ABOVE: A look at the current Law Enforcement Center in Fairmont which houses the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, Fairmont Police Department and jail. The board of commissioners discussed the potential of a new facility in a special work session on Thursday.

FAIRMONT– The Martin County Board of Commissioners held a special work session on Thursday to go over the history of the Justice Center project. Part of the purpose of the meeting was to inform the three incoming commissioners on how the board came to be at a crossroads on the project.

To start off the two hour work session, Jonathan Loose of Wold Architects and Engineers gave a brief recap of his involvement in the project.

“As many of you know, this has been going on for about 18 years. We were hired back in 2006 to do a justice system study. We were re-engaged in 2017 for an additional master plan and there’s been a few different iterations of designs and plans since then,” Loose said.

As several of the commissioners have said in the past, talk about a new justice center started even longer than 18 years ago as the current facility, which opened in 1974, was designed to be a 25- year facility. It marked its 50th anniversary earlier this year.

Speaking to why a new facility is needed, Loose said, “part of the issue is the nature of the security building and the historical courthouse. There’s numerous safety inefficiencies, space challenges and security risks.”

He also said as the Department of Corrections (DOC) continues to do its annual inspection of the jail, it’s found a number of things that are out of compliance.

“I think the knowledge that this all started back in 2006 or 2007 is that there’s certainly needs that have been there for a long time and the board and staff has continued to engage Wold to discover what those are and how to respond to them,” Loose said.

Next he touched on some of the specific work Wold has done, including a study in 2006 and again in 2017. Wold has also done a predesign as required by the state when the county went out looking for state funding.

Another thing Wold has done is a site analysis.

“We’ve looked at 16 different sites to identify where this potential new facility could go,” Loose said.

He pointed out that over the years the county has looked at different state and federal funding and most notably, it received $2.167 million for design and site prep in the 2021 bonding bill but it has been unsuccessful since then receiving any state money for the project.

Loose said that after years of studies and meetings, the recommendation to build new did not come from Wold, but from members of the justice committee and staff and former board members who agreed this is the right approach.

“This is this vision of preparing the county for the next 50 years and trying to improve some of the operations and dialing in on the safety and security issues which are difficult to address in the existing infrastructure,” Loose said.

As for determining which site to go with and what the needs of the new facility are, Loose said he and his team have met with each departments in the county multiple times to find out what the deficiencies and concerns are. The information was then compiled to determine what the square footage needs would be.

“It isn’t just, ‘here’s my wishlist….’ I think we went through at least three or four different cuts of square footage to really try to make this new facility as efficient as possible,” Loose said.

Starting with looking at 16 sites, Loose said they seriously considered up to 13 sites over time. The first one they really seriously looked at, however, was the Center Creek Drive site. He said they had finished the schematic designs for that site but they ultimately ran into some challenges that the land presented.

“So we moved over to a site South of Margaret Street and were about 95 percent done with construction documents and design was pretty well complete and we went through some planning with the city (of Fairmont) and found some challenges with the zoning and ultimately there was a moratorium put on building on that site,” Loose said.

That was in the fall of 2023. At the time, the county was looking at a 55,000 sq. ft., 50 bed facility that would be called the Regional Public Safety and Justice Center. However, the court system was removed late in the process and it was just going to be a law enforcement center with the potential to add courts later.

After the moratorium was placed, Loose said the county had put the brakes on the project to think about the next steps while looking for another site and more funding.

“Fast forward to where we are now is the site North of Margaret Street,” Loose said.

However, the previously designed facility would not fit on the new site due to the lay of the land and some of the underground utilities. So about six months ago, the board made a decision to redesign the facility and this time include everything.

“I think the full meal deal is what was talked about. Not just the law enforcement, but the whole thing because if we’re going to do it right, let’s do it now,” Loose said.

Today, the county is looking at a 27 cell facility with seven potential classifications. The facility will include law enforcement, jail and courts. Loose said the next steps on the project include purchasing the land, which is on the commissioner’s agenda for Dec. 17. The project then needs to go out for bid and the county needs to work with the city of Fairmont on vacating the right of way and then getting the site plan approval.

As for the site in question, County Attorney Taylor McGowan said that the current property owner has said that the county’s option to purchase the site will expire at the end of this year and that they have indicated that they will not extend the option as they have another interested buyer.

After Loose’s presentation, Commissioner Steve Flohrs read through a list of about 40 questions which were directed to Sheriff Jeff Markquart and Chief Deputy Corey Kanderud, both of whom have been involved with the project for many years.

Klanderud spoke about the status of state inspections of the current law enforcement center and said that the jail facility is inspected annually and was last done in March of this year.

“Our rate is very high. We get very good scores because of how we operate the facility, but there’s always physical plant concerns on the inspection reports and language that says due to the fact that we’re currently working toward a new facility, nothing further will be done at this time but if that ends then it will be considered changing our classification from a level 3 facility to a 90 day facility, which is a level 2 facility,” Klanderud said.

He stressed that if the county does not make changes to meet the physical plant needs, the DOC will change their classification so that the jail cannot operate as it currently is. Right now, the jail facility is rated at 32 beds but it’s reduced to 80 percent capacity rating because of the design so they’re maxed at 25.

They have nine cells, eight of which are used for general housing. There are four two-person cells, two four-person cells and two eight-person cells. Klanderud said they also have one isolation cell for discipline issues that can’t be controlled but technically no one is housed in it.

He spoke to some of the classification issues following questions from some of the new commissioners.

“Our linear design doesn’t allow sight and sound separation which is required between genders and that’s another reason we can’t have juveniles either; we can’t separate them,” Klanderud explained.

A good amount of time was spent discussing when and why transports need to take place, especially for juveniles as Martin County can only currently hold them for six hours. With a new facility, the county will have the capability of holding them for 24 hours which will eliminate many problems. As it is now, the county usually needs to transport juveniles to Willmar when there is space for them there.

“The difference between the six hour window that we’re currently working with, versus the 24 hours is a big deal when it comes to these juveniles,” said McGowan.

He added that if they pick up a juvenile they need to hold them until they can appear in court but if they pick one up at 10 p.m. they can only hold them until 4 a.m., which is before court would take place so they would need to transport them until they can appear in court.

“Then we have our officers spending a lot of time calling around to jails to figure out where we can put this juvenile,” McGowan said.

Klanderud said they also currently do not have a medical accessible cell so need to transport inmates with medical problems to Nobles County or Scott County. Another issue the local jail and many other jails face is mental health issues.

“We have jails all across Minnesota that are housing people up to a year that are sentenced to go to a mental institution and they have no charges but there’s nowhere for them to go and they’re sitting in jail,” Markquart said. “We have sent bills to the DOC to pay for these nights because it’s costing us to house this person and they will not pay these bills.”

He said that mental health is a big problem across the whole state and Klanderud added that the capacity is low statewide for the ability to transport someone to treatment so they’re kept in correctional facilities because they’re a danger to themselves or others.

Next, the conversation shifted to why it is not feasible to remodel the current facility, as has been suggested many times by members of the public.

Klanderud said that the age of the facility and the way it was designed doesn’t allow them to build up. He said they looked at remodeling options of extending the front of the building, but that they’re landlocked on both sides by historical buildings (the courthouse and the Chubb House) and by Lake Sisseton in the back of the building.

“Space and costs are the reasons we don’t,” he said.

When asked why it hasn’t been maintained, as has also been brought up by the public, Klanderud said it’s a facility used 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and that it is maintained constantly and consistently.

Funding sources were also touched on and County Coordinator Scott Higgins said they have looked heavily at state funding and that the county engaged with a law firm about five years ago to assist with this. In 2020 the county was awarded a $2.1 million reimbursement grant for design and site work.

“We’ve been pursuing bonding bills for the last four years… as far as grants go, we’ve gotten federal funding as well, $1.1 million that we received last year. We did request for CY 2025 $3.5 million but there wasn’t support from representatives for that,” Higgins said.

He said the county has not pursued any private funding so far as it is pretty limited in options. He said they’ve had some brief conversations about using a Local Option Sales Tax. However, there is currently a moratorium on the state on LOST through May of 2025. The earliest Martin County could get approval by legislation is 2025 and then it would go to voters in 2026 and if passed, tax would be collected starting in 2027.

As for what’s been spent on planning for the project so far, Higgins recounted the study and predesign planning that happened back in 2006 and again in 2017. He said site inspection on the three different sites has also costed the county money. The county has worked with Bolton & Menk on land surveys, Beemer Companies on geothermal testing and with ISC Consulting, plus more, all of which have carried a cost.

“All in all if you want to look at the money spent, it’s $2.2 million for all of the firms,” Higgins said.

There’s also been additional money spent on the lobbyists the county has used to help it in securing funding. In total $2.4 million has been invested so far.

Flohrs asked for it to be explained why bonding is the best option to fund the project. George Eilertson from Northland Securities then gave a presentation on what the board has most recently been pursuing.

“This is a refresher about the capacity of the county to issue the debt,” Eilertson explained.

He said the county has a little under $7 million of existing debt that counts toward the debt limit that is mostly going toward the recent courthouse update projects.

Eilertson said that general obligation jail bonds is a nice statute that is friendly to counties and that counties can issue up to .1 percent of their market value in annual principal interest payments with general obligation jail bonds.

“You have a capacity based upon your market value to have annual principal and interest of about $6.5 million,” Eilertson said.

He explained that as per the statute, jail bonds can fund jails and “sheriff residences,” which is antiquated, and that courts and law enforcement centers are not considered jails so that the bonds can only fund that portion of the project and other avenues need to be found to fund the rest of the project that is not jail related.

“That is done one of two ways, through capital improvement plan bonds or lease revenue bonds. A lot of counties do lease revenue bonds,” Eilertson explained.

When looking at a $50 million facility, Eilertson said he and Loose have looked at how much of it will be a jail related expense and it’s about 50-50.

Currently, the plan then is to pay for half with jail bonds and half with lease revenue bonds. They each carry a bond term of 30 years at a relatively low interest rate.

“Annual debt service is $2.45 million based upon the current market. Right now it’s showing a downward trend on interest rates and hopefully that continues and it will drive the debt service payment lower along with it,” Eilertson said.

The county is currently looking at $1.8 million in debt service for 2025, which totals almost a 9 percent levy increase but with other expenses, the county is looking at a 12.5 percent levy increase. It will officially vote to approve the budget and levy at its Dec. 17 meeting.