Upcoming Meetings to be Held Regarding Possible New County Jail

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Submitted by Andy Coon

On April 4, Shelby County will be voting on whether to fund the building of a new jail. If you would like to know more about this, there are going to be public meetings where the proposed jail will be described.

• March 9, 6:30 p.m., at the County Courthouse in Shelbyville. A tour of the jail will follow for all interested

• March 16, 6:30 p.m., .at the Shelbina United Methodist Fellowship Hall.

• March 21, 6:30 p.m., at the Clarence City Hall.

Why do we need to do this? Allow me to make a comparison.

If my toilet starts leaking, I have two options. Call the plumber, or not. (Some of you can do your own plumbing – I can’t. So these are my two options.)

If I don’t call the plumber, and ignore the problem, I will save money right now. It isn’t like I have a bunch of money that I really want to spend on plumbing. But once water starts leaking, it never stops. It gets worse. And eventually, I am going to have to call the plumber.

The longer I wait, the more it is going to cost.

My friends, our toilet is leaking. The jail has to be replaced. At some point soon, it is going to be condemned, or closed because of the risk of a lawsuit from someone getting hurt. We can vote to use a sales tax to fund a new jail now, and share the cost with people traveling through the county on 36, or we can wait. If we wait, it will get more expensive. Construction costs only go up, and we may end up having to pay another county to house our counties’ inmates. To fix the main sewer line to the courthouse recently, it cost $540 a day to have people in the jail held in Macon. It would be a shame to waste $540 a day of county funds, for years, until we finally decide to fix the toilet…. I mean, build a jail.

If you have questions, please come to the meetings, message me, ask a County Commissioner, talk to your local police officer. And I hope that everyone who reads this will consider voting for this.

Not because any of us want to pay for a plumber today, but because we don’t want to pay more if we wait.