2023 Lesson: Conduct Public Research Before Making Big Proposals

Lessons from our Successful 2023 NO JAIL Campaign:

The take-home message from our 2023 “No, And” Campaign opposing the city’s Public Safety Building bond measure are that in the future, the Puyallup City Council has to – 1) avoid proposals based on assumptions (like whether we need a city jail) rather than on fundamental feasibility studies (like whether it’s more efficient to use our county jail) and – 2) to present all studies and options to the public for feedback in neighborhood brainstorming meetings … before making big proposals at city council (and then trying to sell them at faux public meetings after decisions have already been made).

Here’s what the city should have done from the get-go on public safety facilities, and still needs to do after its loss at the ballot box:

Update Our Jail System:

1. Create an ad-hoc committee of stakeholders to help Pierce County Jail develop and maintain sufficient capacity for city and county misdemeanor inmate beds.

2. Get competitive bids for a Feasibility Study on contracts with Pierce County & Nisqually Jails, based on current and predicted future inmate capacity, medical/mental health beds needed, and transportation system options.

3. Reduce city jail use as inter-local agreements make regional jail bed capacity available, and as city corrections staff transition to transport and employment at county/other jails.

Attain Modern Police Facilities:

1. Open competitive bidding for an independent/professional Space Study to inventory best use of existing facilities, especially City Hall as well as places like Public Works, determining need for any additional building, renovating or acquiring of new spaces, even as the property next to the new fire station on the hill is already bought and paid for that purpose. Space Study should look at options such as putting police administration in city hall building (as proposed in last ballot measure) as well as using the existing public safety building for short-term holding cells while spreading out police officer and detective unit spaces there, and creating secure police officer parking once fire station relocates as planned.

2. Sponsor neighborhood feedback meetings in three city districts or four city quadrants, including presentation of options for utilizing existing facilities, and brainstorming ideas for building additional spaces as needed depending on results of Space Study.

3. Depending on space study and public brainstorming sessions, open competitive bidding for design of new/additional police facilities (likely in the near-term, and courthouse potentially in the long-term) financed by councilmanic bonds (since political capital for voter-approved property-tax increase bond proposals is assumed to be gone after three increasingly failed ballot measures) and paid over time with savings from the shift to regional jail system – before other community funding needs are impacted, and to ensure that the upcoming budget “boon” after city hall is paid off follows what the public wants the city to prioritize, not visa-versa.

Feedback shared at the doors during the voting window seemed to show that:

+/- 10% of voters we talked to expressed immediate anti-tax sentiments and said they would vote “no” on virtually all bonds;

+/- 10% of voters we talked to were so frustrated with how few crimes are enforced with arrest and incarceration nowadays that they didn’t want to pay for more jail space if it wasn’t going to be used anyway;

+/- 10% of voters we talked to expressed already being anti-jail generally, saying Americans are over-incarcerated, or that having a jail means a revolving-door of crime directly back into our community, so they were probably already going to vote “no” on this bond;

(voters sometimes expressed 2 of the above sentiments)

+/- 20% of voters we talked to said they were thinking about voting in favor until they saw the Puyallup Voters for Integrity mailer and its alternative solutions to the problem such as utilizing our Pierce County Jail;

+/- 30% of voters we talked to said they were planning to vote in favor, sharing a rationale similar to what the city published on multiple taxpayer-funded mailers, emails and public info sessions;

+/- 20% of voters we talked to would not say how they were feeling about the bond, so we assumed they were voting in favor, perhaps affected by the fact our volunteers were up-front as being from the “no” campaign;

In sum, our impression was that before receiving the Puyallup Voters for Inegrity mailer and viewing our website, anti-tax voters were already going to vote no, establishment voters were going to vote yes, some progressives were going to vote no, while independents and moderates from both parties were going to vote “yes” since they didn’t know of any other solutions other than what the police chief and council members offered to the problem of our out-dated public safety facilities.

The take home lesson is that we have to be careful making and accepting proposals without first checking our assumptions about how we used to do things when things have changed. Assumptions have to be challenged, studies have to start at the beginning, information has to be vetted by the public, and then then, good proposals will be the result.

Note above that our turnout in Puyallup was 8% higher than the average county-wide, likely a result of interest we helped generate in this election, especially considering two uncontested city council races. In 2021, the turnout in Puyallup was 4% higher than countywide, and in 2017 ours was on par with the 28.5% countywide turnout. In 2019, the interest we helped generate in the warehouse fight brought Puyallup turnout up to about 44% compared to countywide turnout under 40%.

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.