Whatcom County officials are poised to make a third run at asking voters to fund a new jail, funded by a ballot measure. This time, officials hope to give voters what they say they want: adequate remedies for the social ills that put people in jail in the first place.
At the inaugural meeting of a new jail planning committee on Jan. 20, County Council member Barry Buchanan conceded that public engagement “was such a missing element in our first two efforts in 2015 and ’17.” Buchanan promised the public will play a bigger role in this latest jail-planning effort, which kicked off with that meeting of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC).
In 2015, voters narrowly defeated a new 521-bed, $125 million jail plus sheriff’s headquarters in Ferndale that would have replaced the smaller, crumbling facility next to the county courthouse in Bellingham. Sheriff Bill Elfo told fellow SAC members on Jan. 20 that he has been dealing with a substandard jail since he took office in 2004.
“There are many failures in this jail,” Elfo told the new committee, listing the lack of space for inmates with chemical dependency or in need of mental health treatment, medical isolation and education.
County officials came back to voters in 2017 with a 480-bed, $110 million jail proposal, and the vote wasn’t even close. Then came a countywide listening tour in the spring of 2018, when county leaders asked people why they voted “no.”
Officials were told their proposed jail in Ferndale was too big, too expensive, and too far away from courts and social services in Bellingham. Citizens also said some of the jail’s repeat occupants should never be there in the first place — particularly those experiencing homelessness, mental health issues or addiction.
To prepare for a third ballot measure, the 36-member SAC is going back to the drawing board, this time to sketch out not only the county’s future jail but also the constellation of behavioral health services needed to keep the jail population down. The committee also will consider court reforms that could reduce the financial burden on inmates, as a way to clear the jail of defendants who are only locked up because they can’t afford bail or fines for minor crimes.
The committee’s initial meeting laid the groundwork for this broad needs assessment, which could be completed over four more sessions. The next meeting will be sometime in early April.
No date has been set for the next jail ballot measure, but Buchanan said in an interview that the entire planning process — the needs assessment, architectural design and a plan to fund everything — should take two years. The overall proposal would go before the County Council, which would then vote to place the measure on the ballot.
County officials had aimed for a new jail bond to appear on the November 2020 ballot, with the Stakeholder Advisory Committee originally planning to hold its first meeting on March 16, 2020. Thanks to COVID-19, that meeting never happened, and subsequent lockdowns delayed jail planning for nearly two years.
In an Oct. 21, 2020 memo, Buchanan, Elfo, the county executive and the county prosecutor told SAC members the jail planning was on hold because “an open public process was not possible” during the pandemic.
Information about SAC meetings is available on the Whatcom County website, and the committee will take comments throughout the year at SAC@co.whatcom.wa.us. A planned public hearing that will give citizens a chance to speak directly to committee members about incarceration and behavioral health has yet to be scheduled.
