TROY - (Dayton Daily News) -- Sheriff Charles Cox will close the Miami County Incarceration Facility at year's end, cutting another 28 corrections officer jobs and idling 240 jail beds.

The decision to close the facility resulted from a third round of cuts this year to meet a combined 12-percent reduction in budgets from 2009 to 2010 by the county commissioners.

"You're either going to have to layoff a lot of deputies or, another option, is closing the incarceration facility," Cox said in October as he looked at ways to cut his $10 million-a-year budget.

Before cuts began, the sheriff's department had 135 employees including 53 sworn officers.

In May, Cox laid off five correction officers followed by another 10 in September. In addition, five positions were vacant at the time of the first layoffs.

Those steps resulted in closing of two of the pods at the 10-year-old incarceration facility on County Road 25A between Troy and Piqua.

The building houses non-violent offenders and prisoners under contract from other jails and the federal marshal's service. Use declined as other counties battled budget woes and did not send as many inmates. The county jail housed with the sheriff's office in downtown Troy holds 110.

County elected officials and department heads met again Thursday, Nov. 5, with commission Chairman John "Bud" O'Brien to discuss how to implement the 12-percent budget cut.  Pay cuts, furloughs and layoffs have been among options discussed by officials who earlier were given information on various implications of a cost-saving measure such as unemployment payments required for those laid off.

Sales tax income for the county has consistently been down from a year ago in month-by-month comparisons and income from investments has dropped.

Revenues to the general fund from those two sources this year is down nearly $1 million from the same period in 2008, the commissioners were told in late October.