MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:
FEBRUARY 2 AND 4, 1999
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chairperson Jordahl called the Johnson County Board of Supervisors to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 9:00 a.m. Members present were: Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson.
Jordahl: Morning. We're now in session of the informal meeting of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors for Tuesday February 2nd, 1999. Looks like spring is here a little early and I'll take it. Review of the formal meeting of January 28th. These are available in the ‘I' drive on the computer (inaudible) figure that out. We'd review them, make comments now and changes we want to make and the we'll approve them formally on Thursday. Well, I apologize.
REPORT (JORDAHL): INTRODUCTION OF NEW SUPERVISOR CAROL THOMPSON
Jordahl: Well she was sworn in. She was working yesterday. She's fit right in, I was kind of like. Of course she's here. I apologize. This is the first actual Board meeting that you've been at. In case people were wondering. Carol was part of a selection process, participated in applying for the Board of Supervisors and was chosen by the committee of the Auditor, Recorder and the Treasurer who interviewed I think 12 applicants for the position. Very highly qualified people. I think it was a difficult decision for them. They made a choice that has given us a person who has experience as the Director of the Department of Human Services here in Johnson County as well as the Chief Juvenile Court Officer. So we have experience in budget, we have experience in corrections, we have experience in social services. Talk about hitting the ground running. I think we've got ourselves a good Supervisor. Welcome aboard.
Thompson: Thank you.
Jordahl: You're good too, Charlie. But she's new.
Duffy: Yes. I know.
County Engineer Mike Gardner: Doug Ripley's here also from JCCOG. What we're talking about doing is, Naples Avenue south of Highway One where Miller Monument is, if you're familiar with that. There's a stretch of pavement the road it has a shared jurisdiction. The City limits run basically down the center of the road. The City approached us wanting to place a speed limit on that, the development that's gone on out there. There's several access points and it would seem appropriate that we lower the speed limit in that area to 35 miles per hour. So that's what we're talking about here tonight. The stretch that is paved we share with Iowa City and as I understand it only that the City took action for the first reading last week...
JCCOG Employee Doug Ripley: Last Tuesday.
Gardner: So we would just ask that the Board take formal action on Thursday to pass a resolution so that we could sign it. Both sides of the road are posted at 35 m.p.h.
Stutsman: What's the speed limit now?
Gardner: 55.
Stutsman: 55.
Gardner: It's not posted (inaudible).
Lehman: Looks like the biggest advantage would be for the people coming from the south. Would you put a sign to the south of that hill with a reduce, when they come over that hill there's people coming off those newer paved streets with not quite enough time to get out of there with the high speeds.
Thompson: Who checks speeders out there?
Lehman: County has south bound.
Gardner: South bound lane is the County and the north bound one is the City. I know the Road Department through our agreements with the City is taking care of the maintenance of the road itself. I'm not sure if the Sheriff and the police have similar arrangement on roads like that or not...
Ripley: I think either one of us could work (inaudible).
Jordahl: That was going to be my question. Generally speaking if you see something going on you'd probably do something.
Stutsman: How much of a stretch of road is it?
Gardner: It's a little over one quarter of a mile.
Jordahl: So you're in agreement with this?
Lehman: I've seen a lot of presence of Iowa City police. You'll see them out there on the east side of it and you'll see the Sheriff's Department checking businesses and stuff. There is a pretty good presence. But I think the idea of reminding people of the speed, of lowering the speed limit I think would be a good idea. More traffic's going to pick up all the time out there.
Stutsman: Well it just makes sense to have it consistent with the City.
Jordahl: We could have one lane one speed limit and the other lane the other speed limit.
Gardner: There are things like that.
Jordahl: Maybe not. OK.
Stutsman: So we put this on for Thursday then?
Gardner: Get this on for Thursday get the resolution and take action at that time.
Jordahl: All right. Thank you.
Gardner: Thank you.
Ripley: Thank you.
Jordahl: It says other here Mr. County Engineer and there was a meeting of the Roadside Vegetation Management Committee last night. Maybe you'd like to update us on the doings there.
Gardner: At last night's meeting there wasn't a lot of new business to take place. We've been working on trying to get the Adopt a Roadway Program back in business, so last night the committee did take action to make some changes. We took the existing program to the County Attorney for them to look through it and give us any information they thought we needed to do to update. They had minor revisions. We're going to make those revisions and then I will bring it to the Board in the not too distant future and let you take action on getting this thing up and running again, formally. And that was about the extent of our discussion last night.
Jordahl: Did you talk about the County newsletter advertiser, the opportunity in terms of cultivating new people without (inaudible) Roadways might be another vehicle.
Gardner: Those discussions took place in the past, so that will be something we'll put in an article in one of the Roadways Magazines once the program has been actually adopted. And we're ready to start taking (inaudible).
Jordahl: Roadways goes only to the rural residents though. I've seen a lot of places around the country where some McDonalds in the middle of town will adopt a mile of road out in the country. Perhaps we could get more miles adopted by cultivating people county wide.
Stutsman: I bet the committee's probably talked about a lot of possibilities for communicating. I was thinking even 4-H newsletters and stuff like that.
Gardner: Right. We've looked at several (inaudible) we could take (inaudible). We wanted to wait until we were ready to starting taking calls and stuff got it up and running before we started before we got a lot of new applicants requesting information (inaudible).
Stutsman: Good idea. It's always better to have it prepared than try to regroup afterwards.
Jordahl: I stopped by that meeting last night after it was over and Mike and Kevin were there until it was almost 10 o'clock discussing some of these issues. How early do you folks get a Secondary Roads Department on a regular basis.
Gardner: There's somebody out there by 7 in the morning. (Inaudible).
Jordahl: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Any lunch break in there?
Gardner: We had a sandwich.
Jordahl: I was pretty impressed. Thanks for all your work. Any questions?
Gardner: Thank you.
JUVENILE COURT SERVICES OFFICER BRANDON BEAUDRY: DETENTION SERVICES WITH LINN COUNTY
Jordahl: See this is just on rails here Sally.
Stutsman: Yes.
Jordahl: Item 2. Brandon get your breath. Business from Brandon Beaudry Juvenile Court Services regarding detention services with Linn County. Good Morning.
Beaudry: Morning. Sally did you get a chance to hand out this...I made some copies.
Stutsman: No. I didn't. Good. Maybe I'll just go ahead and tell the Board. Brandon and I and representatives from Linn County, Ivan Vonk and (inaudible), who is with the Linn County Supervisors, Ivan is with the detention facility in Linn County and (inaudible) met probably a couple of weeks ago to begin talking about an arrangement with the Linn County Detention Center as far as some kind of contract with Johnson County and use of their facility. So I thought it probably would be best if Brandon just came in and informed the Board of what we're talking about and give some direction as far as where we want to go from here.
Beaudry: The 2 options that were given by Linn County authorities basically are: One, that we simply purchase beds from Linn County on an as needed basis and the charge there is projected to be $238.59 per day; the other option would be to make a contract to purchase certain beds. Probably I would recommend that we purchase 3 beds if we go this route. The charge there would be $214.73 per day. The difference in the per diems has to do with the occupancy rate; if we don't guarantee beds, detention centers are never at a 100% capacity all times so they charge an additional amount because they're projecting that they'll approximately be at 90% capacity. With 21 beds opening up in August of 1999. They do plan to go to 28 beds within 3 or 6 months of the opening day. That is the difference because if we then purchase the beds there would be no risk factor in terms of occupancy since we would be paying for those beds whether they were used or not, they would not have to add that factor into the cost. I'm recommending that Johnson County enter into a contract with Linn County for 3 beds. I've given information to the Board previously. Our detention usage has skyrocketed from 2 and a half beds per day on average in Fiscal Year 96, this year we're averaging over 7 children per day in detention centers, although I must say that in January our numbers were down. I haven't seen the figures yet from the Auditor's Office. But there have been a number of days this month when we've been at 2 or 3 children. Hopefully that trend will continue. But over the entire fiscal year we're still at approximately 7 children per day. We have projected that in Fiscal Year 2000 we will probably have a need for approximately 10 children to receive some kind of detention service. As I proposed to the Board and the Board did approve, I plan this year to have funding set aside for a detention alternative program that is about to get under way. We're projecting in Fiscal Year 2000 that we would probably have a need for 3 of those beds, we're currently funding 2 of those beds. I think we need to see how it's going to work first. But I have every reason to believe that it will work well and it will save the County a considerable amount of money. I think that in any case the number of kids we've had in detention, purchasing 3 beds from Linn County would probably result in the best financial arrangement for this County, because I think most of the time we would have 3 children in the Linn County Detention Center anyway. If we do contract 3 beds we would be saving approximately $25, per child, per day, by going along the lines of a contractual arrangement with Linn County. I guess in support of that I would say that even if the County be preferred that children be placed in other detention centers where the per diem is lower most detention centers in Iowa, as I previously informed the Board, charge about $165 per day, there is no guarantee that the courts would place children in those detention centers, generally the courts would like to place children in the nearest available detention center. There is no guarantee that law enforcement agencies would place children in a detention center that are considerably further away, than the one on Linn County. I think its also important for child, even in they have to be detained to be detained as close to the home as possible. I think that's always a good policy to have, parents do visit their children and if they are placed in a facility 100 miles away it does make it more difficult for them to visit. And one of the other reason, and perhaps the main reason is that it becomes a logistical nightmare for law enforcement, and we're talk about the Johnson County Sheriff's Office, to transport kids all over the eastern half of Iowa to be place in detention centers. When we have our delinquency day hearings, our hearings usually occur on Thursdays and Fridays, it's not uncommon for them to have a couple of cars, busy all day long, bringing kids in from various detention centers, and often taking them back. I asked Duane Lewis from the Sheriff's Office to maybe provide you with some information concerning the difficulties that that agency has experienced with that type of problem.
Sheriff's Captain Duane Lewis: I don't think I have any disagreement of what has been said at all. The closer we can get, the more convenient it is and the less man hours and time we tie up. I don't think there would be any question, I would even bet that as far as the initial charge or arrest or custody situation that the closer to Iowa City they are. The charging agency has to transport the first time, so if they have to go to Linn County or Davenport or someplace they're just not going to pick them up.
Stutsman: You mean like, if Iowa City picks up a juvenile.
Lewis: Right, and then after it becomes a court issues they order us to go to wherever.
Stutsman: Because, then, we pick it up.
Lewis: Yes, so I think that just for the entire system it goes without saying that closer the kids are the easier it is for the whole system to work. I put together some numbers that Brandon asked me for that I really don't know how too... This is what we did for total time and mileage of last year. It's hard to put this in perspective and so far as this was all transports we made. We'd still be hauling to Linn County regardless so I don't have any breakdown as to what the actual cost is because it's not going to eliminate all this time anyway. We're still going to go to Linn County anyway, and spend time going back and fourth.
Stutsman: Is it safe to say that the majority of these transports were not to Linn County, that a majority of them were to Lee County.
Lewis: I don't know if you have any statistics on how much you are using Linn County at what stage, but we spend a lot of time in Linn County and in different places. I don't have any feel for percentage that are going to Linn County, but we spend a lot of time going all over the place. I can't say the majority are other than Linn County because I just don't know that.
Beaudry: Less than 10% of our kids are detained in Linn County and the primary reason for that is because they only have a capacity of 11, and they do give preference for Linn County children. If we go into a weekend and they have 8 or more children they will tell all the out of county children's workers if they need to remove those children and get them to different detention centers, and that primary reason we just don't use Linn County very much at this present time. We haven't had much usage of the Linn County Detention Center that much in the last couple of years.
Lewis: The fact that we didn't have guaranteed beds up there, meant a lot time we were made to relocate our kids which actually cost us to haul them twice. We had to haul them to Linn County and haul them someplace else when they got full so we were actually doing double or triple duty on some of these kids where as if the had guaranteed beds there would just have stayed there.
Beaudry: That would be a factor also in any future arrangement that if we don't get guaranteed beds that if they have 21 beds and they have 20 Linn County kids they are going to have only capacity for one out of county kid, so they might be telling us again that we have to remove kids especially going into a weekend. They may anticipate more kids coming in.
Stutsman: I was going to tell you Deb Minot from the County Attorney's Office just came in. I think she may have wanted to talk about some of the issues with this.
Lewis: That number I handed out, well I didn't know what kind of philosophy you wanted to use, and so you can break this down and chop it up however you want to, but I figure 24 cents a mile is what we reimburse people for when they are on the road, just kind of a ball park figure, and then if we were having to pay someone time and half to transport all of those, so that's what all those numbers are. I had to put those someplace and we can chop them up however you want to.
Stutsman: I wanted to ask, Gene Oxley's words were always if you build it they will come, and I am thinking about the Iowa City Police Department, if they know that we have these 3 contracted beds will they be filling up those beds all the time and adding even more to the detention costs.
Beaudry: I do anticipate a greater usage of detention if we have a facility that is closer that we can access easily. I think, though, there is an intangible element here and that is community safety and also another element and that kids need to be held accountable for their behavior. Some kids just need a really short stay in detention to really get their attention, and I think that there have been times that law enforcement know that if they take a child to detention its a 4 or 5 hour round trip that by the time you take a child to the center, get them admitted to the center, do the necessary paper work and get back, that it is definitely a disincentive for them to take kids to detention that probably you should be going. Sometimes I think that if we don't take kids to detention right away when they should go, down the road we pay for that, because they become more delinquent in their thinking and we end up putting them in detention for much longer periods of time then perhaps we would have if we had simply taken them to detention in the first place.
Jordahl: If we pursue that line of questions does that imply that we need yet more detention space. You say that you anticipate some continued growth, are there people now who should be being detained beyond the additional space we are going to provide.
Beaudry: I think that the problem would lie mostly in not detaining children initially who should be detained. I don't think the problem lies so much that problem is in detaining kids longer than they should be. I do think though that if we add the kind of programming that we talked about for the detention alternative program, where we have children placed in day treatment, we have them being tracked and we have them being monitored electronically. I think that the main problem in terms of numbers is that, law enforcement agencies will look at the fact that Linn county is usually full or close to full, they can't access that county facility, and as I said that if we go into a weekend where they have 8 or more kids, and they only have a capacity of 11, they simply tell us to get the kids out.
Jordahl: That wouldn't be the case under this new contract, right? You buy 3 beds and you got 3 beds.
Beaudry: We've got 3 beds. That's correct. They told us that initially they cannot permit Johnson County to purchase anymore than 3 beds, because they feel that they need that space for Linn County. They aren't sure how many kids they're going to have either. If they are running at 90% occupancy they are definitely planning on going up to 28. If they are running at that occupancy rate in the future they do have the capacity to increase their numbers. It could go all the way to 63 kids in the future.
Jordahl: Is there some sort of sense that you have or some sort of verbal indication from them that we could expand on our three beds as they grew.
Thompson: I was going to ask about that too. When you're negotiating could you get them to write that in there at the time they expand we have the option to get another bed if we want to.
Beaudry: I think that they would be willing to have that part of the contract. From the conversation that Sally and I had with them about 2 weeks ago I think that it would be a definite possibility.
Thompson: Just for safety sake, why don't you do up or down, so we could go to two if we haven't been using our 3.
Beaudry: Well I proposed something similar to that Carol, and that is what we're using in the detention alternative program, and that is if our main average usage for the fiscal year is less than 2, which is what we have a contract for now, that the program would permit up to 4 kids. If we had a need for it. Until we got our mean average usage to the level at which we had contracted for. I proposed that to the authorities from Linn County. I have not yet received a definite yes or no. But the indication is it's a no. They feel that would be taking the risk factor out of any negotiation, any contracted rate. If they did that they feel they would need to raise the per diem for the contracted rate and I feel the per diem is already high enough.
Lewis: There was some discussion Brandon when we were meeting early on, I haven't been to those meetings for a long time, if we did not use contracted beds and they did that that would also count toward our contract. Has there been any discussion on that? If the bed had not gone empty and they were able to use it that there would be an adjustment there. Has that gone by the wayside?
Stutsman: I kind of got the sense that they weren't interested in doing that, that they are very conscious of the cost of operating this facility. So they want assurance that there is a fixed revenue coming in with these contracted beds.
Lewis: They're going to leave the bed empty then, even if they need it?
Stutsman: I guess we really didn't talk about it.
Lewis: That would be my question. I know it was discussed early on that if you can't use it we have to pay for it. But if you use it then your rates are stable and you're making (inaudible) utilizing it. That was just a question because I know it was an issue early on.
Stutsman: What we did kind of talk about is that if we have empty beds, would Linn County fill that for us from another county. Their answer to that they will fill their own empty beds first, the beds that they have, and then if there are any additional needs then they would fill the Johnson County. But they feel no obligation to fill our empty beds first before they fill their own. I think there's some of these details that we need to sit down and think about and try to work out. Linn County in coming to us I think wanted some kind of commitment from Johnson County as to what we would contract with them before they expanded their facility because I think their Board of Supervisors are very concerned about the cost and operating this. And so if we give them some kind of commitment then they will expand the facility to what was it 21, Brandon, or 28 was it?
Beaudry: 28 would be their first expansion.
Stutsman: Initially they're opening at 21. They do have capacity within 6 months to go to 28. They didn't want to go to 28 if there wasn't some kind of commitment from Johnson County that we would use 3 beds on a contracted basis.
Assistant County Attorney Deb Minot: I think a slightly different way to contract and I did this in Maryland when I was reviewing contracts for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services is we bought bed days. So at 3 beds a day over the course of the year, what we did was buy 195 bed days of treatment, in this case 1,095 bed days of detention. We may use 5 on one day and we may use one on another day and what that required was a periodic accounting of how those days were running, otherwise you might get to October and have zero left for the end of the year.
Stutsman: I was wondering how that would work. And then you just go into the regular per diem rate?
Minot: Right.
Stutsman: OK.
Minot: I think in a situation like this you would want to negotiate. I think that's the optimum thing to try and negotiate for. What that guarantees Linn County is that even if our beds sit empty they still get that 200 some thousand dollars from Johnson County for the purchase of those beds. But it also gives us some flexibility to be up or down on any given day space is available. Now obviously if there's 21 beds here and Linn County has 18 of those beds filled then we're not going to have more than 3 of our kids in there. But there will be days when Linn County will have 12 kids. There'll be days when they'll have 13 kids. We could probably easily have more kids there. I really think we need to sit down with them and talk seriously about that. Because it's conceivable although I can tell you that the way things are going I don't think it's going to happen, it's conceivable they could be paid twice for a bed. They could get paid from us and if they sell that bed to somebody else at a higher rate they could get that payment too. Under this theory they would be able to do that. They wouldn't have to account to us at the end of the year for empty beds. So we bear the risk for having empty beds which I think the way our dockets have been going lately is very little risk to us. But we also retain the flexibility to go up or down.
Jordahl: I still have a question about a hole here though that has sort of been bumped up against. Major Lewis example. If Linn County has more than 18 of their beds filled, so they have some of our beds filled, it's not just a question of whether we pay. What happens if we have 3 juveniles that we want to send and they've got somebody in one of them. Do they take their person out?
Minot: I think they have to give it up.
Thompson: The person has to move.
Stutsman: On this bed days arrangement? Or are you talking about contract?
Minot: We have to negotiate that. I'm a lawyer so you can write anything into a contract, you know theoretically. You have to talk about who bears the risks and what kind of risks are more acceptable and what people feel that they need more and they're willing to give away other things. I think what will probably happen is Linn will have a bunch of their own kids there and there will be plenty of days when they'll have kids from other counties there. So if we have 3 guaranteed beds and they had 15 Linn County kids and 4 kids from Tama County for example what they have to do is kick out a Tama County kid to free up our guaranteed bed. As between our kids and Linn County kids we'd probably have to negotiate. Because the juvenile court judge sits in Cedar Rapids most of the time, she keeps daily control over the Linn County detention population in a way that our judges do not. And she doesn't do that for Johnson County kids. So she will authorize who needs to go, in Linn County if somebody needs to go.
Stutsman: Based on availability?
Minot: Yes. Based on their availability. So they are on a daily basis making those decisions. And she, as I understand it, Brandon, participates in that. So if they had 11 beds full and they have 2 kids coming in on a Class B felony, they may let 2 kids in who are there on assault causing injury. Let those 2 kids out and put the 2 new kids in. I don't think they are accessing other detention centers and paying out of pocket except in very, I know they're doing it in Benton County and (inaudible) jails. I'm not sure how often they're doing it at other detention centers.
Thompson: Lately they have had to quite a bit.
Stutsman: It seems like this bed days contract would almost put us in the same situation we are in now; in the fact that when we need the facility, and if Linn County's full then we would just have to go some place else.
Minot: I think we have to have some guarantees though.
Stutsman: OK. Alright.
Beaudry: This is similar to what I propose in terms of allowing us to exceed the cap if our mean average usage was less. So far I've received some fairly negative opinions about their willingness to accept that. We could still talk with them. I have not received a definite no yet.
Minot: I think what their decision is how much do I want to guarantee that I'm going to have 3 beds paid for from January first through December 31st. If that's really important to them I think they'll make some concessions. If they decide that's not really important to them and they won't make that concession then we have to go back and decide whether we can live with what the alternative is. I think we've had very very few days when we haven't had 3 kids in detention over the past calendar year. We had one red letter day not too long ago when we had zero kids in detention and by the end of the day I think we had somebody in. But I don't like the idea that somebody's going to sit there saying gee, we ought to send this kid to detention today because we already paid for that bed and so we need to use it. I think another thing that I think, and again I have feelings based primarily on convenience and the fact that I think Linn County runs a better detention center than Lee County and it's better for the kids to be there and it's closer. My feelings have a lot to do with treatment issues and what's best for our kids. Most kids that we send up there are not a huge danger to society. Most kids that we send up there are kids who are going to be back in to the community fairly soon who we're going to be working with. The way they're treated in detention and that experience that they have, I want it to be significant to them in a variety of ways. But I also want it to be appropriate geared to the fact that they're still kids. But I think it's important for the Board to consider that you can sign or not sign a contract with Linn County. Whether you sign a contract or not we're going to have kids in the Linn County detention center and we're going to have them at the higher rate because the officers will take kids to Linn County if they call and there's a bed open. And the judges will send kids to Linn County. We hear all the time in court, can't you send me to Linn County so my mom can come and visit me. That's an important issue in juvenile court. Especially for kids who are in detention longer term and we have some of those. I think that's going to be a serious issue for the court to look at and so I think the Board's ability to control the usage of which detention center is going to be limited. I think from a practical viewpoint, I've ran a whole bunch of, I was laughing saying if I wanted to be an accountant or a business major I'd probably making a lot more money now than I am. Of course judging by my competency at doing it perhaps I wouldn't. I was trying to run a lot of figures last night to try to compare these relative costs. Even if you assume we use Lee County every single day every single bed, which of course we don't, we use a variety of detention centers and they have different rates, then if your usage gets up to 50/50, if you have half of the kids in Lee County and half of the kids in Linn County at that higher rate, you're ended up if you figure transportation in, and I figured it at a lower cost than the Sheriff's Office did, you break even. You're paying the same amount as you would if you signed a contract for Linn County.
Stutsman: And then balancing that is the programming with the detention center because I've visited a couple and it's obvious Linn County has a much better program in addressing the kids' needs. Brandon, do you have any idea of how many days we are below the 3 beds?
Beaudry: Not very many. I don't have a percentage. January was I think the only month that I saw of this fiscal year were we had any days where we were below 3.
Stutsman: You're kidding. You mean every month since July we've been above 3 days?
Beaudry: Yes. Yes. That's why we have the 7.2 children per day in detention centers. This is the only month out of the whole fiscal year we've been below 3.
Minot: Was it '97 that we were going to all the meetings. I remember in working groups in Johnson County with the variety of people here some really serious discussions about the concept of even, because at that time they were talking about building a bigger detention center I think, 25 or 26 beds and we had real serious discussion about whether we could possibly even fill up 3 or 4 beds, average. And now our average has been running 7.
Lehman: What is the average length of stay? I guess that was one of my questions.
Beaudry: It's about 2 weeks.
Lehman: OK. That kind of factors in. It's not one day up and back so try and do some of the math. If you locked in one bed per year at each price what the difference is being short or being long. I know it's not all math and dollars. You've got effectiveness of being close for ourselves and for the kids.
Minot: I think what will happen when the new center opens is that the very short term stays will increase. Because, I'll just tell you that it is a very very rare occurrence that any law enforcement officer who is investigating a case and charging a kid takes that kid to detention anymore. They just don't get authorized to do it by their watch commander. That will increase. If they can drive to Linn County and get back we'll have more kids going overnight or even for the weekend to detention. We may be able to get them out quickly and put them in some of the other programs that we have. Right now virtually every decision about who goes to detention is made by the juvenile court office staff, my office and the court. It's very rare that an officer who has the legal authority to make that decision actually exercises that because of the time and cost involved. But with the available facility we've all known that will go up.
Lehman: You're saying that the decision doesn't get to you a lot of the times because they know it may not be available or the time...
Minot: Absolutely.
Jordahl: If we're using 7 now and we're contracting for 3 it kind of sounds like we're not reaching quite as far as we need to. Is that perception accurate?
Stutsman: I think there's feeling too by Linn County that there not really interested in contracting for many more than 3.
Beaudry: They will not permit us to contract for more than 3 when they initially open at 21.
Jordahl: With the understanding that they will grow as they need to and we'll probably need them too.
Beaudry: I indicated to Ivan and (inaudible) that I thought that Johnson County should end up within a year or so contracting for 5 beds and they thought that would be a possibility once they expand to 28 but not at 21.
Stutsman: It's so difficult because nobody can get a clear handle on what this will mean. There's just so many unknowns in dealing with kids going into detention. You can't blame Linn County. They want to make sure the built this facility, they're assuming the operating costs, that they want to make sure that they have beds for their kids. Though they're willing to work with us, they're certainly interested in protecting their interest first of all.
Beaudry: Detention centers just can't predict how much occupancy they're going to have. For example, Black Hawk County one weekend will have 30 kids and they have to turn away kids and they have to get out of county kids out of that facility. The next weekend they might be down to 15. So it's very very difficult to predict how our detention usage is going to be. And that's one of their dilemmas is the occupancy rate that they have they simply don't know what it's going to be.
Stutsman: When you step back and we have these discussions about juveniles and what we're doing in detention when you step back and you think isn't this just nuts, I mean when they're driving these kids all over the state of Iowa trying to find beds for them. Isn't there a better way, that's for a whole different discussion. But there's just got to be a better way.
Beaudry: We use 6 different detention centers covering basically the entire Eastern half of Iowa at the present time. That's the nightmare that the Sheriff's Office faces.
Lehman: I envision where you may take a juvenile up and you get there and they say we don't have room for him and you need to move another one. You get into playing that game too and you're back to past square one.
Beaudry: Generally, law enforcement will call the detention center to make sure they have an opening. If they're very very close to being at capacity they may look somewhere else because of that very reason.
Jordahl: Deb, I like what you said about the Maryland contracting you did talking about a number of beds per year. And as I read option 2 over again it does say number of beds per fiscal year. It doesn't say what was explained to me 3 beds per day. I'm wondering if what was meant there as you had these discussions with Linn County whether they in fact meant much what Deb is saying that an average of 3 beds per day and then we would pay that amount over the fiscal year and if we hadn't used them we'd still pay. But if we had (inaudible). But we wouldn't have to use the same 3 physical beds on any given day or that we might have 5 some days and one, one day and still be within the framework of option 2.
Minot: I think that would be great for us.
Jordahl: I wonder if that is what option 2 now says. Or if it is intended to say exactly 3 beds per day, if you use them fine if you don't use them we bill you anyway. It doesn't say that in the words. But it might mean that in what they're understanding.
Beaudry: When they talked to us they were talking about Johnson County purchasing 3 beds and not being able to go above 3 beds and still have your contracted rate. I know that's what they said.
Stutsman: The purpose of bringing this today is to give direction for Brandon and representative from the Board and Pat White to begin negotiating this contract. If that's the direction the Board wants to go then I think that's what we need to do.
Stutsman: I think we should ask. They could say no.
Thompson: Just try to get the best price we can.
Jordahl: Then as far as above 3, of course we'd pay the higher rate for above 3. If they had empty beds why wouldn't they want us to pay them to fill them?
Lehman: They would.
Minot: I think we should negotiate to pay the same rate. I think if you are a preferred customer you should ask for a better rate. But I'm not the County's contract person but that's what I'd do going into the negotiation. In a lot of ways this is, you know again contracting is all about protecting yourself from your worst case and trying to get what you most want. I mean that's the whole purpose of contracting. When people come to the table they want different things. That's when you start the tradeoffs. Do I want this enough to give up this thing. Does the other person, are they afraid enough to give me this even though they'd rather have something else. I think those are the kinds of discussions that we need to have. It's usually useful to point what the other side is getting. And in this case they're really getting a pretty big check.
Stutsman: Well they're giving that guarantee too. I think that's what they're interested in right now.
Minot: That's exactly it. It's $235,000 which they know they're going to get. In reality in the climate that we're dealing with today they're a lot less worried in 1999 about keeping there beds full than they were in 1997 because things have changed a lot. And so that risk to them may not be as prominent as it was 2 years ago when they we're trying to get us to say we would go for 4 beds.
Stutsman: I guess I would suggest that the Board appoint a committee to work with Brandon and representative from the County Attorney's Office to begin working on a contract and start hammering these details out.
Beaudry: I think that's a good idea Sally. I know that Linn County had an accountant there and we didn't so maybe it would be a good idea to have somebody with some accounting experience be part of the negotiating team.
Jordahl: I think I heard Deb volunteer.
Beaudry: She sounds like an accountant.
Minot: Oh that's pathetic. People go to law school because they don't like to do that.
Jordahl: Pat does that kind of thing for us with unions all the time.
Stutsman: I would suggest I would like to be on that committee and I don't know if Carol's interested in being on there.
Thompson: I would. We still don't have the accountant though.
Jordahl: Where is our accountant supervisor. I believe that's Mike over there.
Lehman: I can show up. Give me the numbers.
Beaudry: Another question that I haven't heard addressed is there was a lot of players when we started this 2 years ago, if we don't contract these beds are they going to contract them to someone else? Eliminating our access to as needed.
Jordahl: I think we ought to contract these beds. I think we're talking price not whether as far as I can see it.
Thompson: Did Iowa County decide to do it?
Beaudry: I think the other counties just don't have enough usage to make it worthwhile for them to make a contract.
Thompson: Iowa was the one that was considering it the most and I thought they decided against it.
Beaudry: I don't think Iowa County has enough kids in detention to contract for even one bed.
Stutsman: That's what they said is that they had approached those other counties and none of them are interested in a contract. As Brandon said there's not enough kids. They need a facility but not certainly like Johnson or Linn County.
Thompson: And for Tama this isn't the closest facility so they're not as interested.
Beaudry: Tama has the most kids in detention of any other county in the district besides Linn and Johnson and they're closer to other facilities.
Jordahl: It seems to me that we're sharing this facility with Linn County. We're sort of a small player in this thing and we're looking at space needs in the County and we're talking about the need for a jail here as our next time on the agenda, it would be expensive for us to go out and build our own juvenile detention facility, you've got to staff it and everything. Cedar Rapids is already staffing this facility. Has there been discussion of Johnson County doing more than contracting for beds? Building a pod, for example onto the Linn center sort of co-funding the facility in a little bit more aggressive way than simply renting beds?
Thompson: There were some discussions about that in the beginning. But my impression was that Linn County wants to do this alone.
Stutsman: Quite frankly, I'm not so sure that isn't the best way for even Johnson County to go. It's one thing to build a facility and it's a whole different thing to operate it and that's where your expense comes in. I just don't know if Johnson County has enough kids that we want to get into a long term operating a facility for juvenile detention. There might be at some point down the road. But hopefully maybe we can come up with some better solutions for these kids before we start looking in to those options.
Beaudry: I think at some point down the road Johnson County should consider building its own facility right here in Johnson County. If the number of kids gets to a point where it becomes feasible to do that, cost effective to do that, I think you should consider it.
Jordahl: And that's exactly the question. We got Dwight Dobberstein sitting right behind you he's here to talk about cost effectiveness of the jail facility. I would like to see some sort of preliminary chart of when it is cost effective to build our own facility.
Stutsman: I think that's for discussion for another day. I think we need to focus on working on this contract.
Beaudry: I think it's for a long term idea though, and it may not be as long term as we think based upon our increase in numbers.
Jordahl: I want to be looking at our long term because our population in this area is going to continue to grow and my suspicion is that with that larger population we'll have a larger population in detention. To go to another intermediate point and then I will let this go is the idea of putting more money into the Linn County facility, we could do that without tying ourselves down to operating expenses by doing something for construction costs, for example. As a way of leveraging more beds. We'll do some of the brick and mortar if you'll give us 2 more.
Thompson: The Iowa code allows 2 counties or more to go together to do a joint detention facility which is the only mechanism that we would have for doing what you're talking about and that's what they rejected. Linn County didn't want to have a joint operation. They want to own the whole thing themselves and have it be on their land. Their big concession was that they put it in a location really that we selected. That was a big concession because they had land.
Stutsman: I think Linn County wants to make sure they have a facility to take care of their needs. Although they're willing to work with Johnson County their main concern is taking care of Linn County kids.
Thompson: I think your analogy is very correct. But we are a good customer. But we're not the only customer and we're not the reason they're running the business.
Jordahl: So at some point it becomes more effective and efficient for us to have our own facility and I don't suppose that that's tomorrow. But I'd like to know when it is so that we can start making plans for it. We're looking at we have this expense for a jail we don't have money set aside for it. Gee, wish we did. If we're going to be looking at a juvenile detention facility at time X I'd like to know what time X is. Is that 10 years, 3 years, 20 years so we can start planning to be there to pay for it.
Stutsman: Maybe a couple of years down the road we'll know where we're at.
Beaudry: I think we have to first of all see what kind of usage we have in this new facility before we have a clear idea of the direction we are going.
Jordahl: Charlie wanted to say something.
Duffy: Jonathan we've had a lot of meetings on this. In fact I'd say many. (Inaudible). I think we're at the ground breaking at Linn County I remember it was so windy, remember that? It does suit our needs quite well. I think we're a little modest here to (inaudible) 24 cents a mile. Most of them are over 30. But what you're talking about Jonathan we were talking about it too, I think it was Iowa County somebody was going to give maybe 40 acres, I mean this was a while back. We were kind of looking into that. Didn't materialize. It's too bad I always ask this but I'm going to ask you again, are we gaining on the enemy. It's too bad that we have to build more jails and juvenile detention we're not talking about any juvenile that makes a mistake someplace. Maybe grab something in the store and run out. It's more than that. I hope the public don't think that any kid that does something we're going to put him in juvenile detention. But it looks to me like we're trying to head something off at the pass, so to speak. But it is costly. But these kids have to be straightened out. But we did talk about it at one time. But it's just such a great place up there.
Stutsman: I think we just have to continue to monitor this. I'm sure Brandon and Deb will keep us informed about what's happening. If we do reach the point where we do have to seriously think about building a facility down here.
Jordahl: Here's how I'd like to see that. A graph that doesn't just cover what has happened. But that goes out 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years and let's extrapolate that line and if there's some reason that it shouldn't be extrapolated along that same slope let's talk about what that is. Then put that together in the picture of where it's affordable for us to have our own facility. I think we see trends. Let's project the trend and take appropriate action.
Stutsman: Would Deana be appropriate to put on this committee to look into this?
Jordahl: Yes.
Stutsman: We talk about account type. We've been doing our best.
Jordahl: You got out slicked of that one Mike.
Lehman: No argument. But I think what you're saying is there's a lot of unpredictable variables. You got population, you got educational type programs. We're also looking at, you're saying a lot of these kids aren't sent the first time when it may keep them from going what turns out to be their 2nd time. You got a lot of variables. But we need to do some type of prediction. I agree.
Minot: The 2 biggest variables, I mean really I don't know of anyone who do this work on a regular basis who would probably disagree with this and it's not my theory it's just what's happening, is one our caseloads are certainly increasing. But even more than that I think has been a fairly fundamental shift on a state level in terms of the amount of resources that they will supply to deal with this problem. And the shift toward community based resources. So the bottom line is we have less available out of our community to remove kids from the home. Kids stay in detention longer, they wait longer, they go there more often. We have more community based programs. But there is a cost on a day to day basis of managing those kids and detention is one of those costs. Another cost is recidivism. The most startling statistic in my case load is that in the past approximate 5 years since the residential treatment (inaudible) was imposed the number of re-offenses that I have (inaudible) have almost quadrupled. Those were kids who were staying in the community longer who were re-offending.
Stutsman: Maybe that's more of the discussion that we need to have. Not looking at building a facility or focusing on that. But what are the things that we can put in place in the community to try and get a handle on these kids. Because it almost seems like the discussion we have on the State level about jails, we just can't keep building these facilities. This is just goofy. We can't afford it. I see the same with detention. I think we've got to look at what are the options we can before we just squawk and say the solution is building another facility.
Jordahl: What is your name?
Bill Terry: As a County taxpayer I guess I would ask you, and I'm glad to see that you're addressing this, at what point do we need to build a facility or find a facility that we can do this. If my math is right, by the time you add the man hours and the field costs, that's over a quarter million that Johnson County's spending (inaudible). I guess what I would ask you as Board members is can we not operate a facility at a quarter of a million dollars? Sally you made the point as well are we going to have them filled. If that's the case then let's build it for capacity that's above what Johnson County is presently using and do what Linn County's doing. Contract out so now that you've got that quarter million dollars coming in plus the contracts from one or 2 other counties coming in, you could probably run a facility at a half a million dollars. If we're looking at this where right now we're spending a quarter million dollars for this year next year next year, at what point where Johnson County has distributed 3 quarters of a million dollars or a million dollars, that can't be kept here in the County under our own facility plus the money coming in. I think that as a taxpayer I have to ask you at what point are we going to continue to throw the quarter million dollars out there and most of it going up to Linn County.
Jordahl: Actually I think that number's bigger than that. It's more like a half million isn't it that we're into this year, Brandon?
Beaudry: About 430,000 projected. That was before, I haven't seen the January figures yet and calculated those in to the total fiscal year picture. But I would say in response to the gentleman's comment there that Linn County's projected total cost to (inaudible) the facility are 2 and a half million dollars.
Stutsman: For one year? To build the facility was how much?
Beaudry: If you look at the sheet I gave you under fiscal year 2000 billing charges they have a column there which is entitled total cost. As I understand this would be on a per year basis. Their total costs are $2,413,000.
Stutsman: To run it for one year?
Beaudry: Yes.
Stutsman: That's for 21 beds?
Beaudry: Yes.
Jordahl: That includes depreciation on the building though, which is much like what I'm talking about setting money aside for the future to build a building. They're depreciating that out at $170,000 a year over 30 years.
Stutsman: And then to build the facility it's really expensive. I can't remember exactly what the cost was; it seemed like 10 million.
Beaudry: I think one problem you would have with Linn County building the facility and having the capacity to expand to 63, I don't know how Johnson County would take in kids from other counties very well because the surrounding counties except for Linn don't have a great deal of population so I don't know you would draw in a whole lot of kids, enough to keep the facility with enough numbers to make it go. I think this would need to be studied some.
Stutsman: I agree too, Brandon. It warrants study, to really look into. But I think it's deceiving when we throw these numbers out that there's a lot more to it.
Jordahl: Carol raised the point earlier and I assume this may have been part of your thinking in talking with Linn County about this is it is regional cooperation. If you ask where are the juveniles then, I suppose the Quad Cities is a source of population near us. Would a facility somewhere east of here central to a population that you could define make some sense where we could cooperate through (inaudible) and multiple counties and get a regional facility built that would make more sense than each county trying to have their own palace.
Beaudry: Scott County already has it's own facility. They use Scott County's facility. I think you'd have to look at where the facilities are and then in relation to the population of the counties that you're looking at. I know about Iowa County and Iowa County's projecting a detention bill this fiscal year of approximately 70,000. So you're probably talking about approximately one child per day in detention for Iowa County and much of the time you would not get that Iowa County child because Linn County's facility is actually just as close if not closer than our facility here would be. There are a lot of variables to consider like that.
Stutsman: Would it be OK Brandon, the Board to organize a meeting so we could begin sitting down and talking about this.
Thompson: A meeting of our own people rather than the meetings with Linn?
Stutsman: Yes. I don't think we're going to meet with them.
Jordahl: Carol and Sally and Deanna...
Stutsman: Would that be OK? And then somebody from Pat White's office.
Jordahl: ...and Deb of course pending your schedule you could be amica curiae or something like that.
Duffy: Is the old committee then that's done. I mean we haven't a had a mini for so long that we'll try something else. But we used to behave a lot on that.
Stutsman: Linn County decided just to go ahead and build the facility themselves. That decision was made then that committee kind of quit meeting. We'll arrange a time then to get together. We'll be in touch.
Jordahl: Anyone else like to comment on this issue?
Reverend Bob Welsh: Just a comment to support some of the things that were said. I think we need to look at the alternatives to detention centers. There needs to be some real brainstorming, what are the other alternatives? Is this really the best way of handling these juvenile? Is this the best we can do? Is there a way that could be better? And I've had the privilege of working with both Sally and Carol on projects and I know that their creativity level, if you charge them with the thing of coming up with 5 alternatives to detention centers, I'll bet you they'd come up with 7 or 8 different alternatives and the community could decide, hey which of these alternatives do we like?
Jordahl: Yes. Let's lead.
Minot: We've done a lot of that. I can honestly say that the past 4 years, I'm not saying we're at the end. But creativity has been tapped pretty deep. We have really done a lot of things and there's been a lot of support and commitment from this Board and a lot of agencies and individuals in the community. You know, it's just there are times when you're just at the end of that, that's the sad part. Some of the resources that I think we need to tap into, that we could tap into that could really make a significant impact on this, we've simply been told it's not going to happen on the state level.
Stutsman: To me that's a 2 fold approach: Keep coming up with alternatives and then continue to work with the State in saying you need to take care of your responsibility of the children of the state of Iowa. That's my hesitation on just going out and building our own facility and I'd rather see if we could put dollars in more prevention programs so we wouldn't have to keep building facilities. It seems like that's always what comes out short because we're always spending so much money to keep these facilities going. With detention, it's with jails. If we can work with some other ideas like that, I'd be happy to work with (inaudible); I know Carol would be too.
Jordahl: All right.
Duffy: Jonathan. We have Association of County Meetings coming up the middle of March. Usually I go up there, and probably the main reason why I like to go up there is to visit our fellow Supervisors across Iowa and by doing that maybe we could get some input that we haven't thought about?
Jordahl: Yeah. I wonder if it's on the agenda there. Certainly something (inaudible).
Duffy: It should be on the agenda.
Jordahl: Maybe there's still time to suggest it. I think personally I'd like to take a little break here for we move on to our next agenda item. Dwight will you tolerate that?
Stutsman: Quarter after.
Jordahl: Quarter after
Recessed at 10:07 a.m.; reconvened at 10:15 a.m.