1. It would impose a huge burden on Eau Claire taxpayers, a burden they neither want nor deserve. At a time when the whole country — and especially the struggling State of Wisconsin — are hovering on the brink of recession, it is hardly an opportune moment to embark on a project that we now realize would cost over $60 million dollars before it was done. Do the citizens realize that we would be paying for this ill-conceived venture for the next 30 years, and that it would raise property taxes by an average amount of between 15% and 20% per family? To make matters worse, most of the costs for design and construction of the new facilities are slated to go to businesses from outside of the Chippewa Valley. That money would not recirculate back into the local economy; it would be lost to us for good.
2. It represents a poor set of priorities to put the county’s educational needs at the bottom of the list in order to place correctional facilities at the top. Are you aware of the fact that over the past three decades the State of Wisconsin has reduced its spending for higher education by almost exactly the same amount that it has increased spending for its bloated prison system? This trend cannot go on indefinitely! If it continues, we will lose an entire generation of young people, their hopes and dreams nipped in the bud because they cannot individually afford the rising costs of higher education. (As educators, this is of particular concern to us.) The only solution, in our view, is for the state and local governments to resume their fair share of the costs for education. Yet the huge and costly jail construction plan will effectively turn its back on our students and youth.
3. We would do far better to create less expensive rehabilitation facilities for local lawbreakers. Most of these have been convicted of non-violent crimes in any case, and they can be dealt with more effectively by sentences involving a combination of house-arrest, drug or alcohol rehabilitation where necessary, and community service. The money freed up by emptying jail cells could be used to provide more easily accessible higher education for all. Would we not do better to rehabilitate our young people and send them to school than plan to increase their rate of incarceration?
4. The estimated costs for the new jail project keep creeping up incrementally. The latest news we’ve heard is that the soil all along the Randal Park riverbank area is insufficiently stable to support the weight of such a large edifice. As a result, there would need to be a soil stabilization procedure prior to construction, adding costs of somewhere between half-a-million and a million dollars to the original estimate! Some people may say this is “only” half a million dollars, but the taxpayers of Wisconsin will not be so blasé when they realize how their representatives have wasted their hard-earned dollars.
5. Some have argued that the rising number of crimes in Wisconsin requires the building of more and more prisons. Yet the fact remains that Eau Claire is one of the safest places in the country to live, with a relatively low crime rate. According to my information, the expansion plan calls for filling up the beds in the new jail facility with prisoners drawn from other parts of the state, since there won’t be nearly enough local criminals to incarcerate. So the intention is to ship them in from Milwaukee and Madison, principally. In this way, the presumed hope is over time to pay for prison cells that should never have been located here in the first place. This plan may be clever, to be sure but in adopting it the planners implicitly admit that they are expanding the jail to an extent far surpassing Eau Claire County’s needs.
6. Further, has the Eau Claire County Board considered that prisoners, too, have families and friends who need to visit them on a frequent basis, both for the prisoners’ morale and for their families’ sakes? It is simply inhumane to shift prisoners around over long distances from one part of the state to another, treating them like mere chattel with no human dignity. We hope that the Eau Claire City Council will have a more compassionate attitude when your turn comes to consider this matter.
7. Even if it could be shown that Eau Claire needs such a huge increase in its jail facilities — which we very much doubt — it still would not follow that the jail should be built in the Randall Park area. Randall Park is one of the oldest and finest neighborhoods ***in the city, yet many members of the County Board are evidently willing to destroy many of the loveliest homes there. Among those on the list slated for demolition are several houses of real historic significance, including that of the first mayor of Eau Claire. This neighborhood also features a growing artistic community. The entire area is situated by our prized Chippewa River waterfront. This is an area where the town’s children and adults alike now spend restful summer afternoons. They will scarcely be pleased to see the intrusion on their leisure space by the expensive behemoth that is now being planned.
Directly across from these treasures Eau Claire has just spent a great deal of energy and taxpayers’ dollars to improve the landscape with Phoenix Park and the new Open Air Marketplace. And now there are plans to spend far more money to destroy the opposite bank by demolishing the lovely old neighborhood in order to erect a large, impersonal jail that will stretch along the waterfront and sports paths? Instead of doing that, we would urge our representatives to fix their sights on the outskirts of the city away from any recreational sites, where the land is cheaper and the soil is more stable and where a reasonable distance can be maintained between the facility and local homes; a site where incidentally prisoners also could have some opportunity for outdoor exercise or involvement in some useful pursuit. We know that alternative sites have been suggested numerous times, yet for unknown reasons this option has never been seriously explored.
8. It may be said that those promoting a jail expansion have the best interests of Eau Claire in mind, that they are simply making some tough choices for the betterment of the community as a whole. In that case, however, one has to ask: why is there so much resistance to putting the matter before the voters in a referendum? If the jail-expansion advocates of the Eau Claire County Board genuinely believe that these construction plans reflect the best interests of the citizens, then you should have nothing to fear by submitting the matter for decision by plebiscite.
Some of the members of the County Board have already decided that they wish to go forward with this project. We would like to suggest that you reconsider this decision very seriously, pondering the fact that a very large contingent of your electorate do not stand behind you on this plan and are deeply opposed to the long-term taxes that it would impose. As word of the profligate waste as well as the planned destruction to their community spreads throughout city, people are mobilizing in order to prevent this from going forward.
If the Eau Claire County Board should choose to ignore their constituents’ pleas, then we must appeal to the City Council to please deal appropriately with these plans. Talk to your neighbors. Ask them if they want to pay a huge increase in taxes for the next 30 years for the privilege of having their waterfront destroyed.
And then please, let the will of the people decide!
Respectfully,
Edward and Emily Beach
Eau Claire, WI 54703
