In letters delivered this week, Bellingham and Whatcom County’s small cities have underscored competing demands on the county’s massive jail project, expected to appear on the November ballot.
With time running out, county leaders are caught in the middle, sorting out Bellingham officials’ request for more social services while the small cities call for a bigger jail.
One thing everyone can agree on: Building and running a new jail — along with the possible additions of a mental health and addiction center for inmates, and an urgent care center for people in crisis — will be expensive. Even if voters this November approve a 0.2% sales tax, expected to generate $13.5 million in its first year, the cities and the county won’t have enough money to pay for everything they want.
Cost figures are rough at this early stage, but county officials expect a new jail with up to 440 beds to cost anywhere from $137 million to $207 million, depending on where it’s built.
The estimate is based on a jail about 20% larger than the combined capacity of the current downtown jail and the Interim Work Center on Division Street.
In a June 6 letter to the county council, mayors from Whatcom County’s seven cities said a 440-bed jail would be too small.
The current facilities are under booking restrictions. As Sheriff Bill Elfo explained to the county council on June 6, the jail isn’t taking people on misdemeanor or even felony warrants due to a lack of space. Officials have said the booking restrictions have emboldened criminals and contributed to a recent increase in crime rates.
“We have been under booking restrictions for years now, and petty crime is on the rise,” said the letter, signed by the mayors of Bellingham, Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine, Everson, Nooksack and Sumas. “We think the new corrections facility should be sized for current use, if booking restrictions were removed. We feel this number is higher than 440 beds.”
Bellingham Mayor Seth Fleetwood also signed a letter, along with Bellingham City Council member Michael Lilliquist, calling for a greater emphasis on mental health and substance use treatment facilities.
“We believe that this needs much greater emphasis, urgency and specificity,” Lilliquist and Fleetwood said in their letter, delivered to county officials on June 9. The ballot measure also should let voters know how much of the sales tax will go to behavioral health care, they said.
“A lack of clarity on this issue has the potential to create misunderstanding and to damage public support at the ballot box,” Bellingham’s letter said.
The county executive’s proposal, presented to the county council June 6, has nearly all the sales tax revenue going to jail construction over the first five years of the 30-year lifetime of the tax. Spending heavily on the jail in those initial years would allow for most of the money to be spent on social services starting in 2029, according to a presentation to the council from Deputy Executive Tyler Schroeder.
Also, sales tax revenue would grow with the overall economy, starting from $13.5 million in the first year to a projected $20 million a decade from now.
Progressive groups have an altogether different idea for future ballot measures related to a jail and social services. A June 9 letter signed by 28 individuals and organizations asks the county to scrap the current plan for a new jail and instead offer up two separate ballot measures: one for social services and housing, and another to renovate the existing downtown jail.
“We all want to feel safe, stable and be treated with dignity within our community. Building a new, bigger jail will only take us further away from achieving those goals,” states the letter, signed by the Whatcom Peace and Justice Center, Bellingham Tenants Union, Community to Community Development, Bellingham City Council member Kristina Michele Martens, city council candidates Liz Darrow and Maya Morales, and others.
All of this input is funneling to the county council, which must come up with language for the Nov. 7 ballot by the end of July. A final vote on the measure is tentatively scheduled for July 11.
Before then, the county council will devote most of the afternoon of Tuesday, June 13, to deliberating the details of the jail plan. That meeting will begin at 2 p.m. in council chambers at 311 Grand Ave., Bellingham, or online.
Discussion will continue at the council’s regular June 20 meeting.
