Woodbury County Sheriff Chad Sheehan wants the city of Sioux City to add a bus route to serve the new Law Enforcement Center.

At Monday's City Council meeting, Sheehan expressed concerns about how citizens, without their own transportation, will get to the LEC to serve on juries, attend trials or conduct administrative business at the sheriff's office.

Previously, when inmates were released from the former downtown jail at 407 Seventh St., and no one was available to pick them up, they could walk a short distance to a Sioux City Transit transfer point at the Martin Luther King Jr. Transportation Center.

"I'm here to ask this council to look into how do we provide a route so that the lower socioeconomic people in our community can have equal access to the criminal justice system in Woodbury County, just like anybody else that can afford a car to drive them? It's been a concern that I brought up," Sheehan told the Council. "I know everybody's worried about what the inmates do when they're released, and while I'm concerned about them as well, they've gotten themselves into the position where they're responsible to get themselves home or wherever they're going to go."

Sheehan said he's talked to some Woodbury County supervisors about building a bus stop at the LEC, 3701 28th St.

"If you want to bring a bus into our parking lot and turn it around, we'll figure out a way to make it happen. But this has to be addressed," he said.

The lack of bus service to the LEC emerged as a topic of concern even before the LEC opened in September 2024 on the northeast side of the city. In the spring of 2023, Sheehan said he was told adding the service would require a separate part-time bus route.

"The price that was quoted to me at the time was somewhere between $250,000 and $350,000," the sheriff said. "At the time, I found it hard to believe that would be a number that it would cost to run a route from Seventh and Lewis up to 28th Street, or from the Floyd Walmart, which is what I was told were the two nearest stopping points on the transportation route that existed."

Sheehan said discussions about how expensive it would be to use the city's buses continued in September, October and December of 2024. He said Supervisor Matthew Ung told him that when discussions with the city about a bus route "stalled," the cost still being "kicked around" was $250,000.

Later on in the meeting, City Manager Mike Collett said that's the "general number to add a route."

"The further discussions were much less than that," Collett said.

Back in November 2024, the previous council expressed opposition to city taxpayers footing the bill for a bus route for the new LEC.

"I just feel very, very strongly about it — that it's not the city's responsibility to provide this transportation. It's not the taxpayers' responsibility to provide it. That should have been built into their plan when they had their plan developed, and for some reason, they left it out," Councilwoman Julie Schoenherr said during a council retreat session held at the Seaboard Triumph Foods Expo Center on Nov. 26, 2024.

At that retreat, Mayor Bob Scott said asking city taxpayers to fund a bus route on top of paying for 85% of the jail is "not acceptable" to him.

"The reality is, we're 85% of the taxes they collect. They're not asking Bronson to pay if they collect a prisoner. They're not asking Danbury to pay. They're asking us to pay for everybody, and I'm not for that," he said.

Sheehan told the council that he learned from a recent local news story that the city provides bus service to Sergeant Bluff for just $14,000 annually.

"If we're doing this service for a city that's not our own city, I don't understand how we're not doing this in the city of Sioux City for a population of folks that need access to these services. And if that's not enough, the trailer court, I know, is clamoring for public transportation," said Sheehan, who also mentioned that Agape Community Services is constructing a new long-term treatment facility on 28th Street next to the LEC.

Schoenherr, the current mayor pro tem, asked Sheehan whether the county would share in the cost.

"Yes, we might be willing," Sheehan responded.

Councilman Rick Bertrand said he likes the idea of a route that would serve the mobile home park and Agape.

"New council, let's address it," he said.

Sheehan told the board of supervisors on Tuesday that the council seemed receptive to finding a transportation solution.

"From watching this currently seated council, they seem to be a group that likes to get things done," he told the supervisors.

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