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BCC Minutes 02/05/2002 W (w/Sheriff Hunter)February 5, 2002 TRANSCRIPT OF THE MEETING OF THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS NAPLES, FLORIDA, FEBRUARY 5, 2002 LET IT BE REMEMBERED, that the Board of County Commissioners, in and for the County of Collier, and also acting as the Board of Zoning Appeals and as the governing board(s) of such special districts as have been created according to law and having conducted business herein, met on this date at 9 a.m. In WORKSHOP SESSION in Building "F" of the Government Complex, East Naples, Florida, with the following members present: CHAIRMAN: VICE-CHAIRMAN: ALSO PRESENT' JIM COLETTA TOM HENNING JAMES CARTER, Ph.D. FRED COYLE DONNA FIALA Tom Olliff, County Manager Don Hunter, Sheriff Page 1 COLLIER COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS AGENDA February 5, 2002 9:00 A.M. Sheriff's Workshop NOTICE: ALL PERSONS WISHING TO SPEAK ON ANY AGENDA ITEM MUST REGISTER PRIOR TO SPEAKING. SPEAKERS MUST REGISTER WITH THE COUNTY MANAGER PRIOR TO THE PRESENTATION OF THE AGENDA ITEM TO BE ADDRESSED. COLLIER COUNTY ORDINANCE NO. 99-22 REQUIRES THAT ALL LOBBYISTS SHALL, BEFORE ENGAGING IN ANY LOBBYING ACTIVITIES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ADDRESSING THE BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS), REGISTER WITH THE CLERK TO THE BOARD AT THE BOARD MINUTES AND RECORDS DEPARTMENT. ANY PERSON WHO DECIDES TO APPEAL A DECISION OF THIS BOARD WILL NEED A RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS PERTAINING THERETO, AND THEREFORE MAY NEED TO ENSURE THAT A VERBATIM RECORD OF THE PROCEEDINGS IS MADE, WHICH RECORD INCLUDES THE TESTIMONY AND EVIDENCE UPON WHICH THE APPEAL IS TO BE BASED. ALL REGISTERED PUBLIC SPEAKERS WILL BE LIMITED TO FIVE (5) MINUTES UNLESS PERMISSION FOR ADDITIONAL TIME IS GRANTED BY THE CHAIRMAN. IF YOU ARE A PERSON WITH A DISABILITY WHO NEEDS ANY ACCOMMODATION IN ORDER TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROCEEDING, YOU ARE ENTITLED, AT NO COST TO YOU, TO THE PROVISION OF CERTAIN ASSISTANCE. PLEASE CONTACT THE COLLIER COUNTY FACILITIES MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT LOCATED AT 3301 EAST TAMIAMI TRAIL, NAPLES, FLORIDA, 34112, (941) 774- 8380; ASSISTED LISTENING DEVICES FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED ARE AVAILABLE IN THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS' OFFICE. 1. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE 2. Review budget for jail planning and construction and law enforcement 3. ADJOURN INQUIRIES CONCERNING CHANGES TO THE BOARD'S AGENDA SHOULD BF' MADE TO THE COUNTY MANAGER'S OFFICE AT 774-8383. February 5, 2002 CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Would you stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Pledge of Allegiance was recited in unison.) CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I learned that the sheriff's father, Mr. R. C. Hunter, passed away this weekend. I'd like to thank the sheriff for arranging for this and pulling this whole workshop together. And I'd like us to take just a moment of silence in remembrance of Don Hunter's father. (A moment of silence.) CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you. I want to begin by thanking the sheriff and his staff. Don, I didn't see you come in. It's good to see you, and thank you very much for all the work you've done to put this together, sir. SHERIFF HUNTER: Thank you. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Don, we're sorry to hear about your father. SHERIFF HUNTER: Thank you, Commissioner. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: As everybody knows, the funding for the sheriff's agency is provided through the Board of County Commissioners. In advance of the upcoming budget, the board members thought it would be a good opportunity to spend some time with the sheriff's agency to hear in more detail the issues regarding jail planning, construction, and to get an overview of the rest of the sheriff's agency and its budget. With that I turn the balance of the morning over to the sheriff and his staff. SHERIFF HUNTER: Thank you, Commissioner Coletta and the board. It's good to see you this morning. And, regrettably, I will be departing a little bit early. I'm still taking care of some fa~nily business. I apologize for that beforehand. Page 2 February 5, 2002 Chief Smith, Lieutenant Smith, no relation. I don't know if they've introduced themselves this morning, but Tom Smith is our planner and kind of a special projects guy in research. Chief Smith is our corrections chief. And I'd like to thank Crystal Kinzel, our director of finance, for helping to put this all together. And, of course, virtually all members of staff were involved, as it were, at headquarters to try to keep the board involved updated in terms of the operations of agency. But I will do a quick overview with the board's permission and tell you that, first of all, we appreciate the opportunity to talk. This is a good thing, especially prior to the beginning of the budget process for this year, because always there is and should be concern for the expenditure of tax dollars and public funds. And we take our stewardship of public funds very seriously, and we are very interested in working with this board and our public to do what we can to continue to have as much control as possible over expenditures and reduce our expenditures to the extent possible. So with that having been said -- go to the first -- this is the organizational chart of our agency, your agency. I'm not going to spend a great deal of time on it. You can see that we are broken down into essentially three divisions at the bottom there. Administration division on the left, and that's our infrastructure, if you will, payroll and accounting functions, information technology, and judicial process. Judicial process includes our bailiff group that works as certified officers to maintain security inside the courtrooms and at the front entrances to our courthouse. We have corrections division, and Chief Smith is here this morning. You can see that he has a large responsibility. We have three facilities: Naples Jail Center, which is our primary facility, which, again, Chief Smith will be covering more of later; Immokalee jail, which is our Immokalee facility; and then the D.R.I.L.L. Page 3 February 5, 2002 Academy co-located with the Immokalee jail. Then we have the chief of operations, who is also here this morning, Chief Stiess, if you would raise your hand for us. Chief Stiess is the chief who runs the basic law enforcement functions of the agency other than our bailiff bureau. He has patrol division; criminal investigation division; communications, our comp center falls under him, 911 emergency communications; has the professional responsibility, which is our internal affairs group; special operations division, which you know has canine and SWAT, aviation, agricultural patrols; and then, of course, the youth and prevention services, which is listed last but perhaps is our most important because it's our way of prevention and providing that communications core back to our youth in our schools. That's our general chart. I assume there's not many questions, but we're on to the next. Any questions on the operations chart? COMMISSIONER CARTER: Do you want your chief of operations to come up here and sit with you? SHERIFF HUNTER: Do you want to come up, Chief?. I should also recognize under Sheriff Bob Burhans who is here with us. He's the second in command of the agency sitting right behind me. Well, Chief, you didn't realize you might be speaking this morning probably. SHERIFF HUNTER: This is a crime rate population chart that we are using to depict our outcome measures, if you will. Population, of course, isn't one of our outcomes, but crime rate certainly is. And the middle column in the chart-- there is no real middle column -- but the next to the last to the right, the "Part 1 Crimes" is the title of the column. That is the raw number or the total number of Part 1 crimes. Part 1 crimes are the crimes of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Page 4 February 5, 2002 And larceny, as you would expect, which is the taking of anything of value, is our largest volume crime because it's -- in essence, it's just the easier target. It could be anything from golf clubs to a fishing rod in the back of a pickup truck or a bicycle taken out of a front yard; it can be anything of value reported to us. And if we were to get into the crime rate itself, you would learn that virtually all of our crime is composed of property crime. Larceny is the largest, burglary next, and then motor vehicle theft. As you can see on the chart, although the graphic on the left doesn't give you all of it, you have to look back 1985 and beyond, you see that we peaked back around '75. You can see that by the year 2000, we had arrived back at a rate that was pretty comparable. In fact, we were within just a few crimes per 100,000 population of where we were in 1972. And the year 2000 we had yet another decline in our crime rate to where now we are at a rate of about 3,950 crimes per 100,000 population. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Sheriff, do you have a chart in here showing population versus how many patrol deputies on a historical chart like this one? SHERIFF HUNTER: I don't believe we have provided it this time. Is that correct; Crystal? We have no chart depicting crime -- or population rather with total number of law enforcement; is that correct? MS. KINZEL: I'm sorry. What information do you need? SHERIFF HUNTER: Do we have a chart depicting population -- MS. KINZEL: Not with us today. SHERIFF HUNTER: -- relative to total number of law enforcement officers? MS. KINZEL' Not with us today. We'll get something if the board wants that. We don't have that today. Page 5 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think that would help me -- MS. KINZEL: When you see later in the presentation, we'll have total number of certified law enforcement, so we will show you civilian versus certified and the numbers of deputies we have in those areas. Also in your budget book we do have a breakdown completed by district. MR. OLLIFF: Crystal, I'm going to need you on a microphone so we can get you a part of the tape if you're going to -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Crystal, what I was looking for is historical data, say 20 years, population versus the number of deputies. SHERIFF HUNTER: And we can get that for you, Commissioner. It's just that we didn't know that you'd be interested in that this morning. We may discover that there's a number of things that we haven't included in our packet that you would be interested in knowing that we can get for you. COMMISSIONER FIALA: While we're on this subject, will we also learn today how many vacancies you still have -- SHERIFF HUNTER: Yes. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Oh, good. SHERIFF HUNTER: We will talk about vacancies, and although we can't give you the 20-year historical trend that you're looking for, Commissioner-- COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's fine. SHERIFF HUNTER: Commissioner Henning, today we might be able to do a quick calculation, I would imagine, of the total number of law enforcement officers relative to population and give that to you as a per capita, but it just won't give you the historical that you're looking for. I can tell you this, when we compare ourselves to, let's say, our police department, especially the one most recently, we compared Page 6 February 5, 2002 with Naples police, we discovered that our per capita -- our total number of law enforcement officers per capita was a great deal less than the City of Naples, and we also discovered that the total number of law enforcement officers per square mile are far fewer than what we would discover in the City of Naples, just to give you a comparison. And I'm not suggesting that that's unique to our sheriff's office. That would be pretty consistent with sheriff's offices throughout the state. But nonetheless, per capita, we are not going to rate well when compared to city police agencies because we are considered to be the base level of service for law enforcement, the large umbrella law enforcement agency. And police agencies are considered to be supplemental to your base service and are permitted by law and charter. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I think I see what Commissioner Henning's asking for. It would be interesting to see it in relation to this crime rate and population chart that we have as an extension of it. So it was like a percentage, too, so we can see cause and effect as we go down. That's what you're looking for. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Yeah. And it helps me make better decisions during budget time, and there's a lot of questions out there from the people who we serve -- that will kind of help. SHERIFF HUNTER: Let me -- since we're on variables -- and this happens to be my expertise with a master's degree in criminology -- let me talk a little about that, because I hope we don't go down -- if we go down a particular road, we could be deceptive. There are a number of variables that cause our crime rate decline besides the proper deployment and targeting of crime. Yes, it has a good deal to do with visibility, and there are a number of studies that have been published. The Kansas City study was the most notable where it was clearly determined that visibility of patrol resources, Page 7 February 5, 2002 marked units with uniforms can displace crime, meaning you can push it around from place to place, but if you saturate an area like a county well enough with marked units and uniforms, that you will displace it from your county. Typically, the resources aren't available to do that, so what law enforcement executives do is they make deployment strategies based upon crime statistics and developing themes within their districts or patrol areas -- precincts they're sometimes called, in our case zones, patrol zones. We make those kinds of decisions on the basis of the comp stat process every two weeks, and we redeploy members based upon information that is provided through our crime analysis group and intelligence gathering. And we try to be in those locations where we predict crime will occur, and we will either suppress it by our presence, or we will make arrests of the people involved. That's the principle, and we believe that part of this decline that you see is a result of that type of activity. Other types of activity, though, that also will generate a decline would be high incarceration rates. There's a very strong, almost one-to-one correlation, positive correlation, between putting people in prison who are high-impact criminals, people who are the upper 10 percent in terms of being highly active, the career criminals, if you put them in jail, the people who contribute most to your crime, then you will have a decrease in your crime pattern. So that's very important. And perhaps the third, but not necessarily the least important, would be our work with the public in protecting their property and themselves. And I can point to some very dramatic statistics over the last 12 years where we have seen actual declines in numbers of burglaries occurring, especially, and that has something to do with technology over the households, the alarm systems and monitoring systems, as well as the fact that people are locking their homes up and taking their property in with them at night and not leaving in the Page 8 February 5, 2002 beds of their pickups or out in the front yard, that sort of thing, or leaving the garage door open all night long so people walk in and out unfettered. Those three -- I think those three factors would give you a better sense. If we could somehow put into a numerical form citizen participation in this process, you would see that as ranking perhaps No. 1 with incapacitation and number of patrol deputies as 2 and 3. But this also somehow gets to the issue of the take-home car program, what we call the modification-Indianapolis program -- MR. HENNING: I don't have a problem with that. I don't know -- SHERIFF HUNTER: That is a very high profile program that provides direct evidence to people in the street that we have people out looking. And we have often heard -- as the undersheriff can attest -- we've often heard from visitors to our county, especially people from the north saying that we're saturated with law enforcement officers when, in fact, we're not saturated. What they see is that traffic at critical times during the day where we have crossover, shift changes, people going to and from duty post, and it gives the impression that we're very well protected. And, of course, as the crime rates would suggest, that's our outcome. But, in fact, we don't have the numbers of people we would like to see per square mile. I think we've done a nice job of balancing, is the bottom line, by deploying people where they need to go based upon our statistical analysis and predicting where crime is likely to occur, we've been able to accomplish that. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Sheriff, one more question, and I'll let you continue on. I'm interested in economics and the rate of unemployment or unemployment and how that affects a crime rate and the sheriff's Page 9 February 5, 2002 budget. There's a lot of talk about a rate of growth in Collier County or the "M" word. And I would be sometime interested in trying to get some statistical information on that. SHERIFF HUNTER: And that I think would be beneficial for the commissioners. Let me, though, once again say by way of qualification that when we have insufficient resources, which will always be the case for government -- whether it's local, state, government, we will have insufficient resources -- it causes government to be more clever in the way we go about business. And I'll use two examples. One is gangs and the other is terrorism. No one had terrorism on the scope for local agencies until September 11 th nor on state agencies until September 11 th except the domestic versions of it with militias and the KKK and the skin-head groups, that sort of thing. But when gangs arrived and when terrorism arrived on the scope, we cannot come back to you and ask for 50 more people or 100 more people. What we have done is reorganized the agency internally in the following fashion. Here's how we accommodate these types of things. I identify within the agency by way of Chief Stiess, Captain Mullen, our patrol captain and our captain of criminal investigations, Captain Weeks, those members of our group who are most aggressive, well-motivated, energetic, who are going to get the job done. And I try to identify a cadre. In the case of our gang situation, what we did was we identified at least five members of each district-- we have six districts -- five members of each district that could work with us with a core enforcement team of three to four members. Three to four members of our agency I redesignated as gang enforcement, and then they have trained the five members within the districts to become their liaisons with the districts to develop intelligence, to aggressively patrol looking for gang activity, looking for symbols, looking for graffiti. Page 10 February 5, 2002 And by way of that process, we've gotten those five members of each district trained as gang enforcement officers. Then what happens beyond that is those gang liaisons will train -- give basic training to the other-- their fellow members of each district to be on patrol and watching for gang signs, elements that we would be concerned about. Who is moving where? What are they driving? Are they carrying weapons? That sort of activity. We do the same thing with terror. Our terrorism, now, is structured as two core members for the agency who are doing things like finding the training, documenting critical sites, protection activities for our critica! sites, and then we have developed a group of members within our districts that are responsible for the actual patrol, what to look for in our patrol activities, developing businesses to be partners with us, and preventing terrorist activities and that sort of thing. So rather than -- what you won't see, therefore, is a large increase in our staffing that will be directly correlated back to a decrease in crime rate. What you will see, rather, is a retooling of the agency to focus on our primary mission and those missions that rise to primary as a result of most recent activity. Again, terror street gangs, those are very high mission. We also have career criminals we've focused on that has helped to drive down that crime rate. We know that if we take the high activity violators off the street that likely we will see a decline in crime, and, in fact, there's a direct correlation with that. We know that from the literature it says that 8 to 10 percent of your criminal population are your career criminals; the ones who are committing most of the crime, 80 to 90 percent of the crime is committed by 8 to 10 percent of the criminal population according to literature. So, therefore, if we target our limited resources, then on those people who are committing most of the crime, then we're going Page 11 February 5, 2002 to see decrease -- we should see a commensurate decrease in overall crime and crime rate. So that's what we have done, and that's why I say if you would be careful when we do provide the information to you about the number of people that we have available, it won't be completely flat. We've had an increase, but it's not going to be the kind of rise you will see correlated to the decrease in crime, because we've targeted our resources more appropriately and made deployment decisions based upon reality. I think in large measure I am finished other than any questions by way of introduction, anyway, at this workshop. May I answer questions? COMMISSIONER CARTER: Just one comment, Sheriff Hunter-- a couple. One, the comp stat program, if any of the commissioners have never had a chance to sit through that meeting, let me tell you, you ought to put that on your list. It is very informative, well run, and I came away from that feeling a lot better as a private citizen and also recognizing all the things the chief talked about, how when the bad guys shift, you know where they are going, and you put the resources into that center. We're not frozen in the structure. So I compliment you on that, and I think that was a great educational effort. The other thing I thought you said very well was 10 percent of your population causes 80 to 90 percent of the crime. People get confused with profiling, confusing it with certain groups versus identifying the fact that if 10 percent of your population are your -- are the people doing it regardless of their make up, that's what we're profiling. It has nothing to do with ethnicity or anything else, and I think that's a message that we could all help the communities with. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Henning. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Sheriff, I know that there are Page 12 February 5, 2002 certain crimes that you want to target, burglary and so on and so forth, but what I'm receiving through mail or e-mail or through the media is more deputies enforcing traffic violations such as speeding through neighborhoods and traffic-light violators. SHERIFF HUNTER: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I don't want to redirect the sheriff's department to do that. I think that being a victim of crime is -- should be on your list, but what about if we increase the fines for traffic violations in order to create some more positions within the department to enforce that particular part of law enforcement? SHERIFF HUNTER: Well, if I may make a few comments on that. The issue is do we increase fines in order to have the deterrent effect that we wish to have with people who are out driving. I'll give you a number of anecdotal stories, but I also give you some research that was conducted -- I believe that City Manager Rambosk is also aware of this. But there was research conducted that suggested that in the state of Florida, that as fines increase for traffic violations, fewer tickets were being written. And when the inquiry was extended, why would that be, it was this law enforcement felt that the -- the law enforcement officers who were on the street writing the tickets or responsible for writing tickets believed that the fines were too onerous for the people that were out -- for the violations. And they were making -- they were using their lawful discretion to make decisions about issuing warnings instead of citations. So there seems to be something out there in practical terms, and I can write all the policy I want, and I can admonish all I wish. But the bottom line is there is a statutory provision of discretion to law enforcement officers that they are well aware of that they are permitted to make those kinds of decisions on the streets. And I would, again, caution that merely suggesting that additional fines be Page 13 February 5, 2002 levied might not have the impact we're looking for. In addition to that, I'll give you at least one anecdotal story -- and I know the undersheriff's aware of this, and I believe Chief Stiess is aware of this -- there was an individual who on several occasions -- I believe it was two occasions in a row, two mornings in a row -- was stopped in a construction zone on Immokalee Road where the speed limit had dropped from 55 to 35 miles per hour. And he called in irate after the second day and told us that we may as well be there tomorrow and the next day and the next day because he wasn't going to drive 35. And he had already collected a couple of citations -- and, of course, at some point then you withdraw his license. Now he's driving without a license, and he can be arrested for that, but, nonetheless, the attitude expressed by this individual was that it was worth it for him to have to have to pay the fine for him to continue on at the pace that he originally intended. And I'm afraid that that's the attitude of most drivers. They are not going to wait for another cycle at a red light. They are going to try to make it across the intersection. If they don't make it all the way across the intersection, they'll just obstruct the intersection, and people will let them in. I would like to say that we're unique here, and we can apply additional resources and somehow make this go away, but regrettably we aren't unique. I hear the same reports from those sheriffs and police chiefs across the state that they are all suffering the same thing. And we don't know exactly why this is. I think if you could go to some of our smaller communities that haven't had the kind of growth impact that we have had, we might get a little different treatment. But I believe it has a lot to do with the congestion of the roadways and the fact that we're all competing for the same amount of road surface. We have been very aggressive for over a year and a half now in Page 14 February 5, 2002 enforcing the law with special operations groups and special traffic details. Extra emphasis has been given to our district members to enforce the traffic laws when they are out on patrol. And, in fact, I will punctuate that statement by saying that that is one of our most viable tactics in the enforcement of gangs against gangs, motorcycle gangs that if you will enforce your traffic laws against them and take away their driver's licenses and make it an arrestable offense when you find them driving without driver's licenses, that you begin to make a difference and an impact on gang activity. Again, whether it's juvenile youth street gangs or motorcycle gangs, you have an impact, and that's one of the adopted tactics. So we have reinforced with all members of the agency, both those who are in criminal investigation division as well as patrol, that you will make traffic stops, and you must write written warnings or citations in order to change these attitudes on the street. We have a high influx during high season of people from out of town. They are competing on the roadways as well. The deterrent effect is lost on them many times. They might collect a ticket while they are here or maybe even two, but the deterrent effect, generally speaking, is going to be lost on many of our tourists because they're just not here long enough to enjoy it -- enjoy that deterrent as a result of collecting high citations. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mr. Chairman, this probably flies in the face of the memo I sent yesterday suggesting that we ought to have a law or ordinance that fines people $500 for running a red light that we might slow that activity down. However, I think it probably points to a greater problem. People think that having a driver's license is an entitlement. It is a right. It's a privilege, and just maybe, if these people get the fines and then they lose their license, and we catch them, and you put bans on them where --just like we do other criminals, because to me it's a Page 15 February 5, 2002 criminal act to run a red light. What you're saying is that I don't care if I kill myself or somebody else. And maybe it's selective on some of these things, but where do we draw the line? Where do we make the point? And I don't have the answers, Sheriff, but perhaps if we did some of those things -- I guess we can't use cameras. That has been knocked down by the great judicial system, and people will think that's an invasion of privacy to have their license -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Is that correct, Sheriff Hunter? SHERIFF HUNTER: That would be a correct statement. The cameras at intersections have been declared unconstitutional for-- predominantly, the issue is we don't have front license plates, and only the front shot will give you the face of the driver, not the owner of record, which is what the license plate would give you, but rather the vehicle at that time in that intersection. So, therefore, it's an unenforceable device. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Sheriff, I'm not quite clear on your response. So if we could continue this later on about traffic violations, maybe it would help me out in what I see our customers want. SHERIFF HUNTER: Then I'll be perfectly clear. My position on traffic is that it's one of our highest priorities. We were talking about crime rate, and I enumerated those crimes that are composed-- that constitute our crime rate according to the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the seven most serious crimes. That's what we measure as our large output measure for law enforcement. It's always been that way for all law enforcement agencies going way back with the FBI, and then the Florida Department of Law Enforcement adopted it as the method to measure outcome for law enforcement as of about 1970. But traffic remains one of our high priorities because it represents such a strong public safety issue, and it is one of the few Page 16 February 5, 2002 things that I get regular phone calls on to remind me that that's one of our responsibilities. And I can assure you that I will match call for call the numbers of calls you get in your agency. It is not ignored. In fact, I can demonstrate to the board, I'm quite certain, with some assistance from the chief and our captain of special operations especially, that we have written more citations last year than we have probably in the last two years, three years before that. It's just not deterring people, and we are heading in the direction that Commissioner Carter suggests, which is that it is the withdrawal of licenses that's going to make the difference. We have a three-point program, we call it: education, engineering, and enforcement. And under that general logo we have a number of things that we put into place besides working with your engineering groups on synchronization of lights, needs for lights, bad intersections. We also have been trying to educate the public in a number of different ways. One of the direct outcomes has been the creation of a program called the Citizen Courtesy Notice Program, where we have involved our neighborhoods. We bring in citizens and train them and issue them a book. It's not citations. What it does -- it's a record book. They record the date, time, location, vehicle description, and license plate of vehicles that are found to be in violation of law. And we train them what violations of laws are under the traffic codes. They send -- the citizen sends that notice to us. Each time they issue a notice -- they don't issue it; they issue it to us. We get the notice; we do the research and determine who the owner of record is for that vehicle, and we send a notice on letterhead that their vehicle was seen at a certain location, certain time, certain day doing the following things. And many times, of course, it's not the owner of record who is the violator, but rather perhaps their child or spouse. And they are able to monitor the use of their vehicle. And Page 17 February 5, 2002 by way of that device of warning, if you will, that's received in a very official manner through the mail, we hope to say to that person to watch what you're doing or have better control of your vehicle, because what's going to happen is you're going to begin collecting citations. That's a first step. We have an oral warning that we employ. We also have a written warning. The written warning goes into the computer. When you write a warning on the streets of Collier County, for at least a year that warning is tracked. If that person is stopped again, the warning comes up on the screen, and we notify the member who has made an additional traffic stop that this person has also received a written warning, and a citation is suggested here. If that particular violation hasn't risen to the level that a citation would automatically be written -- for instance -- and I'm not suggesting this is policy, but this is a good -- I give you an indication of how it works in our unlawful speed category of violations. Typically, what we're looking for are people who are driving faster than ten miles per miles over, because the speedometers on most vehicles are not-- as you know, Commissioner Henning -- not precise. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mine is. SHERIFF HUNTER: I'm not suggesting that Commissioner Henning's speedometer is not calibrated or that he has been stopped for that matter now that you bring that up -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: It's the other guy's speedometer that's not calibrated. SHERIFF HUNTER: Always. We calibrate ours, but not every speedometer is calibrated to the size of vehicle tire and transmission. The interaction between tire size and transmission we all know has an effect on how fast you are actually -- indicated you're going. Some we do have some break points, if you will, ten and over might be Page 18 February 5, 2002 where we write a citation. We can stop at five-plus miles per hour over the speed limit, but the State of Florida says you can only write tickets five-plus over the speed limit as posted. Anything below that -- we're taking into consideration calibration and some of the problems we experience there. So you -- this ten-miles-per-hour window, in essence, takes into consideration calibration of speedometers and gross violations of the law. At some point you have to say this person's maliciously violating the speed law, or we want to hear what the excuse is, and we'll make the stop. But we won't always write a ticket. But with violations of red lights, little different situation. Let me tell you about that and how that works. First of all, oncoming traffic -- we're told by our local courts we can't enforce that. If I'm sitting at one side of an intersection and I see the light go red on my side, I cannot assume -- according to the courts -- that the other side was synchronized exactly the same way, because we have no way of verifying that, and we can't testify that on that sequencing that cycle -- that they were both together. The only way that I can write a ticket -- I'm told by the courts in such a situation -- would be for obstruction of traffic. So let's just say that I'm sitting at a traffic light. I see oncoming traffic. It appears as though they've come through a red light -- on my side at least -- and now the traffic opposing is beginning to advance into the intersection, and this person breaks the intersection. I could -- if I can get my vehicle around now on the opposing traffic, I could theoretically write a ticket for that person for obstructing traffic, which is a violation of law, but not for breaking the red light. Obviously, traffic signs are a little different because you can see people roll through or blow through a traffic sign. But for traffic lights that's the situation for today. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Sheriff Hunter, I'd just like to ask Page 19 February 5, 2002 a follow-up question concerning traffic enforcement. How much do we collect annually in traffic fines, and where is that revenue reported? SHERIFF HUNTER: Well, the revenue would come into the clerk's office by way of the board. It's collected by the courts in the sense that they issue the fine, and then the actual check is written to the Clerk of Courts as your custodian of records and money. Then the money comes -- it's broken down into a number of different categories at that point, but it doesn't come back to the sheriff's office. COMMISSIONER COYLE: None of it? SHERIFF HUNTER: The only way that it comes back to us is sort of a circuitous route, if you will, comes back to us as second- dollar-training funds. We can use some of it for training but -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Do you have any idea -- SHERIFF HUNTER: Do you want to address that issue, Crystal? The big issue of how much -- and I don't believe they have that. Mike-- MS. KINZEL: They said I have to be on mike. I don't know if this is working but-- Commissioner, we get second-dollar money annually. It's minimal dollars, and remember that all the citations written, also, we don't have collections on all of them. The only way the sheriff's office gets credit, so to speak, from those types of revenues would be in the general fund allocations. The dollars for citations, those go to the general fund of the county as a general revenue. The last time we checked, we were running about 4 million annually in citation revenue. COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's total revenue, but not what you got? MS. KINZEL: Right. Not what we get back to the sheriff's Page 20 February 5, 2002 office. The training fund is only running about $20,000 annually. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So out of-- how many million, 4 million? MS. KINZEL: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Four million in traffic fines that you write you're only getting $20,000 back. MS. KINZEL: Right. But remember the entirety of the citation revenue goes to the general fund of the County Commission, so the sheriff's budget then is allocated back out of general revenue. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I guess my preference would be to have it go more directly to the sheriff's department. I feel that there really is a correlation between the interest in writing a ticket for a traffic fine and the expectation that some revenue is going to result from it. If somebody is confusing that issue and routing the money through a circuitous route, I don't really think the impact is being achieved. But that's something, I guess, we could take a look at. SHERIFF HUNTER: Well, we would only caution that away from the quota system of the '60s and '70s by law -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. SHERIFF HUNTER: And I would not want to taint our philosophy by some suggestion on the streets -- and it becomes communicated pretty quickly on the streets -- that that's what's happening -- I'd like to stay as far away from that as possible, even the suggestion. But I appreciate what you're saying, because we have made the -- we have offered the analysis in the past during our budget process that we are bringing more into the county revenue-wise then we're being given credit for. But we're not asking that you give dollar for dollar back to us, the amount that we bring into the county. And I would also like to build on this a little bit. I've lost the bead on it to some extent, but as I say, some of this money, I believe, Page 21 February 5, 2002 goes to the state for special trust funds, perhaps victim-assistance funds. There are a number of different breakouts of fines that the court's levy against violators. I don't have the number, but Crystal has referred to it. There is a collection percentage that I'm sure that we could assign on fines, but we often note that people who are being released from state probation, for instance, who have a condition on their probation that they will make restitution to their victim, are being released from their probation without having satisfied restitution or payment of fines. So there's a collection issue as well beyond the fact that fines are being meted out by the courts that has to all come together. And I know the clerk's office has really put an emphasis on the collection of traffic fines and trying to keep people honest there, but there are other variables besides just the issuance of tickets. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Well, it would help me, I think, if we had a report concerning the number of citations issued on an annual basis and sort of track that -- SHERIFF HUNTER: Yes. COMMISSIONER COYLE: -- so that we understand that the emphasis is being placed on these -- on these kinds of things. And then, I guess, it could be up to the board to try to track down some of the other issues with respect to allocation and collections. I understand you don't have much that you can do about that. SHERIFF HUNTER: Correct. COMMISSIONER COYLE: But I feel if money's due, we ought to do everything we can to get it. And if somebody's dropping the ball somewhere, I think we need to take some action if we can. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I think it is a very interesting discussion, Commissioner Coyle, because I'd really like to know what the breakdown is. Who gets what? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. Page 22 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I have no problem with the Amounts that come back to the Board of County Commissioners' general fund and then recycling that into the sheriffs budget. But at least we'd know what that contribution was. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Now, it seems to me who gets their hand in the pie and takes what, and why would I be motivated to do some of those things if it doesn't really see a direct benefit (sic). COMMISSIONER COYLE: See, it's a lot easier, in my mind, to justify transfers from the general fund to the sheriffs budget if I understand that $4 million of that was generated by direct activity by the sheriffs department. And I think that's a very important principle, and we should see what we can do about tying that down. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I hear both of you, and I agree with you to a point. I do have some concerns about the motivation being profit oriented back to the sheriffs department. Then we become like one of these small towns where they make their total revenue by stopping every tourist and everybody that passes through town that they don't personally know. I know that's not quite what you're pointing for, but I agree with you. I would like to see something in the way of a chart showing where we have been over the past ten years or so as far as the number of traffic stops, fines that were issued, the revenue that came from it. And I think the public would like to know that too. And, hopefully, it's been an increasing type of graph, but then again, too, with the traffic the way it is, it might not be that way. COMMISSIONER COYLE: That would be effective for the purpose of replying to the public's concern. We can demonstrate to them through numbers and dollars what has been done. SHERIFF HUNTER: We'll get that information for the board, total citations issued -- and I might be able to collect written warnings Page 23 February 5, 2002 as well. I don't know that. And we should be able to identify the total number of traffic stops. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And how can I get one of these books to write citations to people? SHERIFF HUNTER: Well, you're not actually writing the citation, but you are putting them on notice. I would say just see Chief Stiess, and we'll get you hooked up. I think it's just -- how many hours, four hours, that's required in order to write the citizen courtesy notice? It can't be much. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Coyle, in a lot of these ungated communities, what I'm seeing in Golden Gate is complaints of speeding on neighborhood roads. So I definitely will get together with Deputy Stiess and try to get an education to people who have complaints and get them within the process of taking down license tags. COMMISSIONER CARTER: How will these things work, because I know in Pelican Bay -- complain about speeding on Pelican Bay Boulevard and set up the traps very nicely, and gets who received most of the tickets? The residents of that community. Boy, that issue went away in a heartbeat. SHERIFF HUNTER: That's pretty consistent across all developments, whether it's Lakewood, the Glades, Pelican Bay. Typically, we find it's the residents who are violating their own speed law inside the interior of their residential area. I've been asked by Lieutenant Smith to remind everyone that we do have an e-mail address and that if you do have traffic complaints, I'd ask the public as well that if they wish to pass on to us specific information -- don't just tell us, "You need to come out here and enforce the speed laws." What we're looking for is tell us a little bit about that. Is it mostly in the morning? Is it afternoon? Is it cut- through traffic? Is there any particular nuance to it that you should Page 24 February 5, 2002 make us aware of?. Is it correlated back to a construction area as it was in Pelican Bay, largely, for a period of time? We'd like to know those kinds of things so that we can target the resource. We also have traffic monitoring trailers we put out there to count the total number of violators on a particular roadway. It flashes your speed limit -- or it flashes your speed. And then you correlate that back to the speed limit so that people can adjust their driving habits for a period of time before we enforce or as we enforce. As I say, this is a very serious thing for us. We have three traffic-control trailers that we move around, but, obviously, three for 2000 square miles. One of those was purchased by Pelican Bay, so it remains in Pelican Bay. And moving two of them around 2,000 square miles is a daunting task. Moving even 695 law enforcement members around 2,000 square miles on three different shifts 365 days a year is a daunting task, especially when you're focused on a number of different things; critical-site patrols and those kinds of things attached to terrorism, street-gang activity, career criminals; it's a competing interest. But I want to assure the board that traffic has been and continues to be a high priority for the sheriff's office, and we place great emphasis on it. We'll get the statistics together for you so you'll get a sense of it. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And what was the address, please -- the e-mail address? SHERIFF HUNTER: It's sheriff-- all lower case --: Sheriff~colliersheriff. org. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Don, my problem in District 5, of course, Golden Gate Estates, the long roads over large expanses. One of the things to your credit and your department's credit is when we have had complaints, that your department has been very good responding to that at a very fast rate. And, once again, too, it's Page 25 February 5, 2002 usually the residents on the street that get nailed first. But also, too, some of the major traffic file ups in not only District 5 but other parts of the county. I know when you've been notified you've been there with a deputy on scene in a very short period of time to keep the traffic flowing, and I do appreciate the efforts that you're doing. I really do. SHERIFF HUNTER: Well, again, I think we're responsive. We also are proactive, and I appreciate your comments. Of course, Everglades City is the only small town where we have those speed traps so... I'm teasing. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Yeah, I know. SHERIFF HUNTER: But we do. We try to be responsive. If the public will tell us where they are seeing some of this activity-- because many times it's internal to the neighborhood -- we will get someone there and begin not only monitoring but enforcing. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Any other questions or comments for Don Hunter? SHERIFF HUNTER: May I add one additional comment. I'd like to thank your engineering department that works very closely with us. The intersection-- as an example -- at Pine Ridge Road and Airport-Pulling Road, we were writing a number of tickets there for red-light violation. And what we discovered was that people would be trapped in the intersection crossing it after entering the intersection legally on yellow. They would be trapped in the intersection under a red light because the sequencing was far too rapid for the size of the intersection being crossed. Your engineering department came out, monitored that for us, and adjusted the lights so that now people can safely enter the intersection and cross it before the opposing traffic begins to come into the intersection. So, again, I commend your engineering Page 26 February 5, 2002 department for that kind of work. That's not the only intersection they are working with us on, but it's very important that we have that marriage. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The engineering department is never recognized for what they do right. SHERIFF HUNTER: Yes. So I'd like to thank them for that. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you. SHERIFF HUNTER: before I-- SHERIFF HUNTER: Any other questions I might answer We also have sitting at the table here Mr. Minozzi from Marco Island council. I invited him up here because the sheriffs department is global throughout the county and asked him to partake of the discussion there so he can see the great value that Marco Island's getting from our sheriffs department. SHERIFF HUNTER: Okay. And before I depart-- good morning, Councilman. MS. MINOZZI: Good morning. SHERIFF HUNTER: Good to see you again. Before I depart, perhaps I could make a philosophical statement and just say that we work very well, I believe, with the police agencies of the City of Naples and Marco police. And I would like to say that Marco police have come up to speed very rapidly. That's my perception. I believe our City Manager Rambosk would also agree with that as would our Chief Moore, and we have a very good, close working relationship. And I thank you for sending your Chief Reineke (phonetic) up to our comp stat meetings, and we're all talking, whether it's the City of Naples or the City of Marco. It's all Collier County problems, and we're working together to make sure that they don't become significant problems. And we do the best we can to control it. MR. MINOZZI: Well, I've got to tell you that Chief Reineke is really very impressed as are we. We really appreciate the work that Page 27 February 5, 2002 your doing, and he came from a very large department. He was the assistant chief of Milwaukee, and he had come here, and he's very, very impressed and certainly appreciates all the help and guidance that you've been able to give him. And I saw Bill McDonald -- for some reason I didn't see him for a while, but I guess he's still around, and he's doing a great job. SHERIFF HUNTER: As you know, we've moderated that staffing down at Marco based upon our interaction with council. Council has various opinions about what you'd like to see there. The courts, though, have not relieved me -- nor has the constitution -- responsibility for the entire county. So we maintain some minimal staffing there for the envelope, if you will, and for any assistance that we might render to Marco and Marco Island proper. But we are willing to have discussion with the council about that. MR. MINOZZI: You're there when we need you, no question about that. SHERIFF HUNTER: Anything further of me? And if I may have your leave, I'm going to go take care of a few more family matters during business hours. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: We appreciate your coming out today, Don. And I know that you have a lot of family matters to attend to. SHERIFF HUNTER: As many of you have been through this before. It's an unwelcomed drill, but you have to do that. Well, thank you for having me this morning, and I think that we are very well represented by Chief Smith, Lieutenant Smith, Director Kinzel, Chief Stiess, and Undersheriff Burhans, and I know that we can answer your questions. If we don't have it today, we'll get it for you. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Thank you, Don. I guess this is an official break since everybody got up. (A break was held.) Page 28 February 5, 2002 CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Would you take your seats, please. That means sit in it. There we go. Thank you. At this.point who has the program? CHIEF SMITH: I suppose that would be me, Commissioner. For the record, my name is Greg Smith. I'm the chief of corrections for the Collier County Sheriffs Office. And I'm going to bring the portion of the presentation to you today regarding sheriffs facilities and some of the needs of those facilities and more germane to my own special area of interest, corrections facilities in Collier County. And just for the knowledge of the commission, although I'm the chief of corrections, I do write traffic citations. COMMISSIONER CARTER: We won't argue with him when you get a citation. CHIEF SMITH: Everywhere I go and speak about jails I need to start out almost inevitably by clearing up the misconceptions that the term "jail" and "prison" are not synonymous. And even in certain forms, you will hear very learned people on the subject use those terms synonymously. There are some vast difference that I think should really be pointed out, if not to you, to your constituency. First of all, jails are usually administered by the county sheriff. There are some counties in the State of Florida who administer their own jail system much like you do with EMS. Orange County is probably the most prominent of those counties. Orange County is surrounded by a lot of metropolitan police agencies. They have a huge corrections division. It probably dwarfs the Orange County Sheriffs Office in terms of budget and operational expenses, and, therefore, the county has determined that they would run that jail system. So that takes place in about four or five counties in the State of Florida. The balance is administered by the county sheriff. Page 29 February 5, 2002 Jails are predominantly utilized for housing those people who are awaiting the criminal justice process or trial who are unable to post bond. Large numbers of our people who come to us by way of having violated a law or committed a crime don't stay very long in the county jail system. And that's one thing that some of these slides are going to show you today and demonstrate. It's more a clearinghouse, if you will, a point of entry into the criminal-justice process, and the criminal-justice process being the court systems, probation, and parole. The state attorney's office, the public defender's office, the various free-world trial attorneys, there are a lot of components that make up the criminal-justice process, and that's really the primary mission of a jail. It does house those people sentenced by the courts to one year or less. Jails by virtue of their mission are usually centrally located next to the courts and to those providing services to the inmate population. And in our own local setting, we transport -- just to illustrate this -- out of 792 average daily population that we currently have in the Collier County jail system, we transport more than 500 inmates to court and back. So the picture that I'm trying to paint here for you is that it's a continued process of going forth and coming back, and you're really talking about a transient inmate status as opposed to prisons. Prisons are administered by the Florida Department of Corrections, a state agency. It is used to house those sentenced to one year or more by the courts, and they are usually remotely located. They do this to encourage escape. They do this to minimize risk to the public because those people who are sentenced to state prison are usually considered to be a risk to the public and, therefore, that's the reason they are incarcerated. And they are also remotely located because they are huge areas, and they take advantage of lower-cost land parcels by remotely locating. Page 30 February 5, 2002 So those are kind of the basic differences ofjails and prisons. The missions, as you can see, are pretty much diametrically opposed. Next slide. Just to give you a little information about your county jail system, the Collier County jail system currently has 754 beds. The average daily population for the last year was 797 inmates per day in that system that's designed for 754 beds. Last year 17,246 persons were processed or charged with a crime and incarcerated. Collier County jail system has a staff of 221; 197 of those are certified correctional officers. We have 24 civilian workers, and we also have two contract-service providers. We've outsourced medical, and we have outsourced our food service. Both of those companies that I provide the oversight for do have a complement of work staff that they bring into our environment. So that's in addition to the 221 sheriffs staff positions. Last year the operating budget -- excuse me -- this year the operating budget for the Collier County jail system is about $18 1/2 million. So, as you see, it is a huge component of the sheriffs office. It's about one-fifth of the total budget -- excuse me -- one-fourth of the total budget and takes up roughly one-third of the certified positions. So we're big and getting bigger by the day. The Naples Jail Center is that area which most of you are the most familiar with because you drive by it on your way to work. It has a rated capacity of 582 beds, although that's not always been the case. The Naples jail opened in 1985. When the Naples Jail opened in 1985, it only had a rated capacity of 301 beds; however, over the years we have added beds to that facility on the inside by double- bunking some single-bunk designed cells so that we've now arrived at the 582 figure. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Can you tell me what rated capacity means, please? Page 31 February 5, 2002 CHIEF SMITH: Certainly. "Rated capacity" is a term that originates with the old State Department of Corrections, which used to have oversight of the county jails. And what they did is they'd come in and look at the amount of inmates you were housing on a daily basis. They would assess that against the number of beds that you had in your facility and would factor in any out-of-cell time. And then they would come back with a rating factor which said that this is how many people you can lawfully hold in that facility and not risk suit by the courts for overcrowded conditions. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Thank you. CHIEF SMITH: A lot of that kind of regulation has since gone by the wayside. We've witnessed a little bit of a pendulum swing in the court since the 1980s when all that transpired and a little bit of a relaxed standard in that regard. However, the premise is still there that when you're incarcerating these people you have to do so safely and securely and provide for the care, custody, and control. Naples Jail Center is the primary booking and intake for all agencies in Collier County. It's not just to service the sheriff's office's needs. It also services those people who are arrested by the City of Marco Island, City of Naples, Game and Freshwater Commission -- excuse me, just the Game and Fish Commission now -- the Florida Highway Patrol, INS or border patrol. U.S. Marshal Service from time to time will put an inmate here, as well as the State Department of Transportation from time to time will book inmates. The average daily population last year in the Naples Jail Center was 673. So as you can see, last year we averaged on any given day 91 over our rated capacity. So if you're kind of getting the idea that we're crowded, yeah, we're crowded. However, caution to the criminal element if you happen to be watching; there's always room for one more. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Question. When we check them Page 32 February 5, 2002 into our facilities by an outside agency, do they have to pay us a daily fee? CHIEF SMITH: No, sir. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Too bad we can't do that. CHIEF SMITH: Well, let me back up just a second. There are some that we are under contract with that provide a daily fee. The U.S. Marshall Service is one of those, and we do receive a reimbursement from the Immigration and Naturalization Service for any of their prisoners. However, anyone who is confined by virtue of having committed a state statute infraction we are not compensated for. That is the mission of the local jail by statute. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Okay. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Could I ask a question about the criteria for determining capacity? You said it's based on an old criteria. What are the current criteria, if any? CHIEF SMITH: Okay. The current criteria is the number of beds that you have. And rated capacity over the years has been translated down to bed count. And it's your number of beds, although you subtract out any special-housing beds for infirmary patients or-- what's the other category -- or disciplinary confinement beds. So those are taken out of the mix. COMMISSIONER COYLE: What decides how many beds you can put there? Is there a square-footage requirement for inmates? CHIEF SMITH: Yes, sir, there is. COMMISSIONER COYLE: What is that? CHIEF SMITH: I don't know right off the top of my head, but there is a requirement. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. CHIEF SMITH: One of the slides we'll look at later is a jail is probably the most regulated piece of real estate in the county, and we'll get into a little more discussion of that in a moment. But with Page 33 February 5, 2002 me today is Captain-- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Just one second, please. MR. MINOZZI: I just thought I'd ask you on the beds. You show a rated capacity of 582 with 673 average. Now, the five -- the first number, does that include these double bunks? CHIEF SMITH: Uh-huh. MR. MINOZZI: And so then what happens? There's a difference. Do you have people sleeping on the floor? CHIEF SMITH: Yes. We have people sleeping on the floor. You do, like in sleeping bags or things like MR. MINOZZI: that? CHIEF SMITH: They are sleeping on mattresses with blankets provided, but they are sleeping on the floor. MR. MINOZZI: So then that is an actual difference, then, as maybe 70 or 80 people are sleeping on other than a bed? CHIEF SMITH: Actually, there's more than that sleeping on the floor. And we'll get into a little further discussion about that in a minute when we talk about things like management factor of a housing unit will dictate how you utilize that housing unit. Because if you have a block that's designed for misdemeanors, but you have felons that you need to house, you can't put the felons in with the misdemeanors. Therefore, you may have an underutilization in the misdemeanor-housing unit and an overutilization in the felony- housing unit. So you may have more than just that 97 -- 91 number sleeping on the floor. In fact, I think I have a utilization table in here that -- a little bit later that will graphically show that for us. I was going to say Captain Sinolonza's (phonetic) here with us today, too, and he can supply information as well. Would you be able to get that square-foot number for us? CAPTAIN SINOLONZA: Sure. Page 34 February 5, 2002 CHIEF SMITH: Okay. We'll supply that to you. The Immokalee Jail Center is the second adult jail that we have in the county. It's a rated capacity of 172 beds. Last year it had an average daily population of 124. That's an underutilization from its capacity, and the reason for that is because the plumbing has reached a state that if we house the maximum number that could be housed there, the plumbing would very likely not handle the flow. So we have to underutilize that facility. It was originally opened in 1962. It was originally opened as a county workcamp stockade that was administered by the Board of County Commissioners. It was administered by the Board of County Commissioners until October 1 st of 1980 when the sheriffs office took over operations. The facility has served the county well for many years; however, it is now starting to show its age, and the facility has now deteriorated into a poor condition. As you can see, some of the plumbing fixtures are in disrepair-- actually, they're not in disrepair. They are functional. It's just cosmetically the facility is reaching the point where it's not worth salvaging. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And we want a pretty jail for those inmates. CHIEF SMITH: Well, I don't think that aesthetics is really the issue as much as I think we want to stay out of courts that might have a totally different interpretation of what's needed for that inmate population than we do, because their opinion is usually one we have to live with once they've rendered it. But, Commissioner, I think that your point is not lost that we need jail facilities that serve the purpose, but we definitely don't need extravagances. Next slide. The remaining component of the Collier County jail division is the D.R.I.L.L. Academy, which was opened in 1996 as a 30-bed Page 35 February 5, 2002 residential juvenile-offender program. Also we have as part of that program, 30 juveniles in a conditional release supervision. D.R.I.L.L. Academy has gotten a lot of publicity over the years for being a very innovative way to combat and treat juvenile crime problem in Collier County. It's probably one of most successful things as an agency that we've ever directed our assets at, and I think that it's made a real difference in turning the corner in the war against juvenile crime in this county. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Would you put gang members in there too? CHIEF SMITH: Absolutely, absolutely. There are various gang members. There's been a high utilization for that facility for trying to turn around the lives of some gang members. We've been very successful in that. You have to have had at least five referrals by the Department of Juvenile Justice to be considered for that program and be between the ages of 13 and 17. COMMISSIONER FIALA: So a gang member, then, is put into the academy -- and I'm sorry to delay any time, but I'm curious -- and they come out, and they are in pretty good condition. I mean, I've watched what's happened with the D.R.I.L.L. Camp, and I'm really pleased to see how the kids have progressed. But then they're brought back into their own environment, and even though they have somebody working with them from the sheriffs office, still they are in their own environment, and they're with the same parents or parent or lack of parents and on the same street where all the kids were and who now might threaten them if they don't participate in the gang activities. How do you control that, or do you? CHIEF SMITH: Well, that's why we do the step-down program, the conditional-release supervision, and we try to reintegrate them into society. Sometimes it's easily done, and sometimes it's very Page 36 February 5, 2002 difficult because there are personal circumstances that we have to overcome. A lot of times we've been able to have youth transferred to programs that are longer in duration, that are possibly out of area where they can learn skills and trades. Right now we've done a great deal with some of our older graduates from the program trying to get them into the military armed forces. Been very successful in that. So we've recognized that, and that's something that we just work daily with to try to overcome, but I think the main weapon there if we're going to be successful is keeping those kids comfortable with the ability to come to us and not see us as threats to a way of life that hopefully they've abandoned at that point, but see us as mentors and role models and someone that's able to help them achieve a productive place in society. So that's what we try to get done, and I think to a large degree it's been very successful. It's heralded as one of the most successful programs that the Department of Juvenile Justice has funded throughout the state. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I know we're all proud of it here in Collier County. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I don't know -- and it may be in here, and I raised the question, and I apologize if it's been sent to me and I missed it, but I had read where the Salvation Army had a statewide program where they were working with young offenders, keep them out of the jail system. And actually they took them under their guidance and control. The question is: Is that still in place? Does Collier County participate with the Salvation Army in that program, and could it be an adjunct to the D.R.I.L.L. Academy for following on what Commissioner Fiala said to work with these people who we catch early in the game and keep them out of the system? CHIEF SMITH: The Salvation Army has run several diversion Page 37 February 5, 2002 and halfway house programs for years. They've worked very closely with the federal system as well as the state system. We have participated by referring youth to them from time to time. They are -- they have a very strong component of intervention. They are primarily designed for children with alcohol or substance abuse problems, and we've sent them people. We don't utilize them to a great degree because we haven't had the right kinds of kids for their program. They have entry criteria. So when one comes along and we don't have a good fit here locally, then we've tried to direct them into that area as well. So, yeah, it's something that we do utilize from time to time. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Thank you. CHIEF SMITH: Next slide. Talk a little bit about the dynamics of the inmate population of the county jail system. 2001, as we said, there was 797 inmates on any given day in the county jail system. And this is a question that I'm frequently asked when I give presentations, but how long is the average length of stay of an inmate. And you have to understand that it's measured in hours, not days. Of the 17,200 that we processed last year, only 4.63 percent, or less than 5 percent are represented in that average daily population of 797. Sixty-two percent of everyone who's booked, or 62 percent of that total 17,000 number were released within 24 hours. You can see following the chart down, that goes up to 80 percent within the first week and 98 percent within 120 days. So what we're left with, that 797 out of 17,000 are individuals that don't qualify for any type of bond, diversionary program, or other alternative that we've been able to implement to help reduce jail populations. In other words, what we're left with is that 10 percent that the sheriff was talking about that's committing 80 percent of the crime. But what we hope for you to go away with after viewing this slide is Page 38 February 5, 2002 the fact that it's basically a revolving door, and we're not talking about people getting off on the charges. We're talking about people who posted bond who have been judged not to be a threat to society who are out there. But you have to understand that on any given day, there are many more people who are active participants in the criminal-justice process that are mixed into the public at large than are detained in your jail. Next slide. COMMISSIONER FIALA: That's kind of scary. CHIEF SMITH: Give you a little bit of information about the typical inmate profile of booking. Eighty-three percent are males usually between the ages of 20 and 24, white, 76 percent single. Only 45 percent report to us that they are employed. Only 27 percent report to us that they are a Florida native. That's a very important correlation to draw. It shows us that a large percentage of the jail population is the result of growth into the area. We also see that 17 percent are here on the instant offense of a drug charge. On the other hand, we see that our female-inmate population are quite a bit older than their male counterparts; 35 to 39 years of age, still predominantly white, predominantly single; 61 percent of them are employed, 38 percent are Florida natives, 16 percent are here on the instant offense of a drug charge. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Greg, how many of these people are homeless that come to the sheriff's department who do not have a legal address? CHIEF SMITH: Not very many. Most do have addresses. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHIEF SMITH: We do have a number that would consider themselves to be homeless. Usually, when a homeless person is arrested, it's a very minor offense. They are usually given credit for time served upon their first initial arraignment when they get before Page 39 February 5, 2002 the judge. And it's really not a huge percentage of our population. Next slide. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Do we have a statistic on the number of people that you picked up that are out on bail or awaiting trial that are repeat offenders and they just keep cycling in and of the... CHIEF SMITH: That's a number that we do manage, but I didn't supply that as part of the information packet today, so I have to get that back to you. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Is it significant, or is it a minor amount? CHIEF SMITH: If I just had to make a wild guess, I'd say it's 25 percent of the population that we're dealing with. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I'd like to know that and how we might be able to better deal with that, if it's in our control. CHIEF SMITH: I can tell you that almost authoritatively that most of it is linked directly to larceny and opportunity crimes, theft crimes, theft occurrence, and almost always done for the purpose of acquiring funds to purchase narcotics. That's why if you see the slide -- if you can go back for a second -- where we talk about 17 and 16 percent here on a drug charge, the other thing that you can be told is that the large degree or the biggest percentage of crime that people are being held in jail for are theft, larceny, and other property crimes. We have found out that those crimes are committed to obtain funds to purchase narcotics, a large percentage. And that's not just a Collier County trend. We're seeing that as a national trend as well, so it's not something that's just endemic to Collier County. Go ahead. As you can see on the left, only 27 percent of our inmate population is made up of misdemeanor offenders. That's very important because you have to realize that by state statute the only people that you can keep in reduced-custody-housing areas are Page 40 February 5, 2002 misdemeanors. The large majority of our inmate population, 72.64 percent, are felons. So we have a huge felony component in our jail system today. On the right you see that only 18.82 percent -'- 19 percent we'll call it -- are sentenced. Almost 85 percent are awaiting trial or some other outcome that's associated with the criminal-justice process. That is a huge number. We're only one of five jurisdictions in the State of Florida that have a number in excess of 75 pretrial -- 75 percent pretrial. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I wonder why that is? CHIEF SMITH: And you can see that 3 percent of our population has been through the process, have been sentenced to state prison or are awaiting commitment papers to be processed by the clerk's office and delivered so that we can ship them away to state prison. So that's your basic inmate population makeup. As we said before, rate of capacity has now deteriorated to a term where we're talking just about a basic bed count; 582 in Naples, 172 in Immokalee. Although when you talk about beds as we've already given you a precursor, you really find it difficult to utilize them all in the configuration that's been designed. And this isn't something, once again, that's unique to our situation. This is something that correctional practitioners and managers throughout the nation have come to deal with. Ten percent of any facility's jail beds will be ate up or not utilized by reason of management factor, and that's what we talked about before. Felons have to be separated from misdemeanors; sentenced from non-sentenced; male from female, that's an easy one; juvenile from adult. So you are going to have some underutilization in regards to the size housing units that you've built in. Also, this is something that is a little bit unique to any area of high seasonal influx, but in Collier County we experience about a 12 Page 41 February 5, 2002 percent peaking factor throughout the year. So at any given time this time of year we'll be about 12 percent above rated capacity just in terms of seasonal influx. Also, you have to deduct out the 12 confinement beds and the 7 infirmary beds from the Naples Jail Center as well. Next chart illustrates that point pretty well, and it's kind of hard to read on the screen, so you may want to refer to your packet. But to point out just exactly what we're talking about in underutilization, if you'll look at the column on the extreme left, go down past the center of the page to an area called "3A," Naples Jail Center under housing area 3A. You'll see as you read across the page to the right that the number of inmates in that cell today are six. And the number of beds in that cell -- that's the number on the floor is zero. You'll see that the number of beds in that cell are 12, and the reason for that is that's the juvenile cell block. So we have 6 juvenile males in a cell block designed for 12. Now, that's the smallest cell block that's designed in the Naples Jail system. So we've got 6 beds that are not being utilized in that situation, but we can't put anyone else in there with them. It's even more compounded if we were to get one juvenile female. Then we have to put her all by herself, and she'd be taking up a housing unit designed for 12 people. So those are some of the things -- and as you read down that list, you can see that 3C, for instance, 20 inmates are in that cell block today. The cell block's designed for 28. That's your female trustee dorm. And so you can't mix non-trustee -- actually, we call it the inmate work force because we don't trust any of them. So we can't put anybody in there with them, so we've got an eight-bed underutilization in that area. And as you go down the chart, you can see that in cell block 5-Alpha, that's our felony block, we have 74 inmates in there; 28 of those inmates are on the floor because the housing unit is only Page 42 February 5, 2002 designed for 48. You can see that in 4-Bravo, 63 inmates are in that housing unit, so 16 of those are on the floor, and that's our largest housing unit -- one of our largest housing unit that's designed for 52. So if you were to tally up the numbers down the center, you can see that today there are 143, not 97, who are sleeping on the floor of the Naples Jail. So it is a little crowded. Any questions about this chart? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Just one question. I don't know if you covered it earlier; I don't recall seeing it. What's the cost per inmate per day? Is there a breakdown for that? CHIEF SMITH: Yes, there is. It's not provided in your packet, but I can tell you that in the Naples Jail it's about $55 a day. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: And that takes into consideration all factors or just the hard cost of deputies or jail-- CHIEF SMITH: That's by simply taking the operational budget of the correction's division and dividing it by the number of inmates. And that's not a good formula. I can tell you that that's a number that you try to compare with other jurisdictions to see just exactly how you're measuring up or how you're doing, but when you go around to these various jurisdictions like I do and you ask that question, you come up with a sundry of answers. Everyone figures it different. Everyone figures in some things and leaves out some things. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: So in other words, the $55 isn't a true representation of what the cost is. CHIEF SMITH: It's not a true representation, and you really can't make any comparisons. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: My understanding was, like, a hundred-some dollars per inmate. Could it be that high? CHIEF SMITH: No, sir. No -- I mean, it could be that high depending on what you were adding in and taking out of the formula but-- Page 43 February 5, 2002 CHAIRMAN COLETTA: The formula would be based upon the fixed cost of the facility and what it costs to maintain it against the depreciation of it, the cost of the labor that's directly related to that. Jim Carter, I'm sure, could draw it up for you in a moment, because this is his speciality. But I would assume that it wouldn't be that difficult to come up -- COMMISSIONER CARTER: If we were in the sunshine, Fred and I could do that, but it's against the law. (Overlapping dialogue.) CHIEF SMITH: I would be very surprised if it approached $100. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I wouldn't be to be honest with you. I'd really like to see the real number -- CHIEF SMITH: Okay. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: -- and how we arrive at it -- CHIEF SMITH: We can put that together if you can tell us what you want to see in the formula. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Mr. Carter, give me a hand with it. What I just mentioned, what else is missing from that? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, you want the meals, health care-- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: -- (overlapping dialogue) everything that's related to the cost of the building. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Utilities. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Exactly. I mean, I'm sure that could be easily formulated. You have a budget just -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: (Overlapping dialogue) -- we've done it before for our businesses. COMMISSIONER CARTER: You've got your fixed costs, and then you've got indirect costs -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Right. Page 44 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER CARTER: (Overlapping dialogue) and you've got-- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Indirect costs would be everything from the court systems right on through it, I would imagine. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Well, I guess it could get pretty -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Oh, yeah. COMMISSIONER CARTER: You're right. It depends on what you want to factor in to that, but at the end of the day what are you going to do with the number? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Well, the number gives you a product comparison what the real cost is. It's meaningless to have a number of $55 if it isn't based upon a true cost. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Would you take Fund 040, corrections budget, or is that what you're already taking -- CHIEF SMITH: That's the number that we come up with right now to arrive at 55. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. And that doesn't include a lot of the maintenance costs like food and clothing and things like that? CHIEF SMITH: It includes food and clothing. It does not include things, for instance, like maintenance to the facility that the county provides. There is a note taken into consideration for the facility itself and the depreciation. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Transportation for the prisoners, that's all figured in? CHIEF SMITH: Usually transportation's figured in there. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: All deputies that are related -- CHIEF SMITH: Right. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Cable TV. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And in looking at that Fund 040, it Page 45 February 5, 2002 looks like most of the information that you're really interested in is included there. And that's a total of about $14 million, if I remember correctly. CHIEF SMITH: Right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So if you took Fund 040, divided 14.069 -- 14,639 by the number of-- average number of inmates, you'd get the figure, I would think. CHIEF SMITH: So if that's what you'd like to do, we can break that out in some detail and supply that to you. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I would like to see it. CHIEF SMITH: Sure. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I think it's a point well taken. Sometimes what we find in this process as a cost are scattered around through several funds (overlapping dialogue) -- CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's exactly what I'm getting at, Commissioner Carter. I would like to see a true representation of the cost, not that -- I'm sure the cost is legit, but when I see sometime like $55 per day and past numbers that I've heard, like, from the state penitentiaries and what they cost per day, it doesn't relate. I know the (inaudible) cost is up there considerably on $55 from what I see. CHIEF SMITH: Like I mentioned previously, Commissioner, it all depends on what you want factored in, and a lot of those people -- like I said, when -- because that's one of the numbers that we use as -- correctional practitioners bandy about between ourselves. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Right. CHIEF SMITH: You know, "what's your rate?" And when you start talking to these guys for any length of time, you find out that, well, did you factor in -- for instance, a good example is medical care and that "Well, no, I didn't factor in medical care, because my county provides that free," where I have to contract with a provider for medical care. So it's really hard to make apples-to-apples Page 46 February 5, 2002 comparisons on that number. COMMISSIONER CARTER: But I think we know that because, see, what happens to us, is that all the constitutionals come to us for a number of reasons, and what we need to find out is who needs what particularly you get the capital expenditures on facilities. Because what is the basis on which you bring that to me? And are several people using the same account to say that this is what I need, and that's part of the struggle that we go through as commissioners, because that is our constitutional charge that we have to provide this. CHIEF SMITH: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I think that's what we're all struggling -- and our county manager, budget director has done a great job. We're just trying to get better at this so that we can really separate out and say that -- CHIEF SMITH: Right. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- you know, these people need this now, and you'll have to live what you have to live with because we don't have the funding. CHIEF SMITH: Uh-huh. Absolutely, we can do that. COMMISSIONER CARTER: The simplest thing is what's behind the number. CHIEF SMITH: Okay. Next slide. Talk a little bit about how we assess the need for jail space. First thing we do is we take a look at the historical picture in terms of our average daily population. And you can see from this chart that's provided from 1994 to the current year that number is steadily increasing. It's increasing at about the rate of 40 inmates per year averaged into the average daily population. In 1998, you see a pretty significant spike where it went from 622 up to 682 and then a decline the next year. What happened there was some aggressive enforcement strategies that shaped the jail Page 47 February 5, 2002 population that attributed to that spike. In '99 was when we utilized -- made greater utilization of alternatives to incarceration programs, so we were able to get the head count back under control. In the year 2000, we have pretty much depleted all of our alternatives to hard-cell incarceration. We've pretty much done all the magic that we can do locally and just growth into the area has spurred on this latest spike or, to a large degree, a spurt on the latest spike. COMMISSIONER CARTER: You had a number of positions that are open too. You had turnover in personnel, and I suspect there's some correlation in there with beginning to close that gap, retaining experienced officers, and what happens over here on this chart. CHIEF SMITH: Exactly, and that's what's happened on the enforcement side as well. Once you start retaining those officers, once you start implementing some enforcement strategies such as comp stat and those type of things that are driving the crime rate down -- you heard the sheriff talk about the direct correlation between incarcerating people and driving down the crime rate. And here you're able to see it for yourself. Crime rate went down in 1999 considerably as the number of incarcerated started going up. Next slide. Of course, no one has to tell you that the county population at large is growing and expected to grow for some time. In 2001 the current BEBR estimate is 267,979 persons at large for the area. And by the year 2008 we'll eclipse 350,000. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And this is our full-time population, if I'm correct, sir. It does not take into account the swell from tourism. CHIEF SMITH: Yes, sir. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Which is our primary industry, Page 48 February 5, 2002 by the way, ladies and gentlemen, so... CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Tourism or jails? COMMISSIONER CARTER: No, tourism is. Jails are not a primary industry, but it looks like it's certainly gaining momentum here. CHIEF SMITH: Okay. So it's very easy to look at the people who are currently incarcerated per 1,000 of the population. And for this number we used the 2001 BEBR projection; laid that against the 797 ADP, and we're able to determine that we have a 3.36 per 100,000 incarceration rate. And incarceration rate is what the Department of Corrections in Tallahassee uses to track jail systems statewide. They still do that. Even though they don't have direct oversight, they still track our population statewide. They still have the responsibility to report to the governor relative to jail utilization and space per capita. Now, in county government we also have a level-of-service standard as it relates to jail beds. That's the number of beds to be provided in the county growth plan. Currently that level-of-service standard is set at 2.42 beds per 1,000 of the population. It's easy to see that you're almost always going to have -- if you stay with the 2.42 rate, you're almost always going to ensure that one person is sleeping on the floor per 1,000 of the population at large. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Greg, how does this per capita incarcerated people compare to the other counties in Florida? CHIEF SMITH: It's very comparable. It's not unique to us. Every county in the State of Florida is wresting with the issue of growth and jail beds. COMMISSIONER FIALA: So we're about the average, then? CHIEF SMITH: That number -- it's a little higher than average, but everybody has over three. Most are, like, three-flat or three-one or three-two. So it's not uncommon at all. The only thing that I will Page 49 February 5, 2002 caution you about your level-of-service standard is -- first of all, I understand and correct me if I'm wrong, county manager-- MR. OLLIFF: Behind you. CHIEF SMITH: But I think that is set by the board as a matter of policy; is that correct? MR. OLLIFF: Yes, sir. CHIEF SMITH: And you want to be careful where you set that level-of-service standard, because you don't want to set it at a point where it creates a deficit of jail beds that you would have to fund through the general fund before you can reach currency and utilize impact fees. Currently, all the new jail growth is to be funded through impact fees that are being collected now. So I would just advise you to be cautious as to where you put the level-of-service standard. And there's nothing saying you have to set it at 3.3. That's a matter for you to take into consideration and set where you feel the most comfortable or the most appropriate. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Correct me if I'm wrong, aren't we studying the jail impact fees today? MR. OLLIFF: We're currently doing an update on the jail impact fee, and Chief Smith's got a great point. What you don't want to get yourself caught in is a situation where you automatically jump from a 2.42 beds per thousand to a 3.3 or 3.4, because what he's saying to you is, it creates a situation where you cannot pay for the needed expansions from your impact fee revenue source. It has to be growth driven in order to use an impact fee. So what we did in the library, for example, when we're faced with the same situation, is established a stepped increase level of service so that every year the level of service increased slightly until we were reaching our target numbers, which in this case might be 3.3 or 3.6. And that allowed us to continue to collect impact fees for library books in that particular instance. In this case, it would be for Page 50 February 5, 2002 jail expansion. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And that's probably a better proactive way to accomplish what we want to accomplish here in Collier County, and one famous commissioner -- I remember him saying is, "We want to control growth. We don't want growth to control us." And that's a great statement. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Putting me in a past tense. COMMISSIONER HENNING: No. I didn't mean to do that. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Got a good sense of humor here, folks. Lighten up a little bit. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Well, past chairman. CHIEF SMITH: Any additional questions relative to this slide? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Just -- if you let me interject something. I did some quick calculations to answer Commissioner Coletta's question about the cost per day. If you use the entire budget for the Corrections Department, it works up to $60 a day. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: That's close to the $55. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And that includes some money allocated for capital expenditures too. CHIEF SMITH: And I can tell how I missed by $5 is that number that I gave you was prior to the implementation of the pay plan, so that's where that money probably is. Now, it's just not up to me to study jail trends and to make recommendations to the board. This is something that's actively done by your county manager and his staff, by your budget office and their staff, and at times we have brought in consultants to help guide us through this process. The jail situation has been studied in great depth. First, in 1989 we contracted with Correctional Services Group who came back and said that we needed to add 256 beds immediately and another 256 beds by the year 2000. Page 51 February 5, 2002 Now, there information was not flawed. In 1989 we still only had a 370 bed count at the Naples facility. We hadn't double-bunked all the cells yet. So we really accomplished that 256-bed expansion simply by double-bunking the remainder of our cells. So, when you look at the fact that they were saying that you'll still need another 256 by the year 2000, that initial study that we did in 1989 has been pretty accurate. In 1993 we hired that same firm to come back in and freshen that study a little bit. They recommended that we give -- provide a greater utilization of alternatives to incarceration, that we maximize the utilization of IJC. At that time IJC was only being used to house sentenced prisoners. We weren't holding any non-sentenced there, and the average daily head count was only about 70. And that 1993 study also said that we should immediately plan for the 200 additional beds to be added into the system by the year 2000. In 1997 -- this is the most recent comprehensive study that we've done. It was done by the V-Group who said in their recommendations that a new IJC facility of 192 beds should be constructed and that the Naples Jail Center should have an immediate addition of 240 beds plus support space. Those recommendations were adopted by the Board of County Commissioners at that time, and this is the building project that we're currently in the middle of. It's important to point out that the Naples Jail addition is not only the addition ofjail beds, but you see jail beds plus support space. Remember that when we built it in 1985 there were only 300 beds. So the support space was designed to complement a 300-bed jail. Now we've doubled the capacity, but we never addressed the support space. So the library we have was designed for 300 inmates. The staff offices were designed for a staff that would be used to manage 300 inmates. The kitchen was designed for 300 inmates, and it goes on and on and on. Page 52 February 5, 2002 The booking center -- when we talk about the fact that we booked in 17,200 people last year, we're doing that in a booking center that was designed to book in 4,000 a year. So that's one of the areas of great concern to us. COMMISSIONER FIALA: What about the bathroom facilities. Were they also just for 300 -- CHIEF SMITH: Also the bathroom facilities were designed for 300, so we've had to go in there and retrofit some things like showerheads and those type of facilities that the state requires by statute we supply in a direct ratio correlation, so we've had to wrestle with this for quite some time. So that -- the Naples Jail expansion is not just jail beds. It's also -- a great deal of that square footage is to be support space for jail medical, staff support, and a new booking center, all things that are needed desperately to manage the current flow. Next slide. The IJC replacement is currently underway. It's slated to be 192 beds which will give us 20 additional beds at that center. Work has already been funded and work has begun. Its completion schedule is for late '02. It will then give us the ability to fully utilize that 192 beds. We will not be timid as we are now, about shipping people to Immokalee. We will take advantage of some distance technologies, and we will utilize that facility to its full potential. Another great thing about this new facility that we're building in Immokalee, we will be able to drive down our per-day staff costs. So it will help us to operate that more efficiently. It's also critical to the NJC project because we're going to have to ship some of our inmate population around when we start remodeling the existing Naples Jail. So Immokalee will play a huge pivotal role in that process. And I can tell you that we're having weekly meetings out at the construction site with the builder, and the project is currently on time and under budget. So that's good news. Page 53 February 5, 2002 Naples Jail Center, 240 new beds will be added with a new booking and intake center, a new medical/mental-health center. That's very important when you understand that the state is limiting access to state-run mental-health centers now. We're going to see more of these people in our jail facilities. I know it's an overused term, but a lot of people refer to the local jails as the social institution of last resort. And I have found through my own personal experience that that is indeed the case. So we have to work with all these types of problematic populations. We also discussed we need support space. The entire jail system at the completion of the projects will be 1,014 beds. Broken down, 822 in Naples, 192 at IJC. However, the forecast of inmate population at the completion of the current projects, if you run it out to the year -- actually, instead of 2009, that should be 2004 -- we will experience an average daily population of 1,090 if the current trend of 3.3 continues. And if that current trend of 3.3 per 1,000 of the population at large continues, then by the year 2015 we'll need 1224 beds on line. However, I can tell you that both these projects that are currently under construction, Immokalee and the Naples project, will be moving toward schematic design shortly. So we're still in the design phase of that project. But both of these projects have an immediate ability to expand if necessary. That's been programmed in. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Let me make sure I understand it. There are some changes from our packet to that. The 1,090 average date of population would be in 2009; is that correct? CHIEF SMITH: 2004. COMMISSIONER COYLE: projects is 2004. CHIEF SMITH: Right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: No. The completion of current But the average daily population Page 54 February 5, 2002 requirement of 190 -- CHIEF SMITH: I'm sorry. COMMISSIONER COYLE: -- 2004 or 2009? CHIEF SMITH: I'm sorry to confuse you. You're correct, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. And then the 1224 beds, our packet says 2009. That should be 2015 -- CHIEF SMITH: 2015, right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Got it. CHIEF SMITH: Go ahead. Now, jail populations -- you know, this is another point that is critical that people who manage jails understand is that jail populations just don't happen. We just don't sit down and open a jail and wait for people to come; although they do. Jail populations are influenced by a multitude of external factors. First and foremost is possibility the enforcement philosophy of the local law enforcement jurisdictions. If you have very aggressive law enforcement in your jurisdiction, they are going to have a direct effect of how many people are brought to jail. Incarceration philosophies; there are people who are empowered to make decisions on how long you keep these people that are incarcerated. For instance, the County Commission is one of those bodies. The County Commission has within their authority the ability to grant statutory gain time over and above that which given automatically by statute (sic). Several years ago the philosophy of the Board of County Commissioners was to not grant gain time, so we quit petitioning the board because the board was not granting any gain time for inmates. You have to understand that that has a direct relation as to how many people you keep in your jail. The court's ability to move cases through the criminal-justice process has a direct relation on how many people are in your jail. The addition of new judges will speed along the process, but if that Page 55 February 5, 2002 judge has an aggressive incarceration philosophy, it may also speed them up and give you greater numbers at the same time. Also the use of alternatives to incarcerations such as probation, pretrial-release programs, pretrial-diversion programs, there are any number of alternatives to incarceration that are able to attack the underlying causes of the incarceration without tying up a very expensive jail bed. So it's to our benefit to identify those people and try to divert them out of the system, and we've been very successful in Collier County in doing that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Well, may I just say here something that makes me real nervous about putting people back out on the street on probation or bond or whatever is. In my opinion, we're just putting them right back out to continue to commit crimes. I mean, no matter whether they say, "I'm not going to do this anymore," or you're on probation, or you can't do this because you have house arrest or whatever, they are still right back out there ready to do the same things again. And I realize it's expensive to keep them incarcerated, but I'd much rather have them in a place where they are not preying on innocent people. I don't know. Maybe that's just my own philosophy. CHIEF SMITH: I don't think that your philosophy is flawed at all, Commissioner. I'm just simply pointing out to you that any one who -- any politician, especially -- and, please, no offense intended-- but anyone who says that "I want to get tough on crime," and "I'm going to cut the budget" should be immediately suspect. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Call that an oxymoron and drop the "oxy" part, I guess. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Let me add something to that and then ask a question. I think your data has shown that if you confine those people who are habitual criminals and keep them confined, the actual crime rate goes down. The second question is: Do we track Page 56 February 5, 2002 the trend in these management philosophies? In other words, where are we going from right now? Are we incarcerating a higher percentage of people right now than we used to? Are we granting gain time to more people now than we used to? Is the pendulum swinging back? Is there any information you could provide us that would give us some indication as to where we're going in the future? CHIEF SMITH: Absolutely, Commissioner. The last study that was done by the V-Group that I referenced is a complete, comprehensive study of the entire criminal-justice process of Collier County. And if your staff can't provide you with a copy of that document, I would be more than happy to. And it answers almost every one of those questions. COMMISSIONER COYLE: study I presume? Okay. And it's an up-to-date CHIEF SMITH: Well, it was done in 1997. We really don't like to use studies that the numbers are more than five years old. So we're right at a point where a prudent individual would seek fresh numbers. COMMISSIONER COYLE: How do we do that? Is that something you normally do, or is it provided by some state agency? CHIEF SMITH: Actually, it could be done either way. Either the sheriff could bring it through part of the -- put it on the agenda under his constitutional officers and bring it as a recommendation for you to vote on, or your staff could do the same thing under the county manager. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Commissioner Coyle, I don't really think that's something we need to do. I would like to see the updates. I would like to see those philosophies. I would like to see where we can find balance in this and if there are some other resources where you can accomplish the same goals for the first- timers, etc., where you're not tying up that expensive jail bed, and it works -- Page 57 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. COMMISSIONER CARTER: And I emphasize that, "and it works," then I would look for those. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I agree. CHIEF SMITH: Commissioner, would you like us to study that issue and bring it to you in the form of a recommendation from the sheriff?. COMMISSIONER COYLE: You promise not to ask for a budget increase? CHIEF SMITH: Well, sir, I think that where you would go from there is you would instruct your staff to start the process of releasing an RFP and selecting a firm to do the study --. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. CHIEF SMITH: -- as we've done in the past. And once a firm is selected then they are contracted with by the county manager's staff. Jump in any time if you disagree with me. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I wonder if there's any grants? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Uhmmm? COMMISSIONER CARTER: I wonder if there's any grants -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: That would be great. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- or any other outside funding that can be tapped for those kinds of studies under the broad blanket of-- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. Why don't we look at that, Tom? Because the data that's four years old now or going on five years old is not particularly effective with respect to forecasting of where we're going in the future. And there's some significant dollars here. So I think it's prudent that we know as much about the future trends as we possibly can. COMMISSIONER HENNING: If I can interject here, you know, we got the study -- the study is, like you said, almost five years Page 58 February 5, 2002 old. We had a company do it, the V-Group. Why don't we just ask them to update it, but in the meantime I know Crystal Kinzel, who's very good with grants, and maybe she could take a look at if there any monies available for such a study. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Good. CHIEF SMITH: Okay. Last point on this slide is I'd like to talk for a minute about the Public Safety Coordinating Council. Florida Statute 591.26 states that each county should establish a Public Safety Coordinating Council. And I've given you the referenced statute in your packet. You can read through it and see that there's been a recognition at the state level that jails are an amalgam of independent actions that are taken throughout various stages of the criminal-justice process and that we need to bring those people around the table and talk about those kinds of trends. If you'll go to the next page. I'll direct your attention to paragraph 2, that it will meet at the call of the chairperson for the purpose of assessing the population status of all detention or correctional facilities owned or contracted by the county and that you'll also assess the availability of pretrial intervention, probation, work-release programs, substance-abuse programs, gain-time schedules, bond schedules, and the confinement status of all the inmates housed in the county jails. There's been a recognition that this is a hugely regulated piece of real estate, it's a very costly piece of real estate that any county owns, and that there needs to be very controlled oversight. So while I understand that there are any number of boards and committees that the commission has to deal with, this may be one that you want to reactivate because it has laid dormant for at least seven years. And with this issue so hot and in the forefront, we may well want to reenergize that group. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Would that be an initiative by the Page 59 February 5, 2002 sheriffs office? CHIEF SMITH: Actually, it's -- the way that we did it in years past, the court administrator's office provided the oversight and the scheduling. The chair of the County Commission was the chair of that board. My role in it in years past was to provide the information and to help them track and plot trends. And we would be willing to do -- to provide whatever assistance that the chairman requested. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Is this something that we'd like to have Mr. Olliffbring back to us? Commissioner Henning, do you -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, the word "shall" is that-- you know, I'm not sure if that's a mandate that we need to do something like that. COMMISSIONER FIALA: "Will" means you're going to, but "shall" means you can in my interpretation. COMMISSIONER CARTER: But am I hearing the sheriffs office say it might be a good idea to reenergize? CHIEF SMITH: We would recommend that you reenergize it, first of all, because we can't control the inmate population all on our own. There's a lot of external factors. And it's very good to meet around the table, at least quarterly, with these people who control those factors so that we're all playing off the same sheet of music. COMMISSIONER COYLE: My reading of this is that it's directive in nature. But I guess we need a legal opinion. It says up front, "The Board of County Commissioners shall establish." It doesn't say that you may establish, or it's recommended that you establish; it says "shall." And I agree with Commissioner Fiala. Sometimes those terms are misleading, but I know that the lawyers understand them. Maybe we should have the county attorney take a look at that. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I don't think we have a representative here from the county attorney's office. Page 60 February 5, 2002 MR. OLLIFF: Just to keep it moving, why don't I work with the county attorney's office, and we'll work with the sheriffs office, and we'll bring you back a report on what the Public Safety Coordinating Council did the previous time, and, yes or no, is it a mandatory requirement and provide that information as a follow -up to the workshop. COMMISSIONER COYLE: They give us the option ofjoining with another consortium of one or more other counties. So it seems to me that they're telling us that we should do one or the other. But I agree, we need to get a definition of "shall" in that context. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I see a couple of nods. Do we have at least three nods to bring it back? COMMISSIONER CARTER: Yeah. CHIEF SMITH: Okay. Next slide. We'll talk about some of the diversion programs that are currently utilized in the Collier County jail system. First and foremost is the use of a bond schedule. Everyone that's arrested has the ability to post bond relative to the bond schedule that's approved by the administrative circuit judge. That is the release mechanism most often utilized by those people who are arrested. Our weekend work program, those are the sheriffs buses. You may have seen them out in your communities. If you haven't seen them in your community and you'd like to, give us a call or drop us an e-mail, and we'd be more than happy to put you on the schedule. What we do with that is that we take determinate sentences where the court has to impose a sentence. We have those people report on the weekends as opposed to tying up a jail bed. And over the course of Saturday and Sunday they go around the roadsides of the county and remove debris. They also do any number of other projects that we'll talk a little bit about in a minute. But they provide a great service to the county. They are probably accomplishing more Page 61 February 5, 2002 than anyone who's sleeping in the jail overnight. And it's driving down the cost ofjail construction because you don't have those people in your population mix. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I think you should be able to take a factor like this and subtract it from your cost. What would it cost us to send out road and bridges to be able to maintain the greenways? And doing an excellent job. I seen it at 951 and Immokalee Road. Tremendous, they absolutely pick the place clean when they go through. That's definitely got a dollar value to it. CHIEF SMITH: Absolutely. Pretrial-release services, this is a program that was instituted by the sheriff at the conclusion of one of the consultant studies that made that as a recommendation. The sheriff has a deputy who interviews those arrested for only a first or second offense. And if they are non-violent offenders, have a job in the community, have a standing in the community, i.e., homeowner or long-term renter, then that person is released in the community on a day reporting system where they call in every day. This was done to take 691 people out of the jail system last year. And what they does is once again it frees up the jail beds for your more severe offender. It provides a service and offsets the need to build jails. Notices to appear, last year rather than make an arrest the deputies out in the field issued 1,155 notices to appear to individuals who had committed minor crimes. As we've said our booking center is severely limited in its ability to conduct day-to-day business. And our jail space is precious. We reserve those for only those people who are truly deserving of sleeping there. So we have stepped up our notice-to-appear effort in that regard. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Do we know how many or what percentage actually do appear? CHIEF SMITH: Yes, sir. It's almost 98 percent. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Good. Page 62 February 5, 2002 CHIEF SMITH: A very high percentage rate. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Can I ask you a question? CHIEF SMITH: Sure. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Also when you were talking about this work program, you mentioned that they do other things other than pick up trash. What would be some of the other things -- CHIEF SMITH: Can you go to that slide, Tom? COMMISSIONER COYLE: Pick up rocks on the beach. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Hey, there you go. CHIEF SMITH: Here's our weekender projects list from the previous years. You can see that at Sugden Park we pulled weeds and spread mulch. We also worked at East Naples Community Park, the Collier County Museum, Collier County Animal Services, Clam Pass, the Naples Equestrian Challenge, Barefoot Beach, Naples Beach, Marco Fire Department, Lely Barefoot Beach, and, of course, the Collier County Courthouse. And, of course, not listed on this is the tons and tons of debris that we removed from the roadsides of the county. COMMISSIONER FIALA: How do you find out what work needs to be done in the different parks? Is that something that Marla works with you guys on and tells you-- CHIEF SMITH: Exactly. COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- which parks you need at the time? CHIEF SMITH: We have a staff member that's part of the sheriff's staff that coordinates that program with the county manager's staff. And I think that the word has gotten around pretty effectively that if you need a project or if you need some routine maintenance, give us a call. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh. CHIEF SMITH: Because they often do, and we're more than Page 63 February 5, 2002 happy to provide it. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You've all come out to Naples Manor a couple of times and cleaned up out there, and it's truly appreciated. CHIEF SMITH: We've done Naples Manor in conjunction with our community-oriented policing program or COPS program that you've heard about. We try to go in and clean up communities such as those, put pride in ownership back into the hands of the residents of those areas, and we've seen a real turnaround in them working with law enforcement in that regard. I think that those type of strategies is what's had a direct effect that's resulted in the crime -- the reduction in the crime rate that Collier County's enjoyed. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Is the attitude fairly good among the participants of the program? CHIEF SMITH: For the most part, yes, sir. I think that they understand that it's to their benefit because they are able to retain their employment. They're able to provide for their families, and they are giving up a large part of their weekends, about 12 hours each day, so I think they realize it's to their benefit to do it. And believe it or not, some of them actually said that they do enjoy it. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I personally love it. I think it's one of the greatest things the sheriff's department has ever done. COMMISSIONER COYLE: You've been out on these patrols? CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I've been watching them from a distance. Actually, no, I've never been on one, and I hope that I can always watch from a distance. CHIEF SMITH: You can see that 103,017 pounds of trash was removed off the roadsides last year. State and county probation is probably the alternative to incarceration that we're most all familiar with. That's usually a Page 64 February 5, 2002 program that's entered into at the direction or order of the court, the individual be placed on probation. And that's usually in lieu of a more substantial jail sentence. The in-house arrest program, that's a program that's administered by the county probation. It's utilized for minor offenses, and that's where they put the electronic bracelet around their ankle, and they have a day reporting system. Prosecution diversion program, that's administered by the state attorney's office primarily for domestic violence or minor offenses. Domestic violence is not a minor offense, but they do utilize it from there time to time when they go to domestic violence intervention programs and seek other types of mental-health treatment. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You know, that's one of the things that I'm extremely concerned about, domestic violence. By letting this offender who has just finished up beating the wife and the kids, beat them to a pulp, the wife calls to say, "Help me." They come out; they arrest this guy; get him straightened out for whatever overnight, you know. And maybe he sweats out the alcohol or whatever has prompted this, and then they send him right back home. Now he's angry because she's reported him, and -- but now she's afraid to report again. And you're putting him right back into that situation, and you're putting her in harm's way. I don't know that you have an answer for this. This is just a concern of mine. CHIEF SMITH: Commissioner, we have a very capable victim services unit that does a wonderful job with the victims of domestic violence. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there aren't repeat occurrences because I'm sure there are. But we walk them through the process of filing injunctions for protections through the courts. And once that is established, if they are right back in the same situation, then they've violated the law. And all we need to do is know about it, and that person is then immediately removed, and they Page 65 February 5, 2002 are also taken off the participation list of any of those programs. As you know, we have a very active role with regards of intervention and working with the women's shelter and all those things as you do. In fact, we, with the participation of the past board, declared Collier County a domestic violence free zone. And that's one of those things that we take very, very seriously and enforce very, very rigorously. So we share those concerns -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh. CHIEF SMITH: -- and we closely monitor those situations to make sure that that doesn't occur. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And I'm sensitive to it, because I had a friend beaten to death so... CHIEF SMITH: We also have a -- you may have heard about our victim notification program that we have where we have an automated system that calls the victim of any crime and let's them know that the perpetrator's about to be released from jail. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh. CHIEF SMITH: So we try to take those opportunities to warn the general public if that's going to occur. Next slide. Now, if you remember, we talked a little bit about the percentage of inmates who are booked in who have drug and alcohol use. And we run in-jail programs -- we run a number of in-jail programs. And one of them is Project Recovery, which is an independent, holistic, therapeutic substance abuse recovery program that's licensed separately by the department of HRS and recognized as a treatment model. What happens in those cell blocks is these individuals from the time they wake up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night are spent in discussion groups and education to help kick their substance-abuse problem. We had 545 participants in '01, and Page 66 February 5, 2002 recently we've expanded from 28 to 52 beds at the urging of the court system because they saw this problem as being greater than what we had the ability to compensate. So we've been able to move around some different housing units and provide larger numbers for those services. Another very important element -- next slide. Another very important element to providing in-jail programs is it keeps your inmates busy. They are not sitting around plotting their next crime or creating problems for the staff. So we try to institute these programs to keep our inmates busy and give them something to do. We have a GED block that we run in cooperation with the Collier County Public School System; 715 participated in '01, and 218 of those have received their GED diplomas. That's important when you relate that back to the fact that 45 percent of the males that were arrested year were employed (sic). We are trying to equip them with the means and ability that once they are released to maybe make an impact on their lives by acquiring employment. That's a large degree of what goes on in those programs is giving them job skills, teaching them to sit for an interview, how to fill out an application, and trying to convince them to be productive members of the community. Also 65 different area congregations or religious groups serve the inmate population on a weekly basis. There are 25 services or studies provided to the three facilities. And that's just another area that we utilize to help turn these undesirable behavior patterns around. Next slide. So in planning for additional jail beds, monitor trends in the inmate population, this is a big part of what I do on a daily basis. Plus this is what we hire consultants to come in here and validate for us. We should also seek alternatives to incarceration, understanding that there are those people that can be cut out of the hard-bed jail Page 67 February 5, 2002 mix. We also have to evaluate the effectiveness of our in-jail programs to make sure they are reaching the right pattern groups. And we need to assess -- make an assessment of the application of construction options. Oh, and before we go on, this is an interesting point. When we talk about the working weekender program, you know, the buses; when we talk about the therapeutic community, the GED block, religious initiatives, that none -- of that is funded with taxpayer dollars. We have a fund called the "Inmate Welfare Fund." Monies are deposited in that account from the profits derived from commissions on telephone calls and the items that are sold at the inmate commissary, such as candy bars, potato chips, and other items. That is put into a fund, and that fund is in -- earmarked to be expended upon inmate programs. So any television that's in the Naples Jail -- which they don't view television. We have a television system where we trap the cable channel and pick those things out that we show them, a lot of educational programming, a lot of the Discovery Channel, a lot of the Travel Channel -- they might see somewhere else they'd like to live -- those types of issues. We think that's more of a benefit than just a daily dose of whatever they want to watch on TV. All of that is done with inmate welfare funds, not taxpayers' dollars. And we're very proud of that accomplishment as well. Next slide. Okay. You see here provided for you is a shot of a tent, which is an alternative to traditional construction. Some people heavily advocate the use of tents. Florida statute provides for the regulation of tent cities at county jails. For your reference, that would be Statute 951.23. It lines out that they must be temporary, and there must be Page 68 February 5, 2002 plans underway to provide conventional housing; that they are built next to a jail so that the required infrastructure is provided such as showers, food service, other utilities, and adequate security. And the most important thing to understand is they have a very limited application. Next slide. The Florida (inaudible) jail standards are the rules that we daily run the facility with. And if you'll look at 16.08, you'll see those rules that have been provided for the use of tent cities: temporary basis, reduced (inaudible), sentenced or unsentenced misdemeanants, non-dangerous felons, or other inmates determined by the sheriff or chief correction officer not to present a risk of escape or threat to staff, other inmates, or themselves. Now, if you remember back to some of the slides we've shown you previously, in large, those people are already out of our population. We are 75 percent felon. We are a great degree pretrial. So that we do have some that would apply to that, there's not going to be an opportunity for a great deal of utilization such as they do in some other areas. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'd like to ask if there's anything in these standards that protect a neighborhood that's only 500 yards from that compound. I mean, being that the jail is surrounded by a community on all sides, how safe is it for those residents? CHIEF SMITH: That's part of what the sheriff is required to do before he presents to the board that he's going to open a tent city. He has to have conducted those assessments and issued those assurances to the board. And that is definitely a consideration that you would have to take in -- that you would have to make before proceeding that way. Go back to the previous slide, if you will. As you can see this is Maricopa County in Phoenix, Arizona. And you see that there is a traditional jail right next to this tent city. It's also interesting to note that there are four county jails in Maricopa Page 69 February 5, 2002 County. They have a huge inmate population so that when you get right down to it, probably only about 2 percent of their inmate population is detained in tents. You can see that it doesn't save you any ground space. In fact, it takes up hugh amounts of ground to put the perimeter down to make sure that it's secure. So, naturally, it wouldn't have much of an application here in Naples. You may be able to get away with it in Immokalee once the old facility is torn down, but you definitely are limited in application to where exactly you're going to put it. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: A point to make on that too. Immokalee, the infrastructure we have down there as far as the roads going to Immokalee, the amount of trips to go back and forth, I don't think we want to aim toward increasing traffic on Immokalee Road until that point in time we get a four-lane, at which point in time I would have objection. Also, don't forget, we do not have mosquito spraying in Immokalee. So you can't put these people in harm's way by exposing them to the Nile virus and all the other airborne diseases that mosquitoes carry until you have a spraying program in place. So the only place I could see that this would work right now would be on 41 on the county property, and they could use the present facility. But this is a great incentive for us to get Immokalee Road four lane. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I don't know how that got in there but... CHAIRMAN COLETTA: How did that work out? COMMISSIONER COYLE: That's a big stretch, but I do have a question. As you know, I favor this stuff. We've talked about this before. But 71 percent of your inmates are released within 48 hours. CHIEF SMITH: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Now, if those are felons, that means I presume they've been tried and sentenced and are being Page 70 February 5, 2002 transferred somewhere else, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. So if we've got a large transient population and 71 percent of the people are in the facility for 48 hours or less, I simply don't understand why something like this won't work. CHIEF SMITH: Back up for just a second, Commissioner. They have been tried and released. Most of those have posted bond and are awaiting trial in the community. But I hear what you're saying. If they are only staying a short amount of time, then why can't that short amount of time be in a tent? And the answer to that is that it could. But what you have to understand is that inmate is probably going to be accessed about a half-a-dozen times within that first 24 hours by having to go to 24-hour hearing. An attorney's going to come in and see that person. A bondsman very likely is going to see that person. Family members are going to try to get property such as, you know, the family paycheck so they can buy groceries until they're able to post bond for him. Get the keys to the car so they can move it off the traffic lane. There's any number of things that are going to occur. You're not going to let the general public access the compound where the tents are. So you're talking about tying up staff moving inmates back and forth. And you have to understand that any savings you might gain by not building traditional jail beds are going to be lost pretty quickly by having to add staff to take care of the inmate population. For instance, one of the things they teach us in jail design where we design new facilities, one 24-hour, 7-day-a-week staff position added into a facility will generate almost two-and-a-half million dollars of operational costs over the life cycle of that building. So when we go in and design facilities, we try to design them as operationally efficient as we possibly can. And that's one of the huge Page 71 February 5, 2002 downsides to tents when you talk about a jail population is the fact that you're going to be constantly in and out of that area with staff. But there could be application. Like I said, it's one of those things that if we were going to hire a consultant group to come in here and look, they could tell us if that's right for Collier County or not. They could compare it to some other jurisdictions in the area. They could look into other concerns that we might have like the temperate climate zone that we're in, any kind of infestation of bugs or mosquitoes that might be present, those types of things. It would be validated by someone from the outside that doesn't have a vested interest or doesn't have the -- doesn't want to make sure that the officers have to work in tents. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: I think that before we went to that point Commissioner Coyle would probably want to see a cost analysis done on a local basis before we spend $50 to $100,000 on a consultant to tell us what we might be able to learn in-house. I think Commissioner Coyle has got a very well-founded interest it what he's looking at. The cost relationship shouldn't be that difficult to prove one way or the other. CHIEF SMITH: You're exactly right. It shouldn't be. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Especially with other people having done it already. We can learn from them and gain from their figures; right? CHIEF SMITH: You possibly could, yes, ma'am. COMMISSIONER HENNING: There's a scenario that Commissioner Coyle played on was 71 percent of them are there for less than 48 hours. And I would imagine it would be at this facility here in Naples. CHIEF SMITH: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So before we -- knowing that the jail impact fees -- there's not enough there and having a need to Page 72 February 5, 2002 expand that facility, I think it would be prudent to take a look at something of this nature so we don't have to take out of the general fund to support such a long-term facility on a temporary basis. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yeah. I think the key -- and that's exactly it, taking it out of the general fund to do. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Right now the sheriffs budget represents 43.4 percent of the entire general fund. That's a big hit, and I don't believe that includes the proposed capital budget expenditures, which is rather substantial. I think the impact fee is a wonderful way to deal with it. But I've talked with the sheriff's department, and I understand their problem that the impact fee is designed to accommodate future growth, not to take care of deficiencies in current capacity. And I believe that with some innovative thinking we can find ways to use impact fees for developing the hard jail sites and compensate for those nonviolent offenders in the diminished security facilities. But, as I've told the sheriffs department, I'm not going to try to micromanage their business. They know a lot more about this than I do. I just propose ideas, and if they don't like them, they don't like them. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Well, we have a lot of say-so in the facilities because we do provide for, and the scenario with the expansion of the Naples Jail, I think, for my part of it, I would have to be convinced that putting up a temporary tent in the meantime is trying to save space and not having a -- I mean, the jail impact fees -- where I'm coming from -- jail impact fees needs to be supported by itself. And it doesn't need to be augmented by the general fund. COMMISSIONER COYLE: The real problem in determining this -- and I'll be quite frank about -- if right now we don't know how many trips in and out of the jail -- in and out of that facility would be Page 73 February 5, 2002 required for each inmate. We don't know how many people would be visiting them in that 48 hours, and without some hard numbers on that, it's very difficult for us to arrive at any conclusion. And I think that -- I'll tell you right now, if the sheriff's office doesn't think it's a good idea, we're not going to be able to collect the information to prove that it is. It's that simple. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Uh-huh. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So the only thing that I would ask for is that we take a good objective look at it, and if the sheriff's department feels they could somehow do it, I would be strongly supportive of it. But I don't want to get in the business of trying to ram something down their throat, because I don't think I'll ever get the information necessary to analyze this down to the finite detail we'd really need. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I totally agree with you. And if that would save dollars -- I mean, we have beautiful weather and all. But it's my community that's sitting right around that place. And I have a great concern for the safety of the people that are living -- who can look out their windows and see the jail, I mean, that close. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Sure. COMMISSIONER FIALA: You don't see that in these pictures here. I'm terribly concerned about that. So as they are gathering figures, if indeed that's what they do, I'd like to know what tent cities have been constructed in a neighborhood and how safe the people were in that neighborhood and if there were any problems that resulted from a tent city in those neighborhoods. Thank you. CHIEF SMITH: I think the biggest problem that we're going to run into if we were to put tents anywhere on this campus is that every square foot of this campus is already spoken for in the master plan. That's the immediate thing that we will run up against. Another thing that's important to remember is that in this expansion of the Naples Page 74 February 5, 2002 Jail system that over half of that square footage is in support space, not jail cells or not sleeping beds. So even if we didn't build any jail beds, you're still going to have the need for those others things as well. The other thing that you have to understand is that it is very difficult to recruit men and women going into this business. You're going to compound that if you explain to them that you're going to have to work in a tent. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I guess the frustrating part for me, Commissioner Henning, is that there's going to be about $5 million sitting in the impact fee fund for the construction ofjails that we're not going to be able to touch. We are going to have to take more -- two to three times that amount out of the general fund to build the jails. And then that amount of money is largely going to be staying in that fund for the impact fees that we won't be able to touch except for the incremental increase in capacity. And that's the frustrating part -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: I don't understand why we can't touch it. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Because in some cases -- we're rebuilding the Immokalee Jail, and we are increasing its capacity incrementally, but you can't use all of the impact fees for rebuilding existing capacity. COMMISSIONER FIALA: COMMISSIONER COYLE: Right. So that money, as I understand it, is going to largely stay in that impact fee fund. And it will stay there until it's used for additional capacity. And we're going to have to take money out of the general fund to rebuild a facility that's in really bad shape and needs to be improved. So that's the frustrating part. We've got a real budget crunch. We can't use the impact fees to fix the problem with the jails. We've got to use general fund revenues to Page 75 February 5, 2002 fix the current problems with the jail. And, quite frankly, it's a ridiculous situation, but we don't have -- the sheriffs department, and we don't have control over that. I've been hoping to get an interpretation with respect to what flexibility we have in getting relief in transferring money from some of these protected funds to do things that are necessary to be done. And I so far have been unsuccessful in getting an interpretation of that. CHAIRMAN COLETTA: Commissioner Coyle, we do appreciate what you're doing there. I don't mean to interrupt, but I have to leave for a speaking engagement. I'll be gone for about an hour and a half. I'm going to turn the meeting over to the Vice Chair, Commissioner Henning. They only thing I'm going to ask is decide when you want to take your lunch break, if you want to take a lunch break. And also when you come to the issue on Marco Island and Naples and the tax balance that goes back and forth, if you'd allow time for people in the audience to speak prior to going into that. And I'll come back just as soon as I finish this appointment. (Chairman Coletta leaves the workshop.) COMMISSIONER HENNING: If I can just expand upon that, the discussion is that there is ways through the clerk's office -- and I'm sure you're aware of this -- to bleed off interest off the impact fees to -- that's some relief. And we're going to be using those monies for the jail expansion at Naples -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: Yes. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- the Naples facility. COMMISSIONER COYLE: What I'm talking about-- and I don't want to delay this any longer, and I'll try to be very brief-- the state legislature give the school boards the opportunity to transfer certain monies between accounts because the state legislature cut Page 76 February 5, 2002 back funding. What I would like to do is determine if we can get similar relief because we're experiencing budget cutbacks too. So what I would like to see us do is go to the state legislature and say to them, "Look, we've got monies sitting in these funds we can't even touch. As a matter of fact, we're wasting it because it's there, and we can't do anything else with it." And that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm not talking about the sheriff's budget. I'm talking about some of the other impact fees that are sitting in those protected funds. And we will build a structure that we don't really need merely because those funds are there, and they are available, and if we don't use them, we're going to lose them. So my concern is that we should be given the flexibility to take these funds and use them where we need them used right now because we've got some tough budget problems. I can't imagine that the state legislature would not give us some kind of relief in that respect. And I would strongly recommend that we as a commission pursue that with our legislative representatives to see if we can get something -- something done in that respect. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Commissioner Coyle, it was the pleasure of the board, and it's not a decision-making thing, but I guess some direction. I can ask that question. I don't know if there's any way to do any tag-ons in this session? I think it's -- COMMISSIONER COYLE: It's probably too late now. COMMISSIONER CARTER: -- too late, but it doesn't mean that next year we shouldn't be putting that on our legislative agenda as an item that we want our delegation to explore and use. And I would think like you that it's practically a no-brainer to be able to get the flexibility to use the funds where you need them. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Exactly. The problem is we're way behind on impact fees, and unless we can use some of those impact fee reserves to do something with respect to improving our Page 77 February 5, 2002 infrastructure now, it's going to take us a very, very long time to get caught up. COMMISSIONER HENN1NG: Right. MR. MINOZZI: Tom, can I mention something about that? I think -- and I know that one time when I was commissioner of our fire department, a rationale that we had used for purchase -- at least partially toward the purchase of a new truck was that the deterioration was indeed speeded up as a result of the increase in growth. And that did count for a certain percentage of the ability to use the impact fees. And, you know, that's just another point -- another way to look at it. And that might, at least, be able to release part of that money for something like that. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Good. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Very good point. Greg, we need to kick this up a notch. We're way behind, so if there are some of the slides that are not really important. CHIEF SMITH: Sure. Go ahead and flip through. Oversight for jail operations, first of all, there's requirements of the sheriff's own policy being designated by the Board of County Commissioners as the chief correctional officer. He requires that we do in-house inspections. These are weekly fire and safety inspections by the staff. He has a staff inspection process where every two years they come in and do a thorough analysis of our jail system, and any inquiry by the Professional Responsibility Bureau that's the result of a citizen's complaint or inmate complaint is investigated as well. On top of that we are inspected by the Florida (inaudible) jail standards, Health and Rehabilitative Services, Department of Juvenile Justice, the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- COURT REPORTER: Excuse me. CHIEF SMITH: I'm sorry. That's the result of kicking it up a notch -- the Department of Children and Families, the local fire Page 78 February 5, 2002 marshal, as well as the U.S. Marshal Service. So you can see that we're one of the most regulated piece of real estate in the county. Also the courts have oversight in jail operations as that any inmate may seek remedy or relief in the court system if he thinks that the conditions of his confinement are unfair or cruel and unusual. Jails are very prone to suits relative to conditions of confinement. In any given day, there are inmates over there trying to think of things to sue for. And a big part of what we do every day is answer these pleadings and complaints that are filed with the court system relative to the way an inmate doesn't like to be treated. So the courts have a lot of oversight and a lot of regulatory authority regarding jails, insofar as that when they decide a case that case becomes case law. And almost every piece of case law arrives from a cruel and unusual punishment has a application to local jail operations. Next slide. Also accreditation, the Collier County jail system is nationally accredited by two accredited boards -- excuse me -- nationally accredited by one and state accredited by the other. The Florida Commission on Correctional Accreditation has 262 standards of which we adhere to. And the National Commission on Correctional Healthcare has 69 standards that we adhere to to receive those certificates of accreditation. So that ends the presentation on jail facilities. Any questions before we go on to anything else? COMMISSIONER HENNING: Any questions from the commissioners? (No response.) CHIEF SMITH: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Next presentator (sic). CHIEF SMITH: I'm just going to talk briefly about some other capital projects that Collier County Sheriff's Office has. This is a list of our prioritized projects. Of course, the jail expansions; followed Page 79 February 5, 2002 by a special-operations building that we're currently occupying that is in a state of disrepair; the Everglades substation building that we do not own, the county does not own that we're currently inhabiting is in pretty bad repair. The communications expansion, I think there's plans currently underway to build a communications facility to service county-wide needs in that regard. We've talked to the county numerous times about a fleet facility to get out of the cramped quarters that we are currently leasing. There is a need by way of a consultant study to provide OrangeTree with a substation now. East Naples and North Naples substations are in need of expansion. Building J2 is part of the sheriffs admin space that has yet to be planned or funded as part of the campus plan, and there is also proposed an eventual Fiddler's Creek substation. And this is just some of that history as opposed to these projects, when they've been requested, when they've been funded, so that you understand just exactly where we're at with all of these requests. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Is there any opportunity to combine your fleet facility requirements with the county's? CHIEF SMITH: I think that's been discussed previously. I really have lost the bead on where we're at with that. Crystal, can you give us some help? MS. KINZEL: Commissioner, we've explored that option for the last-- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Your name for the record. MS. KINZEL: Oh, I'm sorry. Crystal Kinzel, finance director with the sheriffs office. We've explored that option numerous times, at least three in my 13 years experience with the sheriffs office. And interestingly enough, the fleet operations do fall under the finance division for the sheriffs office. Page 80 February 5, 2002 Really the best solution that we have addressed -- because you have to recognize that we handle primarily Fords, primarily marked patrol units, high-impact vehicles. County maintenance works on a lot of heavy machinery, road equipment, different types of vehicle maintenance. We've looked at doing a joint location but with separate operations simply because of the priority level that we have on road patrol. But we've looked at everything from a different location in the current industrial park, which was rejected by the board. We were going to explore expansion of a mutual site at the county landfill. I think that's been delayed based on the county landfill issues that have come before the commission. And we've also looked at actually taking over the County Barn facility should the county fleet maintenance group have a separate facility constructed. So we have worked very closely with the county to try to come up with a joint solution to both the county's fleet needs and our own. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Is there a recommendation or a list of alternatives? MS. KINZEL: At this point I think we were looking to have a facility -- Tom, maybe you want to jump in, the latest on that. MR. OLLIFF: No. MS. KINZEL: Okay, thanks. MR. OLLIFF: That's the short answer. The modified short answer is that the site location that we have been looking at is tied up in the governor's order in terms of that property that it is in a moratoria until a plan can be developed around 951. So until we can get some better schedule about what's going to be allowed in that area, that is our only real viable site that we've been able to come up with. And we've got a number of fleet-type facilities that we're looking at co-housing, cohabitating a single location so that they can Page 81 February 5, 2002 share fuel, and they can share mechanic use and a lot of things, including the sheriffs agency. But until we can get some resolution of that, we're probably not moving forward in any real direction so that we're not spending money not in the right place. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. CHIEF SMITH: Any other questions? (No response.) CHIEF SMITH: Okay. That will conclude my part of the presentation. MS. KINZEL: And, Commissioners, I guess this might be a point to discuss either lunch or break or if you would like us to go on. I have only a few slides on the overall review of the sheriffs budget. We can either shorten that, come back to it at your will. We also have a short presentation on the community-oriented policing projects that the sheriffs been involved with to give the community an idea of what we have been doing out there. And you haven't gotten to public speakers. COMMISSIONER HENNING: That's two presentations? MS. KINZEL: Right, two small. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Why don't we continue, Commissioners, and we'll just cut out some of that if we can, cut to the chase and go to public speakers. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Mr. Chairman, if I could recommend. I think most are familiar with the community-oriented policing program, and we can read right here what's been done. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. MS. KINZEL: Okay. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I don't know that these need to be repeated. COMMISSIONER CARTER: I don't think so. Page 82 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER HENNING: I'm game for that. MS. KINZEL: Then as quickly as your court reporter can type, I'll try to speak clearly and slowly but... To give the commission an idea, we start our budget process right now in preparation for the June 1 submission date to the board. We send packages to our captains and our lieutenants in operations. They complete a package of their wants, their needs for the next operational year. That then goes through a lengthy process of review within the sheriffs office. We take it to the division captains and directors. Then it goes to the chiefs and undersheriff, and finally we review the budget with the sheriff in April after it's already had many, many cuts in many areas. That final review is then approved. We prepare a book -- and each of the commissioners received a book-- about 250 pages of detailed information on the entire operations of the sheriffs budget. Through the summer we try to do the community presentations. We do the workshop with the board in more detail on our budget proposal. And then in September the board holds the public hearings, and our operational budget takes effect October 1. Next slide. The sheriffs budget is broken down, and most of you have seen this. This comes in a lot of our general presentations throughout the community. Seventy-five percent of what we do is law enforcement related, 23 percent corrections, and another 2 percent on the judicial and the court system. Next slide. Patrol takes up the majority of our dollars, closely followed by corrections, then criminal investigations. Special operations includes our traffic operations and also SWAT, canine, and marine patrols. Youth or preventive services, that is crime prevention. Then we do have the fleet services, organized crime, communications, down into the administrative areas of the sheriffs office. Next slide. Eighty percent of the sheriffs funding is related directly to Page 83 February 5, 2002 personal services, people to do the things that we do. Another 15 percent is for operational items, what we discussed with the jail; inmate clothing, inmate health, liability insurance, vehicle insurance. That only makes up about 15 percent of the cost of the sheriffs budget. Another 5 percent is attributed to capital, and that would include vehicles, boats, computers, and replacement items for the sheriffs operation. Next slide. The sheriff-- thank you, Commissioner Henning, for the compliment on grants. I think we have been very successful. Annually we get about $6 million in federal and state grants. We have also the board appropriation from general fund and other revenues including interest earned at about $2.6 million. The board does provide the facilities, so I've included that in the use of funds paid by the board. It's about a million-six to operate rental property, leases, and utilities. And we -- again you see corrections, judicial and law enforcement split accordingly, including the federal and state grant dollars. Next. One of the issues and the reason for this slide -- even though it's a little cartoonish -- we try to get across the serious point to the community 70 percent of the sheriffs office activities are 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. That is a lot different from a business operation that perhaps would run 5 days a week for 8 hours a day. And as Chief Smith indicated, it takes about 5 people to fill one post for a 24-hour position. So when you look at the staffing numbers of the sheriffs office, you have to recognize that most of what we do in investigations, communications, road patrol, those are 24 hours a day. And we have to make sure that it's sufficiently staffed for all of those hours. Now, through our processes of comp stat and other targeting or focused approaches to law enforcement, we are able to review peak periods and schedule according to those peak periods. But we do Page 84 February 5, 2002 have to have at least minimal coverage for 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Next. This is just a little bit different breakdown of our staffing; certified positions, civilian positions, and certified corrections officers. You see that the majority of our staffing is certified law enforcement with almost 600 positions related. Eighty-six positions for the current year are a grant funded out of the total allocation of 1100 positions. Next. These are the historical sheriff budget increase costs going back to '92. And you can see that our budget usually maintains a steady level until we have a pay-plan year, which requires catch-up funding. And I think the board -- we really appreciate the pay-plan implementation that was significant this year. We have been successful -- I have the next slide coming up -- that shows you in May of 2000, when the board approved the initial pay plan, we saw an immediate result in our ability to hire and staff up. And this goes to your question, Commissioner Fiala. You'll see that we have been able to fill those positions with paychecks actually issued to members. It was dramatic. We had been tracking them every three or four months from payroll. And we were even surprised to see just the steady and dramatic increase in our ability to recruit with the new pay plan that's been established. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Could I ask one question. Why is the red line based on actual paychecks issued rather than actual number of employees? MS. KINZEL: Well, we see that as an indicator of our actual employees, the number of people that are filling a slot that requires a paycheck. And that would consolidate our part-timers, you know, some of those people that are filling a slot. So they really aren't a vacancy because we are paying them to do a job. So we use paychecks issued as a reflection of our actual numbers of employees, Page 85 February 5, 2002 whether full time or part time. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. Full-time equivalents would be more meaningful to me. MS. KINZEL: Okay. We'll be glad to put that up there. We have very few part-timers, Commissioners. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. MS. KINZEL: The majority of our staffing is full time. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So for all intents and purposes, you're telling me that number represents employees. You currently have 1,053 employees on board. MS. KINZEL: Right. And we think that's actually a more current -- whether they are part time or even temporary slots that we fill right now. Because of our hiring program, we can now -- when we've identified an applicant to a certain point through the process, we can actually put them on a temporary basis until they've completed the hiring process. And we try to then keep them interested in a job in the sheriff's office while they're going through. As we've explained previously many times probably to the board, we have a rather lengthy hiring process that includes polygraph, background check, drug screening, and physical testing. So it takes some time to get members recruited. Actually, those are the only focused areas that we heard from commissioners specifically to address some of the staffing, some of the pay-plan issues. We're open and available to questions. Beyond that -- and that was the abbreviated version. We'll be glad to answer anything else. And if the commission -- if you do have other questions prior to the summer workshop, we'll be glad to be prepared to respond to those. If you get them to us ahead of time, we'll have specific charts and graphs available for you as to the number of full-time equivalents. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Fiala. Page 86 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER FIALA: Thank you, yes. My first questions is we have a situation on Marco Island where we have taken off 17 officers because Marco voted to have their own police department and reallocated them to other areas. Two questions, two problems. Number 1 is how can we deduct the amount that we would pay those officers from the taxes that are paid by Marco Islanders, not incorporated into something else? I realize everything else -- you've put on a great presentation today to let us know where all the rest of the dollars go. And I have to say that I've also seen a list of all of the different duties that the sheriff's office gives to all of us that we never see. I mean, we never know that they're even going on because they are day-to-day routine, and it's done so well. MS. KINZEL: Thank you. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But there are 17 officers that we have seen taken off Marco Island and put to another area. This is the number I'd heard. I was wondering, No. 1, if we could just deduct that off the top being that they're not filled positions anyway so that nobody else's taxes would go up, and just so that level would go down a little bit over there on Marco. MS. KINZEL: It was eight deputies that were removed at the time that the MSTU issue came up with Marco Island. And during that year the sheriff's budget was reduced by $1.6 million so that all of the taxpayers in Collier County were not assessed taxes for that portion of salaries attributable to those eight deputies' salaries. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And that's great that we all benefited, but the thing is that the Marco Islanders didn't benefit by losing those eight officers. I believe that -- Bill Moss, did you have a presentation that you would like to -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Why don't we finish up with the budget questions from the commissioners -- Page 87 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. This directly addresses, but I'll come back--okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And we are going to get to that subject, and the councilman from the City of Naples is here. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. Very good, thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Just one brief question. With respect to the issue of rent buildings, Object Code 644100 in the budget itself. This is just an accounting question, and I don't understand what that means. Does it mean that you are paying rent for buildings that the county provides, or you're paying rent to some third party for-- MS. KINZEL: The county is paying the rent on behalf of the sheriff using those facilities. So that transaction goes through county funding through the Clerk of Courts' financial process. But those costs are attributable to the facilities that the sheriff's office is using. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Okay. So we're renting $895,000 a year in facilities? MS. KINZEL: Yes, Commissioner. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Carter. COMMISSIONER CARTER: No questions. COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think it's an appropriate time to go to public speakers if nobody else has any other input. So why don't we start with -- COURT REPORTER: I need a break, please. five COMMISSIONER HENNING: COMMISSIONER HENNING: minutes. (A break was held.) COMMISSIONER HENNING: Five minutes? Okay. We're going to go to break for Now's the most important time of the program is we go to public speakers, and our county manager Page 88 February 5, 2002 has some slips if you want to sign up to speak at this workshop, and I think it's an appropriate time to go to Councilman Minozzi representing the City of Marco Island. MR. MINOZZI: Okay. Thank you. The reason that I'm here, along with some representatives from the City of Naples and our city manager is that there is also what we consider to be an injustice in a very small part of the sheriffs funding. I'm looking at page 25 just to point out what we're talking about -- and it's just a few slides back -- that lists all of the services and functions that are provided by the sheriffs office. And Marco Island, I believe, pays about $6 million a year-- the taxpayers of Marco Island pay about $6 million a year, and I think combined with Naples -- Bill knows that number, but it's a pretty high number. We have no objection to virtually all of this except for one small part. Everything on this list other than patrol, we have no problem with. And as far as patrol goes, it's only a very small part of it. And this goes back to when Marco Island incorporated and became a city. At that time we had put in our own police department. And, of course, the police department is being paid by the taxpayers of Marco Island and rightfully so. At that time one function of the sheriffs office was no longer required by the city and that is the very specific road patrol, which we had calculated-- the numbers are different, but I'm going to say -- and I think Bill -- Mr. Moss has a little bit more clearer picture of exactly the number, but I'm saying between $1 and $2 million that I feel that we are unjustly being charged for services that we are simply not receiving. We don't need them. I'm not complaining that we're not receiving the services. We don't need them. The services are provided by our own people. Yet we are paying as if we were receiving these services. Now, again, I'll repeat, we are receiving Page 89 February 5, 2002 some service from the sheriffs department even in regard to road patrol, but it's very minimal and certainly not justified by this amount of $1 to $2 million that really represents a double taxation. We're asking along with the City of Naples to return back to the previous MSTU -- and just as an example, it was mentioned before by Ms. Kinzel that at the time when -- and, frankly, I felt the number of patrols that were taken off of Marco was higher, but in any event, whatever that credit was at that time was credited to the taxpayers of the entire county because at that point rather than the sheriffs being funded through this MSTU, everything now went into the general fund. But yet, of course -- and not that I'm asking it, but yet the charges that we're paying are not being paid by the entire county; they're being paid only by Marco Island. So a credit came to everybody. The charge comes to only the city itself. And therein lies the imbalance. And I'd like to ask our city manager, Bill Moss, to explain in more detail -- I know we have sent a detailed outline to all of the commissioners. And I'd like Bill to see if we can get more detail exactly what we're asking for. MR. MOSS: Thank you, Councilman. Vice-chair, Commissioners, Mr. Olliff. The councilman is correct. A briefing paper was offered to you on Friday. Essentially our request -- when I say "our," I'm speaking on behalf of the City of Marco Island and the City of Naples. We would like the Board of County Commissioners to consider reinstatement of the tax policy that was in place for 19 years from 1980 to 1999, wherein the sheriffs budget was partially funded by the general fund millage rate and the unincorporated general fund MSTD. This was a policy that was implemented following several years of studies and negotiations between the City of Naples and the Board Page 90 February 5, 2002 of County Commissioners, and it created what was called the "doughnut theory," the doughnut being the urban area or the incorporated areas, the hole of the doughnut, and the rest being the unincorporated areas of Collier County. That theory recognized that the county would continue to grow. The predominance of this growth would be in the unincorporated areas. As urban growth increased, the sheriff's office would be required to provide the services that were necessary and that he is constitutionally required to provide. The growth would be much greater in the unincorporated areas than in the city. The city had its own police department, and, therefore, it had to deal with its own growth issues internally, while as the county continued to expand in the unincorporated areas, the sheriff's funding would have to somehow address. What this theory did by creating the MSTU to fund a portion of the sheriff's road patrol was to recognize the inequities, okay. To reimplement and restate the policy would simply mean a reduction of the county-wide general fund millage rate and an increase of the unincorporated general MSTDs. Essentially what this would involve is a shifting of $9 million. Currently, your general fund collects approximately $129. What this would do would reduce that to 120 and increase the collections from the unincorporated general MSTD by the $9 million. This would have an impact on both the incorporated property owners as well as the unincorporated. For the incorporated property owners, the millage rate would increase by about.27 mills; for the unincorporated areas the increase would be about. 17 mills -- the net increase because remember we're reducing the general fund and then increasing the MSTD. And that essentially summarizes our request to the board. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Councilman, anything to add? MR. MINOZZI: No. I think that he explained it quite well Page 91 February 5, 2002 other than the fact -- again, just to reiterate that it is an imbalance, and we're hoping that you will see fit to look into this and correct that imbalance. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I think we have some other speakers -- MR. MINOZZI: Yes. I believe there are some speakers here from the City of Naples. COMMISSIONER HENNING: So, Tom, would you call them up, please? MR. OLLIFF: Mr. Chairman, you also have the mayor of the City of Naples, Bonnie McKenzie, registered to speak, and I'm assuming that Kevin Rambosk will probably want to follow her as well. COMMISSIONER HENNING: And I'm not real sure or certain that these speakers (sic) are working, so I think it would be more beneficial to sit down over here with the rest of us. I'm not even sure if those are working. COMMISSIONER CARTER: This one's live. MR. RAMBOSK: Good morning, Chairman and members of the commission, staff of the sheriffs office. First thing I'd like to point out very clearly is -- COMMISSIONER HENNING: Your name for the record. MR. RAMBOSK: Kevin Rambosk, city manager with the City of Naples -- that the City of Naples holds in the highest regard the sheriff's office and all the members of the staff here, and that's not the question that we're raising along with the City of Marco Island. As you're aware, back in the 1980s and actually from the mid- 1970s the City of Naples and the county of Collier had entered into discussions with regard to how to deal with this question of double taxation. I think we are all well aware of what we can and cannot do legally. I think the question stems more from the enormous growth Page 92 February 5, 2002 that has occurred in the county and will continue to occur to have a draw on the resources of the sheriff's office, pulling them away from the city, and utilizing them where they are the most effective, and that's where that population growth is. So on behalf of the City of Naples and with the resolution that was sent to you by the City of Naples by the council, we are in full support of returning to the original MS TD that was developed in order to resolve this question so many years ago. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Thank you. Mayor. MAYOR McKENZIE: Apparently, I get to say "me too." I don't really have a presentation to entertain you. I did wear the McKenzie tartan, but it probably didn't do much for you. I'd like to reiterate to you-- Bonnie McKenzie, mayor of the City of Naples. I'd like to reiterate what Mr. Rambosk said about thanking the Board of County Commissioners, Mr. Olliff and his staff, the sheriff's office for the extraordinary level of cooperation that we have enjoyed during my two years as mayor. And I'm hopeful that it will continue on the same level. I think we work well together. But I do want to, on behalf of the City Council and the City of Naples, reiterate our support for Mr. Minozzi and Mr. Moss's position to ask the Board of County Commissioners to take another look from the position of the municipalities within the county. Thank you very much. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. Next speaker. MR. OLLIFF: The only other registered speaker that I have this morning, Mr. Chairman, is Janet Vasey I don't know if anyone else in the audience is interested. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Is anyone else interested in signing up to speak at the workshop? Last public speaker. MS. VASEY: Hello. Janet Vasey for the record. Good Page 93 February 5, 2002 afternoon, everyone. I wanted to bring to your attention that the productivity committee took a look at this issue in June of 1999 when all of these transfers were occurring, and we considered the transfers to be appropriate. And you can get a copy of this -- I think it would be in the budget office. We found that there was a legal basis to include all sheriff's costs in the county-wide general fund. We also found that it was reasonable to believe that drug interdiction efforts and gang control in Immokalee had a beneficial effect throughout the county extending into the cities. If drugs are readily available -- if drugs are not readily available, they will not find their way into county or city schools. The sheriff's office provides an operational capacity that's available county-wide that can be used to back up city police departments and deter crimes. Now, these are all the issues that were talked about in this report. I'd also like to address the Marco/Naples proposal. I only had a chance to look at it quickly this morning. But I think there is some problems with the way these calculations were done. The original plan that we had for the unincorporated area of the sheriff's office funding was that it was the Marco Island road patrols, the Everglades road patrols, and the Immokalee road patrols. These three patrols comprised the $6 million and 11 percent of sheriff's costs that were transferred a couple of years ago. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Did you say Immokalee also? MS. VASEY: Right. Marco, Everglades, and Immokalee were the three outlying areas that were included. And the idea was that they were so far away that they didn't affect the cities. So that's why they were put in the unincorporated area originally, and that's where they stayed for 18 years, something like that. Then the decision was made that, no, there was a legal basis to Page 94 February 5, 2002 include them county-wide and that change was made. So that's where you get the $6 million that was originally transferred and the 11 percent. Now, the 1 1 percent is very important. In this proposal the Naples/Marco area says that we should go back to the old methodology and use that 1 1 percent again, which would then be $9 million that should be transferred back to the unincorporated area. Well, the problem with that is the 11 percent doesn't mean anything now. Because if you look back where it originally came from, there is no Marco road patrol. Everglade City, if you use the logic of this report, should pay separately for their own sheriffs services, and all you're left with is Immokalee road patrols. And Immokalee road patrols are only about $5 million. So it's not 9; it's only about 5, 5 1/2. So this is really an important concept. There's nothing magic about the 1 1 percent. And the productivity committee already found out controlling crime in Immokalee does benefit the entire county, including the cities. And also, if you're controlling the crime out in Immokalee, these are the same people that are coming into the cities to work. So there's got to be some benefit to doing that. At least they are coming into Naples. I don't know if they are coming into Marco. I would suggest that all of these facts can be verified by Crystal Kinzel and Mike Smykowski, at least the financial ones. The budget funding policy is not a science; it's closer to an art. You need to look at the whole system; it's not just one piece. While all the sheriffs costs are spread to everyone, even those that don't really use them that much, this is not too dissimilar from the beach situation. All beach costs are spread to the entire county residents even though Immokalee residents will seldom if ever use Marco beaches. So maybe Marco Island and the City of Naples should pay for their own beaches. Now, I'm not really proposing that, but that's a very similar kind of argument. Page 95 February 5, 2002 And, also, along that same conceptual line, cities generally understand that their police forces are additive costs to county sheriffs services. If they really want to more fully utilize the sheriffs services, they have that option. They can eliminate, reduce their police department, and the unincorporated areas will not object. And now I'd like to speak as a resident of the unincorporated area since no one else is here to speak for us. And I can do that because I'm a former resident of District 5. I'm a current resident of District 3, and my father-- who I can also speak for -- is a resident of District 2. And I can tell you from our perspective, we don't want to see this change. The current tax policy is legal. It's been tested in court, and it's appropriate to spread all sheriffs costs throughout the county. And the current tax policy recognizes that Immokalee road patrols make all of us safer, as I said before, and then there are also these other funding inequities. You can start -- if you want to start changing how funding is done, then the first thing that you can do is reverse the parks and recreation transfer. That was done at the same time as the sheriffs one. The sheriffs program was moved from unincorporated to general fund for all the county. And parks and rec was moved from all of the county to the unincorporated as kind of a quid pro quo transfer. So as a member of the unincorporated area, I would like to see that switched back. And I can tell you right now that that cost was $5 million at the original switch, and it's $8 million now. And if the Immokalee road patrol is only $5 million, I'm going to have a net decrease in my taxes. And, also, as a resident of the unincorporated area, I don't want to pay for Marco's beaches. So it's not a simple question; it's not just one issue. So if you're going to look at this, I would respectfully recommend that you have Page 96 February 5, 2002 to look at all of it. Thank you very much. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Before you go, Janet, as I was reading this -- let me say I didn't even just read it. I was really studying it. And I've been looking at the entire issue. I have to tell you from Marco Island's point of view rather than the city -- but the city falls into the same thing. And what I was trying to think of-- you know me, I always bring everything down to basics, try to look at it from a fair point of view with no slants. And what I could see was the myriad of services that the sheriffs office provides. And I don't care where it is in the entire county, we all benefit in one way or another, and I think we should all pay for that. I don't care where you live; you should. The only problem that I -- the only little glitch -- and it's just a little one, not a $9 million glitch in my opinion -- is that if they took eight -- Crystal said eight people off Marco Island. Those are eight people that aren't there, period, then I don't think Marco should pay for them, but I don't think the rest of the county's taxes should be increased. I mean, I just think theirs should be decreased by that much and that eight should be lopped off the top of how many employees that the sheriffs office thinks they still need to pay for. There's that disparity there of about 80 employees or something. Anyway, just lop that off of that. We don't have to pay for it; it doesn't have to be budgeted, and yet Marco doesn't have to pay for a service they are not receiving and same with the City of Naples. To me that seems fair. If you -- and there's nothing with those eight deputies, road patrol deputies, that any of the rest of the county would benefit by. So I don't know, maybe there's $700,000 or something for eight. I don't know what that is, but maybe that could be. Do you figure that's a workable situation? MS. VASEY: Well, I think that's happened in the last -- within Page 97 February 5, 2002 a couple of years ago. Over time those people were being moved off Marco, and while I don't really speak for the sheriffs department, it seems that they did re-utilize those people, then, in other areas. They moved them to-- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. MS. VASEY: -- different jobs and different functions. And I don't think they asked for budget increases for personnel in those years recognizing that transfer. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. MS. VASEY: Now if that's good, bad, or indifferent, I don't know. But I think that's what happened to some of those people, and they may -- I would assume that they are supporting people in other areas. COMMISSIONER FIALA: They are, and that's why I feel that the sheriffs budget doesn't need to go up. We just need -- we just need to reduce the number of budgeted employees that aren't really filled and normally never get filled really -- MS. KINZEL: But, Commissioner Fiala, we did that. In the year that this transfer took place, we reduced the sheriffs budget by eight budgeted slots. The $1.6 million was a specific direct reduction to the sheriffs budget in that year that the transfer took place. COMMISSIONER FIALA: But it wasn't reduced from Marco -- MS. KINZEL: It was reduced for every taxpayer that pays into the county-wide general fund, yes, it was. That came off of the whole pot. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Is that fair to Marco Islanders? MS. KINZEL: Well, maybe I should speak as a citizen of Golden Gate. But, for example, the sheriffs services -- and because case law has supported this that the sheriffs services are county-wide. If you think of it similarly, I live in Golden Gate, for example. I don't Page 98 February 5, 2002 pay for 20 or 30 deputies only within Golden Gate. I pay for every district. I pay for Immokalee; I pay for Marco; I pay for East Naples; any other-- COMMISSIONER FIALA: I hate to interrupt you, but you don't pay for Marco. MS. KINZEL: Yes, we do. COMMISSIONER FIALA: They pay for their own road patrol. MS. KINZEL: But for the 13 deputies that are still assigned to Marco Island as a direct request of the council at the time Marco did incorporate, those 13 deputies remain functional on Marco Island, and we pay for those on a county-wide basis, as all taxpayers throughout the county pay, because they service not only Marco, but they would service Goodland and Isles of Capri. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Right. And that's good, and I'm not talking about them, nor am I talking about any of the other services of You know I'm an advocate for the sheriffs the sheriffs offices. office -- MS. KINZEL: Thank you. We -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: -- and I always have been, and I will always remain that way. MS. KINZEL: Right. COMMISSIONER FIALA: I'm just talking about fairness for these eight people that aren't there anymore, and why should -- nobody else should have to pay for them. But why should Marco have to pay for them? MS. KINZEL: I think one of the sheriffs examples and has always struck home with me, if you look at what's going on in the country right now with terrorism, I hope that the National Guard never has to come to Collier County. I hope the Department of Defense -- I hope they fight somewhere else and they never have to come here, but we as citizens pay for the availability of those services Page 99 February 5, 2002 to protect our country, our city, our county. We don't see those directly on our streets, and as I said, I hope I never do as a citizen. But as a society or as county government, we pay for the availability of those services. Just as if there's an incident in Immokalee -- and we would send whatever we need as a sheriffs office to Immokalee to address those situations -- we have sent many people to Marco in situations that have happened there that were stationed in East Naples or Everglades. You have to look at the sheriffs office function as a county-wide resource, and we're not paying for just those people that are sitting in a substation that's designated within our district, but we are paying for the availability and the capacity of the sheriffs office as a whole to respond to anything that goes on in this county. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Councilman, you had a question? MR. MINOZZI: Yes. I would like to respond with a few points, and with all due respect, I think that was a great answer that was given, but I think it's an answer to a totally different question. The fact is is that Marco Island pays more than -- the citizens of Marco Island pay more than $5 million a year for sheriffs services, and included in that is service for Immokalee. The fact that Immokalee crime -- we're already paying for that. We're not telling you we don't want to pay for that. I'm isolating the very specific, exactly what Donna is saying. I'm not saying I don't want to pay for the availability that you're bringing up. We are paying for that, and those taxes go up like everybody else's taxes go up, and we pay them, and we don't complain about that. I'm talking very specifically about road patrol which we no longer have from the sheriffs department on Marco. And, by the way, if I didn't say it, this is in no way, shape, or form any complaint about the sheriffs department because I think they do Page 100 February 5, 2002 a fantastic job -- MS. KINZEL: Thank you. MR. MINOZZI: -- all the way around. But to prove my point, at the time that we were asking -- we were considering putting in our own police department, one of options that was put forward was instead of hiring your own police department, we'll get additional deputies on Marco. And I don't have it with me, but I've got the quote in writing. It would cost -- the sheriff's department said, yes, you can put anybody you want on there for a quarter of a million dollars a year per deputy, 24 hours -- that's three, actually three, per shift. So if we wanted to add ten extra people or-- I'm sorry-- if we wanted to add eight extra shifts -- eight extra full-shift people, that would have cost us $2 million. So on one hand you're telling me that we cover everybody anyway, but if I want a little bit extra on the island, you've got to pay $100,000 a person. But now you took eight people away, all of a sudden that $100,000 a person doesn't exist? We shouldn't get the credit for that? And the fact that you're saying that we got -- the entire county did get credit when the sheriff's budget was reduced by those eight people, the entire county is not paying for the shift -- for the road patrol of Marco Island. I don't except them to, but, in other words, you're comparing apples and oranges. And I'll repeat it because I think it's very important. We are not asking for anything special. We are just simply asking for equality. We are not complaining about the fact that the availability is there. The fact is that we have mutual aid. There are times when the deputies need Marco's help, and we're there to help, as the sheriff's department is there when-- they are on backup call for us. But we're paying for that. That's part of the $5 million that we're paying. That's not the money I'm talking about. I'm talking about Page 101 February 5, 2002 specifically the money for the road patrols which do not exist, and that's what we're talking about, and I'm hoping that that can be understood. And that's exactly -- and that's exactly what Donna's saying. COMMISSIONER FIALA: yes. That's exactly what we're saying, MR. MINOZZI: Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Commissioner Coyle. COMMISSIONER COYLE: I think the basic question is, whenever a city establishes its own police force, is there a corresponding reduction in the budget for the county? Generally, I've heard the argument that there's no corresponding reduction, but if we take that to its ultimate conclusion, which is that in addition to Naples and Marco, Golden Gate City incorporates and has their own police, Immokalee someday incorporates and has their own, then you ask the same question then. Is there a corresponding decrease in the sheriff's budget? And if we use the same argument we're using today, the answer is -- would be no. There would not be a corresponding decrease in the sheriff's budget, although more and more of the people are coming under the jurisdiction of the city's police forces themselves. It is a complex problem as Janet Vasey has pointed out. And there are dozens of other inequities in the way this stuff is all apportioned out. I believe the primary issue is road patrol, and the primary issue is only a portion of road patrol, because road patrol does perform some other functions that our city police perhaps do not perform. I have no way of defining that and splitting it out, but it seems to me that the municipalities should have some offsetting capability with respect to the security they themselves provide. They also do things like arrest criminals at Coastland Mall who might otherwise have created -- caused crimes -- committed crimes in other Page 102 February 5, 2002 areas. So I think we both do those kinds of things, both the sheriff and the city. The city, as sometimes does, does drug busts. And I really have -- except for the last time when I complained about this, when I was on city council, I have not seen sheriffs road patrol in my neighborhood or anywhere nearby. The last time I complained about this I saw one on my street the next day, so I think they were looking for me. But I don't want to diminish the sheriff's office contributions either. I think they are doing a great job, and despite the fact that I criticize some of the things, they are really a great organization and do a great job. But you can't argue that the city's presence with its police force has no impact outside its boundaries, but the sheriff's office and its force has an impact within the city's boundaries. I think it works both ways, and I think you have to look at it from that standpoint. It's not a one-way street; it's a two-way street. And having said that, I don't have the slightest idea how to solve this problem. It's a very difficult problem to solve. From the standpoint of the people who live in the City of Naples, I think it is a great idea to go back to the old formula. But as Janet just pointed out, if you do that, why don't you transfer parks and recreation back, too, and that creates a lot of difficulties. I think if we're going to do anything, we need to sit down and understand it a little better and analyze this. I think there are other issues we haven't even brought up here that need to be analyzed, and it's a complex process, and I would hope we wouldn't end it today, that we would continue to look at it and see if we can't get a better handle on this. COMMISSIONER CARTER: Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, everyone that's around this table this morning, the Board of County Commissioners set this policy in June of 1999. It was a Page 103 February 5, 2002 policy decision by the Board of County Commissioners, and when you have the sheriff's budget review, and you look at everything else, this may be a topic of discussion. But as been stated, you cannot have this discussion in isolation. And Mr. Smykowski can quote for you chapter and verse rulings upheld by the Florida Supreme Court. And we did this not lightly, but within a legal boundary. And that's all I'm going to say this morning. Policy -- in order to reverse this policy, they need to do that in a regular-- constitute a Board of County Commissioners' meeting. COMMISSIONER COYLE: And I think we need a lot more analysis about the issue, particularly financial information. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh -huh. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Mr. Smykowski. MR. SMYKOWSKI: For the record, Michael Smykowski, budget director. A few members have mentioned going back to the old doughnut theory, which was a fallout of a 1980 dual taxation settlement agreement between the City of Naples and Collier County as prepared by Frank Spence. Subsequent to that 1980.dual taxation settlement agreement, the Florida Supreme Court ruled specifically and direct on point, and David Weigel's office had prepared a legal opinion in support of this issue when we brought it forward as a recommended budget policy change in June of 1999. And the ruling itself (as read): "The Supreme Court of Florida approved the use of property taxes to fund the Palm Beach County sheriff's road patrol and detective division, even though the four municipalities within Palm Beach County have their own police forces." So that case was directly on point and relative to the discussion we're having here today. (As read): "The court noted the following benefits: The existence and availability of standby assistance and Page 104 February 5, 2002 back-up capacity of the sheriffs office, the reduction of crime in the urban unincorporated area has some spillover effect by curtailing the movement of crime into the cities. Municipal residents travel in the unincorporated areas and temporarily fall within the jurisdictions of the sheriffs offices, and the majority of reported intermunicipality assisted by the sheriffs office involved non-routine matters which involved above-average expenditures of deputy time, money, and expertise. The court held as a composite established that the sheriff road patrol and detective division provide not only a minimal level of direct benefits but also a substantial degree of indirect benefits to municipal residents." So the court ruling in this case was directly on point. It was brought by a municipality contesting the Palm Beach County's sheriffs office ability to charge for said services on a county-wide basis. In addition, in various formats the sheriff has made it abundantly clear that his allocation of resources is done on a county-wide basis, thereby justifying the need to charge for said services on a county- wide basis. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Mike, the issue there is substantially different. That suit was brought, as I understand it, because the municipality challenged a rather large portion of the sheriff's allocation of costs on a county-wide basis, not just a subset of their expenses such as a portion of road patrol. So there's no argument here that there should not be some sharing with respect to the county's cost for sheriffs office. There is only a concern that specific elements of that particular cost should not necessarily be shared in the same way. Once again, one has to -- you would have to argue that if the city's police forces were suddenly abandoned, wouldn't the sheriff have to increase their staff and their budget in order to provide Page 105 February 5, 2002 security for those areas? The answer is, yes, they would. So if that's the case, then those agencies do provide a corresponding benefit to the entire county. And it's that issue that I think we're trying to resolve. But this is a -- it's a decision that was made by the board, and it can only be changed by the Board of Commissioners, and it can only be changed by three votes on the Board of Commissioners. And we don't have a full board here, and we're not going to vote on it today anyway. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Right. COMMISSIONER COYLE: So I-- COMMISSIONER HENNING: What I would suggest is if a board member really feels strong about this, bring it up at a regular meeting or during the budget meeting. And if I can just add to the discussion about if the City of Naples police force closes its doors, you know, I feel that the county provides work force for the cities. Therefore, if those jobs were not there, would that work force be there? I don't think so. You can't live off the land. You can't catch mullet anymore with nets, so, you know, my feeling is it does go both ways is the county provides things to the city, and the city provides things. And I'm sure if the hospital wasn't located or the Naples Daily News or all the resorts on Marco Island, the need for work force and work-force housing and the sheriff's department to enforce the laws in those work-force neighborhoods wouldn't be there. COMMISSIONER FIALA: And you're right about that, but Marco isn't even saying we don't want to pay for that. They are saying -- not only that, they're saying we even have 13 road patrolmen here that are designated for this area, and we're happy to pay for those. We just don't want to pay for those eight that we don't have anymore. Page 106 February 5, 2002 COMMISSIONER HENNING: I understand that, Commissioner, and what Crystal has stated was the time that eight was cut on Marco, their budget was cut. Those eight deputies -- I mean, those increase of deputies over the years is, you know, because as our work force increased in the county -- that's where I'm coming from. So the proponents of changing the policy, I would say, has to come from either a general meeting or a budget meeting. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Uh-huh. Well, I agree that we do need to talk this one over a lot more. Boy, we've only just scratched the surface, but we've certainly put our issue out on the table and I think as clearly and succinctly as we could with the information that we have. And I will be happy to call for that meeting at our board meeting on Tuesday. MR. SMYKOWSKI: Actually, the appropriate forum would probably be the budget policy discussion in which we kind of set the basic parameters for the preparation of the upcoming year budget. This year we anticipate that happening on February 27th, I believe it is, and that would be a component of the budget policy, and at that point they can provide direction to staff as to how to proceed with apportionment, the sheriff's budget, between the unincorporated area and the general fund. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Do we need to submit anything to you in advance for that? COMMISSIONER HENNING: I think it's just a matter of direction. We don't have Commissioner Coletta here, so we don't know if we have a majority on this topic -- COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. COMMISSIONER HENNING: -- so it's just a matter of giving direction. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Okay. And maybe I can meet with Page 107 February 5, 2002 Mike and with Bill Moss beforehand, and they give me a little guidance from the Marco end. Thank you. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Thank you. With no other input, I would entertain a motion to close this workshop. COMMISSIONER COYLE: Motion to adjourn. COMMISSIONER FIALA: Second. COMMISSIONER HENNING: Okay. Let's adjourn. There being no further business for the good of the County, the meeting was adjourned by order of the Chair at 1 p.m. BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS BOARD OF ZONING APPEALS/EX OFFICIO GOVERNING BOARD(S) OF SPECIAL DISTRICTS UNDER ITS CONTROL J~AIRMAN ~nese minutes approved by the Board on · ! Page 108 presented or as corrected February 5, 2002 TRANSCRIPT PREPARED ON BEHALF OF DONOVAN COURT REPORTING, INC., BY PAMELA HOLDEN, COURT REPORTER Page 109