Whatcom County Council sets construction budget, scope for new jail project
Whatcom County Council members set a final budget of nearly $240 million for a new jail, capping construction costs so that its design and other planning can move forward, more than two years after voters approved a sales tax to fund it.
On a 5-2 vote, with council members Ben Elenbaas and Mark Stremler dissenting, the council set the budget at $205 million for the jail and $20 million for a behavioral care center that was promised to persuade voters to approve the tax. These numbers do not authorize debt, and are only to be used for planning purposes. They also don’t include $14 million in separate state and local funds for the care center.
Council Chair Kaylee Galloway saw Tuesday’s vote as a bridge between the pledges that government officials made to voters when campaigning for a jail tax in 2023 and the size and scope of the jail that emerged from more than two years of community discussions.
“We want to deliver a modern and thoughtful correctional facility that meets our current needs and also deliver on our promises and provision of services. You can’t just do one without the other, I’m a firm believer in that. And I think that we’re going to continue to work with our administration in good faith and our cities in good faith to try to deliver the project to the best of our ability,” Galloway said.
In November 2023, Whatcom County voters approved a 0.2% sales tax to fund the building of a jail and behavioral care center — a replacement for the current jail, which was built in the early 1980s and is too small and outdated.
During the week of April 13-19, the average jail population was of 187 in the main jail, 88 in the work center, 20 on electronic home detention and monitoring and 32 out of custody, for a total of 347. Tuesday’s resolution doesn’t set a fixed capacity for the future jail, instead relying on average length of stay estimates that range from 359 to 699 days, according to the resolution.
The council’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee recommended in a 5-2 vote Tuesday morning that the revised proposal go before the full council for a vote. This is the third revised version of the proposal, after the first and second receiving major pushback from mayors of Whatcom County cities who are part of an interlocal agreement to fund the jail.
Officials in those cities had agreed to waive their part of the jail tax collections for several years in exchange for promises that booking restrictions would be lifted.
Talks of re-examining the interlocal agreement between Whatcom County and all its cities began after projected construction costs began to soar and future sales tax revenue fell, leading to new budget constraints. The jail’s size will likely decrease by over 70,000 square feet based on these numbers. Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund said at Tuesday’s committee meeting that Tuesday’s resolution feels like “a different conversation now,” and that the cities finally feel heard and included.
