County Board - Regular Meeting

called in board meeting to order. The clerk would please call the roll.

Posler.

Posler here.

Posler here. Ritt.

Ritt here.

Ritt here. Rylander. Rylander here. Rylander here. Smith.

Smith here.

Smith here. Trucios. Trucios here. Trucios here. Veldren. Veldren.

Indicated he would be late.

Okay. Wegleitner. Here. Wegleitner here. Welsh.

Welsh here.

Welsh here. Yang. Yang here, Andre. Andre here, Baruchuk. Baruchuk here, Blazewitz. Blazewitz here, Boettcher. Boettcher here, Bollig. Bollig here, Brandmeier. Brandmeier absent, Brouwer. Brouwer here, Chavala. Chavala here, Dantzler. Dantzler here. Dantzler here, Doolin. Doolin here. Doolin here, Downing. Downing here, Eicher. Eicher. Engelberger. Engelberger here, Erickson. Erickson here, Freeze. Freeze here, Furman. Furman here. Furman here, Glazer. Glazer absent, Gray. Gray here. Gray here, Heuselman.

Heuselman here.

Heuselman here, Jackson. Jackson here, Kemp. Kemp. Kemp absent, Crowning. Crowning here, Larson.

Larson here.

Larson here, Lewis. Louis here, Marin. Marin here, Obese. Obese here, Peterson. Peterson here. Peterson here, Miles. Miles here. Miles here, we have a quorum.

The quorum being present, we shall move on to the inspirational message this evening provided by Supervisor Pasler.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good evening, colleagues. The world we live in is a crazy place, and tuning into the national news can be downright depressing. So when I look for inspiration, I need to look no further than our shared accomplishments, the work that lies ahead, and the power of community. Community is not just the place that we live, it's the promise that we make to one another. It's the understanding that no matter what our background, our politics, our differences, we are connected by shared streets, shared schools, shared parks, and shared hopes for our future. Community is built when neighbors choose cooperation over division and service over self-interest. That is the true purpose of local government. Local government is where democracy becomes real. It is not distant or abstract. It's the snowplow clearing the road before sunrise. It's the firefighter answering the call. It's the teacher, the public works crew, the librarian, the volunteer, and the elected official sitting in a long meeting because they care deeply about the people that they serve. Here, democracy is not measured only by elections. It's measured by participation, by listening, by showing up, by working through disagreements with respect and determination, and most importantly, by recognizing that progress happens through partnership. No community succeeds alone. Cities, villages, towns, counties, businesses, nonprofits, and residents all have a role to play. When we collaborate, we multiply our impact. We create stronger neighborhoods, safer communities, better opportunities for families, and a future that reflects our shared values instead of our individual interests. And while budgets, policies, and projects do matter, the most important thing that we build is legacy. Just to be clear, legacy is not about recognition. It's what remains because we chose to serve. It's the park that a child will play in decades from now. The farmland preserved for future generations to till. The affordable home that gives a family stability and a chance. The partnerships that we form today will continue long after we are gone. Democracy is ultimately an act of faith, a faith that ordinary people working together can accomplish extraordinary things. And history shows that we can. So let us continue to lead with courage, serve with humility, and build communities worthy of generations that will follow us. And if you're so inclined, I'd like to invite you to join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance 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.

Thank you, Supervisor Passler. that we're on to special matters and announcements uh first item before us this evening is uh 2026 resolution 14 recognizing may 20 26 as asian pacific islander and desi american heritage month uh being presented this evening by supervisor yang

2026 Resolution 014, recognizing May, 2026 as Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American Heritage Month. Whereas May is designated as Asian Pacific Islander and Desi Apeta Heritage Month to recognize and celebrate the achievements and contributions, as well as acknowledge the sacrifices and lived experiences of generations of Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American people in the United States. And whereas the month of May was selected for Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American Heritage Month because Apeta people are inextricably tied to the history of the United States. With the first Japanese immigrants arriving in the US on May 7, 1843, and the first transcontinental railroad completed on May 10, 1869 with substantial contributions from Chinese immigrants. And whereas the history of Asian Americans in the United States includes exclusionary and discriminatory laws and policies, including the Chinese Exclusion Act. The first federal law to prohibit immigration based on race and nationality, which institutionalized anti-Asian discrimination and created lasting barriers to citizenship, family reunification, economic opportunity, and civic belonging for generations of Asian Americans. And whereas the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, Japanese American incarceration, when more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them US citizens, were forcibly removed from their homes and confined in internment camps, causing lasting intergenerational harm and demonstrating how racism and xenophobia have denied Asian Americans full belonging, civil rights, and equal protection under the law. And whereas Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American communities continue to experience the impacts of racism, xenophobia, violence, underrepresentation, and inequitable immigration policies, including the racial profiling, detention, and deportation of Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants, particularly members of Hmong, Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese communities, many of whom arrived in the United States as refugees and whose families have contributed significantly to the social, cultural, economic, and civic life of communities across Wisconsin and Dane County. And whereas Dane County recognizes that the detention and deportation of longtime community members and refugees undermines the values of inclusion, belonging, family unity, and pluralism that strengthens our communities and stands in support of policies and practices that uphold dignity, equity, and opportunity for all residents, regardless of national origin or immigration status. And whereas the Apeta community is an inherently diverse population, comprising more than 45 distinct ethnicities and more than 100 language dialects. And whereas Asian and Pacific Islander are terms that encompass all of the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. Micronesia, Marianas, Guam, Wake Island, Palau, Marshall Islands, Karibatu, Nauru, and the Federated States of Micronesia. And Polynesia, New Zealand, Hawaiian Islands, Rotuma, Midway Islands, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, and Easter Islands. And whereas desi is a term that refers to those of South Asian descent, a pan ethnic group of diverse people and communities rather than a nationally bounded category is one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the US. And whereas the 2026 theme, Power in Unity, Strengthening Communities Together, emphasizes the importance of leveraging collective power, storytelling, and building bridges among the APETA community to unite in common causes using innovation, resilience, hard work, connection, and belonging. And whereas APITA individuals have made significant contributions across all sectors of society, including public service, education, healthcare, business, science, technology, arts, and civic leadership. while continuing to confront challenges such as discrimination, exclusion, xenophobia, anti-Asian violence, inequitable immigration systems, and underrepresentation. And whereas Dane County values the diversity, knowledge, and experience its 181 Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American employees bring to the service they provide, THE RESIDENTS OF DANE COUNTY, AND ALSO RECOGNIZES THE APIDA MILESTONES ON THE COUNTY BOARD. AND WHEREAS, SUPERVISOR BRENDA YANG IS THE FIRST PERSON OF HONG HERITAGE TO SERVE ON THE COUNTY BOARD. AND WHEREAS, FORMER SUPERVISOR ASHOK KUMAR AND CURRENT SUPERVISOR YOGES CHAPLA ARE THE FIRST AND SECOND DESI AMERICANS, RESPECTIVELY, TO BE ELECTED TO THE COUNTY BOARD. AND WHEREAS, SUPERVISOR PATRICK MILES, AS THEY SAY, a second generation Japanese American and is the first person of color and first Asian American to serve as Dane County Board Chair. And whereas Jeff Okazaki is the first person of Asian heritage appointed as the Dane County Clerk of Courts. Now, therefore be it resolved that the Dane County Board of Supervisors recognizes May, 2026 as Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American Heritage Month. and honors the many valuable contributions and sacrifices these individuals and communities have made from the local to the national level. Be it finally resolved that the Dane County Board of Supervisors reaffirms its commitment to promoting diversity, ensuring equity, protecting immigrant and refugee communities, and fostering inclusion for all Pacific Asian Islanders and Desi American communities recognizing that Dane County is strengthened by its pluralistic and multicultural communities, and by the dignity, safety, and belonging of all people. So moved.

Moved by Yang, seconded by Chavala. All in favor of approval, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no. The motion carries, the resolution is adopted. Representative Yang, did you have a few words?

Yes.

Okay.

Good evening, Chair Miles, colleagues on the board, and members of the community. I am honored to present this resolution recognizing May 2026 as Asian Pacific Islander and Desi American Heritage Month in Dane County. This month acknowledges the many generations of Asian Pacific Islander and Desi Americans whose labor, leadership, culture, and resilience have helped shape our community, our county, our state, and our nation. And as we recognize the many contributions of APIDA communities, we should also acknowledge the many hardships and the injustices these communities have endured and continue to face. The history of APIDA communities in the United States is deeply intertwined with the history of this country itself. From the earliest Japanese immigrants surviving in the 1800s to the Chinese laborers who helped build the Transcontinental Railroad. Asian Americans have contributed to the growth and the success of this nation, even while facing exclusion, discrimination, and violence. We cannot celebrate heritage without also speaking honestly about our history. The Chinese Exclusion Act institutionalized anti-Asian discrimination into federal law. And during World War II, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly incarcerated. Most of them were US citizens, and now, Refugees from Southeast Asia, including Hmong, Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese families who came to this country due to anti-communist ideology, which resulted in the French Indochina War and subsequently the Vietnam War. These wars created displacement for Southeast Asian communities, and many still face barriers tied to inequitable immigration systems, detention and deportation. From the year 2000 to 2024, that's 24 years, 1,000 plus Southeast Asians were detained and deported back to Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. And in the year 2025 to now in less than just two years during Trump's second administration, 7,069 plus Southeast Asians have been detained and deported. Now this number is also higher because other reports are showing different numbers. So it could be up to actually 12,000 deportations because the data is skewed and it's inaccurate. Now this shows a 1,100% increase in less than two years. Detainment and deportation in the Southeast Asian community isn't something new, and this has been happening at the federal level for a long time. But what this administration is doing is incredibly inhumane, unjustified, and is a direct attack on our values and our morals as a country made of immigrants. So on average, since June of last year, on a weekly basis, I speak with at least two families that are impacted by these inhumane immigration practices. And the stories of these families are incredibly heartbreaking. And it shows the magnitude of how evil can manifest and permeate under the guise of executive leadership. Yet through every challenge, APIDA communities have continued to build, organize, lead, and serve. In APIDA history in our country, though it is dark, shameful, and incredibly inhumane, it is also important to note that these traumas and these tragedies do not define us and our community. here in Dane County. APEDA residents and employees strengthen every part of public life, education, healthcare, small businesses, public service, technology, the arts, and civic leadership. And this resolution recognizes important milestones in our county board history, and it speaks to the volumes of the values that we want to instill in our county. From me being the first descendant on the board to Supervisor Yogesh Chawla, to being the first Desi American selected on the board, to Chair Patrick Miles being the first Asian American, first person of color to serve as a county board chair. They reflect not only individual achievements, but also the growing strength and visibility of communities that have too often been overlooked. So as we celebrate this month, we also reaffirm our responsibility to stand against racism, xenophobia, anti-Asian hate that is on the rise, and policies that strip families and communities apart through inhumane immigration practices. that by acknowledging these atrocities that are happening in real time, we reaffirm our commitment to building stronger equity, inclusive practices, bringing dignity and belonging for all people. So Dane County, I believe, is stronger because of its pluralistic and multicultural communities. And we are stronger when every resident feels seen, valued, safe, and able to fully participate in civic engagement. Thank you. Now, I have invited members of the nonprofit organization.

Actually, Supervisor Yang, before we invite our guests, Supervisor Chava is on the board, wishing to say a couple words.

Sure. Thanks, Chair Miles. And thanks, Supervisor Yang, for your eloquent and inspirational words. I've always been a little sheepish about these resolutions, where we're honoring our cultures and where we're talking about being the first to do something, or in my case, the second to do it. I always thought what is always most important is to be the first to do something well. And what we all bring is our experiences and perspectives. And when we put those together, we're always informing for better outcomes. And I was thinking that over and that was a real 2008 to 2016 mentality, which was changed quite a bit in 2016 and that was reaffirmed starkly in 2024. And April 23rd this year, you know, you hear a lot of stuff that's posted to Truth Social or that's shared, and A, you brush it off. You know, 49% of Asian Americans in the diaspora have experienced some kind of hate crime or hate speech or some situation, you just shrug it off. But, you know, reading what was written, a baby here, a baby born here becomes an instant citizen. And then they bring their entire family in from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet. They're not like the American European Americans of today and their ancestors. I think about that a lot because, you know, my mom was pregnant. She came here. She's like, Oh, son, I want you to be president. And like, You're born in America, and just hearing that, there's this visceral rejection that you feel. And it's something really hard to put into words. And that visceral rejection always leads to what I call radical assimilation, you know? I always try to understand people, and I always try to say I must have something in common with some person I intensely dislike. You know, Kash Patel, he says Sundays are for God, beer, and hockey. I could do the beer and football part of that, and that's both of us doing radical assimilation when we think of Nikki Haley, when we think of Bobby Jindal, when we think of Ro Khanna. We all change our names, we all do things to be more American so we can fit in here. And I'm the most guilty of that, you know, dressing American, talking American, adopting American culture. So today I wanted to look at this resolution and think about a concept that's hard for a lot of our people to think about. And it's this concept of pride. just being satisfied with yourself, being satisfied with your people, being not embarrassed to be seen with your parents in public, or if you're hanging out with a lot of brown people, to just lean into it, to be happy about it. So when I was picking my outfit, first of all, all my dress shirts are too tight, and it's gonna be a long night, so I was figuring I'd wear some pajamas, but I was thinking like, you know, when I was first elected here, like my mom and dad, they flew here. They're old. They made like the chorus for everyone. It was a very special occasion. And later today, I'll be sitting on the dais. And instead of a tie and suspenders, I thought it might be cool if I sent my a picture to my mom and dad of me and our traditional clothing. So thank you.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Supervisor Chavez. Supervisor Ng, do you want to introduce our guests?

Sure. I have invited with us here today members of the nonprofit organization Amazion to speak on behalf of this resolution. And Amazion is a nonprofit organization in Dane County that seeks to celebrate and uplift Asian communities by creating spaces where people can find true belonging and connection. It is the resource hub for all things Asian in Dane County through linking community members with resources, opportunities, and promising relationships. Through their cultural events, their programs, and their podcasts, the Amazion Exchange, they honor and amplify the people and the voices that make the AAPI community vibrant. And we have with us tonight, Anne-Marie, can you stand? This is Anne-Marie Malachowski, who is the president of Amazion. And then we also have with us Sadie Minobi, who is the vice president. Yes, please stand. Vice president and treasurer. And then we also have May La Rosa, who is the director of legal compliance. And Anne Marie, I'd like to invite you to come and say a few words. Thank you.

Wow. Well, I have to admit, I'm a little nervous, but as soon as I heard that opening quote about community, I kind of settled down because just hearing you speak, I understood this is a welcoming environment. And I think one of our biggest things that we believe in at Amazion is that we're better and stronger together, and that's what makes community. I'm pretty emotional being up here. This is a great honor. I'm a Taiwan adoptee, Wisconsin native, and so searching for my roots and kind of trying to understand the background of where I came from, kind of embarked on a heritage trip back to Taiwan to experience what that was like. And so just listening to Brenda speak and in the back there, you know, about being seen and being afraid to be seen when i was in my community it was very special to look like everybody else and it was a sense of community i never understood and so through that i was empowered to get more involved here in madison and so through that i found amazion our founder is also an adopter adoptee so it was a great connection there, and then meeting our board. We really collectively have come together. So we're a new leadership team at Amazion, and like Brenda was saying, we really strive to be, and we are, not strive, we are proud to be a central resource for Asian Americans here in Dane County. as a collective because we are better and stronger together. So that is really what we're trying to build and provide resources for folks, whether it's how do they find a lawyer, how do they find a food bank with culture-appropriate food, or hey, where do they find K-pop dancers for this cultural event? It's really a gambit. Yes, exactly. And since we, as Brenda emphasized, we are such a rich and diverse community, it really takes all of us within this nonprofit to make it amazing, honestly. So it's not just me, it's not just Sadie, it's not just Mae, it's all of us as a community. We have to continue to support one another. So we're extremely honored and we want to continue with our programs. And Brenda said with our podcast, you know, we're going to continue to promote and emphasize our community and try to uplift them by making us more present because we deserve to be seen and we deserve to be heard. I spent a long time not understanding these things because when I grew up, there wasn't the internet, so I didn't understand that anyone that was Asian could sing, because I can't, until American Idol came out. So, yeah. But so, I mean, through these experiences and talking about all of this, this is what has helped us build Amazin, and we're going to continue to grow and see how we can continue to support Asian Americans here in Dane County because we need it. But thank you so much for having us, and truly, deeply honored. Thank you.

applause

And next up we have. 2026 resolution 19 recognizing June 15th, 2026 as World Elder Abuse Day in Dane County. Reading the resolution this evening is Supervisor Downing.

Welcome, go ahead. Well, thank you chair miles. Yes, I'm here to present Resolution 19 of 2026, recognizing June 15th, 2026 as World Elder Abuse Awareness Day in Dane County, courtesy of the Adult Protective Services Division. Whereas adults age 65 and older compromise 18% of the total population of the United States. And research has indicated that at least 10% of adults age 65 and older will experience some sort of elder abuse in a given year. And older adults deserve to be treated with respect and dignity to enable them to serve as leaders, mentors, volunteers, and vital participating members in our communities. In 2006, the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, in support of the United Nations International Plan of Action, proclaimed a day to recognize the significance of elder abuse as a public health and human rights issue. 2026 also marks the 20th anniversary of annual World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. Its recognition will promote a better understanding of abuse and neglect of older adults. In 2025, there were 505 reports of elder abuse investigated in Dane County. And knowing there are many more situations of abuse to our vulnerable adults that go unreported, Dane County recognizes the importance of taking action to raise awareness, prevent, and address elder abuse. In 2026, the United States reached a record high life expectancy of 79 years for a child born in 2024. As currently, approximately one in 25 Americans are over the age of 80. We are presented with an opportunity to think about our collective needs and future as a nation with a population projected to live longer. Ageism and social isolation are major causes of elder abuse in the United States. It's up to all of us to ensure the proper social structures exist so people can retain community and societal connections, reducing the likelihood of abuse. Preventing abuse of older adults through maintaining and improving social supports like senior centers, human services, and transportation will allow everyone to continue to live as independently as possible and contribute to the life and vibrancy of our communities. Despite the dedicated efforts of the Dane County District Attorney's Office and local law enforcement to pursue justice and address elder abuse, our community must continue to work toward greater awareness, outreach prevention, and support services so that older adults can live free from abuse. Now, therefore, let it be resolved that Dane County urges all residents to honor, protect, and advocate for older adults in pursuit of a community without elder abuse. It finally resolved that the Dane County Board of Supervisors recognizes June 15th, 2026 as World Elder Abuse Awareness Day in Dane County.

So moved. Moved by Downing. Is there a second? Seconded by Erickson. Very tempted to... All in favor of approval, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Opposed, say no. The resolution is adopted. Supervisor Downing, do you have a few words? Otherwise, we do have a speaker.

I have just a few words. Okay. You know, I'm thinking that this may be Senior Appreciation Month, as a local newspaper by me just put out a section of seniors and how they can remain active. So I'm thinking that this Elder Abuse Day is simply one feature of Seniors Month. As one who has senior credentials, I simply ask that you pay attention to the seniors in your life and help keep them safe.

Thank you. And with us this evening, we have from our Dane County Adult Protective Services Program, Beth Freeman. Welcome, Beth.

Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Downing, Chair Miles, and County Board Supervisors for tonight's recognition of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day and the significance of elder abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation in our community. My name is Beth Freeman, and I am the Manager of Adult Protective Services for Dane County Human Services. World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, recognized every year on June 15, seeks to promote a better understanding of abuse of older persons by raising awareness of cultural, social, economic, and demographic processes affecting maltreatment, neglect, and financial exploitation. Locally, in cooperation with the Area Agency on Aging, Pelotary Data Destruction, and Dane County Waste and Renewables, a Shredfest and small electronics recycling event is being held on Friday, June 12th at Warner Park from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in recognition of World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. The event gives older adults and our community the opportunity to safely shred and recycle small electronics, thereby mitigating the risk of their confidential information getting into the wrong hands. In 2025, victims of financial exploitation in Dane County lost an estimated $6,136,000 with only about $751,000 able to be recovered. Excuse me. Protecting our confidential information and devices is one way we can reduce the risk of financial exploitation. Additionally, we appreciate you recognizing the important work of Dane County Adult Protective Services and our many partners who are dedicated to preventing and responding to elder abuse. These include family and friends, caregivers, financial institutions, social service providers, community businesses and organizations, healthcare professionals, and law enforcement. Lastly, thank you on behalf of all victims of abuse. As noted, last year our staff investigated over 500 reports of alleged abuse or neglect of someone over the age 60 in Dane County. Abuse is not only a violation of someone's body or bank account, but of their dignity and trust. It is vital that we know, excuse me, it is vital that they know we care and that we support the systems and services that protect them and aid in their recovery. Thank you.

Okay, next we have a presentation, EMS cardiac outcomes presentation, I believe being presented by Carrie Meyer. Is she online? Okay. So if you're ready from emergency management, along with Charles Tubbs, Director Tubbs, ready to give the presentation on this.

Yes. And thank you very much. And good evening to all of you. Thank you for this opportunity to share this important information and exciting information that's coming out of Dane County EMS services. EMS services and Dane County is saving lives. This is a total team effort. from citizens who make the call to all our first responders here in Dane County, our medical teams, and our hospitals. I want to turn it over to Carrie Meyer, our assistant director who oversees the EMS initiative here for Dane County, who will also introduce Eric Anderson, who is our data specialist in this area. But before I do that, I want to thank Dane County Executive Director Melissa Agard and to our Dane County board members for your tremendous support. And this would never be possible without your support. So thank you very much.

Thanks, Charles. As Charles said, thank you for this opportunity tonight. This next week is actually EMS week. And the theme for EMS week across the country is improving outcomes together, which is just couldn't be more perfect, honestly. for what we do here in Dane County. Dane County has had an EMS division in emergency management since 1977 when EMS was really getting its start. And again, as Charles said, that is in great thanks to the Dane County Board and the Dane County Executive and your continued support of our department and that division. Lives are truly being saved through improved outcomes because we all work so closely together. Again, improving outcomes together is the theme. In April, we had an example of system success. This is just one of the many statistics that Eric will highlight, but I want to put the person of this story in front of you. Bill is a father of three, husband, and from my experience, the sweetest swim instructor as he taught both my kids how to swim. He owns Little Strokes in Wanakee. He's 44 years old. He is all about the community. And in April, um, after dropping his kiddos off at school, he arrived home with terrible chest pain. He called, his wife called 911. When the ambulance arrived, he stepped into the rig and he collapsed on the cot. He was pulseless and was not breathing. EMS jumped into action like machines. That's what his wife said to me. It was like they were machines. She watched as they performed CPR, placed an airway, gave multiple shocks and medications. They decided quickly that he needed to be transported and would likely be a candidate for ECMO. ECMO is basically a system at our hospitals that allows the heart and lungs to be pumped outside the body so that they can figure out what's happening inside the body. The field activation of ECMO is not standard across our country. But with our system of care here in Dane County, we have worked so closely with our hospitals and we've built up trust with those hospitals through our skill sets. that it allows us to actually make this activation from the field and tell the hospital we're coming and then be ready for us to be able to go straight to cannulation. Bill had compressions for 40 minutes on his way to UW. He was shocked multiple times. He was then cannulated for ECMO. The machine took over. They were able to correct the concerns with his heart, and he came off the machine just over 24 hours later. He is now home, alive, doing well, and being dad again. When speaking to one of the paramedics that was on the call, her words were, the Dane County cardiac arrest system is amazing with all the feedback we get to better what we do. It has improved me as a provider tremendously. That feedback doesn't exist where I previously ran EMS, and it really is amazing that we get that. That feedback is Eric, who I will introduce next. He is our EMS data analytics coordinator. I'm so grateful for the opportunity that he can speak with all of you to share more about our cardiac arrest successes. He and our dedicated EMS providers, they are truly making Dane County stand above the rest when it comes to cardiac arrest care. So with that, I'm gonna pass it to Eric.

Awesome, thanks Carrie and thank everybody for your time tonight. My name is Eric Anderson, as Carrie mentioned, I'm the EMS Data Analytics Coordinator within the Department of Emergency Management. I am real quick gonna share my screen. to just highlight some of the excellent work that our field providers are doing. So the long and short of a lot of what I do is I perform a detailed analysis of every out of hospital cardiac arrest, and I give our field providers detailed and measurable feedback on how we can improve. So cardiac arrest is, in the scope of EMS, a pretty small number of the incidents that we run. But the reason that cardiac arrest is such a good indicator of system performance is that it tests every part of our system to the maximum level possible. It tests our 911 communicators on their ability to process and dispatch. It tests our responders on their partnerships before the ambulance gets there, our partnerships with health care, and then our ability to recognize success and improve moving forward. So we see this this improvement process spill into other areas like heart attacks, like strokes. And it really has been a system strengthening example for us. We didn't build this program necessarily. I'm a bit of a Bears fan, so sorry to lose half the room right there. But the Resuscitation Academy in Seattle and King County is the 85 Bears of cardiac arrest survival. So they were very gracious to invite us out and really get the ball rolling on how our program could build. So up until now, we've reviewed just over 1,800. It's actually up to 1,900 cases. And I just wanted to present some of the key takeaways for our providers and then kind of bookend that with how's it going? Where do we go next? So when it comes to resuscitation, we follow a practice called high performance CPR. Think of it like there's changing a tire on the side of the road and then there's a NASCAR pit crew stopping by to help you and they get you on the road in about two and a half seconds. That's really what we're going for. It's a coordinated. It is a high stress, but it is a repeatable and trainable skill that we move for. So when we look at. How do we perform this? We look at four key metrics where we want people focusing on these four things. We want as little time off of the chest as possible. So the faster you can do compressions on somebody, the earlier that they are defibrillated with an AED, the higher chance they have a good survival. And our job in that is making sure that we continue that good work. We keep that survival chance as high as possible. We want a chest compression fraction over 90%. Think of that as the score. We want to get at least an A on how often we're spending time on the chest, but we have to do high quality chest compressions. So we have metronomes, we have team leaders that are making sure we're not doing all of this good work and then not doing it well. We want to be professionals in this as well. And then finally, it really goes into the destination. Carrie mentioned we've got some incredible partners, the UW Health System with their ECMO program. We have a lot of resources other programs don't have. We want to make sure we're capitalizing when we get pulses back, that we're taking patients to the best possible facility. So how are we doing in all those metrics? The short answer is exceptionally well. But I put together some pretty cool graphs, and I want to give a little bit of detail on some of those. So when we look at the pauses over 10 seconds, what we really want to avoid is a lot of really, really long pauses off the chest. This isn't TV. We're not going to stand around and high five in the middle of this. We need to be focused. We need to be about a purpose of resuscitation. So we see since 2020 when this program started, we continue to excel at that goal and we see fewer cases with those prolonged pauses. Another huge success for us is meeting that chest compression fraction goal. So our goal right now is 80% of our cases are gonna meet that goal. And since 2023, we've met that goal every single year. So that's fantastic. Our providers are really listening to this feedback and taking that in for their next patients. Chest compression fraction rate. I hate to say it's a non-issue, but we're doing really, really well with this. Our providers have really been selfless in taking this feedback. I think naturally with any process, there's a little bit of a when you start measuring and you start giving feedback and it can be a little uncomfortable to hear that there are areas you can do better at, you know, your profession or your volunteerism or your passion in your free time. But this is one of those things that our providers have said. It's about what's best for the patient in every aspect of this. So we're going to use those adjuncts, use a metronome. There's an app that our county has called PulsePoint that has a built-in metronome, and I'll touch on that in just a minute. But this is really one of those areas that I'm proud to say we don't quite have 100%. I don't know that it's reasonable to say we ever will, but it feels really good seeing us that close to it. And then the same thing goes for our post-Ross 12-lead. So a 12-lead is that bunch of cables on people's chests that tells us, was this something potentially wrong with the heart? And if it is, if our providers interpret that as something that could be cardiac in origin, that changes where we might take them and then a little bit of a fun one for me it's it's fun in my mind there's a device you might have heard of called the Lucas device it's like this big tower you see in TV and it does automated compressions statistically there's no difference in outcomes you're not more likely to live if you have a machine doing your compressions as opposed to a human doing it but what does matter is how long it takes to put that device on And it's a huge safety aspect for our providers. We've been very, very lucky to even have two of them in emergency management so that we're able to provide those safe compressions for our providers. But we're seeing our field providers improve on this consistently. So again, we're going back to the chest where we're recognizing there's not a significant difference in outcomes. But if you're going to take somebody to the hospital, it's very difficult to wear a seatbelt while doing chest compressions in the ambulance. So we have this device that can improve safety. So I'd love to say that there's nothing else we can do, but that would make it really hard for me to justify continuing the program and the work that we do moving forward. So unfortunately, this is a call that's never going to go away for EMS as hard as we may try. But there are some areas that we can really excel at moving forward. The good news is we have the basics down. The things that save lives are early defibrillation, early chest compressions and advanced level care. And we've got those things down pat. The other thing we can do is really focus on our shockable rhythms. So you see if an AED is on and it says shock delivered, you hear about news stories, Kerry mentions when you defibrillate somebody, those are the patients that we have the best possible chance at a good outcome. And we have a little bit of kind of nitty gritty work that I won't bore you with the details on, but that's one of those areas we can excel at. And then once we get those pulses back, we do get pulses back quite often, but what we're really looking for is long-term survival. Getting pulses back is just the first step in that very long and arduous process for these patients. So we have to be aggressive when it comes to maintaining their pulses, maintaining their breathing and giving them the best possible chance. And just to highlight in a couple of the survivor celebrations we've had, we've celebrated 64 lives saved coming out of the pandemic. We had to condense a few years, so we had 118 and it feels really good seeing triple digits on the back of that shirt to celebrate lives saved. But I just want to close with a little bit of a synopsis on, is this working? We do a lot of work. We give a lot of feedback. It's well received. But is it making a difference? The short answer is yes. Since we started this project, 437 people have left the hospital the same person they were before this event. And that just doesn't happen. To put that into perspective, 437, I mean, Just let that number sink in. That would be every cardiac arrest for a year and a half in our county walking out of the hospital, going back to their families. The average age of those patients is 56 with a median age of 59. Now, my dad turns 65 this year. I think he's a pretty young and spry guy. I think about all the life that there's left to live and all the time that is to be given back to these survivors at 59. Our youngest survivor that we've ever had the pleasure of meeting was eight minutes old at the time of their arrest, and the oldest was 94. So this is the entire community. It's people of the community, visitors for the community. It's parents moving their kids into college. It's college students who are going for a run. This is everybody in our community, and it's everybody in our community coming together to solve the problem. And the last number I throw at you, I promise, in Dane County, I think everybody on this meeting and in this room should feel remarkably proud that as of the last year that we have outcomes from the hospitals, if you have a witnessed arrest, somebody witnesses you arrest and an AED is applied and defibrillates you, you have a 61% chance of being the same person after your hospital stay than you were before this cardiac arrest event. I mean, Better odds than a coin flip on cheating death is something that our providers have worked tirelessly to achieve. So in summary, the chain of survival in Dane County gets stronger every single year. Improving outcomes together starts at the very earliest parts of the chain of survival. It starts with family members learning CPR. Our public access to fibrillation registry, which has over 1,300 public access AEDs that our 911 call takers can guide people to. The PulsePoint app, where if you know CPR, you can be sent to those locations when CPR is needed. And it's the recognition of those successes and learning from areas that we can improve. We have our survivor celebration coming up on Friday, July 24th. I would like to extend an open invitation to any members of the board who would like to attend. I'm sure our office can get you those details. But I want to close with a quote that sticks with me. And I think it lines well with the quote. with the inspirational statement from this morning or excuse me from earlier this afternoon. Surviving an out of hospital cardiac arrest doesn't happen by accident. It's the result of a seemingly impossible number of challenges overcome only by the remarkable efforts and commitment of everyday people in our community. So I'm very happy to say that I work for and I work as a first responder in Dane County. I'm happy to be a first responder. I'm proud of our first responders, and I appreciate everybody's time tonight. So thank you.

Thank you, Eric. And with that, I assume, Carrie, you have nothing further?

Nothing further. Again, thanks for your time. Thank you to Supervisor Postler for helping us get on the agenda to share the story. And hopefully you all received that summary. And if you have further questions, Or if you have an interest in coming to our Mallards game on July 24th to celebrate the survivors, we would love to have you. We do basically a small program for 45 minutes. We have a kind of picnic lunch with the survivors and the crews and the 911 call takers that were with them during their incident. And then the survivors get to throw the first pitch. We do that annually and it's the highlight of our year to say the least. So. Please let us know if you would like more information on that. And again, thank you.

Very nice. Thank you. All right. Back to the agenda here. All right. Thank you for that. And now we're on to announcements. Anyone with an announcement? Supervisor Postler.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So on theme, I just wanted to let everybody know May is a month for the first responders. Going back in time, May 4th was International Firefighters Day. This week is currently National Police Week, and next week is National EMS Week, as we heard. So please thank a first responder for their service, and remember those who gave it all in service to our Dane County community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Engelberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to invite all of our people here, supervisors, or anybody actually, to Stoughton this weekend. We're having our annual Setnamai Festival. It's a three-day festival, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It's a weekend-long celebration of Norwegian heritage. Featuring fun activities, cultural experiences for the whole family. Come and join us for three days of amazing food, drinks, arts, music, athletic competitions, kids activities. There's a parade on Sunday. If you haven't seen the Norwegian dancers, you really need to come down and see them. It's a pretty awesome weekend. So hope to see you in Stoughton this weekend. Thank you.

Supervisor Downing.

Well, thank you chair miles. Spring has sprung and there's plenty of stuff to do on the weekends now. Including the annual spring art tour in Western Dane County, it's there will be 31 artists opening their doors to you at their individual places. Starting tomorrow through Sunday and. If you're wondering where they're located, they're all the way from Belleville up to Black Earth, and you can find out more about them by searching springarttour.com. And there you'll be able to download displays of the kind of art that these folks do. And I hope you'll... Oh, and if you want one of these in paper, if you make it to the first one, you can pick up one of these. So I hope you make it out to Western Dane County. Thank you.

Thank you.

And Supervisor Wegleitner.

Thank you, Chair Miles. I'm really excited to remind folks that this month, in fact, tomorrow and next week, Madison Rally, the USLW League team in Madison is kicking off its inaugural season at Bree Stevens Field. And it's It's really historic for a number of reasons. Bree Stevens is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. And USLW League is a pre-professional league, and it's the premier pre-professional league for women across the country. So a lot of folks who are women who are in college playing competitively can retain their eligibility and keep up their skills in the summer with a really exciting competition with 90 teams across the country in this league. So come out, support women's soccer in District 2, in Madison, at Bree Stevens. The preseason game tomorrow is at 6.30 against Chicago, and then the first season game is a week from tomorrow. Hope you'll check out the team and support their first season. Thank you.

All right. Any other announcements? One last check. If not, we're ready to move on to... Actually, I have an announcement. With the... The start of the new term and whatnot, I did not announce April birthdays last month. So last month in April, we had Supervisor Jackson, Kemp, and Rylander with birthdays, as well as our county clerk. So happy belated birthday to all of you. And in May, we have Supervisor Peterson, celebrating his birthday in this month so happy birthday to you okay I wanted to remind folks if you haven't been watching Cecily's emails and for our June 4th meeting we will have a committee of the whole that will start at 6 o'clock for our safety training That's an in-person only training. So just note, there will not be a hybrid option for that part. Of course, there will be for the county board meeting after that. Cecilie has sent out a reminder about this, but I just wanted to remind you here, just to bring it to top of mind, please fill out the orientation survey, feedback survey. So you have that in your emails. All right, with that, moving on, just want to check in. Any disclosures or abstentions? Anybody wants to announce? Supervisor Passler.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be abstaining on H4 this evening due to my dual elected role as the Village President of the Village of Dane. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Supervisor Marin.

Thank you. I'll be abstaining from voting on Item 1 under Zoning, Personal Connections. Okay.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, with that, we are ready to move on to C, approval of payments. We have before us the bills over $10,000 referred to the County Board. Is there a motion? Moved by Chavla, seconded by Posler. Discussion or questions on the bills? Hearing none, all in favor of approval of payments say aye. Opposed? Say no. All right. With that, the bills are approved for payment. That takes us to E, approval of county board minutes. We have before us the meeting minutes of April 16th and 21st. If there's no need to separate, I'll recognize a motion on that. Anyone? Moved by Engelberger, seconded by Erickson to approve the minutes. Any corrections, discussion on meeting minutes? Hearing none, all in favor of approval of the minutes, say aye. Aye. I would say no. Motion carries. Minutes are approved. So we're on to consent calendar. We do have registrants wishing to speak on item 14, so I will be separating that. Are there any other requests for separation? So we're going to say we're going there.

I think, Chair, I'd just like to be recorded as voting no on F-16.

All right, I'd like to know on F-16, anyone else on any requests for separation? Okay, hearing no requests for separation of any other items, excuse me, let me get over to, let me make sure there aren't any registrants on any of the other items wishing to speak. Okay, there being no other registrants wishing to speak on other items under consent calendar, those will, what is before us on the balance of the items are committee actions, so all in favor of approval of items F1 through 13 and 15 through 18, say aye. opposed to say no. That motion carries. And so we shall move on to item 14. And I am going to ask Vice Chair Chavala to come up and facilitate this portion of the meeting, please.

Come here.

This is our list of public comment people right here.

Yeah. So you can just go down the line. OK. OK. And then when it gets to board debate, watch here for speakers. OK.

Perfect, OK, so we're going to start off with our public comment on items on F 14. We have a number of people on zoom and a number of people in person. So why don't we start with Ron Larson on zoom? And can we unmute Ron and Ron? You will have five minutes to address the board and I will be keeping time and I'll give you a little warning when we get close. We don't have Ron. Okay, do we have Brian Tushar online? Brian is not online. Okay, if any of those folks join a little later on, we will make sure to get them in the queue. We have Matt Chunky in person here. All right, Matt, you could use either side and you'll have five minutes to address the board.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Matt Schenke. I'm village administrator for the village of McFarland. I'm speaking tonight in opposition to 2025 resolution 435, asking that the county board remove this item from the consent agenda, discuss its proposed merits, and delay action. The resolution before you will authorize the purchase of 165 acres of land in the town of Dunn at a cost of $6.41 million in an effort to protect this land. It also approves debt service for an additional 20 years likely paid by taxpayers, encumbers the property in a conservation easement that you have not reviewed nor will approve, and sends it to a closing that has had little public discourse over the course of the last month. There is no plan presently for the use of this property, but it also suggests that the land would be donated to the Ho-Chunk Nation. Protection of this land and preserving the heritage of the Ho-Chunk Nation is very important to the village. We strive for the same objectives. The land in question, though, is already protected through a cooperative plan that the village and the town of Dunn have worked on and has existed in excess of 20 years. It is true cooperative plans are not forever, but it affords another 10 years of protection within this area to bring all partners present to the table to discuss its future. Most of these areas as wetlands or otherwise contain Native American burial mounds are already protected. True planning and partnership is what's needed here, not dissimilar to what the town and village have completed just this last year. Unfortunately, Dane County appears not to think partnerships of this nature are important, and only its voice matters within this purchase because it thinks it can afford it. The village had to inquire on this topic only to be told by our elected representative that the county was not actively pursuing this purchase, and then were promptly forgotten. Neither the executive or representative nor the staff thinks any of these constituents are important leading up to this decision tonight. This is unfortunate. The village and the work it's done with the town to form a cooperative plan has been largely ignored to achieve a vision that does not exist. There is no plan. The purchase also is a luxury, and one that the county itself cannot afford based on all the rhetoric it continues to feed the public about the current state of affairs. Acquiring this property today only benefits the property owner, who is being paid a premium to part ways with it, especially, again, when this land is already protected. There is ample time to plan for its future. and that is a wonderful opportunity that it presents through collaboration. Why, though, there instead are private negotiations happening, leading to a fast-track county board decision within the last month, I hope you can sympathize with our frustrations, since none of this matters to those charged to represent us, and as a result, we are simply forgotten, having to go to these lengths to be heard. Yes, there may be a time to purchase for this to be purchased to be publicly owned. Ownership by the Ho-Chunk Nation is an honorable idea. Preservation of the wetlands and shoreline is a wise choice. The time is not now, the expense is too great, and there is more work yet to be done. Please table this action until those efforts can be achieved for everyone's benefit, not just a select few who stand to benefit. Cooperation over division. Thank you.

Thanks for your comments. Do we have any questions for the speaker? Supervisor Baruchuk. Thank you, Mr. Westion.

So what was your position in McFarland?

At the present, the options of support or oppose.

Sorry, what's your title in the village?

All right, village administrator. Is that an elected position? I'm an appointed official. Thank you, no further questions.

Thanks, Supervisor Baruchuk. Do we have any other questions? I don't see any on the board. Thank you for your testimony. Appreciate it. OK. Up next, we have George Corrigan, who is on Zoom. Once you're unmuted, you'll have five minutes to address the board. And I see George there. Is George unmuted?

Hello.

OK. George, welcome. Thank you for hearing.

Hi, my name is George Corrigan. I'm a current resident of the town of Dunn and a former resident of the village of McFarland. I strongly support the preservation of this land. I don't think I need to speak to the ecological and cultural value of the land. I'm sure staff and others with expertise have addressed that better than I can. But I would like to speak about speak about it from the perspective of a local resident. The land has been in this particular owner's family for decades. For 20 years, the cooperative agreements between McFarland and Dunn limited their options on what they could do with the land. And now a new 10 year agreement will limit those options for another 10 years. Nonetheless, the owner who's getting up there in age has found a way to realize the value of this land while he is still alive. and he did so in a way that allows others to enjoy that land forever, forever. It is his choice to sell, and neither the village nor the town should stand in his way. He cannot change the terms of the cooperative agreement between McFarland and Dunn, and they should not be able to stop him from selling. The agreement continues to apply when ownership changes. Nothing in his sale would change the ownership, would change the agreement between Dunn and McFarland. This is a sale by a private entity who has chosen this manner in time to sell. Please let that sale go through. And finally, I want to touch on the price. That is a fair price. Another effort to preserve land a few miles away between a private owner and a nonprofit has a negotiated price of over $115,000 an acre. That compares to this land of $38,000. That land is zoned NRC, and it's hundreds of feet from Lake Higanza. It has no shoreline. The land in question today has shorelines. An independent appraisal of this other parcel put the value very close to the negotiated price of over $115,000 an acre. The about $38,000 for this land is very fair when you compare it to the comparable land. Thank you.

Thanks for your testimony, George. Do we have any questions for the speaker? Okay, not seeing any. Up next, we have Tony Abadi in person. And Tony, you will have five minutes to address the board.

uh hang on a second we got to get your mic yep okay you're good okay uh good evening everybody i wanted to uh thank you for the opportunity to speak on this uh resolution so my name is tony abate i am the senior director of conservation for groundswell conservancy a local non-profit land protection organization based in madison serving dane county and the seven surrounding counties So on behalf of Groundswell Conservancy, I'm here to express our enthusiastic support for the acquisition of the approximately 165 acre Harrell property in the town of Dunn. This project represents or will represent a landmark achievement in public-private partnership, protecting a landscape of immense ecological value and profound cultural significance. Groundswell Conservancy has been deeply committed to the protection of this specific property for nearly a decade. Our staff first visited the property on June 30, 2016, to investigate its conservation and cultural value. We were accompanied by then-retired state archaeologist Bob Birmingham, who was struck by the condition of the mounds, noting that, quote, the crossed linear mounds were likely the only ones left in the Midwest, possibly the world, end quote. So then in January 2017, we contracted an archaeological review by Red Gates Archaeology to formally document this cultural heritage. The resulting report confirmed that the Harrell property contains 11 linear and conical burial mounds, including the rare crossed linear mounds, along with ho-chunk corn hills, garden beds, and evidence of both woodland and multi-component villages. We also learned that several bird-shaped effigy and burial mounds had already been destroyed by farming and development. These findings opened our eyes to the fact that these 165 acres are not merely a natural landscape, but a critical repository of Ho-Chunk history and tradition. The opportunity to protect such vulnerable ancestral lands is exceedingly rare as the Madison Metro area expands. Following this discovery, Groundswell began the delicate process of gauging interest from the Ho-Chunk Nation to ensure that our conservation efforts aligned with the nation's goals for cultural preservation. This partnership was nurtured through years of direct engagement, including several site visits with Ho-Chunk staff and legislators. The strength of this relationship culminated in November, 2025, when Groundswell staff and landowner Stuart Harrow presented the project directly to Ho-Chunk Nation's land development team, securing their formal support for long-term ownership. The Harrow property is a crown jewel within the Lower Mud Lake Natural Resource Area. This land features nearly a mile of shoreline, including approximately 2,500 feet of Yajara River frontage and 2,700 feet along Lower Mud Lake. These riparian zones act as a natural filter, protecting the water quality of the Yajara chain of lakes. Over 62 acres of the property are vital wetland systems, including emergent marsh, wet meadow, and shrub kar. These areas provide essential breeding and migratory grounds for waterfowl and are a key component of the Lower Mud Lake Natural Resource Area. Beyond the water's edge, the property rises into a blend of mesic forests, tall grass prairie, and oak woodlands. These uplands provide a sanctuary for wildlife in an area of Dane County that is seeing rapidly accelerating loss of natural space due to that metro expansion. The permanent protection of the Herald property ensures that this exceptional landscape will remain a significant public asset for the residents of Dane County. While the Ho-Chunk Nation will own and manage the land to preserve its deep cultural heritage, the partnership is structured to ensure that the property remains open to all members of the public for recreational and educational use, similar to the nation's Kickapoo Valley Reserve in southwestern Wisconsin. The critical funding provided by Dane County through this resolution makes this project possible. While all partners have spent years building the foundation for this project. 20 seconds. Gotcha. The current funding environment has made it increasingly difficult to secure the necessary capital through traditional channels. The Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program, the state's primary fund for this kind of acquisition, was left out of the most recent state budget, and federal grants will become increasingly volatile. Without the county's intervention, this property will likely not be protected. I'm gonna skip to my last paragraph here.

Okay, you just, if you could wrap it up, you just have five minutes.

This acquisition is a once in a generation opportunity to protect the landscape where natural beauty and deep human history are inextricably linked. By authorizing this purchase, Dane County is securing a vital ecological buffer for our watershed and taking a profound step toward cultural reconciliation. We are proud to have helped lay the groundwork for this moment over the last decade. We urge you for your full support of this resolution to ensure that this place IS PRESERVED FOR ALL. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, TONY. DO WE HAVE ANY QUESTIONS FOR THE SPEAKER? OKAY. I'M NOT SEEING ANY QUESTIONS FOR THE SPEAKER. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. OUR NEXT REGISTRANT IS KELVIN DEWITT. IS KELVIN IN THE ROOM? ALL RIGHT. KELVIN. YES. AND YOU'LL HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO ADDRESS THE BOARD.

ALL RIGHT. AND IS THIS SPEAKER WORKING FOR YOU?

YEP. YEP.

Okay, let's see. May I put it up a little higher? Sure. Is that a little better? Adjust it as you do. If there's a big crash, just jump. That was a terrific... commentary from Tony, with which I agree fully. So as a wetland scientist, a professor of environmental studies and environmental science, and a wetland ecologist, I'd like to address it more from that angle, but with the support of what Tony has just said. Dane County added the lower mud lake area to the Dane County Parks and Open Space Plan and Natural Resource Protection already in 1991. And in 1994, when this plan was published three years later, it reported that residents and local officials of the Town of Dunn and the Village of McFarland suggested making Lower Mud Lake a resource protection project. Describing it as a major wetland along the O'Hara River, the plan proclaims it to be a significant environmental feature on the main waterway in Lane County. The plan emphasizes that the purpose of resource protection is to identify is to identify major natural resources and historical features which are desirable as permanent open space. And not only that, institutes and preservation programs dedicated to long-term acquisition of land of rights from willing sellers as the land becomes available for development over the years. In 1994, the Dane County Board of Supervisors, this board, adopted the Lower Mud Lake Resource Protection Plan as part of the County Parks and Open Space Plan. The main objective of this plan that you passed was to create and preserve along the O'Hara River and Lower Mudd Lake for the purpose of to preserve and restore natural resources, preserve wetland flood plains, springs, and related features, protect water quality along the O'Hara chain of lakes, provide and protect natural habitat for fish, water, life, and wildlife.

Cal, do you want to be a little careful? Your papers are like hitting the mic a little, and it makes a little feedback.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Continue, please. And then finally, to preserve archaeological and historic resource sites. The plan is available on the internet, and all you need to do is to access Lower Mud Lake Open Space Preservation Plan. It's been there since 1994. And it's preceded by the action of 1991. I've been watching this for years. I'm a wetland scientist. And I think this is a treasure on the landscape. I think it rightfully should shape the Ho-Chunk Nation and make sure that they stay to their native values and not have a casino there instead. I realized that that was the first reaction I got from some people. No, that is their land, really. We have figured out how to deed it, and we now have to figure out how to put this back into their hands so they can be again stewards of this famous and fabulous area that is unique, I think, throughout the whole United States. Thank you.

right kel thanks for your testimony appreciate it uh do we have any um supervisor questions seeing board staff on the board oh they're off the board okay i'm gonna put one last call out there for ron larson and brian tucher who were uh registered we're not seeing them on the zoom so uh we'll hang on one second do we do we have one of them Okay, we're gonna promote Ron Larson. And Ron, when you are promoted and unmuted, you have five minutes to address the board. Ron, do you wanna go ahead with your comments? Ron, we can see you. You can start when you're ready.

I'm afraid I can't.

Yep, we got you. We just heard you.

Thank you. Well, thank you for your patience. Yes, I'm speaking on behalf of in favor of this resolution. All favor in favor of the county purchasing this land and eventually having to go to the whole chunk. This is a very important piece of property in my belief. for the environmental aspects. And I find it wonderful that it's going to be protected. I live in the village of McFarland at 5403 Marshwoods Drive. And I know this property has been talked about for decades, I know for at least 35 years with the Hero family, that the Village of McFarland has often been approached to annex this property for development over this time period of 30 to 40 years. And it always worried me that it would actually happen one day. and i find this opportunity to be so wonderful that this land would be protected from future development i've always been as a resident of the village of mcfarland i've been always appreciative of the town of dunn and their land stewardship um and protecting the land and and keeping it as natural as can be and i think that's a great aspect that benefits the village of mcfarland even though i think some people are worried that we're blocked to the south because of the town of dunn blocked to the west because of lake wabisa and blocked to the north because of the city of madison but i think that that gives us a great opportunity to be unique in our setting and and having this land just across the hair river from the village McFarland to be preserved, I think, will help preserve the uniqueness of the village of McFarland, and so I am just. wanting to express my. opinion on how wonderful this would be for everyone who can benefit from this land being protected. And just for a little bit of history, I know the Ho-Chunk were the first people here, but this corner land on the I guess at the southeast corner of Exchange and Highway 51, the Hero property, was the site of the first permanent Norwegian settler in the town of Donne. If that makes any difference, that's a historic site in a way. But the main thing for preserving this land is for the environmental reasons. And I want to express strongly how important that is. So that's all I have to say. So I appreciate the time. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ron. Do we have any questions for the speaker? All right, I'm not seeing any. I just also want to note that we had nine register in support who did not wish to speak. And with that, we will go on to board discussion. OK, so we're going to start with Supervisor Marin.

Thank you. This project, and I don't want to keep us here late and repeat what other speakers have already said, but it's really important that we understand the importance of this purchase. The project represents a rare and meaningful opportunity to permanently protect land that is not only environmentally significant, but deeply important from a cultural and historical perspective. It's not a new project. The property has been identified for preservation in Dane County, in Dane County planning documents for over 30 years. To reiterate what Tony said, Groundswell spent considerable time working directly with the landowner, helping to build trust, coordinating partners, and ensuring that the significance of this property was fully understood. They also played an essential role in connecting the project with the Ho-Chunk Nation. This is about more than open space preservation. It's about recognizing and respecting a landscape that has profound cultural meaning and ensuring that these sacred and historic areas are not lost to future development. Public ownership provides a much greater level of long-term protection than relying solely on existing mound preservation laws, especially given the likelihood that additional archeological resources remain undiscovered on this property. The 2026 conservation fund was budgeted at $10 million and carried a 10.8 million forward from 2025, bringing the total available for land purchase to 20.8 million in 2026. The current balance of the conservation fund is $18.1 million. The county budgets well to accommodate significant acquisition opportunities such as this one proposed here. The proposed purchase is also consistent with existing local land use plans and does not prevent future growth opportunities identified by the Village of McFarland. This effort reflects years of collaboration between Groundsville Conservancy, the Ho-Chunk Nation, Dane County staff, and the landowner. And I believe it's exactly the kind of thoughtful and forward-looking conservation investment that Dane County should support. I encourage you all to vote yes on 2025 Resolution 435. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Marin. Up next, we have Chair Miles from the floor.

All right, thank you, Chair Chabot. I'm gonna ask Laura Hicklin to come up if she could please. I just have a couple of questions before I go into my comments. Excuse me. I guess first, let's see, where do I want to begin here? First, I want to begin with my first question, I guess, with I think we can bring up the map, aerial map of the land. If you could just point out to folks the boundaries, just so everybody has the visual, it's up here for the public to see, the boundaries of what's being discussed here and some of the conditions, characteristics of the landscape.

What is... Sure, would it be possible to pull up the map from the resolution? From the resolution, yeah. That's a better one. In the legislature file. Thank you.

Yep, you might want to zoom out a little.

There we go. So this is an overview of the property. The proposed purchase is outlined in red. You can see to the north existing lands owned by Dane County as part of Babcock County Park.

Director Hicklin, can you pull the mic a little bit closer to you?

Sorry about that.

Yeah, that sounds great. Thank you.

So again, the proposed purchase is outlined in red. You can see Babcock County Park to the north. So the property straddles State Highway 51. Many people consider it to be the community separation that many people in our community value between incorporated and unincorporated areas and provides kind of a gateway experience as you enter the village of McFarland from the south. There are considerable wetland resources and certainly Dr. DeWitt outlined those much more eloquently than I can, but primarily you'll note along Mud Lake and the O'Hara River on the far eastern portion of the property is a significant wetland complex. that moves into several areas of forested woodland that tony from groundswell mentioned the mound sites within this property are scattered throughout but are heavily located in the wooded areas It's really important when we think of these mound sites to think about kind of the larger context in which they existed in the past. I strongly disagree with any assertion that they are truly protected under private ownership. State law does prevent people from destroying them, but it does not prevent people from subdividing properties, cutting down vegetation around mound sites, blocking access. And it also precludes any future opportunity for the nation, the county, and other collaborators, groundswell, to do further archeological investigations of this property, which I strongly believe will show that the entire site is rich with artifacts and perhaps other undiscovered mounds or mound remnants. As we move out of those wooded areas, you can see some tillable land that's currently a mixture of some grassland, some prairie conservation reserve program enrolled acres. A lot of that is prime candidate for future full blown prairie restoration. And then as we cross uh highway 51 you can see additional wetlands additional forested lands where we know there are mounds located there is access to directly to lake wabisa and on both both sides of the highway you do have significant upland portions that could be developed in the future either through annexation at one point, and while I understand and honor the cooperative agreement, it certainly does not guarantee a long-term outcome of preservation, and in fact, the owner also has some rights within the existing Town of Dunn location that would allow some development as well.

Okay, and then just looking outside the boundaries of the, the red boundaries there, just to confirm for everybody's information, the yellow areas, those are farmland preservation, conservation easements or?

Yeah, so the properties outlined in yellow represent existing conservation easements that Groundswell Conservancy, the Town of Dunn, and Dane County have worked together on to protect. So if there's yellow outlines, that generally means that the county helped with that particular purchase. There are also shaded brown properties that aren't coming through really well on the map, but that represents existing properties

State-owned property that is also protected Thank you, and then turning to slightly different subject I Can you discuss the process of grounds? We heard from Tony about that, but just I guess what I want is some confirmation about whether this process was unusual, about how this arrangement came to be, or was it a typical process?

I think it's unusual in that we see such strong community support and that we have a partner like Groundswell that's been working hard to help implement the Dane County Parks and Open Space Plan. As we've heard several times, this property, this area has been identified in the county's Parks and Open Space Plan since the early 1990s. There have been many organizations and individuals that have worked either generally through the town or the village to see the property protected. There are many people that have worked directly with the landowner to get to this point. And most recently, as you heard, Groundsville Conservancy has really invested the time to help the owner come come on board with this transaction so if it's unusual it's unusual to see such strong grassroots support assisting the county in implementation of our regionally significant parks and open space plan but that doesn't mean that we've sidestepped our traditional system that does provide for transparency in the process. So this landowner does have rights as a private individual to sell the property. That can happen at any point. Those discussions, whether he chooses to sell to a corporation, another individual, or Dane County, I have the right to be private deliberations and negotiations. We have followed state statutes governing that process. The Park Commission is the oversight body that provides a guidance to staff and walks us through and provides oversight on some of the topics that we've heard about tonight, including the appraised value, how the property fits into the plan, how it will be utilized into the future, the collaboration and land transfer with the nation, the easement that we will co-hold with Groundswell Conservancy. The commission met several times in part, I'm sorry, in closed session. Those deliberations resulted in an offer to purchase that was presented to the landowner in late March of this year. And the authorizing resolution that is before you tonight was introduced to the county board at the first opportunity after the landowner accepted that offer to purchase. So the proposal in front of you tonight is the opportunity to help make this opportunity a reality, something we've been working on for many decades. And that is the public process. That is the same process we follow for all of our transactions. And we are following state law in making that proposal public through that resolution that was introduced at your April meeting.

So for any of us supervisors, during that process you just described that concluded with the acceptance of an offer and so forth, county board supervisors, elected officials generally aren't made aware of those proceedings until the time that the deal is ready by way of resolution.

Yeah, it follows the same protocols that all of the items on your agenda tonight follow, correct? So the agenda is publicly available. We follow all of the meetings laws, and that information is available for anyone that would like to review it during that time period.

And finally, final question, the capital budget, confirm that the capital budget has authorized an amount sufficient in the conservation fund to accommodate this.

Correct, so the 2026 budget for the conservation fund is $10 million and we also brought approximately $10.8 million in carry forward into 2026 for a total available expenditure line of roughly $20.8 million. If you'll recall during LAST YEAR'S BUDGET DELIBERATIONS OR FOR THE 26th BUDGET, THERE WAS QUITE A BIT OF SCRUTINY ON THAT BALANCE AND THE PURPOSE OF THE FUND. AND I DO WANT TO SAY THAT'S A TOPIC WE WORK WITH THE PARK COMMISSION ON AND AS STAFF WE WATCH REALLY CLOSELY. AND THE VALUE IN THAT CARRY FORWARD, THE VALUE IN BUDGETING PERHAPS MORE THAN WE'RE GOING TO SPEND IN ANY GIVEN YEAR IS SO THAT WE CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES LIKE THIS. So the intent isn't, oh, budget $10 million so that we can rush to spend it all. We have thoughtful plans that we've been working on. And every, I would say, three to five years, these really amazing opportunities come before us. And that doesn't mean we're not doing cool things. INTERMITTENTLY THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. WE APPRECIATE THE SUPPORT OF THE BOARD FOR ALL OF THE ACQUISITIONS WE BRING TO YOU TO IMPLEMENT THE PARKS AND OPEN SPACE PLAN. BUT OCCASIONALLY, WE SEE THESE REALLY PHENOMENAL OPPORTUNITIES. OTHER EXAMPLES WERE THE 160-ACRE ADDITION AT PHEASANT BRANCH CONSERVANCY, THE WAKIKA ZOO ACQUISITION AND THE SIX MILE CREEK NATURAL RESOURCE AREA. the Sugar River Wildlife Area expansion three or four years ago. And those are difficult decisions. I know they're expensive. We can't put a price tag on the value of the mounds, the wetlands, the cultural landscape. That's something we struggle with from an appraisal perspective. But I assure you, this is a very reasonable price relative to the Dane County market. And I know it is difficult to see municipalities frustrated with our process, but I can tell you from experience that I had a lot of frustrated calls when we made the Waikikazoo purchase in 2005. Some of you might have been on the board at the time and remember that. We had a lot of frustrated calls when we made the pheasant branch acquisition from the city of Middleton, who felt we were limiting their growth opportunities. And I pledge to you that in both of those examples, the municipalities reached out to me sometimes a year later, sometimes two years later to say our comprehensive plan was wrong. We are so happy to have this asset in the community, and we are grateful that the county moved ahead and made this purchase.

Thank you, Laura. That was my last question. All right, so just on that last note about my last question regarding the capital budget, I just want to point out that, you know, there's been some, we've seen some emails regarding the cost and whether there's sufficient funds in the capital budget for this and so forth. And I just want to point out that in the last budget cycle there was an amendment to reduce the size of the conservation fund by about $5 million. And I think that amendment probably got more testimony in opposition than that committee has seen in years. The public made very clear that that fund is valued and allows the county to capitalize on the opportunities, opportunities like this, that when there is a willing property seller. And that's what, in this situation, there's been the question about timing and why the rush. The timeline here is set by a willing property owner. And the reason we have funds sufficient in that conservation fund is to be able to jump on those opportunities when they become available. And so I guess that's all I have to say on the conservation fund. And it is consistent. And we heard loud and clear from the public that we need to maintain that fund so we can realize opportunities like this. Let me talk a little bit about the villages, some of the villages' concerns they raised, one being a desire to see us delay action on this, I guess in some way to be involved in some planning. I just want to explain that You know, first of all, as was mentioned, there's a new boundary agreement that was adopted last year, 2025, a 20-year agreement, and that agreement prohibits the village from entertaining annexations to the south For 20 years with the exception of an area defined as the future us highway 51 growth area That is a smaller section starting south that would include the property in question here and a little bit south of that and in that area the village Would not be able to consider annexations for a period of 10 years so in 2020 So I just provide that as background to say I'm not sure what they're looking for to be accomplished in a delay and to be engaged in planning. They can't do anything with the area for a period of at least 10 years, and that would be only if there's a property owner looking to annex that land. And I would add to that, they agree that most of this area in question is appropriate for conservation. So I'm not sure that a delay would accomplish anything on those fronts. Additionally, Like I said before, the property owner is ready to make this arrangement now, to ask him to wait. I think, one, wait for how long? He's certainly not gonna sit on this for 10 years. So he's ready to sell now. And even delaying a short period of time, I think quite possibly puts the arrangement at risk and we would see eventually see a higher price tag. And I think a good case in point to that is we learned yesterday at the Clean Lakes Alliance event and Mr. Corrigan referenced this, that that there's a nonprofit organization that has made an offer and it has an accepted offer on lot three of Sunnyside, not too far from here, on the north side of Lake Aganza, where the price per acre is a higher value. So I think there's any delay could result in a higher price tag in the end. To the question about the village's growth opportunity to the south, I think that the fear that this prevents that is a false premise. The conservation easement does not change the equation or the timeline the village has to consider annexations to the south. And if you look at this map, this may be my own opinion, but I think the opportunities for development are very small. You got a few areas of cropland, even the cropland in the area in question being surrounded by areas we know there's significant archaeological features and mounds. It's highly probable that that cropland has remnants of that as well. So I think the small amount of development of potential of development in this area would be the value realized through increased property value would not cover the costs of extending, the very high costs of extending services. down into that area, and that would only serve to raise the rest of our property taxes in the village of McFarland. But maybe somebody can make that work. This conservation easement does not stop that. will not prohibit development on those lands that maybe have that potential, and it does not prohibit the annexation of those lands if there are property owners looking to do that. Next, I just want to turn to the plans Laura mentioned and Professor DeWitt also mentioned the Lower Mud Lake Resource Protection Plan. I also want to point out that the village's own comprehensive plan identifies much of this area as either wetlands, and they have acknowledged that there's cultural resources, mounds and so forth that deserve protection. So I think there's some unanimity in that. But turning back to the lower mud lake resource protection plan, there is reference to when that was adopted, but that is a component of our parks and open space plan. That plan gets updated every five years and it continues to be a part of that plan. So I just want to read one excerpt from that, and that is, the purpose of the resource protection project is to identify the natural resources and historical features which are desirable which are desirable as permanent open space and institute a preservation program. From Lower Mud Lake, this means long-term acquisition of land or land rights from willing sellers as the land becomes available over the years. And that is just what has happened, and we are following that plan. In short, I think the conservation of this land is a net positive. The interests of County Board District 34, including McFarland, for all parties involved, Dunn, McFarland, Ho-Chunk, it's a win-win-win. Wetlands and habitat, cultural resources, namely the barrier mounds and other artifacts, will be protected. The land will be publicly accessible. And these two things, I think, will contribute to improving the quality of life for both Dunn and McFarland residents. And at the same time, there's a measure of sweet justice here. Ho-Chunk receives some of their ancestral lands back. So, and I'll just close with this. This area has a long history, and it is part of my origin story as a public elected official. 25 years ago, wow. And I'm imagining thought bubbles in some of the younger members here. Chair Miles, you have 45 seconds, just a warning. All right, 25 years ago, there was an annexation petition to the village for this area. And village residents and town residents came out in force in opposition to this. And I was at a community meeting where some of our residents were saying, we need somebody to run for the county board to fight this. And I felt possessed somehow, and I raised my hand and said, I'll do it. I ran as a write-in candidate on this issue. And that's how I became elected in 2021 to the Village Board. And many of those people in McFarland, many we've seen emails from today, both Dunn and McFarland residents, even one or two former trustees have written in support of this. I think there still continues to be strong support in McFarland to protect this area. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Miles. Up next, we have Supervisor Engelberger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could I ask Director Hicklin to step up? Director Hicklin, if you want to take this mic and go ahead and start your question while she's out walking.

I guess I got a question, Director Hicklin. Is this property in the city of McFarland?

No, the property is currently located in the town of Dunn.

Town of Dunn. And did you generally negotiate with the town of Dunn when you're dealing with a private party for a property that we're purchasing?

No, but I do owe an apology to the town of Dunn. I do usually reach out to the municipality where a property is located to notify them. I would not have, however, notified the village because the property is not located in the village. Okay, so.

It's generally not even something that we do is deal with a neighbor of a municipality that we're purchasing property in. Okay. I appreciate that. I guess that's all the questions I have for you. Thank you. I'm all in favor of this purchase. I think it's a... It's a good deal, I think it preserves our history. We've got Native American artifacts that are on this property, which is, we heard that very rare ones, in fact, and I just think it's a no-brainer, we need to purchase this. I would recommend that all of our colleagues here vote in favor of this, thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Engelberger. Up next we have Supervisor Veldren.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Laura, can you come up? You can leave your laptop. You can leave your laptop, Laura.

Supervisor Veldren, you can start your question.

Yeah, just real quick. I was going to say, you don't need any of that. This is real quick. On the purchase price, is any of this part of the state funds, too, or is this just ours?

It is 100% county funding for the purchase. Groundswell Conservancy has invested in what we would call pre-acquisition costs leading up to this point, including the cost of the appraisal. They've also volunteered to cover some of the environmental review that occurs during the due diligence period leading up to closing. the purchase price itself would be covered by county. As you heard earlier, stewardship funding has disappeared and is no longer available to either the county or nonprofits. And no one's been able to apply to that fund since sometime in late summer, early fall of 2025.

Thanks, Laura. That's all I really had. I'm glad you pointed that out because I do remember that coming up, but I totally forgot about that because we did have some people asking our state folks to see what they could do to keep that. Just a couple of quick comments. First of all, I want to thank Chair Miles for, I had asked him earlier, because this obviously was his district, as we heard, an issue that was very important to him uh running for the village board um so i appreciate um him him um stepping down and really being the person who would be the most knowledgeable and giving the chair up and that's a good that's a good lesson for everybody that i had mentioned at the first meeting of the board, that the chair should always do that. So I certainly greatly appreciate the chair, relinquishing the chair, because it's important for the body to understand who is speaking and that extra power that is just brought on by the dais. Secondly, that was also just a great primer for folks also on how the county buys land that Director Hicklin and Chair Miles brought us through for the new folks as well, how we require land, why we require land, why it's in a plan that's not just random. We don't just throw money around willy-nilly. So for those things, for the new folks, I think it was a great lesson on land acquisition and why we do it. At first I wasn't sure, and that's why I really appreciated both the comments of the chair, Chair Miles, and speakers, because I guess I am concerned about our spending all the time. I think it's important that we, if the deficit now, if we've now cut 15 million out of it, it's still important that we be diligent on what we do. But seeing some of the comments that were made, both for and against by, I know it was only the village and seeing their their need their understanding to preserve the the property is is well founded i'm sure um but understanding that the county um has and laura especially director hicklin has really looked at properties and said in areas where can we do the best um and i was i guess that was i think that was mr corrigan because i got that from chair miles when he pointed out and chair miles also pointed out the purchase price of the acres. And when he said that the other one is the new property is 115 an acre and we get it for 38. So usually there's this big outrage. And so this obviously is a great price for the times we're living in right now, because there were some other comps that were sort of thrown in there that I was gonna bring up, but it was unnecessary because of the work by the earlier speaker, and I'm sure Laura brought that up, and Chair Miles would have as well as they did, but in more detail, if necessary. And just finally, so... Chair Miles just pointed out something to me and maybe the clerk would remember that too when he talked about the 2005 land in Middleton and how they were thanking. I just reminded reading a lot from my predecessor who was he was vehemently against us and said, how could Dane County, excuse me, purchase this land for this much at an acre? And it was outrage. And how could we do this? I saw this constantly though. That wasn't one of the reasons I ran against this person, but it was more about just his general, the way he represented my district. So I appreciate Chair Miles brought that up because that did remind me of that Middleton fight. So with all of that said, I think this is a good price, a good purchase, and a well use of county funds. So I think we should all be robustly behind this. Thank you.

PE Supervisor Veldren, up next we have Supervisor Downing.

Thank you, Chair Chabla. Another question for Laura.

All right, you can go ahead while Laura, she's half the distance that she's walked. Very, very efficient.

Well, from what I've heard in the room here this evening, including the concerns from the McFarland elected officials, I'm of the opinion that it sounds to me like no extraterritorial rights of the village are gonna change. And my question is, is that the case?

Well, the Village and Town recently signed a second cooperative boundary agreement. The first one that was signed expired last year. The first cooperative agreement was actually driven in large part by annexation petitions from this property owner. The current plan calls that this property is part of the protected zone that Chair Miles mentioned earlier and could not be annexed for a minimum of 10 years. After the 10-year period, it could be annexed into the village.

My question was, does this resolution change any existing extraterritorial rights of the village?

Oh, I apologize. No, as we heard from Chair Miles, there are still annexation options available to other property owners and the village to move south into that protected zone should they so choose.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Supervisor Downing. Thank you, Director Hicklin. And with that, the board is clear. What is before us is the recommendation of the... Supervisor Miles? Okay, so Chair Miles has called for a roll call vote. And then Supervisor Obese, did you wanna address this resolution? Okay, Supervisor Obese.

Good evening. So with the little I know about what we're talking about, but one thing I know is the price tag, over $6 million. I mean, looking at what the county executive stated that we have a deficit of $15 million. Right? And, sorry, okay. So we have a deficit of $15 million. There are, I mean, I'm looking at this for the timing. There are other things we can look at investing in our community versus what we're spending the $6 million. So I would... I would advise my colleagues to vote no to this resolution at this time. And can I move to postpone?

You can make a motion. Yes, so Supervisor Obese is making a motion to postpone. Indefinitely. To postpone indefinitely, and we'll see if there's a second. Is there a second? Is there a second? Without a second, that resolution, or that motion fails, and so we're back on the main motion. And with that, the next person I have on the board is Supervisor Andre.

Thanks, Chair. Comptroller Hicklin, are you with us tonight? Just a quick clarifying question about capital and operating budgets.

I am here.

Okay, super. We have fielded a lot of questions about how this purchase may or may not play into our budget quandary. Can you clarify for me how do capital purchases and the debt service on those capital purchases fit into our levy limit?

Yeah, good question. So this purchase would be funded through the conservation fund, which is 100% funded by debt that the county issues. And it has no GPR operating dollars go toward this. So this purchase, foregoing this purchase cannot change the operating deficit that right now is projected at about $15 million. Further, under the county's levy limit, and the tax levy being our single largest source of general purpose revenue, under the levy limit statute, payments on our debt that we do issue, as long as that debt is outstanding, the funds that we raise to make those payments are outside the levy limit. So if we have payments, we can levy that additional amount.

above what our limited operating levy is.

If we don't have payments, we cannot levy those funds. So there is a completely separate flow of funds that are levied for purposes of retiring debt compared to the funds that are levied to support regular county operations, being staff, utilities, contracts, things of that nature. Does that answer your question, Supervisor?

Can you just summarize in that, am I correct in understanding that this purchase and the debt service on the capital purchase has no bearing whatsoever on the operating budget deficit? Is that correct?

That's the short answer, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Supervisor Andre. And then I just wanna make a reminder, the Zoom chat is more for administrative or procedural reasons. So Supervisor Dantzler, if you wanna make a comment, you can certainly be recognized to do so. I saw you put something in the chat. And Chair Miles, you're looking to get my attention?

Just a point of information. I got word that Ryan Greendeer of Ho-Chunk Nation. No, Ryan. His brother.

What?

It is John. Well, your screen here shows Ryan. Sorry. John Greendeer registered, had some trouble registering and is registering in support of this from President of the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Thank you. Thanks, Chair Miles. Okay, I am seeing the board is clear. So what is before us is a recommendation of the Environment, Ag, and Natural Resources Committee on F-14, authorizing the permanent protection of land of the Lower Mud Lake Natural Resources Area in partnership with the Ho-Chunk Nation and Groundswell Conservancy. A roll call has been requested. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Posler. Posler, aye. Posler, aye. Ritt. Ritt, aye. Ritt, aye. Rylander. Rylander, aye. Rylander, aye. Smith.

Smith, aye.

Math, aye. Trucios? Trucios, aye. Trucios, aye. Veldren? Aye. Veldren, aye. Wigleitner? Aye. Wigleitner, aye. Welsh?

Welsh, aye.

Welsh, aye. Yang? Yang, aye. Yang, aye. Andre? Yang, aye. Andre, aye. Bruchuk?

Big, aye.

Bruchuk, aye. Blazewoods? Aye. Blazewoods, aye. Boettcher? Boettcher, aye. Boettcher, aye. Bollig? Bollig, aye. Bollig, aye. Brandmeier? Brandmeier, absent. Brouwer? Brouwer, aye. Brouwer, aye. Chavla? Chavla, aye. Chavla, aye. Dantzler? Dantzler, aye. Dantzler, aye. Dantzler, aye. Dulin? Doolin, aye. Downing? Downing, aye. Eicher? Aye. Eicher, aye. Engelberger? Engelberger, aye. Engelberger, aye. Erickson? Erickson, aye. Erickson, aye. Fries? Fries, aye. Furman? Furman, aye. Furman, aye. Glazer? Glazer, absent. Gray? Gray. Heuselman?

Heuselman, aye.

Heuselman, aye. Jackson? Jackson, aye. Jackson, aye. Kemp? Kemp absent, Crowning? Crowning, aye. Crowning, aye. Larson? Larson, aye. Larson, aye. Lewis? Lewis, aye. Lewis, aye. Marin? Marin, aye. Marin, aye. Obesee? No. Obesee, no. Peterson? Peterson, aye. Peterson, aye. Miles?

Miles, aye. Miles, aye. 32 to 1. OK. And that resolution passes. I'll yield the chair back to Chair Miles.

Okay, thank you Vice Chair Chavla for chairing that portion of the meeting for me. So that was the last remaining item under the consent calendar. So that takes us to H, zoning petitions. We have eight items before us tonight. Are there any requests for separation? Hearing no request for separation, what is before us is zoning committee action for approval of items H1 through 6 and H8, and then recommendation of denial for H7. All in favor of committee action, say aye. OPPOSED SAY NO. THAT MOTION CARRIES AND THOSE ITEMS ARE, THOSE ACTIONS ARE APPROVED. On to K resolutions, we have four items here. The first one being 2025 resolution 342, authorizing the tax deeding of tax delinquent properties. What is before us is personnel and finance committee action, which was a recommendation, I'm pausing because I'm trying to determine, was the action for, was there a sub, or was it just the resolution as before us? It's just as the resolution was before personal and finance is what's before us for approval. Any discussion on resolution 342? Oh, Supervisor Weiglein, sorry, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Miles. I'm a member of the, or have been a member of the personal and finance tax deed subcommittee. I don't know if I still am, but when this, the subcommittee took, a meeting was scheduled when I was on vacation. I was not present. And there are a number, I did receive a memo about, About the parcels, it looks like a number of them, there are current occupants. So I would like to hear from Treasurer Gallagher about the status of those occupants and efforts to reach out to them related to this.

As in the past, I went on a weekend. I went and knocked on the doors of these locations. Line number one of those is an occupant. They made a substantial payment. They still have a balance they intend to pay, but it has not been received in full. Line four has an occupant. There was a payment received as long as it clears all banks. That one becomes a moot issue and nothing will occur. Line 10 is an occupant, and that occupant I spoke with intends to pay this month. No payment has been received at this point. Line 11... There is an occupant who feels there is some issue, has some issue with a local special that was put on a tax bill and refuses to pay. And line 13, there was no answer at the door and I have not heard anything back from that occupant.

Okay. Is there a reason that we shouldn't separate those or postpone those that you were where payments have been made or on the way?

It becomes a mood issue. There's no reason to remove something that is no longer It makes no sense to remove something that may or may not clear a bank or that we may not get the payment. That just says it doesn't matter if we get a payment. So we do need to keep the ball rolling. If everything clears all banks, then there is nothing that gets done at this point. It stops dead in its tracks.

Okay, I have another question, but you said on one of these, they made a substantial payment.

Yep, that's line number one.

But if they don't make the remainder of the payment, the process will move forward and the county will take it home.

That was only a substantial payment for the one year, not for the full 37,000. It was just for the one year. So as long as we get the balance, then everything is good. And I will be following up with these if we don't hear from them by the end of the month as we had discussed in my conversations with them.

Okay, thank you. I guess I'll probably be voting no on this because I guess I'm not comfortable with the uncertainty around taking these properties when there's people currently living there attempting to make payments. In the past, I've been more satisfied that we've sort of hit the end of the road and the treasurer has exhausted all those efforts. I don't feel that way today.

Okay. Supervisor Downing.

Thank you, Chair.

Adam, tell me, does the... Party in Belleville who's refused to pay have any appeal options or else what's next in that case?

I've spoken with him. I asked if he had worked with the village, and he says the village claims they've done nothing wrong and that that was kind of his... contest at the point is to talk with the village because it was something the village had put on as a special. And if the village is saying they didn't do anything wrong, I don't know what other options to do. It's really a local contest or whatever at that point. That's also for only the one year. The others, he just is not paying and says, I'm not going to pay ever again. I I do not feel comfortable going back to that house myself.

Well, Adam, what then will be your next steps?

The next step would end up being the same steps that we've done in the past, which is having a sheriff go out there if it gets to the point of eviction. But until then, it would be taking the property, transferring it to Dane County, We would then notify the property owner. Dane County is the owner. They can buy it back, but they have to pay all the taxes instead of just the one year. They would also have to pay any liens that show up on a title report. They would also have to pay 1% the assessed value. And they would have to pay $60 so we can do another title report to make sure those liens have been paid. That can all be done anytime up until an auction. So if we were to tax-date this, say, the end of June or July, that would still provide another three to four months, which would be like, say, August, September, and then October is the auction. If we take it in June, it would be July, August, September, and then October is the auction.

And what is your intention?

At this point, it would be recording a tax deed on the property. But if he chooses to pay at least the 2021 and 2022 taxes, so that's two years of taxes, then nothing would happen. As far as timing, I'm looking towards the end of June or July. depending on how office workflow goes for getting those recorded. We are currently short staffed, so I'm trying to fill in on several fronts.

Chair Miles, I move that number 11, the Belleville item, be removed from this in hopes that the folks will understand the severity of what can happen and will negotiate a settlement.

All right, a motion by Downing to strike the line, including the Belleville property. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Wegleitner, was it? Seconded by Wegleitner. Discussion on the Downing motion? Supervisor Downing, did you want to speak to that? I've already given my rationale. Yep, got it. Yep, good. Any other discussion on the downing motion? All right, all in favor of the downing motion to strike the Belleville line in the table? All in favor, say aye. Opposed, say no.

No.

OK, a roll call has been requested. If the clerk would please call the roll.

Posler.

Posler, no.

Posler, no. Ritt. Ritt, aye. Ritt, aye. Rylander.

Rylander, no.

Okay. Rylander, no. Smith. Smith.

Smith, no.

Smith, no. Trucios. Trucios, no. Trucios, no. Veldren.

No.

Veldren, no. Wegleiter. Laila Nair, aye. Welsh?

Welsh, no.

Welsh, no. Yang?

Yang, aye.

Yang, aye. Andre? Andre, no. Andre, no. Baruchuk? Aye. Baruchuk, aye. Blazewoods? Blazewoods, no. Blazewoods, no. Boettcher? Boettcher, no. Boettcher, no. Bally? Bally, no. Bally, no. Brandmeier? Brandmeier, absent. Brouwer? Brouwer, no. Chawla? Chawla, no. Chawla, no. Dantzler? Dantzler, no. Dantzler, no. Doolin. Doolin, no. Downing. Downing, aye. Eicher. Eicher.

Eicher, no.

Eicher, no. Engelberger. Engelberger, no. Erickson. Erickson, no. Freeze. Freeze, no. Fuhrman. Fuhrman, no. Fuhrman, no. Glazer. Glazer, absent. Sorry. Gray. Gray. Gray absent. Heuselman.

Heuselman, no.

Heuselman, no. Jackson. Jackson, no. Kemp. Kemp absent. I think Crowning. Crowning, no. Larson. Guys, it's hard for me to hear, okay? Larson. Larson, no. Larson, no. Lewis. Lewis, no. Lewis, no. Marin. Marin, aye. Marin, aye. Obesee. No. Obesee, no. Peterson. No. Peterson, no. Miles? Miles, no. Miles, no.

Six to 27, fails. Okay, with that, we're back to the main resolution, unamended. Resolution 342, Supervisor Bollard.

Thank you, Chair Miles. I think just for general education, we better talk about how many years you have to be delinquent before the treasurer gets involved. I think it used to be four. Is it still four? There you go. For general information, could the treasurer please indicate how many years a property owner has to be unpaid before you get involved like we are tonight?

So by statute, it's three years. And looking at the details of the 13 parcels that are listed here, one was removed in committee because we did not want to get into a legal battle with the condo association. They're working on it. We're going to let them handle their end before we come in and do anything if we get to that point.

Thank you. My point is this isn't new. It's not like these are last year's taxes. Correct.

These are 2021 as the oldest that we have going on and 2025 as the most recent. So you are correct.

Thank you. Okay. Before I call one more speaker, but I just want to clarify what is before us because I I had some confusion. The highlighted thing on my agenda here says, what is before us, is the resolution, that the resolution itself is recommended for approval, and the action by Personnel and Finance was for the recommendation of the resolution as amended by personnel and finance. And just to point out, the one change was line three in the table was struck. That's the amendment. So I just wanted to clarify that. That is what is before us. My apologies, it was just a little... Things weren't clear on the agenda I have here. So with that, Supervisor Velden.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was chairing this subcommittee. Adam, did you know about those payments at the meeting? I know it was a while ago because of the election, so it was over just about a month ago when we last met and Supervisor Wigliner indicated because she was on vacation, so it was just Supervisor Smith and myself at the meeting.

Those payments had not come in by the time of that meeting, no.

So they came after. So that was new information. Okay, that's fine. Could you just, those two, sorry, I didn't have it up earlier. Was it number one and what was the other one that said you had partial payments?

Number one, there was a partial payment towards the oldest year. They did express an interest in paying the remainder this month. I will follow up with them before anything further action is done on my end. The other line that did make a payment was line number 4. Line number 4, as long as it clears all banks, will be clear for this round. They'll be out of the system until we started again in September. I'm hopeful that everything will be fine there and that becomes moot and no further action on that one. And then line number 9 and 10. 10 is the residents, 9 is vacant land, both owned by the same individual. And there was an email correspondence and a phone call correspondence that I received that there is an intent to pay again by the end of this month. And if that happens and it clears all banks, then no further action on our end. Our, like I said previously, I hope that Workload will say we can record something towards the end of June, beginning of July. And that's pushing it out so we can try to help those individuals that expressed.

That's fine. Thanks. Did we vote on that that night? Because I noticed on the agenda it said that there was no vote taken. I thought we voted that there were no action was taken.

That was because it does not typically get referred to the subcommittee because the subcommittee does not make that the determination. It's the personnel and finance. Oh, directly? Correct. We put it on as a discussion item. Okay. And no action was taken other than to refer it back to personnel and finance. Okay. Thank you.

I don't think Mr.

Chair, thank you.

All right, Supervisor Trucios.

Yeah, just a quick question regarding the nature of the tax. Is this all the tax owed on the property, or is this just the tax owed for the county?

At this point, we would need all taxes for 2022 and older. So if there's 2021 and 2022 taxes, those two years need to be paid. The rest will not start until September, that process all over again.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, so for example, line number eight, $322, is all of that, all property taxes owed, city of Madison or city of municipality, it's in as well as the county, or is it just the county's portion of that?

that that's the total amount due okay so yeah thank you okay uh thank you they're being known uh supervisor hilsman go ahead

Yes, I'd like to move that we strike number one and four since they've already made payments and are intending to do so soon. And so just to give them a little bit more time to clear that up.

All right, let me clarify your motion Supervisor Huseman. It's to strike lines one and four in the table. All right, and that was seconded by Wegleitner. All right, discussion on the Huseman Amendment. Did you wish to comment, Supervisor Huseman?

Just that since they're they have made substantial payments and it sounds like that they are in the process of trying to make more just to give them a little bit more time to do that. Hopefully by the end of the month, but just to since they've already have earnest money down to give them a little bit more time.

Thank you. Supervisor Rylander.

Yeah, just a question for Treasurer Gallagher. I think you've already addressed this point, but I just wanted to address it in light of the amendment. If they were to make a payment in the next month or two, it sounds like the Treasurer's Office would take no action. Is that accurate?

That is correct.

Okay, thank you. Even if we pass the thing unamended? That is correct. It's just the authorization to do so.

That is correct.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

All right. There being there being no one else on the board on the Houston Amendment all in favor say aye. Opposed say no. And the motion fails. So again, back on resolution. 342 any further discussion? SEEING NO FURTHER DISCUSSION, WHAT IS BEFORE US IS APPROVAL OF THE RESOLUTION AS AMENDED BY PERSONAL AND FINANCE COMMITTEE. ALL IN FAVOR, SAY AYE.

AYE.

OKAY. OTHERS? ANYONE ELSE? OKAY. THAT WOULD BE WEGLEITNER, BURUSHICK, AND DOWNING WISHING TO BE RECORDED AS VOTING NO. Let me just finish the call for the vote. We had the ayes. Anyone else wishing to vote no? No. All right. With that, the resolution is adopted. Excuse me. Okay. Moving on to K2. I need to check, make sure there aren't registrations. K2. All right, K2 is 2025 resolution 414, authorizing a contract between Dane County and Global Tel Link Corporation doing business as Viapath Technologies for Dane County Jail resident telephone and video visitation services. What is before us is the first standing committee action, which is public protection and judiciary's recommendation for approval as amended. And we do have several registrants wishing to speak. And so I will proceed with calling each. And we have more than 10, so I'll go through the first 10 and then pause to see if there's any questions. All right, so first speaker wishing to speak in opposition is Eric Howland, to be followed by Jack Ringhand. Eric is online. Is he promoted? Okay. Welcome, Eric. You have up to five minutes to address the board.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Monday at personnel and finance. I tried to address both the advantages of free phone calls and also the changing technology and pricing for jail communication. Bad timing management on my part. led me to leave little time for technology and pricing. So today I'll swap the order of these topics. I read Supervisor Fuhrman's blog post and would like to support his argument that the landscape of GL communications has changed since the RFP went out early last year and that we can do better now. After his blog post was published, we received an analysis of the Dane County Jail Communication from Worth Rises, a national nonprofit that works on jail communication. That analysis supports Supervisor Fuhrman's conclusion that the initial RFP for jail communication can be, that a new RFP for jail communication can be both cheaper and better. It's instructive that worth rises documents in the document that I think all of you got in the mail. And particularly in two particular ways, one is in phone rates and another is in messages. In the WorthRise report that they prepared just for Dane County, they point out, quote, there are more competitive rates offered by all the leading jail telecom providers. For example, providers charge a permanent rate of nine tenths of a cent in Illinois, 1.2 cents in New Hampshire, 1.2 cents in Dallas County, 1.4 cents per minute in Colorado, 1.5 cents in New York, 1.6 in California, and 2 cents a minute in Ohio and Mississippi. They conclude with a bulk purchase, Dane County could get a 1.5 cents per minute phone rate. The other place where the landscape has changed is in messages per message billing. And again, I'll quote, there are more competitive rates offered by all the leading jail telecom providers. For example, in Maine, all families receive 10 monthly electronic messages for free and can pay a 0.25% for each additional message. In California, families pay a message rate of 3 cents a minute for all messages types. They suggest that Dane County could get a per message rate of three cents per message. Worth Rises also notes that permanent or per message rates are not the only way of purchasing services in the current climate. Jail communication providers are starting to offer plans with unlimited use per tablet per day. A new RFP could discover if this model would provide additional savings. And so the recommendation would be that we turn down this contract and then we move ahead with an RFP to determine what benefits we can get. So I'm going to pivot a little bit here and repeat some of what I said last time about why free phone calls are different than just low cost phone calls. Free phone calls are really about changing the climate and making the jail a little bit more humane. It's increasing human contact. It's increasing connection to support systems, including employees, employers and child care and so on and so forth. Worth Rises has just completed a major study about what happens when free phone calls are instituted. A major theme that runs through the research on free phone calls is that it decreases stress all around jail residents, loved ones, and jail staff. In their study, they identified eight ways that phone calls can benefit multiple groups. I'm not going to go through all of those, but some of these are really straightforward. There's more communication, which helps understanding. Financial relief for the families, better connections with families and communities. Those are sort of the first order benefits. But there's some things that they found in their study that were maybe less expected, at least less expected by myself. Both mental and physical health were improved by having phone calls, stronger parenting, and interestingly, less violence and disruption in the jails and prisons. better rehabilitation, better reentry planning. I mean, that one kind of makes sense. So it makes sense that to a lot of these, it's if there's less stress in the jails and prisons, less isolation, less being disconnected from family and whatever support systems a person has, that free phone calls are making those differences. It's not surprising. I'll just say one other thing. They went into a bunch of prisons and talked to the staff, and 100% of the staff said they recommended it. They saw that as kind of a treatment modality. So it's not surprising that Sheriff Barrett has endorsed free phone calls, even though he has not offered to put them into his budget. And with that, I will stop. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Eric. On to Jack Ringhand, registered to speak in opposition, to be followed by A.J. Thoyer.

Hello, Chair and County Board. My name is Jack Ringhand. I'm a nurse and a resident of District 12. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight in opposition to Res 414. A quick shout out to the moms in the room. Happy belated Mother's Day and happy early Father's Day to the dads here as well. I hope you had the opportunity and will have the opportunity to spend those days with your kids. Of course, emphasize this because the moms within Dane County Jail most certainly did not get the opportunity that you had and will have during their day this past weekend. Across the country, roughly 80 percent of women in jail are moms. We also know that those incarcerated in the Dane County Jail are disproportionately pre-child, meaning they have not been convicted of the crime that they're incarcerated for, and they're also disproportionately poor. They are simply in jail because they cannot afford bail. Thus, parenting for many of these folks becomes something to be purchased. And not only are our parents in jail physically barred from seeing their children on important days as well as every average day, but their communication with their kids is also greatly attenuated. Via Path, a for-profit company, stands between those incarcerated and their families on the outside. as well as the other way around. People are getting charged, both calling out as well as accessing their loved ones on the inside. This company raked in nearly $400,000 in 2024 from incarcerated residents and their families. The average cost of communication for folks in the Dane County Jail is $129 per month, which equates to 18 hours of wages if paid the minimum wage. These costs simply are a tax on county residents who can least afford it. Dane County then needs to take this moment as the opportunity that it is to establish a plan for free communications in and out of the jail that are accountable to the public. um this proposed contract with via path does not even get close to that standard okay first and foremost it maintains the status quo dane county permitting a private company leach profits off of working-class people additionally it is a bad financial deal for dane county compared to the problematic smart communications contract which you all um justly voted down in september 2025 via path provides significantly less financial value to the county. It does include a free 10 minute per person per day phone call, which equates to roughly $68,000 per year in financial value. The company though currently pays $78,000 per year administrative fee for staffing purposes, which is absent from the proposed contract. And furthermore, the smart communications contract that was voted down last September would have provided a $300,000 per year administrative fee. So you have in front of you a very low financially valued contract that does not even come close to meeting the communication needs of folks who are in the jail and their families. So for Mother's Day 2027, Let's look forward a year. Let's even look forward a half a year here. We need a system that assures free communication in and out of the jail that's accountable to the public. And everyone beyond just parents deserves a real access to basic communication with their loved ones. Now is the time to make that happen. We have the opportunity. I encourage you all to jump on it. I appreciate your time. Vote this contract down. Thank you.

Our next speaker is AJ Thoyer, registered in opposition, to be followed by Aiden Gardill. Welcome.

Everyone, my name is AJ. I'm a Dane County resident, District 14. I've been working in telecom for almost a decade. I wanted to talk about the rate structure of this contract. So it is 25 cents per text and an additional 25 cents per photo. That's 3 cents a minute for calls and 12 cents a minute for video calls. And that's 6 cents a minute for tablet use. So that tablet use applies to composing messages as well. So if you are someone that takes a bit longer to type out a message, you're gonna be charged more. And so that disproportionately impacts people with disabilities and the elderly. Captain Splinter claims that this is a non-issue because there will be staff to help with composing messages. For me personally, every job that I've ever had, we've been overworked and understaffed. So I find it really hard to believe that there will always be resources to help people write out text messages. I ask you to really picture what that probably looks like in practice. In terms of a rate plan, this is archaic. In my experience, I don't see plans like this anymore for personal use. I bet none of you would sign up for a cell phone plan like this that nickel and dimes you. The rare situations I do see plans like this being used is by for-profit business lines. A for-profit company like Viapath knows they can charge these rates in contracts like this simply because they can. Their end users don't have a choice. That choice is actually for you all to make. We shouldn't have an out of state company profiting off of our marginalized and impoverished communities. If you can pay your bail, you have free communication at home. This contract is essentially a poor tax. This contract is worse than the smart communication contract that was voted down last year. I urge you to vote down this contract so we can get a fresh RFP going that prioritizes free communication. We have the time to do that. Please don't be rushed into a bad deal that will be locked in for years. Thank you.

Okay, next up is Aiden Gardill to be followed by Allison Tracy-Bertz.

everyone my name is aiden gardell i'm a madison resident from district 8. i urge you to vote down this contract and put something better in its place this is a bad contract and the county deserves better i'll touch on three reasons it's a bad contract one it originates from an old year rfp two it underperforms in the services it provides and three it does not provide the thing that actually helps those in jail communication as a free basic service First, you should not be considering a second choice contract from a year old RFP. The county's learned so much in this last year from both community advocates like Moses and Expo and Just Dane and from experts or sorry for and for reports like the fiscal report from Worth Rises that was shared with all of you. We should not still be going off an outdated RFP for something we will be locked into for the next three years. Second, it's a bad contract because it under delivers on services that the county could be getting. Supervisor Furman has done a great job pointing out the numerous ways that this contract is a worse deal for the county. And I want to hit on one more aspect of this, and that's indigent services. Both the previous Viapath contract and this new proposed contract offer $25,000 per year for indigent services. It's important to take a side point and point out that this resident in the jail must initiate this process to be considered indigent, which has a number of aspects to it. It's unclear how obvious this option is to somebody in jail. And part of the criteria to be considered is to have low funds in your account for a week. And so that's a week of potential isolation because you don't have money to actually connect with anybody and communicate with anybody else at the jail. But back to the offered services from the contract. I received in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request that shared the total amount of used funds for the indigency funds over the last five years. And during the lifetime of the last contract, I guess the current contract we're in, only one third of those funds were ever used. This is absolutely not to say that we should ask for less indigency funds or reduce the amount of services offered in that contract, but it should raise red flags about how Viapath is pulling wool over our eyes about the quality and quantity of the services it is offering. Just imagine if all that $25,000 per year would be put towards free communication for anyone in the jail, rather than hiding it behind barriers of applications and processes that only a few select people actually get to use. But the main reason this contract is a bad contract is because it still fails to deliver on one of the best tools that we can give people in the jail to succeed, free communication. There are countless studies and reports about how providing communication as a basic service helps those in jail, their families, and the safety of officers and staff in the jail. The 10 minute per day calls that is offered is now is not enough. This is one single phone call that someone gets to make and has to choose whether they can call an employer to arrange for their release or call home to talk to their child. The Sheriff's Office will tell you that there are hundreds of phone numbers that they have designated as free to call, like many organizations and nonprofits. But those phone numbers don't include someone's mother who lives in Minnesota and who this person wants to talk to about a difficult day they're having. Those numbers don't include a friend who said he'd watch this person's dog while he's in jail and this person wants to check in on. Those numbers don't include the direct community of this person who would help with their mental health state while they're otherwise isolated in jail. Other counties and states have realized how important free communication is and are taking care of their communities. Dane County could lead the way in Wisconsin, which was already taking steps towards that statewide with Assembly Bill AB731 and Senate Bill SB708. But we need to move beyond this bad contract. And I want to say one last thing in my remaining time. In a summary of the contract services that the Sheriff's Office sent out recently, it makes a reference to La Crosse County. And I'm really tired of this comparison being made and want to make it known that we are in a significantly better bargaining situation than La Crosse County was. I personally talked with the supervisor who led the effort to get their limited free phone calls. And the important point that everybody seems to glance over is that they negotiated those calls after they got that contract, not while they were in an RFP. They were in such a poor position for negotiating at that time. And we were in the perfect position to negotiate, to put out a new RFP with exactly what we want, free communication.

Aidan, you have about 30 seconds left. Okay.

We're Dane County, the seat of the capital of the state, and we can do better than 10 minutes per day. We can provide free communication and keep families connected, but you need to vote no on this contract. Thank you.

Okay, next up is Allison Tracy Bartz to be followed by Kylan Bartel. Allison is on Zoom, registered in opposition. Okay, welcome, Allison. You have up to five minutes to address the board.

Hi, thank you. Good evening, board. I'm here to talk to you about the 2025 Resolution 414 regarding the contract between the county and Viapath for the purpose of a jail communication system. I would like to ask you to reject this contract. I have many reasons to say so, but I'm going to keep my focus narrow today. First, the ViaPath contract is financially concerning for jail residents and their families. I'm gonna guess that everyone in the room right now has a phone plan right now where you pay a lump sum per month, you hand over some amount of money, and you get unlimited texts and calls with almost anyone. However, in jail, it is still 2005. You have to pay for every message and every minute of every call. Worse, for some messages like photos, both the sender and the receiver have to pay, effectively doubling the cost from 25 cents to 50 cents per photo. The worst part of all is that in this contract, it costs six cents per minute to even have the messaging or call app open, punishing anyone who has dyslexia or other difficulties with reading or writing since it takes longer to type a message. Fortunately, the sheriff's office negotiated one free 10-minute call per day, but is that enough to catch up with a kid outside of jail? How about a spouse? How about arranging childcare or pet care or talking to your job or your landlord? Our jail residents and their loved ones are currently paying an average of $129 per month in order to stay connected. And that is going from the wallets of disproportionately low-income Dane County residents right into the pockets of a for-profit company shareholders outside of Dane County. As you have heard from other speakers tonight, there are ways for us to implement free communication in and out of the jail that is accountable to the public. Second of all, this ViaPath contract is also a worse deal for Dane County. The county already rejected an extremely similar contract in 2025 with the company Smart Communications. Both contracts were developed in a 2025 RFP process to replace the current jail communications contract with ViaPath. However, the contract before you from ViaPath is the second choice. Why? In part that is because it is a worse financial deal for the county. The contract does not have an administrative fee to reimburse the county for any of its work actually administering the program, which the rejected contract did have. It also requires the county to pay for any broken tablet, $200 per tablet, while the rejected contract did not. This Viapath contract has worse problems than a rejected smart communications contract, and it still requires our taxpayers to subsidize shareholders and board members of for-profit companies outside of Dane County. But not all the taxpayers, only the ones with loved ones in jail, were much more likely to have low wealth and low income compared to the average Dane County resident. The most just way to provide jail communications would be to spread across all taxpayers by implementing a system for free communication in and out of the jail accountable to the public. There may be other speakers tonight who will create a false sense of urgency around passing this contract, but I would like to counter that and say that we have time. We should go into a new RFP contract, new RFP to look for a new contract and consider other options like a county administered plan or a nonprofit plan to stop enriching wealthy corporations at the expense of our poorest residents because it only hurts our county to continue with the current for-profit model. Please vote against this contract. Thank you.

All right, following Allison is Kylan Bartel, registered on Zoom in opposition to be followed by Rachel Kincaid.

All right, can y'all hear me okay?

We can, go ahead. You have up to five minutes to address the board.

And you said my name right, so thank you. But yeah, I'm a constituent of the 28th district and I'm voicing my opposition to resolution 414. This resolution would approve this communication contract, which is predatory, passing the cost of communication onto incarcerated people and their families. And the way I see it, this contract would benefit no one except for the private equity millionaires and billionaires that own Viapath, the for-profit jail communications company, which would be the other party to this contract. Under this proposed contract, people in the jail would only get one 10-minute free call per day, as other folks have mentioned. Beyond that, people would be charged 25 cents per message or photo received, and 12 cents per minute for video calls. I don't know about you guys, but if I got charged 25 cents per message or photo I received, it would not be very good for my financial outlook, and I... I guess I would just say if I was in jail, I would be very upset about this. And just thinking about the fact that one in three people in this country have a criminal record, this affects a lot of people in our county. A lot of people in our county go to jail at some point. Most of the people in there, two out of three people have their cases pending, have not even been convicted yet for what they're in there for. So... Yeah. But yeah, these fees would add up. It sounds like just a little bit, but they really add up and they penalize connection to family and friends. It really doesn't have to be this way. Many states and counties across the country have implemented free calls for jail and prison residents, as other folks have mentioned. And where these free calls have been implemented, there has been documented lower recidivism rates, lower drug use, and more pro-social behavior for the people on the inside. This would benefit not only the people on the inside and their families, but also all of us by just creating a stronger and healthier community. Last but not least, I'd just like to point out that the likely cost of providing free communication for everyone in the jail is very, very small compared to the cost of building the new jail in the first place, which was over $200 billion. I would say if we can pay to build a multimillion dollar building to keep nonviolent community members away from their families and their work, then we as a county can afford the much smaller cost of free communication. I'm sure you all don't often hear taxpayers saying that they support paying money for things, but I, as a taxpayer, definitely support my money going towards free communication for people in the jail. I see it as a basic right for people on the inside. With that, I yield the rest of my time. Thanks for your consideration.

All right. Moving on, it appears that Rachel Kincaid is not available online at the moment. So we'll move on to Brenda Salvo, wishing to speak in opposition online to be followed by Aditha. I'm not gonna make a mess of your last name. Aditha is on deck in person. Brenda, welcome. You have up to five minutes to address the board.

Hello friends. Hello board members. My name is Brenda Salvo. I was born and raised in Dane County and have chosen to live here in my adulthood since 2015. Many of you have heard me speak on this issue before in committee meetings or if you were a part of the board last fall. I want to urge you with the utmost sincerity and intensity to say no to this contract. saying yes to this contract would frankly be a failure of your duty to represent what the community wants and needs. I have many, many concerns about this proposed contract, many of which have been highlighted by other speakers before me. It's a bad contract overall. It costs the county more money than even the one that was resoundingly shot down last fall. It would cost county residents more money than we can afford. Particularly heinous is that it double charges for messaging, both by charging for the actual call or message itself, and then also charging for the time that it takes to make that call, which of course, as has been highlighted before, would cost non-English speaking elder and disabled residents more than others. This is a discriminatory impact that this contract would have on your constituents And then overall, this is for-profit communications in and outside of the jail is an exploitative system, and it targets poor, disabled, Black and Latina community members. It takes us in the opposite direction of where we need to be going as a community. The concerns that I have about this contract that are most personal to me are the glaring inequities that this contract would compound. I am a poor person, and I would not be able to afford bail. Now, please let the record show I have no intention of breaking the law, but we know that innocent people are detained every day. We know that the vast majority of people who are currently in Dane County Jail, according to the legal system, are presumed innocent. They have not had a trial yet. No guilt has been proven. This is also personal to me because I have disabilities. I need more services than the average community member. And most of the services that I get, even from institutions that are designed to be helpful, like education systems or health care systems, most of them are inadequate. So I don't have a lot of faith that the jail of all institutions would suddenly be the first institution to be able to provide the kind of support that disabled folks need. I would be charged more for communication than someone without dyslexia because of the time it takes me to compose these messages. This is also personal to me because, like I'm sure many, many of you, I have loved ones who are statistically more likely to be targeted by law enforcement because of their race, because of their religion, because of their gender expression, or because they experience mental illness. I can very easily imagine a loved one of mine being... falsely accused or detained or taken based on something that someone suspected but wasn't true. And then being saddled with this debt because the system is broken. But we have the power to fix that broken system. Each of you guys voting tonight has the power to take us towards something that better matches the needs and the desires of your constituents. It shouldn't have to be personal for any of us to give a damn, because jail residents we're talking about are our neighbors. They are your voters, and they're human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and to have their basic needs met, none of which this contract does. And before I close out, I just want to highlight that communication is a basic need. we probably have all seen Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Where we say like food, water, shelter is the most important, and then we develop community later. But the vast majority of us, meet our basic needs like food and shelter through community. It is through our relationships that we are able to survive. When we look at historical moments where human beings have moved forward together, it's been because of interpersonal connection. And we know that the isolation caused by not being able to communicate with our loved ones is life-threatening. It leads to suicidality. It leads to the drug use that we're trying to prevent in our jails. It leads to the kids of incarcerated people using drugs more frequently. It leads to more violence.

Brenda, that is your time. If you could finish up, please.

Thank you. So I just urge you to treat this matter as serious as it is and stand up for your constituents, the 700 of them that today are locked up and the many others who will encounter the jail system and vote no on this contract because we deserve better. Thank you.

Next up, registered in person in opposition is Adithya. I look forward to hearing how to pronounce your name.

Thanks, it's Adithya. All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Adithya. I'm a District six resident and Democratic Social America member.

You can just leave them. You don't have to lift up. Got you.

All right. Yeah, I'm also here tonight to urge the county board to vote down the proposed jail communications contract. Others before me have already spoken to the details of why we can and should keep families connected and make jail communications free. So I'll try to just stick to the basics here. Average stay in the Dane County Jail is 21 days. Most people in there longer aren't there because they're convicted and think they're in pretrial detention because they're unable to find the money to pay bail. The county is currently allowing a private company to profit off their need to contact, stay in touch with the outside world. I think it seems ridiculous to me that the only way to provide basic needs that are easily accessible to most of us is to mediate more and more interaction with the outside world through these tablets where you schedule visits, order meals, pay for almost every phone call, every text, every email. When people go to jail, they're already denied access to their own phones, which, honestly, so many of us can't live without. They can't even receive a crayon drawing from their sibling or their child. Instead, if someone tries to mail that to them, they get sent a photocopy instead. Think about how dehumanizing that is, even for people who are in jail, disconnected for a few days from the outside world. How is that building stronger, healthier, safer communities here in Dane County? This is what's being offered to us here by a private equity backed corporation that's seeking to price gouge and profiteer off the backs of the poor and vulnerable families in Dane County. All while cost of living continues to increase for all of us and the county is being forced to cut our other services. I see no reason why we should allow the current state of things to continue when it's very clear it doesn't have to be like this and clear alternatives exist. We should reject this contract and build something better for everyone, thanks.

Next up is Selina Tapen, online registered to speak in opposition, to be followed by Yaseen Ahmed. So Selina, welcome. You have up to five minutes to address the board.

Hi. Yes, thank you so much for having me. Good evening, my name is Selena Chapin and I am the Chief Advocacy Officer at Worth Rises. We are a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the exploitation of incarcerated people and their families. It's very meaningful that you all are considering a contract that reduces rates and makes communication more affordable. However, I really want to urge you to use this opportunity to consider making jail communications free to connect families. Worth Rises has helped pass and implement free communication policies in six states, over a dozen counties, and also on the federal level. We know what it takes to make this work. We've done it a lot of times. We're absolutely committed to helping Dane County do it as well. I really hope that you pay attention to and give great weight to the testimonies of folks who are local, who are directly impacted by the decisions that you are making. I'm going to focus my remarks on fiscal considerations and what we have seen in other places where communication has been made free. Worth writes, as someone earlier mentioned, we just released a report documenting the impact of free communication policies across the country. And we found that without the stress of having to figure out how to pay for communication, without having to ration out the minutes, the quality of communication completely changes. Parents are able to stay on the phone with their kids while they do homework. They can listen to them talk about the little things. They can joke and laugh and process things. They can say, I love you. And all of this has a huge impact both on the families and also on the person inside. We found that the folks inside had more hope. They became more involved in programming and education. As far as children are concerned, what we found is aligned with well-established research showing that children with incarcerated parents who maintain regular contact are less likely to experience feelings of abandonment, more likely to do well in school, and less likely to become justice involved themselves. We also found, this comes as no surprise, that regular communication really eases reentry. The vast majority of people who are incarcerated are going to come home eventually. And staying connected helps them plan for that. They can secure housing. It can ease family reunification, which can be really, really difficult when someone has not been able to communicate with their family while they were away. and it helps them line up employment every single someone else mentioned this but every single correctional staff member that we interviewed recommended that other agencies adopt this policy they credited free calls with reducing tensions calming facilities and making their job easier It makes a lot of sense. I just spoke to a mother of an incarcerated young man who talked about how meaningful it was that he was able to just process with her because jail is a very stressful, difficult environment and how everything changed for him when he could just pick up the phone and talk to his mom. On the fiscal side, we have built models based on data that we have gathered from prisons and jails across the country, and that allows us to support administrators and lawmakers with fiscal analysis. Right now, Dane County's families are paying 7 cents per minute for phone calls, 12 cents per minute for video, and 25 per stamp for electronic messages. It all adds up to $954,000 a year just to stay in contact with a loved one. This is a hardship. One in three families with an incarcerated family member goes in debt over the cost of communication alone. based on our analysis, the county could make all of that communication completely free for incarcerated people and their families for as low as $284,000 a year. Those figures are grounded in several factors, including rates that other jurisdictions have already been able to negotiate down to.

Selena, you have about 30 seconds left.

Great. Based on that, we think that you should be able to get close to one and a half cents per minute. And what do I need to get to? What's most important in my 30 seconds? I will just end. The county is already renegotiating its telecom contract. And this is a really important opportunity. Please consider us a resource. We have worked with lawmakers. We have worked with agencies. I'm happy to answer any questions tonight or in the future. Thanks very much.

All right. Our 10th speaker, and then we'll pause for questions, is Yasin Ahmed, wishing to speak in opposition. Oh, you're here. Great.

Go ahead. Hey, Yasin Ahmed, Dane County resident. Yeah, I just want to... who are much better public speakers than I am, have already talked about Dane County can and must work towards free communications into and out of the jail that's accountable to the public. But in terms of this contract in particular, we know that we can do better than this, right? A lot of people have referenced Supervisor Fuhrman, and thank you, Supervisor Fuhrman, for your leadership on this. But in comparing this to the smart communications contract, this is a worse deal, right? Similar rates, no administrative fee, worse for the county. But also, I think it's really important for us to recognize the power of negotiation in this process, right? Last year with the smart communications contract, I think it was about four hours before that contract was to come before this board, the sheriff was able to bring forward the revised contract with no mail scanning enforced in it. And that was because that wasn't gonna pass, right? we see how this contract was adapted from that very same RFP that would have forced mail scanning. And we saw how even the slightest bit of pushback from the sheriff's office led to that small but not insignificant 10 minute a day free phone call, right? But also, I think looking at the FOIAs that our neighbors have done, recognizing how long the sheriff's office sat on this and how little negotiation was really done in earnest is really important. I'd call on you to all imagine what we could do with real negotiations. But as so many of our neighbors have already mentioned, we do know what that looks like, right? We recognize that across the country at both the state and the county level, we've seen free phone calls one outright, not just those two free 15 minute day phone calls, which are great, but fully free calls. And as my neighbors have testified, these rates would be far lower that if the county were to pay them, then what incarcerated people again, way more likely to be, especially in jail, there for crimes of poverty, and their loved ones would pay. And that would minimize the amount going to Viapath to these corporations. I think as we think about smart communications, yeah, we see Jonathan Logan with his yacht called The Convict and the Lamborghini with the license plate inmate, right? Flock is a really easy target after that Super Bowl ad. Viapath is and does the same thing. They're less ostentatious about it, but ultimately, this industry is fundamentally an evil one. that we need to send as little of our county resources to and not force our most vulnerable neighbors to contribute to that industry. I think especially considering what that money could buy for our most vulnerable neighbors. Adithya before me said this, but I think it's safe to say that all of us here today see how bad it's starting to get in the economy. And us here in this room are probably far more insulated than the average incarcerated person, their loved one, from those as the economy gets worse. As things get ugly and while the county is forced to cut services, and I don't envy the position that you are all in this year, but we do have to alleviate whatever burdens we possibly can. I urge you to vote no on this contract to solicit a new RFP to really hold the sheriff's office accountable to negotiating that as hard as they possibly can and to ultimately work towards a system that is owned and administered by the county. Thank you for your time and thank you for your vote no today.

All right, that was our 10th speaker. So are there any questions for the first, any of the first 10 speakers? OK, I'm not seeing anyone with a question, so we shall move. Oh, my apologies. Supervisor Fuhrman, you have a question for Jack Ringhan. So is Jack Ringhan still online? Yep, so Jack's still with us. So go ahead with your question, Supervisor Fuhrman.

Thank you, Chair. Jack, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to clarify the number that you provided about how much your understanding is that this contract generated in previous years.

Yes, thank you very much. I had made a comment about nearly $400,000 being generated for Viapath in 2024. I do want to note that that data was sourced from a preliminary fiscal analysis that was produced by Worthworth. enterprises who you just heard from one of the representatives. A final fiscal analysis that was sent out to the entire county board prior to this meeting uses 2025 data and their fiscal analysis concluded that Biopath in 2025 generated in terms of total communication revenue over $950 $50,000 from Dane County incarcerated people and their families. Thank you.

Any other questions? Okay. Seeing no other questions, moving on then to our four remaining speakers. The first one being Elise Seligman. SELERIER WISHING TO SPEAK IN OPPOSITION TO BE FOLLOWED BY ERIKA BACH.

THANK YOU. MY NAME IS ELISE. I'M RESIDENT OF DISTRICT 12. THANK YOU FOR HEARING US OUT. I KNOW IT'S A LONG NIGHT BUT I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT THAT WE REALLY LOOK AT THIS CONTRACT. THERE'S A NUMBER OF ISSUES WITH THIS THAT Many people have already gone over. One that I wanted to go back to is the charge on message drafting. So I work in IT and frankly, a six cents charge just to have an app open is ridiculous. There's no reason for it other than corporate greed. Um, and if you really think about the impact that has, how often when you're missing a loved one, do you go back and reread a text? How often do you just want to send a good night message? No, the sheriff's office has talked in subcommittees about their, um, programs to help people with disabilities with drafting messages. And while I think those programs are important and good to have, I don't necessarily want another person in the middle. I just want the time to write the message myself. And that's something that I don't think, I've never seen another contract where you have to pay just to draft a message because there's no reason for it. It's not costing the company anything to let someone type in an app. Yeah, communication is key. It's connection. There's a lot of really great information that's already been talked about, about how it helps people who are in the jail, how it helps their families.

It's

It's a basic human right, and it's a basic human need as well. Isolation has horrible effects on mental health that no one should have to go through or choose between that and going broke. The majority of the people in the jail are pretrial. I've been trying to keep tabs on the numbers through the county jail website. I've been sitting around 57% most of the time, so these aren't even people who have been convicted of crime and those who are, it's not a horrendous one. Even with that, taking away a basic human need is never okay. This contract does add the 10 minute phone call, which, well better than charging for every single phone call, is not nearly enough to actually provide meaningful connection. If you're talking to a loved one or a child about their day, that takes more than 10 minutes to actually connect. In family court, limiting to 10 minutes a day for a phone call would be grounds for parental alienation. It's not right. To others' points, there is still time for another RFP. This contract was renegotiated based on an old one that didn't have the same amount of information. Doing a new RFP where we're clearly stating what we want from these companies to get a better rates for communication so these families can connect will have a very meaningful impact. It will add actual competition for the companies to actually give better deals. we can do better. We should do better. Please reject this contract.

Thank you all. Next registrant. Excuse me. So, Erica Bach is not available. Is that correct? Go ahead.

Oh, just kidding. She's joining now.

She's joining now. Okay. So Erica will be followed by Madison Dashnaw.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, members of the body. You've had a long night, and so I'm not going to echo, hopefully, too much of what others have said. You might remember when we began this conversation, what feels like eons ago, there was a young woman, and her name was Soraya, and she read this beautiful children's book about talking to a parent in jail. And it currently requires funds if you're an incarcerated parent in the Dane County Jail or the child of one, where... Instead of being able to get a hug from your parent, perhaps you're fortunate enough to send a picture, or perhaps you're able to get a phone call from your child, as you might be an elder who needs them to help you manage your health care. There are some of you who are in that situation where you are either the parent of a child or you are the child of a parent, and that requires your presence, even if you can't physically be there. At that time, many of you commented, and I couldn't agree more about just how brave that child was to speak before you and to come and give voice to what that might be like to be too poor to talk through our communication systems. And so I'm going to ask you all to be brave here tonight and reject this proposal so that people in jail can speak as well. I want to thank Supervisor Furman for the leadership and for calling this out for what it is, which is a worse deal. You know, the Sheriff's Office confirmed that they didn't request a cost breakdown. And there was also a statement at one point about how they didn't originally ask ViaPath for an extension because they thought that the smart contract was going to go through. And then within like the same minute or two, there was a comment that the office had reached out and then was waiting to hear back. And so my question is a little bit of like, what is it? And what have we, where did we land with that? Supervisors asked if the sheriff would consider free communication and they were told yes to go for it. And then there was going to be some follow-ups where the Dane County Sheriff's office was going to get back to either Supervisor Andre or maybe all of you on the board and let them know what were our options. We were exploring for those folks who are indigent why we haven't used all of the $25,000 that was set aside. Sheriff reported that it was between January, February, and March, only $2,000 of those dollars were used. So we could roll those over to pay for part of this contract instead. The money is available. Excuse me, the money is available. We have not used up all 25,000 or even 12.5 of that. So we were trying to figure out what, you know, Supervisor Andre, thank you for asking what percentage of folks are indigent and county sheriff's office was supposed to get back to you. So I have questions about did that happen? We do need to continue to look, as supervisors have said, at all the push points. We want to know what is possible. Sheriff Barrett told us anything is possible, and this is not it. This contract does not reflect all of the possibilities that we could have. So this, again, is a worse contract than where we started. I'll acknowledge that they don't want to use our data, which is great, but that's not our only sticking point. And there were a number of things that were not explicitly in the contract. the free operational attorney's phone calls and what it might look like if there was the need for emergency medication and mental health management. There are so many considerations and especially because you've heard from several people before me and myself included, where this is not inclusive of folks with disabilities. One of the reasons that you all often do not see me on camera and why it's hard to be on the phone with you, I have neck and spinal issues that caused me from not holding a phone. And so if that's happening in the Dane County Jail, we can pretty much assume that those conversations aren't going to happen between loved ones because it's just too physically difficult to do so. One of the final things that I want to share with you all is we really clearly said one of these disabilities also means that I have attention to detail and I write a lot of notes. So we clearly have in quotes here, we haven't asked, so we don't know. And we haven't done it through a competitive RFP process. And that has not changed with what's before you tonight. Those were things that were important to you months ago. Also, the quote that leaders work proactively to solve problems before they're before us. So before they come to the floor so that you all get to do this work in committee. There should have been a follow-up from the Sheriff's Office and Chief Deputy, I believe it's Nygaard, to determine what those options were. If you all can say with full confidence that you've determined what those are, we'd like to see them. The public deserves that. The people in the Dane County Jail deserve that. So I'm going to ask you again to get those answers. We can't move forward with this contract and with knowing that we're leaving money from the internship funds on the table and knowing that this is not our bravest choice. So I'm gonna ask you all to please vote no and continue to work out those details. Thank you.

Next up is Madison Dashna. Not available. Okay, Madison's not available. All right, one last check on Rachel Kincaid was not available earlier. Is Rachel online? Still not online. So they were both registered in opposition. So that concludes our speakers. So for the speakers, for the last two speakers then, are there any questions? okay there being uh no questions for the speakers we shall move on and i like i said before they um what is before us is the first standing committee action of a recommendation of approval BUT I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT THAT PERSONNEL AND FINANCE ALSO TOOK ACTION AND THEY VOTED UNANIMOUSLY ON A MOTION TO RECOMMEND DENIAL. 6-1? THANK YOU. I WAS LOOKING FOR IT. I DIDN'T SEE IT HERE IN THE MINUTES. Oh, you're right. There it is. Okay. Yep. Yep. No. Okay. It's not here. Anyway, thank you for the correction. Six to one vote to recommend denial. But what is before us is the recommendation for approval. And I see in the chat, Supervisor Furman would like to make a motion. Supervisor Furman, why don't you just state your motion, please?

Sure. Thank you, Chair. I'd like to move denial of the contract. Thank you.

Okay, there's a motion by Supervisor Furman to move denial. Is there a second? Seconded by Riley, was that Riley? I didn't hear who was. Tertius. Tertius, thank you. All right.

Sorry, Chair, so the action in PPNJ was on the contract as amended?

As amended. I said that at the outset, not just...

Okay, so this would be denial for the contract as amended, Supervisor Fuhrman? Okay, very good, thank you.

Yeah. It's denial of the contract, yeah. Okay, Supervisor Fuhrman, do you want to speak to your motion?

Sure, thank you, Chair. I do want to start with first by thanking the community members who showed up this evening. Their advocacy on this issue has been incredible. They've shared a ton of experience and research with the community and the board and had to do it repeatedly. Thank you. Thank you. If the goal after rejecting the smart communications contract in September was to see a contract up for approval that's financially worse for the community and the county, I got great news, mission accomplished. The contract in front of the board this evening is for the runner up of an RFP issued almost a year and a half ago and whose results were due in March of 2025. Compared to the smart communication contract, it no longer pays the county back for staff administrative time, which was close to $300,000 a year. The Sheriff's Department recently claimed that the removal of this fee was to get the price of calls reduced from $0.11 a minute to $0.03 a minute, which is confusing because our current contract with ViaPath is for $0.07 a minute and smart communications, which included the reimbursement, was for $0.03 a minute. The contract does give jail residents a 10 free minute call each day, but those quote unquote savings quickly disappear with five minutes of usage of the tablet due to charges for basic tablet usage like messaging that didn't exist in the smart communications contract. Our RFP process is broken. The original RFP went out without community or committee input, and we're still considering a version of the results a year and a half later. PP&J voted 3-2 to recommend approval, driven largely by concern about the uncertainty of running another RFP process. Personnel and Finance recommended denial with a vote of 6-1. The market has changed since the original RFP. We know more about what we want and what's possible. We should absolutely be asking all vendors for their updated proposals, including those who weren't selected or didn't participate in the original RFP. Accepting stale results from a flawed process doesn't protect the county, it just locks in the mistakes. The first RFP had significant gaps. It didn't adequately specify the board's values around free communication and cost to families. We've since updated our ordinance on data privacy. We've had lengthy public debate about what the community actually expects. A new RFP carefully drafted to reflect those values would give vendors a clear target and give us a much stronger negotiating position than simply taking the runner up and hoping for the best. The new contract isn't scheduled to start until November. A focused, well-run RFP process with clear requirements around subsidized communication, tablet fees, and data protection can be completed in that window. PP&J recommended approval not because Viapath's contract is good, but they were afraid of the alternative. That's not a reason to bind the county to a worse deal for five years. The board has shown its willingness to hold the line when a contract doesn't reflect our values. This one doesn't.

Supervisor Reillander.

Thank you, Chair. I agree with everything the speakers have said tonight, including my excellent constituents, Jack and Elise, who spoke tonight. I won't bore you by repeating what they said. Thank you also to Supervisor Fuhrman for your research and advocacy here. Not that it should make any difference, but jail is not just diet prison. It is disproportionately filled with folks who are presumed innocent and are too poor to pay the bail it takes to get out. We all agree that jail communications are an essential county service, and all county services, as we're painfully aware, cost money. Our choice as a board is to decide where that money is plucked from and where it goes. We have seen the numbers from Worth Rises, $950,000 per year under the current for-profit model that takes money from the pockets of people who are too poor to afford bail, and their loved ones, and puts it into the pocket of a out-of-state for-profit organization. An organization, by the way, that I believe is currently being boycotted by the prisoners of the state of Nevada. So you can imagine how bad something has to be for them to give up communications just to make a point. Or we can spend what has been estimated to be $284,000 per year, according to, again, the Worth Rises numbers, which I've read over. Either way, we spend money. But in the first option, we spend four times as much, and we take it from those least able to part with it. A beer at a concert costs $20. because a profit-motivated company knows you are trapped there. This is that $20 beer on steroids. And if you've ever bought one of those beers, I urge you to vote no on this contract and insist on an RFP that taps into some of the resources that WorthRises highlights. Thanks.

Next up, Supervisor Peterson.

Thank you, Chair. Just a quick statement. I want to acknowledge that there's legitimate concerns being raised tonight. We're balancing resident well-being and family communication, concerns about fee structures, operational realities inside the jail, and a county budget environment that includes a roughly $15 million deficit. I also think we need to be clear about what problem we're trying to solve before we default to procurement. An RFP is not a policy solution by itself. It only works well if the body first agrees on the outcomes we want and the trade-offs we're willing to make. Right now, I don't think there's consensus on a couple of key questions. So what level of communication access should every resident receive? Should communication services generate county revenue? Should the county subsidize some or all communication costs? What outcomes are we prioritizing? These are all policy questions first and procurement questions second. I also think it's reasonable to ask vendors what different models would cost, and I do agree with Supervisor Furman on this. Whether that's a fully county-funded model, a hybrid model, a free baseline communication model, there's all kinds of models there. That information helps us make informed decisions. It does not predetermine the outcome, though. At the same time, we really should avoid oversimplifying the budget discussion. Saying cut another sheriff line item is easy in theory, but eventually you have to identify specific reductions and accept the operational impacts that come with them. I also think we need to be honest about timing. If the direction tonight is to move immediately to a full RFP process without first defining the policy framework, I think there's a real possibility communication services may not be ready in time for the new jail project. Procurement, implementation, security review, operational transition all take time. For me, the most important thing is we don't pretend there's a zero trade-off solution here. There is not. Every option has financial, operational, and ethical implications. The question is which trade-offs this body believes are most appropriate and most aligned with our values and fiscal realities. Personally, I believe there is a value in exploring models that provide a meaningful solution. free communication baseline for residents while still maintaining you know operational sustainability and fiscal realism but before we jump to rfp as the answer i think we first need to find the policy outcome we're actually trying to achieve here thank you chair any other discussion on resolution 414 supervisor andre

Thanks, Chair. I've had the unique opportunity to vote on this in two different standing committees now, which is a little unusual. But what I'm pleased to hear tonight, and I think, frankly, throughout the discussion over the last few years now, is actually a lot of agreement around values and philosophy. That's also resulted in a change to our state legislative agenda, so now we can advocate on this issue and try to make some public policy changes there that could impact us positively here at the local level. I also want to reiterate that advocates have really drawn a lot of attention to this issue. Thank you for being so consistent and thoughtful and like really digging into the data and the weeds on all of this to really raise the issue for our consideration. I was the one in finance committee, so I will reiterate some of the rationale for why I've been supportive of this contract. And it really comes down to a few different really discrete reasons. Number one, Having those 10 free minutes a day, to me, is very meaningful. Maybe a future contract would be better, maybe not. That's an unknown at this point. There's also a significant increase, a doubling in the services for individuals that qualify as indigent. And as we talked about earlier, there are major limitations and workflow issues about how all of that happens. I like that there's a pot just for that particular population because it means that those individuals with the fewest resources and who document that are entitled to a certain degree of free services. There's also very wide discretion for the sheriff's office to add phone numbers for local nonprofits, and those services are utilized very greatly according to the data we've got from the sheriff's office and from the existing provider on all of this. We don't know whether those provisions would exist in a future vendor or not, to what degree, what discretion, limits on it, et cetera. That freaks me out. And when we went out to RFP this last year, which I agree that the process here on the timeline is concerning, but there were only two respondents to that RFP. There were other vendors that were interested and then did not respond. So really this comes down to what I'm thinking about the next steps of this process. If this proposal is denied tonight, We, as multiple people have stated, need to get on the same page about what the priorities are in that RFP process, what the policy trade-offs are, what the red lines are, and then go out to competitively bid that. knowing that free services or lower reduced cost or neutral or some combination of those are not the only component that the review team is going to consider through the scoring of those vendors there are very significant privacy security technology considerations, especially as we're going through the jail consolidation project. This is a vendor that's gonna need to transition across multiple locations, multiple processes. It's a very complicated thing that will be a major component of how this actually comes to fruition if that's the case. So we might get vendors that apply but aren't selected through this process. And maybe it's worth going through that process to figure out the answer to that question. I hear the call from advocates and some of my colleagues to do that. But it might just result in a different vendor with different rates, different structure, could be better, could be worse. And to have the minutes accessible proposed under this contract I think is very, very important. We spent a lot of time on the whole mail scanning issue. I'm thankful that hasn't come up again, appreciative of that. But it does feel that there are many different policy tradeoffs here that if we go to RFP, let alone how those responses are scored, could result in an outcome that is less favorable than the one before us today. So I'll conclude with that. If we do move forward with an RFP process, I really hope we can... figure out what those policy partiers are and where the tradeoffs are such that maybe if there's a values aligned vendor that offers some free services but not all, would we consider that? Is it the vendor? Is it the minutes? Is it how much? Like what is most important to us? But I do want to reflect that I have learned a lot through this process. I appreciate that there's been really robust engagement from the community. I think it's something we all need to take seriously and I support the components in the contract that take us a step further to more accessible services. Thank you.

Hey. That is the speakers. So again, the motion is to deny resolution 414. A roll call, a roll call has been requested.

Sorry, yeah. Okay, on the motion to deny Posler. Posler, aye. Posler, aye. Ritt? Ritt, aye. Ritt, aye. Rylander? Rylander, aye. Rylander, aye. Smith?

Smith, aye. Smith, aye.

Trucios? Trucios, aye. Trucios, aye. Veldren?

No.

Veldren, no. Wegleitner? Aye. Wegleitner, aye. Welsh?

WELSHEI.

WELSHEI. YANG. YANG. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. ANDRE. Eicher, aye. Engelberger? Engelberger, no. Erickson? Erickson, aye. Fries? Fries, aye. Furman? Furman, aye. Furman, aye. Glazer? Glazer absent. Gray? Gray, aye. Gray, aye. Heuselman?

Heuselman, aye.

Heuselman, aye. Jackson?

Jackson, aye.

Jackson, aye. Kemp? Kemp absent. Crowning? Crowning, aye. Larson? Larson, aye. Larson, aye. Lewis? Louis, aye. Louis, aye. Marin? Marin, aye. Marin, aye. Obesee? Obesee, aye. Obesee, aye. Peterson? Peterson, no. Peterson, no.

Miles? Miles, aye.

Miles, aye. 30 to 4.

That motion to deny passes. The resolution is denied. On to item K3. 2025, Resolution 419, Award of Professional Services Agreement for the Multi-Building Mechanical Systems Improvement Project at Henry Vilas Zoo. What is before us is Public Works and Transportation Committee Recommendation of Approval. Discussion on Resolution 419. Hearing none, all in favor of the recommendation of approval, say aye. Aye.

Aye.

OPPOSED SAY NO. THAT MOTION CARRIES AND RESOLUTION 419 IS ADOPTED. Next up is item 4, 2025, resolution 440, contract change order number 15 for the CCS parking ramp restoration phase two construction at 113 South Henry Street in Addison. Wisconsin contractor is Gulf Acquisition Group. What is before us is Public Protection, no, no, no, Public Works and Transportation Committee recommendation for approval. Discussion on resolution 440 supervisor Berisha Thank You mr. Chair I'd like to be recording as you know on this resolution Okay and Again there's a problem with the minutes on here this well I said it's before us with a recommendation of approval that is true there was one vote at committee in opposition so all right and Any other comments on resolution 440? Excuse me. All right, there being no further comment, all in favor of the recommendation of approval of resolution 440, say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, signify by saying no. And with that, motion, yeah, the recommendation, I'm sorry, resolution 440 is adopted. On to L, appointments. We have one item here, 2025 resolution 445, county executive appointments. What is before us is the executive committee actioned earlier tonight with a recommendation of approval. Any discussion on resolution 445? And this is the long list of county executive appointments we've all been waiting for. So please check it in detail. All right, so all in favor of approval of resolution 445, say aye. Opposed, say no. And with that motion, the item carries, the vote carries. So resolution 445 is adopted. We're on to M, items requiring more than a simple majority. And I just need to check whether or not we have any registrations on these items.

Yeah.

Are you referencing at some point supervisor appointments by the executive? These are just, not just, these are citizen member appointments. Were you referring to something else? Just for clarification purposes.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I referred it earlier tonight. That's what I looked at before coming in, sorry.

We don't have those yet.

They're on Logistar now.

Tonight we do.

So they're available for, so. Very good. Look at that. Sorry. Just kidding. All right, just checking registrations. No registrations on any items under M. So are there any requests for separation? Supervisor Doolin?

Yeah, M1, please.

Okay, we'll separate M1. Are there any other requests? All right, then, what? Veldman asks for separation of M8. Pardon? Okay. Got it, got it, okay. On the balance of items one through, I mean, sorry, two through seven, I'd like to record those as having passed unanimously if there's no objection. Hearing no objection will be so recorded and those items are adopted. So turning to item one, 2025 resolution 358, award of contract for the Arctic Fox exhibit construction at Henry Vilas Zoo. What is before us is public works and transportation committee recommendation of approval. which carried out a vote of four to one. Discussion on resolution 358. Supervisor Doolin.

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to rise in opposition to this resolution, not because I oppose investing in the zoo, because I believe that our first responsibility is to the animals already in our care. So I mean, absolutely, I'm in favor of the quality of our exhibits over the quantity. So, in 2022, we paid for an independent investigation into zoo operations, and one of its key recommendations was to meaningfully involve zookeepers in major decisions. The keepers are telling us clearly that the priority should be improvements to current enclosures, like the Capybara enclosure, and addressing existing animal welfare concerns before building a new fox exhibit. And that's not a new issue. So funding for Capybara enclosure improvements has already been identified through capital improvement process. A design was developed and submitted through the RFP process, but the project reportedly stalled because the cost was considered too high. So the obvious question is, why is this funding not proposed to help address that existing need instead of building something entirely new? We also need consistencies. When concerns were raised about the seal enclosure, this body recognized that animal welfare and safety had to come first. So why would we apply a different standard here? If we are serious about following recommendations of the independent investigation, listening to zoo staff, and prioritizing animal welfare, then existing needs should come before expansion. And speaking personally as a guinea pig mom, I am personally concerned about the treatment and welfare of these animals. Caves are highly social rodents with complex environmental needs. And I do not think concerns raised by people caring for them every day should be brushed aside in favor of expansion projects. So for those reasons, I urge a no vote on this resolution. Thank you.

Any other discussion on resolution 358? Supervisor Engelberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could we hear from the interim zoo director, Janine, regarding this issue?

You have a question, Janine?

You know, it seems there's concern from keepers that there's some problems with how we're proceeding. I mean, to me, in this instance, this comes from the Public Works Department. It's approval of a building project, which is different than the problems that are perceived out there by some people that... we're not doing the right thing. So I'd just like to have the zoo director, interim zoo director, give us some details on what's happening here, if possible. Sure.

Happy to do that. Thank you. I think there's a lot of questions across the zoo and in this interim role, I am listening. I want to hear what the staff has to say. In this particular project, I really see... what the need is and we have an incredibly passionate team that cares about the animals that are in our care. The current welfare standards for our capybaras are being met. We are meeting the standards for both USDA and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums welfare standards with our capybara enclosures. We do move our capybaras to a winter enclosure in the wintertime and move them back. They're back in their summer enclosure now, which is in keeping with good standards across many other zoos do the same. Milwaukee Zoo does. Como Zoo in Minneapolis does. And we are... not choosing animal welfare, I would say, over another project. Both of these projects are incredibly important to the zoo, and I'm committed to looking at and taking a step back in the Capybara enclosure as well. I want to hear more information from the staff, and we are hosting an input session on the 29th. One of the things that came to my attention in this process and in this interim role was that both construction exhibit for Capybara and the expansion in that aviary money came back, yes, too high, but also there were some construction concerns with the ability to continue that construction with the infrastructure that was currently there. So I want to take a concerted effort to revisit those plans and also some welfare concerns with free flight aviary and the Capybaras moving into that space as well as the HVAC kind of seal, if you will, between the area that we're looking at moving capybaras into the free flight. So it is not a, we're not doing capybara. This is a timeout. We need to reevaluate this project and do it really well for the success of our animals and our staff and our taxpayers to make sure that we are doing that project correctly and that we are taking a really good amount of time to talk with the staff. I know they have so much good ideas and I want even more of their good ideas And I want to do that in an appropriate and respectful way. So I want that time to spend with the staff moving forward for those aviary improvements. And I see it as a strategic sequencing on this. And the big plan, while also trying to make sure that we can fill in. exhibit that's been emptied fall of 2022 and our aza um it's very important for us it is a mar on our accreditation well it would make it so we can't be accredited it is a mar And so we want to make sure that we are continuing to work on those capital projects. And this is part of that sequencing that the staff has planned on. And I know we won't always all agree, but I really want to listen to this team. And I feel like the passion of this team is why we really need to take a time out. look at this capybara project and ensure in the end that we meet the results that our staff expect, our animals deserve, and be able to also move forward with the Arctic fox project to avoid this enclosure remaining vacant into a fifth year.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we should move ahead. I have confidence in our employees and our department heads, so I think we should move forward with this. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Trucios.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in opposition to this item. At the beginning of this meeting, we all received an email from the keepers, seven of whom named themselves in signing on to this email, and many others who were unwilling to put their name on the line, their aim and their career on the line. This is a very lengthy email. I will not, I tried extracting individual components of it, but I will spare us all. I think that the funds, if we're going to spend taxpayer dollars on a brand new exhibit, I think it would be better invested doubling down on what we currently have. I'm really proud of the zoo. I think it can be even better. I want our staff to feel supported and heard, and I think that if we want to spend funds on the zoo, we should take a look at that email and the priorities of our zookeepers and thoughts thereof when considering those dollars. Thank you.

Okay. Let's see here. Supervisor Wren.

Thank you, Chair. It's very hard for me to vote no against something with the zoo, but I encourage my colleagues to join me in voting against this resolution. While I certainly would love to see the arctic foxes here at Henry Vilas, I think that There are animals that we already have. Fine example of that is the capybaras. And their housing is not adequate. They have to change habitats twice a year, which can't be comfortable or easy. I know, you know, I haven't moved in 25 years. I can't imagine moving twice a year. I'm hearing from a lot of zookeepers as well that they have these concerns. We have money now and I keep hearing from management that the capybaras will not be ignored, but to me voting yes on this resolution is kicking the can further down the road we have some funds available and we need to invest in the animals already within our care before we bring in new ones so i'll be voting no okay uh next up uh supervisor rylander uh yeah it's just a

For the interim director, can you speak to the fungibility of the funds that are being used for this? Is it correct to portray this as the Fox exhibit taking money away from the ability to make the improvements that are outlined by the zookeepers for the copy bears?

Thank you. I think it's hard to identify exactly what the fund for capybara will be without going back into some planning around that. So I can't speak to the amount that we would need, depending on where we would make those improvements, whether it's in the current enclosure or elsewhere within the zoo, without doing a full investigation and reaching out for those quotes.

Thank you. Supervisor Welsh with a question.

Thank you, Chair. You mentioned the impact of AZA accreditation. I'm wondering also if you could speak to any potential impact of empty or underutilized spaces in general at the zoo and what that impact might be from an economic standpoint or visitor standpoint.

Thank you. Yes, I would say, you know, there's always excitement when we're able to make sure that our exhibits are full. We go many feet without seeing an animal throughout the zoo and being able to add Arctic fox in that space. If you're familiar, those of you who have been at the zoo, Formerly, the penguins were in that location, and it has been a number of years where that exhibit has sat vacant. And I know that with the former leadership, they have put out a lot of information that Arctic fox will be coming. And so we have excited folks who are looking forward to having an animal in that space. And visitation is incredibly important. We are mandated as a free zoo, and one of the nine free ACA accredited zoos across the country. And not having animals in exhibits does hurt some in many ways to our attendance. And so attendance is the way that we get folks to drop some cash in the donor tubes to help us remain free and accessible and also to get people excited to come visit and explore, learn about animals, learn about conservation and species survival. So having full exhibits brings people to the zoo. And it's a great visitor draw to Dane County to get people to spend cash here.

All right. Thank you.

Supervisor Boettcher.

Director or Supervisor Welsh, I know you were on the March 3rd, the Zoo Commission took this issue up and then on April 14th, they voted to approve this resolution. I'm wondering if either of you could give us some insight into what the Zoo Commission looked at or what concerns they brought up or the reasons for why they voted in favor of the resolution.

Yeah, I would say the 1st round that it came through the commission received what I suspect is a similar letter to what you all received and commission to take a pause and said, hey, we really want to understand. We then invited to commission anyone who was interested to come see the enclosure to understand what it looks like to move capybaras. between these spaces and what it takes to do so. And so I think it was helpful for them to have the time and understand the timeline that we shared around this decision making that it wasn't done lightly, that this has been in a planned progress since November of 2022. We've incorporated the staff into multiple planning sessions. And I think having the opportunity to take a pause and have the Zoo Commission understand that full timeline was why they ultimately decided to move it forward. Supervisor Welsh, maybe you have a different perspective than me from that meeting, so I'll turn it over to you.

No, I think that accurately reflects what was discussed at both meetings. I think having the more in-depth perspective of seeing the actual space and understanding the movement between it was helpful as well. So that's the only other thing I would add.

Okay, let's see. Okay, it's just a question, okay. Supervisor Marron. Oh, no, you're... Got it, all right. That clears the board, and given some of the comments, I'm gonna ask that the clerk call the roll, because this does require a two-thirds vote of the membership. Okay, Postler. No, the action before us was Public Works and Transportation Committee Recommendation of Approval. That was the first standing committee action that carried there in a vote of four to one. And then Personnel and Finance was the last committee to consider it, and it passed there unanimously.

Postler I. Postler I. Ritt.

RIT, no.

RIT, no. Rylander? Rylander, aye. Rylander, aye. Smith?

Smith, aye.

Smith, aye. Truccius? Truccius, no. Truccius, no. Veldren? Aye. Veldren, aye. Wegleitner? No. Wegleitner, no. Welsh? Aye. Welsh, aye. Yang? No. Yang, no. Andre? Andre, aye. Andre, aye. Bruchuk? Aye. Bruchuk, aye. Bliesewitz? Aye. Bliesewitz, aye. Boettcher? Aye. Boettcher, aye. Bollig? Bollig, aye. Bollig, aye. Brandmeier, absent. Brouwer? Brouwer, aye. Brouwer, aye. Chavla? Chavla, aye. Chavla, aye. Dantzler? Aye. Dantzler, aye. Doolin? Doolin, no. Doolin, no. Downing? No. Downing, no. Eicher? No. Eicher, no. Engelberger? Aye. Engelberger, aye. Erickson? Aye. Erickson, aye. Fries?

No.

Fries, no. Fuhrman? Fuhrman, aye. Fuhrman, aye. Glazer? Absent. Glazer, absent. Gray? Gray, no. Gray, no. Heuselman?

Heuselman, no.

Heuselman, no. Jackson?

Jackson, no.

Jackson, no. Kemp? Kemp, absent. Crowning? Crowning, no. Larson? Larson, no. Larson, no. Lewis? Lewis, no. Lewis, no. Marin? Marin, no. Marin, no. Obese? Obese, no. Obese, no. Peterson? Peterson, aye. Peterson, aye. Miles? Miles, aye.

Miles, aye. 18 to 16. So that is not 2 thirds. No. So, uh... that, so the resolution is not adopted. Do we need affirmative action?

Denial, it's just.

It's not approved, okay. All right, so, yep, so that was resolution 358 is not adopted. Excuse me. The other item that was separated was item eight, And that is 2025 Resolution 448, authorizing the reclassification of child support investigator and lead child support investigator classifications. What is before us is Public Protection and Judiciary Committee recommendation of approval on a vote of six to one. So on this, Supervisor Veldren.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was the one. I got the PB&J late, I apologize. So I really didn't have my thoughts together on this other than what I really thought about and didn't enunciate those to the committee, but it still holds. We pass these classifications pretty easily and readily. And the work is certainly important. And I'm not downplaying that. And everybody has to work sometimes a little harder. And maybe it's a lot. But I'm looking at this right now from a fiscal standpoint. And this, to me, is a raise. And it's something that we should be very careful of doing at all times, but especially right now. I'm not saying these folks don't deserve it, but it's $56,000 for, and I know the majority of this, and the Corporation Counsel can correct me since these folks are in the Corporation Counsel's office, the majority of this money is paid for by the state. I believe. So we do get good use of our money from a leverage standpoint. Right now, I don't think this is when we should be looking at any kind of reclasses and just pushing them through. Obviously, a lot of work was done. I never read that much of an analysis on a position, a 21-page memo. for reclassification, but I think right now we should look at everything that we pass well before October, well before September. as money that we're gonna have to afford in a new budget. And this is operations. We've had some other discussions earlier tonight about capital versus operations. This is operational money. This goes on the levy. So these are the things that we pass these. This gets added to right to the bottom line, if you will. This gets right into the new budget. So I think that's a consideration that we should have to take. Like I said, we pass these reclasses and it's real simple, but we ask everyone to take a cut and This to me is just, I'm not saying it's a way around it, but maybe it was being done at the same time, but I just don't think this is something that we should easily pass when they come up. So I'm just sort of making this point right now early in the term. So I would encourage folks to think about this and vote no.

Supervisor Truccios.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I rise in favor. I voted in favor of this in committee. In committee, we had several members of the teams who do this work come and speak to the nature of their work. Many people are working with a caseload in the 3,000 to 6,000 range. Their job is extremely demanding, where they have an extreme amount of discretion on how each individual case is handled. Every case is unique. I was grateful for them to come and speak to us in committee. Given how late it is, I don't blame them for not wanting to come tonight. Like Supervisor Veldren said, the memorandum behind describing the nature of their job went into extreme detail covering exactly how demanding this job is, exactly how high their workload is. If one person who is working that job cannot continue to work for the county because of the pay range, Every single other person on that team is going to suffer. Everybody else in that department, a lot of jobs, a lot of work will be unfilled. Again, the majority of these funds are coming from other governmental bodies. We are going to be putting in a small portion of it compared to the 51,000... 56,000 total, sorry. And I think it's important that we... that we keep in mind how sensitive this work is and the people who would be impacted if, again, anybody does have to step down from their job, several people. The reason why this is coming before us to begin with is entirely because one person retired after working, I believe they said it was like 28 years. It was something far longer than I intend on working. uh myself if i can if i can't afford if i can manage to uh get a state pension someday uh the because of that person retired it's now before us for consideration if they had not retired it would not be um again i think we should strongly consider in favor of this resolution all right with that thank you chair

Um, Like my colleague, Supervisor Trucios, child support investigators aren't just handling paperwork and enforcing court orders. They're keeping families financially stable and helping children get the support they are legally entitled to. So when it's collected consistently, it means fewer families relying on public assistance, fewer parents forced into crisis, and more money flowing directly back into our local economy through rent, groceries, childcare, school supplies, and other everyday needs. So it's not just the wages itself. So this work has long-term impacts. Financial stability for children is tied to better educational outcomes, better health outcomes, lower long-term costs associated with poverty and instability. These positions strengthen accountability, support working families, and ultimately save public dollars by helping prevent deeper economic hardship before it happens. So I encourage my colleagues to vote yes, because it's not just an investment in enforcement, but an investment in children's families and overall economic stability of our community.

Supervisor Larson.

Thank you, Mr. chair, just a brief comment in support of my, the past 2 supervisors to comment on the measure. I also voted for this in committee. I just wanted to highlight the overall cost is less than expected to be less than 20,000 dollars for the year. For all of it, that's certainly a fair chunk of change. I would personally love to have, but that's not a 1M dollar project. That's impacting whether the zoo can functioning as we're just discussing or other matters of that nature. And I also wanted to reiterate supervisor Julian was saying about the importance to families and children of what these investigators do on a day to day basis. How difficult it is door to door tracking people down. And to reemphasize supervisor's comment regarding the extensively helpful documentation that was provided with regard to all the different position description requirements of the different classification levels showing comparable positions and the amount of time spent on those particular tasks. clearly supported the increase of classification just through mission creep and you know how much more difficult it's gotten to do these things in an increasingly technological world. That's my entire comment. Thank you.

Supervisor Walsh, my apology. I jumped over you in the queue. Go ahead.

No worries. Thanks, Chair. Very quick point. I appreciate and take the point that Supervisor Veldren is bringing up about being very thoughtful and intentional about how we're approaching the budget and essentially approving pay increases. I did for the sake of equity want to just remind folks that not that long ago we did approve a pretty substantial wage increase for both the sheriff's position and the clerk of court. So I think this is a small amount that is very, very well documented and justified in my opinion. So I, you know, keeping in mind that we do really have to be conscious of what we're approving at this point in time, I will be supporting this.

All right. Thank you. That the board is clear, so this requires more than a simple majority vote. I would like to record that as having passed with more than a, yep. Got it. I'd like to have it recorded as having passed with the necessary greater than simple majority vote. Supervisor Veldren has indicated he is voting no. If there's no objection to recording it as such, speak up. Hearing no objection, it will be so recorded, and resolution 448 is adopted. All right, so that concludes M. Any other such business is allowed by law from anyone? Then I would entertain an adjournment until our June 4th. I move. Moved by, who was that, Obese, and seconded by Bollig. So all in favor of German say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? We are adjourned. Good evening, everybody.