Voters reject sales tax for new Boone County Jail

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Proposition L -- a sales tax increase to pay for a new Boone County Jail -- failed Tuesday, with nearly 60% of voters voting against it.

A total of 65,511 votes were counted, with 39,178 "No" votes and 26,333 "yes" votes

Proposition L was among the questions local voters saw on their ballots in Tuesday's mid-term elections. The tax is expected to bring in about $17 million each year and expire in 2042.

Boone County's sheriff said Tuesday afternoon that he felt good about the prospects for passage of a 3/8-cent sales tax to pay for a new jail.

"So I think, you know, probably the number one thing is it's a public safety issue," Sheriff Dwayne Carey said Tuesday. "And then we're going to try to go a little bit farther with what we're doing on mental health, because we know the funding is not going to come from the state of Missouri."

However, Carey said before the results were tabulated that the county would keep pushing for more money for a new jail.

The current jail has 246 beds but can only hold about 200 people because of logistics, the sheriff's office says. The county has twice that number of criminal detainees, he said. If Proposition L passes in November, it would allow the county to start building a 570-bed jail that can expand to 990 beds.

Currently, the jail has 457 people in custody with only 246 beds.

In 2022, the county spent $499,000 on out-of-county housing. Last year, the county spent about $2.5 million.

A group against Prop L, No New Jail, argue that the timing was bad, among other problems.

"First off, right, it's a major sales tax increase at a time when people are really hurting, and things are going up. City Utilities and Columbia are going up," said Amick. "It's a regressive sales tax also, so it's the most vulnerable, the hardest, but also hits the most vulnerable."

In previous reporting on Prop L, Susan Maze, a member of the group No New Jail, said she's against the new jail because there have been no answers on why the number of detainees has increased, causing the overcrowding problem.

Amick said Tuesday that a new jail would mean more incentive to put people in it.

"That affects thousands of people across the county. And really, again, across the region. Like I said, we see the destabilization that occurs from jail when someone's disappeared for days, weeks, months," Amick said.