Whether Clay County is going to build a new jail is not the question. What voters will decide in Tuesday’s election is how we’ll pay for it.
One approach – the Clay County Commission’s first choice – is on the ballot, awaiting “yes” or “no.” The measure would enact a one-half cent sales tax levied over the next 20 years.
If voters say “yes,” the local tax will be added to Minnesota’s 6.875 percent sales tax, including the same exemptions for food, clothing and other items. The tax would raise an estimated $1.6 million per year, with revenue earmarked to repay the $37.5 million in bonds that will be issued to fund construction of the new correctional center.
If a majority vote “no,” on the other hand, the outcome changes. Construction of project proceeds either way. But instead of paying an extra half a penny on the dollar of taxable purchases, look for your property taxes to rise substantially.
“I’ve been sheriff for 14 years. We’ve been talking about this new jail since I was elected,” says Sheriff Bill Bergquist. “It’s too small. The plumbing breaks. The roof leaks. We have to farm out prisoners to other jails hundreds of miles away. Finally, we are doing something about it.”
Jail administrator Julie Savant adds that concerns about the present jail’s inadequacy predate even 2002, when Bergquist became sheriff. She’s been running that jail for 21 years, following four as a corrections officer. “The situation has been bad as long as I can remember,” she asserts. “But in recent years, it’s reached the boiling point.”
That includes everything from major plumbing problems that have flooded the basement, where deputies and police investigators work, to major problems with a leaky roof. Growing staffs in both the sheriff’s department and police, which rents space from the county, have created cramped, inefficient workspaces. There’s no meeting space at all – not for law enforcement personnel, and not for groups like Clay County Jail Chaplains and others who would like to counsel inmates and help prepare them for their transition back into the outside world.
And then there are the jail cells themselves – double-bunked units of 50 square feet that fall far short of the state Department of Corrections standard of 70 square feet. The cramped quarters affect not only inmates but the jail staff who have to navigate in the tight spaces.
Clay County built the current jail and adjacent law enforcement center, shared by the Clay County Sheriff and Moorhead Police Departments, back in 1966. Department of Corrections standards changed dramatically 11 years later, when the already outdated but still young facility was grandfathered in. Both departments’ staffs have increased over the years along with the city’s dramatic growth and a booming population of law-breakers, especially – says the sheriff — since the watershed year of 2006.
That’s when, Bergquist says, the biggest issues began to show up. “Cass and Clay County have been growing good,” he comments, noting that nearly one-third of Moorhead prisoners are from the neighboring state. That led to proportionate increases in higher-level criminal activity. Too, the booming economy in western North Dakota increased the number of gangs and others passing through Fargo-Moorhead – putting pressure on law enforcement here that the present downturn has not erased.
“Our clientele is changing, too,” Savat says. “Our inmates have more issues now – mental illness, reactions to street drugs, gang violence. There’s more need to keep some of them separate.” Once rare, she and her staff now end most workdays with a conference on how to shuffle that day’s “guests” to make sure space is available for those who may come in overnight.
“If Clay County hadn’t built this facility as well as they did 50 years ago, we wouldn’t be using it at all right now,” Bergquist says. “But we’ve done everything we can to keep it going. This place has been bandaged and squeezed and repaired the best we can, but it’s not good enough.”
The Minnesota Department of Corrections, which regulates the jails mandated in every county, has long deemed the Moorhead facility inadequate. “It’s the oldest jail in Minnesota, and we’re nowhere close to meeting DOC codes,” Savat notes. Two years ago, the state closed off 22 of the 38 beds in the high-security area that houses the most challenging prisoners. (Another 30 can be accommodated in the lower-security annex.)
Pressured by the dramatic increase in inmate numbers, the county has turned to basically renting rooms in other counties’ facilities – now accounting for about 45 per day, down from the peak of 60 in 2016. Some are housed in the Tri-County Correctional Center in Crookston, with others in Wilkin, Otter Tail and Douglas counties and even more distant – some as far away as the Kandiyohi County facility in Willmar and Wright County’s in Buffalo.
Not only does the farmed-out population cause endless issues with arrangements for court dates, attorney meetings and family visits – it means that two of deputies spend all their times shuttling prisoners between distant jails and the Clay courthouse. Between the cost of space in other jails, travel and staff time, it’s costing more than $1 million per year.
Bergquist points out that keeping that same million in-house will offset the cost of feeding and maintaining nearly twice as many clients here when the new jail is up and running.
The new Clay County Correctional Center has been designed with 208 beds. As the need grows, two more 60-bed pods can be added. “It’s designed to take care of our needs for the next 50 to 60 years,” Savat says.
While actual construction won’t begin until next spring, progress is already showing up on the south side of the present law enforcement center, where most of the new jail will stand. Meanwhile, houses have been demolished and groundwork is underway for the separate joint law enforcement center north of the courthouse. That project is expected to begin later next year and conclude in the summer of 2018.
The final phase takes place in 2019, after the rest of the correctional center – including cells for inmates – is complete, and when deputies and police have made the move across 10th Avenue into their new facility. The current law enforcement center will be demolished. Taking its place: larger kitchen and laundry areas to serve the much larger population, along with the administrative area and meeting rooms that will finally permit programming for rehabilitation, classes and mental-health care that can’t be fitted in today.
It’s been a long, long road from recognizing the need to standing on the brink of a solution. “Our staff is finally really believing that it’s going to happen this time,” says Savat. The only question left is how voters will decide to pay the bill.
