Information key to passing jail expansion, group says

Getting out the vote, raising money and campaigning are paramount if Kootenai County wants another shot at passing a measure to pay for a jail expansion, according to the recommendations of a citizens committee.

And the county should start now, the Citizen Jail Expansion Advisory Committee wrote in a Nov. 30 letter to the Kootenai County Commission.

The citizens committee met last week to analyze why the November local option sales tax measure, which asked voters for a $50 million jail expansion, failed.

Members said they failed to get out the message of why the expansion was needed and why it carried a $50 million price tag.

To make the cost more palatable to voters, the committee said it needs to meet with opponents and work out some sort of compromise before the local option sales tax measure is put on next November’s ballot. By law, the county has to wait 51 weeks to rerun the ballot issue.

That could mean reducing the price tag by doing the expansion in phases, which would require the county to go back to voters several times.

The county commission will review the letter and make a decision within the next few weeks on how to proceed.

County Commission Chairman Gus Johnson said the commission will likely ask the citizens committee to come up with a new proposal. He said the measure, which needed a 66.6 percent vote to pass, failed by only about 300 votes and that working with opponents is key to getting the needed supermajority.

He said one idea is to have an advisory vote in May asking county voters whether they would like to pay for the jail expansion with a bond instead of the sales tax.

Yet Johnson and even most opponents agree that the local option sales tax is the best way to pay for the jail expansion because it provides an equal amount of property tax relief.

That’s how the county paid for the previous $12 million jail expansion that voters approved in 2000.

Concerned Businesses of North Idaho, one of the most organized critics, acknowledges that some form of jail expansion is needed and that the half-cent sales tax is the best way to pay for it, executive director Kelly Richards said.

Yet she said the price tag needs to be reduced and more discussion is needed about the ongoing staffing costs that will come with building additional beds.

“A pay-as-you-go fashion may be more appetizing,” Richards said.

“That way you can do it in bites.”

The failed measure would have nearly doubled the number of beds and added a new kitchen, laundry facility and space for records storage.

The deal also would have included at least $50 million in property tax relief because the sales tax option requires that at least as much money as is raised for the jail go toward reducing property taxes.

Shirley Thagard opposed the measure because she thinks the county should focus on restorative justice programs such as drug courts instead of building more cells.

To make those programs work, she said, businesses, civic groups and churches need to get involved, and the county commission should take the lead in making that happen. She is more than willing to work with the citizens committee to find a solution.

“There’s better ways to spend our money than on the Kootenai County bed and breakfast for drug addicts,” Thagard said.