Jail siting forum provided more chances for feedback
Tue, 07/29/2008
The City of Seattle made its case at South Seattle Community College for the potential siting of a new municipal jail for misdeameanor offenders on July 26th. The forum was one of a series of public forums on where to site such a facility. The City of Seattle, as well as all other cities in King County are being forced to build a jail because the county has said that the contract they have to incarcerate these offenders expires in 2012, and will not be renewed.
The focus of this forum was on two potential southwest Seattle locations. The first, located at 7126 West Marginal Way S.W. meets the basic requirements but is opposed by some neighbors on safety grounds, notably Eddie Sherman of Pacific Plumbing Supply, directly across the street from the site. "Let there be one incident from that jail of somebody breaking out, somebody accosting one of the ladies there...one thing happens and all heck breaks loose," said Sherman. Others have different objections and some would tolerate the jail being located there. Boots and Paul Winterstein said, " It's a fairly isolated location bounded by fairly major arteries on all three sides," said Paul Weinstein, while Boots his wife said, "I think if it proves, after more analysis, to be the best site it would be quite o.k."
The other site at 9501 Myers Way S.W. is already the site for a Seattle Fire Department training facility and is where future Senior and low income housing is planned. White Center resident Liz Giba said, "Two and half years ago I asked him (Mayor Nickels) to paint a picture of what our community would look like in ten or fifteen years if we became part of Seattle. He said it was a reasonable request... now I've got my answer. He'd like to put a jail right outside our doorway." Giba favors a regional solution to the issue.
The forum was attended by approximately 100 people and comments were written and collected for both consideration and future reference.
Senior policy analyst on the issue for the City of Seattle, Catherine Cornwall acknowledged that the issue is difficult to resolve because "None of the communities is enthusiastic about having to build a jail... I've talked with the people who worked for the City of Kent when they located the Regional Justice Center there... and they heard a lot of very similar concerns from the community."
For more information on this issue see the City of Seattle's web page about it here http://www.seattle.gov/municipaljail/SiteSelection.htm
The collected feedback from this forum is available at:
http://www.seattle.gov/municipaljail/Feedback_7-26-08_Public_Forum.htm