Certain questions need to be asked when proposing a $55 million jail to your constituency. First, one has to determine who the constituency is. Is it the citizenry at large? Is it your voters? Is it the Indiana General Assembly? Is it the city in which you propose building it? Is it the staff of the jail? Is it the inmates? Or, is it some combination of all of the above, including future generations?
Considering this, how will communication reach each constituency? Newspapers are one tool for the public, although not everyone gets the paper. Council meetings are another, but they are inconveniently held at 8 a.m., making it unlikely Joe/Joan Public will attend unless they miss work. Introducing the public to the old jail through a tour and to the new jail with large scale drawings was a great idea. It was only on this tour I got information not possible to be gleaned from newspaper articles.
I found out the “three-story jail” referred to by county officials was a misleading phrase. Why? Because each story contained TWO floors. Originally, the jail was going to be seven floors, including the basement, making it as tall as our county courthouse.
Because the design of the jail is changing, this seems a moot point; but, on the contrary, it is an important point. The language of “three-story jail” the county leaders chose to use didn’t fit the reality of the actual design. We need to look with a practiced eye at future proposals. Greenfield leaders are right to stand firm against such an intrusion on quality of life, safety, and the economic well-being of downtown residents and employees.
Had the city been included from the beginning, there may still be the same stalemate, but it would have been reached earlier, before millions of tax-payer dollars were paid for scrapped architectural designs. In these original plans, the architects over-designed by at least two hundred occupants and they provided private showers in every cell. Is this a prudent use of taxpayer money? Is a state-of-the-art jail really what taxpayers want as a top priority?
The commissioners have full-time jobs apart from their part-time civic responsibilities, relying on the advice of the professionals. With this project, however, it seems more prudent to get a second opinion than pay for three trips to the drawing board.
The commissioners required due diligence from the group who wanted to move the fair grounds to the county farm. I applauded them then, as they asked hard questions, wanted hard facts, a business plan, other sources of funding, and more. It was not unreasonable for them to want this information.
It is not unreasonable for Hancock County citizens to expect answers to hard questions about the jail. As of April 2018, there had been no cost analysis of the proposed jail, which has been discussed for years. A cost analysis would include questions such as: What is the long-term impact of this project? What won’t the county be able to do as a result of bonding between $55 million and $71 million? How long will it take to pay off the bond? Will this jail impact the economic viability of the city of Greenfield? By how much?
Had they asked these questions earlier, they may have known Greenfield is in the running for Stellar grant dollars from the state agency, OCRA, to be applied to quality-of-life improvements in downtown. Perhaps this would have mattered to them then.
Another effective form of communication is known as lobbying. On the jail tour I asked if the county had lobbied the state for alternative solutions to over-crowding. Sadly, the answer was simply, no.
Donna Steele, a retired educator, hails from Alabama and made Hancock County her home in 2011. She can be reached at [email protected].
