Sheriff jail beds shortage and CGL study

1:48:59So um We have a time certain at eleven forty five, but if if If you guys are ready to go, we can go. All right, why don't you uh come on up for the Eleven forty five R one hundred. I have no idea what this is. Mm-hmm.

1:49:19There it is.

1:49:24Okay.

1:49:26Ah.

1:49:29Morning, morning. Congratulations, thank you. So

1:49:38Uh Can I begin? Are you ready? So I want to begin with thank you very much for the time. And I know we sent a letter. I know you each had opportunity you met with uh Major Jenkins and Captain Riggins to go over the jail. I just wanna come forward also and we can have a discussion or at least just hear some of the things that we wanna bring up and Start with, you know, I want to thank Dan very much. You you talk about leadership, being able to work together. Absolutely. Um we are doing that, we're working together. Uh these issues that I'm gonna

1:50:08bring up, these are things that have happened way before many of us. You know, these are things that have been going on for years. And because they weren't dealt with then, we're now in the predicament we're in now. So I just want to say that, but I you know I want to again, Mr. Biles, thank you very, very much. You well deserved. Whatever the award that was, well deserved.

1:50:28So Just to give you some numbers, so in 2015, CGL recommended, and this is obviously this all goes back pre-CGL. There was uh 20 six 2006 Wade trim study. I'm sorry, Chris Nacko, 8700 Citizen Strap. Apologize. Uh this goes back to a 2006 Wade trim study. Uh but I'll I'll fast forward a little bit to 2015. It was a CGL study. That said in 2024 there the jail would have to pay two thousand five hundred and thirty-five beds. Uh right now we're at fourteen hundred and thirty-two.

1:50:59When the new jail opens in July of 24, we'll be at 1832 beds. And CGL is coming out with some new calculations. So right now Going on those numbers, we'd still be short 700 beds, but CGL is gonna be putting out some new numbers. They'd say that we're gonna be short 588 beds. So We all agree. Oh, which way is this gonna go? We all agree in the fact that bail reform doesn't work. Uh when you saw like, hey, how can we get people out of jail? You

1:51:29know, we we don't want a warehouse and we'll never warehouse. But a as everybody could say, just letting people out of jail for the sake of oh we're gonna do that doesn't work. And unfortunately we see across the country It's not working. And when I a nice woman came up and said, I'm glad we moved to Pasco County. One of the reasons people are happy to move to Pasco County is because it's safe. They see the opportunity, they see the growth, they see that we're working together, but they're safe. And that's important. But I go back to it. We do not want a warehouse and I'll tell you some of the things that we're doing in there. You

1:51:59know, we're proud to manage that jail for the county board of county commissioners. Um we've done enhanced M8A labor work programs. uh certificate programs, I mean that's the thing. We do not want to warehouse people. We want to improve them. The fact that we can give somebody a certificate in welding, now they're going off making a lot of money, they're getting a life on track. Those are winners. You know, special housing unit for veterans, faith based housing unit, anti human trafficking training. Increase education through tablets. You know, that's something you know we're always

1:52:30looking to be advanced. So one thing I'll talk about later on is the fact that with those tablets, we're able to have access so somebody doesn't have to come to the jail to visit a loved one. They can do it online, they can Skype. Um general population of psychiatric housing for inmates. Uh coordinate recovery unit. Enhanced visitation. That goes back to that. People can visit from home. Um alternatives to incarceration programs. Uh medication assistance treatment program. So when people and I'll tell you everybody understands this, the county is the largest center for addiction and mental health.

1:53:00That's the biggest center right there. So what we're trying to do is working with Baycare, which is a phenomenal partner. To get them so when they leave, they're not in that situation, you know, they're off the addiction. Uh we partnered with the University of South Florida and did a study regarding traumatic brain injury. Um and we are partner with the N Recidiv N Recidivism Project. So those are those type of things that we go back to, we're not just trying to warehouse people. We're actually in there trying to get these people back on their feet. At the same time is we're dealing with a multitude of issues and the fact that You know The

1:53:31reality is, you know, eighty five percent of the people in there are felons. The common misnomer, and it's interesting you had that the group in here, the Citizens Academy group. Everybody thinks that there's so many people in there for misdemeanor weed. There's nobody in there for misdemeanor weed. Like that is the biggest misnomer. Oh, if there wasn't there's nobody there are felons in there. We saw last night. People commit homicides. Keep up robberies. Eighty-five percent are felons in there.

1:53:58Two hundred and forty five are sentenced already. Thirteen hundred and forty six are pre-sentenced. We're dealing an issue right now with the Department of Corrections. The Department of Corrections, they're having a shortage issue. They're not, we can't send people over there. That's that's very difficult to deal with right now. There's about a hundred people on VOP. That they're waiting to hear some from the judges to get in front of the judges. What's V O P. Violation probation. I'm sorry. Violation probation. So they it could be technical issues, but we're trying to get them in front of the judge.

1:54:29Um, but I'll tell you, even with those things in place, we're still at a shortage. It's not going to move the needle that much at all. Uh we're still dealing with what we have. The diversion program was taken away, you know, not taken away, we it was done with several years ago. It would be a substantial cost to bring it back. But I'll tell you judges, they have the they have the ability. That's it's on their that's what they do. They can make those decisions on bond and they can ROR somebody report on their own recognizances. So they see that they can come back on their own,

1:54:59that they're honestly gonna come back. So the judges have that ability to do that. You know the the county de right now the detention service budget is fifty million dollars. That's what we're dealing with. So One thing that when the bond went out, and I'll get into that further, but one thing when the bond went out, which was not included, was the staffing. So The National Institute of Corrections estimates when this new jail is built, we're gonna need 250 more members to be in there. And so that

1:55:29was not included. That two hundred fifty is roughly forty million dollars. So that was not included in that original bond. Um Those are those type of things that when you look upon and and i if we don't maintain certain things, certain amount of space, number of bathrooms, those type of things. The federal decree can come down. D the a federal judge can say, your jail does not sit, you know, i you're violating civil rights. They can take it over. If they can take it over, a judge can order whatever he wants to happen in there. She can order whatever she wants to happen

1:55:59in there. So a couple of things we've done over the years to save money, you know, and it's actually not just save money, but you know, we make sure that it's the same quality. You know, we contracted health care. It's a contract that we have. Uh contracted food operations, contracted commissary operations, so the honey buns, the uh hot chocolate, those type of things. It's contracted. Contracted transportation. We contracted where we could contract where we'd be successful in doing it to save money.

1:56:30Because it was it was cheaper, same quality, but it was cheaper to do it with a contract service than with uh County Sheriff's Office members. You know, when you look at the um man, I'm skipping through. Budgetary needs, contract. Oh, who's doing? I appreciate it. Whoever keeping up with me, thank you very

1:56:46much.

1:56:48I'm trying to I know you all have a packed agenda today, so I just want to make sure you kept on track for a little bit. So You know, if these steps aren't made, you know, the projected shortfall for the county remains nineteen to twenty five million dollars. That's just and and uh this is where there was some things that were outside of everybody's control. Nobody expected Material was to go up the way it did. Those are things that yeah, absolutely. They w those are things that just they just happened. Every industry's dealing with that now. Every every logistics dealing with it right now.

1:57:20So I'm trying to skip ahead a little bit to keep going. So That was the number that was projected that was the number on the on the bond. So one of the things you know could be asked is you know as we're looking at this the thousand bed expansion, it's not gonna be a thousand beds Because you have to think in c when it's not just beds. We're not just building beds. When you when you build a when you're building more people, you're building more people to come into a house or a hotel. You gotta expand food services, you gotta expand laundry services. There's another, so those are things that have to be brought into

1:57:50consideration. The other one is we're trying to expand medical in there. We're trying to save because the amount of money that we have to spend to go out, because there's been issues in there where Rooms haven't been kept up. Uh there's been issues with uh uh there's one of the rooms in here, I have it on our on my thing. The um

1:58:11R where was it?

1:58:15The negative pressure cells. Thank you, Major Jenkins. Negative pressure cells, because the negative pressure cell does not work. We had to send an inmate out. Because we sent an inmate out, now you have somebody that has to sit with that inmate that the outside cost spread healthcare on it. Those are those type of things that you look at. Cutting costs, we can't really because nobody brought nobody was looking at the staffing issue when they proposed the the bond. Those are things when you're not looking at the staffing issue, that's very hard to cut. You know Other things you

1:58:45have to keep into consideration is I go back to, if you cut things too much Inmates sue. When inmates sue and it goes in front of a judge, a judge could make that decision and say, I believe you're violating civil rights. We do not want to violate anybody's civil rights. If they violate civil rights and a judge deems that They take over the jail and it doesn't matter what anybody thinks, they will say you will do this and you have to do it.

1:59:12This is just history, the the numbers for the daily population and where we're looking at. The other one too is just so you're aware. See if I have my numbers right here. I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit.

1:59:26That was the basically the bond issues. And the bond issues basically come down to it's it wasn't enough money. This is

1:59:39But let me I'm sorry, let me go back one thing. So we send about What was it? There's thirty seven inmates I believe right now in Hernando. Uh there is I got the number right here. Sixty. Something like that. That we send to Seminole County. Hernando charges sixty-three dollars a day, Seminole charges seventy-three fifty a day. Well Seminole County is a little bit further away. We have to that's a transport cost we have to add, you know, we that's additional to it. Polk County would

2:00:09charge $113 a day, with a minimum they want eighty-five inmates. At any moment and that's if we decide to go to Polk, I mean basically this is hotel charge rates. You're like, hey, how much is your hotel gonna cost? What's your hotel gonna cost? What's this and so Those are calculations. Those are things that we have to look at. Then you have to look at classification issues. Is somebody high risk or they low risk? Can you know in a sense? Those are things that we have to bring into the equation. So it's not a simple, oh, we're just gonna go here. It it's not that simple. There's a lot that goes into the equation.

2:00:43The CGL study also whenever oh am I going the right way.

2:00:49Um the CGL study also did in their in their study, they said that you know when they were looking at projection numbers, it also didn't take into account land acquisition, site development, utility construction. Financial costs or staffing. Those are things that, you know, I go back to it again. When we talk about trying to cut costs, there's nowhere really to cut costs. There's not enough money to build what we were trying to build. That was originally. Then when you take into effect all the logistics and supply issues that we're dealing with from a national level that trickles down across. That is a

2:01:19that is a major issue that we're dealing with. And so The bottom line is we want to work together. Like everything we've done, I appreciate this board has been fantastic. We've worked together. Like that like the crowd said earlier, they're proud to be here. That's because we're working. But at the same time as if I don't bring this forward You know. Wrote the letter. I know the major and captain sat with you. I'm here. I just want to bring it to your attention because this is an issue that since the early two thousands hasn't

2:01:49gone away. It's still not gonna go away. And as our population grows tremendously, I know one number had us projected to be Well, Uh where's that number at? I got numbers all over the place here today. This is amazing. One number had us at like six hundred and uh thirty thousand but then up going up to eight hundred and forty thousand by twenty twenty four and another one has us going over a million. But uh not twenty twenty four twenty forty. Twenty forty, I knew I always deserve that trophy back. Um by twenty forty. But those are those type of things that you know it's

2:02:20not gonna go away. So some way, somehow It's gonna have to be dealt with and And the quick results. So that's fine. I said we're very happy to manage it for you. You know, we're very happy that we work together the partnership it works well. But I just wanted to bring this forward because It's your jail. And if I don't tell you what's happening with your jail, if I I'm your contract, if I don't explain what's going on in there. then I'm wrong for not bringing it forward. So that anything I can answer,

2:02:50Chair?

2:02:52Uh Well we're glad you're here today but it's frustrating news, right? That that can got just postponed that you know, got kicked down the street for many, many years. So it's a challenge that we at the county have. Administrator, did you want to say something?

2:03:11Uh I all I'll say I think uh the the current contract will be in front of the board here in the next few months for the the firm fixed price. We expect construction to start in the spring. But that as the sheriff said, that's about five hundred and eighty new beds. It completely new central services area which is which means we won't need to touch that the next time we expand the jail. But it is significantly short funding and we are working to bring it forward with a funding solution to that, but it is still probably anywhere

2:03:41between twenty and thirty million dollars short. Just because of the I mean steel. You know, all other construction materials. So that's what we're dealing with. And every month we delay that. the prices are increasing anywhere from four to five percent right now.

2:03:59Um Um Commissioner Moore than Commissioner Mariano and then Commissioner Oakley.

2:04:02Just yeah, just out of curious, I think it's gonna answer a lot of people's questions. Um right now, what are the contractors what stating the percentage why is it what it's gonna go up? Okay, we're looking at fifty percent, forty percent, thirty percent, cost to construct, not not the O and M and

2:04:19staffing, but cost of construct. Since eight the end of eighteen the cost of materials for this project's gone up almost forty five percent. That's it's accelerating and it's not slowing down.

2:04:33And then my last

2:04:34kind of

2:04:35slowed down, but

2:04:35there's not a whole lot of wood in this building.

2:04:37Right. Well I would I would hope not, right?

2:04:41Commissioner Moore.

2:04:43Thank you, Madam Chairman Mariano. Uh Sheriff, thanks for bringing this forward. Um There's an opportunity that's that's coming up with the opioid funding we're getting. And right now from what I understand it's only about twenty five percent of what the total money is gonna come between C V S, Walgreens coming down the road. The way the legislation is written right now, and I'm not sure how much you were involved, but I'm sure you were, of how that money is going to be spent. With the new contracts coming up or even legislatively, we can change the the legislature can change how that agreement has been settled

2:05:13with all the counties that have signed up, et cetera. Do you think it is worth taking a look at, especially for the mental health, the drug abuse, and at least trying to do a major offset on having a building structure that is going to accommodate this, on dealing with this issue for down the road? Are you happy with the way that legislation looks, or do you want to take a closer look at that and try to get legislators to go change and give it more flexibility so that we can go, let's say, pump a lot of that money into this project instead of doing it the way it is being allocated now?

2:05:40So uh that's what I say, Commissioner Yeah it's a I have to dig dive deeper into it. My only concern is I think it's gonna be this one time. unless I I don't think it's gonna be continuous hours, so we'd have to look at a capital project such as you know, filling in the gap here. Um we would love I mean the the goal would be uh honestly that if s I said these are felons in here, the eighty five percent felonies. Um The misdemeanors, a lot of them could be a a violation of probation for something, they had to come back in again. Uh But in a perfect

2:06:10world where we would have a separate system, you know, a separate system for mental health and substance abuse where we can divert them. That would be the best. But honestly uh there would be so low risk that the sheriff's office wouldn't have to really be involved in that. So, but from a capital standpoint, if that money comes in and this is to fill a gap here, I would say, you know, I could like Administrator Biles would probably say, put it towards there. If it's operating dollars and this is continuous dollar that's coming down, like the cigarette um taxes that had come through that you know continuously go through, I would love that you know we can put mental health workers out

2:06:40on the street to start diversion programming. I know homelessness is a major issue, and we can all agree. That homelessness, you know, it it's never a law enforcement issue. There is a mental health and substance abuse component to it. if we can have counselor, we have somewhere we can take those individuals and put that money towards something like that, you know, that would be a huge diversion program that we would love to be a part of to assist with. But it's they there's a mostly mental health and substance abuse issue. But the reality is we all live it. There are people that don't want help. They just don't want it. And I'll

2:07:11be the first to admit it. We've sent people, we've worked with your with your homeless coalition up there. They don't want help. The ones who do want to help are the juveniles. Those kids that are that are uh s co uh surfing from couch to couch. Those are the ones if we can get money to help them. I'm all for but yeah, there's so much coming in. I I'll dig I'll dig deeper. I'll work with you all to dig deeper to find out. Where that pan you know the money is from the prescription pills, where is it coming in? Is it one-time lump sum? How can we best use it? Is it to fill the gaps because The prescrip

2:07:41prescription epidemic caused a lot of addiction issues, absolutely, but it also caused people to commit violent crime. And a lot of that violent crime added to the jail.

2:07:50That's true. Mr. Madam Clerk, let me just follow up on that real quick. Yeah, and I know we're we're tight here, but um That's correct. That's something to look into because you could actually encumber those funds and they could be used for O and M down the road if you actually set those. That's going to be a one time hit. Maybe phase two. There's a second phase of that a possibility. I think Mr. Steinsteiner could jump in. But that initial pot, I guess I hate to call it a pot of money. But basically what it is. Confusion. But yeah, if it's the first series of settlements. Right. So if there's a possibility you could encumber those funds and use them, you

2:08:20know, for possibility for operations and main maintenance down the road, if so allowed by the settlement agreement. But you're you're correct. We may have to talk to our legislators after we look closely closer at that to open that up a little bit more. But it you you're right, Sheriff, because again, some of these people unfortunately that have opioid addiction and committed crimes. Some of those were violent crimes. So those are connected.

2:08:45Right. Yeah. And then the one thing you said, Commissioner, about the money, and that's one thing keep wanting to remind you also is to remind everybody, you know, th those numbers and we'll find out if you know if it is one time capital cost that we can use it towards, but the staffing issue That is a major component. You know, two hiring having to hire two over two hundred People to work in there because they have line of sight issues. You have safety issues. We don't have those things. And I'll give you an example. It it's things that people wouldn't remember uh think of. So if we

2:09:15don't have proper staffing, according to you know, National Institute of Corrections or some other group. and somebody gets in a fight and somebody gets permanently hurt and then they find out that we did not have proper staffing They will file a lawsuit.

2:09:27Okay.

2:09:27And that lawsuit will come because there wasn't proper staffing to support to protect The inmates in there because we have to remember those inmates have absolute rights. And so that's those are those things. So I just want to make sure we remember that in the conversation is there's a huge staffing for deputies that's needed.

2:09:41I I'm curious because I do a lot of work in workforce development and I think I've been reading that part of the problem with the Department of Corrections is they don't have their workforce, so they're closing some of their facilities. Do you anticipate any issues in hiring those people and

2:09:57We tr we try to hire. We try to hire performer corrections.

2:10:00Two f oh.

2:10:02Yeah. Yeah we've been we've been hiring for we have numerous members that come from Department of Corrections. Okay. And so It's just a uh we're and they're they've had major shortfalls, but to go back to your point that their shortfalls are can are creating they're not taking the amount of inmates from us that they that are already sentenced. So it's bottlenecking there, too. But it also comes down on bottlenecking on us.

2:10:25Yeah, so that's something we'll have to deal with as well. Okay, well I'm sure we'll be talking about it um later on in this year about how to come up with the funding. Right.

2:10:34Commissioner Starkey.

2:10:35Commissioner Oakley. Oh I'm sorry, Commissioner Fitzpatrick and then Commissioner Oakley.

2:10:38Thank you. I remember in 2013 at the ASAP convention, you had said roughly eighty-five to ninety percent of all crimes stem from drugs. Is that still true today?

2:10:47We believe it. We believe about eighty eighty to eighty five percent, if not more, is there's a dem Is a mental health component. And that goes from domestic violent m mental health and substance abuse, domestic violence, everything else. If somebody commits a domestic violence, even if they have a mental health or d or substance abuse issue, they got they're taking the ride. Um those are the type of things that, you know, it's hard to we know a lot of people in there have those issues. We're trying to deal with them in there, but at the same time, there's consequences to their actions that state law will say, you

2:11:17will be sentenced or you will be tried for it.

2:11:20And then ge I'm not sure of how many inmates are housed out of county, but with the jail expanse and not being able to c make the accommodations and not meet the capacity Do we have a break even analysis? At what point? How many additional beds can we make? instead of sending inmates out of county.

2:11:43Right. So the number we have is sixty three how much uh oh you're here. Major Jenkins' gonna answer that.

2:11:50Thank you. Major Stacy Jenkins, um two zero one zero one central boulevard land of lakes. Um With regards to um how can we make beds? So right now our rated bed capacity is 1432 inmates. Uh when I started one deputy watched 64 inmates, uh which was a a heavy workload. Now I have deputies watching 112 inmates, 112 felons. Um that is

2:12:20including instead of two man cells. three men to each of the cells, and it is including inmates on the floor in the day rooms of our housing units. Um so when you ask what can we add? Um, I'm gonna tell you we can't add anything else. Um we're We're housing about sixteen hundred inmates currently in the Land O' Lakes

2:12:43Jail,

2:12:43one hundred off site. I've had as many as eighteen hundred and forty four inmates in the jail. But it becomes very much a management problem. The classification of inmates, we can't keep them. inmates that should be in lockdown, we have to release them out of lockdown. Uh so they become uh a constant turnover in the jail with regards trying to manage inmate fights. manage incompati incompatibilities. So I'm going to tell you the 1600 that we have in there, we're very close

2:13:14to managing that the best that we can. That's why we have inmates housed off-site. Um anything else becomes much more difficult, not only for my staff, but also for the inmates to to coexist.

2:13:26Thank you. And you had said there's a hundred out of county. So do you have an estimated how much per year does that cost to house them out of county? About three point two million dollars. And with three point two million dollars How many more beds can we make in our jail with three point two million dollars. With regard

2:13:47with regards to construction cost, I couldn't speak on that. I

2:13:49apologize. Well I'm just saying there's a breakeven analysis. If we can redivert that three point two million dollars every year for ten years, that's three hundred and twenty million dollars that we can keep back in our accounting and use it to Expander jail. And then also I know we s had stated six or seven originally million dollars was going from ARP. If we can get a breakdown of how much funds with the ARP funds are being allocated, which direction maybe we can see if we can allocate some

2:14:19more additional ARP funds to the jail expansion since we're already allocating some.

2:14:25Yeah, you're allocating about fourteen million already.

2:14:29Okay, so if we can just get a breakdown at some point of where all of the ARP funds and see if we can

2:14:36Okay, we'll

2:14:36I'll send you

2:14:37the point.

2:14:39And we are not going to solve this problem here at the commission meeting today. But we will work on this. Commissioner Oakley. Thank

2:14:44you. Sheriff, I I realized um about six or eight months ago I was told that we're gonna be short of money when we was looking for these thousand beds to be to be be built and all and inflation of uh products and we got so much growth going in the economy and things happen in Florida and all over the country. The expense is just Going out of sight. And I mean you can understand what happened with the money when it when it costs so much more to build it and construct it. And then the

2:15:15fact you have to hire people and you have A lot of our de some of our departments They're short of people. We don't have the people to go to work, so some people are not actually working. Like we thought they would. Um But even that We have to be very thankful here in Pasco County. That the citizens Yeah. to build a thousand bed jail for for their county. that was done by the citizens. We put that forth in a bond issue and

2:15:45it was done. So they want safety just as well as we do. And we are safe here in our county. We got a lot to be thankful for. We need to buckle up work together. And I know we will. We've been doing it. We'll support ya and we'll We'll do the best we can to uh help provide in the future. So

2:16:05no I appreciate Commissioner Oakley, the citizens supported this.

2:16:11They support being safe and that's the one thing so we'll work together because that's the one thing that makes Pasco good is the fact that we're working together. Yeah. And I give you kudos. The more businesses you bring in here. The more people are working, the less we have to worry about the jail. Because people won't go to the jail. So as I said, bring those jobs to keep those people working. And AMP Skills is worth helping out too.

2:16:29Yes, we are.

2:16:34Oh, absolutely. Thank you.

2:16:35All right. Thank

2:16:36you all very

2:16:37good. Thanks, Mutz. Merry Christmas. Merry

2:16:39Christmas. I'll see you later on this afternoon.