 Folks, we are house corrections and institutions and we've shifted gears now to discuss our secure residential facility that is to be built in Essex is to replace the current middle sex facility. We do have money in the capital bill to proceed with a 16 bed facility and our counterparts health care committee have been working on some of the policy issues surrounding this. And I'm gonna turn this over to representative Donahue. She is speaking on behalf of the health care committee and their discussions and where they landed yesterday. So I'll turn it over to you representative Donahue and then after that we can go into the Vermont the hospital association after that. So while- Thank you very much representative Ann Donahue and I will really try to avoid getting into the weeds but we did spend a lot of time we took a lot of testimony and just as a quick background review the middle sex facility, the concept of the secure residents was always a part of the one to one replacement of the Vermont state hospital beds after Irene because they're locked court ordered step down they're not community residences because of that feature of them. So state hospital had 54 beds. Post Irene, we replaced that with 52 beds. Since then we've added 12 new ones which haven't opened yet which would be 64. And this is then proposing an additional nine which would bring it to 73. That's 54 beds to 73 in a really short time period with a lot of added capital for institutional locked care. We as a policy committee did not ever hear from DMH the clinical reasons for that theoretical increase in clinical acuity or needs. There was other information we asked for and didn't get that would have maybe informed other aspects of this. But we do know it's really well established that community investments result in inpatient reduced inpatient use less capital construction needs. Vermont used to be the best in the country in terms of that ratio. And DMH presented us David as showing that in the last 10 years we have almost doubled our rate of inpatient use per population base. And the community investments have barely remained are barely more than stagnant. It was from 0.46 to 0.81 in terms of inpatient use per population. The community use of the community access from 0.34 to 0.37. Inpatient and secure locked care. The secure locked is slightly less expensive than inpatient but not a lot. This is much more expensive care than community residences and community care. So it's the long-term money issue. The operating dollars are the biggest piece of the cost. And we know that the emergency department backlogs are rebuilding but it's important to know that right now there are 50 inpatient beds offline because of COVID. So obviously it's rebuilding now plus those 12 new beds we just invested in have not opened yet. So we're looking at a series of current unknowns. First of all, as DMH has just pointed out there appears to be significant amount of new federal money that may be available to develop other further community plans. We don't know what that is yet. We specifically don't know. We don't have any plans in place for how to put that to use. We do not know at all what the impact of the huge investment in 12 new secure level beds are at the retreat because they're just beginning to, oh, they haven't opened yet. They're just beginning. And the investment in converting 10 beds at the Wyndham Center to have the capacity for high level security. So we don't know how those are gonna play in yet and we don't know what the community role could be if that opportunity arises in terms of impact on the flow, clog across inpatient care that results in emergency room backups because this group of folks for secure residents is not the only group that's not getting an appropriate level care. They are not the only group stuck in inpatient care. UVMMC did a big study a few years back, identified a series of levels and we asked DMH for report which they did across the residential care system which indicated every level of care is inadequate and is resulting in inpatient people being stuck. So what has changed since 2015 when DMH was first saying and the legislature supported, increasing the number of secure residential beds instead of just replacing them, the 12 beds that we invested in that haven't opened yet and the new information on the rest of the residential system and the tremendous needs across that system. So we do believe it's absolutely urgent to replace middle sex and we do believe that at least 16, in other words, the nine additional transitional beds from inpatient care are needed. But what we think there's a need for more information to make the right decision is the fact that we can't do everything and what's the best use of any capital investment in terms of those additional nine beds? We think it's premature to make it to lock in a final decision that they ought to be that highest security level and the most expensive operating cost level and make that wrong decision before we are able to assess these other much newer pieces. And that's the basis for our recommendation that the capital be appropriated in your two-year capital bill for 16 beds. But to do it in a two-year phase, the first year proceeding with planning for the 16 bed infrastructure, moving for the construction of eight of them, eight rather than seven just to split it, you know, eight and eight. While we spend a year working through those questions, fully reopening the system, the other 50 beds, the 12 new beds, identifying whether there are federal options, what we can do about that, the remaining, you know, stuck in inpatient care pieces, what's going on coming out of the Senate with S3 on forensic needs and the potential to need to build that and new capital construction there before locking this in. In that second year of the capital bill, the remaining capital dollars would then go either to proceed to complete the second piece of the 16 bed, the eight pieces, or to then say it's a much more critical investment and a better investment to develop alternative beds within the community system. And we have the language prepared to do that proposal. We had a minority view in our committee and most of that minority view said, we need to do both. We need all of it. So yes, do the 16 secure, as well as capital investment and expansion in the community. And, you know, I think we can't do it all. So the question is, what's most important? And we think it's premature to lock in the most expensive level without a review of what happens when we open the 12 new ones and what's really out there in terms of better community options to address the backlog that's currently experiencing. So that's the fundamental piece. Welcome questions. And we did have complete consensus on the language that we also added about what we would be asking DMH to do in the interim. And in other words, even if your committee decides that the capital money should be locked into this level of care that we still would want to ask DMH to be fully digging into these other questions that are language outlined. So I just want to clarify a little bit. So your committee, I heard there was a vote on whether or not to go forward with the full 16 beds or not in a secure residential. And I think it was a, what was the vote result of that? So there were five members who supported exactly the language that is our majority position. There were four people who said, do the 16 and out of those four, two or three of them were saying, do the 16 plus recommend additional residential capital. And there was one member who abstained because he wanted to go much further than the majority view and in fact put much more into the community. So. So what was the vote result again? Six, four, five, four? Well, technically five, four with this one missing member and one person who said, I don't want to vote as part of the five because I'm a sub-minority who wants to go beyond that position. So really your committee is sort of split in trying to figure out what to do, how to go forward with the right thing. There's thoughts, a lot of thoughts, but it's kind of, it hasn't really coalesced in one specific path except to know there needs to be 16 beds. That's right. And some folks think it needs to be much more than 16. Needs to be the 16 current proposal and more in the community. Others say we ought to at least hold off on the second eight in the exit site until we resolve these questions. One wants to go further. So it's split, there's consensus around meeting much more investment in the community, but whether we do everything versus let's prioritize what's the best use for eight additional beds. Right, so. That's where the split was, so. Five, four split. So just to give you a heads up, we've got BGS working in trying to figure out what the cost implications are if we phase it in. The current plan, if we did the full 16 beds, the current plan, there'd be a shovel in the ground in June or July of this summer and it would be completed, the construction would be completed by June of next year. There'd still be some fit up in construction a little bit for the next few months and then bring in staff online and training so that the goal would be that the construction plan and opening right now is it would be open, the 16 bed would be open at the end of December in 2022, the very first part of January in 2023. And it would be for a cost of around 16 million. So we're having that analysis being done right now, they're gonna have, if what we heard yesterday is this by phasing it in, we'll delay the beginning of the construction, we'll delay the opening up of the beds and we'll increase the cost to the project. So right now we've, BGS is working with their contractor to work out those numbers and they are coming back in this afternoon. We're gonna work while we're on the floor, we're gonna be in committee and we're gonna be getting that testimony this afternoon. So it may, it's been very clear that it will increase the cost and it will delay the project. So we understood there, we don't know what cost increases there are and we know that's your decision. I would note if part of the delay is some redesign, we have a strong recommendation about the need for some degree of redesign, regardless. There needs to be a redesign to change and eliminate some of the space that's been identified because of removal of the industry and options. We also think it's critically important that from a programming point of view that it be an eight and eight program because a 16 bed program is not a residence. There's one intensive residence that has 16 beds and has been a sort of a clinical fiasco in terms of best, you know, best model. So, and that's not a lot of redesign, but so if redesign is the issue, I mean, they may say it's a big delay. I wouldn't think it would be a big delay to just say the second phase of construction, you know, might be delayed, but the, any rate, I'm not the one with expertise. I hope they're clear on what the proposal is because it may not be as long as they may be assuming in terms of what we would be suggesting. Correct, so I'd welcome being able to talk to somebody in BTS just to make sure they're clear on what the proposal is. Well, we're going to hear that this afternoon, so you're welcome to. Alice, I've got a question when it's appropriate. Yeah, I've got that. So we do have a list of questions. We have Kurt, Martian, Michelle, and Mary. Kurt. Representative Donahue, thank you. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the EIP, the change in the EIP decision. We went through quite a lot of work trying to get that set up so that there would be EIPs available to these clients. Can you elucidate on why that change? And then the nature of the facility that we're building and how that redesign works. Yeah, and I, some of it, we might have to talk offline because there's a lot of history. I think we heard a huge amount of testimony about the negative impact in terms of recovery of even having it available in a facility of people knowing that those kinds of coercive responses plus whether it's even appropriate for people to be outside of a hospital setting at all if there's a need for that. There's some key hospital oversight that's involved in using those kind of procedures. So we heard a lot of testimony about that. It's not something we had taken a lot of testimony before. There was also a broad misconception, I know on my part, and in the broader community, that when DMH was historically talking about EIPs, they were only talking about brief hands-on restraint and people were stunned last summer to discover that there was a seclusion room being designed and that mechanical restraints would be considered. That was brand new information to most people. So there was a really significant testimony to us and pushback and we strongly, I think, felt that that would not be appropriate. And DMH listened to the stakeholder feedback and came back and said, we think it's not essential to the program and we will adapt to be able to do that. Okay, Marsha, Michelle, and Mary, you've got all my M's, anybody M's, any other M's while we're at it. Dan, I was just wondering, how many patients are there at Middlesex right now? Yeah, seven. Seven, so that, if we only went with eight, that only leaves us one free bet. It doesn't add, yeah, I mean, I consider it basically the same. It doesn't add, it adds theoretically one, that's right. And when our chair was talking about building, yeah, the price goes up higher when you, the poor spent two different times or everything else, considerably higher. That's right, if the decision was that we did need those additional eight as the highest priority, we recognize that would increase the cost. We don't know yet by how much to delay by a year. I think even a delay would be immense cost. And I think if we've got it set and set to go into the ground in June, it'd be best for the state to hop on while they could instead of delaying it. But that's just a personal opinion, but thank you. No, I recognize that. I think we're looking at, yes, the capital's important, but the much bigger long-term cost is operating costs. And if we're operating beds at a much higher cost level, then that's gonna be a lot of money in the long-term. So Michelle, Mary and Linda Choi. Yeah, thanks, Representative Donahue. So you mentioned when you were testifying initially that at every level of care, there's inadequate results which results in inappropriate placements and hospitalization. I'm wondering if you could say a little bit more about if we did the model, the two-phase model with an eight bed initially in the more restrictive vision of the secure facility. And then the other side was some other model. What kind of possibilities do you envision for that? Would it most likely be on that same property? Would it be in the community? Would it be a different level of care? What would we be looking at as those options? So it would be in the community. We're proposing that on a quick turnaround time we ask the community stakeholders and providers to say what they could do and what it would do, it would be addressing the needs of other people who are also stuck in hospitals. That was part of the DMH bed analysis and the U of EMMC that there are other people who are also stuck who are also not getting appropriate step down out of the hospital. That includes people who need to be in a nursing home and nursing homes won't admit them. People who need the intensive residential level, intensive residentials are maxed out because there's no step down from that. Supported community housing can get more people out of intensive so that people can step down out of the hospital. All of those parts of the system are at capacity and DMH agrees that those all need. So it's what is the most important in terms of getting people to the right level of care which ought to be prioritized. That's the real issue that we really feel to move into this prematurely could really result in a locking in the wrong solution. Yeah, I agree. Thank you. Mary and then Linda Joy. Representative Damahue, how much testimony has your committee taken on the community resources that you feel would be needed to help in this, I guess, grand picture of what we're doing? And I'll make a comment before you answer that. It has been for years, I have seen the legislature continue to hunkik significant issues to the community. And yes, the community has to be a part of the plan. But the reason we're having the problems in our communities is the different partners in solving these issues don't have the resources, don't have in many cases the staff that has the level of the professional level of helping and treating within the mental health community. So I see that a lot of our problems are as we keep looking to the community who does not have the pieces to do what we're wanting. And that's why we're having the different issues such as the backup in all the facilities. I mean, my folks down here are pleading for the help of having the appropriate number of beds to start the process. But if we're looking at, if we're looking at just starting to have those discussions now of what the partners in the communities can do and we don't have those beds to be able to have a safe place for folks that are in crisis. I don't see how we're going to look to start to resolve anything, especially when there needs to be a deeper dive on all of the, with what we're discussing. So I guess please try to answer that. Yes, thank you. I do not think that it's about community expertise. It's about the fact that they have significant staff vacancy because the legislature and the administration but have starved that system for so long. We have not been putting the money into it. They have been consistently losing because if you're level funded, you're actually going backwards. And that's demonstrated by DMH's own information on, when I referenced the point, 0.534 to 0.37 versus the huge increase that we've put into inpatient care. So that's the first part. I understand the urgency for that's being requested for more high level secure care. We've just spent significant capital money at the retreat for 12 new beds to help address that. They haven't opened yet. So that's the huge risk about overbuilding until we know what those 12 added beds are gonna do. And I think there's the whole question that's also coming up about, do we need a forensic facility that will be coming over to the house from the Senate imminently? It's on their calendar and they want that assessed. So that could be another whole capital piece yet to come and we don't know where that's gonna go. So we've got all these unknowns and the risk of locking in one solution that might not be the right one. But how do we go from what is in many hospitals and communities that are having patients at a high cost staying in emergency rooms or rooms that have now been created by the hospital to secure folks and be as safe as they can. That's a huge cost at best. So- Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't answer part of your question I realized I was trying to take a note because it was several parts. And where does the money come from for those if we were gonna do more community residential? Well, it comes from the much higher amount of money that would need to be invested to open even more secure highest cost type beds on top of the 12 that haven't even opened yet. So, nine additional highest cost that operating money if it was placed into community residentials for some of these other groups of people who are stuck in inpatient beds and using inpatient beds would also actually give you much more bang for the buck in terms of the costs of operating them and increasing that capacity. So that's where the money comes from. It comes from not spending it on further levels of high cost care beyond the 12 new beds that are already planned for beginning with the current years operating budget to phase those in. So with all that you have put forth to us, I see some of these discussions and plans being put in place for this probably several years out. Some of the communities dealing with the issues that we're dealing with cannot wait that long. And it's going to be a bigger cost if we keep kicking this can down the road, but I will respectfully listen and hope that I get something out of these next number of discussions on this because I think the need is there. Yes, unfortunately COVID has the 50 beds that aren't being used and then the new 12 haven't come online and I understand that, but I think the need and especially with COVID, the cases are have even intensified and the need is greater, but I will listen and I respect you coming to speak with us today. Yeah, thank you very much. I don't think we're kicking the can down the line when we've put the capital into those 12 new beds coming online. Just we don't know yet whether we'll need more beyond that. So I'm going to interrupt a little bit because we're talking a lot about beds. And I know we got a couple of questions with Linda and Karen and we're going to, I think we need to get into this more with this afternoon's discussion, but the beds are not used for always the same level of care and acuity. I think we have to be very, very clear about that. We can talk that we've got 100 beds or 50 beds, but they're not going to house the same acuity of a person in a mental health crisis. Yes, thank you. I mean, that's the 12 new ones. We are about that in that the new beds that are coming online at the retreat are your highest acuity, level one. So those are going to be just like your state hospital bed. The question then becomes when the person has been stabilized and does not need that high level of security and acuity, but still needs to be in a safe environment, in a secure environment, and with a high level of therapeutic care, where does that person go? So I just have to clarify. I'm just laying this out for the committee, Ann. I understand, but in terms of the flow, because what's happening, they could be taking up a bed right now with a high acuity purpose that they don't need that, but they still need something a little less. Where do they go? The question is, can they go back to the community with a community accept them or not? But just to clarify, Representative Ammons, it's not a lower level of security they need. It is a lower clinical acuity. The whole point of the secure residential is that they're folks who can't go back to the community. So it's the same level of security. The retreat was designed from the start that it could be either a secure residential or an inpatient hospital. So if it turns out we need more on that end because of the flow, that option is there. The Wyndham Center has just been enhanced in security. So there's a lot of moving parts that are not resolved. That's just a lot of moving parts. And there's a lot of layers to this because those 12 beds at the retreat feed into our waiver for Medicaid funding. And that is looked at as our whole system in terms of our beds at the state hospital, our beds in Rutland and our beds at the retreat in terms of length of stay. And in some of those facilities, the length of stay may be a little longer that would lose our qualification for Medicaid funding in some of those other places, it may be a little bit lower. So when you average that out, that keeps us at the level that we can continue our waiver with Medicaid funding. So you can't just say you're gonna change the acuity of a level one bed at the retreat down to a little lower that would replace the secure residential because that may mess up your whole Medicaid waiver. So it's not as simple as that. And those are the questions that need to be asked and answered for that. So I just wanna lay that out to the committee. It's very, very complicated, very complicated. So when we talk about beds, there's different uses of those beds and there's Medicaid funding that goes with those beds that we have to balance. Do we put that in jeopardy or not? So I just wanna lay that out. We can get into that later on this afternoon when we have more testimony on this. So we have more questions here, Linda and then Karen. Thank you representative Donahue. You're always a plethora of information in this area. So my question is, was racial equity in the use of involuntary hospitalization evaluations and disproportionality of increased institutionalization in Vermont actually discussed in your committee? And was there testimony taken by DMH as to bed occupancy and the change in the population because of that? We did get testimony on that. It was raised by several witnesses. DMH was not asked a response. And quite frankly, we did not discuss that at length in our committee because we felt there needed to be more step down for those folks who didn't need the secure care. But we are aware and the data is very clear that there's a racial equity as with the correctional system that people being kept in locked secure environments have a much higher percentage of people of color and DMH has that data. I believe it's at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital. It's 15% people of color. They don't break it down beyond that versus I think somewhere around the 5% statewide population. Karen. Yes, thank you Representative Donahue for being here and sharing all of this. It sounds like we're gonna get more information this afternoon. There's a lot of different factors coming into play with that and two questions that come up for me is we have this kind of plan that's been percolating and moving along and now we got this new information, new possibility to pause and do the eight and eight. I think one question is what is an acceptable cost increase? It sounds like we're gonna be discussing that this afternoon. One that I feel like maybe it's harder for our committee to determine but what will be an acceptable delay? So say we find out it's going to be a three month delay but maybe they say it's a nine month delay or long. I don't know. These are folks that need to transition sounds like five years ago. I don't know how long ago. So I feel like that would just help inform us as we're listening to BGS come back like what is an acceptable delay? And then I have one other question as well. Yeah, thank you. I mean, I agree. And as said, if there's so many new pieces in part because of COVID, one piece of testimony and thing that was identified in our committee is this unexpected major investment at the Wyndham Center which raised the security level there so that it can be highest level security. And one idea was there is a tomorrow need for that middle sex facility, those patients. And even just with the current plan for that two years before it would open maybe that's a best use for that facility just as a temporary transition. So I disagree. I mean, I agree. I think our committee agrees about the urgency of replacing the current middle sex capacity and care. Okay. I don't know if that helped me to decide when we hear there's gonna be a delay. Right. So I just wanna clarify about the Wyndham Center. Those are 10 beds are affiliated with the Springfield Hospital. So it would have to be the hospital that would then agree to change the use. And it's also connected with their critical access status as a hospital in terms of their reimbursement on Medicaid and Medicare. Right. They cannot in Greece be on 10 beds because of that. So they have, so we have limitations there and it would be negotiations with a hospital wanting to provide those services for that. So those are layers that are on the surface so you're not aware of that but as you start doing a deeper dive things start coming up to the surface. Scott. Oh, can I, I sorry. I have one other question. Sorry, Karen. Karen and then Scott. So my other question was tying this into the testimony or the conversation we had this morning about the potential influx of new capital project money from the federal level. And I don't know if this is for you, Madam Chair. Is that, can that be part of the conversation? If we're getting this influx of federal dollars can we look at something different or kind of shift things a little bit? Like could we do this residential thing and also consider how can we increase community? Like can we consider the all the all possibility? The federal dollars that you're talking about is for capital infrastructure. So it would have to be used to renovate a building buy a building or build a building not for contracting out with a community provider to provide services. That would be the difference because it's capital infrastructure, not operating for that. Just a thought. Oh, Scott. I confess that this is all pretty confusing to somebody who's new to it. I just wanted to ask about numbers. Representative Donahue, thank you for being here. And you mentioned nine, a number of nine beds. Where was that? Is that also the Wyndham Center or is that something else? Can I answer that one, Sam? Yeah, the nine beds are what DMH is proposing to add in the secure residential because there are seven currently in middle sex being replaced, which we support. Oh, I see. And they're suggesting 16. We've been kind of talking about eight and eight just to balance them equally, but it's actually nine and seven. Okay, okay, okay. Current split, yeah. So we can spend time on, I'm looking at the time here and we are scheduled at 11 to go over this hawk thing that, you know, we can be a little late for that but we have a couple of questions. And we also have Devon Green who's part with the hospital association that is scheduled to testify. Her schedule is pretty tight. So I really wanna make sure we offer those folks time here. One more question, Michelle and then we're gonna go over to Devon and Lucy. Yeah, I actually wanted to just make a quick comment. I'm not sure. I mean, the Wyndham Center is about two miles from where I live. And I'm not sure if people know that it's set up as a 10 bed facility but it was set aside as a COVID safe place for people having mental health issues. And there was an article, I believe it was in January that only five people had been patients in that center since it was open. So it's being very minimally utilized and as COVID is receding, it feels like in terms of looking for a safe place that we could move people as a transition while we're getting this new vision of middle sex ready, it feels to me like that could be a really effective use if we could get the permission granted through Springfield Hospital and all that. But it is a facility that has 10 beds, it's highly secure and it's being very underutilized right now. It feels like the number of people that are using it, it might actually make sense to send them some, anyway, I think that that's a viable option that really could help address part of the need here at least in a short-term basis. So that's a deeper question with the Hospital Association, Department of Mental Health and Springfield Hospital. So thank you, Madam Chair, and I'll sign off and listen. If you want, I'll sign, yeah, I will, I will stay and listen. I just, I hope that you'll hear from the community, Vermont care partners as well as the hospitals since they have very different perspectives. Well, we have to get our bill out tomorrow. We're not gonna have time to do lots of testimony. I understand, but if you're taking the hospitals who of course want more hospital or hospital secure level beds, seems like there's a balance there. That's all. Thank you, Madam. That's why we looked out to your committee. Thank you. Okay, let's shift gears here. Devin Green from the Hospital Association and Lucy Garand. I don't know which one would be ready to go. Who wants to go? Devin? Hi, Devin Green from the Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. Thank you for having me in here today. And I'm here just to speak a little bit to how our hospitals usually end up being the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the mental health system because we know that there is a problem with Vermont's mental health system when we see backup in our emergency departments. Our emergency departments cannot turn people away. And so when we see people who are waiting days and weeks instead of just hours, which every other sort of condition is under, that's when we know that we have a real problem. And I know there's a lot of swirl here now and there are beds offline because of COVID, but this has been an issue for a long time. Since 2010, or as of 2018, our ED outpatient mental health bed days, so days, again, not hours, have grown 348% from 2010. So they have increased and they continue to increase. And I assume they will increase even more as the effects of COVID continue in our communities. So I don't see, this has been a long-term need. It has continually increased. This year, there were 1500 fewer visits in the ED, but the wait time remained the same. So people were waiting longer despite there being fewer patients. So I am advocating for more resources put at every level of the mental health system. So we do have new level one beds coming online and Brattleboro, which is hospital care. And then I'm advocating for the 16 beds with the secure residential facility. That provides a space for people that community providers don't accept. They feel like they don't have the resources to accept. That's a place that they can go when they donate hospitalization. Hospital beds and secure residential beds are different things. The secure residential facility provides a transition. It helps people relearn how to cook, how they can, they help some with housing. It gets them back into the community. If patients don't have that, then they're stuck languishing in the hospitals. We found that the residents who are currently in the middle sex facility tended to stay 300 days in the hospital, which is way longer and tells us that we need more capacity in the middle sex facility. The typical level one high acuity patients stays about a hundred days. So the folks that are in the secure residential facility now stay much longer. We think that there's more capacity there to be needed. And indeed, Commissioner Squirrel testified yesterday that as of yesterday, she could probably fill most of the beds in the secure residential with the patients that she sees now. I think we have a real opportunity here. There's federal funding coming in. I know that you have your capital funding coming in, but there is actually federal funding that is earmarked for community mental health services. So these are national numbers. We don't know what Vermont is getting at, but there's 1.5 billion towards community health services, a community mental health services block grant, which need to be expended by 2025. 50 million for funding, community-based behavioral health needs that are worsened by COVID-19. 420 million for certified community behavioral health clinics. So those are all earmarks specifically for community services. So I think we have a real opportunity here to bring our level one beds or hospital beds online. We've already invested in those. Invest now in the secure residential, the 16 beds secure residential facility, and then also use those federal dollars to invest in our community services because I would like to see our mental health system strengthened throughout the care continuum. So Devin, I have a question on that particular piece. So those federal dollars are coming through for the five years to beef up the community system. Is that more for hiring and program needs or can some of that be used to actually build or renovate? I mean, you're gonna need beds. Yeah, I don't have to purchase beds as well. I don't have all the details on them. I think I'm not sure when we have, so I should be clear, it needs to be expended by 2025. So at the end of 2024, I don't wanna have a full five years. And I think it's worth looking into more. I know that there's funding for community behavioral health clinics. I'm not sure what that entails if that entails capital funding as well, but it's certainly something to think about. Questions? And I do just wanna say one more thing on the Wyndham piece that the Wyndham Center was open previously, you know, 2010, it was open and beds were available as the need was increasing throughout the system and the wait times were increasing throughout the system. So I know that the Wyndham Center has been underutilized this year, but prior to COVID, we were still seeing a need there despite the Wyndham Center being online. Okay, we have a question and then we're gonna have to wrap this up because we've got to shift gears to the Correctional Feasibility Study. Scott. It sounds like there's a variety of levels of care in what we're calling community settings. Are those facilities all contracted out or are there facilities that are funded by, built by the state? There's no building in the community that's owned by the state. Okay, so that is all a matter of general, well, I don't know about general funding but whatever, it's not capital funding. No, it's your contract, it's through the budget upstairs, they contract out sometimes with your local DAs, designated agencies or other agencies, other entities, but there's no physical building that we are responsible for unless anyone knows anything different but I'm not aware of anything. Okay, thank you. Anything else? So we're gonna be coming back to this issue this afternoon, just be on guard from maybe one o'clock, 1.15 on, I'm not sure we're gonna be working, we're not gonna be on the floor and we're gonna have Commissioner Squirrel and Commissioner Fitch kind of go over the numbers. I think what might be best is if you folks could just do the YouTube streaming and if you wanna weigh in, you could send a quick email to Phil and say, you've got an answer to this, maybe we could allow you to zoom in and give the answer. I just don't wanna open up the Zoom room to everybody because we don't have that bandwidth today or at the time, we're taking under advisement at the healthcare committee, they're our policy committee, what they recommend and their thinking is, we'll be looking at language, they had language they're proposing and we'll be working with our draftsperson, Becky Wasserman and figuring out the part with BTS about the cost and the length of delay, if there is one, if we phase it and make a decision. So I wanna thank all three of you for coming in. I know this is at the end, but we were letting our policy committee do their work before we got into any deep dives and maybe we should have spent more time as the institutions committee doing a deeper dive. So we did the best we could. So thank you all for coming in and then for the committee, let's just take a little stretch in your seat and Phil will let in, I'm assuming there's other folks in the waiting room that pertain to the hawk report, correct? There is a bunch of people. Okay, let's, these folks leave and some folks will take their seats. And Phil set us the report and I'm under the understanding that they may have a PowerPoint presentation. I got a message from Eric that says that the hawk individual, Jeff Goodale will be, I'll assign him as a co-host and he has a presentation, I think. Okay. That's correct. And Judy is going to send the copy of it for posting. Oh, good, Judy, good. So that we can get that posted to our webpage. And then, because sometimes if we can just look at it personally, it works a little better. We're tap dancing and chewing gum at the same time today. During the rest of us. So we're going to be in committee this afternoon here. I don't know if you heard that. I just figure I'm with you until the bill leaves the room. Yep. Madam chair. Yep. Just a quick question. Is the expectation, are we going to be looking at this report through lunch or is there going to be a breaker? Well, either way, just curious. I'm not sure yet because they said it's going to take two hours. I hope it doesn't take two hours. It depends how many questions are asked. Got some trail mix. Yeah. Yeah. They said it would be a two hour presentation, but I hope that that can be condensed because that's a pretty long time for us on Zoom. Okay. That's helpful to know. And I may pause and get a snack. Yeah. So that's why I'm just not sure when we're coming back. If it's like closer to one o'clock, closer to 130, depending on when we finish with this. Maybe what I can do is emphasize to folks just look at the very, very top layer of this to give us some information a little bit on how to move forward with the 1.5 for replacing the directional facility and know that we're going to do a deeper dive of this. Once we get our bill out of the way and can really start focusing a little bit more because this is going to be a multi-time process. You're not going to grab everything on the first walkthrough. There's going to be deeper dives that will need to be taken and we can do that after we get the capital bill out. We have time to focus. You can let folks in, Phil. Okay. So for Eric, who's going to lead this? Is it BTS? Is it DOC? Who's going to be leading this for the introductory? Anybody? Or do we know the direct? It's the client. Go directly to Jeff. Is the consultant. So whoever is the ranking member of DOC should probably. I see, Madam Chair. I see that Commissioner Baker is in the room and I agree with Eric's recommendation that Commissioner Baker should lead us off. Okay. Oops, I see him. I don't see him. I see his name. Yeah, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on with my camera. It shows I'm on, but... Is there a... Did you slide something over the camera on your computer or iPad? No, I don't think so. I did one day and it was called hand cream. Because it looks... On this end, it really looks like you slid something over the camera. Really? Let me sign off and sign back in just quick. Okay. Can we all look at this technology? Oh my God. Commissioner Fitch, can I ask you a question? Sure. You never got back to me on the dairy. Uh-oh. On the dairy? Oh, on the wide... Oh, we have an answer for that. And I gave it, I believe to Representative Harrison. So let me, I will go and take in my emails and I will send that to you as well. Okay, thank you. You got it. Yeah, he's back, but not... Well, I don't know what's going on here, but... Well, we can hear you down. Well, and maybe you've been burning up the screen. You've been on too much. You can be or... You know, there's a story that goes around since we're not recording. Yeah, are we on recording? We're on, we're live. The story that goes around when my mother, when I was a baby, that she used to put me face down in the carriage because of my look. So... Oh, Jesus. Maybe that's, maybe that's what it is, Madam Chair. I don't know. Oh my God. It's a Johnny Cash voice. There you go. Look, I don't, I can open up. I don't have a lot to say. I think it's important that we get, I think it's important we get to the consultants who have done a lot of work here. So, and if you're ready to go, Madam Chair, I'm ready. We're ready. So for the record, my name is Jim Baker. I'm the Interim Commissioner of Corrections. And I know we have a large group here today. I want to start out by acknowledging the level of cooperation and collaboration that went on between Corrections and the BGS staff and the consultant HOK. They've been meeting nonstop for weeks every Monday. The work has been incredible. You're going to see part of the report out today, which is kind of an overview of more about the facilities and the delayed maintenance on the facilities. And there's more information to come yet that will be in a second presentation. So I think we should just get to the work. And then if there's anything at the end that folks have questions for myself or Commissioner Fitch, you know, we can get to it. But I want to reemphasize that the work that's been done here is collaborative. And it's taken a lot of effort to get to the point where we are. So I think we should just move on to the consultants and get on with the presentation. Great, thank you. So without we will. So we have Jeff Goodell here, welcome. And I want to turn it over to you. And before you begin your presentation, if you could just identify yourself for the record. And I do believe you're a co-host so you can share the documents. Is that true? Okay. It appears so, yeah. Okay. They have the capability. So yeah, I'm Jeff Goodell with HOK. We're a global architecture planning firm. We have a specialization in the kind of work that you've hired us to do. And before I get to the PowerPoint, I want to echo what the commissioner said that we've been all working very closely together. I think it's been a tremendous collaboration with BGS, with DOC. We've had a very free flow of information, a lot of conversation. And I've got a great team that's been working with me and with them to push this along. And it's actually been an exciting and a very interesting project for us to work on. So we really appreciate the opportunity we've been given and we're honored to be working with you all. Thank you. Now I will go over that next line to make sure technology works here. It's working. Work it. All right, very good. I'll go to the slideshow. And let me get to the beginning of the slideshow, however. There we go. Okay, so as you're all aware, we are talking about the first part of the correctional facility feasibility and conceptual design study. And then it is a two-part structure. The first piece of it is the survey of the existing conditions. And the second part, which we'll be talking about in a subsequent meeting, conceptual plan for expansion and modernization of the facilities. In the first part, review the documentation that's already been collected over the years with Vermont, in particular some master plan information from the early 2010s. Touring the facilities was on the list. And I must say, we've had to do virtual tours because of the pandemic. But again, the DOC and the BGS has been fantastic in providing us pictures and data. And we've done as well as we can without actually being able to step foot. We hope soon we can step foot and verify some of the things we've seen. The other parts of this phase review the population and provide projections of the population, identify operational costs and then start with recommendations on the data that recommendations really start to solidify into the second phase. Just a little bit about our overall team. As I said, I represent HOK. I'll tell you just a bit about myself. I've been working in the corrections detention court justice field now for 35 years. And I've been in particular in the last 15 to 20 very focused with departments of correction and other larger counties on mental health, on reform, on eliminating isolation as a means of housing. And one of the projects I worked on that I'm proud of was working for the receivership of the state of California for their department of corrections when the federal government actually took over their medical, mental health, ADA and dental. And we worked with that to get return back to the CDCR but they've been building in reforms in the state in their department of corrections and in counties based on that work. And we've been working now with other states and others based on that. But also on our team, McFarland Johnson for engineering, French Freeman French is our associate architect. Some of the people that I've listed, Bill Garnos has been somebody that I've known and that he's been involved in bed need projections for 40 years. He's as good as is in the business in that. And Marcus Hardy is our operational analyst. He has recently been with the Illinois Department of Corrections as the associate director of that department. Worked closely with him on projects and then white for the cost estimating. And white is somebody that's done cost estimating for us on several projects very accurately and knows the detention corrections work very well. Just quickly again about HOK, 15,000 beds designed and built last five years. So we are really at the forefront of what's happening in this business today, operationally based design that takes into account staffing, safety, work satisfaction, things like energy, reducing recidivism in the economics of what you have to do for department of corrections. And I've been in this long enough to come full circle from when this was really about punishment very often to now I think really about looking for the best outcomes for people. What will help people get back to society, be productive members of society? And that's changed the facilities and it changed the way that we do things. French Freeman has been a great partner for us. They certainly have great knowledge of your facilities. They've worked on these facilities as well as providing architectural services in the state for many, many years. And McFarland Johnson and they've been a really important member here too because as part of the evaluation of these facilities it's not just enough to look at the space but really look at the underpinnings of the engineering and other issues with infrastructure that could either help or limit expansions and those types of things. So they've been a very important part of the team as well. Just a couple of examples of recent work and we won't spend a lot of time on this but this is a new mental health facility we're doing for the Illinois Department of Corrections. 200 beds dedicated to mental health treatment that the state has started from a class action lawsuit of 11,000 acute mental health patients, people would need. And this is the first tip of that iceberg in dealing with that issue but I'm very proud to say we were part of planning and designing this facility. You see an example of one of the day spaces where you've got, you have correctional staff but you have clinicians with patients in an area that's filled with light. Another one is a new mental health that we're doing for the state of Ohio for the women's reformatory. That's the second consecutive women's facility now that we're doing for the state. And then you can see again that with the treatment the ability to have a normalized facility where the outdoor space is really important as well as certainly the custody space. And on a larger scale, this is the replacement prison we're doing, penitentiary we're doing for the state of Utah. 3,600 beds in the far right is a new women's facility of 700 beds out of that 3,600 beds. So all of these are located right by the Great Salt Lake moving out of a suburb of Salt Lake City that has now been really taken over by science and technology development. One other just important thing I think, looking at the vocational skill training that's been a very important part of the projects we've done and have really great outcomes. This is in San Mateo, California where one of the graduates moved on to Panera as one of the executive chefs in their overall organization and the ability to work with staff and to work in this kitchen and to be able to, again, return back and turn things around is really something important, something that I think has been very satisfying for the people that run the facility. And another day space in a mental health facility. So those are the examples. So in this first part, we looked at the six facilities you have at Northwest, Northwest State, Chittenden, Marble Valley, Southern State, Northeast and Northern State and did the evaluation and looked at several things, including number of beds. So we're just gonna walk through those. It's in the written report and we'll start with Chittenden, which right now serves as your women's facility for the state in South Burlington. Built in 1974, takes up about six acres, has a 177 bed capacity and has an affiliated hospital but not robust on-site medical facilities at that particular facility. At the existing conditions, you can see the site plan of how the facility looks and it essentially does take up its entire site. So it's really, it's a difficult place to look at for expansion. And again, being built in 1974, that is one of the older facilities and that's now well over 40 years in operation. That's when facilities are certainly in a position where they're difficult to just add to. These are some of the photos of the exterior and some of the issues at the exterior. It's a masonry facility. So I mean, it's been in good shape from that perspective, but there are areas that need work. And then this is an example of the interior shots of some of that. One of the ones I'll point out too, and we see this a lot of kitchens. They even newer ones, but with the tile and everything, they take a lot of use, a lot of abuse. There's a lot of maintenance that has to take place with those. But you get an idea of what the interior of the facilities are. I know some of this on this committee are familiar with these facilities. And then we have the cost of deferred maintenance in the different areas. So we've talked about what the identified cost is for the shell over 300,000, which is not for facility this size is actually not terrible for that age of facility. Interior renovations that need to happen, 2.7 million. Other services, 450,000 equipment and furnishings for placement, 144,000, and then site work, which is often in these cases is parking and related items. So again, we've cataloged all of these deferred maintenance and this comes from records from BGS and then surveys also with DOC. Other elements as we talked about, we went through a catalog of the issues that exist at the facilities. I'll just touch on a few on the sidewalk. As I mentioned, parking is one issue, but sidewalk repair is something that needs to happen there. And then we have another list of items. I think in particular on the interior systems where we talk about the majority of interiors are in poor condition. A lot of those have had a lot of wear and tear and have not had replacement over time. On the service systems, fire alarm has reached its end of life. The heating ventilation or conditioning has reached its end of life and the plumbing systems are also a need of repair and replacement. At Southern State, which is I believe is your newest facility in Springfield that was built in 2004. It's an all-male facility. It has a hospital affiliation with Springfield and it takes up 27 acres or it has 27 acres assigned to it overall. And you can see the site plan here. So again, it's a podular type of design with a campus style where the buildings are outside of the core facilities and inmates have rec space that they walk to or come back to the core facilities such as dining. And some views of this. Now this is a precast concrete and this is a concrete facility as compared to the masonry. And again, as I mentioned, it built in 2004. So exterior conditions on it are overall in better shape. On the interior, again, it's a newer facility. And you can see that it was definitely planned and built for a higher security level, which is appropriate often for men, but that's the type of facility it was in. And I think again, I will note not a great deal of daylight in the facilities. There are windows for the cells and so forth, but the day rooms and so forth don't have an abundance of that, which is something in a newer facility would certainly look to improve upon. Some of the deferred maintenance issues are less there. There has been a lot of work done at Southern State. A lot of the piping and other elements of the infrastructure have been replaced since it was built in 2004. So the current list of other deferred maintenance is now shorter on that facility as a lot of areas have been actually brought up to par. Some of the areas here are still some issues with sidewalk. As we've noted, the majority of interiors are in fair condition, not as worn as they are at Chittenden. There's some work order for some safe cells to be completed by 2022. On the service system side, we still have some issues of fire alarm reaching end of life. As I mentioned before, a lot of the underground piping has already been replaced and the plumbing systems are in good condition. One other item on the exterior detention windows in fair condition, but those windows don't have parts anymore that are produced. So there's gonna be issues as far as finding replacement parts for those windows as they've been discontinued. Marble Valley in Rutland, the next one built in 1979. So it's a similar advantage to Chittenden on five acres. It's a small facility, all male again, 118 bed capacity. Rutland is the regional hospital it's affiliated with. And you can see it's a much more compact layout, less parking, again, a smaller facility. And just some pictures of the existing conditions there. Again, it's a masonry building, similar to getting vintage to the Chittenden facility. And then again, more interior shots. And again, with similar looks, I would say though, the overall look of Marble Valley is a little bit less wear and tear than I think that we saw at Chittenden. More deferred maintenance issues there. On the shell, $300,000 worth. On services, $184,000 worth. On site work, $512,000 worth of deferred maintenance is still in the schedule to be executed. The big one on that is improvements that need to be made to the perimeter fence. The brick and stone veneer are in decent condition. The windows are in decent condition. The interior is in better condition. Some of the detention doors and hardware though are scheduled for replacement. And we have fire alarm systems that have been retrofitted. So that one is not at end of life. So the overall building systems are actually in decent shape at Marble Valley. Northwest State in Swanton is the next one built in 69. So it's certainly one of the older, if not the oldest, on 85 acres, 255 bed capacity in the hospital affiliation with Northwest Medical Center. You can see the layout there is getting more similar to what we saw down at Southern. And it's a podular on a larger campus. And these are the, and this reflects the existing conditions, the exterior shots. I know a lot of these shots are on overcast days. So they all have a similar look to them. And then you can see on the interior, now some of the interior facilities actually in pretty decent shape. So they do, we have window opportunities. So we do have the ability to get some daylight in. But the overall shape of some of the interior facilities where it makes are probably better than some of the other ones. And in terms of deferred maintenance, you can see there's a couple of big line items with shell and interior. So there's some work that needs to be done here that's been scheduled, $1.8 million or almost $1.9 for shell and almost $1.8 million for interior work. And so within that, on the outside, really the loading dock needs some work. That's probably the worst thing that's happening there. But on the shell systems, roof replacement at the dining, brick masonry is needing to be replaced or tuck pointed certainly. And then the detention windows have been recently replaced. So that's been a positive improvement there. On the interior systems, some of the detention doors have been replaced, but some of the other detention doors are in need of replacement and other doors at the kitchen and so forth are as well. So that represents a lot of what that interior renovation number is as detention doors and locking systems and so forth are pretty expensive. The fire alarm system was just retrofitted. The boilers need some replacement, plumbing in decent condition, and some transformers were recently replaced there as well. And Northern states, new ports, that'd be the next one built originally in 92 with an addition to 97 takes up 47 at 41 acres, one of the larger capacity facilities of 433 beds and North country hospitals and medical affiliate with that one. And you can see then this facility was built with split face block. And it's kind of interesting when you see the ages of the facilities goes from bricks, split face block, precast concrete, the sort of sign of the times or sign of how things were typically kind of built with a metal roof here. And then some of the interior shots again, some of the facility interiors pretty good shape. You can see the day room sort of at the upper right, pretty good shape again, lack of light, a lack of other sort of more typical newer amenities or kind of requirements I guess I'd say in the facilities but not overall in bad shape. And now again, deferred maintenance identified there in the shell 2.5 million and then other services 2.8 million and even a significant number on the interior and coming close to half a million. There are some concrete replacement that needs to happen. The loading dock needs to be fixed. The tunnel has some groundwater and sewage leak issues and the kitchen has issues with the grease trips in this shell system. Exterior steel windows are not insulated and do not close properly, so that is an issue. And the CMU walls at stairs are cracked and we see this often with exterior split face CMU over time. It does have a tendency, it has had a tendency to deteriorate and that's why it hasn't been involved now in a few years. They're ongoing on capital improvements to replace detention doors again, detention frames, another hardware. We have some issues with boilers and then the plumbing system right now is a capacity. So if there is a look at doing an expansion at this facility, the plumbing system would need to be addressed in order to take care of that expansion. So I think we're down to the last one here. Northeast Regional in St. John'sbury is the next one we're looking at, built in 1982. Auxiliary building in 90. Woodsheds were completed in 2000. It's on 47 acres, 219 bed capacity. And Northeast Vermont Regional Hospital is the medical affiliation. And you can see it's a little bit more spread out type of campus layout at this facility. And again, more exterior photos is taken on a sunnier day. Again, though, with brick primarily. And overall the brick in pretty decent shape. And then the more the interior shots. And again, things have been kept up to a great degree on the inside, kept up as well as they can for facility of this age. But again, this is starting to get in the older category of where the facilities start to face sort of life and end of useful life issues, not meeting standards so forth. The deferred maintenance issue, and they're kind of across the board in the 200s and 300,000 per site work. Seasonal water pining, some concrete replacement needs to happen on the shell systems, roof system issues. The window system does need to be replaced at this facility. The non detention windows, the detention windows overall in decent shape and a couple of the units have had some brick veneer issues. On the interior, bigger issue is with showers. And that's certainly an area like kitchens that we see a lot of wear and tear. They need life cycle replacement more often. And then other areas and on the service, it's sort of at its limits in terms of its capacity. And some areas that need work and replacement, including the generator fuel tanks. So there's some other areas that need some upgrade as far as the engineering systems. So I need to move my window of view folks so I can see. All right, that kind of wraps up our look at the existing facilities in terms of just their physical plant. Now we're gonna move into the part where we're gonna talk about the population at the facility and looking at where you're at in population. I'll just preface this, like every other system in the country, the pandemic has made this an interesting look because every system we know of either released or reduced inmates to reduce capacity but it's still unknown whether that capacity is gonna come back up. So as we looked at things, you know, given that the pandemic was a sort of a singular catastrophic event, you know, the projections still take into account what the traditional history has been coming up to the pandemic. And I think, you know, in discussions with DOC, the feeling is that, you know, the idea that it can, you know, that it may come back up to capacity is if not likely but very possible. And that, you know, the issues have caused reduction from the pandemic may not be in effect anymore. So as we just looked at the, we looked at these beds and Bill was, you know, Bill Garnes was the one that really spearheaded this look. Over the last 10 months, there were a total of 1,400 inmates in your in-state facilities, 90 female, 1,300 male. And then we also had the other, you know, out-of-state out-of-state that has been averaging, I believe around 200 pre-pandemic, right? Prior to that, that number was 1,747. And again, with a number of inmates that were out-of-state as well. So the current capacity in the state, including the out-of-state, is right now in 1,929 total beds. As Bill looked at that, and we can get some more detail here, but what we looked at in his initial projection in order to have facilities that met capacity bring the out-of-state inmates back to Vermont, but also have some additional beds for, you know, for the very necessary purpose of having some flexibility. His projections were between 2,055 and 2,184 as a really top limit on a bed projection that accounts for, you know, being 80 to 85% typically filled, but the ability to fill more if you need to. And what that also does is takes into account the classifications that are necessary because we can't put everybody on the same classification. So it takes into account a certain amount of maximum security beds, medium security beds, minimum security, and special needs beds for both male and female looking forward for the state. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on these charts, but this is the underpinning of how Bill did his projections and these are from, you know, again, from actual data that we received from the state. And again, you can see from 2016 to 2019, you had a fairly steady population overall of male from 1615 and down to 1595, but that's, I must tell you, that's an extraordinarily consistent number. And then of course we had a bit of the drop from the pandemic down to 1356. For the female inmates, again, sort of a similar story, in back in 2016, 143, 144 the next year, 150 the next year, and then 148, so again, extraordinarily consistent. And then the drop down to 97, or as I've shown before, 90, but the average being 97 for 2020. So again, that number has dropped a little bit. But unlike the male, you can see it drop precipitously early in 2020, but then it's kind of come back up again. For the in-state inmates, this is again, male and female together, 1,511 back in 2016, stayed very close to that 1,500 number and dropped to 1223 with the pandemic in 2020. The out-of-state inmates, now that number has stayed consistent in Mississippi, 247 back in 2016, up to 269 down to 226, 261 and now 230 in the pandemic. So that number has not changed significantly from the pandemic. It's been up and down a little bit more than your overall number, but it's still fairly consistent. And then within all of that, because you actually have a consolidated system of county jail plus department of corrections, we looked at what the sentenced inmate numbers were, 1339 in 2016 through 1305 and then 1,088. And I guess I should say, when we looked at overall the data, we could go back further. In fact, we look back further. However, 2016 in an earlier projection, many number of years ago, that looked like there could be an increase up to 2,600 beds, that didn't happen. That didn't happen. So what we looked at was more recent data so we can really gain some consistency and look where the real trend was. And consistent with other trends around the country, you haven't grown as other states have not grown. The trend has been either to be more flattened numbers or actually to come down. And so we pegged 2016 is really that year that we saw that trend really start to become more consistent. And then again, 2017, 18, 19 and even 20 with the pandemic really kind of backed that up. So that's really what we based the projections on not older numbers that look like they might be grown because we're really trying to strive obviously for you to be as accurate as we can. We wanna be a little bit conservative and not under reporting, but we also don't wanna over report what we think your projection is because that could skew you to thinking you had to build more facilities and could lead to some unnecessary planning. So we're really trying to use this history and this data to make this as accurate as we can looking into a crystal ball. The other part on the detainees, again, the numbers very consistent 419 back in 2016 through 2019, 438, 365 and 2020. So actually that number hasn't come down a tremendous amount. And you can see actually number pop back up a little bit in 2020. So the average of 365 is just a little bit below. So your sentence numbers come down more from the pandemic than the arrestee number. And then we looked at the federal inmates too because we know that as part of your program, again, that number has been pretty consistent in the 50s but we know that you actually have more capacity and our understanding is that the federal government would like to be able to house more if they possibly could. So looking at all inmates out of state and Fed and everybody that you have, that number was 1758 back in 2016. Again, tremendously consistent through 2019 has dropped to 1453 and 2020. But again, as we look at the capacity, we're tending to look more at those 2016 through 2019 numbers because those have been your consistent numbers. The other thing I'd say is those have also been numbers that the other programs you have in the state to help reduce custody, reduce having to have people in custody have already provided some benefits for you. And so I think that's another reason these numbers have been consistent. So we're taking that into account that you do have programs in place that have kept those numbers consistent, have kept those numbers down from being larger than what your capacity is at the facilities. One more chart to look at. Again, the high-low range back in 2016 got down to 1704 up to 1827. That was sort of a higher, that and 17 were your higher marks. Those numbers have come down just a little bit in 18 and 19. And again, with the pandemic down a little bit, although the high number in 2020 was back as close as early was up to almost 1700. And then we just compared that a little bit with your state population, which is also pretty consistent. So the amount of people that you have, as words of your state incarcerated, has stayed consistent with your overall population in the state. And that would be our expectation. Sometimes those numbers will skew based on the profile of who is arrested, and that really does tend to be skewer for younger, for younger males and younger females. But those numbers have stayed consistent along again with your overall state population projection and state population projection. I'm not gonna spend a great deal of time on this, but these are the different models that we looked at. So this wasn't just taking one approach, but we look at five different things really. We look at the average projections, the average trend projections. So those are your average daily population. And then we look at the overall projections, even going back to 2013. And we've compared the earlier projections, we compared what the current numbers look like. And that really gives us a baseline of current model projection, of saying that your number is consistently looking at the low point from 16, 18, up to 17, 40, or I'm sorry, up to 18, 14 is the high mark. So again, that's how Bill kind of landed in that number at just a little over 2,000 for all capacity, including the ability to have flexibility for classification and so forth. If we look at each of the particular facilities, those capacities, and I talked about them before, but here they are together, 177 at CRCF, 118 at Marble Valley, Northeast has 219, we have 433 at Northern State, 255 Northwest, 377 to Southern. You know, again, with the total capacity at 350, being out of state, we know that number's really closer to the 200s. So that total capacity, again, that 1929, in comparison to what we saw in the projection in 1800. So you've been under capacity, however, it has been close enough to capacity that we know the DOC has had to make some compromises in the way that they're able to classify and house people, just based on being so close to that. And clearly, I think we've heard loud and clear that to have the inmates that are as far away as Mississippi has not been ideal, and that one of the goals is certainly to look at bringing them back home to Vermont. And this is just one more chart to look at that, but again, this kind of sums it up again. Everything else that we've just gone over looks at the total male population, female population, that has been in the last 10 months during the pandemic, the number that was before the pandemic, against your total capacity, and then the chart to the far left, or far right, I'm sorry, looks at what that capacity would be with everybody back in the state. And I will tell you the working number we've really been looking at moving ahead is actually a slightly less than 2055 in 2050. I think we've collectively, our view from the HOK side and then talking to the DOC is that 2050 takes into account a little bit of that trend downward, but would again, look at being able to have capacity with some flexibility above and beyond what you've got right now for current capacity. The next thing was the operational assessment. And looking at what the cost is and how things are working at each of the facilities. And I just showed you, so again, capacity to each one of the facilities, the one having the mission being the female, the rest are all male facilities. And then looking at the operating budgets for each of these. And so, when you look at the per capita, that's the dollar amount per inmate per year to operate. And at Chittenden and Marble Valley, we'll say those are some of the higher numbers we've seen anywhere in the country. Over 62,000 at Chittenden, over 70,000 at Marble Valley. Question, one of the questions that comes up is, okay, why are some facilities or why are some systems higher than others? One of the issues that we see with older facilities is that with older facilities, often it's fewer inmates per staff in terms of supervision. So your staff to inmate ration, you'll see that here in a minute comes up. And then what happens is if the facilities are not expanded, the facility is not efficient. The department is a correction, typically the only real resource they can do something about is adding more staff. So as they get more inmates to add more staff, but that staff to inmate ratio gets further at a skew. So you'll see the daily per diem at close to $200 at Marble Valley is a really high one. Normally we see those numbers probably more in the low 120s like you see at Southern State. You see that the Northern State is at 92. That's actually a fairly low number. We see more metropolitan areas, New York, Boston, Chicago, other areas like that are probably on the per diem side, probably more than 120 to 150 range. Ones in other areas that are more in the South or the mid South, those numbers might be in the 80s or so. So that by comparison, the numbers, especially at Marble Valley and shit in there are high numbers. And they reflect what that high staff to inmate ratio is that again is to a great degree dictated by the facility and the ability to have X amount of inmates per managing staff. This breaks it down in more detail. And again, that's in the report, but this takes into account all of the elements that go into that operational cost. As you can see, when we look at the total, 82 million and 5.6 million is set aside for that contract with in Mississippi, 76 million then is 76.5 million. And 75 is your in-state number. Out of that 76.5, it's staff. Staff is 64 million five out of that 76.5. So that's, you know, that's over 80%. But that's probably high. I would say that over a span of 30 years and many systems that number is probably closer to about 75%. So it's not terribly higher, but it is a higher number of your staff. And again, that reflects again, the need to have staff, additional staff in facilities that are less efficient. But you can see the other elements have went in and we really tried to take into account everything that fit into your operational numbers. Again, we had a great deal of cooperation from the Department of Corrections opening their books and going over these things in detail. And we've had a number of conversations about whether these, you know, where we had gaps, we filled in the gaps. And so just make sure we really are capturing everything. So again, I think we feel good about these numbers that they're accurate. And so your yearly expenditure is over 82 million a year for your Department of Corrections system. And this was just another way of taking a look at these different facilities. As I mentioned before, Southern was the most efficient of those, Marble Valley the least efficient and Chittenden right there with them as well. So it's just another way of kind of parsing those same numbers. We looked at the per diem again. And again, these are all in the report. But I think what was important here is that we really tried to take this data and look at it several different ways. And Marcus Hardy was really our lead on this as he's been doing this almost identical job himself for now, you know, 30 years plus. So he's got a great deal of experience understanding really what goes into operational costs. And identifying these. But again, it sort of just ranks these different per diem costs per facility. And as I mentioned before, the staff to offender ratio. And that really tells the story on the efficiency. In over at Chittenden, it is one to 1.56 at Northwest or one to 2.15. Marble Valley is 1 to 1.235. The most efficient one you have is Northern State at 1 to 3.86. We really overall like to see that number probably more one to three, one to four. Some modern facilities are even one to six. One of the big issues that we see between a newer facility and an older one, sometimes in a unit, you might have 16 inmates, you might have 32 inmates in medium security in a modern facility, direct supervision or the staff is with the inmate. That number is more like 48 beds in a unit, maybe up to 64. 64 is sort of the limit of good practice. But 48, somewhere between 48 and 64 is the number. And a lot of these older facilities are more like 1632 and so forth. So again, it really dictates your staff to inmate ratio. And so Northern State is closer to that. It's closer to that one to four. But when you go down to Chittenden at 1 to 1.56, that is a high staff to offender ratio. And we just kind of, again, we looked at the different costs at each of the facilities on a per year basis. And we looked at the number of beds utilized. I mean, again, you could see again for 2020, the beds, the capacity is down practically everywhere except for Marble Valley was not. The other ones, though, did come down from the pandemic. And so we just looked at the ranking. So I know I'm showing you a lot of charts. Got to show you a number of the same things. But again, we looked at these in a variety of ways before we reached any conclusions as we sort of head into part two. So the last thing I'll talk about just is the program inventory. That was the other thing that was asked for. And to the right, you can see the breakdown on what that is, evidence-based practice, EVP, the mental health support, medical support, and substance abuse treatment, or education. And looking at which of those things exist at which facility. And I'll have to move that around again. So these are programs that you have at the state right now. And I don't actually know exactly what each of them is. The team does overall. But thinking for a change, motivational interviewing, criminal conduct, substance abuse, charting the new course, aggression, interruption, cognitive behavioral intervention, community high school of Vermont, prevent child abuse, kids apart, divas, Vermont works for women, all these elements that are part of programs. And then what do they check? What box do they check in terms of that? Whether they're evidence-based practice, a number of them do. Gender-based, practically all of your programs do respond to gender, are gender-responsive. A number of them on the cognitive side, on working with people in custody, on their cognitive ability and improving those things. There isn't a robust one on transitional housing currently. And I know that's one of the things we've talked about. I think if we look forward, transitional housing, reentry housing is something that'll be an important element. The community high school of Vermont is certainly a program that's very specifically on education. You have other programs that specifically address employment, family, medical, mental health. So as we look forward into phase two, what are some of the things that really, are we looking at, and we'll talk about next steps here, but is certainly a facilities that are gender-responsive that are very specifically for women women's programs and for the reentry, also reentry for men. And also a more robust view of treatment, mental health treatment, medical treatment, for all inmates, male and female, and being able to get those services to them, really on a universal basis, so that, again, as I mentioned at the very beginning, outcomes are the important thing. I've been in this business, like I said, 35 years. I'm very, very sensitive to the issues with victims. I'm very, very sensitive to the issues people have with, should people be incarcerated? What, you know what, why should they be incarcerated? When should they be, when should they not be? We also work on a variety of beds that are non-custody, that are mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment. So we work across that entire spectrum. So as we look at the next step, at the part two, we take all those things into account of what really would make your system really operate well, be the most beneficial for the state, be the most beneficial for the employees that you have at the Department of Corrections, and also for the employees of BGS, they have to take care of these facilities, and also for you and taxpayers. What's the system that's going to produce the best outcomes? I think the most important thing is people that need to be in the system, or deemed to need to be in the system, them being able to return to their families, to society, and so forth. So just a couple of more images, just this is one of the new facility in Utah, and you can see the emphasis on more daylight, the emphasis on a more robust day room, more area, more things happening in the day space. This facility right now is probably about 50% built for the state. A lot of the pictures I showed you of your existing facilities, if I were to show you the ones from Utah, and look very similar. So this is the new facilities they're doing, you know, move into this new approach. And then the other one is a view of a reentry. This is the day space of a reentry. In this particular case, there's a dog training for adopted dogs, the rescue dogs that happens actually in the space. And you can see there's just a more normalized environment for people that are in reentry as they are preparing to return and be done with their time being incarcerated. So with that, that concludes presentation, and I would certainly be happy to answer questions and discuss any of your comments. So thank you very much. This is terrific. You've given us a lot of background information and data, which I think is really good for the committee to digest over time. Some of the committee members are brand new to the world of corrections. So some of this data I think is very, very helpful for members. I think it's also helpful to know what our bed capacity is in state. And I know we as a committee have done a little bit of that work. And I'm glad that you also touched on, even though we may have certain beds, we may have, you know, 1500 odd number, 1500 and plus beds in our system. They may not all be flexible enough to be used for everyone. And I think that's really important to keep in mind that some of our facilities, the way that they've been built and designed can be limiting in terms of the use of those beds for particular inmates. And I'm glad that you highlighted that. I think too, the other thing that's really important, and we've heard this from BTS, whenever you're building a facility, a new facility, you always wanna build in extra capacity. And we have heard around 10, maybe 15% that you over build for the capacity. And politically, that gets into a quagmire because people are feeling you're over building, you're putting in more beds than what you need. But in terms of a system, looking at a system, you need maybe more of that flexibility for that. I'm looking forward to your next part of your deep dive. And hopefully there'll be some recommendations on how we go forward with replacing our facilities. Do you have any thoughts on when that part two might be completed just so I can figure out how this plays into our legislative session timeframe? Yeah, we're actually very close. We have, in the report, we've formulated a number of options that, and one of the things we were asked to do was to look at an all new approach so we've done that. But then also on the other end of that spectrum, what if we were to just expand at all of the facilities? So we've looked at that as well. And then there are several scenarios in between. Are you able to share any, just a broad view of any of those options with us or not today? I can talk through a couple of them. I can talk through a couple of them. I don't have them prepared to right now show. And we're still, we are still crunching some numbers. So I don't want to. I understand that. I think it's just the scope of what you're looking at would be helpful. Yeah, so in looking at one or one new facility, we really are looking at, I would say actually what that translated into is actually four new facilities because we understand the need to have a gender specific facility really requires a women's facility, a facility that is really focused on women's needs. In that, that also includes a significant re-entry element to it as well. So- I just wanted to have to be clear. So the women's facility would have like two separate entities to it. Correct. An incarcerated entity, a separate building on the same property as re-entry. Right, or it might be a little bit, it could be a little bit separated. One of the things with re-entry is to consider what the job opportunities are for people in re-entry. So that would play into the location of the re-entry but it could be co-located but it might be a little bit separated but we would look at perhaps trying to share resources. And similar thing for the men as well. An all in men's facility with again re-entry, we're looking at 100 bed re-entry on that, 50 bed female re-entry. One of the things when you mentioned the co-location though that would be a benefit and even whether they were close or not, one of the things that we've seen that is a benefit that works is when the people that are incarcerated work with certain mental health professionals, counselors, others that they can also work with in the re-entry program as well. People that know them, people that have gotten to know them. And so that co-location or at least the close proximity does have a benefit and that your professionals really get to know the people in the system, get to know about their families and that ability to work longer with them and have more direct one-on-one relationship has benefits. So then I'll go to the other end of the spectrum where we are looking at additions at all six of the facilities and what the feasibility of that. And that Chittenden is the one that's the women so we're considering that would still be the women's, however, looking at some of the limitations with Chittenden, we're still suggesting that a new women's facility would still be really beneficial. Even if you were looking for male facilities, they were expansions or additions. A new women's facility that was really more specifically for women's needs is something that's still gonna come in the part two. And then in the scenarios that are in between we look at what are the best facilities to to keep a hold of as your assets and Southern certainly, I think fits into that category and the facilities in the northeast part of the state fit more into that category. The ones on the west, Marble Valley, Chittenden, Northwest, they for various reasons are more probably in the category of replacement. So we have a scenario that looks at replacing those but expanding at the ones in the eastern side of the state and down in the south and then in the northeast. And then there's another scenario that looks at what if we just replace the one in the northeast too but we still maintain Southern. So we have a total right now of five different scenarios that are those combinations of new and expansion. And we are also gonna break out separately, the ability you could look at one at a time. So if we're gonna look at what, if we did just build a women's, what would that look like in addition to then doing other expansion? So there's really five distinct scenarios that are coming that we're looking at. And then perhaps a six one if we look at the women's. What we're now crunching numbers, we're looking at the operational models or the operational data that we already have when you're existing. We're doing projections of future, these future expansions. I will tell you, the ones that are more consolidated facilities are going to be more efficient. The yearly operational cost is going to come down on those. But we're also then looking at the combinations and then we're also looking at the construction numbers on each. And I would say, we're doing some analysis right now to make sure we feel those are realistic but we're going through that right now. But we're combining the new construction with what's been identified as deferred maintenance issues that have to be fixed. And in a couple of cases, I think some bigger engineering things that would need to be able to have to be addressed. And so by the time we're done, when what we'll present with the part two of this is really sort of an all in number that takes into account with that operational cost and the construction cost and look at the overall construction costs but importantly, it'll annualize it. So we'll be able to look at all of these different scenarios not only with the overall construction because everybody likes to look at that number but the reality is you pay that on a yearly basis along with your operational cost. And what I will tell you is some of the models, the operational cost on existing is going to be higher where maybe the construction might be lower but when you combine them, they have a bit of a parody with some of the newer scenarios of doing that. And I think the other important thing is that we'll have a lot of these scenarios, they don't all necessarily have to be enacted today. What we are hoping is that we're working with you on a roadmap for the future that perhaps some of these things could be done soon but other ones might be a little bit more in the future but they would give the DOC, BGS and yourselves the opportunity to look at a lot of these different scenarios and say, what works best for us say over the next 10 years, what could we plan for? What could we plan for money-wise? What could we plan for operationally? But I think maybe more importantly is really what will we accomplish in these facilities? You know, we now have new facilities that really address women's needs. We have new facilities that really address mental health needs and how can we improve what we can deliver for the DOC? And I think one more important thing about the DOC folks is staff, you know, they have to work here every day. They come to work every day in a facility that embraces, you know, a better working environment. We know that reduces turnover, that reduces absenteeism, that improves morale and improved morale for staff will improve outcomes for the other people in the system. Some studies recently of people we have associated with have shown interviews with some staff in correctional facilities have PTSD issues as acute as war veterans. That, you know, they've been in these systems a long, long time and it's shown that some of the newer facilities or facilities that really address over their needs reduce these PTSD issues. And again, have a happier staff to have your staff really then makes for the better outcomes. So all the things that we're looking at and we're gonna talk about when we present part two. That's terrific. Thank you. So I wanna open it up to the committee for questions. I'm sure there's some questions. You're gonna have to raise your real hand because I can't, because it's still being shared. The screens. Can we take the presentation down? I'm gonna take that down. You bet. Great, thank you. So then now people can use their blue hands. But Michelle. Yeah, I just have a quick question. I'm wondering, I was looking at the chart, one of the charts you had toward the end that had the predicted population numbers. And it looks like within a few years, what the projections are saying is that we probably would have over 2000 people incarcerated. And I'm wondering, does that include, like your final slide there was some re-entry model housing. Does that number of 2000 include people in the transitional housing or is that only people that are in the traditional prison model facilities that we already have? Yeah, that 2050 that we were looking at includes transitional. That's 150 overall transitional. So the, so the in custody is 1900 from our projection. And then the transitional is 150, 50 women, 100 men. So that gives us the 2055. I mean, those folks are currently incarcerated now. It's just they're in a harder bed. That's the only difference. Correct. Because my understanding is that you don't have that option right now. So some of those, you know, some of the people that are in that, in the system would then be transferred to be in that program, as opposed to being in the regular custody. So the 2055 includes that 15% additional capacity. Right. To give you some buffer, you know, a release valve. Correct. Because you're building a facility for 50 to 70 years. You're not building it for 10 years. Right. Well, and in fact, to that point, often, often because of budget issues, and this happens with every client we work with, a lot of these facilities last longer than they ever thought they would. They're using them longer than they ever thought they would because it's, you know, it's unpredictable what will happen with your budgets over time and there's a lot of competing interests as there should be. So, you know, we have to look at these facilities being on a timeframe, but probably longer. And so the flexibility part is especially important when you look at it that way. So going, some of us have been through construction projects and building facilities for, and I may be putting you on the spot here, for a facility that say is built a 400 bed facility and you have, let's say 150, 100 of those beds are transitional beds. What would be the construction costs for that? Can you just give us a broad ballpark figure so people can have a concept of what we're dealing with here? So right now what we're dealing with is a construction cost for the custody beds of being somewhere in the $425 square foot or, you know, between four, you know, it's probably for your market somewhere in that range for the less restrictive, more of the transition that number is probably more like 300 to 350. And so on a per bed basis, we're figuring off in custody beds around 150,000 of bed. And it's just to, you know, again, what broad ballpark number and then the less restrictive, more closer to the 100,000 or so. There's a lot of factors that can go into that of just, you know, certainly the more beds you build you start to get some economies so smaller facilities tend to be a little bit more because you still have to have central, you know, central services, that kind of thing. You know, a kitchen, you know, laundry, those types of things have to go. So when you build smaller, you know, the number tends to probably go up a little bit per bed, but those are kind of the construction numbers we're looking at right now that we think would be appropriate probably for your market. So- Can you answer your question enough? It does, and I don't want to do math in public because they're always mixed up. But if you did a transitional unit of, say, 50 beds at 100,000, well, that's just at 100,000 a bed, does that also take in your community rooms, common rooms? Yes. It does, 100,000 a bed? Yes, that would contemplate all the different services, counseling space, everything else that would need to, you know, be part of that program. And you'll see when we do turn in part two that we have done overall programs for all of these facilities that are more than just the beds. We've identified counseling space, kitchen space, administrative space, secure space, the amount of acres, any of these particular items would have, and then plus also infrastructure space with engineering systems, that type of thing, even including, you know, taking into account maintenance shops, that type of thing. So when you see part two, it contemplates all of those things as part of any of these facilities, so it isn't just the beds. So when I do give you the bed number, that does take into account, you know, additional pieces and parts of that that go along with it that are necessary. But it doesn't include purchasing land. We have not identified it purchasing land. If we just did 100 bed, a 50 bed reentry program on land that we currently own at about 100,000 per bed, you're talking at the minimum 5 million to build. For a minimum security facility like that, yeah, at a very minimum, yeah, I would say so. So I don't like doing math in public, but if you get into a 300 bed facility of custody, that's 150,000 per bed. Yes. I'm not doing the math in public on that. Maybe somebody can do that, but what did I say, 150,000 times, do 300, it's 45 million. Yeah, that's probable. I mean, yes, you're in the ballpark. Yeah, and I should also say, you know, that's where our construction costs, it doesn't take into account other fees, other construction management that might be looked at, certainly not the land, furniture fixture equipment, and then IT data. So, you know, those things would have to be added in, but if you're looking at the rock construction costs, you're in the neighborhood. So I just wanted to put that out for the committee to know what we're dealing with. When we built the last facility, Southern State and Springfield, that was a 350 bed facility. It ran around 20 million for the facility and there were a few add-ons that they needed to do. So it came in at about 22, 23 million for the facility itself. And that was back in the late 90s and early 2000s. So just, and we had to purchase land too with that. So I just wanted to get that. Yeah, that's consistent with my knowledge from back then too. I mean, you paid a market price for that facility. So I just wanted to put that out there for people to have that concept of what the cost is. So we have a couple more questions. Scott and then Sarah. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goodale. I'm wondering about the elements of flexibility. We're talking about these facilities lasting, you know, as the chair said, 50 or 70 years and which is probably not the design horizon but probably the reality. So I'm just, I'm wondering what your firm thinks of as the elements of maximizing flexibility. Sure. I think one of the things is to have housing units that in the case, I think especially of maximum security, medium security to have those very consistent with each other. So you could use medium for max if you needed to. You could use max for medium if you needed to. The staff to inmate ratio would be very similar. So then, you know, and then if you go down from medium down to minimum, I know that dormitories have been something that have not really worked well for the department of corrections, but you could be looking at some things like eight person cells or, you know, eight person bedrooms that type of thing that allows you to mimic more of the efficiency of minimum security without having maybe some of the issues that you've had with dormitory. The other things are to make sure that wherever, however you build it, there's additional horizontal expansion for a variety of reasons. Maybe your kitchen may need to expand over time. Maybe your warehouse to expand, be able to have enough space. I could add another housing unit in the future if I need to. And then if we look at the engineering systems, you know, if you don't overbuild them today, they have the ability to be built onto later. So a wastewater treatment as an example, either the city you're working with or if you have to do your own wastewater treatment, you know, make sure it has additional capacity. So if you do add beds or you add capacity, you don't have to make major changes to a facility like that. The same thing with electric generators. The same thing with underground piping. If, you know, your underground piping is being contemplated for 200 beds today, but maybe it needs 300 beds in the future, size it for 300. And those are areas that aren't tremendously more expensive for you to spend on, but can make huge differences in doing additions down the road. If you don't have to, you know, tear up your plumbing system or add another plumbing system. And I would say one of the other things that is really more and more a factor today is IT and data. You know, more of these facilities now we are using, you know, there's Wi-Fi for people in custody, there's Wi-Fi for visitors, what for staff, that type of thing. And then the data that is being shared and the data being used to run these facilities, there's more and more of it. Not that many years ago, 10 years ago, we didn't, you know, we might put the infrastructure in, but we didn't think a lot about what the IT data is. Now that number is equal to 3% of the construction and it goes up all the time. So being sure that your data system and your data infrastructure could support expansion, that's another important thing to take a look at. So I just think those, you know, being able to look at those kinds of systems and then being able to, you know, and build in some capacity, either now or for the future for expansion and then have that flexibility of how you're going to operate your units are, you know, the areas that we really take a look at and try to try to maximize that, you know, for your future use. That's great. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Gondel. This is really terrific. I was really appreciative of all this data information and in particular kind of your analysis of some of our existing programs and where our strengths and where our deficits are in our system and appreciate your comments like about specifically where our deficits are. So without getting ahead of where we are right now, I'd like to hear a little bit about your process for designing, because we know you're in the built business of architecture and design. We know that, you know, programs can influence how spaces are designed and also spaces can really impact our ability to develop to deliver those programs and for good outcomes. So I'm curious, in this phase or in the next phase, will you be engaging some, maybe, or maybe you can talk about how you engage stakeholders or folks who do some of the programs and how you might access new ideas that might not currently be in our program or system? I'm really curious about how your experience nationally has, you know, what you're bringing to this project in that way. Okay, no, absolutely. So when we get to, when we get in the next phase of a more detailed program, and that's really where these facilities really become, start to really become, when I say, you know, you start to see what they're going to be in the programming area, because that is really to me is the most important element. I mean, the master plans are important, but that programming phase, which is next, and what we implement is very robust and intensive workshop approach to these things. So whereas the BGS and you all are our bosses, so there's a core group we always report to, we really make the effort to have workshops that with every group of stakeholders, and in some cases that includes people in custody. We've actually successfully done that. State of Ohio, we did that recently to really get some input all the way around 360 degrees of how things are at the facilities of what people want to see. When we, you know, when we talk to people, for instance, on the medical mental health side, we have other partners that we work with that are absolutely, you know, they specialize in not only, you know, the medical part, understanding how healthcare works, but also understanding psychology and psychiatry at correctional facilities. And I would say, and HOK also does healthcare, a lot of people do healthcare, a lot of people do corrections. The correctional healthcare, correctional mental health is a really narrow specialty that not a lot of people have a lot of experience and I'm fortunate our group does. But we would have those professionals come in and they would work with your custody staff, with your mental health staff, with policy makers, and really get that, again, 360 degree view on all those things early in the programming. Then we start to identify what the capacities are and we start to identify those space needs. So as an example, if we settle on 48 persons in a unit and we'll say, you know, American Correctional Association standards would say, you know, every person that sleeps gets at least 25 square feet, they get X amount of daylight, they get all those things, we meet those standards, those standards plus American with Disabilities Act standards. And we, in some of our mental health facilities, we have 100% universal access for ADA because that's just required in those. So we go through all of those steps and we also include our engineering partners to talk about, okay, so what are the engineering implications of all these things? It's a pretty intensive group with a lot of team members and looking at a lot of different things. The trick is for us to get it organized and make sure we're sitting with stakeholders at the right time. As we go to that next phase then of taking that program and start to actually visualize how things work, we often do start with the housing because the housing often is 75% of any of these facilities and it's extremely important because that is where the people in custody are, that's where your staff are. And we would start to actually use 3D visualization and other things to really say, is it safe, can I see, can I see everybody I need to see? Does it really promote interaction? Does it promote programming? One of the key things we look at is, will people in some cases, will we be bringing meds and dining to them or will they be going to a dining hall? What are the kind of programs do we expect them to take place, take part in? All of those elements. We'll look at early, then they'll start to define how the design works. And as we're doing the design, again, we're working with our engineering partners, we really, I would say, really take into account sustainability, making sure that we really are building the most efficient facilities. And some of our current corrections facilities are having a 68, 70% improvement in energy use over their predecessor. So, these new facilities are far more efficient and sustainable. So that's another element that we build in. And I'd say maybe the last element, that's really important though. And as we've talked about, these facilities need to last 50, 70 years. We really wanna make sure that even if they don't look at, they're really secure. They're really built with really good security systems. We use some tricks like we use raised ceilings. So we might use a commercial ceiling that's less expensive, it lets in more daylight, but it's still safe for all occupants. And then the durability factor of, the exterior systems, the roofing, your mechanical systems, that kind of thing. I pride myself in that we really put a lot of emphasis on that because I really don't wanna hear from my clients who are my partners later. Wow, why did you spec that for here? Cause five years later, we had to tear it up and do something different. I don't get those calls. And so though all those things have to be factored in as then we price what it will be to build it. We also look at the staff, the inmate ratio. So what's it gonna take to operate it? And just as we're gonna show you in the part two, we'll have projections for operations. But those go in very much into the whole planning and design processes. You really start to move towards existing buildings. I'll add one more thing. Your question. And as we look at spaces, we really implement a system that we referred to that's referred to as trauma-informed design that understands that a lot of the people that are in the system came to get in this situation for a variety of reasons. And we need to design a facility that responds to those things, that makes those things work better rather than work in reverse. So the ability to have a more normalized setting that any of us would be comfortable in has been shown to be very important for getting people off the treadmill of recidivism and that type of thing. So while some people have looked at some of our facilities and wow, that's really nice, what it's really about is having the right outcome. Because the important thing is that we have fewer people come into the system and then when they leave the system they don't come back. And that you have staff that are happy and stay there. And those are all the outcomes and elements we really wanna look for. So thanks for that question. You can tell I couldn't talk about that a long time. I appreciate it. Thank you. We have another question. Kerr? Yeah, Mr. Gardel, this, it seems to me that part two is what we're really looking for, what I'm really looking forward to in that point, we'll be able to make some sound decisions. I'm wondering if there's any decisions that we can make now that would help towards the development of that that we as a committee could make that would assist in that at all? Well, you could, but what I will tell you as a preview, we're gonna present these different scenarios. And I think we're going to make it fairly clear what the key benefits of those are in each of those. And I think you'll be able to choose from that and say, you know, this particular scenario doesn't seem very strong that we were definitely interested in. You know, and I know from discussing some of these things in BGS and DOC, you know, some of the things that this group has talked about in the past. And so we take that into account. You know, as, and I would say part one, we really did our level best to stay as absolutely objective as possible to just look at data. Part two, very naturally, it includes input, you know, that we've had. We don't want to come up with a scenario that the Department of Corrections would say, I can't make that work. I have no interest in making that work. So we've had some of those discussions. We know that some kind of a transformation with a women's program is something that is absolutely key. You know, we know that. So I'll give you a preview there. That's coming. I think the other part about, you know, dealing with more of the acute mental health and medical issues of all inmates, male or female, that's also an important element as well. Certainly representative, if you have, you know, opinions like share, we take those into account, but I will tell you our report is getting, is very close to being published for part two within, you know, within days, not weeks, not months, but within days. So we're getting there, but certainly, you know, any input would be, we'll take into account. But one other question. I know you looked at, with each facility, you looked at the community around it and medium income and things like that, poverty rate and such. Did you look at, you looked at other sites throughout the state, especially if we're thinking of a new facility where those might be located or a view towards that coming later? We've only looked generally and I think that's been our, that's been what we've been charged with of not looking very specifically. The one thing I would say is that, and this just comes from other departments that we've worked with around the country, and even one, I'll just give you one personally, we worked on many years ago for the state of California, we did a new state of the art medical facility in a particular location that wasn't close to any urban center. There were no doctors or nurses or other people that lived anywhere around it. So it was a beautiful facility that never really got used. So the next time around, we built facilities much closer to this urban center. So where we have, where we know we've got a, especially, you know, key medical, mental health, counseling needs that type of thing, being close to where you have professionals that live, that's important. You know, that's an important thing. The other thing that I really haven't mentioned, but we also are taking into account is, you have a partnership with your counties in the state with your sheriff's departments and so forth. So we know that they bring them to your facilities for intake, they stay at your facilities. So any scenario can't just ignore that element of things. It has to take that into account. And that's one of the difficulties if you were to look at just one all-in facility, or where do you put it that works for everybody? That's tough. So, you know, that might exist, but it might not. And so that's why it's important. I think when we look at right now, like I said, we've got five different scenarios. It's important to look at all the elements of those five different scenarios, not only to think about the efficiency, not only to think about what the programs could be, but also what's the social impact and what's the other impact with your overall system? It's not just the DOC, but also involves your counties and sheriffs. So to answer your question, because that's not exactly what you asked. What you asked is if we looked at some specific, we have not looked at specific sites yet, but we have some general ideas about where things might fit. You know, you probably know that we're also trying to make a decision regarding the Windsor facility. And so it would be good if we had some input on that, as whether that's a, how that would fit into any of these scenarios that you would propose of those five or six scenarios, if that would come into effect at all. We haven't touched on Windsor much yet. I don't know if that's something maybe BGS might comment on as well. Okay. Commissioner, just identify yourself for the record and unmute. My name, thank you. My name is Jennifer Fitch and I am the BGS commissioner. So the scope of the project, right, is to look at the existing system and evaluate it and then to come up with some scenarios. This is called alternative scenario planning, right? So we're looking kind of high level at some different opportunities and options. And so because Windsor was not in the current system, if you will, that facility was not assessed and is outside the scope of this work. Now, certainly once we get past sort of the planning phase, if you will, right? And we have some recommendations and some ideas on how we may want to proceed. We're going to continue that planning effort, right? So we're not going to go straight into design. We're going to continue our planning efforts. We're going to learn a lot from the study as it wraps up. And then for the next phase and what we're asking for in the capital bell, right, is to continue with conceptual planning. So no, we haven't specifically looked at it. It wasn't part of the scope, but there's still opportunities to do so in the future potentially. Anything else? I think we're starting to close up here. Mr. Goodell, I want to thank you for this. I think this has been very informative. As I said before, I think it gives a lot of background information that will be very helpful to the committee, particularly because we have so many new members to the committee and Department of Corrections. Life is very complicated and this gives a good base for people to start understanding the moving pieces of our population that's incarcerated, the needs of those folks who are incarcerated in our bed capacity. And also the condition of our current buildings at our current facilities as well. I think it's been very helpful. And we do look forward to the part two of this. And that's where we will really be doing a deep dive. And I'm really glad that you're putting out options, different options, options one, two, three, four, five, six, how many. We went through this process once before when we had to replace a large facility that housed state government workers. And we went through a similar process where we couldn't decide if we should rebuild or tear it down and move someplace else. And we went through this similar process with Freeman French and Freeman in fact, and they came in with five or six options. And it was amazing how that process worked and how all the parties really did coalesce around one of those options. And hopefully that will happen here. For that's my goal. That's my hope for that. So I look forward to having you back and having part two. So any final questions before we take a quick lunch break and then come back to work on this? Madam Chair, I can't raise my hand. You can't see me. No, I can't. Sorry. Just a couple of closing comments that I don't want to hold folks up for lunch. So again, Jim Baker, the interim commissioner of corrections. Jeff, thank you for that presentation. Commissioner Fitch and I have talked about this a couple of times. Clearly picked the right folks to work on this project. Very impressive, very well done. I just want to remind the committee, right? This whole conversation got started because of the women's facility. And I think if you listen close to what Jeff was talking about, it hit a lot of key points that we've been working on, right? Behavior of the incarcerated population and staff, the impact on staff. Thank you, Jeff, for bringing up this point about post-traumatic stress syndrome of correctional staff that works in facilities. We're living that right now because of the pandemic and the staff is under enormous stress. Talking about operating costs, right? We have one of the highest staff, the ratio, staff to incarcerated individuals in the country because of the way our facilities are designed. Operating costs in general. I mean, Jeff hit on all of this. The fact that we have gender trauma sensitivity built into all our programming, but our facilities don't support it. It doesn't support that concept. And the discussion now is moving forward about the money that's in the capital budget now. You all know where I stand on it and I know you know where Commissioner Fitch stands on it. That's the next big piece for us to move forward. We're talking about things such as, is the Windsor facility a site to build on, right? Or whatever the committee goes to. But we're going to need that next step to be able to get to that next level of conversation. So I didn't want to cut into lunch hour, but I just wanted to wrap this conversation up. And again, thanks to Jeff and the team. This is impressive work and we look forward to phase two. Thank you, Commissioner. I think our committee feels exactly the same as what you just expressed and really appreciate it. Anything else before we finish up? Okay, thank you. Thank you, folks. We're going to take a quick break now. And Jeff, you can zoom out if you want. And Commissioner Baker, you can zoom out, but I want to hang on to Commissioner Fitch for one second to talk about our secure residential. We're going to take a half hour break. We'll be back, I would say. Let's try 10 minutes after one. We've gotten the authority not to be on the floor this afternoon. And I've encouraged the members to set themselves up for being notified by either their leadership or some of their colleagues. If there's something that comes up on the floor, if there's a roll call vote or if there's a close vote. And I am hoping to, are you available, Commissioner Fitch? Around 10 after 1, 1.15, that timeframe as well as Commissioner Squirrel. Chair, I set that up for 2PM. I know, yeah, I know you did, Phil. I had a conversation with a Commissioner Squirrel this morning and I didn't bring you up to speak because I had to start time getting in. For the flexibility, not sure if we could get off the floor or what was going to happen on that. I said, just be prepared for between one and two. Because I knew we had scheduled it too. Speak for BGS and say that we are ready to go, but I don't want to speak on behalf of DMH. And I do think that both DMH and BGS should be in the room at the same time. So, Phil, can you check with Commissioner Squirrel? She seemed to indicate to me this morning that she would be, you know, that there's flexibility there. I know. I will check that explains why her assistant was inquiring to me as to exactly what time we were going to meet. What would be your desire, Madam Chair, about 1.10, 1.15? Is that what you're looking for? Right, that's what I'm looking for. Okay, I will see if we can do that. I'm sorry to let you know, Phil, this morning was a little crazy with my electrical problem. And I had just gotten off phone calls and trying to juggle this afternoon. I wasn't sure if we even had the okay to get off the floor until we got involved in testimony. So for the committee, let's come back like 10 after 1.15 at the rate we're going. Let's say 1.15, because it's quarter of 1 now. And then even if Commissioner Squirrel and Commissioner Fitch can't come into like 1.30, we can spend some time as a committee kind of talking a few things through. We got time. Alice, I'll hurry up my, I have a discussion with Commissioner Squirrel at one o'clock. So we'll hurry through that together into the committee. Okay, that'd be great. Hopefully we'll be right a quarter after 1. And Phil, if you could also let Becky and Catherine know that we'll be, cause they've reached out to me as well. And I gave them kind of like, you know, I'm hoping for around 1.30, not sure yet. If you can kind of let them know that we'll be back at 1.15 and plan on picking up with a secure residential.