A group of Montgomery County residents are asking county commissioners to be more transparent as they plan for the new county jail.
The citizens group is called the Montgomery County Justice Coalition. They say the county has been planning the jail behind closed doors with their contractors and not keeping the public updated on their progress.
The coalition asked all three county commissioners to attend their virtual town hall last week. However, all three commission members declined to attend. They sent a letter saying they don’t believe a panel is necessary at this time.
However, Dayton City Commissioner Jeffery Mims did speak at the meeting. He said transparency in government is more important now than ever. Mims said many people have lost faith in institutions they used to trust.
“Some of that is because some of the institutions have done themselves in by giving wrong information too many times, and then because they’ve done that you have more and more people at large who have lost faith and lost trust in institutions as a whole,” said Mims.
Plans for the new Montgomery County Jail show space for over 900 beds. That’s twice as many beds as the current jail holds.