Here’s a reminder that the largest tax increase in the history of the County of Platte will be on your Aug. 6 election ballot.
Joe Vanover, second district Platte County commissioner, attended a meeting of the Downtown Platte City Association (DTA) last week. He went there hoping the group would endorse the county’s proposed half cent, $400 million jail tax proposal that will be on the August ballot. Wisely on the part of the DTA, the meeting ended without an endorsement. No endorsement, not on that day, anyway.
According to those who were there and confirmed by the minutes of the meeting, concerns from the Downtown Platte City Association included the daily process of releasing inmates. Even with the smaller current jail, business owners along Main Street are consistently approached by inmates being released needing public phones, phone chargers, money, food, and access to transportation. Reportedly, Vanover is taking these concerns back to the county commission and he’d like to meet again with the Downtown Platte City Association “with future plans on how to address these concerns.”
I mean, the business owners already have a list of specific concerns and they didn’t even get to the worst parts of the county’s proposal: the tax increase is way too big and lasts way too long.
But back to their concerns. One Platte City business person wrote to me last week: “Currently, when prisoners are released it’s not unusual to see them walking around downtown or even sleeping on the benches. Can you imagine if we do this at 2.5 times the current rate? Safety is an issue.”
The 2.5 times the current rate is in reference to the current average daily population of the jail (195) compared to the county commission’s proposal of building a jail with a population of more than 470 inmates. Yikes.
And the business community is not wrong about the prisoners wandering around Downtown Platte City. If you’re a longtime reader of this column, you already knew that. I’ve written about it many times through the years, telling stories about how I would be working after hours with the front door unlocked at our former office location at 252 Main when just-released county jail inmates would stroll into The Landmark office asking to use the phone or looking for other forms of assistance. As I wrote back then, despite the often awkward encounters, I kept The Landmark door unlocked while working after hours because I felt comfortable with my level of protection and the conversations with prisoners often resulted in interesting column material. It also allowed me to chat with the inmates about what they liked/didn’t like about the Platte County Jail. Believe it or not, there are some things inmates like about the Platte County Jail compared to other jails they have “visited,” and we can get to that in a future column.
Understandably, other business owners and their customers in Downtown Platte City are not as open to visiting with inmates as I was. So the safety aspect of business owners and their customers is a very legitimate concern.
I want to pass along this tidbit. I had a text conversation with a longtime prominent Platte County business person and community leader late last week. I informed him that Vanover had appeared at a meeting of the Downtown Platte City Association hoping the group would quickly endorse the county’s $400 million jail tax. Here was that businessman’s response: “He seriously thinks anyone is going to endorse that turd?”
Instead of quickly endorsing without raising questions, the DTA showed wise restraint and by doing so provides an example of knowing the importance of some details before you make a decision on endorsing a proposal that some prominent business folks consider worthy of a toilet flush. It’s important to know the details before throwing your support behind something like this. Heck, apparently even the county commission’s own Committee For Public Safety had no idea the county commission was going to ask for a $400 million tax for jail operations. The Committee For Public Safety did not include the wild and crazy idea of a 20-year half cent operations tax in their recommendation to the county commission.
“I never heard discussion of a tax large enough for hundreds of millions of dollars for operations at any of our meetings,” a member of the Committee For Public Safety told me in a phone conversation last week. “And I was at all the meetings. I would have remembered that.”
Despite what some media outlets have reported and what county commissioners would like you to believe, this isn’t a tax just to build a new $85 million jail, try to pay off the construction debt early and be done. Not even close. This is a $400 million jail tax that will last for 20 years, with three fourths of that going toward operation of the nearly 500-bed facility. Of those nearly 500 beds, more than half will be available to be rented out to house other jurisdiction’s prisoners. This is destined to be a modern day jail hotel. Or as a retired federal officer says: “It looks like Platte County wants to build a corporate incarceration empire.”
So a county commission that consistently tries to give the false impression Platte County has a growing crime problem (felony prosecutions in Platte County are down by 14% in the past two years and misdemeanor prosecutions in Platte County are down 36% in the past year) not only wants to house our own prisoners but now wants to import other counties’ prisoners and associated problems that will come along for the ride. Into a downtown area, of all places.
This really is a proposal worth flushing down the toilet.
Another point for Platte City business owners to consider? There are capital improvement projects that need to be performed in Downtown Platte City. Main Street and some nearby side streets need resurfacing. Curbs on Main Street need rebuilt. In some areas the curbs are way too short. In a couple areas the curbs are crumbling. Some of the downtown sidewalks need attention.
Next time you’re on Main take a look at how short many of the curbs are. For many reasons, including safety and drainage, curbs are supposed to be a certain and consistent height. Most of the curbs along Main are neither.
Troy Miller, alderman, whose full time job is with the fire department located at Second and Main, has noticed downtown desperately needs some street and curb improvements. He has mentioned it at multiple city meetings the past few months. The last time it was mentioned, the consensus of opinion by city officials was that the city will put off making any street improvements in the downtown area until the jail tax issue is decided. The reason? If jail construction begins at the county complex, the construction trucks and related activity would very likely cause damage to newly-resurfaced streets. That being the case, if the jail tax passes city officials have indicated not to expect the city to perform any major street and curb improvements downtown until jail construction is completed.
How far away is that? Well the county anticipates its first full year of new jail operation would be 2028. That’s four years from now. So if the jail tax passes, get used to looking at the downtown streets and curbs in their current–or worse–condition over the next four years.
Seems like another valid reason to flush this proposal by the county.
(You’re always welcome to visit Foley or email him at ivan@plattecountylandmark.com)