Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right. Good morning, everybody.

Andy informs us it's 9.30. We'll get this ball rolling. First sign is approval of the agenda for today. I'll move to approve the agenda. Those in favor? Aye. Manage to the June 30th, 26th board meeting. Make a motion to approve. Now second. Those in favor? Aye. Employment contract for the assistant engineer.

I'm going to make a push to approve the suggested contract.

And I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. And I believe you put an August 7th. Just in time for school. He'll be working under Brad for a year, year and a half. Brad's two weeks. Next up is Samuel's group jail study presentation.

So I'll just give a brief background to the board here about the Walpole County Sheriff's Office and the jail. The jail and the law center opened in November of 2000. Our facility is rated to 148 inmates. We've been farming out for several years now. And last year we had the highest farmed out number of 57 inmates. Currently today, we have 33 formed out. The board decided a year ago to hire Samuel's group to do the jail study, and I'd like to introduce Sid Samuel, Chance Cohen, and Henry Kopp, or Kropp, to do the presentation.

It's all yours.

All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for letting us present here today.

Can you hear me now?

All right. Well, thank you, everybody. So, yeah, what we're doing here today is showing you guys the results of the study that we've been working on with the sheriff and his staff for approximately the last nine months or so. What we've been doing is we're hired to evaluate the capacity of the existing jail, look at expansion opportunities, evaluate how any of these expansions might change the operations of the jail and the existing site there, and then develop a preliminary cost estimate for that. Some of the key findings of this was In the last 10 years, the jail population has increased by 57% or a little over 57% in 10 years, which is pretty significant. With that, the jail is at its design capacity or has exceeded it. So typically, this 148-bed jail design capacity is set to be 126, the way that our industry operates for operational controls, all that. they're spending approximately $700,000 a year farming out inmates to other counties. So that's money that's just kind of going outside of the county. With that, there's also some state policies and other effects outside of the jail that are likely to continue this increased rate. So we believe something is going to need to be done from what we can see here. And essentially the existing facility has met or exceeded its capacity and its design. Back in 1999, the building was built with a foundation set up for an expansion. So it's something that kind of seems to have been planned or expected down the road. And we kind of see this as you're at that point where it needs to be done now. Next slide. So some of the other things that affect this or that we look into with these studies, population of the county, we look at household income, economic opportunities, poverty levels, things related to substance abuse, crime activity. Again, these state policies length of stay. All of these types of things affect the jail populations for every single county, so these are pretty standard demographics. We're not showing all those charts in the presentation that I'm going to show you today, but in your packets, there's a larger print off that has all of those details in it. And if you've got any questions about any specifics, we can reference back to those. So when we looked at crime and booking trends, some of the things that we noticed right off the bat there, crime rates. So in Guadalupe County, per 100,000 population, Guadalupe County has the highest crime rate in Iowa. So that's one of the items. Booking trends have actually been pretty stable. That's not necessarily a driving factor for the jail population, so it points to something else. Longer stays. Longer stays are affected primarily by the types of offenses and the charges, as well as some of these state policies where judges may not be able to be as lenient with sentencing, that sort of thing. Classification challenges, this is a big one. Back in the 90s, there wasn't necessarily as many classifications in a jail. So as you divide up that pod, what does that look like? Today, we're dealing with more and more classification types, whether it's male felonies, male misdemeanors, female. There's a lot more females in jails these days. And then there's other medical and mental health issues that are dealt with inside the jail where you want to isolate those folks so they're not a danger to the rest of the And then, yeah, the policy changes, population management trends, that sort of thing. This chart here kind of shows what the existing jail is set up as. So it's got a design capacity of 126, a max capacity of 148. Their current average daily population, or ADP, you'll see that acronym pop up a few times, is at 137. So that is above the design capacity, and it's been that way for about the last two years, pretty steady. At one point, there was 151 inmates in the jail, so even above the maximum rated capacity. There's a breakdown on the side there of the types of cells that the county has, you know, between cells, dorms, special status, and where you get to the 148 beds. On to the next slide then. Here is a graph of the last 10 years of ADP. So for about eight or so of these years, things were fairly stable. You know, there was some fluctuation, a little bit up, down COVID. There was a drop in population in the jail, but then it came back up. And then in 2023, that's where the real growth really started. So that's when we talk about that 57% increase. That was really kind of the starting point of it. There was a pretty significant growth there. And again, yeah, the design capacity, which is the black dashed line that runs across, that's that 126% beds that a jail ideally operates at. You can see again, yeah, that approximately in the last two years, it's been above that point. Then kind of, again, to touch on transportation and outsourcing. So the county's been having to spend a little over $719,000 annually to other counties to farm out their inmates. Came to a little over $12,000 inmate days in other facilities and 561 inmates themselves, which was, it averages out to about 350 trips annually that the deputies have to make to and from other facilities. One of the key things about that is every time they're driving to another county and back, that's time they're outside of the county being able to, you know, focus on the needs here. Then as we start looking at kind of a recap, again, the design capacity, 126. Average daily population in 2025, it's 137. So we're looking at a pretty significant increase. And with the trends, the way they're looking, that is likely to just continue. And we'll have some other charts to cover some of that a little bit later on. Graphically, this is projecting the jail population. So in the red dotted line with kind of the red hatch below it, that's your existing facility and where that is. The green line on the bottom that kind of squiggles up and down, that was the last 10 years of jail population. And then there's three different curved lines going off various percentages. So the national average for for an annual increase in jail population is approximately 0.96%. Over the last 10 years, Wapolo County was 5.2%, so about five times above average. Now, we don't have a glass ball, but we don't believe that that exact percentage is going to continue forever because Things seem to sort of stabilize at that roughly 137 number the last couple of years, but is likely to keep going with some of these policy trends. So one of the most likely scenarios is what we're seeing is probably a 3.5% increase. So that kind of meets in the middle. And where that 3.5% comes from is taking two of the extreme changes from the actuals observed and eliminating those. So the highest high change and the lowest low change. And that kind of brings you right in that middle area there. So that 3.5% is what the study is going to base off for the solutions. So we're looking at something that would be roughly a 20-year function similar to what was done in the past. So that would put you somewhere around 273 beds is what your overall capacity would need to match that 3.5% increase. So one of the first solutions we looked at, and this was really just based on the original ask of the county, was look at adding on a pod using the existing foundations from 1999 that were built for that future expansion. So that's what we looked at here. It provided approximately 118 additional beds onto the existing facility. We were looking at some kitchen renovations and a small kitchen addition. Overall, you'd have a capacity of about 265. Doesn't quite hit the 273 that the 20-year projection shows, but it got close. With that, when we were looking at this, discussions back and forth with the staff, we realized that, well, if you basically double the population of the jail, we need to really look at all the support spaces, everything that goes into running a jail. So more than just a kitchen, because with that many additional inmates, things like laundry, things like storage, medical intake booking, those sorts of things also really should be addressed as well. So... When we were discussing this, we kind of decided, well, just doing the pot addition and the kitchen renovation probably is not going to be a long-term solution. It's going to put strain on staff and the overall operations. So then we went on to the other two options, options A and B. This slide here is kind of an overview of everything that went into option A. On the top right, small site plan. You'll see that there's some orange blocks. All those orange blocks represent additions onto the existing facility. And then because the new jail pod takes over some parking spaces, we're adding some parking lots, one to the southwest across the road where there's some vacant property there. And then also to the northeast, kind of by the highway there, there's the vacant a lot there where we can add some more public side parking. So more staff parking on the southwest side, more public parking on the northeast side, and then some additional ADA stalls there. This addition here with all the support area renovations, this gets you to a 284 bed capacity. So this would meet the 20-year projection, assuming everything goes at this 3.5% increase there. Along with that, the existing rope that's on the jail and sheriff's department, everything, that's the original rope. So we proposed that that should probably be replaced. If you're doing all this other work, this is the time to do it, as well as upgrading some of the security electronics that are in that existing facility. Both parts are very, very difficult to find and to keep those things functioning and maintaining. So that would be an opportunity to upgrade those to match what's going in the new facility. Option B by comparison. So this one, we were looking at maximizing the site and maximizing longevity. So with that, then the new pod addition, instead of being 118 beds, it goes to 150 beds. So this gets you a total capacity of 316 beds. So again, it exceeds that 20 year design capacity there. All the other same scope is still employed here. This just provides more flexibility. It improves classification abilities for the staff. It maintains the existing dorms and the work release program that are in there that's pretty important to the operation of the current facility, but it also brings in additional dorms inside. So some of the lighter offenses have more properly classified instead of putting them in with general populations. Any questions on that? There are a lot of things out there. Move on. So then this is a quick side-by-side comparison of the two different options that we're recommending. So option A has a total bed capacity of 284. This is adding 136 beds to what you have currently. Option B, 316 total beds. that one adds 168 beds onto what you currently have. The estimated cost then for option A, we're putting that about 37.5 million is what we believe that that would cost. And option B would be approximately 44.8 million. One other key thing after that long-term, functionality of the facility, option B compared to option A has additional 32 beds there. And their projected capacity, option A, is going to get you somewhere around that 2041 to 2046, we believe. Option B would be 2045 to 2049. So get you about somewhere between four to five more years there. Graphically, here's another look at the overall capacities. Again, you have the dotted red lines with kind of the red or the pink hatch below show where those projections go through because you don't want to go through this same process another 10 years. Each one of these gets you out past that 20-year mark. All right. So one of the other – another question?

Yeah, where's the – on the solid board?

Yep.

You were – being the word booking area.

Correct, yeah, yeah. So with that, this is going to – I was trying to locate where they come in at, but I don't see it, so. Oh, so if we swing back to one of the site plans, if you look at those – And this might be easier to see in the full 47 page packet where everything's blown up a little bit more. So where the current parking lot is on the northeast side, that's where the new satellite port would be located. So when I talked about adding public parking across the road, the parking lot would be displaced and moved over there. And that's where the new satellite port would be located because we're using the existing satellite port as part of the booking area. In that booking area, is where typically you're going to find a lot of your padded cells for any violent inmates, things of that nature. So that's part of that renovation there. And to improve the flow and functionality of that space.

Would they be doing the booking in the pink area?

Yeah, the pink area is the booking and intake space. So it's the same general flow, just rearranged a little bit differently. So, yeah, people would come in, squads would enter into the salary court, process through into booking, deal with property, things of that nature, and then move into the jail and to whichever classification that they end up needing. There's a little area, I can touch on this now that you've got questions there, a small area for attorney and inmate visitation in the... We'll call it the plan north side there, so that way attorneys don't necessarily have to enter into the secured perimeter like they currently do. So any of those meetings and discussions can happen in the corner right between jail, staff, admin, and the booking area. Then the admin area would also be renovated. That's going to take over some of the the underutilized space that's on that kind of front half of the facility right there. Some high density storage and property inmate storage to maximize that, because we're not growing the footprint of the entire facility to match this, so we gotta maximize and make it as efficient as possible. So the staff has been working very hard to utilize every cubic inch that they have there, but having this extra capacity is going to, in a sense,

It's a little easier to see.

Yeah, yeah. If you look at that one, everything's blown up a little bit more.

Any other questions on just the general building programming? No, I'm glad I asked.

I didn't realize the parking lot was going there in front.

Yeah, we met with the DOT here. I think it was a week ago and had a conversation with them to see about that green space across from the Law Center, if that could be utilized. So we're still trying to look at that to see if it's going to be available, but it seemed pretty positive with talking to DOT, just so you have an update. And you know too, Darren, when one of the current Sallyport, once you get a couple of cars in there, it's pretty tight. So this will allow for vehicles to pull in that Sallyport area.

We don't want to store any vehicles in there anymore, right? We can store them in a building across the road. That's the idea.

Yep, so that parking lot on the southwest side, that'll have a vehicle storage building there that can be used for vehicles that are part of an ongoing investigation and evidence or as needed for sheriff's vehicles.

Jump back then to slide 15.

One of the things with expanding the jail, obviously there's going to be some operational costs associated with that. So the staff worked through a mock scheduling. So they looked at every single day, every single post and shift that they have. The existing facility has 17 employees on staff on any given day. requires a total of 26 employees. That accounts for 40-hour work days, sick days, vacations, anything of that nature. Currently, the existing staff costs are about 1.63 million. With the expanded option, the way that scheduling looks to work out, that's going to require about 34 posts on a given day once the facility is at design capacity. That'll require a total of 49 employees to fill those 34 posts on that same 40-hour workday, all that good stuff. That is going to come to approximately $2.92 million in wages for the staff there. The key thing that was discussed even if the expansion doesn't happen, they still believe additional staff is going to be required to keep operating and maintain the status quo. So because the transportation requirements to other counties is, you know, if there's no addition, that's not going to go away. And with the current trends that are being projected and what's expected, that there's still going to be additional staff needed to transport the inmates to other counties.

So if you go back to page 15 for just a moment, the estimated cost. So once Henry had gone through staffing plans, had gone through square footages, our estimated part of the NDS is basically square foot numbers in today's world, right? So we've constructed quite a few correctional facilities, and we're using that square footage historical data to help us determine what the actual cost would be for these different options. In addition to that, we've worked with Square Financial, and they've come back, because lots of times when you look at referendums and you go back to the public, all they see is that large number, and it's pretty darn hard to digest that kind of a number. So what we want to do is basically convert that number down into what's the taxable impact for property taxes, whether it's for residential, commercial, or agricultural land. So if you look on page 16 there, really what we're going to use is that $100,000 mark. So somebody's home is valued at $100,000. In Iowa, you have the rollback. So in 2027, your rollback percentage is in our estimate of 44.53, ultimately getting you out to $82.83 for that option A. You can see what it does for the commercial as well. And then the average average is down there below four. agricultural. And if you go to the next slide, that's really how she's breaking it out. So what we're going to really start talking about here shortly is it becomes that mortgage, and that mortgage is something that taxpayers control the general fund, right? So we'll talk about what that does so you guys can look further down the road. On page 18, That's the larger option. That's the option B. You'll see the same chart. The difference is you're looking at $99.76 for a $1,000 property. Then again, that's for supporting that on the following page. Looking at the page 20, one of the things we wanted to look at was if we are currently transporting people out of county, currently costing roughly a little over $700,000 a year. So you see in your fund that's $711,000. That's the cost to the county and that's coming out of your general fund to house those inmates out of county. What we've done is projected What we want to do is show you exactly what that compounded cost is going to be. If you choose not to construct a facility, choose to continue to do what you're doing, what's the impact of what that expense is, and compare that to if you decide you want to go to a referendum and construct a new facility. So some of the criteria, we're using that population increase, all those lines that were on that chart. projecting that as an annual inflation of 4%. We can all arm wrestle over that, because over the last five, six years, you've seen interest or inflation rates going substantially higher. But historically, it's been around around 4%. The next page, this one usually becomes pretty important, especially when we're talking to the general public in regards to what all those members mean, because they can get very confusing. But you'll see the blue lines there. in both option A and option B, that's your mortgage. So if you've decided to go to a friend in the past, sold bonds, you have a mortgage that you have to pay over the next 20 years. That's that dark blue line that's going across the chart. The orange line represents what it's costing you today in transportation. We're adding that inflation over that 20-year period of time along with the increase in general population of the jail. and you'll see that that starts taking a fairly steep curve. So what we look at is how close that intersection, so you'll see the dotted green line. And what we're looking for is where that green line lands in that chart. If that green line was past that 20-year mark, we probably wouldn't be talking to you about these bigger options. But as that green line gets closer and closer to 1 or to 0, the urgency of having to do something that's pretty important. Because the day after that intercept, it costs you more money per year to transport those inmates out of county than it would be to pay for the car. Does that make sense to everyone? Understand that? So that really becomes a pretty underlying factor of why or why not you may want to consider a rail train. So you look at option A, 10.6 years. So in 10 years, that's where that intercept is for option A. In option B, you're just a little over 12, like 12.2. So in conclusion, we looked at that jail population increase, the operations of the existing facility. That was the other thing. You would charge us to look at just the cost of adding on a pod. As we took a look at the population trends, looked at all your data, found that you can add that on and you have capacity. The problem is you're going to create a situation where you cannot run this efficiently because you don't have the space for your administration and all of your back of house to support that number of inmates that are coming in. And so that's why you see in both of those options the renovations that need to take place, the addition of the Sally Port, the addition of the kitchen so you can have a bigger kitchen space because you're going to have to feed double the capacity. And so that's really what generated that need for those additional areas to be renovated with additions. So our recommendations from our experience is really the two options, A, option B, I think the sheriff's going to talk That's important to Henry's staff. From there, you select your preferred alternative, your choices. Decide if this is something you want to continue to move forward on. And then decide if you want to move forward. I'll send it back to you.

All right. Thanks, Sid. Henry. Back to you. You know, some of the state policies have changed there July 1st that in talking with the county attorney's office, you know, we work with the county attorney's office and the judges to try and limit some of this population if we're able to. But the state has kind of limited the judge's ability to do that stuff that they've done in the past for us, like ROR, releasing those folks on their word that they'll show up before. They've eliminated that. Or if they are able to do that, they have to have a really good reason as to why they're doing that. The bonds, sometimes a judge... might lower bonds if somebody isn't necessarily a risk to reoffend. You know, they have to use the standard bonds, which my understanding is they're looking to raise those standard bonds because of inflation. So they're going to raise that stuff. Same with serious misdemeanors and simple misdemeanors. You know, you come to jail on a violent or drug offense, you know, they have to postpone before they can be released. Sometimes the judges require that, sometimes they don't. But my opinion is for a drug case, they're having to postpone. They can't be arraigned and then the judge release them. They have to postpone now. And then the habitual offender portion of the state law has changed to where it's increased. So I think that's potentially going to add some longer stays for folks to potentially go to trial or try and get a better deal, I guess, from the court or from the county attorney's office. You know, in talking with the county attorney, she told me that she foresees currently the way it is is a person can't be held in the county jail for no more than a year on sentenced inmates. With these changes that's come about, she foresees the possibility of the state changing that law to where you could be in the county jail up to two years. I think that's how they're going to try and control the population a little bit maybe. So I think we're looking at a lot of things changing to where I think option B is the one we want to look at heart, you know, and it's not an enormous impact on our taxpayers. And, you know, it's something that we can, I think it's needed. So in my opinion, so I guess you have any questions for us?

Would you like me to expand on those law changes?

I'd love for you to share.

Sure. So some of the things that Sheriff Phillips was talking about. Go into the microphone.

Oh.

So as of July 1st, there was a lot of legislative changes and a lot of them revolved around basically keeping people in jail or prison longer, which obviously As the county attorney, we believe that was necessary, but it will increase burden on the sheriff's department, for sure, and the jail. So currently, it used to be you can post 10% bonds. So that's no longer a thing. That's mostly going to affect bondsmen, but they're going to be more reluctant to give bonds to individuals because they're going to be on the hook for a full amount rather than 10%. There's no longer releasing on recognizance for Several of crimes, the ones that we're going to see the most of that were previously released on their own recognizance that are no longer going to be able to do that. We're driving while bars and first offense possessions. We have a lot of those in our county. And a lot of times if someone's in jail on a driving while bar, they're trying to be like, hey, we've been released. And we'll be like, yeah, we don't have jail space for a driving offense. That's not going to be an option anymore. And that's going to add a huge impact. Over the years, there's also been an increased number of forcible felonies added. So the way the law has changed additionally is that basically forcible felonies, they're not going to be able to bond out. A forcible felony is when the sentence someone is facing has to be prison. So that's going to be a couple of things that we see a lot of are assaults on correctional officers or police officers. causing bodily injury. That used to be an aggravated misdemeanor with the possibility of a suspended sentence. That's changed to a forcible felony, including spitting on an officer. Which, unfortunately, we do see a lot of. I think, Darren, your experience in law enforcement, you know how often that happens. But that does add an impact to our jail because those people are not going to be able to be released and they're going to prison. Additionally, there's the assaults in violation of no contact orders. So a lot of times with domestic situations, then for whatever reasons, the parties end up back together and then another assault occurs and that no contact order is in place. Now, if you assault someone and there's a violent and then no contact order in place, that is also a forceful film, which unfortunately we see a lot of. I mean, it's a good thing it's a forceful felony. Don't get me wrong there. I believe that is appropriate. However, we do see a lot of that happening just because the nature of domestic relationships. And again, those people will not be able to bond out at all. Additionally, the Department of Corrections has added sex offender beds to the residential facility. And when you have sex offenders, you have violations of the registry. So given that increase, we're gonna have more sex offender charges. And it's generally our position that, or the county's attorney's position that we don't let sex offenders out. They can postpone, but we're not gonna be really thrilled if someone's not registering to release them to the community. So that does increase more beds as well. And the Department of Corrections now is facing, I assume they're in crisis mode considering they're already 28% over capacity. And the fact that we're having more forceful felonies, the change in the habitual offender law, all of that is going to increase their capacity. And they're going to be looking for ways to shift that to counties because it's just simply not there. And that's, again, it's going to be shifted. The burden is going to be shifted to the counties and spread out because just the system we have in place isn't equipped to currently handle that. Now they say that there's going to be changes and stuff, but that's going to be a process. And I don't know many legislators who are running on build more prisons. So I assume it will be a long process. And that will impact. That's why my theory is that they're going to change aggravated misdemeanors to be housed in county jails as well. Because that's the first step I would take as a legislator. Just because right now you have The level of offenses, you have your felonies A, B, C, and D, and your misdemeanors, you have serious, aggravated, and simple. Right now, for your misdemeanors, only serious and simple with their maximum sentence would be held in the county jail. I believe it'll be changed for aggravated misdemeanors as well. We see a lot of aggravated misdemeanors, including, you know, driving on bards, second offense possessions, So a lot of crimes that most people don't think of, theft thirds. So if someone's been convicted of shoplifting three times, you're out of theft third and aggravated misdemeanor. So those are going to be more impact on the jail as well. Additionally, we're going to see more people on probation or parole. And while they're waiting for space in prison, they're going to be held in the county jail. Or you're going to get contempt time rather than a recommendation of prison because there's not prison space. So then that means that you're going to get, instead of revoke your probation and send you to prison, you're going to get, okay, now you have to serve 180 days content. And that 180 days is going to be in the county jail. And you're going to see an increase in that because of the lack of space. So in the next, until there's more capacity on the Department of Corrections level, which as anyone's guess about what that's going to be, it's going to be an increased burden on the counties. So I think that in the foreseeable future, in the next few years, there's going to be a substantial increase in people going to be housed in our jail or need housed in our jail and therefore having to send them elsewhere because we won't have capacity. And those are a lot of things, too, that the judges and people's hands are really tied on. You can't just release people. And unfortunately, people just keep committing crimes and So that's a, again, that's going to be, I think the burden on the counties and the jail is understated for the next few years, given all these law changes.

The taxes increase you showed here, does that cover just the jail costs to build construction or that? Overall, jail, staff, food, daily in jail, all injuries.

It's the capital improvement.

Is there a special place for minimus work release? Because we have all kinds of jobs we have to serve now.

Yeah, there's still the 20 beds for work release that are in the existing facility. That's remaining. And then in option B, I don't know. or plan of option B, that one has an additional dorm, or two dorms in there with 10 beds each, so there's another 20 bed capacity in the new pod. So you could potentially have 40 beds for work release if that's how the staff would like to house it.

Yeah, we requested the 20 beds to remain for the work release just That way it limits people getting stuff into the jail from the outside. I mean, obviously staff and everybody does their best to prevent that, but sometimes it doesn't always work out. Then they have another charge, a felony, so then they're gone. So that's why the 316-bed facility is where we're kind of leaning at. And, you know, I'm talking with the county attorney and the jail administrators and staff. I just think that's the best option for Waplow County. We don't want to build something that gets us 10 years down the road. This gets us much further down the road.

Are there any projections of Or do you think there will be an ability to house other counties to bring revenue in with that expansion? Or do you believe that our increase in what CB is saying is going to take up all of that room?

Well, I guess it's unforeseen. Our point would be to try and get... income or revenue off of the facility to help offset that, maybe pay it off sooner is our goal. But I don't want to, you know, I've talked to people that probably just about the current facility and they're like, well, we were supposed to be able to house other inmates from other counties. And we did do that in the beginning, you know, with We just got to a point where we needed our own space, and that's where we're at. And so I don't see why there wouldn't be any reason why we couldn't house from outside to help generate revenue, pay off the bond potentially, or help cover the staffing costs that we're going to incur, as well as just the food, the gas, the power, the water, those costs that's going to come about with this.

I think if you – we really designed – the intent is designed specifically for WAPLO, right? But if you take a look at page 20, if you go back to that, you'll see the number of people that are being housed in-house and those that are being shipped. So if you look over those 20 years, there's definitely capacity in the jail to potentially rent beds. It really is dependent on what – if you get a spike in your population base – I guess the bigger thing is that you've designed a facility that meets the population needs here. And if you can take that opportunity to rent those beds out, that is a benefit to taxpayers and to the county in regards to offsetting some of these costs. The last thing is I'll go back to that chart. And one thing in regard on page 21 is everything above that blue line, that starts becoming offsetting of what you're taking out of your current budget. So whether it's gravel roads or whatever it may be that the county is to provide from infrastructure, those funds are going to have to come out of that general fund in order to transport those inmates out of county. And the more inmates are transporting out of county, you have to hire additional staff. So you're deputizing your people, transport people around the state. And the last thing is, The state of North Dakota is in a very similar situation. They're probably a little bit further ahead because what they've been doing is the state has actually been renting those beds from the counties. And so when you, as a sheriff, are looking to house your inmates at another county, they're driving all over the state of North Dakota looking for a place to put a female that is a serious crime offender and nobody wants to take her, and they're driving clear across the state to find that person. They're losing days in transportation, and they are really a great example of what you don't want to do from a state perspective. But we do have experience with that and watching what's going on there. We do work for the state of Iowa in the Department of Corrections through DAS, and nothing right now that we have seen is even being talked about at the DOC level. So I think it's more than five, probably more of a decade of figuring out what this really means to corrections in the state of Iowa.

And I just also point out that these issues that Stevie mentioned, has provided you as the same issue is going to happen across the state of iowa i believe and she believes and i think it's going to be harder for us to even find beds for our own inmates to uh farm out to just some of these places are going to run into the same issue that we have from a timing standpoint um when would the new facility be open be used

I'm guessing you're probably about three years from referendum. So it's going to take you a good 10 months probably to design it. It's going to take you well over two years to get it constructed. Okay, thank you.

You know, to answer some of your question too, Brian, is we, you know, I've talked to Allers and Cooney, the bonding attorney, to figure out the language for this. I guess, you know, we're kind of on a timeline to, you know, the 28th, you guys have a meeting. I don't know if you want me to get that resolution. Do you want to look this over, maybe see about putting this on the ballot for November, which is, I think it's an August 17th deadline for that ballot to be on there. I think it's August 17th. So, I mean, we're kind of in a good spot. I mean, we can always get this resolution drawn up, get it before you guys at the July 28th meeting. I guess if you can vote in the direction you think you might want to go or not want to go, and we can keep this kind of moving forward. I feel like it's just... I told the Samuels group this morning that the three of you see that there's an issue going on, and I think you're trying to come up with a solution. Unfortunately, I just don't think the small footprint of a jail is going to be beneficial. I'd hate for us to have to come back 10 or 11 years or nine years from now and say, hey, it ain't big enough. We all have egg on our face. I know this other one's a large... chunk of money, but I think we've seen what the impact on the citizens, and I think it's very minimal for what we want or need.

I think a couple things to add to that. Each year that we move beyond this, and it isn't a pressure, it's just simply what's really going on in our world, is construction costs every season starts in June because that's when union contracts are negotiated. So the goal is to get, of course, every year is to get done before that negotiation happens. But really, if you take a look at these numbers, if you were to say, let's do it in five or we're going to do it in three or whatever that may be, we would adjust our numbers at a 4% inflation. So if you take 4% of, let's just use 40 million, right? That's $1.6 million each year for waiting that you're probably going to see that increase in the construction costs. And that's just based off of historical data. Next steps, if you decided that you really wanted to do that, one of the things that we would offer is if you wanted to hold a special meeting between now and the 28th because you had the opportunity to maybe look at this a little bit deeper, digest some of what you're seeing because you're being asked a lot in a meeting, we'd be more than happy to come back and answer any additional questions that you may have. that, but really getting your websites put together, getting all of your collateral put together so that you can go out and train, or not train, but communicate with the taxpayers so that they understand what it is that they're voting for. An educated voter is what we want. We aren't someone that's just going to the booth and saying, yeah, I want one or I don't want one. Our goal is to educate them so that they're well-informed to make that decision. And That takes a little bit to get that communication plan put together. That's web pages, that's social media, that's all of that that it takes to communicate with your constituents. So there's a lot to do between now and, it's going to be a lot of work to make it happen in August, but that's something you, one, you've got to determine whether or not this is really something that you're interested in pursuing. If it is, which of those options? We've given you two. we are all kind of leaning towards the B simply because of the ability to have that additional space for flexibility and what's needed. And then from there, getting bond language put in place and just getting it all put together so that you come out of the gates with all your information ready for your constituents.

Don, would the attorney develop the resolution for us? Is that what you're thinking? Yes, that's what they would do. he said this you know he would need uh he kind of talked like he'd need a couple weeks but i don't know if a week would be good like if you guys wanted to look this over have a special meeting next week and uh we'd go forward from there or you know i he said he made it sound like it was going to be like a week a week and a half for him to put that together and i've realized there's

opinion would be that we probably want to proceed with seeing what the resolution would look like. You can't decide something without knowing what you're going to be voting on. So I would say to go ahead with that.

That's up to the other two here too. Well, the bonding attorney did advise that he just needs to know the amount that like option A or option B that you'd want to go with. But the amount can be adjusted as we proceed.

The resolution is not approved until we approve it. So a proposed resolution can be a little bit flexible in dollar amount.

It could be dollar amount and be the actual size of a facility.

So if you recall, we were making one option for work release, additional work release beds and things like that. So as part of that bond language, you don't want to include, if you're going with option A, the bond language specifically to option A, bond language specific to option B.

So you are going to have to make a decision before you go to hold the bond in the terms.

There's still something that is proposed. Yep. You can always do something proposed.

I need to see something done from what's the average increase going to be? Because if this is only for the building, electric, water, food, staff, clothing, uniforms, medical expenses, what's that going to affect? Because that's all the general fund. And we know we can only go up 2%.

Well, that... I suppose the food and custodial gas and water, I'm assuming, again, that it would probably double because you're doubling the space. If you do that, you're looking at $700,000 with what's budgeted this year.

I also would think that we could do some numbers that The numbers given here were late cost only. So we could really look at a budget that includes utility costs, all those other costs that go into it. So we have a, I agree with Darren, if we ever produce a document that gives us some indication of the operating cost of the new project, of like option B. And it doesn't mean you have to do it.

We can do it. Well, I guess I figured if we were doubling the jail, you know, of course, you got office space and areas of that way would, you know, but I just figured if you want estimate, we can just double it. And that's where it'd be at. You know, that's what I mean. I did it on the case of April here just so I had those numbers in case we were asked. Right.

I think another thing to consider is those transportation officers. You're going to be hiring quite a few of them. If you go to that one diagram where it shows the number of people being housed out of county, you're going to need more deputies transporting those individuals. You can't. I think right now you have two people that are kind of designated to that transportation need. But if you look over that time. Slide 20. Slide 20. It's pretty difficult for us right now to give you an exact number on that. But take a look at the number of vets. You've got 130. You're starting out with 137 right now. You're shipping 30 people. Go to year 10. You're going to be shipping 80 people. And if you go to year 15, you're shipping 115 people. so yes you're increasing your staff you're increasing some costs in relation to constructing the new facility but you're also going to be increasing your staff no matter what in order to take care of and transport to the inmates out of county the other thing i think that you know talking about meeting or requiring an early november election in my opinion we could always

approaches with a special election. I know there's cost to that, but on the other hand, we might want to do some research on whether or not that makes sense to do a special election.

We would love a special election, but I think the state of Iowa eliminated the ability to do this on a special election. It has to be on the November ballot. Okay. So that's the way we used to do it. We loved it because that really being voted for. With the way the law changed on that November ballot, so we don't have that option anymore to be able to do a special election. I was not aware. I would love to.

The other thing I would like to see is over the like, I'd like to see on page 20 the data for a shift out over the last 20 years, or at least the pop, maybe just do this, the jail population over the last 20 years.

So in the larger book, we have the population for the last 10 years, to get you to 10 years.

That might be adequate. What page is that?

A particular one that doesn't have a page number, but we're going to be about, yeah, well, you got 14 years. Okay. Yeah. Page 14 on the page of that book. These are the actual populations for the years and broken down by month.

Thank you. Good job.

You got it done. Well, it's with their health.

I'm going to suggest we set a special meeting. Do we have time to take over all this information?

What are you thinking?

For next week?

A whole lot of time. I don't want to rush it, you know, I missed something. 28 is two weeks. Plus the attorney ain't gonna have a resolution done in a week.

You know, we could always have the resolution. Well, say we can't really have it figured out because we don't know which option we may go forward with. But, you know, I was going to say you could have it written up and if you guys decide to go forward, you just went over those services that... Or you could do two resolutions. Just change the numbers. That's possible. If you guys want to do, we could... Have both of them before you. Yes, you could always have it before the 17th, yes.

And I would just confirm the 17th. I've heard the 26th, too, in a different county. So you just might want to, I don't know for sure if it's the 17th or not, but just confirm that so you don't miss it.

I have to say, I've seen the Johnson County, and they talked about that date of August 26th, I think, also on it, but I was... Be safe. The information that I got was the 17th.

That's what I wanted you guys, because you were talking when we met, you're going to go town to town and sell this.

Well, so typically... Your next steps would, again, would be engage the communication plan. We would actually have our group start working on the website, the social media posts, getting things prepared so that when you would actually vote for doing this, we would want that information live. So that as soon as you do, then the public's going to be very interested in what it is you just voted for. So our goal would be to have all the information available to the public at that moment. and a lot of work would need to keep going.

Well, if you remember correctly, what the board liked about Samuel's group was the marketing piece that was brought to the table. And I think they have a huge marketing piece that is very beneficial for us to the point where I think My understanding is the public could go in and enter their address, and they can see what the impact is going to be on them on the website. So that was the part that was interesting to us.

Yeah, we have a lot of people that want to know exactly what it's going to cost them on their property. So the goal is to get that table out there. They can plug it into a parcel. Once they've done that, then they can get a pretty good, accurate read on regards to what that's going to be for them. We'll just go ahead and do it on the 28th.

We have to have a special one to prove it. It's funny time to, what is it, 17th or 26th? Great.

Here's two of the three weeks.

We are available anytime for questions. So if there's something that one of you have, we'd be more than happy to answer this for you.

I'm going to use your work session right after me on the 20th.

So you want me to give the rest of the questions? I'll let you know.

Question, comment from the audience? Don, I had a question for you just from a historical standpoint. What did you kind of attribute to the, I guess, spike in the average daily population over the last two or three years when it was pretty stable for the 12 to 15 before it? that kind of required looking into this?

I think, you know, there's a lot of things that go into the plays, your poverty level, the economics in your community. There's a lot of play into this. I think that what we're seeing too is, you know, this is just my opinion. I think we have a 1980s court system. There's not enough court dates. There's not enough attorneys, both defense attorneys or prosecuting attorneys and not enough judges. So there's a lot of things that's going into play that's prolonging these states. And I just think that the increase in crime in our community, because of the drug usage, the mental health issues, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff there that play into it.

Did you ever feel like, you know, before it started to really increase that the County was getting a little too close for comfort as far as where it was, you know, where the average population was going to be, that it was something that, you know, five years ago, eight years ago, you couldn't look at saying we're getting pretty close to where we can really max out here.

Well, previously to this board, we were having those conversations. Like we need to start maybe looking at that and, uh, I think then COVID happened. We added some beds to the jail. We figured out in one of our inspections that we were able to do that. So we added some beds. I think it was 16 that we added. We changed the female pod into a male pod and put the females elsewhere. But then the population, as I think Mr. Samuel said, the population with females went up, shot up real high. We've looked at those things. We've done some things to help offset that. We were having these conversations probably five years ago about we need to start thinking about it.

You're in favor of option B, obviously. Certainly the more costly one, but the one that actually gives you some build-in and flexibility like they mentioned. Do you think either one of these options would and the farming out of inmates to other counties, or have you kind of answered that, that it's kind of difficult to foresee what that's going to look like? I didn't get the question you were asking. By adding more, will you no longer have to farm out inmates to other counties? Under either one of these options.

Correct. Yes, we wouldn't have to farm out. Obviously, the smaller one may be sooner. Whether it's 20 years or 25 years, it might be sooner to get the farming out portion. I think that we wouldn't have to farm out anymore at that point. In fact, as I said, hopefully we can generate some revenue to offset some of these costs that the boards have brought up and what's been presented. Anybody else?

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Moving on down the list, advanced correctional health care. We've met health care, Donnie.

So this is the healthcare for inmates. We currently have local providers doing it. This will provide eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, a nurse within our facility and 24 hour communication ability with a doctor.

See in this contract they have. Finance charges, open finance charges.

Yeah, what?

A finance charge. The bill is not paid within 30 days. We don't do that, right? That would be my only question on the contract, looking at finance charges.

Well, I don't think it's going to be an issue of getting that bill paid within 30 days, and I guess I would say that... I'm not going to pay a finance charge, I guess. I don't think it's an issue getting it paid within the 30-day period. I guess I missed that portion of it, but I did have the county attorney look it over. There was a couple of concerns she had, and I sent the contact back to them. One of them was they eliminated the renewal period, you know, It has to be negotiated every year because we don't know what the next year in budgeting is going to bring us. So that was one thing that she had a problem with. And then it was asking for some records and she wanted to change to where it said just medical records because they're not entitled to all our records.

Resolution 33 dash 2026 average and speed limit.

There. We got some roads. It should go 60 on them.

As most of you are aware, the state legislature included language in recent legislation to change the default speed limit to 60 miles per hour on rural paved highways, which includes the county systems. We have some concerns about that. We have a number of roads that don't have the geometry to support the higher speed safely. We have some roads with both curves and hills that would contribute to that. We also have some roads that or older and needed replacement that would not be ideal for the 60 mile per hour speed limit. So we wanted to request essentially a more forum on roads that are not clearly able to support for 60 mile per hour speed that is not a default speed limit. So we put together a proposed resolution identifying roads for that consideration. put that up as a draft about a week ago while we continued doing some research on the roads within our system for previous speed limits that may have been established and other contributing factors that we'd like to look at as far as the speeds are concerned did have a rather significant number of updates in the roads that had previously established speed limits that we found through research, many of which are not posted. I don't know if they ever were. Some of those resolutions are back, you know, 15, 20 years and older. So the records in our sign inventory don't go back that far, but they're not presently speed limit signs in most of those locations. So as we looked through that and we found some of those discrepancies, I think perhaps wise to go ahead and discuss that here today, but if you would like to defer this to your next regular meeting or next meeting and then look at it, give you a chance to look at our updated information on that detail. I would support that short delay to establish that, or those speed limits through a resolution.

And Brad, I know you told me, but I don't know if you told the other two what the cost is of these new speed limit signs to another unfunded mandate for the state.

One of the things we were able to determine within our sign inventory is that we have approximately 10 55 mile per hour speed limit signs out in their county. I would expect that number to tend to be appropriately signed. So I guess it's somewhat fortunate that we don't have all those signs out there telling people what the default speed limit is by code. And then digital drivers should be aware of that, but there's also some guidance in the code that says we should be posting those signs. So each of those signs, the sign itself would be somewhere approximately a hundred dollars. the rest of the hardware, the posts and so forth that goes with that, probably another 50 or $75. Then the manpower to put that up and the equipment to go with it. All told, easily $250 per sign. It's probably a good number to use as a estimate. So we probably have a hundred signs. You can do the math, I think that's around 25,000. We've got speed zone, changes uh no passing on the signing to be moved the striping on the road that goes with those would need to be moved for for the new speed limits it's it's correlated to the travel distance uh at the speed that you'd be traveling at the posted speed so every no passing zone we have would change to some degree you know if it's five or ten feet probably um Not worth restriping it, at least immediately, but some of the hills that we have could easily change 100, 150 feet, and we'd like to have those appropriate to the signing at the time. So a number of things like that that go into that discussion. Each of those built costume signs that has to be changed. You're still looking at the labor and the equipment, even if the materials are still good. be relocated to a point a hundred feet away. So there's a fair amount of expense there. I'm estimating somewhere in 30,000 plus range as far as expenses for our county. I think we have about 20 segments listed there that we wanted to evaluate for appropriate speed zones. Just especially in the, say like a five mile radius around the city of Ottumwa, we have a lot of big roads. Many of those are curvilinear with no designated speed limit on them. So to have those default to a higher number than what's publicly higher already than appropriate,

I was still looking at Madison and Soap Creek and going to 45 on Madison.

I think those two actually have a speed limit designated to them based on our research.

Don't have what...

The speed limit is for all of that. But Madison was designated as a 35 mile per hour about 20 years ago. But it's, I don't believe it's posted. So that's some discrepancy that we're finding. And I think we should get a firm handle on our current status before we move into that next stage. So I think that would be currently posted at 35. I think that's, I don't see anything wrong with the list here. Do you have the updated list that was provided a couple of days ago? It's the one you turned in with the resolution. Okay.

That drafts it.

I had staff look at everything that we could find. We've done a number of discrepancies, so we do have an update on that. That's why I was thinking it might be best to continue discussing, but maybe wait until your next opportunity to actively adopt it.

Yeah, I'd like to make sure this list is correct.

The 28th? Yeah. Okay. Making a motion to Those in favor? Aye. New allocation of Wofford County Expo for prizes and award.

I'm going to make a motion to do the 8,000 like previous years.

Second. Those in favor? Aye. annual allocation prizes and awards for . Letter of support for River Hills Community Health Center's IMPACT application. I move to approve the letter of support. Nice and fair. Nine Heart Service Agreement. You went on me. I don't remember that one. Like Britain is Britain's operations. It is. His resolution disputes additional services for the clients. Reading through this, I don't remember it at all. Do you, Brian? I do not. Yeah.

I'm gonna make a motion for table.

I'll second that motion. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Resolution 32-2036, Transfer Funds General Supplemental to the County Health Fund.

Make a motion to approve.

I'll second. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Requests for payroll approval, new hire, secondary roads. Second. Any other business? We have the reporters, fourth quarter of fiscal year report. Fees collected. Okay. That's the tax analysis? Yeah. You're here.

You got your copy? I do. For the fourth quarter, April 1st through June 30th, our total received was $151,061.50. Disbursements were the normal. Our vitals paid to the state. DNR paid to the state. our use and sales tax portion that's sent to the state, and then our e-commerce fee, which is paid to us, and then our recording fees and our portion of the revenue stamps. Those all totaled $151,061.50. For the year end, which would be July 1st, 2025 through... June 30th of this year, our total receipts were $532,369.95, which I would point is down a little from last year, the last fiscal year. Total disbursements are the same as previous vitals, DNR, treasurer's date. We did have a DNR postage adjustment from overage of $2. That was the only thing out of the ordinary .

Thank you, Lisa.

You're welcome.

Recording, reporters, fourth quarter. I'll second. Mr. Beyer? Aye. Recorders, year end, 25-26. I'll second. Mr. Beyer?

Aye.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

All right. We're going to be going.

Yes.