County, city discussing possible joint justice center project

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The Perry County Commission and the City of Perryville are in the midst of talks regarding the possible construction of a combined “justice center” in Perryville.
The proposed project — which would carry a $15-17 million price tag and possibly open in the next three years — would address a number of needs, ranging from a desperately needed new jail facility and sheriff’s office to duplicated emergency 911 services as well as a number of security and logistics concerns involved with transporting prisoners for court appearances.
“In the last few years, the city and the county have partnered together on a number of things, even on things that may not have seemed like, a natural merging of powers or efforts, if you will,” said Perry County Clerk Jared Kutz, “but we’re stronger together, and as they go, we go and vice versa in a lot of situations and this is another opportunity where we can be stronger together.”
Funding for the proposed project would come from a proposed half-cent sales tax similar to the one that funded construction of the Perry Park Center at City Park in Perryville.
“There’s been a lot of legwork done, a lot of up-front work as far as the commission’s consideration to determine the appropriate statute for the tax to fall under,” Kutz said. “That’s still to be finally determined. We’ve been consulting with legal counsel and financial advisers on the best route to go on that as far as what to present the voters, but I’m fairly confident that there will be a question of this nature on the ballot in April.”
The Perry County Sheriff’s Office, which also houses the county jail and emergency 911 services, was completed in 1990, and according to Kutz, it was outdated the day it opened.
“This building was obsolete the moment they built it,” Kutz said. “[Sheriff Gary Schaaf] came in Jan. 1, 1993, and a year later, they’re putting in 911 dispatch and this just wasn’t created for that. I just think it’s critical at this time that we modernize our operations because we can’t keep dumping, you know, $40, $50, $60 thousand a year into this facility. That’s not going to get us any better off than where we are today.”
As for the city, it’s police department facilities aren’t nearly as dated, but city administrator Brent Buerck said there are a number of other factors that make the project worthwhile.

“The police facilities aren’t part of the issue,” Buerck said. “We can continue to operate the police department [out of its current location], but then we don’t realize the benefits of shared 911 dispatch. Instead of us staffing a full team and them staffing a full team and us buying full equipment and them buying full equipment, we can merge that and as a system, city and county, we get better, we get more efficient and that allows us to do more with less. We can use the money we’re saving in one department to provide additional funds or additional support.”
In addition, having the sheriff’s office and the city police operate out of the same building would greatly ease interdepartmental cooperation, as officers, deputies and detectives can more easily share information and resources.
The City of Perryville recently asked citizens for their opinion regarding such a facility as part of its 2020 Community Survey, which gives residents the chance to weigh in on a number of proposed projects that could be included in the next iteration of the city’s five-year plan.
This year’s survey posed the question, “How likely would you be to support (vote for) the construction of a joint City of Perryville & Perry County Justice Center?”
Preliminary results from the survey, which won’t be fully completed until next month, show a majority of residents would likely support the project, with 29.4 percent of respondents saying they were “very likely to support the project,” while another 22.4 percent said they’d be “somewhat likely” to do the same.
A small number of respondents — 14.2 percent indicated they would not support the plan, while 33.9 percent indicated they’d like more information (19.7 percent) or were undecided (14.2 percent).
Buerck said the plan is to address the matter as quickly as possible, and in a manner that will allow the new facility to serve the community and the agencies it houses for years to come.
“We’ve had several meetings with the sheriff, several meetings with the police department, meetings with the judge and the clerk,” Buerck said. “We toured other facilities to see what works in a correctional facility. The architect we’re working with has done several of these across the country, which is different than the guy who designed this one the first time. He didn’t have that level of experience. We can’t fix what we did to get here, but we can fix it for the next people that follow.”
“The goal is to put [the tax] on the ballot in April, and then that sets us up for probably 18 to 24 months of design and construction. We think we can get there by 2023.”