With revenues up, expenses down RSW superintendent pursues bonuses for staff

After a positive Finance Manager’s report on contracted bed rentals to non-member jurisdictions through the first two months of Fiscal Year-2021, Rappahannock-Shenandoah-Warren County (RSW) Regional Jail Superintendent Russ Gilkison recommended a bonus plan for remaining staff at the jail. Pointing to the loss of 16 people due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the jail and its staff fighting its way through a COVID-19 outbreak impacting inmates and staff, the RSW superintendent told the governing RSW Jail Authority on Thursday, September 24, “I’d like to reward those for sticking with us through the good and the bad.”

Gilkison estimated a $126,000 cost to implement the bonus plan. New Authority member Ed Daley, Warren County’s Interim County Administrator, suggested establishing bonus program guidelines based on length of employment at RSW through the recent pandemic situation.

As RSW Finance Manager Stephanie Smith listens to his right, Jail Superintendent Russ Gilkison, center, explains how the jail is operationally surviving a jump in staffing vacancies. Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini – Royal Examiner Video by Mark Williams

On the bright side of that situation, Gilkison reported “no active cases or symptomatic staff/inmates since June 15, 2020.” He also called a remote visitation system implemented on July 13, allowing family and friends of inmates to visit them virtually “a huge success – We went from no visits to more than ever,” Gilkison said of the IWeb Visit system that is averaging 45 remote visits per day.

On the not so positive side, Gilkison noted losses that have left jail 42 staff down, the largest number ever one authority member pointed out. Asked about safety concerns from the staff shortage, Superintendent Gilkison noted procedural adjustments in the COVID-19 pandemic environment that have reduced some oversight needs.

“It looks worse on paper because that number is going up. But we’re really sitting about the same as we always have because we just operate a little differently … overall we’re operating just like we normally do. We’re still maintaining our staffing standards that we did pre-COVID. I don’t feel like we’re at risk,” Gilkison assured the authority members. He added that were it to get to a point of overstretching remaining staff he would have to begin telling outside jurisdictions the jail could not accept additional inmate bed rentals from them.

Gilkison proposed a $126,000 allotment toward a bonus program for remaining staff who have performed admirably through personnel losses and a COVID-19 outbreak.

But with it not yet at that point, Finance Manager Stephanie Smith reported August contracted inmate bed rentals totaling $118,748.52, $74,723 from Culpeper County and $44,025.52 from Page County. That brought RSW’s two-month FY-21 bed rental revenue total, including medical, commissary, telephone and related housing expenses to $243,928.45.

Couple that number with reduced expenditures due to the smaller staff and Smith’s Finance Report noted that with 16% of the Fiscal Year gone, expenditures were at 12.4% and revenues at 18.5%.

Smith also reported RSW Jail’s receipt of a $49,963 grant from the Coronavirus Emergency Supplemental Funding (CESF) grant program made available through the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. The grant was near the program’s ceiling amount of $50,000.

“To date, RSW has expensed $88,567.96 on materials, supplies, and services directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic, so the funding from this grant significantly helps,” Smith wrote in her finance report.

See the full Authority and RSW Finance Committee meetings of about 20 minutes each in this Royal Examiner video: