I'm going to call to order this work session of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners for Thursday,
February 26th. And thank you for your patience as we got through technical issue. We're going to start
with Ms. Ridge. Good morning. I'm sorry. This is last minute. I received the last quote yesterday evening.
the tree removal. We've received quotes for the tree removal for our baby Creek Road project 6 29. Um
it is time sensitive because we only have the month of March before the bat restriction begins on April
1st. So we asked that the low quote be accepted, which was from Monroe site work LLC and the amount
of $39,000 and that is paid from. Our cumulative
and you do have it in your emails that I sent probably around 7 30 this morning. Cunebridge number 11
35. Correct. Thank you. Before we even move into questions, I'm going to make a motion to approve the
agreement with Monroe site work LLC for work on Baby Creek Road.
The amount is $39,000. The fund name is Cume Bridge. The fund number is 1135. Second. All right, we
have a motion and a second. This will have to be ratified on March 12th, just FYI. All right, comments
or questions? Commissioner Jones? No, I don't. Commissioner Medeira? No. All right.
Let's see if there's any public comment on this item. You raise your hand on teams or come to the podium.
Seeing none, Mr. Cockerill, will you please call the roll on Monroe site work LLC agreement? Mr. Thomas?
Yes. Commissioner Madeira? Yes. Mr. Jones? Yes. Motion is approved three to zero. All right, thank you.
Okay. All right. Um let's just go through our next our first item Bobcat of Ellisville and Richard Small
Engine Equipment and Implements. This is a purchase. Um. And. These are pieces of
4932 in the amount of $119,858. And that's my motion. I second. We have a motion and we have a second.
Ms. Whitmer, thank you for your patience. Oh, no, this is wonderful.
took three quotes on the compact track loader and four quotes on each of the implements. And when we
chose the equipment, it wasn't exclusively chosen because of the lowest price. But once we chose the
compact track loader, it did not make sense to purchase another vendor's implements unless the implement
had more capabilities. So that's what we did. We put our package together, and we believe we have
chosen wisely and the equipment will last for years to come and we would we'll need to bring it um put
it on the county insurance yeah for sure um and this will also have to be ratified on march 12th okay
well the county legal was not sure that's why i'm at the work session i think they can approve it today
so you can get going but then it still has to come back and be talked about at another meeting because
march 12th or after
That's fine because I also we will not order until the Monroe County Council appropriates the money
in the proper account on March 10th. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Right. Um, so, um, any comments or
questions? Uh, commissioner Jones? No, I don't. Thank you.
This is for the Nature Preserve, and we're going to have a building of some sort to put this in,
and yep. And we do have to add, yeah, you're right, we have to add this to our insurance, especially
given what happened earlier on the property. Okay, thank you. All right, let's see if there's any public
comment on this item. And raise your hand in teams or come to the podium.
the motion. Seeing none, Mr Cocker. Will you please call the roll on the Bobcat of Ellisville and Richard
Small Engine Equipment and Women's Purchase. Mr Thomas. Yes Mr Madeira. Yes, Mr Jones. Yes Motion is
approved. 3 to 0. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr Myers. I'm going to have you hold on a second.
We got a couple other quick things to take care of. I
regarding ADA and Title VI plans. Good morning. Good morning, and thank you, Dave Schilling from the
legal department. Counties are required to adopt ADA transition plans and Title VI implementation plans
and to maintain those plans. And years ago, the county had adopted such plans, and we've recently prepared
some updates to that. Working with staff
throughout another. Those, these plans need to be heard and considered at a public hearing. And so we're
simply asking the commissioners to public hearing on these plans for March 12th or March 19th, if possible.
I think we could do it on the 12th. The 12th is much better than the 19th.
Commissioner Jones, what do you think? March 12th? That's fine. Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. We are
set for March 12th to hear this. I assume that we can set it apart in our agenda for a specific time
or do it first, or is there anything else we'd? Yeah, that would be up to you. It just has to be done
within a reasonable amount of the meeting time starting, so you could do it
first or take a break and do it. So it's just a regular business item. We don't have to treat it specially.
Correct. Okay. And then you're going to manage the advertising side of it. Yes, we will. We will have
these plans and the notice of hearing on the county website, hopefully by tomorrow. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. YSB. That is you.
Okay, I am requesting that you guys approve an amendment to the residential treatment services provider
contract that's between the Indiana Department of Child Services and Monroe County. This amendment to
this contract updates several key compliance requirements, specifically related to confidentiality,
stricter protections of confidential information, compliance with state and federal laws.
AI usage approval and state RAMP, which is cybersecurity standards. It also updates their employment
eligibility verification requirements, including mandatory e-verify participation. And it requires an
increase in cyber liability insurance to at least $1 million aggregate.
and revises non-discrimination provisions, strengthens background check compliance language, and updates
the designated DCS contact title. All other items of the original contract remain in effect. So there's
no additional costs for this? No costs, nothing. This is just kind of changing some of the. OK, so we
don't have to ratify this at a future meeting. I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to approve the
US Service Bureau contract, which is amended.
Um, regarding residential treatment services provision. It's the residential treatment services provider
contract. Right. Okay. I second. Thank you. We have motion and a second. Um, any comments or questions?
Commissioner Madeira? I do not. Commissioner Jones? No, I don't. All right. Um, all right. Um,
public comment on this item. Raise your hand on teams or come to the podium. Seeing none, Mr. Cockrell,
will you please call the roll on the amendment for YSB to the Residential Treatment Services Provider
Contract? Commissioner Thomas? Yes. Commissioner Geary? Yes. Commissioner Jones? Yes.
Thank you. Ms. Purdy, can you help us with the letter? I think, oh, Ms. Kelly is still here too, but
there's an extension, grant extension. Can you provide that info, somebody? If Ms. Kelly would like
to do that, since it's her daily work, but if not, I'm willing to speak.
I'm here. So what happened is our current grant funding for our disease intervention services. So the
grant cycle ends on February 28th of 2026. So we are waiting on additional funding for the next grant cycle.
But during this grant cycle, due to the hiring freeze, we were unable to use the additional funding
that they had originally provided for an additional disease intervention specialist, which resulted
in an amendment for a reduction in funding. Since that was still in process, then a new contract to
my understanding, according to the call I got, was that they couldn't reissue that. So what they have
done is they have
provided an extension for the amendment that reduces the grant funding under the same award. Once that's
processed through our channels and then the Indiana Department of Health, then they will provide additional
funding through another amendment under this same contract. So that's kind of my understanding and based
on the call that I received yesterday. So they have sent to my understanding
this through DocuSign to the commissioner's email address then for signature. And I would bring this
to the next commissioner meetings for ratification. I don't think you have to actually, I don't think
we need to ratify this. Yeah, so good news there. Yeah, Ms. Purdy.
I have pulled the grant up, and this grant now terminates on February 28th of 2027. The grant funding
was decreased by $58,835. So the total amount of funding for this grant is now $289,909. And unfortunately,
this is all because we didn't get a position paid for by state tax dollars through a hiring freeze.
I don't I don't understand. Crazy doesn't make sense. But okay so. And I call it can I just say that
this is what I'm moving to approve an extension and amendment of the disease intervention services.
from the Indiana Department of Health. Does that work? Second. All right. We have a motion and a second.
Commissioner Jones, comments or questions? No, I don't. Commissioner Madeira? I do not. Thank you. I
don't either. I've already made my comment. All right. So let's see if there's any public comments on
this item. You raise your hand in teams or come to the podium.
Thank you. And let's go backwards to
Great, thank you. This is ordinance 26-07. Thank you. Let me share my screen here in one second.
All right, so this is located at 3521 South Roger Street. It is in Perry Township, section 17.
It's 1.01 acres.
The zoning map currently shows it as PUD Summersburg and it was discovered by staff that this is actually
an error in the zoning map and it should be zoned a different district. So this was brought to the attention
to the plan commission and through the plan commission process as acting as the petitioner, the plan
commission decided to rezone or request a rezone to residential one instead of the PUD, which was an error.
A little bit of background here. As I stated, staff discovered this error. We were talking with the
property owner of the property and their eventual goals for further development of the property when
it was discovered that the zoning district appeared to be off given other information and evidence.
Some of that evidence is included in this packet.
Essentially, the PUD Summersbee ordinance itself has a legal description that doesn't match, including
this parcel of record, as well as the Summersbee PUD subdivision also does not include this piece of
property. And then there's also a map that was generated by the city of Bloomington in 2004 that also
verifies that this parcel is not part of the Summersbee PUD.
All right, so there's a location map. Highway and stormwater don't have any comments regarding the rezone.
Stormwater said any future development may require a local and or state stormwater permit. Here is the
current zoning map that we're showing. High development residential surrounding the property. And you
can see the gray is the PUD. And this is the parcel record or subject parcel is in red.
outlined in red, and you can see that it's showing as gray here on this map as well. All right, so the
petition type exhibits a close proximity to water and sewer services with the City of Blooms and Utilities.
There's a sewer line cutting through the property, actually, and there's an existing residence on the
property that's operating as a two-family dwelling that does have that sewer service included.
The petition or the property owner, when they first came in, was interested in providing additional
dwelling options for the property, potentially additional bare patio homes, maybe even a subdivision
if the zoning district was right. And then of course staff began that conversation with, it looks like
this PUD is, this PUD district is off and it should not be including this property in question. So we
went through that discussion as well.
So the rest of this page includes more details regarding the site and the site conditions and
the infrastructure here. It is adjacent to the Bloomington Rail Trail. You can see on this screen here,
the Bloomington Rail Trail is in blue here, which also leads me to the discussion of House Bill 1058,
which if it is approved by the state legislature, it would go in effect in July.
July 1st, I believe. The premise behind this bill is that it would provide a property owner the ability
to annex to a jurisdiction through the contiguity language with respect to a difference of that area
being the railroad.
Um, so because, um, the rail trail was formerly a railroad, it's staff's understanding that if this
bill was approved, um, that the petitioner could theoretically request, um, annexation to the
city voluntarily. Um, but any other, um, additional questions related to the house bill 1058, I would
defer to County legal, um, for those questions. But it is pertinent information in this discussion.
So here's the site conditions map. You can see the green lines here. That's the sewer line that cuts
through the property. We do have the comprehensive plan information here as well. It's designated as
mixed residential. I'll have a slide show prepared for this presentation when it goes to the formal
session. I just scrolled through the findings in fact. And we did receive an initial letter from the
property owner.
At the very beginning of this petition, the process of this petition, staff had originally suggested
to the planning commission that it be rezoned to high development residential. Through the planning
commission process, the planning commission acting as the petitioner to correct this error, decided
to change that request from high development residential to residential one. So here now on the screen,
there's some site photos. You can see that existing residence here.
property. It's just a long east-west property here. Some more photographs of the site from South Rogers
Street. These are from 2023. They're Google Street View. And then these are from this year when we had
all the snow. You can see South Rogers Street there again. And then looking back onto the property,
this is from across the street, looking onto the subject property as well.
And then the rest of the exhibits are the evidence pieces that indicate this property should not be
part of the Summers BPUD, as I mentioned earlier. There's that subdivision plat. The petition site is
just south of this subdivision plat. It's not shown. And then this is that map from the city of Bloomington
that I referenced as well. The petition site is located here, which was a zone of RM15
prior. And then I've also included the page from the County Development Ordinance for the Residential
One District showing all its permitted uses and such, and its development standards as well. And that
concludes this packet. And I'll have, like I said, a presentation ready for you all for the formal session.
The Planning Commission did vote to forward this with a positive recommendation unanimously.
So I will take any questions at this time. All right, thank you so much. Comments or questions, Commissioner
Maduro? None. Yes, it does definitely make sense why that is residential one instead of high development.
I'm sorry, high density, yes. Yeah, and there's no sewer, and it's a very long piece of property, and
I don't know how that
becomes something else. But it certainly is Res1. And so it's being used. And it certainly doesn't belong
in this PUD. That's a longstanding typographical issue. Commissioner Jones, comments or questions? You
are muted. So I don't.
I'm sorry. No, not at this time. So this is really a plan commission petition. So we really don't have
a petitioner, so we don't really need to check with people. But I wonder if we could do this on the
26th of March. Would that work? I just hate to load up our 12th of March.
the board of commissioners. Thank you. Thank you for waiting. Think you know, technical difficulties
along agenda. Mr Cockrell. We have a letter.
And this came about because when I was talking to Commissioner Thomas, she had been hearing from the
public about concerns dealing with the elections and voting, dealing with outside people coming and
intimidating or otherwise disrupting the meetings on a side or the voting. On a side note, I was also
at the county council meeting on February 10th where there were public comments about concerns about
disruptions of voting. And so this letter is a letter to the election board.
asking them to work with our emergency management to discuss and plan for any types of disruption or
intimidation at polling places and at the early voting site. And so that is what this letter does and
is intended to do, is just put them in contact with each other so they can develop a plan to react and
deal with those kind of emergencies if they were to come up.
I'm sorry. Um. We do have to take a vote on approving this letter to be sent. This is just.
Request Um. There's no. Funding attached to it, but obviously, um, election division has its own funding
mechanism if they need to.
They can't. We need to figure it out quick. Comments or questions, Commissioner Jones? No, I'm just
glad that this issue is being considered. Commissioner Madero? No, I think it's excellent timing. Great.
We don't need to take public comment on a piece of correspondence.
I will assume if we can get this on DocuSign or something that we can get this out promptly.
I will get it. If you approve it, I will get it to Anita and she can. Great. Thank you. Mr. Copper,
will you please call the roll on approving ratifying the letter to the election board? Commissioner
Thomas. Yes. Commissioner Madeira. Yes. Commissioner Jones. Yes. Motion is approved three to zero.
Thank you. Last item deals with Council's resolution of last Tuesday. And I guess what I'm talking is
a little expanded from that. Meeting earlier, the Council had indicated that they wanted updates. They
said weekly, turn it into every other week because, and I'll get into this.
But I've also been doing some things that are with one commissioner, with council president, you know,
and I want to make sure you guys get the update and then we'll go ahead and forward it to the county
council. And of course, they have questions that feel free to give me a call and ask what's going on.
I have intentionally not included names of location. And these were all discussed at the, you know,
the February 16th or the February or the earlier February.
Executive sessions where we're talking about property for This is kind of the update of where we're
at with with that process. Thank you. So on February 16th, we had that executive session where we went
through some properties some made the cut some didn't but Following that meeting I was to set up a meeting
with the city of Bloomington planning Talk to some of the representative of the property owners from
from the locations we reviewed
Um, that setting up that meeting with the city of Bloomington took a little longer than a week. So that's
why we didn't have a weekly update last week. So, but on 20th, on February 24th, uh, counselor Crossley,
commissioner Thomas and I met with, uh, city of Bloomington planning, um, and, and other affected
departments. I know the city legal was there as well to discuss some of the various sites. Uh, we got
some really nice feedback, I think, from some of the, some of the plan from the
from the city of folks. And so we're kind of looking at how are we going to develop looking at some
of their suggestions and moving forward with that. But that meeting did occur. Then on yesterday, I
guess February the rest of these happened yesterday on the 25th. Again, Councillor Crossley, Commissioner
Madeira and I met with a representative from IU real estate.
to discuss and brainstorm potential sites in the community. We chose IU Real Estate because they're
one of the big landowners that has zoning already applicable where this would be a conditional use.
So part of it was to just see what they have, what's out there, and what they'd be willing to look at.
Clearly they didn't have any
parcel in mind, but they did say if we saw something that we thought would work really well that they
owned, to get in touch with them and contact them about that. We also talked about a couple other sites
that we hadn't mentioned previously as part of the executive session that he brought up, which may or
may not be good, and I don't want to bring them up until we had the whole group weigh in on whether
those are good ideas or not. But I thought it was a very productive meeting.
person we met with has a vast wealth of experience with real estate and looked at kind of some of the
issues that we're talking about in a different way. So I think he had some feedback. I also talked with
a couple other property owners to see if those properties that we had been discussing were indeed available.
The two other ones said yes.
meeting with the city planning. I had contact with Scott Carnegie to kind of talk about some of the
questions that came out, particularly about the Thompson site, of that meeting with the city planning
access. I'm seeing if he could figure out how it would be accessed with what has happened with the PUD
to the west, with that. So we're working on that, and I guess
I got a hold of the resolution that the county council passed the night before. I read that and looking
at the financial report, it appears from that document that the max, not to say that it is the budget,
but the max budget would appear to be about $170 million if you look at that report. So I immediately
got a hold of the WGSR estimators and say, hey, if we do it for $170 or less, and they just to jail,
not talking the full
and they indicated that that would be possible and probable. I asked them if we could do it for under
something or less, and they said yes. And that would include a reasonable purchase price of property
if we had to do that. And so from that aspect, it looks like we can't afford it. I mean, that's not
to say that there's not a lot of discussions on appropriate savings or appropriate bond size.
a plethora of other conversations, but the bottom line is that there is funding available to build the
jail facility. And not having to wait until 2029 now, because there's a way to do it where we would
meet and not exceed the 25%
of lit being spent on a bond that the state legislature imposed. And that's, I have not confirmed yet
with bond council. Okay. Because there were two things that we were looking at. And one of them was
with that future revenue stream, the future lit, whether we could pledge that and not have to renew
that pledge. And I'm sure I saw that in the legislation. The other question was,
that would enable us to enact that type of lit now, even though we know we're not going to collect it,
with the assumption that we would at least have the debt service covered with that. I need to talk to
bond council and everybody that said that made it in. I'm assuming it did. I just haven't seen it, right?
So bond council's next on that list. Yeah, and I would also point out that
these documents that were presented were based upon what we have today, right? And I am not a fortune
teller, but I would be surprised if we had worked far enough along by the end of this year to have issued
bonds and begun construction, right? So, you know, when I looked at their report where it says
Estimated lit available for debt service as of today as for this year. That's 11 almost 12 million dollars.
Well, if we don't spend that that would be transferred to one of the balance as of what would be 1031
2026. So there's right. There's some other things in play but I think the What's represented here absent some
that we could afford building in jail. Okay and just just so folks following along at home understand
there. There is
And then on the subsequent page we have. A listing. If you look at the left side column. That indicates
that between that
that there is currently sitting in those lit funds. Unappropriated at this moment. That. That there
is. Ostensibly 170 million. To actually move forward now. No. Maybe I will just state the numbers and all that
The $35 million in cash, roughly, that's not going to be removed from the fund in one fell swoop. It
will be invoiced. We spoke about this yesterday in that those invoices will be coming in and will be
paying as we're also receiving funds from the state. So I just want to clarify that there's not going
to be a $35 million
And I think what we're getting at is sometimes with our highway grants, right? Because we do highway
grants and NDOT funds the highway process and then bills us for the full amount of our share of that
project. And that all comes out upfront, right? And then they go and perform the project. And if there's
anything left over, they figure out how much gets refunded and all that. That is not this project.
But I guess the 170 number is derived from the estimated bond size calculation in the first column of
the last page of the Exhibit A to their resolution, which has $135 million. And that is based upon current
lit 25% of that, which is the statutory maximum we can do.
just under $11 million payment, and right now we have just under $12 million in funds that we are receiving
through income tax that we have not appropriated in any way for this year. So that is not an unreasonable
number. It might not be the right number, but it's not unreasonable. And then our economic development
income tax, 1112, which prior to last December,
The plan for that was always to spend 100% of it on this project, given the budget difficulties and
things like that. That changed a little bit, but mostly that changed a little bit for general operations
for 2026 with nothing for general. After that, I think there'll be a conversation about that, so I'm
not going to say
But that funding was $23,475.66. When I say funding, that was the cash balance of that fund at the beginning
of this year. And then the band capital, that is the bond anticipation note that we had issued when
we were looking at Fullerton before that whole thing happened, and that still has
5,721,462. And all of that money has to be spent on this project, right? It has to be either for the
land or for the design, because that's what that bond or ban was issued for. So that has to be spent
on this project. And then the jail lit, which is 1233, is $7,108,463. And that was the cash balance
at the beginning of this year.
And I guess we chose those three funds because traditionally that's what we thought the mechanism was.
When we talk about the $225 million project, that's based on the revenue from these funds. The edit
was passed by the city council I think in 21, 22, and we at that point in time knew this was our big
project, and so that's why we had designated that for that.
In 2024, the council looked at the jail at the, at the correction. I call it correctional lit. This
says jail lit. It's, it could be up to point two. The conversation around that whole increasing that
from 0.01 to 0.17 was for this project. And so when you look at the funding of those two, of those two for 2026,
The estimate is about $20 million a year. And so our previous calculations had the $225 million at $18
million a year for a bond. And that didn't include any of the cash balances, right? So I'm not saying
that is exactly what it would have been issued. But that's where that $225 million came from, just so
you guys are aware and remember. So I guess when reading the resolution,
I mean, I think we can get beyond the can we afford it conversation to I think the question is where
is it going to go and then the question after that is not can we afford it is what do we want to afford,
what are the tradeoffs with size and location and all that versus what we want to keep for cash balances
and things like that. I mean, we're not out of the
woods, but I think we can get beyond the, there's absolutely no way we can afford it conversation just
with what we're collecting now. Or the jail only co-locations, different conversation. Um, and I would
say single story jail is what I hope WGS heard because I've heard from them before that it's, that it
would be more expensive construction wise to build a two floor. Oh, okay.
So I read this and I thought it was a good step forward in that I think it states the funding, it states
the funding. The maximum funding level, right? I think there's still some work the council has to do
to kind of get a more realistic funding number. I don't think running your cash balances and all your
funds to zero is an ever good idea and all those kind of things. But it's a start. I mean, if I'm the ACLU,
or I feel you and I'm looking for something, now I know what is the maximum budget allowed, right? Right.
And it can pay for a jail to be built. I'll start with you, Commissioner Madure. Did you want to? Yes.
Jeff, my voice is really bad and it's cracking. I was wondering if you would read something for me.
These are not my words, these are the words of Commissioner Madeira. Before this year, it seemed that
we are engaged in a process to carefully study the jail issue, evaluate property, et cetera. Now there's
this new urgency to meet attorney Falk's deadline, but also we have to be careful not to fall into this
unstated get it done, get it done at the least possible cost. While we need to be very fiscally responsible,
of course, we must
also invest wisely in a facility that must remain safe, functional, and legally compliant for the next
40 to 50 years. Often guarantees higher long-term costs through repeated retrofits, staffing inefficiencies,
deferred maintenance, and greater litigation exposure. This facility should be durable and future-ready
so housing,
programming and technology can adapt as laws, population, and best practices change. The question isn't
whether we can afford a modern jail. It's whether we can afford the predictable cost of building and
maintaining an outdated one. I think there's a little bit more below. Page two. I'm just kidding. Oh,
there is more. Not much. There's a little bit more.
I'm also hearing several references to committing to constitutional care inside the jail and then references
to offering premium services outside the jail. But these remarks unintentionally imply that there are
two standards for treatment. This can't be the case. Both need to be excellent and evidence-based. Both
address two different populations of individuals. One addresses the populations who cannot be kept out
of jail despite our best efforts.
addresses those who we've managed to keep out of jail through our best efforts. Thus, we need to do
more than aspire to build a constitutional jail. What we're doing isn't just building a facility with
more beds. We're building a facility that will also reduce repeated offenses and improve safety for
the people who live and work in it. That's going to take an additional investment of funds, investment
in educational program, mental health services, recovery services, and so on.
Our jail lacks space for treatment, education, medical and mental health care, reentry planning, and
safe separation of populations. Having a modern jail based on evidence-based programming, substance
use treatment, counseling, job and GED training, cognitive behavioral interventions, we need to make
an upfront investment that stabilizes people in crisis
and lowers recidivism and reduces costly emergency transports and the risk of lawsuits. Because underserved
the individuals who live in the jail, they are more likely to return there in the future. That's it.
Wait, there's another file. No, I'm just kidding. It's good to be verbose even when your voice won't
let you do it. Thank you, Jeff.
that. My third grade teacher would be proud. Commissioner Jones, do you have anything you'd like to
say? Well, I would just like to say that I agree with everything that Commissioner Madera said, and
I hope that it will be taken very seriously.
Yeah, it's interesting because I started getting calls and text yesterday from folks who said, wait,
there's not enough money for a jail? Is that what the council's saying? And that's not what appears
on the Garitas financial report, which they asked for and
that they commissioned and included with their resolutions. So it's very interesting to see that number.
I appreciate Mr. Cockrell being willing to talk through those numbers so that folks understand what
we're looking at. And I will note there's still a little give in terms of the edit rate overall for
the County Council still.
in terms of what was approved by the city. There's still, isn't there still a little give on that? I
don't know if there's, I mean, I think there is room in edit, but I think that requires the city council
approvals and things like that. I think there is definitely, I mean, we're at 0.17 for the correctional
lit and that could go up to 0.2, which. Okay. That's, I guess that's what I'm thinking.
million million dollars a year which would give you another 12 to 15 million dollars yeah i think that's
what i'm thinking and i think yeah it's it's good to have these conversations um i yeah um as commissioner
madeira did the aspirational idea of finding some sort of treatment program system
outside of the criminal justice system, or even perhaps one that can meld with it. But it's certainly,
our first priority has to be building a new jail at this moment. And I think even saying, wow, we'd
like to put some money aside for that, great, but don't do it at the cost of building what we have to
build constitutionally. It's great to have those aspirational ideas, but nothing's been done on it
I've been here for a long time. Um so I don't know. The value of setting aside. Money for treatment.
Um at this moment when we have a very specific. Constitutionally required building that we have to build.
They're just kind of putting things off till 28, or now we know 29, when the lit and property tax change
happens fully. And that's necessarily required at this moment. We can actually move forward, which is
really good news. I do want to say a couple things about
as I watched that council discussion. And one of the things I want to say is somewhere, oh, no, I know
where it came from. This number of 257 million got thrown about on social media. God bless social media,
because it needs it. And it is not true. That number has been 225. Now, of course,
number. I don't know where that number came from. Here we are another year into it. I don't know that
we're gonna be able to keep that number. But the number was never 257. I don't know where that came
from, and I hate the fact that we have people repeating it. Who should not be repeating that number
to 25. We had a higher number come in on an estimate once deals he completed the first round of plans.
We got that number back down to 225. So I don't
There is also some veiled criticism, not so veiled criticism about the process and, oh my gosh, people
have been left out. We have not left anyone out of this process. This process has been thoroughly inclusive,
not just elected officials, the public.
both are necessary. Both are necessary. And both have been there from the beginning. And you may not
have seen it. You may have heard somebody gripe that they wanted just one more meeting. That always
happens, unfortunately, but we did. And every location we looked at,
We had public meetings with area residents so we could hear their concerns. We could talk to them about
what they liked or they didn't like. We could address some of the myths. This was in a big prison with
big barbed wire walls and all that. We didn't leave anybody out and we haven't left anybody out. Now
there may be some new players in the game who feel like they want to have
You know, they want to go back to the beginning and make us go through this whole process again. We've
gone through a multi-year process. We've dragged this community through a multi-year process. And the
thing I hear the most from people is like, get it done. And amen. We need to get this done. And if it's
true, even though it seemed like from the comments that the council thought this all spelled doom for
getting the jail built,
I think it shows otherwise, and if that's the case, let's get moving. We do have some research to do.
There are a couple of questions. I know that we've got outstanding with various groups and agencies
and whatnot, but we're learning a lot every day, and I think
We hope to have something to bring as an ordinance for March 12th, because at that point in time, we
will have had that research completed and we'll be ready to be much more decisive. But the money piece
being the thing that continued to be raised as a question, if that indeed is truly solved,
I'm not sure what else we need to do at this moment, but it is good news. And I think that the thing
that we've heard, I will say two things about this project. Yes, it has to be a single floor. I'm not
willing to,
Personally, I don't think, you know, making it work on a floodplain is not a good plan for a jail. I
don't think, you know, we should become contortionists to fit something on a piece of property because
it has some magical address or something else. I think what happens when you do that is you end up with
what we have in the Charlotte Zittlow building, which has cost us a mint.
to keep afloat. And speaking of that building, I think it's foolish for us to plan only for a jail.
And while we don't have the funding in place today, I'm only going to personally be able to support
something that will lead to co-location in the near future.
either that or we end up dumping money into the Charlottesville building and we end up with ongoing
expenses. And we've heard from the judges, the prosecutor and the sheriff that co-location is a must
and I support that. We'll figure it out. And no, it's not gonna be right away. Of course not, of course
not. But that doesn't mean that it can't be in the plan. And that would be a really good thing.
Uh, but that's as far as I'll go right now on anything else. Um, but I just, um, I appreciate everybody's
thoughts and comments and, um, it, I think the news is better than it appeared to be when we were first
presented with this. These numbers and this resolution, I think, you know, clearly it will be, uh, sacrifice
to get to that number, but, but it seems perfectly doable.
this time. Did you have anything you wanted to add, Jeff? I would just say I have not watched the meeting,
so everything that I talked about is straight from the resolution, right? Sure. I am sure that there
are conversations to have. I guess when I'm talking about the number, I was reading this and I'm like,
this is what can fall, or if I was the ACLU or ICLU attorney, this is how I would interpret this document,
right? Okay. And I don't think that's inaccurate.
So what we're saying is we can afford it. We may not want there's some pain involved with that number.
I'm not saying there's not any pain involved, but it's a piece of paper that says we can do it legally.
Yeah. Then that puts that burden, shifts that burden. Did you? I'm just going to say, and that's presuming
that we would need $170 million. That's the maximum, right? That's the maximum we would.
And we don't know that I got a pretty immediate. Yes. So I'm thinking it's, it's the word that we would
be below that. Yeah. We're not going to try to do the max. We're going to try to do. You can't really
have an accurate figure until you know where it's going to be. Right. Because a lot of that's what's
the ground cost, if anything, what's it cost to prepare the ground? So it's level and you could, I mean,
there's design costs. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, we've got some done. It's the second, you know,
where it's gonna go. Right, because there could be preparations required, there could be other things.
And so for me, it comes to co-location and timing, right? Timing being such an important part of this
now, especially given the position of the ICLU ACLU box letter.
So, but that's a good way, that's a good way to read it. And it's probably good that you didn't see
that meeting because it is a resolution that stands on its own. And they did intend it to be a resolution
for the ICLU, ACLU as the audience, not us, apparently, but. Ms. Turner was, Turner King was advised
to set the following day.
when she sent us her copy, so yeah. I mean, it's factual, right? There's nothing in there that I don't
think is factual. But I think it's actually a very good statement as to what our maximum is. I mean,
the next step is in, I will be totally honest with you, I would not feel comfortable
recommending we go to the max, right? Because that is, that's dangerous. I think the column in that
third column where it talks about, well, if this, and that's basically designed where if this were say
a TIF fund, right? And we knew this was the amount of revenue we're getting in the TIF, we would take
80% of that revenue. Right, for bond. And have that be the most we would ever do a bond. Well, these
funds are not getting, that's not 80%
That number there, that 11, I mean, that's 40% of what's, or 50% of what's collected. Not anywhere close
to that 1.25. I think that philosophy is good because it gives you some comfort to know that you're
always gonna have enough revenue to pay your bond and still maintain your current expenses. So I think
there's some value to knowing what that number is.
And knowing that the lit max of 25% of the total lit collected would go to a bond is also helpful because
that says, hey, you control the other 75%. And I know that was bandied about, oh, we're going to spend
half our lit. No. You don't need to. In my mind, it's less than the amount you're not spending. You
are collecting more than that amount, which is a good thing, right? Yeah.
building stress levels, but they're also building, I'm kind of comfortable with that concept, things
with her too. Sure, sure, of course. Explain the half of lit. Comments. I don't think I can. I'm not
sure I understand. What did you hear? No, I would like for Mr. Cockrell to expand upon fusion.
Well, I don't know what you're asking, but I will go and say I was at the February 10th meeting, right?
And at the February 10th meeting, there were statements made that basically that half our lit is going
to keep us on a level playing field, right? And I assume that that is half of what will be the new lit.
I think that's baked into that. Half of your total lit will go to maintaining the status quo.
And if it's based upon going from, you know, basically what we have now to the 1.2, and you're thinking
half of that, well, I mean, that other half's a pretty big number, right? It's 25 million, 30 million.
I don't know off the top of my head, but that other half is a pretty good number. So if, I personally
don't think it will take only half to maintain status quo, right? I don't know how that works.
If that's the case, and I mean, that's just, to me, then it goes down to priorities, right? What are
you going to prioritize over this facility if you have, you know, if two thirds of what you aren't spending
can accomplish this goal and one third is just still there to cover any unknown, then, you know, kind
of what are,
What are we worried about? What can come ahead of us in the next 15, 20 years that we really think is
reasonable that it will be a higher priority than this project? That would be the questions that I think
everybody should be asking themselves when they're looking at any of these numbers, right? What will
happen in the next few years that we think we need this funding for that is a higher priority than this project?
And that's kind of where I think the whole funding conversation, if you're going to break it down to
its simplest terms, is we know we've got $170 million from that document. I can tell you now, I know
things in my mind that I would consider to be a higher priority than some of the things that we would
do that I think would get that cost up to $170 million. I think that there is a base cost much lower
than that that we need to figure.
piece of property, we can figure out what that is. And then we can have the conversation is of, well,
if we did this, you know, what do we expect in the next 20 years to happen that we're not going to be
able to do because we did X, Y, or Z with this project. And I think that's where we need to go. I think
we keep getting, I think we start down that path and then we keep getting caught up with location.
Not an easy location for a jail project is never going to be universally accepted. It's never going
to be everybody's going to love it. Every some there are always going to be people who complain. Right.
And I think that I think we are going to continue. We need to make a decision on where we're going to
go and we need to be firm in that and get things going. And I think then we can get to where
those conversations are.
I'm glad you asked that question. I heard that statement differently, so. That was the situation.
Thank you. You just said, Julie, you heard that wrong. Because I was like, I don't understand that question.
Yeah. All right. That's why. Thank you. So kind. Anything else? We Commissioner Jones. Anything else?
No, I don't. It's good to see you, Lee.
It's good to be here, hopefully in person next week. We're not here next week. The meeting was already
canceled. OK, the week after, sorry. Did you have anything, Commissioner Medeira? I think that it's
very helpful to remember that just because we build a jail does not mean we don't focus on community
programming. And one is not to the exclusion of the other.
It's not an either or question. It's a both and. We have to do both. But often, they're two separate
populations. And they have to be two separate populations. There are people who, unfortunately, have
to be people who live in the jail. And often, they are not the same people who can be released into
the community. But it would be great to be able to offer decent mental and physical health care for
those folks and treatment. Yes. Yes. And we can't do that now.
to the extent that we need to. And I agree that it is important to have all of those components, but
I think when we think about those priorities, as Jeff said, when we think about those priorities,
constitutionally, we have to have a jail, right? So that is priority number one.
And I would love to do all the, you know, I'd love to have the rest of the justice system built the
same time. Ain't going to happen. It's okay. We'll figure it out. Right. But, but then let's think about
what's next on the priority list. Is it, is it continuing to try to keep the Zillow building going,
um, and remodeling it, or is it, I know, um, I know that, yeah. Uh, or is it,
or is it really to go ahead and get that built? Or is it some sort of mental health treatment services,
substance use disorder treatment services in our community? That's a priority. And when you set a budget,
you make a priority. And I get it. And yes, we have to have those programs. And I'm glad for the ones
that we do have. It's not sufficient. We all know that. It is not sufficient.
Um, but, but we also know that the state's not helping to pay for it. The feds stopped paying for it
in the eighties. Um, and, and it will be a community commitment to pay for that kind of service. Um,
and it's going to be a question for the community.
Yes, and statutorily, we are charged with carceral care. Statutorily, we are not charged with community
care. And there are so many other providers who, for better or worse, can pick up that load. And we
can partner with them. And we need to partner with them. But statutorily, we also have that responsibility.
And that is incumbent upon us. And that is incumbent upon, you know, that's what we need to use taxpayer
funds for.
our job is also to make sure that the people who live in our facility become people who do return to
it. And that we are providing the safest possible conditions for our staff and for those who are housed
there. And that is a priority that we have to take care of. There's no excuse.
And I believe that the transition team that has been working with the CLD prior to October, I think
that they were building design, helping to design a very treatment oriented focused facility. So, yeah.
I want to say 80 to 85. This is in the.
and then a single cell for people who have different needs. Medical treatment, and then there's room
to do programming that we don't have now. And we saw it when we did the jail tours elsewhere,
other states, that there are ways to set up a pod so that it becomes a substance use treatment
forward pod, and they work every day toward building themselves up to get out and to become productive
residents. And it's exciting to see that. And we can't do it. We can't do it. You know? Since we got
on this topic, I just want to say, I applauded the work of the transition team. I thought they were
very reflective of what they were hearing from the community. Sure. What was the expression? I thought
they were doing a very good job.
reacting to what I think was kind of the universal hate, the kind of stuff we want to see in our facility
that we can't do now. And I thought they did a great job. And there's a lot of that information that
we won't be able to share ever because of security issues, obviously. But we can share numbers and space,
but we can't share diagrams and whatnot. But I will say as well that I think throughout the county,
we had staff stepping up and working.
at quite a few of those meetings. I know Angie and Jeff were at almost all of them. And when we had
meetings with DLZ and department heads and getting things cut and changed to get down to that five,
we did it. And they did it. You know, it wasn't a party and it wasn't a circus. It was tough.
It was tough. But it was possible. But it was possible.
And they all made it happen in one way or another. And that cooperative work that got us to where we
were before the state legislature decided to mess with our lives. But we can't blame them if indeed
there is a way to do this now. I would say I blame them for not being able to immediately build co-located services.
Beyond that, if we can do it, I'm excited, just to get this thing moving. And I have a lot of optimism,
so thank you. Anybody have anything else to add? All right, so with that, we are adjourned. Our next
meeting is really, really, really March 12th, 10 a.m., right here in the Daniel Hill Room. Thanks, everyone.