Would you like a giant helping of déjà vu with your county jail site recommendation? After a costly stall in site plans, months of meetings, and one failed site suggestion, the (snappily named) Special Committee to Resolve Jail Space and Site Needs has made their final recommendation: the same damn spot downtown.

Expensive? Yes. Disappointing to many people ? Of course. Anticlimactic? Oh goodness, certainly. From WEAU.com:

• The 15-person group voted 10 to 5 to recommend the county build a new jail near the Chippewa River in downtown Eau Claire.
• "In Eau Claire County we don't want to build a jail, but we need the jail,” Eau Claire County Sheriff Ron Cramer said.
• Sheriff Cramer says he’s been working for six years to get a new jail. And, after hours of debate, the committee got what was a stalled plan rolling again.
• Although Chair Colleen Bates warns there’s still a lot of work to be done.

Of course, this is a special committee’s recommendation, not the final say. When the Eau Claire County Board hears the final recommendation, it (and the city of Eau Claire) could still reject the plan. Interesting quote from the WEAU story: “Even Sheriff Cramer says the new jail design isn’t the most efficient.”