MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
AUGUST 30, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department at 1:03 p.m. Members present were: Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
WORK SESSION: PROPOSED LAW ENFORCEMENT CENTER
JOHNSON COUNTY SHERIFF BOB CARPENTER: PRESENTATION OF DAILY INMATE COUNTS AND STATE REQUIREMENTS
Stutsman: Before we get started with introductions of people, I would like to just explain, briefly, why the Board called this meeting. The Board, in coming to this decision, has attended a lot of meetings, has gotten a lot of input, has received a lot of feedback from the Committee, from the architect, from the jail consultant. We made a decision based on a lot of that information. Well, as we went through the process, it became clear to us that we had gotten at a lot of meetings, a lot of information through open meetings, but not everybody has had access to that same kind of information, especially the elected officials in the County and those people who are Chief of Police and city managers. We found that if anybody was going to ask people questions about the jail issue besides the Board of Supervisors it was probably going to be these elected officials. These are the people that constituents turn to when they have questions about an issue. We thought it would be a good idea if the Board had a meeting where we would share with these important, key people in the community the same kinds of information we had about the jail issue and the information that we had available to us in making our decisions. That’s why we decided to have a meeting with the elected officials in the county as well as city managers and the Chief of Police. We’re doing this meeting in the spirit of open government. It’s an open meeting. The Board of Supervisors is very committed to having open discussion about issues and to share information that we have when we are deciding on an issue. That is the purpose of having this meeting today. We decided to have the meeting at the jail because we didn’t realize that there would be so much public interest in this particular meeting. We wanted to have it here because of the easy access to the jail, and if people were interested in taking a tour of the jail. That’s why the decision was to meet here. We certainly hope we’ll be able to accommodate everybody that is interested in being a part of this meeting. It looks, for right now, that we do have enough space, but if, as we go along, if it becomes an issue we may have to decide that we’re going to have relocate or have the meeting at another time. I wanted just to give a brief overview of where we’re at on this jail issue, or how we got to this point. I started on the Board of Supervisors 6 years ago, and one of the first things we did when I became a Board member was that we started the strategic planning process for the County. One of the things that we did in that strategic planning process was to identify some issues that the County needed to deal with. Always at the top of that agenda was space needs. In February, we appointed what we called a Space Needs Committee among County officials, among people in the County, to start identifying our space problems and to develop a strategy on how we were going to address those needs. It was a very deliberate process. We had a lot of input from department heads as well as elected officials, from people within County government about their particular needs. We hired an architect to help us in having a very planful process of how we're going to address these needs, first identify and then address the needs. Then we began the process of prioritizing those needs. We knew we couldn’t address all the needs because of the budget, so we prioritized. In that priority process we came up with jail being the first priority of the needs that we needed to address, so the Board put some resources into strategizing on how we were going to address this need. We appointed a citizen steering committee. We, as is our usual process with a Board, open it up to the public, to ask for the public to be asked appointed to this board. It’s a regular process that we follow as far as Board appointments. We also hired an architect and a jail consultant to help us get information in making this decision and moving forward with this. When the Board got this information, and with that information has made a decision to proceed with putting the jail on the ballot in the fall. We feel that it’s important for the citizens, the taxpayers of Johnson County to make that decision as to whether to go ahead and build a jail, so that’s where we’re at today. I want to stress that the meeting today is not to persuade one way or the other whether people should vote for the jail, yes or no. We are simply here to inform you about the facts that the Board had in making this decision. I would like to introduce people that will be part of the presentation to inform you about what’s been happening with this jail issue. Bob Carpenter, of course, will be first on the agenda. Pete Hayek, who is the one of the co-chairs of the Jail Steering Committee, Dwight Dobberstein, who is the architect with Neumann Monson, and has been working with the project, and John Cain, who is with Venture Architects, Tony Roetlin, who is Vice President of Springsted Associates, who informed the Board as far as financial options with the jail proposal. I would like to introduce my fellow Board members. Charlie Duffy, Carol Thompson, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, and I am Sally Stutsman and I’m Chair of the Board this year. With that, I will turn it over to Sheriff Carpenter.
Sheriff Bob Carpenter: I just want to take a couple minutes to bring up everybody to speed, as to why we’re at where we’re at today, and how we got here. Basically, to go back a little bit, I’ve been on the Sheriff’s Department for over 30 years now for Johnson County. I was up on the hill when we had the 25 to 30 inmate jail facility out there. It became quite obvious almost 20 years ago that that was too small, and there were several bond issues that were defeated, a couple were defeated as far as building a new facility at that time. We ended up coming down here, I believe, in 1981. This building here was built to house 46 inmates and in 1989, when I took over as Sheriff, I got a letter from the State indicating that we were overcrowded and we were going to have to do something at that point in time to alleviate our problems of overcrowding. This has been something that’s been in the works for a long period of time and isn’t something that just hatched overnight. At that point in time we did some pretty serious looking, and of course we were looking at codes and everything else trying to figure out what we could do to keep from doing that. Through a loophole in the law, we were able to, because of our classification… We actually opened up 6 months before the new law took effect for the sizing of cells, so through that loophole, the fact that we grandfathered in under the old standards, we were able to double bunk as long as we didn’t do any major construction on this facility. That means moving walls or something like that, so we went ahead and double bunked. We didn’t do them all at first because we were really concerned about double bunking our maximum security inmates. But in time it became quite obvious that we didn’t have any choice. Right now, to the present day, we’re double bunked in every area of our jail that we have here. Later on, when we take a tour, you’ll get a chance to see what that means. The Board, at that time, authorized, I believe, $30,000 for us to go in and build the steel bunks and weld them on top of the present bunks. Well, that got us over the hump at that point in time. It has never alleviated our problems because this building was only built for 46 people. What it means is that for the last 10 years, basically, we’ve been operating… Today’s count was 105 people upstairs. This month’s, so far, average is 98.6 people in jail that we’ve been holding. Our capacity, as far as the State is concerned, under our double bunking rule, is 92, so we’ve been considerably over our State mandate. In January, the State sent the Board of Supervisors a letter and told them that we had to make some changes and they would be back at a later date to make sure that we’re doing that. They also knew, at that time, that we had told them that we have a Steering Committee that had been appointed by the Board of Supervisors to look into the overcrowding problem we had. In that, I think we’ll probably move is right into peek, what was established back last fall was a Steering Committee to look into the overcrowding problem. My job, to work with that Committee, was to give them what information they needed to work with. I felt very comfortable with this group of people. We have a very, I feel, very good cross section of the community. They did a very good job, I thought, in looking at all the aspects towards what we need to do. I’m going to turn it over to Pete, but the only thing I would say is that those reporters that are going to be going on the tour upstairs later on, if you’ve got cameras, you will not be allowed to take photos of inmates themselves. You can go up and take your pictures of the facility, I don’t care, but inmates’ pictures are not going to be allowed to be taken. Keep that in mind later on, but I welcome everybody else to take the tour and see what our facility is like. When you go though it, keep in mind this was built for 46 people, not 92 or 100 like we have today.
Thompson: May I say something?
Jail Steering/Site Selection Committee Former Chairperson Pete Hayek: Sure, please, Carol.
Thompson: I just want to make it clear to everyone that we asked Pete to talk. He has 2 hats now. We asked him to speak today in his role as the former Chair of the Steering and Site Selections Committees. He has since felt strongly enough about this that he has reformulated himself into a member of the Vote Yes Committee, but he’s here today to talk only about the facts that his prior committee has found, and not proselytize.
Hayek: Thank you, Carol. I want to correct, respectfully, what Carol’s said a little bit. It’s that I am here to speak concerning the job of the Jail Overcrowding Committee, which was really the initial study committee that shifted, then, through the direction of the Board of Supervisors to the Jail Steering Committee and that’s completely true, I have not formed any official Vote Yes group to this point. I want to make that very clear as I have to a couple members of the press. We’re in the stage of talking and determining who might be wanting to form such a committee, but such a committee has not been formed. But I am definitely talking to you with respect to my former job as the chair of both of the committees, which have the same members constituting the committee. In view of a couple of letters that we’ve, maybe, a lot of us have seen in the press, letters to the editor, talking about the makeup of the committee and the alleged lack of diversity of the committee, in challenging that aspect of the committee, I want to come to the committee’s defense, and the Board of Supervisors who appointed this committee, that we really, I think, had a real broad spectrum. I think it’s tough to get representatives from every segment of the community to serve on such a committee, and I understand the Board of Supervisors put out a request for people who would be willing to serve, and from that list, selected and appointed the current committee. We had a co-owner of a construction company in the Riverside area, so that part of the county had a representative on it. We had a professor from the University of Iowa. We had Joanne Stoner, who works at MMS Consultants. Joanne is a very prominent person in the local Republican establishment. We had a person from the University of Iowa College of Public Health. We had a retired Superintendent of Schools serve on the committee. We had a person from HACAP, and, by the way, the candidate for first district Congress position from the Democratic Party, Bob Simpson. We had one lawyer, we had the CEO of a local company that’s been quite successful. We had a person from MECCA. We had 8 men and 4 women. I just want to indicate that I thought the Board actually did a pretty good job in terms of putting together a diverse group of people, including people living in Solon, people living in Tiffin, people living in Oxford, Riverside, Iowa City. The Committee started meeting in October, biweekly, every 2 weeks, and we did so through the month of January. Our first meeting, we set the goal to complete our fact finding in 4 months. We felt that this was an issue we didn’t want to serve for life on. We thought it was an issue that we would try to get and glean every bit on information we felt appropriate to determine what the problem was with regard to overcrowding in the Johnson County Jail, and then come up with a recommendation for the Board of Supervisors. We did so. I’m very proud of the committee members and makeup of that committee, as I said before. This facility, we determine in our fact finding, was built, as Bob indicated, 19 years ago. It was built for 46. It has intake facilities for 46. It has laundry facilities for 46. It has cafeteria and kitchen facilities for 46. It has food delivery systems for 46. It has a library for 46. We’ve been having the average daily inmate population of 100, and I believe it’s been up to 135 at times. Bob told you about double bunking. That got us to the 92 limit, but the Department of Corrections has administrative rules that set forth what a jail can have at a minimum for every person who is in that facility. It’s not just for the comfort and protection we found of the inmates, but even more concern for us is safety of the deputies who work in this facility. It’s my understanding in the last year and a half there have been 13 incidents where deputies have received personal injuries largely as a result of having to handle so many people in a facility designed for only 46 persons. As Bob indicated, the Department of Corrections has, by authority, by the law, by the administrative rules that are in effect, the law of Iowa, the authority and the obligation and responsibility to inspect and supervise all jail facilities in the state of Iowa. They have, as Bob indicated in writing, given us a warning that we are not meeting minimum jail requirements for the inmates in this facility, and that if we don’t do something about it, they’re going to do something about it. They made that very clear. We’re faced with the situation where there is a state law mandate as to what we have to provide to inmates in this facility. Also, there are liability issues that the Committee determined exist. If we’ve got maximum, medium, and minimum security prisoners that are classified as such, depending upon why they’re here. You’ve got to be very careful that you don’t put someone here for a minimum security infraction in a cell block, for instance, with people who are here under a maximum security infraction. Because if an injury occurs and assault occurs, then we have a problem legally, and that problem could cost a lot of money. Even though we have 92 beds, we may only be able to safely bed some less than that because of the mix of maximum requirements, minimum and medium security requirements. Even if we have 92 people here and we’ve got 92 beds, we may not be in compliance with the law. If the Committee found, if the Department of Corrections, as they’re authorized to do, mandates that we are in non-compliance, as they’ve indicated to us we are, and then goes the step further and says you must now do something about it and we’re going to tell you what to do. It’s our understanding, from the committee’s standpoint, that that will come as a fixed maximum number of bodies that can be housed in this facility. It most likely will be less that 92, because in the experience of the Department of Corrections, they generally say, OK, especially in this community, on the weekends you’re going to have 135 people here, and that’s not been unusual, especially during home football games and other activities that go on involving alcohol abuse and other infractions that occur as a result of that. They’re going to say maybe, or we feel the Committee probably, that you have to have a maximum number of 70 or 75, depending upon what the anticipation is for the maximum load up that happens typically on weekends. Logistically, you can’t have 92 people here on a Thursday, and then on a Friday night, bring in 35 additional, and then start calling around the state trying to find empty beds to rent for those people, and then shuffle them there at midnight or one in the morning, and then get them back for their arraignment the next morning. The people that we would most likely have to send outside, to outside facilities would be your longer term residents, people sentenced to 60 days in jail, or 100 days in jail, or something like that. At least you can get those folks out to a place where they can stay and you’d don’t have to shuffle them back and forth. If we had to ship out 25 or 30 people, you can easily do the math on what it’s going to cost each and every one of us who owns property in this county. The average rate now is running from $65 to $90 or $85 a night or day to rent facilities. Take an average figure of $72, it’s easy, 30 times $72 times $365 is $788,000 and some change. That’s the first year. There’s been a study that was commissioned by the County by a jail consultant in Kansas who has predicted that our requirement for a minimum number of beds to the jail 2019, based upon past trends and future predictions, that’s all they are, predictions, and we’re going to have some… John Cain and Dwight’s going to talk about this, mandates, in his opinion, that we have a jail facility to serve us for the next 20 years, it’s been about 20 on this facility, of 255 beds. That’s where the 255 bed number came from. People can say, well, the population is not increasing as quickly as Bill Garnos, the consultant, said it would. In the last decade, we just saw that in the paper, 8%, I think, increase in Johnson County. His prediction was based on a projection of, like, higher than that, I think 12 or 14%. But even if it’s 8% and not the projected 14% in the next decade and the decade after that, maybe we’ll have a requirement for 255 beds in the year 2021, or 2024. I don’t know. None of us here do. But I think all of us must agree that this county is vibrant, it’s going to probably continue to grow, most projections are that it is, and in the requirements for facilities for inmates to live safely and for deputies to operate safely is going to require a larger facility, and so will the State. If you look at what the projection is in terms of prison inmates, this facility population in the future, and you consider the bond issue will cost us, it was projected, $29 for $100,000 in property value a year. Shipping these folks out starting, let’s say, today, at $788,000 per year, escalating up based upon the projection, first year is going to cost us somewhere around $15 or $16 a $100,000. It escalates up until, I think, the fifth year, we’re up to $35 per $100,000 of property value. We’ve got to realize the Board of Supervisors doesn’t have that kind of money budgeted, so either it comes from other programs, human services, whatever, and goes to paying for rental and transportation, or it comes out of our taxpayer pockets. Either way it does. Either way it does. But we’re going to spend more if we don’t build this facility then we do in space. That projection doesn’t count, by the way, the Committee found, doesn’t count transportation expenses. I saw this in the paper the other day that was pretty interesting. Polk County, overcrowded by 150, sending a lot of their prisoners to northern Missouri, because it’s cheap down there, about $60 or $65 a bed, but I hate to know what the facility’s like, frankly. Because they have to build their facilities based on their requirements, and Iowa has very high standards as far as minimum requirements for prisoners. $1.7 million in Deputy Sheriff overtime pay last year, most of which was in connection with shuttling their prisoners out of county. So you start looking at huge amounts of money that we’re going to be spending to ship these people out. The Committee also found that the rule that you hear, if you’re going to be in a community for a long time, it’s better to buy or own than to rent, because after 5 years, you’re still renting and you’ve got no equity built up. If you do this by bond issue and you build it now, you’re building up your equity and in 20 years, I believe that’s the 20 year bond, you own the facility. The committee felt, all ranges, all the spectrum of the committee, and we were unanimous in our belief, was that the County should build a new facility that will handle us for the next 20 or 25 years. Location. We’ve heard about our recommendation based to the location on Melrose and 218. That recommendation was for several reasons. First of all, this jail is going to be expensive if it gets built. Pardon me, when it gets built. It will be built sometime. When the money starts going out like that, it someday will have to be. But the land costs us nothing, we own it. Granted, Charlie pointed out, we are taking that off the usable real estate the County owns if we set a jail on it, for some other purpose. But the fact of the matter is we don’t have to acquire it, we don’t have to use condemnation for land, because the committee, conceptually, I think, felt we didn’t like conceptually taking people’s land without their permission, and the current location, where we are here, is not usable for a facility the size we’re recommending, and of course not for any future expansion. The University of Iowa has got a brand new building to the south. They’re building a building similar to it on the west. I’m probably pointing a wrong direction. No, I guess I’m not.
Jordahl: You got it.
Hayek: Not yet. The road’s on the east and to the north the University owns that property too. We went to the University because we wanted to find out, could we get land to the north of the University and add on to this facility. The answer was no. That came from Doug True and he sent a letter to that effect saying he doesn’t make the call, the Board of Regents does, but he’s the person, one of the people who is in command of that kind of operation here, facilities, and that sort of acquisition, that sort of things. He said the University is not interested in selling property. They’re interested in buying property. We felt that well, gee, that might be a nice entity to go to for this facility, if this ever becomes vacant, if the County doesn’t need it for their other space needs.
Duffy: I don’t know if I agree with that.
Hayek: Well, Charlie, doesn’t agree, but I’m just telling what the committee found, Charlie.
Duffy: I’m thinking there’s a lot of other people that might be interested.
Hayek: There might be a lot of other people interested in it. That’s right. You know, it would be nice to have a facility here because it’s convenient for the Iowa City Police Department. It doesn’t take them as much time to shuttle prisoners, and then consequently, officers are off the enforcement beat. But I’m just afraid this land is not going to make it. Even if we were able to acquire the land to the north, we couldn’t go any farther than building a facility of 250 to 255 beds. Then, in 21 years or 22 years or 20 years or 19 years, we’re going to be right back where we are now asking for more money to build a brand new facility on another location. Going up, we can’t do that without having more land, according to our consulting engineer. Also, the facility out on Melrose provides great access to the County law enforcement patrol people to the County. They’re right there on 218, they can get to 80 quickly, 380 obviously, 218 north-south. It’s much better for County law enforcement response time than it is here. That’s not a major thing at all. That’s not any reason to build a new facility, but it is a factor that we’ve looked at. The Committee spent hundreds of hours on this issue, and I’ve spent a lot of time in addition to that speaking to groups, just explaining what we did and why we did it. We all feel fairly strongly about this. As I said, we didn’t have anybody say heck no, I’m not for that recommendation on the Committee. Lastly, but not least, I’ve got some extra copies of the report that we submitted in January to the Board of Supervisors for anybody who would like to have a copy.
Stutsman: Thank you, Pete.