“Our money is being spent on something we don't feel is necessary."

“Our money is being spent on something we don't feel is necessary."
NAACP, commissioners oppose $40 million general obligation bond which gives $30
million to jail, $10 million to education
By Tyrone Tony Reed Jr.
The Jackson Madison County branch of the NAACP had secured, by Wednesday morning, about
60 percent of the signatures it needed to halt a $40 million general obligation bond, which
allotted $30 million to the jail and $10 million to education, according to Rev. Marshall Brooks,
vice-president and acting president of the branch.
The deadline to get the 6,000 signatures in to stop the bond, which the Madison County
Commission approved last month, was set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Brooks said Wednesday
morning at the branch’s kickoff breakfast at the Baker’s Rack for the 55th annual NAACP
Freedom Fund Banquet.
“It’s down to the final hour,” Brooks said. “(The signatures) are still coming in. We’re still
working on it and we’re going to up on it until the last hour.”
Brooks said he was up Tuesday night worrying about the petition, wondering about what he
could do to get more signatures and what more he could have done. Brooks said he is optimistic
about reaching the signature goal, but said if they didn’t, they would continue to fight.
“We’re not going to ever give up,” he said. “We’ve been in the trenches for 109 years, so we’re
definitely not going to give up.”
The branch announced last Thursday at the Madison County Courthouse that they had begun to
pass around a petition to protest the issuance of the general obligation bond.
"We feel that (bond) is a travesty,” Brooks said at the briefing. “So we are standing here right now to voice our opposition to that. We're asking them to stop this bond issue or to reverse it and turn the majority of the money over to our school system...We know incarceration is not the
answer to our problem, but education is." Brooks said he tried to write a statement for the press briefing, but he couldn't because of how mad he was.
"Right now, I'm angry and everyone of us who (are) standing around here should be angry,” he said. “Our money is being spent on something that we did not agree upon. Our money is being spent on something we don't feel is necessary."
The petition said: “Pursuant to T.C.A. 9-21- 201/T.C.A. 9-21- 207 et seq., we the undersigned
registered voters of Madison County, Tennessee hereby protest the issuance of the general obligation bonds as proposed by Resolution/Ordinance No. 5.2A.031918 adopted by the Madison County Commission on March 19, 2018. We desire that obligation bonds not be issued unless the voters of the Madison County approve such act in a referendum election. Must Be Registered Voter Of Madison County, Tennessee.”
Because there are over 57,000 registered voters, the branch needed to get 6,000 signatures, get
them verified by the Madison County Election Commission and certified by Madison County
Clerk Fred W. Birmingham by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
At the time of the general briefing last Thursday, the branch had secured less than 500
signatures.
Harrell Carter, who has stepped down from his duties as branch president and is currently
running to be county mayor, said there are several issues that need to be addressed and building a new jail is not one of them.
"The issues are simply this: there has not been a mandate to build or to expand the jail,” Carter said last week during the press briefing. “The issue is that we're not managing (the current jail) in a way that allows for space to be available to occupy those that need to be locked up."
Carter said that according to jail administrators, 60 percent of the jail population has low to high
mental issues.
"The jail should not be a place for the mentally ill,” he said. “There's another 20-plus percent that are there, just being held because they are too poor to get out of jail."
"All of our people are concerned,” Carter said. “We don't want criminals running loose. But, we have a system that is non-functional in terms of the ability to have a feasible facility to hold the worst of our criminals. We don't just need to hold people just for the sake of holding them. It makes no sense."
Carter added, "We all need to help one another, but we have to solve the problems at (their)
inception, not when they get to the point to where we are locking up individuals that could
otherwise be deferred to an out of system program...We don't have to lock everybody up. People are just too poor to get out or they have some mental illness, which should be a health issue, not a crime issue."
According to 2014 and 2015 documents to and from the Tennessee Correction Institute, the
commission and jail administrators, the Madison County Jail has had an overcrowding problem
since being inspected in 2014. Documents show that the male inmate population has consistently
been overcrowded, leading to some inmates not having a bed to sleep in. The county commission
was required, after joining TCI’s County Correction Partnership program, to submit a plan of
action to solve the overcrowding problem. The commission formed a committee, whose
members included judges, commissioners, Madison County Sheriff John Mehr, then-District
Attorney General Jerry Woodall and Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris.

The committee was to meet regularly, find ways to reduce the jail population and address
alternative sentencing; probation and parole trends; community corrections programs, drug court
and split confinement. The committee was also supposed to “look at the implementation of
programs that would reduce the recidivism rate of present inmates,” one document stated.
It was also in that document that the committee stated that, “we believe with the make-up of the
committee involving all areas of the judicial system that we can come up with a solid plan and
make strides toward getting the Madison County Justice Center back within the standards the
state requires.”
According to an April 2, 2018 revised document listing committees of Madison County, the
Madison County Correction Partnership Committee is made up of one member from the
Attorney General’s Office, Mayor Harris, seven county commissioners (Commissioners Gerry
Neese, Gary Deaton, Jim Ed Hart, Barbara Johnson, Larry Lowrance, Luther Mercer and Harold
Petty), one member of Community Corrections, Director Of Jail Operations Tom Rudder, two
General Sessions Court judges and Sheriff Mehr. The committee will end “upon completion of
its duties,” according to the document.
Madison County Commissioners Claudell Brown, Jr., (District 5) and Larry Sipes (District 7),
two of the commissioners who opposed the bond, attended the NAACP branch's April 2 meeting.
Both commissioners said they didn’t like the idea of the county being millions of dollars in debt
already and borrowing more money in the future, which the taxpayers and future generations of
taxpayers would have to pay back.
Brown said another reason he opposed the bond was the fact that no votes have been taken for a
new jail or jail expansion.
"The county commission has yet to approve a jail or the building plan," he said last week.
Brown said the commission has also not been given any information on what the new jail or jail
expansion will entail or how many beds it will have. He also said he hasn’t received anything
that says there needs to be an extension of the jail.
"However, money is being borrowed," Brown said. “My concern was that my constituents and the constituents across the county require and expect transparency on the part of this legislative body in all of their dealings, especially when it comes to $40 million. Our taxpayers and citizens expect us to be open with details on why we are spending $40 million.”
Sipes agreed, adding that the commission had been told that more money may need to be
borrowed in the future.
“They weren’t borrowing the amount that they needed,” he said. “They were halfway borrowing
what they were going to need. That didn’t make no sense to me. Just out of principle, if you’re going to do something, you do it right. You do it right the first time. Don’t come back later on
with your hand out, wanting more money to borrow.”
Carter said schools are in a crisis and that more money should be given to education, not to
building a new jail or extending the current one to house more inmates.
"We need to give our children a chance to be educated in this county,” he said. “We need to find ways to out the money where the money is needed...We have an urgency and crisis for our
children and this community needs to have an urgency about education...We can change this but
it's going to take resources going to the right places, to the right folks, at the right time."

Carter added, "And I think, given the climate we have today, it's often times difficult to get money into public education. It shouldn't be. But, we don't need to sit at home and think someone else is going to get it done for us.