Planning for a new Monroe County jail appeared on meeting agendas for both the county council and the board of county commissioners this week.
For county councilors, it was a discussion with Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté, chief deputy Phil Parker, and jail transition director Cory Grass—about a strategy for funding a transition team to be headed by Grass.
The source of transition team funding identified by county councilors is revenue from the corrections local income tax, which county councilors enacted last year.
For their part, county commissioners moved ahead with work on site selection for a new jail, by approving a $4,750 contract with VET Environmental Engineering, for a Phase 1 environmental site assessment of some land along West Hunter Valley Road and West SR 46.
This is the land that the county is now considering as a possible location for a new jail, after putting aside consideration of the Thomson PUD location, in south central Bloomington.
County commissioners also received an update from jail commander Kyle Gibbons, who gave them a rundown of the most recent jail population numbers: 164 felony inmates; 35 misdemeanor inmates, and 15 housed in the jail on other holds. Gibbons gave a nod to the circuit court judges for the pretrial release program, which is helping to keep the numbers down.
Gibbons also told the commissioners that the jail is fully staffed. There’s been just one resignation in the last 90 days, by someone who moved back to northern Indiana to be with family.
About the environmental assessment of the land along West Hunter Valley Road and West SR 46, administrator for the commissioners, Angie Purdie, noted that the total amount of land in the parcels is about 56 acres. Of that total, only about 43 acres is being considered for purchase, Purdie said.
Commissioner Lee Jones noted, “All of this seems to have been taking a lot longer than we had initially anticipated.”
Commissioner Penny Githens said she’s “anxious to move forward.” She described the current jail as “limping along,” saying that money has to be spent on significant projects like elevator replacement, just to keep the current jail in working order.
Commissioner Julie Thomas said she’s looking forward to learning about the property from the study.
It’s the third site that commissioners have seriously considered as a new jail location, including one in the south part of Bloomington, which rezone request was denied by Bloomington’s city council in late 2022.
About this third location, Thomas said, “Hopefully it works out. Fingers crossed.”
The night before, the county council heard from Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté, chief deputy Phil Parker, and jail transition director Cory Grass about their request to fund a six-person transition team.
The funding for Grass, who was brought on board through a contract inked by the sheriff in mid-December last year, came from the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act). But as county councilor Geoff McKim put it on Tuesday night: “ARPA was great to get started. It’s not a viable path moving forward.”
The basic idea for assembling a transition team is to draw from current jail staff—but in order to do that, the jobs now being done by those staff will need to be backfilled. That’s what the additional funding will pay for.
On Tuesday night, the ballpark number used by county councilors for the six jail staff positions was $330,000 a year, without benefits. The amount of revenue generated in 2024 by the new jail local income tax (LIT), which was imposed by the county council last year, is $424,260.
So the existing new “jail tax” was identified by county councilors as a plausible source of funding for backfilling the jail transition team positions.
The council’s action last year to impose a new “jail tax”—which state law calls the “tax rate for correctional and rehabilitation facilities”—did not increase the county’s overall LIT rate.
That’s because the county council reduced by 0.01 points the LIT rate in a category called the special purpose LIT. But the council imposed, for the first time, a rate in the corrections LIT of 0.01 percent, matching the reduction in special purpose tax.
The special purpose LIT, which was previously imposed at a rate of 0.0950, is restricted under state statute to funding “the operation and maintenance of a juvenile detention center and other facilities to provide juvenile services.”
The reduction of the special rate to 0.0850 was judged by the county council to be a possibility, because the annual shortfall in the juvenile detention budget could be covered for at least a decade based on the existing operations balance in the special purpose LIT.
An increase to the corrections rate could come later, once the site of a new jail is selected, its square footage is determined, and its construction cost is dialed in. But there’s a statutory limit on the jail tax rate of 0.2 percent.
Last year’s action on the jail tax left the overall rate paid by Monroe County taxpayers at 2.0350 percent. The overall cap on local income tax that can be imposed is 2.5 percent.
At Tuesday’s county council meeting, councilor Peter Iversen raised the question of whether the people hired to backfill the positions for members of the transition team should be considered “permanent positions.”
Chief deputy Phil Parker responded by saying that it was a bit “up in the air,” but as the transition to a new jail unfolds, if it becomes apparent that more jail staff are on board than are actually needed, then those numbers can be decreased through attrition.
Councilor Munson asked Parker if he recalled that during many of the discussions about the new jail, the idea had been discussed that fewer jail staff would be needed for the new facility, “because it would be designed in a way to make better use of personnel.”
Parker responded to Munson by saying: “I recall it. We’re highly skeptical of it!”
Based on county council discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, an appropriation for the funding of positions to backfill transition team members could appear on a county council agenda in the first part of April.
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.”
This is very disappointing. It’s on a highway with no public transit and no nearby services.
Use the Thomson site. There will be a buffer between residents and the justice center. Actually it will be the safest area.
The current jail is within 2 blocks of a school and neighborhood yet no one seemed to care about that. Is it because it’s considered lower income?
I remember when the current jail was built and I remember skepticism about the expense and the need for a facility of such size but I don’t remember much controversy about the location, if any. Perhaps this was because the “new” site was literally only four blocks away from the “old” jail on Walnut south of Kirkwood.
Also, that part of Morton Street behind the jail had a long and checkered history and was sometimes referred to as “the Levee”, apparently after a similarly notorious district in Chicago. The area had been largely cleaned up by the time the jail came along, but the reputation lingered.
An older friend of mine told a story from her childhood about seeing a drunken man in front of what is now Crazy Horse, trying to mount a horse from one side, falling off the horse on the other side, trying to mount the horse again, falling off and landing back where he started, repeatedly.
Maybe that reputation and the proximity to the old jail accounts for no one coming to the defense of Fairview School? Or maybe someone did and was ignored? Dunno…
But they said that the land was a concern and that Duke would need to move power lines that would take a minimum of two years. That is at least two years before they could even begin working on it working on construction, if the land was buildable because of the karst concerns as well as the existing and new neighborhoods..
Too bad they didn’t deal with this years ago
I was one of the most vocal supporters of the Thomson site for the jail, and continued to support it after the public listening sessions. I thought (and still do) that the neighborhood concerns could be substantively addressed, and neighborhood opposition should not be a reason to look elsewhere (I have taken the same position on many housing rezones that the Commissioners have denied!).
But unfortunately the practical difficulties are compelling. The costs of moving the pile of rubble alone negate much of the advantage that the county has of already owning the property. But the cost and timeline required for Duke to move the high-voltage power lines (and our inability to do any substantive earth-moving until those lines are moved) just make this location infeasible. We simply cannot wait that long.
We will have to ensure that some sort of public transit is available to any jail location, whether provided by the county, or by Rural Transit or Bloomington Transit or some other means.
It is still not adequate. Why didn’t the Commissioners address this years ago. By now we could’ve addressed the problems and be on our way to construction
This is terrible community planning! Will this go to an actual plan commission meeting with somewhat qualified individuals to look at the community and environmental impact?? The kicker here is the services and city connection was more possible to the south side than this location. There are communities and commuters and a large entrance into Bloomington and IU from this area, not ideal for an expanded jail complex. Just because the county put this off for so long does not mean they should push this through at all costs because they feel they have no where else to look. Revisit the others, but do not place this here!! Disappointed in the lack of community outreach by commissioners and councilors as my neighbors had no idea this was going on but strongly oppose a jail expansion! Julie Thomas’ quotes clearly show her bias in pushing for this last ditch effort to work. The taxpayers oppose this, when will they listen!??
Anyone reading this who opposes, please reach out to the county commissioners and your county councilor to state your opposition. They just don’t seem to get the reality of this and impact on community, no matter how much we publicly oppose. Please contact them so they have to respond!