KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Voters in Kansas City, Missouri will be deciding if they want to renew a sales tax to build a new city jail. If approved, it would go up just west of the county's new jail off of 40 Highway, where the Heart Village Mobile Home Park used to be. A 'Vote Yes' supporter is Councilman Crispin Rea. He says he's spent the last year trying to come up with a solution to this issue. "We need a detention element to our public safety strategy," he said in an interview with FOX4 Tuesday. "We're doing a lot of other things on public safety, but we also need this piece." Rea supports a renewal of the ¼ cent public safety sales tax that shoppers in the city already pay. Renewing it for 20 years would help fund a new 250 bed city jail. Eye drops recalled nationwide due to fungal contamination The current tax expires June 30, 2026. If someone's charged with a city crime, currently they go to Nevada, Missouri in Vernon County or Warrensburg in Johnson County. The city contracts with them for about 105 beds. "A lot of folks aren't aware of our difficult situation with sending inmates an hour away and not being in control of their care and not being in control of their release," Rea continued. "Folks certainly feel the impacts of that when we have to release folks prematurely and they come back to the same neighborhood, and they continue to commit a certain level of crime." Fellow Councilman Johnathan Duncan was the lone 'no vote' on this issue going before city voters at Thursday's council meeting. When it comes to the city jail, Rea says the people who would go there would be those who violate municipal ordinances. Rea says people who commit property crimes, assaults, and domestic violence would go there. Tuesday, Duncan talked about the people who would go there too. "Our municipal detainees are not murderers, they're not rapists, they're not people who have shot somebody," he said. "They are not even the serial burglars who are breaking into downtown businesses. They are not people who are stealing cars. By and large, these are low level crimes, and I do not think that widely the public understands who is actually going to be housed in our detention facility." Duncan says the city approved $16 million separately for a renovation of the Kansas City Police Department downtown headquarters to put in a holding facility there. He says he's internally thought about writing an Op-Ed in the Kansas City Star before the vote on why he won't be supporting it. He did something similar before the stadium sales tax vote in April of this year. He voted no in that election. Download the FOX4 News app on iPhone and Android "I think if anyone tells you that they are 100% positive that the vote will pass, that they are delusional," he continued when asked if he thought the jail vote will pass. "You think about the juxtaposition of the school bond vote on the same ballot, and you compare that to the jail vote, which is essentially what it will be, 'Are we going to fund our schools, or are we going to fund our jails?'" The jail vote will be April 8, 2025. As Duncan mentioned, it's also the same day Kansas City Public School voters will decide on their bond issue. KCPS hasn't been able to pass such a bond since 1967.