03-24-2026 Council [45:11-50:16]

So I think that's pretty, that's a very telling for how physically responsible we tried to be and tried to streamline a lot of things over there, so thank you. We bring in $120,000 from NLCS, they pay for the SROs for the time that they're at the schools. Several other things there, but I also want to give a shout out to you because you guys just clarified that on the chief matron. Karen Beans, my chief matron, she's worked at the jail for 11 or 12 years now, and she does a great job. She keeps our meal cost or right around $2 a meal for our inmates, and that is, we provide almost 3,000 calories per day in the minimum requirements, 2100, so we actually provide about 25% more calories than needed. And she does all that for about $2 a meal, so she does a really, really good job. With the budget, a few concerns, I just wanted to make sure I highlighted, obviously just the cost of everything, keeps going up, this guy rocking, it looks like gasoline is going to go way up in 2026, so. We've streamlined our budget already to the bare minimum, so we'll really have to feel some of it this year, I'm sure. Secondly, if you remember a couple of years ago, the state cut the misdemeanor fund, they send us the money, and it went from $54,000 down to $27,000, we always spend the vehicle out of that, so we've lost one vehicle every year, we were replacing three a year, and now we're down to two, and we've got several vehicles that are between 8 and 12 years old and well over, probably half our fleet has 150,000 plus miles on it, so at some point in time that's all going to catch up to us, the repair bills and stuff already add up, but that's, I worry about the long-term impacts there, and then the last thing on the budget, and I've touched on this a couple of times, but the FCC passed the new laws with the communications, with the inmates, we no longer will get, we're not allowed to get any commission on the visits and things like that, even though they can come to our lobby, and there's a kiosk in there, and they can do everything for free, we used to get a commission, because it was just beneficial for them if they wanted to not come in, and they could do it from their own computers and stuff, so. I've met with our communications provider, and that is going to equate to somewhere around a 40 or $50,000 decrease in our commissary, and you can already see, I mean, I'm spending almost $300,000 to help fund things the way it is, so we're going to take a hit there, obviously the exact amount fluctuates depending on how many inmates we have in there, but that's a pretty big hit for an account that doesn't come, you know, it's not budgeted, it's tech payer funding, so. And then jail programming, I think a lot of people don't understand everything that goes on in the jail, but I did list all of that stuff, and if you got kudos, if anybody actually read this entire 12 page report, but, you know, I wanted to highlight a couple of those, we have online academic classes and educational games on their issue tablets that all the inmates have for free, GED preparation classes that are free, we have the moral, the MRT, the moral recognition therapy, which is a evidence-based behavioral treatment system that's designed to reduce recidivism, it fosters moral reasoning and offenders addicts high-risk populations, so it's supposed to help change harmful thought patterns and improve their decision-making, so. It's a really, it's a very in-depth and difficult program, we don't have tons of people on here because it has actually, you know, they get their own housing block and everything, it's a great program, it's just, it's a lot of work and some of them don't want to take advantage of that. I think right now we might, I think we have five in there. The cool thing about it is we've only had, it's a pretty long program, so I don't know we've had, we've had five or six complete the entire thing, but our recidivism rate is actually zero for everybody that has completed the program. No one that actually completed the program has came back to jail. Now, we're talking a, you know, you're in a half period here, so we'll see a long term, but it is, we, it is making a difference, I think. They have to be in there a long time, though, to take advantage of the program, like how long? Yeah, I mean, they can actually continue the program outside of the jail, so they can get started, and then because it's, like probation has, has that same program and stuff that they can help do, so they can continue it out of there. So, we also have started right at the end of 2025 called Pathways to Progress, and this is a program that supports justice-involved individuals, starting with incarceration