MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
OCTOBER 2, 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 7:10 p.m. Members present were: Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
WORK SESSION: PROPOSED LAW ENFORCEMENT CENTER
SHERIFF ROBERT CARPENTER: PRESENTATION OF DAILY INMATE COUNTS AND STATE REQUIREMENTS
Sheriff Bob Carpenter said in the late 1970’s it took 3 bond issues to finally build the current jail. The jail opened in February 1981 with a capacity of 46 inmates. He explained there were overcrowding problems as early as 1986 and Sheriff Hughes spoke to a Grand Jury about this. Carpenter said that in 1989 he inherited this problem when he became the Sheriff. In November 1989, the State issued Carpenter a 15-day notice that they needed to take care of the overcrowding. He said there were about 52 inmates a day at that time. A loophole in the law, allowed them to double bunk, taking their capacity to 92, instead of the original intake of 46. Sheriff Carpenter explained they have been looking at other options and in August 1999 a program of in-house arrests began, where inmates are given bracelets and allowed to serve their time at home rather than in the Jail. The in-house arrest program averages about 15-20 inmates a day. The current average daily population of the jail is 98.7 as of September 2000’s count. The low count was 78 on one occasion and the high was 123. In January 2000, the State notified the Board of Supervisors that there is an overcrowding problem and suggested they start looking seriously into the situation. Carpenter said they just had an inspection but have not received the report back yet.
Carpenter said in August 600 were booked and in September 689 were booked. He said the daily population average for these 2 months is about the same, meaning arrestees may have been booked but released. With public intoxication cases if the Sheriff’s Department can find someone who can be responsible for that individual they can sign them out. He said that on September 30th about 25-30 were brought in on charges in addition to intoxication. He said something has to lead to that person being arrested and it isn’t unusual for them to also be booked on an assault charge. Carpenter said underage people are only given a citation as long as they are not intoxicated. Last, Carpenter said that the County jail can only take people who are sentenced for a year or under.
Jail Overcrowding Study/Steering/Site Selection Committee Member David Maupin said 12 of 17 applicants were selected for the original Jail Overcrowding Study Committee and it was a good mix of people, male, female, young and old. Maupin said that everyone came onto the Committee with the idea of taking a fresh look at the Jail overcrowding problem to try to figure out what makes the most sense for the County. They looked at the history and future jail headcount, which is projected to be up to 255 inmates by 2013. He said the Committee thought this increase was unbelievable at first until they looked at different facts and figures and realized that people are put into jail for things that they weren’t put in for 20-25 years ago. This includes drunk driving, drugs, and child/spousal abuse. Maupin said that currently the Jail legally holds 55 people and in 13 or 14 years they will need a jail that will hold 255 people. The Committee found that if prisoners aren’t confined in Johnson County jail, they will have to go elsewhere at $65 a day, which amounts to $4 million a year in operating expenses by 2013. The Committee feels Johnson County will be better off to build a jail now and house its own prisoners, rather than transporting prisoners elsewhere.
Maupin said the 2nd task given to the Committee was to select a site for the Jail. He said there are 2 basic alternatives. The 1st is to put the Jail in the middle of town, which requires buying out people and/or condemning property and perhaps getting into a situation where later on the facility couldn’t be expanded. Maupin said the 2nd option is to build the facility outside of the downtown area where there will be space to expand. Maupin said the Committee did not want to make the same mistake again of choosing a site that they wouldn’t be able to expand later, which is why the Melrose site was selected. He said the Committee feels the need to build a bigger jail is a clear issue.
Neumann Monson PC Architects Project Architect Dwight Dobberstein said the County hired Bill Garnos of CSG consultants to study if a new jail is needed and if so, how large. Dobberstein said that Garnos had been a Jail Consultant for 6 years, working for the Department of Corrections in South Dakota prior to that. He said Garnos was well qualified to look at the situation, independently with no ties as to whether the project moved forward or not. Garnos’ report stated that the population in Johnson County has gone up, as well as dramatic increases in bookings and caseloads and so the jail count is up, with a continuing population increase prediction of about 12% a year. Dobberstein said that the increase stems from changes primarily in the laws and other environmental factors that have to be taken into consideration.
Dobberstein presented a graph from Garnos showing the average daily population of the Jail since 1993. The graph details the average population with lows and highs for each month, the total number of beds available and how the population well exceeds the beds available. Garnos also made projections for the population and how big a jail needs to be in the future to meet the population projections. Garnos projected that by the year 2019, there will be 185 inmates in the Jail, which actually reflects a conservative number. He said the ultimate projection for the number of beds is 255 because there needs to be space within the jail to classify and separate inmates. The Garnos report shows the present jail to be very crowded, with no room for expansion of classification areas, and support areas like exercise, laundry and kitchen facilities. Garnos reported that safety becomes a large issue in an overcrowded jail because there is limited viewing into cellblocks, which is a safety concern for both prisoners and staff. Garnos also recommended building a jail on a new site.
Dobberstein said that they were looking at different sites for the jail around the time that the Jail Steering Committee began. Dobberstein said they looked at a number of sites and the ultimate site is on Melrose Avenue, just on the western edge of Iowa City. They looked at a site on the South side of Melrose, as well as sites near the present jail. Dobberstein said the basis for the selection of Melrose is that the site criteria from the National Institute of Corrections lists location as key, size of the site for expansion and flexibility in the future, and land ownership, in which the County does own this site. He said that some other criteria includes the site being open and capable of satisfying correctional design criteria, the site already being zoned for public use, which it is, and accessible to County courts. Dobberstein said this site is strategically located because there is access to Highway 218, I-380 and I-80.
Venture Architects Architect John Cain said the first step in working with the County for this project involved sitting down with the Sheriff’s Department and writing a detailed building program for the facility. He said the outcome of that is a building that is roughly 123,000 gross square feet. The jail makes up about 56%, at nearly 69,000 gross square feet. This includes the 256-bed jail, divided into 3 different pods. Pod A is a 100 bed dormitory facility for minimum security inmates. Pod B is a 60-cell, 100-bed pod, for both medium and maximum security classification inmates and Pod C is a 33-cell, 56-bed special needs unit for high-security inmates and medical, psychologically dependent inmates. There is a booking area where all bookings will take place for inmates that are arrested, including 62 short-term seats for individuals who are not anticipated to be put into the jail, which makes the facility much more staff and operationally efficient. There are also a number of areas for inmate programs and activities, exercise areas, classrooms and visiting.
Cain said there is a work release program that will be a part of this project where a certain number of inmates put on work release status can go out to their job or to class each day and then come back to the jail. There is also facility support for the jail, including administration, food, laundry and staff areas. The Sheriff’s Department, which is about 41,000 square feet or 34% of the building, includes the Sheriff’s Administration area, the different departments for the Sheriff’s Department, including detectives, patrol, communications and records. There are staff training facilities and fleet operations with a garage on-site for 40 department vehicles with 10 spaces for vehicle evidence storage. The remainder of the project, about 13,000 square feet or 10%, includes the building lobby, and a courtroom to allow some cases to be heard at the Jail. There is also space for the Civil Defense Department, building maintenance and facility support, and mechanical spaces as well.
Cain went on to explain that the building design concept has Highway 218 to the northeast. There are gullies surrounding it on 3 sides and the Secondary Roads Department is to the West. The building is sited along a flat area and the public entrance will be along the southeast corner, visible and accessible from Melrose Avenue. There will be parking lots to the east and they are envisioning retaining a lot of the landscaping that exists on the eastside of the property to help screen the facility from both the Highway and the residential areas to the east. The jail is more towards the back of the site so it is less visible and there are trees nearby that section. All of the servicing will occur on the north end of the building and away from the public to the south. The proposed jail would be a 1-story building, with 2 of the housing pods in a 2-story design. Expansion on the Melrose site is possible for all 3 components of the program, with the Sheriff’s Department able to expand to the east, and the jail can be doubled to the west, if necessary, in the next 20-40 years. There is also still site land available if other County departments choose to move to the Melrose location at some point in the future.
Cain explained how the jail pods will look. In a broad sense, the dormitory construction is going to be for minimum classification inmates and the cells are typically for medium and maximum classification. Pod A is a dormitory pod that includes bunk beds and tables. Cain said there is no reason to build cells for every single inmate in the County, which is the reason for the dorm style pod. The cell pod design has the same concept of the radial design where the officer is able to see directly into all areas. The concept behind this is to increase staff efficiency and to improve safety and security, not only for the inmates but also for the staff. The current jail is linear, with corridors, dayrooms and cells, making it impossible for officers to see everything going on. Cain said that in a podular design, it is much more possible for a single officer to be able to see everything that is going on in a 360-degree circle. There are windows looking into the cells, they are double bunked, there are toilets in these and showers off to the side.
Cain said the bottom line for the preliminary budget for the project is $20,282,000 which is for everything, including the construction of the project and soft costs. Site development is budgeted at $450,000. The building construction budget is $16,086,000 and when broken down the jail is $11,240,000, the Sheriff’s Department is $4,052,000, and the other areas are $794,000, totaling the $16 million. The total construction budget is $16,536,000. Other related costs, or soft costs, are at $3,746,000.
Springsted Associates Assistant Vice President Tony Roetlin said the company he works for helps cities and counties in Iowa and other mid-western states work through financial decisions. He said he is going to talk about financial realities and one of those is that prisoners need to be put somewhere. He said the County will be facing transporting and housing elsewhere for a significant amount of inmates given the current and projected prison population. Roetlin said this will result in annual costs of $700,000-$1 million the 1st year and escalating thereafter. He said they probably would not be looking at shipping prisoners to a neighboring county because most of these have their own version of this problem, making the cost estimate of transporting conservative. Roetlin said that by the 10th year the estimate is accumulated at $15 million, which is also a conservative number. Those numbers translate into $16 per household cost per year for a household in Johnson County with a market value of $100,000. He said Countywide, regardless of where that household is, every $100,000 increment of residential value will pay $16 to transport prisoners. He said this number quickly raises to about $35 and this is an annual cost.
Roetlin said the Board of Supervisors hired him and his firm to look into the financing options and what types of borrowing and use of funds on hand can be utilized to finance a facility like this. He said there is no provision in the Iowa State Statutes that govern County finance that facilitates financing a project this large with cash on hand or with regular tax revenues. The 2 options that the Board of Supervisors explicitly and implicitly chose on August 24th, by a unanimous vote, were general obligation bonds and funds on hand in the Capital Projects Fund. A $19 million General Obligation bond issue was placed on the ballot for November 7th to finance the bulk of a project not to exceed $20.3 million. He said that $1.3 million difference, by not borrowing it, the Board of Supervisors save County taxpayers about $2 million over the total cost of the financing. He said this calculates out to about $40 for the $100,000 market value household. He said the impact of the $19 million borrowing would be $29 for the $100,000 market value household in the County. He said there are 2 points that he feels inspire confidence in the way that the Iowa State Statute works with regard to a project like this and in the way that the Board of Supervisors of Johnson County is utilizing these statutes via the decisions they have made. He said these are the cap on project spending and the potential uses for buying proceeds. The total cost of the project can’t exceed $20.3 million. This number is on the ballot as a ceiling for the project and any expenditure in excess of $20.3 million would need to be voted by a Countywide election. With regard to the use of bond proceeds, the federal taxpayer and the state statutes in Iowa restrict the use of these monies, the $19 million, to this project. Roetlin said that if this project comes in under budget, the monies cannot just go towards another fund like renovating the Courthouse or improving County roads, although the funds could be used to reduce the total cost of the borrowing by repaying bonds early and saving on interest costs.
Roetlin said there are 2 sources of revenue that don’t get talked about a lot and one is that what space is not utilized in the new facility could be rented out to other counties and jurisdictions that need bed space. He said a plan that utilizes that component is very fiscally responsible in terms of potentially repaying bonds early, saving interest costs for Johnson County taxpayers and utilizing a project in the best way possible from a financial perspective. He said the existing facility is another topic that doesn’t get talked a lot about. The existing facility could be used to alleviate space needs elsewhere in County government without even selling it, thus saving money on that particular space needs acquisition. He said another potential utilization is selling it.
Charles Major asked if the bond issue doesn’t pass, where is the Board of Supervisors going to get the money to transport prisoners, and if the Board would take some of that money from Social Services. Stutsman said the Board will be starting the budget process in the near future and they will know at that point in time whether the bond issue passed or not. Stutsman said this will affect Human Services and other budgeted items because they are going to have to pay for transporting. Stutsman said it will be up to the Board to decide how they are going to do that within the budget process. Thompson said the money for the bond issue will come from additional taxes and the money to pay for the transporting of prisoners would have to come out of the current budget. Jordahl said the Board of Supervisors does have a capital projects fund that is money set aside for space needs which could be used for transporting prisoners. Jordahl said that 1.5 million is in that fund. Major asked if the Melrose Site is a good site. Dobberstein said it was the best site they found, although they have no information yet on the soil conditions. Stutsman said it has natural buffers which are appealing. Dobberstein said the jail will have a low impact on neighbors at this site. Major said he is in support of the jail.
Tim Ruth asked if the bond passes, what is the estimated interest gained on the moneys from the time the bonds are sold until the project is paid out and complete. He asked if this will be included in the project or if they will set a cap. Roetlin said they can utilize those funds to pay project costs within the 20.3. Roetlin said they are also allowed to earn what the bonds are costing. Ruth commended the Board for their work on the Jail project.
Carpenter asked Roetlin to give a quote as to what the bond issue will cost. Roetlin said it depends on the interest rate and the amount of money borrowed. Roetlin said a ballpark figure would be 35 million dollars if the bond issue is a 20 year all term level debt service issue, mean just like a mortgage, where the payments are the same every year. Roetlin said there are different payment structures they could choose to save money.
Harney asked what the capacity of the waiting area is. Cain said 62. Terrence Neuzil said the jail is an important issue because it affects everyone in the county, so it is disappointing that more members of the public aren’t in attendance at the meetings. Neuzil asked what the County’s responsibility is if the Jail bond issue fails. Carpenter said he imagines if the bond issue fails, the State will tell them that they have to start transporting prisoners.
Stutsman thanked everyone for attending the meeting. She said there will also be 2 other similar meetings, on October 17th, at 3:30 at Montgomery Hall and at 7 p.m. at the North Liberty Recreation Center. She said the plan is to inform voters about this issue as much as they can and these meetings will present opportunities for voters to ask questions or gain additional information.
Adjourned at 8:25 p.m.
Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor
By Casie Parkins, Recording Secretary