Whatcom County Council selects site for jail

Whatcom County Council decided June 13 that the county’s new jail will be built on La Bounty Drive in Ferndale if its funding is approved by voters. 

During a special committee of the whole meeting June 13, council passed a motion in a 6-0-1 vote, with councilmember Kaylee Galloway abstaining, to select La Bounty as the location for Whatcom County’s correctional facility. Council held the special meeting to discuss wording of a jail tax measure that council then introduced during its June 20 meeting. Council will hold a public hearing on the measure at a future meeting before it is expected to go before voters in November. 

The ballot measure seeks a sales tax of two-tenths of 1 percent, or 20 cents on a $100 purchase, to fund the new jail and behavioral health facilities. The remaining funds would pay for improved behavioral health services, diversion programs, supportive housing and re-entry for those released from jail. The new jail is estimated to cost $137 million and expected to take three years to build.

Councilmembers said they selected the La Bounty location because it would be the most cost-effective, while some were worried about the possibility of overexpansion at the site.

The two other locations council considered were a site in the Irongate industrial area in Bellingham, which is where the Whatcom County Jail Work Center and Anne Deacon Crisis Stabilization Center are on Division Street, and a vacant lot south of the current jail on Grand Avenue in downtown Bellingham. 

Galloway said she abstained from voting because she had wanted to hear community feedback on the La Bounty property before confidently voting on it. 

“My first choice was trying to find a way to do a horizontal design at Division [Street],” Galloway said during the June 13 meeting. 

Councilmember Barry Buchanan was on council when it put the first failed jail measure in front of voters in 2015. He said the Division Street location would’ve been ideal had the county been able to secure more land for a horizontal development that could have accommodated expansion. 

“I’m torn,” Buchanan said during the June 13 meeting. “I’ve been through this process since 2015, and I have that same fear about the La Bounty location, but given the cost estimates, we have to be responsible with our tax dollars as well.”

During the meeting, county council also approved creating a calculation for the number of jail beds in the future jail and an equation to determine what triggers the future jail’s expansion.