VAN BUREN — The Crawford County Quorum Court is making another attempt to persuade voters to approve sales taxes to finance construction and operation of a new county jail.
Quorum Court members passed ordinances Monday referring to voters a 0.5 percent tax to pay off up to $23 million in bonds that would be sold to finance construction of a 264-bed county jail and a 0.25 percent tax to raise additional money to operate the larger jail and for other law-enforcement facilities.
The election will be May 20, the day of the Arkansas primary election.
The May 20 election will not be the first time county residents have been asked to vote on sales taxes to finance a new jail. Voters narrowly turned back a proposal in December 2005 to institute two sales taxes totaling 0.5 percent to construct and operate a new jail.
A similar proposal was rejected by voters in March 2003.
The Quorum Court’s vote on the 0.5 percent sales tax ordinance Monday was 12-1 with Quorum Court member James Lane voting against the ordinance. He said he thought the Quorum Court was acting without determining how large a jail the county needs.
He recalled Justice of the Peace Lloyd Cole’s assertion from an earlier meeting that the Quorum Court needed to be united in support of a new jail to persuade voters to approve it.
But he said that several months ago he called for population projections for the county and a professional needs analysis to be performed to determine the size of the jail needed. Those studies were never done and the research he said he has done showed the population projections won’t support building the size of jail being proposed.
County Judge John Hall said Lane had the right to vote his conscious but added that the issue had been talked about for years and the time had come to vote.
Sheriff Ron Brown had toured other jails in Arkansas and Missouri to get an idea of what type of jail would fill Crawford County’s needs.
He said he wants to build a jail that will hold 264 inmates and be expandable to hold 400. It would be an indirect supervision jail that would require fewer jailers than a direct supervision jail. Still, he said, a new jail would require 12 additional jailers. The county’s current jail has a staff of 23.
The jail, opened in 1989, is certified to hold 88 inmates. Sheriff’s Lt. Vena Cupp said Tuesday the jail population was 92.
During Monday’s meeting, Hall announced that his office received nine offers of land on which to put the new jail. The county is looking for a different location because Van Buren officials oppose the county expanding the jail in its current site on the edge of the city’s historic downtown district.
Several of the proposed jail locations are on U.S. 64 between Van Buren and Alma and on U.S. 59 in north Van Buren with one near Alma and one near Kibler east of Van Buren. The parcels range from 6.3 acres to 21 acres and in price from $240,000 to $699,000.
Hall said Monday that Quorum Court members will tour the various sites in the next two weeks.
Hall also said the Quorum Court members will have to consider soon the hiring of an architect for the project.
Crawford County’s jail has been out of compliance for years and has been placed on probation three times since 2004, according to the state Criminal Detention Facilities Review Committees.
In its last inspection, the county’s review committee found the jail to be chronically overcrowded, with insufficient staffing, insufficient space to separate inmates, safety problems and inadequate cell design, space and medical area.
The state gave Crawford County six months to show it was making progress in resolving the deficiencies. The state could seek a court order to shut down the jail if no progress was made.
Brown said he made improvements on areas that didn’t require money for building or modifications, such as separating inmates who are not supposed to be housed together.
If passed, the 0.5 percent tax would generate about $3 million a year. Quorum Court members were told last month that at that rate, the construction bonds could be paid off in nine years. Once the bonds for the jail construction are paid off, that tax would expire.
The proposed 0.25 percent tax would be permanent to pay ongoing operating expenses for the jail.
Bond counsel with Friday Eldredge & Clark, Ryan Bowman, told members Monday that because of the way the state statutes are worded, if voters approve the 0.5 percent construction tax but reject the 0.25 percent operations tax, the Quorum Court, by a twothirds vote, could decide not to go ahead with the construction project.
However, he said, if the 0.5 percent construction tax fails but the 0.25 percent operations tax passes, the operations tax would go into effect for jail operations and the law-enforcement purposes it was passed for.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 02/19/2014