Alachua County Commission creates new Housing division, expresses reluctance to raise deputies’ pay to be more competitive with GPD

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At their August 15 Special Budget Meeting, the Alachua County Commission discussed creating a new Housing and Strategic Development Division, budget requests for Court Services, increased pay for County staff, and their reluctance to increase deputies’ pay to be more competitive with a recent GPD increase. This article is the first of two on that meeting; the second is available here.

Housing and Strategic Development Division

During a discussion about the budget for Community Support Services, Director Claudia Tuck proposed moving Housing Programs to its own division: Housing and Strategic Development. The current Housing Program Manager will become the Housing and Strategic Development Division Director, and the current Strategic Development Coordinator will become the Housing and Strategic Development Manager. 

Commissioner Anna Prizzia made a motion to approve the creation of the new division and the reclassification of the positions, and Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.

Court Services

Deputy County Manager Carl Smart said Court Services is requesting an additional $706,863 for more drug testing, three new positions for doing the paperwork associated with First Appearances of newly-arrested individuals, three new positions to administer electronic monitoring of individuals on pre-trial release or probation, and one new position to oversee compliance with community service requirements. 

Prizzia asked why there’s “such an increase in drug testing” and added, “If you haven’t been monitoring it, [the jail population is] up in the nine hundreds now, and we’ve gotten over 1,000 a few times… I would encourage any and all of us to have conversations with our judges and with our State Attorney and with our Sheriff about how we can begin to reduce those numbers, which gets me to electronic monitoring. I’m excited about that, too. I think it’s a great opportunity to release people who aren’t dangerous and that we don’t need to be fearful of, back into our community, so they can keep their jobs, so they can keep their connections with their families, so they can continue to do the things they need to do while they await trial. These people haven’t been convicted yet.”

Prizzia also asked to change the name of the community service compliance position from community “compliance” to “support.” She said, “Our goal is to help people; it’s not to monitor people. We’re not the police, and we’re not the courts. We’re services and support systems for the people who are dealing with the courts and who are dealing with law enforcement, and our job is to help them navigate those systems and help them be successful at doing whatever it is that they need to do so that they can rehabilitate and get back into community successfully.”

Smart said, “The judges are requiring and asking for more of the drug testing.” He said drug testing is used for individuals on pre-trial release and on probation. 

Electronic monitoring devices

Wheeler asked whether the County could use less “clunky” monitoring devices, and Smart said they’re looking at issuing a Request for Proposal for a different type of GPS monitor. Wheeler said, “I think that’s important, because we’re talking about people who really have not been convicted. They’re just trying to be monitored, and it may not be that they even need that kind of monitoring if they meet certain criteria.”

Prizzia said, “I will say this, the Sheriff does have the opportunity to… write a ticket for appearance. They don’t have to arrest someone, put them in the jail, have them go to First Appearance, have them go on to monitoring, or stay in the jail if they can’t make bail, if they believe that they’re not a risk to the community… I think that’s another conversation: are they using that tool to their broadest ability?”

Commissioner Chuck Chestnut said, “There are also other circumstances. They could be a person that’s a pedophile or something like this. They want to keep that kind of control over them, to make sure they’re not near children…,” and Prizzia added, “or domestic violence.”

Chair Mary Alford said, “But you know, cell phones have tracking devices in them, and there are companies out there using cell phones now… I think the stigmatization of the ankle monitor and that, you know, ‘that person’s already a criminal’ kind of mindset that people have when they see an ankle monitor is – I see that as dehumanizing.”

Wheeler said it could be “a design of a wristwatch or something.”

Should services provided by small nonprofits be absorbed into County government?

As part of a discussion about how long it’s taking to finalize a contract for re-entry services (for individuals being released from incarceration), Commissioner Ken Cornell said he would like to have a policy discussion about the status of nonprofits that depend entirely or almost entirely on the County for their funding: “If it’s that important that we’re funding an entire organization, perhaps it should be part of our staff… If they’re relying totally on public funds, then they should be part of our departments.”

Alford agreed, and Prizzia said it was “worth a policy meeting discussion because that’s a dangerous – again, that’s another pathway. Basically, what you’re saying is that every time we fund a community program that’s with a small, limited-capacity nonprofit, we should just take them over.”

Cornell responded, “Not necessarily, but if they are totally reliant on public dollars to have an organization… we should say, ‘Wait a minute.’ If that’s a critical thing in our budget, then they should be a part of our budget to run a program.”

Prizzia disagreed, saying, “Whether they’re large or small… we are working with experts who can do more than we can do, right? Because they aren’t government, right? And they are able to be more nimble.”

Cornell asked staff to set up a policy discussion on that topic after the budget cycle and asked staff to bring data “with regards to – what organizations are we funding more than half of their budget? Is that a good number?”

Prizzia disagreed, saying the important thing is whether the organization meets the deliverables in the contract. She said full financial reports are “none of our business, really, if they’re meeting their deliverables… I don’t know why it matters if… they’re doing the work.”

Cornell responded, “It doesn’t matter until it’s in the news,… until they’re audited and there’s a problem with the financial situation.” Prizzia said she supported having that conversation about future contracts, “but asking existing organizations to go in and pull all that data and provide that to our staff,… that’s a lot of work for both our staff and those organizations we partner with.”

Cornell said, “You and I are not on the same page at all… I feel like if they are getting public dollars, they are subject to the same controls and requirements that we ask of our County staff.”

Alford said she supported having the policy discussion.

Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby said a lot of the County’s contracts have language allowing the County to request financial information, “so I don’t want people to think that we currently don’t have that in place. We do have that in most of our contracts.”

Shifting some of the utility tax to the gas tax fund

In a presentation covering several departments, Crosby told the board that he recommends shifting some of the utility tax on County residents to the gas tax fund because “gas tax revenues are not keeping up with the policy decisions the board made in terms of [not] using inmate labor and some of the other costs… [Public Works Director Ramon Gavarrete] said, ‘Tommy, if we’re going to continue to move minimum wages up every year, [we will need more funding].'” 

The utility tax revenues are normally split between fire and the general fund, and now some will go into the gas tax fund. 

Alford asked Crosby whether the County is “still charging the maximum allowed tax for GRU customers,” and he said, “Yes, 10%,” but explained that it’s for all utility companies, not just GRU.

Minimum wage for County employees will increase to $18/hour

Crosby said the County’s minimum wage (the amount they pay their employees) will increase to $18 per hour in the next fiscal year: “I think we’ve been able to really help lead as a local entity on what we believe should happen locally.”

Crosby explained that the legislature passed a law this year that prohibits local governments from requiring vendors to meet the local government’s minimum wage, but “we have two years to implement that.” He said that since the state’s minimum wage will be at $15 in two years, the County could ensure a minimum wage of $15 or above by waiting two years to comply with that law.

Cornell said, “I think that’s great. I want us to continue to require that in two years.” He asked whether the County could ask vendors whether they pay the County’s minimum wage, once the law takes effect, and use that to decide which vendors to use. Crosby said he didn’t think so, but he would research that.

Sheriff Gainey asks for minimum of $55,000 for deputies

All County and Constitutional Office employees will get raises of 6%, and Crosby said Sheriff Emery Gainey has asked for a $55,000 minimum for deputies, a 10% increase: “That’s not something we could afford… We’ve costed out what it would mean to get to $55 (thousand) for those that are not – and not worry about compression… and that’s still over $300,000 in costs to do that… So I just want to let you know that that is not in the budget. It’s 6% like everyone else.”

Cornell pointed out that Gainesville Police Department just moved to a minimum of $60,000, and Alford chimed in, “Yeah, but you know that is starting salaries, and that’s causing wage compression across the rest of the organization, which is causing some issues. So I’m curious how that’s all going to play out. So we might want to sit back a little bit and watch what happens.”

Editor’s note: In an August 1 presentation to the Gainesville City Commission about GPD’s contract, City Human Resources Director Laura Graetz said that since all the ranges were adjusted, “there’s no compression that occurs now.” 

Cornell said he wanted to bring up “the grand bargain that this board made with the previous Sheriff – Sheriffs -… and that was, we’re not going to touch your MSTU, and you have to live within your MSTU.” He said the request should have been made before the MSTU rate notices were sent out for this year.

Chestnut said about the City, “I don’t understand, when you have budget problems… you’re giving raises like that… It does put pressure on other agencies in our area.” He said Sheriff Gainey told him that he had recently lost two officers to GPD because of the higher pay and added, “I don’t want to get in a position where we’re playing catch-up.”

Crosby said that, unlike many other counties, the Sheriff has committed to bringing correctional officer pay to the same level as deputies, and the County recently picked up more of the health insurance costs of employees. He added, “There’s enough in the pot to help achieve some of the goals, but it may not achieve all of the goals that he’s trying to get to right now, and we may lag a year or two behind to get where we want to get to.”

Sheriff Gainey is expected to discuss his budget requests in detail at a future meeting.