Salt Lake County leaders contemplating next steps if public safety bond fails

SALT LAKE CITY — The numbers don’t look good for Salt Lake County’s public safety bond, which might not pass.

Ballots have until Nov. 19 to be counted, but as of Monday evening, the bond was trailing by around 14,000 votes, with around 65,000 ballots left to count.

The bond would have combined Salt Lake County’s two jails into one, closing the Oxbow Jail and adding beds and services to the high-security Adult Detention Center on 3300 South. The largest portion of the bond money would have been used to build a Justice and Accountability center for low-level offenders to receive resources.

County leaders said they’re contemplating contingency plans if it fails.

“We haven’t added jail beds in over 23 years. And yet, our population has grown by 300,000 people. So this is devastating,” said Salt Lake County Councilwoman Aimee Winder Newton.

Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s office didn’t want to comment until all the votes were counted but said pass or fail; they plan to meet with community and county leaders to determine the next steps. When asked for comment on specifics, a spokesperson for Wilson said, “There are many options on the table.”

Three possible solutions, councilwoman says

Those options appear to Newton as threefold.

First, she said the county could keep the status quo with the two jails operating but noted that Oxbow Jail is old and needs tens of thousands of dollars of maintenance.

“If we keep limping by, we’re going to be having to put millions of dollars into deferred maintenance (into the Oxbow Jail), which is just not a good use of tax dollars,” Winder Newton said.

Another option is a lease-revenue bond, which could still require raising county property taxes to build the Justice and Accountability Center.

“The downside of doing a lease revenue bond, too, is it looks like to voters were just flipping the bird and saying, ‘Sorry, I know you voted no, but we’re going to do it anyway.’ So as a policymaker it like that gives me a lot of heartburn,” she said.

And a third option, Winder Newton said was using some money, around $100 million that the county has saved to build the center, then trying the bond again in 2026 for the additional beds at the current high security jail.

“I want to dive into the numbers and really understand what is best for taxpayers and what also takes care of our public safety needs,” Winder Newton said about her preference for the solution.

She believes the cities may be the most disappointed by the bond failure because their police often see offenders return to the streets after being arrested, sometimes within hours.

“And so they are frustrated. They recognize that there’s a need there. And so we’ve got to move forward and figure out what the right solution is,” she said.

Salt Lake County’s Clerk said they plan to release more results on Tuesday by 7 p.m.