County Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. Okay. We're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. It is Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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. One. Okay. Any minutes report saved and filed? Yes, we do. You have the sheriff's March 2026 fees, the treasures March 2026 reconciliation report, and the collector's March 2026 fees.

Okay. Uh commissioner committee liaison reports upcoming meetings and events. New back board meeting this afternoon. Planning commission meeting tonight. Uh the 15th is tax day and our quarterly reports are due if you haven't done that already. Um Thursday come meet with the outside auditor. Chamber connections and it's at feet sponsored by our homebuilders association. something come by and see what we're about. Um, Monday's political economic responsibility committee meeting board of realtors and I think that was about it.

Um, turn that thing on here. Too many remotes in here. Yeah, somebody left a mouse up here on my desk. We about to have some fun there for a bit.

Okay. Uh, this evening is a legislative meeting for Missouri Associated Counties and tomorrow. later this morning. I see we're groundbreaking for the facility uh on Wednesday afternoon Patriot Day meeting at the capital. And go ahead and mark your calendars for the weekend of 911. This will be the 25th anniversary of 911 911 I guess we should say. And it's going to be quiet on that weekend. Uh Friday is the Westside Business Association barbecue. Okay. Yeah. Today the I got the ice IC school groundbreaking at 10. Let me get out of here. Uh Wednesday afternoon, I got Thursday traffic and safety and then the 250th committee meeting that evening. Friday I got down. It's somebody named Jeff Her's birthday.

It's holiday, right? Sure.

Huh? Uh then I've got a Gold Star family meeting. Then Saturday is the Sons of the American Revolution Patriots Day Awards. We're recognizing one of our EMS and one of our sheriffs. And uh so we've got that. And then Saturday and Sunday, the Missouri Military Museum has their annual open house. So, a lot going on. Okay. Any commission comments? Bids and contracts interlocal agreement for JAG grant. So, this is a Jag Grant. We do this every year. We share it with the uh city. Uh, our part of it is $4,496.40. Probably going to have gone to radio with it.

Okay. Uh, I'll make a motion to sign and agree to the resolution. Second. All in favor? I I Okay, thank you. Thank you. Renewal four of elev the elevator maintenance and repair services. This is the fourth renewal with Otis Elevator Company. They proposed a 4% price increase and Greg said he was okay with this increase. I

think that was 4% over the original amount. We think it was 4% over last year's amount. I was looking at it. So that's even better. So you good? Okay. I'll make a motion to approve the fourth renewal of the elevator maintenance and repair services with Otis elevator second. There we go. All in favor? I I I mods for the show me healthy women's contract amendment. Good morning. Good morning.

As we talked about, we're seeing more clients that are eligible for these services because of our NP family um planning services. So, DHSS has increased our contract to pay for those services. So, I just make that amendment signed today. Make a motion to sign a program services contract with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Second. All in favor? I I I approval and signing of GMT program provider agreement. Yes. Good morning.

So if you'll recall historically we have participated in the uh GMT program which reimbures us uh for our unreimbured costs for providing service to Medicaid patients. And traditionally we've participated in the fee for service program which basically takes uh a cost report at the end of the year and determines what our per cost per transport is versus what we were reimbursed and then uh through subsidies from the federal government makes us whole. There is a new addition to that program that targets a different population of patients that are on Medicaid and basically it does the same thing. Um it reimburses us for our actual cost of doing service for what we've been reimbursed to make us whole. Um so we are now eligible to receive funds from both programs. And because we are enrolling in this secondary program, I do need to have you sign an administrative fee agreement and a provider agreement that just says we will participate in the program um because they are two different pieces. So, uh that's the only action I need today. Uh we're still working through the rest of that program uh and should have action in the next couple weeks. There's no downside to

no this is recuperating money that um we have expended to provide services. Um and you know let's say for you know a typical ambulance transport it costs us $1,500 to provide that service. Um generally Medicaid billing uh reimburses about $500. So, this program makes up that remaining thousand dollar um at no additional cost to us. I'll make a motion to approve and sign the GET NT program provider agreement. Second. All in favor? I thank you.

Okay. New business, accounts payable review. We would would request approval of accounts payable pending review. To approve accounts payable pending review. Second. All in favor? I I I. Okay. Public hearing for the vacation of a portion of a utility easement in parts of lot 36 and 37 of Metobrook Estates. Good morning. Good morning. I have all the paperwork. I don't know what all you want to Oh. Oh, great. Great.

The morning off, Shannon. Thank you, sir.

Again. Yes. Uh, Mr. Wikenberg approached the county about vacating a portion of of the utility easements in the property that he owns. He actually had the lots replatted uh so he could get a portion of a rear lot from the neighbor. Um he has worked with the city of Jefferson also to make sure that any portion of these utility easements would not get in uh the surplusable area of um a sewer man that goes through there to not actually sit in a sewer easement. Um some of those old sewer lines were run just kind of where they wanted to. uh he has checked with the uh utility providers of the area. Nobody had anything in those and uh you know these are these are easements that will not be used and then this will make uh make it available to he can have better use of that portion of his property. This is not unlike we've probably done a dozen of these the last 20 years between vacation rideways sewer easements and utility easements. There is a drawing in there if you're kind of looking at what they're wanting to do there. Third. There you go. Okay. I've always been intrigued with the term vacation instead of vacating. I mean, we take vacations, we vacate property. But in this case, we're all vacations. Yeah. And

it's used both ways in the statute. It's right, I guess. Okay. So there's no controversy at all. No, City of Jefferson was on board with it. Like I said, the local utility providers and the fiber guys said that no, they didn't see any need for it. So you just opening the public hearing today. Is that what we're doing?

It's it's a one and done. It's it's not like uh you know certain sections like what we did on certain county roads have to sit for the whole term since this is not that type of established rideway. It is just a utility easement. 71270 provides since it's a platted easement like that, you can have the the hearing and then act on it today like we have in the past. I think the last one we did like this was on a utility was probably out in uh Pioneer Pioneer Terrace out there or Pioneer Estates. We had a storm water easement that we got rid of because we didn't need anymore cuz we moved it back. So, we put a a a box structure in there. So we got rid of that easement. He had like 40 foot on the back of his lot. We took it down to like 10 cuz he didn't need that much space anymore.

Yeah. So I was wondering if we just need to open Yep. hearing. And so I guess that's what it would open. We can approve it after we close the hearing. Yeah. Is there anybody here wouldn't like to speak on this? I guess I'm just here for my husband. He's out the country right now for work. Um so if you want me to be present and like I said I have all the paperwork if you want to look at anything. They've got cops and everything you do. So, thank you. Okay. Anything else? Then we will close the public hearing and take action. Go ahead. If you got it, you're good.

All right. I'll make a motion to approve the vacation of the portion of the planted utility easements as presented in lot 36 and 37 of the Middle Brook estates. Second. Okay. All in favor? I I I Okay. How many copies do you need, Shannon? Just you just need one for the recording, I guess. Uh yeah. Yeah, because they just sign one and then they'll they'll have it recorded back. I have one here. I will let you sign. Okay, next. We all three. You get to sign this one. Yes.

Okay. It's more important to capital improvement sales tax order. Here we go. this passed last week. So all this is a order from the county commission to enact it January one and Jessica is going to provide a copy of this to department of revenue who collects it for you.

Okay. I'll make a motion uh to adopt and sign this order of the Cole County Commission as it pertains to the uh extension of the capital improvement sales tax for 10 years beginning on 127. Second. Okay. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I

I Okay. Uh we are going to table the discussion on public works central maintenance shop expansion. Eric is home very very sick. So I said oh you don't need to come in and infect everybody else. So we will table it till next week. Uh senior tax freeze update. Uh the collector's office will again be offering in-person assistance for residents needing help with their senior tax freeze applications, their renewals and questions. So starting on May 6th through June 30th during the hours of 10:00 a.m. through 2:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays only, staff will be available to assist new applicants when with their senior tax free applications and questions here in the commission chambers. So residents with questions about the renewal applications can also come during this time for assistance as well. Um the staff will also be assisting residents with new applications and their renewal applications at the windows at the collector's office during normal business hours of 8:00 a.m. through 4:30 p.m. Um and that's as time allows during you know other other business um at the time. So, uh, new applicants can also submit their applications online, uh, via the collector's office website. Um, the, uh, renewal applications as well are on the collector's office website. So, those can be submitted online if residents cannot come into the office.

You're a much better child than Larry. Thank you. Unfortunately, Larry is at a family funeral, too.

Yeah. as they said on the recorders or collector's website, it's on if you go to cocount.org, it's on the very front page, too. The co county senior real estate property tax freeze info. It should be fairly easy to find. They are fairly easy to do online. Um, like I said, if you got any questions, just get a hold of all of us. Trying to keep it certain hours because we'll have it staffed. Recorder, our collector again is being kind enough to kind of ramrod it. Since he's not here, we can volunteer him for other stuff, too. That's right.

If y'all had any questions on this, we got we had meeting about last Friday trying to kick some things around. I think we're geared up to be able to handle a somewhat of a rush. a little more geared up than I had preferred. But I don't think there will be as much of a rush since there are so many people that applied last year. We're going to get the ones that missed the deadline last year of June 30th. So, um, we'll have those and those that turned 62 this year. Yeah, the newbies. Yeah, we were trying to figure out what the under over was, but we couldn't really agree on that either. So, all right. Thank you. Thank you Larry as well too and our chair.

Okay. Unfinished business. ADA compliance update on document remediation.

All right. Well, there are eight working days left until the deadline. So, we're uh looking pretty good. I think um we have eight offices that are completed. All of their um remediation or their documents are okay. Um we have five that are almost done. There's a few documents like I had brought up earlier that there was a few documents that were a little bit more troublesome to remediate. Um I do want to request a um or ask about the outsourcing. Um what I was told is that we can upload the documents that we want out to outsource for them to remediate for us and they will bill us at the end of the month. Um most documents will be $1.50 a page. um it's $120 a page if it's just mainly text. So once I upload a document, those would be they would give me an estimate of what that price is going to be. But I kind of did a little calculation on just the ones like mainly like our job applications are kind of they're really a little bit more challenging to do and um that type of document um with a lot of tables and stuff in it. Um so I would like to go ahead and get those remediated. I think we're under 80 to get all of those documents done. Um if you would allow me to do that. Um, I don't know how you want to go about that. If I would have like a budget not to exceed to get those remediated or how that would work, how the building would go.

So, approximately what do you think the cost will be? I think for the documents that I've already kind of picked out that I would like to get remediated, it was like $79 and something. Um, but I think, um, I have a couple of offices. Um, HR, um, I need to get with you guys today because there's several documents that we need to work on, um, today. Yeah. And public works is the other one that I need to get with Teresa again on um, some of their documents. Now that we know that a lot of the documents that we're worried about are exempt, it does kind of um shrink the amount of documents we need to do. But we

So what documents are you putting on there that you're having to remediate at this point? What do you mean putting on there? Because if they're already on there, then they're exempt, right? No. So then which ones?

If they're documents that are being accessed um for public services. So if for example there's something that explains our park rental facility guidelines, those types of documents that are being accessed accessed regularly for services are not exempt. The exempt ones would be ones like our agendas and our minutes that were done. They will never be touched again. um like our bid documents, those were kind of a once done will never be amended or changed again.

So bid documents that are coming up, those have to be those are extensive. Yeah, those have pages and stuff. So what are we looking at to get those remediated? I'm not arguing the $80. That's what I need to find out. I need to find out exactly what documents are still out there for bid first of all because those if they're still out for bid on April 24th they have to be remediated. Anything going forward has to be

All right. I don't think necessarily has to. We've gone through and made it ADX and as long as we have it to where they can contact us to find out if some if they can't reach something they can contact us and say I can't get this document to open can and then we can work with it. But if it's out there for for bid right now and people are still looking at it to formulate their bids or whatever, then they can call if they can't access it for whatever reason. if they're having problems. I'm just telling you what the what the ADA I'm telling you what I've heard too. I mean, we've both heard different things and I've heard that we are in compliance since our websites are in compliance. So, it's

the website's in compliance. Our documents aren't all in compliance. Take it off the document. If somebody wants it, tell them, we'll email it to them. I mean, it's getting ridiculous. It's still ridiculous. I mean, we can take things off the website, but I mean, that's not that necessarily Well, I know. I know if the kids are going to fight over the ball, we just take the ball away. Nobody gets that fun. Yeah. Some documents we're going to have to do. So, are you are you thinking 500 or $1,000 right now would be a good number? I I would I don't think I would like to give you a number so you don't have to keep coming back to us every week. How about one person talking at a time? Yeah.

Okay. I think um 500 would be a good number to start with and I don't think we'll get to that number, but it'd be nice just to have that bucket there so that you know as these documents come up that are a little bit more challenging and like I know Teresa is super swamped with other stuff and those documents that she has to look through are you know there's a lot of them and some of them are pretty complex or could be I don't know probably most of them will be exempt but just going through the spreadsheet and checking and making sure that's going to be time consuming. So um and plus we're there's a lot of everybody is still learning how to use this software and how to do this. That's the the biggest thing is like you know we just had our first class for this prep Thursday so everybody's still learning how to use it. I've been using it for a while, so I'm getting really comfortable with it, but there's still a learning curve. So, but I do do think we're in good shape. I think we are making a lot of really good progress. And I think as long as we're making progress, if we have a few things after the date that are not remediated, that you know, we can show that we are working on it. So, but yeah, it would be nice to kind of have a number that I could work with to have prep remediate some of these documents for us.

We This is so small amount. Do we need to say it's okay? Yeah, that's I just want I just kind of want some feedback on what I need to do as far as that money goes.

From my point of view, I'll talk with Jessica and we'll figure out whether the charges go against uh their budget or just the general account. And you know, if it's $1,000, we've got money. we can just, you know, do a quick budget transfer and you all would sign off when that budget transfers comes through. But I mean, from if you all want to just give a a target of $500 or a,000, you know, we can move forward with that without a problem on the budget side of it. What if we said that if you see a thousand, raise your hand and tell us.

Yeah. Come back and Yeah. And then we'll And this is critical, important for the county, so we will fund it. And I won't be sending just any documents. It'll just be the ones that are just going to take a really long time and be a real headache. So that's all I have. But if you have any questions, um, thank you for we'll talk about it again next. Yes. Thank you for all you're doing.

Is there an amount then that we're going to limit it off cuz I mean look how much money and time she's spending going over some of these spent a whole day the other day. You said on on one document I've been remediating every day basically like told us $80 or $500 or $1,000 doesn't even include our time on it. It's ridiculous. So, at what point you all going to come back to us? $80. Well, I think

I'm suggesting that if you exceed or you see you're exceeding $1,000 and come back. But I will tell you what, I'll say exceed 2,000 and come back because we don't have a big choice here. Because if they exceed 2,000 and they come to us and two of us say no, then what happens? bill. Well, I think you're inviting those ambulance chasing attorneys to come after us for violating the law. We're we're already trying to do stuff. We're in we're compant when we say $2,000 is too much. We can't do it. It's too much. I said that I'm not going to go over and above what we're spending the time and materials on right now. Well, and the next

take off the internet. The next phase is really to me is making sure that departments are posting new content that is accessible and training that those staff people on best practices to be able to make their documents accessible. Um, we will still have to use keep the prep program because once they create their document, they will need to send it to somebody that has the software to run it through and make sure it's compliant and print the report out. Um, so, you know, it's not like once we're done with the 24th, we're going to be done.

This is a new thing that everybody is going to have to be a little bit more um, intentional about. What's up? Okay.

So, you got an endless checkbook with two of them. It sounds like it has to be done. No, it doesn't. Just don't put it on the website. That's how you keep it. Okay.

It's not a The website's not an endless file for people to access. Listen, if we're going to go through this much time and trouble to do it, just don't put it on her then. It's that easy. And she says very few documents. Don't put them on there. So, which one do you want on her that has to have all this stuff to go through? Bid sheets. They don't have to have bid sheets on her. They can call and we can email it to them. So, it's as simple as that. There's other ways around it. I do appreciate what you're doing, Melissa. And you probably don't want to come up here every week, Melissa.

I I expect this every every week, Jeff. I I don't know what I would do without the banter. You could come up and do the senior tax freeze when you're when when you've got nothing else to do. All right, move on up. Okay. Do we have anything else under unfinished before we go into close session? Hearing none, I would entertain a motion to go into close session.

Pursuant to section 610.021 of the revised statutes of Missouri, the commission will go into close session to discuss the following responses to bids and negotiated contracts under section 610.021 subsection 12. Second roll call, please. Sam, yes. Harry, yes. Jeff, yes. So, I guess you guys are going to the Yeah, that's what I say. If we can get through this pretty quick, I don't think it's going to take a long time. I didn't realize I had it.