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August 13, 2021 Otsego County has been working diligently on a “Plan B” after the Otsego County Justice Complex proposal was not passed on the May 4, 2021 ballot. A new jail remains the highest priority of the Otsego County Board of Commissioners for safety and security reasons. This need has not gone away. We’ve heard your voices. Otsego County professionals and elected officials engaged in meetings, conducted a survey, and received extensive feedback from the community as to why the proposed Justice Complex was not supported. The consistent feedback identified two main reasons: the project was too big/too expensive, and many community members understand the need and would support a millage for a new jail, but not necessarily an entire complex (the former Justice Complex proposal included a new jail/sheriff office plus a second story devoted to the court system and prosecutor offices). In response to this feedback, a Plan B has been developed that has nearly cut the proposed building in half and entirely removes the “complex concept” from the millage request. The new millage proposal is ONLY for a Jail/Sheriff Office. Additionally, the original 120-bed proposal with a shell built to expand to 178 beds, has been reduced to a 96-bed jail with no expansion shell. The previously proposed Justice Complex building would have been an approximately 60,000 square foot facility. The new millage proposal for strictly a Jail/Sheriff Office facility is planned to be approximately half of that, 31,000 square feet. The building cost of the Justice Complex was projected to be an estimated $30 million. For the Jail/Sheriff Office, the building cost is estimated at $15 million. The operations component of the millage request has been reduced by nearly 20%, to reflect the reduction in the number of jail beds in the millage request. The proposed 20-year millage request has been reduced from 1.95 mills to 1.15 mills. The Otsego County Board of Commissioners approved ballot language to ask the voters to approve a 1.15 mill request for a new Otsego County Jail/Sheriff Office, to be on the November 2, 2021 ballot. ***See page two of this document for a side-by-side comparison of the previous Justice Complex proposal to the new Jail/Sheriff Office proposal.