Above: Side view from the City of Puyallup on how the proposed Public Safety Building would look, with costs added.
• FAQ – Will the bond cost us $56 million, $76 million, or more? Is there a limit on how much we’ll end up paying?
• FAQ – Are we already paying for county jail space just sitting empty? Does Puyallup really have a system that’s literally twice as much as Tacoma’s?
• FAQ – Did the city do a feasibility study to see how much it would cost to bring our misdemeanor inmates to our county jail instead of continuing to run a city jail?
• FAQ – Why does the City of Puyallup claim we “can’t bring our misdemeanor inmates to the county” when surrounding cities do just that? Is it too far away, or would corrections officers lose jobs?
• FAQ – Is our current jail really inadequate? If so, why do little towns around us continue to contract to use it as a regional jail?
• FAQ – What would Puyallup Voters for Integrity support in regards to a new Public Safety Building?
Is it $56 million, more than $76 million, or is there a limit on how much we’ll end up paying for Prop 1?
It’s a blank check. What’s critical for those voting on the Puyallup Public Safety Building jail proposal to know is how inaccurate the ballot language is that city council approved: the bond is not $56 million, it is “more than $76 million” as specifically stated on Page 2 of the ordinance city council passed and submitted to County Elections. The $56 million mentioned on the ballot is just the portion that increases your property taxes. According to the very ordinance city council passed to put this measure on the ballot, “more than $20 million” in “councilmanic bonds” is also needed to build just the police station and jail. That totals “more than $76 million” plus the future courthouse they plan to put on top of the police station, so the cost could rise to $100 million or more. During city-recorded council meetings throughout the beginning of this year, after contributors to Puyallup Voters for Integrity spoke up to oppose the idea of adding city general funds/sales taxes on top of raising property taxes for this Public Safety Building, council members promised they would be 100% clear and transparent about the cost. In the end, they decided to hide the real costs.
Are city taxpayers already paying for Pierce County Jail space just sitting empty? Does Puyallup really have a system that’s literally twice as expensive as Tacoma’s?
Yes and sadly, yes. We in Puyallup are of course Pierce County taxpayers, and our county jail is running with about 800 daily inmates, plus about 400 funded beds sitting empty, and another 500 unfunded beds sitting idle. Wait, what? That’s 900 available beds? Yes, our county jail is more than half empty. Our question is: why would our city council and police department ask us to raise taxes to build a new jail when we could be bringing our inmates to our county jail – a jail we already pay property and sales taxes to fund? Yes we need a new city police station, but new jail space is more than unnecessary. The county jail is our jail. It’s where we already bring all felony inmates, and it’s where surrounding Pierce County towns and cities bring their misdemeanor inmates (plus contracting with the Nisqually Jail, SCORE, Yakima – and some little cities like Milton also contract to bring a few of their inmates to our old jail for $120/night). Our police chief and city manager refuse to even look into contracting with Pierce County to use the empty jail space we’re already paying for. Our question is: why pay twice to run our own city jail and not utilize our county jail, let alone pay 30 years of increased property tax and drain the city’s general sales tax fund to build a jail we don’t need? By contracting with our Pierce County jail and the Nisqually jail, the Tacoma Office of Budget & Management says they spent just $1.2 million on all jail services in 2022. We spend $2.1 million to run our old jail, according to our police chief. Broken down per taxpayer, that means each of us in Puyallup are paying 10 times what taxpayers in Tacoma are paying: $1.2 divided by 220,000 population = $5.45; versus our $2.1 million divided by 42,000 population = $50.00 each!
Did the city ever do a feasibility study to see how much it would cost to bring our misdemeanor inmates to our county jail instead of continuing to run a city jail?
None has ever been released to the public, and when asked directly at a “neighborhood meeting” on October 18th, our police chief said, no, they did not. Apparently, they simply started with the assumption to build a new jail. They proposed a combined police station, courthouse and jail, but never looked at the feasibility of using the empty wing of our Pierce County Jail located just 8 miles from our city limits. Compare this to Olympia, where earlier this year, the police chief stood up in front of city council and presented a feasibility study showing the simple cost of running their 60 year old jail (which is similar to ours) is $1.5 million more expensive than bringing their misdemeanor inmates to the Nisqually Jail which is 15 miles from their police department. That’s not even considering the cost of building a new jail! We could also use the Nisqually Jail which is only 30 miles from our police station, and features outdoor yard, natural lighting, rehab space and other qualities our longer-term misdemeanor inmates could benefit from.
Why does the City of Puyallup claim we “can’t bring our misdemeanor inmates to the county” when surrounding cities do just that? Is it too far, or would corrections officers lose jobs?
It’s not too far. No, officers would not be out of work. We certainly can bring our misdemeanor inmates to the county jail which was built exactly for that purpose. In fact, Puyallup taxpayers would save over a million dollarsper year that could go to preventing and solving crimes. Puyallup can simply enter into an inter-local agreement to use the new county jail for our misdemeanor inmates. Our Pierce County Jail is located in downtown Tacoma, exactly 8 miles from Puyallup city limits, and our correction officers would no doubt get a bonus to work there (Pierce County is budgeting $2.7 million for hiring incentives for sheriff’s and corrections deputies so we will have a challenge retaining corrections staff here anyway) due to the demand for correctional facility labor. Like all the other cities around us (Lakewood, University Place, Sumner, Orting, Eatonville, etc) we can have a couple of vans outfitted for transporting misdemeanor charges, have remaining corrections officers drive those, and follow the efficient protocol other cities use when booking inmates into Pierce County.
Proposition 1, like the two recently failed Public Safety Building measures before it, is a project created by desire, not by necessity or analysis. The city has never made any attempt to negotiate a contract with the county for our misdemeanor inmates. Tacoma, Lakewood, University Place, Orting, Eatonville and all the rest – they all have contracts for just that: the new 2003 county jail we are still paying for was built for and almost exclusively holds misdemeanor inmates. It has 12 housing units, each with 84 beds. Currently there are about 200 inmates in the new jail, meaning over 800 misdemeanor beds are empty, with about half of those currently funded. The old 1985 main jail is where almost all felony/high risk inmates are housed – it has capacity for over 700 inmates and has almost 200 funded beds currently available.
Is our current jail really inadequate? If so, why do near-by little cities use it as a regional jail?
It’s interesting that the City of Puyallup keeps making contacts with near-by little cities like Milton to bring their inmates to us for $120/night in an attempt to fill our city jail. Our police chief claims less than 10% of inmates in our city jail are from other cities, and he says that it proves ours is not a regional jail, but by definition, if we are contracting with cities in the region, then ours is a regional jail. No matter, the point is that if our jail is contracting with other cities, then the jail must be adequate. If the voters of Puyallup don’t demand that it be shut down due to the waste of over $1 million/year in comparison to what it would cost to bring our inmates to our county jail, then the city can keep maintaining our jail as-is. It’s important to note that Tacoma doesn’t even have its own jail, and Puyallup Voters for Integrity is currently investigating whether Puyallup spends more on running its own jail than the City of Tacoma does on its entire jail services budget. Tacoma, along with other medium-sized as well as small cities in the area, contract with the Pierce County Jail, as well as Nisqually Jail which is a modern jail facility with outdoor space for inmates to get fresh air and natural light, something Puyallup does not include in its new jail design proposal. Nisqually would be an excellent and inexpensive facility where we can bring our inmates expected to be held for an extended period.
What would Puyallup Voters for Integrity support in regards to a new Public Safety Building?
Current contributors to Puyallup Voters for Integrity have been speaking at meeting after meeting over the past couple of years, telling city council we agree a new police station is needed, and telling the police chief and city manager go talk with Pierce County to utilize our jail space sitting empty. Unfortunately, council has been bought and sold on their assumption that we need our own jail, even while our old jail has been sitting half empty much of the time. Our proposal to council is to have the city build a police station with a couple holding cells for arrestees awaiting court hearings. We were particularly surprised when this time around (the city has put this proposal to us twice before and never won the vote of the people), council dropped the courthouse portion of the project but kept the jail, even when nearly all speakers at city council meetings said over and over that it was the new jail that was unnecessary. Council did add a couple expensive medical beds to this jail proposal, but that’s unnecessary since the new Pierce County Jail has a medical wing so inmates with physical or mental health issues or high on drugs don’t have to be turned out onto our streets before a hospital can take them. Next year, we encourage council to bring city residents a proposal for affordable police station, and then look at including courthouse space later (we currently rent relatively affordable space in the East Pioneer blue glass building) if we can afford it in future years.
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