Starke County Commissioners, Council Discuss Jail Project

David Pearman

The Starke County Commissioners and the Starke County Council met in a joint session Monday night to discuss the proposed jail project.

Council President David Pearman talked about the overall objective of the meeting.

“The overall goal of the meeting was to finally end up with getting the first look at the proposed ordinance that would enable us to utilize the 0.65 percent tax rate,” said Pearman. “However, what we did for the benefit of the rest of council, was basically go through the jail presentation but also, during each slide, kind of give a feel and some flavor of what the public had during our presentations.”

No action was taken on the ordinance during the meeting Monday night.

“However, on Aug. 20, during our joint meeting, we will discuss the ordinance again and then we’ll ask for approval of the ordinance so that we can move forward,” Pearman said.

Once the ordinance is approved, Pearman said the project really starts rolling.

“Everybody wants to know where we’re going to put the jail so we’re really going to have to look harder at that,” Pearman expressed. “To start a project, we have to have a site so they can look at the site, understand what we need for site readiness and site preparation. I think that will be the next step. We’ll start looking at some property in some areas and some zoning and things like that. Our partners, our consultants, will then take things to the next level. They’ll start refining some of the drawings – working toward the ultimate goal of starting to work on some bids and things like that as well.”

The commissioners and the council hope to have the jail project done in 2015.

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