Funding for Dane County’s jail overhaul project is once again short millions of dollars, forcing the County Board to again consider how to pay for its largest-ever infrastructure project.
Under the board’s current plan, the county needs about $9.8 million in additional funding to build a six-story, 825-bed facility that would replace the county’s current jail facility at the City-County Building in Downtown Madison, County Executive Joe Parisi said in a statement Tuesday.
Originally estimated at about $166 million, the project now costs about $176 million, according to Mead & Hunt, the county’s engineering consultant.
While the county executive’s office doesn’t have a breakdown of what is driving the jail’s rising price, labor and materials costs are up and “are certainly the two main inputs on any construction project,” said Chuck Hicklin, the county’s chief financial officer.
Board Chair Patrick Miles said any further delays in finalizing the project would only lead to more cost increases. Criminal justice reform-minded supervisors who might oppose further funding for incarceration should keep their focus on reform front and center, Miles added, but not at the price of holding up the project.
“The need to house residents in the jail facility in a humane way, a respectful way, to me, that’s a necessity,” Miles said.
The estimated cost of the original project is now about $190 million, Parisi said.
“We now know even the cost of the redesigned project exceeds that of the original proposal,” Parisi said.
The board’s current plan includes a number of optional cost-saving measures in the event that the jail’s estimated cost increased. Those include eliminating a food prep area, parking in the tower’s subbasement and office remodeling.
But even those changes would not be enough to substantially whittle down the shortfall, Hicklin said.
The current plan came together in March and was the result of a hard-fought legislative struggle. Supervisors tossed around competing proposals for months. A resolution to fund the original project was postponed for two weeks, only to have the compromise plan introduced the day before the final vote.
The latest plan not only took one floor off the originally proposed seven-story tower, but keeps open the aging Huber Center work-release facility near the Alliant Energy Center. Closing it had been a longtime goal of jail project supporters.
Proponents of the compromise touted it as achieving three major goals: closing the 1950s jail in the City-County Building that law enforcement has called inhumane, ending solitary confinement, and providing mental health and medical services.
‘Dignity and respect’
Sup. Richelle Andrae, 11th District, who chairs the board’s Public Protection and Judiciary Committee, said it would be “a dereliction of duty” if supervisors didn’t find a path forward for the project.
Other supervisors have hinted at putting jail funding in a referendum to voters if the board can’t muster a three-fourths majority vote to increase the project’s budget.
“We have a responsibility to exercise fiscal responsibility to the taxpayer and to invest in a building that treats people with dignity and respect,” Andrae said.
“I’m interested in evaluating options for the project to meet our priority goals,” she added.
The board needs to approve any additional funding by August in order to finalize the county’s fall borrowing for 2022, Parisi added.
History of delays
Under consideration for decades, the jail project has seen plenty of surprises and ever-rising cost estimates.
Originally, the county intended to simply add additional floors to the Public Safety Building at 115 W. Doty St. Supervisors ultimately learned that the building couldn’t withstand that additional weight, pushing the scope of the project from a $72 million renovation to a new tower costing $148 million.
That estimate was short-lived, though. By late 2020, the project’s price tag had risen by roughly $20 million.
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