Inmates from Potter County soon may come to Butler County Prison to serve their time.

County commissioners Wednesday approved an agreement with Potter County, which allows the warden of Butler’s jail to accept adult inmates from the north-central Pennsylvania county.

The agreement does not force Butler to accept inmates from Potter, the fifth-least populated county in the state, according to county solicitor Wil White. Rather, it sets a rate at which Potter County will reimburse Butler to house inmates — $60 per day — should they choose to accept them.

Potter County is now the fifth county with which Butler has an agreement to house inmates, joining Allegheny, Armstrong, Franklin and Venango counties.

White said Potter reached out to Butler because it has a long-term female inmate and its jail is not equipped to deal with her incarceration.

“This one’s a little unique in that Potter County, as you’re aware, is somewhat rural, and they have a smaller jail,” White said. Its “effective capacity is only 74, they have 14 full-time COs (corrections officers), and they’re not really equipped for long-term female inmates.”

Joe DeMore, Butler county jail warden, indicated he would be willing to house inmates from Potter County, according to White.

Commissioners also approved the purchase of two billboard advertisements for the Area Agency on Aging: One advertising the availability of COVID-19 vaccinations and the other advertising the agency’s protective service program.

Neither advertisement will be paid for by county taxpayer money, with the funds instead stemming from grants. Both ads were approved by the state.

Beth Herold, director of the Area Agency on Aging, said the latter advertisement is related to the increased number of scams aimed at older residents.

In public comment periods during the commissioners’ Wednesday meeting, some residents derided the vaccination billboard. Jennifer Steele, wearing a pink T-shirt bearing the words “proudly unpoisoned,” said “I don’t approve this.”

Although any person can submit information to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a database administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services known as VAERS, Steele cited those data to bolster her opposition to the billboard.

The VAERS website states it is not a tool to establish the causal relationship between vaccinations and adverse events.

“This limitation has caused confusion in the publicly available data from VAERS WONDER (Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research), specifically regarding the number of reported deaths,” the site states. “There have been instances where people have misinterpreted reports of deaths following vaccination as deaths caused by the vaccines; that is not accurate.”