Three minutes at a podium beats three hundred comments online.

Three minutes

My name is ____ and I live in ____. I want to talk about a number in this jail's own financial report. In fiscal year 2026 the Rappahannock Regional Jail took in $2,300,000 from six revenue lines paid by incarcerated people and their families: inmate telephone, phone-time purchase, commissary, food purchase commission, at-home video visitation, and tablet commission. The phone line alone brought in $1,400,000 against $880,000 budgeted — 156.2 percent of budget. The tablet commission brought in $36,000 and nothing was budgeted for it at all.

That works out to $5.60 for every day a person is held, or about $2,000 a year per person, taken from families who are mostly paying for someone who has not been convicted of anything. It is 4.4 percent of the jail's General Fund revenue, and none of it appears in the headline summary the Authority Board reads.

My ask is simple and it costs nothing. Direct the Authority to publish, in the next Board packet, which fund each of those six lines is deposited into and what that fund may legally be spent on. A records request for the phone, tablet and commissary contracts and their commission schedules went to the Authority on August 13. The five-working-day deadline under Virginia Code 2.2-3704 passed on August 21 with no response. Please ask them why. Thank you.

Sixty seconds

My name is ____ and I live in ____. In fiscal year 2026 the Rappahannock Regional Jail took $2,300,000 from six revenue lines paid by incarcerated people and their families — phone, phone-time, commissary, food commission, video visits and tablets. That is $5.60 for every day a person is held, from families mostly paying for someone convicted of nothing, and it is 4.4 percent of the jail's General Fund revenue.

My ask costs nothing. Direct the Authority to publish, in the next Board packet, which fund each of those six lines goes into and what that fund may lawfully be spent on. Thank you.

Three minutes

My name is ____ and I live in ____. On January 22, 2026 the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority Board approved a fiscal year 2027 budget of $58,000,000. That is $4,700,000 more than fiscal 2026, an increase of 8.9 percent. Those minutes were disclosed to the public in the packet for the July 23 meeting, six months later.

Over the same period the jail held fewer people. Local prisoner days fell from 410,000 to 400,000 — 4,500 fewer days, down 1.1 percent — and average daily population fell to 1,100. The FY2026 appropriation divided by FY2026 days is $120 per prisoner day. Lay the FY'27 number on the same population and it becomes $140. That is a $19.00 raise per person per day for the same building holding fewer people.

This body appropriates our locality's share. My ask: before you vote that share, require the Authority to deliver a cost model that separates fixed cost from marginal cost per prisoner day, and require the operational increase to be itemized by line in a public document. If the population is falling and the cost is rising, the public is entitled to see exactly which line is doing that. Thank you.

Sixty seconds

My name is ____ and I live in ____. On January 22 this Authority approved a fiscal 2027 budget of $58,000,000 — $4,700,000 more than fiscal 2026, up 8.9 percent. Over the same period the jail held fewer people: local prisoner days fell 1.1 percent. Cost per prisoner day goes from $120 to $140 for the same building holding fewer people.

My ask: before you vote our share, require a cost model that separates fixed from marginal cost per prisoner day, and require the increase to be itemized by line in a public document. Thank you.

Three minutes

My name is ____ and I live in ____. In fiscal year 2026 people held at the Rappahannock Regional Jail filed 1,900 grievances. 1,200 of them — 63 percent — were closed as not investigated. Nobody looked at them. That is the jail's own number, in its own monthly report, in the packet.

Of the 710 that were investigated, 180 were substantiated. And across the entire year only 28 appeals were filed. The jail's own statistics record zero appeals upheld and a 100 percent overturn rate every single month — which means every appeal anyone actually pursued succeeded. In the worst month, Jun-26, 82 percent of grievances were closed without investigation.

A grievance process that returns two out of three complaints unread is not a safety valve, it is a filing cabinet. My ask: require the Authority to report to this body, quarterly, the number of grievances returned without investigation, the stated reason for each category, and whether any supervisor reviewed the return. A records request for exactly that data went out on August 18 and is due August 26. Please ask them for it too. Thank you.

Sixty seconds

My name is ____ and I live in ____. In fiscal 2026 people held at this jail filed 1,900 grievances and 1,200 of them — 63 percent — were closed as not investigated. Only 28 appeals were filed all year, and the jail's own statistics record a 100 percent overturn rate every month. Every appeal anyone pursued succeeded.

My ask: require the Authority to report to this body, quarterly, how many grievances were returned without investigation, the stated reason for each category, and whether any supervisor reviewed the return. Thank you.

Three minutes

My name is ____ and I live in ____. The Rappahannock Regional Jail's own program statistics record zero participants in substance abuse services in 4 months of fiscal year 2026: Jul-25, Aug-25, Sep-25, Feb-26. Zero. In a year when between 240 and 320 people per month inside that building were prescribed psychotropic medication.

I have read the minutes available to the public and I can find no record that this interruption was disclosed to the Authority Board, and no record of corrective action being directed. If a program that treats addiction stopped running for months in a jail where a fifth of the population is on psychiatric medication, somebody should have been told, and the public should have been able to read that they were told.

My ask: require the Authority to disclose to its Board, in the packet, at the next meeting, any interruption in contracted medical or behavioral health services, with the dates and the reason — and to state whether the interruption in fiscal 2026 was reported at the time. A records request covering those contracts and staffing goes out on September 8. Thank you.

Sixty seconds

My name is ____ and I live in ____. This jail's own program statistics record zero participants in substance abuse services in 4 months of fiscal 2026 — Jul-25, Aug-25, Sep-25, Feb-26 — in a year when between 240 and 320 people a month inside were prescribed psychotropic medication. I can find no record that the Board was told.

My ask: require the Authority to disclose to its Board, in writing, any interruption in contracted medical or behavioral health services, with the dates and the reason. Thank you.

Three minutes

My name is ____ and I live in ____. In April of this year the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority was asked for seven fields from its 2024 booking log — no names, no birthdays, no addresses. It produced 1,855 pages and withheld one field, the inmate identification number, with a single sentence saying no report can be generated that includes it. It cited no exemption and no section of the Code, which Virginia Code 2.2-3704(B)(2) requires when anything is withheld.

We wrote back citing 2.2-3704(G), which says that excising fields from a database and converting formats is not the creation of a new record. Three days later the Authority re-sent the same sentence, word for word, with no acknowledgment that the letter existed. Separately, a request for the phone, tablet and commissary contracts went out on August 13 and its five-working-day deadline passed on August 21 with no response at all.

Silence is not an exemption. My ask: state on the record that this body expects the Authority it funds to answer public records requests within the statutory five working days and to cite the specific Code section for anything it withholds — and ask the Authority, at its next meeting, how many requests it received last year and how many it answered on time. Thank you.

Sixty seconds

My name is ____ and I live in ____. This Authority was asked for seven fields from its 2024 booking log. It produced 1,855 pages and withheld the inmate identification number with one sentence and no exemption cited, which Virginia Code 2.2-3704(B)(2) requires. A separate request sent on August 13 passed its five-working-day deadline on August 21 with no response at all.

Silence is not an exemption. My ask: state on the record that this body expects the Authority it funds to answer within five working days and to cite the Code section for anything it withholds. Thank you.