Custer County Commissioner Canda noted during the last Board of County Commissioner (BOCC) meeting of December that he was planning on putting together another committee to start the process of plans for a new building for the court, which has often taken on the name of a “Justice Center.”
While the comments made by Canda were only during the public comment section of the BOCC meeting, he made it clear that he feels that the only reason the Justice Center Bond issue of $31.5 million dollars was defeated by the voters of Custer County by an almost two-to-one margin in 2021 was because there was a lack of “education.”
Canda repeated his conviction, saying, “We held open houses at the county jail, and almost nobody came to see the cramped condition of the jail.” In this assertion, he might have been correct that not many of the county’s 4,300 voters took a tour of the jail. However, the measure did not pass because of a lack of sight-seeing; it was because of the unpayable price tag that came with the combined courts, jail, and Sheriff’s office. A sales tax increase of about 2% would have been levied on local businesses, putting us just behind Aspen for the most expensive sales tax rate in the state at over 9%. In addition, if there had been any hiccup in the economy over the next 20 years, which is extremely likely, the Custer County government would have had to cut vast amounts out of its budget to pay for the $1.6 million due every year.
Thankfully, the measure did not pass, and the new incoming Sheriff was able to take advantage of state laws that were passed in 2022 that allowed the local jail to be shuttered and inmates housed in the Fremont County Jail. Sheriff Smith has claimed that this saved the local budget about a million dollars per year. Sheriff Smith might fancifully inflate this claim, but the point stands that the county was able to house its limited number of inmates in Fremont County.
The new idea of a Justice Center would not house a jail, but it would include the courts and a Sheriff’s Office. However, because of the rise in interest rates, it is likely that the cost of the Justice Center would be about the same as before, if not higher.
Canda, despite being a commissioner in 2021, forgot that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on advertising and surveys regarding the Justice Center. In addition, the county either bought or is still paying for land just to the east of the current courthouse, which now sits vacant. While Canda once stated that the land had been donated, the actual details have been mired in murkiness.
The segment of the population that is most likely to need a larger and more secure courthouse, that is, males between the ages of 16 and 35 who commit crimes, are a vanishing segment of the population here in Custer County as they cannot afford the $750,000 price tags attached to most of the existing housing stock in Custer County.
The most sensible option to address the nearly 100-year-old Court House was presented by Commissioner Lucas Epp on November 11, 2023, the last time the Justice Center question was publicly discussed. For Commissioner Epp, building an administrative building to house the county departments and using state funds to retrofit and upgrade the existing courthouse would be massively more affordable. Indeed, this strategy was pursued once before. The building that sits on one property to the west of Antler Liquor, which now houses a music store, was built to house government offices in the 1990s.
Unlike residential real estate, which has massively increased in value over the past five years, commercial real estate prices have flatlined or declined. A new County Administrative building could be completed for $2 million dollars or less, a price tag that would require no borrowing if the County Commissioners made plans and saved over the next few years for such a project.
But Commissioner Epp, an electrical contractor who has worked on the scale of our small rural community, is outnumbered by two former military men who have only known massive projects using Federal Government deficits (borrowing) when faced with an infrastructure problem.
It would be wise if the BOCC did not waste years of focus and tens of thousands of dollars to place a ballot question to borrow $31.5 million dollars when it is clear that the citizens of this county, regardless of how much “propaganda” is shoved down the throats of locals, will never vote for such an onerous debt load.
– Jordan Hedberg
Photo caption: Picture of the proposed Justice Center that was voted down by citizens in 2021. – Courtesy photo