Board of County Commissioners Business Meeting - workshop

Good afternoon, everybody. Let's get started with some introductions around the room, please, with Ms. Kendra.

Kendra Davis, Commissioner's Office.

Fonda Fields, Commissioner. Allie McCourt, Person of Order. Leslie Summey, Commissioner. Carrie Warren-Gully, Commissioner.

Todd Weaver, Finance.

Heather E. Penance.

John Paul Wischiavelli, Clifton, Larson, Allen, the External Auditor.

Adam Smith, Community Resources.

Calvin Guzman, Finance.

Ruben Diaz, Finance.

Adam Loreno, Finance.

Su Myung, Finance. Anita Miller, Finance.

That's a lot of finances. And we have Commissioner Jessica Campbell, District 2 joining us online and Commissioner Jeff Baker is absent and excused. We're here for an audit, true?

Sure. I'm not going to do most of the talking though, Commissioner, but it's my pleasure today to present to you the county's annual comprehensive financial report for fiscal year 2025. Going through the materials today is John Paul from Clifton, Larson, Allen, our lead auditor, and Heather Lynn, our accounting division manager. So with that, I'm going to turn the controls over to them, and they're going to walk you through the important points of what to know about this year's audit.

Thank you. I thought we had copies that I saw upstairs. We did. They're over here. Oh, okay. Do you mind grabbing me one, Commissioner? I certainly will. Thank you, ma'am. Here you go. Thank you.

So I thought about just reading start to finish what was in there, but decided we'd summarize it in just a couple slides instead. Okay, great. Let's get the AI button instead, right?

A summary.

So just to quickly recap on kind of what an audit is, this is an annual requirement for the county. to have both the financial audit and the single audit, which is over federal awards. So we'll be covering kind of the results of both of those. Our responsibility as the auditor is to review to make sure that the financial statements that is, you know, almost 300 pages or so, are materially correct. So we perform a number of audit procedures, statistical analysis, sampling, that type of thing to make sure that after all of that we can say with reasonable assurance that the financial statements are materially correct. we do review the county's processes internal controls kind of the overall assessment of the county the risk profile that type of thing in order to form that opinion and conclusion but we don't specifically issue our opinion over the processes and internal controls our opinion is over the amounts and the disclosures within the financial statements um so i like to give the analogy that we're really kind of the editor double checking the financial information the county is the author of the financial statements and the audit two kind of misconceptions the first is that we're not specifically designing audit procedures to be looking for fraud throughout the county if we did find or detect any fraud that would be communicated to you as part of this presentation or earlier But it's not something that, it's not the primary focus of the audit. And then the audit is not designed to say whether the financial results are good or bad, only that they're accurate or inaccurate. And so really it's up to management and the Board of County Commissioners to make the decision on is this good, is this the trajectory that we want to be on, do we need to make any course corrections, that type of thing. So I'm pleased to be able to say that we were able to issue an unmodified or clean audit opinion for 2025. And that's it. We can be done. So that's really kind of the... You know the primary thing that is the audit is covering again that's saying that with reasonable assurance that there's. No material misstatements within the financial statements, as I mentioned, there is also the single audit component that's required anytime a government entity receives more than a million dollars in federal awards. The county received over 100 million in 2025, so that was required, and I will cover kind of the results in a little bit more detail for that in just a second. Heather was going to cover a little bit more on the specifics, but there were just a couple of really high-level items that I wanted to mainly, again, 300 pages or so of financial information and I tried to summarize it in one slide So you're getting the real real high level but kind of the two significant items that I would say really impacted the financial statements would be the ballot issue 1a that removed the Tabor restriction for property taxes so property taxes increased by about 78 million overall and And then there was also the decrease in revenue recognized for ARPA, for the state and local fiscal recovery funds. That's reaching kind of the, reached the end of the period of performance, and then it's coming to an end for the time that it's required to be liquidated and actually paid out. So with that, there's kind of the decrease relating to recognition for those awards. Primarily due to that increase in property taxes, the county did have an increase of about $89 million of governmental activities ending. So if you take your assets minus your liabilities, this is kind of the ending number on a long-term basis. That includes consideration of capital assets and long-term debt and then on the short-term basis Which is similar to how you would budget so it's more similar to cash basis So like things that you're actually spending and paying money on there was about a 66 million dollar increase in that fund balance so in both of kind of views of the financial activity of the county, there was an increase overall or a strengthening of the financial position of the county compared to the previous year. So, in addition to issuing our clean audit opinion, we also did not have any findings or recommendations as part of the audit. We can kind of get to the point where we issue that clean audit opinion, but it can be kind of messy getting to that point with certain governments. But pleased to be able to say that there were no audit adjustments, issues, anything that would warrant the county commissioner's attention as part of the financial audit. As part of the single audit, this is much more scripted in terms of what the federal government prescribes. This is how we want auditors to test each of these different federal programs. So we did look at six different programs specifically. That's on a cycling three-year basis. And again, all of this is what the federal government requires in terms of what programs are reviewed. So those are the six that we looked at, primarily with human services. though there's also the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act as well as the WIC program with public health. So pleased to be able to say, oh, go ahead.

Commissioner Warmbilly has a question. So the ones that you, the six programs you looked at, did they have...

certain dollar amount that triggers them to be looked at correct okay so it's over a certain threshold for the county was three million dollars any program that's over three million would be required to be tested every three years at a minimum okay thank you there's some other rules along with it but that's kind of the main guidance that would be causing that thank you yep And so with the single audit, again, that's looking at both internal controls, compliance, making sure that You know, the federal government lays out these are the specific things that we want auditors to look for. It's very black and white. Was it yes or no on any of the samples that we looked at? Making sure that, again, that there's an internal control over every compliance requirement. So pleased to be able to say that there were no findings, recommendations, no issues as part of those audits over federal awards. And so in addition to the financial statements, we do also issue a letter at the end of the audit. We're required by auditing standards. It looks very similar each year because we're required to say the same things at the end of each audit. And so if there were any significant issues, changes, things that the Board of County Commissioners should be aware of, that's where they would all be described within this letter, but really Again, a very clean audit and nothing significant or substantial to report within that. So one thing to highlight at the end, the financial statements do include an introductory section at the beginning and a statistical section that has 10 years of information, some other demographic information. Towards the end those sections are not audited. We do review them make sure that there's no glaring issues But it's not a subject to actual audit procedures So with that that's kind of the conclusion of the audit presentation again Very kind of quick. I know Heather was going to cover a little bit more of I had one slide So she'll go into a little bit more detail on some of the significant items that County management wanted to bring to your attention on the financial statements. But before we do that, I'll pause if there's any questions or comments.

Questions? They're not on the screen either, so good job.

This is the part we like to be short and boring and not have a lot of information.

That's right.

If John Paul has to talk for another half an hour, 45 minutes, something has not gone well. Very true. But we appreciate him and his team's work on the audit on behalf of Arapahoe County and thank him. And as he said, Heather's going to walk us through some additional information on the audit, more from a county perspective and things we think are important for you all to know about this year's financial report. So, Heather?

Sure.

Thank you. Good afternoon, commissioners and everyone. I want to start with my part by saying that how proud I am for my accounting team, for the successful audit and successful EIN, and how grateful I am for the support from Todd and support from all of you, and also support from our colleagues across department and elected offices. And also, we have very strong partnership with our auditors, John Paul's team, that make this process much smoother. And so I'm going to move you, what I'm going to do here today is I want to talk about a big picture about financial activities and positions, and to talk about what changed, what's the change, how the impact on the numbers, and what does number tell means for the county's ability to provide services. So what changed in 2025, and the first thing that we all know is funding. And then we have upper grants. Upper money decreased from 2024 by 37 million because of the spending down of upper money. And we also onboarded district attorney's office in 2025. And we have a Yeah, we're adding two more funds for adding district attorney's office, DA for feature funds and also with the compensation fund. And then we have a significant amount of the new guys, the 87 lease and 96 lease, and I'm going to talk a little more later. To do that, I'll start with the book you got, or how we put our financial statements together. Basic financial statements report. This report including two primary reports. One is the government-wide financial statements. This, like Chang-Po mentioned, is about long-term. And we also have a second set of reports. It's fund financial statements. This one is about short term. This is similar to budget basis or cash basis. I'm going to focus on today to give you a big picture talking about the long term, which on this side is basically here. the government-wide financial statements, which include all the assets that we own and the liabilities that we own. So basically, the capital assets including land, building, infrastructure, and also the long-term debt, the pension liabilities, and the compound city absentees, which are the the leave, sick leave, annual leave that employee earned and the county is obligated. So that all included in the big picture as long-term base. So there's two report cards. for this big picture, the long-term base. The first one is statement of net position. This is very similar to our personal finance, right? It has all the assets that we own, and all the liability we owe, and also the difference will be A county position here is very similar to your network, personal network, right? So here is the big picture. As of now, as the end of 2025, the total assets the county has is 1.7 billion, and the total allowability is 0.8 billion. The difference is 0.9 billion, which is the net worth, net position. And then you can see the change. You can see our net position increased by 88.9 million, almost 89 million from 2024. That really shows our financial position got strengthened. And then you can tell that the cash increased by 74 million. That's primarily due to the 1A funds, and then there's small amounts spent in 2025. And then here, I want to show this one. I'm very excited about this one. I'm going to talk a little bit more about the net position. So you can see the unrestricted net position increased by close to 30 million. And here is a three-year trend of the net position. And here's a chart. You can see the countywide net position increased from 762 million to 901 million. And if we look at 2025, we're here, right? The purple portion, that's about $776 million representing land investment in capital assets, including the building land infrastructure we own. That represents 86% of the total net position we have. That's the 778. 778. Right, 778, thank you. And then here is, if you look at the red, the portion that unrestricted, 2023 and 2024, I look back to the history, from 2015 through 2024, our unrestricted net position has always been negative. Yeah. But it's in 2025, because when the money put our unrestricted net position into 30 million, finally, we got out of that negative.

We're digging out.

Yeah, we're digging out.

Right.

So... But it just shows our financial situation got much stronger than what they see, what I found. So whereas it's only general fund allow the negative unrestricted in that position. And of course, we have pension liability there. We have compensated absentee liability there. And now that's the second report. It's called statement of activity. This talk about what changed. in the 2025. And if we look at the 2025, here it's talking about this, this financial information talking about how much it costs the county to provide the services. So you can see the total expenditure for the county to provide the services is 545 million. And it also tells what source of funding are used to pay for those services. And you can see the first source of funding is program revenue that includes fees and grants. And this dropped by 43 million from 2024. That's primarily due to the spending down of upper money. And second source of them to use to provide community services, county services is coming from the general revenue, which include property tax, sales tax, and investment earnings. And you can see our... Yeah. Thank you. Great. You can see our general revenue increased by 84.9 million, which primarily due to the property tax increase of 76 million.

Madam Chair, can you clarify, sorry, Heather, can you clarify that again? So the 84.9 is the general fund increase, and 73 of that came from Tabor, I mean from our 1A.

My 1A.

This is more than just general funds?

Yeah, this is including everything. Oh, okay. So basically, it's a total increase of $85 million, and out of that is $78 million is due to the 1A funds. Okay, thank you.

Keep in mind the 1A funds were not only an increase in property tax, but also the specific ownership tax that's redistributed after the... the assessor and the treasurer collect all the property tax, that specific ownership tax is divided back out by how much of the property tax your taxing authority has collected. So it's not purely property tax, there is some specific ownership tax in the 1A funds as well.

Thank you.

So the difference between the 84.9 and the 78 in 1A would be the increase in the property tax? Am I doing that math right?

No, there's just other revenues and I think in the general revenues as well besides property tax. Okay.

All right, all right. Thank you. So, yeah. Okay, I also want to point out there is 2.81 million change in financial reporting. I think you asked what that's for. That's where we onboard the VA's office and then it's bringing 2.81 million in balance to that position. Keep in mind that the asset allocation IGA was almost signed and then soon we're going to close the 1 million out to all the other three counties. And so, I'll just add a slide for the new chapter for the Office of District Attorney's Office. They started with FTE of 181, and then the county contributed about 23.9 million for the 2025 total budget there. And again, and we're adding to more funds. DAs for future funds, and also the compensation fund. Great. And I also want to talk about Gatsby 8796, because this year we just have more about 8796. And so, think about 8796, they're the same concept, they're just applying different things. 87 covers physical, like building equipment and vehicle uses, long-term uses. And 96 covers software prescription. And nowadays, we don't purchase software anymore. We assess software through the long-term subscription. So those two Gatsby standards is basically they don't change our financial position. They don't change our cash flow. But only thing is they want to be more transparent. They consider those long-term arrangement as a long-term commitment. So they want us to be more transparent and put on the financial statement, show as assets and liabilities, and just show our commitment, right? And so Gatsby 87 for 2025 would add $361,000 for the lease of DA's office vehicles. That's about 20 vehicles and with leasing term one to five years. And so for Gatsby 96 software subscription, there's three main things. One is 2.2 million Exxon, that's for the DA's office. And then 1.5 million for the HCM for the HR, our new HCM system, and the 7.1 million Tyler Technology Taxation System that's for the treasurer's office. In total, we have capital expenditure and insurance of lease for both 87 and 96, 11.3 million, and just keep in mind, they don't, impact our financial position. So we have the capital expenditure, $11.3 million. That expenditure will also have other financing resources, $11.3 million. As revenue coming in, they offset each other.

I think the main shift here is, as Heather said when she started the slide, is in the past, we would only record as an expense or whatever the lease payment was for that particular fiscal period. So if the lease on the software was $300,000, that's what we recorded, $300,000. If it's now $1.5 million, we're recording that liability as the full $1.5 million. We're also still spending currently the $300,000 for the lease. It's just kind of to get those obligations shown more like they do in private sector accounting as opposed to government accounting, right? So it kind of shows that when you sign on to the Tyler Technologies taxation system, we're going to owe that $7.1 million over that 10-year period.

So then every year this should look... Like that Tyler Tech one would start going down by however much per year. Exactly. But we might add other ones. Exactly. We might add other ones.

And I still want to talk about general fund, because general fund is our primary fund, providing support for the core services to the citizens. So for 2025, the total general fund revenue is 347.9 million, and you can see the largest is the property tax, which is 221 million for 2025, representing 63%. And for 2024, the property tax is 145 million. And then followed by charge for services, which represents 21%, 73 million. And then the third is investment earning 20 million. And then the total expenditure for general fund is $273.5 million. And public safety, this is by function. The chart is by function, and you can tell the orange as public safety remains the largest service area of about $124 million.

Public safety is 45%. Yes.

Hi. So in charges for services, fees, and forfeitures, the Centennial contract for the sheriff is in there?

Yes.

Yes.

Great.

And public safety would only be the sheriff's office, no?

Commissioner Campbell, I think the Centennial IGA for charges for services accounts for probably about more than half of that, $72 million. It's like $38, $39 million.

Yes, exactly. Got it, thank you. Say that again, 38% of that?

No, no, of the $72.8 million for charges for services, fines, forfeitures, that's 21%. More than half of that is the IGA with the City of Centennial for law enforcement services.

Commissioner Fields?

Yeah, just looking at the pie chart there as it relates to the expenditures, and when I see health and welfare, is only five percent that seems kind of low compared to you know operating the whole county we're always included in that five percent so this is just the general fund

So keep in mind, you have about $96 million in the Human Services Fund, which is not on this pie chart. So if we did this pie chart across the entire county, the percentages are going to look very different. Because there's very little in public safety that is outside of the general fund. But in health and welfare and in capital, Those percentages of the pie would grow much larger because you have road bridge, the capital fund, the infrastructure funds, and that capital portion would grow significantly. And the health and welfare, you have AD Works, you have Community Development Fund, you have the Grant Fund, and you have Human Services. All those would probably fall under health and welfare, and it would grow that blue piece of the pie quite considerably. general fund which is the main operating fund and right now there are precisely zero dollars in the general fund for human services so this just gives you an idea of what comes out of that main operating fund the general fund but in many cases some of those programs are in special revenue funds which are not depicted on this chart right here yes um i think i have another chart i didn't include there is for the county-wide

The county-wide, if you look at the county-wide, the health and welfare, so the county-wide health and welfare is $155 million. That comes first, the largest. And public safety, county-wide, is $146 million. So if we look at county-wide, the health and welfare is the largest service area, $155 million. And the public safety, $146 million. Those are our largest ones. And then the third is general government. I also want to share general fund, the unassigned general fund balance. And you can see the unassigned general fund balance increased from 62.5 million in 2023 to 151.4 million 2025, it really shows how our financial situation got improved and strengthened. And just keep in mind, there's 151 million, so the board reserve of 15% and only 3%, which TABOR requires reserve, is considered restricted. So the other 12%, which are about 42 million, is included in here, is included in this 151 million. That's a requirement for the accounting, how we do the reporting.

If I could, when you look back at 2023, you see that $62 million, the reserve obviously was smaller, but you still have to subtract that from that $62.5 million. But then in 2024, what you're seeing is 2024, if I remember, was a very tight budget year. We tightened the screws down pretty well on the budget in 2024. Conversely, we did start to see a bump up in interest earnings, investment earnings, Yeah. As well as we had the Senate Bill 238 money that I think came in in 2024. So that's why it bumped up a bit in 2024. But primarily, as Heather said, for 2025, it's the addition of the 1A money that we brought in in 2025, but very deliberately only spent a very small amount of to set us up for the budget process that was 2026. So while it looks like we should all be like confetti cannons should be going off. They should because 1A is a good thing. But keep in mind, your increased reserve is coming out of there, as Heather said. And if you remember back to when we adopted the budget, you've also committed to spending $25 million per year on capital, which is going to start to bring that green bar back down, not hopefully back down to where we were in 2023, but that green bar is going to start coming down. So you're saying that's a short-term celebration right now. Good way to put it. Don't get too happy. This is the windfall from your deliberative process not to blow all your money in 2025 and kind of take a slower kind of methodical process. That's the benefit of it. We'll be using some of that windfall over the next few years to get things accomplished for the county and your budget.

I listed all the GUSB standard, the accounting standard that we implemented from 2022 and 2025. And I thought about why I want to put it there, because it matters, right? And so when we got auditors to evaluate our financial statements to make sure to see whether we confirm with those accounting standards. And those standards ensure our financial statements. be prepared consistently and transparent, and that citizens can be trusted. So I already talked about GASB 8796, so I'm not going to go through all of those. And are there any questions?

Does everybody know what GASB stands for?

Governmental Budgeting.

Governmental Accounting Standards Board.

I made a bunch of things up.

Sometimes with acronyms I have to too. I think it's important to note that in the world of governmental accounting, these are the people that kind of set the rules of the road. So to Heather's point on GASB 87 and 96, we just didn't decide one year we were going to account for releases differently. we were kind of told we had to account for leases differently. There's changes in the way we report on certain financial information. There's ways we're supposed to calculate and report on the compensated absences. So each year when these things come up, we as the county and Heather and her staff have to adapt, as well as John Powell and how they audit, have to adapt to make sure that we are in compliance with those rules and that when we're audited, they make sure that we've complied with and implemented those rules. So with that, that's a good segue into Heather's next slide.

So can I ask you the question of how you say, instead of gaffer?

Can't say that word anymore. Gaffer.

So we say ACFER. This also tells ACFER is not we just throw the numbers together. They are put together according to the standard. It's also audited by our auditors. And so here is how the share was coming in 2026. new accounting standard 103, 104, 105. And 103 is a big one, is update to the financial reporting. And again, this doesn't change our financial position as only the purpose of this reporting is want to make this report easier to interpret, is more consistent, more transparent. They want us to be in the MDA section to be more storytelling on what happened. in the financial activity and why it happened and what's the, what helps for the going forward, the financial situation. And also it makes standard reporting for some revenues and expenditures and also for the improvement on the budget reporting side. Yeah.

Are there any questions? I just remember, how long ago was it that they made us start reporting liability of our retirement fund.

Oh, that's I think 2012.

It was 2015, and then you had to kind of look back to 2013 in terms of the information, so 10 years.

Okay, because I think I remember we were dealing with the teachers and their para, you know, and the liability of that. a very large number of it, and all of a sudden now, it's needed to start showing up.

It is. I did look at, go back to look at it, and I look at unrestricted net position. So prior to 2015, we always have a positive, a good unrestricted net position. And because I look at back then, the pension abilities only like 20 million, and it started in 2015. And our pension, I believe, started with 160 million, 170 million, but I throw our unrestricted net position into 90 million. Yeah, it's huge.

Yeah, it was big. I remember a big shift.

Well, I just think, at least in my tenure here at the county, I feel like we're up to 105. Mm-hmm. So not to have another Tata's old joke, but when I started here, one of the first projects I worked on was GASB 34, and that was the recognizing of assets for infrastructure. And now we're on GASB 105. So there's been a lot of these in a short period of time. There's been numerous ones on fund balance. There's been numerous ones on retirement liabilities or retirement pension plans. These are important to keep up with so that we're driving the county bus and following the rules of the road is kind of what we need to do.

I didn't know you were old until you gave us those numbers.

I've been here for almost 70 gas days. We should measure financial age.

Like they have dog years and human years.

You have financial years. We did have good news from the guys before, the chairman, and he said we can take a break for 20 years. and possibly 2028. Yay! Okay.

I don't believe it. They'll find something. Yeah, they will. They always seem to. Okay.

Yeah.

any time we get to hear Heather present I'm just long listen after you can just

Thank you very much, Heather. This is wonderful. Do we have questions?

I do have a quick question. I'm quite sure it's somewhere here, but I haven't had a chance to do the fast reading on all this. But I'm looking at this summary here where it talks about the opera funds. Okay, this is on the last page. And it says that the second...

quarter of 2026 which is coming up so at this point will we have spent all of our money or are we going to have to return anything no but we are almost fully spent if you remember last fall we had the issue with safer colorado and then the conversion over to all so with that we had we got the money back from safer and then repurposed it for the All Health project. So that, hopefully, as of this quarter, knock on wood, I think we're almost there.

Yeah, they've spent it.

Benita says they've spent it. And the third and fourth quarter reports for ARPA will show us fully spent of $127,534,910. Yay! Well done. That's right.

And then the other, the graphic here about this dollar bill.

The dollar bill, yeah.

When I look at the dollar bill in reference to this, this is a really good analogy as it relates to how property taxes and where the money goes and how much percentage. You know, I had no idea what it looks like. Like 56 cents goes to schools, 23 cents special. You know, that's a lot of money is coming in and it's going out. And so... You know, it's just amazing to me how we're able to fund government when we have all this stuff here that we have to give out, and we're still operating at a very high financial standard and operational standard, because we're getting the work done. And so it's just... That was a comment, no question. But it's just like, how do we do all this? The funding aspect really has to be challenging because we're going into 2027 with who knows what the formula's gonna be. We have some sense of revenue, but it looks good on paper, but we know that things might impact revenue in the future.

yeah i mean i i don't think i mean 1a don't get me wrong 1a is a fantastic thing for our county not only now but in the future but no matter what we would have done there's going to be needs for public services and public infrastructure that exceed the amount of revenue that we can bring in and there's still going to be a lot of focus put on how to best use those financial resources going forward the challenge of the annual comprehensive financial report is to report on what we've done accurately and in compliance with the accounting standards and do our best to make sure that future presentations from john paul are short and boring and don't include any findings so if i may with a closing remark so as i said this is we like for this presentation to be boring we like for it to have no new information for the commissioners we did put heather put together so i think some insightful slides to kind of give you some important things to keep in mind. One of the other things you found within your finance segments was that handout that Commissioner Fields pointed out. That's something new that Heather and her staff are trying out this year. Obviously this book is tightly controlled on what's in it by accounting standards. And there's not a lot of opportunity to kind of give you a plain English version of what's in the financial report. So something new for this year. It's just kind of like this brief overview of kind of the financial condition of the county. And hopefully you find it useful because we may continue to do that in the future. And so with that, I would just like to say thanks again to Heather and the accounting staff for all the hard work they put in on this year's audit. As well as a few of my colleagues over there. their departments especially Human Services and Community Resources account for a lot of the federal expenditures that have to be part of the single audit so their staff is invaluable in putting together what's in this document thanks to all the other directors and elected officials for their cooperation and as always thanks to John Paul and his staff you know they don't give us a lot of trouble which is good Hopefully that means that we're giving them exactly what they need and when they need it. And thanks to the board for your support on our financial accountability and transparency. And we continue to work on it. We continue to find ways to improve. We're working on implementing the grant management recommendations that came out of the consultant report a year ago. We're implementing a grant management module in SAP. We are currently reviewing and revising some of our financial policies. So we're always trying to work on ways to make sure that this goes smoother and that we avoid any kind of findings or weaknesses. So I think that's all I really have for this afternoon for you all, unless there's any other questions or comments.

Thank you. Any other questions? No. Anybody? See how it's Heather and John Ball. Thank you, Director. Thank you. For all of that. We appreciate this. I'm just so excited.

Yeah. Another clean year.

Yeah.

Woo-hoo!

Yay! Thank you.

Thank you so much. You're right.

Right. Look at us.

Commissioner Campbell, I'm going to go ahead and mute us until we start the next item, okay?

A couple years ago. Yeah, that's right.

Can you hear us, Kelly? Can you? Kelly can hear us. All right. Should we get started six minutes early? Yeah. Let's do it. Good afternoon, everybody. We're going to get started with some introductions around the room, please.

John Christopherson, County Attorney's Office. Nico Johnson, Management Analyst.

Kendra Davis, Commissioner's Office.

Rhonda Fields, Commissioner. Leslie Summey, Commissioner. Carrie Waring-Gully, Commissioner. Kathy Smith, Community Resources.

Ed Bowditch, Lobbyist. Dan McElkey, Human Services.

Wonderful. We have Director Michelle Halstead online. We also have Commissioner Campbell, District 2 online. Commissioner Baker is absent and excused. And are we expecting, we're expecting Jen?

Right.

We're expecting... Oh, we have another Jennifer. Different one. Say your name, please. Jennifer Ludwig, public health. Wonderful. Do we have another Jennifer that's going to join us at some point? Online? Maybe?

I think so.

And is Jen coming online?

I think if she can, if they have Wi-Fi.

If they have Wi-Fi. Oh, that's right. You did just say that. I got stuck at Garden of the Gods. Oh, let's go there. Okay. Well, we may have Jen Castle with us. We may not, but that remains to be seen for the moment. So let us get started with our ledge debriefing for the doggone year. I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you, Nico.

Awesome, so today we're going to recap the 2026 legislative session. We'll take a look at what's ahead for the rest of this year from a legislative related standpoint and then other topics and calendar items. And then the legislative team will ask you for some broad feedback on the general direction that we have come up with so far for our 2027 legislative priorities. We'll start today with a high-level overview of the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget package before doing a recap of some key legislation and takeaways from that key legislation. Then we'll get into the legislative overview from our Arapahoe County perspective, and we'll take a brief look at what's to come, and like I said, a preview of the proposed 2027 legislative priorities. And then the ledge team and Ed, please feel free to jump in at any time. So, first off, the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget package. The budget deficit, according to OSPB, was $908.6 million. The shortfall was the result of an increase of Medicaid utilization, a reduction in general fund revenue due to HR1, TABOR's revenue cap, and an expansion of state programs in prior years. One caveat there is in the June forecast, both the Legislative Council staff and OSPB found that the state lost less revenue due to HR1 than previously anticipated, which I think was a plus, though that adjustment was not enough to make up the deficit without the legislature's balancing actions. So, to bring the budget into balance, the legislature made a series of one-time and permanent general fund cuts. They transferred funds from various cash funds into the general fund, and they reduced the general fund reserve requirement from 15 to 13 percent. Despite the major cuts to appropriations across departments this year—sorry, I skipped one. The long bill appropriations total 49.5 billion, and of that, the general fund accounts for 17.3 billion dollars. Despite major cuts to appropriations, that $17.3 million in general fund represents a 0.2% increase from fiscal year 2025-2026 to fiscal year 2026-2027. That's after the adjustments were made to cover the deficit in fiscal year 2025-2026. That was a lot quickly. Are there any questions? Or additions?

Thank you, Madam Chair. What was the marijuana tax cash money?

I will jump to that.

Oh, okay. So you're going to do that? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

I did the left side and some, and now I'll jump to the right side.

Oh, okay. So sorry. No, no worries.

No worries. I love the eagerness. So I will go to that first. The marijuana tax cash fund revenue was a reduction, just over $6 million in fiscal year 2026, 2027. and the out year, 2027, 2028, will be diverted from counties. It will no longer come to counties. I believe, Ed, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe that diversion doesn't go anywhere, it stays there, and then if there is an excess, it goes to schools.

yes maybe maybe i'm not sure the direction it goes to but it goes to somebody else not counties it was a money grab to move more money to the general fund oh so similar to canceling the multimodal options fund they just needed to find cash funds they could put in the general fund so that wasn't outlined in any ballot initiative or anything like that

maybe a billion years ago or something. Yeah.

Okay.

Can I just ask a follow-up? Okay, so just so I understand correctly, this is a fund that they used to have. They kind of held those funds there, but some of that fund, I do remember, used to trickle down to higher, like, counselors and schools and things like that. Is that pretty much what this fund is or is that different?

This fund is the money that went to local governments, cities and counties. And it wasn't that much money on a statewide basis.

I was going to say, did we ever even get any of that? As you said, Nico, it was...

I'm not... So $6 million over the next two years, each year, I'm not sure what percentage of that Arapahoe County ever received. Okay. However, it was... It is earmarked money for counties, and so if we did, we will no longer see that.

Okay.

Going back to reductions, since Ed mentioned it, I'll start there. The MMOF transfer is the general fund transfer of $10.5 million to the MMOF fund. That was canceled for the next three years. The retail delivery fee reduction, beginning in this fiscal year, the percentage of revenue from the retail delivery fee in the MMOF fund that goes to local transportation projects will be reduced from 85 to 70 percent. Hitting the fiscal year 2025-2026 budget was a $130 million reduction in state affordable housing funds. That is now going to the general fund.

How much was that one? Sorry. $130 million.

from the state affordable housing fund to the general fund.

That was the Prop 123 money that went. When Prop 123 passed, there was a provision that said the legislature can cancel 40% of the Prop 123 monies, those monies that go to OEDIT and ultimately CHAFA, and that's what they canceled.

For a year?

For one year, and it's very unlikely they'll be able to cancel it in future years because the money is exempt from TABOR when it hits OEDIT or DOLA, but if you bring it back into the state general fund, we've got to count it against TABOR, which if we're up against our TABOR limit, as we will likely be in future years, it doesn't do us any good. So in a perverse way, TABOR protected that Prop 123 funds in future years. Okay, thank you.

And the last item on the reductions list is the general fund reserve, as I mentioned. It was reduced from 15% to 13%, which helped balance the budget in this fiscal year. Ending on some good news, things that were funded that impact the county. The 18th judicial district will share $600,000 and 5.9 and 7 FTE in the next two fiscal years with the 17th judicial district. That's a big win for us and one of our legislative priorities. Medical-related services in the Long Bill got significant increases in funding. Notably, HCPF appropriations were increased from FY25-26 supplementals. Upward adjustments were made to medical services premiums, behavioral health services, the Office of Community Living, Child Health Plan Plus, and other programs and services. The SNAP administration funds were increased by $87.8 million in cash funds from the Healthy School Meals for All. HSMA funding for SNAP admin will total $11 million and $14.3 million respectively in the next two fiscal years after we offset for losses in funding from the general fund and the federal government. Yes, sir.

Go ahead, Dan.

I would just say maybe. Maybe. Because we don't know what our penalty is yet. So we know what the total of the healthy school meals is. We don't know what our HR1 penalty is. So therefore, we don't necessarily know what the healthy school meals will or won't be able to cover. And it will not likely be able to cover the full amount. So I just want to always say that, because if you talk to some other folks, they will tell you that healthy school meals, though Commissioner Warngole and I have been to many a meeting where it's not all. And if the state is hit with a $220 million fine like we think we are now, it's not close. But it's important to make sure that we're not planning for healthy school meals here. and Ed, you correct me if I'm wrong, there's also a valid issue here over whether or not you can completely use all of those dollars or a percentage of those dollars.

Thank you, Director McKelvey.

Thank you. Moving forward into key legislation and takeaways. Before we get into it, just to note that the next few slides aren't a comprehensive list of the legislation from this session, but my goal was to highlight some of the priority-aligned bills that the county spent time, effort, and resources on, and some of those that could have a lasting impact. For the sake of time, I won't go through each piece of legislation on the slides, but these were some notable ones that were important to show. So that being said, HB 26-1429, County Administration of Public Assistance Programs. This was probably the flagship bill of the session, or the bill that was most impactful, maybe. It makes several changes to the administration of public assistance programs, and it established a state county implementation team guided by a third party contractor. This, sorry, I lost my spot. The county played a key role in negotiations that led to the development of this bill. The overhaul of our public administration system will be a heavy lift, but one that benefits the county in the long term. And congratulations to our very own Director McKelkey, who has the pleasure of serving on the implementation team. It starts riding. The board ended the session in support of this bill. In justice and public safety, SB 26036 was the prison population management measures. This set new guidelines and requirements that individuals and entities involved in prison population management must adhere to once prison bed vacancies reach below 4% for 30 consecutive days. Community corrections providers are required to provide inmate transition placements for the state to review as our new requirements, and the board ended the session in a monitor position on this bill. I touched briefly on HB 261399. That is the bill that stopped the transfer of $10.5 million from the general fund for the next three years.

Three years, did you say?

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Which is a win. HB 2613-13, housing developments on unqualified properties. This adjusts the original Prop 123 funding eligibility requirement from a year-over-year increase to an increase based on a formula. This will slightly increase our county's target unit count and based on the work that we did during the legislative session, I think we can anticipate hitting that target in the near future.

Yeah, it'll probably double us, and more than double us, based on what we're looking at now. But yes, we're hopeful we would still meet it.

Amazing. One, I think, big win that Kathy and I were excited about was the partnership incentive multiplier that allows you to multiply the number of units that you get if you partner with a locality by, I think, 1.1x. And the board ended the session in support of this bill as well. HB 26, 13, 17, unified post-secondary talent development system. This created a transition advisory committee to develop a plan to transition the Department of Higher Ed into one focused on higher education and workforce development. The county was successful in expanding the committee to include a county commissioner from a county that delivers workforce development programs, a seat that will be filled by our very own Commissioner Warren Bowling. Congratulations. That's big, big news for us. And the board ended this session in support of the bill also. Any other questions on some of the key legislative highlights?

Yeah, there's two. One on this slide and then on the other side. Yeah, the one on Senate Bill 181. Yes, ma'am. Cost of living adjustments. What is that? Is that increasing in...

And for basic cash assistance, it was taking away the cost of living increase that would automatically go. Is that going to, it's been funded? It has been unfunded because there was a deficit in the TANF grant. So it was, by statute, there was an automatic raise to the basic cash assistance, so it's suspended for two years.

That's clear. And the other one is on the Colorado Cottage Food Act. I know that there was some initial opposition to it. What does it look like rolling out?

I'll pass it to Jennifer. But it wasn't. What changes has it made? Favorable, but I think where it ended up, we were much happier with it than where it started.

I think it just makes back while we opposed and opposed up until the very end. Right. And it still passed, but with amendments that we can live with. It made it more manageable, and we'll be collecting data across the state to see what type of Increase or impact it will have on our day-to-day operations as well as any associated outbreaks So

In the 2026 session, there were 626 bills introduced. We tracked 31 of those, and we adopted positions on 28. Human services and justice and public safety commanded a lot of our attention this year, followed closely by general government, housing and land use, and transportation bills. In the donut graph here in the foreground, you can see the breakdown of legislation by positions that the Board took. A little bit of background here. The successful legislative advocacy rate, which going forward I'll refer to as the SLAR, is a little bit of a new measurement for the county.

Say it again. We did not discuss this back here before. We did not.

We did not. But as I was writing my notes, I was like, I don't want to say that multiple times in a row on this slide. So SLAR it is.

Apologies.

Successful legislative advocacy rate. That's a mouthful. Slar is so much better. There you go.

There you go. You can go a lot away with it. What the...

acronym measures is the number of bills that the county took a support oppose or amend position on that resulted in an outcome that aligned with the county's position on that bill that means bills we opposed that died bills we supported that became law and bills that we offered amendments to that were included or taken into consideration So if all the bills we supported, opposed, or amended became law, died, or were changed respectively, the SLAR would be 100%. The percentages that you see on the donut graph are relative to the 31 bills that we tracked throughout the session. The 72% is calculated from The fact that four of the eight bills we took an amend position on, we successfully contributed amendments to. Three of the four bills that we ended session in opposition to died. And six out of six bills that we ended session in support of became law. So, and then just to round that off, the monitored are bills that we end the session in a monitored position on. And the other section is a combination of bills that we either took no position on, which is there are two bills, or bills that ended in an outcome inconsistent with our position.

So what one did we oppose that got through? I should have known that you were going to ask that question.

I'm joking. I'm going to find it for you, and I'll tell you. I'm going to find it for you, and I'll tell you.

One slipped through, right? What is it? Yeah, I'm curious.

What's the slower screw-up?

Would that be the cottage food? I think it was. It was cottage food you think? I don't think we did. I think we stayed opposed the whole time.

So cottage food could be the slur.

Yeah.

It could be the bill that ruined our slur.

Ruined it.

Just a couple of caveats. One thing that is... that's not captured in this data is the fact that our position on bills changed throughout the session. So this is based on where we ended the session, one, and then that's for both opposed and support, and then for amended bills, that's just based on the knowledge that we have here as a group. We know which bills we were successful in amending, and so I can count that in the data versus historically not something we can count and that's why this is a new measurement for us and we can measure that going forward.

I just want to add on to that that this is one of the measurements that will be included as part of the strategic work plan measurements for the board because it matches with your strategic objectives and the path of strategic plan. So we'll help kind of identify the resources and the energy that this county is putting towards legislative action and and what the return on that investment looks like.

I think it is that Cottage Food Act. We did end up keeping our opposed position. Though the bill got less bad, it still counts against our overall SLAR success rate. That's true. That is the one.

That will be a new acronym down at the Capitol.

They'll be lucky to have it.

Two more slides.

before we move on from what Kendra was saying when we're talking about the ROI on our legislative advocacy that will be basically the contract when about a to castle staff time maybe commissioner time whatever against the like success rate but then also maybe will that factor in money you don't have to spend as well as money we bring into the county sorry commissioner can you say that one more time that the ROI, can you guys hear me? Yes. The ROI, will that be factored in as the contract with Bowditch and Castle and the staff time, maybe commission or time or whatever against not just the money we bring in, but also the money we prevent from being required to spend or being taken from us? How will that measure, what's the equation on that measurement?

Commissioner Campbell, that's a great question. It's a little bit early in our assessment. This is something that we're just starting to measure this year. And so I think as we continue on, if there are additional elements or details or numbers that you'll find helpful in kind of measuring the ROI from this investment, we can certainly take those into account as we continue looking at what that investment evolves into. So, yeah, we'll certainly make a note of that. That's really helpful consideration.

Cool. I like the idea. Thank you.

Thank you. Anything else? Okay, Nico.

The next slide in the session overview depicts what I call a success score scale. What's the acronym for that? I didn't think of one. That one's easier to say. So the success score, it's depicted by these check marks. And it isn't a measure of county effort. It's a way to represent how the outcomes of the entire legislative session between legislation and the budget aligned with our priorities that we outlined last year, and we outline every year. So green is successful, yellow is partially successful, and red is unsuccessful, I think, maybe another way to think about this could be aligned, partially aligned, or not aligned. The point that I'm trying to get across is this isn't a measure of effort, it's just a way to visually depict how the session ended up based on what our priorities were. On the first one, I gave it a partially successful because I think that there were many statutory programs, reforms, and services that were funded in the Longville. However, if you take a look at public health, for example, there were a lot of programs that I think are impactful across the county that received some decreases in funding. Adequate funding for new legislation, also partially successful. I'm sorry, there was one piece of... The other thing to keep in mind that I wanted to say was that I think in years characterized by structural deficits, it's important to understand that we're only going to be so successful. The outcomes are ultimately outside of our control, but there's only so much success to be had. So the new requirements for prison population management, I think, were supported by small increases in funding and beds. And 1313, like I mentioned earlier, likely increases our target unit requirement for affordable housing without providing any real certainty of an increase in funding in addition to the reduction in funds that we got in fiscal year 2025-2026. So maintaining state and federal workforce funding, that was a successful, there was never really a direct threat to workforce funding this session, but as we talked deeply about during the session, we need to stay actively engaged with the 1317 TAC. to make sure that things are going our way. We acquired the funding, or some of the funding in the FTE at least, for the 18th judicial district judgeship, so that's a positive, that's a success. And the upgrades to CBMS are a partial success because they are included in the human services admin restructure, however, As we know, those aren't going to happen overnight, and it'll take some time for us to really feel the benefits of that conclusion. On the next slide, excuse me, confirm proposed changes to community corrections. This is a win because the bill never really came up in session. The prison reform bill that did come up was amended heavily and removed all of our concerns. And the changes to the prison population management in the prison population management bill aren't really going to negatively impact the county. Supporting access to diverse and healthy food options while prioritizing food safety. Raw milk never really got legs, so that's a huge win. And we walked away from cottage foods not entirely happy, but with like we alluded to earlier, with some beneficial protections. Opposed legislation related to the built environment, etc. There weren't many housing and land use bills that created problems for us in this way, so that's a success. Reductions to dedicated transportation housing funding, that's... we took quite a big hit on that. However, I took the optimistic view, and because Ed and Jen were able to only, Ed and Jen were able to bring down that MMOF reduction from into perpetuity to only three years, that's a win. So we get a partial success there. And then unfortunately, again, not because of any effort or a lack thereof, I think public health across the board saw large cuts to funding in the long go and so I think that that's, any cut to public health is going to be a challenge because it's already underfunded. Anything to add, legislative team? Any questions?

I like this this is an interesting way to look at this and trying to keep track of what got passed and not funded what decreased our funding what It's great. So this comes from our legislative priorities booklet, right? Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Yes, ma'am. These are all the 2026 legislative priorities that you approved last October.

I like it.

Wonderful. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Looking ahead on the legislative programmatic, that's the word I was looking for, on the legislative side of things, we covered a lot of the fiscal year 2026, 2027 budget stuff at the beginning. We'll get our first budget and economic forecast of this fiscal year in September when legislative council staff and OSPB brief the JBC. Election year delegation changes, some to highlight. Senator Jeff Bridges could be elected state treasurer. Senator Robert Rodriguez is leaving his seat. Representative Emily Sirota is running for that seat. And the 2027 session will be Representative Meg Froelich's last term. Those are notables.

Am I missing anything? Representative Mandy Lindsey lost her primary. Thank you. That's the other change.

We'll have a new governor. It'll take some time for the new governor to get settled in. And so more will happen in terms of legislative session action, probably in the March-May timeline as the governor gets settled. The federal landscape, no shortage of updates there. The 21st century road to housing bill became law without the president's signature last week, I believe, or the beginning of this week. The Office of Management and Budget's proposed uniform guidance changes are a very hot topic, rightfully so. NACo and CCAT both submitted public comment on behalf of county members. The passing of Senator Lindsey Graham leaves vacancies on several influential committees at a time when the work and votes are very important. So that could result in some delays on important things that either he was working on or that are just important votes that need to happen on the Senate floor. An update on House and Senate appropriations. The House Appropriations Committee has advanced all 12 appropriations bills. The full House has passed the Military Construction VA Spending Bill and the Agriculture Appropriations Bill. Did you have a question, Commissioner? No, sorry. The Senate, on the other hand, is lagging slightly behind the House in this process. The Appropriations Committee is still negotiating top line discretionary spending levels. And the word from Holland and Knight is that the Senate's pace is making a continued resolution increasingly likely. The Interim Medicaid Commission, established by Senate Bill 187 to address the financially strained Medicaid program. The members include JBC staff and chairs and ranking members of the HHS committees. To date, the commission has met three times. That's correct. I think twice. In those meetings, they selected SHG advisors as the technical advisor. They met with the facilitator to discuss administrative issues and outlined priorities and discussed the role that the commission should play. The Human Services Restructure Implementation Team, I will defer to Dan for any ongoings to date, but a third-party contractor was supposed to be selected by July 1st. We just haven't heard if that has happened yet. It did. I just don't remember who it was.

Notting Hill. Didn't we say it was Notting Hill?

Yeah, something like that. Isn't it?

Notting Hill's a great movie, though. It's an elite one. That's an oldie, but... The post-secondary town... North Highland Group? Yes. North Highland Group. North Highland Group.

Isn't that really close to Notting Hill? I love that.

The Post-Secondary Talent Development Transition Advisory Committee. The first meeting was on 6-23. Their next meeting is scheduled for this Thursday. Their charge is to submit the transition plan to several stakeholders outlined in that legislation by November 1st. Kathy, Commissioner Warangoli, any poignant ongoings so far?

No, not really. There was a kickoff, right, to the TAC. We've seen the materials for this week. Doesn't look like a ton of decision-making happening, more informational background. But Commissioner Warangoli, Sasha, and myself have convened a group of directors and other commissioners to meet on, you know, tech issues, CCIs involved, so we feel like we've got a good group trying to advocate together and tackle the issues.

Sounds like an all-star team. And then from a programmatic standpoint, these are all the large item dates that we have to look forward to. I'll highlight the legislative dinner. We're working on the date for that. Looking at November 19th, which is the Thursday before the Thanksgiving break. And I avoided as many... wedding anniversaries and birthdays that I possibly could. So I think we picked a winner. I think we picked a winner. But that is that. Certainly there are other programmatic things that we can look forward to, but these are the big ones. Yes, sir.

Go ahead, Director McKelvey.

Just one clarification for the board. There's going to be a lot, and Ed knows this, a lot of energy around Medicaid. There is the changes that the federal government, HR1, is doing, and then they're what Colorado has done to expand Medicaid. And they get put together as if they're all an HR1 issue, and they're actually not. Colorado expanded Medicaid much further than other states did with no real sustainability plan, which is a huge draw on the general fund, as well as the changes from the federal government for HR1. But I do want to be careful, because when you do in certain groups, it couches it all under H.R. 1, and it is not all H.R. 1. And I think we have to be careful with where we can advocate locally for general fund relief versus what is a federal H.R. 1 issue.

I have a question about that afterwards. Before I go into the 2027 legislative priorities, we're bringing these before you today just to give the board an idea of the general direction that the legislative team believes we should go in to receive some high-level feedback. The first two of the following three slides are 2026 priorities that the legislative team feels are important to carry forward. in some fashion, maybe not word for word, into 2027. And then others are no longer necessary, and I'll explain which one. And the third slide of the following three includes new priority concepts that we just came up with and are going to explore before we come back to you for approval. So as I said, these are the 2026 legislative priorities. The first three are ones that we believe we should carry forward to some degree. The final three in the gray italics are priorities that we will no longer carry forward because they because we achieved them or can move on from them. The third italic bullet point we will reword in a different way. Thank you. As this, how do I want to say it, as this challenge has changed. The approach to this challenge will change. And then these are the final four of the 2026 that we believe should move forward in some facet. These are new? These are, this slide and this slide are the current 2026 priorities.

That would roll into?

That would roll into 2027, correct. Maybe not verbatim, but we would like to keep the general direction of these or explore keeping them. These, I'm sorry, Commissioner Campbell has a question.

Go ahead, Commissioner Campbell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Can you go back to the previous slide?

Yes, I can.

Real quick. Just the oppose the reduction or elimination of dedicated transportation and housing funds. Maybe, I heard you say they'll be amended, but yeah, I feel like it should be like reinstate, renew, or whatever. But yeah. Okay, cool. Thanks.

These are the new 2027 legislative priorities, the topics that we would like to expand into and focus on. And the legislative team, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that, again, One of the major themes for developing our priorities is going to be budget defense with an emphasis on prioritization and being strategic about which things we are defending and where we can be nimble. I think that that is a major theme that came out of our first session to discuss the legislative priorities. Did I capture that correctly?

And it is quite possible that we will lose both our Arapahoe County members off the JDC, with Emily Serota being term limited, likely moving to the Senate, and Jeff Bridges potentially being elected state treasurer.

Do you have a feel for who might be considered for that?

Off the record, I would speculate that Emily Sirota would be arriving in the Senate at a fortuitous time when there's a Senate vacancy. And if she wants to continue. A lot of people don't want the JVC because it's not their interest. They don't want to just cut all the programs and they don't have time. But we'll see.

I was just thinking of Arapahoe folks that might have an interest.

Is there another hand? Yes, Mr. Campbell.

Yeah, I think we need to add energy and land use policy to this. I think data centers is going to come back and need discretion for counties or local governments on land use and oil and gas operations will come back. There's been that moratorium under POLIS and I think There's a lot of environmental groups and folks that are chomping at the bit. So I think we should anticipate a fair amount of action in the environmental energy space and land use in that regard. And I think it benefits us to be very involved in that.

Understood. Thank you.

Commissioner Fields?

Yeah, as I look at the proposed priorities, what's key? They're all important, but the key that I'll be looking for is like, looks like it's bullet number three, how we're going to protect and prioritize funding for H.S. and public health. Because I'm thinking about how it impacts people. Because some of these issues, they might not be as relevant to some folks. And also the pay error rate. I'm really concerned about what that looks like. for big counties because i know where the most work is taking place and so you know i don't know how the the little counties are going to feel but it should be based on per capita based on, I don't know what the prior formula was, I don't know what kind of haggling or tussle that's gonna be, but that's gonna be of huge interest because I don't want to, like that first, I want to protect as much as we can in a realistic way as it relates to some of the rural locations. If they have not a lot of people, then they should be taking a big cut. But I don't have the big picture like you guys, because I'm not on the board. so um but that's going to be a key concern in reference to how you guys iron that out because that's a mess director mckelvey i would agree with you wholeheartedly and i'm probably not on very many small county christmas lists as a result of advocating like that today So whatever we can do, it's gonna be a fight. Because no one wants to give up resources or funding. Everyone wants to kind of keep things to status quo, but the reality is, as you mentioned, the money's not there. So we have to think about what's the appropriate level for delivery of services based on history, data, whatever data you have. The other one I'm concerned about is I think the workforce issues are concerning to me because with the elimination of higher education and I don't know if your task force are they looking at restructure or are you just looking at so there is going to be a model in reference to what that org chart is going to look like. That's like, I'm very curious about what that looks like. It's almost like the payment error because when you look at how people find jobs and where people go to get re-skilled, And if they take that away and try to central, I'm just really, really concerned and curious about the model that's gonna come up at the task force. Especially the delivery of it. How do we make good on the proposal and the funding aspects? Because you do a good job in reference to securing additional funding to help community, all the stuff. And it's just like, what happens to all of that labor and that work?

so those are just my concerns moving forward as we prioritize this less thank you madam chair i i agree commissioner fields and to the workforce stuff um building on what dan said earlier in particular around workforce i think we're going to have to be very strategic about what we're asking our state partners for and tracking, and what we're tracking and asking our federal partners for. So this area in particular, I mean, human services, it would be lovely the same, but the workforce stuff in particular, I'm amazed at some of the federal legislation that we're seeing coming down around that. I mean, really, almost just decimating workforce at the federal level, even though they're increasing those requirements. So partnering between our state team here and then our federal group and lobbyists as well, it's gonna be a lot of balls in the air, I think, of figuring out who's responsible for what and what bill is actually affecting it in whatever way. So that would be a priority to me. I don't know that it comes up in our legislative priorities but actually really tracking differences between state legislation versus the federal stuff.

especially since we have all that real estate. We have a lot of real estate. We have a lot of assets as it relates to computers and resources. And I'm just thinking it's good. And I know that's not duplicated in other places. So whatever we can do with the reorg, bring it our way is what I'm trying to say. But I don't know what it looks like. But I'm kind of concerned about those kinds of things.

Niko, how many more slides do we have? Hey! See, listen, I was just starting to get antsy. I was like, there are lawyers in the room. Something's getting ready to happen.

We are all set. That concludes the presentation. If there are no more questions or discussion.

Yay. We have questions or discussion, commissioners? Lookie there. You've got to make up.

Slightly over.

Just a little bit. It's okay. No problem. Well, thank you very, very much. Thank you. This has been great. So we don't get to see people until, like, session?

I think we'll be back.

We'll be back.

Ed, are you coming back, too? I'll make you come, too.

I'll come back whenever I'm invited.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, we appreciate that. Yes. Good to see you. You too. I have a question.

Okay. Question for me?

Well done, Nico. Yes, well done. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Thank you. Good to see you.

Callie, you can hear us. Now we need a motion. Madam Chair. Yes, Commissioner Warren-Beller.

I move the board go into... Oh, sorry. Hold on one second. We jumped in the meeting and it's on the wrong ones. Oh. Okay. We should be good now.

I move that the board go into executive session pursuant to section 24-6-402-4B and D of the Colorado Revised Statute's to receive legal advice regarding the cybersecurity phishing incident on July 7th, 2026. Is there a second?

Second. Thank you. It's been moved by Commissioner Warrendelli and seconded by Commissioner Fields to go into executive session. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. That's good. Any abstentions? Thank you very, very much. The ayes have it, and we are in executive session.