• Sheriff Robert Carpenter: Presentation of Daily Inmate Counts and State Requirements
• Jail Overcrowding Study/Steering/Site Selection Committee Chair Pete Hayek: Report and Recommendations
• Neumann Monson PC Architects Project Architect Dwight Dobberstein, and Venture Architects Architect John Cain: Review of Proposed Law Enforcement Center and Site
• Springsted Associates Assistant Vice President Tony Roetlin: Review of Financing for Proposed Law Enforcement Center
• Inquiries

Chairperson Stutsman called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in Montgomery Hall, Johnson County Fairgrounds, Iowa City, Iowa, at 3:35 p.m. Members present were: Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson; absent: Charles Duffy.

Sheriff Bob Carpenter said the rules in place when the Jail was built allowed one individual per cell, but changes in the regulations allowed double bunking, beginning in 1990, taking their capacity to 92 instead of the original intake of 46. No additional space was actually added and the support facilities were still sized for 46 inmates. He said to operate a jail they need room to segregate certain types of inmates, citing the separation of male and female prisoners. He noted that there could be beds in cell blocks which can’t be used due to the need for separation. There also is the need to separate prisoners who can’t get along and divide prisoners into minimum, medium, and maximum security classifications. Prisoners with health problems must also be separated. Carpenter said the Jail housed an average of 98.1 for September and for August the average was 98.6. Sheriff Carpenter explained they were able to do this because last year they began a program of in-house detention, where work release inmates are given bracelets and allowed to serve their time at night at home rather than in the Jail, if approved by a judge. The in-house detention program averages about 15-20 inmates a day. Without this program, this would bring the count up to 115-120 per day, which require transporting prisoners. Carpenter said the State recently rechecked the Jail and re-approved the 92 bunk capacity. He said the State doesn’t want the liability of having someone hurt or killed due to running over capacity. He indicated he would probably stop that before it gets to that point because he is concerned about his deputies putting their lives in jeopardy and is also concerned about the inmates. He noted his responsibility and the County’s responsibility if he releases a prisoner who is intoxicated who gets killed or gets behind the wheel of a car and kills someone else.

Carpenter said in 1986 Sheriff Hughes spoke to a Grand Jury about the overcrowding problem and he talked to the grand jury in 1989 and started talking to the Board about it. He said the only option they have been able to come up with since the double-bunking to help with overcrowding was in-house detention. He said the Space Needs Committee began meeting in 1998 and placed the Jail at the top of the list of priorities. He noted Bill Garnos spent about a year working on a study for the Jail. He reviewed the process by which a Jail Study committee was appointed, indicating the diverse backgrounds of the Committee members. He said Garnos’ conclusion was that they would need to build a new facility that could house 255 people in 20 years, including within that a capability to segregate certain prisoners.

Carpenter recapped the ongoing nature of this problem. He said the County will probably be shipping prisoners before too long in order to ensure the safety of the prisoners and his officers.

Jail Overcrowding Study/Steering/Site Selection Committee Member Pete Hayek said 12 applicants were selected for the original Jail Overcrowding Study Committee. They had decided to limit the period of study to 4 months. They met regularly every 2 weeks until they came up with a recommendation for the Board in late January or February. He commented on the various interests and backgrounds of Committee members. They consulted with judges, probation and corrections staff, and consultants hired by the County. Hayek said the overcrowding problem is based primarily on the fact that more laws are being passed requiring mandatory sentences, such as sentencing on drug use and certain alcohol offenses. He mentioned the movement in the legislature to reduce blood alcohol limits from .1 to .08, with Congress using road funding as an incentive. He noted that these trends were in spite of the fact that Johnson County public opinion is leaning toward decriminalization of non-violent crime. He said the Sheriff can not control what crimes are prosecuted. He commented that the County has no influence over arrests made through the Iowa City Police Department. He noted the liability issues with releasing intoxicated people. He said the probation and parole policy for former prisoners of state institutions results in increasing incarcerations when parolees drawn by Johnson County programs break the terms of parole. Hayek said the Committee agreed with the recommendation of consultant Bill Garnos to build a new jail. Hayek said the University’s presence in the area surrounding the current location of the jail prevents expansion. The University has expressed in writing an unwillingness to sell the land to the north of the existing Jail. He indicated there are tremendous costs to expand the current Jail upward. He said the proposed location is owned by the County, eliminating site acquisition costs, and allows room for expansion. The Committee projected that the County will spend more money moving and housing prisoners outside of the County than it will with the bond.

Neumann Monson PC Architects Project Architect Dwight Dobberstein said that, in 1997, Neumann Monson had been consulted regarding County space needs and had immediately seen the Jail as overshadowing any other space needs. He said that in 1998, Neumann Monson made a presentation to the Board concerning jail overcrowding. In the evaluation of the Jail, it was determined that the structure would not allow for vertical expansion. They recommended hiring a criminal justice consultant who was not an architect and would not be tied to any future contract work. A request for proposals was issued and the County hired Bill Garnos of CSG Consultants to do a study. Dobberstein said that Garnos had worked for the South Dakota Department of Corrections, working with the Governor’s staff. Dobberstein said Garnos had experience looking at alternatives to incarceration. Dobberstein reviewed the discussions held with Garnos, including jail reduction strategies used in other locations. He cited examples where court processing was changed, drug programs expanded, and private contractors were hired.

Garnos’ report gave the conclusion that a new jail should be built. Dobberstein presented a graph from Garnos showing the average daily population of the Jail since 1981. Garnos projected the trend in the jail population to the year 2019, based on the period 1981-1999 and based on 1993-1999. Garnos recommended using the midpoint of those 2 projections, which is 185 inmates in 2019. He multiplied that number by a classification factor of 10%, which takes into consideration classification issues, such as the need to separate men from women and prisoners with medical problems. The number is also multiplied by a peaking factor of 25% to take into account days with a big influx of inmates. With the factors applied, the projection for the number of beds required in the year 2019 is 255. Based on the findings by Garnos, Dobberstein said the Committee projected a cost of $20 Million.

Dobberstein said the Committee went through a site selection process and the site selected is on the western edge of Iowa City, right on Highway 218 and not far south of I-80. Dobberstein said there were several reasons for the selection of this site, including accessibility to the entire county for the Sheriff’s Department. The 8-minute travel time to the Courthouse was deemed accessible. It has utilities to it. It is also clear of neighbors being close around it. He said Venture Architects was hired for the project design, introducing John Cain.

Venture Architects Principal John Cain said the first step in working with the County on this project involved sitting down with the Sheriff’s Department and writing a detailed building program for the facility. Next a conceptual design was developed to make the building 3-dimensional. The third step was to develop construction cost budgets, as well as project budgets. He said the proposed building is 122,988 gross square feet, which is made up of 3 pieces. The jail makes up about 56% of the total building size, at 68,818 gross square feet. The Sheriff’s Department is about 41,300 gross square feet or 34% of the building. The remainder of the building, about 13,000 square feet or 10%, includes the building lobby, a courtroom, Civil Defense Department, and the maintenance/mechanical equipment spaces. The jail is made up of 2 broad areas, the housing portion and the support area. The proposed jail has 255 beds in 3 different pods. Pod A is a 100-bed dormitory having large rooms with bunk beds for minimum security inmates. Pod B is a 100-bed pod having cells for medium/maximum classification inmates. Pod C is a 55 or 56-bed pod with cell construction for high security/mental health, special needs inmates. The Sheriff’s Department includes the administration area and the different departments within the Sheriff’s Department, including detectives, patrol, communications, and records. There are staff training facilities and a garage for department vehicles and for evidence storage.

Cain went on to review the site plan of the proposed law enforcement center, located north of Melrose Avenue and southwest of Highway 218. He explained there would be visual screening on the east. Cain noted on the plan of the building the Sheriff’s Department, the jail housing area, and the jail support area, all one story except for 2 pods a 2-story design. The main entrance will be on the south side, visible from Melrose Avenue, with public parking nearby. Staff and visitor parking would be east and north of the building. Service activities would be at the back of the building. The sally port for bringing prisoners in and out would be on the east side. Cain explained how the building is designed to be able to expand in the future. He said the need to expand was one reason the downtown location was not selected. The proposed jail could expand to the west and Sheriff’s Department could expand to the east.

Cain showed an example of a pod design. He said this design is different from the linear design of jails such as the current Johnson County facility, built around a corridor. He noted the difficulty in viewing the prisoners in a linear design. Cain said the podular design allows an officer in the center to see 360-degrees into smaller segments of the housing unit. This configuration allows classification of inmates and separation by gender and security classifications. The examples shown were from a jail in Wisconsin. The first example would be like Pod A, for minimum classification inmates. Cain showed an example like Pod B or Pod C, using a podular maximum security construction.

Cain broke down the project costs. The total project budget estimate is $20,282,000. The total construction budget for the building is $16,536,000, consisting of 2 pieces, site development at $450,000 and building construction at $16,086,000. There are other associated costs at $3,746,000.

Springsted Associates Assistant Vice President Tony Roetlin said his firm helps evaluate financial and funding options. He began by noting that Johnson County may in the near future face transporting approximately 20 prisoners and housing them elsewhere. Roetlin said this would result in annual costs of approximately $600,000 the first year, rising each year. He added this is a preliminary estimate using a $65 per day housing cost per day with no transportation costs, but the cost could be $65 to $90. He noted an ISU study estimated a $10 cost for transportation to neighboring counties. He said they are probably looking at $700,000 to $1,000,000 a year in the near future, not including administrative costs. Those numbers translate early on into a $16 cost per year for a household in Johnson County with a home having a market value of $100,000. He said this number quickly raises to about $35 as an annual cost.

Roetlin said the Board of Supervisors hired his firm to help them evaluate funding options, which led to an August 24th unanimous vote of the Board to put a question on the ballot for the General Election. 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 the $1.3 million difference will come out of capital projects funds that are not borrowed. He said general obligation bonds are the lowest interest cost mechanism available for funding this type of government project. The $ 1.3 Million not borrowed would save County taxpayers about $2 million over the next 15-20 years. He said this calculates out to about $40 in savings for the $100,000 market value home. He said the impact of the $19 million in general obligation bonds would be $29 for the $100,000 market value home anywhere in the county. He said there are 2 points that he feels inspire a level of confidence in this type of project that result from the method in which it is being financed. He said under Iowa Code the total cost of the project can’t exceed the $20.3 million on the ballot without another countywide election. Under Iowa Code, the $19 million bond proceeds for this project may not be diverted to any other project. Roetlin said, if this project comes in under budget, the funds could be used to pay down part of the interest costs.

Roetlin said there are 2 sources of revenue or sources of resources that could be used for this project. One is that space not utilized in the early years in the new facility could be rented out to other counties and jurisdictions that need bed space. The existing facility could be used to alleviate space needs elsewhere in County government, alleviating the need to rent or purchase other property. He said another possibility would be selling the current Jail property.

Roetlin distributed a chart on daily operational costs. He noted the 2 bars labeled "Current jail with housing and transportation costs". He said the bar showing a daily cost of $63 is the cost of securing each bed or each slot into which the County can place an inmate with the present facility (at a double bunking capacity of 92) in conjunction with renting or contracting for 20 additional beds out-of-county (based on a guideline from the Department of Corrections early in the process). This is a cost per unit of capacity or bed. The next column, showing $76 per inmate, is the cost per Johnson County inmate that will result from continuing to use the existing facility and contracting for some additional capacity outside the county. He said the cost per inmate takes into account empty beds for a peaking factor at the jail. The 3rd column, labeled Proposed new jail and showing a cost of $43 per day, is a maximum capacity cost of operating the facility at a per bed basis. He said the County will be able to rent out beds to other jurisdictions in the early years. Revenue in the first year could be in excess of $2 million. He said this revenue could be used to offset new operating costs and to pay down some of the debt. He estimated there could be $4,700,000 saved on the bond issue by applying this revenue.

Carol Spaziani inquired about the placement of juvenile offenders. Thompson said they could not house juveniles within sight or sound of adult prisoners and they probably shouldn’t even be on the same site. Carpenter said juveniles require programs that are expensive to run. Carpenter said the Juvenile budget pays for his department to transport juveniles. Jordahl said there wasn’t enough need for juvenile detention in Johnson County to build their own institution. Lehman equated Johnson County renting space in a new jail to Linn County renting space in their juvenile facility to other counties.

Myron Smalley mentioned that Washington County is spending $96 a day to transport and house 22 prisoners and asked if that is a reasonable figure for Johnson County. Carpenter said it is, and the cost also depends on the proximity of the receiving county. He mentioned that other counties in Iowa are transporting prisoners out of state. Smalley asked what would happen of a prisoner’s sentence lasted for more than a year. Carpenter said that they would be transferred to a state institution, although the process of transfer could be slow. He said that the Legislature was considering permitting a maximum of 2-year sentence for prisoners in county jails. Smalley asked about a separate space for overnighters. Carpenter responded that there would be a holding area in the processing area separate from the general population. Smalley queried whether the possible new location will improve response time for rural areas of Johnson County. Carpenter responded that it will. Smalley asked Jordahl why it had taken so long to get the issue on the ballot. Jordahl said that were not willing to have a special election. They found it to be a more urgent issue after communication from the State Jail Inspector. Carpenter said they had found a loophole to put off having to build a new facility. Jordahl said that the present jail had been built in 1981 and the public wasn’t ready to accept a bond issue for a new jail after just a few years.

Michael Katchee asked about the cost of the present jail and length of the bond issue. Carpenter responded that it was $2.8 million, which was originally slated for 20 years but was paid off in 8 years. Katchee said that generally every government building is rebuilt in 20 years and new property after a bond issue is paid off doesn’t contribute to paying off the costs. Katchee asked about the operating costs of the new jail and occupancy of beds. Roetlin said there would be empty beds on some nights to allow room on the busiest nights. Jordahl said that it is in the County's best interest to rent space. Katchee said that he didn’t think that government was allowed to make a profit. Jordahl said that renting space helped defray the cost of operation. Katchee asked how the taxpayer benefits. Jordahl said that taxes would not need to cover all the operating costs of the jail and the cost per prisoner would not be higher. He said revenue beyond operating costs would be used to reduce the bond issue. Roetlin discussed using revenue to reduce the levy to pay the bonds and the possibility of retiring bonds early. He said renting the extra room would be a way finance the proper size of the facility to meet future needs. Carpenter discussed the lack of jail space in other counties in Iowa.

Spaziani asked what percentage of current prisoners were mentally ill. Carpenter said hopefully none were. He said that if a prisoner appeared to require treatment, he was taken to the hospital. The only reason they would take one back is if the hospital would not accept them. He said that the new jail will have a special needs pod. Cain said there would be special cells for isolation if there were any prisoners with contagious diseases. Carpenter said they are negotiating for a physician’s assistant from the University to work with prisoners and they want to have a nurse on staff. Spaziani asked if there will be a library in the jail. Carpenter said that they plan to have a library and to continue the contract with the Iowa City Public Library. Cain said that inmates can check out books and legal documents from a library storage area and spend time in multipurpose areas. Carpenter said they’ve yet to see exactly how operations will run. Spaziani asked about staffing time for escorting prisoners to and from multipurpose areas. Cain said that some of the multipurpose areas may be located inside well-observed pods. Spaziani encouraged planning for the mentally ill and to put priority on services for inmates. Carpenter said his staff is very conscientious about the mental ill and those with special needs and will continue to do so in the new facility.

Smalley asked if the taxpayers’ dollars would be saved if the County remodeled the old jail for use by another County department. Jordahl said that the Board was looking into the land value of the land. Dobberstein said they haven’t looked at the cost of remodeling the old jail for another department. He said they would need to work around specific physical features of the building, like bearing walls. Smalley asked how potential use of the building compared to monthly rental per square foot. Lehman said that they hadn’t attempted to sell the building because no one would put a figure on the table. Smalley inquired about the Iowa City Police Department’s degree of responsibility for jail overcrowding. Carpenter said that false statistics are being published and that intoxicated students weren’t the cause of overcrowding. Jordahl said that intox charges run between 5 and 10% of the jail population. He agreed with Carpenter that most alcohol charges were associated with other causes for arrest. Carpenter said that the statistics didn’t include people who had been bonded out. Jordahl said 57% of arrests in Iowa City made in October and September were cited and released. He said that some statistics said that Iowa City was paying 60% of the taxes but had 49% of the inmates. Carpenter said that Coralville had 10% of inmates and 21% of the cost.

Adjourned at 5:50 p.m.

Attest: Tom Slockett, Auditor

By Rachel Deierling, Recording Secretary