letter to L-T editor

Hi Tom,

I wanted to point out a few things related to your editorial's theme: that the public did not object to the county jail project in time, and the public was given plenty of opportunities to have input.

From my perspective, as someone who followed the jail project closely from summer 2005 to now, the county has been fairly bad at listening to input from the general public. Early in the process the county officials would often say that input given was coming too prematurely, since the county had not entered the phase of the process for that type of input yet. Then, at a later point in time, that very same type of input would be brushed aside, when the county would say the input is coming too late, and that particular aspect of the decision was a done deal. And that is if a citizen managed to attend and speak at two public meetings on the issue -- not an easy task.

The county largely only had an interest in hearing from established groups and community leaders, such as businesses interests, and failed to take into account input from the general public. Often, these presentations only encouraged questions to clarify what was already planned, rather than input on the future or objections to past decisions. Few members of the general public got presentations or were invited to meetings or serve on committees related to the jail issue. Few if any established organizations were willing to stand up to the county or felt it was within their purview to comment on the jail issue. I saw one presentation in Spring 2007 while on the board of Downtown Eau Claire, Incorporated, and even a group like that had no interest whatsoever in providing official input on the jail plan. I had to approach Frank Draxler (Project manager for the jail) in order to get the county to give a presentation to the Student Senate in spring 2007 – which they would not have done otherwise.

I am a bit surprised that your editorial ignores, just as the county board did, that over 1,000 signatures were gathered in the summer of 2006 from across Eau Claire County objecting to the proposed location for the jail. The Student Senate, while I served on, in November 2005 passed a resolution objecting to the current plans for the project at the time – mainly its location that would destroy low-income student housing and put area businesses at risk. I count these are fairly substantial, and early, objections to the jail project but your editorial chooses to ignore them.

Finally, I find it disturbing that anyone would call this jail project a "done deal" when construction clearly has not even begun. The main strategy that the county has been using to get this jail through is repeating the theme that this jail is a done deal, even when it is not – and that tactic has been utilized on this project for years.

As the circulation numbers of the Leader-Telegram likely show, many citizens of this community would rather cancel the newspaper than read editorials like the one you just wrote. Who wants to read editorials that tell them they can't make a difference, and discourages them from taking part in further decision making on this issue? As a result, when something is accurately reported on or well editorialized in the L-T there are fewer people to read it.

Volume One, unfortunately, is far more convinced that the jail is a done deal, to the point of not even caring to meaningfully report on it. So I do thank you and the L-T for at least discussing and reporting on the issue.

Jeremy