Chairperson Stutsman called the Joint Meeting to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 1:00 p.m.

Present were: County Attorney J. Patrick White; County Auditor Tom Slockett; County Recorder Kim Painter; County Sheriff Bob Carpenter; County Supervisors Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson; County Treasurer Tom Kriz; Jail Steering Committee Members Pete Hayek (Chair), Marty Jones, Bob Kemp, Dave Maupin, Norm Osland (Co-chair), Leonard Roberts, Tim Ruth, Bob Simpson, and Marilyn Wright; Neumann Monson PC Architects AIA Architect Dwight Dobberstein; and Venture Architects Principal John Cain. County staff present were: Sheriff’s Major Duane Lewis, Board of Supervisors Administrative Assistant Carol Peters and Auditor’s Office Recording Secretary Casie Parkins.

Stutsman: I would like to call to order the Joint Meeting with the County Attorney, Sheriff, Auditor, Treasurer, Recorder, Venture Group, Dwight Doberstein, the Jail Steering Committee, and the Johnson County Board of Supervisors for an informal work session for Thursday July 6, 2000. At this point, I would like to welcome everybody that has joined us this afternoon. I appreciate your interest and your consideration in this very important project that the Board of Supervisors has in front of them. This will be the first of three work sessions that the Board will be having about the Jail issue. The purpose of these meetings is to not only educate the Board of Supervisors about the Jail and what we are facing as far as overcrowding in the Jail, but also to educate the public. We have requested Andy Small, who does a videotaping for the Board of Supervisors meeting to also videotape these meetings, so that they can be shown on public access television. So people who aren’t able to attend these meetings can watch them on television and also be informed about our deliberation and consideration on this project. We are here today primarily in response to a letter that we have received from the Iowa Jail Inspector concerning our situation with the Johnson County Jail. We have been put on notice for how many years now Bob?

Carpenter: Well we… back in ’91 we were put on notice and we were able to double bunk and that took us off the hot seat for awhile and now we are back on the hot seat again as of January.

Stutsman: Right. And that hot seat means that Johnson County has to deal with their Jail situation and the facility and the overcrowding that the Jail Inspector is finding there. One way or the other, and that means either making some changes to our current facility or housing prisoners outside of Johnson County. So we are taking very seriously his letter and as long as the Jail Inspector feels that we are making a good faith effort to address this problem, we continue to be able to buy some time. But we can’t do that indefinitely. We, as a county, have to make some decisions about what we are going do at the situation at the County Jail. We continue to work with the Legislature to try to make them understand what we are facing here in Johnson County as far as our Jail situation. But the Legislature continues to pass laws making it necessary to have more space in our jails. We understand the constituents who elect people to the Legislature are interested in getting tough on crime and this is the fallout of those decisions and those laws that our passed at the Legislature. If you are going to get tough of crime and put people in jail, then you are going to have to have space to put them or to house them. So we are here today to start finding out exactly where we are at on this issue and what the Board needs to do to move forward. Before we get started, I know Pete Hayek, who is Chairperson, or Co-chairperson of the Jail Steering Committee is going to do a presentation for the Board along with the Venture Group and Sheriff Carpenter. I wonder if we could go around the table and introduce ourselves. We have a new person who is working with the Auditor’s Office taking minutes. Meghan is not all that familiar with all of us. So it would help her if we could just kind of go around and introduce ourselves. I’ll start, my name is Sally Stutsman and I am Chairperson of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors.

Thompson: Carol Thompson.

Painter: Kim Painter, County Recorder.

Duffy: Charlie Duffy, County Supervisor.

Slockett: Tom Slockett, Auditor.

Kriz: Tom Kriz, Treasurer.

Simpson: Bob Simpson, member of the Steering Committee.

Hayek: Pete Hayek, and I am Chair of the Steering Committee, although I don’t mind being Co-Chair if you like to call me that.

Osland: Norm Osland, Co-Chair, and I don’t mind serving with Pete.

John Cain: I am not serving with either one of them. I am John Cain, I am a principal with Venture Architects out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Tim Ruth: Tim Ruth, and I’m on the Committee.

Dave Maupin: Dave Maupin, member of the Committee.

Leonard Roberts: Leonard Roberts, member of the Committee.

Jones: Marty Jones, and I am a member of the Steering Committee.

Dobberstein: I am Dwight Dobberstein. I am with Neumann Monson Architects.

Carpenter: Bob Carpenter, Johnson County Sheriff.

Lehman: Mike Lehman, Board of Supervisors.

Jordahl: And Jonathan Jordahl, Board of Supervisors.

Hayek: And Ms. Chair, if I may, I know at least one other member of the committee is in back, Marilyn Wright. And anyone else…

Stutsman: Oh sure. OK. Marilyn we have…

Jordahl: There is a chair right here…

Hayek: And Bob Kemp also.

Stutsman: Really, people, there are a couple more chairs if you would be interested in coming up to the table. A couple other housekeeping issues. First of all, we do have a work session and the way that the Board handles a work session is that this is between Board members and Committees or staff to have discussion and dialogue. But we do have a place on the agenda for public discussion towards the end of the meeting. So we do invite comments from the public. But if the public wishes to address the Board or the Committee with questions or comments, we ask that you identify yourself, there again for the Auditors Office for the purpose of minutes of the meeting. So, with that, I will turn it over to Pete Hayek, who will begin the presentation.

Hayek: Thank you Ms. Chair. As you all know, you folks appointed the Johnson County Jail Overcrowding Study Committee last September. It is comprised of the individuals who introduced themselves today plus some other individuals who are not here today. A committee of 12 citizens from a broad range, broad spectrum of Johnson County residents. We met bi-weekly since the beginning of October, to look at what the problem is with regard to the existing Johnson County Jail facility in terms of its overcrowding, in terms of its safety issue, as well as to come up with a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors from a citizens standpoint, knowing full well that there are, whatever our recommendations are, if they are adopted, they do have an economic impact of a significant amount. So, we met bi-weekly for a period of nearly 4 months, setting our goal of making a recommendation report to the Board of Supervisors by the end of February, and in fact, on January 20th, we presented our specific findings to the Board of Supervisors, as well as to the other persons who were present at that meeting, concerning the jail overcrowding situation. As you know, it took 2 bond issues failing before a bond issue successfully passed back in 1979 to build the current facility, which was completed in 1981. The current facility was built based upon the amount of money that was approved by the voters. The current facility was built originally to hold 46 inmates. Well, it became pretty apparent, pretty quickly that 46 inmates would not be a sufficient number to meet the needs of Johnson County with respect to cells in the Johnson County Jail. As Bob Carpenter mentioned, back in 1991 or 1992 we were exceeding our 46 inmate limit and the Department of Corrections at that time suggested to us that we had to do something about that. Fortunately, also at that time, under the then current regulations concerning standards and specifications for jail cells in the State of Iowa, we were able to, the Sheriff was able to come up with a solution to that by double bunking, essentially, each of the cells, each of the 46 cells to turn around and have a capacity then at that time of 92 prisoners. The average daily population of the current facility has increased tremendously. And we will talk about why it has done so in a little bit. The jail population has tripled from 1981, from an average jail population on a daily basis of an average of 25.4 inmates in 1981 to an average daily population of 94 inmates, during the first 3 quarters of 1999. That average daily inmate population has increased since that time. We have had as many as 130-135 inmates in a 92 bunk facility from time to time in the last few months. Unfortunately, the committee found no reason to dispute your consultant’s projections with regard to future requirements for jail beds. As you know, I believe it was CSG Consultants out of Kansas, Bill Garnos did a very complete study at the request of the Board to determine what the future jail cell needs of the County would be through they year 2019. Basically, in 1999, looked at a 20-year span in the future to see what we would need to have in order to meet our needs. He found, and we found, the committee found that there were many factors which influenced the jail population in this county. On factor is certainly minimum jail terms. As Ms. Stutsman points out, the Legislature has passed over the last several years, several statutes which are making sentencing stricter, taking discretion out of the hands of the Court, with regard to sentencing and passing laws that require minimum jail time for offenses. It doesn’t give the Court any discretion to say, well, it is a first offence of drug possession, so I am not going to put this kid in jail, or person in jail. The Legislature says, oh, yes you are. And there is no discretion. So these statutes have consequently increased the number of people who have to go to our jail facility. Judge Steve Gerard, the District Associate Judge here, one of them in this County, presented to us his feelings about why the jail population was increasing, some of the reasons. One of which is a pilot program the Department of Corrections has. And that is basically concerning people on probation out of our State institutions, people on parole out of our State institutions, our prisons, coming to Johnson County, this vicinity, they are still on probation, they are still on parole, they have terms and conditions they must meet. Well, when these folks don’t meet those terms and conditions of their probation or their parole, then there is an administrative process where an administrative law judge in Des Moines, puts them in our facility, if this is where they are residing, and this is where they stay until their cases are adjudicated. This has resulted in a lot more requirements on Bob’s Jail facility to house these people. Now, you might say, is there anyway to keep these folks from coming here when they are on probation or parole? And the answer is, not to our knowledge. If they get a job here and their probation officer says this is a good place to come to, we have services to support people in these situations, this is where they will come. And we found, the committee found that this is a desirable community from many standpoints and one of which is for people to try to get back into the mainstream when they come out of prison. Unfortunately, they all don’t make it, and they end up over in jail. Bill Garnos, the consultant, found that based upon past population trends, future population projections in general, based upon the past increase in numbers of prisoners or inmates in the Johnson County Jail and future projections, that by the year 2019, we will have a requirement in Johnson County for a 255-bed jail facility. He also found some other things that with the current facility, based upon the number of prisoners that we house there that were alarming to the Committee. One of which was the safety to the deputies. And also there is an issue about prisoner safety themselves, when you have so many people packed into a facility that is not designed to handle it. We are very concerned about the safety of the deputies. As I said, we had an experience when we were touring the jail facility, one of the initial tours where an alarm was sounded in one of the cell blocks, and you just don’t know, as a deputy what you are going into when you go into a cell block full of 8 fairly alarming people. And I felt uncomfortable seeing those deputies unarmed, no pepper spray, no club, no nothing, because those weapons can be turned against you, go into that jail block and try to quell whatever problem had occurred. The Sheriff can not continue indefinably housing more and more inmates in excess of the 92-bed capacity. The Department of Corrections has already told us that, very clearly. Unless we make progress in dealing with the problem we have and the problem we will have in the future, they will order us to do what they have ordered other counties to do, and that is take your prisoners somewhere else. And we have got… the committee listened to a lot of individuals with impute as to what the cost of that sort of thing is, we are going to get more specific, I think, with subsequent presenters. But, if you have an order, from my understanding and the committees understanding, if the Department of Corrections decides that we have to start shipping people out, they are not going to say, you can ship people out until you get down to 92, they are going to most probably say you have to ship people out until you get down to a weekly, not weekend number of some amount, maybe 80, it’s speculation. Because then on Friday and Saturday night, you arrest a lot of people, more than you do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and you got to have capacity available to do that. Another big problem our current facility has is, it is difficult when you have so many prisoners, so many prisoners in excess of what you are built to do, remember this was built to handle 46 prisoners. We have 92 beds, it was built as a facility for 42 and when you have so many prisoners, you have a terrible classification problem. Being that you have people who are in jail who have been charged with first degree murder, you have people who have been charged with aggravated assault, who are dangerous people. You can not put those people in a cellblock with your son or my son or your daughter or my daughter who is there because they were stopped for OWI. You are asking for trouble. I mean that person is going to be, if that person was assaulted by that violent person because they were commingled in the same cellblock, you’ve got one heck of a liability issue. And the committee found that we have a real potential liability issue. If we were to have to outsource or ship people out of the jail, we are looking at a cost between $65 and $90 per day, per prisoner, per bed, if you can find the beds. Polk County now is sending people to Missouri, they are 150 people overcrowded. They have been ordered to outsource and they are going to Missouri. Scott County is shipping people to Newton. Now these people have to be transported, as well as renting the bed facility. So you have additional deputies or some form of staff, maybe not sworn deputies, but somebody has to drive them, you have to have the vehicle, you have to go to Benton County where we are going now from time to time. We go as far as Black Hawk County now, at times. Because we do not have the facility to handle the number of people; it is a number factor. So we felt that Mr. Garnos’ projection, although somewhat speculative, we found no reason to believe that that was not probably a good projection, as best as you could get. What are our options, OK, that is the biggy. We looked at the existing facility, of course. The existing facility is relatively new, it is located close to the Courthouse, and it is a nice looking building from the outside. But we can not expand that building to handle the current projections for prisoner populations to the year 2019, yet alone there after, and we don’t say that lightly. The University has built a brand new building to the south. The University plans to build a brand new building to the west. The University does not want to sell the property to the north to Johnson County. We can not force them to sell it to us, because they are a State institution. We have no right to take any property from them. So we are stuck in that footprint, basically. We can build up, but we could not build to handle the number of people that would relieve the problem for more than 2 or 3, 4, 5 years, without acquiring more property, which we do not believe is realistic. We said, well, what if we could even talk the University into, who we talk with about buying the property to the north, selling the property to the north. We can only build a facility if we had that property that would house inmates up to approximately the year 2018 or 2019. And then we are back right where we are now, having to move. We would not be able to go anywhere else, I mean, to have any other option at that time. So, we found as a committee unanimously, that we can not satisfy the problem at the current location. Other options: set up a separate, low, minimum security facility somewhere and keep the current jail in operation. Well, that initially sounds like that might be a possibility. But you know the most expensive cost that you are going to have at the jail facility whether it is where we are now, other than prisoner outsourcing, is your staffing. And we found, and the experts that we have talked to found that staffing would be significantly increased if we had more than one facility to staff. The courts have tried other things to help us. Home detention, people ask me about, ask all of us about home detention. Why don’t we let these people stay at home, rather than putting them in jail. That is great, but first of all, it has to be part of the sentence by the court, so you got to get the court on board to do that. And they are doing that right now. But you also have to have the right classification of prisoner, inmate. It can’t be a violent person. It cant be someone who’s going to just rip that collar right off his or her leg, or not rip it off, and go out and assault that spouse or rob that store, or whatever the case may be. You can’t put those people out. So there is a limited number of people, and I think at any one time, we still have 17, 18, 19, 20 people who are on home detention, that meet the classification and can be there. We still have the overcrowding average daily inmate numbers even with that program in effect. So they are trying to do things to relieve the problem somewhat. So, the options we have are not, we don’t think, very viable, except for what we felt the Board should do and the public, the people of Johnson County should do from not only a safety standpoint of the officers, but from a financial standpoint as you will see later, is to construct a new jail facility on a new site on a parcel of land large enough, not only to build a 255-bed facility but to build onto that facility if in 20 years we are sitting here again saying, what do we do. We can’t build somewhere where we have to move, it is too expensive. You can add on to a facility a lot less expensively than to build a brand new facility. So, we came to the conclusion that based upon all of our findings and based upon what is the best interest of the citizens of Johnson County from a financial standpoint that the County should construct a new facility on another site to the current national jail standards that is expandable in the future, that has right from the get go, has the laundry facilities that are required, has a cafeteria facilities required for a larger facility, has everything infrastructure-wise that you need to have to support a larger facility someday in the future and that we do so as soon as we can, from a financial standpoint, as you will see, it is critical. Some hard lessons have been learned since the existing facility was built. And we are telling you, we as committee members and taxpayers cannot afford whatever mistakes were made in the past. Based upon our findings, we strongly urge the Board of Supervisors to determine that a new facility must be built in Johnson County and that we must, and the citizens of Johnson County we urge support, whatever funding is required to do that. Thank you very much Madam Chair.

Stutsman: Thank you. Pete, are some other people going to present this afternoon? Dwight?

Dobberstein: Yes, I think we had an agenda here and Bob up next.

Carpenter: I think probably my role is… I have been asked to bring forward to this not only the consultant’s information we had brought to the Board earlier this year, to kind of give the folks on the Board here an idea on what’s happened over the years. We started out with an average in 1982 total bookings for that year was 1,580 people. And as of the year ending here we were looking at just a few over 7,000. The average daily count that we have as of this year, which would have been actually the year just ending July 1st would have been a few over 92, which is an average daily count. Which is almost the same as it was last year; however, take in to consideration the fact that we do have in-house detention right now and that is taking up a lot of slack, between 15 and 20. So, there is your difference from one year to the next. Now that has helped stop the gap for one year, but what we are finding here is that that number is not expanding like you would think, we are starting to pick up our numbers on our daily count now in the Jail. For those that do not know what in-house detention is, it is where we monitor somebody on a bracelet that is eligible by the court to go home and spend their incarceration in home. A lot of these folks are eligible for work release also. Now this is not part of our work release program where we have a person go to work and then come back into the population each night or each day, whatever shift they may have. This is a case where we still have to maintain a bed for them if they are out just on work release. Whether they are out on work or not, they have to have a bed in the facility be available. It is very rare and unusual to have all of our inmates in bunks. Most of the time now, we have quite a few mattresses on the floor. When Pete was talking about the safety of our officers, this is quite a concern when you are going in in the evenings and doing a jail count when you are stepping over the inmates that are lying in the jail on the mattress. So, this is part of our concerns, as far as our safety concern. I fought off double-bunking for quite a while, especially in maximum security, because those are areas where space is needed, as much space per inmate as possible. And a little over a year and a half, two years ago had to go to that where all of our facility is double-bunked. We don’t have a choice there on that. I was asked also to give a breakdown on the facility. Of the agencies that deliver inmates to our facility and the Iowa City Police Department themselves, bring in approximately half of our inmates. The total on that for last year was 3,428 inmates come from Iowa City alone. Coralville delivered 705 of them to our doorstep. University of Iowa Department of Public Safety brought 679 in, of course that is pretty much your campus, your University group there. The Highway Patrol brought in 146. Other outside agencies, which I would imagine would be FBI or some Federal agency brought them in for a short period of time, because normally I don’t hold federal prisoners. The Sheriff’s Department, alone, had 1,016. North Liberty Police Department, 11, and University Heights brought in 10. Now the court system itself sentenced 1,055. When I say sentenced, those are usually your long-term people. Most of the other agencies bring them in either overnight, but the courts want to send them back in on longer periods of time, for 6 months. The County Jail can hold prisoners up to a year. And I may say that I think the State is looking at the possibility of changing that to 2 years. I know there was talk about it last year, and I understand that there is a good possibility it is going to come up again next year. So, they would like to see that because of the problems they have with their housing with State prisoners, so they would like to see the County, bear, I am sure, their portion of that. I will give you, kind of a breakdown as of the year 1999 the types of offenses that were committed and what the prisoners were brought in for. Intoxication was almost 2,000 bookings. Possession under legal age, 40. False identification, 13. Intoxication, second offence, 84. OWI, 1,897. All alcohol-related bookings, there was a total of about 3,973. Total bookings was 7,087. So, looking at that, a little over half of the bookings are alcohol-related. Drug-related, we are looking at about 760 with the possession of illegal drugs. The only other things that are related to that are drug tax stamps, which is usually a charge is tacked on. Just another charge for somebody that has illegal possession, and there was 8 arrested for that. And one for prohibited acts. So that is kind of a breakdown as far as the major areas of the people that we bring into jail. Now, we also do have several in there for murder charges, burglaries, those types, a lot of sexual offenders, those types of offenses. So, we are looking at a little over 100 population. The County has roughly, I think 115,000 population, so we are talking what, roughly 1% of the population. So, I think if you put those numbers in perspective that we are probably in pretty good shape in this county compared to other counties in this state.

Stutsman: Bob, do we ever take outside prisoners from other counties?

Carpenter: We did, when we double-bunked there for several months. One of the things I told the Board, in order to get the money to double-bunk, is that I try and bring in the revenue to pay back the cost of the double-bunking, which we did. But then after a period of time, we had enough prisoners, we could not bring in outside prisoners, and where we don’t have the room to do it. So, we have not done that for quite a while unless it is just an overnight special thing for maybe a… Cedar County would bring a female over once in a while because with the female section, we would possibly have an empty bunk there, because just of the segregation…

Stutsman: Do you know what kind of impact that would have if the Legislature did approve 2 years in county jails?

Carpenter: You know, I really don’t have any idea, I am sure it wouldn’t double, but it would be a large impact on us. We definitely couldn’t handle it; I know that. I couldn’t tell you.

Stutsman: To me, that is just another indication of what the Legislature does that has an impact on the local level. They pass the laws, but they don’t think through what that is going to do to our situation here in Johnson County, not just Johnson County, counties throughout the state.

Carpenter: Well, unfortunately the County Jail doesn’t have the option of taking the prisoners in. We, right now at the present time, are probably holding some State prisoners because they don’t have the room or something to go back in to their own facility. So we are stuck with them until they tell us that we can bring them back. So, actually, the buck stops here with the County. As far as our facility concerned, by law, we are required to take all of the inmates from Iowa City, Coralville, and any of the smaller towns and also the State Highway Patrol, and the State cases that are generated in the county. So, we are required by law to accept them and it is up to us to figure out how we are going to house them.

Stutsman: Is that it? Dwight? I think you have something.

Dobberstein: Well, just to… if I did my math right, I think that is 1/10th of 1% is what is in the Jail.

Carpenter: Ah, you are right.

Dobberstein: So, that is really quite a low number, not 1%. What I am going to do is review just a summary of Bill Garnos’ report. Not to be redundant, but it is the basis for all of our work from here on out. Bill Garnos is with CSG Consultants and they were hired by the Board to make their projection on the number of inmates that we can expect. And they have no interest in how big the jail is going to be, because they are done with their work now and so it was kind of an independent report as to what the projection would be. I am going to quickly review that for you. I have got, there are a number of graphs in the report and I have copies of them here.

Carpenter: Dwight, do you want me to elaborate on this before you get into that, or not? Or do you (inaudible).

Dobberstein: Well, I can get that one when I’m done, if you want. Bill’s report covered some of the trends in Johnson County and one big trend is the population, which we have talked about has been going up. Back when I moved to town, the population here in Johnson County, in 1970 about 72,000 people. And now we are up here in the year 2000 and Bob said that we are at 115,000 or so, and the projection for the year 2020 is another 28,000 people on top of this. The County continues to grow at a rate of approximately 12-15% and there is no sign that that is going to let up. So, that is why we are finding more people in jail, there are more people living here. Along with that, the number of bookings has gone up and the criminal caseload has gone up, so this goes right with the population. The caseload has quadrupled, according to Pat White and his office. As you see here, and Bob mentioned this, that the bookings have quadrupled also. Back in 1982, it was a fairly low amount, but it has gone up at a significant rate, pretty constant rate ever since, and so that we are up here now. This report was done in 1999, so we are already in the months past this report. We are up here, (inaudible) 7,000 bookings and so the trend, as you can see, follows right with the population. So what Bill did, and this is kind of the key to his projection, is he looked at the average daily population in the Jail and he charted that from 1993 up to the present and this dashed line here is the number of beds available. And you can see that Bob was working with 75 beds up until about 1996 or so, when he just had to double-bunk every cell and maximize his use and he was up to 92. But, during that time, see this heavy line is the average population during the month. And it averages everyday in the month, and that is a key figure in making projections. But the top line is the peak number in that month. So that at any one Saturday night, for example, how many people were in the Jail? That is charted on this top line. You can see all the way back to 1993, we were already maxing out the number of beds that he had. That is why he had to jump this up in 1996 and that number, the number of beds, total people there, peak factor had exceeded what number of beds all the way back in 1997. So, that explains why you have been coming so many years and saying we have a problem here. I think, in fact, back in 1998, the Space Needs Committee looked at this and said, hey, we have a real problem with this jail and it hasn’t gotten any better. Here in 1999, we have a peak of 127, and I think we just heard Pete say there was up to 135 already this year. So, you can see that is over 35 people sleeping on the floor. If you sleep on the floor yourself, you would wake up pretty angry and mean and that is why this is a dangerous situation for those deputies that have to go into those cells and you have a lot of angry people in there. This is kind of a key graph in Bill’s projection. He took these numbers and he extended them out to the year 2019. He picked the date back, starting when the jail started, it was built- the new jail, this jail was built in about 1983- and you project that a reasonable line up there, you get a number of around 150. But if you take just the last few years here, where it has dramatically increased, and you project that line up, you are up much higher to a number around 221. So, what Bill did was basically look at all of the factors, legislative and others and decided, well, the best we can guess in the future is that hopefully it won’t continue as bad as it has been. But it might be worse than the long-range shows and so he just took the midpoint here and he projected that to be 185 inmates in that prison. And what he did to figure out the total number of beds is that he multiplied that by a peaking factor, in other words, we saw in that other chart, just because this is the average, 185 is the average number, that the peak is actually much higher than that. So he multiplied that by a peaking factor and he also multiplied it by a classification factor. As Pete said, you can’t use all of the beds, you have to have some sort of flexibility, if you have someone who is sick, they have to be isolated. If somebody is dangerous, you want to keep them away from people who are not so dangerous. So you need some flexibility in there for classifying prisoners. So that is where he took those two factors and multiplied it times the bed, or the inmate count, and he came up with a 255-bed projection, is what we would need for a jail in the year 2019. Bill went on to talk a little bit about the existing Jail and …

Jordahl: May I ask a question at this point?

Dobberstein: Sure.

Jordahl: When this was presented the first time, I raised this question, and I want to make sure we don’t overlook it now that we are looking at this page again. It is my layman’s sense and it would take maybe someone who had done sociological research or at least read a bunch of it, but I imagine in the field of corrections, they do that. That, when you get a larger population in an area, you don’t just get an increase of crime directionally proportional to the size of the population, but that as it gets larger and larger, the tendency for there to be more crime, increases. In other words, the trend of crime would increase faster than the population as the population got to be on some larger level. I am thinking of a place like Chicago or something, is that you get people kind of packed together, there is an intensity of something that changes in society and I think I see that in the chart that you’ve got there. Where it kind of jumps around here, but then it is kind of intensifying as we get up here. If you were to assume that that kind of thing were to happen, then the projection would, in fact, be much higher than what is shown on this graph.

Dobberstein: Well, I am not qualified to really talk about that either, but it makes common sense to me that that would be the case. And I look at Bill’s number and I think he is being very conservative in his predictions. And so I would agree that what he is projecting here is really not the worst case scenario. If we wanted to take the last few years and that upward trend, we would be talking about a much higher outcome.

Jordahl: Yes.

Dobberstein: And at this point, our proposal is that we would want to build a new jail big enough to handle what we think might happen but be expandable. So if the worst case happens, we can always expand it and add onto it to accommodate the additional people.

Slockett: Dwight, I have a quick question. I just may have misheard you, but I thought I heard you say the projected 255 and this says 221.8. I am just wondering.

Hayek: That’s before the factor was…

Slockett: That is before the factor was applied? OK. Thank you.

Dobberstein: He projects 185 inmates, but a 25% peaking factor and a 10% classification factor and it should be 255 beds, is what his report said.

Slockett: Yes. I just noticed that he doesn’t show it on the chart that you presented. It says 221.8. I guess…

Hayek: Yes, and I think…

Jones: Tom, it increases all of them if you apply a peaking factor to all three of those, you are going to end up having them all increase proportional.

Dobberstein: This 221.8 is this trend here, for actual inmates, if you are going to use that.

Hayek: In the future, to make sure we get the information correctly out to the county, that is correct- but I think we ought to have another chart that does, because his material does state 255 in there after you factor that in- so it would be nice to have one additional chart from your excellent chart making skills that showed the 255.

Dobberstein: Well, yes. We could have a chart that would show actual beds as opposed to the inmates. That might be better.

Thompson: So, if you apply those two factors to the highest trend, it comes up to about 290-bed need?

Dobberstein: That sounds right. I didn’t actually multiply it out.

Jordahl: And that is the highest trend as shown on this chart, but as I have suggested, maybe the real trend is going to be something higher than that. And I want to caution us all as we look at this that this may be just the kind of assumption underlying what we are doing now that may, in later years, be seen as just like not having built a large enough facility in 1981. That because the public wouldn’t pay for it, this is where we are and we have to do this again. One of this things I think we have all come into this process with is a kind of commitment that we don’t want to be, or that we don’t want the future Board of Supervisors and members of the community be in this same situation in less than 20 years. We want to be building something that will grow, yes, but when we talk about having the equipment in place, the laundry and the kitchen and so forth, sized adequately to handle a facility that we are going to need. Some of the implications that these assumptions are driving us to are what size should those facilities be now in order to accommodate that future need. So I think the question of what assumption are we making of how many people we are going to have is really key and if we have questions about this, we ought to focus those a little bit.

Jones: Well, the thing to keep in mind is, if that you have a problem with the existing site. That building set 10 miles out in the middle of a 40 acre field wouldn’t necessarily be a serious problem. The safety issues, and some of the things that are unique to that building that are a problem, he could deal with. But that building, we have no real expandability. So, in turn, if you were to build a 150-bed jail facility in another location that has the future expandability a modular design that a lot of the jails today that are being built like, then they problem, how many beds you build today, isn’t really that serious. Because you are going to be able to expand that facility in the future. The problem is the existing facility and the way it is laid out.

Jordahl: Expand it to what size?

Dobberstein: Well, the thing is, that is something that you are going to have as Supervisors are going to have the option to say, 20 years from now, do we add on 2 more modular pods to a new facility where as with this one, you can’t do it.

Jordahl: How many pods can be added to the facility we propose to design? Isn’t there a size limit that is implied by the infrastructure we provide, the furnace and so forth?

Dobberstein: To some extent.

Stutsman: I don’t think we are at that point yet. I think we need to continue on with the presentation before we can…

Jordahl: I think we are at the point of asking what is the need.

Dobberstein: (inaudible) exactly.

Slockett: I would like to comment, too, at this point, just because Jonathan is making a lot of assumptions here and he is proper to label them as such. There is no basis other than sheer speculation to (inaudible) the velocity (inaudible) that curve is due to some sort of population level of the County. It also very well might have to do with what had been refereed to earlier, the law and order mentality of the State Legislature decreasing the discretion of judges and criminalizing more and more behavior, and it is possible that that kind of Legislative action could change in the future. So, as long as we are making speculations, we ought to mention that speculation as a possibility as well.

Maupin: I would judge it would get worse.

Hayek: And I think who knows, but we already hear the Legislatures talking about, and there is an intense pressure on the Legislature to drop the OWI presumptive level from .1 to .08 or whatever, and as soon as you do that, you are going to have a lot of our folks, 30% of them or more, are over there because of OWI and alcohol convictions and when you drop that threshold level down, you are going to have more and more people in that jail. So, I know we can’t predict with any reliability what the Legislature is going to do, but I can suggest that we see evidence right now that they are still doing more criminalizing and more strict rules and regulations on drugs and alcohol offenses, if not others.

Stutsman: And you have to remember that the legislators are elected and they are responding to what the electorate has told them they want. I think there is a general feeling out there that a good part of the population likes being tough on crime, and this is the consequence.

Maupin: True, I just don’t like paying the bill.

Stutsman: Exactly, well and it is easy when it is shifted down to the county level. They don’t want to build more prisons. So it is easy to say, OK, the county has to deal with that.

Kemp: Remember, it all started with Richard Nixon.

Hayek: Thank you, Bob.

Stutsman: Let’s move on to more of our presentations.

Dobberstein: Yes, this is a number that we feel we can defend and take to the public, a very expensive project. Bill also had listed in his report some of the major problems in the present Jail. Insufficient housing is one. Another problem he lists is inadequate space for intake and release. I think Bob has said that on any given Saturday night, he brings in 35 people, maybe, and there is no place, well, I shouldn’t say no place, but very little space for intake of those people. You do one at a time, basically, or maybe 2, and it is really a bottleneck for his department. So that is a critical deficiency in his existing jail. There is actually no, because all of the support spaces are inside, there is no expansion possible for all of those support facilities such as the kitchen, or recreation, or visitation areas, it is all very limited and inadequate. There is no visibility into those day rooms either. The present Jail is designed so that very little visibility and that just adds to the dangerous situation. So, Bill had outlined those issues as well as the problem of not being able to classify or segregate any of the prisoners that may need it. So, that is another thing adding to the dangerous situation. Bill also has a conclusion in his report. He talks about the same options that Pete just mentioned, rather than being redundant about that, I just wanted to say that his report, he is also recommending a new jail on a new site and thinks that we should start that right away.

Hayek: Dwight, can I just…

Dobberstein: Do you have a question?

Hayek: Representing the members of the committee and the members of the committee I think to a great degree represent the population of Johnson County in terms of all sorts of interests. But we are hoping you will talk about, or if not, I would be happy to talk about that last page.

Dobberstein: I have that next.

Hayek: OK, because that, from our standpoint, safety was number one. But, compelling number 2 is, we have no choice as citizens of Johnson County but to do what we are doing because of that graph there.

Dobberstein: Yes, if you decide not to build a jail, if your decision is not to do anything, we are going to get told by the Jail Inspector that we have to start shipping people out. And we put a chart together here that talks about what that costs will be. We are assuming, the low end of the costs that Bob has talked about, $65 a day. And that is assuming we can find it. It may be much higher than that. If you start to add up $65 a day times the number of prisoners that our projected over 74 beds, this is what you come up with. First year, you have $616,850. This bottom line just lists the annual costs. And the annual costs go up every year because every year we have projected additional inmates. In 10 years, the annual cost would be $1,863,355 just for that year. This upper graph shows that if you add those costs up year to year and carry them forward and that shows that within a matter of 10 years, we will be up here at $15,000,000.

Jordahl: I really think we need to alter this chart to take into account the time and additional staff and the gasoline and the wear and tear on cars.

Carpenter: Well, I think that is strictly just the housing.

Dobberstein: Strictly the housing, right.

Jordahl: Right, but the purpose of the graph is to communicate and if it is going to communicate the cost, that is not the cost.

Carpenter: The problem, Jonathan is that I have no way of calculating that, because if I’d have to go to Kansas City with them, that would be a lot more than being able to go to Des Moines.

Jordahl: Well, as long as we are talking minimal, this is the minimal $65 a day assumption. Instead of making a $95 a day assumption, if we are going to go that low, then let’s make some sort of minimal assumption about the cost of travel and we know it is going to be at least as much as it costs to get them to whatever, Davenport.

Hayek: Jonathan, I found, if I may though, because I have been, a few of us have been sort of spearheading, representing the committee to various associations and organizations around the county, that I found we better be pretty accurate with our figures, because I have a lot of people challenging me about, don’t tell us what your estimate is in terms of making a good guess, use… If you can tell us there is $65 a day minimum now, then we can understand that better than we can if we try to estimate… What I do is I tell them what this is, which is shocking, and then say, this doesn’t even include additional staffing, deputies, vans, overtime, liability for being on the road and running into somebody on Interstate 80. All of those things that sort of are harder to quantify, where this is a lot easier for people to really understand is when they see the number. I understand what you are saying. This doesn’t reflect nearly what the cost is going to be.

Jordahl: Yes, I am saying, if people are concerned with don’t give me estimates, give me the facts, give me what you know, we know it is going to cost more than that. This isn’t the facts. I understand you are saying, this is a chart of what we do know at a minimal cost, but I would say this is not as accurate a representation of the cost as something that included an estimate of the deputies time and wear and tear and so forth would be.

Carpenter: The problem, Jonathan, I got is, I doubt if we were asked to take 30 prisoners and move them out somewhere, I doubt if I would have any 2 or 3 facilities capable of taking that many. So I would have to spread them all the way around, probably the whole state. And I have no way at this point in time, until I have the need to, I can tell you what maybe they would be charging, per day, but I can’t tell what my costs would be to get them there and back. Because number 1, it may require more than one trip there and back. If they are in any kind of Court proceedings at all, they may need to be brought back to the county and then taken back.

Jordahl: Sure, I understand and agree.

Carpenter: So, I don’t know how I would put a finger on that.

Jordahl: But you could say what you just said to me in a paragraph that would accompany this chart. But you could say, at least, the minimum cost… I don’t think we are serving ourselves well by making assumptions, oh the best case is going to happen. How often does that happen, that the best thing happens?

Stutsman: But I guess I recommendation of this committee. I think this is the best way to approach it. This we know is minimum and we can just build on that. And I think we get into too much speculation and then when to that point then people start second guessing where you got your figures. Are you saying that you are going to take everybody to Kansas City when you can take a bunch of people to Benton Jail. I think that this, to me, is pretty dramatic if this is minimal. And then you can just build on this. Who knows what the limits are.

Hayek: I agree with you. What we could do though is work with the Sheriff’s Department, maybe if this is feasible, and say, what if we were ordered right now to ship 30 people out today and see what facilities are available and how much they are today.

Stutsman: A point in time, yes.

Hayek: So then we could say something like we researched that on July 10th 2000, what would happen, and this is what it would have roughly cost us to take people to Sioux City, Newton, whatever. We maybe could look at doing that, but that is up to I think Bob and…

Stutsman: That would be interesting.

Thompson: And what this…

Carpenter: And what the cost is going to be, if I have several cells sitting there empty, and I want to rent them out, naturally I am going to get the best possible price out of them I can. So you are not going to be able to be real picky on I don’t want a $55 a day room if there is even such a thing, I may have to take just what I get, and that could be 75 or 80 or even up to 90.

Slockett: Can I have a quick point of information, Dwight? What was your assumption on the annual increase in the number of prisoners in this?

Dobberstein: It was based on the report, Bill Garnos’ report, on his…

Slockett: What percentage increase was that annually?

Dobberstein: I think we have talked at, it’s going on approximately 5%.

Slockett: 5% increase annually?

Dobberstein: Yes.

Carpenter: Tom, that was taken off of our booking charts from 1982 on. It shows that if you got a copy of this, I will give you one, it shows you o up until 1998 and 1999 went over the 7,000 mark.

Hayek: Yes, we got it.

Stutsman: Are we ready to move on to Ventures?

Dobberstein: Yes.

Stutsman: Bob, did you make all the points you wanted to make? Dwight, did you have anymore that you wanted to add?

Carpenter: Well, there is one point that I would like to make. We talked about the costs of running a facility. 90% of my costs for running the costs for running the Jail is labor. It is the people that I have running it. So it is really an important factor that the public should keep in mind. Our current facility is not built to be really efficient that way. The new facilities are a lot better. I think that is really important for the public to know that. I don’t think that the increase in population necessarily increases our employees to the extent that would be for each inmate. There are savings in new construction because of the new way they are constructed. I am sure that is something that the architects can get into, too.

Dobberstein: Yes, we have spent the last month meeting with the Sheriff’s Department and Jail staff talking about the program of space needed for a new facility. And that is what Jon Cain from Venture Architects is going to talk about a little bit and his observations of the situation.

Cain: I think we will use both easels.

Jones: OK.

Stutsman: While John is setting up. Do you just want to give a basic background of how John and Venture came to present, where they are from, for people who may not?

Dobberstein: OK. We have a while back, talked about the need to hire a jail consultant. This is a very specialized type of building and the Board Of Supervisors asked us to send out a request for proposals, which we did. We had a number of them here, I think about 8 different proposals. We had a committee set up that looked through them all and chose Venture Architects as the one that we would like to work with on this project. They are from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I have extensive experience around the country on jail facilities. Especially, on county jails, which we thought was pertinent to this project. We were very impressed with one particular jail that we all went to tour up in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It was about the same size as what we though we might need here. After touring that, I think we were all very impressed with that, and have used that as kind of a basis now to talk about what a jail here might look like. So then, now we have had John and his staff come down and go through these meetings with the Sheriff and his staff and talk about what the need is. They bring a much more experienced perspective on the whole thing.

Stutsman: Thank you, Dwight.

Cain: I am John Cain with Venture Architects out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I apologize, I am from the Badger State. I apologize as to what Berry Alvarez has done to your football team the last couple years. But Ron Dayne has gone to the professionals, so we will see what happens this fall, at least. I was told never to mention Badgers, but I will just mention that one time.

Stutsman: It is not as bad as Iowa State, so you are forgiven.

Cain: (inaudible).

Kriz: And we trained Berry here.

Cain: That is right. As we were preparing for today’s presentation, Dwight asked us to answer a number of very specific questions. What I am going to do is simply go right down those questions and provide some answers and some information for you. I have provided everyone at the front a handout, which basically represents what you see on this flip chart, but I will go through them very quickly. The questions fall into 4 major categories. One are comments and opinions on various issues related to the CSG Consultants report that Dwight just reviewed, including the opinion of the existing jail, how does it compare with other facilities? Do you agree with the 255 beds? Is intake/release adequate; is it safe? What is you’re opinion on other areas of the building, particularly support services? Why is the lack of visibility in the jail a problem? That is item A. Item B, what spaces are needed in a new jail? And we will review very briefly the 3 meetings that we have had to date, and we have come close to a recommendation on the size of the new building. Item C is why isn’t a regional jail a viable solution? We have done some homework on that, prepared to talk about it today. And then finally D, do you recommend building a new jail? So with that in mind, let’s talk a little bit about the existing Jail. If you can turn to the next page. CSG report outlines very carefully and very clearly a number of issues pertaining to the existing conditions of the Jail. And Dwight has reviewed them. But before I do that, let me come over here and just very quickly describe for you the facility for those of you who, and I presume most of you with the exception of the Sheriff have been through this facility. It is a 2-story building, as you know. The first floor is made up primarily of Sheriff staff areas, offices, etceteras. There is a small component on the first floor which is the Sally Port where inmates, arrestees are brought in, brought through a secure door into an elevator, up to the 2nd level of the building. The 2nd level of the building is all jail function. The design of this jail was referred to as a liner jail. And what is meant by that is that the cells are organized along lines of space. That you have along this core, groups of cells with individual day rooms and there are series of blocks that run both on the east side as well as the west side of the building. The core down the middle serves as those support areas that Dwight mentioned before are difficult to expand. So, you have cells on the outside and you got a core down the middle. Quickly again, the comments that Bill Garnos had offered regarding the facility, insufficient inmate housing and classification, due primarily to the jail overcrowding, which also leads to the 2nd issue that of inadequate space for intake/release. That area, starting at the Sally Port and then going up to a small area on the 2nd floor where all arrestees are brought in and held for a very short period of time and booked. That area is extremely inadequate. Perhaps it was inadequate when the building was actually built, specifically related to the amount of holding space that is in that portion of the building. The 3rd item had to do with inadequate space for inmate programs, activities, and support services and the referring to the center areas of the building. There are really few, if any, places where there can be education programs or GED or Alcoholics Anonymous. Those spaces nearly are not existent in the present Jail. And then finally, he made note that there is a lack of visibility into inmate housing areas. Specifically to the point, what it means is that for an officer to do their rounds and to be able to see into these areas, they literally have to come into each of those units, if you will, to see what’s going on. If you have 1 staff who is making those rounds as they are over on this side of the building, no one is seeing what is happening on the other side. So, that makes it very unsafe, not only for staff who have to go into those areas, but also for the inmates who are there as well. We offer a few other comments and thoughts in support of what Bill is doing. We note that because of the liner jail design, that the facility is really staff inefficient. To meet the safety requirements that can be met in a newer design, you would have to add many, many more staff, so that the staff could see into these areas on a much more frequent basis. So it is very inefficient in that respect. Because of the date of the building and the new Federal Laws requiring ADA accessibility, the building does not meet those. And then finally a comment that was mentioned earlier, is that there is a growing element of population within this jail that has medical and mental health needs. The present jail, because of its design and the lack of visibility and support areas, it is really not meeting the needs of that very specialized inmate population; oftentimes, in jails around the country, is one of your fastest growing populations. Those special needs populations, as well as the women’s population, are the 2 areas of fastest growth across the country. So that gives you a brief overview and some thoughts not only on what Bill had to offer about the Jail, but we do as well. How does it compare with other facilities, was the 2nd question? This facility is approximately 20 years old. It was state of the art at the time it was built, it is very typical of the kinds of facilities that were built at that time, 20 years ago, throughout the United States. In fact, many, if not all of the projects that we are involved in and have been involved in were looking at existing facilities just as these. So, my summary comment on this is that it is very typical of the type of facility that was built 20 years ago in terms of the codes that it had to meet, in terms of its liner design, very typical. Do you agree with the 255-bed requirement? We have talked a lot about that today, and I will try not to beat that one to death. Very quickly again, the summary was based upon these 4 projections. One of the past 19 years which gave you all a lower line, if you will. Past 7 gave you a higher line. 3 and 4 have to do with the growth of the County population. Total County population was 3. The group age is 18 to 64 was the way the projection number 4 was done. Bill took an average of 1 and 2 and he came up with 185.4. That was mentioned before. Added to that, quite appropriately, a 25% peaking factor to take into account those times during the weekends etceteras where you have a higher population. As well as a classification factor of 10%. And that is essential so that the Sheriff can meet all of the classification requirements that the State of Iowa establishes and that he is responsible for holding. So, if in fact, if we talked about the present jail as having a capacity of 92 beds, you really need to back off. About 10 of those beds should be empty at any given time to meet the different classifications that are required between male and female, between minimum, medium, maximum, and special needs populations. And so, that is how the final 255-bed recommendation was made. I think our comments are in support of that 255 number because we certainly see as we look at the statistics that Bill has reviewed, Johnson County is a growing County population. It is one of the fastest growing areas in the State, if in fact, I believe it is the 5th fastest growing county in the state of Iowa. That is driving the jail population. So is the past caseload increases of 10% per year since ’82. As well as the 10% per year increases of booking since 1982. Growing county, growing population. And the daily average population, since ’81 has been growing at approximately 8% per year. And we see that as being a very typical population increase and in fact, is very close, or we would, in our own state of Wisconsin, would see that as being about average for across all of the counties in our own state. So, we do agree with the direction that Bill has taken. But we, as Bill, if he were standing here, would put some qualifiers on those- and that certainly has been discussed here today- that the bed recommendations are based on past conditions, past conditions of arrest rates. Particularly past conditions of what the State Legislature wants to do and has done in the past. And those future conditions will obviously have a significant effect on the actual outcome. But as Dwight has also mentioned, that if we look at the year 2019 as a benchmark at 255, that 255 might be realized sooner, it might be realized a few years later. But the important thing is, that as we master plan this facility, we provided for expansion, so that that can take place and you know, and you are sure that that can happen in an organized way at that point in time. We go back then to other questions that have been asked of us, is the intake/release adequate? And is it safe? I think I have generally covered that already, though I have provided in the handouts a brief summary and some comments related to the entire building. I have already spoken a little bit about intake/release. Some of the other areas- the work release portion of the facility where inmates who are assigned to work release and are coming in and out of the facility on a daily basis. There is really no place for the shakedown to occur, which means there is the potential that they can bring contraband into the facility because you have population that is going in and out every single day, twice a day. And likewise, besides not having a shakedown area, there is really no good way to separate those work release inmates from the general population. And that of course leads to that contraband problem that I just mentioned. In terms of activity space, the day rooms are terribly undersized for the double bunking that occurs in those areas and as I mentioned before, there is really no activity space to speak of for programs and exercise. Support areas, which include kitchens and kitchen facilities, laundry facilities, obviously again, because of the double bunking are terribly inadequate for the current population. There is no storage space, very typical of all jails. Every project, when it gets to that point where you cut, cut, cut to meet a budget, what goes first, but the storage spaces. And then finally, as I mentioned before, there is really no accommodation for those special populations that do exist in the County Jail. Have we covered all of those? And finally the question was, why is the lack of visibility a problem? I think I touched on that before, I won’t mention that again. It has to do with the liner design of the jail facility and the inability to really see from a single point everything that is going on. If we then talk about item B which are what spaces are needed in the new jail? Let me go very quickly through the work we have done to-date. I will show you 2 charts. One, which will talk about the jail, and the 2nd, which will talk about the entire building. In the new jail, and this is a 255-bed facility, we are looking at a total square footage at the bottom of approximately 70,000 gross square feet. That is all areas including mechanical. Of that, roughly 70,000 square feet, over 50,000 of it is housing. And the housing is going to be divided into 3 pods, if you will, or groups of housing units. Pod A of 100 beds will be a minimum classification area. I should mention that this whole facility will be fully secure. So it will have a secure perimeter around the entire building. There will be no way for inmates to be able to move in and out of the building without being under controlled supervision. But the 1st 100 beds will be a minimum classification that will be a dormitory construction. So, your least cost for the building, that would be for inmates that are classified at a minimum level. DWI, OWI, other people, petty thefts, etceteras, where the Sheriff, going through a fairly rigorous classification process identifies that of the total inmate population, a number of those people, in fact, a significant percentage, do not have to be housed in a cell, but can be in a dormitory setting. It is much less expensive in terms of its capital costs. Pod B is a 100-bed pod of a medium/maximum classification. This will be a cell pod. This will be a 2-story design. Officers station in the center, ability to see the fronts of all of those cells. Approximately 100 beds there. And then finally pod C is a 55-bed unit where we talked about meeting the needs of that special needs classification or population. I do have one illustration that I will show only very briefly. It is a photograph of a portion of the facility that the Sheriff and his staff toured up in Northern Wisconsin. It is refereed to as the Oneida County Law Enforcement Center. Hopefully, it will illustrate at least a couple of points that I just mentioned. This is a minimum classification, so this might be referred to as the pod A, the dormitory. And what you are seeing in this picture, instead to that being that liner design which we talked about before, you have in the center, an officer’s station and surrounding it like a cartwheel, you have a series of housing units. That from a single point, a single officer position, in this particular case, can see 100 inmates surrounding him or her in a circle, 360 degrees. And so what this view is showing, is the officer’s station, but looking into these different dormitory areas. So this would be very typical of what pod A might look like. It is podular in design, with the officer’s station in the center and this particular pod is all dormitory construction. So I just simply show that so that you get a better understanding of what we are talking about when we discuss podular design.

Thompson: When you say dormitory, how many beds does that mean in a space?

Cain: What we are talking about, and I am going to work from memory here. In fact, let me just pull out from underneath, not that, but underneath that, Carol, let me get more specific so I… Of that 100 beds that we are talking about, we’ve got what we refer to as units or pieces of a pie. And they are going to be 9 of those pieces. So, take the pie and divide it into 9 little segments, of which 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of those will have 8 inmates. 1 of them will have 12 inmates. And 3 of them will have 16 inmates. And that will make up the 100 beds.

Thompson: So that would allow us to handle the largest number of our bookings at the least possible cost, because, speaking in generalities, they are the least dangerous prisoners that we have.

Cain: Ask that question again, I am not sure if I understand the comment that you made.

Thompson: Bob mentioned that 50% of our bookings are people with drug and alcohol offenses.

Cain: Yes.

Thompson: Presumably many of those would not be particularly dangerous, so this would allow them to be served in the least expensive level of housing.

Cain: Yes, that is right.

Thompson: Which we can’t do now, because all our housing isn’t like that.

Cain: Well, you have one small unit that is what we would refer to as dry cells with no plumbing fixtures in that part of the building. In this area, there are toilets and showers, but they are within that dormitory area. It would be like a room such as this, where there are tables on one end; there are bunk beds on the other. Back in the corner is a shower area and toilets that have modesty protection particularly if you have as male officer working in the housing unit, female inmates in that area. We deal with those issues very effectively in the podular design; that will not be a problem. I mentioned also that the particular picture shows these different areas and we will be able to house male and females in those. And we will not distinguish to any great extent where the males or the females might be, so there is flexibility in the housing units. Continuing with the rest of the jail program, the other areas include activities and programs, roughly 600 square feet. Infirmary, which is primarily an exam area, is 600 square feet, approximately. The intake/release or booking area, approximately 7,500 square feet. There is space for holding of 50 inmates in that area. Some of those people will be brought in, booked, and released out of that processing area. They will never see a housing unit. The work release area I mentioned is roughly 900 square feet. The kitchen and laundry is roughly 4,400 square feet. Jonathan, I will point out that these areas are being sized for 600 beds, so we are providing the space, not the equipment, but the space in the kitchen as well as in the laundry area for a larger population. We do that because it is much more difficult in the future to add on to those areas. And then finally the administration area is roughly 17-1800 square feet, for a rounded number of around 70,000 or mathematically we show here 68,926. The remaining portion of the building totals out mathematically up to around 23,000. We are going to put some cushion on that and we are saying today that it is a facility of around 125,000 total square feet. Of which the jail is roughly 70,000. The Sheriff’s Department is roughly 41-42,000 of that, which includes administration, Sheriff’s administration, the detectives, the patrol, communications, which is 911, your emergency operations, Sheriff Department training and then fleet operations. The courtroom, and we are proposing that included in this project is a remote courtroom that would minimize or eliminate the need to transport inmates, some of the inmates to court, of roughly 1800 square feet, that is included in the project. Civil defense, which is currently in the Sheriff’s Building, the Law Enforcement Center, would move out to this new location, and that is roughly 900 square feet. The lobby area, which includes a number of public spaces, including 1,200 square foot multi-purpose conference room, roughly 3,500 square feet. And then finally maintenance and facility support, which includes the support areas for the entire building, mechanical equipment, boilers, etceteras, roughly 6,200 square feet for a total of again, around 123 to 125,000 total. And that is at 255 beds. Moving on to the next question.

Jordahl: Can we stay on size for just one second and kind of readdress this question?

Cain: Yes.

Jordahl: You talked about 600 beds. What is the expandability, or what would the expandability of this facility be, say that our estimate is low, as I think it is, and we needed 3 or 400 beds in those same period of years by 2019? What adaptability would the design that you propose have to address that?

Cain: The design that we are talking about, in a sense could be expanded almost limitlessly. It is going to be a series of zones, if you will, that can be expanded in really 4 directions. We start with the core and we work out. Primarily in 2 directions, but in theory, I suppose we could go the other 2 as well. What really becomes the driving issue is the site that is selected. And we are, as you know looking at a number of sites and we will be coming back and having a meeting, similar to this, I believe in just a few weeks to talk about those and what some of the advantages and disadvantages there are to those different sites. But all of the sites that we are looking at have expansion potential to at least double the facility.

Jordahl: To double what your design.

Cain: To at least double it, yes.

Jordahl: Not double our current facility, but double the design that you are proposing.

Cain: No, at least double what we currently have, yes. Some sites easier than others, but they all can be expanded.

Jordahl: What about verticality? We can’t really go up on our present facility. Are you proposing a design that needs horizontal expansion?

Cain: Yes, and we would prefer for issues of construction costs as well as staffing efficiency, that we could look at expansion in a horizontal manor as opposed to having to go vertically. Because by the nature of having to move inmates through elevators, it is just inherently more staff inefficient or less staff efficient. So we prefer to all be on one floor.

Jordahl: OK, thank you.

Cain: Sure. Any other questions regarding the program? Question number C had to do with why aren’t we considering a regional facility? And we have looked at this in a number of different ways. First of all, for those who may not be familiar, I want to define just want a regional jail is. A regional jail is a building, if you will, that is multi-jurisdictional. It may be under a single ownership, but more than likely, it is a consortium of owners. In our particular case, it might be a group of counties that all pool their resources and build a single facility. And primarily why is a regional jail, why does it make sense, or where does it make sense? And it is primarily because resources are limited, by pooling them together, in theory at least, you can be more efficient for everybody. There are in all of these types of jail facilities certain minimum sizes to be staff efficient. The housing unit that I described before has 100 inmates around it. That is an ideal number for a housing pod with a single officer station. Really in a sense, anything that is smaller than that is not staff efficient. So when you have a county, or you are a county where maybe you have only 30 or 40 inmates, the ratio between inmates and your staff is not going to be as good as if you had a 100-bed facility. I think the math if fairly obvious. So, there is a size efficiency when you start to get larger. As I mentioned at the beginning, typically a regional jail is under one management or one form of management type. Somebody has to be responsible for the facility and the inmates that are there. In the State of Iowa, there is a history of regional jails, or let’s say an attempted history to use the concept of regional jails. And we are familiar with 2 examples. South central Iowa, which includes Lucas, Decatur, Wayne, Monroe, Appanoose, and Davis, 6 Counties in the South Central part of the State are currently involved in a feasibility study for a new regional jail. But I might add they have been involved for about 5 or 6 years in this issue. At one time, we are talking about at 50-bed facility when 3 of the counties were involved. Now they have 3 more that are also involved. I note to you that the sum of those populations is around 63-66,000 people total in aggregate. Again, what they are trying to do is realize the benefits of grouping their resources to build a larger jail than what each of them would need individually. And as I mentioned, they are currently conducting a feasibility study. We talked with one of the Chairmen, I think the Board Chairman for Wayne County driving down here this morning in the car. In this feasibility study, they have determined their bed requirements. They are looking for a site, which is a huge issue on a regional jail because you really would like to have it in your own county and not have to transport people. But they have not asked the most important question which is who is going to pay for it or how are we going to divide up the costs? So, not until they have really answered that question, I think have they really gotten to first base. The other example is northeast Iowa. Howard, Winneshiek, Allamakee, Fayette, and Clayton talked a number of years ago about a 100-bed facility. Again, their aggregate population is 83-85,000 but at this point, the project is dead. They could never come to terms, never agree as to what they would do collectively, they have all gone and done their own thing. Again, it gets to the most important questions, as I raise here, is how is it going to be managed and who agrees on that distribution of cost? In large part because of what we see as a sort of mixed history of regional jails here in Iowa, but more importantly, the fact that Johnson County is of a size where it can really have its own jail facility. We really don’t think it is in the best interest of Johnson County to burden this project with trying to create a regional jail. That is not to say that excess bed capacity wouldn’t be made available to other counties to help offset some of that cost during those many years where you got beds available. But again, primarily because Johnson County already is over 100,000 people today, can really support its own jail. There are problems with transportation, security, and costs. I think that anytime you put an inmate with a deputy in a vehicle and transport them, you are subject to the potential of escape and the liability related to that. There are problems in a regional jail with who is controlling the inmates? In State statute, it says that Bob here is responsible for his inmates wherever they may be; again, an issue of liability. Then, of course, the final item which I mentioned before, problems with financial support and commitment from each county. That would have to be agreed upon before a regional jail could move forward.

Hayek: May I make one comment, too, if I might? Also there is the issue of the political acceptance of sharing a jail facility for example that is in another county. I clipped out of the newspaper about a month ago, and I think it was the Press-Citizen or it was the Gazette, one of the 2, says dateline, whatever you call it, Mayors Oppose Regional Jail. It goes on to say 6 of Washington County’s municipalities want to keep the jail a County facility rather than seek a regional one. The Mayor of Washington, Crawfordsville, Ainsworth, Wellman, Brighton, and Kalona. And so right there is a county that you have a lot of political clout in saying no to a regional jail. So that just highlights the difficulty in trying to do this. Thank you.

Maupin: It is a pipe dream.

Cain: We did also go one step further and say well what if the regional jail did make sense, and we quickly inventoried all the counties that surround Johnson County to see just what their status was and very quickly, we asked them 4 questions. What is you’re current bed capacity? What is your current average daily population, how crowded are you? Has that population changed depreciably in the last 3 years? And finally, do you have any plans for increasing capacity. I won’t take time today to go through the nuances of what the answers were for each of the 8 counties that we looked at. But I will summarize it here today by saying this. Benton County said that it wasn’t the right time, not right now. Linn County, of course, is doing their own project; they are adding 150 beds to their present jail, minimum security. Jones County just added 10 beds, so they are in pretty good shape. Iowa County is doing their own study for a jail right now, there may be a possibility there. Cedar County is building a new jail right now, they told us. Muscatine has a brand new jail, it is just 3 years old and there is plenty of room there, they have a lot of beds, maybe have some of your inmates. Washington County, the State just closed their jail. And finally, Louisa, is in fact, exploring a regional jail facility with 3 or 4 counties, but they were not sure which Counties they were. So, that gives you some summary. I think our summary basically was not as much with what they are doing surrounding you, though that would obviously be the group you would be talking with. But the more important thing is that you have your own issues here in Johnson County. You are of the size where you are more than capable of handling your own needs, you really need to go about your own business and not be hampered with other counties and their political issues. So, the last question for us today in our presentation is- so what do you think then, Venture Architects, do we need a new jail or do you recommend building a new jail? And we strongly believe that that is the case and we are probably 2nd or 3rd or 4th in line today to say that, but we will try to summarize for everybody what some of those comments are. Our recommendation is: Johnson County needs to replace its existing Jail/Law Enforcement Center with a new and larger facility with expansion capability, that is an important key. What are the reasons? Clearly number one is that the current Jail is overcrowded. It does not meet the classifications of Iowa’s Department of Corrections. You are potentially in a liablist situation. The linear jail is not safe for staff and inmates because not only of its design, but because it is overcrowded. And that you really are not meeting the programmatic needs of your inmate population. Again, this is a pre-trial facility; these people have not yet been sentenced, most of them. There are many counties in the United States that provided fairly ambitious programs in terms of GED, Alcoholics Anonymous, things like that for their jail inmate population. To run them effectively, you have to have the support spaces to make that happen. I think Johnson County is an enlightened county and I think they want to be mindful of the needs of that population. Johnson County, the 2nd item, is growing in population, it is one of the fastest areas within the State. You have a robust economy here, but particularly because of the University and other industries, people will be attracted to this area for a variety of reasons. So your total county population is growing and that is also going to lead to a larger jail population. Item number 3 is that this steady increase in housing inmates out-of-county is going to happen. And as Dwight showed very effectively, there is going to be a cost that will continue over many years. Not only in terms of the bed rental that we talked about at $65 to $90 a day, we read in an Iowa State study that minimum of $10 a day per inmate is contributed to transportation costs. So whatever that $65-$90 you talked about, I think you need to add another $10 to that strictly for the transportation costs as the Iowa State study noted. And then an item that we haven’t really talked about is that every year construction costs do go up, roughly 3-4%. You may not build now, your referendum may not pass in the year 2000, but someday, not now, it will be built and the cost of this building that we talked about at 125,000 square feet, the cost of that is only going up. So the need is now really to build. And finally, the letter that was read earlier regarding the State of Iowa’s DOC’s position with respect to the jail overcrowding. You are on a progressive path of planning for a new facility. The referendum is obviously a huge hurtle to overcome. They are monitoring you very carefully and they may re-evaluate their position, if the referendum doesn’t pass. So that is our long presentation.

Stutsman: Thank you.

Cain: Thank you.

(Continue to Part 2 of transcript)