Plans for a joint law enforcement facility between Iowa City and Johnson County have been put to an end after Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel and the Board of Supervisors expressed opposition.

Despite the Iowa City City Council narrowly voting to move forward with the facility in a 4-3 vote during its Sept. 16 meeting, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors decided not to pursue the project.

Kunkel, who began working as a deputy at the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in 2001, said the current jail was built in 1981, following a bond referendum that succeeded after several failed attempts. 

Within 10 years, the jail, located on the second floor of the Sheriff’s Office, was overpopulated, requiring doublebunking and has had capacity problems ever since.

“When I started my career here, and started working in the jail, we were overcrowded,” Kunkel said. “We had well over 100 inmates just upstairs in the jail when the maximum bed capacity was 92.”

The building has also experienced leaks and cracks throughout, impacting its stability. 

After failed bond referendums for a new facility in 2012, the idea was brought back up in 2023 when the jail inspector documented concerns about the building’s structural integrity. 

“We’ve had a space study done that recommended a new sheriff’s office and jail, including increasing the capacity of the jail,” Kunkel said. “As we got to that point of the study, the City of Iowa City was doing the same thing at the same time.” 

Since both the Iowa City Police Department and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office were experiencing similar structural issues, they began working together on potential plans for a joint law enforcement facility on property owned by Iowa City that could potentially save millions of dollars. 

A survey sent by the University of Iowa Center for Social Science and Innovation asked the initial voting block if they would support the possibility of a joint law enforcement facility.

Of the respondents, 86 percent said they would “definitely vote yes.”

RELATED: IC City Council moves forward with joint law enforcement facility

Kunkel started to see issues emerge when plans were being formed, and expressed doubts about meeting a proposed timeline for a bond referendum in November 2026. After the Sept. 16 Iowa City City Council meeting, Kunkel said he couldn’t see how the project could be completed in that time frame. 

“We have a lot of things we would have to work out for that agreement in a short amount of time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the county to have a contractual relationship with elected officials who don’t have a value for law enforcement.”

District C Iowa City City Councilor Oliver Weilein, one of the dissenters for the facility, said he opposed the plans due to uncertainties for the council and how much agency the city would have in the scale of the project.

“I wasn’t willing to go forward with a plan for something as serious as a jail with this uncertain process that could have potentially taken power away from the city council in deciding some of these factors,” he said.

Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan echoed Kunkel’s concerns, noting resistance from three city council members.

“I’m still confident that we can get something done, but we’re gonna have to do it ourselves,” he said. “Because when you’re trying to get a project like this completed, you need to have everybody pulling in the same direction.”

Kunkel added the path forward for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office will be pursuing a standalone facility provided by the Board of Supervisors. 

“We have overgrown our space,” he said. “We’ve added staff positions that probably weren’t ever on the radar 50 years ago, and we don’t have the space now to absorb really any new staffing positions.”