By Oliver Weilein, Iowa City Council member
On Nov. 3, I will be voting No on authorizing Johnson County to borrow $94.5 million dollars (plus approximately $30 million in interest) for the purpose of building a new, bigger jail. I strongly urge my neighbors and fellow community members to vote No as well.
There are many reasons to oppose a bigger jail. In a time of rising authoritarianism, mass investment into increasing carceral capacity is irresponsible. ICE, regardless of our county’s intentions, will take advantage of more cells to deport community members (the immigrant advocacy organization Prairieland Freedom Fund says to vote No). Johnson County’s incarceration rate is trending downward. There persists massive racial disparity in arrests and incarceration in Johnson County, where black men are locked up four to five times the rate of white men. There are many pre-charge diversion programs that are proven to work. Here, I want to focus on how this ballot measure impacts the work that I was elected to do on city council.
It is true that the current jail and Sheriff offices need improvement. However, what is being proposed is a huge leap from what needs to be done to address existing concerns, and it costs too much.
We must see this ballot question as a choice that reflects our priorities. If we borrow this huge sum of money for a new jail, what are we forgoing? One of my main focuses on council is housing. Housing is a priority for our community and our city council. I have organized with fellow tenants against abusive landlords, and have worked directly with the homeless population in Iowa City for years.
People sleep outside every day in this community, year round, living in abject poverty. It is at least as much of an emergency as leaking ceiling tiles at the jail, and this homelessness is preventable. Elected officials, city staff, and partnering organizations have been hard at work for the past year, formulating an actionable plan to effectively end homelessness in Johnson County. To succeed, we must be willing to make a significant, lasting investment, of a scale that may be as large as the requested new jail. A huge investment in housing would beautifully reflect the love and solidarity that exists in our community, and is one I would stand behind.
If this bond passes, it will be much harder to reach functional zero homelessness. To say “we can do both” is a gross simplification. In the internal meetings I attend with affordable housing providers, experts, elected officials, and staff, there has been a recurring theme that “the outcome of the jail bond will drastically change the landscape.” A single bond that takes up such a large portion of the County’s ability to borrow money will mean that our plan will take longer to implement. It will be much harder for our staff to execute. It will be much harder to sell to the public, after seeing their property taxes go up by hundreds of dollars per year.
Saying “yes” to this large bond means people will sleep outside longer. To pretend otherwise is dishonest. One can believe that building a new jail is worth significantly hindering our efforts to house those living in tents in our community, and I’d suggest proponents of the jail try to make that justification so we can have a real conversation. In my view, prioritizing a larger jail is regressive, and contrary to the values of Johnson County residents.
Due to the austerity and manufactured scarcity forced upon us by the state and federal government, and more broadly the economic system that we live under, many critical needs in our community are not being met. I am very focused on housing, due to it being a core issue in Iowa City for decades, but there are many more ways that a one-time infrastructure investment of nearly $100 million dollars could drastically improve the quality of life for our residents. Childcare, cleaner drinking water, school improvements, clean energy/conservation, an expansion of alternative response/mobile crisis operations. Take your pick!
Government usually expects us to accept the enormous costs of jails and wars as “common sense” investments to keep us “safe.” But when we talk about things like ending homelessness, or providing critical services to our residents, we are often told that the cost is “too high,” that we “can’t” or “won’t,” that “our hands are tied,” that we need to cut costs and corners at every step, that we need to means test, and that we need to “be realistic.”
As Antonio Gramsci said, “‘Common sense’ is not something rigid or stationary, but is in continuous transformation.”
We can decide what is possible, what our values are, and work like hell to achieve those goals.
