Blog note: this article, like the one just posted, references the June 2018 grand jury report that criticized the Tuolumne County Economic Development Authority’s management practices.
Apple computers, 3D printers and digital fabrication tools at the now-shuttered InnovationLab in Sonora will soon be replaced by electronic ankle monitors, breathalyzers and group-therapy sessions.
The Tuolumne County Probation Department’s Alternatives to Detention Center, which houses the intensive day reporting program, is planned to move from a leased property off Highway 49 to the lab’s former space on the third floor of the mostly vacant, county-owned former Tuolumne General Hospital building at 101 Hospital Road in Sonora.
The county pays $4,450 a month to lease the Highway 49 property.
“We’ll save on rent and move them into a building that the county already owns,” said Deputy County Administrator Daniel Richardson, who oversees facilities, “which follows the direction given by our Board of Supervisors when we were developing the budget to try and avoid renting office spaces if at all possible.”
All of the InnovationLab’s former tenants who were renting office space have moved out of the building, Richardson confirmed on Monday, though he wasn’t sure exactly when the last one left.
The lab opened in August 2014 as a project of the Tuolumne County Economic Development Authority, with the goal of providing a space and tools to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
After being unable to attract enough paying members in the first couple of years, the TCEDA began renting low-cost office space at the lab to businesses, individuals, nonprofit groups and government agencies.
Some of the lab’s tenants included the trail design and planning firm Contour Logic, The Water School in conjunction with Columbia College, and HealthLitNow, a nonprofit organization run by TCEDA Board Member Barry Hillman.
Larry Cope, executive director of the TCEDA, announced in July that the lab would close by Aug. 15 after the county asked for the space back as a way to cut down on the cost of leasing offices elsewhere.
The TCEDA was being charged $6,000 a year by the county to rent the space in the former TGH building.
The county rents 35 properties for more than a dozen departments — including the public defender, sheriff, public health, behavioral health, and social services — at a total cost of about $76,000 per month and $913,000 per year.
Moving the Alternatives to Detention Center to the former hospital building will reduce the county’s rental costs by more than $54,000 a year.
“We’re always looking for ways to save the taxpayers’ money,” Richardson said. “This was one of those situations where the service and timing came together, and we’re able to provide the service at a less expensive cost.”
Richardson said the county’s decision to take back the former InnovationLab space was not influenced by recent controversies surrounding the TCEDA, including an ongoing lawsuit over public records and a report by the Tuolumne County Civil Grand Jury that criticized the agency’s management and oversight.
The Alternatives to Detention Center will move into the new space after the TCEDA Governing Board approves the disbursement of the InnovationLab equipment left in the building, much of which was purchased through grants from private organizations.
An inventory of the InnovationLab’s equipment provided by the County Counsel’s Office through a California Public Records Act request showed the total cost of the equipment was about $32,000.
About $22,000 worth of equipment was purchased with a grant awarded in April 2014 by the Sonora Area Foundation to the Economic Prosperity Council of Tuolumne County, the TCEDA’s nonprofit fundraising arm.
Items purchased with money from the grant included three Dell computers, three Apple iMacs, a tabletop CNC machine, two Canon digital camcorders and power tools for an ill-fated “maker space” at the lab.
The Sierra Pacific Foundation, a charitable organization founded by the family that owns timber-industry giant Sierra Pacific Industries, donated $7,500 that paid for the lab to purchase two 3D printers, several laser printers, a laptop and touchscreen tablet, among other items.
At a special meeting earlier this month, the TCEDA board approved a disposal plan for the equipment that gave local schools first priority. Cope said he would return to the board at a future meeting for approval on who gets what.
Richardson said they’ve already notified the landlord of the building that houses the Alternatives to Detention Center about the impending move, though he didn’t know exactly when that will occur.
He doesn’t expect the move to cost the county additional money because the space won’t require much work to get prepared for the new tenant and probation crews and in-house facilities management will help with the move.
Signage in front of the building for the InnovationLab will also eventually be replaced with signs for the Alternatives to Detention Center.
The center opened in January 2012 in response to the state prison realignment under Assembly Bill 109, or AB 109, which shifted the burden of supervising certain released prisoners from state parole to county probation departments.
BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private-prison company the GEO Group, was contracted by the county to run a more intensive program at the Alternatives to Detention Center for higher risk offenders than those who were previously supervised by the probation department prior to AB 109.
Part of the program involves checking in at the center on a daily basis to undergo alcohol and drug testing, treatment classes and group therapy, among other requirements.
Richardson said he doesn’t anticipate resistance to moving the center to where the InnovationLab was formerly located, because it’s surrounded by similar services such as the Behavioral Health Department, Enrichment Center and visitation center.
It also will be more than a mile closer to the Probation Department building at 465 S. Washington St.
August 28, 2018
The Union Democrat
By Alex MacLean
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