Planned new jail budget numbers start to come into sharper focus for Monroe County council
At its Tuesday meeting this past week, Monroe County’s council got a briefing that included some estimated hard construction costs for a new jail with different bed counts—400 compared to 500 beds.
The difference in hard construction cost between a 500-bed jail and a 400-bed jail is about $20.2 million. That’s based on 120,000 square feet for a 400-bed facility and 150,000 square feet for a 500-bed facility and a construction cost of $674 per square foot.
The hard construction cost for a 400-bed new jail is estimated at $80.9 million. The current jail has 287 beds.
The additional hard construction cost of a new, 50-percent bigger justice center, to be co-located with a new jail, is estimated at around $78.7 million. That’s based on a 136,848-square-foot facility, at a cost of $575 per square foot. The current justice facilities cover 91,222 square feet.
The all-in cost of a combined new 400-bed jail and a co-located justice facility—which includes 20-percent for “soft costs”—would be about $199.6 million. Soft costs include contingency, professional fees, land purchase, FFE (furniture, fixtures and equipment), bond counsel, permits, printing and the like.
All the numbers came from Chris Ciolli, with Weddle Bros. Construction, and Scott Carnegie, with DLZ Corporation, who briefed the county council on Tuesday.
It was just after a storm blew through the county, leaving many Duke Energy customers without power for a day, some as long as four days. Power was available at the county courthouse on Tuesday evening.
At Tuesday’s meeting, several members of the group Care not Cages delivered comment from the public mic opposing the construction of a new jail.
No location has yet been decided for a new Monroe County jail, but a limited amount of pre-design work can be done independent of site selection.
Carnegie noted that the pre-design phase includes programming, master planning, and conceptual design. The programming phase is not site-specific, whereas master planning and conceptual design depend on a specific site, Carnegie said.
Programming involves figuring out the specific functional and space needs of a new jail, including the number of beds, administrative areas, security requirements, and the supervision model. County jail supervision models can include direct supervision, with officers inside cell blocks units, indirect supervision via control rooms, division of the facility into pods or various hybrid approaches.
The specific site currently under consideration by Monroe County commissioners is the North Park PUD, on West Hunter Valley Road. At this past Wednesday’s work session meeting, commissioners approved a roughly $5,000 increase to the contract with VET Environmental, for additional boring samples as a part of the Phase 2 environmental study for the North Park site. The initial amount of the Phase 2 study contract, which had already been approved, was $28,417.
The site reconnaissance and Phase 1 environmental study have already been submitted to the county by VET.
On Tuesday, county councilors seemed relieved to have finally received some more concrete numbers that connect the cost to the bed count.
Councilor Peter Iversen said the square footage and cost estimates reflected progress. Iversen appreciated the way the estimated costs had been broken down with separate numbers for the jail and the justice center, and a separate analysis based on a $180-million conceptual budget compared to a $200-million conceptual budget.
Councilor Kate Wiltz asked Carnegie for a breakdown of costs for a 300-bed facility, which he indicated could be provided.
The bed count recently became a point of friction between county commissioners and the county council—with respect to who makes the decision. County commissioners have recently put the bed-count ball in the county council’s court.
The county council has already weighed in with a policy document several months ago that includes a 400-bed limit on the new jail facility. A more recent recommendation, from a statutorily required feasibility study done by county commissioners, indicated 450-500 beds was the best number.
That recommendation, made by RQAW Corporation, has been criticized, because the number came from just taking the average figure for the number of jail beds per capita in the six counties adjacent to Monroe County.
Also coming into clearer focus in the past week or so has been the available funding for a new jail. Based on a presentation given Friday the week before, by Financial Services Group, the county government’s long-range financial planning consultant, it would be possible to pay for a $200-million co-located jail and justice facility.
Paying for the $200-million cost would require enacting a 0.2-percent local income tax (LIT) just for jail construction, which would generate about $8.5 million a year. It would also include using most of the additional revenue that comes from the roughly $11.2 million that Monroe County government now receives from the relatively new economic development LIT, enacted by Bloomington’s city council in May 2022.
At this past Tuesday’s meeting, county council president Trent Deckard said the council now needs to start connecting “options for funding with options for action.” Deckard continued, saying that there are several different elected officials who will play a role. Deckard added,, “We want to honor those wishes as best as possible while figuring out the funding.”
Deckard described the current situation as “one big giant mud ball.” He added, “This council’s mission… is to take [the new cost estimates] and try to clean that mud up.”
Consideration of a replacement jail facility Monroe County is driven by the conclusion of two consultants who submitted recommendations to the county almost three years ago. One of the reports concluded that “The jail facility is failing…”
The jail currently operates under a 2009 settlement agreement with the ACLU, which filed a lawsuit over crowded conditions at the jail. The settlement agreement has been extended several times.
The rated capacity of the jail at the time of the settlement agreement, based on Indiana’s County Jail Standards and inspections by the Indiana Department of Correction, was 278, with 248 secure beds. The other 30 beds are for trustees and offenders attending a special program.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, when the population for the available security beds reaches 244, the jail staff has to contact the circuit court judges and request an order releasing inmates in order to avoid the population exceeding the jail’s capacity.
