The Battle For The New Jail Is ON!

I was wondering when the Vote No crowd was going to get organized and it appears they have with a website and a few lawn signs starting to pop up here and there. As I mentioned earlier in the month when I made my State and Local Endorsements, I am supporting a new Justice Center, why?

Well, we're spending $1.3 million a year to have other counties house our inmates and the current jail is just plan inadequate to the needs of the county. Don't get me wrong: I know what county I live in and I'm betting this won't pass but the reasons the NO campaign are floating aren't really impressing me all that much:

1. $46.8 million in taxpayer money: Well, new jails aren't cheap. I'm pretty sure I remember the Board of Supervisors actual voting to LOWER the amount of money they were asking for not that long ago- and despite the cost- which I'm not crazy about this is something we actually need.

2. TSA-style Security for Regular Courthouse Visits: I need more specifics on that. Are we talking strip searches? Gropings? Full body scanners? Or just metal detectors? The Courthouse deals with people who have committed, you know, crimes and some of them aren't the nicest people in the world. Keeping everyone who visits there safe is also not unimportant.

3. "Build It And They Will Fill It": Seriously? How big do you think this new Jail is going to be? If they wanted to go south of town and build a gigantic shiny new Justice Center then maybe- maaaaaaaaaaaaybe, this would be a valid argument. But how much more space are they going to have? If it's not significantly more than what they need to make up the current shortfall in space, I say fail on this argument too.

4. Merging the Courthouse with the jail is a BAD Idea: They want to kill two birds with one stone- the Courthouse needs extra space and the jail for sure does need extra space. And it's not like the new jail is going to go all Borg Cube on the Courthouse and swallow it whole- look at the picture on their website. The Historic Courthouse is going to look the same as it always has.

5. Fear Mongering (and highly exaggerrated risk to public harm) are being used to sell the project to the public: I'm not really seeing this one either. We can spend $46 million now or keep spending $1.3 million a year to have other counties house our prisoners. Either way, there are still going to be prisoners and we're still going to have a problem but biting the bullet and building a new jail relieves us of that $1.3 million bill we're paying each and every year.

Look, I'm not wild about this. The County just got the kinks worked out of the new Joint Communications Center (which was expensive- as consolidating Dispatch centers always is) and now they're asking for a new Jail. That's ballsy to be frank about it and I think this would have a lot better chance of passing had they asked for the new Jail before consolidating the dispatch centers. But the Courthouse and the Jail really do need the space and this proposal although pricier than I'd like solves that problem.