Monroe County commissioners have moved ahead with consideration of other land, besides the county-owned Thomson PUD, as a potential location for a new jail and co-located courts facility.
At their regular Wednesday meeting, commissioners approved contracts with two firms to have appraisals done of some land that is located in the vicinity of SR46 and Hunter Valley Road, north of the city of Bloomington.
The amount to be charged by the two firms for their appraisal work is significantly different—$950 for Advisio and $3,750 for First Appraisal Group. County attorney Jeff Cockerill said that the lower price charged by Advisio is due to the fact that the firm had recently undertaken an appraisal of the same property.
After Wednesday’s meeting, Cockerill told The B Square that the appraisal work by both firms is expected to be completed in four to six weeks.
Still not completed is a required feasibility study for the construction of a new jail, after the commissioners approved a $40,000 contract with RQAW Corporation in late October 2023 to do the work. The amount of working time, as opposed to calendar time, for completion of the study had been expected to be around eight weeks.
According to Cockerill, in mid-January a serious meeting was held by county officials with representatives of RQAW about their progress. The meeting was attended by Cockerill, Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté and commissioners administrator Angie Purdie, Cockerill said. At that point, Cockerill said that RQAW had not really started the work.
For B Square background on the question of the need for a new county jail, see: Monroe County sheriff, commissioners square off at committee meeting, ACLU lawyer says: “Look, you need a new jail. Everyone knows that.”
Wednesday’s approval of the appraisal contracts for the land north of Bloomington came after last week, the county commissioners took the occasion at the start of the county council’s Tuesday meeting to state their latest intention about the location of a new county jail.
Last Tuesday, commissioners indicated that they would be looking near North Park, in the vicinity of Arlington Road and SR 46.
The county council is the fiscal body of the county, which means that there still needs to be majority support among councilors for the decision on jail site selection, which it is up to the commissioners to make.
Last Tuesday’s announcement from commissioners about their current thinking for the jail site came just a few minutes after a joint executive session with the county council on the topic of real estate acquisition. That’s one of the reasons under Indiana’s Open Door Law that public bodies can hold meetings that are closed to the public.
County councilors did not appear to be expecting that the commissioners would be announcing their intentions that soon after the joint closed session.
After last Tuesday’s meeting, county council president Trent Deckard told The B Square: “I will say this: This council has dutifully been engaged in solutions all around this issue, and we will remain so.” Deckard added, “And whatever form that takes, we will be there figuring this out. And that’ll be our reality.”
At last Tuesday’s county council meeting, commissioners Julie Thomas and Lee Jones ticked through the reasons for focusing away from the county-owned Thomson PUD property, which had last fall been a leading contender for a new jail site. They restated those reasons at this Wednesday’s meeting. Commissioner Penny Githens joined the meeting via videoconference.
The fact that the Thomson PUD is already owned by the county had been a point in its favor. But detracting from that basic cost advantage was the fact that on further investigation, to construct a jail with colocated courts and related facilities, a big pile of debris would have to be removed, and Duke Energy’s high-voltage lines would need to be relocated.
The combined cost of moving the debris pile and the high-voltage lines is more than $6 million, according to a note in the commissioners meeting information packet. The note also indicates that moving the power lines would mean a construction delay of up to two and a half years.
Also a factor, according to commissioners, in their remarks last week and Wednesday morning, was opposition by neighbors of the Thomson site.
The general vicinity of land to be appraised was not a surprise. At an August 2023 meeting, two additional sites, neither owned by Monroe County, were unveiled as under consideration as possible jail locations, but were not pursued at that time. One was south of the Monroe Hospital. The other was north of Bloomington in the vicinity of Arlington Road and SR 46.
By November of last year, commissioners were already looking to reduce expectations that the Thomson PUD site would be their choice for a new jail location.
By mid-Feburary this year, the idea that the commissioners had mostly cooled to the idea of locating the jail at the Thomson site was established by Julie Thomas at a county commissioner candidate forum. In that Democratic Party primary race, the incumbent Thomas is facing a challenge from county councilor Peter Iversen.
Is this for real? what a mess! In any corporate setting someone would surely be fired. In this context we have an approaching primary election.
i just think it is absolutely unacceptable to put the jail on a highway outside of town. jail needs to be on a bus route, and within a plausible walking distance of *something*. i understand the fundamental nature of a jail is segregationary but especially as they add in these things like courts and rehab, the inability to access it without a car is substantial.
arlington and SR46 is the worst place in the county. two young men were killed while walking near there, one in 2006 and the other in 2017. this is an environment where literally no one walks and still the two that did were killed. one of them was even on that short stretch of sidewalk there and was still killed. it is a fantastically lethal environment. the commissioners have spent enormous sums building that fantastically wide curry pike but they ignore the county urbanizing area plan that is supposed to describe how to develop this without turning it into exclusion, sprawl, and segregation.
i understand there are challenges but the commissioners are treating it like these basic requirements are negotiable, when they aren’t. the reason i swear every time i put the commissioner’s name in my mouth is that the CJRC was formed exactly to study these problems, and then the county commissioners disbanded it. the county commissioners said that when the CJRC members asked for input into this question — the central question — the commissioners perceived it as harrassment. that’s absurd and autocratic and disingenuine and awful.
the county owns a ton of vacant land in the city, including several *excessive* blocks of urban blight right downtown that are earmarked for the convention center, but which we all know will not be used for that. they need to stop thinking of the jail location as an opportunity to suburbanize our criminal justice system. we do not need to make a jail campus with every facility co-located. the project doesn’t need to be that large. we need a jail in the middle of the city near a diversity of existing services.
the county council doesn’t need to fall for their BS. i know you all are democrats but you don’t owe anything to the Thomas Githens Jones gang. you owe more to the lowest criminal than you do to those jerks.
The 2020 Kenneth Ray Justice Services Report (here: https://bsquarebulletin.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/MCICJ-Study-Final-Report-Submitted-062021.pdf#page=17) doesn’t stress the need for a *new* jail NEARLY as much as it talks about failing processes, lack of data, inadequate pre-trial diversion, and unnecessary arrests.
The report also emphasizes that unique bookings have gone down from 2004-2019, but repeat bookings have increased. Most of the capacity issues are due to policy and procedure issues. People being arrested for technical probation violations, non-violent misdemeanors, etc.
The average length of stay has swelled by ~25% from 2003-2018. Contributing to the increase in lengths of stay are the jails staffing practices and scheduling procedures. The jail currently doesn’t even staff the bond process or pretrial release program on weekends. Meaning a person arrested and incarcerated on Friday has to wait at least until Monday to even post bail.
It is ridiculous to expand the capacity for misery without fixing the root issues, which are fundamentally policy issues. I wish the County Gov would even consider the cost of remediating the current jail and remediating processes and procedures before deciding to splash $80M+ on a new jail which will experience the exact same failures.
Remember, Vigo County just built a huge, new jail a couple years ago and it filled up in less than a year. (https://www.21alivenews.com/2023/07/20/21investigates-build-bigger-jail-vigo-county-jail-officials-advice-allen-county/)
Jail expansionism is not the answer. Justice praxis reform is.
This new proposed location for the jail is awful! It is almost as bad as putting the limestone heritage park at that location. So now we are going to put the jail next to a park? Our commissioners are completely out of touch with reality. Please vote them out in November!
Steve, as I mentioned above it seems like a real mess created even in fact by the behavior of the commissioners. And obviously then I agree entirely with you. All further illustrated by the fact that one of the early actions by Julie Thomas may be once again an attempt to get more money for herself by salary increases. She’s always known the salary before seeking election but that doesn’t hinder her in asking for more. Now as for your concern above, is it also a sad fact that the proposed County Park is planned on contaminated land unfit for women to visit?? What is the condition of the land considered by the same for the new jail? Surely things can’t be this tragically bad!
Please reach out in objection to the county commissioners and councilors so their focus can shift on what matters – not expanding the jail & finding a better location than this!