LA CROSSE COUNTY BOARD PROCEEDINGS

COUNTY BOARD PUBLIC HEARING – LEC  ADDITION

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2007

The La Crosse County Board of Supervisors Public Hearing on the LEC Addition was held on October 2, 2007 in the Logan Middle School Auditorium.  Chair Doyle called the meeting to order at 6:41 p.m.  The County Clerk, Marion I. Naegle, took attendance.  All supervisors were present except as noted:

County Board Chair Steve Doyle

The meeting was called to order at 6:41 p.m. instead of 6:30 p.m. due to some citizens having gone to the wrong school.  

Doyle explained the order of the agenda.  Sheriff Helgeson would first speak on the situation as it stands today in the jail.  Then retired Judge John Perlich will speak on how we handled situations years ago and how we have changed our philosophy today and last our architect Paul Brummond from Potter Lawson will go through a rough drawing on what the addition could possible look like.  After the presentations, the public hearing will begin.  He will allow each person three minutes to speak and after everyone had spoke once, people would get a second chance to speak or ask questions.

Sheriff Steve Helgeson

The Sheriff thinks the proposed plans for the LEC Addition will serve the needs of La Crosse County as far as incarceration for the next 20 to 30 years.  It is a long-term solution and a permanent solution.   He went back in history and explained the different directions that were taken to solve the over crowding of the jail including housing them in the Ivy Motel with guards standing on the sidewalk in front of the inmate’s door.  He explained that the female jail in the Administrative Center is worn out from the chain drives on the doors to the ventilation system.   It is also inefficient as far as staffing.  Staff and inmates also have to cross 4^th Street because of meals, medical issues and court proceedings, which is a danger, especially in emergencies.  The male facility is over crowded and approaching crisis.  At times there are as many as 20 males sleeping on the floor.  It lacks housing for the mentally ill and persons with disabilities.  It lacks program space and space for things like church and classrooms.  The meal and laundry area is a non-secure area.  If the area were secure, inmates could come down and help with meals and laundry and could save the County money on staff.  The jail is dangerous, there have been more frequent attacks on staff.  Just last week two of the staff were attacked and had to go to the hospital.  Ten years ago this rarely happened, now it is common.  They have seen increased fighting between inmates and increased mental health issues, and more suicide attempts

 including four successful since the facility has opened.  He has visited other jails and talked with other Sheriffs around the state and they do no experience these problems in their facilities.  These problems are due

to the over crowding.  About 30% of our inmates take medication for their mental illness and up to 50% of our inmates at one time were diagnosed with a mental illness.  That creates our own set of challenges for staff.  Inmates today are more violent than 10 years ago.  Today many go directly to prison from our facility or even the super max prison in Boscobel.  Our jail is not set up to handle those types of people.     There are many benefits to building the addition.  It is a plan for the future with the flexibility and the shell space.  Bringing the females over to the new addition will also bring staff, which will be a tremendous help with the overcrowding.  There would be flexible housing, more room for the mentally ill and disabled along with giving the program space needed. Direct supervision will make it a safer place for both inmates and staff.  There would be an assessment center in conjunction with Justice Sanctions and Probation and Parole and we would be able to have all the key players present.  We could use the Evidence Based Practice Programming, which has been known to reduce the recidivism rate by 30%.  Eventually we could be up to 600 beds, which will make this jail good for the next 20 to 30 years.  He believes this is a good start to what we need to be able to correct the jail problems.

Retired Judge John Perlich

Many of the problems the sheriff talked about we have been dealing with for the past 15 to 20 years.  Most counties through the country have been dealing with these same issues.  About 10 to 15 years ago, we started to look at trying to change behavior of inmates.  Close to 100% of these inmates will come back out of jail and live in our community.  So we started looking at what can we do to help these people from committing crimes again.  We have managed to come up with some programs to keep ahead of the game.  Many counties have not.  Because we have taken a large amount of low risk inmates out of the jail (due to programs), it leaves only the high risk inmates left in the jail and that is why it is getting so dangerous.  We are running 8 to 9 programs including bail monitoring, Drug Court, OWI Court, testing, and community service and so on.    He complimented the County Board on taking action to have these programs.

Paul Brummond – Potter Lawson Architects

There were several diagrams for citizens to be able to see what the plan would look like.  He explained the master plan, and how these improvements would help with safety and efficiency.  He thinks the new plan for the addition will help resolve all the problems we now currently have with the jail.  He started with the site plan.  There will be four phases.  He explained where each department and inmate pod would be located and the reasoning behind their location.   He explained the time line, which is looking at the building being done in June of 2009 and the remodeling in February of 2010. 

Each presenter took questions from the audience.

County Board Chair Steve Doyle

Chair Doyle started the pubic hearing by explaining that he would be calling on people who signed up to speak in the order they signed up.  If speakers had questions, he would step in and find a staff person to answer the question before moving on.

Speakers 

Staff and presenters stayed after the meeting to answer questions and talk with attendees.

ADJOURN:

The meeting ended at 8:08 p.m. with 7 excused – Richmond, Gamroth, Freedland, Ehrsam, Maney, Kapanke and Bilskemper.  There were 2 absent – J. Johnson and Sebranek. 

The above minutes may be approved, amended, or corrected at the next Board meeting.

I, Marion I. Naegle, La Crosse County Clerk, in and for the County of La Crosse, Wisconsin, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and correct copy of the Journal of Proceedings of the La Crosse County Board of Supervisors Public Hearing on the LEC Addition held Tuesday, October 2, 2007 and that it is the whole thereof IN WITNESS THEREOF, I HAVE HEREUNTO SET MY HAND AND AFFIXED THE OFFICIAL SEAL THIS 4^th DAY OF OCTOBER 2007.