CITY HALL -- Staten Island won't get a new jail when Rikers Island closes, Mayor Bill de Blasio said less than week after refusing to rule out the possibility.

"I have no intention of opening a jail on Staten Island because, again, we need the fewest facilities possible and so we know that very few of our inmates come from Staten Island," de Blasio said Monday at an unrelated event on Randall's Island.

De Blasio wouldn't go that far when asked about the potential for a new jail on Staten Island last week.

"I don't start with any assumptions about what additional facilities would look like and where they would be," he said on Wednesday. Two days later, de Blasio said, "nothing's off the table."

Still, Borough President James Oddo took de Blasio at his word on Monday.

"The de Blasio administration will not be building a jail on Staten Island," Oddo said in a statement. "The Mayor has consistently said the fewer the number of new facilities, the better."

PLAN TO CLOSE RIKERS

Rikers Island would be closed in a decade under de Blasio's ambitious plan.

The city must first reduce the overall jail population to roughly 5,000 inmates, from some 9,300 housed currently by the Department of Correction. Changes to the bail system, alternative sentencing and other city and state criminal justice reforms would be needed.

Then the city would have to open alternative facilities outside the Rikers complex.

"I want to see this move forward and I want to figure out the fewest possible locations that'll allow us to get off Rikers Island and Staten Island doesn't really play a strategic role in that," de Blasio said on Monday.

An independent advisory commission, chaired by former chief judge Jonathan Lippman and impaneled by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, disagreed.

The commission issued a report on Sunday recommending Rikers be closed and replaced with smaller community jails, including a facility on Staten Island.

"According to the Commission's analysis, the largest facility would be Manhattan and the smallest would be Staten Island," the report reads. "Each of the facilities would have varying capacities proportional to the population held from each Borough."

The average daily population of jail inmates arraigned on Staten Island was 315 in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, according to the Department of Correction. That's just over 3 percent of the total population.

The city already has three jails in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn in addition to Rikers Island.

'A MAN OF HIS WORD'

Oddo has been adamant that Staten Island won't get a new jail.

"Given the potential small size of any proposed jail required to address the local need, pursuing the siting of a jail in our borough is simply inconsistent with the administration's stated views," Oddo said. "Since we first met each other in the City Council nearly 20 years ago, in every dealing I personally and directly have had with Bill de Blasio he has proven to be a man of his word. As far as I am concerned, this ends the notion that the de Blasio administration will attempt to build such a facility on Staten Island."

The city examined two Staten Island properties to help replace Rikers Island as part of a theoretical exercise in October 2015.

Public land along Arthur Kill Road in Rossville and at the Teleport in Bloomfield were included in a presentation made to First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris called "Alternatives for Rikers Island."

Any new jails would still have to go through the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, known as ULURP.

That seven-month process is public and includes input from several levels of city government, including the community board, the borough president, the City Council and the mayor. The Council typically defers to the local member in matters of land use.

Staten Island's Council delegation is opposed to new jails in their districts.

De Blasio said putting a jail on Staten Island is "not my plan."

"We're going to sit with the Council members and figure out what we can agree on that makes sense as a path forward," he said.

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