King County: We can collect taxes for detention center until ruling

By: Linzi Sheldon

While blocking downtown Seattle streets on Friday, demonstrators said King County was “illegally” and “unlawfully” using taxpayer money to build a new, $210 million Children and Family Justice Center, statements the county said Friday are untrue.

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“We put a lot of pressure on Dow,” co-organizer Julianna Alson said. “I think an enormous amount of people, 40,000 people at least from social media, know what’s up with Dow’s jail. We’ve exposed lies about the jail, we’ve exposed illegal drawing of money from the jail.”

The project, at 12th and Alder on First Hill, is well underway. It is a $210 million project approved by voters in 2012 through a nine-year property tax levy.

But a group called Ending the Prison Industrial Complex, known as EPIC, sued King County, and a Court of Appeals ruled that what voters only authorized collecting property taxes for the project for one year. That provided $20 million instead of $210 million.

King County petitioned the state Supreme Court to review the Court of Appeals’ decision, and the Executive’s office said there is no deadline for the court to decide. It could be nine to 12 months, the county said, for a decision once the review has been granted. In the meantime, Constantine’s office stated, property taxes continue to be lawfully collected pending a final judgment

“The structure is up,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said Friday, “and they’re going to begin closing it in, closing the walls shortly.”

KIRO 7 learned Constantine currently has no fallback plan in case the Supreme Court upholds the Court of Appeals’ decision and the county is left looking for $190 million. His office said in a statement that they are “focusing on the legal process at the moment and can’t speculate on future decisions without clear direction from the courts.”

Seattle protest ends just before Friday afternoon commute

Constantine said he also had the project redesigned at no cost to allow the building to be reconfigured as the county makes progress toward a goal of zero young people behind bars. The project will start with 112 detention beds but some of that space could be used down the road, he said, for community programs.

Still, he acknowledged that there will be some cases that warrant serving time.

“If a kid is accused of committing murder, it is very difficult to foresee a circumstance where you don’t have to have him in a secure environment,” he said. “So then the question, what is that secure environment? Is it a place that’s creating more trauma? Or is it a place where they’re being able to reconcile themselves to what they have done?”

That is something demonstrators do not want to hear.

“We don’t believe that any youth need to be detained for any reason,” Alson said. “There are a lot of other community-owned, anti-racist ways to go about addressing interpersonal harm.”

They also vowed to continue to put pressure on Constantine to stop the project.

“We don’t believe there need to be prisons,” a protestor who only identified herself as “B” said. “We don’t believe there need to be police.”

The Children and Family Justice Center is expected to open in 2020.