Whatcom County committee weighs new jail scenarios as behavioral care center funding and operations remain uncertain

County planners and advisory committees on March 17 reviewed new jail-planning scenarios and trade-offs between capacity and behavioral-health services, while staff warned that operating funds for a co-located crisis center remain uncertain.

Kayla Schoppressler, executive's office, told the joint meeting of the Behavioral Health Committee and the Legal and Justice Systems Committee that the design-build team is working from a $205 million budget target to produce refined alternatives that balance bed capacity and therapeutic space. “At a $205,000,000 budget, it is gonna be very difficult to meet everyone's goals from this facility,” Schoppressler said, adding the team will show alternatives that shift capacity and program space.

The packet materials distributed to committee members included older preliminary budget figures; staff acknowledged those earlier numbers (variously listed in materials as roughly $105 million to $155 million) may not be reliable going forward and said a 4% sales-tax escalation assumption had been…