IOWA CITY

As the November election draws closer, 10 Johnson County supervisors and another three county elected officials are stumping for votes.

Sheriff Brad Kunkel is instead stumping for a new jail and sheriff’s office.

A public informational forum drew about 50 one night last week to the Hy-Vee Center at Centennial Park in North Liberty, some in the audience favoring a new jail and some opposing it. At the front of the auditorium, Kunkel stood in front of a large video screen making his case for a new facility.

It was a moment 45 years in the making.

The current jail and sheriff’s office, located in downtown Iowa City, was built for a sheriff’s staff of about 50 and a capacity of 46 inmates. The sheriff’s staff has doubled and so has the demand for bunk space. Inside, water marks on ceilings and walls mark places of water damage. The aging building has resulted in a $3 million roofing repair project that is currently ongoing.

On Nov. 3, voters will decide on a $94.5 million bond referendum that will determine if a new jail can be built on a 35-acre property near the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm that is already purchased by the county. The referendum will require a 60% approval rate.

“I have maintained the whole time that the reason we’re in the mess we’re in today is because in the late 70s the proposal for the current jail and sheriff’s office was built to a cost, designed to a cost,” Jon Green, a former Lone Tree mayor who is now chair of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, told The News in an exclusive interview. “I think we need to design to a need.”

And that set the stage for discussions, and arguments, in the Board Room over not just months, but years. How big? How many beds for inmates? Where?

Some in the public have described the cells as cages.

Others have acknowledged the need to replace a building that is 45 years old, small, has hallways lined with supplies because of the lack of storage space, and results in deputies transporting prisoners to other counties because there are not enough cells in Johnson County’s jail.

Those transports, Kunkel told The News, may involve single deputies with a single prisoner, or more deputies, depending on conditions and the nature of a charge.

The discussions have led to a voting split on the five-member Board. Even the approval for a referendum issue, which means the public will vote on the jail in November, fell to a 3-2 split vote. Supervisors V Fixmer-Oraiz and Mandi Remington have opposed the move toward a new jail that will house 120 beds and new sheriff’s offices, and Green, Rod Sullivan and Lisa Green-Douglass have favored it.

“I would just hate to see us get into a position where we try and nickel and dime that down to a point where we repeat the same mistakes of the 1981 facility,” Green said. “I know that I’ve frustrated a lot of people. It can’t be solved because they simultaneously argue that they want fewer beds but bigger cells.”

That same argument surfaced during the public forum.

“Yeah, I recognize that’s what they’d like,” Green said. “But we have to have a proposal that’s going to get 60 percent. I can’t get out there and pitch a facility that’s going to be at capacity on opening day.”

“Every square foot you add, there’s a cost,” Kunkel said.

Bond referendums for new facilities have failed multiple times since 2000, yet the status of a new jail was among the biggest topics brought up by county residents in one-on-one conversations with county supervisors and the sheriff at the recent Johnson County Fair.

Former Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, who served for four four-year terms, told The Gazette of Cedar Rapids in 2020 that not overseeing the building of a new jail during his tenure was one of his biggest regrets.

Among those publicly supporting a new jail are supervisor candidates Jennie Wunderlich of rural Kalona and Sue Dvorsky of Coralville.

Shive-Hattery Architecture & Engineering, an architectural firm based in Iowa City and West Des Moines, has produced extensive studies and statistics that have been welcomed by some county supervisors and criticized by others. Shive-Hattery’s studies go back more than two years and the firm is working with the county on projected designs for a facility that would begin construction in 2027 and be completed in 2029.

The new designs include bigger office space, conference rooms for inmates and their families and attorneys, medical areas and exercise rooms. The total square footage is 110,500 with sheriff’s offices taking up 55% of that space, according to Michael Lewis of Shive-Hattery.

If passed, the bond would result in an additional charge of about $88 per $100,000 of assessed value in property taxes.

Green and Kunkel are among those who feel confident about the referendum’s voter approval.

“I think the question before the voters is something that should be 90 percent acceptable to 90 percent of people,” Green said. “I don’t think that there’s anybody that’s going to get everything that they would want, but it’s close enough to capture enough support.”