Stutsman: We’ll reconvene the meeting for the Johnson County Board of Supervisors for Thursday, August 03, 2000, and we will now go into the work session. This is a joint meeting with the Site Selection Work Group for the Jail Steering Committee, with Dwight Dobberstein, Venture, and the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. We have with us Dwight Dobberstein, who is the architect that’s been working with the Jail project and I think you have a report for us. Before you get started Dwight, I would like to ask people to introduce themselves if they are going to be speaking. That’s for the purpose of the Auditor, Casie Parkins, who doesn’t always know everybody that comes to the Board Meetings. With that I’ll turn it over to you Dwight.

Neumann Monson Project Architect AIA Dwight Dobberstein: OK. Well, Norm was just here and he stepped out, but I can start without him. I’ll give a little bit of history to bring the Board back up to speed. We last were here on July 6th. At that time we presented the case for the need of a new Jail and Sheriff’s Department. I think the most important thing that came out of that meeting was the fact that the Jail is obviously overcrowded and that the Sheriff is at the point where he’s going to have to start sending people out of the County. If he does that, at the estimated $65-95 an inmate, the cost will be somewhere around half a million to a million dollars per year over the next few years. That’s going to accumulate very fast. This was all based on Venture Architects, our consulting architects’ review of the program and the spaces that were recommended by Bill Garnos. In fact, they took that a little further to analyze that the need for minimum security actually was about 40% of the inmates and the rest would be maximum security similar to what is there now. That’s been part of the program that they’ve been working on with a concept to build minimum security cell blocks for about 100 people. It would be a lot less costly than a maximum security jail would be. The Board met on the 13th and approved the recommendation for the new jail and appointed a Site Selection Committee that was basically the Jail Steering Committee, along with some other members, Tom Slockett, Tom Kriz, the Sheriff and his staff and some others. We’ve been meeting and we met on the 21st. We had 11 people there. That Committee reviewed different sites. I think the charge of that Committee was to investigate and identify sites, to analyze them and then make a recommendation to the Board. That is what we’re here today to do is to make that recommendation. I guess at this point, do you want me to turn it over to you Norm to make that recommendation?

Duffy arrived at 1:15 p.m.

Jail Steering Committee Co-Chair Norm Osland: Whatever is appropriate, that’s fine.

Dobberstein: Norm Osland, being the Vice Chair, Co-Chair I should say.

Stutsman: Thank you for introducing Norm. He wasn’t here earlier when we got started.

Osland: All right. Thanks Dwight, Madam Chairperson and Board of Supervisors. As Dwight indicated, since we were last here, we have met as a Site Selection Committee, which Dwight indicated who that encompassed. We met on July 21st and had a presentation by the architect and Dwight, talking about the sites that they had looked at, selected and studied very in depth. After hearing all of those proposals, options and debits and credits, our Committee did vote unanimously to recommend to you as a Board that the site for the new jail be at the corner intersection of Melrose Avenue and Highway 218 on the northwest corner. We felt that it really fits all of the criteria for the Jail future growth, somewhat away from the growth at the present time. When you take into consideration the issues of the other sites, it just simply weighs heavily in favor of that site. With that, as we advised you in our letter of July 24th, that is our Committee’s recommendation and, Sally, we’ll turn it back to you.

Stutsman: OK. Thank you.

Dobberstein: We meant for this to be a fairly loose agenda because this was a work session with the Board. I guess we’re prepared to review the criteria and the sites if you like, or answer any questions that you have.

Stutsman: A question I have, how much land are we talking about in that area? How much land is there available and how much land are we talking about the Jail using?

Dobberstein: I don’t know if you can see this up here. This is the site. North is up 218 here and Melrose Avenue here. The site is right here with the Secondary Roads being right here. We’re looking at this portion here, which is light colored because it’s being farmed right now. It’s fairly level. The whole site I believe is 853.57 acres. But, what we’re actually looking at is this piece right here, which is roughly 10-12 acres, depending on how far we go. It’s got a ravine running through here and lots of woods around this whole site. I think the area that’s being farmed now is about 9 acres and we need about that much for the new facility.

Stutsman: 9 acres or the 10-12?

Dobberstein: About the 9 acres.

Stutsman: OK.

Dobberstein: In the future, as it may be expanded, we may need more. There’s available site there for that. But the program recommendation from Venture Architects was for 125,000 square feet for the new building and space on the site for about 100 cars. The present jail has about 45 cars and about 28,000 square feet. This facility is about 5 times larger than what the present jail is. Part of that program, is the Sheriff’s Department, a big part. It also includes a storage garage that presently they have south of the Jail. They would be moving all that, all those vehicles in storage to this site. Then, there is the actual Jail itself and the support facilities.

Stutsman: You’re talking about the things that are in that storage shed on Capital?

Dobberstein: Right.

Stutsman: OK. So, those things would all be relocated.

Dobberstein: Yes.

Stutsman: OK.

Dobberstein: That would be available for the County to use for other purposes, other storage.

Stutsman: OK. Other questions or comments?

Jordahl: At some risk, here you’re talking about site and space. A storage building is a low cost facility. You’re talking about a considerable cubic footage of stuff that is currently happily residing in a low cost facility and we’re talking about a much higher cost facility that we’re going to use a big bulk of for storage. This is the first I have heard of that concept.

Dobberstein: Well, it’s lower cost in the new construction also. It’s not very expensive space compared to the rest of the facility. It is just an open garage area. I think the Sheriff is saying that, his deficiency of his department would be increased if they would have… They need to have that equipment nearby. It’s not just the storage equipment. They have a number of boats and rescue vehicles, but also their cars, which they use daily. The plan would be to get those into a facility where they don’t have to spend time chipping ice off of them like they do now. It’s always been part of the recommendation of the program.

Jordahl: OK.

Venture Architects Representative John Cain: I’m John Cain, with Venture Architects. It should be noted as well that in the garage there is a large percentage of the stalls that will be provided indoors, are for the storage of evidence of vehicles that have been in accidents and other situations that perhaps now are either being stored outside or are being stored offsite. In terms of the Sheriff Department’s ability to process crimes etc., to have that storage space contiguous to the evidence processing portion of the Sheriff’s Department makes a considerable amount of sense. I think the Sheriff has made the right choice as we’ve gone through the building program. We do have a garage facility that is part of the entire complex. It would be built for dollars that are obviously far less per square foot than the other parts of the building.

Stutsman: Parking for 100 cars?

Jordahl: A bigger garage.

Cain: That’s outdoors.

Stutsman: That’s outdoors.

Cain: That’s outdoors, yes.

Stutsman: OK.

Dobberstein: Those 100 cars are for the department personnel plus the visitors that would be coming there.

Jordahl: We’re basically talking about the parking lot here or 2.

Dobberstein: Right. It’s recommended that they would have 2 spaces for every staff person that works per shift. So, when the shifts change, you’ll have double the amount of people there and you’ll need parking for that, plus some extra parking for visitors. This is designed to have a courtroom. There may be some people that need to come out. It’s not a big facility, but nonetheless it has a space for a judge and a reporter and attorneys coming out from time to time. We needed some parking for visitors as well as the staff. That’s what the 100 spaces are for and they’re outside.

Stutsman: When you looked at this did the Committee look at any working with Secondary Roads or are you just looking strictly at this site for the Jail.

Dobberstein: I’m not sure what you mean by working with Secondary Roads. I guess we looked at the site to see whether it was big enough to look at using it as a potential campus for future buildings that might go out there. The best way maybe to show that is to get your model out.

Cain: This board is going to be at a scale that is twice the scale of the aerial photograph that you just saw. Secondary Roads is over here to the left. Melrose is here and U.S. Highway 218 is here. As Dwight indicated, where we’ll show in a minute where the building would be located is generally in this portion of the site. These lines that meander around the site are contour lines and there is a ravine that cuts through the site here, in a sense separating the site that we’re proposing for that portion of the County owned property from Secondary Roads to over here. When we met with the Committee several weeks ago to go through all of the sites, we used little models to help illustrate how a building might fit on this particular site. What we’re talking about, the 125,000 square feet of building, which is being programmed, or has been programmed, and I know it’s going to be difficult to see this little piece here… But there really are 3 components to this block of building. This is the Sheriff Department’s piece, this is the Jail support piece and then these are 3 housing pods, which make up the 255 beds. As Dwight mentioned before, one would be dormitory construction, secure but bunk beds, in a dormitory setting of 100 beds for minimum and medium classification inmates. The next pod, also of 100 beds for minimum and medium classification inmates. The next pod, also of 100 beds, is secure and can be used for maximum security inmates lockdown. Then, the remaining 55 beds are in a special needs housing pod. There is a percentage of inmates who have mental disorders. There is the need to segregate out of the general population those inmates that are incorrigible, hard to deal with, difficult to manage, need to be separated out. That’s what the 3rd pod is. As we’re talking about this particular site, we’re looking at it’s placement approximately here. The main entrance to the building would more than likely be on the south side of the building facing the street, or the southeast corner here coming into the Sheriff’s Department. This area to the east would be used for parking, for the public as well as some of the Sheriff’s staff. One of the other reasons for placing the building like this is that people who would be coming to the building this way would really essentially be seeing an office building. Though the jail portion or the housing portion, the walls of that building will actually not have windows but will bring natural light into these housing areas through skylights in the roof. It essentially will be a box if you will. Any sense that people are looking at the Jail will be mitigated by the fact that that part faces in to the site to the west. There will be other parking over on this side for some of the inmates and other staff and vehicles. There will more than likely be a service drive around the entire building as we have to bring food and other supplies into the Jail along the north side. But, if you’ll recall, the photograph, aerial photograph that we saw a minute ago, there are trees through a large part of this area. We know we are going to have to fill in some of those areas and take some of those trees out, but we would also try to preserve a lot of that screening on the eastside of the property as much as possible. When we begin to think about expansion, and that was part of the criteria for selection, we recognize that of the 4 different sites we were looking at, in particularly the 2 along Melrose. This one and then the site to the south, both owned by the County, but quite different in size because the site to the south is considerably larger than this. We were concerned about expansion here. Was there enough room for adequate expansion? We think we’ve solved that, that if I place that same footprint of what you saw before, which is this piece right here, we can expand the Sheriff’s Department to the east, we can add additional housing to the west, and effectively double the size of the jail. Not that we’re recommending that, but we’re saying that the space is available for that in the future. Likewise, there is room for expansion of the support areas. Now, at that time, it’s quite likely that there is going to be some site development involved in that because now we’re starting to get into the ravines, where there are some costs associated with it. Part of the reason for having sited the building here, obviously one is the fact that it’s flat here and we’ve got some ravines and other topographical changes on the site. The other issue is we wanted to make sure that we were preserving other areas on this parcel for future buildings, so that if in the future, be it whatever type of County building would be built, we would envision that that probably would be built over on this parcel. Now, your question before about have we communicated with Secondary Roads I think is an important consideration and needs to be asked if they intend to use any of that space. But, there are other areas on the site that may be expandable for their uses. We’re not recommending this by any means, and this is far beyond the scope of the project. Sometimes, over a period of years, a jail facility becomes a judicial center, which means courts. If there were a time in the future, and it might not likely be the case here in Johnson County, but if court facilities were to be moved to a location such as this, there is the ability to create a secure connection from the jail into the courts. Which is what a judicial center needs to have to preserve the safety of inmates and more importantly of the public as well as the staff, as they would then not have to be transporting those inmates in vehicles. But, that’s something for the future and that’s to be considered by someone else. But, the important thing is that we’re placing this building in a concept in such a way that we are not eliminating or let’s say making more difficult those future considerations for other people. It’s in part, based upon our ability to place this building on this site. The fact that the site is relatively contained and concealed on several sides by trees. The fact that it’s highest and best use, particularly compared to the larger site to the south, which has far greater development potential. Not only for the County, but if it were developed for commercial property, housing, etc., it’s a much larger and contiguous piece of property and we didn’t want to chop off a portion of that. Better to find a site that’s owned by the County, so there is no acquisition cost or timing involved. And a site that is such that allows us not only to build the first phase economically, but the ability in the future to provide for that necessary expansion, when and if it might ever occur. That’s in a long summary, part of our recommendation and why we’ve chosen this particular site.

Jail Steering Committee Member Robert Kemp: Have you ever timed the distance between the present Courthouse to that facility how many miles it is and how many…

Jordahl: About 3 miles.

Kemp: 3 miles. How many minutes?

Jordahl: I didn’t time that.

Kemp: Didn’t you.

Cain: We traveled it several times. It’s about 10 minutes.

Kemp: OK. 10 minutes.

Dobberstein: The criteria I remember was to be within 10 minutes.

Kemp: Yes and it fell within that. Because of attorneys having to travel and families and so on can do it by bus, but 10 minutes, that’s not bad.

Lehman: When you mention travel, one thing to point out is access to interstates. The Sheriff is charged with rural law enforcement. Quicker to get access to the rural parts of the County with that set up here than starting from downtown with a congested area.

Dobberstein: Yes I think Bob has said that a number of times that this site provides the access right to 218, which then can get to I-80 and much faster they respond around the County.

Lehman: I consider 2 statements made about City High School built in the middle of a cornfield years ago. Development is moving towards the west through Coralville, Iowa City, North Liberty and Tiffin.

Cain: Several other issues that we looked at on all of the sites, I believe if I’m not mistaken Dwight, there is public transportation either to the site or just to the east that could be extended to the site.

Dobberstein: Yes. Right now I think the bus lines come through Walnut Ridge. As the need grows, I can imagine that Melrose Avenue is a natural extension of that.

Stutsman: There has been interest for a long time to get it to Chatham Oaks and feeling it’s not enough usage. But, with this there definitely would be additional usage.

Cain: If I’m not mistaken, the site is also inside the City limits of Iowa City, which becomes very important. Particularly if we’re talking about making sure that we cover all of our bases, if you will, with regards to if a court facility were ever to go here because it has to be in the city of jurisdiction.

Stutsman: Well that’s interesting.

Caine: Then there is no issue of annexation or anything that people 20, 30 or 40 years from now will ever have to deal with.

Jordahl: As you’ve mentioned the court facility issue a couple of times now, I want to hasten to, especially here on the eve of the Courthouse’s Centennial, to say that there is no necessary implication. Even if a court facility were located on this site, that the current building, with its grandeur and fine restoration work that has gone into it and everything, would by any means be necessarily liable to close. That we could still maintain that and have some sort of a facility here for initial arraignments or whatever, that would make sense in conjunction with the jail, without necessarily moving the whole shooting match.

Cain: I appreciate you qualifying that. Because it’s only to be assured that we, as planners for Johnson County, have done our homework in terms of the ability for you and the future to build additional buildings here. One of those options might be a courthouse. We’re not recommending it. We are addressing the immediate needs of the issue of transportation for inmates. We’ve provided 2 elements within this building, this facility. There will be the capability for video arraignment, so that inmates, instead of being transported downtown for their initial hearings can, upon the discretion of the judges and the attorneys, have that hearing done electronically. They would instead of being transported go into a conference room and through the use of technology, a camera and a monitor, that would be both at the Jail as well as at the Courthouse, that capability could take place if the County chose to do that. It’s being done all over the Country and has been for years done very successfully. Likewise, we’re providing square footage in the building for a courtroom. The County has some flexibility there in choosing to hold some of those preliminary hearings on site. That’s part of the 125,000 square feet as well.

Jordahl: I want to hasten to mention too, that the idea of transporting prisoners, we’re transporting prisoners currently. There’s nothing new about that. It’s a question of whether it’s a block and a half or 3 miles. But, they are still getting put in vehicles to be taken to the Courthouse. That’s not different with this site.

Cain: That’s not different now, yes. The individuals being transported throughout the County, at the times of their arrest they are being taken downtown.

Lehman: When you design the pods, are their divisions inside the pods for male or female prisoners.

Cain: Yes there are. I would suggest there have been a lot of good questions about the building itself and it’s program. I would sense that, as we’re trying to work in sequence, our last presentation dealt with the need for the Jail and today’s presentation really talks about the location for the Jail. That our next presentation and discussion, and I believe that happens on the 24th of August would be a time where we would show in more detail the components of this building, how it functions, and in fact go through the program elements. So that the very questions that you are starting to ask today we’d be much more prepared to talk about at that time. But, Mike, to answer your question, yes. Within the pod design, and that within a typical pod of 100 beds, it’s segregated off into smaller pieces. Through the use of lighting controls and mirror codings on glazing, viewing from the officer into these areas, we’re able to eliminate any cross viewing from one of the small pieces to another one. In fact, men and women can, though by code required to be separated visually, can actually exist within the same pod. Not within the same unit, but you would have a male and a female.

Jordahl: You don’t have that model of those little angled walls do you?

Cain: Do we have a model?

Jordahl: Do you have it here?

Cain: No. You saw the model at the interview. Jonathan, I’ll bring it next time. It is of the facility in Oneida County that the Sheriff’s Department did tour. I think it illustrates very well both the concept for dorm construction as well as cell construction. I think we’d do well to bring some photographs, too, at that point, so you have a real sense of what we’re talking about. Again, we’re jumping ahead here. We should be talking about the site. The concepts that are being proposed in this building are time tested and have been with us as judicial planners for 10, 15 years, the idea of a podular design. We can talk more about that in 3 weeks.

Stutsman: I wanted to ask about the site. I hear all the time about why we can’t expand at the current site. I wonder if you, because we’re being televised, go through what the limitations are at the current site?

Dobberstein: OK. To compare this with the site that they recommended, here is the present site of the Jail. I guess you can get a feel for the difference in sizes just by looking at the 2. The present site, the Jail is right here. This is the property line and then this is actually the rest of the block, presently owned by the University of Iowa. There is an alley that cuts through here that’s in the middle. I guess the first thing you notice is that it’s smaller and so, a one story or even, this would be a 2-story building with a cell block there because the maximum security is a stacked cell. That was being recommended as the most efficient way to lay out a jail. If we had (inaudible) we would have one story. That’s a more efficient and less costly way to develop a jail. We don’t need to have elevators or stairwells. You don’t have to duplicate restrooms and all the support facilities on multiple floors. Also, with the pods, you are able to maximize the number of inmates that can be supervised by one deputy sitting in the middle of the pod.

Cain: What we discussed on this particular site in this concept, based upon adding on to the present law enforcement center, both Sheriff’s Department as well as Jail, was to look at first how much of the existing building could we reuse, so they wouldn’t have to build new. What our proposal consists of is retaining the Sheriff’s Department on the first floor, but providing additional expansion space to meet the program requirements that have been established into new construction that will be going in this direction. Then also take the 92 beds that are on the upper floor and essentially reclassify them because lines of site really don’t exist. There are issues of security and safety not only for the inmates as well as the staff, that dorm element that I spoke of earlier, or those 100 minimum classification inmates, we would propose that they would be housed in that part of the existing building. That is how we would reuse that portion. What would be remaining to be built as new would be the other 2 housing pods and then all of the Jail support. In that configuration, it might look something like that on the site, with them parking to the west. This is, as Dwight alluded to earlier, becomes a multi storage building and in a sense is a 3-story construction. The housing pod, which in the other design is likewise a 2-story component, which will be explained more as we come back in 3 weeks, is the same. It now sits on top of the support piece. We now have elevators and stairs that we would otherwise not need to buy or purchase and build. There is some concern that there might be soil problems in this part of the downtown that would lead to the need to provide heavier foundations, caissons or piles, if necessary. Though soil borings have not been taken, a jail facility is a heavy building because of the concrete and the concrete block that’s used in its construction. We are concerned about the additional cost if the Jail were to be built here. The other thing that we have not documented becomes an important issue for the Sheriff’s Department, is that he, in a sense has 2 Jails. He has the existing Jail and he has the new Jail. Though they are on the same block, essentially they are separated from each other. There are times, during the life of a jail, the day’s life of a jail if you will, where disturbances and incidents do happen. Staff have to be pulled from one area of the jail to another area, as opposed to a facility that’s all on one level, which is really where staff can move quickly at a disturbance. What we’d be looking at on this particular site, if we were to reuse the law enforcement center as it presently is used, those staff would really not be able to get back and forth. Now, there might be the ability, certainly, to provide connecting pieces and we would certainly have to look at that. But, the present Jail does have windows around it’s sides on that 2nd level, which we would have to maintain. That’s a consideration as well, as we talked about using this site.

Dobberstein: I think the other issue on the site of course is future expansion. In this case, that would have to go vertically.

Maynard Schneider: Have you ever thought of coming out on the eastside over the street. Put your pillars out there. You wouldn’t have to change too much. But, you’re looking for space, that street is wide there. If you came out with a pillar, all you’d have to have is permission from the City to come out and close the street would be to put your pillars in and they can still use the street underneath later on. But, you would get area. You wouldn’t have to change your facility as far as your food and all this other thing. I think that you could gain all of it if you go up and look at it. I think you’d gain all the room you want.

Dobberstein: We have talked about the possibility of Harrison Street, which is this one right here, because that’s already blocked off.

Schneider: I would come out. That front, Capital Street is a wide street. It’s got parking on both sides and plenty of room to move through. I don’t know how wide it is, but if you went out about halfway and put pillars, so that you could keep the rest of the jail as it is, you’d wouldn’t have to change your cooking facilities. A lot of the facilities you’re using now would be able to be used. You’d get your area for all these prisoners. I think Iowa City would be tickled to death to work in any way we can with you, because if you move out there, when they built the new jail, they started to bring their prisoners in. They did away with the holding jail with the City and started bringing all the prisoners down here for the County to take care of. I think they’re not going to want to have run clear out there every time they arrest somebody and turn them over. They’re going to have cars on the road all of the time, especially on Saturday night.

Dobberstein: Well, on the contrary to that, I think the City, as one of their main goals is to keep the view to Old Capital open. They don’t want to close off any more of that view of Capital Street.

Schneider: The City is going to be tickled to death to do anything. If you tell them, OK, they’re your prisoners. The County tells them, OK, we’re going to have to work out something, there’s going to be a cost to you guys. I think they’re going to be tickled to death to (inaudible). Another thing, the concept that you’ve drawn there is a beautiful reasonable jail concept as far as I’m concerned. I think that’s what we’re going to be coming to eventually anyway. The State keeps putting these things that have to be done in your county jails, in Iowa County, Washington County, Keokuk County, Cedar County, Henry County. None of them can afford that kind of a thing. I think the best thing to do is each one have their holding area for their Sheriff’s Office and have a central jail that was managed by the Sheriff’s, the County, the Supervisor of each county and the State people. I think the State should come in and pay 45 or 50% of the cost because they’re eventually going to want us to hold these people in jail for 2 years. Now we hold them for one. If they do that then, and we’re doing them a favor if we do this to hold people that they now have to put someplace else. I think if we’re getting a little in a hurry on this thing. Most of them don’t want to give up their little dynasties in their county. They think that they are doing away with something. Well, we did it in the schools. We crossed school lines to collect tax money, so I think we can certainly do it for a jail and it would help everyone. They could have more things, they could have the things that the State wants you to have in these jails to take care of these prisoners with.

Stutsman: Norm has to leave and so I didn’t know if there was anything else Norm that you wanted to add before you left.

Osland: Maybe we were negligent at the very beginning. I was perhaps. We bounced right into our recommendation and now you’ve heard about the present site. Maybe we were wrong in not talking about the other 2 sites. I know Dwight and John would be happy to do that. I know some of you are aware the press has covered it very well. But if there is any need to talk about that, because it was a great presentation, some good reasons why we selected the site we did. So, if you decide you want to do that, I know they’d be happy to talk about that.

Stutsman: OK. Thank you Norm.

Jordahl: That’s a good point. I think it would be good to just straight go to that. It wouldn’t be out of order.

Stutsman: To talk about the other 2 sites or why this was selected over the other sites? Yes this is kind of basically what we are doing right now, talking about the current jail site.

Thompson: Could I ask one thing first? I originally intended to be at this meeting and then I was out of town and Mike sat in for me, for which I thank him. But, I know that you had a conflict set of selection criteria. Could one of you just briefly run over the criteria that you looked at and compared all of the sites to?

Dobberstein: Sure. Don’t want to let your comments go either because we did meet. It was on July 6th and we discussed the regional jail concept.

Schneider: We’re headed towards regional jails. Everybody is going to build big expensive jails and then pretty soon we’re going to have to go to a regional jail. It suits the County. It’s in the future. They need to get these legislatures and these county supervisors and sheriff’s and get them together and each one realize that something has to be done. We can’t keep on spending money like we do. We got to do so that it’s efficient and it’ll be something that we’ll ask in the future. We need a jail. The State’s not going to push you guys to build this jail right now. They’ll step back if the people here say, hey, we need a little time to think this thing out and we want to do it the right way. If the people get together, the legislators and the people get together, they’re not going to, they’ve tried this before and they’ll work with you.

Stutsman: I appreciate your comments Maynard, but I think we need to hear from Dwight about the other sites.

Dobberstein: The criteria we used in the Site Selection Committee was shown here. It comes from the National Institute of Corrections as an example sample of criteria that they recommended using. It’s quite a list, the 3 boards here. I don’t want to go down through all of the individual, but I’ll hit the main topics. The location, obviously, is very important within the County and City. The site size, is the site large enough for the projected facility, plus expansion, plus parking. I think we’ve been talking about that a little bit with the recommended site. Land ownership; is the property owned by the County or do we have to purchase it or get it by some other means. The site that we’re recommending is owned by the County, and so that was a plus. Capability to satisfy correctional design criteria, in other words, is it open and surveillance available and I think that’s the case here. Is it sight and sound separated from neighborhoods and that’s the case here. Compatible with existing zoning ordinances. Well, it’s already zoned a public property and the requirements there are much less than any other type of zoning. Accessibility to courts, as we talked about, this is within 10 minutes of the criminal courts there. Once you put the inmates into the car, whether you’re going for 3 minutes or 10 minutes, doesn’t seem to be a big amount of time. This was within 10 minutes and we thought that was good. Accessibility to arteries for emergency services. We discussed this particular site was the best of all the sites we looked at because it’s right on 218. That has a direct direction to the rest of the County so that was a real plus to this site. Direct accessibility to existing water and sewer lines. There is a large water line that goes right down Melrose Avenue. A 12-inch line, I believe. So, that’s plenty, plenty big to service. Sanitary sewer comes up to the County home, Chatham Oaks, and it stops at that point. But, it’s close enough we’d have to go across Melrose, possibly put in a lift station. But, it’s an 8-inch line and that’s big enough to service this facility plus others if you want to locate future buildings there. Power and gas is not a problem out at that site, either. Accessibility to medical facilities, is the site within 10 minutes of a hospital because a lot of times police would bring prisoners that need medical attention and say, no, you’ll have to go to the hospital first. Or someone at the facility develops a problem then you’re able to take them to the hospital in short order. Of course, the Sheriff uses the University Hospitals and that’s closer than the Courthouse. Capability for future expansion and flexible building configurations. This site is big enough, we try to demonstrate that. But, it’s big enough for building flexibilities so we can design the building the way we’d like it to be, rather than having to site dictate the shape and size of the building. It is big enough for expansion. Minimal adverse environmental impact for developing the new site. I checked with the City and there were no issues that they had with that particular site. It’s surrounded. It’s well surrounded by the freeway on one side and Melrose and the trees and so there is minimal noise in fact. There are no wetlands there. It’s kind of sitting on a hill. It’s good drainage, which is actually the next item, pods of soil drainage and terrain conditions. We don’t know about the soil bearing capacity out there, however, with the site large enough, we could stay with the 2-story building and hopefully we could use spread footings. But, if this site is selected then we would like to pursue soil borings and find our more about it. It does have good drainage and gently sloping terrains so there is not a problem there. Normal site development costs are an issue. Again, we believe that this site (inaudible).

Jordahl: You knew that there was a sewer line, I remember, at the presentation the other day that the City, Iowa City, has brought up to this site?

Dobberstein: Right. It’s right to Chatham Oaks. It stops at that point, an 8-inch line. That is not a big problem. Minimal special development issues, there’s no demolition cost involved, such as the downtown site might have. We don’t think there has ever been any structures on there that there might be buried foundations or something that might have to be dug up. I think the final criteria is capability to develop high-energy efficiency conditions. Well, in other words, there is nothing about this site that would preclude us from designing a building that would have passive solar aspects to the design, or whatever we might want to look at in that regard as far as energy efficiency. The site is a pretty normal site. Some of these criteria are more important than others. We didn’t try to weigh them in any way. We just looked at the different sites in view of these and most of the sites were not scoring as well as the one we are recommending. This one we have seems to be good in all of these aspects. I can go through those other sites if you like. We’ve already talked about the existing Jail site.

Stutsman: Does the rest of the Board want to?

Lehman: Well, I think the public would like to see what the options were.

Dobberstein: OK. Well, actually we started out and we had a list of ideas and we were open to ideas. In fact, on the 21st, we asked for any kind of recommendations and a list and we didn’t get a lot of response. Here is a map of Iowa City and some of the sites we talked about were the present Wastewater Treatment Facility. The City of Iowa City is planning to gradually move out of there, but the timetable on that just doesn’t seem to fit very well.

Stutsman: Is that down by the Union?

Dobberstein: South of this building.

Jordahl: That was their fresh water intake.

Dobberstein: We also talked about over where the City Transit Facility is as a possible site there, if the City is willing to let us look in. But that’s the old dumpsite and that has foundation problems there. That site has been settling constantly and so we shied away from that. The City had some other smaller properties. We talked about the Water Plant site at one time. But, again, I don’t know if the City has any ideas if they want a jail there. They are really restrictive about the type of facility that might be developed on that site because there are wells around that whole entire peninsula and they don’t want to have any problems with contamination of the wells. That was not an option. We looked at basically, the 2 sites we’ve talked about. This is the site we call the site A, which is north of Melrose, and site B then is this piece south of Melrose right across the street. Site C was a site next to this building that we chose as a site that would be typical of any downtown site. How would it work if we were to look at one single block downtown? Then, site D was considered to be the existing Jail site. So, those were the 4 sites we decided to study in depth and presented to the Committee. We talked about site A, which is the recommendation that we made today. This is site B, but this is the larger scale. This is that 1 to 100 aerial photograph. This is Melrose Avenue up here and this is Secondary Roads. This is the site A that we just talked about. Then across the road is Chatham Oaks. The County owns this parcel all the way down here and I think down Slothower Road across to here and there is a little point that comes out here that’s not shown. But, they own all this land here, so site B could be anywhere on there. But, we just picked this corner as a possibility to study. Here is the 8-inch sewer line that we talked about. It comes up here and I think it actually comes up closer to Melrose. It stops at Melrose, but it’s in here somewhere and it connects to the Chatham Oaks. Then, there is a 12-inch line that branches over here for future development. That’s for site B, any site up in this area, this would be the connection we’d probably shoot for. This site met a lot of the criteria that we looked at. But, some of the problems with this site, as John already pointed out was that it’s so big and possibilities for the site are so many that we didn’t want to destroy it for that reason. Plus, I think it was presented at the meeting that the Johnson County Historical Museum had some thoughts about developing this site for a museum. Talked about a possible schoolhouse being moved to the site or other buildings that they might develop, more of a museum and also building structure, the house and the artifacts that they have. Really creating a special place there for the County history and actually developing all that area to groves and farmland and natural prairie. There is a whole plan that they had for this and it was presented I think 2 or 3 years ago to the Board and they are still working on that. This site to the west of here presently is not very developed but we thought it might become more developed as possibly residential. There could be some problems there, being next to those residential areas in the future. Those were some of the reasons why site B was not pursued or not recommended.

Lehman: Dwight, could you point out the sewer lines there if you have them?

Dobberstein: Yes. The sewer line here is kind of just drawn in with black pen. It’s a 12-inch line that goes straight through this ravine. It’s fairly deep. In fact, it’s got a lot of fall there. This 8-inch line there is a little shallower. That’s why by the time we get up to here and want to extend it across the street, we might need a lift station. But, the cost of that is not very large when you look at the entire cost of the project. By the time you extend this one up to this point or extend that one for the lift station, they’re about a wash. So, it was not an issue. This aerial photography shows the other 2 sites. Here is the present Jail site and the outline of the actual property here. Site C was this block here, which we hesitated to say that we were looking at this because the County doesn’t own this and we don’t want to scare anybody that would be living there. But, it was just taking that as an example of what if we had any of these blocks between here and someplace near the Courthouse, how would a facility fit on there. I guess we went through a similar process as we did for the Jail here. In fact, this being a whole block, the County doesn’t own that either, but if the University would work with us and give us that, that’s what John just presented. The same issues come up when looking at this block here. Someone brought up the issue that, well, there is a railway that comes across here and we don’t even know if that has an effect on it. But, just fitting everything on that site, plus parking, plus future expansion, meant that we would be going to a multi-story facility. The fact that the County doesn’t own it and we’d probably have to condemn that, it was reasons there not to choose that site or a site similar to that downtown.

Jordahl: Quite beyond condemnation there was the money aspect. Condemnation doesn’t just mean we get it.

Dobberstein: Yes. Right. One of the other criteria is, are there other site development costs? Obviously, even if we had this site, there is lots of demolition to do on that site as far as getting all of the old buildings and the foundations out of there. Again, land in this area is not the best. If we could stay with a 2-story building we would probably be all right, but a multi-story that we were talking about would probably require deep foundations. The University built this building right in this area and they did have to do that for their buildings. There was a lot of cost involved in just obtaining and getting this site up to the point that the other site is already at.

Jordahl: An estimate of that is some significant percentage of what the estimate of the entire cost of the Jail project is. The idea that we already own the land out in the country is one of the major criteria that made a difference between C and A, was that it’s so much cheaper to build on land we already have, plus, we avoid the whole spectacle of condemnation.

Duffy: Jonathan, I don’t know if I agree with that or not, because our land, where we’ll probably build the Jail, being on this Board now for 11 1/2 years, Supervisors in the past could have sold that land many times to different developers. Let’s not say that we own this land, it’s not going to cost that much, because that land would sell in a few days where we’re going to build that.

Jordahl: That’s a good point.

Duffy: On a county interstate, that’s what I’m trying to say.

Jordahl: Let me put it a different way. Not having to add the cost of land acquisition to the cost of the Jail project would mean a smaller bond issue.

Duffy: Yes that’s right.

Jordahl: That might be easier to pass than a larger bond issue.

Duffy: But, still we’re losing some land that could sell.

Jordahl: Yes you are right.

Dobberstein: Well, anyway, those are the 4 sites that we looked at and some of the reasons why we are recommending the ones we are.

Thompson: Could someone briefly describe your discussions about the compatibility of the use with Chatham Oaks?

Dobberstein: Chatham Oaks is right across the street. The concept that John submitted earlier would co-inside well with Chatham Oaks. It’s really more of an office building that would be seen from across the street. New jails make good neighbors in that they are quiet and they can be attractive. The one we saw in Rhinelander was nice looking and not objectionable to have across the street. I’ve read a report from the National Institute of Corrections saying that there were a number of studies done that jails actually increase the value of the land around it. Contrary to what you might think just because they are good neighbors. We’re not taking about razor ribbon and fence. I think that this building would look nice and not interfere at all with any of the goings on at Chatham Oaks whether in present state or even if it was developed into a museum state.

Stutsman: Any other questions or comments? Tom?

(Continued in Part 5)