• Discussion: Process for Addressing Johnson County Jail Needs
• Discussion: Notice from City of Coralville Regarding Beaumont Annexation Proposal
• Report (Jordahl): Attended Regional Land Use Conference
• Report (Lehman): Attended Regional Land Use Conference; Attended Chamber of Commerce Meeting; Attended County-a-Day
• Report (Stutsman): Attended County-a-Day; Attended Decategorization Executive Committee Meeting; and Upcoming Legislative Forum
• Report (Thompson): Attended Regional Land Use Conference; Attended Space Needs Committee Meeting; Attended Housing Task Force Meeting; and Attended Finance Work Group Meeting
• Report (Reverend Bob Welsh): Upcoming Social Welfare/Cluster Board Meeting; and Upcoming Mental Health/Developmental Disabilities Meeting
• Harold Stager: Teenage Drinking

Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 10:14 a.m. Members present were: Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson; absent: Charles Duffy.

Stutsman: We’ll call to order the informal meeting of the Board of Supervisors for Thursday, February 24, 2000. Second item on the agenda is business from the County Attorney. Nothing this morning, Jack? No reports or inquiries? I might add for those people who may not have been a part of that formal meeting this morning, Supervisor Duffy is under the weather this morning as well as various other members of the Board and staff are in various stages of wellness. We will continue on then with Item 3, business from the Board of Supervisors. Discussion regarding process for addressing the Johnson County Jail needs. Carol do you want to begin this discussion?

Thompson: One of the first steps that we thought we needed to take was to appoint a work group that will identify a financial consultant and possibly also a Project Manager and a Jail Architectural Consultant. The committee, which was Bob Carpenter, Tom Kriz, Tom Slockett, Pete Hayek from the Jail Steering Committee, and myself... Did I get all the people? We met on Tuesday and we determined that perhaps the Project Manager would be something that comes into the process at the construction phase, and our Facilities Manager, Mike Scheer, would work with Bob Carpenter on that part of it. There are still some duties that need to be assigned. Also, in our contract with the architectural firm, they will do some of the preliminary work as they’ve already been contracted with their piece. That’s set in place. They presented an RFP for a consultant, and they’re in the process of sending that out so architectural firms and others in the area will be getting that soon.

Stutsman: The RFP is for…?

Thompson: For the consultant for the architectural aspects of the building. This would be things like what would our staffing needs be, what actually will be our needs in each year of the next few years so we know what capacity we have to build for. There was some recommendation from the Steering Committee that we build it in phases, and so this would help us decide which part of the building would be built in each phase. What else, Bob?

Stutsman: Bob Carpenter, County Sheriff for people that don’t know. Do you want to come on up to the table, Bob, or are you more comfortable back there?

Stutsman: OK.

County Sheriff Bob Carpenter: I think probably in answer to Carol with Mike Scheer, it was felt by the Committee that met the other day that it was important for Mike Scheer to be involved in the Project Manager part because he’s going to be… If a building is in fact built, he would be the one responsible for the upkeep on it and needs to know the knowledge of how it was built and all these ins and outs on that. It’s important to keep him in on the building process. Basically, from the start. I would assume that his… And it’s already somebody that’s on board, too. He’s already an employee of the County, and we just kind of blend in with his functions already. However, it was also felt that because he’s new with the County, the Board, at some time, may want to take a look at helping him as far as personnel. This is going to be time consuming for him also. That’s a matter for another day.

Stutsman: OK.

Carpenter: Dwight Dobberstein was also at the meeting, and his company is not an architectural firm that builds jails. The expertise in jail buildings is something that is going to be sought after. That’s what the guidelines were set up for that particular type of person, their company to come in and actually figure out what our staffing needs are going to be, the type of facility that would need to be built as far as soft beds or hard beds, that type of thing. We can get an idea of what the cost would be on a facility. Right now, we have a lot of things to do because we have no idea of exactly what we need, and because also of space needs, how big a building, if we’re going up or out, or however. Until some of these things are determined by those types of individuals or companies, we have no idea whether there’s going to be 5 million, 10 million, 15 million or what it would cost the County. There are some things that need to be done before that. We even get the public (inaudible) with the cost (inaudible).

Thompson: The work group members have that document?

Stutsman: Now the work group is that committee that you named.

Thompson: Yes.

Stutsman: I just want to get it very clear in my mind where we’re going with this project. Because I think this is a big project, and I want to make sure I completely understand how this is going to flow and go. Now the work group then originally was going to do just this RFP for the Financial Consultant. Now that has changed, correct?

Thompson: That changed at the meeting last week. 2 additional things got added on to the agenda for the work group.

Stutsman: OK.

Carpenter: I think that happened, Sally, last week when the Board was there, that they also have the Financial Advisor and the Jail Consultant along with the Project Manager. Those were all in it. The 3 things were things of this particular Committee was going to try to lay out and get that information back to the Board for final approval. Apparently, some of these aren’t paid until such time as they come under… Carol, do you remember how that was stated?

Thompson: What we’re in right now is called the pre-design phase. As I understand it, it would extend up to the point that we have a decision made about how to fund… Whether to have the new jail and how to fund it. We have our contract with Newman Monson for that, and they’re being paid a set amount. Once we decide to go ahead with it, then they would receive a certain percentage of the total cost of the project.

Carpenter: I’ve never gone through this particular type of a situation before, so I’m not sure. I guess, financial wise, we’re depending an awful lot on Tom Slockett and Tom Kriz to advise us. That way this particular committee anyway, and the rest is going to have to kind of fall into place once we get these consultants on board to tell us what our next step is. Nobody on this committee has gone through this particular process before.

Jordahl: Did I just hear you say, Carol, that the consultant is going to get paid proportional to the cost of the project their consulting us about the size of?

Thompson: It’s a little more complicated than that. As the project gets more expensive, the percent that they get gets lower. It’s not like make it expensive and you get paid more.

Jordahl: It certainly sounded like that.

Thompson: This apparently is a standard payment arrangements with architects.

Jordahl: Well, I’m sure the architects are in favor of it.

Thompson: The draft of the RFP for the space consultant is with the Committee members until Friday, at which time it will be sent out to a list of people that we know are experts on building jails and publicized in the newspaper and all of that. That leaves the RFP for Financial Consultant. We made a list of qualifications that we thought we’d be looking for in our RFP, and Tom Kriz and Tom Slockett are working on drafting something for our next meeting, which will be in March.

Carpenter: It’s later March.

Thompson: It’s the end of March.

Carpenter: About 27th or something like that.

Thompson: OK, the 28th of March at 1:30 in this office. At that point, we’ll have the responses back from the Space RFP, so we’ll be able to review those at that meeting and get the RFP for the Financial Consultant off the drawing board.

Carpenter: One of the things that I think is important, Sally, is the fact that this committee, the Steering Committee, the new name for the new committee, even though it’s the old committee, it’s the new name.

Stutsman: I’m trying to follow all these.

Carpenter: They feel very much inclined to stay real involved in this project to serve the Board in helping get the information to the public.

Stutsman: OK.

Carpenter: As everybody knows, the jail project is not something that the public’s really thrilled about because it’s something we don’t like to discuss and talk about. The fact is, it’s here. It’s a problem we have to take care of. They’re more than willing to help do that. I really think it’s really important for the Board to keep them involved clear through the final process on this whole thing no matter what the decision of the Board. We still have 2 options, the way I look at it. It’s either to try to do something space wise to house the prisoners here in Johnson County, or to ship them somewhere else. I think the latter is probably the more expensive of the 2 over the long run. As a matter of fact, I know it is. But the public does have some decision one way or the other on that. The old frame commercials, it says pay me now or pay me later. That’s basically what that entails. The expense, as the time goes on, and the increase in the population, it’s going to cost the County quite a bit of money if we do start shipping them somewhere else. I think it’s important for those who made it to help present to the public and get the true facts to the public rather than some of the rumors that we hear that are being spread around. I think this committee is very vital to us.

Jordahl: Well, 2 things, Bob. It isn’t so much that we need a jail that we have prisoners that we have to put somewhere. I don’t think the Board of Supervisors, I don’t think you, I don’t think anybody wants to go out and spend a bunch of money on a new jail. But the problem is we’ve got a bunch of prisoners that keep coming into your office, and where are you going to put them? We either have to spend money for somebody else to put them there, or put build some place to put them here, and it makes more sense to build some place to put them here. It’s just plain cheaper. I think over the long run we can refocus the discussion in a variety of ways, including focusing on… The problem is not the jail, the problem is the criminals. The problem’s the people.

Carpenter: I think one of the things that’s important is that this particular committee has gone through a lot of those… That process already, and has sorted out the goods and the bads and the dos and the don’ts and that type of thing. They’ve looked at a lot of different options. I know the public out there has got a lot of questions, why we can’t do it this way or why we can’t do it that way. This committee’s already looked at that. To hear it from fellow citizens, it comes off a lot better than it is to come from me or from the Board or somebody like that. I think it’s important to let them do their thing too. I would encourage the Board, if they’re asked a specific question they don’t feel comfortable answering, to try to contact somebody on the Committee, because they’re the people who know what’s going on.

Thompson: I think it’s also important to remember that as much as we deplore the need for a jail, we still want to be able to offer our jail in a responsible way that’s safe for the staff that works there and for the prisoners.

Carpenter: Well, we inherited a liability problem when we started getting over our limits, not only to the staff but to the inmates themselves. We open ourselves wide open, the liability.

Thompson: It is to your credit that we haven’t had any unfortunate incidents in our jail.

Carpenter: Fingers crossed.

Thompson: Due to the overcrowding.

Jordahl: Due to advances in jail design, too. I understand you’ll be able to operate a facility designed under the way that they’re being done now, analogous to the Linn County Juvenile Detention Facility, with some kind of central monitoring, without increasing the staff markedly, whereas, well, if you’d like to...

Carpenter: I think the person who’d probably be harder to take a look at staffing in the next few weeks or whatever would be more able to do that. But my understanding is it’s quite obvious that the new ways of building jails or prisons today takes less staff than it was back in the days when, for instance, our facility was built. I’m not sure that I can give you a figure on what it would take to house, as far as staffing, 255 people. But I know that the ratio is far less than it would have been for 255 people with a facility like we have now. The new facility would be a lot less, which, it appears, it’s quite obvious that staffing is an ongoing cost which is never paid down. As years go on, it continues to increase if you keep adding people. I think it’s something that would be a savings, too, that needs to be factored into the overall cost of a facility.

Jordahl: Just like we look at oil roads. It costs not as much to do an oil road in the first place, just spray some oil and rock on there, as it does to build a hard surface road. But in the long haul, the maintenance cost of the thing, which in your case includes personnel to staff the jail, it’s more expensive to do oil roads than it is to do hard surface roads. The question of how much the ongoing staffing costs of a new facility are really should be part of the cost figure.

Carpenter: Well, to give you an idea of the importance of a jail staff, the law requires more training for jail staff than it does to patrol deputies. It doesn’t seem like that should be the way, but with all our staffing needs and stuff, whether it’s medications, dispersal or whatever, we’re required to attend more schooling than it takes to put an officer on the road. That’s the importance of what you get here. You’re actually dealing hand-in-hand with human beings up there with all different types of personalities, in an atmosphere where they don’t like to be there anyway. A lot of times you play doctor, psychologist, just all kinds of… You wear different hats to get through the day. Of course, people don’t like to see that the new jail be a facility that’s better than your home. Often times I have people tell me that they probably eat better in the jail than they do at home. This may be true, but by law, we’re required to give the meals and provide the meals that we do up there so they get a balanced meal. It’s set up by a dietician, a state certified dietician for our meals. If we don’t do that, we’re liable for lawsuit. There’s a lot of rules and regulations that are out there that we have nothing to do about. The other thing is, do they have black and white television or do they have color? Well, basically, colors are probably cheaper than black and whites nowadays. The main idea is to, to some extent, if you can keep them a little bit happier, things go so much smoother, and you don’t have to be extravagant or anything like that. When that door shuts, believe me, if you’re on the other side, you hear it. It’s not a fun place to be, and we certainly don’t want any more people in there than what we have to have. Unfortunately, we don’t have the say as to who’s in there and who isn’t there. The courts are the ones that put the people in jail. Well actually, the individuals the commit the crime are the ones that have the say on it, I guess, before. Our hands are tied. We basically have to take and do what we can with what we’ve got.

Jordahl: We are putting a lot of money into prevention, too. In our current budget, we’re taking up a lot of slack from State cuts in crime prevention activities that the County’s doing. I think the whole Board to a person understands that we have to do something on the front end of this deal, too.

Carpenter: Well, the other methods we’ve tried to utilize, we’ve started, and we’re one of the first departments in the State as far as the County departments are concerned, with jails, to go into the at home detention with the bracelets. We started in July and I think we’re between 20 and 25. That varies each week because we have some coming off and new ones coming on and that type of thing. Those would be 25 people that would be in jail and take more space than what we’ve got, if, in fact, we didn’t have that program. But you can’t put everybody on that program. It would be pretty naïve for me to sit up here and say that the people we’ve got incarcerated shouldn’t be incarcerated in the jail because, believe me, there are some people there that you don’t want to take home with you. You wouldn’t feel comfortable and you wouldn’t want them on the street. There’s a need for it. As to whether how many we get or how many we don’t get or the judge passes out or leaves go on the street, that’s their problem. Once I get the court order, it says that they have to go to jail, we don’t have any other choice.

Thompson: Well, I certainly gained a new understanding of what you’re facing, the day that I came down and got the tour upstairs. I know we all go down to the jail building, but it’s usually to meet with Bob in his office or attend a meeting in the conference room. I’d encourage all of you to make an appointment with the jailer and get the tour upstairs, because it’s really an eye-opener.

Stutsman: Yes, I’ve already done that, and it is something. I would even like to go so far as say, come down on Saturday night and see what happens.

Lehman: See the intake methods and what you deal with on busy season or what happens.

Carpenter: One of the things I’ve been toying with is it’s very difficult to have an open house.

Stutsman: Oh my, yes.

Carpenter: Letting the public in and out. Trying to figure out a way to at least let the public take a look and see what we’re up against here so that they don’t think it’s something that we came up with, or some cool idea that we want to cost the taxpayers more money. But I’m not sure that I can facilitate an open house with the number of people we have in there, at least not a very big one. If we could get groups or something like that that would be in, I would entertain the motion of taking a group through, maybe 10 to 15 or something like that at a time on a set schedule. To open up a weekend, say well, we’re just going to open up to a public, because we do have visitations and stuff during weekend days, there are times when it’s almost impossible to do that. If the public would be interested in coming in and taking a look, at a set time with a small group of 10 to 15, I think we could entertain that and trying to get as many people educated as possible. I’d be willing to try to do that.

Stutsman: Is that an invitation then that’s out to the public?

Carpenter: I guess, really, it is. I would certainly try to entertain the thought.

Stutsman: I think it would be.

Thompson: You mean like a church or a service club or a group of people wanted to come in a small group?

Carpenter: Any group of concerned citizens. Really, honestly, I’d like to see those that really think that this is a bad idea and absolutely don’t want to agree that we need to do something, have them come down in a group, set up a group somewhere. Those are the folks that I need to have them take a look and see, when they leave, if they still have the same feeling. I know there are people on the committee, the Steering Committee now, that their ideas were changed once they came down and took a look at what was going on.

Stutsman: Bob, I mentioned about coming down on a Saturday night. We all know that things get pretty busy.

Carpenter: The bad thing, Sally, about Saturday night, I’ll be quite honest with you. We have even had to go to the point where we do not allow officers to be up in the control center to write our their charges. It’s so crowded that we tell them they have to have their charges either filled out before they come to the jail or they’ll have to go back downstairs and fill them out in the control office and then send them back upstairs. What we were finding, we’d have several officers in that real confined space in the control center to where we actually couldn’t function. When you’re dealing, and this is the thing that most people don’t understand, we’ve got a nice looking building. It’s not beat up, it’s painted well and everything, but the problem is it’s for 42 people are we’re housing up to 100 people. We’re way over capacity and there’s just not enough room for facilitating the intake, the booking process, let alone, where are you going to sleep them? We’re just not set up. If you have a glass, there’s only so much water you can put into it before it spills over. That’s kind of the way I like to explain it because we’re spilling over at this point in time. How long we can do it before we get the carpet wet or that type of thing, or it’s all over, I don’t know. The State says you’re going to have to dry it up. That’s basically what it amounts to. We’ve got our first letter from the State, I’m sure the next one (inaudible) considered.

Thompson: The day that I was there I was very conscious of the extra steps that your staff had to go to, to protect my personal safety when I was in the jail area, so I really commend you for being willing to do that for public groups.

Carpenter: For my staff, if you can imagine have people laying on a floor on a mattress and the staff having to go into that area and actually step over an inmate laying on a mattress and feel comfortable doing that, it’s not comfortable, it really isn’t.

Stutsman: The Committee mentioned, too, the tremendous staff we have at the jail. That really takes a lot of risk for their own personal safety, in dealing with problems with inmates. I guess Pete Hayek talking about if there’s an issue in a cell block, they literally have to go in there unarmed to find out what’s going on in there and not knowing what they’re going to be walking into. It’s scary when you think about those situations. We have the draft of the process. I wondered if there was any discussion or clarification or… Are we pretty comfortable with what’s been laid out? I think Carol put this together and she did a good job of laying out at least a beginning process. There may or may not be modifications as we go along. I think as Bob alluded to, we’re all kind of new to this process and we’ll learn and look at this.

Jordahl: Well, Bob. I had a question that I think is pretty common out there in the community about alcohol. It’s pretty clear, Sally’s mentioning Saturday night, it’s not just because it happens to be a weekend but there’s some alcohol involved. I think there’s been questions asked about to what extent could a cheaper facility which dealt with the alcohol problem in isolation from the other crime problems, resolve the space needs of the jail? I just thought I’d toss you that and see what the answer is.

Carpenter: Well, the problem there again is space and personnel to run it. The personnel is a problem because it’s extra cost that doesn’t stop once you get your space paid off. It’s a continual (inaudible). No matter what type of facility, our facility is set up basically in 3 stages right now. It’s a minimum security, a medium security and a maximum security. Naturally, the drunks, the alcohol related inmates do not go in medium or maximum security. They’re in minimum security, which is more the dormitory type style. But I had a lady call me the other day and says, well, that’s the problem, that’s the reason why you’re full all the time. Well, yes, we do have a large number that would come in, but what do you want us to do with them? We’ve got to take them off the street. You can’t let them drive. Drunk driving will turn into vehicular homicide very easily. Then we’ve got a different situation of a more of a long term type of thing. I don’t know, they’re talking about lowering the limits. That’s certainly going to create more of a problem. I don’t know if that was one of the bills that you were talking about, Sally?

Stutsman: No, that wasn’t one of them.

Carpenter: Or not, but that’s certainly going to be a consideration that we need to have. Whether the present status is working or not, we get an awful lot of repeat offenders. I don’t know if I could evaluate whether the particular sentence they’re getting now is serving it’s purpose in keeping the repeat offenders from coming back or not. I guess my feeling is that maybe it would be a little harder to start with being a shock treatment type thing would be better the first time around and maybe people would get the point. But we still get a lot of repeat offenders, especially in alcohol related offenses. I know Janet could probably attest to that. It’s probably our biggest... I think we’re talking probably 40 to 50% at some time or another have been inmates in and out. Keep in mind that’s the intake. People in and out. They’re there for short periods of time, like overnight, until they sober up, and then they’re in and out. That’s a few of them, but at the same time, we’ve got a lot of people up there that aren’t serious offenders who are not just alcohol. You’ve got to put them somewhere, you’ve still got to have the space.

Thompson: Jonathan, I think he just made a very important point, because while alcohol related offenses are a high percentage of the entrances into the jail, many of them are released the next day. But people who are sentenced will be there for 30, 60, 90, up to a year. Those people account for the highest percentage of the days spent in jail. So really, decreasing the number of alcohol related intakes wouldn’t go a long way to solve our space problem.

Stutsman: But I think, Jonathan is hearing what I’m hearing from people who seem to think the reason we’ve got such a jail problem is because we are picking up so many intoxicated students on Saturday night and keeping them in jail. I hear people say, you know, almost ignoring that problem on Saturday night, and then we wouldn’t have a jail overcrowding problem. I think that’s part of the public education. You have to explain to people who actually is in the jail, and it’s just not the people that are there overnight, that it’s people that are there long term.

Carpenter: The problem you get into, Sally, though, if you’re going to have 2 facilities, you’ve got to put them somewhere, you’ve got to take care of them. You’ve got to staff it, you’ve got to take care of it, and there’s where your cost comes from. It don’t run out in 10 years down the road when your facility’s paid for or whatever. You still got your staff and that continues to grow. Naturally, those types of people can be housed in a dormitory, I think up to 40%, if I remember right, the statistics, 40% of your facility can be what we call a dormitory style, and that’s under State code, dormitory style inmate population. You know, you still have to have the same training, you still have everything else. They’re still incarcerated, they’re still under your care.

Jordahl: The County also funds substance abuse services through MECCA. They have a detox tank area, whatever. I think the companion question that I think is active in the public about this is, well, we’re talking about all these millions of dollars for jail, we don’t pay MECCA that much. If this number of people that, you know, part of the common perception that students go out, drink, get drunk, get thrown into jail. If some number of those people could be put in a facility like MECCA, maybe some expanded MECCA facility using their staff, that there could be some substantial reduction, not necessarily elimination of the need to build a new jail, but a reduction in some of the associated costs. I would guess that, as you talk about the training that’s involved in having jail staff in there with the prisoners, maybe cheaper to operate a facility like MECCA does, for those people who don’t actually long term incarceration.

Carpenter: Well, you know Marilyn Wright, who works with MECCA, is on that committee.

Jordahl: Yes.

Carpenter: She’s been there the whole time.

Jordahl: Right, and I haven’t.

Carpenter: I recall Marilyn saying oh no, we can’t do this, we shouldn’t do this, and that type of thing. She was one of the (inaudible) people on the committee that give their recommendations to the Board, is all I can tell you. I’m not really familiar with MECCA, as far as that goes. Marilyn was… This board has a really good cross representation of the community. That was a concern that they looked at, is to whether they could be housed. We taking people that could be housed in other places, but I think the final decision that was made was that it wasn’t a really good option for these other things.

Jordahl: I don’t question the conclusion, Bob, but I’d like to know more about the process of why that’s true. Maybe I need to talk to members of the committee or go back to minutes there or something. But again, for the process of public education, that if I have the question… I’ve talked to other people who have similar questions that this particular piece of the puzzle, this is an important aspect of the public education, is why is that true, that we can’t economically house people in some other facility?

Carpenter: Well, I think those are a lot of questions this panel’s going to have to answer to the public. I certainly don’t have all the answers, either, other than the fact that when I get a court order from a judge that says you’re to facilitate this person in your facility, that’s what I take. I don’t go back and say, well, why don’t you send them to MECCA. I do it. I’ve got a court order, I do what I’m supposed to do. The committee met with the judges, they met with the Community Court Services and those type of people. There’s no way it’s going down. Our problems aren’t going to go away, and we can put people… A good example is these 20 to 25 we’ve got on the in-house detention right now. If I didn’t have that program, they would be in that mix too and we’d be looking at 125 people in facility.

Jordahl: What’s the connection between those 25 and alcohol?

Carpenter: Without actually looking at it, I’m not exactly sure, but I would assume, if it’s normal, I’d say probably your 40 or 50%, pretty much go along with that. Those are people you can put on a monitor. Most of your alcohol related crimes, you could probably do, other than the fact, if they’re not intoxicated, they’re probably not a hazard to the community. But it’s when they become intoxicated they are. If you can keep them to where they’re not drinking, they’ll be fine. They can be out and mix with the public. But the problem is, if you… For instance, if one of the officers brings in a drunk driver, for instance, we bond them out, this is one of the questions a lady asked me, well, why can’t you let them back out? Well, if we let them out, it’s our liability for letting them back out in the street, and I think there’s been cases in the State of Iowa where that’s happened in years past, and a person’s gone out and killed somebody. That’s opened up a liability for the County. I don’t think we’ve got that much insurance policies to cover some of that stuff.

Jordahl: So, when a person gets arrested for public intoxication in downtown Iowa City, which is a fairly common case, they’re not necessarily driving, but they’re creating some kind of public disturbance. They get taken down to the jail, right? They haven’t seen a court, they don’t have a judgement yet, they don’t have a sentence, they’re just there being taken off the street because they’re creating a problem.

Carpenter: That’s correct.

Jordahl: How is the line drawn between that person who goes to the jail and the person who may go to MECCA for detox?

Carpenter: Well, that’s an option, my understanding, on the detox deal. On a person who’s brought in for intox (inaudible) the jail, number one, depending an awful lot on their demeanor, and number 2, if they’ve got an adult who’s sober who’s willing to sign them out on their responsibility. They can leave with a sober person who’s signed a responsibility over to them, for that individual. They may come in intoxicated and possibly leave if, for instance, a parent or somebody like that would come in and say I want to take my son who’s 18 years of age home. That type of thing. They would be allowed to do that if they post a bond and sign him out. Otherwise, it would probably be 3 or 4 hours until we can determine that they’re sobered up enough. We wouldn’t just turn them loose on the street, let’s put it that way, even if they had the money in their billfold to bond out. We wouldn’t leave them go.

Stutsman: I think what we lose sight of is the public safety factor here. I said thank you that you don’t turn this person out on the street. If you’re intoxicated to the point that you should be in jail, you should not be on the street potentially driving a car. That, to me, is really scary.

Carpenter: Number one, I don’t believe MECCA is a locked facility. If someone wants to leave MECCA, they can leave it.

Jordahl: They have a locked…

Carpenter: No, I think they can leave it and there’s nothing that we can do about that.

Stutsman: I mean, if somebody’s arrested, you can’t just take them to MECCA. If they’re arrested, they have to go to the jail.

Jordahl: OK.

Lehman: And be processed.

Stutsman: These are good questions to ask, clarifications, because people have a lot of misconceptions about what happens.

Carpenter: There’s so much involved, Sally, in this stuff that it’s just unbelievable. Most people don’t have any idea of what goes on. If they had the foggiest idea about some of the things that are going on, they’d be in awe.

Jordahl: Maybe we need to clear up that foggy idea out there.

Carpenter: Well, I guess that’s what we’d like to try to do, but I don’t know that we can do all that either, because it’s a pretty big void to try to educate the people.

Jordahl: Got the press.

Carpenter: Because it’s not a popular issue. It certainly isn’t . Nobody wants to think about the jail.

Stutsman: Well, I think we always want to make quick, fast, easy solutions to things, and like so many issues, this isn’t one of them that’s going to have an easier…

Carpenter: Well, myself as a citizen and a taxpayer, we’ve got to provide a facility, a means to take care of the inmates that we develop in this County. I’m not even talking as a Sheriff now. It’s our responsibility. As a Sheriff I can look and say to the Board, it’s not really my problem. By law, I have to take care of these people, but the Board and the community’s got to provide me with the means to do it, and if that means hauling them to Missouri or Wisconsin or Illinois to do it, which is possible, we can do that. I don’t want… I think it would be throwing money away, but I’m willing to do it if that’s what the public wants to do. I’m not going to have a fetter in my head if we build a new jail, is what I’m trying to say.

Stutsman: I want to move the discussion back to this Project Manager, and clarifying the role of the Project Manager. You said that the committee has agreed that Mike Scheer would take over this role. I guess I want to…

Carpenter: I think what we agreed to was to ask him if he would be interested, and the Board would probably appoint him to that role. This group of people itself has no authority to say this is who’s going to do this. The Board is going to be the last… But I think it’s fair to say that we decided we’d ask Mike because this committee feels that Mike would be the appropriate person, if he’s willing. He’s also brand new, but I guess my feeling is, he’s going to have to know if sooner or later anyway. I think it would be better for him and for the County if he’s on Board right from the start.

Stutsman: I fully agree with what you’re saying about being involved in the building of the jail, if that’s the route we decide to take. I just see a Project Manager as being more encompassing than that, especially if we get into a site selection, maybe some negotiations with that. I have some concerns with Mike, his newness, his additional responsibilities that this would take, and whether it’s appropriate to have him take that entire role, or if we should be looking at.

Carpenter: I guess, Sally, I think it’s important that he be involved and knows what’s going on, but I look at that more so as the jail consultant and the engineer or the architect.

Stutsman: OK, that where I needed the clarification of different roles.

Carpenter: They’re going to have to be… No matter what site we decide to go on there, then we have soil samples to see… That’s not something that he would necessarily be doing. That’s something the architectural firm and the consulting firms that the Board decides to bring on board.

Jordahl: Mike has a pretty strong resume in his ability to master complexities and learn things. He said that he was 2nd in his class at the Police Academy. He has gone on and gotten continuing education in a variety of areas to improve himself. He’s been selected for continual improvement in his career. I’ve every confidence that Mike can rise to the occasion of doing this. There’s going to be a lot of help. You don’t approach a project to this magnitude without some real expert help. They’re going to take care of the angles of this that require that expertise the Health Department can do, the things dealing with soils. But the Project Manager is somebody that can ride heard on the whole thing.

Stutsman: Exactly, and that’s what I’m concerned about, that the time…

Carpenter: No, I think he’s the person who comes, he works with us, he works with you, he works for the architect… He works with whoever’s involved in the thing to make sure the day-by-day response…it’s not a part time job, it’s kind of a full time, it will be later on.

Thompson: During construction.

Carpenter: I think it’s important to have somebody on board that the Board feels comfortable with, that everybody dealing with him feels comfortable with, and I think it’s important… Mike’s going to have to be there sooner or later anyway.

Stutsman: Yes, and I fully agree with that, but I guess I need to be very comfortable that the project manager is fully aware of a multimillion dollar project, and that he’s able to see it through to its fruition. I just want to make sure that this is the right person for that job. Nothing to take away from Mike and his ability, this is a very complex issue that’s going to have a lot of facets to it, and I think we have to very seriously make sure that we have the right people in place.

Thompson: Sally, you’re right, there are a number of tasks outside the scope of what we talked about for a Project Manager.

Stutsman: OK.

Thompson: The Committee only talked about the Project Manager’s role in relation to the construction of the new building. The tasks that occur prior would have to be assigned out to the consultant or the architect or the Sheriff or other people on our staff, or perhaps hire someone.

Stutsman: Well, and that’s just, when you say assigned out, I know as we’ve gone through this whole space needs project, and I’ve stated this before, everybody’s very busy, everybody’s got lots on their plates, and you prioritize things. When push gets to shove, that’s what you have to do when you have limited time. I see this project as being so important, that this has to be at the top of somebody’s priority, and sometimes that means that they don’t do anything else, that they just devote full time to a project like this. I think we need to be fully aware of that. If it’s the Board’s agreement that Mike is that person, then he doesn’t do anything else.

Carpenter: I think another reason why the Board looked at that was that was the role Pat Langenberg played when the jail was built.

Stutsman: Yes.

Carpenter: When this building was built, that was what he did here too. The feeling was, at least from that Committee, and I feel comfortable with. Like I said, I don’t know what Mike’s capabilities are, I didn’t see the resume, but he had expressed some interest in possibly doing that, because I know he wanted to be involved even before the meeting last week. He indicated to me that he would. But the final decision’s going to be up to the Board as to what they do. That’s one of the recommendations I think this committee will come back to the Board and give them. I’m sure that the Board will want to talk to Mike about it, see what he feels.

Stutsman: I guess I will view it as interviewing him just as I would anybody else.

Carpenter: Yes. There are a lot of things, I’m sure there’s going to be things that we’ve discussed the other day that probably not all of us can agree on. I think we’ve got to try to move on and start making some decisions here and pass them on to the Board to see what their feelings are to keep this thing going. Because quite honestly, things are going to have to move pretty fast if we’re going to try to do something, even this year, as far as, even if we go to a bond issue.

Stutsman: That’ll be the process then. You’ll review these things at this subcommittee, or at this work group. I need a layout of all these groups and who’s involved and what their names are. Then you’ll bring those decisions to the Board for final approval.

Carpenter: Carol pretty much chairs that group, and I would assume that she would report back to the Board what their plans are and keep you folks informed. I’m sure that the Committee would come in and have some formal action on it, come in and express their views on it, too.

Stutsman: Steve Emerson is here. I know you had raised your hand earlier. I didn’t know if you had some comments.

Architect Steve Emerson: May I address the Board?

Stutsman: Sure. You might want to introduce yourself.

Emerson: I’m Steve Emerson, Brown (inaudible) Architecture. I’m mainly here because of the clarity, whether there was the architect contract or whether they were ever interviewed for this project. I know Mike had told me that Neumann Monson was on contract more or less on retainer basis to do contracts. To kind of echo your comments, Sally, of this being a very complex project that needs to have their priorities, the complexities of the jail and the potential volatility of the jail are incredible. To avoid pitfalls, I know that you’re saying that you’re going to (inaudible) along this process. I think what I’d like to encourage you to do is to interview a complete design (inaudible). Right now you’re talking about adding a jail expert, which is only one minor component to that design team, I’ve provided you have the list of just a typical design profile. Now all these people would be involved, should be involved during the budgeting period. My concern is that there’s been numbers thrown out about the required cost for the jail. None of these are real. You don’t know any of these until you’ve had a (inaudible) or gone through the housing profile, first of all, which was not done on the Garnos study. Garnos called out that you needed 102,000 square feet, but we know from experience that you could do an ACA jail for 250 people at 85,000 square feet. If you don’t want to meet the American Correction Association’s standard, you could probably do it for 75,000 square feet. Those are huge numbers. Also, you’re talking about site selection now, and I’ve kind of quickly jotted down people that should be involved in that. The Civil Engineer, Environmental Engineer, the architect, of course, the jail designer, which would have involvement in the jail staffing and transportation, because any site’s going to really impact the cost of transportation. The mechanical, electrical, structural and geotechnical engineers would have involvement in there too. Right now, you’re trying to add experts as you need it, and like you say, you’re going to learn, but to try and make that learning a little bit easier. I think you’re at the component now where you need to have an entire design team that has corrections or jail expertise to avoid those pitfalls so that your public information is accurate, not only the square footage, not only the site considerations, but also the cost. I know if the paper a while ago there’s 20 million dollars, now there’s 15 million dollars in the paper and nobody knows. We had talked to the Jail Advisory Committee several times about these numbers and saying we can’t give you ballpark numbers because you don’t know exactly if you want to do it like Black Hawk and have it all single bed cells. Yes, we could tell you what the cost would be for that, but you need the housing profile to look at that. All I’m asking is that this is a very special case, a very special project, multimillion dollars. I think you should entertain the idea of interviewing entire design teams that have corrections experience. Because otherwise you’re going to encourage the volatility to the public, and like last time, I think it took 3 times to pass the jail, that’s 19 years ago, and it got paired down each time, and they were mostly concerned with cost. At video productions, that’s something that we had talked about before. That’s a good educator to the public, is to go through and do some video publications of what is existing there. Maybe on Saturday night, you’d do that, rather than drawing these people in and even being there, being in that volatile situation inside the jail. I just wanted to be heard that I think it’s a great mistake not to get the entire team on board now, just because of all this information. I know Jonathan, you had mentioned you could staff it with less people. Now, they’re doing an incredible job on their staffing. The jail expert was surprised at the staffing to inmate relations that they have, and they’ve had a really low crime rate inside the jail, but the jail’s really not set up for that. That jail should be a lot worse than it’s running now, just because of Bob’s and Dave Wagner’s persistence in making it run so well. I think that things are kind of going in the right direction now to look at it, but you’ve got to have everybody on board to make educated decisions or educated campaigns to the public to make sure they know what’s going on. I just think it’s a very special project that you’re facing that has a lot of complexities that you really should at least consider the idea of interviewing a unified entire design team. Rather than just trying to pick up the expertise and go down the list and say OK, we need all these people.

Thompson: Thank you. That’s good input for us to have.

Jordahl: Yes, I was trying to ask a similar question in that meeting of Bob’s (inaudible) talking about why can’t the architect and the jail consultant be the same person? You seem to be suggesting something like that, only it’s more elaborate in terms of how many people you’re involving.

Emerson: Right. Yes, more or less. The downfall to that is, in my team, essentially, I would be playing the role of Neumann Monson, more or less, except for I have some more corrections experience. I am by no means a jail expert. We do use a firm consistently that has ties to our firm back 20 years. My first internship was with this firm, actually. But you need somebody like that for the staffing, but I think you also need a local architect that can address that. The problem is, is right now you’re trying to add all these components because of an existing relationship with Neumann Monson to do, essentially, most of the County work, which is understandable, to get the consistency. But there’s a lot in the contract documents and the construction administration of that local architect that should have some corrections experience too. But you’re not going to find a jail expert locally. You’re going to be going most likely to Colorado, Wyoming, possibly over to the East Coast to get somebody that has the experience that can set it up. Like Bob said, the staffing costs to run the jail, if you do it wrong, you just have it so you can monitor everything with one more person than what you really need, that costs you $200,000 a year just by having that one extra post that’s required.

Stutsman: Carol, did you have a comment?

Thompson: Well, since we have what I consider to be a binding agreement with an architect, I don’t feel really comfortable going into all the details of this when he’s not present, but perhaps…

Emerson: I guess I would (inaudible) like the County Attorney or somebody look into it, was that something… I know they had a dated study, and were there every interviews held to do a competitive look at it, full design teams. Otherwise, I think you’re going to set yourself up not to get served well. Just looking at the Garnos study right now, you’d be right now building a facility for 102,000 square feet, and you can do that in 70% of that number. You can save yourself an incredible amount of money and an incredible amount of continued money in supervision in maintenance.

Thompson: Could we ask the County Attorney to look into this and report back to us next week?

Stutsman: I think that would be a real good idea. Carol, you have a copy of that contract that the Board entered into. Maybe if the Board…

Emerson: I’ve never seen that. I asked for it, but we’ve never seen that. Even with that, I don’t know if it’s something that came about because of the standing agreement, or if it was competitively interviewed. I’d like to know that also.

Stutsman: Great. Those are all…

Lehman: In the length of time.

Stutsman: Right. I don’t know what Pat’s schedule is like next Thursday, but Carol, maybe if you could ask Pat if we could… Then maybe put this back on for discussion. I think these are important decisions that we need to have clarified up front in the early part of the process.

Emerson: Thank you.

Stutsman: Thank you. Any other comments or discussion for this morning concerning this process? Are we OK then with the draft as outlined?

Jordahl: I think the bond issue thing probably ought to come after the design phase part. I think if you haven’t designed a facility, you’d be pretty hard pressed to know how much it’s going to cost.

Thompson: There’s something called a schematic that’s like a basic picture but not a full design that would come before a bond issue, but the whole design is extremely expensive. You don’t want to incur a lot of expense until you know you have the funding in place. That’s why the bond issue would come before the largest expenditures.

Jordahl: Would that schematic, it sounds like you’ve been through this process before, would that schematic answer the question of how much money we need?

Thompson: Yes. We would do all the studies ahead of time that said what phases we wanted to build in, what population we serve at various times, what it would cost to do that, what the staffing would be and all that. At that point, that’s when you go to the public if you decide to do that.

Jordahl: My other comment on this is that I think once we’ve gone through steps 2 and 3 on this process, 1,2, and 3, hire consultants. Once we’ve got consultants on board, I assume that we’re going to be led by the hand as to what the next steps are, which may well be these steps.

Thompson: Well, and you notice, I had Carol put draft in very large letters at the top of the page because I’m sure that the sequence of all this will change a lot over time.

Stutsman: But it gives us some direction, at least, to know we’re all on the same page about where we’re heading in this process and things, and certainly I’d be willing to leave draft on indefinitely, knowing that as we move along, things may change or whatever.

Jordahl: Another question I had was the timeline.

Stutsman: That’s a good… It always helps to have a timeline so that you can say where are we?

Jordahl: When do we open this new jail? June?

Carpenter: I think an awful lot depends on how the public is educated and what their feelings are. I think that they were looking… We were talking the other day at a meeting, if this thing would go to a bond issue, probably this fall would probably be one of them would be on it. With all this stuff that has to be done before then, I don’t know how you could get it on much sooner than that, really I don’t.

Emerson: Realistically, you wouldn’t be open until Spring, 2002, as an estimate. To construct it, it’s going to be 12 to 18 months. To do actual detailed documents, 4 to 6 months, and then that’s everything that happens after the bond issue.

Thompson: Depending on the weather, too.

Carpenter: Realistically, I wouldn’t think that we could look at anything, and that’s presuming things went well, in November. I don’t know. The other thing is, I think that as far as the Board’s concerned, I think we could be prepared to start spending money before this is constructed, housing prisoners on a (inaudible).

Jordahl: Yes.

Carpenter: Something we’ve got to look at real seriously, because I don’t think that we’ll be able to build them in time for them, even if it went through, if we go the bond issue. Unless somebody wants to donate a bunch of money to the County, maybe we could (inaudible)…

Jordahl: Hey, look into that.

Stutsman: There’s that lottery.

Jordahl: You should look into that, donating a whole bunch of money to the County. Maybe somebody would like to leave their estate to us or something to build a new jail. Probably not, I just can’t see that.

Carpenter: But anyway, that’s kind of where we’re at now. Anybody that, if you’re talking to people that want to know what’s going on, either set them the direction of the Citizen’s Committee, or we’ll trying to answer what questions we can down there too.

Jordahl: I was thinking, I’ve been hearing there’s some national correspondent doing an experience in the jail reporting, and we have, of course, local press, some degree of media involvement in this process would be useful, whether it’s a filmed thing or written thing. To think about, and this is where the ideas get a little more farfetched, but up in Waterloo, I think before they opened the new jail, they had various local elected officials and contributors and whatnot offered an opportunity to spend the night in the new facility.

Carpenter: That’s not uncommon. That happened here when we opened this facility. You have to have a trial period where actually you bring people in and out to see how your staff’s going to be able to operate and work and function. This is what happens, I’m sure that would be, basically, the same thing would happen again. I’d love to get all the Supervisors in jail.

Stutsman: For a visit, clarify that, Bob.

Carpenter: For a visit.

Jordahl: But I was actually talking about immediately, in terms of coverage of the situation, if you invited a person.

Carpenter: Liability wise, I could not… I don’t have the space to clear out a block and to put civilian people into the jail population, it wouldn’t be proper.

Jordahl: I’m not thinking about the whole Board. I’m thinking about if a press person…

Carpenter: It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s one or 10, I couldn’t do it.

Jordahl: Couldn’t do it. OK.

Stutsman: Well, I think we’ve had good discussion this morning, good start to the next phase of this process, and I know this discussion will continue over the rest of moving this project forward. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Steve. Bob Welsh, did you have a comment?

Reverend Bob Welsh: I understand, I think from the Board of Supervisors’ part in relation to the total space needs and the architectural firm that you work with. I think that’s proper. I think what I’m beginning to sense, having been at that meeting with the Study Committee and the Supervisors and (inaudible) to me… That it may be when you deal with a project like the jail, you need a different animal than what you need when working on the remodeling of the Administrative building or a Department of Human Services building, Health building, you need a different animal. The idea of design teams makes sense to a person like myself. I guess I’m also coming from the fact that, your conversations have alluded to this, getting the bond issue passed is going to be a tough step. The more you can assure people that boy, we really designed this (inaudible) here, the statement made today, I can’t say whether or not it’s accurate, but I hear a statement made, well gee, you can do this at 75% of the (inaudible) that was projected. That’s a heck of a big saving. I guess I want to encourage you all to really look at that whole aspect, because I think it’ll have a dramatic impact on this step of the bond issue.

Carpenter: I don’t disagree with what he said. One of the things I would like to point at, what we heard you (inaudible) on the space needs for the jail was, and in fairness to the (inaudible), I think he was projecting what he felt was an overall (inaudible). He hadn’t figured in the soft cells, (inaudible). It’s a ballpark figure that he gave the Board. I don’t think there’s anybody out there trying to build something above and bigger… It was a starting point and I think quite honestly, everybody’s saying well, if (inaudible) bigger, maybe we can move down to a (inaudible), and everybody would love to do that if possible.

Emerson: To address that, that number is still made up until you do your housing profile. Nobody knows where that’s at. I guess I should have set that a similar deal has been done. That’s all determined on the housing profiles.

Stutsman: That’s good clarification, Bob. We made an estimate at where we were at, at that time.

Carpenter: Better to start high than low, when you’re doing something like this.

Jordahl: Yes.

Stutsman: OK. Well, we’ll continue this discussion hopefully next Thursday, depending on Pat’s schedule, and go from there.

(continued in Part 2)