Music Music Music Music Music Thank you. Good afternoon. We'll go ahead and get started. This is the October 7th, 2014 Special Public Safety Committee meeting. The first item on the agenda is approval of the summary. Move approved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you. And then committee members, as a cleanup, I have been asked by our law department administration to wait for items two, four, and five, which is sky lanterns, the taxi ordinance, and the ride-sharing services. services. We are waiting on all three of those items for information from the state. And I think our law department's here if you have any questions for them. But I wanted a motion to amend the agenda to move these items to the December 2nd meeting. There is not a meeting in November. is there any discussion nobody has problem council member he was on there go ahead clark yes uh the sky lanterns uh issue may not be ready for the december meeting because the it may it may extend beyond that depending on some facts that we get. So we can go ahead and vote to put it on the December agenda, but it may need to be referred later. Okay. And the same could be for the ride-sharing services, although we expect that the state will make a decision. But in case they don't, it may not be on the December agenda. Councilmember Mathadi. No, ma'am. I was just making the motion. Okay. Councilmember Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. I guess that was going to be my question. Will it be done sooner than December? Do we need to maybe have a special meeting in November to address this? Because I think we're having one group that is abiding by the law and one that's not. And I think the sooner we get this resolved, the better. we contacted the transportation cabinet for an update and they have submitted the e-regulations to the governor for approval and so they are expecting that those will be released at the end of this month so if they are then yes we may need to do something in november sounds good thank you thank you so in that case we would call a special meeting if need be so is there any other discussion on the motion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. So that leaves item number three on the agenda, community corrections, staff turnover, staff inmate ratio, and exit interviews. And we have Director Ballard. And this item was placed in committee by, through the public safety links process, budget links. So welcome, Director. Welcome. It's good to be here, Chair and Assistant Chair and Council people. At your request, you asked me last time we met if I'd take a look at some salaries, both around the country and in the Commonwealth as it related to correctional officers' salaries. In your handout, I gave you a map. It just gave you some of the states we looked at. We looked at Washington, Nebraska, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. One of the things we tried to do is compare apples and apples the best we could, and that meaning the bed capacity of the agencies we're looking at. We only asked for hourly rates. We didn't dig into their benefit packages, so we didn't get into what portion their employees pay for health care, what their cost of the retirement system is. We looked strictly at the salary cap. As you can see your handout, the hourly range ran anywhere from $21.69 an hour to our current salary of $14.54 an hour. The average salary was $16.85 of the 11 states we looked at. In addition, we looked at the big jails in Kentucky, us Lexington being the second largest. We looked at Kenton, Fayette, Jefferson, Hardin, Warden, Christian, and Henderson. And you can see there the attached, and we also included FMC and the Bureau of Prisons. And you can see those salary ranges averaging anywhere from $18.76 an hour down to as low as $10.26 an hour. Can we put this on the screen, please? Do you have it, Chris? No, I do not. Okay. It was in the back. I emailed it to Paul. I don't have it on a thumb drive. I need a hard drive. I don't have it. I need it. I need it. I'll bring it back up. Do you want a minute? I'll bring it up. I'm going to try. You're currently on what page? Mine's not numbered. Thank you. Thank you. We can start there. That's the chart we just plotted the salaries from the 11 states we looked across the country to give you an idea of some of the salaries. Please. Okay. And we just include a map to give you an idea geographically what counties we chose to look at. And this one here would include the Federal Medical Center here located in Fayette County along with the other jails, and you can see where we ranked out third in salary. The next one, we looked at those, the last time we spoke, we looked at those agencies where we were losing the most to. So we looked at the Federal Medical Corrections Bureau of Prisons, Lexington Metro Police Department, Fire Department, Louisville Metro Corrections, and our own. We compared the salaries there with the Bureau of Prisons being the highest at $18.76 and our salary being the lowest at $14.54. Paul Schoenaker did some calculations on his own. There are some numbers throughout the year. but I don't know if you have in the packet or not. I enlisted the help of Dr. James Wells, PhD at the University of Eastern Kentucky, and he was able to do a little bit of research for me and checking around the country, both through the National Institute of Corrections and through his other universities around the country. And on average, it looks like in corrections, it runs as low as 6% turnover to as high as a 35% turnover. And you can see there's ours for the last several years. Yeah. Okay. Council Member Masati has a question. Director Ballard, you just said that the highest, I mean the lowest was, what again, the turnover? I caught the highest, but what was the lowest? 6%. And the highest is 35%. Yes, ma'am. And we're at, in the last two years, we're at 45% and 42%, correct? I didn't I mean 2009, 2010 I don't know where 11, 12, 13 and 14 is, did we not look at those numbers? We did and I had a call into Paul, this slide difference in the other slide that he compared because he also do we have this I think that's probably one of our biggest questions is you know So the high turnover rate, it gets better, okay. The high turnover rate. Well, this is going to be really difficult. There you go. Here's probably the most current data that we have for FY10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. The section you want to pay most attention to is, if I can push the right button, is this group of numbers here? These are the officers. That's where the biggest turnover is. I don't have turnovers in sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. They're career employees. So that's the group you want to look at. One of the things that I did different is I took out the, I thought it was unfair in that total of 59 people that left during that time period to count retirements and people that were promoted. Because those were positive, not negatives. So it lowered those by a few percentages down. But you can see we've been pretty consistent through here. And I think when I averaged out these, when I took those numbers out of there, we were averaging 19.5% turnover a year. And these are just the officers. Can I ask you another question? In the other data you presented to us, were the officers, was that just officers or was that everyone? Because you said, you know, the highest was 35 percent. We asked for just officers. Okay. Because usually when they've made sergeant, they've been here three or four years, and the promotional process, those are career employees. But it's at the lower level where we see the largest turnover in our industry. Okay. I just want to make sure that we're comparing the same data. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. As asked, we're continuing to do exit interviews. As our employees leave, they meet with me. I can't tell you. I've met with every single one because sometimes with scheduling and my schedule, their schedule, but I've tried to meet with every one of them. I can tell you except for two, most of them left for the exact same reasons they told HR, different jobs, family issues, difficulty adjusting to shift work, But basically they repeated the same thing. We did have two that said they didn't like us, didn't like the way we managed the place, and wanted to go someplace else. Thank you, sir. Are there any questions for Council Member Massadi? I'm sorry to keep on asking all these questions. So pay was not an issue at all, and you're saying in these interviews. No, pay was, the reasons they were giving were correct. It was either pay, better jobs. No, there is, let me back up. The reason I was asked to do the interviews was to make sure the reasons they were telling HR were the same. So when I interviewed them, only two of them gave me different answers. Most of them were for better pay or having a difficult time adjusting to shift work or for family reasons. Were they going to other facilities? A few have. We've lost, I don't have those numbers with me today. Lexington Metro Police was the largest. I believe we lost nine there. The Bureau of Prisons came in second. We lost five there. Fire Department came in with three or four, which were all paying substantially more than what we're making. So in your estimation, if you think if the pay was at a better standard, would you be able to retain these employees, or were they just going to go leave anyways because of a better position or ma'am it would definitely impact us but I would be misleading if I told you that cured everything because if that was the case you wouldn't see these numbers around the country because you saw other facilities that paid eight and dollar eight and nine dollars more an hour and they still have a turnover problem do I think it will help and slow it down absolutely all right thank you you thank you councilmember Lane mr. Ballard if you look at page 15 of your presentation I apologize well maybe yours is numbered I didn't number the pages can you help me out and give me a just see the very last page in there Okay, it shows that in 2010 that the turnover was 135 people or 42.1%, but in the previous chart, it only showed less than half that many turnovers in 2010. What would be the difference? Could you go back to the previous chart you had up there? I know. The other way it was is. Yeah, look at 2010 there. See, it says total sworn, and it shows that turnover was 19%. I guess that's 62 people. And that's half of what's showing here for turnover for 2010 on this chart. What is the difference? Do you know why there's a differential there? No, sir, I don't. Paul prepared these from numbers he got from HR. I see. Okay. All right. Could you go back to page 15 one more time? That was the previous page you had up there. And I was noticing that in 2001, which is around the time of 9-11, we had the major attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, et cetera, that the attrition started going up at that time. And would you attribute that to Homeland Security and other agencies hiring people? And because some of our people were lower paid, they got opportunities to get a higher-paying job. Is that what you see there? And then it sort of stabilized, it looks like, around 80 or 90 turnover per year. And then in 2008, it went back up to fairly high levels. So do you have any comment on, you know, factors that may be related to the high turnover we're having? Because 42% and 30% turnover, that's really tough because by the time we recruit people and train them, we have a lot of money invested, and then they leave. You know, we're losing our investment in their training as well as our personnel. So do you have any comment on that? I think your analogy in the September the 11th is correct. I think a lot of our young men and women felt the need, like we did when Japan bombed us, to join our military and serve their country. I think some of them had active duty time that they reenlisted and went back. I think, what, 2008, the economy started turning. Things went down. When I first met you in March of 2012, we were 58 officers short. They were working a lot of overtime, so I can only guess if we went backwards, we'd find some of those same issues that was going on during the division. But without going back and interviewing staff that were here at that time, I'd be really just making a guess on why it's so high during that time period. I can tell you one thing that's impacting us now, though, is I think, as you've heard, I think the economy is improving in our community. There are other jobs because I see where they're going, and I see what they're making. And not all of them are leaving for bad reasons. We had a young man this week. His first love was playing football, had a full scholarship to Murray. His career goal was to get a teaching job and coach. Well, that didn't work out quite well for him when he got right out of high school or out of college. And after working with us for a while, decided that he liked it, but he wanted his first love. So he was going back to finish his master's degree to go back into teaching and coaching. This is the tough question for you. What recommendations could you make to reduce the turnover? Because, you know, overall it's a bad situation. Losing your trained people, having to recruit, and all that's very expensive. Do you have any, you know, recommendations on what you would like to do? Let me tell you what we've done. so far because your comments are not falling on deaf ears. We realize the impact it has on our operation. One thing we did, we retooled the academy. We looked at every particular class. Our goal was are we properly preparing these young men and women for the task we're asking them to do. We added two more weeks to our academy going from five weeks to seven weeks, adding additional courses. We redid the FTO module, our field training manual. We totally took it apart and rebuilt it to try to improve that. In this class of just graduated, we're now tracking them from day one for the next two years. Tardies, discipline, coaching and counseling, why they leave, and see if we can figure out what we can do to turn this corner on the turnover rate. But when you have young men and women that can go and increase their livelihood by four and five dollars an hour, it is difficult to argue with them. But we are looking at it. I'm interviewing everyone that leaves to make sure that there's nothing we did, that they weren't properly trained, they felt unsafe, something that we could do to improve to make them stay longer. Well, my time is out, but I'd just like to say one thing and then I'll shut up. If you gave a raise of $1,000 per correctional officer, there's about 2,000 hours per year in a normal 40-hour work week, and I presume that's close to what their schedule is, 40 hours a week on average. Maybe they're working more hours than that. That would be about a $2,000 per correctional officer raise. Do you think that would make a significant difference in both recruiting and retention, or do you think it's really sort of a buck an hour, it's not that big of a deal? I think it's a combination of both. One of the problems in my industry is my mission is to keep people locked in. Unfortunately, I keep good people locked out. So the men and women who serve you each and every day, you don't get to see what they do. You don't see them cleaning up the feces off the wall when the mental health inmates rubbed it all over the wall. And whether you're making $100 an hour or $14.54 an hour, that task is still a terrible task. So I think it's a combination of increasing salaries, increasing their supreme decor, building pride in what they do. It all comes together. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for your responses. Council Member Akers. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Rodney. Hi. For the comparisons of our fire department and police department, and I guess even the federal medical center, which are higher salaries or hourly rates, I guess my question would be why would they not pursue those positions first versus leaving your, you know, the corrections to go there? It's a good question. As you know, our recruitment and academy classes, both police and fire, are driven by budgets. They only come so many times a year. So these young people need employment to feed their families while they're waiting for their job of choice. So they're able to come work with us. Let's think about police for a minute. Many of the things we do together, we search people, police search people. We use mechanical restraints, they use mechanical restraints. So they're developing some skills that they're going to learn. They're learning who the bad guys are coming in the door. We're meeting them. So it's an intermediate step while they're waiting to get hired in the police department. Some stay and then like it, but then there's others that have that opportunity to go to police and fire, and they take advantage of it. Right. And so I guess you can't, like, say, you know, be planning to leave us for the police department and not hire them, I guess. No, because I think what I would say to that question is I would tell you I'm hiring the right people. If they're good enough for Chief Bastin, that tells you I hired the right person. Sure, sure. It became just a financial thing that they worked out that they could make more money. Because, see, Kentucky is unique, and if you think about your other states, the sheriff runs the jail and the police department. So when you get hired in, you might have to spend two years inside the correctional facility and then go what they commonly refer to as the road patrol. But in Kentucky, we don't have that. So it makes it a little harder transferring. But you can't transfer between like you do in other states. Separate agencies. Yes, ma'am. Okay. I was just trying to think out loud. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Does any other committee members have questions? I have a question, Director Ballard. Do you anticipate any other steps that you might take to try to reduce the turnover? I know since you've been there, I know that you've implemented other things to, you know, like the cafeteria, for instance, for employees, and then trying to get a handle on by doing the exit interviews and so forth, why get a better idea of why folks are leaving. But are there other things that we might be able to do to improve? Well, I definitely think when the contract comes up and we do contract negotiations talking about salary increases, shift differential, their portion of health care they pay, I think that all comes into the big package. But I got to just tell you, it's a tough job. And those who have visited our institution, it's unique in that when you walk in the door and the door closes behind you, you can't get out. And for some, they just don't like that. So it takes a special person to work in this industry, as demonstrated around the country, because, and I agree with everything that's been said here today, we need to work, do better, work harder, reduce the turnover rate. But when you look around the country, you find some of the same problems. Very similar. And when I go to large jail network meetings, which are jails of 1,000 bed or more, we talk about these issues, and it's difficult. with the economy turning around. If they can make the same salary and work a Monday through Friday and off Saturday and Sunday, that's an improvement to their family. And is there any possibility of, I know that you're restricted, like, for instance, an officer that's new to the detention center will never get a weekend off. They may be working second shift or third shift. It does make it difficult on family life. Is there any possibility of rotating shifts or I think collective bargaining restricts that? Yes, that's all in the collective bargaining. That's something that would have to be discussed when the bargaining negotiated. But as it is now, it's all bid on seniority. Thank you. Council Member Stenet has a question. Thank you, Chair. Director, thank you for being here today with us. Thank you. We've seen some data today. We've seen some numbers that go on one slide way back to 96. I guess I'm more interested in taking this data and seeing what we're going to do moving forward. So what I'd be more interested in hearing, if you have it today or at a next meeting, is what our plan is to address some of this, and what do we need to be thinking about as we enter the next budget cycle? How do we raise the pay out there? How do we help you with turnovers? What is the plan? Do you have something formulated today as how we're attacking these three issues, or do we need to come back and maybe sit down together and come up with a plan? A little bit of both. I think tracking, as I briefed Ms. Hamilton, tracking this class that's currently this class, class that graduated, is our first step at doing that. And we're going to monitor them through their tenure with us, meet with them every three months, and try to figure out, you know, what it takes to keep them here. And then we're going to interview some. why did you stay and why do some stay and why do some leave? Try to figure that out. If I figure that out, I'll be able to make a lot of money because I'll go to other agencies around the country who are fighting with, grappling with this same issue. So I think us tracking this class will help me give you some ideas on why they're leaving. And I think definitely when we get closer to negotiating the contract, In fact, talking to you about increase in salary and benefits is another thing that we need to talk about. What about the inmate ratio, staff to inmate ratios? How do we attack that? Well, you know, there's actually no standards in the country you're going to find that says there's a ratio. The only thing Kentucky has, since you're a direct supervision jail, you can have one to 70. That means 70 inmates all out at one time, which rarely happens at our place. Could it happen? Yes. but you also gave me some additional staff last time that we were allowed to put in some of the units that are more aggressive than others. So we're looking at that in the particular unit that we have. We have two officers in there now to make the job a little less stressful. But even some of those that are leaving are even so early on in their career, it's almost, you know, for lack of a better term, they didn't get a good taste of what it was about. They left so quick. So we're constantly working with that. So why don't we adopt our own standard then? why don't we come up with a standard so everyone knows what we're working with and what this council knows, the employees know, and we all can abide by our own standard. Have we thought about that? Yes. And that's something that has to be talked at the budgeting level. What are we comfortable with and what are we wanting to raise it to? So when will you be able to bring back something in regards to that? Well, that's probably rather, could probably do it rather quickly because not every housing unit has that type of inmate that needs two. So it wouldn't take much work to figure out if we increased it, but two or three housing units what that would do. I haven't done the relief factor here, but if you use the 1.87 relief factor on a 24-hour shift, that's six new people to keep one person in that housing unit 24 hours a day. So if you want to take two housing units, That second option would cost you 12 new people. Well, and that's the kind of the presentation I want to see. What would it cost? And leave it up to this council to make that determination on what it's worth. But I'd like to see how a plan is to attack that along the other two issues. And to be fair to you, as well as the current management out there, this has been going on for a long time. It's not done just happening last year or year before. I've seen it for 10 years, the same repetitive issues. So anything we can do to start diving into those and eliminating some of the reoccurring problems would be very helpful, I know, to this council member and the rest of us. So thank you. I appreciate that. I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago with Commissioner LaDonna Thompson and looked at her turnover rates with her, and it was amazing what we saw. Those institutions that are located closer to urban areas had higher turnover rates. Those institutions in the rural parts of our state had very low turnover rates. which computes if you're in the rural community, there's not as many as opportunities for employment. In the urban areas, there's more opportunities. So they're able to be more diversified and change jobs easier. Council Member Akers. Quick question. I know at some neighborhoods or housing facilities that I work with, there are groups like a resident council or we have a youth advisory council here at the city. do you have any kind of officer counsel or are they organized at all where they can have sort of a united voice or one person representative to come to you or to the leadership executive leadership administration in that jail you have those have that dialogue and discussion and express their concerns as one way to in a going forward is council members didn't mentioned This is like one of those questions. I really thank you for asking that question. Since I came to work for the government, I have a standing meeting. The first Thursday in every month is the FOP's meeting. It's on my calendar, and it's their meeting to cancel. And we meet with them the first Thursday of every month. And I think we picked a Thursday because it's in relationship to their meetings. And it's their opportunity. The executive board comes in, and we talk about everything from radios to officer safety to quartermaster issues, Anything they want to talk about, it's open, and we talk about those issues. They brought several issues to the table that we, to be honest, hadn't thought about, and we were able to resolve with them, which was good for both management and for the workforce. Okay. Thank you. No one else has signed up to speak. Has anyone signed up for public comment, Mr. Mundy? And I guess I would just ask if anyone here in the chamber would like to speak, have any public comment. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Council Member Stinnett, you indicated you'd like to keep this item in committee, correct? Thank you, sir. next item on the agenda was items referred to committee is there any discussion on any of these items we went at our last public safety committee meeting we went through each of these one by one and several were removed but i won't do that again but if you uh today but if you have any comments on any of them? If not, Council Member Stinnett? I'll make a motion to remove the substance abuse coordinator since we've already dealt with that issue. So I move. Second. Can we have a motion and a second to remove the substance abuse coordinator? Is there any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. No other discussions? I guess I would entertain a motion to adjourn. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you.