Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

But let's be careful when freedom of speech crosses over and can look like you are mocking individuals. And I want to go on record. Two weeks ago, I got calls about this chairman. And I said I wasn't going to say anything about it. But today, it is on my heart. I can't speak for any of these other commissioners, but I know for me, I cannot sit in silence if any of the less of these or any of the people who may be developmentally delayed or have issues that are not their fault of being the brunt of a political joke. And so I just want to go on record that's distasteful, and I don't support it,

Chair. Yes, sir. I would like to join in and say amen to what the Vice Chair indicated as well. Okay. We don't need that up here.

Mr. Chair, I would also like to join in on that comment and agree with Madam Vice Chair. Okay.

Continue, Matt. I agree as well. People should be able to come up here and talk about issues and items on the agenda, but they should not be able to attack anyone or mock them or do anything like that. And I'm happy to discuss, colleagues, the bringing forth a resolution that would prevent that type of behavior. Madam Clerk.

Yeah, I had just a couple questions. Can you educate me on the eligibility criteria? Why just unindicted cases versus unindicted and indicted cases?

Okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like that would be a bigger universe of people.

What would be the cadence of that playing out? when would that likely start?

Commissioner Arrington. Good morning, Judge McBurney. And you may or may not know the numbers, but I think it's important if we do, and maybe if you don't, maybe Mr. Narocki does, The numbers would say the number is much smaller. Are we talking about less than 100? Are we talking about less than 500? I think it's important at least for the public to know how many of those people have the $2,000 bond but also have the murder charge or some other pending felony charge.

Mr. Narocki, if you can include those numbers in the updates, it's very important because we always get people coming down talking about the people being held with $2,000 bonds and the sheriff is always disputing that narrative. And so it's important, I think, for us to make sure we have those numbers and communicate those numbers clearly so that the public knows exactly what we're talking about and we can all get on the same page.

I had one more question on this before we get off this topic. You mentioned the bail project being, having difficulty interceding in this because of some of their other issues.

If we had other partners, we need to try to seek other partners into this in addition to the bail project.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. I just wanted to make sure we covered the consolidated trial calendar, which is the last page of the presentation. It seemed like we were about to move on, so I wanted to make sure we heard that.

Does that include... prosecutor, public defender?

Going back to the consolidated trial calendar, you mentioned that the judge, that senior judge who had been working with this wanted to take a step back. So that coincide with, so you've gone to, you've cut the number in half through the end of the year. Is that the way for me to read this?

Okay. Was that done more for funding or because the judge wasn't available? Funding. It was driven by funding.

So that's my question. How quickly could another senior judge be identified and it restored back to the same cadence? And on top of that, I mean, along with that, I'd be interested if Mr. Narocki's got sort of an estimate of like, generally all at annual cost to staff for the other folks in addition to what you just shared. But could this also be accelerated? In other words, I mean, we've been pushing for and trying to get the additional judgeship. So we know we've identified the need. this doesn't exactly fill that need, you know, because it's not a full-time judge, right? But in the absence

Okay, all right, so the priority right now is really just identifying the resources to get back to kind of what we have currently, what we previously had. And then any future things on that really is gonna require a lot more thought to it. Imagine there could be some space issues too, potentially.

I mean, what I'd like for us to try to figure out a way to do today is give some direction to our staff to make this... come to fruition and get, you know, I don't think it's really productive for us to continue to sit up here and talk about it, but to actually just find the ability to get this back to restore to where we were, and it's operational. So do we, and is it just the cost, is it just your cost, and then maybe it's the question for Mr. Narocki, or do we estimate that this is gonna be, we're gonna need to do, need something, It's been operating, I guess, without additional costs, but

Okay, what do you, do you have an estimate of what that would be through the end of the year?

So I guess roughly, I'm just thinking through kind of like the analysis we went through with state court and we had a judge and all that sort of stuff and just doing the math. So the magnitude of this probably all in is annualized as less than probably about What, 700 to 750,000, something in that neighborhood? Certainly under a million, probably. Okay. Not between half to a million. Yes. Okay.

Yeah, well, maybe I don't try to put anybody on the spot with just directly on numbers or who and all that sort of stuff, but I'd like our staff to go back and I know we've got a couple of other things that we've had sort of on here that we've continued to discuss. We're gonna have at least, I think we're gonna have at least a million bucks worth of funding, which we could identify to apply towards these types of initiatives, whether it's, I'm talking about throughout for the rest of this year, it gets a little bit different in terms of an annualized figure, but I'd like to see you all come ba

Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that we're not gonna be able to identify at least a million bucks on that, but stranger things have happened, so we'll hopefully have better information on our tax digest and all that sort of stuff to be able to make that a reality.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was really gonna cover a lot of what Commissioner Ellis just covered in terms of getting the, sorry, this is more for Mr. Naraki, but covering the, you know, getting the numbers from all of the related agencies that have any costs associated with keeping these courts or getting these courts back to at least where they were, if not more coverage. Obviously, as with the earlier conversation, if there's not enough cases, that would fit the category. then no, but obviously to address the need. But I would also say rather, my personal perspective is that it would be good

Commissioner Ellis? One more thing, too. In Judge McBurney, if we acted upon this, and this, you know, in essence becomes moved from being a grant-funded program to, you know, a direct county general funding program, in order to sort of assess do we want to continue it and all that sort of stuff, because I do think there were some pivot points that could come in there, like, hey, we get an additional judge, that's going to mean... we've got to consider more overall funding for that and all that sort of stuff, and how does that work? Or maybe some trade-offs, right, where we want to roll that o

Yeah, because I think this is a good thing. But the way it's, it should generally be something that's probably at some point in time temporary if we have. We ought to be self-sustaining. Right. Got it. Thank you.

All right. Anything else? Thank you. Continue, Madam Clerk.

All right, questions, comments? Our motion to adopt by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Ellis.

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

All right, now we have a motion on the floor to approve a motion to do so by Commissioner Arrington that is seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

All right. Before you begin, Commissioner Barrett has requested to speak now.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With all due respect, Mr. County Manager, you characterized this as not an emergency. And yet, when it was presented to us on August 7th of 2024, it was presented as, quote, Dream is requesting 3.2 million to address immediate and emergency jail needs. Here's the item. And then when the work was contracted, the first part of the work was contracted with Lurch Bates, it was contracted under an emergency authorization agreement. it was characterized as an emergency when it was presented to us. And at some point, if it downgraded from an immediate and emergency jail need,

So Mr. Manager, Ms. Strong, Whitaker, would you care before we even get to, because this is, No, I'll save my comments for later.

I hear you that that was not what was requested of you, and by no means am I suggesting that you should have done something without it being requested that way, nor am I saying that you should not have done the initial request as it was requested. I mean, that's your job. But again, And by the way, I wasn't able to find the emergency agreement on the list of... At that time, we were getting a monthly list of emergency purchases, and I did not find it on there, so I'm not sure if that slipped through somehow.

Yeah, I just couldn't find it. I'm not saying it wasn't there. I could not find it. But my... My question still is, this was presented on paper to us with the words emergency and immediate, and over the two-year period, to your point, Mr. Anderson, I have asked numerous times about the speed of these things getting done. I have mostly been poo-pooed about that, but the word emergency and immediate eventually trailed off from what was presented, and then it was called immediate needs. On the monthly slides that you presented us to, it was called immediate for almost the full two years, and only

This discussion here is a lot deeper than just these elevators, but I'll weigh in later. Commissioner Ellis?

Yeah, just so I understand, the emergency procurement was for to do the assessment and so forth, right? And then we learned in the assessment that maybe things weren't quite as bad as what because we're not elevator experts, right? That's why we had to engage these people. Elevators are pretty complex. If you look at elevator repair projects, replacement, whatever, in significant buildings, they tend to take a while, right? Very few people that do it. We weren't experts. So we hired the expert. They give us the assessment. The assessment actually turned out to be better than what we thought. a

Okay, all right, all right. And so, you know, so we'll just, all right. So it's here before us to approve and then kind of get paced through, you know, just like any other project would, right? Yes, sir.

Okay, all right, thank you. Commissioner Thorne.

Thank you for that. I was going to mention that I don't believe in the consent decree that it was an urgent need that needed to be addressed, correct? And that we had lots of urgent needs that we were having to prioritize at the time, and now we can go back and get to the elevator project again.

Okay, and I just wanna, I mean, it was interesting that there was an article published in the AJC the day our agenda came out about the elevators. So I'm hoping Mr. Reed Williams will go back and maybe edit the article to say that the amount we approved back in August was for consulting services, not for the actual procurement and installation. It's interesting how an article can come out the day our agenda comes out from the AJC. So I'm hoping we can get some accuracy in reporting on what we're doing and what we're not doing. But I would love to hear your presentation first before we... I did

I just need to correct the record. Commissioner Thorne, the original request was for 1.652,052,000 for the survey, the consulting, and 1.6 million for the actual work. So that was actually what we approved in August of 24.

And Mr. Davis will explain why that was inadequate funding after the consultation.

Right, but what I'm saying is you just said that the reporting was wrong and that the only thing we approved was for the survey, and that's not accurate. We approved both.

And if we approved both, we should get reporting for both sides.

I didn't ask a question. I'm just making a statement.

Chairman, I want to reserve the right to be able to speak after Mr. Davis speaks. Thank you.

Joseph Davis, Real Estate and Asset Management Director.

All right, Vice Chair, I'm Drew Rockman.

First of all, let me start here with the executive team. For me, you all are very transparent and I appreciate the information that you not only give to all of us, I appreciate you all openness to speak about any and everything that we may ask before the cameras start rolling on each first and third Wednesday.

County attorney, I'm gonna ask you a question. I just need you to answer the question. How many people have perished in the jail since this has been going on? When I say since this has been going on, since this sheriff has been in position, how many deaths have there been in the jail?

And we, as a body, reprioritized them in order and aligned with the DOJ, the Monitor, and the working relationship that we had with them.

And let me ask you this. That DOJ report is how many pages long?

Would you say maybe about 200 pages, a little shy of maybe?

It's 400. Thank you, Commissioner Ellis. And of those 400 pages, how many references are made about the elevators?

Okay, thank you for that. I want to bring some focus back to this, and Chairman, please forgive me if I go a different direction. Miss me with the fake outrage, okay? I received so many calls from constituents when this was reported on the news, and it was reported on AGC, and oh my God! The house is on fire because some elevators. Now, I try to stay in my lane. I don't want to be in the lane of Joe Davis. I don't want to be in the lane of Felicia Whitaker. And I don't want to be in the lane of our county manager unless I'm going to get their checks. If I'm going to get their checks, I don't m

Okay, and this body approved how much money for that contract?

Oh, wow, I am so upset, you all. Miss me with the fake outrage. You had no outrage for that $2.5 million that was spent on devices that were supposed to make a difference. And now, oh, well, they may have, we were just beta testing them. We were just, they, excuse me, missed me with the fake outrage. Now, I know my colleagues are not going to say what I say because they're just not built like that, and that's okay. But when I look at the AJC and I will look at the news and then the sheriff has a certain feeling about certain stuff, I get it. But I will never sit at this position and allow our

Commissioner Ellis? Yeah, Mr. Davis, I really appreciate you kind of walking us through things. One of the things that sort of struck me in some of the remarks you made were the comments about continual damage to the elevators, bent doors and that sort of stuff. And I guess some of that could be natural, but some of that could also be vandalism, you know, people doing something inside the elevator. Is that correct? Yeah, and that And right now, I think we received a note that all the elevators are functioning at the jail. I mean, we know that there's been downtime, but they're all... So many t

Thank you, Chairman. My last comment on this is really more or less educating the public Mr. Davis, the maintenance of the jail is who's responsibility?

And you all are required to maintain that regardless if it is something that you have to go back and redo one, two, three times a week. I'm just throwing numbers out there. Because I want the people... to listen to understand your job and part of what you all do is to make sure you maintain something. It doesn't matter if you put something in brand new and you've come back here and parked and it's broken and not functioning by the time you get here.

So your job is to make sure that you maintain, and a lot of things come up, a lot of things happen, and your goal in your department is to prioritize and to work with the sheriff on what the priorities are and to make sure those that are prioritized are done as well as any new service needs that come up simultaneously. Would that be a correct statement? Okay, thank you. I just wanted the listening public to know. Thank you.

All right, any other comments? Thank you, Mr. Davis. The motion on the floor is to approve. Motion to approve by Commissioner Arrington, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman. Please vote. Appreciate your favorable vote.

All right, motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdurrahman, seconded by Commissioner Arrington.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rockman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

All right, motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

Motion to approve by Vice Chair, Dr. Rachman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman.

All right, we have a motion to approve by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Ellis.

Now, these next three are all the same. You will sound them together.

Hold on. Vice Chair, did you have a comment?

All right, favorable motion on all three by Commissioner Thorne, seconded by Commissioner Arrington.

All right, favorable motion on all three. Motion to do so, to approve by Commissioner Ellis, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

Update in terms of what our net new hiring position is for detention officers to date.

All right, Commissioner Ellis. Just real quick. Sure. Yeah, I mean, just not really any questions, but just put the goal up there. The goal's 200, not monthly goal, it's our yearly goal. Put it up there, 200, track our progress. We're at 29%. Put that up there, that's our target. That's what we should be measuring ourselves up against. The time to fill is interesting, but it's also somewhat of a misnomer since we didn't do really jack squat up until the last couple of months. Right? I mean, let's just call a spade a spade. And then, like, we did, it looks like this process actually could work

All right, so that's the validating piece that it can work if we follow it through and we do the work. But right now, we didn't do anything in these months, so we're at 29%, at a target of 200%. Right? All right, put it up there. 200 is the target.

Mr. Herman, did the elevators, any of the elevators being down have anything to do with these people not being hired?

Oh wow, somebody call AJC. Somebody call 25 and 11 right now! I know that sounds ludicrous, y'all, but listen to me when I say this. And, County Attorney, if I am wrong in my statement, please correct me. The staffing issue at the jail is critical. It was identified in the report from the DOJ and as a body, this body has done everything in its power to help attack that shortage of staff. Is that correct?

I just don't know what's going on. I'm just outraged right now. Do you see? We're talking about people's lives.

How many people did you say at the same time were separated from... The job, same time as if the hiring was going on, it was people leaving. Do you have any information, exit interviews or anything that can speak to why that happened?

Because the concern of mine is if that trend keeps up, we're bleeding. A tourniquet won't help that, Chairman. I mean, it's nothing that we can do here even with walls. There's nothing they can do if we have that type of turnover. And so what I want to go on record here at Fullerton County, this board has done everything that this board can possibly do. We need help. we need a way to make sure that these people, not only that are working there, stay there, and the ones that have come in that are being, I guess, vetted, my understanding they're being vetted by walls, but then the final decision

Thank you, Commissioner. Anything else? All right, Commissioner Thorne, sorry.

Without going into specifics, in the sheriff's office, does he have an abundance in positions while still having a shortage in the detention facility officers?

Well, Mr. Herman, I'm not going to let you off like that. In the study, did we not find that there was top heaviness? And what I mean by that, there were people in supervisory positions that did not have any direct reports?

Well, I can say it. Yes, it did. It said there was a concern that there were, in some cases, individuals in supervisor position with no direct reports, and they saw that as a problem. And so I hope that's being addressed as well. I would ask that by the next meeting, when you come back to us in two weeks, if you can just look at that and see if that has been alleviated or if that's still a problem. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair. Mr. Herman, anything else? No, Commissioner. Thank you. Next item.

Yeah, I guess really my question here is are we, I had made a request for a response from the tax assessor to whether or not we were gonna receive a digest by September 1st. So has that information been provided to the tax commissioner It's really just my question for that. Mr. Conley, can you address that? Yeah, my question. Has the digest been submitted to the tax assessor?

Okay, that sort of answers my question, and it doesn't really answer my question. Has it been handed over to the tax commissioner or not, and sort of when, do we have a line of sight in terms of when, and I realize there's two parties in this, but when we could receive a digest?

And that information has been provided to him as of when?

That information was provided to them yesterday? Okay, all right, thank you for that. And in terms of, and this is maybe for Mr. Rewicki, if we have this and if this paces itself through and we receive, I guess you've got some sort of potential schedule we could be looking at. Just give us the assumption in terms of what this is based on.

Okay, just two or three quick questions. Okay. And just sort of points of emphasis. All right, so if you go back to page three, all of this, the schedule of this outline really is predicated on this balancing thing to happen, right? Correct. All right, and so for us to be able to be sitting here on September 16th approving a proposed millage rate, when does our staff need that information by to make that part work?

Okay, so that means we got a week, is that what that means?

All right, so I'll ask Mr. Connolly, have you prioritized the resourcing of your people to ensure that not only our government but other governments would have this by within a week's time frame?

Okay, all right. Thank you for that. And then in terms of for our staff and everything, we've got obviously dates on here that we're gonna have to meet. So we're just all queued up for that. We've got all the folks that need to be queued up in terms of the advertisement. And the clerk notes here that we're gonna have to have To stay on the schedule, we're gonna have to have a special called meeting in September, correct? For the public hearings, yes, sir. Okay. There's no way to accelerate this schedule the way it's laid out.

Okay. All right, so absent. The key data I heard from you on that is unless the September 16th piece moves, the rest of it is fixed. Is that a fair statement?

Okay, all right. Well, I would just say this, just to close this out. Obviously, the critical nature of this cannot be understated. We got a timeline now that's on record. We had one one before, we missed it. We cannot afford to miss this again. And just whatever, for all parties involved in it, we've got to prioritize getting all of that stuff done and over to our staff. by the 15th and all the other local governments as well because we're gonna need them to do all the same work that we have to do, right? So hopefully when we come back on the 15th or 16th, whatever day that is, that this is w

All right, any other questions or comments? Thank you. Mr. Conley, before you leave, I do have a question. Regarding the commercial property appraisal audit that we discussed back in, I guess it was probably January or February of this year, and that all came about because of the concern of the public, other local jurisdictions, and this board about the high profile trophy properties, and we requested that a third party audit be done. What happened to that? The reason for that was to assure the public, because I had understood from talking with you and your staff that we were doing everything

Okay, when is your board's next meeting? Okay, because in the meantime, it was my understanding that your appraisers had looked at several of these high-profile so-called trophy projects, and there were four or five of them, if I understand it correctly, that were... previously valued at a combined value of right at $100 million, and on reappraisal by your folk, it came out in the billions. Is that accurate?

Not the high profile. You're correct. It's the data centers. The data centers. Is my math correct?

Okay, but you will have a firm timeline for us at our next meeting?

All right, anything else at this time? Not, I entertain a motion to, I was corrected, we will entertain a motion to recess for lunch, first of all. Second of all, we may discuss items that deal with real estate, litigation, and personnel. Motion to do so by Vice Chair Abdur Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

All right, without objection, we will resume the regular order of business. Madam Clerk, continue. Items from executive session.

I have a motion to do so by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne. Vice Chair?

Clerk, Madam Clerk. Does this clear up that the way she just... Our county attorney just phrased it. I'm just doing a double check.

All right, motion to do so by Vice Chair Abdur-Rahman, seconded by Commissioner Thorne.

All right, any other matters that come before us, Madam Clerk? No further items. All right. In the absence of any other matters, we are adjourned. Thank you, Commissioners.