Kansas City’s latest changeup in a yearslong effort to build a permanent municipal jail involves a $120 million retrofit of its new, temporary modular one: the so-called World Cup jail that didn’t open for the World Cup, and still hasn’t opened.
This latest pivot on the city’s part, from an all-new $201 million permanent jail in the East Bottoms, was not born from any long-term strategic planning, community engagement or a change in needs. Rather, it’s because of money.
The move follows the recent surprise reveal to City Council members that the city’s public safety sales tax, renewed by voters in 2025, could only cover about one-quarter of the $402.6 million in total costs estimated for a jail and other large public safety projects the city has planned.
“We all live within budgets. We all have a certain amount of money we can spend,” Councilman Kevin O’Neill, who represents the 1st District at large, said during a Tuesday committee meeting. “We can’t afford a $1 million house, we buy a $300,000 house, right? My fear right now is that we are changing the scope again.”
Over the last month or so, city staff have devised a new plan to renovate and expand the city’s temporary, still unopened detention center at 7740 E. Front St. into the city’s new permanent jail. It would add 84 beds to the modular facility, expanding its total capacity from 136 to 220 beds, while building out its kitchen, laundry space, a clinic, administrative offices and visiting, intake and release areas.
The city also would have room to further grow its jail on site, as well as expand Water Services Department facilities just south, without needing to relocate its existing tow lot — an $18.4 million expenditure officials previously contemplated for a permanent jail at 7750 E. Front St.
Eliminating the tow lot move, along with changing the jail project to a $120 million retrofit, means the city stands to save almost $100 million in project costs from the prior plan. The shift would bring the city to $145.8 million spent on new municipal detention facilities to date, also counting the $25.8 million it has spent so far on the temporary jail.
The temporary jail got a temporary occupancy certificate in late August, but it only covers administrative offices. Council has given a January goal to start housing people charged with municipal offenses, but the city still hasn’t been able to recruit and hire enough people to staff the facility, which is essential before opening.
The city’s Human Resources Department is working on hiring and offering retention incentives so it can better compete with five other correctional facilities in the metro area. To that end, council members agreed Thursday to increase the city’s minimum starting pay for correctional officers from $19.27 to $25.40, and senior correctional officers from $20.10 to $27.35, with a retroactive effective date of Sunday, Oct. 18.
Officials and some community stakeholders have long raised what they say is a dire need for a city jail. Kansas City has lacked one since 2009, meaning people accused of breaking city laws — such as trespassing, disorderly conduct or some alcohol-related offenses — are held at local police stations or carted away to facilities in Missouri’s Vernon and Johnson counties.
Council members in recent years mulled several alternative arrangements but later pivoted from them. These included a shared jail with Jackson County’s own detention center, which opened in March and houses people charged with more serious, state-level crimes; a new municipal jail off U.S. Highway 40 and Interstate 70 next to the county facility; and a temporary jail in the Kansas City Police Department’s downtown headquarters.
Projects planned beyond city’s budget limits
Even with the reduced jail costs, council members on Tuesday discussed a further need to, as O’Neill put it, “value engineer the hell out of” two more important projects to find the most affordable route possible: replacing the Police Department’s more than 30-year-old Central Patrol Division and constructing a new community resource center with wraparound services, crisis support and reentry programs.
The projects carry $94 million and $89.2 million estimates, respectively, but city staff indicated Tuesday that final costs could not be determined without direction from council, including as to where the facilities should be located, or whether they ought to be merged. Mayor Quinton Lucas in January introduced a resolution to explore co-locating the projects in one “Midtown Justice Campus” on or around the current Central Patrol site at Linwood Boulevard and Forest Avenue, but the measure since has been held on council’s docket without discussion.
“In many ways, I don’t care where exactly we put it, other than to say the co-location is, I think, the way we deliver both projects,” Lucas told reporters Tuesday. “At $90 million (now estimated for) each, I question if we’ll have the resources to deliver both the new police patrol division and the community resource center unless we actually bring them together.”
Third District Councilwoman Melissa Patterson Hazley called attention to what she described as a “systemic problem” of council needing to scale back municipal projects designed without regard for cost, as compared to projects designed from the onset with a fixed budget in mind.
“The architect is going to draw you the Taj Mahal every time unless you give them guardrails because that’s their job,” Patterson Hazley said Tuesday.
She later continued, “I feel like nobody’s value engineering on behalf of the Kansas City taxpayers. We’re just paying these humungous bills. We’re doing financial backstops. We’re exhausting our specialized funds. And we’re taking the word of the architect and the construction company that has nothing to gain by scaling back.”
Officials are working with the following math: The city’s public safety sales tax is expected to generate $25 million per year available to fund project bonds over 17- to 19-year terms, in line with voters’ 20-year renewal.
But annual debt service (principal and interest) would have cost $34.2 million on the three public safety projects, plus the tow lot relocation, if their initial $402.6 million scope had remained as is.
And a big chunk of what the city brings in with the public safety tax — $17.5 million of the $25 million a year — is already tied up covering other costs, such as police body cameras and information technology. That would leave about $7.5 million a year, not the needed $34.2 million, available for project bonds. The city still would need to spend millions of additional dollars to operate and maintain future facilities, too.
With the city poised to dip into its general fund no matter how it proceeds, Lucas proposed prioritizing public safety sales tax dollars for the new capital projects promised from that source.
“We ran a campaign saying we’d do things,” Lucas said Tuesday.
A resolution passed Thursday by council would prioritize public safety sales taxes for retrofitting the temporary jail into the permanent jail first, and then the police station and community resource center on even ground, with any remaining proceeds going toward public safety infrastructure and equipment. The resolution asks for a financing plan that caps annual debt service for the jail, police station and resource center at $21 million.
Assistant City Manager Tammy Queen said the change from a permanent jail to a retrofit of the modular facility would drop its debt service from $17.2 million to $10.2 million per year. On the other projects, she said, city staff would “sharpen the pencils.”
“We know we have to squeeze into a budget operations for these facilities, paying them off and all the other things that we already pay for with the public safety sales tax,” Queen said Tuesday. “So we understand the assignment and we’ll certainly go forward and work on it. It’s been such an impossible puzzle to solve that we’re like, ‘We don’t know which way to go.’ I think this makes it more clear.”
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
