Kirk Ludtke: Got it. Thank you. And do you remember what the — how many beds were funded back then?
David Garfinkle: I know that nationwide populations are around 55,000. I don’t know if they were necessarily flooded at that level. It was probably less — I know it was less than that.
Damon Hininger: Yes. Actually, I think it was pretty meaningful less than that. Now I think about it.
Kirk Ludtke: Interesting. Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful. And then on California City. So now the lease expires in just a couple of months, has the state started to ramp that facility down?
Damon Hininger: They have. Yes, they’ve been going through the steps for kind of deactivation, I think, both population and staffing.
Kirk Ludtke: Okay. Got it. And are there any legal limitations as to what you can use that facility for?
Damon Hininger: There are a couple. I don’t know right off the top of my head, I think there’s a few. But obviously, California was in there, and then we’ve had no issues on housing Marshals there and ICE in the past.
David Garfinkle: Would be the type of inmate that you’re…
Damon Hininger: Yes, maybe that’s right. It is type of inmate and I don’t know off top of my head. We can follow-up with you offline on that, but I suspect there’s probably some limitations on maybe classification or something like that.
Kirk Ludtke: Got it. Thank you. And then on Harris County, that’s a nice win. Can you just expand on that? And how that came about? And why they — because if my Google Maps is working correctly, that’s over 500 miles between Harris County and Tallahatchie. So I’m just curious what maybe expand on how that came about and why Tallahatchie?
Damon Hininger: Yes. Yes, sir. So we — part of the playbook is that, obviously, we’re always monitoring not only the existing needs with the existing partner, I should say, but also partners like Harris County or potential partners, what’s their system utilization capacity, maybe some challenges that they’re experiencing. And Houston is — I think that’s where the company really got started. Our very versed contract was in Houston almost four years ago. So either in that county in that city really, really well. And so I think they just expressed they had some issues with physical plant. They had some, I think some really difficult outcomes here in the last couple of years because of overcrowding. I think there were some staffing issues.
And it’s a pretty big system. Obviously, Metropolitan Houston and Harris County. It’s a big system. Don’t hold me to this, and I think they have almost 10,000 people in their jail system. So what that allowed us to do to kind of your last part of your question about the distance is to say, okay, look at your entire population and is the part of the population that would be well suited and this is individuals. They don’t have to go to jail or go to court every day that could be in a setting of Tallahatchie County. And of course, we’ll work with them on transportation, video conferencing and whatnot to keep them connect as appropriate with the courts and the Sheriff’s office here in Harris County. So we’ve got a lot of plays in the playbook on helping them deal with kind of some of the distance issues.
But again, with the system that large, there’s parts of the population that would be well suited again from a distance of again, you said 500 miles from Houston. If anything you’d add to that, Dave?
David Garfinkle: Yes. I mean Tallahatchie was a great facility. It was about 25% occupied. So it was a location where we could immediately satisfy the need and bring the detainees in quickly, we could probably — I mean, there’s about seven or eight different customers that facility. So they’re doing a fantastic job there. But with the exception of probably a handful of locations where we could accommodate a new customer, like what we did at our Saguaro Facility with Montana, Saguaro Facilities in Arizona, so Montana moved 120 inmates there. We do have — it’s like 120, and we probably have a dozen facilities, but it’s getting to the point now where we may have to look at activating a new facility to accommodate new contract towards if we see that kind of demand.
Obviously, we wouldn’t do that speculatively. It’s expensive to open up and staff a facility in advance of visibility on a customer. But it’s — Tallahatchie was a great location where we could accommodate Harris County, and there aren’t many of those left.
Kirk Ludtke: That’s interesting. I appreciate it. Thank you.
David Garfinkle: Thank you, Kirk.
Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Brian Violino from Wedbush. Your question please.
Brian Violino: Great. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question.
David Garfinkle: Good morning, Brian.
Damon Hininger: Good morning.
Brian Violino: Good morning. Just quickly, you talked quite a bit about the three state and local contract wins you had in the fourth quarter. Could you give us how much EBITDA you anticipate those contracts will contribute in 2024?
David Garfinkle: We haven’t disclosed that, but they’re probably different profiles. One was a facility that was largely occupied the one in Arizona and then Tallahatchie, as I just mentioned, was like 25% occupied. So it’s probably a few million dollars in EBITDA between the two of them over a year, maybe a little bit north of that.
Brian Violino: Got it. Okay. Thank you. And then maybe hard for you to answer from your seat, but it seems like DHS has been reallocating funds to ICE for additional bed funding given that we’re over the 34,000 number. I guess from your perspective, do you anticipate that there’s additional dollars that could be reallocated within DHS or do we really need supplemental funding to see bed counts rise much more than there are today.
Damon Hininger: Well, the first part of your question, you’re exactly right. That’s really hard to answer. Again, they had that play in the playbook last year. As you know, I think the secretary came out May or June of last year and indicated they were doing a reallocation of funding. So can they do that again? And do they have the ability, it really be hard for me to say. I don’t know if they even said publicly what the amount was. I think the secretary just came out saying we’re doing it, but I don’t think I ever heard an actual number. I think population, again, a little bit to the question earlier about you’re currently at the 37,000, 38,000. Again, they’re officially funded at 34,000. Again, that number as Dave said, that was pretty consistent during the fourth quarter.
You had a little bit up and down because it’s again seasonality. So do they feel like they could do that rest of the year if they come to end of February and March and due to the full funding until the end of fiscal year at 34,000. Maybe again, we’ll just have to wait and see. And again, I think for them to go meaningfully above that, and I think this is the last part of your question, it will require additional funding. And again, that could potential be supplemental. We just talked about or they could — I’ll say they’ve got the ability to go ahead and do additional funding through the full funded year, full budget for the full-year. So that’s still an option, too. Again, we’ll be watching, obviously, all these different discussions for these different vehicles where they could increase funding.
I don’t know anything you want to add to that Dave?
David Garfinkle: No, that’s right. Great.
Brian Violino: Great. Thanks. And then just one last one, if I could. Kind of on a similar note. In terms of ICE looking at idle facilities, is that something that you think that they can be involved with without supplemental funding potentially looking at some of your vital facilities, maybe even outside of Cal City?
Damon Hininger: Well, I guess I’ll say it this way. I mean we have been in the last, I guess year and it’s a little bit to the discussion we had on staffing. I mean obviously, we’ve worked with ICE for 40 years, so we’re in daily conversations about what their needs are. And obviously, they’re getting direction from DHS administration and to somewhat from members of Congress. So we’re always having a constant conversation of our capabilities where we’ve got capacity, either that’s in printing facilities or vacant facilities. And then with that, we make certain decisions based on that information on investments we need to do on either CapEx and/or on staff. And again, that’s a little bit of what we did last year. We felt like before Title 42 went away — as you know, we were at 5,000.
We felt like we needed to make some steps to get staffing in place for if and when the ICE populations do go up, we would be prepared for that. So we’re continuing to have those discussions internally, but also with our customer, and that’s just part of the — kind of normal behavior working with them. And we know that there a lot of eyes on them and they get a lot of direction from a lot of different stakeholders, but we do our best to acknowledge just to hear what they’re saying, but also make some proactive steps as appropriate. I also want to be prudent on that as appropriate to prepare for any future demand. But I guess, anything you’d add to that, Dave?
David Garfinkle: Yes, I’d say if they wanted to consolidate populations from a number of local jails for example, and then consolidate them into one of our facilities, that would not require incremental funding because you’re just transferring dollars from multiple facilities into one facility. So we have had conversations with ICE at a particular facility on that. I haven’t taken action on it yet, but that could be a potential where you could activate an auto facility without an incremental funding.
