By RYAN LANCASTER
Staff Reporter
A site near the Medical Lake interchange has officially been designated as the home of a Geiger Corrections Center replacement facility if Spokane county voters approve the project next spring.
In a 2-1 vote last week Spokane County commissioners Todd Mielke and Mark Richard overruled commissioner Bonnie Mager to sanction the 40-acre site, located about five miles east of the city of Medical Lake near Interstate 90.
Mielke and Richard also voted to declare an emergency, providing time for land-use changes in advance of April's bond measure. The land, currently zoned as Rural Traditional, will be changed to Light Industrial. Richard said a state-mandated review of the site is already complete and that the emergency declaration simply sidestepped a comprehensive plan amendment process that would have pushed the project to 2012 or beyond.
The project's original scope has been downsized significantly after a combination of factors led to reduced inmate projections. Richard said programs aiming to reduce recidivism seem to be working, but he fears that police officer layoffs could also mean fewer arrests of lawbreakers. In order to meet county needs for the next 25 years officials now say a replacement for Geiger should have 1,608 beds, 462 of which will be at the existing downtown jail site.
Richard, Mielke and other proponents of the detention center project have been making the rounds in recent months to get feedback from various groups. “At this point we're sharing where we're at and what our needs are,” Richard said. “We're trying to get a more intentional dialogue going.”
Others are pushing back with a loose-knit campaign of their own. Michael Poulin is part of an informal group of about 20 people who are opposing the detention center under the banner of the No New Jail Project, which just recently launched a website and a Facebook page. The group plans to voice opposition at all arranged meetings on the subject and is even retracing the steps of jail promoters, Poulin said, finding those they've already spoken with to offer up a contrary view.
Among other issues, the group's website – nonewjail.com – raises the project's cost, asking, “How do our elected public officials respond to the worst depression in memory? With jobs? Health care? Housing? Heaing [sic]? Education? Infrastructure? No, the priority for Commissioners Richard and Mielke and Sheriff [Ozzie] Knezovich is a new, half-billion dollar jail that we call the billion dollar pig (because the sheriff wants two of these).”
Richard said costs touted by project opponents are misleading because they reflect interest on the bond for the next 20 years.
“Unless you're trying to defeat a bond measure you don't include interest in the price of a project, just look at any school bond,” he said. “Every project has interest. I hope people can study the issue and compare apples to apples.”
Richard also said reductions in inmate projections will bring the project's cost down, though it won't be know exactly how much until the end of this month.
Poulin, however, takes issue with the county's changing forecast of how many inmate beds will be necessary in the future. “The sheriff's figures justifying the inmate numbers – those projections are very suspect,” he said. “Just this spring [the county] let go 60 employees due to a lack of inmates. Jails and prisons have been closing across the country for years.”
Poulin and others, including Mager, also point back to the programs, noting that they are already proving the reduced need for jails and could do even more to trim inmate counts if adequately funded and given time.
But Richard said programs alone will never solve the county's criminal justice issues.
“All the experts will tell you that you can't work your way out of the problem with programs and you can't build your way out with new jail,” Richard said. “You must have both.”
Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].
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