COUNCILMEMBER	PRESENT	ABSENT
Councilmember Tornatta	X
Councilmember Sutton		X
Councilmember Shetler	X
Councilmember Goebel	X
Councilmember Raben	X
Councilmember Abell	X
President Winnecke	X

President Winnecke: Would you please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

President Winnecke: Before we get to the business at hand, I’d like to welcome Councilman Shetler who begins his first meeting with us today. Welcome. Mr. Tornatta will be – he has one more meeting with us, our Personnel & Finance Committee meeting for January will be next week, so that will be his last meeting. Anyway, at this time I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes from our November 1st meeting.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Shetler: I think perhaps I should abstain since I wasn’t a part of the meeting.

President Winnecke: Okay, at this time we’ll begin with the appropriation ordinance and appropriation requests, and turn it over to Mr. Raben.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Mr. President. Do you wish to move on to the sally port project? Do you want to hear the presentation first or –

Bill Nix: Good morning. I appreciate everybody’s time this morning. Hopefully, we won’t take up but just a few minutes. I’m Bill Nix, County Commissioner. With me this morning is Judge Heldt and Judge Pigman, from the Sheriff’s Department, Major Wedding, Lieutenant Klaser and Sergeant Martin. And let me just give you a brief overview and then we’ll get into just a small presentation. About six months ago, Dave Rector and myself sat down and met. We talked about some different things: one is the old jail space and future plans for that along with how we would handle transporting and holding inmates from the jail. And presently, we’re using cells 21, 22 and 23. Over the last, like I say, six months, we’ve talked about a lot of different possibilities, scenarios and that. We have hired a consultant or actually an engineering firm to look at and actually put together specifications for the demolition of the old jail which would include all the cells and basically just gut the area out for build down. After a meeting with the judges and I think James Raben, Councilman Raben, was in a few of the meetings early on, there was some discussion about either utilizing cells 21, 22 and 23 or possibly building a new holding facility over adjacent to the court building and then abandoning the idea of using these holding cells at all. We’ve tossed this back and forth. We’ve looked at it and it’s just not feasible that we can see to use the existing facility under the circumstances with some security issues. So I’m going to turn this over to Sergeant Martin, he’s got a small presentation and then I think Major Wedding will say a few things and Dave Rector has got a few comments then.

Dave Wedding: Good morning. I’m Dave Wedding. I’m a major with the Sheriff’s office assigned as a jail commander since July 2004. Each of you has a pack of information that basically shows the last seven days, how many inmates have been in custody and then we’ll talk about how many inmates we transport to and from court. In the month of October, we transported 1,219 people from the Vanderburgh County jail to our courts. In the month of November, we transported 1,014 inmates to court as well. Taking the holidays in November and just kind of figuring it out, its about 53 inmates per day, on average, is about what we’re bringing from the jail to court each day. Included in that, now we’re going to add inmates that are taken into custody from the courts each day, quite often somebody comes in and the judge places them into our custody, so we’re bringing back probably six or eight more each day. We’re doing video arraignments at the jail as everybody knows, and each month those numbers are rising. We started in July with about 192 people attending a video arraignment, and in November we did 337 inmates. I think everyone here knows that the arrest numbers are not going down. We’re probably bringing in 11,000 plus people per year. The issues we have is basically loading and unloading inmates in an unsecured area which we feel is not safe for our employees. Its not safe for the inmates. Presently we’re unloading in an area that is now occupied by the Evansville Police Department. When we left the jail back in January this year, the Evansville Police Department took over the existing administrative offices of the Sheriff’s office. When we pull our buses in and vans, quite often, members of the EPD vehicles are coming in and out of their office areas. They have parking spaces there, we have foot and vehicular traffic in and out which causes problems with our deputies as we unload inmates. Its safety issues and Sergeant Martin will show you some still photos and video of just what we’re talking about. At any time, a person can come up and they see the deputies unloading prisoners, they may have questions of how to get to a court or a building in the Civic Center and walk right up on our deputies while they are trying to unload prisoners. We feel that’s kind of a time when we need to be in a sterile environment and we have inmates that are in for serious charges. Most recently, Tom Schiro, and he’s been given a 40 year sentence in Circuit Court for some rapes and this is a gentleman that thought he was going to be seeing the light of day next year. And now he’s spending some more time in jail in prison. This can be dangerous because he may think, you know, I’m going to try to escape. I’m going to try to get somebody from the outside to help me escape. We have a fairly consistent pattern bringing inmates to the Vanderburgh County courts because they start pretty much the same time every day in the mornings and afternoons, so there is a pattern there. If a person thought, hey, I’m going to ambush the Sheriff’s office today when they unload the bus, there’s plenty of areas there to hide that are just unsecured and we can’t do anything about that given the present state. From the EPD standpoint, not that that’s a huge issue, but when we’re loading and unloading, we certainly block their access in and out of their own facility. We don’t want them pulling in and getting out while we’ve got a large bus, you know, a bus that transports 40 inmates. Along with that bus, we usually bring at least one or two vans that might transport an additional ten people per vehicle. Another issue, we would like to think that we would have our inmates unloaded in close proximity to the courts. Presently when we unload, we have to walk through what used to be the old booking area of the Evansville Police Department. The inmates are shuffled up into the second floor of the old jail. At that point, they are unhandcuffed and sent across the bridge and then staged over in the courts building. The room over in the court’s building is a little bit less to be desired with the number of inmates we put in there. And I would think with today’s standards we probably wouldn’t be allowed to hold as many inmates as we do in that particular holding area. So it takes a little bit of extra time unloading the inmates and then shuffling them all the way across the bridge to court and then repeating the process as they leave the building. In inclement weather, the inmates are coming on and off the bus and in the vans and everyone knows in Evansville we have snow and ice conditions. The inmates are stepping out of a bus and there’s a little bit of distance between the steps and the pavement, we feel there is always a chance of an inmate slipping and hurting themselves and/or a deputy sheriff even slipping and falling as well during this process. The area designed by the Building Authority would allow better separation for inmates once they’re over in court. Quite often, we have inmates here to testify against another inmate that’s charged with a crime. When this happens, it creates a little bit of a problem for our staff trying to figure out where we’re going to put four or five inmates that have to be separated throughout a trial or hearings. The design Dave Rector showed us, it would give us ample space to keep inmates separated during and before trials. Probably one of the most important features with the enclosed sally port is when we pull in, you’d have a door close, and just like our sally port at the jail, the inmates, should they get out and think they’re going to escape, there’s nowhere to go. Right now, and you’re going to see on the video that Sergeant Martin shows, as the inmates get out, they’re going to look and walk out and they can see open air. They can see areas that, if they chose to take off and run, we would have trouble keeping up with all of them. And once again, we are under a time constraint because the judges, they want their inmates in court. So we’re trying to get a lot of inmates in a short period of time. And once again, with the jail located there it is, the court is located down here, and we’re going to have this problem you know for quite some time. What we’re trying to do is get a sally port that the bus and our vans can pull in, we secure the area, it becomes sterile and then the inmates are unloaded and they’re in close proximity to the holding cells before they go into court. We know, if you look at your sheets here, that we probably average maybe 492 people in custody per day and these numbers are not going down, they’re staying pretty constant and that’s been just about the case since we opened the jail in January. We were holding about 330 inmates in the old Vanderburgh County jail. Once we opened up, we went to the various Sheriff’s offices around the state and picked up an additional 130. So once we occupied the building and got our inmates we were at about 460 at that time in early February. That’s about all for my presentation. And basically, you know, we’re here for the safety, security and the efficiency of our office moving inmates. And everyone knows that’s a very volatile time for all of us. Anybody have any questions of me?

President Winnecke: I think it would be good if we got to see the presentation, then we might double back and ask some questions. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Jim Martin: Good morning, my name is Sergeant Jim Martin. I’m with the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s office, Sheriff’s Deputy. It’s a pleasure actually to be with you today to be a part of this presentation. Over the last couple of years I have been involved with Mr. Rector in renovating and providing some security information to them of the existing courthouse. And it’s a project that I’ve enjoyed doing. I’ve liked seeing the changes that we’ve had and this is just another step in the security issues that we have to deal with. As Major Wedding stated, the three things that we want to deal with today are issues regarding the security, safety and efficiency of the movement of inmates to and from the confinement center into the Vanderburgh County courts. It’s a function that we do, you know, five days out of the week. Its, as Major Wedding said, it’s a factor that is a pattern that we’re going to continue to see and the citizens of Vanderburgh County certainly know what actions that we take to get these inmates down here. Currently some of the pictures that you’re going to see, this is a picture taken yesterday morning, about a half hour, forty -five minutes before the bus even arrived, and you can see that some of the parking spaces are not filled yet. These are the spaces that the Evansville Police Department are currently using. And as you see throughout the transition of the slides through this presentation, that it starts to become congested, especially at the time that we are unloading the prisoners. Certainly when we’re loading them up before the noon hour to come back, you know, this is the Civic Center, it is the Police Department, its an area of business for a lot of employees, so, you know, this is the area that we’re talking about. It certainly is an open area that you’ll notice on the video that inmates take account of. Our options that we have right now, we have the prisoner vans that we use and they simply back up to the door. That doesn’t seem like that much of a space, but it still is certainly an open area that inmates are exposed to potential escape routes. The other option that we have is the 40 passenger prisoner bus. It certainly is a tight squeeze coming in. Any vehicles as you can see in this next slide that would not be pulled up all the way, is a factor for the drivers of that bus, for the deputies that are bringing those prisoners. And we have to constantly make sure that area is open and accessible for that bus to come into. And as you can see that the overhang, although the bus, you know, pulls up right next to it, we certainly don’t want to impede any of the structural features of that sally port, the pillars that support that flooring. Its probably about a 20 or 30 foot distance between the exit of the bus to the door to the old booking lobby area. This is how the prisoners come off every day and this picture doesn’t adequately show what the issues that we’re talking about, but you can see, you know, we would be to the east of that driveway area, that is open area straight to the back of the courthouse to the post office, across the street from the federal court building. You know, these are things that we have to take in account, you know, to the west what would be behind this picture from the angle that I took it, another open area out to Martin Luther King Boulevard. Its open areas that on a bright sunny day, you can’t help but look and see that day of light, that, you know, would provide an avenue for a prisoner should they choose to use it or if they bring the fight to us and we have to defend ourselves in this kind of environment, we are exposed to whatever comes at us. This is currently where we have to park the bus, although its not an issue of public safety, its certainly parked legally, it could be considered an eyesore, it’s a vehicle parked on the street, but this bus is exposed to the public during the hours that courts are running. We don’t keep an armed guard on the bus at all hours. The bus is certainly susceptible to any sort of ill intent that someone wanted to come and inflict on that. With the enclosed sally port, that bus would stay inside the entire time and keep that a sterile environment. You know, we do security checks, we sweep the bus before we load and unload prisoners. It would be a lot more calming if we didn’t have to move that from a sterile environment. And again, from the point that I had mentioned earlier where they’re looking at that daylight, this is the angle that those inmates are seeing as they leave that bus. That’s a pretty good view. The entrance coming in is guarded by some certain barriers of walls and the line of sight to daylight isn’t near as promoted as it is right here. This is the view that they have coming off that bus. Where you see the van in the picture, that’s where the bus would have unloaded, so again, its just a different angle for you to see how much space, you know, that sally port has served us well for the last 30 - 40 years, but now its more of a hindrance to us as we unload and load prisoners. Before I go into the next slide, I’m going to show a video. Again, yesterday, we just shot video so you have kind of a bird’s eye view of what takes place on the loading and unloading of prisoners. And it will give you a good idea of what the prisoner might be looking at. And I want you to pay particular attention when the inmates are coming off the bus, watch their face movement. To the average citizen, it might not be that big of a deal, but to law enforcement, its one of the first things I’d point out reviewing the video, is every time that inmate comes off the bus, they’re looking left and right. To me, that’s a problem because they’re seeing what our situation is and, you know, potentially forming a plan. Maybe not for today, maybe not for tomorrow, or even next week, but the more that they come down to court and it could be five, six or more times, they’re formulating a plan. We’ve stopped escape plans before. You know, we get information from other inmates and we go do a shakedown of their cell and we see layouts of a dentist’s office, layouts of where bushes are surrounding the court area. So we know that they do this because we’ve seen it in the past. (Video begins) You can see there as the vans or bus are pulling in, its certainly a radius that the bus has to take to make that turn. Its sufficiently trained and go through the D.O.T. bus requirements to be able to operate the bus, but its still, they take a couple of deep breaths before they pull that bus in. We kind of use that van as a gauntlet to bring those prisoners in. The van is not always there. If we have just one busload, we might not utilize the vans, but when it is, it serves as a gauntlet for us that we use that to our advantage. As we see, you know, the bus pulls up, there are two exits on that bus, the front one is for the driver only. The inmates are separated by a secure gate halfway between the bus that we can separate inmates if we have to, if we have to separate based on their gender. This particular day yesterday, the van was used for the transport of the females because we didn’t have a normal break for the bus. The bus had 40 passengers on it yesterday, so we took over 40 prisoners to court just yesterday. They take the prisoners off about ten at a time, we have two deputies on the bus and then the deputies that are in the van, that assist us from the court security that come and help, you know, we might have two or three deputies taking ten prisoners at a time handcuffed and shackled. And when you see when we change, we’ll actually follow the inmates in and you kind of see what kind of area that we have to deal with. And notice in the background, obviously you see some of the officers that were a part of this, but these are Evansville Police Officers coming to work. We can’t shut down what they do down, certainly we’ve had people come in before that have no business being in that area, you know, the “DO NOT ENTER” or “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY” signs, there are signs and people do come in there. They pull in thinking it’s the post office, looking for the drop boxes, you know, even yesterday, the officers were coming up, you know, what are you guys doing? We’re doing the same thing we do every other day. Police vehicles are trying to utilize their parking spots. And watch these faces as they come off, they’re looking left, they look right. To me, that’s an issue. I want to know what they’re thinking about. Are they noticing the people that are milling around? Are they thinking, okay, how many cars do they have in that location this particular day? And then they follow down this hallway waiting for instructions. You know, we still utilize the elevator when its operable, the old jail elevator. And again, take 10-15 prisoners up before we get to the holding facility and cells 21, 22 and 23. The time spent right here is waiting for the officers to secure their weapon so they can be safe going into the sterile location. We’ve been fortunate, the inmates have, you know, they understand what we expect from them and staying in an orderly line and certainly staying quiet when we’ve asked them to. But we all know that it just takes one to get the others going and in a potentially dangerous situation. This is still the old booking lobby from the Police Department where we utilize that elevator. And again, you know, two or three trips, four trips sometimes, before we get all the prisoners up there. And when you have two or three transportation officers making that transfer in stages, it takes some time. You might think, well, just start earlier, when we’re dealing with issues of feeding the inmates their breakfast in the morning. For all I care, we’d come down here at 2:00 in the morning if we could logistically do that. Again, prisoners coming off and you’ll see basically the same thing you’ve already seen. In preparing for this we looked at some studies, one done by the national institute of justice, they sponsored an assessment from the national Sheriff’s Association for the current state of what transporting prisoners would take place. Their study included three surveys that found that safety of the personnel, transporting those officers, were of the most concern. And through this day they called for enhanced facility structure features. You know, that’s what we’re talking about today. You know, so the prisoners transport can become a safe environment for everyone involved. Also another study done by the National Center for State Court said that architectural needs protect not only the safety of the people doing the transport, but those who also use the buildings themselves, the Civic Center employees, those who frequent the court or work in the court, those who park in the parking lot behind the courts, these are all people that we’re trying to prevent injury or problems for themselves. Through these architectural advancements, we will be able to make a more secure environment and enhance, in essence, our court security. Some of the additional standards that the Nation Center for State Court said was to secure the vehicular sally port and use central and court floor level holding. That’s some of the things, you know, we certainly used those cells when we were in residency at the old jail and had no problems. We certainly moved them over there on a constant basis. But now its added area that we have to walk in. We can do it a lot more efficient and a lot better and have better movement for the courts and for the judicial staff if we have a more centralized location attached to the courthouse itself, have the quick and safe delivery as the study called for. You saw this in the video, this is the enclosed area that the prisoners have to go up to the elevator in. It’s a small elevator. We take 10 - 15 prisoners to one or two deputies. You know, that’s not a very good ratio. Yes, they’re handcuffed, yes, they’re belly chained, but again, you know, we’ve been very lucky. You don’t know what could happen and that’s what we’re trying to prevent. After you come off of the elevator, you step off and to the left, this is just to give you an idea of what barriers we have to go around, what hidden corners that we have to look for, and the amount of personnel that we have to move them to all of these areas. And finally, this is the hall of 21, 22 and 23. These are the cells that we used when we were in residence of the old jail, the majority of the court, the inmates going to court the next day, utilized. So, you know, it was great for then but now, again, its not, and that’s the bridge that leads down to the courthouse. The plan that the Building Authority has come up with, we basically are unloading the bus into some holding cells directly attached to the courthouse, they can go straight up to Circuit Court, to Misdemeanor Court, or straight to the holding cells in the new Division II renovated courtroom. A study in New Hampshire in 2005 reviewed that they had some issues with their security problems as well and they requested the study to help make improvements as they saw necessary. Some of these were, that the courthouse built at that time are not up to the standards of what we would expect of security today. And I think September 11th showed all of us that we were susceptible to terrorist acts or acts from outside. And certainly our courthouse, you know, opened in 1969, was not built for security in mind, it was built for the openness and for the feeling of accessibility to the courthouse. Unfortunately, 2006 is not 1969, things have changed and we have to be more security conscious and try to prevent acts of misconduct within our own courthouse so we can, you know, have some sort of sense of normalcy into our court process. Another issue was prisoners being walked through public areas, even through some judge’s chambers. We, fortunately, haven’t had to go through the judge’s chambers but we’ve certainly had to go by their chambers. I think Judge Pigman can certainly attest that there’s many a times that he had to go to the old Division II courtroom and there would be prisoners coming through that hall. Ms. Abell, I know when you were in the Clerk’s office we would bring inmates down the hall to small claims and we don’t like that, that was a necessity, it was the lesser of the evils that we had to pertain to. You know, and there are still times that we would have to go to small claims now, but we’ve been able to cut those down through the renovations of the courthouse and this would just assist us in that. We certainly want to prevent these areas. Some of the courts in New Hampshire didn’t have adequate holding cells. Through our renovations, we’re doing an excellent job and making sure that the numbers that we have are in compliance with state and federal guidelines. And we talked about judges having to pass the litigants on the way to the courtroom. We’ve been able to cut that down substantially. Surveillance in the courthouses, that’s one of the first projects that Mr. Rector and I had the privilege of doing in the courthouse, we certainly updated the security features there, this is just another step in our process of making it safer now. Multiple points of entry and exit, our courthouse certainly does have that. The one thing that is of pertinence today is the lack of the secure vehicular sally port and, you know, hopefully through this presentation, we’ll be able to see the need for that. You saw the outside pictures from earlier, this is one of the, an article from Kingston, Tennessee that happened in 2005. A former prison nurse had gone to her husband’s hearing where he had pled guilty in a case for burglary, and as soon as he had pled guilty, the nurse and an accomplice ran outside to where they were loading the prisoners. The prisoner in this case was a Mr. Hyatte, and Hyatte yelled for his wife to shoot them. The wife shot the deputies or the officers that were getting the inmates onto the bus, killing one officer and then also allowing her husband to escape. This was in 2005. We’ve certainly seen cases in Indiana courts since, gosh, within the last 10-15 years of violence that can occur in the courthouse. We certainly have an opportunity right now to prevent this from happening in our own community. Could what we just saw in that newspaper article from Tennessee occur here? We certainly have the area that it would be possible. That alone should make people think about whether there’s a need for an enclosed sally port. I don’t have to look to New Hampshire for studies. The Supreme Court of Indiana in 1994 had the management committee meeting submit recommendations for courthouse security. It was made pursuant to Administrative Rule IV-B. The court accepted and approved the guidelines and priorities for the State of Indiana and that was signed by the Honorable Randall Shepherd. So as of today, and it was revised just this year, the standards remain the same for what they call for these guidelines, and the guidelines include similar to what we see in New Hampshire, eliminate weapons from court related facilities, installing duress alarms, installing bullet resistant barrier in areas of high risk, securing windows and doors, improving the parking security, control public access to private work areas, pedestrian circulation to and from court, vaults, safes, the public address system, and secure sally port areas for prisoner transport, holding cells for prisoners to and from court. This list, we’ve done every one of them except those last two. We’ve improved the security in the courthouse. We’ve done our best to prevent acts of misconduct upon the officers, the public, the inmates, the staff, those that frequent this building here, except for those last two, and this is the natural progression to ensure the safety of all those involved in this process. Basically, what we can go from this to a secured area. That’s what we’re asking for today is that we provide our community with a safe means to get prisoners to and from court, that they make a safer sterile environment for our officers, for our inmates, for our court staff. This was the design that was accepted by the judiciary. We’ve worked with them for over a year. This was not a project we jumped into quickly. We wanted to see how the transition to the new confinement center would work. This was purposely not constructed right away because we didn’t want to waste the taxpayers’ money and time and energy on a project that we didn’t know would work. We know now that this project will work and it’s a necessity for our community. I welcome any questions that you might have or Mr. Rector can speak to the construction site. I also have Judge Pigman and Judge Heldt here who are in support of this enclosed sally port.

President Winnecke: I have questions, I don’t know who, if someone else would like to begin. First, thank you. Your presentation was unusually thorough for someone coming before this body and I applaud you for your efforts and Major Wedding’s efforts. I guess notwithstanding the detailed security concerns that you’ve outlined, my biggest concern about this project is, this is not my recollection of how this was going to play out once the new jail opened. A lot of people didn’t like the fact the new jail was going to go there, and obviously, this is no reflection of you, but this is just kind of a head-scratcher to me. My recollection is that the way this thing was teed up initially was, that we’d be able to use the existing facilities for the transportation of prisoners to courts. And now we’re into this new facility less than a year and we have a request for a half million dollars or whatever to change it. And that’s just kind of a personal rub I have against this project right now. That’s not to say I might not support it or a version of it but –

Jim Martin: Well, I just appreciate that fact, you know, just making you think about it, then I’ve done my job here today. I’ll let Mr. Rector deal with numbers. I think what the problem was is, when they found what it would cost to renovate and update the old facility, that this was actually cheaper. But I’ll let them speak to that. I don’t have figures.

President Winnecke: And I guess, to me, it just kind of, you know, not long ago the courts building parking lot was renovated, added a number of spots then. That all started after the construction of the new jail. I don’t have the specific time line, but there’s kind of a lack of vision here that I think is ultimately going to cost taxpayers more money. At the end of the day is it the safest thing to do? It may be. I don’t know that but I think it confirms to a lot of people that the location for the new jail is probably not ideal. But I’m off my soapbox now. Mr. Tornatta?

Councilmember Tornatta: Well, all great points, I mean, I think that those are – when you look at how it was presented and what types of things, some of these things weren’t brought out, but the one thing that I think that we do have to address is this issue and it is a security issue and I talked to Chief Deputy Eric Williams as early as last year about just some things that I had heard, just a problem with the fact that you have too many open spaces. And any time you are transporting these individuals, you have to have a secure environment and, you know, we throw a lot of different ideas around, but obviously, this idea plays out a lot better. Now whether this architecture is the best way to do it, obviously, that’s what the consultants think and there we are. Probably not the least expensive way to do the process, but looking at how the bus is going to turn in, obviously, the worst thing you can have is a reverse button on that bus. Never do you want to see that bus go in reverse. And so in that instance, what we have is not what we should have in the future for safety. And not only for the prisoners escape but for our Deputies. What I’ve looked at is the amount of deputies that are on that bus controlling that many prisoners, they have to be specialized, they have to be trained, and they do a wonderful job, no incidents up to this point. But if there is an incident, two deputies on the bus, forty inmates on the bus if something happens, then we have a big issue and I don’t want to see that in my county. Therefore, I think we do have to address this problem as soon as possible.

Councilmember Raben: I have a question. I may need help from Dave with this one as well. Number one, the 582,000, does that also include demolition of the crosswalk? Will that be needed any longer?

Dave Rector: Dave Rector, Building Authority. Actually, what you see is we’ll cut a portion of that crosswalk, the bridge off, and tie it into the stair tower. You all have some floor plans, smaller versions in front of you and if you see that bridge is tying into the stair tower where then the buses coming into the sally port on through to the holding cells and straight up those stairs so the bridge will not be totally demolished and would still be available for use.

Councilmember Raben: And I had another just pretty basic or simple question, but as we looked at the initial videos, we saw the smaller van that the, along with the bigger bus, now how will the smaller van where you have quantities that are greater than 40 inmates, how will that unload?

Jim Martin: The current design, we can fit two vans into that enclosed sally port side by side. Typically, as you saw, it was a lot closer in the video from yesterday morning. Typically, the van will leave first and then would be out of the area. The current design would not allow for a van and the bus in there. But the vans would be done prior to. It would deal with any separation issues that we have to deal with or some of the inmates you saw, depending on the color of their jumpsuits, you know, suicidal subjects or high risk inmates, we would take them in a separate, either in a squad car themselves depending on their risk or in the vans and be out of that area and clear that area prior to the bus getting in. And the bus would stay in there for the duration of the court hearing. Those vans are also used for medical runs, small transports to and from court that day. I think that answered your question. We would still utilize them but they wouldn’t be in the sally port.

Councilmember Raben: Yeah, I think you’ve answered it. I guess that was the question, would they fit in there as well when the bigger bus is in there?

Councilmember Goebel: Yes, obviously, public safety is paramount. The safety of everyone that works here, happens to be in the Civic Center Complex is paramount and safety for our law enforcement also. And I echo Mr. Winnecke’s sentiment that perhaps the comprehensive plan was a little bit short, that this should have been included when the jail was constructed because its probably a problem that many thought about while that jail was going up. So it’s a shame that we’re addressing it now. Do you foresee a lessening of security forces if we do invest and put the sally port here? Will we need more security, less security? Long term, I’m talking about, as far as expenses to the people of Vanderburgh County?

Jim Martin: I’m not prepared, that’s beyond my realm of responsibilities to comment on what that would entail. My scope of this was to try to educate on what some of the security issues might be through some of the education that I’ve had in dealing with the courthouse. I couldn’t comment on future manpower issues.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, it seems like there would be a lot less area and openness, so perhaps –

President Winnecke: We’ll change the tape and then we’ll continue the discussion.

Dave Rector: Excuse me, before we proceed, Judge, I know you have to – did you want to say anything before –

President Winnecke: Maybe just before you leave, I think the Major or the Sergeant, one, mentioned the judiciary support of this project. Maybe you could talk about that before you leave. I know Judge Heldt is here also.

Robert Pigman: Judge Robert Pigman, and Carl was with us on this. The Sheriff brought this idea to us originally. I first recall at the time we were engaged in the renovation project for the new courtrooms that you funded for us and supported us on and the original design was a little different than this and we were not comfortable with that. We thought it affected unfavorably the aesthetic value of the building and we thought it was important to help preserve that as best we could. But then they brought this design which is, in our opinion, much better, much more effective and I think will help to some extent. Security is an ongoing problem in the courts. Last night at 7:30, a jury in a case I was presiding over delivered a verdict against an inmate of the Vanderburgh County jail who was convicted of carrying a shank, a metal weapon about this long, that he had sharpened into a point and it was a pretty hideous looking thing. The evidence showed that he probably had that for at least a month. The evidence also showed he was able to get other contraband into his cell. These guys are pretty ingenious in the way they think of ways to violate the law. And also in another case that I personally presided over, an inmate who was awaiting a verdict on a murder case, secured upon his person, a metal piece of a razor that he had removed and hid that in his shirt. And now, fortunately, the security forces were tipped before he got to court and they stopped him and surveilled him. And we’ve also had problems in our Division II courtroom. On at least one occasion, someone had entered the courtroom sometime during the day despite the fact that we keep them locked. You know, mistakes happen. Someone had entered the courtroom and taped underneath the seats where the prisoners sit, on that particular occasion, I think it was a package of cigarettes. It was some object that could not be used as a weapon but, obviously, they had gained access to our courtroom and had taped contraband there. So in my particular situation, my chambers sit outside the Division II courtroom, which is the old Division II courtroom, and our security situation is infinitely better now that we’ve got the new setup. But the time that I was there, I mean, I have had people arrested in my chambers. There have been fights in the hallway immediately outside my courtroom. On several occasions, deputies have had to fight with inmates there in that area right outside my front door because the inmates were either assaulting the deputies or were trying to escape. So it was a pretty lively area there by my chambers because I was right outside the courtroom. So I think security is a problem. I think its also important to note that many of the people who come to our building don’t do so voluntarily. I mean, they’re not here because they want to be here. They’re here because we’re compelling them to be here and so I think that certainly we should have a safe environment for workers and people who want to use it. But we also should keep in mind that a lot of people who come here are required to be here. And Mr. Rector and Eric Williams were sort of the lead on this particular project and they laid it out for us and asked for our support and we gave them our support. We think this is a way that we can enhance the security of our operation and make it a little bit more efficient. If you’ve got any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them before I need to leave.

Councilmember Goebel: Just a general question, but I would think most people would assume that the most secure place in our community would be with the courts and the jails, but I don’t know if anyone has done any studies historically, but the case you illustrated earlier of the courtroom shooting is – do you know, Judge Pigman, do most of the incidents for violence or breaks, or inmates try to break out, happen in courtroom facilities or in transport?

Robert Pigman: That I don’t know, Mike. I really don’t know the answer to that. I do know that when people ask me about the courthouse, I say the neighborhood is great, it’s the neighbors that are the problem. And the problem you have is, many of the felons that are brought to court are not violent. But some are. And some are unstable. And the difficulty lies in being able to tell which ones are and which ones aren’t. And so its virtually impossible to make that judgement so you have to assume that the potential there is for everyone who is brought there on a serious crime is capable of something. But to your specific question, I don’t know where most of those incidents occur. I’m just familiar with the things that I know from anecdotal experience have happened in my particular courtroom, and I’m one of seven who would handle felony cases.

Councilmember Goebel: So from a judge’s perspective, this is always a concern, the safety?

Robert Pigman: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it’s a – you’re foolish nowadays if you don’t make security a priority.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, well, one instance would be one far too many, so thank you.

Councilmember Tornatta: You were talking about the aesthetic value of the building, by looking at this, you are – how do we look at actually taking that corridor out and is there a way that you can move between those buildings at that point or is that just dead space at that area?

Carl Heldt: First of all, Dave, that’s just a cross section. That’s corridor is not going to come out, right? I mean, that – he showed –

Dave Rector: Yes. Oh, its just cut off, it was just a matter of putting it on the drawing.

Carl Heldt: Okay. Carl Heldt, Circuit Court. Mr. Chairman, when they first approached us with this, I was against it. I felt, now wait a minute, just use the old jail, don’t put some building next to the courthouse, and use the old jail. And the more they talked to me, and I think Mr. Rector, one of the things he was talking about is the unsatisfactory nature of using the second floor of the old jail and the fact that if they were ever going to put anything up there, that they have this setup up there next to whatever else they’re going to put on the second floor really detracts from what they can use the second floor for. Is that – will you address that? Okay. He said its just really a bad setup up there and for one thing is, you can’t use it for other county needs if they ever want to do that, and I assume they will. The county won’t want to leave an empty second floor up there. So that was the one thing and then the Sheriff, who is in charge of our security and who we trust to secure us, convinced me anyway that the security issues are real. And so I was against it at first but they convinced me that it was the thing to do, so that’s why I’m an in support of it, for those two things.

President Winnecke: That’s what I needed to hear from you, thank you. Okay, any other questions of Judge Heldt? Okay, we’re going to get to Mrs. Abell’s questions and then we’ll circle back, because we interrupted her.

Dave Rector: Could I perhaps make a comment before we get started? I feel like our responsibility in the Building Authority is to meet our leaseholders needs. If they identify something, we try to do that and assist with it. The expansion of the parking lot was one, Area Plan Commission renovation, Water Department renovation, whatever the need is, if they identify that, I think its our responsibility to try to assist with that. Early on, Chief Williams thought perhaps we could use the old jail. We said we’d try doing that before we did this. As they continued to use it and as we looked at the demolition of the old jail and then space planning purposes for county and city offices to move into, it became more and more evident that this was the better approach. This is actually probably the twelfth iteration of getting to this point. Our position, the Building Authority, whether we do this or not really doesn’t matter to the Building Authority. We’re trying to meet your needs, the county’s needs, the city’s needs. These gentlemen also came before our board and made a very similar presentation and convinced our board that this need is real and we would try to meet that. One of the things to consider, too, in the construction of the new is in the demolition of the old, as we got into that. As you might imagine, all the plumbing is tied together, all the electrical is tied together. Everything is integral to that. The air handling system on the second floor of the jail actually handles the first floor and the basement of the safety building. The air handling system on the third floor of the jail handles the second floor and the third floor. So we can’t, without totally removing them from there at some point, we can’t do this jail renovation project for the city and county. With them in a new building, we can totally gut that then, make all that square feet available for city/county use for whatever offices that we determine during the space planning. So I just kind of wanted to explain how we had gotten to this point and I’ll be happy then to answer your questions and I’m sorry to have delayed yours for so long.

Councilmember Abell: My first question was actually the one that Mr. Tornatta was going to ask. Does this building take up the entire space between the parking wall for the city vehicles and the county building?

Dave Rector: No, it doesn’t. If you can see right there, we have left an opening so you can still come through the city parking lot and then, in fact, we’re considering cutting another opening at the end if you want to go back out and circle around to the courts. I don’t know if I walk away from this – you have a floor plan in front of you that I think shows that.

Councilmember Abell: Well, we’ve got a floor plan but I’m not sure that it definitely shows that there’s a – an area it looks like to me, there’s not an area big enough for a dog to walk through much less a person. And we have employees and I think we have to be considerate of our employees being able to get through here.

Dave Rector: We do have a walkway that goes beside this new structure that (Inaudible – comments made away from the microphone).

Councilmember Abell: Okay, and how big will this area be? Two car widths? One car width?

Dave Rector: The dimensions of the building, I think, – I always walk away from this -- were about 18 feet wide, the sally port building itself, so we’ll have adequate space then for a walkway alongside of it and then cutting through.

Councilmember Abell: Will that be well lit? You know, I worked down here for eight years, I actually worked down here longer than that, and I know that back parking lot, many times at night its not locked, it gets dark at 5:00, employees are walking back there and I had mostly female employees, 50 of them walk back there in the dark. Is this going to be lit, because if this is going to be dark, I think its more dangerous to put that in there than it is –

Dave Rector: It obviously would be lit accordingly and much better than what the old 1969 lighting was that was put in the parking lots.

Councilmember Abell: So it would be safe at 5:00 when its dark for people to walk down the side of this building that’s pretty well enclosed and secluded and you don’t think anybody would be hurt.

Dave Rector: It will be well lit, let me answer that. I don’t know if it will be safe, but it will be well lit.

Councilmember Abell: I don’t like buildings that close together with small areas between them. The other question I have is, in looking at the video, I saw the EPD officers coming and going in that which was I consider to be the northern entrance to that building. There is an eastern entrance which goes into where the Sheriff’s, the current Sheriff would have slept if he had been here during the night. Its not utilized any longer for that, of course. Why can’t they be using that? Why would they have to use the same one the prisoners are going in? Why can’t they use that eastern entrance off of the east parking lot?

Dave Rector: I think you’re asking me to address something on the habits of the EPD officers that I’m not prepared to do. Is there another available entrance? Yes.

Councilmember Abell: Yeah, I thought there was. Why can’t we just put an iron gate around the current sally port? I guess, you know, I will be up front with you, I am not in favor of spending over a half million dollars on top of what we’ve already spent on the jail because we have other departments in this building that need money, too, and I don’t think we can continue to just keep funneling money behind what I consider to have been a bad project to begin with. But why can’t we just put iron gates around that area that they open to come in, they close it behind the bus, I mean, I was the Clerk of the Court here for eight years and the only people I ever saw escape jumped out of the windows from the courtroom and having a sally port is not going to take care of that problem. And its not going to take care of fights outside the judge’s chambers and its not going to take care of any of those kind of problems. I never had an opportunity to be aware of anyone that escaped while they were being transported. The ones that escaped weren’t being transported. I also know that having looked at all the statistics for eights years as a Clerk, and I’m not addressing this to you, I’m actually addressing this to everyone, our opportunities here to have hardened criminals are pretty slim. Most of our people that we have coming to court are not going to try to break away because they’re in the worst trouble they’ve ever been in now, and all they want is to get out of trouble and they know that the way to get out of it is not to try to escape. So this isn’t Pendleton, this is a county jail with county violators and I think to think that everyone that comes to this courtroom has a gun hidden on his body or a knife or if going to try to escape is really overplaying something that isn’t necessarily true. And again, I’m not addressing that to you.

Dave Rector: I understand. I’ll let Sergeant Martin address that for you. As I said, we’ve gone through, this is literally the twelfth iteration of how and what we can do. And we looked at just enclosing a fenced-in area for a sally port, we looked at reusing the space, we looked at just unloading the bus with a connecting corridor right in front of the building. This was the arrangement and the layout that the judges and the Sheriff’s department felt best met their needs. But I’ll let Sergeant Martin discuss your option.

Jim Martin: Have there been attempts to escape when they’re in police custody? They absolutely have. Do you read about them in the paper every day? Absolutely not. There were cases when we resided in the old jail, prisoners would get out of a squad car whether it would be kicking out the window, take off running in handcuffs down the street. I’m not surprised that no one has heard of it. You don’t hear about it. We capture them, we charge them with it, we take them to court. Mr. Goebel’s question about has there been other instances, part of that Indiana Supreme Court case that I cited, cites a case in `87 in Noblesville where a bomb was placed outside of a courtroom, a case where, I believe it was Elkhart, where a subject walked into a courtroom with a loaded rifle, those didn’t play in the need for a vehicular sally port. There certainly are cases and, Ms. Abell, I know you know how many weapons that we’ve taken from the screening, you’re right, that’s not going to do anything about the sally port. But certainly we do have hardened criminals in Vanderburgh County. We certainly don’t have them at the rate that bigger municipalities would, but we have rapists, we have murderers. I’m glad we don’t have any more than we do. I don’t want to see them any more than anyone else, but we have to think about the safety. Handcuffing experts, defensive tactic experts will tell you that the number one time that you’re ever going to have a problem with an inmate is when you have to lay hands on them when you’re putting them in handcuffs, whether you’re taking shackles off or handcuffs off. Whenever you have to go hands-on with an inmate or a person you suspected of a crime or being arrested, that’s when you’re most at risk. As a motor patrol officer on the road, I took a deep sigh of relief when I finally got into a secured area inside of a building because I don’t know what’s going on in the backseat behind me 100% of the time. I would lie if I told you I’m watching them through the rearview mirror the entire time. You can’t. I’ve had windows kicked out, I’ve had people take off running after being placed in handcuffs. You know, it is scary, you know, transporting even the smallest misdemeanant because you’re absolutely correct, they’re scared to death and its that flight or fight response that they have to give, you don’t know what they’re going to do. We’ve been very, very lucky. Gosh, I hope we never do have someone have an act of violence outside our courthouse. It scares me to death. But the point is that we could at any given time. I think I answered your question about other crimes within Indiana aspects. We certainly have had them. We’ve been fortunate not to have major ones here and I hope that I’ve answered some of the other questions that relates to when the chance of escape would be.

Dave Rector: I think Ms. Abell’s direct question was, why couldn’t this be gated off in that area.

Jim Martin: Thank you. The question to the gated off was simply still dealing with the part of contraband. It would be an open area and until its totally enclosed, you know, if someone, currently, the way, and I’ll call it the west entrance. It is the northern corner of the building, but there’s a barrier wall and there’s about a one-foot opening that, you know, someone with training or knowledge of cover and concealment could have a muzzle of a weapon around that corner and you would never see their body. That would not be fixed by an iron gate or a fence. I don’t like the fenced in enclosures. I talked to a major municipality neighbor of Atlanta, Georgia I met at a court security conference at one time and asked him to send me anything you have on sally ports. And they were forced, their sheriff’s office, to build a sally port constructed out of the heaviest duty chain length fence that you could have and they still have contraband passed in and out and they have to be cognizant of what’s going on around the fence now as well as – you know, and that’s the same issue we’re dealing with here. We’re trying to pay attention to what’s going on behind us, to the left of us, to the right and front, inmates coming down off the bus, how many do we have, do we have enough to go up yet? We’re still open to, you know, until it is totally enclosed, its not a sterile, safe environment, and a gate simply won’t do it. A fenced in sally port won’t do it. We’re still dealing with issues. They put the plastic slats in the chain length fence to try to obscure view but they’re only as good as a plastic strip going through a chain length fence.

Councilmember Goebel: Okay, thank you. I don’t think anyone doubts the job and the responsibility that the Sheriff and the Police Department have for our safety and I guess the harm’s way you put yourselves in, so we do appreciate that. And the sally port is similar to the unloading dock at the new jail, correct, where its enclosed?

Jim Martin: Much smaller scale. It does have holding cells in it. You can drive the bus in it, yes.

Councilmember Goebel: I guess my question for Mr. Rector is, if this proposal is before us and the existing old jail that has to be I guess demolished and then rebuilt, is going to be a factor upon where we hold the prisoners, is that correct? Is there a master plan for the use of the old existing jail that might be incorporated with this?

Dave Rector: We are working on a master plan now and have a consultant. And if you recall a couple years, maybe four years ago now, I guess, there was a survey done of all county offices identifying their ideal needs, if they needed to expand. We’re going to go back and interview and upgrade that. With that we’ll work on space planning for that old jail space and getting back with the officeholders and elected officials, so the answer here, is there a plan now? A proposed, but no, there is nothing set at all, but yes, that’s being considered. To do that, we need to know if they’re going to be out of that space or not. Is the space 21, 2 and 3 going to be available for us to plan office use in or is that going to remain for holding cells that we can’t use? That’s why its important to know at this point at least for planning purposes, is that space available or not?

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Dave, a quick question. If the county, if we’re funding the new construction, the improvement here, what type of agreement will we work under with the Building Authority? Will we pay the Building Authority a maintenance fee and cleaning and what have you?

Dave Rector: I guess that’s a legal question, but I would assume we’d probably still operate underneath the square footage occupancy and it would just be additional square footage. Now, keep in mind, too, as we develop space plans in the old jail, probably the county’s commitments are going to be less because the city, with the county’s approval, would like to take over some of that space. So you won’t be paying for some of the space in the old jail that you currently are.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, so there would not be any discount on the square footage fee, since we’re out the funds to –

Dave Rector: I’ve lowered the budget for 2007 for the third year in a row. I hope that helps.

Councilmember Raben: Yes, you did and thank you for that. Mr. President, I know we’ve discussed this at length.

President Winnecke: Actually, I have two quick questions that I think would help everyone. One, – and they’re both for David, or three quick questions. How is parking affected?

Dave Rector: We will lose, in this scenario, we would lose five places that I would have to reassign. I believe those spaces can be easily used in the parking lot on the other side of the wall. If you remember, we’ve moved 24 detectives out to sector offices, those places were previously used by the detectives and I’ve told Chief Hale that those are areas that we would look at replacing the five that we would lose.

President Winnecke: So the parking that would be affected is on the inside of the barrier wall?

Dave Rector: No, its on the outside. Its on the strip – do you know where Bennie parks the orange truck? Those five right along there.

President Winnecke: The second question, what kind of time line for construction are you talking about?

Dave Rector: According to when we started, but I think what we’ve got is a six month construction period and we’ve got a couple month design period. So we’d be this time next year if we got started at the first of the year.

President Winnecke: And my last question may be more of a combination of you and Sergeant Martin, and this gets back to my very first spiel about sort of the bigger picture down the road, and Councilman Tornatta made a good point earlier about putting a bus like that in reverse is probably not an ideal situation, what’s the next shoe to drop or is there another shoe to drop on this project three, four, five, six years down the road? What are we looking at big-picture wise?

Dave Rector: As I said, I think our obligation is to try to meet the needs identified by our leaseholders. Can we all foresee the future? No. Can we plan? Yes. I think we can debate all day long whether that jail should or should not be there, but it is, and we’re dealing with that. Is this the best plan at this point? We think this is the best location for that, the best way to handle this. Are there other opinions? I’m sure there are. This is where we’ve gotten to and identified that we feel like this is going to meet long-term needs. The Sheriff and Chief have both said those additional holding cells should meet long-term needs with the way they see one, increased arrests, but two, with the video arraignments. So I’m answering the feedback I’ve got. I think, yes, its going to meet relatively long-term needs. But, Sergeant, I think you’d better...

Jim Martin: I think Mr. Rector has spoken well enough, I mean, we can’t foresee the future. We certainly will always want to look at security and necessary upgrades. He is correct, the video arraignment is going very well. I think that they are trying to work with the judiciary to increase that, and all that does is lessen the number of inmates that have to come, but it still doesn’t negate the fact that we need a secure area to unload them. There will always be someone that has to come to court. There are certain by state statute rules of inmate appearances. I mean, there will be some that have to come at all times. You know, we can plan for the worst, hope for the best, and the future will be what it is, but we’ll try to make it as safe as possible.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Mr. President, I guess in an effort to move along because we have discussed this. I think everybody has a good sense of where they’re going with this and, in fact, I think Mr. Rector has made himself available after the meeting for anybody that wants to do a walkthrough. At this point, it would be my intent, Mr. President, to defer this matter until January and take final action then. That would be my motion.

Councilmember Shetler: I do want to bring up one question and you do have an opportunity to look at this later, but we talked about that reversing, it looks like we can pull in one way but we’re going to have to back out?

Councilmember Shetler: And this is where I think I have the biggest problem is the logistics of this.

Dave Rector: (Inaudible) It was a long process getting an agreement with the Sheriff Department’s needs, the Judges’ requests, to get to something that everybody agreed to. And I think you can all tell that these guys take this very serious. I think this is a heck of a presentation by them. They’re serious about their need, the Judges’ commitment to it. So they put a lot of thought into this before they got to this point.

Councilmember Shetler: I understand. I guess that’s where my two biggest questions that I have is that I happen to agree with a lot of what’s been said in that I believe we need a sterile environment. I’m concerned about those vehicles sitting on the road while the prisoners are inside and they’re unsecured apparently, from what I understand, and I have real concerns on that. And at the same time, we are not accommodating enough room there for the vans to be kept in a secure environment while the bus is there. I don’t know if, in a case of, Mr. Schiro was mentioned, an inmate like prisoner Schiro that is somebody that is that hardened of a criminal, and a real threat and danger that we’re concerned about, do we bring him down privately or does he go on the bus with the other 39 people? And if he comes down privately, do we secure that particular vehicle as well and, you know, how do we take care of, you know, so we’ve got a variety of prisoners here and I hope we’re not treating them all totally the same.

Dave Rector: I think the Sheriff’s Department can best answer that, but probably, as with any building that was designed and built in 1969, its not the best use today. This building has served us well, but times have changed in the last 37 years and I think that’s what we’re seeing in the security issues.

Councilmember Shetler: So I guess what I’m coming down to is this, I know it’s a half a million dollars and it’s a lot of money, but I would rather spend a half a million dollars or $700,000 today correctly so that you don’t come back in two years and say, you know, that plan didn’t work as well as we thought. We are backing out, we’re going out on the street there and stuff, and if we’ve got those kind of problems and issues, I don’t want to deal with those in two or three years. I’d rather do it...

Dave Rector: I think my answer to that is, I think that we have. We tried to plan for the need that they’ve identified for us and I trust that their need addresses the future for what they think is going to meet their necessities then.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, back to my question a half hour ago, what I would like to do is, obviously, we’re going to have some time, and I agree with the deferral process, we’re getting to see some of this for the first time, but I really want to challenge everybody to start thinking about the future needs of these buildings, and what we’re going to do for the future if there are any additions or any other issues that we’re going to develop outside of the security plan. Do we need to maintain that concrete wall that runs all the way down? Should we address it at that time? Is that going to be a security issue just for the people that, Ms. Abell brought up a great question that I had, any corridors, especially small corridors, seems like they’re a bad idea. So do we take out that wall? Can we get some more spaces in that case? I just want to review some of these issues before we get a concrete pattern on this idea because if there are other ideas that we can have where we tear down walls, make spaces or if we’re going to totally use some of those areas for other things, then maybe we ought to address it at this time.

Dave Rector: And I will also make myself available to any and all of you at any time that’s convenient to you to address any of these questions you may continue to have as you review it.

President Winnecke: Okay, there is a motion, thank you, everyone. I appreciate your patience and I appreciate especially the Sheriff’s Department who did a great job as a couple of us had mentioned. There is a motion on the floor to defer this to next month and a second. Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under Scott Township Assessor, we have Rent in the amount of $8,000, I’ll move approval.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second, questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, under County Commissioners, 1300-3610 Legal Services in the amount of $23,000. There was a question raised last week as to whether there were funds available in other accounts to transfer. After review by the Commissioners and I know our Executive Assistant, Sandie, worked with them yesterday again on this, most of their accounts are all but depleted. There really isn’t funds to transfer at this point so I’ll move approval of that request in the amount of $23,000, 1300-3131 zero, 1300-3551 zero, for a total of 23,000, I’ll move approval.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second, questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Next, under Superior Court, 1370-3050 Patient & Inmate in the amount of 300,000. Again, last week there was some discussion whether or not that amount could be drastically changed. There was some confusion as to what bills were actually due. The bills that we actually looked at last week, I think, took us through October. This 300,000 is what they need with their outstanding bills for November and so I’ll move for 300,000.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second for $140,000. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, first there was some discussion on this last week, too, I think, raised by Councilman Sutton. This fee is after the week of our budget hearings last year. This was part of the new contract negotiated late last year. The fee, the contract actually states $140,000 plus, okay. We don’t really have an exact figure on how much above $140,000 may be paid out. So, in fact, the study done by Gaither’s agency requested that we try to limit it to the 140, so I’m basing it off of that.

Councilmember Tornatta: Somebody from The Centre is here if – I saw him out there, if you could just address this, have an opportunity to hear that.

Darren Stearns: Yes, Darren Stearns, Assistant General Manager at The Centre for SMG. That’s true, the base management fee was the 140,000, but with the past contract, there was also food service management fees that we could not collect until we knew what we had raised in December, which means they were paid in January, and that’s where they were coming up with the additional funds.

Councilmember Raben: So we’re making up for food bills from January of this –

Darren Stearns: Well, from December of last year because we would have to get the figures in, in which case we couldn’t do that until January and then the reason we were doing it now is so we can clean it all up for this new contract where it will be just the base 140.

Darren Stearns: Well, I guess, that’s at least a portion of that from what I understood as far as the commission part of that. But that’s where they were coming up with the 170, was some of those fees that were -- in December, of course, we couldn’t pay those until we actually had the total amount of the food service fees in. And the 140 is correct, is the base management fee for this year.

Councilmember Raben: Isn’t that a continuing cycle, though? Won’t you have December bills of this year that you won’t pay until January?

Darren Stearns: Well, we won’t have the food service management fee because its not going to all be in a lump sum of the 140 base management fee from what I understand. Before there was a base management fee and there was a food service cost management fee.

Councilmember Tornatta: And do you expect any type of monies – are you going to ask for any monies from the Council in December for any food management? Any food fees?

Darren Stearns: No, this will be it. The food service fees, the way I understand it with the new contract, its all one together. There was a base management fee and then there was the food services from when the support service had it, but that’s all been taken care of and in the new contract there is just the base management fee, which we have in the budget for next year.

Councilmember Tornatta: Okay, but in the past, we have been, we have kind of been the one that gives the food money for the food, is that correct? Just buying of the food in general? Or how are those funds doing for this year?

Councilmember Tornatta: Normally, we get hit for about a 60 to $150,000 food bill in December, so if this is all that there is, I think we’re in pretty good shape.

Councilmember Raben: And this bill that we’re looking at from December of ‘05 –

President Winnecke: Jim, can you hold that thought? We need to change the tape real quick.

Councilmember Raben: Mr. President, I think I’m clear on where we’re going with this. I would like to amend my motion to state in the amount of 170,000.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, next under County Council, in the amount of $57,097, I’ll move approval.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Riverboat, 1490-3551 Repairs to the Coliseum roof in the amount of $230,000, I’ll move approval.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote please.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, Circuit Court Supplemental Adult Probation, 2600-3510 Other Operating in the amount of $100,000. Everybody remembers what this relates back to the IT personnel for the courts where Circuit Court had agreed to give us this $100,000, so this is them following up with their commitment and I certainly appreciate that and I move for approval.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote.

Councilmember Raben: Okay, transfers, County Auditor in the amount of 2,759, I’ll move approval.

President Winnecke: Motion and a second. Questions or discussion? Roll call vote.

From: 3660-4110	Land	17,426.00	Deferred
3660-4193	Community Corrections	531,751.00	Deferred
3660-4321	Road Construction	32,563.00	Deferred
To: 3660-4195	Court Sally Port	581,740.00	Deferred

1160-3600	Rent	8,000.00	8,000.00
Total		8,000.00	8,000.00

1300-3610	Legal Services	23,000.00	23,000.00
1300-3131	Area Plan Per Diem	500.00	0.00
1300-3551	Veterans Coliseum Repair	230,000.00	0.00
Total		253,500.00	23,000.00

1370-3050	Patient/Inmate Care	300,000.00	300,000.00
Total		300,000.00	300,000.00

1440-3955	Operating Loss & Mgmt. Fee	170,000.00	170,000.00
Total		170,000.00	170,000.00

1480-1971	Accrued Payments	47,223.00	47,223.00
1480-1900	FICA	3,613.00	3,613.00
1480-1910	PERF	553.00	553.00
1480-1911	Sheriff’s Retirement	2,733.00	2,733.00
1480-3460	Consultant	2,975.00	2,975.00
Total		57,097.00	57,097.00

1490-3551	Repairs to Coliseum	230,000.00	230,000.00
Total		230,000.00	230,000.00

2600-3510	Other Operating	100,000.00	100,000.00
Total		100,000.00	100,000.00