Juvenile detention center plan scrapped next to Cary Home
24-bed concept that emerged in 2024 won’t fit on Cary Home property, county officials say. New site eyed near Tippecanoe County Jail. Plus, a look at local impact of Gov. Braun’s property tax proposal
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TIPPEANOE COUNTY SCRAPS JUVENILE DETENTION CENTER PLAN NEXT TO CARY HOME
Plans introduced in 2024 to build a juvenile detention center next to Cary Home for Children along South 18th Street have been scrapped because designs for the 24-bed facility wouldn’t fit there, Tippecanoe County officials confirmed this week.
Now, county officials are looking at whether they can justify a similar, though more expensive, design aimed at county-owned property just south of the Tippecanoe County Jail – where a similar plan was proposed but never built nearly two decades ago.
County Commissioner David Byers said the hope of having a juvenile detention center next to Cary Home was that the two could share some staff and services. Survey and construction design work done in the past year proved it didn’t make sense structurally.
“We couldn’t get it to fit where we had it,” Byers said.
In May 2024, commissioners hired a design firm, with hopes of getting construction bids in the first quarter of 2025. According to drawings and cost charts in contracts laid out at that time, the facility would have had four pods with a total of 24 beds in either 16,000- or 20,000-square-foot configurations just south of Cary Home, a facility that offers residential and treatment services for youth.
Commissioner Tom Murtaugh said ravines and tight property lines on either side of the proposed layout proved problematic. Murtaugh said this week that conversations shifted in late 2024 to the original site targeted for a juvenile detention center off Cor-Dale Court, northwest of the intersection of North Ninth Street and Duncan Road.
A project the county pursued over the course of four years, and eventually dropped in 2008, was for an 87,000-square-foot center on the site near the jail. At one point, that proposal ran an estimated $25.1 million, which included a 32-bed secure detention component, alternative services and associated courts, based on news coverage of the proposals at the time.
The plan for the Cary Home site had been touted by Byers as being a stripped down version, coming in at $15.5 million, based on initial estimates shared in 2024.
“Right now, we’re looking at the same headache we had 16 years ago – can we afford it?” Byers said.
Byers said the project being contemplated would include juvenile intake area – something that would have been left at the jail under the Cary Home proposal – along with 24 beds. He said the current estimate is $22 million for the project. He said the county and its financial consultants will look at whether money from public safety local income tax revenues – about $1 million raised annually and assigned to brick-and-mortar projects from a 0.18% tax that started in 2020 – plus bonding would work.
Byers said preliminary numbers on operating the juvenile facility were close to $3 million a year.
Ahead of the 2024 plans, county officials said the county averages roughly 12 juveniles in secure detention – including for juvenile and adult offenses – at any given time. Rebecca Humphrey, the county’s youth services director, said at the time that Tippecanoe County joins others across the state finding fewer available beds after a change in Indiana law in 2022 that required anyone under 18 being charged with adult offenses to be placed in juvenile detention, instead of in county jails meant for adults. Of the 19 juvenile detention centers in Indiana, six didn’t accept placements from Tippecanoe County at that time due to local demand for beds.
According to numbers provided during the debate in 2024, the county spends between $120 and $220 a day to place a juvenile in another county’s facility, with an average stay of 30 days.
Byers said the aim was to break even on operating costs, between savings on not sending kids to out-of-county facilities and revenue from housing juveniles from other counties. Byers said having a local juvenile detention center would keep kids closer to schools, their families and services.
“We already have other counties knocking on our door to take beds,” Byers said this week. “We know we could fill the thing the very next day from surrounding counties. … We’ve just got to figure out the numbers about whether we can make it work.”
AN EYE ON PROPERTY TAX CHANGES COMING: THE ESTIMATED LOCAL NUMBERS
Part of the calculus for Tippecanoe County’s proposed juvenile detention facility – “Everything, really,” Commissioner David Byers said – was factoring in where things will land with current property tax cut proposals.
“The preliminary numbers we got is that Tippecanoe County’s going to lose about $35 million,” Byers said. “That’s not our portion alone – you divvy it up against all the other entities in the county. But we have to pay for what we currently have, versus throwing on a whole other group. … Everybody’s watching.”
That conversation has been picking up steam at the Statehouse, including during an Indiana Senate committee hearing Tuesday on Senate Bill 1, which contains Gov. Mike Braun’s property tax relief plan.
Among the coverage:
Indiana Capital Chronicle reporters Casey Smith and Leslie Bonilla Muñiz’s account included this: “Currently, the Republican governor’s proposal would cap annual increases on property taxes for all property types at 3%. Homeowners aged 65 and older, who have minor children or who are low-income would see increases capped at 2%. The legislation would also raise the homestead deduction for houses worth less than $125,000 and require a property tax transparency portal to go live by 2026. Braun has repeatedly emphasized that in order to help ‘struggling’ taxpayers, relief will “have an impact on local governments.’ … Brandon Sakbun, mayor of Terre Haute, said property tax cuts are likely to impact police and fire salaries, which account for 82% of the city’s general fund. ‘I stand before you all today, humbly asking that this group consider some replacement revenue streams to fully support our local law enforcement and to fully support some of the basic needs of our community,’ he pleaded.” During a fireside chat Tuesday with a pair of homeowners, Braun put things back on local governments: “If you want above and beyond that (tax cap), do it through a referendum process that is very transparent. … Don’t hide behind an opaque system.” From the ICC story: “Asked about his plan’s hits to municipalities, counties and schools, Braun pushed them to find efficiencies — and disputed their complaints. ‘Almost all of them are saying that they can’t do without what they’re having now. I would say: prove it,’ he told reporters.” For more: “Locals, lawmakers struggle to compromise on Indiana property tax relief.”
Indianapolis Star reporter Brittany Carloni had this report: “Can local governments take the hit from Gov. Braun's property tax reform?”
By the numbers
From a fiscal analysis tied to Senate Bill 1, done by the Legislative Services Agency, here’s how property taxes would shift over the next three years under the current plan, based on property type:
From the same report, here are the estimated net revenue changes statewide for counties, cities, schools and other taxing units:
For cities, schools and other government taxing districts in Tippecanoe County, overall, those estimated numbers in reduced property tax revenues would be:
2026: $23.9 million.
2027: $30.8 million to $31.4 million.
2028: $31.6 million to $38.8 million.
Here are those numbers, broken down by taxing unit in Tippecanoe County, according to Legislative Services Agency estimates.
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Now aren’t you glad you voted for Braun? Lower property taxes and reduce services! Who needs $ for police and fire departments? Obviously, you local governments are NOT managing your $ well! So what are you gov going to do for the people beside lower property taxes? Redecorate the mansion?
According to those numbers, TSC would lose about $6.5 million per year in funding, LSC would lose $2.9 million per year, and West Lafayette would lose $2.7 million per year. By way of reference, the West Lafayette school referendum looks like it generates about $8 million / year, so this would effectively cut a third off the benefit of the referendum that West Lafayette voters passed for our schools.
On the municipal government side, Lafayette would lose about $5.4 million/year, West Lafayette $2.1 million/year, and the County $6.6 million/year.