County Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. Now, we're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. It is Tuesday, April 28th, 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. Okay. Any minutes and reports received in advisor? No. Two weeks in a row. You haven't done any. No. Next week it's going to be

uh commissioner committee lead reports upcoming meetings. We want to present a proclamation to the Eugene basketball tomorrow morning breakfast. The civil design incorporated have is having a 30-year open house Thursday afternoon. East Side Business Association have a social at Riverside Park Thursday evening 4 to 6 in their golf and also Monday FFA petting zoo at Calvary L. See some goats. Uh taste of Louisiana out at Capital Bluff Center on Friday evening. Capital City showdown down at Jeff City Fairgrounds. Saturday got car show, maybe a band and some different things, food trucks and stuff. Um, and then like I said, side business golf tournaments Monday fundraiser. So, I think that was about it.

Uh, tomorrow, Williams keepers is here being interviewed by the commissioners. Yes. and they've been interviewing others throughout. Oh, they're here tomorrow, too. Through the rest of the week. Okay. So, they had last week and this week. Last week, they took off because of I had that training, auditor training. We each have separate times. Yes. I'm at 9. Okay. Already did. And Jeff, I think, has already done his. Yes.

Okay. That scared me because I didn't have that one on the calendar. So, all right. Very good. Friday personal financial disclosure statements are due with ethics commission. So be that's for all elected official. Yeah. I've been getting I did mine last night. So thanks for the reminders. That's all I have.

Okay. But yes, I'm meeting with Williamskeepers tomorrow at 9. Thursday. We finally have traffic and safety. Uh at 8:00 a.m. Cardia, I have a Navy League meeting. Sunday, the 200 Cole County 250th committee, we are planting Liberty trees in every each of our communities in Cole County. So, everyone is invited to Center Town at 2 PM uh for uh the planting of dedication of our Liberty Tree and there's all kinds of other stuff. So, everybody come out Sunday 2:00 PM and and join us. And then that is all I have. Okay. So, we will move to presentation from invited guests. And we have the Capitol Area Rail Terminal presentation and update. Okay. Well,

can you I think you have to minimize somebody may have to help you. I'll get going. Um, so thank you. We have Ron Spencer and Curtis Nineswander with Capital here. uh Ron will present on the cart and kind of give an update on uh where where we've been and where we are today and what we got to look forward to in the future. So, as soon as we get that up and rolling, looks like it is. Yeah, there we go. Different ones or Okay. You think it's this one? This one? Yeah, it's okay. So, you can see it over there then. Yeah. Okay, cool. So, I'll turn it over to Ron.

Perfect. Thank you commissioners for having us today and uh giving you a little presentation. Please ask any questions as you see the slides. It's a lot of photos just to give you an idea of exactly what we have out there uh and what we're trying to do in the future and what we've already accomplished. So, uh Eric, if you want to go ahead to the next slide. So, yeah. So, basically, CART is a partnership between Cole County and Capital. uh you know Capital Farmers Companies is a third generation company in Jeff City, been in Cole County for 50 60 years and uh many business uh ventures through the state and through the Midwest. So, uh, one of our goals a few years ago was to to open a a rail terminal and, uh, to make it feasible for for everybody and to make it, uh, viable, a partnership was formed and, uh, and as well as you know. So, uh, right now we are handling a majority of our own product. We're bringing in asphalt oil and we are bringing in some fly ash and we have some cement we're going to bring in uh to the terminal. But we're also expanding to public and that's really what we would like to expand in the future is the public uh potential and the private uh potential to ship by rail where we it hasn't existed before. Go to another one. So, so basically cart we we offer full service rail transloading open to the public. Uh we have no uh current restrictions on products that we can receive or ship. Uh and you can see we have a a track mobile right there that will move up to 12

loaded rail cars at a time. Uh, and we can hold basically 50 cars in our facility at one time. Uh, we're kind of limited by some track space as we we know. Uh, but uh 50 cars is a great number for for the start. So, go ahead. Thanks. So basically a lot of things that uh we were kind of discussing u before the meeting even began is it's really about efficiency and getting removing trucks from the highways as much as possible. And you know, a lot of times people will say, "Well, you have a a truck that has to come and and transload the product, right?" But that truck is not coming in and then going somewhere else and loading. You're you're eliminating about half of the trucking need by shipping by rail. Uh and that's what we want to convince local businesses. That's what we want to convince new businesses to uh take advantage of. So, there is an overhead shot right there. And and I know it's kind of uh hard to see, but off on the left is the car facility, our three tracks. And you can see the line goes down kind of uh behind Command Web and Alpla and Morris Packaging and goes into the Union Pacific main line on the right end. So that's the entire of our track and facility. So uh since we opened we've moved uh 537 rail cars. Uh 517 of them been loads of

our own asphalt. Uh seven loads of fly ash. And we have two customers that we have brought into the terminal from the outside. One is a provider of agricultural sand that we uh they're out of Alabama and they ship it to us from Savannah, Georgia. And then road salt. We transloaded five cars of road salt for Cole County last fall and we are trying to expand that with MDOT and some other possibilities to bring in more salt this year. Uh go the next one. So, we are working currently, we had a a visit from a large uh multinational company last week and they uh they sell barley and malt in the brewery brewery industry and they really like Jeff City because of the location between St. Louis, Kansas City. Uh they have some major uh customers, Boulevard Brewing, Springfield Brewing, Mother's Brewing, and they want to make this their distribution center for the Midwest. So they they do not have a location between Denver and Chicago, and we will be it. Um so that is exciting. Um there's a lot of plans, but we are currently working on a long-term contract with them and uh hope to have that completed in the next two to three months and the first uh rail cars will arrive later this fall. But uh that potential could beund 100 to 200 cars a year plus some storage and some uh you know bagging possibly in the future. So that's that's an exciting one. Uh we are reaching out to every local manufacturing company and we're in discussions with uh some some major

players in the area. Uh but one of the things that that does take time is changing habits, changing supply chains. So we are we're working through that. Uh but I would expect some exciting announcements in the next 3 to 6 months as far as that goes. And just a couple things, this is a a fully uh automated asphalt oil loadout that you're looking at right there. So the capital drivers can come in, they can load their own truck. They don't have any interaction with anybody at the facility. So it's completely self-mated, which is great. Uh you saw our track bill earlier. And then uh we have inter uh built a temporary scale that we are currently loading directly from railc car to truck on the scale so there's no errors. It's very nice. It's very convenient for the customers and for our our guys out there working. Thank you. Any questions? I'm happy to try to answer or discuss. So, it's possible in the future, maybe even near future, that you'll need a the barley people will need a place to store their product.

Yeah, they uh they would like to have silos on site so they can store the barley malt in silos instead of in the rail cars and then the the trucks would just come and load as needed. but they like to have the product on site as the demand is there for the brewer. So I would expect that to be we're talking about three phases of growth. The first would be very simple rail car comes in, we put it in a truck, they take it to the brewery, then silos probably second phase. Uh the third phase would be maybe a uh bagging facility to take that product and put it into bags and sell it like that instead of bulk. So later on the agenda we have the extension of the current operations agreement and part of that was let's let's bring capital in and Ron and let's let's kind of give an update and maybe you know I can come up here and talk about the card all day long but but having them here they're the ones that are actually operating this to go through more detail I think was was pretty important.

Yeah. And I I mean I I think uh you know we're going to do 6 700 cars this year. Uh but I think uh in 27 we we could be looking at 800 900 maybe a thousand. So we'll be pretty excited we hit a thousand. I like the growth. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. And you know that is the BH and O line is we even have shirts that Okay. So it's a BHO rail. BH I like that. Very nice. Very nice. I I think it's appropriate that uh you know once we get the asphalt in, the most important thing for this community is beer.

No, I I agree. I I we're working on it. It's we're going to make it happen. And I I'll just say and and we've been working on this project from conception going back give or take. Yeah. And in my 30 years of doing this, I don't think I've ever been part of a team that has been, you know, from start to finish. And we're not finished. We got more to do and we're still engaged. But, um, everything has just been been very, very good to be a part of. And I, you know, we're definitely in a good place with Capital operating this this transload facility that

the county and JC rep and Capitol and the city and Midmo RPC work together to to get built and extended. So, it's definitely been a good good project and a good good a good asset for the county. Absolutely. For sure. So, thank you. All right. Thank you very much.

Okay. Any commission comments? Uh, bids and contracts, approval of amendment to the operations agreement part. So, so that's me again. Um, so what we have and and as as Ron explained, uh, some of these things, especially with rail, it it takes a little time to develop and we uh we worked on a fewus for a few years. Last year we we did an operations agreement for for one year and and it did technically expire in March, but as as things were developing with the the Malt Company uh and where that leads into the future, we knew we needed to to get some of those things squared away before we came back to you for an extension or a new operations agreement and decided that we would do an amendment to this, the existing agreement uh just to extend it for one year. knowing that things in place as they are now are moving good. There's a lot of changing as time goes on and we we didn't want to get too far down the road or make a big change right now. Just keep things as they are. Ultimately, the goal is that, you know, the cart will start turning enough of a profit that it can start reinvesting into the maintenance of the facility itself and the rest of the spur line. So, but for right now, we just want to extend this uh operation agreement uh by one year through an admittment. So, I have this document uh here for you to sign. Good. All right. Make a motion to approve the amendment to the operations agreement or part.

Second. Are there any questions? Hearing none. All in favor? I I I Okay. Approval of agreement for point of care testing with EPO. I think I ask that we table that. Um there was some language that needed to be adjusted and uh they weren't able to get that done for today. So that'll be on next week's agenda, please. that uh signature of home wave contract.

This is a contract that we have currently with or this is a contractor that we have currently with uh video visitation and make uh phone calls. Uh that's a three-year agreement we're wanting to go along with. They pay us. We don't pay them. Uh it's going to bring us about $8,500 a year.

So, they bribe us. It's not a bribe. It's services after it's ordered versus the $10,000 for the record was upfront, which is an outright bribe. I haven't made an amendment. I'm just asking. The other one was called a bribe. I don't know how this one's not a bribe. So if the other one was and this one's got to be if they're paying us. This one's a commission. The other one wasn't. The guy said specifically, I want to buy the contract.

There's a little different semantics. So, and I was okay with the toy contract. So, okay, I'm done for now. Oh god. Chad, put your hand right here. I'll make a motion to sign the amendment number three to contract number 2022-21 between Homeway Home Wave LLC and K County, Missouri. Second. Thank you. All in favor? I

I Okay. Approval of medical director services agreement. This is just our annual contract with Dr. Kwood to be our medical director at the health department. No changes. It's $5,000 a year that he um gives us guidance and off on our charts and gives us standards. I'll make a motion to uh execute the independent contractor agreement with Dr. Awood.

Second. All in favor? I I I

Okay. Uh approval of siren repair with outdoor warning consulting. You like this a timely opportunity to revisit uh the outdoor warning sirens. So just a overall excuse me um review of how the sirens work. They are um batterydriven electrical uh sirens. So um when the sirens do go off, they will sound for a predetermined amount of time. But because they are battery driven, they're not designed to operate continuously. So that's why uh when we do have these severe warnings, these sirens will sound, they will shut off, and they will sound again at a predetermined time as long as the warning is still in effect. Um, if you recall two weeks ago, uh, when we had, uh, the storm system on the 17th, I believe, uh, that was an extended warning and those sirens were sounding for quite an extended period of time. Um, so after that, uh, we had our consultants go out and check each one of the siren towers to make sure that, uh, we didn't have any issues. and they found two uh minor issues at the tower in center town and the north touse tower. Now, we have to remember that when we picture these siren towers, there's multiple speakers and sirens on each tower, right? So, they're they're redundant. So, if one part of the or if one speaker fails, there's like 10 more to continue to sound the alert. So, um in each one of these towers, only one speaker needs repair. So, the towers are still functional. Um, and they did alert yesterday. Um, so, uh, just asking that to we approve this repair for $2,223

with outdoor warning consultants and that's for the replacement of one amplifier and one speaker driver. Happy to answer any questions. Are the batteries uh solar powered or uh No. Uh, we we service the batteries every year. that's uh on on grant um and we um try and get that paid for to cover, but no, they they are not on solar or any sort of background. Are the east side woodpeckers added again? Uh not that we know of. Okay. So, uh there was no woodpecker damage reported. I can't believe I have to split up here and talk about woodpeckers, but um there there was no damage reported when they went out and inspected.

Okay. I'm glad we have the battery because according to the news I guess Slater when they lost electricity their sirens stopped operating. Yeah. So, you know, I think that's why we operate on on battery powered systems that are self-contained within the the unit themselves. So, so does it take a motion to make this happen? Uh yeah, I just ask uh there's nothing to sign. It's just a quote. So, I just approve the quote with outdoor warning consultant. I'll make a motion to approve the quote with the outdoor warning consulting for $2,223 to repair the outdoor warning sirens. Second. All in favor? I I you.

It's good to have the notifications on our phone so we can go outside to see if the sirens are going off and everybody does the weather. Everybody does. It went off at 4:30 when we were leaving yesterday. Right. Right at 4:00. I was trying to take a nap. I was at the capital that must be time to get up. It was uh Okay. Approval and signing of the air gas contract. Unless you want to chest.

All right. Um so we have an oxygen tank on site at the health department for emergencies for medical emergencies in case somebody would have a reaction to the medication we're giving or vaccines. Um and our um oxygen tank is very old. um it's not holding air anymore, so we need a new one. Um and this contract would be $75 a year and then if we needed to exchange it, it would be $12. So I just ask that we approve for us to get a new oxygen tank. Okay. You got the contract?

Yeah. Make a motion to sign the contract with Air Gas. Air Gas USA. Second. All in favor? I I I Okay. Approval and signing ofU with the FBI for clinical ride along.

Morning again. Uh so last week was approached by the uh FBI field office in Kansas City. Uh they have agents both uh in the Kansas City office and I believe here locally in Jeff City that are medically trained um to help support their operations and the FBI requires them to perform um a ride along once per quarter I believe to maintain their proficiency. So um because we have done agreements uh in the past with uh folks from the uh se seven civil civil support team that's a mouthful um seems like a obvious fit and we kind of have the process already in place. So this justou outlines um that process and the responsibilities of both organizations. I'll make a motion to sign the memorandum of understanding between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the K County, Missouri Emergency Medical Service to cover the clinical ride along program. Second.

All in favor? I I

I Okay. bid award and contract signing for the 2026 asphalt overlay program. So Matt Pringer has a pre-bid meeting on the Stirbridge Road bridge project that he was not able to attend. So he uh passed it up the chain for me to do. So I get to be engineer for a little bit which is really my passion. But uh so we did open bids last Friday on asphalt and chip seal and Jefferson Asphalt was the low bidder on the asphalt and we would recommend award to them in the amount of 1,15,6734 and there's several county roads involved um out in Osage um oh not Oage but um area and then Lakewood subdivision are the primary. We got some work on Tanner Bridge and Marina Road. And then also we did work in Lman and Wesville and that's included in this contract. So anybody have any questions?

So with cost of petroleum, how much of an increase is this over last year? Last year, um, good question. I don't have that exact number. I think about five bucks a ton, give or take. We were just under a hundred, I think, last year. and we were expecting the increase. Um it's very volatile right now and so little concerned that it would be a little bit higher than that that actually. So the price is fair. We we felt are we doing the same tonnage or we don't know until we actually lay it all what

uh the tonnage um since we've shifted a little bit into preservation chip seal is the next one to award. Uh the tonnages have gone down a little bit from what we have in the past just because the funding really hasn't kept up with how much asphalt has increased and we were having to do more preservation to extend the life of our pavements. So good. All right. I'll make a motion to award base as well as a bid for the city of Lman and village of Warsville with Jefferson asphalt. Second. All in favor? I I

I got three tabs for you.

Okay. Uh bid award and contract signing for the 2026 chip seal program. So um again this is part of our our overlay program uh for the year. Chip seal is an overlay as is asphalt but it's a preservation treatment uh to extend the life of our pavements. Asphalt as you know has increased so dramatically in price that uh just simply overlaying with asphalt will get we will go behind very quickly. And so uh chip seal is the preferred method for preservation. Missouri Petroleum has been doing our work for several years and is a fantastic contractor out of the St. Louis area and um their their bid price was $499,327.12 and we recommend award to them and several roads on the list. I won't go through them all, but a lot in the Oage um city area as well as some some roads, for example, Wade Road, Miss Road, High Point, Ston are roads that have been chipped in the past. And so the preferred method is to if we catch them at the right time, we could chip them and extend that life to where we're not having to overlay uh immediately. We can extend payments quite a ways by doing that. So again, that Missouri Petroleum is the uh contractor that we would recommend award to. Any questions?

I do want to back up a little bit. I don't know if I made a motion to award the bid and sign the contract if anybody remembers for sure, but heard award for clarification. And I wanted to add Yes, I want to let me add to sign the contract for the asphalt overlay program with Jefferson Asphalt. I'll I'll second that again. Clarify. All in favor? I.

Okay. And then this time I'll make a motion to award the bas contract with BMC Enterprises DBA Desert Petroleum Products 2026 chip seal program. Second. All in favor? I I Eric, could I ask you kind of just a

general question about asphalt paving and chip and seal approach in a in a perfect situation, we take a gravel road and we pave it with asphalt. X years later, we do a chip seal to extend the life of that pavement and maybe even do that twice in some cases. Could be three or four. Three or four times.

It strictly goes off of condition rating which we do every two years and cardigraph gov um has a life cycle or not but it has a deterioration curve that it figures in. Scenario builder which we approved a few month and a half ago or so. uh integrates all that into a what we're working on a 10-year plan. So, but yes, chip seals could in and you know, realistically you could chip a road for 20 years, maybe upwards of 30 as long as we catch it at the right time.

Okay? And and the the volume of traffic and the weight, the biggest trucks will wear it out faster. the volume wears it out faster. So you can't give a you know just a oh we'll do this in x years. You have to you have to follow it.

You you back 30 years ago we overlaid every 10 to 15 years because it was cheap. You know it's not anymore and we can't do that. And so we're going off of just strictly payment rating. And you know, there's no guarantee that, hey, we're going to chip or we're going to overlay in X years now or 10 year plan. It can lay that out and and get us pretty close. But it's not going to always be that case. You know, something could change in a year or other things. And so you're always adjusting it. But with the 10-year plan, we'll be able to say, okay, this road might get a chip in in year eight or something. could could shift a little bit but not significantly once once that plan is is good and we start enacting it. But if we deviate too much then it could it causes our overall score for our whole system to go down.

Okay. And so we really stick to that plan and it's it will be very effective going forward. We have four almost 450 miles of road. We got 478 miles of roadway. 330 or so 335 are paved. Okay. So it's pretty significant system. Okay. Thank you. Yep. Thanks. Okay. New business. Accounts payable review. Ask for approval. Accounts payable pending review. Make a motion to approve accounts payable review. Second. All in favor? I

I recruiting and retention proposals from the sheriff's department. Good morning. Good morning. I have some papers for you. I don't know if you need one or not. these proposals that we already talked about.

So, basically our we're 16 people down, 11 full-time, and it's to the point where we got to start doing something again. And my proposal is to do a $2,000 pay raise to my jailers. Uh I can pay for that by actually getting rid of one of my jailer positions and using that money. The jailer position is $70,000, a little over $70,000 for a jailer position. and that's including benefits. Uh to do a $2,000 pay raise for all the other jailers, which I think is 16, it's going to cost about 38,000, but there's six vacancies, so it's not going to cost 38,000. So, I haven't worn enough money in my budget. This is just a reallocation of funds within my budget right now. Uh the second proposal is a recruitment incentive program. I'm going to use uh uh non county money. I'm going to use our barbecue funds and also funds from uh donations and going to give $50 to an employee that brings me an employee $50 gift certificate at the end of the year. We'll put their name in the hat and we'll draw and pull a $100 gift ticket for whoever whoever does that for the year. Um that is an easy one. What I can do uh but what I would like you to do is give me permission to do that countywide. I'd like to be able to do to pay any employee $50 gift certificate if they bring me an employee a viable employee. In other words, they have to be given a conditional offer of employment in order for them to receive that gift certificate. So, both of these are within my funding. So, I'm just asking for to do something different for uh my jailers and then also do something for the recruitment. Uh, I'd use some of that money, the sum of the 70,000 to increase our uh, footprint for uh, within Zimmer and KMIZ to try to get our branding and our name out there a little bit more, trying to get more people to apply.

How many jailers are we down again? Six full-time jailers. I said 11 full-time. Well, there's 11 full-time, including all everyone in the jail. If you look at the top part, it'll show you who where all were were short. Uh so it's uh I have one person in support services, uh one or I'm sorry, three people in support services, three people in patrol division, and 10 people in the uh jail. That's including full-time and part-time. Okay. I know you called me, I think it was last week, and I was kind of tied up and I forgot to call you back to kind of go over this.

That's all right. get to go through the whole proposal with you and irritate you on it. Well, you were on a high list. I didn't want to talk to you too much. I didn't want to be the cause of you falling off of it. So,

it's kind of windy, but it was all right. Um, I'm just I guess I got some questions on it and stuff and I know we briefly talked about it this morning before we came in here and the the open positions we used to help I guess I'm going to call it back fill and used to pay the overtime for existing employees. So is that going to affect that money? I mean, how much of these jailer positions do we use? Cuz if you've got these positions, we've got to use that money for the overtime. And if we eliminate this position, we're losing some of the money that we pay for the overtime for the the other deputies. And then it's going to cost us more for overtime as well with the pay increase for the

Well, well, I don't know if it's going to cost us more overtime. I'm hoping that it attracts more people and it'll reduce our overtime. Uh, that's the whole point of this. So, I'm hoping that the attracting more individuals uh will will allow us to get more staffing to where we're not burning our staff out right now. But if you have x number of jailers that you need and you eliminate one, then you don't have as many as you need. So, we got to pay overtime to

Well, and that's true point to a certain extent, but at some point we got to figure out what what am I going to do because I'm not getting the applicants now. So you have to figure out you have to increase the compensation for people to get them to to attract them to come here to work. So I don't I'm not sure. I mean we can't do nothing. We've been doing I mean we've been doing what we've been doing but doing nothing is not is not an option. We're going to have to do something and this is I think is the next viable step to to to bring more staff into my facility.

Thought we were filling some of the positions though since we were advertising it. my jail that we are uh the deputies positions are uh we're doing real well on uh I have two vacancies in patrol division. Uh but those two positions are filled with two deputies from the jail, but I can't move them out of the jail until I get more staff in the jail. So deputy wise, we're not doing bad jailers is where we're hurting and that's why I'm inc that's why I want to do a pay increase for the jailers. seems like we're throwing money at it every time and it's not making any dents in Well, I think it's making some difference, but I'm willing to I mean, if you got ideas, I'm willing to listen to them, Jeff.

This isn't I mean, this isn't new. I mean, this is we've been fighting this for three years, so uh but if anybody's got ideas on what we can do different, I'm willing to listen. But this is the next valid step for us to do to try to raise the salary to try to increase. If this step is taken, uh, we have your assurance that you won't exceed the salary line. No. Yeah. No, you have my calendar year. Yes, that's correct.

Got it. U, with respect to the proposal two, does that give our accounting staff a headache for these $50 or $100 things? And and and then another question with that is this does not allow an elected official to do the recruiting and get paid for it. Well, that would I mean if you want to put it that way. I could I'd be happy to set that program up that way. I really didn't write anything up for now for us for command staff. None of the command staff. Okay. But no, you I mean you mentioned you wish it would apply to all of you.

What I'm saying is it can't apply to elected officials. Oh, okay. That's that's my exclusion. Yes. Yeah. I'm good with that. I I think we would be in violation of the salary commission's decision of what to pay elected officials. Oh, I didn't think it that way. It's not much, but it's different. Sure. Yeah. It Now, does it give you a headache to to add 50 or 100 to the W2 for the You mean how you said you're paying them out of your barbecue fund? Yeah. It's not going to count. It won't be any county money. It won't affect anybody but us. If if we're not attaching it,

we're we're we're let's say we're in a gray territory with the Internal Revenue Service. If you're paying somebody for doing something and you don't take care of the payroll taxes, you're toying with an issue that you really don't want to go into. But I'm not going to 50 bucks is not much, but and it's not coming from the county. So, all right. Have any more questions? I talked to Jay about it and Brian Rener and they both agree that it's a good program.

Poor Brian. My internet's going to get turned off again.

So, we have two uh two votes here. one for proposal one access. We'll make a motion to adopt proposal number one. I will second discussion. Can we have add that he's not going to ask for that position to be filled? I'm good with that because it seems like we always end up we do stuff like this and then they come back and well I've got to have that person. I need this extra person. into me into refilling it again. And I'm not not just your department. I don't think I've ever done that, but I mean I'll take it off my org chart. So I mean once it's off my organizational chart,

we've added several and you're also department. So I've never given up a position before. So this is the first time I've ever done this. But that's the extreme that we're at right now. Any other discussion? Hearing none. I will call for question. All in favor? I I Okay. Make a motion to adopt proposal.

No, I won't let you guys do this. I might make a motion to adopt proposal number two as presented. Um, actually what I'm asking for you guys is to include the county employees. That proposal is I could do something like that uh quite frankly without coming to you because it's all internal, but I would rather go and let county employees be able to bring these people too. That's not part of that proposal. Okay. Then I will change my motion to adopt proposal number two to include county employees for the proposed gift. Is that right?

Excluding electrician. Excluding Harry excluding elected officials. All right. I will second discussion hearing none. All in favor? I I opposed. No. Okay, Jeff. Oh, oops. God. Uh, okay. Uh, 2026-2027 DSSF grant application.

So, this is the application we did last year. This is the same one. The difference is last year we got a $2,000 increase for all my postcertified deputies. Uh this one raises it up to 3,000. It's an extra $1,000. It'll start July one. Thank you. Make a motion to s sign the grant application for the DSSF culture office. Second. All in favor? I I thank you. Thank you, Sheriff. Approval of IGT payment to Missouri health net.

This is the uh intergovernmental transfer of the nonfederal share for our GMT uh cost recovery program. uh we need to make payment uh in the amount of $178,731.92 in order to receive our reimbursement through the program. So just asking that we approve that today so Jay and his staff can work on getting that accomplished. Just laughing. It sounds funny. We got to pay money to get reimburse. I did this. What was the amount again? Uh 1 thou $178,731.92.

I'll make a motion to approve the IGT payment to Missouri health net for $178,731.9. Second. All in favor? I I thank you. Okay. Unfinished business. Senior tax freeze update. I see our collector is here. Would you like to give an update? We got our chairwoman. Oh, Lexi. Chairwoman. Lexi. Both of us. Say bossy. I think that's an indication that neither one of us wants to.

Don't get in line of all the other people have not volunteered. Um, we are taking online for the renewals and the new already. Uh, again, our plan is to start next Wednesday, the 6th, with doing in-person help from 10 to 2 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Uh, the IT department's already got some computers that they brought up here and set up to test everything out. And I think and Lexi's been working on a schedule for for help at least for the first week. Our our plan right now is to to hire three uh high school students to come in and and help after they get out of school for the year. We'll probably use two of them up here and one down in the collector's office uh help with that process. And we have both Gan and Linda coming back that helped us last year with the new application. So, I think we're in pretty good shape. Uh but we are taking applications daily uh online from for the renewals and the new process. I think there's a lot more people this year that are using the online for signing up for the first time. Uh we just want to be sure that you know people are aware that they need to get this done this year. Uh because 2027 will be a reassessment year. really anybody that signed up in 25 or signs up in 26 frozen at at what that what they paid in 25 or 26. 27 is almost guaranteed to be an increase because it's a reassessment year. And the assessor is doing countywide reassessment. So that should affect every residential property in in the county for next year. So, any questions?

Concerns. We're doing this till June 3rd. We're the registration right now. That's what we're we're saying. June 30th is a cut off date. We we'll see how things go, but but the plan for right now is June 30th. Were you uh keeping a running total of authorized senior freezes? In other words, there were was there 5,000 from last year. There was 5,169 or something like that last year.

And so that's that's growing incrementally as we speak. Are you keeping a record just a running co? Well, we will by year, but we haven't started processing anything for for new 2026. We're working on the renewals right now, but we haven't started processing any new online renewals. Not not renewals, but online new ones. I I keep an account. Yeah, we are we do are doing new ones online and we have received several. You're finding old geysers like you and me can get it online and do that thing. I would prefer to say we're finding old geysers like you

and me and Sam. Unfortunately, we can't include Jeff in that. So, I'm trying to catch you all. We're just He's just a birthday. He He's just a geyzer.

So, this isn't necessarily a question for you. I think it's going to kind of be for us too on the renewals. At some point, we need to look at if we're going to even require them to sign that nothing's changed or if we go in there and just make sure nobody's died or or you know, how we can look at doing that because I know I've had questions about that. You know, why do they even have to sign a car? That's my been my only saving grace is that I'm just saying that you're signing that nothing has changed and we're looking at how we could achieve that, but it's not as simple as I mean there's even some cost to that. You have to be able to track changes in ownership of the of properties and we've had several of those already where people sold their house and bought a new house.

Yeah. Uh, and then that makes them have to start the process over again. Uh, and then we we haven't I haven't talked to the health department yet, but if there's a way for us to be able to verify deaths or get copies of death certificates or notifications, I mean, it may never go away. I mean, you're pretty much always having to sign a sheet on your property tax assessment that says, "Hey, nothing's changed."

And the renewal process is about as simple as it can be. I mean, anybody that that has seen the renewal application, I think there's three questions on it and you sign it and mail it in. So, u but we have to have a way to get that information and that's been the big key for several counties, you know, that are that did away with it. They're paying, for instance, the Department of Health to get death certificates on a monthly basis. uh and they're having to make some type of arrangements to get changing ownerships. So th those are the two things we need to figure out. Hopefully we'll have that in in done in time for 2027 so that we won't have to do renewal applications,

but it may not go away. You have some that will will put their house in their children's names. We'll have some that will go to retirement communities. I mean tracking all that is is again that's the issue with renewals. Yeah,

Larry on the the property tax bill going forward. Will will it have notice that they're at frozen at the 26 level? Will will a resident be able to verify when they receive their bill that everything is in place for them? It's actually on all the 2025 bills. Okay. So, it it shows on there what their tax would be without the credit, how much the credit is, and what their tax is going to be. Okay. Okay. Anything else?

In the rare instance where the value decreased, they would get the decrease. Then it's not really frozen. It's just frozen from going up. It's frozen from going up. Yes.

Will be rare. It might be available. Well, I mean, there's instances where, you know, there's a fire in a house or something like that and the assessor uh reassesses based on that,

then it could go down. But overall, it's unlikely that properties are going to go down since they've never really gone up over the year. So, so technically though, you freeze it at the following year's assessment when it goes down. So, it was frozen the year before. So, it kind of is frozen from going up. But if it goes up, you're freezing it at the new new assessed rate.

Well, well, if a house is damaged, if the house is damaged and it and the value goes down, they're going to pay based on that lower value, but you're going to come in that year and sign a new freeze agreement that didn't freeze it the year before. It's just saying you're wanting to keep it frozen as a new as a new signer or as a renewal. as a renewal. Well, as a it would stay it they sign the renewal, it would stay low until that property is rebuilt. Then it would go back their seats or their positions. Sorry. Cuz that would be considered an improvement in betterment to the property.

Pi I think pi I was just looking at it. If you come in and you do a renewal, just don't do the renewal if your property goes down. So never mind. What do you move on? The sheriff didn't wear me down enough with his argument, so it's sit. Thank you. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. I'll send Janice up here next time.

Okay. Uh discussion on public works central maintenance shop expansion. So, we discussed last week and and you asked that I go back and and look at financing options for this. And so, we've done that. We discussed with our team and came up with a a proposal. And and I'll say that, you know, our our facility as as we all know, it's very old, but we're we're we do a good job taking care of it the best we can. And our team is is looking at long-term, you know, plans for that for that campus. And ultimately we do need to build a new you know office type building and truck parking but made the decision here within the past few years that that is not the most important part of what we need to be doing. Uh at a later date when the time comes yes that's important but right now we need to focus on doing everything we can to take care of our equipment and which ultimately takes care of our roads and bridges. that's our utmost uh responsibility and and do the best that we can and so we need to provide the best opportunity to do that and so shifted our focus to uh an expansion of our of our building as it is now to expand central maintenance. Now we did open up um the public works maintenance shop to central maintenance with a goal at some point in the future to expand to other county departments. Right now we're doing the county departments other than the sheriff and the EMS. So ultimately the goal is to expand the sheriff at EMS whenever that uh time comes if if that's the the ultimate goal of the county. U but we still have a a big need to expand our

shop as it is now. It's it's dated. It's wasn't originally set up as a mechanic shop. It's got its deficiencies and space-wise we're maxed out. And so the focus is to expand that, expand it in a way that can add other departments and also build our wash bay. And so came back last week and looked at, you know, how can how can we do this? uh sent you a plan um earlier or or last week that included uh some sales tax funds of the 15% side, also possibly some GR and then Roaden Bridge contingency and then shifting some of the cost of the project into the Roaden Bridge 2027 budget. And so I talked with the auditor and and he suggested that u we not use GR for this just focus on the sales tax and then our plan for uh using our road bridge fund and uh next year's budget. And so what I got what I sent you is a is a a changed proposal which would include um 1,650,000 out of the 15% side of the sales tax. uh 500 out of the road and bridge contingency and then also uh shifting 150,000 uh of the project to next year's budget and that's concrete flat work which has to be done next year anyway and some of that is actually just repairing some of the area around the shop anyway that we just added to the project uh because it was convenient to do it all at once and so um with that would like some input or some comments from the commission or questions I will say that in our in our contingency uh using $500,000 there, uh we do have $170,000 in salt that will not get used this year. We we're maxed out on our um storage of salt right now, so we don't need any more. Uh this year was maybe a little lighter uh than in the past, but

we've seen trims go to where our salt usage has not been what it has been. uh 5 10 years ago we were budgeting upwards of $400,000 in salt and now we're down closer to 200. So uh quite a bit of savings there. So any questions or or comments? I think it did a good job. Okay.

Yeah. I think we're again the project it's ready to bid out uh as soon as the commission gives us go ahead. Of course we'll have to receive bids and see where they come in and analyze it from there to make the decision moving forward. But I think we got a really good plan and ultimately the project in of itself is much needed and it's important and the time to do it now and uh we think we can get the best price now. Um again prices will just keep on going up if we wait. So thought you said you were going to bid it anyway. No, I wasn't going to bid until I got approval.

Last week you said I'm going to bid it anyway. And so I thought okay well bid. Let's see where they come in at. But either way, you know, I'm going to go back and listen to that meeting now. Go listen to it. I I I specifically did not want to bid it until I got the authority from the commission to do so. Anybody else remember that, too? I think you're the only one. Challenge accepted. Okay. Okay. Let me know. I'm not okay in anything, but I think if you want to take go ahead and take it out to bid and let's see where we end up at.

I will make a motion to proceed with authorize Eric as director of public works to proceed towards the bidding of the county public works facility. Second. Any other discussion? All in favor? I. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very. Okay. We have breezed through that. If there is nothing else to come before us and I would entertain a motion to go into close

pursuant to section 610.021 021 of the revised statutes of Missouri. The commission will go into close session to discuss the following responses to bid and negotiated contracts under subsection 12. Personnel issues under subsection 13. Second roll call, please. Sam, yes. Harry, yes. Jeff, yes.