Funding, leadership key factors in jail facilities progress

Funding, leadership key factors in jail facilities progress

When the Charles City Council and Floyd County Board of Supervisors met Monday evening, there was a singular desire for progress, with a couple different ideas on how to go about achieving that progress.

The joint workshop, held before City Council’s established workshop session, was billed as a chance to establish future meetings or workshop opportunities after FEH Design finished their final presentation last week.

Although closer inspection of a new county jail was unanimously interesting, discussion varied on what those next steps should be as county and city representatives tried to match the pieces together.

“If we have enough consensus that it’s a good idea to keep exploring, then the question is who should go out and seek out a third party facilitator to move things along,” Mayor Jim Erb told the table. “My experience has been, without that, it’s very difficult to pull things together.” But council and board members were also wary of adding too many people to a growing decision body.

“I don’t want to committeeit to death,” council member Jerry Joerger said. “I’d like to get moving.”

“I just want to see that we don’t hand it off to another facilitator, to come back with another plan,” County Supervisor Doug Kamm said.

An outsider may help the city and county vet cost estimations for projects, County Supervisor Roy Schwickerath said, and help members identify funding sources that have not yet been explored.

“We all talk bonding and whatever else, but there’s a lot of other funding sources out there,” Schwickerath said. “We don’t have all those answers.”

By Kate Hayden khayden@charlescitypress.com