The Tri-County Regional Corrections Board held a regular meeting in the Polk County Justice Center on Monday morning.
RED RIVER VALLEY JUVENILE CENTER UPDATE
The board received an update on the Red River Juvenile Center’s opening from Executive Director Andrew Larson. The center is still waiting for a Certificate of Occupancy with the Building Inspector from the Department of Corrections coming for another inspection on February 22, which would give them over a week to fix a few issues they had.
“We are getting close. There are a couple of minor items. Specifically on fireproofing some items, anytime there is a penetration going through a wall, that needs to be sealed up properly so there are a couple of spaces within the juvenile center where the building inspector identified he wanted a little more work done sealing those up to ensure in the unlikely event of a fire, it keeps the smoke in the area rather than impacting other areas in the facility. Once those items are wrapped up, I think the Building Inspector’s due to be back sometime next week, and after that, I expect we’ll get the Certificate of Occupancy from the Building Inspector.”
The Juvenile Center will also be working on tying its lighting system into its security system, and they are also updating their computer systems and adding some new cameras. Larson didn’t have a definite date for the center’s opening but hoped by the end of next week. They would have everything needed to give to the Department of Corrections for the Certificate. They also still needed three more staff positions filled to fully operate the facility, but they could hopefully open at least one side of the building, likely the residential side, by the week of March 6.
MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS
The board then began discussions on three miscellaneous items. The first was a BOP Interim Monitoring Report. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had completed monitoring the Center on February 4, checking if the center has a good system to help inmates transition back into the community, reviewing their referral and intake processing, and other services like their grievance process and medical and food services worked properly. One of the bigger items was ensuring the center complies with the Prison Rape Elimination Act expectations. The center received a good inspection, and the Bureau of Prisons noted they would continue utilizing their facility.
The second item was a Revenue Recapture Audit Report. The center was selected for the Minnesota Department of Revenues’ Revenue Recapture Audit Report, in which the auditor reported their process was very thorough with a few adjustments they could make.
“We will submit uncollected debts largely for fees collected through our probation department, like probation supervision fees and UA fees. We will submit uncollected debts to the Minnesota Department of Revenues, which has been something that has relatively been fruitful for us to generate revenue that we would not normally receive, which has been anything from $40-50,000 annually that we’ve seen. The audit that was conducted was a very good audit. It did help us identify a few minor issues, like a document template we had to send out was missing a piece of information. Specifically, we had a piece of inaccurate information on a lottery prize amount, so we made some minor changes to our document template. One of the other items they worked with us on was ensuring that the language we used for contested case hearings was accurate. In our notice, we did not indicate that the claim was put on hold until a determination was made, so they worked with us to update that language. Overall, it was a really good audit.”
They had to resubmit their letter for those changes, but they had received a “Clean Bill of Health” until the next audit.
The final item the board heard was an update on a Laundry Room Fire in the jail. Jail Administrator Joe Pederson reported the fire alarms went off on January 27 at 7:15 p.m. in the jail. The jail’s fire alarm went off, and the laundry room was full of smoke. The Fire Department was alerted, and they arrived soon after. The official fire report stated it was a lint-related fire in a dryer. No one was hurt due to it being at night, and no one was down in that area, so no staff or inmates were injured. There was mostly smoke damage to the room, and the dryer that caught fire was destroyed. Some laundry was also damaged in the fire as well. The next day, the State Fire Marshall directed the jail to return back to help with repairs to the building from the smoke and clean off the walls, and they will need to have the room repainted.
2022 4TH QUARTER INTERNAL AUDIT
The board then heard from Deputy Director Andrew Bissonnette on the Internal Audit for the fourth quarter of 2022. Their revenues for the CCA Subsidiary agency had received just over $1 million from the state, with $55,000 from the MCIT, which was more than what they had budgeted at $25,000 by over 280%. Their interest account had spiked by over 1,200% from what they budgeted at $1,000 and received $11,000, thanks to rising interest rates thanks to inflation. For inmate communications, the percentage they received brought in over $8,300, which was a little less than what they budgeted at $8,800. For their Adult Fees, they had $23-24,000 had been posted for inmate fees, which was a little lower than expected due to amounts receding in 2023. For their total expenditures for the year, they brought in $9,512,877. For their expenditures, the department had budgeted $127,000 for the 2022 year, which they were close to reaching, with them spending $250,000. For their total fund balance, their adjusted fund balance from the end of 2022 was $742,512, which was significantly less than the previous year at $1,357,000, which was a difference of over $600,000.
“We did anticipate that we’d see some reduction, maybe not of this amount. The reduction was driven by our loss of per diem revenue that we encountered when we had to temporarily close one of our housing units in the jail due to staff shortages. That hit us hard on the revenue side of things because of contracts that we maintain with the U.S. Marshall Service, the Department of Corrections, and Mahnomen County. Those bring in about $1.3 million in revenue, and having to reduce our capacity, we saw a big reduction in revenue that we produce,” said Larson. “But we’ve been very fortunate, as we’ve run with a very healthy fund balance since I moved into the Director’s position in 2015. We’ve been attempting to reduce that fund balance strategically over the course of the last four to five years by planning to use fund balance offset expenses and try to get that number down to roughly one month’s worth of operating expenses. With the significant reduction in fund balance we saw last year due to our revenue shortfall. We’re pretty much at that number now. We’re still in good shape financially.”
The board approved the motion unanimously.
MONTHLY DEPARTMENTS REPORT REVIEW
The board then began approving the monthly statistics review and Statistical Reports Review of all departments for January. Executive Director Andrew Larson reported that there were 161 inmates currently in the jail, with an average jail population of 165. They were also seeing a high rate of people crossing over the northern border, which was something that many other northern areas were seeing, with an average per diem of 165.4. The most common offenses inmates were brought in for were Probation Violations, DUI, and Domestic Abuse. For their Accounts Receivables, they received an average of $100,043, and an average of five ICE detainees were brought in. For their Transition program, they had 15 kids in the program for the month, with one new referral out of Polk County. The average monthly caseload size was 13.2, and there was a waitlist for the program right now, thanks to them lowering it down to one worker for the program. For their Probation Department, they have 57 inmates, with their being 54 felonies and ten misdemeanors. They had a total of 84 closed cases. In their Service Program, inmates cleaned at the Crookston Sports Center and cleared some snow around fire hydrants in Fertile. Thanks to the Juvenile Center still being closed, they currently had three adolescents in secure detention in Clay County, one from Polk County and the other from Norman County.
PERSONNEL ISSUES
The board then received an update on Personnel issues from Executive Director Andrew Larson. The center had many new hires, such as Jake Potter hired as a Full-Time Corrections Officer on January 17, and Myssa Morales as a Full-Time Corrections Officer on February 6. They had also hired Sheila Olson and Clifford VanBuren as Full-Time Juvenile Custody Officers on that day and have Holly Messelt scheduled to start as a Juvenile Senior Caseworker on March 6. Larson noted that several case workers had reached the point of passing their Probationary Periods, including Full-Time Corrections Officers Christopher Adam and Dezaree Brown and Correctional Sergeant Judy Moran. They had three resignations from the center, which included Juvenile Caseworker Beverly Larson and Corrections Officers Nicholas Pappas and Haley Hansen, and one termination with Corrections Officer Vanessa Esparza on February 2. This left them with three full-time Correction Officers positions open and needed two full-time and one part-time open for the Juvenile Center, but all other departments were filled. The board approved the report unanimously.
JANUARY 2023 INVOICES
The board finished the meeting by approving the invoices and bills for the county for January, which they approved unanimously.
The board will meet again on Monday, March 13, at the Tri-County Corrections Center.
