![]() “In order to see a return on the investment, it must be filled, it must be utilized. “And that is what happens when a new jail is built,” he said. Tim Gaydos-Baker said the space and resources for a new jail could be used to improve the lives of county residents instead of “to provide a shiny new building to lock people up in.” Credit: Stephanie Casanova / Signal ClevelandĬaitlin Gaydos-Baker and her husband, Tim Gaydos-Baker, who live in Garfield Heights, both spoke out against the jail proposal. Activists and Garfield Heights residents spoke out against the proposed new jail at the Cuyahoga County Council meeting at the Cuyahoga County Administrative Building on July 6. Addressing that need would help address some of the conditions that lead to unsafe communities. There’s a huge need for safe, affordable and permanent housing in the region, Quarles said. So before we invest in another building, we need to invest in our people.” He said he recognizes the current state of the Cuyahoga County jail in downtown Cleveland is “awful” but happened over decades, “because people didn’t care about the people in those buildings. ![]() “I think an investment of this magnitude should be matched with community investments, where we have divested from for a long time and are at the root causes of what brings people to our county jail,” said Josiah Quarles, with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. Opponents of the plan said the county’s priority should be reducing the jail population both by releasing more people pre-trial and by dedicating funding to education, affordable housing, mental health response and other resources that could reduce crime and prevent people from ending up in jail in the first place. ![]() Council members questioned the county executive’s sudden sense of urgency. Ronayne urged council members to move forward with the proposed plan quickly and not get sidetracked with other possible locations. ![]() Thursday night’s meeting included much of the same. Ronayne’s most recent proposal, presented at a Committee of the Whole meeting earlier Thursday afternoon, is a “central services campus” that would include reentry resources, diversion and pretrial services. The price tag for the project is estimated to be almost $750 million. The discussion on whether and where to build a new jail has been going on for years, with several groups of people voicing their thoughts, from activists to judges to the public defender.Ĭounty Executive Chris Ronayne last month proposed a site in Garfield Heights on Transportation Boulevard just north of Interstate 480 as the location for a new jail. ![]()
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