Justice center will require new taxes to build, maintain

The time has come for Howell County to seriously consider a new jail facility or justice center – and what it might cost. The county commission took the first step in the process last week when they published a request looking for professional architectural services.

 

Once the commission chooses an architectural firm in late May, the firm will perform a needs assessment. Howell County News sat down for an interview with Howell County’s Presiding Commissioner Ralph Riggs and Sheriff Matt Roberts to talk through the details.

 

The needs assessment will determine whether the county builds a jail facility separate from the courthouse, which is the current arrangement – or whether they build a justice center that combines the jail and courthouse into a single facility. 

 

Sheriff Roberts prefers a justice center, he said, for security reasons. Regular readers will recall a high-profile inmate escape from the courthouse in December. The inmate was being transported to court for a routine appearance. Any time transports of this nature occur, escape into a busy downtown area is a risk, Roberts said. 

 

That escape was not the first during a prisoner transport, and there have been escapes from the jail facility itself. Combing the courts with a secure jail facility cuts down those risks, Roberts said. 

 

A new facility can have more and larger courtrooms, Riggs pointed out. Current courtrooms are small. The Sheriff’s Office itself is cramped, with the investigative division housed in the Howell County office building downtown. 

 

“We’ve needed this for a long time,” Roberts said. 

 

The age of Howell County’s jail contributes to its conditions. Howell County Jail is the oldest facility in the surrounding counties. As previously reported by the News, the conditions are described as “nasty,” “dirty,” and “cramped” by grand juries that have toured the facility. They point out the unacceptable working conditions for county employees as well as for inmates. 

 

Repairs are difficult to complete because parts are unavailable, Roberts reports. Electrical failures and plumbing problems are routine. 

 

The forty-year-old facilities are unprepared for the volume of mental health needs present in today’s jail populations, Roberts said. When working with an architect on the plan for a new facility, he hopes to include medical amenities in the new facility. 

 

Paying for it

 

“The consensus is we need to do something,” Commissioner Riggs said. “To do something, there’s going to have to be an increase.”

 

“The construction of a justice center will totally be decided by the taxpayers.”

 

Working with a financial consulting firm, the county will analyze sales tax revenues and the local economy to determine what they county can afford in a new facility. Riggs reported tax revenues in 2026 have been mostly flat so far. 

 

There is no room in the county’s current budget for a project of this magnitude. The commission plans to put two taxes before Howell County voters- one would be an increase to the existing law enforcement sales tax. Under the law, the current fifty cent tax per hundred could be raised to one dollar. This increase, raised from a quarter tax to a fifty-cent tax in 2022, would be used to fund higher costs of the new justice center – more staff members, a bigger budget for maintenance and utilities, and likely more inmates.

 

Roberts said he plans to avoid building a new facility his department can’t afford to run. The 2022 tax increase funds current operations in the sheriff’s department and could not support the new facility with its current revenue.

 

The second piece could be a capital improvement tax or some sort of debt service tax. This will be determined by the needs assessment. There is no indication at this point in the process what the facility will cost. 

 

“We’re taking it carefully, one step at a time,” Riggs said. 

 

“We do not want to rush or miss steps,” Roberts echoed. “We want to be methodical in assessment and planning.”

 

The earliest a new justice center tax could be on a ballot is April 2027, Riggs said, but it could be longer. The timeline is nebulous and dependent on the architecture firm they choose. The county is looking for a firm that specializes in law enforcement design, and they plan to visit and tour the facilities the prospective firms have designed. 

 

In the interview, Riggs and Roberts pledged to transparent and to keep the public informed along every step of the process.