Editorial: County growth makes it high time to vote ‘Yes’ on Prop A

Dallas County dearly needs a new jail and sheriff’s office. Everyone agrees on that point.

The different departments within the sheriff’s office somehow manage their ever growing case load in about half the space they need to do it, according to studies. It is a testament to the professionalism — and patience — of the sheriff’s office staff that they balance their oversized load in undersized facilities.

Jail Administrator Doug Lande, for instance, is deservedly proud that he handles two and even three times more inmates than comparable counties with two and even three times the beds of Dallas County Jail. Lande is indeed a marvel of adept administration, but it comes at the cost of an ongoing violation of Iowa Department of Corrections standards.

The new law enforcement facility proposed in Proposition A will cost $16.8 million. That is a lot of money in a county that likes its supervisors to be strict fiscal hawks who watch every penny of spending with a jealous eye.

But pennywise and pound foolish is a proverbial expression for a good reason.

Comparisons can be helpful. The city of Waukee, for example, has built nine or 10 new grade schools in the last decade at an average cost of $20 million each. Johnston built a new high school not so long ago with a $72 million price tag.

Relative to these costs, the Dallas County Law Enforcement Center is a modest proposal. So why would voters oppose it?

Part of the reason might be our history. Dallas County’s citizens have never voted to buy a new jail. That fact does not itself explain why we have always rejected jail bonds. Maybe we are simply parsimonious — cheap, in other words — a common trait of rural people, according to the stereotype.

Some object to the location of the proposed jail. They fear it will stifle future growth in one of the county’s prime corridors for economic development. But sometimes, almost in the same breath, they say they want to keep the jail on the square in Adel for the sake of local retailers’ prosperity in the historical brick-street area.

This sounds inconsistent. Either the jail will be bad for business, or it will be good, but it cannot be both at once. The architectural design of the proposed Ortonville sheriff’s station is in every way handsome. Nothing will impede further industrial and commercial development along the road between Adel and Waukee, least of all the building of a state-of-the-art law enforcement center, and even residential subdivisions are likely to crop up in the vicinity soon enough.

Voters in the northwest quarter of Dallas County complain that the location of the new facility is further proof of the county supervisors’ ongoing favoritism toward voters in the southeast quarter of the county. Such claims have some basis, but the facts of population trends are nobody’s fault.

Price and location — most all objections to the new jail boil down to these two. But the objections do not outweigh the arguments in favor of a new county facility that will keep pace with the county’s growth over the next generation.

Plans and projects are never perfect, and they never satisfy everyone, least of all the CAVE people, Citizens Against Virtually Everything. For the rest of us, it is regrettable that we must pay the social costs of poverty, criminality, drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness. But we must, and in doing so we must also meet minimum standards in place to guard the health and humaneness of our detention centers.

The proposed Ortonville law enforcement center will satisfy the county’s present and future needs in the most nearly optimal way and far more certainly than the vague “other options” that are often mentioned but never specified. For these reasons, we urge Dallas County voters to vote “Yes” today on Proposition A.

Polls in today’s Dallas County Special Election open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. County voters may vast their ballots at any one of the ten voting centers in use for this election. The voting center locations are:

1. Redfield American Legion Hall, 1116 Thomas St. in Redfield
2. Faith Lutheran Church, 602 S. 14th St. in Adel
3. McCreary Community Building., 1800 Pattee St. in Perry
4. Emmanuel United Methodist Church, 1910 Locust St. in Granger
5. Dallas Center First Presbyterian Church, 1204 13th St. in Dallas Center
6. Van Meter American Legion Hall, 910 Main St. in Van Meter
7. St. Boniface Church, 1200 Warrior Lane in Waukee
8. Point of Grace Church, 305 N.E. Dartmoor Drive in Waukee
9. Heartland Presbyterian Church, 14300 Hickman Road in Clive
10. St. Francis of Assisi Church, 7075 Ashworth Road in West Des Moines

For more information about the 2015 county-wide special election, call the Dallas County Auditor’s office at 515-993-6914 or at www.co.dallas.ia.us/government/auditor/elections .