Metro Pulse/Insights/Justice Center Savings

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by Joe Sullivan

Hidebound county commissioners were quick to seize on County Executive Tommy Schumpert's recommendation to scrap plans for a new, $90 million downtown jail as a pretext for cutting county taxes.

The eight votes cast at Monday's commission meeting for Commissioner Howard Pinkston's resolution to roll back the county's property tax rate by the amount of the savings were two votes short of a majority on that motley 19-member body. But one of the resolution's sponsors, Commissioner Phil Guthe, was absent; and several who opposed it or abstained did so on grounds that it was premature to leap before looking at the full-blown county budget for next fiscal year that Schumpert will present today.

That budget will hold the line on taxes at the $3.32 property tax rate commission adopted last year after increasing it by 55 cents. Schumpert is clear that any attempted roll back would be "shortsighted." But it's going to take some doing to convince commissioners and the public alike that deep-sixing the new jail shouldn't bring some tax relief.

Schumpert didn't help his cause by maladroitly revealing to the News-Sentinel his conclusion that the $90 million facility planned on State Street isn't needed without giving concreteness to the smaller, lower-cost alternatives he's now recommending. And he compounded his faux pas by letting commissioners read about it in the newspaper (to their infuriation) instead of getting a fuller picture from him firsthand.

But it wasn't Schumpert's fault that he got caught in a budgetary time bind when commission punted back to him in January the task of reassessing the entire project, whose site had become as controversial as its cost. The four-month time frame until he's obliged to submit his budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 simply wasn't long enough to allow the county executive and his consultants to both redefine the needs and then flesh out plans for meeting them.

The alternatives that Schumpert is now proposing include:

(1) total renovation of the outmoded jail in the City/County Building into a much more efficient 150-bed facility (down from 207 presently); (2) construction of a new intake center that would also house about 150 detainees immediately adjacent to the City/County Building; and (3) relocation of a new sheriff's headquarters that had been due to go on the State Street site to the Maloneyville Road site of the county's longer-term detention facility in Northeast Knox County.

Schumpert has said the clincher for him in deciding against even a downsized (from the 472 beds that had been on the drawing boards) jail on State Street was the conclusion that additional courts that were due to accompany the jail in a Justice Center complex would not be needed in the foreseeable future. Absent a court component, a free-standing new jail became unjustified.

At Monday's commission meeting, Schumpert attempted to fill in some of the funding blanks. Even though anything approaching firm projections of the cost of his alternative construction plans won't be ready until August, Schumpert made a "ballpark estimate of somewhere between $50 million and $60 million." While that may seem like a $30 million to $40 million saving, the county has already sunk close to $12 million into the design, acquisition, demolition, and remediation of the State Street site. And the net saving to the county of, let's say, $25 million is far in excess of the amount that could in actuality be passed along to property taxpayers. The actual cost differential reflected in the tax rate is the roughly $2 million in annual debt service that it would have taken to fund an extra $25 million in jail debt. Since each penny of property tax generates about $500,000 in revenue, the maximum tax reduction to reflect the savings would be 4 cents.

To fill that gap, Schumpert is proposing an additional $31 million in capital outlays for other purposes. Of this, $16 million would go to acquire new industrial and business parks on behalf of the county's economic development arm, Knox County Development Corp. The other $15 million would go to the school system, principally for replacing roofs and HVAC systems.

Ironically, the sponsor of the tax rollback resolution, Howard Pinkston, held forth during Monday's commission meeting on the need for prompter attention to school roof leaks. "We've got to stop those leaks," he said. "That ought to be the number-one priority."

Even if the commission doesn't buy Schumpert's additional capital outlay recommendations, parleying any savings into a tax cut would be unwarranted. There are other, far more compelling uses for the $2 million (four cents worth of property taxes) that might be freed up.

The school board, for example, approved an $8.2 million increase in its budget for next year as a baseline just "to function in FY2001 as we currently are this year." It also recommended an additional $11.8 million in outlays for new "initiatives," with grudging recognition that County Commission approval couldn't be expected for very many of them. But projected $6 million to $7 million growth in school revenues from presently dedicated property and sales taxes doesn't even cover the school board's baseline budget increase. And that baseline doesn't include anything for teacher raises.

If the state legislature, as expected, approves a 3 percent raise for state employees, including teachers, Knox County will have to come up with $2 million to cover a big part of it. And the school board will have to get that $2 million out of some other hide. Having to scrimp on other things, such as maintenance, is why so many schools have leaky roofs.

Not even the most strident critics of the $90 million jail project can be expected to oppose Schumpert's alternative. Indeed, it bears a striking resemblance to the jail overcrowding solution long advocated by the State Street project's staunchest foe, lawyer Herb Moncier. And even Sheriff Tim Hutchison, who now has his tail between his legs, is reportedly amenable to it—though he's assiduously avoiding public comment.

In the course of getting commission approval of a 55-cent property tax increase last year, Schumpert pledged it would be the only one he'd seek during the balance of his four-year term that runs through 2002. So the county will have to make do on that one-time shot in the arm for three more fiscal years. Each year the calendar moves closer to the 2002 elections, the lesser the likelihood that commission would vote for any sort of tax increase. To cut taxes now would be worse than shortsighted—it would be a travesty.