County Commission - Regular Meeting

Are we up? Okay, we're going to call the meeting to order. It is Tuesday, March 24th, 2026. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Any minutes or report received and filed? No.

What you doing hitting on me? That's assault. That's a city issue. Okay. the city. Uh you get no reports. No reports. Okay. No report. Okay. Commissioner committee leaison reports upcoming meetings and events.

All right. Tomorrow morning we've got our county building committee review on the codes. That's going to be our first meeting. So that should be interesting. We have also have the community voices advisory board meeting that I may or may not make depending on the previous meeting. Then we also have the city county improvement projects coffee. Is that tomorrow? So you guys are going to I plan to go. Is that a 8:00 a.m. meeting? 8:30 8:30 and I will not be there because I'm speaking if he goes. It's not post. I'm speaking to Amar. You can't go to Emirates because I was going to go to there.

I'm there and it's not I'm their program. So that's your hand here. Just you're the one in bad mood and I mean I'm in good mood. So I'm ready to argue all day long. Okay. What else do you have, sir? So yes, maybe I'll see you at the CVAB thing and maybe not. Um and then Harry's representing at the CIP. Thursday is our West Central District Commissioners meeting that we're hosting. Sam is hosting. Uh Friday, the only fish fry I have down is the TA fish fry. I'm sure there's some other ones out there. And our nights of Columbus Lias Council, which is my council,

so I figured there's some more. I think that is it.

Okay. In addition, on Wednesday, I have commission meeting in Ashland and will attend a Ward 4 meeting that the council members from W 4 have. day is Thursday. Uh you mentioned Thursday with central and then Friday is meeting with juvenile. Okay. Well, today as soon as this is done, we have a city county meeting here at le and then I have a meeting with the city at 3:00 today and then tomorrow the Amaran community voices advisory board meeting at 8:30 I'm speaking uh Thursday besides our west central commissioners I have a Missouri extension 4 program on our 250th on I'm not sure even what time that is. So anyway, we're all busy. Uh any commission comments. Uh I just saw our prosecu attorney come in. I might move VOCA up.

So that are you do you need to get back upstairs? Uh I'm not in any huge area. Wait. Okay. Then we'll then we'll move forward. uh approval of colonial printing quote for the assessor's office. Just come up here. Yes. Sure. Okay.

All right. I am Maryanne from the assessor's office. If you do not know who I am, um we are getting ready to start a mass mailing that will spread over the course of 12 months and we'll be mailing impact notices. um we do not have the staff to facilitate the entire mailing process. So we have received a quote from Colonial um where they will help us fold stuff the envelopes and then seal them for us. We will provide them the preprinted notices and then they will return them to us and we will actually mail them from here. Um there is not a quote for the postage because the quote we did receive from them basically would charge us the same for first rate mail and charge us labor on top of that. So we do have a dedicated person in our office who runs our mail in personal property and they will take care of that part of it for us. And this is uh the first time the assessor's office to my knowledge has asked or anticipates I should say this mass u large number of impact notices.

This is correct. And everyone who has real estate that has an increase proposed is is going to get this impact notice. They will get a notice. Yes. Um this is particularly for residential properties.

Okay. Um we are going through doing a mass inspection where every every property is going to be visited and so we need our resources out in the field gathering data and then um people that aren't in the field are in the office actually reconciling values and preparing those notices. They will be mailed monthly because we will be visiting a different section of the county each month. So every 30 days a new batch of mail will go out to the taxpayers that live in that next session section to be visited. And then hopefully we can spread the phone calls and informal hearings out over 12 months not to cause a problem or overwhelm the staff or the taxpayers.

That's commercial and resial. Let me defer to Tim. This is just for residential. Okay. Okay. Now, the proposed quote was for 27,000 pieces of mail. Um, we've learned recently that it's probably going to be closer to 21 to 22,000. So, the bid's a little over what it could possibly be. And we do have this budget. You're right. It is budgeted. Yes. So, Colonials is 37.80, but that doesn't include the postage. Does not include the postage. They're friending it, folding it. Does that include the envelopes too? Then

we provide all the resource like the the envelopes, the pre-printed notice. We'll include that. We'll provide that. They're just doing the action of the folding, stuffing, and sealing for us. Okay.

I'm fine with uh the assessor's request here. It comes out of the assessment fund which is why there why it's there. It's budgeted in our printing and binding and mailing also postage too. Okay. Do we just need an okay for I guess maybe just to go on record. Yes. I need the quote signed and approved. I have a few of them. Okay. motion to approve and sign the colonial printing for the assessor's office. Second. All in favor? I

I Thank you. Good job. Appreciate that. Thanks, Marian. Thank you. You just need one copy of that then or you make copies after you sign it? Yeah. Okay. Uh renewal two of concrete repair services.

Great. Uh we're asking for the second renewal of concrete repair services for public works. The current contractors are Stockman Construction, Graal Brothers Construction, and BMP Patterson LLC. They've all agreed to maintain their current pricing and Allseason Landscaping does not wish to renew their agreement. I'll make a motion to approve the renewal of renewal two of the concrete repair services with the Stockman Construction Rid Brothers and the B&P Patterson. Right. Yep.

Second. All in favor? I I Okay. New business. Accounts payable review. Ask for approval of accounts payable pending review. Make a motion to approve accounts payable pending review. Second. All in favor? I I Okay. Senior tax freeze budget. Morning gentlemen. Good morning sir. You too Sam.

This is too much information I sent you in a previous email. about what some of the expenses were last year and and the biggest unknown for this year is uh this

I was going to storm or something. I didn't see it in the forecast, but just the electricity

is the docuign software so people can sign up online and you have to buy envelopes. Is that right? Um 1,000 envelopes was this $5,516. If we went to 2,000 it'd be $9,54720. The other expenses that I show on there are fairly minimal, but the software expenses is the big item. Why I think we need to go ahead and create a budget for the senior tax free. Uh we also will have probably a couple part-time people to take applications. Uh, if we do it similar to that we did last year for the 3 days a week from 10 to 2 or 10 to 3. Was it 10 to

I think it was 10 to 3. 10 to 3. Yeah. Um, no, they were at the door at 8:00 a.m. But it was advertised 10 to 3,

right? We well luckily we had uh some of the your staff, the commission staff as well as uh IT staff that helped tremendously with that and and helping people that were here early as well as other elected officials offices uh helped out also. But I think you know we did a little over 5,000 people last year. I'm I'm guessing we're already in the 1500 range this year. Um, so I think I would ask you all to, you know, at least put $10,000 in uh in case we use all the packets or envelopes needed up to that 2,000.

Did we have a separate line for the senior tax? We added it after the budget was approved. There's no budget there. Um, a comment I would make is last year the docuign invoice got actually paid out of Brian's budget. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Larry. No, it did not. Yes, it did. I wrote a check for it. Well, did we pay twice? Well, I don't know. Well, we had two there were two separate um docy sign bills because we bought the original envelopes and then we had to buy more envelopes. So, there were two different transactions.

So, we paid $5,540 uh out of Brian's budget for it. Well, I paid $4,492. Yeah, I think that was there was two different transactions and that's where they just got to see it. Yeah, thank you Brian. Yeah, pay for it. They wonder why I know it was March of 201. So that would have been probably the first one. Okay, it's going to be an ongoing. So yes, we need

but yeah, you all had requested to put a separate to create a line which we did but it was after the budget was approved. So there were no budget dollars added into Larry's budget for it, but we have a expense line there. Do we need transfer something to that then? Is that what we're proposing today is 10,000 to that budget line? Yeah, we would do a contingency move from general fund to

the senior tax fund. Okay. I guess Brian doesn't want to keep paying for it. Larry doesn't want to either. So, I'm guess we're going to have to And I think we might as well put the 10 in there so we don't have to come back and

later on because it looks like it's going to be right at 6,000 on the low end between 6 and 10. If if we're only saying that we're going to have 1,500 total for the whole thing, I can't imagine we would need 2,000. But again, we don't know until until we get going, but I I'm kind of torn like getting 2,000 envelopes, you know, if we don't use them all, we potentially lose them. Lose them.

Yeah. Although they did tell me that if you renew early, which they did tell me this before, but if you renew early that sometimes they can give you those credit, move them over to the next year, but they didn't tell us that. So, they told us that we couldn't do that before. So, you could move them over if they were It would be. Yeah. The envelope, I mean, is it not a real envelope? It's just they call it each person uses it. Yeah. Each signature is a one little

So predicting 1500 then we should get to 2,000. But if we really don't know we get to,000 then you need to buy 500 more then is it going to cost that much more? They they'll be more expensive if we just buy small amounts. They're they're cheaper the more you buy. So, but still if you don't need them, they're not necessarily cheaper. Can you get a clarification on whether we could carry it over? What if we don't use they told me that if we they told me that last time I talked to them if we re renew 45 days or sooner before our term expires that they can probably roll them over for us

probably. Probably this Yes. This Yeah. So 60% of the time it works every time. Well, and also after this after this um time, we can also if we do it early enough, we can maybe look and see if there's another option that we can integrate with our therefore. The only reason we didn't try and do that this time is we really didn't have time to talk to therefore and see like how much it would cost for them to integrate with a different state maybe for a different day of discussion. But is Boone County the only county

going to the the nonrenewal requirement at this stage or are there other counties going there? There are other counties going there and and we can probably go there next year. We don't have a mechanism set up to do, you know, Boon County's got a their IT department has over 20 people in it. They do whatever they need to do.

Um they're doing database searches for deaths, uh database searches for changes of ownership. Um and we don't have a system set up for that. I think DevNet is actually working on some of that. Um, and we probably could track the change in ownership through the assessor's office, but we don't have a program set up for that yet on a way to track it. So, so I'm I'm hopeful next year we can move to that not doing renewals, but that doesn't do away with this because it's just for the new renewals were fairly simple this year. U you know, we sent out about 5,200 renewal notices and I think we probably got over half of them back already. So, that was actually a pretty simple process. So, I'd say put 10,000 in that line and then on the docuign packets, I don't know if you've looked at that or not, what it cost to get 500 more if it's going to cost us, you know, basically the same amount as just to buy these first 2,000 up front. I'm not familiar enough with the the nitty details. I'd only ask that, you know, if the county as a whole buys these quote envelopes or whatever they're and they're unused, is there someone else in the county that uses docu signed that that can burn those off before they expire? I don't know.

I don't know that either. Yeah. And I I did kind of talk to Jessica and Jill and ask them if if they would have any use for the Docy sign um any of the docu sign stuff, but they didn't really feel like they would. I don't know about other offices. You know what the other one that may be able to use some would be uh the health department. Um I kind of talked to Chris White about it. He said sometimes they would might have some use for them. So, um but I just recently talked to him about it. So, check public works too with our um permits and stuff being online.

Yeah, might be able to do that. We got our on-site wastewater treatment systems at the health department too that I may be able to do some of that. So, yeah, they can be that's a great idea to at least use them and not lose them. So, we go ahead and budget 10,000 and then we can still or further documents. Okay, I'm fine with that. You need a motion to do the transfer or you just needed some direction? I think we just needed direction. Yeah, I'll do the transfer and then you guys can sign off on it.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, we're going to the VOCHA budget cuts by prosecute attorney Lock Thompson. I have a little PowerPoint. I don't know if it's possible to put it up, but turns out it's only like six slides, but there's numbers and stuff.

I need for that. He just awesome. So, um, we recently got some bad news. Uh, that being that, uh, the VOCA funding that is used to fund two of our victim advocate positions is, uh, was drastically cut. Um, VOCA, just as a refresher, that stands for Victims of Crime Act funding. It's a federally funded program. Uh the way it works in Missouri is those funds go to uh the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services, MOPS, uh who then allocate out uh monies for circuitbased victim advocates around the state. So in uh for example in a multi-county circuit you may have a single victim advocate working in multiple prosecutor's offices to cover victims in that jurisdiction. Uh here in Cole County obviously we are a single county circuit and presently uh we have two advocates who are funded through VOCA. Um the allocation we got for the 2026 fiscal year was $54,169.15. Uh that included uh 38,000 plus for the salaries and uh 15,000 plus in FICA, fringe benefits, all that kind

of stuff. Um the and I don't remember how much we put. Do you remember Jay in the budget what we put like revenue-wise we only put 27,000. Okay. So that's what we anticipated. We have there's two and a half positions and with salaries and French benefits uh the the expense was uh around 143,000 but only 27,000 in revenue side.

Okay. Um so the uh victim advocates in our office just a little bit about what they do. They act as a liaison between crime victims and the prosecutor who's working on the case. Uh they are basically it's their job to make sure that victim's rights uh in that are enumerated in the Missouri constitution are upheld. Um, and at any given time, our advocates are working with hundreds of victims depending on their case load. Uh, can be a pretty, as as I'm sure many of you can imagine, can be a pretty high stress, high burnout job dealing, uh, with victims who are obviously often going through some sort of trauma or a terrible experience in their lives. Um, the VOCA cuts and statewide impact. Um, so we mops requested about 1.6 million in allocations for a six-month period. The way these uh allocations work, it goes April to through September and then October through March. And that's how VOCA gets awarded. And I know for some time we've kind of been worrying about, you know, oh, for the next six months, what are we going to do? Or is there going to be enough funding or is there going to be some sort of bridge? And it's always happened that there has been and then uh for this latest six-month period we were told nope there's not. So the funding got cut uh by um almost 33%. So it went from um 1.6 which I think is what we've traditionally asked for to 1.1. Uh the scary thing is that barring any unforeseen circumstances uh it's expected that the next award is going to be 1.1 million for the full 12

months instead of a six-month cycle. So essentially it's another 50% cut to VOCA funding statewide. Uh several counties uh Platt Green and Cape Gerardo specifically have agreed to absorb their advocate positions. Um several others have moved theirs to part-time status. Uh but again, even with these cuts, another 50% reduction could force uh counties all across the state to be going without victim services. Um, so I've been asked if I would ask you guys uh to see if we were able to or willing to absorb our advocate positions. Um, and I'll note that even if if we could do both, great. If we do one, that's great, too. I think it gets us there for the next six months. However, again, we'll have the other 50% cut coming here in the near future. So, I don't know if you want to go ahead and rip the band-aid off now or wait.

So, what would be the cost? The cost what we to us to us what was budgeted was about 143,000

of expenses less 27,000 of revenues. that it appears going forward is probably not going to come in or we, you know, may need to to even reduce that. Um the the 24 budget for revenues was set at 96,000. The 25 budget was set at 85,000 and then we cut the 26 budget down to 27,000. So the revenues budget-wise has been cut um you know over the last three years.

You mentioned the counties that have sort of stepped up. Yes. Sorry. Kate and who? Uh Kate, Platt, and Green absorbed their positions. So, auditor, can you recap it real quick what it was in the good old days and what it'll be in the worst the worst days?

I basically I I think from my point of view, the question is, do you want to continue to fund victim advocacy positions? We have two and a half uh positions there around $143,000 going forward. But we budgeted 27 in revenue, right? Yes. And right now we're looking like that's going to be 38,000. Actually, it's uh 38 and change for the uh salaries. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're actually going to get a little more than we projected, but yeah, going forward probably not going to get anything.

Yeah. So, at some point in time, it's sounding like we would would the county would have to fund 100%. So, I think we actually prepared for this this year the way it appears here with the budget.

Yeah. Because we knew at budget time like, you know, and again, we've talked about it, I think, most years that there's this fear of cuts may be coming. Um, but there's always been that bridge they've been able to to find. And I can tell you every year when we go to the uh National District Attorneys Conference in DC, like that's the one thing we're always talking to uh the congressional folks about is trying to find a way to shore up VOCA funding. And I guess this year it didn't happen. Yeah. Are these optional services that we've the county's chosen to fund and want to keep funding moving forward?

I mean, they're statutoily man mandated to uh we as an office, as a prosecutor's office are statutoily mandated, not statutoily, constitutionally mandated uh to provide victim services. You know, is this just another example going forward as the state's budget gets tighter, we start getting more pressure from up above to continue to provide these type of services with, you know, no reimbursement, no funding on the state side. Why would they stop now? I mean, it looks great for them. They're cutting the budget, but they're just passing it down to the

And it's not I mean, it's not state money. It's federal money, but passes through the state. Federal, state, it they're all doing it to us. At least give us a hug when you do it. I don't know. We're block. Does it take two and a half positions going forward to to provide the services? Yeah, I've actually got a third advocate who's not even on our payroll. She's on loan from racks, but uh between the three and a half that we have, they stay plenty busy.

But if uh if they get rid of them, then it's going to fall to one of your prosecutors to take that role over. Correct. Or somebody in your office. Essentially, it would if we were to eliminate advocate positions, it would add a tremendous amount of work on the prosecutors because

um we are we are again constitutionally mandated to uh provide victims with updates on every single case. uh to notify them of all court dates, to notify them of plea offers as they go out, to notify them of uh to make sure that they have a right to be at every single uh hearing in every case uh at sentencing, have the opportunity to be heard at sentencing. And with our attorneys already working the factual or evidentiary side of the cases like that, it's not feasible to ask them to then take on duties of of a victim advocate. I think my position would be to tough it out in other words fund it for this calendar year uh balance of this year and

well I don't know what it's going to look like come October well and that's would might be something where we would have to cut back I can't see cutting the legs out of victim who are halfway through their recovery and then say, "Well, by the way, we don't do that anymore." Or throw it onto a prosecutor who's already got a full load. Right. And so the victims are the ones that are going to suffer here. Correct.

If I may, the the other thing I just want to bring up, it's very important to us, too. The victim's advocate deals with those victims not on just a one-time basis during that case. It goes over several several months, even years sometimes, depending on the case. they they relieve a lot of burden not only from the prosecutor's office but also from the sheriff's department law law enforcement. I just want to bring that up. It's a very this is very important. I know the funding is there. We're having issues with JAD grant money, federal money coming down to uh for the Mustang Drug Task Force also. It's another issue, but I can't express the importance of those those victim positions. If it makes you guys feel any better, our other grant uh we just got a 100,000 in from

below a little bit there. Yeah, we pretty well know that in October we're we're not Yeah.

So, let's just say we we I use the term tough it out, but we're going to continue to provide the service. we just reach into a different pocket for the money.

Yeah. So from my point of view, the rest of this year, I mean, we don't have to do anything. Um, it it's anticipated, you know, we may have a budget variance difference with the revenue side, but the expenses are already built in. Now, come when we start uh discussing the 2027 budget, we're going to have some decisions there. And again, right now it's just a $27,000 difference because we continue to lower the estimate of revenues going forward. But, you know, how much how many positions can we afford going forward will be a question.

And it may be I I don't know. Um, one of the other aspects of this grant is of VOCA is that it it it's very specific what duties your victim advocate can perform. Um, if you stray outside the scope of what the grant permits, then you run into trouble obviously with the grant. Uh, one of my victim advocates is a retired law enforcement officer. Um, and I had actually kind of toyed with the idea of of proposing this in the past. I know that I've talked to you guys before about the need for possibly adding a part-time investigator at some point um, in the future. I if he were to be moved out from under the grant, he could kind of fill a dual role there rather than me coming back and asking for a another part-time position. uh he would be able to in his full-time position perform advocate duties as well as some sort of quasi investigator type role to uh ease the burden on our single investigator in the office.

I agree with Western Commission. Let's keep moving for now since it's in the budget and then we're going to have to just budgeted. I mean, yeah, we're going to have to discuss, but but statuto or constitutionally, we there's things that we have to Yeah, crime victim's rights is uh something enumerated in Missouri constitution. Okay. So, I I guess we can't can't directly blame the state for this one because it's been a pass through from, right? Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thanks for the explanation. Okay. Unfinished business. Discussion of the Coke County Jail generator docking station. Well, I talked to the sheriff and told him that I've talked to some other people about this and I just I don't think it 115,000 is worth a triple redundancy. We've been there for 17, 18 years, whatever it is, 15. We've not had any problems with it. Could it fail? It could. It would be odd. Um, the good news is you said today that they've been testing it and it's been working fine. Sound real.

Thank you. The composite it might work. So, I just don't think it's worth spending the money on. I did not find any other options without actually having somebody come out and look at it and and see about different ways to plug and play when you're dealing with what is it, 1200 amps. It's something 48 different. So John didn't go kicking and screaming out of the office when I was telling him that. It just

I could see it both ways really truthfully. the fact that Greg actually got in a vendor that works on the GenerRack and has done a really good job on that part of it. We haven't had any issues in two weeks. It sounds like we have better service on it too. Three weeks. So, so, but it's always going to be a concern on the back of my mind now. So, I think on the back side of it though is we work with our service guys that are watching it and see if there's something that we either need to be put some money aside and be ready to replace it down the road. But this thing gets used every two weeks for an hour every every week for an hour, every every Tuesday for an hour and it loads the building up. And it's a big old diesel, right?

Oh, yeah. And it's that thing should last twice as long as this. We just had problems because I feel like it was because of our service. It was a wiring problem. They found a broken wire in the loom, replaced it and pigtails and it's been running just fine. It's just like anything. You take it to service station for a problem and they can't find it. And that happens every time. Yeah. I agree with Jeff.

You are in a bad mood. Well, I just I think keep an eye on it. I mean, I appreciate them guys giving us an estimate on this so we know what we were working with, but it's not a high security super security place or whatever. Well, as if we start having issues then I'm sure you'll get an email from Sheriff Wheeler or myself. I'll be knocking on your door. Won't be an email. All right. So, that's just where I'm at.

I'll follow your lead on this and and I won't say I told you so. Sheriff be waiting for that one. I told you so. Okay. Okay. ADA compliance update on document remediation.

All right. Well, we had um a meeting yesterday of all of the point people with all the point people from um the different offices and it was a good meeting. We kind of had a lot of good questions asked and kind of went through a lot of um kind of what people should be doing right now again and kind of got some questions answered. Um so I think pretty much I think everybody kind of knows what needs to be done. I think they're working toward it. The only one that really I'm still kind of trying to get some information is um on the court side. I talked to Mark yesterday and he said that Osca is actually doing their remediation. So, I'm trying to um I'm trying to work with Jennifer um in his office to find out exactly what that means. So, um but yeah, I'm waiting for a reply about that, but I just we just talked about it yesterday. So, um I'm sure they're looking into getting that information from Oscar of what exactly that looks like. Um the other thing I sent you guys this morning, um after the meeting, I was able to kind of get a better handle on kind of how many license or seats of this um PDF remediation program that Brian and I have been looking at. Um, and I sent you the quote this morning. Um, it's an annual subscription and it's integrates with our Civic existing Civic Plus website. Um, there's a onetime fee of the Civic Plus integration for 3,000 and then each um, license seat is $700.

So, I'm estimating that um five seats should be enough um for us to get this stuff done and kind of keep the power users able to remediate their documents as they post them. Um and it includes um also six one-hour training sessions that um is $500 and unlimited help desk and all of the different products that Brian and I looked at. This one was really stood out above all the rest of the best option. So, um I have this quote, but I spoke to Jeff Jessica this morning and I requested a formal quote that has because this quote if you sign it, we would just um do a they have an enduser agreement on the program once you start using it. But, um they're going to send me a few a formal contract for you guys to sign. But I'd like to see if you guys would approve this um pending Jill looking at the formal um contract once we get that or if you have any questions.

Oh, we have to do it. So yeah. So we had a question brought up how much and what is going to be expected from each of the elected officials offices because we asked them in each each department and stuff to have one person to go to leazison or whatever. Are they going to have to actually go in and do all of this stuff or Yeah. How much are we expecting of them? What's going to be required?

What um kind of we talked about yesterday, one of the biggest parts of it is everybody kind of relearning how to be creating these documents to where they're easier to remediate and make accessible. So that's going to mean like when they're creating a word document, they need to know that they need to put a title in the where you where you put a title in. They need to know that they need to be using the default um styles instead of just typing and making a heading bold. They need to use the style so that the correct tag is associated with that document for a heading. So, there is a lot to it and um I Jennifer Walkin sent me a really good little um tutorial that was shared with her and I sent that out to the group so they can kind of um go through those modules and get a good handle on exactly how they need to be creating these documents going forward. I mean, there is definitely a learning curve to it. That's probably not as big of a deal as trying to get it currently.

Yeah, that is the hard part. But this does everybody do their own website? I mean, does Larry have his own for the recorder or the collector? Yeah, they each have a person most his own page. So, he takes care of every picture or everything that's put on there or do you all does it go through you? A little help desk plus somebody with it. A little of both. So they have the the ability to do their own web page. However, there are some things that they need help with sometimes or some offices don't have a person that

we're going to go through each one currently because weren't we going to get a system that looked at it and said, "Hey, this is not in compliance. You either need to remove it or change it." And then then we tell their office, "Hey, you have to address this." I could tell you that

most of our do almost all of our documents are not going to be compliant to with WICAG. But what I've done is I went into um our Google Analytics for our website that tracks all of the statistics of hits and things like that. And I um created a um spreadsheet with the hits of all of the documents in our document center. And I was able to combine that with our document center report so that I can basically export out a table for each office showing the most used pages that they have basically so we can prioritize which ones really need to be done first. So, um, and really most of the offices don't have a ton of documents once they go through and clean up old documents that aren't being used. Um, honestly, uh, there's just like public works, they have a lot of documents and there's, um, you know, really the agendas, that's a big one, too. Um, but and I think with the agendas, what we're probably going to need to do is go in and go to the old ones and we don't have to delete them. We can just unpublish them temporarily until we can have time to go in and update them to the um remediated documents. So, that's kind of what the plan is.

You can't ever retire. Can Can I take a lightning bolt for Larry? I'm gonna sing also. You don't have to.

So, a good example is the budget book. Our budget book is created in Word. The graphs and the charts you see are pictures from Excel. All the budget tables, they're generated out of BSNA and they're a picture. So that's a major problem when it comes to this ADA compliance. We Melissa took the 26 budget that we had and I think you spent 8 10 12 hours of getting it to that compliance

and that's with using just the tools we have now with this new program. I think the process is going to be a lot easier. So I I Liz is our representative on here and I haven't talked with her as to whether we can be trained with the new process but it is scary that our staff limited small staff has that capability to do that. The other problem is um they maintain our website or our page for us. Um, and we had maybe 7 years of old budget links and my recommendation was maybe just put it down to three and then put a note if they anyone from the outside public wants earlier versions we can get that to them again asking questions and and you all ask I can see going forward but is it really a true expectation that we go backwards? on documents and that's the understanding. Yes. So the other main item we have on our our web page link is the audit. So I will have to work with Williams keepers that they provide us a PDF in the ADA compliance format. Hopefully they can do that. um you know they're a professional organization that do audits and financial uh disclosures for many many organizations. So I hope they have the capability. But that's just an example of what the auditor's office is facing.

And and you know once we get this program I think you know if we kind of sked schedule it out and kind of have a plan of how we're going to do it. I don't I think we can run this kind of I can run some of these through in the background while I'm doing other things. So, I don't think that using this I don't think it'll take as much of my time. Just with the tools we have right now, it it's kind of buggy. It's kind of like there are so many things that can go wrong on those documents. It's not straightforward at all. And with this product at least you have the support, you have tools that you can use that are more intuitive and um they also offer um an option. So if there was a department that had a document that they need it done right now and it's a a complicated document um they can outsource them to do it for them for $150 a sheet for a complex page. So that's just another option. That was actually the cheapest for a complex type of situation that I found from anybody that we've talked to.

So we got an option if it's not compliant, we make it compliant or we remove it from our website so nobody can see it. Well, and like I said, we while we're working on making these things compliant, if we can't get them done before the April 24th deadline, my recommendation is um prioritize doing the most hit documents first and then any of the ones that probably are not hit that much, unpublish them. maybe put a note that we're working toward it and um then do those as we can get them done and then republish them back to the site.

I guess at some point though the cost is just getting so extreme that when do we say we're done and we're just going to take it off there. Nobody can see it. Yeah. Well, these prices how we do with our kids. Well, okay. Take the toy away. Nobody gets to play with it if y'all can't figure something out, you know. Yeah. I mean, this was a low quote and I'm sure there are a lot of places that they're going to do. End of it either. We'll have more stuff. I'm sure a lot of places are frustrating. So, I guess I'm very frustrated with it because we we're trying to do stuff, but

we're punishing other people because we're have to take stuff off the web until we can figure it out. Well, and I think we'll be able to get most of the I think almost all of the frequently used documents we'll be able to get done once we get this in place. But how far because we can upload multiple at one time. How far back are we going to be able to go on some of the other budget stuff? I mean, I don't know how often we look at it, but there's been some stuff with some past things we've done. It has been a great resource to go look at. Yeah. Yeah. So, do we just take it off or are we going to go through this whole exercise with all of that too?

Yeah, I don't think we need to completely take it off. I think if we temporarily unpublish it or even if we like put a note that we're working toward getting this done. Uh, from what I understand, the DOJ just wants to see that you have a plan and that you are making trying to make progress to get I don't mean to grill you on this. Yeah. No, I understand. Great job. It is frustrating. GIS. Every time you go on GIS, there's something else you can click on to reference something and see where your sewer goes, your electric, your property lines. How's that going to work? Yeah, that's the other thing that we're kind of looking into cuz like

just some things are not going to be meant to use. At some point, you got to say, "Okay, this is enough." Yeah. And I'm work I am working with the city to try and um look at what we need to do with that. I think our interactive mapping site, just the navigation part of it is accessible already, but there are some parts of it that we are currently looking at to kind of decide like what what do we need to do to and the city is not required to be a compliant until 2027. We are required to be compliant next month. So that's another little weird thing, you know,

but I think we've got a good faith effort going right now. So I think we're in good shape with it, but it's just still how far I think we just need to show the road map that and document that we are

we are working. It's not like we're not doing anything. And the audio was um put into place last week. the program that monitors our um the actual website, not the documents on the website. And it is compliant right now. So, and they're doing right now they're doing manual checks of everything, too. So, um they're doing more detailed um overview of our website. that will take a few months for them to do. But um you'll see a little accessibility icon in the bottom right hand of your website when you open the county website. So somebody can change the contrast, they can change different settings to make it more easy for them to um navigate the website. So yeah, it's a lot. Thank you.

All right. So, so back to the to the uh quote. Um I was wanting to see if we can get approval pending. Jill um approve it. I approve the quote. Yeah, that's fine. Oh, okay. So, is there going to be an actual contract? Yeah, that's what I asked them for a formal contract versus the quote and just clicking the ULA. Okay. Um, so I'll you know. Okay. Thank you. So if you guys would approve that,

I'll make a motion to approve uh the acquisition of the continual engine service at a cost of 7,000 pending or council's approval of the contract. Second. Any other discussion? All in favor? I thank you. Thank you.

He's back. Just like a bad dream. Uh I sent you all an email. I I really don't think this burden should be placed on each elected official's office. For one thing, I don't have the staff that's qualified to do this type of work. Uh, and well, and Morgan, who is my point person right now on this, is leaving to go work for the city in three weeks. That leaves one person in my office that's been there over 6 months, and that's Jan. And she's got enough other responsibilities without taking on something else like this. And it's certainly something I'm not qualified enough to go in and fix. uh and I and I don't think the other offices their people are are uh website creators and fixers uh I I just I can't do it for my office. I won't have anybody there to do that job. I'd either like you all to find a vendor that that I can hire to take care of my stuff and pay out of my TMF fund or bring a or add a person to your IT staff to do this because it sounds like to me it's going to be an ongoing thing. And how many different departments are there? Maybe we just put everything under the commission's heading and let you all worry about getting it all compliant.

We're doing that right now. No, you're not. after having each department put a person out there to work on it and mine's leaving so I won't have a person who's going to do it then Sam I didn't create the problem but you want me to solve it we didn't create the problem either but you're the leaders of the county so it falls in your lap well if we're leaders we'll tell you we're leaders and by God we're leading and and you'll go fix it. That's our And I can tell you the statute that the statute doesn't require me to do what you tell me to do. Well, then we're not your leader.

So, don't call us your leader. You're the county's leader. Okay. So, um Melissa, if I'm looking at his website, what what what I guess what it has to be. Okay. So, I'll So, Larry for your picture of Larry obviously. Yeah. Well, So I can get AI to take care of that.

So the website on his website, I think most of his stuff is good as far as already having the picture. I think most of them are if not all of them have alt text. The documents you your office doesn't have a ton of documents. I think once we get this program um in place, I don't think it's going to be difficult to run those through it and make them compliant. So, I don't think that you need to be super concerned about it. I'm just saying that going forward as offices are creating new documents, they need to be trained on how to create their word documents. And it's not difficult. It's just a matter of making getting into the habit of

so for a while they're going to be calling different steps. They are going to be calling me. Yes, they will for a while. It is kind of going to fall on it will fall on me probably. A lot of it us and I mean if you lose another person and you know you're going to have some new people or have to train them.

We will and it is going to be an ongoing thing. I think it's going to be a culture of the off all of the offices are going to need to their staff that create word documents or Excel spreadsheets are going to need to be in the habit of uh kind of keeping the accessibility checker um going while they're creating the word document. That helps them see if they're creating a part of that document that is not accessible. it'll tell them and also um it will if they can kind of get a the hang of just having a little bit of a different way of creating their word documents which is going to take a little bit of training. I we'd like to use common sense here, but sometime that doesn't work in the governmental atmosphere, but next next month or 24th of April, that that's a sort of a magic date to me that any document that was created on or after that date, hey, that one's better be pure as the driven snow.

We've been here since 1820. We can't go all the way back and make everything since 1820 ADA accessible simply because there's been a law change. It wasn't in a sense retroactive. I mean, maybe it's planned to be at some extent, but is is if we can really be clean going forward, that's that's got to be one target.

Yeah. and then maybe munch back and bring things forward as far as we can. the answer of if hey the inquiry person or entity you're asking for something about 1950 um if you're asking for that do a sidetrack over here and come and see us it's not going to be a perfect

yeah and if we if we have and we have our accessibility page so if somebody is having issues with anything on on our site they have Sheila's information there and actually we are going to also try and improve even that accessibility page that um on our website but um yeah I think getting the old documents run through this prep program is going to hopefully be pretty simple and easy to get get those through if we'll just have to it's just going to be kind of like churning them out you know get them done but going forward you you know, it's going to be a lot easier to make to run them through and get that done quickly if people are starting with a clean doc as clean of a document as they can. There's no such thing as a perfectly accessible website, but we need to obviously work toward getting as accessible as possible.

Like like Melissa said, I am the county ADA coordinator. I commit to helping the departments as I can. that even if it's just a matter of putting more information out there that says for assistance with accessibility and then having my phone numbers. I mean, I'll do what I can to help and if we need training on whatever on word or whatever um you know like I I sent that link out yesterday um that Jennifer shared that had different modules telling you what you can do to make your word document more accessible. there are those types of things for Excel and and other uh products, you know. So, I mean,

I would like the ability to contract with somebody to take care of my website and pay for it out of my TMF. And I don't know if that's, you know, they can have access to Civic Plus to do that or what. I guess that would take Geral all's permission or the answer would be no. They can't have access to Civic Plus because that's a county that's a county sign on thing. That's a county. Well, I can't maintain my website. I don't have a way to do that. Brian, you've been doing it now though.

We haven't updated it forever. You all added the stuff for the senior tax freeze. Mel I mean Melissa did that. She was kind enough to do that. I mean I am happy to help with whatever I can but yeah it just depends on like how busy I am with other things.

So I I know this all sounds kind of daunting right but I said this in the meeting yesterday. So what you have is you have basically the accounting website has been a dumping ground for old documents for years. So the first recommendation is to go through and clean out get down to the documents that you really feel that are relative to today. And that's why she keeps talking about these hit counts, people who who are using those things. Now this the county is already providing a service that's going to remediate the website for you. So that's what Melissa's talking about. So we put in this product called audio. So they've already spent how much was that? Uh it was like 6,000 something.

6,000 something. So, I think when you when you get down to the the crux of it, it's going to be the the uh remedying the the PDF. That doesn't solve my problem. Right. I need to improve my website, add some more stuff to it. When I look at other collector's website, I'm missing a lot of good information that should be on there. It's not there. I'm not a website creator. I need to hire somebody to do that. This is almost separate from Yeah. ADA is different, but I'm I'm assuming it would require to some degree your all's approval.

So, I guess where I'm going with it is is we'll have a side meeting on that and we'll talk about the improvements you're looking at and go from there. It's that easy. It really is. I'm not not just No, it's not. Cuz it all you got to do is say you're going to do it. Is that what you're telling? I'll sit there with you and I'll go over I'm not doing it. I'm old and scenile. So, No, I think what Brian was saying no grouping like Sam is today. Well, Brian, they need to make this not getting any better. I think Brian's recommend sitting down, seeing what you're expectally wanting to do. Yeah. I just want to know what you're need to get done. Trying to figure out what the options are and what option you're wanting to pay. This is the first I've heard of this, right? I told you this several times. Okay. Did you get married when you didn't know?

You say so. Never listen to And it's also I know you're low on staff. I think that's sort of your one of your biggest problems. So like you know I don't know if it well people quit hiring them away from you. I know.

So if you you know if you do hire somebody the website isn't difficult to do it but but if that person had off time I I could train them to with those edits also going forward but I know you don't have that right now. And for the right now, I think Brian's suggestion of getting together and kind of discussing maybe what types of things that you're looking at can kind of give us a better idea. Um, so I don't know. That's kind of what I trying to come up with solutions. Yes,

you can look at what he's want to do with the website and figure out what it's going to cost if you're want to pay for it out of your fund. I think it's a whole different issue than this ADI ADA thing. Well, it all plays into the ADA thing because any new content is going to have to be ADA compliant. Again, that's when you find whoever's going to help you with your new website and make sure they understand how to do it or even if it's going to go because if I there's anything I want on there, I'm getting a hold of Melissa and going, "Hey, can we put this on our website?" she's going to look in and go, "Okay, well,"

and usually it's just a little bit at a time. And so somebody emails me or calls me and say, "Hey, Melissa, can you do this?" And I can get it done pretty quick because, you know, I work in that website all the time. So, it's take very long. I mean, an option would be for you just to completely do your own website outside of Civic Plus and you're in control of it at that point. And then that way, you know, we're we're out of the picture. Yeah. Well, that's I had it was before.com or what do you do? Yeah. Larry Vincent.com.

I mean, that's what we did before and that did not work out well because then, you know, somebody would leave or somebody that was doing the website that something with their company would change or then everybody's doing something different. All of a sudden there's like nobody that knows how to do anything in the This is the best platform that we that I've ever seen when it comes to individual departments being able to create their content and make it the way they they want it. User friendly.

Yeah. I would be like I would really think about moving away from that. But you know you're it's up to you. You want to Well, you want your own website created the way you want it. Right. Right. I don't I don't want a separate website. No, but I'm not I don't have the capability of doing creating the stuff that goes in it. This is a discussion. Again, it's we can do side discussions, but thank you. when when I came might be and took over and worked with Melissa. But by me, yes.

I've got professional certifications, master's degrees, but I start cringing and shaking if you ask me to change a website. I just don't have those skills. Yeah. And it's it's something I haven't done and I don't want to screw anything up. So, I need help. Our office needs help. they've worked with us and again we maybe have two different type of documents referenced on our website and a picture of me and it's the budget and it's the audit.

I think Larry had two different issues. One was the ADA compliance and I think he's a little worried about what all that's going to take and I think we answered that question. We're going to walk you through it. Melissa and RI it is gonna be out there to help you and we'll see what we need to do if it gets overwhelming. No, my concern is I don't have anybody qualified to do that on an ongoing basis. But you're not doing something on an ongoing basis. Are you continually putting different pictures and different forms and stuff on your page?

It sounds like he just wants a lot a total refresh of his information. That's a different issue though. But the ADA thing, what he's saying is he doesn't have somebody qualified to sit there and watch all that all day long, which I'm not thinking he needs or Jay's office for that matter or, you know, whoever. Well, I would ask our team to work with with Larry and work with with Jay if need be. Can't decide not to do that anymore. I'll be happy to. Okay. Okay. Anything else?

Okay. Then seeing nothing else on our agenda, I would entertain a motion to go into clos pursuant to section 610.021 of the revised statutes of Missouri. Commission will go into close session to discuss the following. Legal under section 16.021 subsection 1. Real estate under section 610.021 subsection 2. Second. Roll call, please. Sam, yes. Harry. Yes.