New PV4I Project – Vote No New Unnecessary Jail

Four years ago, Puyallup Voters for Integrity took on some powerful Political Action Committees, including the pseudo Friends of Puyallup, an out-of-state warehouse PAC attempting to subvert our local elections with unprecedented independent expenditures, later joined by the infamous Seattle based Forge WA. Both of those PAC’s worked hard to support candidates who would let them cover farmland with warehouses. The voters of Puyallup were not fooled, and we beat them back.

For the past couple of years, contributors to Puyallup Voters for Integrity have tried to help the Puyallup City Council create a smart approach to building a new Public Safety Building to replace our current aging facility. We have spoken during the citizen comments portion of every city council meeting where the Public Safety Building issues has been on the agenda. Unfortunately, city council has not heeded our recommendation to prioritize a new police station over building a new jail. The result: two previous failed ballot measures.

Instead of heeding public recommendations to prioritize a new police station and use our county jail for the misdemeanor inmates locked up in our aging city jail, council created yet another new, convoluted ballot measure asking voters to raise their own property taxes – and allow council to divert tens of millions of dollars from general fund (mostly sales tax) revenues – to build a jail along with police station. The proposition is nearly the same cost as previous proposals, but funded differently and delays adding a courthouse into the future. The total cost after adding courthouse far exceeds previous ballot proposals due to current high interest rates and building cost inflation.

In the next couple of days, we will publish a blog post with survey asking Puyallup voters to compare the current proposal with our suggestion. The question will be: do you prefer raising your taxes to build a police station and city jail, or saving taxes by putting our misdemeanor inmates into our modern county jail that’s sitting unused? The survey language will include links to the city website promoting a new jail, as well as links to evidence of tax savings to city residents of over $1 million per year versus the current cost of running our old jail, or saving over $2 million per year compared to the cost of building a new city jail and running it for the next 30 years.

Please consider a donation of any amount, and invite your friends to like our Facebook page. Sponsored by Puyallup Voters for Integrity, PO Box 42, Puyallup WA 98371. No candidate or party contributes to, authorizes or controls this Political Action Committee which is registered at the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission. 2025 campaign season contributors over the $100 threshold so far include Chris Chisholm, PV4I Treasurer. When facts are presented, we want them to be accurate. If you find any errors, please email us with original-source evidence for correction.correction.