County sales tax increase to expand, renovate jail to appear on Aug. 23 ballot

ENID, Okla. — In less than two weeks, Garfield County residents will consider a sales tax increase to expand and renovate the overcrowded county jail.

Voters in the upcoming Aug. 23 runoff primary election will see a proposition on their ballots to increase the county sales tax by 0.30%, or 30 cents on every $100 spent, for a 20-year period beginning on Jan. 1, 2023, to fund the operation, maintenance, construction, equipping and improvement of the Garfield County Detention Center and its facilities.

Jail administrator Ben Crooks first proposed the roughly $8.5 million expansion and renovation to county commissioners in February and has spent the past several months meeting with various stakeholders and community members in Garfield County to present the plan.

If passed, about $2.7 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds also would be applied toward the expansion and renovation.

Crooks, who was a private consultant for correctional strategic planning and spent 10 years working with the federal government in Mexico and its prison system before moving to Enid, said the jail has been over capacity for more than a decade since opening in 2005, which is why he said the expansion and renovation is needed.

An increasingly overcrowded jail

GCDF has exceeded the operational capacity of 193 beds more than 10 years in a row, Crooks said. It also has exceeded the design capacity of 232 beds for nine years out of the past 11.

“That means we have a lot of people on the floor mostly every day,” Crooks said. “(Overcrowding) means you’re going to have more incidents, more potential lawsuits and more liability risks.”

The number of inmates as of Friday, Aug. 12, was around 242, and the highest GCDF reached was 285 inmates, which had included, at that time, about 70 inmates waiting to be pulled by the Department of Corrections.

GCDF, located at 1020 S. 10th, was designed for only maximum-custody beds, which is the highest classification and costs the most to build.

Crooks said at that time in the mid-1990s and 2000s, other jails being built had all three classifications: Maximum, medium and minimum.

“We have more maximum-custody beds than we know what to do with,” Crooks said. “We need some dormitories — lower-custody, lower-cost housing units to account for some of the nonviolent offenders we have.”

One of the issues with overcrowding, Crooks said, is that nonviolent offenders are being housed with violent offenders because there’s no more room, and sometimes, they become victims themselves.

The proposal would increase the jail by 82 beds in dormitory-style housing, add 16,000 square feet and renovate part of the current 45,000-square-foot building.

“It’s not just a matter of, ‘Hey, we need beds.’ It’s, ‘What are going to be the consequences of us sitting back once again saying, we don’t need to do anything until disaster comes,’ which I’m trying to avoid,” Crooks said.

Prior to the current facility opening in 2005, the county jail was located on the fourth floor of the Garfield County Court House.

The U.S. Department of Justice had determined that certain conditions of the jail violated the constitutional rights of detainees and recommended remedial measures, prompting the construction of the current facility on South 10th.

According to a News & Eagle article from 2006, the then-new facility was already full — meaning it was at 80% capacity — one year after it opened.

“You can pretend there’s no issue. You can keep pretending that if you ignore it, it’ll go away,” Crooks said, “but what’s going to happen is that taxpayers are going to pay more in the long run, because eventually, the federal government’s going to come back in. The DOJ is going to come back and say, ‘OK, here’s what you have to do,’ and then you have to figure it out from there, and it’s not going to be any cheaper later on.”

Funding mechanism

Crooks said he looked into multiple sources of funding the jail expansion and renovation and ended up settling on the sales tax because it would be “distributed more equitably” and draw funds from visitors.

The current sales tax for the jail was approved by voters in 2002 to cover the cost of constructing the facility, and in 2018, a continuation of that sales tax was approved and will continue to 2033.

The potential sales tax increase in the proposition is an additional tax.

Lahoma has the highest sales tax rate in Garfield County, 9.35%. Currently, Garfield County has the seventh-lowest sales tax rate out of Oklahoma’s 77 counties, according to www.sales-taxes.com.

A concern regarding the county sales tax increase brought up by Jon Blankenship, CEO of the Greater Enid Chamber of Commerce, and Todd Earl, president of the chamber board, is that Enid’s overall sales tax rate would be higher than cities like Edmond, Norman, Oklahoma City and Yukon — which are retail competitors.

“(Enid) is already substantially higher than most of these cities,” Blankenship said. “It’s not that I think people are looking at sales tax rates when they go to make a purchase, but I do think retailers are looking.”

Blankenship and Earl added there is a need to expand and renovate the jail due to overcrowding, that they’re not in opposition to that and that the jail is trying to solve an immediate issue dealt with every day.

“We just want to make sure that what we’re doing is the best solution for our citizens,” Blankenship said.

The total sales tax rate in Enid — the most populated city in Garfield County — is 9.1%, with 4.5% going toward the state, 4.25% going toward the city and 0.35% going toward the county.

Of the city’s 4.25% sales tax, 2% is general fund operating revenue; 1% is transferred to Enid Municipal Authority to fund capital projects, which expires in 2042; 1% goes to fund the Kaw Lake pipeline and associated water projects, which expires in 2052; and 0.25% is the public safety tax, split evenly between the Enid Fire Department and Enid Police Department.

The county sales tax rate currently stands 0.35%, with 0.25% going toward the GCDF.

If the proposition passes, the county sales tax rate would increase to 0.65%.

“I get that nobody wants to spend any money on a jail, and my objective is not to just spend money or to grow the jail,” Crooks said. “It’s to address the needs and keep the county protected — county taxpayers protected from bad mistakes and bad decisions, and all I can do is deliver the information and let the people decide.”

A federal lawsuit was filed in June 2017, one year after the death of Anthony Huff, a GCDF inmate who was placed in a restraint chair by jail staff for more than 55 hours before being found unresponsive and pronounced dead.

The lawsuit accusing Garfield County officials of negligence in Huff’s death was settled for $12.5 million in 2019 and was paid for through property taxes.

Crooks said the sales tax would pay for the cost of constructing the facility within four years and then fund 100% of jail operations from then on.

That would mean about $100,000 every month — roughly $1.2 million yearly — of funds being expended by the county now for jail operations would be available for other needs in the county.

County commissioners — who authorized in May the proposition to be on the Aug. 23 ballot — haven’t yet discussed what would be done with those funds, though, said Marc Bolz, District 1 county commissioner.

“We don’t have it earmarked at this time,” he said. “If (the proposition) passes, then we’ll have that discussion.”

Mental health

As part of the jail proposal, medical, administrative and visitation spaces would be built, as well as a space for educational and religious programs that can “have a positive change in inmates’ lives,” Crooks said.

In late July, Crooks said about 42% of jail inmates have some type of mental health issue being addressed and that a full-time mental health counselor has been hired at the jail.

“We know there’s mental health issues, but we work hard to address those every day,” he said.

Blankenship said he’d like to see Enid address mental health and substance abuse issues and homelessness rather than just “investing on the backend.”

“Do I think there’s a need? Yes, there’s a need,” he said. “There is clearly an overcrowding issue. It’s hard to segregate areas of the prison population, as they should. Nobody’s questioning the need, but we’re trying to alleviate these other issues.”

In 2016, Oklahoma voters approved State Question 780, which reclassified many simple drug possession and low-level property crimes as misdemeanors instead of felonies.

SQ 781 also was passed and established the County Community Safety Investment Fund to cover the cost of mental health treatment in the state’s 77 counties. However, not a dime has been invested in the CCSIF, according to an Oklahoma Watch article from earlier this month.

Oklahoma legislators instead have been appropriating funds into a separate diversion program managed by state agencies, even though SQ 781 “was clear in its intent that all 77 counties could have funding for mental health courts, drug courts and sentencing diversion programs,” the article states.

Crooks said anybody who has questions or wants more information regarding the jail expansion and renovation can contact him by calling the GCDF, (580) 548-2429.