Department:	Contact Person/Phone:	DOF Analyst/Phone:
Finance	Doug Carey, 684-8067	Elise Downer, 684-8076

Legislation Title:

AN ORDINANCE authorizing the Director of the Department of Finance to execute an agreement with the Yakima County Board of Commissioners for the provision of jail services for prisoners convicted of misdemeanor crimes and sentenced to a period of incarceration under the Seattle Municipal Code.

Summary of the Legislation:

This legislation authorizes the Executive to execute a contract with Yakima County for jail services. The contract commits Seattle and 36 other King County cities to using a minimum of 440 misdemeanant jail beds from October 2003 through 2010. This agreement is necessitated by the King County jail agreement, which significantly reduces the cities’ misdemeanant jail population over the next decade.

Appropriations (in $1,000’s):

Fund Name and Number	Department	Budget Control Level*	2002 Appropriation	2003 Anticipated Appropriation
TOTAL

* This is line of business for operating budgets, and program or project for capital improvements

Notes: Because there is already budget authority for jail services in the 2002, 2003 and 2004 budgets, no additional appropriations are requested.

Expenditures (in $1,000’s):

Fund Name and Number	Department	Budget Control Level*	2003 Expenditures	2004 Anticipated Expenditures
General Subfund 0100	Criminal Justice Contracted Services	VJ1	$1,073	$4,056
TOTAL			$1,073	$4,056

· This is line of business for operating budgets, and program or project for capital improvements

Notes: Expenditure estimates do not include assumptions regarding the costs associated with medical and dental coverage for inmates incarcerated in Yakima. The City will make every attempt to minimize these costs by screening prisoners for health conditions while meeting the minimum bed commitment to the extent possible.

Anticipated Revenue/Reimbursement (in $1,000’s):

Fund Name and Number	Department	Revenue Source	2002 Revenue	2003 Revenue
TOTAL

Notes:

Total Permanent Positions Created Or Abrogated Through Legislation, Including FTE Impact; Estimated FTE Impact for Temporary Positions:

Fund Name and Number	Department	Position Title*	2002 FTE	2003 FTE
N/A
TOTAL

* List each position separately

Do positions sunset in the future?

N/A

Background

The City has had to look outside King County for inmate housing because the proposed King County jail services agreement reduces the City’s misdemeanant population to zero over the course of the next decade. Yakima approached the City in the summer of 2001 to provide misdemeanant jail services, and has contracted with several other King County cities as well as other western Washington cities and counties for such services. The consortium of King County cities that negotiated the new jail services agreement with the County have identified Yakima as the best option for reducing the cities’ populations in King County.

This contract terminates at the end of 2010. At that time, cities will have a plan in place for additional secure capacity, preferably close to downtown Seattle. At that time, the City may choose to continue a partnership with Yakima.

Although Yakima does not currently have capacity to house all post-sentence Seattle misdemeanant prisoners, they have approximately 35 beds available for our use through October 2003 (150 total for all contract cities). The City has housed post-conviction inmates in Yakima per Council Ordinance 120826, which passed June 17, 2002. Per the long-term agreement, Yakima has committed to expanding their capacity to a level that will accommodate 440 of the cities’ inmates by late Fall 2003, based on a seven-year commitment from the cities to occupy a set number of beds.

Beyond capacity and a lower rate, Yakima also offers a wide-variety of treatment programs important to misdemeanant offenders, such as certified alcohol and drug treatment, anger management classes, and GED classes. They are also committed to putting in place certified treatment services for domestic violence offenders.

The financial cost of not implementing the legislation

As the cost of a misdemeanant maintenance day in Yakima is over $20 less than a day in King County under the two proposed agreements, the cost of keeping our inmates in the King County system, were that an option, would be approximately $1,450,000 per year. Although the City might be able to source alternate jail beds at a similar cost to Yakima, the staff time associated with such an endeavor would also be costly. Further, alternate jails would not necessarily cover the costs of such things as transportation, which could make them more expensive than even King County.

Possible alternatives to the legislation which could achieve the same or similar objectives

There are few real alternatives to contracting with Yakima for misdemeanant jail services. Although the Executive plans to make full use of alternatives to incarceration to reduce our jail population, there will still be some misdemeanants who, by the nature of their offense, will require secure detention. By contracting for jail beds in Yakima, the City has chosen the closest provider (other options include Okanagan, Chelan, and Benton Counties) with a fairly long history of providing these services to outside jurisdictions.

Is the legislation subject to public hearing requirements

N/A

Other Issues

The long-term issue of greatest import is that this contract commits the City to a set number of beds in Yakima, the financial liability for which will be spread among all the cities listed in the title of the interlocal agreement. Should there be a major legislative change that impacts misdemeanant sentence lengths (either upward or downward), the City will be committed to these beds through 2010. The nature and likelihood of these changes, however, is unforeseeable.