Travis County Commissioners Court
July 12, 2005
Item 19
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>> ...and report to you about our progress on this project. For the replacement housing and housing and direct service. Recommend approval of site plan option b which is going to be discussed with option a and option c. I would also like to let you know that we -- the cost estimate on that, it was below 100,000 and the rule presented to you and actually is about -- I知 sorry, less than hundred million which is about 80 million dollars. With this I would let the project manager give you a little briefing on that and we would let the architects or consultant present the project to you. Thank you.
>> good afternoon, Commissioners, judge. Ken gatey, facilities management. We have the consultants that we've hired with h.o.k. And carter, tkpwoebl, lee. To my raoet we have bob green with carter, gobel lee. To my far left, ed spooner, the main project manager with his project, and kurt milliken, also project manager for this project. They are going to be -- last time we were here to talk to you about this was during the work session on June 23 at which time we presented the program to you in its current development and also three draft site plans as they had been developed at that point. And today we're back to -- we've thoroughly fleshed out the program a lot better, the space program, we're here today to ask you to give your approval to this moving forward with the program as it's currently developed, and we also have three site plans, a little bit more developed. Similar to what you saw before, but more fully developed now. We would like to ask for you to approve option b of those. They will be presented to you in a minute. We also have a cost estimate that we've worked up at this point for discussion. We're not asking for approval of that at this point, but we would like to discuss it because we will also be be meeting with the citizens bond advisory committee tonight, and they are keenly interested to know how much this project will cost. And so we're here to discuss all those things today, and i'd like to start out with the h.o.k. Hoax who will run through the programs and site plans as they are at this point.
>> at each of your desks we have a booklet. Everything on my power point show is in here so if it's more convenient to read from the book, you can refer to that. What I would like to do just very quickly, go through this power point show and explain how we've arrived at the point in the process that we're prepared to make a recommendation on a single direction to move forward. We looked at three schemes. Scheme a is the scheme that locates all of the new secure housing in the center of the complex, essentially in two buildings connected with a corridor. Adjacent on the left-hand side, which is to the west, is a support building that's the main control access and main entrance. Also on the campus you can see several of the projects that are support buildings that we have recommended being included in this project. They include a new central planted. The central plant initially would provide hot and chilled water to the new secure housing building, but would be sized that in the future as work is done in each of the existing buildings or buildings are replaced, they can be brought into the central plant system. And over a phased period of time, we would phase out all of the individual air conditioners and heaters in those buildings. The result of including a central plant would be a substantial reduction in energy consumption and utility and maintenance expenses. A new commissary building. We don't have adequate space at the campus for the commissary functions, and the current location is not a secure location. This would put the commissary function at the entrance. Not requiring vendors to come inside the campus. Some expansion at the administration building for staff support activities. A renovation of the records and program building. And a renovation and expansion of the visitation building. All of the schemes essentially include those components. The final component is outside of the secure perimeter on the east side of the site which would be a new work release building housing 240 inmates who would be working during the day and returning to that building in the afternoon. It's outside the secure perimeter. Functions independently and has its own parking. This is an enlarged site drawing of the housing complex, and then this is a plan. All of the schemes essentially have included [inaudible] individual housing pods. The secure pods, the single cell, the double bunk cells are 48-bed units. The medium security that we have, which is four-bunk cells, quads we call them, are 56-bet units. And the minimum security is a dormitory with 64 beds in each dormitory. And this is a combination of both male and female. The male, all of the left component is male. The lower right component is male. And the upper right quadrant is the female here. But that's scheme option a. Scheme option c was a design that we approached by taking individual buildings. Each building with four housing units in that building, but the buildings themselves are separated. Again though, the exact same program and number of beds. Scheme b, which is the scheme that was total consensus between the sheriff's deputies, facilities management and the consulting team offered a number of advantages. That locates a single new secure housing building for 1448 beds, essentially in that same site location in the center of the complex. It allows access to that building from a couple of different points. If you see the services building over to the left-hand side, there's a walkway there, and almost all of the inmate traffic for out of housing activities, education, those kinds of functions, medical services, chapel, visitation would be through that link between the services building and what we've called the support building. The vehicular service for that building comes down from the top, the north side of the building, and we have a loading dock in the housing building with a secure sally port and the food pantry is located in that component there, and we have a ring road around the building for service. Inmates who are going from the housing unit for court appearances would be transferred to a van or a bus between the chapel and that building, and there was a turn-around for service vehicles. This is the plan. The building to the left is the main control and entry component. We have some offices, a small office area for staff offices, and a muster room for briefings and roll call and some staff toilets. There's a small holding area, an entrance for the inmate transfer process. We have four holding cells there. Inmates for court transfer would be delivered by transportation officers. They would be held at that position until the housing officers would come up and retrieve them to bring to their individual housing units. Then each of the housing units is clustered in a unit management area so that the outdoor recreation, the day room, the cells, program rooms, multipurpose rooms, essentially all happen in those four pod clusters. The gray area in the middle between the green and the blue is the food service pantry. All of the food from the existing central kitchen is brought to here, and the trace are made up in this pantry and then delivered to the housing allowing us to bring hot food -- the ability to bring hot food is a time-distance issue. So the faster you can get the tray from the service pantry to the housing unit, the hotter the food is going to be, and that's been a very important issue with the large dispersed campus that we have out there. The unit on the upper right is the female unit t female unit has two 64-bed dormitory. One 56-bed medium security with quads, and one maximum security of 48 beds. Each of these pods has their own recreation courtyard so inmates with direct supervision of an officer in each of the day rooms is observing not only inmates this the day room but any inmates in the exercise courtyard. The unit management cluster also has backup and support officers that continually observe and offer a support backup to the officers in the individual day rooms. This is -- it's the last page in your book. This is the cost estimate that we have developed at this point. The cost estimate that I shared with facilities a couple of weeks ago was based on the total area in the program. This cost estimate is the first one we have done that reflects a specific design, and the estimate is based on quantities, square foot quantities in the building and the types of construction that we're anticipating. But the secure housing and the site work related to the security housing is essentially $63 million. The work release housing, the 240 beds is $9 million. And then the commissary, the central plant, inmate records and classification and property storage, the visitation, the new pharmacy, central control and the staff services make up the balance. So right now we're at a total of $79,913,000. That does not include some costs that ken gatey can go into that are what we would call soft costs that are furniture, fixtures and equipment and some other things related to the project. The $79 million is what we anticipate the construction contract costs to be. Sure, yes, sir.
>> [inaudible] do you have about like 2.5% of the total budget and also we have the permit fee, testing inspection, anything related to that, we left about half a million dollars. And here it is the owner contingency, the program attention for anything on the we did not account for, about 4.5%. Just to let you know there's some design and design contingency included this the $79,913,000.
>> how much contingency?
>> if you look at the --
>> $7.9 million?
>> yes, sir.
>> okay.
>> if you look at the last page, i've given you the summary that you see on the slide, and to the right of that is a breakdown. This is of the secure housing component. We actually have these sheets which we'll share with you for each of the buildings, but this is a breakdown of the construction costs. It's got site work at the top and then goes through the structure, the enclosure, roofing, interior, roofing, plumbing, electrical, hvac work. The construction costs of just the trays is $43 million. Then we've added a 18% allowance because it's a design built project. That would be the architectural and engineering fees from the design-built contractor. The general conditions, the staff on the site, the trailer, the cranes, all of those support components the contractor would apply and the contractor's overhead and markup, we've included 18% for that. And then the $50 million we've applied a 10% contingency for the -- a safety factor there. And then we've added a 3.5%es ka lace which would be to the mid point of next year assuming the project moved forward and was put out to bid shortly after the bond issue. That would be approximately the mid point of construction. So that's how we got to the $63 million for that number.
>> we built a new visitation center five or six years ago. We are adding -- we are expanding that one or building another one in this plan?
>> we're doing some renovation in that building and expanding it. Essentially what we're doing in that building is adding some video visitation equipment. That would -- in each of the day rooms, and if you go back and look at the plan, we actually have a small alcove with -- depending on the size, four or five video visitation booths. So the inmate for visitation, for general, normal visitation, would stay in his day room, go to video visitation booth. The visitor would be in the visitation building and they would have their communication through a closed circuit t.v. Connection. Substantially reduces the impact on staff to move inmates across the campus to the visitation building. And reduces potential for contraband and a number of -- it's a very good process. They are still in the visitation building though would be provisions for contact visitation, attorney-client k-frpbgsz and those kinds of events, but the normal visitation could happen in the day room. What we've found when we've introduced that capability in a facility, the staff has the capability of allowing substantially more visitation for each inmate. They've lost some of the direct face-to-face contact, but the number of hours per week that's available to allow for that visitation is substantially enhanced.
>> so has the video visitation model been used in any other jail facility in Texas?
>> yes, sir. And I can get you a list of where it's currently being used.
>> because the last time we tried video conferencing, that word "video" upset a whole lot of people. If there would be an opportunity for both or either, then how would we decide which one to allow for a particular --
>> that's really at your discretion, and conversations with the sheriff and his staff as to what is appropriate for Travis County. The sheriff's department and the jail administration staff have embraced the idea of video visitation. And many facilities operate with a combination of the two.
>> from what I understand, I don't know the total picture, from what I understand, I know that some of the attorneys have had some concern about video visitation with their clients. But the majority of these would be for public, you know, for relatives to be able to come to our visitation building and visit through video link with their -- with their, you know, relatives or tphraepbdz are inmates as opposed to attorneys. It's my understanding the big problem has been with attorneys.
>> I will say that i've had monthly meetings with the attorneys and they are going to begin to use those video rooms more often now. And right now i've -- I was just informed that we have six buildings where we are piloting that program and it's going very well right now.
>> you've piloted --
>> six stations.
>> video visitations?
>> yes.
>> and we just started that --
>> [inaudible].
>> it's only been a month since we've been doing that.
>> it was not only the defense lawyers, but it was the judges except one who came to the Commissioners court room, all the judges except one expressed pretty much opposition.
>> I can tell you that the Austin criminal defense lawyers association, they are beginning to use that more. And I just met with them probably two months ago.
>> it's good for the relatives but not for the defense part. Is that what you are suggesting, sheriff? I won't pass that on, i'll leave it here.
>> if we look at page 6 in the space program, there were two elements. One of the elements is in terms of the addition or expansion of the visitation was for an attorney visiting and parole hearing room. That was 450 square feet, which would be three private rooms and the hearing room. And then the other construction there was a conversion of some of the non-contact visiting to the video visitation.
>> okay. But if people use it, it's fine with me. I mean and if we can enable for visitors to in fact visit inmates, you know, that's a good result.
>> the other thing that is done, and this could be a subsequent phase of expansion to this capability is substations for video visitation could be created. For instance, you could have a small room at the courthouse that could tie into this video system so an attorney between trials at the courthouse could have a conference with another client at the corrections center complex without having to drive all the way out there to del valle. So there's some tradeoffs, but there's some real benefits in terms of the number of contact times that attorneys can have with their clients. From remote locations also.
>> judge, i've got a few questions. Since we last talked, I have had the opportunity to spend some quality time in another local jail that has just recently been completed, and now am in a better position to ask some pretty relevant questions because what I found in this new facility is some things were designed exceptionally well, and I would hope that we would replicate that, and some things you just go what were they thinking. One of the things that it was very key to me is that we are talking about some housing unit sizes of one to 24 -- 24, 48, 56 and 64. Have we been given assurances by jail standards that what we're talking about related to the layout and design of those particular areas will allow us to staff them at win to 24, one to 48, one to 56 and one to 64? Because what I found in this other facility is they designed it that way, but there was some design flaws within that space that did not allow them to maximize the staffing that was permissible under jail standards because they just didn't think some things through.
>> Commissioner, that's a very good point. What we have done, because there are a number of elements of subjective interpretation in the jail standards, at the last workshop that we had out at del valle, we invited a representative from the jail commission to participate in the workshop. Brandon wood, who is the senior review person, he looked at the plans very carefully and we talked about -- with staff from the jail in terms of their approach to management and the utilization of direct supervision. And what he told us was that the commission would accept the concept that you have to have a ratio of one housing officer per 48 beds whether it's a 64-bed unit or 48 or 56. In our arrangement of four units in a cluster with the unit management control in the center, and let's say it's a 256-bed unit, we still have to have the staffing ratio of one to 48, but we only have one person in the day room. 64-bed dormitory, one direct supervision officer. The balance of the custody staff are rovers and floaters and they can respond to any unit for any situation that might arise to support that unit officer. Brandon assured us that the calculation that they would employ was that we take the 1448 beds and divide it by 48. So because of the shape of the unit and the adjacency from one end to the other, he would consider this to be one unit and we would get a staffing ratio of one to 48. So you take 1440 beds -- 31 officers, my mathematician. But you would have 31 officers in the building, and staff could deploy those officers as they saw fit. You might have a higher ratio in the maximum security area and a lower ratio in the minimum security area or whatever from an administrative and a security and control perspective they would choose to do.
>> let me --
>> we have 27 housing pods so there would be 27 officers in one -- one each in each one of the housing pods. So with 31, that's four extra who are then able to roam around the entire facility, under scheme b. Under scheme a, where there are basically two separate buildings, then that ratio changes.
>> we don't have enough of the design down on scheme b to really to get specific, but let me tell you about some of the issues I saw in Williamson county that just weren't thought through. There were support columns within the pod areas and therefore there were blind spots. And therefore they could not have one person sitting up at that upper area and being able to have clear viewpoint because they had support structures in the middle of this thing and not clear. I知 just saying out loud, hello, we need to be thinking about support structures. They also did not think through in an appropriate way that dealing with privacy issues in shower areas in terms of walls, half walls, that that also created some security issues that they did not have a clear viewpoint on certain things so they needed to balance privacy issues related to shower areas, but still they didn't want to create security issues and they created security issues and so they need to do have more people in certain areas because of that. We've got through this one before in terms of whether we will have clear viewpoints of the different recreational yards to be able to count things or whether you are going to have to while people are out in the recreational yards double up or that's where we might have floaters go. Another issue with the del valle was a jail standards requirement that even though we had the pod areas open, that we had to put a separate bathroom in the outside recreational area as opposed to somebody just walks back in to their cell and uses the facilities. So again, it was the kind of thing of we had to duplicate the bathroom facilities.
>> excuse me. You had mentioned that at the last -- at the workshop and that was one of the questions we asked brandon wood. And his analysis of this podular design, he told us we would not be required to provide the toilet in the exercise yard because it's immediately adjacent to the individual day room.
>> not a problem. This is one thing they did exceptionally well up in Williamson county. I was very impressed by.
>> Williamson county, arkansas, by the way.
>> no, no, Williamson county, Texas. This was one thing we did very, very well. The way they did their control rooms, they were able to maximize using control room operators, which are not as expensive as having correctional officers because we have found that because of certain ways that we had done things before, we were having to use correctional officers in our control rooms and you do not get jail standards credits for those folks because they are not able to leave their posts to respond to some kind of situation in the pod. So are we thinking through those kinds of things?
>> the jail you are talking about is -- it does not have the housing unit officer within the housing unit itself. This is going to be a -- the type of operation we're having here is that the officer will be assigned within the housing unit right where the inmates are and will be moving around continually as opposed to being in an outside -- in a control room that looks in. It's the difference between the way the facility is designed from management point of view. This would be a direct supervision facility. So that officer is able to get up and should not be sitting at the desk in the back of the housing unit but will continually be -- will be walking through the unit, be directly in the unit, will be right at the outside rec area, will be able to walk directly where the sho urs are. It's the difference between the direct supervision environment and the indirect supervision environment. That's from the -- so we do not have the significant numbers of officers in the control stations like they have in that county, Williamson county. This is direct supervision as opposed to indirect supervision, and that's a major change.
>> but the point related to the control rooms is this, somebody has to be able to open and close the doors.
>> yeah.
>> and in that census to maximize being able to use control room operators to do that job as opposed to a more expensive correctional officer who then doesn't even get to be added to the count because they cannot leave that room.
>> the only -- from the point of view of the control room, the officer within the unit has an open station where he indeed can open up the cell doors. From the control station point of view, which are the doors leading into the housing unit, that can be manned by any type of individual or employees that you're talking about. But the difference is that the cell doors, an example, are not being opened and closed by a person in a control room. The reason why the officer is counted in the one to 48 is because it is direct supervision and he is there. True, you've made a very good point though in that whoever is in the control rooms, from the outside control rooms, whether it be central control or the control room for this facility, which will need a separate control room. Operationally the sheriff and his department, his office, I知 sorry, would have the capability of determining whether or not they want that individual to be a sworn officer or not a sworn officer, but that does not relate to the officer in the housing unit who will be working there. So it's a real good point, but it's why the county has been so farsighted into going to the direct supervision environment which they've done for years as opposed to having 50 different little control rooms and the officer looking out and having to call another officer and go I think I知 having a fight behind that -- in the shower room. I can't leave my control station, will you come in and take a look, which is the down side of the Williamson county jail, it's indirect supervision.
>> the model in place in dallas county?
>> I知 sorry?
>> does dallas county have a b model?
>> well, they are -- right now they are building a new unit which will be more similar to the b model than anything else. The architect is building a 2400-bed addition which is similar to the b model. However, it has a significant amount of dormitory space. And there are questions about that.
>> mr. Wood attended the meeting?
>> yes, sir.
>> would we be able to get the Texas commission on jail standards to sign off on our staffing strategy prior to final approval?
>> we will inquire and get back to you on that.
>> they are the ones who make the call.
>> we would hate to find out we had something we could have fixed or rethought if we had just simply asked the question.
>> there would be prudence to that because the jail standards are much more specific when they discuss indirect supervision. They allow you some substantial leeway once you have applied indirect supervision, but it's more subjective. So we would ask them for an interpretation and i'll get back to you through ken as to whether or not they would be willing to put that in writing.
>> with a notation of any conditions that they impose.
>> yes, sir.
>> as far as final approval, are you meaning before you approve this final program before it gets turned into bridging documents to go out to the design-build firm? Because we will be back for future approvals as we proceed through the --
>> I think we always find out that when you have to do change orders, they are more expensive as opposed to you already know what you want up front and can be able to tell the design-build firm this is it and you can bank on this because change orders will cost you extra money and it will not be part of that.
>> okay.
>> just a couple more questions. In the middle of the big giant b, you used a word that makes me freak because we've gone through this before. Secured corridor. Now, we've been told about secured corridors before, and they were not that. We still needed search and escort. Are we going to need search and escort in terms of individual people to walk us from a different pod area to get to someplace else or will there be able to be movement within this building simply by opening doors or are we still going to have a search and escort problem?
>> if you are asking whether it's required to have the officer moving them, the answer is no. If you're asking operationally whether they will move them, there will be certain inmates who will definitely have an escort next to them. Your high custody, max custody and the others. One of the advantages from the design point of view is that the other escort officers who make up that one to 48 ratio will most likely be assigned to different locations within those corridors. It would be operationally though, I would never say ahead of time whether or not an individual officer, whether or not certain inmates need to be directly escorted or not, but they will definitely have the ability just from the person in the corridor observing the inmates walking down the line. But that really does become an operational question. As an example, I would hate to say they won't have escorts and find out there's been a major problem has occurred within a housing unit and they are moving 15 inmates to another location. But generally I believe that just leaving the housing unit and going into another immediate area, based upon the classification of the person would determine what type of escorting would be required.
>> a trustee or something like that, but the way we have it night, we have no choice but to have search and escort and that is very labor intensiven it's not really a have good use of the sheriff's officers.
>> actually there is something which is being done here which is specifically done for that reason. There will be -- there are multipurpose rooms available within those housing units which will permit many of the so-called programs, whether it be piped in by t.v. Or by small groups to actually take place within the housing unit area so that you remove the need of the inmate from having to leave the housing unit, possibly go to the program building just because we have this additional space there. So there -- we would never say there will be no escorting of inmates, but the design of this will permit the -- a minimum amount.
>> that works for me.
>> I was just going to add on to what's been said about that. My understanding from major blager, what he told me was that it would only be the maximum security inmates would would really need to be escorted. The medium and minimum inmates could walk through this corridor. If you look at that plan b, we put the maximum security males up closer to the main mall so they have less far to be escorted or to be responded to if there's a problem. And the most secure, the separation cells, they are way up there at the very front where they have the minimum distance to have to be escorted if they have to come downtown or be escorted somewhere else around the complex.
>> these are problem ken gatey questions, these last two, related to the central chiller plant. Did we ask any questions of the city of Austin next door about whether there was any opportunities to -- i'll use the word piggyback on the central chiller plant that was put in on behalf of abia airport or whether the distance is too great and we really could not piggyback on that plant?
>> no, we have not asked about that. We haven't -- we could, but we have not.
>> I think at $3.5 million, it's certainly worth at least a phone call to Austin energy to find out if there is a way to piggyback on that or it's just not possible.
>> mark has information on it.
>> the mechanical engineer when he came by to do his part of the investigation, he was asked to look at that. One of the things we did come back to you've already alluded to and that's the distances are kind of excessive. We do have a large campus already. And it could be done, but it probably would not give us any savings money-wise. It would be good from a standpoint that we wouldn't have to maintain it.
>> I知 sorry, just to add on one more, we do plan to meet with Austin energy soon and we can bring up issues like. That we plan to meet with them to look at the possibility of bringing in an alternative electrical entrance and telecom entrance into the complex.
>> if they have any other programs available, we would certainly want to piggyback on those as well as any other corporation in town. Final question, my memory is from when we did this last time, we built out the water quality pond to the maximum of the site. Is that indeed correct and we're not going to have to do anything further on water quality issues?
>> that is correct. It's built out for a potential -- at the time we built it, the total allowable or if maximum allowable impervious cover on our site was 65%. To the best of my understanding that's still the rule and we are prepared to handle that.
>> thank you. Judge, that's it.
>> mr. Davis, you were in the adjacent counties recently. Any questions?
>> I was listening to the testimony on the probably dual use of the video conferencing and also the video visitation. You say it can be used for both so I guess my concern is if you're going to look at a dual role for this particular equipment, we've been -- I think it's been alluded to a few times by the judges and also some of the defense lawyers, attorneys, defense bar, that it may be underutilized, I don't think they are really using it to the fullest degree of capability. The county has made a significant investment in that. And I知 just wondering what if anything you can do to make sure that we maximize the dual use of video visitation equipment and also video conferencing.
>> I would like to recommend that we continue on with the trying to have more usage from the criminal defense lawyers and also from the judges. As I said before, I had met with the Austin criminal defense lawyers association, and they had made a commitment that they were going to start using those more. I will keep a finger on the pulse to see if they are in fact still using them, and I will visit with the judges to find out what their concerns are and see if we can address those concerns.
>> and my last -- thank you. And my last question is there were several complaints against that we have been able to add up and accumulate over the years especially from the public that have -- that have participated in visiting their relatives or whoever they have an interest at that's in the complex itself, and the complaint basically was hinged around the time that it really did take for them to get into see the person or visit with the person that they came to see, and it just took an enormous amount of time. My question to you is is any of this design, anything that you are doing lessen the time that a person would have if they needed to have visitation opportunities that they desire?
>>
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>>
>> ...if you don't want to search the person from the outside who is coming in, your reason for searching them generally is because in the regular non-contact visiting booth you have to be careful that the glass isn't broken, that it's made so contraband isn't being passed through the non-contact visiting booth. So many times indeed you much search that visitor or you think of searching that visitor coming in. From the video point of view, video visit location point of view, from a security aspect, there really is no need to search the individual from the escape or from the dropping off of contraband because the inmate is not going to be directly next to you. He may be a quarter of a mile away in actuality. So you can say the issue of the person coming up, you may want to identify who the person is and do those things, or the sheriff department may want to search a person, but from a security point of view or from a contraband point of view, there is no need to search that individual. Even if they were to pop through the screen or into the non-contact visiting booth, the inmate isn't right behind there and able to jump there. There are advantages to this. The other thing is from the attorney point of view, one of the problems that attorneys have had is the fear of the eavesdropping by correctional officers or that somehow electronically listen in on the conversation. Whenever you have video visitation of any type there is always that fear. So many times what you can do is you have separate visitation booths for the attorneys, some of which unlike the general visitor, which may be an open thing, sometimes you can put in an enclosed visiting booth and you can also put in controls to keep the fear of eavesdropping away from the attorneys. Because that is an issue that they bring up. They continually will say how do I know I知 not being listened in on? So there are factors that during more of the design stage will have to be looked into.
>> thank you for that.
>> I guess what I wanted to do was just to make sure that we have weighed all the past mistakes that we have made and to show that we really learned and we haven't forgotten the lessons of the past. And so I think it's really, really important that we get a signoff by the jail standards commission. And let's start off on the right foot and not have to back pedal at all. The other thing is to be ready, and I guess roger we'll depend on you once again. We need to be ready to be ready to go when the bonds are ready to go, so if we don't waste any time at all and that we have buy-in from everybody from the very beginning, so I guess all of this time is well spent and to talk over whatever plans or things that we think we are going to need in that facility. So that there's a buy-in at the beginning and no change orders. And to build a building with -- (indiscernible) as long as the planning is done at the beginning, all the preplanning and time is spent going over issues that are of interest to users so that there can be that buy-in. And we need to finish this project on time and on budget, and if possible under budget and before it's time. And then we are going to have one party responsible, right, for all of the outcomes of the project? We're not going to have a lot of clients.
>> that's correct.
>> so we can tell one person -- we can hold one person or one party responsible for whatever does not go right. And how long do we expect that these 1448 beds will take us into the future? How long will this be good for, this number?
>> there's a number of 1688 beds, a total that would be in this project, would carry us up to the year 2014 based on the recent study that was completed last year late in 2004.
>> okay. I知 just trying to make the changes or adjustments as we go along so that we have an accurate monitor when we get there in 2014. And otherwise we need to -- [inaudible - no mic]. And to try to make the adjustments that are costly as we go along. I really want to see a quality project at the end when this is completed. And I really would like to not have to jump through all the hoops that sometimes are necessary. So I think there are enough people involved who have had the experience from the past and have the experience of the future to get this done right the first time.
>> the jail receives the inmates, especially from a pretrial perspective, and the most important aspect of how fast the jail grows is not how many arrests are being made, it's how long the court processing takes. And you can base -- you also currently base your forecast on current and some past practices, but sometimes individuals see a brand new jail and they end up putting people in that brand new jail who they wouldn't put in if it was an older facility. So all of a sudden the forecast starts to change, but also if the court system ends up not functioning at the same rate and it just adds an average of one extra day to the average time a person spends in jail before going to trial, that can have a tremendous impact.
>> thank you for reminding me about that. That means that everyone, all the parties to the jail population, need to keep working together on ways to avoid putting people in jail who do not belong in jail and reserving it for those people who really belong in jail because it is a public safety issue.
>> and moving those people out very quickly once they get in so that this get through their case processing quickly and they move out quickly.
>> I would expect that we would keep all of those parties working together on the jail overcrowding issue, to keep working together, but you're right, it could fill up really fast.
>> judge, this is probably a pbo question, I wish they were here, but it is this. This is not our first rodeo. We have done del valle, most of us here since 1997, we've had various po issuances since then. My question would be are there any leftover dollars from the 1997 program? And if not there, we certainly had old co's that if you had del valle in the same year as they were other projects -- I would ask pbo to see if there are old co sweeps that are eligible that can be applied towards this -- these dollars. I mean, we're always trying to match things and reduce the amount that we need to borrow. It is certainly going to be a whole lot easier for our bond committee and our voters that if you've got $86 million and we've got even three or four million left over from old co sweeps that we prioritized toward this project, every dollar will be helpful in terms of using our old dollars up first.
>> Commissioner Daugherty, we can get that answer next week, pbo? Next week or later.
>> so I知 to assume that what we're talking about here is 1688 beds. And the square footage, total square footage on the secure housing that we have in here would be -- is what is the total --
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> 217,000?
>> yes, sir.
>> 277. And I知 sure it's in here just so I could write these down. And the square footage costs for y'all for the secure housing? It comes out to --
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> that's less the construction.
>> $211 a square foot.
>> yeah, everything.
>> has the work on -- [inaudible - no mic]. It's $163 a square foot.
>> and and on the figures that you all have, how did y'all go about getting that? Is that something that y'all bid out or something that y'all ran through and where there are a number of those that came back to you whenever y'all put this together, do y'all put it out and say, okay --
>> we hired an independent cost estimating firm to work with us on this. They put the estimate together working with our designers. We called in several vendors and manufacturers to get their current unit cost on everything from bunks to video situations, then we applied some ex-calation factors to those numbers.
>> okay. And is it customary whenever you all -- if you go to the right side of the page, on the last page where you talk about site work, and given that you have design fees, general conditions of 18% and site work, and then you go down and then the final calculations you also carry an 18% design fee general conditions. I mean, is that -- is that general? I mean, roger, so you build -- through the site work, you have an 18% fee there that's $698,000 and then you come down on the bottom, design fees and general conditions and then you have another 18% that is on top of the 18 percent of the design work. Is that a general --
>> the first 18% is just applied to the site work. The second 18% is just applied to the construction.
>> to the 4,305,067?
>> yes. And then the two escalated numbers are added and that gives you the 63 million.
>> but if you take and you add the figures up to get to the 43,000 -- 43 million, you take starting from the top five million --
>> no, sir. In other words, the 43 million starts at building, about two inches down on that sheet. So the 43 million is just the sum of the column from about a quarter of the page down. So we reach a total of site work at 5,213,000, then we begin at zero for the 6,475,000 and go down through the 43 million.
>> so from building down is where you get the 43,506,000.
>> yes, sir.
>> and then at the end of that is 58 million, so you go back up to the top and you take the 5,213,000, plus the 58,447,000, and that gives you the 63 million. So we've applied the 18% individually to the site work and to the building. But it's not cumulative.
>> okay. And then the total square footage for the facility, if you take out the 277,000 square feet for the secure housing, what in addition is there beyond the 277?
>> if you look at the -- in the front of that booklet there's a single sheet that i've provided that has a cost breakdown. And there's a column -- the first column next to the description of the items is the building area. You see 277,000 for the secure inmate housing. And then for the work release facility --
>> is that in this --
>> no. It's a a loose sheet that was right inside your cover.
>> I don't know that I --
>> right between your cover and your -- it's right between your cover and your first sheet. That has a breakdown on the square footages of all the building components in there. 46,800 for the work release facility, 36,574 for these other overall complex support areas. With a grand total of 360,882 square feet of building construction.
>> I guess -- I live in Barton Creek and I don't know that my home is $211 a foot. You're talking about building a prison, but I suppose that some of these prisons may be brt than my home -- better than my home. It is kind of surprising to me. I mean, from a cost standpoint. Is that what you all find? $211 a foot, is that sort of in the -- is that ha what it costs to build them?
>> when you look in the means catalog, their specialty is pricing things, jail beds unfortunately are some of the most expensive buildings that we build. They have to be very secure, a lot more secure than your home has to be. You have a lot nicer finishes in your home undoubtedly, but the jail has to have --
>> I guess I was concerned about having to keep me in the house... [ laughter ]
>> that's right.
>> for comparison purposes, Commissioner, the courthouse -- the cjc, it costs about 145-dollar per square foot. That's courtrooms. But this one is 211, I think we're there at that number.
>> what happened to the inmate flexibility beds that was mentioned some weeks ago?
>> those are included in the 1688.
>> the work release beds are new to me. They've been in the plan all the time?
>> they've been in the plan since hlk began to develop the program in cooperation with the sheriff's office. I guess the best way to answer your question is those flexibility beds are kind of distributed throughout. Probably some of them are in the work release and some of them in the secure inmate housing. It's my understanding those work release beds are mainly to replace some of the replacement. If you recall, we had 888 replacement beds that were replacing older or worn out or temporary buildings.
>> if I could speak to that, judge. If you're talking about the concept that was done in the study last year, yes, that was included in the concept is a work release that --
>> it will be in the backup that we do the beds?
>> the secure housing beds are $43,965 each, and the work release beds are $38,753 each.
>> I had my calculator a few minutes ago. But that's just the average.
>> yes, sir.
>> in fact, the minimum security beds will cost more than the maximum security.
>> yes, sir.
>> do we know that difference?
>> we can calculate that.
>> we have to know that because I know that question will come up. If I look at this depiction, the goal of the new ones and the black facilities are the current ones that we're preserving.
>> that's correct.
>> and most of the black ones have some sort of identifying description, like the ones at the top look like buildings without any sort of designation.
>> these up here.
>> those that don't have a description are the support facilities out there, like the marketable skills facility. There is a housing unit out there. I believe it appears to me that the consultants were mainly trying to label those buildings that are housing -- major housing units to remain or other major support facilities to remain. The others are rather minor facilities.
>> we're trying to keep those and use them.
>> yes.
>> all of the ones in here we plan to keep and use.
>> I don't mean to needle you about this, but I知 trying to get it back to the last page, the right side of the page. I get if I add the items up on the right, in order to get the 33406097 down there at the bottom, 33,506,000, subtotal construction, in order to get the 43506, you've got to add in the (indiscernible).
>> you are correct. That's an error on my part.
>> so see, that -- you've got 18% up on top and you've got 18% down on the bottom, and that is -- in order to get to the 43,506,000, you've got to add the 5,213,000 up at the top. It's a simple mistake, but I just want to make sure.
>> it is an error and I apologize to you. I've done to you what my bank does to me on my bank charges.
>> one of the things it does is puts the total of the building at 58.4 million, not the 63. You just back out we we we were saying five million dollars. [ laughter ]
>> let's give credit where credit is due.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> it may very well be. We're going to -- [ inaudible ]. [overlapping speakers].
>> I notice that work release is a separate facility, both stand alone. What does that do to utility costs?
>> the central plant would pipe chill water and hot water to each building on the campus, so in that work release building you would have an air handler unit, but the hot water and chill water are just like the secure housing, would be piped to that building from the central plant.
>> very little, very little additional cost, you think?
>> yes. Overall on a project this size in a very short period of time, there's a life cycle cost savings in building a central plant over separate air conditioning systems of these buildings. It costs a little bit more initially in first cost and it's not totally just the 3.5 million. If we weren't building the central point, a portion of the three and a half million would have to be added to each individual cost, building cost. But there is a slight premium to be paid initially for a central plant, but there's a very short pay back. And if the current trends in energy cost increase, stay like they are, that pay back period is getting shorter and shorter.
>> okay. And my final question today, major balagia is not here. That may be his question. If in fact we're looking at 27 pods with one security officer in each one of them and four rovers, which is 31 per shift, how would that compare to the security personnel required today?
>> it's still based upon one officer being able to respond for every 48 inmates in an area. Where the efficiencies come in is in the supervisory and the administrative type staff as opposed to having all the different staff individuals around in all the different housing units. The Texas jail standards says you must have a correctional officer who can respond on the ratio of one to 48. So that's where it comes in. So the efficiencies are not necessarily with the line officer, it's with the other -- it's how you're combining people so you don't have to have -- you may get by with fewer -- different types of officers, but -- [overlapping speakers].
>> it shouldn't make any difference, it should be one to 48, except if the sheriff's department and operationally because of the design of some of your current buildings or the overcrowding or the variance may feel the need to add additional officers into a unit above and beyond the one to 48 ratio, if you have a segregation unit or a max custody unit where you've got some real bad actors and you're putting two people into a cell, you may need to have an additional officer, even though the standards may say you just need one to 48, operationally you may need to put additional people in there. That's one of the problems you have when you overcrowd and you use a housing unit differently from the way it should be. You lose that efficiency, you can't have -- if you have a 24 bed housing unit and you have 48 inmates in there, you're going to need to have more than one -- you're going to need to have more than one officer available to respond as opposed to building something and designing something where the -- where the numbers of where it's designed to meet the operational need. The big problem right now is you're not meeting the operational need. You're putting max custody inmates in with medium custody inmates and you're adding people -- you're double celling people who should never be double celled, but should be single celled. So you need more staff to watch after them. Hopefully there would be a reduction.
>> let me answer that, though, because from the perspective of having to maintain a one to 48 ratio, I absolutely agree that, yeah, you will still have to maintain a one to 48 ratio. But because of the way we're configuring the buildings based on the fact that we have a lot of individual buildings right now and the fact that we have to move inmates in between all those buildings, we will see an operational savings in correctional officers. That will definitely happen. I don't think there's going to be much argument or disagreement from the sheriff's office on that. I know that's one of the things that we talked to the court before and we studied last year and ij that's still the case here.
>> I think that's one thing the taxpayers ought to be able to see also. One thing for me to say it and another thing for me to explain it like I know what I知 talking about.
>> I think we can do some -- (indiscernible).
>> it seems to me at some point, not tomorrow, but real soon, we ought to have something in writing that sort of explains the rationale and the additional savings.
>> and that kind of says to me that it cuts out on [ inaudible ].
>> you will be able to cut down substantially on that. You will be able to cut down on the needs of those officers. You will be able to get a reduction.
>> and that's something I didn't understand until we worked out that formula. And then the release factor that was involved as well. So i'd like to be able to understand as well so that I can explain that part of it.
>> and I think we can. I think we can go back now that we have some more specific information, we can do back and on do some analysis on on it.
>> one of the things we have to remember is it depends on the classification of that individual that we are escorting, whether or not we will need search and escorted.
>> anything else from the court? We do have some committee members here. Any questions of these consultants while we still have them on the clock and here in the courtroom? Yes, sir.
>> [inaudible - no mic]. You talked about 2014 taking you through that would depend on when it would start, correct?
>> the 2014 date is the date that the growth in inmate population maximum gets to the maximum of the facility. That's not related to the construction start date directly. We have done some schedule analysis on this. As part of our contract, we are working right now in a process that our next phase, once there's a proven scheme is to develop the bridging documents for that scheme. That bridging document together with the rfp language will then go after the bond election approval to a group of design-build contractors for bidding. That process will take a certain period of time. You've got to give them time to develop their price proposal. We have to review that price proposal, then legal and contracts have to be analyzed, but we would anticipate an early 2006 start date for construction. And then the construction on a project of this magnitude is going to be somewhere in 16 months of actual work in the field. So this is a project that would be completed in 2008.
>> keep in mind that -- [inaudible - no mic]. Completely cannot complete the bridging documents until we're sure exactly what the project will be, whether the bonds pass or not. But once the bond election is over, those bridging documents can get completed, we can put them out. The schedule right now indicates that we would be able to award a contract, we'd go through the procurement process for the design build team. We'd be able to award the contract approximately April of 2006. And we were estimating approximately-- the ood said 16 months for construction. There's also some design time in there. We were estimating probably closer to 20 months perhaps for design and construction, total design-build effort. So that gets us to -- to about 2008 by the time they're on line.
>> any other questions?
>> I have a question. Don't mean to interrupt the bond committee, but if we -- we're going to be talking to the advisory bond committee this evening, and they really want to know how much money they need to consider putting on the bond ballot for this project. I just want to make a clarification. We gave you a number of 86 million. We found what appears to be a five-million-dollar error in there, so assuming --
>> we may find more.
>> we'll keep looking, trust me.
>> if we can assume that the number is approximately 81 million at this point and the Commissioners have committed to approximately 40 million, to the best of my understanding that Travis County might pay for for variance beds, does the number that we are asking the bond committee for somewhere then in the neighborhood of 41 million? Is that my understanding?
>> well, I think my answer would be that my recommendation to the advisory which I would be to take the list of projects, the amount of money available, and make a recommendation as to what they believe the Commissioners court should spend on jail construction project.
>> okay.
>> and based on the one or two that i've seen so far, if in fact you're looking at $150 million, I don't see them recommending 86 million for jail construction. Unless they figure out a way to creatively get 150 million up to 210, which we talked about that yesterday, and there are a lot of ways to get to it. But I think we would like to get the advisory committee's best recommendation of the amount that it believes should be spent on jail construction from the amount available. Now, in the last advisory committee was going to recommend an amount twice as much as we needed. And I think we actually ended up approving for voters more than we had up front. So this is -- we would want to respect their input. And we understood, we've given them a tough assignment, so -- does that help any?
>> the best we can do for them today and it seems to me that since the consultants and county staff have pretty much unanimously agreed that plan b is the one that we should vote for, then all the questions from the court apparently went to plan b. And maybe we can just tell the advisory committee that that's the direction that we would like to head in. So I would move approval of that, of site plan b today, realizing that the approval today doesn't really fund it. The reason I think it's important is that I think the court should direct, and that would be part of my motion, that we touch base with the higher ups at the staff level at the Texas commission on jail standards and let them know that after all our discussion, analyzing, etcetera, we have landed on site plan b, and tell them that we plan to implement it and get as much feedback tomorrow. If they had some conditions, we need to know what they are so we can factor those in as soon as possible. Mr. Wood I guess is high up there, but not as high as terry (indiscernible). I would try to get an immediate proposal. It would be difficult to explain to voters if we proceed down this line and at some point realize that in fact our implementation strategy might be approved by the commission on jail standards. So that's what I would try to get.
>> and judge, also how we could -- [inaudible - no mic]. Originally some of the early numbers that were broken out was anything ranging from $59,000 a bed to $72,000 a bed. And we were hopeful that hlk would be -- assist us in trimming down and really getting to the cost of these. And certainly in terms of it's certainly more expensive than anybody would want to spend, the 33,000 and $44,000 a bed is a much better looking number than where we had intentionally have to build in there an awful lot. It's the first time a bed amount times 1688 and getting to a certain number. This is the first time we've also made it extraordinarily clear that there are other support services, there are other things that need to happen at the same time, and that was one of the shortcomings, lessons learned from the last time we had to do this, but there are other things that have to be figured in, and you can't act like they don't exist. For example, the water quality. This year's version of water quality is the central chiller plant. And there are other kinds of things related to support areas and permits from the city of Austin, all of these things add up. And so this is really -- we're not just trying to make it look like a number because that's what we want to hear. I think we want to hear what really is possible for us to trim down as much as we can. And there's contingency, but it's a contingency that we think is a good number as opposed to we don't know what we need -- (indiscernible). I hope we're being more helpful than we were before with this more than 100-million-dollar opportunity to build housing for the indigent.
>> [inaudible - no mic]. I guess my question is that when you would have the availability of that particular information -- (indiscernible). [inaudible - no mic].
>> judge?
>> yes, sir.
>> I have apparently a little bit different information coming my way from some of the bond committee members that I知 very uncomfortable with -- I知 not uncomfortable with hlk's work or what we've done, what I知 uncomfortable with is there's seemingly a difference of opinion with regards to what we need to be doing and how we need to be going about identifying the number of beds and with what we have in place. And we are fortunate on the bond committee to have a person that is very, very knowledgeable about this industry. And I know that there will be probably some arguments to be made with regards to what that person thinks that we need to be doing versus the direction that we may be headed. But I don't want to get so far out in front of this thing -- I do know what happens sometimes where you get something locked in and all of a sudden you think that's where we need to be going and we've got to find a way to get there. I think that we are going to come about this real soon because I知 thinking that the bond -- at least the jail part. There are three committees on the bond, and I know that the -- that the jail part of this probably is going to bring forth some information to this that I think is going to be pretty enlightening. And I certainly want the court to be able to hear that. You know, fortunately we do have somebody that really does know their business in this, and that is something that's very fortunate because we don't always find bond committee members that -- they're incredible because they're willing to work and put forth the time, but when you find somebody that's really got some expertise in a particular field, I mean, I知 all ears. And I think that we need to -- I think that we need to hear that. So that may alter -- that may alter where I go on this thing. And for that reason I知 going to be very leery about voting for b, not that b eventually won't be the thing that we'd need to do, and I知 delighted that we've got this thing in the high 30's and the $40,000 per bed versus what we thought we were looking at, but there's still some information that I am really very eager for this court to hear, and I think that we are very near having that brought to our attention. I think that we can get that information about whenever we want to ask for it. I think it's available if we wanted to agent ize an -- agendaize an item next week where we have a presentation from at least that part of the advisory committee, I think that they're probably willing to come in here and talk to us about some ideas that they have.
>> post it.
>> post it.
>> we'll have it on.
>> anything we can do to reduce this further and at the same time achieve our objective, I知 for it.
>> do we have any current information about what other similar facilities are costing within the state of Texas? Because it isn't helpful for the discussions for somebody to say, yeah, but so and so built one for $18,000 a bed, and you find out that was five or 10 or 15 years ago, and it does not reflect the current economic situation, the steel shortage situation, the concrete situation. It's like, well, that's lovely, but that doesn't reflect what's going on in the marketplace. And certainly what happened to us back in '97 on the cjc building in del valle is that we were building after the airport bid all of its things out, and we had about a-million-dollar premium that we had to pay on labor because all those skill sets were eaten up by the airport project. And we certainly have a lot of skilled laborers that are working on other projects right now, so I want to make sure that we've got a reality situation about what these things can cost and not somebody banging on numbers -- banking on numbers that didn't happen in central Texas, didn't happen in the last five years, didn't even happen in the last two years. But I will tell you the 40,000 figure is very close to what Williamson county paid in the last 18 months. It was in the 40's.
>> and that's a positive.
>> and that's positive. Well, positive and a negative. It's like this 20,000-dollar bed I知 afraid is a situation like $1.25 gasoline, it's come and gone. You should be wishing you got it, but it's not going to happen.
>> we can try to answer that question at least in part. I reminded brandon wood that you had asked for that information, and I asked him if we could get it. It must be -- it's difficult information to pull together apparently. As far as I know, he's still going to try to get us something like that. I did pull together some information, and based on the proposals that we received from consultants like hlk and the other consultants who were competing for this project, we received a lot of information, but the information we received is for correctional facilities across the country. And all the way back from the late 90's up through the 2000's. I did run some numbers on that just to see what we're seeing on a nationwide basis, and what I did was I made a list and I came up just with an average and I got two different spreadsheets, and the the average was -- per bed was averaging between 47,000 and about 60,000, and that was based on an average year of construction of 2001.
>> what locations? Examples.
>> florida, georgia, arizona, some in Texas, colorado, new mexico, tennessee, just all over the country. I escalated those costs up to 2007 using a four percent per year escalation factor and come up in the year 2007, which would be the approximate midpoint of our construction. Those costs came up to around 58,000 to almost 74,000 per bed.
>> share that with us later if you would.
>> sure.
>> and sheriff, with the advisory committee tonight. Very critical information you're about to share with us. [ laughter ]
>> all right. I just want to make a couple of comments. First, the Commissioner asked me about the 18%. I think the 18%, I support that because it's between six and eight percent and you've got the general conditions run from 10 to 12, so the 18% is right where we were. Back to the cost per bed. When we started the project early on and we put about 60,000-dollar per bed, this came from past project we had on del valle, and also it cost us about like $52,000 per bed, and it escalated to 60,000. Plus the previous consultant we had on the (indiscernible) working with us and mike trimble, he gave us about 60,000-dollar per bed, so that we just did the math on that and we looked into it and that's what we came up with was about 100 million. Now, we're glad that what we have right now, just like we told you, we're going to bring the consultant -- they're working so hard on that and they brought the cost down to a more realistic number and now you will see that's about like 43,000 and probably a little bit less once we have the site b approved by the court that we concentrate 100% on site b and we move on with the process. And we're going to come back again to the court to move on to phase number 3. Now, we move into phase number 2 and we move into phase number 3 and we come up with another cost estimate of funding that to you. And Commissioner Gomez, we will make sure that the project is under budget and on time, and we have about 20 months to do it after we have the consultant on board to do the design build. I think I would like the court to approve -- two things today, the architectural space program, plus site plan b.
>> my motion covers the second one. This is the site plan b, right? Which will be used to put together an r.f.p. At some point for design. Now, where is the architectural space plan?
>> the space program is in there too, the listing of the spaces and the sizes of the spaces.
>> can we expand that motion to include both of those? This documents and the recommendations contained here in. The recommendation is really to put a and c aside. And to proceed with b. That's the motion, including going to the commission on jail standards. And opening the doors for recommendations and strategies to reduce the cost of the construction of these beds. So our work is not over, it's time to change gears. Let's see if this motion passes. Any more discussion? All in favor? Show Commissioners Gomez, Davis, Sonleitner, yours truly voting in favor. Present, but not voting or voting against?
>> voting against.
>> voting against, Commissioner Daugherty. Thank y'all very, very much. And we will see y'all again real soon.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 12, 2005 3:46 PM