Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-08-14-10:00AM-WORKSHOP SESSIONBRAZOSCOUNTY BRYAN, TEXAS NOTICE OF MEETING AND AGENDA BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COURT WORKSHOP SESSION r-� -` THE COMMISSIONERS COURT OF BRAZOS COUNTY WILL MEET IN A WORKSHOP SESSION ON TUESDAY 14 AUGUST 2007 AT 10:00 A.M. IN THE COMMISSIONERS COURTROOM OF THE BRAZOS COUNTY COURTHOUSE, 300 E. 26' STREET, SUITE 115, BRYAN, TEXAS. 1. Call to Order 2. Presentation by the District Clerk regarding Juror Payments. 3. Presentation by representatives from Rosser International, Inc. with an update on the proposed Brazos County Jail expansion. 4. Adjourn The Brazos County Courthouse is wheelchair accessible. Handicap parking spaces are available. Any request for sign interpretive services must be made two business days before the meeting. To make arrangements, call (979) 361 -4102. Office of the County Judge • 300 East 26" St. • Suite 114 • Bryan, Texas 77803 • Fax: (979) 361 -4503 R -. 29 s_ FIR AS I of 16 COMMISSIONERS' COURT WORKSHOP SESSION August 14, 2007 The Commissioners' Court of Brazos County, Texas met in a Workshop Session in the Commissioners' Courtroom in the Courthouse in Bryan, Brazos County, Texas, beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday August 14, 2007, with the following members of the Court present: Randy Sims, County Judge, Presiding; Lloyd Wassermann, Commissioner of Precinct 1; Duane Peters, Commissioner of Precinct 2; Kenny Mallard, Commissioner of Precinct 3; Carey Cauley, Commissioner of Precinct 4; Karen McQueen, County Clerk. Attached is a list of the citizens and officials in attendance. Attached is a transcript of the meeting. Vol Q g Page a 2of16 BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COURT Juror Payments Brazos County Jail Expansion August 13th, 2007 Sims: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming to our workshop. I will open this session on Tuesday 14th, August, 2007. 10:00 a.m. in the Commissioners Courtroom. First item on our agenda is `Presentation by the District Clerk regarding Juror Payments.' Sir? Hamlin: Your Honor, Judge, Commissioners, thank you very much. I'm really not for sure exactly what we're going to discuss today; I'm here to answer any questions. Of course, I've got Ms. Lanehart, jury coordinator, with me as well. You're more than welcome to ask her all the important questions with which you'll get the accurate answer. The one thing I want to report to you is I visited with Judge Boyett last week and he said that he would handle all the money for the jurors in the County and he would be more than happy to handle that as long as it was cash. Is that right Judge Boyett? Boyett: For 10% handling fee. Hamlin: As you well know, Judge Boyett does not want to handle those and I'm not for sure exactly where the other JPs are but we are prepared to work with the JPs and the new person in the new position in travel and take care of the jurors. The issue has come up several times and questions concerning the amount of pay for the jurors. I'm not for sure if that's what we're discussing today ... if it's all encompassing or not. I would strongly suggest and encourage... actively support ... I don't know what other words I can use; is for us to use a $10.00 figure for the people to show up on the first day. And these are people to show up that first day. We have talked about the $6.00, which is mandatory by State law. We've talked about the fact that since we're going to a cash payment that we will be saving $7.00 per individual. So instead of costing the County $13.00, we would be saving $3.00. Vol q 8' Page 3 3of16 Others have suggested that we stay with the $6.00 payment and then we would use that $6.00 and save even more money. My situation is the fact that I feel for the jurors, $10.00 is something they can utilize to, hopefully, buy themselves lunch, maybe a gallon of gas if we talk about going to Whataburger ... I don't know if you can stretch it that for or not. But it would give the potential jurors some incentive as well to have a $10.00 bill to be able to utilize to buy two or three gallons of gas... something of that nature. So that's my rationale. I'll be more than happy to entertain any questions that you have. We've already put into place, not in place ... we've already, along with the Treasurer and she's not here today ... we had talked about the Treasurer actually being the one that would handle the juror payments and after her studying it quite some time that it would probably be better that the District Clerk. Simply because of one thing; within a year she is going to be moving to the Administration Building and logistically it would be a nightmare for her, for security purposes, and so on. So, again, I'm open for questions, I'll be more than happy. Sims: Let me make several comments. Number one; this is a State statute that was sent down to us that we initiated by the Legislature and we've got to comply as of September 1St. That is a $6.00 payment for all jurors that show up; whomever is called, be it JP courts, be it the County Courts at Law, or be it the District Courts. We certainly want to comply with this. I will make this comment; it does cost money to write checks. Katy, what does it cost to write a check? Conner: Last analysis was $7.00 a check. Sims: $7.00 a check, ok. I like you being very free with our money here, giving them a $10.00 bill as opposed to the $6.00 but I think we should comply with State law and the State law alone. I mean it may be a little bit more of hassle but I can't see. And I appreciate you stepping up and saying, "We will take care of distributing this money." I know Mr. Hamlin certainly probably has got some security in place to make sure these people are truly on the jury panel. They have to sign off when they get in. Cards are passed out if I'm not mistaken when they show up and consequently when they get their $6.00 of not chosen to be on the jury ... that certainly we have some checks and balances there. Hamlin: Yes sir. Vol q9 Page 4. 4of16 Sims: So I like that and, of course, those that do show up and are picked for the jury ... I think it's $40.00 a day for the second day and all the way through the trial. Hamlin: Yes sir. Sims: So just wanted to give people here a little bit of information having to do with what we're talking about here. I do appreciate you doing it. Tell us, number one, you're in the Courthouse and you're going to be in the Courthouse and we have three District Judges and we have two County Court at Law Judges, the two JPs over in the new Brazos County Court Admin Building over there and, of course, another JP right across the street so you will only have one, two satellites that you will have to coordinate with the County Attorney's Office wherever they're going? Boyett: Yes sir. Yes sir. Sims: You know they're going to have a trial or at least start to have a trial. Hamlin: Well Judge, hopefully we're going to be coordinating with ... and I've heard Judge Boyett called a lot of things but I've never heard him called a satellite but now I've heard him called a satellite... hopefully we're going to be coordinating, having better communication with the Courts. We would like to hear directly from the Courts regardless of the County Attorney's Office. We would really like to try to make sure that the Courts are the ones that are in the loop and make sure that their wishes are being met. We're also hoping that they'll be patient with us because this is something we've never done before. And realizing that just because we start out one way, we may have to tweak that and do it in a different way. We just don't know. Logistically, we don't know exactly how we're going to go about doing this. Judge Boyett did say that he would be glad to set up a table for us and try to make it accommodate us as best as he can. Again, we have not done it before so we really don't know exactly how we're going to go about doing it. But we're going to be working with the Judges and, hopefully, that communication is going to be open where we know well beforehand so that we can schedule where we need to be. Because they realize that we're not just dealing with one Court, we're dealing with ten. And it could be less, it could be one at a time. That would be, in theory, the way that you'd like it to work. But there are times that it's going to be more than that and we've going to have to juggle. Vol q S Page -5 5of16 Now, having said that, we may have two or three Courts in the Courthouse that have jurors that come in at the same time. How we are going to handle that is we are going to also have people trained in my office... because of people being sick or vacation or whatever the case may be... so that we can supplement with an addition person for a short of period of time. To go in and pay the jurors that just show up may take a little bit of time but it wouldn't be an all day ordeal. It wouldn't be over an hour. We would also have someone trained that would be able to go to the satellite offices as well. So, having said all that, again; we're new at this. We're trying to go through it as best as we possibly can. Going through all the scenarios to be able to get everything covered. But we ... the other thing the judges have agreed to do here is that during the time that we are able to pay the people ... the people that actually serve are not going to be the issue. The people that are the ones that show up for that first day is going to be most of the problem. And we're going to address that and if they understand that we've got another Court that we're dealing with and then that coordinator or that Jury Coordinator, whatever title she or he may have, give them time to get there. They can do that easily. So it's not a time frame that is not easily manageable. Sims: Personally I think that the Judges are going to give you some latitude. They know it's going to be trail and error to begin with. But I don't think they want to do it. And so I thank you for stepping up and saying that your office will handle this because it really needs to be ... rather than kind of disjointed and every JP, every County Court at Law, every District Court have to handle their own; this makes a lot more sense. Hamlin: Well, Judge, and I think it makes a lot more sense for the Auditor, the Treasurer, as well ... they'll be dealing with one nucleus or one person, one office so that we can do more audits to insure that those payments are being made. The one thing that everybody is very concerned about and Judge Boyett is the one that articulated this very well in his verbiage the day that I talked to him is that everyone is concerned about cash. I mean cash is something if you're going to have to worry about people handling cash and making that available. That's an issue. The thing is that in my office, we're dealing with people's warrants for their arrest on a daily basis and those signatures are going out. It still concerns me, handling cash, yes. But not as much as depriving someone of their life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Sims: Any question of Hamlin? Yes, Katy? Vol a$ Page le. 6of16 Conner: I wanted to point out that one of the reasons for the workshop was so that everybody could get their thoughts aired because the rate needs to be set by Commissioner's Court before September Ist. Also, during the budget process, the amount that was put into Mr. Hamlin's budget was enough to cover the courts in the courthouse, not the JPs. So that needs to be taken under consideration. I don't have an estimate at this time how much it's going to cost for the JPs. Sims: Ok. We need to put that together and see what we want to come up with. Is that it? George: Boyett: Judge just to comment; for probably a year, not just the two courts ... mine and Judge McCleary ... but Judge Munoz as well will be in the same boat. I've talked to both Judge Munoz and Judge McCleary and right now, we're holding an average of three jury days per month. Each of us has a specific day and so there shouldn't be a conflict there as far as criminal trials are concerned. Mine are always on Thursdays because that's when the Prosecutor is available. Judge McCleary's are always on Wednesday. Judge Munoz's are on Monday. So those stagger out pretty well. When we have a civil or small claims jury, there's a possibility that we may have an overlap then and we'll certainly coordinate that with the Clerk's office. Jury Services will be the first one to know when we're going to have an overlap because we make a request to the weeks in advance for that jury to be pulled. They can wave a flag at us if it looks like there's a conflict and needs some adjustment. But all of us feel like we can, at least, accommodate a person... call it Paymaster, if you will ... to make that. We can set them up with a table right outside the courtroom door or may very well bring them into the courtroom as part of the preliminaries. Do that and get the necessary vouchers signed and the paperwork done. In a situation like I've got or Judge McCleary's got, I don't anticipate it to take more than fifteen to twenty minutes. And I think it will free that person up. It's kind of `...get it done.', and they can leave. Because somebody that shows up late always will have that option to come up to the Treasurer's Office. But if they're there on time and if they're seated, it should not be a problem. I don't think it'll take us more than twenty minutes in any of the three courts. Judge Munoz may have a little bit more of a problem because he's got such a tight fit in his lobby area with his counter for current business, for the juror to check in, and everything else. But it's something that we'll work around. Sims: Of course, once he get's moved, he'll have some addition room. Vol qg Page % 7of16 Boyett: That's true. Sims: Thank you. Boyett: You want to predict when that's going to be? Sims: First of April. That's my guess. Thank you. I appreciate that Judge. I think we can get this done and set up a system that can work and is very tightly controlled. Hamlin: Let me comment, Judge, if you don't mind on a couple of points Judge Boyett made. Herein lies the problem; as he outlined, it is very simplistic coming from the JPs side. And it's very simplistic coming from the District Court's side. It's very simplistic coming from the County Court at Law side. But then when you get all three of them... remember when we go back to the scenario ... he said, "Monday, Tuesday, Thursday... ", those are their days that we can count on most of the time. But, folks we don't have any idea when District Courts or County Courts at Law are going to have juries. So see, therein, lays the conflict. Judge Boyett has one on Monday or Thursday and then J. D. Langley has one on Thursday and Judge Smith as one on Thursday as well ... there's three right there, back to back. So what we're going to do is not rely on the request for juries, Judge. We're going to rely on the Court in communicating not only with Jury Services but this new position so that we can insure, as best we can, the accuracy of actually needed to go to trial or people actually needing to show up. Some of these as the Judge well knows ... at the last minute, they can just settle and there's no need for someone to come out there which frees this person up. So, having said all that, as you can see there are some logistical things that we're going to be working on. But I want to go back and I understand what you're saying, Judge ... the rate is something that I feel like this Court needs to consider. I understand that we're complying with State law at $6.00. I understand your perspective in being frugal with the taxpayer's dollars. And it just depends on how you look at it. If you look at it, the fact that that now, today, we're sending out checks that's costing $7.00 or more, $6.00 is how much the check is actually costing us ... that's $13.00. If we got to the $10.00 figure, then, yes, we're saving $3.00. If you look at it from the other side, we're spending $4.00 more than what we actually need to. But we're also actually taking on an additional responsibility the cash. So I really want to encourage you to consider the $10.00. The $10.00 to a person... not everybody gets paid in the County Vol q $ Page 9. R�O to come and serve on juries. We would like to think that they're getting paid to serve regardless of whether they show up or they're picked on they're not. But $10.00 could mean a lot to different people. So I strongly encourage you to consider that. And I know that will be on the agenda... Sims: You will make that recommendation next the Republican Club meets? Hamlin: And the Democratic and the Independents and anybody else that I need to. Sims: Thank you. Hamlin: Yes sir. Sims: Any other questions of the Commissioner's Court, Judge Boyett, or... Mallard: I guess my only concern is basically if you have a JP court and they're meeting... and I guess everybody is going to have their jurors to be there at 9:00 o'clock? Boyett: So far we have been. Mallard: So you got 9:00 in College Station. You have two 9:00 o'clocks here in the Courthouse or at the Magistrate or one of the other JPs, so how are you going to be three places at one time? Are you just going to have to allocate three people during that time period? Hamlin: We're just going to have to supplement people from our office to be able to go over and appear in those courts at the appropriate times. Hopefully, that will be an exception rather than the rule. Instead of the rule being rather than the exception. And yes, if it gets to a point that it's ... the thing is, is that we've got to remember that regardless the time frame is very important for us to be there. But once we're there, we fulfill our duties, we get everybody paid, and everybody signed off. We're done. The trial continues to go on and the selection process continues. And the good part about it is the fact that we can actually work with the judges and try to massage the times between ... in the Courthouse, because we don't have travel time. But we can massage those times and work with the attorneys and the Judges and, hopefully, be able to able to appear in different courts within fifteen or twenty minutes and be able to complete the task at hand. Any other questions that you may have? Sims: I guess not. Thank you. Hamlin: All right. Vol Q8 Page � 9of16 Sims: Thank you, Judge, for coming. Appreciate it. Ok. All right. Number three on our agenda here is `Presentation by representatives from Rosser International, Inc. with an update on the proposed Brazos County Jail expansion.' Yes sir? Golson: Thank you so much for taking your time and allowing me to bring you up to date on where we are. We've been working awfully hard for a couple of months now as some of you know. We thought it would be appropriate at this time to bring the progress before this group to kind of update you as to where we've come from and where we're going and we hope we're going to be when we get there. We've prepared a brief PowerPoint ... is ten minutes about right for you? Sims: That'll be great. Golson: As I said, what we'd really like to do here is kind of walk you through some of the things that we have been doing for the last two months and kind of bring you up to date on the status. The cast of characters here, as you know, I just wanted to remind who we are; who is Rosser International. My company is Patterson Architects are our associated architects here. And Steve of Pledger Kalkomay is here somewhere in the audience. One player that is not here I don't think is Turner Construction Company which is your Construction Manager at Risk. They've come on board and have been participating in all of the meetings to bring their construction expertise to the planning process. So that's bee a really good deal. Here's where we sort of are at the point ... the architect's on board, the CM Risk is on board. The programming which is basically sitting with the Sheriff's Department and determining the needs ... what goes in the project ... has been completed. And the first phase of the design which we call schematic design is about 75% complete. We're still working toward finishing that. If you will remember that is the piece of work that we will use to get a cost estimate on that then will form the basis for the bond issue for the funding of the property. Here is the schedule that we've been using. We got started late in June ... June 27th. We're pushing for August 201h to get what we call a pricing package to Turner Construction Company that will allow them to start the pricing package. Then on August the 30th, we will complete the entire schematic design package with all of the drawings and all of the specifications and have a final cost estimate from them. And then the Vol q 3 Page /D 10 of 16 County can then use that to move forward. I think you have a September 5th deadline to move forward with our part of the request for the bond issue. A little bit about what's in the project; the 684 beds ... the last time we talked we had 676 beds but we were able to in the design, come up with an additional 12 beds that didn't add any square footage. It didn't add any cost and, in fact, it reduced the cost and didn't have any staff. So we thought it was prudent to go ahead add those extra 12 beds. There are a variety of different kinds of cells in this facility. There are single cell, there are two person cells, there are eight person cells and there are dormitories arrangements. Now what that will do for the sheriffs department is give them a great deal of flexibility in the type of custody level inmates that they can deal with in the facility. So we like to get that broad range for them. With three, really, custody modes; there'll be a general male population area, a special male population area that has orientation and some of the segregation cells and so forth that's at the higher custody level, and then we'll have a female population that will be housed in their own, specific pod. And then, of course, we'll have a jail, an administration component, and a brand new intake that goes along with it. We've been targeting all along 150,000 square feet. The program is right in there. The design is right in there and we are proceeding with that size facility. A budget for construction that is bricks and mortar has been set at forty - five million dollars for the project. A budget of ten million dollars for what is generally known in the industry as `soft costs'. Those include such things as fixtures, furnishings, testing, professional fees, computer systems, telephone systems... all of those types of things that are need to balance out the project above construction cost for a total project cost of 55 million dollars; which would be, basically, the amount for the bond issue. A little bit about the solution. You're looking here at an aerial view of the site. You can see the existing jail and their two building components there. Sandy Point Road there on the North. The site that we're dealing with is sort of off to the West, but we want to stay kind of up on top of the hill there and stay out of the flood plane which is down sort of at the lower portion of the hill. So we're circling up on that portion of the site off to the left there. You can see the new jail which is sort of the bluish tone there. You can see the existing jail. And you can see how the new jail kind of wraps around the existing jail. Here is our existing entrance Vol q9 Page 11. 11 of 16 off of Sandy Point Road. Right now, all of the traffic comes in that side as you know and accesses the existing jail. Our new jail will wrap around and we'll have a new entrance component there for intake and staff. This is real good because now we begin to separate intake vehicles from service and staff and public and so forth and that's a good thing. So we have our intake component here and a cluster of three housing units. They'll be some staff parking here. They'll be secure vehicles for sheriffs department right here which will be enclosed, fenced in. The inmates, then, will enter into a vehicular sally port and go into the building. Staff will then go into their component or entrance there and go up to their administrative component upstairs. We've got a housing cluster here which is the special housing cluster, the female housing cluster, and a general male population housing cluster. There are a couple of what I call `community friendly' aspects about the design of this jail. One is, it has no windows in the exterior walls. We gain light into the facility through skylights in the dayrooms and through light that comes in through the recreation yards that are inside of the building. So we get the light inside. In doing that, we're able to go with windowless buildings. That does a couple of things for the community; one, it allows us to have a piece of architecture that's a little bit more normal looking and a little bit more friendly to the community. It doesn't have the little slits, security looking windows that a jail normally has. So that helps us. The second thing that this windowless building does is it puts all of the recreation kind of in a donut in the center. I'll show you in just a moment. And that that allows us to do is control all the noise. What normally happens in a community as the community sort of creeps up to the jail or develops up to the jail, you begin to get some noise going out into the community. The basic design of this facility deals with that and corrects that. So this would be the layout that I mentioned to you. The three green components are the housing components. The kind of multicolored triangle in the middle has the intake, has the medical component on the bottom floor ... and I'll show you in a minute on the upper floor would have the admin.. We've got a general population of 248 beds, male population. And one, two, three, four modular components. You see the rec. yards that are the center donut in the middle? So that controls that sound that I mentioned. And it also allows the officer inside to sit there and look at all of the cells and look at the exterior recreation yard at the same time and get that kind of supervision and surveillance over the inmates This is the female pods. You know, I mentioned to that there are all different kinds of cells. The female pod features every single kind of cell. Vol q 9 Page_ 12 of 16 For instance; there are single cells, there are two person cells, there are four person cells here and then there's a dormitory there all in sort of their own pod. And we tucked that up kind of close to intake so that the females don't go through the males. So we get that kind of relationship working. Up here we have what we call a "special population" pod of 192. It has an orientation pod where you take the inmates when they first come in front from intake. Puts them in there for the orientation. It also has a number of smaller pods that allow segregation of special kind of inmates. Disciplinary segregation those types ... people that don't play well with others. That type of thing. And gives that kind of high custody level segregation to be able to manage. You can see here the second floor; the staff, then would come in and go up the elevator and go up to their administrative component on the second floor. Each one of the housing units features a two -level component. You go into a day room and above would be a balcony or mezzanine that would have sleeping... cells or whatever... on each one of them. So what you're looking at here in those upper rings of green would be the upper levels of the day room. This is an industry standard kind of a way to take a lot of inmates and pull them up very close to the officer. So you can almost reach out and touch those cells and see them very easily. This is sort of if you were to take a knife and just slice it through building. This slice that would go through that back component... could you go back ... we're on an upper level right here, the site begins to fall off right there. That section that I've just shown you is this red line through here. And it shows how we kind of used the lay of the land to not do all of that filling and everything but ... go to that section ... and what that allows us to do is we take components that can be on another level like service and mechanical and so forth and we tuck under there so we don't have to do all the fill and retaining walls and so forth. But we are able to get all of the housing and all of that intact in the existing jail on one level. And that's been very important to the sheriffs department to not have to have inmates go up and down stairs and not have them to have to go up and down elevators which happens a lot of times when you try to step up and down hill. So we were able in this design to keep it on one level and to use that stepping arrangement to put other stuff in there. And this last diagram here really illustrates the point that I made about the kind of solid exterior wall and then how we are able to bring in daylight from skylights in the dayroom, from daylight coming in these Vol a K Page 13 13 of 16 rec. yards here and then bar light in the fronts of the cells. So we get daylight in the cell, a nice, bright dayroom, and we get a very, very secure exterior wall. So that's kind of where we are and where we're going, of course, is on the 30th we should be wrapping this whole thing up and bringing to you a complete, fairly comprehensive package of drawings and specifications, and a cost estimate. Sims: Questions? Peters: This should carry us out for 15 to 20 years, is that right? Galson: Uh -huh. (positive) Peters: We hope. Or maybe more. But as far as future, out of the flood plane, can you kind of show us... Galson: Yeah. That's a good question and I'm sorry I didn't cover that. You see these arrows here; this design has a corridor system that runs down here. What we would do is extend that corridor out and plug new housing units into it. We can go two ways. We can go with this corridor system out and put essentially two more of these components side by side, or we can stack them. So we have the flexibility of doing either one of those. So we can run out into here and as you can see, this line right here is kind of the magic line we don't want to go beyond and we don't want to go below. So what we would do is put new housing in this zone right here. Or we could also... click to the floor plan and I'll show these corridors; see we've designed this corridor where that corridor can just be extended over here and get new housing over here. Or we can extend that corridor down and get new housing and... go back to the site plan, please... and put housing down here. Little bit more problematic; get's down the hill, get's into a sewer line. But I think the short answer to your question is that we have expansion for new housing into the design of the facility. And it's going to work and it's going to stay out of the flood plane. Sims: Ok. I think the design... from what I'm seeing of the floor plan, anyway ... I like the floor plan. And I know the Sheriff, I believe, likes that floor plan too. So I think it looks good. Cauley: You were saying that what you have there now negates the need for addition land to expand and my question is; are you building into the foundation... will the foundation be able to accommodate another level? Vol � 6� Page I `� 14 of 16 Galson: No. We're not going to do that in these facilities right here ... for a couple of reasons. One, you would be putting a whole lot of money into this bond issue that you might not need later. You might but you may not. Building on top of a building is extremely expensive. What we would prefer to do is expand horizontally by extending those corridor systems and then we can go up then if we'd like to. So, I believe, we can add ... these are around 240, 250 ... so just call these things right here ... if we double stacked them, that would be 500. We could essentially get a thousand more beds on this without having to beef up our ... I don't think you're going to need that many but it's possible... without having to beef up the foundation system. The soil in this area is very problematic for going up very high. There are expansive clays ... we like to keep the loads on our columns as light as we can. So, if we've got areas like we do here to go horizontal, then we're going to want to go horizontal. But we do have the flexibility in the future for going horizontal and then going vertical beside the building. Sims: Ok. Mallard: I know that there's been a lot of work that yall have done. I know the sheriffs department has really put in an enormous amount of time to do that. Duane and I both have tried to show up at several meeting ourselves and try to absorb what we can. It's a lot. But I think this is really a pretty good compromise. There have been several designs looked at and I think this one is a pretty well ... you want to try to stay on the same level. And we do have a possibility for growth in the future. And at that point, like you say, probably the only way to go would be to go up. But I've seen many times ... I know the City of Bryan built the utility building over there and they built that to build a second floor on it but everybody forgets that; what are the people going to do operating in the floor while you're constructing. They can't stay in the building. And in a jail, that's bad when you have to send people away that are in jail. So you can't do that. It makes it very difficult to do it although I like the idea of it. But when the reality shows up, you just can't accomplish it. So, I think it's a real good design and hopefully it'll sever Brazos County for many years to come. Sims: Any other questions? Yes, Sheriff. Kirk: Just a comment actually. It's been a pleasure to work with Rosser and the Patterson's ... they've been very helpful to us. I'd like to compliment our staff as well; they've taken on the extra duties and put their hearts in this as well. You know, this is a change for us. This is going to be a direct supervision jail. And we're not direct, we're indirect and linier. The difference is that there is going to actually be a member of our detention Vol a g Page 15 15 of 16 staff in these pods on the red squares there. And they'll interact with the inmates directly. And that's a big change. And our staff needed to buy in on that and they've been touring direct supervision jails in the State. We've sent teams out to several different sites so that they could get a handle on what that feels like and come back and make some recommendations. They have come back from those really excited about the opportunity to go direct. And that was certainly something that we think from the education of that... and we will find this to be easier to manage the facility. The other part is that our staff has worked very well with the architects to work out the adjacencies of the programs and duties we have. And we really think that this design is as efficient as we can get as far as staffing and being able to do our jobs as efficiently as we can. So we're very pleased with this. I know we collapsed the time table on this and everybody's been working hard to get this done so we can meet our deadlines, but again ... Rosser's people and Patterson's people have been there for us and helped us a great deal and has been really gratifying to work with them and see this project come together. Sims: Thank you. Appreciate it Sheriff. Anybody else like to ask questions? Ok. Seeing none, we will go on to number 4. I will adjourn this workshop session of the Commissioner's Court. Vol 19 Page I& 16 of 16 The foregoing minutes of the Commissioners Court Workshop held August 14th, 2007, have been examined and approved in open Court this the - day of V OV. , 2007, in Bryan, Brazos County, Texas. f� Duane Peters Commissioner, Precinct No. 2 G 6 ---, � 7" Carey Cauley, Jr. Commissioner, Precinct 4 Attest: aren McQueen County Clerk Vol q g Page �% 44d."- Lloyd W ssermann Commissioner, Precinct No. 1 Kenny Mal rd Commissioner, Precinct No. 3 Pg 1- BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONER'S COURT iy� DAY OF au 920 07 10:00 Name (PLEASE PRINT) � M �. , AM/P-, w, 1, Organization (PLEASE PST) �.0 r Name (PLEASE PRINT) Pg -- - of BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONER'S COURT I DAY • a 0 af AM/W9 ! I Organization (PLEASE PPJN