The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors is expecting to vote for a property tax increase Wednesday, Aug. 7, increasing rates by 3% compared to last year, in order to pay for a new jail center and to cover the county’s pension liabilities.
“We have to,” District 2 Supervisor Tom Thurman said. “We’ve got to pay down this public safety retirement debt that we have that the state forced on us.”
For a home worth $100,000, the county property tax levy would equal $178.02, an increase on the $175.32 cost the previous year.
Thurman gave a presentation before the Camp Verde Town Council on Wednesday, July 24, explaining the property tax increase. He described the county’s pension situation as “a complete debacle” and attributed the problems to choices made by the state government.
“I am so mad at the legislature,” Thurman said. “They have swept this under the rug for years and years.”
“Right now Yavapai County is $50 million in the hole and we have nothing we can do about it. The state runs the system.”
Thurman also attributed the need for an increase to overcrowding at the county jail in Camp Verde, necessitating a second jail facility in Prescott to handle the high population. The proposed building would be adjacent to the Yavapai County Juvenile Detention Center.
Yavapai County has in recent years been working on ambitious programs to fight recidivism in order to keep jail populations low, including efforts to identify mental health problems among inmates and release them to supportive nonprofits to help offenders find a way to clean up and not end up back in the system.
The programs have led to results — Thurman boasted of a recidivism rate as low as 22%, compared to a rate of 39% for the state of Arizona and 50% for the U.S. as a whole, according to a 2018 report by Dr. Kevin Wright at Arizona State University. But according to Thurman, the need for more space for inmates continues nonetheless.
“The diversion programs have cut the amount of incarceration almost in half, and yet we’ve still got folks sleeping on the floor of the cell because we’re out of room,” Thurman said. “We’ve been able to keep in check the amount of folks we have overnight in the jail because of diversion programs for the last four or five years.”
Thurman also noted at the Camp Verde meeting that the county is already trying to avoid certain actions that lead to high incarceration, such as jailing marijuana smokers, who he says get fines instead of jail time.
According to Thurman, the next step for the jail is to use the funds to hire an architect to plan a new building for the site, on land already owned by the county.
“I’m not one to raise property taxes — I hate it,” Thurman said. “But between the need for a new criminal justice center … and then with the debacle of the retirement system, we’re forced to do this. There’s no other way out.”
