Travis County Commissioners Court
May 29, 2007
Item 9
If I can just say one or two things about number 9, and we can have discussion this afternoon. Ms. Pierce during her research has learned that there is a private vendor, private lab in harris county that can do these back logs. They do so much per test. We now have four to 500. Our report from bringing in the other six chemists was that it would take almost a year to eliminate the backlog. On the other hand, we have had status reports coming from the sheriff's office and criminal justice planning, basically indicating that again, the number of inmates in our custody is on the rise. Unfortunately, the project shuns over the next two or three months exceed 3,000. I asked major belagia, really is what is sort of the optimal point in terms of our having to do something real drastic, including maybe sending out outside the . He think the number is 2700 or 2750.
>> he will be here this afternoon. That is 250 extra. Nownow--now, we ought to plan for two things of we ought to plan for the emergency plan to stop the flow of inmates into the jail if we absolutely have to do that. If you do that, it seems to me on the front end you ought to slow down that flow flow. It is difficult to look at inmates in our custody and sort of conclude these shouldn't be there. But the meeting that we have in mind for this Friday is to ask the affected ed-- ed--affected departments to do just that. History being a good teacher what we have tried to do, we meaning she has done the work and I have been in the background cheer leading, is to come up with specific recommendations for the group on Friday to look at. Really, kind of like when it comes to sending tests out of county to be done, a small percentage of these go to court. In that case the chemist would have to come to testify, those would be additional charges. I think on the front end you are looking at 90-95 percent percent. Lawyers are kind of waiting around for the test to come back positive or negative for an illegal drug. Then the question is what about the chain of custody. Can we to our satisfaction make sure that that integrity is preserved. That is why I think the people involved in the criminal justice system should make that call. Hopefully that afternoon and on Friday, follow up discussion f we are interested in pursuing that, I think we ought to try the generate specifics. When you look at what they cost us at 40 to 50 a day compared to what it would cost to eliminate some of this backlog, it would make sense financially to go ahead and eliminate the backlog. But others need to help us make the decision. So if you have a backlog of 500, even with six chemists there, as they work on the backlog, they have new case coming in. So if we could do two, three 400 of the backlog out of county, starting immediately seems to me that we will have done a world of good.
>> did anyone indicate what the turn ajound time was if it was to go out of county? Houston or wherever. To get the results of those tests? The turn around on that. Did they have--
>> if I recall correctly, they could do four to 500 in 60-90 days.
>> really. That's significant.
>> only takes five days to eat up 118,000 dollars, which is whatever this thing is. It's a really easy mathematical equation there.
>> yes. I know it's been done before before. What we do locally, I guess we have to figure out a way to do the same thing Travis County and that is whoever receives the suspected substance, let's call it that, has to carefully note the chain of custody. You do the same thing if you use a private lab, wouldn't you? If we were to use one locally there are certain things you have to did I don't assume you put on it airplane and send it to harris county. We take inmates and we take mental health. So we are in the habit of delivering valuable merchandise.
>> right.
>> making sure it reaches it destination and, I guess, doing adequate recordkeeping recordkeeping. Anyway, if we are inclined to proceed in that direction what I'm hoping is that on Friday at that meeting, the appropriate personnel in Travis County would be able to say if you are going to do this, here is how it ought to be done. When you think about it, with a huge backlog and then a steady flow of new cases, you know, six of them eight, nine months, maybe, no way to control the new cases.
>> the city of Austin makes the majority of the arrests, and we accept them into our system here at Travis County county. What type of incentives, what type of, I guess, of things that the city of Austin is doing to, you know to help us also reduce? It just appears that should be top priority as far as getting the chemists on board, getting somebody on the ground running to help alleviate this backlog. The taxpayers look at this, you know, everybody has to dip into the pot in the pantry. This appears to me there ought to be some urgency also are the city of Austin to get somebody on the ground running and let's go ahead and move these cases. It is costing us a lot of money. Of course, hopefully, it will reduce the overcrowding situation that we may well exceed if we don't take drastic action to go in that direction. My concern what can we do to impress on the city of Austin that this is a really tough call, and they are the ones that make most of the arrests and house these persons in county jail.
>> I understand that this is on their radar and on the front burner. The areas e-mail that I recall seeing suggested that they have hired chemists four or five and are bringing that retired chem chemist back for up to three months to help out, and have posted for a sixth chemist.
>> right.
>> we can get more specifics on that this afternoon. I understand that they are trying to move it in the right direction. What happened is that when they went from five down to three, then it's almost im impossible to keep up. I think we acted as quickly as we could and I guess they were too. It's looking better for the future. But the backlog of four to five case for county judge setting there, and you have new ones coming in on top of those. When I thought about it, if it's affordable, seems to me that some sort of medge si response, that is using an out of town lab if it's reliable, and I guess we can run checks and see.
>> check that out first.
>> I would think, they have been in this business and that's where they have been doing this. If they have and our people are satisfied with them, I don't know why we wouldn't go ahead and try to put as big a dent in that backlog as we could immediately.
>> makes sense.
>> because a lot of of lawyers, I mean, the judges take the position that lawyers are not really doing a good job if they do this stuff without the lab getting back, unless the recommended plea is just too good to pass up. But you hate for somebody to be out there on probation or pleading guilty when the lab results come back negative. That would be bad news.
>> justice not served.
>> aside, seems like there's a larger policy issue as far as are all the people in the jail currently, is that the most appropriate setting for them considering their charges and circumstances.
>> we hope to have nine, ten or more specific recommendations this afternoon. But I wanted the court not to approve them as much as, approve them for discussion on Friday. We don't have final say-so, but we raise the issue. Then our appropriate county staff and the criminal justice system would look at it. I can't help but think that some of them really are good recommendations. Others may be a bit more problematic than appear up front.
>> okay.
>> okay. So we'll try to have that discussion starting at about 1:45 or two this afternoon. Jim, you will be back, won't you? Move that we recess until 1: 1:30. All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote.
number 9, which we discussed a little bit this morning, is to consider and take appropriate action regarding the following: 9-a, additional strategy to immediately reduce backlog of lab tests from forensic lab services. B, set meeting on fril, June 1, 2007 at 12:00 p.m. For -- on Friday, June 1, at 12 noon for strategic discussion of recommendations by affected departments and officials. C, adopt schedule for jail reduction plan in the event in a maximum jail capacity is reached.
>> good afternoon, judge, Commissioners. Kimberly pierce with criminal justice and planning. As the judge indicated before you left for lunch, staff did meet last week to discuss strategies to reduce the jail population. The strategy we came up with is we needed longer than an hour or an hour and a half to come up with true jail streang. We have scheduled a working group here in the Commissioners courtroom for next Friday from noon to 4:00. The sheriff's department indicates that the jail population is maxed out when we reach 2750 inmates. Today's count -- 5750. -- 2750. Today's count is 2732. The first recommendation is that they would be willing to help us with the backlog of cases that are awaiting testing from a.p.d.'s drug lab. Last week there were 475 cases. And they offered $250 each, which comes out to $118,000. We're spending that in five days incourse rating 475 inmates. So that's the first thing that I would like for this group to look at on Friday. Secondly I'd like to look at creating a position to focus on jail diversion and overcrowding. I've mentioned to the court several times that I felt there was a need to have an f.t.e. Assigned to jail overcrowding looking at every single day of subsets of the population and see if we can't decrease the population.
>> before you go to the next one, what I'm concerned about is -- we've been dealing with jail diversity and overpopulation, trying to find a diverse way to how we can keep the jail population down, and yet -- and we've been dealing with this for awhile. And yet today we're still talking about the same subject matter. It would be good I think also to have as far as a reminder to the court, the amount of money that we will spend, on this subject matter when we first start looking at how can we reduce the jail population. We've spent a lot of money looking at different ways for how we can solve and put our arms around this problem. We still haven't gotten our arms fully around it, but it would still be good for me to know what we have on board right now as far as earmarked for jail -- a decrease in the population itself and the programs that we've established thus far and the amount of money that we would set aside for those programs. I think all of that in my mind should go along with what we're talking about. And that reminds me that yes, the court has been doing something, but -- I'm going to leave you with a but.
>> I completely agree. We had a working session with the court several months ago where departments came in and they identified several areas for jail diversion and overcrowding.
>> I just heard you mention f.t.e.'s, and I hear continuous increase in cost on dealing with this situation, and I'm beginning to wonder what those other situations that we already have on the books now and why the population is continuing to go up and we've already spent all this money. So I'm not getting it.
>> I understand. And I hope that after our meeting on Friday that we'll be able to answer some of your questions or some of your concerns.
>> thank you.
>> some other thing that I would like to have on the agenda for Friday is possibly looking at some programs and services that we could actually operate at del valle as opposed to in the community as a condition of right hand bond or it's a condition of probation that they receive these services in the community, however if they are rearrested on a probation violation, perhaps we can offer those services in the county jail so they're not having to continue to sign up for the services in the community once they're released. We can also look at a policy to be adopted releasing inmates on a pr bond if there's no lab results from a.p.d. Within a specific amount of time. It's recommended that cjp could also assist pretrial services with the development of a pretrial program for their defendants. We could also explore the use of funding available for electronic monitoring, gps tracking and other tmg available for pretrial defendants. And lastly, develop a policy that indicates after a specified number of days in jail, the pretrial officer would reinterview the inmate for eligibility. We could also ask the sheriff's office if there might be staff available at del valle where these pretrial officers could be housed there as opposed to downtown. Those are some of the conversation that we were having at our meeting last week, since 2400 of them are in del valle, it may be be best to have that staff located there. But again, these are just thing that I just wanted to throw out on the table on Friday's agenda and really let staff get down and talk about what's feasible and what's not. And I'd also like to remind the court that criminal justice planning continue to do research and look at what other jurisdictions are doing in reference to this. And then lastly, we're concerned or I'm concerned with the number -- with tyc, the Texas youth commission. We don't quite know yet exactly how many young adults -- when I say that they're not going to be juveniles released into our community, they will be young adults over 18 that will not be on probation or parole,, being released without any sprfks or basic needs or any kind of assistance. I'm concerned with those numbers because if they do get rearrested they will be at our central booking facility and not at gardner-betts. So with the population about to be maxed I'm concerned about that and I would like for folks to begin to talk about strategies in reference to tyc.
>> one of the questions this morning that was asked, you probably heard it, the houston company that has the ability to help us out, what is the turnaround time if they said that they took the 475? Was that a 60, 90 day?
>> I want to say it was 30 days. Days, Commissioners. It was a pretty quick turnaround depending on the amount of tests that we send them. I can't get to my computer right now. We're in the process of moving. Or I'd be able to tell you exactly what stan said.
>> we would potentially have the ability to deal with 475 cases within 30 days. If you're talking 30 days, because at this stage if everything went right, we're talking about January and that's really -- January just starts full -- getting up to speed with regards to taking on all the new staff. There's no telling how many we will mount up to with the 4 fif that we have now.
>> I'm sure it's well over 500 this week. That's one reason why I wanted to continue to look at other options. Even though it's great that we're helping with a.p.d., but we needed to start looking at other options on how to get the numbers down.
>> do we know for a fact -- obviously you would think that a company that does this in the private sector, they obviously know what they're doing. Do we have some history? Have we do some checking up to make sure that they are sfully compliant -- fully compliant with -- we're not going to get down there and find out that, oops, they either made some mistakes or -- are you confident they can do the job?
>> I'm pretty confident. Harris county district attorney's office uses them. I've heard the conversation about the chain of custody this morning and I'm not an attorney, but I can understand where that concern would be, but harris county district attorney's office is the ones that developed the policies and procedures on the chain of custody for harris county. So again, I want this conversation on Friday, but it seems to me that they're worked through their difbses or concern were in houston.
>> a few years back we were looking at investigation as far as -- (indiscernible).
>> the medical examiner's office.
>> the district attorney refused to release the information.
>> pardon me?
>> refused to release the information.
>> in other words, some persons that were -- I'm vaguely pulling this out of my head, but what I can remember was that there was some persons that needed that test data and there was some flaws in the test data and of course there was something that was supposed to have been looked into? Is this the same people that we'll be dealing with?
>> I don't know. But we can certainly find that out.
>> I need to find out if it's in association with that type of information because there were some cases that were contingent on some of the test results. And I'm just vaguely pulling this up. You will have to help me if anyone can remember that incident and see if these are the same persons that had those problems then, do those problems still exist? That need to be looked into.
>> okay.
>> and one area -- this is great. These are 20 different suggestions to look at, which is wonderful. And one area that I would also like to explore is with the defense bar as far as any kind of incentives or disincentives with court appointed attorney system in getting people off of the jail call fwokt docket and into a pr bond as appropriate.
>> two things stand out to me, and then maybe we'll finish this. One is that people in the criminal justice system, when they get to work each day I'm sure they have a long list of thing to do. Unfortunately, that does not get you concentrated, concerted, systematic look at reducing the jail population that we need to have. And of the 20 or so recommendations that we have, as long as they're addressed specifically, I'm happy. But it seems to me that we need to get the right people to the table to look at them. Unfortunately or fortunately, they're the ones that make the call on most of this. We're just the ones that spend the money. And if the sheriff is half correct on projections throughout the summer, through September, then these are tough times that require tough, dramatic action. And 2750 is the magic number, then we're almost there now. We've got money in reserve, we've got a contract with county affairs that may be available, but we're going to exceed this by 250, 300 or so. We may as a last resort get there anyway, but I would like to think that at least we took steps early on that we thought might keep the number as low as possible. Whatever the reality ends up being, we just have to deal with it. But now is the time I think for us to go ahead and do what we think we can do to keep it down. And clearly, though, without the cooperation of a lot of other officials, there's no way for even defense representations to be done because they don't take place in the Commissioners courtroom. That's why I think in the meeting this Friday is morning, but what I'm hoping we'll do is say from the beginning we've got these projections, numbers are big, seem to be growing. There are specific things that we need to look at to try to figure out whether it makes sense for us to or not. And if there's a reason for us not to do them, we have to live with that. Some of the thing it looks like other communities are doing them and producing good results, we may be hard put to conclude that we want to reach the same good results here.
>> did you send that to the whole court or just me?
>> I sent it to the entire court and all the judges.
>> did y'all copy y'all's?
>> (indiscernible).
>> I wasn't sure, so I asked my staff -- see how the county judge takes care of y'all. Whatever --
>> it was a Friday meeting document.
>> and what I hope we can do today is after this meeting kind of refine ms. Pierce's memo, take it from a draft stage to basically a discussion document that's releasable to the public and send it to all the elected officials that we think either are interested or should be interested in preparation for the Friday meeting. And if we can get that done by noon tomorrow so they can have a couple of days to look at it, on some of these if it's in your area, my guess is it's just a matter of the affected personnel knowing what the recommendation is so they can think through it. I'm thinking a lot of these won't require a lot of additional resources, but if they do we'll have a follow-up meeting to the Friday meeting. But hopefully after Friday we will know which of these we think we can do immediately because it makes so much sense, and do them. And which others require some additional research and work, and we can do those and have a follow-up meeting and which ones we really ought to just reject out right because they don't make sense. And a whole lot of this we talked about who has this authority, who has that authority. The authority really is in the judges basically, the county court at law judges, is criminal court judges. And in terms of how different stuff is processed in the felony cases before it gets to court, the da, and misdemeanor cases before it gets to county court at law, the county attorney. But I'm happy to say that historically we have had such a fine relationship that if the things make sense, then we'll overcome jurisdictional over the lines of authority. Was that said diplomatically enough?
>> very good.
>> major balagia?
>> the chief and I were here in case there were questions on the c pars. Part. And I really didn't have anything prepared and just was here and have my usual backup information for myself.
>> what I mean by schedule is not where on the calendar it is to occur, it is when we reach this point. Do you see what I'm saying? And if these numbers get so big that we eat up the jail overcrowding reserve, and really there's a big question about using those out of county beds, except as a last resort, then when are some of these things triggered? Now, my deep down hope is that rather than reacting to our reaching the maximum number, we simply take some of these steps up front to keep from reaching that number.
>> and they'll even be days where we can sustain a population that is much higher than our breaking point, but that's the -- that's kind of the juggling act that we have to do within clfks to quickly try to attempt to determine who just came in the front door. And will the majority of those people now be getting out within the next 72 hours or are they keepers? And based on that information we do have some room beyond this 2750 because of the recent additional beds that jail standards granted us. The problem with the additional beds is that the majority, through a lack of other available space, are in our largest building, which takes that capacity to well over 700 in a facility that was built for 380. So we potentially are entering into with a real dangerous situation, so that has to be monitored very, very closely. The other beds that jail standards granted us, they're not allowing us to put hard bungs in, but will allow us to use the temporary structures that they refer to as boats, of which we have. We have some that date back to the good old days when we were really crowded. So we have those and they will help us in a temporary situation. As an example, if we have a really, really night down at central booking and we need to use the temporary beds, the idea is you literally place them on the floor, but then when the person leaves you can pick up the bung and it preserves your square footage. Bunk. So there's value to that, but we have to be very careful with the additional beds that we put in building 1. But we could probably work a week or so, even up wars of two weeks beyond the 2750, but once you get past a couple of weeks, then it's dangerous and we really need to start thinking about going out of county.
>> we've been over 2800 before, including last year?
>> yes.
>> it's just not good.
>> yes, sir. And today's count we said it was 2732. It's the first day of the entire year we've been over 27. We've stayed very consistent this last month in the 2650 range. I don't know what happened on the one day spike, maybe just because it stopped raining or something.
>> the wet weekend that you anticipated didn't happen, we took a bunch in over the weekend.
>> yeah, could be. 2005 was really our bad year. I'm looking at our average month. We did 2842 in '05. We didn't have any months where we averaged actually 2800 for the entire month in '06, but September and October we did 2768, 2776, which means we had days in the 2800, but we didn't sustain is for the month. And we'll watch that and we'll be able to do that, like I said, for awhile, but we can't do it for months, of course.
>> mr. Derryberry?
>> yes. I'm here as a resource person. And I just thought I would revisit for a moment with what we talked with y'all about when we talked with the 120 variance beds. At that particular point in time, the major indicated that -- and we have built a budget around the assumptions of 93 percent of the capacity being used with the 120 beds. That's max of 2884 inmates in the house. I know that's a problem. And my recollection from '02 and '03 and '05 and '06 is the major was able to manage right around 92% during that time frame, but it was bloody and very difficult. I have no doubt there were days when he was on the edge. And this discussion is about many more variance beds in building 1 than there were before.
>> bloody means the same as difficult.
>> difficult. Excuse me for my hyperbole.
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> it was difficult, it was hard. And for the record, I always seem like I'm on the edge.
>> [ laughter ]
>> and on occasion, as you may recall last September, we discussed dur the markup period, many, many days, most of September of last year. No inmates were shipped out of the county in September, but it was very close. And I think that the major and his folks were managing that in a very difficult time frame. In the end it started to taper down a little bit and so we stayed with the four exceptions that were built into the budget of 2675. 2675 right now I've got this with you and I'm willing to revise this from where we are from this year to next year. The numbers here to some extent are in line with the 2700, the 2800 that we've been talking to you about for '07 and '08. I suspect they will be higher. We are at 2732 today. It shows us with 2750 or so in June. We're at 2732 right now. This is my observation and we've had a plateau from may and then it goes up in August and September another 40 or 50. As I've said to you before, we worked closely with the sheriff's office and update this, I will update this for the June 1st meeting where we are. In my opinion, taking into account this high, medium low analysis by tanya that was just provided to us. I numbers are not much different than yours. We can give you an assessment of what range of risk there is to you. Next year is another thing. There will be inmates out in October on that assumption. And that will need to be filled in to the sheriff.
>> we need to keep in mind that at least a decent part of this thing is this train wreck that we have had with the lab. I mean, the numbers are there, but if you can get people out as people come in, and we've been having this problem for how many months, kimberly?
>> it was probably about this time last year?
>> so if we can just get our arms around this part of it, not that thick get a whole lot -- not that things get a whole lot better. Even if you can get something back in 30 days, 450, I don't know what that translates into the court saying, okay --
>> these cases can be disposed of. Some of them may be reduced to misdemeanor and given county time, but others will probably be sent to prison, others release odd probation.
>> the reason for the train wreck back when we started super jail call, rocket docket?
>> no, this is recent.
>> and the cause of that train wreck, to borrow Commissioner Daugherty's phraseology --
>> you're talking about 2002, back in that time frame? At that point in time the misdemeanor population was a far larger percentage of our population than it is today as I recall. We're in the 16, 17 percent range and now it's 24, 25.
>> so we are susceptible to fluctuations in population that hit us hard because of our limited space.
>> well, the misdemeanor population has remained at the -- in the 16 to 20% range now for the past four or five -- I was going to say two months.
>> typically it's 18 to 20 percent. It gets lower than the 18, and then it's kind of weird, kind of strange.
>> my point is once we solve the lab issue, though, there may be yet another -- another wind that materially affects your jail population. We need to look at all of our options in addition to how we speed up our processing.
>> sure. Because we've looked at the population that's in the -- our driver is the property crime, so we looked at that population in the 18 to 60-day range and see that there's tons of them. There's bunch and bunches of them, which means they're going to graduate into that 180 day plus range, and that 180 dawf plus range they're all sitting at 230 days or something. So yes, we have something else coming down the pike.
>> and we at least know one of the something elses, which is probably the juvenile justice issue with the younger designation of adult designations. But we could have other issue that come down the pike, we just need to get in front of the curve.
>> when tdcj is full, the number of people that we're able to put on a chain is very small. Those are things we have no control over. That's one reason why we continue to facilitate the jail overcrowding taskforce so we continue to stay on top of some of these things. Every time we look at a subset of a population that increases, we try to immediately address that or try a new docket. We have mental health court dockets now and we continue to try new things just to throw it out there and see if it will work.
>> we're trying to identify all our flex points.
>> absolutely.
>> there was another big issue, I think, and that was we have reduced the time for make somebody paper ready by almost 30 days in 2002, which is a huge thing. We're running the last I looked, it was like 12, 15 days.
>> the state is still picking up transfer inmates office.
>> they are. The numbers have gone down a little, but not really significant. It's just gone down a little. But we've monitored that monthly, but they're meeting their duty. From the time they receive the paperwork, they have a duty to take custody within 45 days, and they've been doing that. They've met that mandate. It will be interesting to see what happens this summer. There's a lot of different reports out there from different folks. But I've heard the same thing over the last couple of years that the state's backing up, but they haven't yet. So I don't know. We're watching.
>> do you need a motion on a, judge?
>> motion on a, b and c would help. That's my motion.
>> I second it.
>> motion to have us all back on Friday.
>> discussion?
>> so b is the only one that needs -- b and c, I suppose? The meeting is already set, right?
>> the meeting is set. A, we have draft policies that will refine and distribute by tomorrow afternoon. C is a work in progress. C we need to discuss. And my interpretation of that schedule there is to start immediately to do whatever front end prevention we can do, but if we're serious about whether that number is 2750 or 2850, it's kind of like planning for a fire, we need to know which steps will be when it hits. And we kind of have done -- we kind of have met that responsibility annually anyway, so it may be a matter of refreshing ourselves on exactly what we've done in trying to figure out is there a better way? I don't know when we decide that really we ought to go ahead and spend significantly more overtime. But when we use the out of county beds. Last year we didn't do it. There were -- I guess facts didn't dictate it.
>> it's such a difficult proposition because of all the different variables. On issues of -- I have space, but what kind of inmates are coming in and do I have space for those types of inmates that are coming. As an example, looking at today's population, I have 35 beds available in the maximum security unit out at del valle in building 2. I took a closer look, 34 and 35 are for administrative separation. Those aren't just available beds for anybody. So it's misleading to a degree. And also depending on how many inmates are in the particular area, absolutely I have staff --
>> maybe we need to see a one pager that pretty much summarizes --
>> I tried to get it on one page, but it's difficult. It also becomes staffing issues because staff will absolutely volunteer to work overtime, but I don't know that I want them to work that much overtime in those types of overcrowded situations.
>> do we know the -- as far as the out of county facilities, do we keep up with the status of available -- just in case Travis County had to send inmates out of county. Second is of the inmates we have here now, how many of those are in transport to the Texas department of corrections that need to be moving on down the road, but yet we still house them? Do we have any inmates in that particular category at all? Here in Travis County?
>> sure. We have over 100 inmates that have been sentenced, but their 45 days have not elapsed. In other words, they're still with us within the standards. The answer to the first question is yes, we called down to limestone and get an update of what they could take of our inmate population if we had to send them. We're still negotiating contracts with falls and mcclennan, so I don't have those yet.
>> so we have one with limestone county?
>> limestone county says they can take 100.
>> that number may vary.
>> absolutely.
>> in other words, there may be another county that may be in the same disposition as we are having to deal with overcrowding, so it would be good to, I guess, keep our pulse on that number as we try to come and maneuver through this crisis, this crisis situation.
>> sure. I agree.
>> so anyway --
>> so that calls for up to 100.
>> does our contract with limestone county give us the right to exceed 100 or is it up to 100?
>> right now that's all the beds they have is 100 beds available.
>> so does our contract exceed 100 if they're available? I thought the county we signed with them was up to 100, period?
>> no. The contract is unlinlted. If they had beds for 500, they would take 500, if I had 500 for them. Isn't that right, jim?
>> I can't remember.
>> I don't need the attorney.
>> [ laughter ] there's no number on that contract.
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> it's more than a budget thing. Going back in time, the most number be of inmates that we've ever had out of county in 2002 was 13. And that was only for two or three days that summer. 103.
>> and there's been very little change to that contract since that time.
>> so we have budgeted enough for how many I object inmates?
>> I can't could this off the top of my head.
>> 100 inmates for three months.
>> that's a rough guess, but that's pretty close. That --
>> you see why we need c? C I'm interpreting two fold, what do we do needly to prevent -- do immediately to prevent, and the second part of that would be when we reach that magic number, what do we do? In the past what we've done is use overtime as much as possible, I take it, and then when we absolutely cannot do more via overtime use, we send out of county, which is what we did in 2002.
>> 2002, 2005, and actually there was a month, the first month of 2006 that we had folks out of county.
>> a handful.
>> it was a small amount.
>> so hopefully we'll get as much done as possible on Friday. And did I post this for a --
>> I think it's the last thing on the agenda.
>> so everyone is invited, and that needs to be -- (indiscernible). Not the best worded language, but it is, a quorum of Commissioners court may attend. And that's a strategic discussion of jail overcrowding and related issues. Thank y'all very much.
>> thank you.
>> now, does that get us to executive session? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> you were looking like you thought I didn't have the votes on that one.
>> [ laughter ]
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 8:00 AM