Good morning. I'm going to call to order this meeting of Monroe County Board of Commissioners.
It is Thursday, July 9th, and we will begin with our public statement. We, the Monroe County Board of
Commissioners, renew our commitment to welcome and protect the rights of all people, regardless of age,
race, color, creed, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity,
marital status, economic status, and national origin. And we affirm the right of every person to live
peacefully and without fear, and we will fight and resist at every step discrimination and harmful policies,
whatever their source. We believe in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. We also stand in support
of our public school systems, both RBB and MCCSC. With that, we will move on to our
Department updates. We have Ms. Kelly joining us from the Health Department. Good morning, Commissioners.
There is currently a gastrointestinal illness that's going around that's caused by a parasite.
Several states, including Indiana, have reported cases. This is called cyclospora, and it's thought
to be linked to raw vegetables and fruits. But the CDC is still working to identify the source at this
time. The Health Department does have vaccine appointments available. You can call 812-803-6364 for
an appointment. All right. Thank you so much. Comments or questions? Commissioner Madeira?
That's horrifying. Thank you so much for giving us an update on that. All right. Thank you so much,
Ms. Kelly. With that, let's see if there's any other department that has an update to offer. Raise your
hand on Teams or come to the podium.
Seeing none, we'll open this up to public comment. This is time for comment on items that are not on
our agenda. We ask each commenter to limit their time to three minutes and to provide their name and
county of residence as they begin speaking. Does anybody have any public comment for us? You can come
to the podium or you may raise your hand on teams.
Seeing none, we'll move on to agenda item five, please. Yes, I would like to move approval of the minutes
for July 2nd, 2026. I will second that. Any comments, corrections, or edits? No. I don't have any either.
And all those in favor of approving the minutes for July 2nd, 2026, signify by saying aye. Aye.
Motion carries 2-0. Next item, please. I would like to move approval of the claims docket for accounts
payable for July 9th, 2026, and for payroll for July 10th, 2026. I will second that. Ms. Guyard? Hi,
good morning. The accounts payable claims docket for July 9th, 2026 totals $1,419,944.70. This includes
all emergency claims and adjustments.
The payroll docket for July 10, 2026 includes $1,729,788.50 in direct costs, and the remaining $721,856.30
were for indirect costs for a grand total of $2,451,644.80. All right. Thank you so much. Any comments
or questions?
I don't have anything. I don't either. Thank you so much. Any public comment on this item? You can raise
your hand on teams or come to the podium. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the claim stock,
it accounts payable July 9th, 2026 and payroll for July 10th,
2026 signify by saying aye aye motion carries to zero I have to step out and log in so sure one moment
we're going to take a two minute recess thank you okay thank you we're back all right we're going to
now move on to new business please
Fund number 9103 in the amount of $9,880 annually. I will second that. Good morning. Good morning. Hello.
Well, how are you guys today? I'm here on behalf of our safe place contract continuation. This is just
approving our safe place contract between Indiana Youth Services Association and the Youth Services
Bureau of Monroe County. It will be in effect from July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2028.
Thank you so much. Comments or questions? Just underscoring how very important this contract and what
it symbolizes, what it represents to the community is how important the self-safe places remains.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. This is a continuation. Grateful. All right. Let's see if there is any public
comment on this item.
Raise your hand on teams or come to the podium. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the safe
place contract continuation, signify by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries to zero. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next item, please.
I would like to move approval of the Josh Huey service agreement. I fund name parks, not averting capital
fund number 1179 in the amount of $250. I will second that. And I believe we have Mr Robertson joining
us on team. Yep, I want teams today. Good morning. So this service agreements with Josh Huey's local
bluegrass musician. It is for a musical performance at Senior Day at the Fair. So historically, our
department has assisted the Fair Board in coordinating auditorium activities for Senior Day. The event
this year was on the 30th of June. Unfortunately, just with the timing of our park board meetings and
the commissioner meetings, we couldn't get it to you before the event. I explained that to our board
at our meeting. They felt in light of that, it was appropriate to use non-reverting funds.
to cover Josh's fees in case there were any questions or concerns, but I am happy to report that the
event went off this year without a hitch. We had around 130 folks attending, so it's popular every year
and continues to be. I can't really see Justin's face, but I wanted to tell him how badly he missed
out on this event, so I hope the vacation was worth it. But if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer.
Thank you so much. Comments or questions? I don't have any, no. Sounds like a great event, and I'm fine
with okaying this after the fact. Is there any public comment on this item? You raise your hand in teams
or come to the podium. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the Josh QE service agreement signify
by saying aye. Aye.
Motion carries, two zero. Thank you. Thank you. All right, next we have the bid openings for crack ceilings,
crack ceiling, feeling of cracks in the asphalt. There we go. Thank you. So we received three sealed
bids that looked like. We sent out a list to the contractors for the areas that we would like to perform
crack ceiling preventive maintenance on the county roads. The first one is from RLH seal coating. This
bid is $145,995.60. The second one is from CNC contractors.
Their bid is $237,858. And the last bid is from All-Star Paving.
This bid is $319,878. Based on last year's bids, we estimated it to be approximately $159,000. So we
will take these under advisement and then hopefully get something awarded at next week's meeting. OK,
I'm happy to take this under advisement, yes? Yes. OK, great. And I appreciate your
work opening those and giving us the information. This is that sort of hot tar drizzle that goes in
the cracks in the asphalt to keep it, especially during the winter when you're freezing thawing, to
keep the asphalt in one piece. Yeah, it's actually, yeah, to seal it up so water doesn't get in the
cracks because then the cracks expand and then we get big potholes. There you go. Perfect. Thank you.
just so people know what we're talking about. All right, excellent. Thank you so much. We're going to
take that under advisement. Let's wait on a motion on this last item. Next we have our ARPA discussion.
And we have Ms. Woodruff here from the auditor's office. Thank you so much for joining us. So this is
In relation to the meeting of Tuesday, June 30th, and the council made a determination. So if you could
just give a small recap and then we'll see if Commissioner Madera has any questions.
Yes, so at the meeting on the 30th, the council made appropriations contingent on Commissioner action
as a recommendation for how the ARPA dollars that are in excess for some of the projects should
be reallocated. The auditors
advisement is that we reallocate those dollars within the open projects. Right now there are three open
projects that are requesting additional funding and all three of those projects were tentatively appropriated.
The appropriation amounts if you'd like me to go over those would be 200,000 to the Monroe fire ambulance
project 100,000 to the karst Park field project and fifteen thousand two hundred twenty five dollars
and 41 cents to the airport stormwater drainage project All right, do you have any Questions
do not. I was actually attending the meeting while I was shuttling back from Colorado, and so I have
a good understanding of the expenditures and the reasons why. So I am fine with all of these. Great.
My concern is pretty minimal, but I want to run something by you. So
we have information in that packet from June 30th from the airport that they won't know until the end
of October whether or not they need any of this stormwater funding. I would be surprised if we didn't
have that answer before October, but I believe October is when they plan to have their project finalized.
So my question then is,
What happens in October? Can we pivot and move that money back out if they don't need it and then reallocate
it quickly to something that can be spent before the end of the year?
Yes, so actually at that same meeting, the council also voted to have any additional funding that becomes
available be automatically funneled to the CARST project. Those actions would still come before the
commissioners and the council at your independent meetings. However, it would be our plan to just go
ahead and funnel that money directly over to CARST, at least as much as CARST can take. And then if
we run into a situation where
car project is maxed out we can have a conversation then but I really hope that that won't happen. Okay
so that's that's not in our wording. No. The last document in the packet in front of you is the council
action that directs that.
And again, these are all as recommendation. Okay. Do they have they don't have resolution numbers on
their documents at the council, correct? I don't believe they do. Yeah, because they just made these
motions without without writing. Okay. All right. Give me a second.
things at once so mr. Roddy can we can we just affirm by a motion and a vote can we just affirm the
D appropriations and appropriations made by the council on June 30th would that be clear enough without
having to go into the
I'm going to go ahead and make a motion that we affirm the deappropriation motion and the appropriation
motion regarding ARPA funding made by the council at the June 30th joint meeting. Perfect. Okay. And
the total amount is going to be $315,225.41. Okay? Good? Am I covering everything? Okay. All right.
So let's go ahead and see.
If there's any public comment on this item, you can raise your hand on Teams or come to the podium.
Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of affirming the Council's deappropriation motion and appropriation
motion of June 30th, 2026 signified by saying aye.
Motion carries, two zero. Thank you so much. All right, we don't have any appointments today. I do want
to note that on Saturday, July 11th, we're going to have a little ceremony here in the courthouse. For
anybody who's been in the rotunda, you'll notice there's a little curtain up there.
And everybody wants to peek behind it, which is fine. But we are going to be unveiling a new plaque
to commemorate the Monroe County residents who served as soldiers in the American Revolution. And this
has been a project of the Daughters of the American Revolution. They've really done a wonderful job.
And so Saturday at 11 a.m.,
here in the courthouse. We invite the public to come and attend. And right after that is the history
center's block party appropriately enough. So if you want to make a bit of a day of it, head on over
to the Monroe County History Center and just block away and enjoy the festivities there for America's
250th. So we really want to thank everyone
with the Daughters of the American Revolution who've made this possible. They did the research. We had
some names missing, some names misspelled, and they found everything. So there's a wonderful pamphlet
that they made up that we have copies of downstairs as well, which explains who each of these men were
and their connection with Monroe County. It's very, very cool. So we do invite you to attend that.
I just want to remind folks that we do have office hours, six hours each month. Just go to our calendar,
log in, and you can speak with one of us. The utility vehicle code that we passed last week was as a
result of a office hour call, so it's a good thing. We do encourage folks to sign up for
the resident alert system for any emergencies. You can receive a phone call, text, and or email. Just
go to our homepage and find that button and sign up. It's free to all Monroe County residents.
We do want to, if I could... ESD, if I could...
share my screen. I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Okay. So one of the things that we
have run across
and we continue to run across is, it still seems there's a lack of information out there, although the
information's there, it's just that it's not getting to the public about this justice center project.
And I really think it's important to
about this project and get moving on this project as soon as possible and we'll talk about the subcommittee
in a moment but there are a couple of things that the board agrees on are required for the Justice Center
project and one is time and by that I mean as short of time as possible to move as quickly as possible
Without delay, time has become the most important factor for us. It's going to help defray some of the
future costs of inflation the sooner we get started, because we all know that construction inflation
is even worse than what we pay at the gas pump in the grocery store. And the human costs are too much
to ignore.
Do you want to talk about the space side of this? Yeah, so we need to find at least 25 acres and that's
an official determination I believe by DLZ in cooperation with the sheriff and other entities to build
a jail facility and in the future when
the council deems it possible when the board of commissioners deems it possible to construct the remainder
of the justice center project, which will include the prosecutor, the public defender, and the remainder
of the courts, and also the clerk's office. And so I'd like to talk a little later about this too, but
a single floor jail facility is both empirically valid, evidence-based in other words, and it will also
save money long-term
because it's more efficient in terms of personnel proximity and access. And in terms of facility maintenance,
it enhances inmate and staff well-being. It's more secure for jail staff and inmates. And it avoids
additional risks as well for correctional officers who must be in that facility. And so other justice
offices may be sited in a multi-floor structure, however.
And also, it should be noted that courts, the prosecutor's office, and the sheriff's office had been
operating in a co-located facility for 40 years. And so it's also strongly preferred. There is also
a long-term cost, or I would say long-term costs, if we fail to co-locate justice-related departments.
This will require additional personnel, additional time, additional vehicles. It will also perhaps incur
additional liability.
transportation and other costs. And also, we've heard many concerns from the community as to whether
the current Zitlo building can be rehabilitated as a jail. This building is beyond repair, both in terms
of the jail and the administrative portion. That does not mean that it cannot be used for some function
in the future, that it must be torn down. It would just need to be probably reduced to studs to be used
again for some purpose.
And so in addition, if there is no co-location in the future, transporting inmates continuously between
the jail and the courts long-term poses not only a lot of costs, but also unnecessary security risks
as well. Would you like to talk about circulation? Yeah. So one of the space aspects relates to that
vehicle circulation where we need to have a separation between
the sheriff's vehicles and the public, people accessing the court, emergency access for first responders,
delivery vehicles, all of the things that make that little village of a justice center operate. So we
do need to make sure that we have secure routes
that we have sufficient access for emergency and fire services. So what this has to do with is the connecting
roads, right? So you have to be able, and that's part of that buildable space to be able to build sort
of the half circle or full circle driveway around a facility. We do have a design for a 404 bed facility.
with the ability to expand in the future. I think one of the things that we do need to mention, because
we've all heard it, oh, I'm not going to prove anything more than 200 beds. Well, Vigo County built
their jail. We went and saw it just before it opened, just to do a tour and see what they did or what
they didn't like and all of that. It was 2019 or 2023?
Oh, oh, yes, okay, gotcha. More recent. They started the process in 2010. Yes. But they've already now
been ordered by court to build a second jail because their first jail isn't big enough. And when we
walked in the door, the jail commander said to me, the council cut our budget, we built a smaller facility
than we wanted, and we're going to have to try to figure out how to make this work. Well, that's what happens.
There can't be any kind of legal impediment to building. There can't be environmental impediments to
building. And again, because those relate to that time element, that time factor. Same thing with physical
impediments to building like harsh features, storm water, flood concerns, slope issues, et cetera. Again,
related to time. Not that those are things that can't be overcome, they can be.
But it takes time. And anything in the city will take an extra year. Anything. Because it has to go
through city planning, city council process. That's just the way it is. Because notifications have to
go out. They have a structure in place. And it's a democratic structure that allows and encourages the
public to be engaged in the planning process.
that process. We have a similar process in Monroe County. I will also note that we have preferences.
So those are the requirements, time and space. Preferences, location, your highway, access to a hospital
nearby or a direct route. We do care and are concerned about transportation services and that may be
transit, that may be
Lift uber on a sunday. I don't know but we can figure that out that part's sort of the easy part compared
to everything else And everybody talks about well, I want the jail to be near services Does that mean
a bus ride away because there's no place in this city? where you are in walking distance to every single
type of service Christ Jail transition food
shelter. It is all over the community, which is good, but that means you're going to have to have transit
right now. We don't even offer transit on Sundays from from our group facility. We also would prefer
a place where we could have natural lighting, which involves a one floor facility and green space in
the surrounding area because we know again empirically that studies have shown that this is a benefit
to those who are housed. Now, having given that information to you, I'm going to now share a chart because
it's entirely possible that all of the information on our
website. We do have a website dedicated to the Justice Center project, the jail facility. And it's a
lot to read, right? So we've really condensed this down to the bare minimum of important points. And
what we did is we listed out all of the sites that we have visited.
And this may not yet be on our website, but it will be. But I'll show you how it is on our website right
now in a moment. So do you want to talk through that? Talk through the chart? Sure. So we essentially,
this is the same information that's available already on the website. There's nothing new here.
And this is a visual representation. So instead of just representing this all in white, it's visually
readily ascertainable what site, for a number of reasons, the commissioners in the past determined was
the best fit, according to a number of factors. And so there is one site that met that, which is North
Park. And of course, everyone knows why, historically.
So there is a number of chart.
headings, so a key barrier decision point, you'll see that North Park is marked in green because there
is none. It meets all of the key factors. So you'll see along the top, there's an investigation period,
how the interim period that we looked at this property, the size of the property, the timeline that
it would take to construct, the route of access taken to the property, legal zoning constraints, sewer access,
cost considerations. In other words, not only what the property would cost, but also any additional
properties that would need to be acquired, any physical constraints, cars features, environmental
consideration slope, benefits writ large. So whether the county owns it, for example, time to build,
whether it would be close or farther away from downtown.
know disadvantages, writ large, whether or not there would need to be utilities moved, whether or not
it would be, for example, very small, difficult to access, and then the overall conclusion is to the
property. And so we realize these are fairly broad categories. Down the left side of the chart, you'll
see individual properties. Some of these, you'll notice, did not get a whole lot of discussion. You'll
also notice that there is quite a bit of overlap between the properties on our chart
and the properties being considered by the Collaborative Justice Working Group. And so basically, a
lot of our information will map onto their matrix to show how the commissioners considered this property
in the past for public members that are interested in the past consideration commissioners gave to that
same property.
And there is some duplication across from left to right. The one thing I will note is that there are
some that duplication, but also the absence because we stopped investigating certain properties. And
we did consult with neighbors on a number of these occasions. So those are noted as well.
And we have here a pretty comprehensive list of what we've looked at. The smallest being 9.71 acres,
which is way too small for what we needed. So this is,
a good sort of overview of all the work that's been done. This has been done over the course of many
years. When I read through this list of sites, I can remember going out to the sites with DLZ, Mr. Cockrell,
other commissioners, and looking at so many of these and trying to ascertain
the pros and cons in a quick overview way before further investigation was pursued to determine,
you know, so there's sort of that overarching, is this property going to work? Is this possible to the
more granular? We have to get geotechnical studies. We have to go and look at the curse features,
et cetera, et cetera. So for folks who are interested, this will be posted.
on our jail website, hopefully today. And we're hopeful that this will become a good way for people
to understand all the work that's been done so far. And a lot of work has been done so far. I would
add as well that
if there are different properties on this matrix, they're even smaller. And so really they're not even,
it's not really even possible to consider them. But what we don't have on here, although we kind of
reflected it
in the way that the columns are organized is, you know, the status is immediately visible in that second
column with the color. And it is difficult to, with the columns that we used, to say, well, this column
is more important than the next one or, you know, to put them in some kind of order. But clearly, if
our requirements relate to time and space,
those are evidence in here, right? So we may reorder that a little bit to reflect that priority before
we post it, but otherwise it's good the way it is. I do want to show something that Mr. Beighton has
completed for us.
figure out how to do this. We go. I love technology. So Mr. Baton has created a
map version of this chart. And it's really neat. Appreciate the fact that he got it done so quickly.
But you can see the shapes in, I'll make this bigger. You can see the shapes here. And when you click
on them, they will provide that same information that is on our chart.
as you can see here, that pops up, which is great. There's actually two pages of that on that one. The
other thing I would recommend that you do is to turn on the slope layer. And because if you zoom in
onto a site, you are going to be able to see slope issues
on those properties. So that's the Thompson property, for example. And when you click on it, you'll
be able to see the information from that chart. So in a sense, this information is already on our website.
So I wanted to show that. Do we want to see the committees? Anything else you want to add about this?
No, is there a floodplain?
No, no, just the slope, but we have, I don't think the... It was a rush job, so. Yeah, I didn't know
if GIS had that. They do have that. We can ask them to add that later. Okay, that's really cool. Yeah,
excellent. Thank you so much. So all of the sites are up here.
um vernal pike north park west which is the one we we walked and said oh my gosh way too hilly way too
slopey um and then um the north park site here um i will just note for the record that some of these
boundaries as well because this was a very quick um ask of the gis office uh dr bayton um just used
parcel lines and so they're not
always going to be accurate. So for example, Discovery Parkway, we were actually looking at this lot
in the back, not the whole of it because that's the hospital. So the polygons are not quite right on
point, but you get the idea. It's a rough approximation in reality. So people know where we've looked,
what we've done. Yeah, for sure. So do you want to talk about the subcommittee next?
Sure. Do you want to do any more with this first? I think this would be very useful for people to...
I talk to a lot of people, for example, who don't know where North Park is or don't know where precisely
Thompson is and the power lines property. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So do you want to move on to talk through...
Is that clean? Yeah. Sure. Go ahead. You start. Okay.
As we know that there is the collaborative justice working group is meeting. I believe they have tonight
they're meeting and they have one more meeting after that before they come up with a recommendation
for a property. Indiana law does place the duty to establish and maintain a county jail on the county
executive. And in this county, at least we are the commissioners are the executive and legislative heads.
I think public discussion and
still has value because India has opened door laws built around the idea that the public should be able
to witness government in action and participate more fully in the government process. And I should note
that these are my remarks. I do think it's important to clarify what types of authority different bodies have.
I think it's important for the commissioners to discuss issues like this publicly to the extent that
we can with the advice of legal counsel and be active in these efforts because the board still has a
statutory responsibility of course for the jail facility and for decisions about county property and
as does the council. The existence of another community conversation does not relieve us of
this responsibility and it does not make our own discussion and decision unnecessary.
I also don't view these conversations as competing with one another. Government meetings are where the
public can hear directly from the body charged with making county executive decisions, as you've heard
from us today. The broader community group can serve a different purpose. It can help elected officials,
justices and partners, and residents understand the facts, constraints, and tradeoffs that surround
any jail site decision.
And I think representations like our chart and the community collaborative working group matrix are
useful because they help move the conversation away from slogans and misunderstandings and toward concrete
criteria like time and space like infrastructure and access and costs and legal risk.
operational feasibility, and the ability to understand unconstitutional conditions. But these don't
decide the issue for us. It helps the public to see why these issues are difficult, why delay
is consequences, and what responsible decision making has looked like, why any responsible decision
has to be grounded in facts rather than assumptions.
So a non-binding group can still play an educational function. It can clarify. It can build
public understanding. And it can help surface concerns. And here, I always think of the Indiana Public
Access Counselor, right? It's described as a non-binding resource, but its role includes public education
and training and advice and interpretive materials. So in a way, non-binding doesn't mean not useful,
although it doesn't have such authority
a statutory authority to choose a jail site, to buy the county to appropriate money or to substitute
its judgment for the commissioners or the council or any other elected body. But I think here the key
factor is that the committee has the ability to inform and not decide. And public education can have
real value.
Here a group that brings some of those perspectives into the same conversation can help the public understand
the stakes and the trade-offs more clearly Just as I hope our chart here today can understand can help
the public understand what the board of commissioners has done So I think the value of the collaborative
group is not is is not in that it decides I think it's value in that is
sorry, is in that it informs. It can help create correct misinformation, identify unanswered questions,
and explain why criteria matter. So, and I think, you know, courts welcome good faith efforts,
but in the end, you know, it's we as the county who must act responsibly, and that includes us as the
council and us as the commissioners. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I appreciate that. It is a non-binding
group. They will
make some sort of recommendation, but they've also limited their role to begin with. Well,
first of all, the investigations have been done. It's not clear that every member of the committee has
access and the ability time to find the time to read through our exhaustive, I mean, we have geotechnical
studies that are in binders for one property. So I mean, you know.
who's gonna read through that, right? Yeah. But by automatically eliminating anything outside the city,
I think they've hurt their process and it's too bad because if you look at their matrix, you'll see
except where things are inaccurate about North Park, it's the only site that meets every requirement.
except no, it's not in the city. But if you start with a requirement, it has to be in the city, you're
adding a year. You're adding a year. And in fact, they have two different listings for planning and
zoning here that would be more than a year. I think that this is a mistake and that it is truly the
nine to 12 months total. But I don't know because you have to prepare a petition. You take it in, you
get on the docket, et cetera.
So it is about a year. It took us about a year to get Fullerton through city counts city planning and
city council Sure, yeah, there may be other things there may be other Board of zoning appeals maybe
need to be involved on something So it really depends on the property for sure So that's a low end
You know, I think the very, if you had a petition ready to go, I think you could get it through in nine
months. I think you could, maybe, but it depends on how many other petitions they have. I mean, it's,
yeah, it's all dependent, but that's the fastest you could really get that done. One other thing I think
that is worth noting as well is before you go through that process, you need full design documents,
at least in design stage one from DLZ.
And I believe that would take three to four months, I believe, is the estimate on a vest. It depends
on the site. We already have one for Fullerton, for example, right? But Fullerton is a mile further
away than North Park. Yes, it's in the city, but is it closer to downtown? No. So what is more important?
I don't know.
Yeah, so there are some things where we have a design we're ready to go, but most things we don't. Most
things we don't. And a lot of these sites, again, that have been very creatively listed, you have very,
very small lots that aren't going to be able to do anything, five acres, three and a half acres. I mean,
that is just really, really difficult.
And they've included the Tap Road and Fullerton and Thompson, which are all large enough, but each of
them have their own limitations, with Thompson having not just the nine-month-plus delay, but also a
significant delay related to the power poles.
That's in addition. So it's more and more and more. But Taproot North and Taproot South, again, they're
on our chart. You can go look at that map on our website. They have very significant grade issues between
60 and 75 feet that would have to be overcome. And they also have a lot of limitations relating to floodways
and the siting. So even though you go, oh, it's 100 acres. Why don't we just do that?
Well, most of that is going to be unusable. And in TAP Road South, the city has a transportation plan
like we do, and their transportation plan requires a road be built between TAP and Fullerton on TAP
Road South property. So that's a huge expense, right? And whatever developer develops that property
is supposed to do that. So there's a lot to think about.
I appreciate the folks for their interest in convening this group, but I really, it's sad that they
limited themselves, that they limited the options and possibilities by taking a county property, which
is a stone's throw from the city, out of the mix.
right off the bat and it's too bad because I think the public won't understand the full range of what's
possible as a result. And one other I promised I would
address one other point, which is the single-level versus multi-level and the importance of a single-level
facility. One of the things I've looked into, partly because counsel asked questions about this back
in January, partly because it's a research interest of mine, is the criminological value of carceral
spaces. So there's this whole carceral empirical body of work on what effect spaces have on inmate experience
and on staff experience. And so there's all of these
studies, peer-reviewed studies, which look at suicidality and inmate assaults and other property offenses.
And these one-level jails with line of sight and podular design, yes, you can build them on multi-level
facilities, but the presence of greenery and natural light and lines of sight that are truly lines of
sight without huge corridors, efficiencies of space, those are all
pluses that relate to one story single level facilities and the correlation to lack of violent assaults
compared to multilevel facilities is there when you look at
actual facilities that are in operation now. So this is not armchair philosophy. These are observed
reality in peer review studies. And so when I look at the facility that we're building and when I look
at the values of our community, I see an inmate experience. I want people to have the least traumatic
experience in a facility that we know is traumatic for everyone. And so no one likes being in prison.
I don't wanna build a prison that is more prison-like than it has to be. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that
reflects our community values more appropriately. I agree. So I think it's important when looking at
the committee's matrix to think about what is more important and what is less important. Obviously,
downtown or city versus not city, even if it's not downtown, seems to be more important
the most important thing because they've taken one site off the map. But among these other elements
of the size and all these other things, it would be really good to have a sense of what the committee
thinks is the most important. I don't know that anyone thinks that time is important because they've all
Anything in the city is going to require that year minimum minimum so I don't think that is a significant
factor for this committee, but it is for us because we are we're facing litigation here and We really
need to act quickly I've been attending a lot of the sessions and I've been offering comment and I
One of the comments I put in was the need to grade or differentiate what criteria are more important.
One of the things that came out of one of the last meetings was an emphasis on constitutionality. And
I'm not sure what that means in terms of a constitutional facility, because a facility could
be constitutional in many different forms, even in a multi-level form. And so I think when you're dialing
down to this facility, what does that mean operationally?
And so I think that can be defined a number of ways. But at the end of the day, it's going to be an
inmate experience and staff experience and safety that I'll be looking at when I vote on a site. And
of course, it's not up to us. It's also going to be entwined with the courts and things like that. But
I very much appreciate the public comments. I appreciate the public input.
all of this, and I also think, you know, we have our own layer now on what, so the public can go on
and see how our matrix corresponds to the committees. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good point. Yeah,
and I would just note that I get asked a lot, like, well, why do you need 25 acres? Well, because we
do need to co-locate. Why do you need to co-locate? A bunch of cities and towns don't have co-location.
Well, what poor planning would that be?
because the building that our court services are in is falling apart because it was built on a shoestring
budget 40 years ago. And I don't want to stick the commissioner 40 years from now with garbage.
I just don't. But the other thing is that, yes, we're used to co-location, but there are risks, there
are costs, there are ongoing costs if you're not co-located. Now, we understand we're not going to co-locate
now. We get it.
The money situation with the state legislature is hard to pin down, to say the least. But to not plan
for colocation, I think, is a real problem. And to me, as a commissioner, colocation, not colocation,
I'm not really phased either way. But we did hear this.
from the sheriff. We did hear this from the courts. We did hear this from the prosecutor's office. They
all understand colocation is necessary. So I'm on board with them. I'm supporting what their determinations
are. And that's how we get to colocation. Even if it's not immediate, we do need the property. At the
very least, I don't think we can take that option away at this stage.
right right all right um anything else on this um no i think that i think that's my um i think those
are my remarks okay great um we appreciate everyone listening um we do have a work session which we'd
like to start at 11 30 um and i know we have one item on the work session which is a planning petition
but i'm going to ask planning if they will
Grace we have another department which is a sheriff's office that wants to come in and talk with us
and they can go first planning can go second so we're going to do that and that will be at 1130 our
next meeting our next regular meeting is the 16th of July anything else for the good of the order
No, I think that one of the things I am grateful for in this entire process is I think we do have a
growing realization that every moment we spend returning to sites that we can't move forward with is
a moment that we are exposed legally, financially, and morally. And so I do think that we're coalescing
around that point. So I'm grateful for that. And I think the more information we get out there,
And I'm grateful for all of our county employees that are helping us get out that information. We have
such talented county employees. And again, very, very grateful for that. You know, I think that's that's
a very big step forward. All right. All right. With that, we are adjourned until 1130 work session.
Thanks, everyone.