Speakers address the need for temporary jail

By Jill Draper

Kansas City officials have requested proposals for a temporary modular jail, and several community leaders lent their support for the idea at the August 11 meeting of the South Kansas City Alliance. The proposals are due August 19.

“We need a temporary facility for the next two, three or four years,” said Bobbi Baker, CEO/president of the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. She said a plan introduced last year to use the eighth floor of the KC Police Department was not the right place.

Kevin Klinkenberg, executive director of Midtown KC Now, cautioned that many things still must be decided, including a site for the module jail. But he called the idea a logical short-term solution, adding “I feel like we have a strong majority support on the city council and mayor to get this approved.”

He noted that some people who had lived in Midtown for 20 years were now leaving the city, telling him “we’ve never seen crime this bad before.”

Ronald Lindsay, pastor of the Concord Fortress of Hope Church in the Ruskin Heights-Hickman Mills area, agreed. “The quality of our life is deteriorating,” he announced. He also warned about the continuing cost of sending the city’s prisoners to other Missouri jails in Vernon and Johnson counties.

“It’s a form of extortion that other counties can charge us,” he said.

Municipal Court Judge Martina Peterson, who was in the audience, said it was not uncommon for prisoners to be released to the community early or to be refused by the jails in other counties. “And then they’re back in court again,” she said.

Kansas City intends to build a permanent jail on land adjacent to Jackson County’s new jail, but that site is unlikely for the temporary modular jail because of ongoing construction.

Also at the meeting was the question of where to site new massive data centers and warehouses. Jennifer Reinhardt, a city planner, and Brian Jackson, a contractor with Wilson & Co., announced they will be hearing public comments on September 10 and 11 to update the long range vision on these developments which often take up several hundred acres.

Details will be posted at speakeasy.kcmo.gov.

Another issue they’ll be looking at is parking requirements. Proposals call for simplifying what developers need to do citywide, including requiring no minimum parking in the urban core.

A final presentation at the meeting included comments on the shut-down section of the Blue River Road. Kristi Ashton, one of the organizers of the Save Blue River Road, said the road will be 100 years old in four years. She encouraged supporters of repairing the road to fill out forms on the city’s speakeasy site, and complained that ongoing maintenance of the road was lacking long before the 2009 washout.

Some in the audience agreed, noting that problems went back 50 or 60 years. One engineer in the audience noted the washed out part that needs stabilization is only one-eighth of a mile long, and that the entire repair proposal of up to $46 million included a 25 percent contingency, a fixed amount of money set aside for unanticipated costs. “That is not usual,” he said.

Another person said, “We don’t need curbs, lights or bike lanes. Just give us a road.”

City Councilman Jonathan Duncan, 6th District, was in the audience and announced there will be another public engagement opportunity on October 1 at 6 pm. He said it will be better organized than the one held in April at Wonderscope where the city underestimated the amount of interest in the topic, running out of chairs, water and speaking time. The location is still being decided.