The Ames Police Station will have a little more room than usual in the next three months because of a plan that would relocate inmates to the Story County Jail.

Beginning 3 p.m. Monday, the police station will begin a trial period — using the Story County Jail for simple and serious misdemeanors instead of placing offenders in the Ames holding facility.

Ames Police Cmdr. Randy Kessel said the department will operate this way for 90 days, after which an evaluation will be done by the City Manager’s Office and the Board of Supervisors to determine whether the situation would be permanently feasible.

Kessel said the Ames facility normally holds simple and serious misdemeanors. More serious crimes, felony arrests, are booked at the Ames facility and are then taken to the Story County facility in Nevada.

He said if someone were to be arrested at 3 p.m. Monday for public intoxication, he or she would be taken to the Ames facility and would go through a preliminary booking process.

“The ideal situation is to make sure that we do not lose any service to the citizens of Ames,” he said.

“Because you not only have the incarceration of prisoners to consider, but you have to consider court times here … We want to make sure that doesn’t affect the functionality of the court.”

Kessel said the department has been in touch with judicial offices in both Ames and Nevada to assure paperwork isn’t interrupted in any way.

J.B. Hopkins, Story County Jail administrator, said the jail has bed space for 104 prisoners and a holding facility with a capacity of 15 or 16.

Hopkins said most prisoners from Ames will only be staying for 24 hours or less.

“I see very little impact as far as capacity,” he said.

Kessel said that, as the trial period goes on, the Ames Police Department will look over the inmate population and see if any changes would need to be made. He said there may be some crimes where officers could cite and release offenders after the booking process, instead of arresting and holding them.

“Some jurisdictions across the United States cite and release, to a responsible person, people who have been arrested for public intoxication and also for OWI,” Kessel said. “We’ve never done that in Story County, so that might be something … we’d certainly have to be in consultation with our city attorney and county attorney.”

He said the trial period is something Ames has considered for two years. Since a consolidation in Des Moines with Polk County has done well this past year, he said, it is something that Ames could do, too.

“We certainly don’t handle the amount of inmate activity as they do, so we thought if they can do it down there, we should be able to do it for a trial period here; see if it’s feasible,” Kessel said.

The Ames police station contains one of 14 holding facilities left in the state.

If the situation were to become permanent, Kessel said, a feasibility study might be done by an outside consultant who looks at space usage for public safety institutions.

The consultant would analyze the current situation and long-term goals and see how much money Ames would need to make the proposed change — which would include renovation of the station, he said.

The Ames Police Department moved into its current building in 1991, and Kessel said the demands on public safety, especially since Sept. 11, make him think the department will be adding personnel in the future and will need adequate facilities to accommodate.

He said he thinks it would also be nice to expand the patrol and records divisions and dispatch.