Final North Park jail showdown set for May 26 after Monroe County council’s 1–5 vote fails

Failing to win approval from the Monroe County council on Tuesday night (May 12) was an ordinance authorizing the purchase of the North Park property for a new jail for $11.375 million.

But that means it will come back for a vote in two weeks at the council’s next meeting on May 26. It’s at the meeting two weeks from now when the question of North Park will be settled for good.

At the end of Tuesday’s almost four-hour long meeting, which featured several tense moments between commissioners, council members, and the public, the county council voted just 1–5 in favor of approving the ordinance.

North Park is a roughly 52-acre property northwest of Bloomington off SR-46.

Councilor David Henry initially made a motion to approve the ordinance, followed by a brief moment of confusion when he asked to change it into a motion to deny the ordinance. After several rounds of back and forth between councilors and county attorney Molly Turner-King, Henry reverted to his original motion to approve the ordinance.

Henry’s idea had been to settle the question of North Park for good on Tuesday night, with a vote where a majority of councilors voted to reject the ordinance. That would have removed the possibility of a second vote in two weeks. As it turned out, the failed 1–5 vote on approval just meant that the ordinance didn’t have unanimous support. And under state law, that meant it could not be approved Tuesday night, which was the same day and the same meeting when it was introduced. But it did not preclude consideration of the ordinance at the next meeting.

Councilor Peter Iversen was the sole vote in support of the ordinance. Trent Deckard was absent. All five remaining councilors voted the same way they did in late October last year when an appropriation for North Park failed to win any votes in support and was unanimously rejected. Iversen was not keen to take a vote at all, because he felt it wasn’t appropriate to decide the issue when Deckard was absent. Henry countered that councilor Marty Hawk had not been present for the 6–0 rejection of the appropriation ordinance late during the Oct. 28, 2025 meeting, after the adoption had failed 0–7. The vote on the rejection was meant to underscore the council’s position at the time against North Park.

With this, councilors have left the window open for approval of the North Park purchase agreement two weeks from now, when their individual votes could change.

County councilor questions

Tuesday’s meeting venue was the usual one—the Nat U. Hill Room at the Monroe County courthouse. It was attended by all three members of the board of commissioners. Julie Thomas and Jody Madeira attended in person, while Lee Jones joined remotely. Monroe County sheriff Ruben Marté also attended. It’s the commissioners and the sheriff who were the named defendants in the still pending lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2008 over conditions at the jail.

It’s the threat that the settlement agreement for the lawsuit will not be extended past May 29, when it’s set to expire, that has injected some urgency into considerations of county officials. If a purchase agreement is not approved by both the commissioners and the council by May 29, then Ken Falk, the ACLU’s lead attorney, has indicated he’ll let the agreement expire, opening the door to fresh litigation over current conditions at the jail.

The council finished deliberations on the other topics on the agenda packet within about 40 minutes of the beginning of the meeting. A short recess was taken, after which discussions began on the purchase agreement for the proposed North Park jail project.

Thomas started proceedings by talking about the urgency of the situation, with the ACLU’s long-running jail lawsuit settlement agreement with Monroe County, which was set to expire on April 15, but was extended at the last moment until May 29.

“Mr. [Ken] Falk [of the ACLU] has made his expectations clear to all parties, as outlined in the most recent extension, and he made it very clear to our attorneys last week that he will not consider an additional extension,” she said.

Madeira outlined the potential risks of allowing the May 29 deadline to pass.

“If the settlement agreement lapses at the end of May without meeting our obligations—a site selected—we’ll then be open to new litigation, both from the ACLU and from individual inmates. This isn’t a suggestion. It’s a real threat. A federal judge can order any number of remedies, but let’s be clear, this is a burden borne by all Monroe County taxpayers,” she said. “This isn’t a risk or cost that the commissioners are willing to accept when a good solution exists.”

Thomas then invited Sheriff Marté to speak on the topic, and he urged the council to act fast given the conditions of the current jail facility.

“I’m walking into that facility, day in, day out, and I’m looking at people that we are supposed to be taking care of, because this city, this county, is supposed to be a caring and giving county. If everybody saw what was going on, they would be embarrassed. Not everyone sees what goes on in there. Everyone has good ideas that they think they do, but those are opinions. I’m dealing with facts,” he said. “We can not provide the programs that we should be able to provide. The medical care—we can’t even keep up.”

The councilors questioned the commissioners for the better part of an hour, probing into various aspects of the proposed project, the appraisals of the North Park property, and the circumstances that led to the county council taking a second vote about the location they had rejected six months ago.

Council president Jennifer Crossley said, “How has it been that the county government has sat on this for as long as we have, and has had the ACLU extend, extend throughout all this time, and nobody has said anything up until the moment when we took the vote on October 28?”

Following a discussion about the plans potentially including a jail and just three courtrooms at the North Park site, councilor Kate Wiltz asked who was involved in the making of these decisions.

“Every single person that I’ve talked to who works in the courts, judges and offenders, prosecutors, I’ve talked to many people. None of them want that, and they’ve all actually said that would be, there’s no way they can see using that. Where’s the disconnect? And have you had them provide input?” she asked. Wiltz commented that the proposal seemed “like a very undeveloped concept”.

Councilor David Henry dug into the decision-making process that led to the current disagreement between the council and the board of commissioners, and how that can be avoided in the future.

“How can we do it differently so that we don’t relive the same process, where we agree to a purchase agreement and then a few months from now, once the design comes back and it’s considerably more expensive for whatever reasons there may be that we end up right back reliving last fall. I mean, how are we going to do this differently to make sure the public and this body is very aware of the requirements we’re keeping and the requirements we’re getting,” Henry said.

Public comment

Public commentary saw an overwhelming majority of speakers pressing on the council not to approve the purchase.

Several residents of neighborhoods adjacent to the North Park site made impassioned pleas to not go through with the approval.

One of them was Susan Easton, who asked for the council’s continued “fiscal diligence” on the issue.

Jessica Groves, another resident in the area, said she’s not opposed to the jail and has sympathy for the conditions of the inmates, but mentioned community activities, children’s safety, and the potential impact on property values as reasons she opposes the proposal.

Kurtis Cummins, who works in public service and human systems and said he is in and out of the jail and the courts on a weekly basis, said, “This is a long-term land use and economic development decision that will shape Monroe County for decades.” Cummins expressed concern that North Park is too strategically important to be “only a jail”, as it may represent one of the county’s most valuable future development corridors.

Former county councilor and now CEO of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce Eric Spoonmore picked up on questions raised by councilor David Henry about the value of the land.

Spoonmore calculated the cost per acre of the North Park site at about $11.375 million for 52 acres, or roughly $219,000 per acre, and then set that against recent jail land purchases in Allen County (about $45,000 per acre), Marion County (about $30,000 per acre), and Vigo County (about $41,000 per acre). He told councilors that means Monroe County is being asked to pay roughly five to seven times more per acre. The purchase price is the average of two appraisals. [North Park Appraisal 1] [North Park Appraisal 2]

Richard Garza, who worked in the justice center last summer, was the sole voice from the public mic who was in favor of the North Park site for the new jail project. “I am here to implore the council to approve this purchase agreement. It is incredibly irresponsible and not caring to deny this. Enough is enough,” he said.

However, the lack of support for Garza’s comments underscored the depth of opposition the board of commissioners faced during the meeting. If that dynamic repeats itself two weeks from now, county councilors will be under pressure to stick by their votes against North Park.