County 2015 Review: Correcting Corrections and the Deficit of Trust

Inweekly sat down with County Administrator Jack Brown last December to discuss his work plan for 2015

High on his list was corrections. The Board of County Commissioners took control of the county jail in October 2013. In April 2014, the Central Booking & Detention Center exploded due to a natural gas leak. The corrections budget was hemorrhaging as prisoners had to be kept in jails in Santa Rosa and Walton counties.

An inmate committed suicide in early November 2014. A new corrections director, Michael Tidwell, had been hired and was set to report for work in January. The board was debating where to build a new CBD and main jail.

“At the last commission meeting we talked about going south of I-10, and so we’re looking at that,” Brown said. “We’re doing our due diligence on different pieces of property. We’ll come back either at the end of January or the first part of February with some recommendations to go from there.”

A year later, five more inmates have died in the county jail. Tidwell has been fired, and Assistant County Administrator Chip Simmons has temporarily taken charge of corrections. The jail infirmary is getting a full-time health services administrator and physician.

By 4-1, the commission voted in November to discard the recommendations of its consultants and staff and keep the CBD and main jail in the same neighborhood. In the following weeks, NAIOP of Northwest Florida, an association of commercial realtors and developers, sent a letter to the board protesting the decision and asking the commission revisit the decision. NAIOP preferred the EPA Superfund site on North Palafox Street.

Several of the commissioners felt that they had been misled by their staff on jail sites in regards to whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency would fund rebuilding the CBD at its old site. In their view, county staff was paying more attention to the wishes of a few and not the entire board.

As one said, the tail was wagging the dog.

They voiced their frustrations at a Committee of the Whole meeting on Dec. 17.

“This site (old CBD site) was taken off of the list based on a statement, which upon further review, could not be backed up,” said Commissioner Doug Underhill. “That statement was that FEMA would not allow, that that $55,000,000 is gone if we build on this site. As a result of that, and finding out that in fact that turned out not to be true, we have a deficit of trust between at least one member of this board and the staff.”

The commissioner from District 2 said he felt like others have worked to push an agenda without giving him and his fellow commissioners all the facts. He believed certain decisions are worked on more vigorously than others made by the board.

“I see an enormous amount of rigor from staff and from certainly very powerful people out in town, on certain courses of action, prior to this board having chosen that course of action,” he said. “I had seen incidences in which we make a course of action, and then I don’t see the same level of rigor. I am afraid that from my perspective, that is what I am seeing so far with regard to this jail. We have been on a real estate shopping spree for 19 months while this county hemorrhages cash to our neighbors, and we never actually took the energy to see what would it take to build back on this site.”

County Administrator Jack Brown objected, “When you look at what the staff has done, early on in the process, this facility was thrown out. I don’t think the staff ever said FEMA absolutely will not reimburse. I think what we have said is we can’t get a letter, we’ve been told by different people in FEMA that they recommend not going back into that area. “

He said that he had successfully tried to get a FEMA representative to attend the meeting. Assistant County Administrator Amy Lovoy said one would be at the Jan. 7 meeting.

Commissioner Steven Barry wasn’t happy with that answer. “Jack, let me ask you, when did we request them to be here? When did we begin requesting FEMA to be here? Our meeting was on November 12th, and it was made clear at that meeting that your board wanted someone from FEMA to be here. The only communication that I’ve heard related to communications back and forth with FEMA have been this week, but I would certainly hope we reached out to them the day after that meeting.”

Lovoy said, “The first request I made to alter the project worksheet, which is this first step you have to take in order to get a formal FEMA determination is to get it on the project worksheet. It never matters what they say verbally; it only matters what’s in that project worksheet. That was made on the 19th. I followed that up with phone calls.”

County Engineer Joy Blackmon said, “I followed up with phone calls, specifically to ask them to come, on the week of Thanksgiving. I did not get a hold of them. The first time in writing that I asked them was December 3rd, and then I followed up, as you mentioned, this week we had a conference call with FEMA to ask them the same questions. They’re very amenable to coming down. They want to work with us on this. They admit this is a complicated project, but that’s the documentation trail that I came up with.”

Commissioner Barry was disappointed with the lack of follow-through. He said, “Jack, I know it was made clear enough in my conversations with you in how important this is, and the inability to secure an attendee of some sort, is, as I stated to you, if it wasn’t going to be able to happen, I said this to you over a month ago, it’s very disappointing. The ability to have a partner agency and to secure just an attendance for a meeting does not seem like a high bar, but we haven’t been able to exceed it.”

Commissioners Wilson Robertson and Lumon May voiced similar frustrations and had little appetite to go through the 58 slides that staff had compiled on two sites and four scenarios.

“I frankly don’t really care to see anymore scenarios, but certainly we’ll listen to them because as Commissioner Robertson just said, we’re going to go round and round in circles, we’re going to wait until FEMA shows up,” said Commissioner May. “It’s not that we contacted FEMA two weeks ago, it was 19 months ago, in which we talked about whether or not this was something that could go where it is and exist. That’s the real discussion that we should’ve had 18 months ago.”

For nearly three hours, the county commission discussed how to build a new mail jail using all or part of the nearby McDonald property – which is behind the current jail and extends to the corner of Pace Boulevard and Fairfield Drive.

The final result? The staff is to return with options using the McDonald property. The EPA Superfund site, the one pushed by NAIOP, is not to be brought back to the board. FEMA better have someone at the next commission meeting.

And county staff needs to improve its listening skills. This board will not be pushed around.