Statement on Jail Consolidation Project current-state
In writing this post, I have two goals:
To explain my position on the vote taken on Thursday night to delay consideration of an ~$800,000 Change Order related to the Jail Consolidation Project, and
To respond specifically to some of the claims made by the Wisconsin State Journal that night, with an inaccurate headline indicating that the Board decided to “stall” the project.
Background
First, some context. The Jail Consolidation Project has been a challenging, high-profile part of the Board’s work for some time now—well longer than my Board service, which started only in April 2022.
The most urgent reason to complete the Jail Consolidation Project is the inhumane state of our current jail facilities. Put simply, Dane County needs to do better by the human beings we incarcerate. There is diversity of opinion on the Board as to how, why, and how often we should incarcerate (more on that later)—but we all pretty much agree that our present facility is unacceptable and something must be done about it.
The project’s complexity has made it vulnerable to misinterpretation and misrepresentation. This has harmed the public’s understanding of what is going on with it. With this statement (and more to come) I aim to do my part in correcting this.
When I joined the Board, the previous Board had just formulated a plan on how to move the project forward. This plan is known as “Res 320” (the full name of the resolution is 2021-RES-320). Specifically, Res 320 calls for a new 6-story jail tower that would comprise 825 beds as well as an in-house acute care medical unit. Among other things, this plan would allow us to decommission the inhumane facilities we use today.
Through prior monetary allocations to the project—as well as allocations made in Res 320 itself—a total budget of $166 million was established for this project.
The Board did not stall the project
After I joined the Board, we were informed by Mead and Hunt—the architecture firm contracted by the County to guide completion of the project—that the items set forth in Res 320 would require an allocation of an additional $9.8 million to build. Mead and Hunt also asked for about $800,000 to complete the designs for the building called for in Res 320. These two factors stalled the project.
Wisconsin State Journal got this situation wrong with their incendiary and inaccurate headline, “As Black supervisors vow new plan for jail project, Dane County Board stalls latest contract.” The Board did not stall the project—nor did its three Black members. That is a crude misrepresentation of what is going on.
The project is stalled because, put simply, the County cannot exceed a project budget by $9.8 million or even $800,000 without your permission. Your permission is granted via the elected Board voting to do that—not by a private firm ordering the County to do that.
The Board vote on Thursday considered only the allocation of $800,000 to complete the designs called for in Res 320. But we’ve already been told that those designs will cost another $9.8 million to build. I joined twenty-four of my colleagues in supporting a delay on the $800,000 allocation for a number of reasons, two of them purely logistical:
The earliest the project can possibly go to bid is early 2023, regardless of whether we had allocated the $800,000 right now, and regardless of whether we make changes to the plan this summer.
The Board is very unlikely to agree to allocate another $9.8 million to the project called for in Res 320, without making changes. I know I wouldn’t do so today.
So, instead of wasting time and money on drawing up designs that we ultimately won’t use, let’s find a better way.
With any project, when there are cost overruns, you first consider what can be done to bring the project back to budget. You don’t immediately allocate more money without asking questions. You may ultimately decide to allocate more money, but only once you’ve done the diligence of examining other factors and ways to solve the issue.
In other words, when there is a stall, you work on finding the best way out, and you don’t assume that there’s only one way. Especially when you’re dealing with taxpayer money during an economic crisis that has devastated so many of the people I serve. (I take this responsibility very, very seriously, and so do my colleagues.)
Anyway, that is what the Board is doing. We are confronting an existing complex problem and working toward the best solution. The Board not stall the project.
I know that the Black Caucus is committed to a solution
First off, speaking personally, getting to the right solution has taken the majority of my time on the Board to this point. Know that I am deeply committed to it.
My three Black colleagues on the Board are, as well. And it needs to be said that they all know a lot more about this subject than I do. Supv. Anthony Gray is a Board veteran, a developer, and an attorney. Supv. April Kigeya is the Co-Chair of the Middleton Police Commission and has served on our county’s Equal Opportunities Commission. Supv. Dana Pellebon is a victim advocate, as well as the co-Executive Director of Dane County’s Rape Crisis Center.
This is a dream team. The three members of the Dane County Board’s Black Caucus know what they’re doing. It is one of the great honors of my life to serve with them, and I know I am not the only person on the Board who feels that way. And it is disturbing that this reality has not been fairly represented by the Wisconsin State Journal.
I have to wonder—as a white man with racial and economic privilege—if I had led a caucus of white people committed to finding the right way forward here, would I have been treated with the disdain that drips from this article? If I’d stood up and made the strong, well researched arguments that Supv. Gray did on Thursday night, would the headline have mischaracterized the situation in this way?
I’m glad that my Board colleagues saw Supv. Gray’s arguments for what they were—the product of deep research, experience, and commitment to finding the right solution. I am also calling out the Wisconsin State Journal for not seeing or representing them in the same light. I demand that the Wisconsin State Journal do better by my Black colleagues as well as by Wisconsin State Journal readers, who deserve to know what’s really going on.
What’s next
Res 320 also called for a study on how to reduce our jail population—also a goal shared by most of the Board—and specific recommendations for how to put these into practice, both programmatically and infrastructurally. I, for one, plan to take these learnings seriously in figuring out the right way forward.
This work is already under way, and we can do it without contributing to further delays in the project.
For one thing, the plan that I will support needs to reflect an ongoing commitment to decarceration. Res 320 had laudable content in this area, but we need to do more. If we have a jail, it should be used with good judgment. I demand a commitment from all parties of the judicial system to do so.