According to Mario Rodriguez, Budget Director for the Maverick County Sheriff's Department, when the county took over the financially failing facility, they had a total of 188 prisoners housed there. The next month, prisoners from the existing Tom Bowles Detention Center were brought over making the total 279 before growing to 326 in January.
More federal prisoners began streaming in in February and the total continued to rise to 375 which generated a total of $550,620.00 at 45% of the capacity of the jail, but it was in the month of March that the numbers escalated to a total of 565 which brought in $920,620.00 to county coffers.
According to Financial Advisor Robert Rodriguez, these numbers are highly favorable yet are not etched in stone as the numbers of prisoners could fluctuate at any given time, however the budget director and Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber have both said that the US Marshal's office is happy with the present arrangement and will continue to do their part to keep the flow of seasonal prisoners coming to the facility.
Seeing that the 2012 Budget was turned in last week with a $2.6 million deficit, these figures show that taking on the responsibility of continuing to maintain the then GEO operated facility is beginning to show promise. Promise that could begin to lead to financial solvency.
It also becomes evident that the county is doing things that will lift the entity out of the multi-million dollar debt it finds itself in due to other failed financial ventures.
The newly appointed PFC will include all four county commissioners, Maverick County Judge David Saucedo, Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber and Human Resources Director Jesus Sanchez.
Discussion on arguably the most important item on this agenda began with a query by the county judge of what the financial advisor would consider to be the 'Magic number' of prisoners the facility would need to house in order for the jail to continue to sustain itself and possibly even create its own surplus fund in case of what Sheriff Schmerber termed 'Slower' months such as the months of November and December where there are lower number of apprehensions of inmates.
"We want to have a savings account in order to deal with these types of situations," stated Schmerber.
Legal counsel Alfonso Nevarez intervened and was asked as to whether the previous item, 'Discussion and possible action to approve budget for Maverick County Detention Center for November 1, 2013 to September 30, 2014', could be tabled to which he replied, "Let's resolve this conflict between the two budget proposals and move forward. Not taking action on this item today is not going to impede this process."
"You just need to know the break point (Between the amount of prisoners we are housing now for instance and the number of prisoners that need to be in there to pay for the day-to-day operations which is $270,000 for salaries and $42,000 for food). I think we have a pretty good idea what the break point is," he concluded.