Reconvened on September 3, 1998 at 9:43 a.m.
Bolkcom: We're at item a), number a business from Bob Carpenter, Johnson County Sheriff and Dwight Doberstein, the project architect for Neumann Monson Architects, regarding the space needs at the jail. Maybe a little bit of background and Sally and Charlie, feel free to jump in. The County is engaged in a review of its space needs and has been working on kind of a working committee with Supervisor Stutsman and Duffy.
Stutsman: Pat's also on that Committee.
Bolkcom: Pat's also. There's a number of other staff. They're looking at a variety of space issues that exist in the County in administration area, in Public Health, Department of Human Services, of course the Jail, Courthouse. I think it...
Stutsman: Ambulance.
Bolkcom: I think it covers everything. We're here this morning to basically get an update to the Board, and frankly to members of the public that might be viewing this about some concerns we have about space at the jail. Good morning.
Stutsman: Good morning.
County Sheriff Robert Carpenter: Good morning. Like you said Joe we're to try to let the full Board know kind of on what's been happening here. About a year ago the Space Needs Committee started meeting. Dwight and his folks I think went to all of the departments in the County to take a look at all of the buildings and our needs. Today is maybe our turn in the barrel to kind of let the Board know what the results were from those. As to where we're maybe headed and what the County should be looking forward to in the future here as far as moneys that are going to need to be spent or saved. That's a (inaudible) problem. I haven't... I'll have to apologize to Dwight and the Board we've been fairly busy here lately and I didn't get some of the figures to Dwight until probably yesterday. I know he's been under the gun to try to prepare a full report for you. I think the figures he got yesterday were something we could kind of go into the future with in a little bit. I know when the facility was originally built it was projected for a 20 year building. At the end of 9 years we were overflowing to the point where we had to do something and we were able to meet guidelines by double bunking cell blocs which over the last several years we have done in order to keep up with our demands. We're to the point now where we can't do that any longer. One of the things that compounds the problem is that it's our belief anyway and I'm not sure that I would hold up yet, but if we would add on or construct any new construction on our facility would automatically revert back to the old code. Basically we would have to start taking the double bunking out, so therefore we would be in the hole already right to start with. We're looking at kind of a major problem, that's looking us in the face. It's a situation that's come up, I think we've got a little time to work with it, but it's something in the next several years we're going to run out of time unless we start working on it right now or at least planning for it ahead of time. That's kind of what Dwight's... I'm going to let him talk about what he's found out and what his thinking is of where we should go from here.
Bolkcom: Great, thanks.
Neumann Monson Architects Project Architect Dwight Doberstein : OK, that's kind of a good overview. We've prepared some more information for you in this packet that I've handed out. I'd like to go through it with you. The first page is the meeting minutes from our tour back in January. Just to highlight a few of those things, as Bob said the jail was designed for 46 single cell and now it's double bunked. The average jail term is approximately 30 days and the jail can house people up to one year. Then if over one year they go to a State facility. There's been some talk about that being extended to 2 years which could dramatically affect the population at the jail. So that's something to watch at the State level. Currently, there are no juvenile offenders housed at the jail, they're all taken to Linn County. They also have a big need for storage. They have boats, trailers, snowmobiles, water rescue equipment, trucks; that are all stored off site, most of them at the Johnson County Storage Building. But none of that stuff is at the jail, they hardly have room for storage of their own files, let alone all of that equipment.
Lacina: I should jump in, the juveniles that we are detaining out of County, it's not by choice it's because of Federal regulations we can not detain them in the County. Is that correct?
Carpenter: That's correct.
Lacina: It sounded like we were just opting to...
Carpenter: Let's put it this way, our facility is not set up to house them.
Lacina: Juveniles, right.
Doberstein: In general, our tour discovered that the department has outgrown their office space, their conference room, storage rooms, their jail cells, there's a limited visitation area, the kitchen can't keep up, and the laundry facilities are very small. They'd like to expand into video conferencing so they don't have to take so many trips back and forth from the jail to the courthouse. Presently they take any where 10 to 20 runs per day. If there was space they could maybe set up some video conferencing and cut down on some of that time requirement. Another issue is the increase in women prisoners, it's grown dramatically. I think now they're up to about 10% of the prisoners are women, where as when the jail was designed it was less than half of that. They all have to be separate from the men, so that puts additional strain on the number of cells that are available for men. Then we have a number of statistics, the one that I mentioned in these minutes was the fact that jail bookings have increased dramatically from 1982 to 1996 they've gone up 71%. What you see following here is statistical data that kind of supports what we've just told you. Population of Johnson County is growing at about 12% per year and that doesn't seem to be letting up, maybe increasing. Serious crimes, the next chart, are also growing. You see this is broken down into property crimes and violent crimes, but the total number of crimes is growing. If we're to plan for the future jail, we're looking maybe 10 years ahead at least, you can see that shortly it's almost going to double from the time in 1994 up to the year 2000. So the number of crimes has increased. The next chart shows the juvenile crime, we've only had 3 years there, but the projection there would be that it would continue to grow also. The next chart shows the calls for department service, Sheriff's calls, and as you see between 1993 and '97 they're going up at a rate that would double the number of calls by the year 2005. So those are putting additional demands on the Sheriff's department. The next graph is the one I mentioned earlier, the bookings, that's been the most depressive to me. Bookings since 1982 up to 1998, you can see this dramatic increase, a 71% increase and if that continues it's going to go off the chart here in the next 10 years. What this all led us to was the information we were able to get yesterday, as Bob referred to, (inaudible) the County jail population, the daily jail population and that's what we're really after to find out how many beds they're needing. The chart shows the average number of beds, a typical month in each of these years. We just picked one month per year, so we didn't look at every month, and just charted what the average was for month, and what the peak was to see how the jail was keeping up. As you can see, this was charted from '89 to '98 and the average has increased so that in '98 we're up over an average of 80 beds used daily. There's a total of 92 beds available. The peak, which in any given month there may be one day that has quite a bit more need for beds, the peak has already gone above their available beds. In 1998 we've crossed the threshold, so to speak, so that their peak this year has been up in the 100 bed range, and they only have 92. So what they've been doing is putting foam rubber down on floors in the day rooms and that's where the inmates sleep. This is useful information to project what size of facility we would need to design for the future. I guess the big question is do we look at the whole range of numbers over maybe a period of 1992 to '98 and project out 10 years. That would indicate we might need 140 beds in 10 years time. Or is there some trend that's happening here in the last 3 years that would show that we would need a lot more. If you project the last 3 years up, you're going to need 200 beds in less than 10 years. That is a question that I don't know that we can answer without a little more study of laws and the way that the justice system is proceeding. There's obviously been a drastic increase over the last 3 years and if that continues then the need is much greater than if you look at the overall last 10 years and how much it's increased. I guess the conservative approach here would say that you need at least 140 beds. Then the question as Bob brought up, if you're going to start to remodel or add on then do we have to bring the existing facility up to code and add an additional 46 cells just to house the people we have right now. Initial indications from the Department of Corrections is that, yes they would require us to bring up the existing into Code. I guess that's a question that we still are unsure about because I think it's happening all over the country that people are starting to double bunk because there's no other options. Whether they let us keep doing that or not I guess is something that we haven't quite addressed, but there initial reaction was that, yes they would like to see us bring it up to code. This next page is our space analysis that's like this. This is primarily based on the existing facility. If we were to keep the status quo as to the type of jail it is and expansion we would need, what type of spaces do they need right now. Not to go through all of this, but the bottom line would show that we would need approximately 63,000 square feet, almost 64,000 square feet, and we have the existing jail 26,463 square feet. There's an additional need of about 36,000 square feet. This chart, this data is based on replacing and bringing the existing jail up to code. If we could get by with the double bunking, we could obviously cut this back by approximately 15,000 square feet so that the need wouldn't be as great.
Lacina: So you're saying a second facility?
Doberstein: Or an add on.
Lacina: Keep one place and...
Doberstein: Whatever. If we were to add on that's the space we would need, 36,000 square feet or a new facility would need 63,000. If you were to abandon what you have now.
Bolkcom: Dwight, when you talk about moving... The projections for 10 years are 146 beds, does that include getting rid of double bunking or we would add another 46 to that number if we were told to get rid of double bunking, it would be more like 200 beds total facility?
Doberstein: What you need is the 140.
Bolkcom: 140.
Doberstein: And you have either, depending on how you look at, either 46 now or 92 if you double bunk it.
Bolkcom: So if we said we have 92 now, we'd need another 50?
Doberstein: Approximately 50, yes. The present site would fit 50 additional cells. There is expansion capability within that site and that could fit 50 cells or 50 bunks. I guess the question is, is that where we want to proceed. That would be assuming that you just extended what the status quo was just 2 stories extended to the north and to the south.
Jordahl: If I understand this discussion up to this point correctly, 50 cells would do nothing but keep us where we are already because we'd have to quit double bunking. We wouldn't gain anything, we'd spend a lot of money and gain no space essentially.
Doberstein: Right.
Jordahl: Right? So when we're talking about... if we're talking about 200 beds, we're talking about really tripling the size of the current facility. Well actually it would be 4 times as big as it is now, we'd need 150% more is what those charts say to me.
Doberstein: Right.
Carpenter: One of the problems is that when this facility was built, it wasn't built in such a way that we could go up and it really creates a problem for us. We're assuming that it was probably because of the cost of the foundations and stuff at the time. If I remember right it was a nip and tuck deal to even get the facility we got at that time. Needless to say the problem was it was projected for 20 years and it lasted 10. I think at our Space Needs Committee meetings we've been finding that that's not uncommon that things that were projected for 20 years ago aren't lasting that long. I think that's a need that we need to look at when we start projecting into the future is to make sure we do last that long because the expense now is a lot greater than it was 20 years ago to build it.
Jordahl: Uh-huh.
Carpenter: The other thing is too that by adding on to the building we're losing a lot of parking. Although I feel that we should move toward trying to expand at the present location (inaudible) the most feasible way and I think it probably will be in the end. But there again it's a projection on figures are building on or completely going to a different location may change that price too. But we're convenient with the Courthouse there. I would rather see us try to extend on to the present facility if that's at all possible. Hopefully that would be the cheapest, but Dwight you have a lot better idea on that than I do. The other thing on the present facility is that it would appear that on our daily population count in for August was 83.8 was our daily average. It's kind of deceiving in the way because not only have the differential between the male and female, we do have differential areas where we keep the different types of crimes that are committed... For instance, we've got a maximum, a minimum, and a... For instance drunk driving where someone was sentenced for drunk driving, they're not housed in the same cell blocs as those that are waiting charges on assault charges, murder charges or anything like that. We do have to keep a certain number of cells open that way in each bloc or they don't meet the criteria to fit into that particular bloc so it could be a problem. Saturday night coming up, of course that only happens 5 or 6 times a year, we'll be way over the 100 mark I'm sure. It's first home football game this year and it's not unusual for Friday and Saturday to bring in 40 or 50 people for intox and that type of thing. They have to sleep on the... The State looks at that as OK, if it's a temporary type fix to sleep them on the mattress on the floor, it's just an overnight type thing. They really don't get onto us until they see us continually on a daily average up over 100 bunking (inaudible). We ran into that in '92, we were ordered that we were going to have to start transporting other prisoners to other areas for housing because of the overpopulation. Right now the going rates probably around $60 a day to house those inmates if you can find a place to take them. I know that Polk County is going all the way to Scott County because they can't house them. We're all right right now, but I think it's gone past the time we need to start really thinking about what we're going to do because jails are very expensive whether you're adding on or rebuilding it. There's no question in my mind the County can't save the amount of money in the next 3 or 4 years it's going to take to build this facility. I think the taxpayers need to know up front what our problems are. I think that we've done a good job in taking care of our facility since it was new. The structure itself, other than the fact that when we get a hard rain we flood, the roof was a poor design on the one we've got now. We have a real major problem because it's a flat roof and it's rocked over and it leaks all over. The other day we got a tremendous amount of problems on the roof. It's a nice building and it's been well taken care of as far as I'm concerned and I'd like to see us be able to stay there if it's at all economically feasible.
Stutsman: A couple things that I wanted to mention, is that I wanted to stress that we are able to keep up right now. I think we're just talking about what's down the road. Part of what may be down the road is that if we reach capacity then we're going to have to start paying to house prisoners elsewhere and that get into a terrible expense. So it becomes a balancing act. It's always a lot less expensive to keep them here at home and house them here than to pay to take them someplace else, not to mention the staff the time to transport prisoners out of county or whatever. The other thing is that we talk about the changes a lot has to do with the changes in the population, we are a growing county, and the changes in society, we're seeing more crime. But the other big change is the changes with the legislature and what they're doing as far as requiring more for local law enforcement as far as housing prisoners and things. I'm sure you can attest that we're keeping prisoners that we never were required to do before. Then if they change the legislation and talk about housing for 2 years instead of one year, that's going to put additional stress. So all of these have an impact on what's going on at the local level.
Bolkcom: What is the nature of... The increase is dramatic, I mean the rate of increase of how many people we're putting in jail. What's the nature of that...
Carpenter: See I've been working...
Bolkcom: ...is it substance abuse? Is it...
Carpenter: I was thinking of that too and I was kind of looking over at Pat to kind of see if he could... One thing I think that's happening, I think we're seeing more domestics reported, child abuse. I think those are some of the things that I can think of in the last few years that have... You see more of those cases coming forward where we're seeing 30 or 60 day sentences that type of thing than what we were seeing 10 years ago or 12 years ago. I know that when I was a detective it seemed like most of my cases that I worked at that point in time were burglaries and thefts those types of cases. But now you see so many more domestic abuse cases, you see child abuse cases, sexual abuse cases. Those kind of take the floor forefront, you don't have as many burglaries although you still have the forgeries, the burglaries those types of offenses, but it seems like those have come to the forefront. I think they're being reported more than what they used to be. I know Pat... Probably if you take a look at Pat's chart if he had one, I'm sure he probably does somewhere, you'd see that his prosecution cases, you can see that there's more a trend to... Probably the public parallels with this.
Bolkcom: I would think that.
Carpenter: Well it would have to because they don't get there unless they're going to court. I think there's just some of the changes that we're seeing and population is also... I agree with what Sally said in what I... I don't want to be misleading, I think we're OK today, but this could very well... We're in trouble, we're in trouble, I don't want to make light of that because I think we could very easily, maybe 2 or 3 years down the road we're in trouble we could be transporting. Because who knows what the next year's going to bring, but... It's going to be so much money that I think that this isn't something that we're going to be able to operate or act on immediately. I think there's going to have to be some very serious planning taking place. I know that right now the Space Needs Committee has taken a look at all of the projects for the County. I think this is kind of number 2 on that list, but I think it's something that needs serious attention. I can't forecast what's going to happen in 5 years any more than anybody else can, but I really think that in the next year or 2 we've really got to have to be serious about (inaudible).
Lacina: We dodged a bullet last year. It was intentioned legislation which was for mandatory arrest for runaways. The idea being to empower parents to get control of some of the kids. But the individual housing the runaway as well as the runaway, the proposal was to arrest them. In the event that that would have occurred with the University here and the kids that are in and out of this town, we would have had a serious problem for juvenile, obviously not the impact on the jail, but just... That together with an attitude to try to get tough on crime, I don't think the legislature is going to make legislation which puts more criminals back out on the street. The intent is to become a little tougher. The mandatory reporting for educators and that probably increased our loads as you said. There's certain pieces of legislation, while the events were occurring, now we're identifying them, dealing with it. One of the things we're seeing from 6th Judicial District is a surprising increase in our revenues because of mandatory Federal parolees that we're being given. That we're doing residential care for them, they're dumping them out of the penitentiaries down on us. Some of those will be successful, some of those you're going to see in the County jail until their parole is revoked and they go back to the penitentiary. But there's a move to shed programs down to lower levels and of course we're at the bottom of the rung. We're the ones that are going to have to...
Carpenter: We've been fairly fortunate here that we've gotten by as long as we have because Linn County and Polk County are both good examples of what's happened. I guess we can't take all the fault for projecting low because both of those facilities in those counties, the jails were built well after ours and they're overcrowded already too. We're not the only ones in the boat.
Bolkcom: Right.
Carpenter: I don't know what the answer is because it's not like it's a cheap building to build, it's not like putting up an office building because of all the security measures that need... We all know that communication and electronics in buildings are very expensive, let alone building them so they are safe and secure. So it's going to be a very expensive building I'm sure, no matter which way we go. Although there are a lot of new ideas and I think Dwight was in a conference here not too long ago and saw some new ideas that are probably coming to the forefront. But they're still expensive and sooner or later we're going to have to take a look at it and bite the bullet (inaudible). Nobody wants to do it. I certainly would hate to think of going through all of the construction and trying to add on and stuff with the problems and everything that goes on. But we're going to have to do it sooner or later unless you've got a place at home you want to take somebody for the night and keep them I suppose. We can just so much for what we've got and when it runs out I don't know what the answer is other than send them out at 60 bucks a day or 65 or whatever.
Lacina: But then Sally said you've got the patrol car out of county shuttling somebody to other area that can't be on our roads.
Carpenter: We already are involved in that with the juveniles because not only do they go to Linn County, they go to...
Lacina: Lee.
Stutsman: Lee County.
Carpenter: Yes, Lee County and...
Stutsman: Scott County.
Carpenter: ...all over. But it's even been discussed that maybe we could just put an inmate out with a deputy to ride shotgun and...
Jordahl: We'll just drive around.
Carpenter: ...just place a bunk for them. That would be one way of giving us more space. But we... It is a problem when you don't have anyplace to go with them. $60 a day is a lot of money and it adds up really fast. I know for the juveniles we do have some juveniles in Benton County and the bill that comes through there is very expensive.
Lacina: It's getting up there.
Carpenter: Several thousand dollars a month.
Jordahl: Bob, at the meeting yesterday, the Elected Officials I unfortunately had to leave, but I hinted to you I had this question about Linn County. They have, I believe, purchased the old Cedar Rapids police department headquarters, turning that into a jail facility...
Carpenter: I don't know that it's a jail facility. I don't know that they've got it purchased. I know that the Sheriff was pushing for it, I think they wanted to turn the Sheriff's department whole facility to the jail and move the Sheriff's department over to the old police department. I think that's...
Jordahl: Oh, something like that.
Carpenter: ...the plan.
Jordahl: Anyway the idea that I've heard there, that I meant to get to, is the idea of revenue. Steve mentioned some unexpected revenue happening from Federal prisoners. I believe it was Federal prisoners that they were talking about in Linn County that they could in part afford to do whatever construction or remodeling whatever they were doing because they could anticipate having some funds coming in as well. So they could build more capacity. Talking about our 200 bed need for example and defray the cost of that to some extent in the near term before we needed 200 beds a day with outside prisoners whether it's from Polk County or whatever. Then as we needed the space for Johnson County prisoners then the space could be available. That would be a way for a larger facility and not facing this again in 8 years.
Carpenter: To some extent yes. We've tried this, to bring in revenue, generate revenue from other sources when we had the space available. But keep in mind that Cedar Rapids, Linn County also, there's a Federal U.S. attorney in that town of course it's a good spot for Federal housing of prisoners. We've been asked in the past to certify as a Federal holding facility. One of the big problems and the reason that we haven't done it is, number one space because you almost have to take your prisoners when they run them into you. The other reason is then you become under the scrutiny of the federal government. Not just the state jail inspectors but you have people coming through too. There are guidelines there that probably go over what the State does. Because we haven't had the rule it's not been very attractive to us to go through that extra hassle of reports and paperwork that has to be done for that so that's the reason why we stay away from federal prisoners. So it's pretty nice to get them shipped up if we get a federal prisoner arrested in Johnson County. They get shipped immediately to Linn County because that's a different district. Nowadays some of that shifts back and forth between districts but that's the reason... Quite honestly we used to get a lot of Polk County prisoners that needed housed down here and it did generate some... When we first double bunked it generated some pretty decent money but then as we got fowled up ourselves we quit doing it.
Jordahl: But as we look at the cost of the new facility and we look at... What I'm trying to think here is the mall. We've got this big plump thing that's probably going to create a lot more growth. We've got the University is not going away, population of the world is growing. I mean it's presumable that Johnson County is going to continue to grow. Whether at a faster rate or at the current rate or, we're going to be facing an increasing population so I for one certainly don't want to build a facility that will just meet the bare needs in 10 years. I think we need at the very least to set a foundation that will be expandable so that as the County continues to grow we can do that in a more economical way but possibly build a facility that we can use that will meet some longer range projections and use it in the near term to generate revenue.
Lacina: Well in our annual budget though realize the 6th Judicial is not counting on that revenue. We were surprised we had a spike in revenue but it can stop tomorrow. No way are we going to project any of our expansion for buildings based on that revenue.
Bolkcom: Right.
Lacina: The other concern is that we're not real pleased with some of type people we're getting. If you build a penitentiary for federal prisoners here in Johnson County and they come, you are going to get some people out of the state. We've blocked a couple that we've refused to take that were real bad guys in gangs that we had monitored and knew why they were being sent to this area and we were able to reject them.
Bolkcom: I think the demand would likely be there from even maybe other counties.
Lacina: OK now that's different. If we're dealing with Iowa, I don't know that we really have a choice but we do really need to be careful when we get into the bad bad guys at the federal level.
Jordahl: That's a reasonable argument but I do, we're talking about how much it costs us to send prisoners to other counties and the time for transportation and they don't just send... Ignoring the cost per night we've got deputies traveling around and that's a cost.
Carpenter: Well it's not really a cost but it's going to be an ongoing cost for personnel also. Because when you expand you can't run on the same amount of people as you do now. As a matter of fact until this year we only had 3 officers on duty handling 83 prisoners a day. I think if you look at the statistics on that, that's not enough officers per manpower.
Lacina: What's the cost to house a contagion individual in one of their positive pressure ventilation rooms? Like with that tuberculosis. Do we have any costs on that? There are certain strains of tuberculosis which are not curable and we were concerned if we received one of those and we ended up having to house them that the cost of setting up a facility to... So that the air wasn't re-circulated, do we have any idea on that?
Doberstein: No not off hand. Bob didn't even get into the medical and mental issues of the inmate classifications. I could tell you the average cost for a jail facility is $160 a square foot. The 3/4 meeting is $200 a square foot. if your talking a special room like that when you look at the big picture it's probably not going to be a big part of what you're talking about.
Lacina: No it's going to be one of those federal cases that your going to get randomly and that's when you get stuck.
Doberstein: But to get a sense of scale here for a new jail of $63,000 square feet in our program your talking over 10 million dollars just for the building, not site development or anything else.
Bolkcom: Or the staffing.
Stutsman: Or the staffing yes.
Doberstein: Or the staffing yes. If you just add on to the existing jail, the additional 36,000 square feet you're still up in almost 6 million dollars so you can get a feel for, this is a big money issue.
Bolkcom: It is. If you've just tuned in at home we're talking about the jail needs in Johnson County. Our space committee looking at future needs. Pat do you have any comments on this question of increase?
White: Yes.
Bolkcom: Why we've seen the increase and what we need to be thinking about.
White: It's a variety of reasons. The criminal justice system is never a perfect a laboratory and you can never measure precisely. I agree with all of the reasons that Bob has sited. We, meaning County Attorney's office and local law enforcement, I think pretty clearly have been relatively aggressive in drunk driving, domestic abuse. I think that's a factor and I think the community is safer because of that. I think it's accurate to say, when I say this sort of thing it generates some controversy, but I think it's accurate to say there's been a bit of a loss of societal values. There are more people today who don't really care about their neighbors or colleagues that will write a bad check more readily than they would have 10 years ago. Or they'll jump on the hood of somebody's car more readily than they would've 10 years ago. Or they'll tear down a traffic control sign more readily than they would've 10 years ago. I actually think Iowa is still a little bit behind the national curve. You look at national crime statistics, the FBI keeps reporting that crime is down. It is as a statistical measure in large cities and across the country but as the Iowa City Coralville area becomes more urbanized than it's been historically that's bringing a higher rate of crime. One of the ironies of this whole situation is the President and Congress have trumpeted their 100,000 police officers around the country, and while for one I have always puzzled over how the federal government which has historically been broke could afford to start supporting local government. But none the less it's done it and here there are between Iowa City and Coralville 10 of those now federally funded officers. And they're finding more crime as certainly would've been expected. They're out on the street patrolling, making more arrests and the community is safer because of that. But they didn't give us any more jail cells, they didn't give us any more jail staff, they didn't give us any more probation officers, they didn't give us any more prosecutors, they didn't give us any more judges, and so the system is straining even more because of this congressional presidential initiative. Which again on balance, more police, a single law enforcement officer on patrol is the most effective thing we can do to protect the public. Hopefully that system will now say, oh, we've left several components of the process out here and in addition to funding new police there are some other things that need funding. In fact one of the goals here will be to position ourselves to be ready should congress say well, gee now that we've sent all of these police officers out we realize now there's even more of a problem with local jails so we're going to create a funding source for local governments to be able to look to, or the state legislature might decide, as I certainly hope it will. It's discussion about using the state surplus for infrastructure, county jails are a very logical way to spend some of that money. So regardless of when we actually expand one of our goals is to position ourselves to be ready to act quickly should state or federal funding become available. So by whatever timetable we can get there to we want to try to make the siting decisions even though we know we don't have the money to carry this plan out. That probably includes not only trying to decide where this could be done but having some preliminary design concept that we'd be able to act on fairly quickly if funding became available. We certainly ought to be out there asking the legislature and congress to follow through on part of what they've started. A couple other phenomena, one that I wanted to mention Bob talked about, Friday and Saturday nights over the last 10 to 15 years. One of the really interesting statistical facts is Thursday night has taken on really almost the same proportions of Friday and Saturday I'm convinced as a direct result of liquor establishments promoting free beer, cheap beer, cheap liquor. The weekend starts Thursday night for those who drink a lot and it's produced a very high number of Thursday night arrests. So we now in a very real sense have a 3 night weekend crowding problem at the jail whereas 10 years ago it really was just Friday and Saturday.
Carpenter: It used to be the biggest night ever would always be after a Saturday night football game here at Iowa. But take those football games out, Thursday night probably is our all time high. (Inaudible).
Lacina: You really do an outstanding job with the resources you have. The care that you give.
Carpenter: Well that's because the people in Johnson County don't realize what kind of staff I've got. Staff is...
Jordahl: I don't mean to single out your department in making the comment that I'm about to make because I think it's something the Supervisors have to do. But in terms of the space needs problem generally we do not have 10 million dollars sitting in a capital projects fund and I believe that we should have money sitting in the capital projects fund. 2 years ago we started putting money away for capital projects. We put away $60,000 for 5 departments. That's $12,000 in each department. it was recognized that that wasn't much of a start. We were under a budget freeze and we just couldn't... We couldn't oomph the stuff up. We did a better job this year. We have a few hundred thousand dollars set away. $300,000.
Bolkcom: This year we put 300 additional.
Jordahl: Additional on top of the 60 from last year. So we've taken a step in the right direction. But it looks to me if you, we've been in to talk about depreciation and Steve has been helpful in bringing this concept forward. It seems like a responsible view for County government to take in this growing county is that we can expect to have expanded needs in the future. We're not just kind of building a solid building and knowing that they'll continue to stand. We have to recognize that we're going to continue to grow and we're going to have increased needs and you can just as you've done extend the graph a few years into the future and recognize that this building is only going to be good for this amount of time. We have to be putting aside money to recognize that on an ongoing basis. We've got to put aside, I don't know what it means. If it means a million dollars a year in capital projects. Constantly without saying the jail has to be built this year. To say that we know in this growing area that we're going to have to do that in order to have money available when the need is clearly there. I think this is something we just have to step up to the plate and recognize.
Duffy: Jonathan I will agree with the statement that you made here a few minutes ago that we don't want to go too small this time. If my memory doesn't fail me, the jail committee that looked into the new jail suggested a larger jail. Isn't that right Pat or do you remember than we ended up with. The jail is built good, there isn't any doubt about that but I'm sure there was a lot of meetings and a lot of the folks felt it was too small of jail to start with.
Carpenter: At one time there was a couple of bond issues I think on the original jail. Part of it was the fact they were looking at the possibility of putting the Iowa City Police Department, the Johnson County Sheriff's department and the jail all in one building on the side hill right next to the Courthouse. As the bond issues went along and it became less and less attractive apparently for both, in the expense of the bond issues were too high for what people wanted to pay, we ended up with what we got and I think it was fortunate we got what we got. I think that it's the (inaudible). Folks just didn't want to have to pay for any more than what they build there. I understand that. They did have it set for being larger, but then they downscaled to get a bond issue passed so they could get something which they needed. It just should have been projected for 10 years instead of 20.
Lacina: I think Linn's renovation on the newer jail than ours was either at 5.5 or 5.9 million that they announced here 2 weeks ago. That's on the existing facility that they're going to enclose some space like we've got down below and just do some remodeling. So when you're dealing with security issues it's expensive.
Carpenter: I think there's always the possibilities of possibly trying to do that. However, I don't think that would be feasible with us. (Inaudible) the fact that we do utilize a lot of personnel that is in the building other than if an emergency rises upstairs. So if you put the department away from just the jail we're not going to have the extra staffing we need there in emergency situations to be there immediately to help out.
Doberstein: They have a different design (inaudible).
Carpenter: We kind of ad lib as we go along.
White: One of the other ironies here that I want to... This is a good opportunity for me to mention, is a division of the Department of Corrections tells us that we may need to give up the double bunks which we now have a decade of experience that shows it's safe and we can make it work. It's the same Department that is running dangerously overcrowded facilities at Oakdale and Anamosa. Where by comparison, our crowding is a piece of cake compared to the dangerous situations that the Department has. It's just ironic that the same Department that runs overcrowded facilities is concerned about our 46 extra bunks.
Lacina: Corrections is going to divide the state in 2 and 6th Judicial has a really good chance of housing the Director for the eastern portion of Iowa up in Cedar Rapids. We're working with him now on that. I think you're right there will be a lot of changes coming down. They see that the numbers are severe enough that they're going to have to restructure themselves ultimately to deal with the population. They either have to build if the legislature won't allow that they have to shed in which case the counties will get it.
Carpenter: I guess the reason why we're here today is that we're kind of in a spot where Dwight is as far as he can go. Quite honestly I'm no expert on facilities, jail facilities either, but we're to the point to have the Board do some thinking about... We'd like to have someone be able to take the next step and go forward (inaudible) take a look at a facility and give some kind of a projection on what it would cost. I think that's our next step and where we need to go. Dwight's probably got an idea of what that might cost.
Bolkcom: All right. Sally did you want comment here?
Stutsman: I was going to say Dwight is on the agenda for Tuesday to talk about this issue, about going to the next step and what that's going to mean either hiring a consultant... He's kind of maxed out on his current contract that we've hired him to do. So we're going to have to look at a new contract to do a more in depth study of what just exactly what are needs are at the jail.
Bolkcom: All right. So that will be Tuesday. Very good. I'd like to add to Jonathan's point a moment ago about the question of savings. The County, this last year is the first year we've been out of a 5 year budget freeze, as a growing county we've also had a demand for things like services and meeting the needs of service in addition to these major capital needs that our Space Committee is discovering and trying to plan for. That's what this is all about this morning is looking ahead and trying to do that. The Board did make a fairly substantial commitment this first year out of the budget freeze given the fact that we haven't had the resources, frankly to make much of a commitment to long term capital needs. I believe we've got about $600,000 set aside right now. It's always better to save money and buy projects with it. It's pretty clear given the cost of this and some other space needs that at some point... We're debt free now, there may be a day in the future where we're going to have to take the money we've saved at that point and look at possibly taking on a little bit of debt to meet some of these really pretty crucial needs. Unless we get into a position where the Board just simply says we're going to raise taxes to such a level to begin to sock away more than $300,000 or half a million dollars a year, you're talking about more substantial, frankly property tax increases to do that. I can tell you from this Board and other Boards we'll try to balance the existing service needs with those long term needs and it's quite a juggling act. Any other final comments?
Duffy: Yes. I think the budget will go down to priorities. There's places I think that we can do a lot better on the budget. Things that we're funding maybe we wouldn't have to fund and put it into something like... The Sheriff Department's budget is not a stationary budget, it's a flexible one because you don't know how many prisoners you're going to have. I think it's just going to be tough to do that, but things we don't have to fund or low on our list, just don't do it.
Bolkcom: All right.
Carpenter: Unfortunately our clients don't usually come in and leave within a few minutes. I mean they're there for the duration. We've got to figure out where they're going to stay.
Bolkcom: Sure.
Jordahl: What about regional cooperation, Bob? Could we do something with 4 or 5 counties, 6th Judicial District, do a regional county facility and share it? Would that be a solution?
Carpenter: I think probably, number one you've got to have those jurisdictions that are all wanting to go there. They're going to be... We do a lot of work with Linn County, however I don't know if they'd be interested in it. I don't know.
Stutsman: It seems like regional is almost more geared to the smaller counties.
Carpenter: Yes. You get into the counties, like maybe Iowa County that's got a 3 or 4 cell jail, Cedar County I think is having problems over there and they've got a small jail. We're in a situation here where we house so many and it would not be... I think it would be more those counties coming in and joining us than it would be us going to a larger county because of our size. I don't know. I guess that's always a possibility, I don't have an opinion one way or the other, other than the fact that I know there are advantages and disadvantages to it. (Inaudible) talk about (inaudible).
Jordahl: Yes. I think it's probably... We and Linn, Linn is building this juvenile detention facility and we're going to ideally be using some of that capacity, maybe there's room here somewhere for a... At least between us and Linn.
Carpenter: I (inaudible) answer that.
Jordahl: I'd encourage you to look into it I guess.
Carpenter: I don't know that... That's going to take a decision far higher than mine to get into something like that. I honestly don't think Linn (inaudible).
Lacina: And Linn's already told us on juvenile detention as soon as their demand meets the capacity of that facility, we're out, we'll no longer have a contract. You run out of jail and then you're in a crisis then what do you do with them.
Carpenter: You run into some real jurisdictional problems when you start doing that, there's no question. Who's runs it, who has the authority, who has the... I don't run my operation the same way that Linn County does, you know that type of thing. You run into some major problems.
Bolkcom: Right. Anything else? You've done a real nice job putting together some materials on increase. I wonder if there'd be an opportunity... I don't know if the Space Committee has other documentation that you'd want to put up for public review on the web site to give people that are interested in this issue an opportunity to see what the challenges are, what the demand of service increase has been. Have it on the Sheriff's page certainly for jail space needs. Something we can talk about maybe next week.
Stutsman: That's a good idea because part of why Dwight and Bob are here is educating not only the Board but the community about what we're facing here and that obviously sooner or later we're going to have the support of the community to go ahead with this project.
Bolkcom: All right. Thank you very much. We'll look forward to seeing you Tuesday.
Recessed at 10:38 a.m. Reconvened at 10:50 a.m.