Officials gather to break ground on mandated $132 million project

This article is brought to you by Jeff Lipinski for Howard County Commissioner District 1.

It has been 35 years since Howard County built a jail. In that time, it has faced overcrowding, breakdowns to the physical and mechanical structures, and an overwhelming resistance to building anew.

That all changed with an order from a federal judge. So, last week Howard County officials joined the architects and developers tasked with building a new jail for the community. They stood upon the ground along West Markland Avenue to turn the ceremonial first shovels of dirt on the project.

With backhoes and earth movers sitting as a backdrop, the architects and construction managers stood alongside county commissioners, council members, sheriff and court employees, and representatives from the City of Kokomo, thanking each other between handshakes and shout-outs.

“I just want to say thanks to all my council members who have helped plan this and try to figure it out,” said Howard County Council President Darryl Maple. “We have found a way to do it. We’re proud of this deal. Over the last six years, we’ve done our due diligence, found the way, and tried to make the best decision possible for our community.”

The jail project came in at an estimated $132 million, slightly over budget. And local residents will pay for it. The county increased its public safety income tax by 0.4 percent, and the City of Kokomo agreed to pitch in $6.7 million in local income taxes to cover repayment of the bonds used to finance the project.

Howard County Commissioner Jeff Lipinski, the former administrator of the Robert J. Kinsey Youth Center, is intimately familiar with the need for a new jail. In fact, he warned the crowd he could talk about the need for the project for an hour. Instead, he spent a few minutes explaining how unavoidable building a new jail had become.

“We did have a mandate from a federal judge that said that we had to do this,” said Lipinski. “There were several hundreds of lawsuits in our jail that forced our hand to do this.

“Howard County is the largest county in Indiana with the oldest jail. Our model, direct supervision, is an outdated model. And every day we have 40-50 inmates housed in other counties at $40 a day. That adds up pretty quick.”

Lipinski explained that the county was not able to pick the contractors that will perform the work, but they did receive a commitment from Garmong Construction to use local labor when possible, amounting to $50 million of the cost going into local workers’ paychecks.

“Howard County has a very diverse and a very well skilled workforce,” said Lipinski. “We’re using those people. We said we wanted that. Garmong listened.”

Howard County Commissioner Jack Dodd spoke to the crowd, explaining that the new facility will be built on approximately 25 acres of the 48-acre lot purchased for the project. That leaves room for expansion, and the jail will be built to accommodate that.

“This jail is built for the future,” said Dodd. “This jail can easily be added onto. God forbid we ever need to do that, but it’s there. This property is the ideal place to build this jail for Howard County and for the future.”

Dodd said that the current jail, while touted as expandable, was not truly designed to accommodate it. Kitchen and laundry facilities were not optimally located, and the direct supervision layout is no longer a desired method for housing prisoners.

The new jail, once complete, will be constructed so that all needed services, such as laundry and the kitchen, are located appropriately outside of the detention area. And it will have the ability to house more than 600 prisoners; roughly 50 percent more than what the current, overcrowded jail is being forced to handle.

“As a taxpayer, it’s painful to get new taxes, but it’s necessary,” said Dodd. “We have to provide the safety of our staff, of our citizens, and that’s what this jail will do.”

Howard County Sheriff Jerry Asher began working at the jail 32 years ago; both were relatively brand-new to community corrections. And both are retiring at roughly the same time. Asher will leave office at the end of the year, and the new facility is slated for completion in 2028.

Asher waxed nostalgic as he addressed the crowd, identifying former sheriff Steve Rogers and Howard County Community Corrections director Steve Maus among the people he worked alongside nearly every day of his time with the department. Soon, he will join the ranks of the retired, but not before this final task – a new jail – becomes a reality.

“I’ll be leaving in about three months, so one of my main focuses was getting shovels in the ground before I left,” said Asher. “We’ll have a shovel on the ground before I leave today. I want to leave a legacy for the staff to have a nice facility.”

One thing was certain from all of the local officials who spoke. They don’t want Howard County to have to go through this again. It took 25 years to finally force local government’s hand to build a new jail. It needs to last long and work better, they insisted.

“This is a day for all of us involved in the criminal justice system to look at ourselves and say, ‘What can we do different moving forward to make this jail successful?’” said Lipinski. “What can we do to make it better? What are we going to do with the (current) jail? We’re going to move work release. We’re making offices. We’ve got a lot of big decisions in front of us.

“We have to do things differently, or we will be back here in 25 years. I would hate to think what it costs then. So, I challenge all of us to do things differently and look at things differently. Let’s make this jail last 40 to 50 years.”