Taking over the Jail?

We are back.. I apologize for being pretty quiet last week. I took a trip to Dallas for a photography conference late Wednesday evening and came back late Friday night. I did not have much time to do anything related to this page for those days and the weekend was full of volleyball tournaments with the kids.

Several of you were concerned that something happened to me since the page was not updated for a few days. I do appreciate all the messages checking in. So thank you all for that.

But we are back this week and jumping back in.

Last week we talked a bit about the Citrus County Sheriff's Office taking over the jail from CoreCivic and what that would look like. The problem was, we did not have any backup material on the agenda, so no one could see the report beforehand.

That was not alleviated Tuesday. You see, the presentation was never sent to the county. Sheriff Vincent admitted at the meeting that they had literally just finished it up just before the meeting. "Hot off the printer" was how it was described as he gave commissioners copies.

Still.. I question how this got on the agenda in the first place.

In any case, no use in crying over spilt milk. So let's talk about what was presented. Since there was no presentation, I took screen shots of what was shown on the screen as it was being presented.

Here is a look at the entire presentation.

A few things to note.

The Sheriff seems to be wanting to do this now, so that it can be included in the 2027 fiscal year budget. The idea is to start getting personnel in place now to be able to go in October. That would likely require recruiting Correctional Officers, which will take 13 weeks to go through the academy. This would require additional funding for this year, although I do not see a total dollar figure for that. He notes he would need $210k for the rest of this fiscal year for the 3 transition task force positions... Jail Administrator, Administrative Lieutenant and Medical Director.

This is going to be a very big lift in terms of startup costs and staffing needs.

There would be 136 positions to fill in addition to the 33 positions currently on staff in the CCSO that would continue under this new model. Total NEW dollars for this is around $18.8 million. Some of this will be offset by not paying CoreCivic, which is around $16 million or so per year.

I am also not sure if the salaries consider the legacy costs associated with these positions. These would be things like pension, vacation time, health insurance, etc. Currently the jail employees are NOT county government employees and not subject to county benefits. The employees under the CCSO would become government employees and get county/state benefits.

The transition costs also include some start up costs. These are things like vehicles, uniforms, etc. There is a slide above that some some examples. I am not sure if that is everything that would be needed, but the total on the slide is $2,165,000 and does not include numbers for Facility Supplies and Food Service Supplies.

This in funding that would be needed upfront to be able to do the transition.

There are also questions on what CoreCivic actually owns in the facility and what would remain. If it remains, is it in good working order? Things like Laundry Equipment, Security Equipment, etc.

We still have quite a bit of unanswered questions. Commissioners seemed open to the idea of the CCSO taking over, but they want to see the full picture of what it looks like to transition including all the of final costs.

We shall see where this goes.