Use Our County Jail Space – 800 Beds Sitting Empty
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We need an affordable Public Safety Building solution that Puyallup can proudly agree on.
We all agree that the city’s old Public Safety Building housing the police station and city jail is less than ideal. The question is whether the bond proposal being put to us this fall is the right way to go? We believe most voters would agree to a new police station. We do not agree that a new jail is needed – about $35 million of the project’s $76+ million cost is for the jail.
Click for FAQ – Are we really paying for county jail space just sitting empty?
What city council should do is “go back to the drawing board” as the police chief said and design a police station with a couple holding cells for inmates awaiting court appearances. There are excellent alternatives for inmates who are held longer. City jails in this state – the very few remaining – can only accept and hold inmates with misdemeanor charges. All felony charges must be brought to the county jail. Our county jail is where cities throughout Pierce County (besides Puyallup) put all their misdemeanor (as well as felony) inmates.
Reports from other cities throughout the county and South Sound agree that it’s much cheaper to bring misdemeanor inmates to our Pierce County Jail and other regional jails like Nisqually. In fact, all city jails in Pierce County except ours have closed for this reason. Fife was the last hold-out as this KOMO news reports details with mention of Buckley jail also closing for the same feasibility reasons. Pierce County likes taking in misdemeanors because they make more money on misdemeanor inmates, and run deficits otherwise – deficits we are all paying for because of all the jail space sitting unused – due in part to the City of Puyallup refusing to contract with the county. By having our own misdemeanor jail, Puyallup taxpayers are being charged twice: we’re paying for the county jail (that sits unused) and paying for a city jail, too. And now city council wants us to pay to build another jail? We say, “no way.”
Bringing Clarity on Proposition 1
To be clear and transparent, Proposition 1 ballot language should say the “Bond Measure raises property taxes by $56 million, and authorizes city council to add more than $20 million in councilmanic bonds using other city tax revenues … to fund both the construction of a police substation in Puyallup’s City Hall and the design and construction of a new Public Safety Building … including 58 bed jail … on South Hill adjacent to the Central Pierce Fire Station … with a future courthouse costing $10’s of millions more to be added at a later date, directly on top of the police station building.” Charging us an additional $180/ year in property taxes, or $5,400 for those of us who will be here for of this bond’s 30 year lifetime, the cost of which will also be passed on to renters, is one thing. But diverting “more than $20 million” additional away from programs and infrastructure the community needs is another. Like after our city council a generation ago built city hall using councilmanic bonds, it was almost 15 years before general fund money went back into finishing city park projects, sidewalks to nowhere, housing and mental health services, etc. That didn’t occur until the city was eventually able to refinance the expensive councilmanic bond once interest rates finally fell.
The fatal flaw in the city’s proposal is that they never did a feasibility study to compare costs of running (let alone newly building) our city jail versus bringing our misdemeanor inmates to our county jail. Let’s do the math then. Our police chief says it costs $2.1 million to run our old city jail. At time of this writing (Oct 15th) there were 19 inmates in our city jail (click on “search” with no info in boxes) that has 51 beds, and that’s right after our highest annual average crime month (due to the state fair). This number of inmates is not out of the norm – our jail is rarely, if ever, full. Why? Way too much jail space between the city and county jails, especially as inexpensive and effective electronic (ankle/phone) monitoring, drug courts, and other alternatives become the norm.
So, give them the benefit of the doubt and say our jail had 30 inmates per night – multiplied by 365 days/year, that totals 10,950 inmate/nights. Divide $2 million by 10,950 and that totals a cost of $182/night per inmate. Or let’s say we build the new 58 bed jail for about $35 million including groundbreaking costs, divided by 30 years it will take to pay it off = over $1 million/year construction costs, plus over $2 million/year to run it with inflation, that totals well over $3 million/year. So let’s say $3.5 million/year divided by a generous 50 inmates/night someday x 365 days/year (18,250) that’s about $192/night per inmate. Lakewood paid Pierce County Jail about $65 to book an inmate, plus about $95 per inmate/night in 2022. Lakewood paid Nisqually jail just $20 to book an inmate, plus about $65/night per inmate. Overall, that city, which is about the same distance from our county jail as we are (8 miles), pays far under a million dollars per year for all its jail services. Why are we paying over three times the amount of a city 50% bigger than us, and potentially six times more per year if we add the cost of building a new jail?
This Just In
This just in from the Tacoma Office of Budget & Management: that big city on our borders with a population of 220,000 (ours is 40,000) spent a total of $1.2 million on all jail services in 2022. Again, why are we paying over $2 million to run an expensive little jail in Puyallup for a few misdemeanor inmates? Our estimation at Puyallup Voters for Integrity is that if we just contract with our Pierce County jail and/or the Nisqually jail, we would reduce our jail services costs from over $2 million to under $1 million per year, even if we incarcerate at higher rates than other cities. Can you imagine the amount of crime investigation and prevention our police department could achieve by freeing up approximately $1.5 million per year like is now happening in the City of Olympia? That’s a down payment on one road project per year to reduce traffic, or it would allow us finish our “sidewalks to nowhere” in short order, or the city could offer a $180/year property tax reduction – opposite of what they are asking voters to do now.
Click for 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?
It’s unfortunate that the Puyallup City Council and police department have neglected to do feasibility studies to compare the cost of running our own misdemeanor jail to the cost of bringing our inmates to our county jail. They don’t want a feasibility study because of what they know what they will find. They prioritize building jail space even though we are already paying for empty space at our Pierce County Jail. Their current proposal is similar to the last two which failed, and those of us knocking doors in the city know how frustrated voters are that city council has not listened to our calls to prioritize a new police station first, and court second, especially now that a very effective Community Court program has been developed here to keep people from re-offending.
With an unnecessary jail, this is the wrong proposal, at the wrong time – too late for low interest rates, and likely to fail again which will keep our misdemeanor inmates and correctional staff in substandard conditions for even longer, unless the city finally takes the initiative to contract with our Pierce County jail (and/or Nisqually) to book our misdemeanor inmates. Our goal at Puyallup Voters for Integrity is to encourage city council to do the right thing next year.
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.
Puyallup Voters for Integrity 