By Mike Hendricks
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City’s new jail hasn’t been designed yet, much less built. But while its opening date remains a couple of years away at least, crime marches on.
So city officials are making plans to possibly open a temporary facility to house people arrested on misdemeanor charges that could be in operation by this fall.
The temporary facility would mean the city would no longer need to transport people to leased jail space in other counties many miles away from KC.
The City Council is expected to approve a resolution on Thursday instructing the city manager’s office to see what it would take to build a temporary jail, possibly adjacent to the city tow lot or some other city-owned property.
Models for the project are the two temporary “trailer jails” that Greene County operated in Springfield, Missouri, while a permanent structure was being planned and built there several years ago.
A company east of there, in nearby Seymour, Missouri, called All-Detainment Solutions constructed that first temporary jail out of four, 53-foot tractor trailers, which were “fused together to make one large and secure building,” the company says.
The second one was much larger, with 12 trailers connected at a cost of $6.3 million for two years, according to news reports at the time.
Mayor suggests field trip
Mayor Quinton Lucas suggested at Tuesday’s meeting of the City Council’s finance committee that Kansas City officials take a four-hour drive to Norwood, Missouri, so they can have a look at the modular units Greene County leased from the company that are now in storage.
“These gentlemen are … for lack of a better term, kind of in the FEMA trailer business,” Lucas said, using the acronym for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I think they’re folks that can build quick prefab facilities, adding the amount of security that we might need in connection with it. They seem pretty ready.”
If the city decides to move forward with a temporary jail, it could be operational within two to three months after electrical, water and sewage utilities are made ready for connection, Deputy City Manager Kimiko Black Gilmore said.
That means the city would need to start work on recruiting corrections officers soon to possibly double or triple the current staff of 13, she said.
“I think it’s very quick, so we’re going to have to start doing that right now,” she said.
The city doesn’t know what the cost of a temporary jail would be. Greene County agreed in 2017 to pay $900,000 a year for use of a 108-bed modular jail.
Possible funding source
But whatever the cost, the city has a source of cash to make the lease payments: $14 million that is yet to be spent on the $16 million project approved last fall to build holding cells on the top floor of Police Headquarters, Finance Director Tammy Queen said.
She said only a couple of million of dollars has been spent on design work for reopening that holding area that was obsolete when it closed several years ago.
A temporary jail could be operational long before the headquarters project would be finished, which would be after next year’s World Cup.
“I think we need to have the capacity that we need for the World Cup,” Councilman Crispin Rea said. “And as voters made very, very clear in the approval of the public safety sales tax, this is an issue that is an immediate concern and a major concern.”
Some of the money to operate the temporary jail could come from the amounts the city now pays Vernon and Johnson counties to house detainees.
The resolution introduced by Councilman Wes Rogers got unanimous support from the council’s finance committee on Tuesday and has the backing of business groups who say a jail is needed to address what they claim is rampant theft and disorder that make their customers and employees feel unsafe.
“As everyone has seen in the news, we have a serious crime problem,” Rogers said. “We don’t have a great short-term solution for a detention facility. And so what this resolution does is gives the city manager 30 days to evaluate a modular jail that we can put together pretty quickly and pretty cost effectively.”
Inmates farmed out
Kansas City closed its jail in 2009 and since then has been contracting with other local governments to house people detained on municipal charges that aren’t so serious that they are charged with felonies and can be held at the jails operated by Jackson , Clay and Platte counties.
For several years city people were housed in a building known as the Regional Correctional Center, adjacent to the Jackson County Detention Center in downtown Kansas City. But after that arrangement ended, the city has been contracting with two Missouri sheriff’s departments. Women arrested on municipal charges are shipped to the jail in Warrensburg and men are transported to the jail in Nevada.
But that arrangement has been costly and inconvenient. And due to a lack of space, many people arrested on city charges are soon released to await trial after being booked.
City officials say the situation has contributed to an increase in vandalism, theft and other crime.
To address the problem, Kansas City voters recently approved the renewal of a public safety sales tax on the promise that a large chunk of the money would go to build a $200 million city jail next to the new Jackson County Detention Center at 7000 E. U.S. Highway 40.
A temporary jail would most likely not be feasible on that site, Gilmore said, because it might interfere with the construction work now underway. The new county jail is set to open a year from now.
But the city owns many acres within the city limits where a modular jail could fit and not be in conflict with the surrounding neighborhood. Lucas said one option is near the city tow lot at 7750 E. Front St.
“For example, the tow lot area is a place where we have lots of land and we don’t have as many neighbors,” Lucas said. It is surrounded by dozens of acres of city-owned land east of Riverfront Park .
But other sites could be considered.
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