Health & Human Needs Committee - Regular Meeting

I will call the Health and Human Needs Committee meeting from June 11th to order and ask Amanda to call the roll. Thank you, Chair.

Supervisor Glazer?

Glazer here.

Chair Weigleitner? Here. Supervisor Jackson? Jackson here. Supervisor Walsh? Walsh here. Supervisor Hueselman? Supervisor Hueselman? Not present. Supervisor Obese? Supervisor Obese? Not present. And Supervisor Dantzler, Jr.?

Present.

Thank you. And we do have quorum chair.

Thank you. And are you convening your meeting when our business meeting is over, Supervisor Doolin, or are you convening it now? I'm just looking for your notice because it's not clear from ours.

I'm in front of me because I'm on my iPad. So if, yeah. Thank you.

The zoning and land regulation committee was posted to start at 5.30, so it would be appropriate to call it to order now. The only item of business is the joint presentation.

Okay. All right. Thank you. So being the time is 5.34, I'd like to call the joint meeting adjourned. with the zone of zoning and land regulation committee to order. And if interim director or if interim zoning administrator Hans Holbert could call the roll, please.

Sure. I'm not looking for another promotion at this point, but.

Yeah, I know. Sorry.

Supervisor Peterson.

Peterson here.

Supervisor Postler here. Supervisor Cronin. Supervisor Ritt here and chair Doolin Doolin here. Or present, uh, Cronin absent.

Okay, I am just, I'm looking at our agenda, Chair Doolin, and I do see a couple items that I think the HHN committee might be able to dispense with quickly to allow our staff to be able to move on with their days and not sit here all evening if there's any objection. If perhaps we could move... our 2026 Human Services Contract Addendum 003 to the top of the agenda at this point. Director Schluter, are you available? Yes, I am. Does that work for you to take that item up? I think Division Administrator Campbell doesn't need to stick around through all of the presentations and everything.

Madam Chair, if you need a motion to move that, I'll make that entertaining for you.

Thank you. Supervisor Dantzler, is there any objection to that? Okay, we'll move up item E, HISCA 003. Amanda, are there any registrants on that item?

No, Chair.

Okay. Then, Director Suter, can you provide an overview, please, for the committee?

All right, so HISCA 003, Addendum to Catholic Charities, five-door contract. This contract is being increased by $30,000 to add capacity for residential substance use disorder treatment at five-door. Five-door is operated by Catholic Charities. This adjustment is being made based on utilization that we've seen so far this year as an overview. provider and they received reimbursement for the treatment that they provided but five but medicaid does not cover room and board expenses for the residents that are in treatment we have a number of contracts like this where we fund room and board only for dane county residents going through medicaid funded treatment this contract addendum is funded by county levies that Division Administrator Campbell's on that call as well.

Great. Thank you. Are there any questions for Director Schluter or Division Administrator Todd Campbell? Not seeing any hands. Is there a motion to approve the contract addendum?

So moved, Supervisor Dantzler.

Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? Not seeing any hands. Is there any objection to unanimous approval of the motion? Seeing no objection, the motion is approved. And we're taking care of that one. I don't, I believe that was the only one that doesn't relate to a presentation or the housing division director shooter. Is that right?

I think so. Can you hear me better now?

That is much better. Yes. Okay.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had the wrong, I was, anyway, I've sorted it out. Yeah, I think, I think, I think that's the only one.

Okay. Well, um, then, um, We have taken care of that. And then I think, don't let me forget about the minutes, but I think then it would be appropriate to move to the report from the NENA collective since we have so many people here. Is there any objection to moving to item G posted for the quorum of ZLR as well? All right. Then we will do that. And we have... a number of folks here with us. And Director Schluter, do you want to introduce this item? And I believe Casey Becker and Ashley Ballweg is here from the Housing Access and Affordability Division. And they can also provide us some context. We did hear from the NENA Collective and their consulting partners on this a few months ago. So we're excited to have you back. But just a little refresher, especially considering we do have some new committee members, new board members on the Health and Human Needs Committee. So a little background would be appreciated.

I'm going to kick it right to Division Administrator Becker as long she was, I think she had a power outage. So I think she's at Northboard. So let me try to queue her up here.

While he's looking for Casey, Ashley, am I missing anybody on the panelists? Sorry, if I'm moving to virtual and we have a couple of presentations, we have a couple of guests. I want to make sure I have everybody moved over to panelists right now.

Amanda, everyone that's going to be presenting is on the panelists that I can see. Thank you for confirming.

I should ask, Amanda, did anybody register for public comment on this item?

No, not on this item.

Okay, thank you.

I am live from Northport. Can everybody see me and hear me okay? Yeah. All right. It is very exciting. Hi, everybody. We're equally excited to be welcoming our partners from NENA Collective back to share the latest on the Farmworker Housing Initiative that they are partnering with us on. Just to provide a little bit of background in the Dane county budget I would have been maybe a couple of years ago now, there was a capital amendment that provided $8 million total that to support the exploration and establishment of housing for farm workers and. Before we get to the housing part, we thought it would be a good idea to talk with consultants and other knowledgeable folks in the community about what exactly would be the best fit for Dane County and for its farm workers and acknowledging, you know, the uniqueness of our area and what we need. So as a result of a procurement, Nina Collective was the partner that came forward, that we moved forward and established a contract with, and they've been working with us ever since and have been doing a great job going out there, engaging with all kinds of stakeholders who touch this issue. And they're going to share a little bit about the latest phase of their work with all of us tonight. And I just want to acknowledge Ashley Ballweg from our team is here. and has been our lead staff person working really closely with Nina Collective on this item. We really appreciate Ashley's work. She's done a fantastic job. Ashley, is there anything that I've forgotten to mention that I should say that's really important?

No, I think you covered it. I was just going to say that tonight we have the partners with Nina from SIFT Consulting and from the UW School of Workers, but I'm sure they will introduce themselves.

All right. Thank you. Take it away, everybody.

Good evening. Are we controlling our own PowerPoint presentations?

Yes, you should be able to.

Okay. Thank you. Well, I was voluntold that I would be first. So here I am. Can you all see my presentation?

Yes.

Okay. Just do this and get it to presenter mode here. So good evening, everybody. And I just wanted to say that it's really an honor to be here with you all this evening to present on some of the work that we have been doing in collaboration with Nina and SIFT these last several months. a project that's near and dear to my heart and my expertise. And I will go ahead and get started with the few slides that we put together for our part. So my name is Armando Ibarra. I am a professor in what's known as the School for Workers at UW-Madison. I'm also a member of the faculty in Chicanx and Latinx Studies on campus. I've been at the UW going on 16 years and this is by far one of the the funnest and hardest applied research projects that I have been a part of in a while. And there's many reasons for that. And one of them really is the current context that many of these workers face today that is much different than in any, well, in any other time in recent history. So what I am going to present on these preliminary findings from our enumeration stage, and I do want to share that today, June 11th, was the final date for our team to come up with the final suggestions. And so those are still pending for me to review and to move them forward onto our team. central folks here on campus and then off to Nina being the lead on this particular project. First, I want to give a big shout out to our research team on our end, right? This wasn't an easy task by any means, and it really required this buffet of experts that really started to ask these deeper questions about enumeration, census, worker counts, and so forth. And so I put together what are called a team that has data huddles, right? These teams of experts that come together and talk through what the puzzle is that we're putting together here, what data sources are out there, and whether we can produce some sort of methodological approach to give an enumeration that can be used by the county where we're comfortable in being as accurate as we can have given the constraints that we have here. As you see, there's folks that are in urban planning. There's folks that are labor experts. There are folks that are immigration experts. There's folks that are agricultural economists. We have people that are applied demographers, folks that do housing in rural Wisconsin specifically. And from these, we've met five or six times to discuss this project and to actually draft the report that we will be submitting as our deliverable, hopefully sooner than later. I also want to give a big shout out to our partners in this project, SIFT and NENA, who also have been very instrumental in asking those hard questions about the process of coming up with these numbers that I've got, these preliminary numbers that I'm gonna present to you in a bit.

Hey Armando, can I interrupt you for one second? I think in the upper left corner, if you click use slideshow, we'll be able to see your full slide. Right now it's hard to see it. Do you see where it says use slideshow on your screen?

Yes, sorry about that. Is that better?

Perfect, yes, thank you.

Thank you, I didn't even know what that was. But okay. So what we did is we use various data sources to really tell this story about, you know, how many workers are in the agricultural industry here in Dane County. And it might sound like an easy task to do, but it's quite complicated in the sense there is no contemporary count of farm workers in Dane County. in Dane County or any type of national enumeration at this time. I think that the last time we had a census of agriculture was back in 2022, and I don't see one happening in the foreseeable future. But we do have indicators out there of workers and of workers by not just industry, but by occupation within this industry. And we were able to collect data, for example, different types of NAIC data for different types of workers in different sectors of the agricultural industry, both those that are employed on farms, those that are employed in some types of food processing or manufacturing facilities, and also other workers that are associated with agricultural production. That was one part of the puzzle. The other one was to estimate the number also of dairy workers and dairy workers as an anchor to this enumeration or this estimation that we are able to provide. And without getting into The actual process of of how we came out these numbers, which it's all detailed in the report. This is the actual workforce scenarios that we came up with. So, and the workforce scenarios are, they're ranged and they're bounded by the data sources, but also by the dairy industry, because that is a central number here that we use. If you'll see, we have a low workforce estimate of about 1,440 workers. in the county of Dane that are a part of this enumeration, a high number of about around 3,000 2962 workers. And then the moderate estimate, the one right in the middle, that is the one that we think should be used by the county to do the work. Sorry, I've got a two year old trying to jump in. That moderate estimate that is the one that we're going to recommend for usage was just 2,348 workers that are spread across Dane County. We did produce a fairly inclusive definition of farm workers, which is also within the report. And it was something that was discussed in length. within our data huddle teams, but also with the bigger Nina collective research team as well. So there is A very inclusive definition of farm workers. I mentioned earlier this count that the census of agricultural has, and they estimate somewhere between 3300 and 3400 workers in Thane County back in 2022. So that's a higher end. And what that is is self-reporting by the actual owners of these different types of employment sites. So we're fairly comfortable using that 2348 number as a good point of a moderate workforce in this industry here. So now that we have this estimate of workers around 2,300, we have to see what it looks like in terms of housing needs. We know that within this population, we have everything from H2A workers, which are contracted laborers that are brought from other places, other countries to work temporary jobs in agriculture. We know that there's migrant and seasonal agricultural workers. Some of those migrant and seasonal agricultural workers are Wisconsin-based, but many of them are also migrating from places outside of the state and places outside of Dane County within Wisconsin. We also know that there's year-round farm workers that currently live here and are established, have families, and so forth. And we also know that industries such as the dairy industry are bound by the herd's biological needs. So they need tending and caring 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And so what this is telling us is there's a mixture of different types of family structures or people that are here alone within that 2300 plus estimate that we have. What we did is we created a formula to be able to give a full count account that includes not just the workforce, but also their family members based on other data that we're drawing on of what we know of these populations. And for that, obviously we used more of the up-to-date data from places like the American Community Survey, but we also right now have a survey that we're undertaking where we've been able to collect about 300 plus surveys of farm workers in Wisconsin that we can hope to draw a much more accurate marker of these family units within agriculture, the agricultural worker population itself. But given what we have right now, We find that, you know, these again are bounded estimates. And we find that there's within the agricultural worker community, this means the worker plus families and loved ones, we see that we estimate that there's about 5,000 people or 4,935 workers people that are part of this working community in Dane County. And what that produces is really this need, this envelope of housing that we are comfortable in presenting I'm hoping that's still the case after I see the reviews from the members, but at 1,644 housing units that are needed to be able to house this working population. We also know that housing demands follow corridors, right? There's different corridors where people live. People don't necessarily live where they work or maybe not even nearby, like immediately by where they work. but they live close to access, to transportation access, they live closest to other folks, which is something that we really dug into with the Applied Pop Lab. And they put together a series of maps that highlight these corridors of where we see movement happening and movement of people. And they're also pretty detailed and they're a part of this report. Importantly here is that people don't necessarily live by where they work. They live where it's affordable to live. And that could mean that they drive to work. Some of them live on site, but the vast majority are pretty mobile. So these are just a sum of what I just presented here in this last few slides. I know I've only got about eight minutes and I'm gonna probably take in every bit of it. So we have our planning baseline of 2,348 workers. We estimate that to house, be able to house all these workers along with their family and loved ones. We need about 1,644 housing units. We have to treat these types of initiatives as economic infrastructure and social infrastructure more than anything else. And I think That is my time. And I want to thank you. And I am open to any questions. The full report will be in your hands via Nina here in the next month or so. So please, any questions or any comments, I welcome. If not, I pass it on to Sarah and Jill.

Thank you so much. Are there any questions for Armando? I'm not seeing any hands. That was very helpful. It's really good to see some real numbers to help define the scope of this initiative. Even though resources are limited, I think it's nice for us to know what, you know, what the needs are. So really appreciate you pulling that together.

Heidi, shall we proceed Sarah and myself or? I don't see any other questions, so go for it.

Yes, thank you. Excellent.

I'm just going to get my screen sharing up. Okay. Well, good evening, everybody. Sarah and I really appreciate being with you here all today and appreciate your time and attention. My name is Jill Gruendijk, and I'll be presenting this evening along with my colleague, Sarah Elliott. We are the two person team that is SIFT Consulting, and our work centers very much on building resilient food systems in all the different ways you could define resilience. So we're really We really are thrilled to be a part of this project and contributing to this initiative. So yeah, we're the third main team as a part of this team of consultants who are developing the farmworker housing plan for Dane County. This evening, we're going to share what we've learned through two housing opportunities labs. We'll be sharing how those findings are very much shaping our thinking and how we're beginning to approach the next phase of developing recommendations. We are not going to be presenting any recommendations tonight, but we are starting to see clear patterns emerge regarding what is feasible, what is desirable, and kind of where those two things don't always perfectly align. So as we've moved through this project, we've shifted from the information gathering of phase two toward really testing concrete housing plan elements. And so tonight's presentation really reflects that transition. So we'll be briefly revisiting the engagement process. sharing what emerged from the housing opportunities labs, discussing some of those tensions that repeatedly surfaced, and then walking through how we will evaluate housing models moving forward. We provided in advance our phase three interim summary report, which includes more details regarding the key findings from those housing labs. We encourage you to read that document in full. And during this presentation, we'll be kind of highlighting some of those key ideas. So it's important to remember that the housing opportunities labs did not happen in isolation. The labs were very much designed to build upon everything that came before them. The in-depth interviews, focus groups, surveys, and lots and lots of conversations with stakeholders that were across the housing agricultural planning and advocacy sectors. Throughout the process, we've intentionally sought out diverse and varied perspectives. And just a little kind of reminder note that very much SIFT kind of handled the constellation of other stakeholders that were really important to this project while the School for Workers and Neenah Collective led the in-depth farmworker engagement. So while these engagement numbers are important, what matters more is the range of perspectives represented. So we heard from people responsible for housing policy, people responsible for land use decisions, people who work with and advocate for farm workers, and then we engage with farm owners who are trying to operate viable businesses while housing their workforce. It was clear that no single stakeholder group sees the entire picture. They see their portion, and all those perspectives are necessary when examining the very complex problems related to the lack of safe and adequate farmworker housing in Dane County. The Housing Opportunities Labs, and especially the second lab, were intended to begin to put some of these different perspectives in conversation with one another. So the first housing lab. So the first lab was intentionally exploratory. And I will note both labs were in-person participatory workshops. So for the first lab, rather than kind of creating or sort of offering up initial like potential solutions, we began by engaging in a very valuable pre-mortem exercise, asking what might prevent this project from succeeding. And then participants stress tested early housing concepts and identified barriers to implementation. So most of the conversation at the first housing lab focused on zoning, permitting, governance, and community and political feasibility. The second housing lab built upon those earlier conversations from the first lab by introducing more concrete housing concepts and giving participants something specific to react to. This was really a key to the second housing lab. So participants examined actual prototype models, discussed ownership and management structures, and debated issues such as tenant eligibility and protections. The goal wasn't to reach consensus. It was very much to understand where different stakeholders aligned, where they diverged, and what themes repeatedly surfaced. We also began to understand the specific pros and cons of different housing models. So at its core, this project really sits at the intersection of these three realities. First, there are the needs and preferences expressed by farm workers themselves. Second, there are the practical realities of developing and operating housing. And then third, there are the legal, political, and community realities that shape what can actually move forward in the incredibly complicated and challenging housing landscape that is Dane County. The labs were designed to test whether or where those three realities could be brought into alignment and begin to uncover some of the specific tensions that emerge when they cannot. So we will now walk through several findings that emerged consistently from both of the Housing Opportunities Labs. What is noteworthy is that not all participants agreed on every detail, of course, but what's noteworthy is that many of the same themes surfaced repeatedly across different conversations, different activities and exercises we facilitated, and different stakeholders. So perhaps the strongest finding from both labs is that zoning and regulatory barriers are not simply just one challenge among many, but really they are often the factor that determines whether a housing concept is even possible. Several participants observed that relatively modest housing solutions become difficult when development rights, infrastructure requirements, parcel configurations, or approval processes create barriers. Perhaps most notably, some farm owners indicated that if zoning pathways were more straightforward, they would pursue housing improvements without necessarily requiring county subsidy. So that raises important questions about the relationship between regulatory reform and direct investment, and which is more likely to spur more long-term opportunities for farmworker housing. The second major finding relates to program participation. Across multiple conversations, participants expressed concern that well-intentioned programs can become so complex that they inadvertently discourage participation. And I will note that this applies to farm workers, but also to farm owners and other stakeholders that would make the program as impactful as we want it to be. So public funding requires accountability, but every additional requirement introduces friction. So the challenge, really a key challenge with this work moving forward, will be designing programs and housing options that provide appropriate oversight and accountability while remaining accessible and practical for the people they are intended to serve. One of the clearest areas of alignment was around the idea that no single housing model is likely to meet the full range of needs present across Dane County. Different farms operate at different scales. Workers have different family structures, different housing preferences. And as a result, participants generally gravitated toward the idea of a portfolio approach that includes multiple housing pathways rather than a single large investment strategy.

And with that, I'm going to pass it to Sarah to continue sharing out some of our key findings.

Thank you, Jill.

So as Jill had mentioned in the beginning, there continue to be many different tensions and paradoxes that are coming up. And we wanted to spend a little time tonight highlighting three kind of recurring tensions that just keep showing up repeatedly. The first is the tension between employer control and worker independence and autonomy. And so farm owners. tend to view housing as a workforce tool and many of them want they many of them provide housing for their workers and they want that housing to be available when they need it and having it available is really a way to attract workers um they also want it to be close enough that to the farm and to them that they can kind of monitor and maintain it and they want it to be connected to employment, to serve as a benefit for being employed on your farm. And then simultaneously, we have farm workers, housing advocates, and others who are consistently raising the concerns about the vulnerability that is created when housing is tied to employment. The second tension that keeps coming up is this tension between proximity to farms and access to community services, resources, and other assets. Farm owners tend to want workers to be close to the farm. I think especially since split shifts are very common in the dairy industry. We also have a lot of farm workers who lack driver's licenses. So driving a distance to work can pose not only this time imposition because they may have to drive there multiple times, but it's also a safety risk. And so understandably, we're also hearing that farm workers want like transportation options and stores and social connections and like the normalcy that can come not living on the farm. And in some ways, this tension, I think, is common for almost anyone who lives in rural areas, but it's really exacerbated by a lot of the lived realities of a farm worker. And then the third tension that we want to highlight is this tension between what is actually feasible and what is aspirational. And so participants are often describing housing approaches that would be really highly desirable from a worker perspective. But like very difficult or maybe even impossible to implement because of zoning and infrastructure and political support or cost or the management complexities or just the realities of how development in Dane County works. And then kind of conversely. A lot of the most immediately feasible options, like options that are allowed in zoning and with our current political realities and community realities, don't actually solve the underlying concerns around farmworker autonomy or mobility or stability. And so Jill had mentioned this earlier, but one thing that we are really learning over and over again from the housing labs is that there is no one universally perfect solution for farmworker housing in Dane County. And participants really consistently surfaced tensions that require kind of balancing multiple legitimate priorities at the same time. And so as we move into the recommendations phase of this project, it's really not about finding a perfect solution. It's about making very thoughtful, intentional choices and then having conversations around mitigating the resulting trade-offs that come with each of those housing models. So one of the other themes that we want to highlight was that housing design and placement should prioritize privacy, flexibility, and the practical needs of farm workers. And this was actually one area that there was really strong alignment kind of around what are the characteristics of good housing. And participants consistently emphasized privacy, dignity, stability, flexibility, and also the functionality of the housing. And farm workers need housing that really supports their daily life and isn't just like a place to sleep. And so all sorts of really practical considerations were raised during the Housing Opportunities Lab, such as like cooking facilities or laundry capacity, internet access, like shared outdoor spaces. all sorts of like accommodations for different household types, just like very solid, tangible things. And it was heartening, I think, that the discussion like immediately moved past like what are the bare minimum standards, which I think is often what comes up in some of the like legal documentation around what is required for farm worker housing. It was like, that wasn't the conversation. The conversation immediately leapt to like what, how can housing really create the conditions for farm workers to thrive? So tenant eligibility and rights, I think was one of the most nuanced conversations that came out of the second housing opportunities lab, And it really continues to be one of the most nuanced conversations that we're having with various stakeholders. And so participants agree that housing should be stable and accessible to farm workers. There definitely are differing perspectives around how closely that housing should remain connected to employment and kind of the specifics of the tenant protections. And some of the nuance came from like very specific details around what types of identification would actually make the program fail, like would be a deal breaker, or what types of employment verification could be required. And I think the main takeaway from this conversation was that eligibility and protection policies are not just these trivial program details. They really are like very central design decisions that will influence who benefits, who's able to participate and really like how the housing functions over time. And so as we move towards the recommendations, we're really viewing this as a decision-making framework as opposed to this quest for the perfect housing model. The question isn't which housing model is best. different goals naturally point towards different housing options, different ownership options, different management structures. And really understanding these relationships between the goals and all of these different options is what's going to help us make more transparent and intentional recommendations. And so developing a housing strategy is really a process of balancing values that are sometimes competing, deciding which trade-offs are acceptable for whom, under what conditions and with what safeguards. And no single housing model is going to solve all of the farm worker housing problems in Dane County and different housing models kind of optimized for different outcomes. And every strategy is going to involve trade-offs. And so this next slide kind of illustrates the framework that we've been using internally. And so instead of like starting with a housing type, it really starts by clarifying the problem that we're trying to solve. And then the problem shapes which models become like more or less appropriate. And from there we can identify likely trade-offs and really begin to think proactively about the safeguards that may help mitigate these trade-offs. And this approach really creates a more transparent path from the community priorities that we heard during phase one and phase two of the project to the eventual recommendations that are coming in phase four. And so just maybe like an oversimplified, not maybe, an absolutely oversimplified example, but just to help you kind of see how the framework might work. It's if reducing worker dependence on employer controlled housing is kind of the primary objective, then certain housing and ownership structures become more aligned with that goal. But also those choices might introduce other challenges such as increased distance from the workplace or transportation challenges. So this, you know, again, the objective isn't to eliminate trade-offs, it's just to be more transparent around identifying them. And so this is an oversimplified example of kind of the path that we are taking as we start to begin to develop specific recommendations. We have learned a great deal. There is also still some important work ahead. And so across the team, we're continuing to gather targeted input completing some case studies and really refining the recommendations with practitioners and with stakeholders. And this last phase of the project is about moving from these like more broad concepts towards recommendations that are really responsive to the community needs and also realistically implementable within Dane County. And So we want to close our presentation with this thought and reminder that there is no perfect housing model and that every approach is going to create benefits and limitations. It's going to create opportunities and also risks. And so the work ahead is really about making thoughtful choices and being transparent about this and then designing safeguards to help ensure that Dane County's investments are actually as effective and equitable and durable as possible. So I think with that, we would welcome any questions.

Thank you. I did have one, I think, for Dr. Ibarra. Sorry, I thought of it later. But I was wondering if you were able to... It wasn't on the slide, so I'm guessing maybe the answer is no. But if we have a sense of kind of like housing size, the number of farm worker families with children, you know, thinking about the total number of units we aspire to and are planning for, you know, be helpful to kind of get a sense of are these what size of units, housing units are we talking about?

Really good question. So when we do the actual, the count for the entirety of this population, it's a multiplier. So we use a multiplier effect, right? So we take what we know about similar populations and then multiply it. So for example, for this particular estimate, we have the number in that middle bound, and then we multiply it by 50%, 0.5 of this population has a family, right? And with a family size averages about 3.2 people. I mean, you know, that's the way they average out. And I, to be quite honest with you, I have not thought about the type of dwellings that these would be. I can tell you what we're learning about wants and desires from the one-on-one interviews that we're conducting with farm workers and dairy workers at the moment that we hope to complete here in the next couple of weeks. And it's, it's, It's a fairly straightforward answer always is, you know, I think the privacy is the top of the list for folks that live with dignity and they want to have a room for themselves and the room for their children, right? For those that have children. But in terms of dwellings, it would, you know, with that type of privacy, family size three, right? Then that is the multiplier that I would say. So two and one, two and two in terms of size, but that's just me just guessing right now. So I'll go back to that and tell you and come back with some sort of dwellings. What I can tell you is that we also have affordability measures that we analyze within the report itself. We actually look at at data that gives us the different ranges in affordability by type of agricultural worker, right? So we know that affordability is different if we base it on a 30% of income for housing number, right? So if you're working in, let's say for example, in food manufacturing, your estimated income from the QCW numbers will tell us that it's about $4,500 a month in comparison to some of the works, for example, as a seasonal worker, or what have you, which is, you know, much less. So that affordability scale is also something that comes into play. And probably one of the biggest factors here is affordability in Dane County itself, right? Within the scales of affordability of these different types of workers occupations within the agricultural industry. So that gives us a much more multi-layered answer to what do these folks need or what is it that they want in terms of housing? But I can tell you that I've interviewed some workers where, you know, one of the final questions on our on our survey instrument is what are your hopes and aspirations for housing? And and one person that stands out is why should i have hopes and aspirations at this moment in uh in my life right uh we're just trying to get through the day and make sure that our kids get to school and be able to get home the same day um so i mean so we have those ranges right that that we're finding out there as well uh but yeah i i think that that that uh that Sarah and Jill really bring something tangible forward in terms of the work they're doing with what can be done with what we got, right? Everybody here knows that $8 million will get us so far. But if it is an aspirational type of report that shows the need and the size of the need, right, then, you know, quite honestly, what you can do with $8 million is probably provide some sort of housing for a fraction of the need at this moment. But it's a really good start. And I talked all the way around that, Heidi, to say that I don't know what precisely square footage, but I know that there is numbers. But now that I think about it, I also serve on the Governor's Migrant Farmworker Committee thingy. And there is precise numbers that they use for migrant farmworkers for their votes as well. So I'm sure that there's numbers in there.

Thank you. I don't know what supervisor was next, but I'll call on Chair Doolin.

Thank you, Chair Wagner. In terms of, I have so many questions, so trying to isolate it to a couple of things until I get to see the reports. Was there any In terms of seeing barriers as far as land regulation, zoning and planning, I know that some, for example, farmland preservation grants and things like that are based on that piece and preserve it. Federal funding or different funding sources from different levels of government required certain regulations and zoning that are not within our purview always at the state or federal level. Is there a plan or have we been separating what can be done, say, at the county level as opposed to what would be you know, like, can we isolate some of the things that we could actually do at the county level and what we might need to do to leverage more support higher up the food chain? Just to kind of narrow our scope.

I mean, the short answer is yes, that the final report will have both some of the things that are, you know, more overarching issues policy that comes at a state level, et cetera, and also things that are specific recommendations within the Dane County zoning code that would be able to bolster more farm worker housing.

Excellent. And if I may follow up with one more question related to that a little bit. When it comes to farm workers and food production, which are very much hand-in-hand, my day job's at DATCP, so I get it. Is there, did you, have you been able to like interview people from family farms or we're talking factory farms or we're talking all of the above? Because we know, you know, the smaller the entity, the less they have to work with. um, the less profit there is. And, you know, there's different playing fields, different scales. It's, it's like those of us who, you know, it's, it's like workers throughout. So is there going to be kind of some differentiation and, um, between that to see how we could, because we're solving more than one problem then at that point. I mean, we're solving more than one problem anyways, but I guess who they're working for would be a big factor in finding solutions as well. So is there any note, like when you're getting your information, is there any, are we identifying some of those different differences?

Yes. Yeah, I think that maybe you and actually the Nina, our partners at Nina may be the best Poised to speak at that. But just from the farm owner perspective, we've been trying to kind of cater our outreach to be representative of the agriculture in Dane County. So we certainly have included like much smaller scale or veg CSA farms, but we also have engaged with them at a lesser level than dairy because dairy is really the predominant agriculture product. in dane county that has a lot of farm workers and so we've tried to be proportional um and i think we've been leaning more into identifying cross-cutting themes than trying to like parse apart the different needs thank you very much from the point of view of the uh put together the data itself um from what we have we did we do have a clear uh definition that

that we are using to be able to guide our counts or our estimates of farm workers. And I can tell you that it's employees, it's people that get a paycheck, it folks that, that work in different types of occupations within agriculture or dairy or some sort of production. And this includes everything from year-round workers, dairy workers, seasonal crop workers, H-2A workers, livestock workers, support workers, contracted Floyd workers, people that are in food processing, and so forth. And these distinctions are made clearly as to the numbers within the report itself.

Thank you so much.

Okay, Supervisor Peterson.

Thank you, Chair. I think I have two questions, folks. The report recommends, I think it's at 1,644 housing units. We're planning for that. I wasn't clear how many of those units already exist today, or is that the gap?

That's the totality. We don't know how many there is out there, but it's minimal. We do know that there is, for example, some migrant and seasonal farm worker that's operated on the periphery of Dane County, right? And not necessarily in Dane County, because one of the One of the real big questions that we had when we were putting this puzzle together was what if they live in an adjacent county, but the labor, their work is in Dane County, right? Would they be counted for something like this? And for us, the answer was yes. So for example, these seasonal farm work, or there's a year round farm, labor community that's operated by UNOS at one of the adjacent counties where most of these workers work at Seneca. And then we have another one in the Waterloo area where folks work on both sides in some of these greenhouses, both in Dane County and right outside of Dane County as well. So those are kind of difficult. We know that there are some H2A, you know, places where people work. And where we have, we do have data of the places where people stay while they're here or actually were here in the previous year. And we also know that there is, you know, housing that is provided by many of the dairy owners on site that houses some of some of the workers. Most recently, I went to a dairy housing area and it was an old home that was converted into multiple apartments. And I would say there was probably eight workers with family and extended family members that were living there. And this is all just to say is that we wish we could have that count, but it's difficult to get that count because folks aren't really collecting that. What we collect is what we got, right? And these different pockets of data that's validated data, but in terms of housing, it would be very difficult to say, you know, maybe we can say that most CAFOs, and this is just talking, right? Most CAFOs that are based in dairy or in dairy herds provide some sort of housing, right? But yeah, that's a really good question.

Thank you.

I just want to add really quickly to David for your second question, just to extra emphasize what Armando was saying that in our phase two engagement, we heard over and over again about the lack of supply of affordable housing near the farms and that current housing is aging in disrepair. So we very much saw qualitatively that gap just to add that.

Maybe also to piggyback, it's like a patchwork. Like there is like, and we know that from farm owners, they're like farm owners may be able to provide housing onsite for some of their workers and some of their workers might be you know, bunking with family and friends and some of their workers might be driving in from a nearby community. And it's like this kind of hodgepodge. And because so many of the farm workers are kind of living this shadow existence, it's like very difficult to have any sort of like definitive answer.

I mean, I agree with all of that. Right. And again, some of this, you know, I think I knew the answer. But I had to ask it all the same, right? And I think we all know, right, like housing is a big issue across the county, regardless of suburban, urban, or rural. But it's typically, you know, in my district, right, when I'm talking to more rural folks, like, especially from a farm perspective or farming perspective, like, hey, we need more housing. Well, I don't. you know, it changes the character. And again, there's all the things that we've, we've heard, right. And it's like, but you have people that work here, you know, and they have, they need to go somewhere. Right. So I typically try to meet that with a data point or two. Right. But again, the, this is not, and I want to be very clear. This is not easy data to get. Right. So I'm not asking, I work in data myself. So I understand how hard that is to you, but like, there has to be something we can do. I mean, longer term or something we could try or something. And again, there's probably something we can't do is just, I don't know what that is off the top of my head. I think the only other question I had, and again, thank you for all the work here. You identify zoning and regulatory barriers as constraints here. Just from your perspective, and again, I won't hold you to anything, but if the county could only pursue maybe two or three policy changes, which changes would produce the greatest increase in feasible housing? And again, that's a tough question. So I don't know what's a perfectly good answer to.

I think we're going to defer to our final report. I definitely don't know which ones I think would be the most yet, the most impactful yet. So I would say stay tuned.

And if I may add, I think that there's a, you know, when we've had the opportunity to have these deep discussions in our full research teams, right, with SIF and all of us at the UW and very aspirational. And sometimes I ask questions that really get interesting. these hard answers well you can't do that because it's part of the zoning right um one of the things that i think that would have immediate um immediate impacts on on housing would be um some sort of uh well you know if the the funds that are available right now if somehow they could be made for rental assistance and or and or a deposit assistance. I think that's one of the biggest barriers that folks have into getting into apartments is having that first that first month rent the the deposit and then still being able to make that the month to for your basic needs as well.

Yeah, we're going to have to ask the state or something to give us some money for that. Unfortunately, these are capital borrowing dollars, which is where most of our, I mean, the huge super majority of our housing money is, is in capital borrowing. We have really kind of limited ability to raise revenue in our operating budget to fund something like rent assistance but I I think it's okay I mean I think saying move-in costs and rent assistance supports are needed even if it doesn't match the current funding we have is still useful information um and it's not won't be a surprise probably to anyone because it's a it's a need across the board um so I wish it was that easy. Unfortunately, it's not. But we can, you know, support creation. And with that support, we can restrict rent limits to require affordability. But that's not the same as providing move-in costs. However, there's things that developers can do to... lower barriers to entry or, you know, waive certain types of, you know, moving costs for that matter, security deposits, things like that. You know, those are... maybe some barriers that could be required in a grant agreement or a loan agreement or something like that, too. So identifying those barriers, I think, is helpful in thinking about how a program is structured to best meet needs. But it might be that there's some other funding out there that's going to need to be found or secured or a different partner that brings that part of the puzzle together so um and I see Supervisor Welsh has been patiently waiting thank you uh Supervisor Welsh go ahead uh thank you and thank you for all of the hard work on this I think most of my question was actually answered through other questions um the one

The one remaining component of a question, um, I had was in regards to the zoning regulation, uh, zoning and regulation barriers that were mentioned. Um, obviously we can control what we can control here at the county level, but I'm, I'm wondering to what extent. The barriers, um, were seen more at the, the very local level at the municipal level. Um, or were they really all more at the county level that you were seeing?

I think I would say both because we had, you know, the balance between opt out towns and the folks that were in unincorporated areas of Dane County that are under county zoning and both were having some shared barriers. Because of the fact that this report is for Dane County and because we really needed to kind of like focus somewhere, our emphasis was more on the county zoning and looking less into like opt-out towns and things, different zoning codes. So some of them are certainly, some of the things that are barriers are certainly barriers across both.

Thank you. The reason why I ask is I think there's an opportunity with the regional planning that's going on in the county level, throughout the county, I should say, that if there are barriers that are also seen at the more municipal level, I think the now is a good time to address those as well. So I just don't want to lose that as a bigger picture if we're looking at, you know, really focusing on corridors that might intersect with municipal zoning regulations.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Supervisor Doolin.

Thank you again. Every time there's a question answered, I get another one. One of the things I remember from interviews with the realtors association, et cetera, was that whenever developers would come through with things and they would get funding for certain fees and stuff, occasionally, like at the municipal level, like would raise their fees in order to, because again, townships don't have, you know, the type, the level of funding that, you know, a county does or whatever. And so, you know, they're trying to recoup costs by raising fees. And some of that is preventative. So I know that, you know, whatever we can do, if we're going to change things, if there's any kind of regulatory oversight that would make funding available, like how could Dane County cooperate with those municipalities to prevent that? prevent that. You know, when you have an agreement for a higher funding source, oh, we can charge more now and we'll get the money. And that was preventative in some cases when it came to developers. The other one, so if we could, you know, keep that in mind, the other issue that I ran into when I was, you know, in my last election, I was without a I'd won the race, and then my landlady didn't renew my lease out here in Rural Dane County, so I had to scramble to find a house. And so we were looking at all kinds of funding sources for ourselves personally, but a lot of funding sources at the federal level, like VA loans, don't cover manufactured housing, or they're loath to do that. So when we're exploring types, affordability, and things, perhaps, you know, those become barriers that you have to work harder to get through to make those work so if there's anything that you could identify that would help us help streamline those processes to make different funding available without making the individual make people individuals have to try to work so hard that makes that a barrier um that would be helpful as well

So. Did you have a question in there?

Yeah, I do have a question about with that. I mean, when it came to terms of barriers and feasibility and things like that, were you able to identify some of those things? I mean, apart from just down payment, et cetera, but like barriers maybe for the farms themselves to provide housing that made those things restrictive.

Sure. I think that, sorry, Jill, I see you also hopped off mute. No, go for it, Sarah. From the farm owner perspective, the biggest barrier that we're seeing really was zoning and the inability to, you know, and it's the same things that I'm sure you all are very familiar with because it prevents all types of housing development in rural Dane County. And we weren't hearing from farm owners about financial barriers. I think from the farm worker perspective, there were a whole host of things that kind of fall in a similar bucket to what you were talking about, about various programs not being accessible, whether that's because of modular housing or because of lack of documentation status or whatever it is. And I mean, over and over again, it was kind of like the devil will be in the details of whatever program the county implements and making sure that those like very specific details are thought through so that there aren't these like unintentional things that are hurdles that are keeping people, whether it's farm owners or farm workers, from participating.

Was there any... contacts, connections, um, data from USDA, uh, Farmers Home Rural Development Agency related to any Dane County, um, rural development, farm worker housing. And would those programs, um, be part of sort of, uh, matrix in thinking about this issue, kind of who those programs serve, who they don't serve, when they work, when they don't work, or if they are a piece in any way. I have to say I don't recall, I've represented a number of renters and program participants in that type of housing. Don't think I have in Dane County, but it might be here. I'm not sure. And I'm not sure if there's a reason for that. But I just wanted to flag that because I hadn't heard anything about it. And I was wondering if anyone had looked into that or there'd be any reference to that. Okay.

To some degree. So one of the case studies that we will share is on the Meadows, which is the farmworker housing in Darlington, one of the only examples of public funding for farmworker housing. And they really... struggled because with their capital stack, they layered on different funding sources and whatever funding source comes a different set of requirements and regulations. And I mean, I'm spoiler alert, but like this is all in the case study and they would say the same that in many ways, like it's a failed development. It has really high vacancy rates because when you start layering these fundings and layering all the different requirements, It's like at each time you need to go back to what's our goal, who's our target audience, and like, is this prohibitive? And so the USDA Rural Development Specific required documentation status. And so in general, we have been looking more at programs that do not require legal documentation status.

Thank you. And I appreciate that. I just, I think it is important to kind of acknowledge that why. And so, you know, we can match solutions that best meet the needs of the people here, particularly the most vulnerable workers.

And I think that's part of the big conversation in terms of just the biggest barrier that most of the of the folks or the workers in this population base is out of status. And it needs to be a part of this conversation. I know it's a hard conversation to have because most of the folks that I've talked to or that we interview are in what are known as mixed status families, right? Where somebody, an adult, might not have a a proper or up-to-date immigration status and there's different types of statuses within the families all the way up to us-born citizens so you know in previous studies that we've done on for example the dairy industry is that we estimate upwards to 70 percent of dairy farm workers that are on farm dairy farm workers don't have a proper immigration status And so that in itself becomes the barrier of how do you discuss housing and how do you discuss social integration and how do you discuss aspirations in these times with some of these folks when you're out there as well. And we see similar numbers in the seasonal and year round workers in agriculture itself, those field hands or those people that work in the greenhouses. Maybe not as high as in the dairy. I think that there's something about dairy because it's so isolated that it attracts certain types of workers. But, you know, we're talking 40 or 50 percent of workers in those other occupations that also have questionable immigration statuses.

I'll just add really quickly that we conducted a literature review during phases one and two. And so there is a lot of existing literature and research about the success of rural housing, the USDA rural housing programs that showcase a lot of the themes that Sarah alluded to that are in our case study. And I feel like when we were doing in-depth interviews and focus groups, we were based on what was surfaced to us about current programs used or not at all, like very much like kind of from the ground up farm owner, farm worker solutions, like we kind of then directed much of our research on what of their, that they're currently trying to leverage or not. And it didn't come up through any of those farm owner interviews or interviews with ag support orgs as well.

I also just wanted to mention in like some of the work that I do and some of the things that I attend and meetings that I go to that, Just like the HUD NOFO, the USDA funding grant and requirements are drastically changing. So I've been attending webinars as like things are becoming available just to kind of have an idea if it does become something that would be like a capital stack or like another funding option with a proposed project that would come up. And so once I have more information, I haven't published the whole thing in total yet. So once I have that, I will make sure that like county staff, we have an understanding of what that is like and if someone does intend on using it. The other funding option could be WIDA, but WIDA does not include Dane County as a rural area. So their rural funds don't apply to Dane County, sadly.

Thanks for that, Ashley. Any other questions from committee members? Well, if not, this was a wonderful presentation. Again, we really look forward to the final report. And yeah. Go Mexico. Big win earlier today, right? From the first game of the World Cup.

I wanted to add that the contract is being extended through the end of September. It was supposed to end in July, but because of the climate and things that were happening, it was harder for all of the entities to get people to come to programming and to complete surveys. So now that the migrant workers are back for spring and summer, we have extended the contract. There's no budget change, but just to give them more time to really harness those other voices that they were unable to gather through the last 10-ish months or so. So the work is still being completed. It's just going to be, we will get the final report in September.

Okay. Thank you for that update. Appreciate it. All right, well, I think we will move on to the rest of our agenda. I don't know if you want to adjourn your meeting, Chair Doolin.

I think that, yeah, we can do that.

Thanks again, presenters. We really appreciate your work.

Thank you very much for all the work. And thank you, HHN, for having us and inviting us. So I appreciate that. So we'll move on to adjournment. Do I have a motion by a member of ZLR to adjourn?

Motion made by Peterson.

All right. Peterson moves to adjourn. And if there's no objections, I'd like to have that passed as being voted as unanimous. All right. So that is passed unanimously. And thank you very much. And everybody stay dry tonight. Thank you.

All right. We are still here. Health and Human Needs, are you still here? Where did everybody go? Supervisors, committee members, if you are able to be on camera, we like to see your faces and ensure everybody is present and we have quorum. um but uh we're gonna move back to our agenda i think we still have to approve minutes item b consideration of minutes from may 27 2026 is there a motion i move approval this is aaron if you can't see me thank you second supervisor densler all right um is there any uh discussion of the minutes Not seeing any hands. Any objection to unanimous approval of the minutes? Seeing no objection, minutes are approved. On to item D1, 2026, Resolution 009, Improving Agreements for an Affordable Housing Project at 606 Reeve Road in Waunakee, Dane County Department of Human Services Housing Access and Affordability Division. Do we have any registrants on this item, Amanda?

Um, technically yes, Lynette is registered on it, but she's here to just speak on it for information. I'm promoting her to panelists right now. Okay.

And she's here. Welcome. I'm sorry. Can you not, um, introduce the speaker or Lynette?

Um, she, sorry. It's so weird doing this all virtual right now.

Can you hear me? Yes. I got video on.

Hi, can you introduce yourself and if you want to provide any information or comments to the committee regarding this project and then, you know, stick around and see if the committee has any questions for you, that would be great.

So we have the project. It's a residential project on top, 12 units, four units we're allocating to affordable housing. They're one bedroom units. We are going to make them accessible as in The vision for this project was, although it's not a tall building, but to make it accessible for older people or people so you don't have to do stairs, you can have an easier life. But also, so we have handlebars and bathrooms and we're just helping older adults into housing, but making it portable for anyone who is open to living in Waunakee. On the bottom of the project, we will have one spot allocated for an office, Casa 4U, where we do real estate and property management to manage our units as well.

Okay. Thank you. Does anyone have questions? I... Can you tell me more about CASA for you? I think this is the first project that's come before the committee and might be the first proposed contract with the county to partner in affordable housing development. So I just like a little more background on the organization.

Okay. I'd love to do that. So Bernardo and I were the owners of CASA for you. So you have a woman owned business and a minority owned business. And we have a niche market with the Latino and Spanish speaking community. I mean, we help so many people into housing, whether it's renting from us or whether they're buying housing, because we're also realtors as well. So This is our first building that we want to do with Dane County and partner with because we saw affordable housing as an opportunity to also help people get into housing they can afford without being in the problems with their bills and everything else that goes into finding housing that's a safe, healthy place to live, also a nice place to live. When we designed this project, we also kept in mind we really want a good quality standard, and we have that across everything we have. We want granite countertops for people. We want spaces where people can actually have a family table, where you have a nice kitchen, a place someone's going to come in and call home, feel really, really good about. Not a place where you came in and felt like, well, it's just temporary. This is actually our house. We're really proud of it. And we keep that vision and that quality standard through everything we have because we really want people to be happy. So two markets, rental and, of course, we sell how people sell and how people purchase. So your question, tell us a little bit more what makes us different, our niche market, the Latino community and minority community. And this is a special market and we understand the cultures, but we also understand the different dynamics people have. And when they come in, understanding how things work here versus where they might've come from or their life experience and we make the transition easy. But we also want people to understand and feel comfortable and the ability to ask questions, any question, because all questions are important. So they understand transactions, whether living in an apartment or whether just in a property.

Thank you. Are there other questions from the committee? Um, I looked on your website. Um, it says it talks about luxury condo rentals. And I was just wondering if, um, if that's most of your business is, is this, is this kind of your first foray into affordable housing, um, rentals?

So when I did the luxury condo rentals, um, I also, um, At that time, we were building some housing in Mount Horeb. And we really wanted to grab people's attention. Look at Mount Horeb. Look what we have. And then others in DeForest. And at that time, nobody wants to go there. So you have to throw the keyword into your marketing. So people are like, oh, well, what's this Mount Horeb? Oh, I click here. And it's not so far away. So it's kind of a keyword strategy, pulling people in. What you see now on the website is one of our vacancies actually for a Madison property. It's not really a luxury condo compared to the new construction ones, but that's how that website was developed with in mind that that new development where we're trying to pull people to look at this typically rural community that people can't at that time really never even considered as an option, whether they worked at Epic or whether they work on the West side of Madison, but it really is commutable.

Thank you.

Um, so this units that we're doing our first step into a portable housing. Okay.

Yeah. Um, other questions. Um, I was thinking about, I don't know if you were on and listening to our prior presentation, but I think one of the things I've heard about in some of those farmworker advisory committee meetings was the villages possibly being a place where farmworkers might feel more community and more connected to farmers. other amenities, but still kind of close to farms where they work. And so I know these units are at the, I think, four units, affordable units in your project at 60 percent AMI. I'm just wondering if you have any relationships with the farm worker community or if you see, you know, the village of Wanakee as a place where more affordable housing could be developed or we should be looking. I think this is the first project ever the county is proposing to fund in Wanakee. So just trying to get your take on that, if you have any thoughts on it, given your experience and community connections.

Army notes. Okay. So I think we have an idea of the Darlington farm workers because we do a lot of fairs to the Latino community. And those people, when you go into the Janesville area, those farm workers go to those fairs. They are Janesville and they're Beloit and they're Waterloo and Watertown, right? Those outskirts. And these, so when you have families, they really want their own house and independence like anybody else. So a lot of them are looking for houses. Cheaper to live in Beloit, but they'll live in Janesville. Does the farm working work there? Well, I think something we hear across the board is what your researchers found is farmers, they provide older housing, but they're not the best housing to put it gently. And If you think about it, if you're a mom with kids and you're trying to navigate a new community, you want a kitchen where everything's functioning, where you can cook, have your family table and a clean, safe living spot, but you don't want to live with a bunch of men. And you want to live separately because everyone likes their own independence. So those communities work to an extent, but they're not the most exciting when you live in the older houses. Because if you have to also take into consideration, all these farm workers came from rural communities in Mexico and other places where they had their own home and they had their own fields. And so they're coming here as a transition. So they do want their independence and privacy, but they want to live someplace clean, affordable, not breaking. But they're grateful for what they get. Would it work in Wanakee? Something would work in Wanakee. We have... We've had farm owners ask if we had any vacancies in Waunakee for the pig farm or dairy farm. And we don't have that kind of housing for families because they have big families. But it would work. Because in Waunakee, you also have up the road Lodi. and you have all those low areas and those workers all want to be close to towns where they can have their own markets, where they can have their own stores. Some of the farmers provide bus transportation and vans, and that's great. But if you go outside the scope of what the farmer provides, you're on your own and it's tough. So yes, it would work in Waunakee, but it should be designed, should just be designed like, I don't know. I was making notes like what would be the best way to design it? Maybe like townhouse style for families where three bedrooms up and like a normal townhouse style. And for the individual farm workers, that one could go many different ways where you could do one bedrooms or maybe some kind of private, I don't know, dorm style. But then you get into a whole bunch of other social aspects and securities. So maybe one bedrooms for the single farm worker.

Well, and I know you weren't coming here to tell me about this and it's sort of just a exploratory question for you, but I do appreciate your insight given your experience in the housing world. And so appreciate it. Any other questions for Lynette? All right, not seeing any. Thank you for being present. We're going to now hear from county staff who will provide some background information on this resolution, which may be our last funding agreement for the non-tax credit funding application process, the inaugural 2025 awards. And take it away, Director Schluter.

Thank you. And I'm going to recap a few things that Supervisor Weigleitner just said. So this is one of several agreements that were awarded through that inaugural round of funding, which was the non-low-income housing tax credit. And that, again, was launched in 25. So the amount of money we're talking about is $860,000 that will be awarded to CASA 4U LLC for the construction of 12 units in Waunakee. This is, as Supervisor Weigleitner said, our first construction project in Waunakee. Four units will be income and rent restricted to those earning less than 60% of the area median income. And The last piece, the last item I wanted to cover was that it's a 40-year affordability period for the project.

Oh, thank you. If there's no objection from the committee, I have another question for the housing owner, Lynette.

I'm ready.

Is there any objection? Okay. I just, I want to be consistent. We have had folks come in and talk to us who are recipients of these housing development awards and what has emerged It got on the radar of this committee and the Dane County Board has been some problems in workers' rights abuses in the use of subcontracting with housing construction. And some examples include the misclassification of workers as independent contractors instead of employees. making them ineligible for certain protections and rights like workers' compensation, overtime, things like that. So we want to make sure that our developer partners understand that the county has real concerns with that. And we want to make sure that we can try to you know, prevent that from happening in county funded properties with the cooperation and support of our developer partners who also have an interest in making sure that the people that the companies you're paying are doing what they're supposed to do and paying the companies that they're contracting with and folks are getting paid and those rights are being respected and those laws are being followed in these Dane County funded projects. So, um, you know, some of the things that we will be doing and moving forward will enhance, um, you know, the disclosures that are made, uh, to the County, um, And, you know, the kind of outreach and information that workers need to enforce and understand their rights on the job. So anyway, I'm just not sure if that's a problem that you're aware of, but want you to have the opportunity to respond to any of that and anything related to your practice and working with general contractors and their subcontractors in your development work.

Um, we absolutely agree with you. Those are really important qualities. And we want to work with ethical people. And we want human rights workers rights to always be respected. I mean, that's essential and no question about it. So I don't see any problem. That's how we work. There's nothing more than better than honesty, fairness and ethical decisions.

Thank you for saying that, because I think this concern had emerged and was brought to our attention by some workers at Worker Justice Wisconsin who had talked with some of these construction workers and, you know, they we want to make sure that if we do, if concerns are brought to us, that we can reach out to our development, you know, partners and they can talk to the contractors that they have so we can, you know, make sure that these things, these issues are prevented or if there is a problem that it can be addressed quickly.

Oh, absolutely. That would just be normal. I mean, we want... Right, and ethical, and that's just part of good standards.

All right, well, thank you. I just, as a new potential partner here, I just want to make sure, and something, these are questions we've been asking of the different developers that have come through the committee process as part of these resolutions.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, thank you. All right, sorry about that. I appreciate your flexibility, committee, and back to Director Schluter.

Okay. Did you have any additional questions on this, Rez, for Division Administrator Becker?

I don't think I do. Does any other committee member have any questions for Division Administrator Becker? Not seeing any, then I guess it is appropriate to have a motion to recommend approval. Is there such a motion?

I move approval. This is Erin again. Okay, thank you.

Sorry, it's really hard to get to the buttons. No worries. I will say I did have a conversation with Division Administrator Becker a little bit earlier today about this resolution. You know, this funding award was already approved that the intent you know the the intent to award funding and initiate a contract negotiation process with this project um has been approved by the board now what's before us are the contracts to um uh about the terms of that funding and um i this is the this is the first time we have uh done this non-tax credit application process in 2025. And we've seen, and we knew we, we weren't exactly sure what type of projects we were going to get. We knew we were going to see a variety and they weren't all going to look the same, but one of the exciting things. And yeah, About it was that we know and some of what we heard just even in our earlier presentation is that there's different ways to make affordable housing and there's different strategies that we need to employ to to meet the community's needs. And and there's different partners that want to develop housing other than sort of the big investor owned models of for the section 42 tax credit program. So I... I think this, we've seen a few of these projects come through already, and this is the most recent one. I will say this is a smaller project, as a lot of these are, and there's only four units of affordable housing for $860,000, which gave me a little bit of pause, because that is a lot of money, and it's not a lot of units, and But I guess I am going to support this motion for a couple reasons. One is that this is the first year. Another is that this is our first project in Wanakee. And this is a new partnership that we have with a developer that maybe can be an opportunity maybe we have another partnership in the future. I'm not sure, but like, I, I do think it's, it's good to sort of expand our ability to work with, with different folks in this area and, and appreciate the different type of experience you bring in community connections. So I, I'm going to support this resolution, even though it, Did cause me some pause given the number of units. However, I will say that, you know, knowing that there are for 60% units with the type of fair tenant screening policies and the tenant protection addendums that come with county funded housing in the village of Wanakee is... is a good thing. So, um, I think we can be proud of that and we can look forward, you know, to this partnership, um, in Wannakee. And so anyway, I would encourage your support, um, for the resolution, but I do think we should, as we get more experience with this, with these types of programs, I mean, or, or this type of funding source, we want to continue to improve, um, our application process so we can make sure our goals are being met. Um, This is the first year and all eligible projects were funded. So it wasn't really a competitive process, if you will. So it's something to think about when the next RFP goes out and as we continue to evolve is how can we best match limited resources with the goals of meeting the housing needs throughout Dane County. Thank you to Lynette for coming. It really made a difference to me in being able to talk with you about this project and look forward to that partnership continuing.

Thank you. One thing that we liked about this too is the 40 years makes it like a legacy project. that will always be affordable. And we really appreciated that.

And that's a minimum. So feel free to go more than that. Thank you. All right. Any other comments on the resolution? Seeing no comments. Is there any objection to unanimous approval of the resolution? All right. The resolution is recommended for approval by unanimous consent. We'll move on. which is authorizing a contract with 2026 Resolution 30, authorizing a contract with the City of Sun Prairie for Town Hall Crossing Development Infrastructure, again, in the Housing Access and Affordability Division of the Department. Do we have any registrants on this item? Amanda?

No, Chair, we do not.

All right. Director Suter.

Thank you. Res 30 authorizes $762,000 with the City of Sun Prairie to fund infrastructure improvements at Town Hall Crossing, and that is a 46-unit single-family housing development by Habitat for Humanity. The improvements include the extension of Caddo Lane and related infrastructure necessary to accelerate the development of single-family housing. So what happened here is the city of Sun Prairie is contributing more than $1.4 million to this project. It's going to be matched with the county's CDBG pro-housing funds. The county's funding comes from $7 million of community development block grants, CDBG, pathways to remove obstacles to housing, that's pro-grant funding, that Dane County received from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The projects funded by the grant contribute to the goals outlined in the regional housing strategy. And again, Division Administrator Becker is also available to help answer any questions that you may have.

Great. So these are single family homes that will be for affordable homeownership?

Yes. And Joanna is actually here tonight. So folks get to meet the HAA All-Stars tonight. So Joanna will have the most knowledge on this one.

Makaela Niles- Chair Weglander, yes, so the 46 units are going to be single family homes, of which 24 are going to be slated for affordable to low and moderate income households.

Makaela Niles- Okay, I mean I sort of Makaela Niles- kind of assumed that based on the partner, Habitat for Humanity's model, but I wasn't 100% sure, but that is really exciting. That is a lot of homes, and homeownership is where it's at, if you're able. So that's really exciting. Where is... I mean, this is just kind of... Are there other... funders here or?

To the development, the phase two development or to which part?

Yeah, I guess I'm just wondering who else is involved in this massive project.

So as Director Schlier mentioned, the city of St. Prairie, their contribution is going to go towards the redevelopment of Town Hall Crossing Road. In order for Habitat to pursue Phase 2 and 2B of the Town Hall Crossing development, it's our understanding that Town Hall Crossing Road has to be redeveloped. And so in a normal situation, the developer would be responsible for the redevelopment of the property, of the road. In this case, this is where the City of Sun Prairie acknowledges the value that they're bringing in. So that's their contribution to the Town Hall Crossing. What we are contributing with the CDBG Pro Housing, it is related to just the infrastructure. So think about like water, sewer connections, the road construction of Cadal Lane to Town Fall Crossing. Right now, if you were to go out there, it's just, it's not even a dirt road. It is, it is not even, it's undeveloped land. And so Dane County is going to be contributing funding. And then I would say that third biggest funder in this project is Habitat for Humanity. So they go out and secure private funds to then invest into the community. And so we are only covering $762,900 and then Habitat will cover the remainder cost as it relates to the infrastructure and the construction of these single family homes. We anticipate that at a later time, Dane County Typically, when we work with Habitat, we partner on the down payment assistance program, being able to support low to moderate income households and the ownership securing of it. And so I anticipate that we might be a future funder in that. It's not a guarantee, as they have to compete for their funds through our regular CDBG and home funds. But Habitat, in their natural fundraising, they secure private funds to make the project work.

All right. Thank you. Um, any other questions? Is there a motion to recommend approval of rose 30?

I move.

Move by. Um, any discussion? Seeing none. Is there any recommend? Is there any objection to a unanimous consent on the motion? Seeing none, motion carries unanimously. We're on to 2026, Resolution 40, approving an intergovernmental agreement with Dane County City of Madison for emergency shelter for adult men, also in the Housing Access and Affordability Division. Do we have any registrants on this item, Amanda?

No, Chair.

All right. Director Schluter.

All right. Thank you. Resolution 40 authorizes an IGA, an intergovernmental agreement between Dane County and the City of Madison. This agreement is necessary to allow Dane County to contribute towards operating costs of the men's shelter program, which will eventually operate at the new facility out on Bartillion Drive in the City of Madison. The City of Madison will be the lead contract holder with shelter operator being a porch light. Dane County will remain involved in the partnership with the City of Madison to oversee the shelter's operations and continued development. And that's all in accordance with the IGA. So we also, we have guest average numbers also in case you wanted to know those for 2026. We, January, we're at 363 at the men's shelter. February, 370. March, 352. April, 315. And then May, we have 306. So that goes along, obviously, with the weather and climate conditions. In colder months, obviously, there's going to be higher utilization.

Thank you. Any questions? All right, I'm going to ask one for Division Administrator Becker. Is there any update as to when the new shelter might open, provided this resolution is adopted at a future board meeting?

this is one of the this is one of the important steps can't move in without without this um the city of madison is also negotiating an operating agreement with uh porch light the the shelter operator because the city of madison will own the building that's another important piece as well so there's no firm date as to when the new the new shelter will be open and when the current temporary shelter program will transition over at this point. But those are the next two pieces that need to fall into place before we can do that. I do know that the city of Madison is planning some community open houses so that folks in the neighborhood and folks across Dane County can come and tour the men's shelter. They've been holding a number of tours for various folks so that people can see the shelter before guests start using it as well. So those are some of the things that are coming up at least in the summer months before they start to wind those down and get ready to start moving folks into the new spot. But I couldn't give you a timeline on the operation agreement. This action that's before you, assuming it passes in order with the various committees, could be done at the end of this month. But that operating agreement, last I heard from the city of Madison, might take longer.

Yeah, it really seems to me that it would not be ideal to be making a transition like that in October. But it would be much better to be making a transition like that before the end of this summer because of the inherent issues that are going to come with a whole new system and the, you know, kind of, change in going from a drop in shelter to a reservations, you know, a different system, as well as this reduction in number of beds. So anyway, um, we, we can, we can do our part, I guess. Um, I just want to address, um, I'm not seeing any other hands, but I did work with and thank two division administrator Becker for, um, harnessing my rambling thoughts about some additional language that we needed to add to this resolution, in my opinion. To be transparent about this project, this will be definitely an improved situation for the shelter guests that are going to be able to use it. It will provide enhanced services. It will be a much I think, safer space and, you know, guest-friendly space. Clean and... Anyway, so I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have toured it. And if you haven't, I think we certainly should be able to make that opportunity available to any supervisors wishing to see it. But it does create... You know, there's growing need here. And the size is... too small to meet the current need. It was planned when it could have met the current need. So, you know, we still have some real challenges ahead of us with, you know, folks who are aren't accessing shelter right now and folks who are not going to be able to access shelter when this new shelter opens. So the sub just kind of provides some additional context to this situation that we have here and calls on the county to continue to work to address, you know, the other components to serving people experiencing homelessness in Dane County in a way that's humane, in a way that doesn't criminalize homelessness, and in a way that recognizes dignity and that everybody needs a legal place to sleep. So it points to two other budget initiatives we had in in 2026 one for the overflow shelter that will be really necessary survival. That that is still a work in progress, as well as the capital funds to, you know, partner with a community partner for a land purchased to set up some type of campground possibly. So anyways, I just wanted that in there to kind of remind the board and ground us in in this really important lifesaving work. And make sure we didn't forget those other aspects in the important focus also that is opening the new purpose-built shelter. So I would ask and hope for a motion to recommend approval of the substitute resolution. And we should put it on the screen. Here, if we can, Amanda, this was, so this is an amendment and this is amended, proposed amended language that was added to Legistar just today. And so I want to make sure that folks can go online in Legistar and see it, but I think it would be good for purpose of evaluating the substitute to screen share if you can.

Is the one with the show the corrections? Do the markup. I think do the markup will be helpful. Just want to make sure. Let's see here.

Okay.

All right. All right. And then if you can scroll down. All right, so this is the language and I don't know if anybody's on the phone or anything, but I'll read it. While the purpose built, this is that line inserting at line 51, while the purpose built men's shelter is a significant step forward in the provision of services for men experiencing homelessness, the need for services continues to rise. When planning began for the new men's shelter in 2022, the 250-bed capacity was enough to meet the projected need. Since that time, national economic pressures and a persistent housing crisis have led to a local increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness. The community also lost shelter bed capacity when the temporary urban campground located on Derry Drive in the city of Madison was closed in September 2025. The nightly average number of people served at the men's shelter in the month of May 2026 was 306 guests. And then there are two additional resolved clauses added at line 64. Be it further resolved that the Dane County Board is committed to addressing the needs of people experiencing homelessness, including people experiencing unsheltered homelessness related to a reduction in available shelter beds. Be it further resolved that the Dane County Board is also committed to working with the community and its partners at the City of Madison to prevent the criminalization of homelessness and to work together on solutions that create Lawful places for people experiencing homelessness to sleep, including its efforts to support the operation of a winter overflow shelter for men with a $440,000 investment and $2 million in capital funding for a community partner to purchase land for lawful outdoor sleeping. So that is the proposed language added into a substitute resolution. Is there a motion to recommend approval of the sub?

This is Erin. I move approval of the sub as written.

Thank you, Supervisor Walsh. I already spoke to it, so I'm not going to speak to it. Is there any other discussion? All right. Is there any objection to unanimous approval of the motion? No objection. The sub is recommended to the county board. And since we're in committee and in this is a recommendation, I believe we do not have to have another motion. On to 2026 resolution 40 Right. No, that was 40 46. 2026, Resolution 43, approving agreements for an affordable housing project at 103 Perimeter Road, Mount Horeb, D.C., DHS, HAA Division. Director Schluter.

No registrants.

Sorry, I forgot to ask. Thank you. Any registrants, Amanda?

No.

All right. Um, all right. Uh, this is thank you. Um, this is resolution 43, 2025 affordable housing development fund award. Um, and this is full with, uh, JT Klein. So this is, this involves 41 units of senior housing in Mount Horeb. Um, all units are affordable and it has a 40 year period of affordability. There are eight units specifically targeted to individuals experiencing homelessness. The developer additionally will pay $40,000 annually to pay the project's support services partner to provide tenants in the set-aside units with support.

All right. and um who's the supportive services partner on this one good question Casey do you know that I believe it's Lutheran social services okay yes that's correct thanks Ashley um any other questions not seeing any is there a motion um to recommend approval of res 43 All right, we got to move this a little quicker. This is Jackson. How late do you want to be here? Thank you, Supervisor Jackson. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing any discussion, is there any objection to unanimous approval? Seeing no objection, motion carries unanimously. On to 26, Resolution 44, authorizing Stonelies for joining forces for families program in the Prevention and Early Intervention Division. Do we have any registrants?

No, Chair.

All right, Director Schluter.

All right, thank you. So just educational for new board members, JFF offices, they provide ground-level social work really pretty amazing work where one person usually in a JFF office, in a Joining Forces office, provides help and assistance. A lot of times walk in and they find different creative ways to get people what they need, people in need what they need. So it takes on a variety of different This one person provides a plethora, a variety of different services on the ground. So this is a lease renewal. We have these sites all over the city. This is a lease renewal for the site at 343 East Main Street in Stoughton. This is a long-term agreement. We've been there for quite a while, and the rent is really fairly reasonable, $400 a month. total cost is $4,800. This lease renewal is through 5-31 of 27, and we have the option to extend for one year at the same rent.

All right, thank you. Are there any questions? Thanks for being here, Connie. I don't see any. Is there a motion to recommend approval? Move by Supervisor Walsh. Any discussion? Not seeing any. Is there any objection to unanimous approval? Seeing none. Motion carries unanimously. We are on to 2026 Resolution 46. I I'm going to turn over the chair to Supervisor Welsh for this item and just recuse myself. I have some active disputes with the funded agency under this funding and just feel more comfortable with not participating. So I'm going to shut off my camera and let Vice Chair Welsh take over the meeting.

Thank you, Chair. What we have before us is 2026 Resolution 046, and I will turn it over to Director Schluter to introduce this.

Vice Chair Welsh, there are no registrants on this resolution.

Oh, thank you. You're welcome. I knew I was going to forget something.

It's okay.

Sounds good. Teamwork makes it happen. All right. Resolution 46. This resolution accepts $2 million of funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD's continuum of care for housing and homeless programs. Dane County applies for these funds annually through HUD, HUD's competitive process via the COC application, which is managed by the Homeless Service Consortium. the HSC. These grant funds are contracted to the housing initiatives to enable them to administer rental assistance and supportive services for sponsor-based rental assistance program for households experiencing chronic homelessness. And again, we do have Division Administrator Becker on standby for additional questions.

Thank you. Any questions From the members. On this item. Not seeing any hands, but if you do have your hand up and I'm just scrolling on my phone and can't see it, please. Let me know real quick.

OK, no hands.

Thank you. I would entertain a motion on the item.

Move approval. Ms. Glazer.

Thank you. Moved by Supervisor Glazer. We don't need a second. So there are no objections. I would like to record that as being passed with unanimous approval. Seeing no objection, item is passed. And I will turn the chair back over to Chair Weigleiner.

Thank you. All right, moving right along. We are on to 2026 resolution 48, accepting childcare funds from Department of Children and Families, DCDHS. What is that fiscal and management or something services division? Is there, I don't, are there any registrants on this item, Amanda?

No chair.

All right. Dr. Schroeder.

Thank you. Resolution 48 is this amendment is a reconciliation part of the reconciliation process. I believe it is the amendment closes out state County. child care contract for 2025. the funds were anticipated and already incorporated into the budget and it is for 192 000 the funds are for child care administration and certification expenses that were incurred in 25 we're receiving the additional funding to cover program expenses that were previously reported to the state. So again, this helps balance us out. But it's not additional money that's already accounted for.

All right. Thanks. Any other questions? Any questions of staff? Not seeing any. Is there a motion to recommend approval?

Moved by Welsh.

Move by Supervisor Welch. Any discussion? Not seeing any hands. Is there any objection to unanimous approval? Seeing no objections, motion carries unanimously. And we are on to presentations. We've already taken care of the FISCA. And we have a presentation on a reorganization proposal within the department. It's in really tiny print at the top of page six of the agenda. So in case you missed it, here we go. Director Schlitter, do you want to introduce this item? Once I learned about it, I thought it was important that the committee also learn about this work happening in preparation of the 2027 budget. And so I appreciate the department leadership pulling together a presentation for us on pretty short notice.

Absolutely. And so as Supervisor Weigleitner flagged, this is a reorganization proposal. And so we have as part of what we have, I have backup here, Dr. Stacker, is present, Division Administrator Becker and Division Administrator Betten, because they're all going to be part of the reorg. So we recently shared this information with Chair Weigleitner and Board Chair Miles. And as Heidi mentioned, she felt it was really important that the rest of you hear the information as well so that we can answer any questions that you might have. I guess as we share this, I think I just want to flag for everybody that this is fluid. It's agile. Our reorg plans are changing. As we learn more information, as our landscape changes, we are having to pivot. And what we want to demonstrate here is as we have to make additional changes, I anticipate there's going to be additional reorg We're going to share that. But I also hope that this demonstrates how much thought, planning, thoughtfulness gets put into the decisions and that this is really, this is in the best of hands. You have some amazing division administrators that are making these calls with compassion and heart. And again, we're so grateful And again, you just have really good, great leadership thinking about these and thinking through all these hard decisions. So I'm going to pass the mic over to Connie Benton, because it's not my news to share. So queued you up, Connie, and you're in the best of hands now, folks.

Thank you, John. Thank you, Chair Weikleitner. And good evening, everyone. I'm aware of the hour, too, so we'll be as succinct as we can. As John mentioned, my name is Connie Betten. I'm the Division Administrator for Prevention and Early Intervention. I've been in this role since the division launched in 2020. For those of you new to the committee, under my area is Joining Forces that John described a little earlier with the resolution for Stoughton. Also is the Community Restorative Court Program, which is a diversion program for low-level offenses doing restorative justice circles. The Immigration Affairs Office, which works closely to help families with human service and immigration remedies all over the county. We have a prevention, many contracts working with everything from wellness to youth and after school programmings. We do the Dane County Youth Assessment Program. And also under my purview right now is the out of home care unit, which does all of our foster care and kinship care and other residential programing. So that's just a little bit of background. The pivot here is I'm going to be retiring in December after a long and very wonderful career here with Dane County and prior to that in the nonprofit private sector. And the timing of this decision was very intentional. We were facing a $30 million structural deficit. My working into 2027 was not going to personally change my retirement trajectory, but it could have significant impact on the department. So I made the decision to retire in December and approached John early in the year, several months ago with my decision. And along with that was a suggestion that my position not be replaced and that one of my colleagues and I had been talking in depth about possibilities. And that person was Casey Becker. And we, John shared, he said, well, I didn't see that coming, but thank you for understanding the moment and please continue working. Talking and bring me your ideas. So. Casey and I proposed to John a new division of combining the housing access and affordability and prevention and early intervention division into a new community support and housing access division. And then we needed to loop in Dr. Stacker, who is in charge of child, youth, and family, because the foster care out-of-home care unit in PEI really needed to go home. Its home was in child, youth, and family, where it worked very closely, always did, always will, with Child Protective Services and Youth Justice. So what we're doing tonight is really giving you a preview of what will be discussed in more detail as the department's budget unfolds. But it's a big change. And as Chair Weikleitner noted, did not want this to be the first time you heard about it when John's budget is released the end of August, but wanted you to have a preview that this is something that will be forthcoming soon. So that is the proposal high level. We weren't really intending to get into a lot of details tonight. There will be ample opportunity for that. But Casey or Dr. Stacker, is there anything you'd like to add to that overview?

I always defer to Dr. Stacker to see if she would like to say something first.

I don't have any. Well, I'll add independent living is part of that out-of-home care area. And as Connie stated, we're already working very heavily in tandem with them every day, pretty much. So the move back is very logical. So that's all I add to that.

Thank you, Martha. I forgot that. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I don't have anything to add at this point. I'm sure folks have questions, so I'll save comments until then.

The only other thing I would add is thanking my colleagues. It's extra work. It's a lift, but they are consummate pros. And as John said, I think it reflects the quality of the leadership in this department that they were like, yep, let's do this. We'll be saving money. significant amount of money by this position being sunset and we can do it. So they're amazing.

I also want to share one other thing that Connie said to me when she gave me the news. She said, you know, and it just goes to show what kind of person that she is. And it was me going early. If that can save two people's jobs, then that's what I have to do. So just again, the conscientious, like the recognition of the moment in time and making that kind of call. And it's a hard it's a hard one and it's going to mean more work for colleagues, for all of us. But it's the right decision. So again, I just want to kind of thank you and Dr. Stacker. Thank you. And Casey, too.

Thanks, John. Any committee questions? for the management team here. And I appreciate your patience. I'm sorry. We probably should have done this one earlier too. You had to stick around. I'm sorry about that.

It was an interesting meeting. Lots happening.

All right. Well, thanks for being here. And now we can leave. Thank you, everyone. Have a good night. um all right um well uh that brings us to i think our director's report on 2027 budget preparation um which you can feel free to keep brief i know you did get your target numbers and i got a number to work with right um

Yep. We have a target number. We shared that. And I believe that's been shared with the board. And I think the biggest, we are going, so human services, we kept a significant portion back in admin. So we're going to keep 700,000 in admin. And the idea behind that is to have as little impact to provider services to people, to staff levels on the ground as possible. And it's also going to mean, you know, tough decisions. That means that tough decisions that are made on the ground and at services and in the community, those are going to be shared by every level of the organization. So I just wanted to, you know,

Can you clarify what you mean by that?

Yeah, admin. So the administrative team fiscal and between fiscal and the administrative leadership management team. So it's the top of the pyramid.

So when you say you're going to... We are coming up with that deficit. $700,000 of the

correct and part of that is for example connie's position okay thank you for clarifying that um all right yeah and so and we are in the middle of budget um report out so that's probably the other big thing that it's every been every single day the last Two weeks. It's nothing but budget conversations and how we're going to meet the target. So each of the divisions is reporting up to me on their proposed cuts and reductions and what we're going to keep. And we're walking through all of that. I have my last meeting with my last division tomorrow. And after I have a complete picture of what everybody's proposals are, then I start making the hard calls of what we plan on reducing, what we plan on keeping, and we prep that for our conversation with Chair Wegleitner and Chair Miles, which will happen at the, I think it's July 20th. is when we have that so we're putting all of these materials and the numbers and the proposals together for in preparation for that meeting so that's what's going on right now it's um nothing but budget and money yeah appreciate the hard work tough tough decisions there um any questions for the director

all right not seeing any um we do have uh our future meeting items and dates um under item age uh so only one meeting in this month and uh one meeting next month two in august and then we really We really get rolling. So enjoy these weeks of June here, folks. And if you do have something that you, some type of presentation or item you'd like to see us discuss at one of these upcoming meetings, do share that with us. Always open to that feedback. Tonight was a full one, so we'll have to make sure we balance it with our business, but thanks for your good work, committee. Any comments on future meeting items and dates? Not seeing any. Are there any public comments on items not on the agenda, Amanda?

No, Chair.

Any such other business as allowed by law? Not seeing any. Is there a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Moved. I think Supervisor Jackson was that you? Yes. That came quick. Any objection to adjournment? Seeing any, we're adjourned. Thanks, everybody. Have a good rest of your night. Have a good night.

Have a nice night.