MINUTES OF THE INFORMAL MEETING OF THE JOHNSON COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:

Chairperson White called the Johnson County Elected Officials Meeting to order in the Johnson County Administration Building at 1:35 p.m.

Elected officials present were: County Attorney J. Patrick White; County Auditor Tom Slockett; County Recorder Kim Painter; County Sheriff Bob Carpenter; County Supervisors Charles Duffy, Jonathan Jordahl, Mike Lehman, Sally Stutsman, and Carol Thompson; and County Treasurer Tom Kriz. Staff present were: Board of Supervisors Administrative Assistant Carol Peters, and Auditor’s Office Recording Secretary Casie Parkins.

J. Patrick White: This meeting is called to order. Item one is to review the minutes of the September 14th meeting, which have been distributed to you in verbatim text. Does anybody have any comments, corrections or additions to the minutes as distributed? We’re on the minutes of the September 14th meeting. It’s not too late to offer corrections. Hearing none, we’ll leave the minutes alone.

White: Item 2 is ISAC County-A-Day Program, which Sally asked to have put on the agenda. I think I know what it is, but do you want to speak to it?

Stutsman: OK. We talked a little bit about it at the Department Head Meeting. When I was at ISAC, Iowa State Association of Counties, meeting in November, they had sign up for the County-A-Day Program. We had signed up for this last year, if you remember correctly, and we got snowed out. So, because I was there and the calendar was there, I thought I’m just going to go ahead and sign up the County and then we can talk about if you want to be involved with it. So, the day that they had free was February 23rd. What we would do is go and meet at the ISAC office in Des Moines that day. Then they would take us over to the Capitol and give us an opportunity to visit with our legislators about legislative issues. For those of you that may not be familiar with the program, ISAC initiated this last year and they had all counties that were interested sign up for a day and then gave them an opportunity to go to the Hill to meet with the legislators. ISAC kind of briefs the county representatives ahead of time letting them know where the legislators are at on particular legislation that people might be interested in. It got a very, very good response last year, so they are doing it again this year. So, I thought it might be a good opportunity for the County to participate in that. We talked about it at the department head meeting. There was very good response, so I think we are going to go ahead and plan on doing that. I just wanted to let people know that it’s on the calendar. More details will come. Carol did a wonderful job and put a lot of time into organizing this last year. It was disappointing that we got snowed out. So, hopefully that won’t be a problem this year and just let people know.

Jordahl: Repeat the date please.

Stutsman: The 23rd of February. Hopefully maybe we can do some carpooling or take the County van up.

White: How many people altogether do you envision going?

Stutsman: I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Last year there was really quite a bit of interest. I think just about all the Supervisors were going to go and all of the elected officials plus department heads. Why did you ask that, Pat?

White: I just was curious what kind of crowd ISAC wanted or whether it made a difference to them, whether they had 5 or 20 people.

Stutsman: The feeling I get, I don’t think it really makes that much difference. They don’t care if it’s Supervisors that go up or the Sheriff or if it’s department heads or who goes up. Just whoever might have an interest in contacting the legislators. Last year Joe Bolkcom arranged lunch for us in, I don’t know, in some office place or some building. So, hopefully we can contact the legislators and they can help us out again this year.

White: Do we need to do that or does ISAC? Is that what they do?

Stutsman: We’re on our own for arrangements for lunch and things. Isn’t that right, Carol?

Administrative Assistant Carol Peters: Last year Joe Bolkcom was very helpful in setting up the lunch, but then we had bad weather.

Jordahl: Maybe Joe could repeat his plans. He’s well located to renew the reservation.

Peters: Right.

Stutsman: Carol, do you remember how many were planning on going last year?

Peters: Actually, it got cancelled and at that time there were only a few. There were like 5.

Stutsman: Was there? I was thinking that there was more than that. ISAC doesn’t have any preference how many people go or who goes.

Peters: The only difference they said this year is they would have an intern. They would accompany the county, whatever county it is, through the whole day. At this point Johnson County is the only one signed up for February 23rd. You go to ISAC, park your car, they take you over to the Capital.

White: Any other questions?

White: Item 3 is the Fiscal 2001 Budget Process, which is on here simply because it’s that time of year and budget and budget process is one of the things we’ve talked about in the past. I didn’t have any reason, other than the process is underway, to put it on. I wonder if we could prevail on the Board just to start us off by telling how it’s going and where you are? Do you have any sense for how grim it’s going to be yet?

Thompson: No. On Friday when we met we got on the table everything we think that we’ve discussed. Everybody’s decision packages and all the other things that might be in Department 18 or whatever. Deana made a spreadsheet with a few holes in it, but mostly it’s all filled in now, and so from here on, we just cut. The first week in January we’ll know how much we’re likely to have in revenues, which is the other factor that we have to have to make a budget, and we’ll go from there.

Jordahl: I suppose we could grant everything. That would be another option.

Duffy: Grant everything?

Jordahl: She said we just cut from this point on.

Thompson: Now wait, I’m here between you.

Jordahl: We need balance on the Board. That’s why we do these things.

Thompson: I feel like the fulcrum in this.

Duffy: I think the first thing we’d better do is put our signs up. They won’t know who we are.

County Recorder Kim Painter: That’s right. You don’t have your signs up.

Stutsman: Pat, you asked if it was grim or not. I guess I would say yes, it’s pretty grim. There are a lot of requests on the table. What was the ballpark figure we came up with?

Deputy Administrative Assistant Deana Pillard: Well, not everything is in there and that was 15. Last year’s was 19 I think.

Stutsman: So, it’s going to be…

Pillard: But that’s just the General Fund.

Jordahl: And that’s if you ignore the Jail.

Stutsman: Right.

Pillard: There’s a lot left.

Stutsman: There’s a lot that isn’t in there. But that’s just the initial lines though.

White: Have you made a starting assumption with regard to space needs or Jail?

Stutsman: We’ve still got $1.5 million on the table, so we’ll just…

Jordahl: But that figure again doesn’t include the Jail. I mean, that’s the other space needs.

Stutsman: Of course, the Jail would be a bond. So, I don’t know if we really…

Duffy: That’s right.

Jordahl: I had some people talking to me about the possibility of did we look at this $700,000 that Bob threw out as what the cost of housing the overflow of prisoners in another county would be for a year that you could… I don’t know where I got the numbers, if it was you, Tom, or elsewhere. …that you could amortize a jail costing about $8.3 million dollars with that figure. So, we’re talking about that in any case. Even if we don’t have a bond we would need that much just to house the prisoners that we have.

Duffy: Is that right Bob?

County Sheriff Bob Carpenter: Well, now that doesn’t house the prisoners that we have.

Jordahl: No, it houses the overflow.

Carpenter: That would house the possible overflow if they come in and say cut back 30. That would take 30 out of 103 right now. We’ve already sacked up the 15 now that we’ve got in-house detention since the first of July. Those figures, taking them out of the Jail, have already, those 15 have already been filled, to give you some idea of where we’re going here. That’s at 6 months basically. So, you’re looking at right now, the rate things are going, they could grow 30 a year real fast.

Jordahl: That’s one of the things that’s been discussed. Again, I don’t recall where the discussion took place. But as you create more jail space, there are various mechanisms by which people wind up in jail and all of those people, whether it’s judges or patrolmen or whatever will recognize that there was probably room to put these people. So, the standard threshold of enforcement may go down.

Carpenter: I don’t think there’s any question in anybody’s mind that we could probably have 30 to 50 more beds right now and have them full.

White: Jonathan, that’s one of the reasons why the sort of projections that Bill Garnos has done are always going to be imperfect. The criminal justice system just is not capable of scientific analysis since there are so many variables, so many discretionary decisions and so many things that you’d like to be able to measure that you can not find. The one you and Bob have just mentioned is one of them. I think that will be true with detention. I think our juvenile detention bed usage has been low, reflecting a peace officer’s judgement that they didn’t want to drive all the way to the east end, northeast side of Linn County to deliver somebody up there. But, with it closer, I think that’d be…

Thompson: Actually, it went down slightly for the first half of this year. Not enough to make much difference.

White: I don’t know why that is. Maybe the screening is the explanation for it. But there are, I mean, we’ve been for years, I think, under-attending the delinquency intake system. There’s probably some difference of opinion about that.

Stutsman: There always will be. There are people that just think the jails are too full and there’s people that think the jails aren’t full enough. They want to continue to be tough on crime and put them away and lock it and throw away the keys.

White: Even in-home detention is an example. I have some disagreement with the way it’s being used, but no disagreement at all with the need for it. Regardless of what cases it’s being used for, we’d be in real difficulty if we weren’t using it.

Carpenter: I’m going to throw this out right now. I know if you’ve seen the Press-Citizen last week, where if it’s the problem we had, that was a judge’s orders that put person into home detention… We had rejected the person.

White: That case is an example of my disagreement. I don’t think that guy should have ever been on in-home detention.

Carpenter: Well, we have some other ones similar to that. But the judge has the right to overrule our decision on it, and he’s made that decision, and I guess I’m concerned about it. But it’s the judges neck, not mine. So, that’s kind of where we’re at on that.

White: But regardless of the individuals put on it and whether you or I would agree with all of them, it does give us more capacity and we need it.

Carpenter: Yes. Well, that would be 15 people we’d have to find a place for right now. Well, right now, at the present time, we’re up to 15. It’s growing more and more all the time. It’s not as fast as what we’d like. As a matter of fact, the company when I signed the agreement with them, ideally we needed 18 on it. They would like to bill us for the last month or so for those that we didn’t project. I’m having a little problem with it and their figures and everything. We’ll get there. It’s just a matter of time to where it’s cost-effective. It’s cost-effective for us in the fact that we don’t need a room and it’s cheaper to spend that $14 a day to have somebody out than it is to house them. But for them to make a break-even point they need at least 18 a day to do the service. We agreed… They agreed for a certain period of time they wouldn’t hold us to the 18, but now we’re getting kind of to the point where it’s… They’re saying, well, you’re a little over, so that’s something that we’ll work out amongst ourselves.

Stutsman: I thought there’d be some letup in the legislature as far as rules, but boy.

Carpenter: You’re not going to see that happen. Well, to start with it wouldn’t affect us for a long time anyway.

Stutsman: But there was an article in the Des Moines Register, I think it was last week, quoting Chuck Larson. Everybody’s complaining about how it’s costing so much to build these bigger prisons and jails and whatnot. He said, hey, it’s working. Crimes down, blah, blah, blah. We’re going to get tougher.

Carpenter: Like I said to the Board the other day, it depends on which part of the country you’re looking at, is whether it’s down or not. When you’ve got a low crime rate community to start with compared with nationwide, yes, we’ve been low for so many years we haven’t got anywhere to go but up. As a matter of fact, I’m sure our arrest rate has increased. That comes from several factors, not only the fact that we’ve got more officers on the streets than what we used to. I mean, I think between Iowa City and Coralville, we’ve probably got 15 or 20 more officers than what we had 5 or 10 years ago on the streets. That’s got to make a difference. Of course, the sentencing guidelines are tougher and there’s more people being put away for those things. So, you’re going to see that increase. I don’t think we’re going to see the legislature… I think they’re going to stay heavy on jail time. I really do. I don’t think that’s going to lighten. Do you see that Pat?

White: I do. Absolutely I do. All these national stories out of the FBI that say crime rates are down are really misleading because ours are not. Again, for a variety of reasons, but our caseloads continue to go up and I think they will be for the foreseeable future. One of the things that I think is happening in particularly urban Iowa- now I mean that’s a bit of a misnomer as the rest of the country would not think anything in Iowa is urban. But when you look in the Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo’s, Des Moines, the other larger cities, we’re seeing a different type of prisoner in the county jail as well as the State prisons have filled. I think a clear policy on the part of the Department of Correctional Services, arguably the Parole Board, to put fewer people in prison. Their way of dealing with the space problem is to stop sending them. That means some of these people, who a few years ago would go to prison, and today still probably ought to, are ending up in the county jail, sometimes for longer terms, sometimes in some split sentence. I think that adds to both the management problem for the jail and that also adds to the space problem. At the bottom end of our scale we end with people who profit from a short jail time, who we don’t have space for. Then I think judges and probation officers do make decisions not to sentence people because they know how crowded we are. It’s a very complex problem. We’ve actually probably lapsed over into agenda item 4, but anybody want to talk more about budget process?

Jordahl: I’d like to invite Deana to, if you have anything to say. Sometimes she likes to be very quiet too. We’ll change that over time. It’s a personality thing. OK.

County Auditor Tom Slockett arrived at 1:45 p.m.

(continued in part 2 of transcript)