Homeless Issues Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. I'm going to call this meeting of the Public Protection and Judiciary Committee to meeting to order Carlos Do you want to call the roll, please? Chair Furman? Present.

Furman here. Supervisor Gray? Gray is absent. Supervisor Larson? Larson here. Supervisor Lewis? Supervisor Lewis?

I'll skip come back. So rather true shows is is running late early late that they're running late from here shortly. So as a Belgian here on here.

Supervisor yang. And absent. Supervisor Lewis.

I'm here to provide the loss here.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Chair we have a quorum.

Great, thank you. The next item on our agenda is a consideration of the minutes. Can I get a motion?

So moved.

Any, thank you. Any questions, comments, corrections for the minutes? Not seeing any, unless I hear otherwise, I'll assume approval by unanimous consent and we'll move on to our referrals for the evening. FIRST REFERRAL THIS EVENING IS 2026, RESOLUTION 097, AMENDING THE 2026 OPERATING BUDGET IN THE PRE-TRIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT FOR ELECTRONIC MONITORING. CAN I GET A MOTION?

THAT WE ADOPT, YEAH.

THANK YOU. WE GOT A MOVE APPROVAL. This is, I am very appreciative that the executive's office was able to figure out, working with the Department of Administration, figure out a way to find desperately needed funds for the pretrial service department for electronic monitoring. I see we have a director here with us. Would you like to talk about this at all? I think it's pretty straightforward.

I know that we talked about it the last time that I had my presentation with PP&J, but I'm available if you have any questions about any of the numbers or anything like that.

Great. Thank you. Are there any questions from supervisors?

I have a question. Go ahead, Supervisor Eldren. Thanks. I looked at the, is that going to be enough? To cover the rest of the year? Sorry.

Yeah, at least for the rest of this year. Essentially, we have had an established budget. And while we've gone over that in the past, this year we did a number of things to kind of reduce our numbers. So I've made efforts with the judges and we've removed a large number of people off of electronic monitoring who no longer had to be on electronic monitoring. So this is really the number that would help us continue keeping everyone on electronic monitoring, GPS and alcohol monitoring for the rest of the year. Because if we kept our current budget without any sort of increase, essentially everyone would have to be removed at the end of, we were able to extend it through September, essentially. So this allows for that. And it allows for me to remove anyone from the wait list who's actively in the community.

To the end of the year?

Yeah, through the end of the year. And then certainly I'll go through the rest of the budget process for 2027's budget.

When you say remove people, what does that mean?

So if we had run out of funds, we would have effectively turned off all of the monitoring for the GPS and for the remote breath. At that point, then the judges would have had to make decisions about whether those individuals could remain in the community without any sort of electronic monitoring, or if they would have gone into custody on like a larger cash bail.

So folks that might be able to be just sort of, in a sense, waiting for

their hearings yes yeah so everyone is in a pre-trial status nobody's been found guilty or anything at this point so they're all kind of waiting for their hearings and during that interim period they are on either gps monitoring or alcohol monitoring thanks and just one more quick question so if people are in alcohol monitoring though is that a condition of bail usually then or is it obviously can be part of a sentence too Yeah. In this case, all of the conditions for pretrial are conditions of bail. So they would be told that they cannot consume alcohol. And then in tandem, they're given an alcohol monitor to ensure that they're following that bail condition. And then similarly for the GPS, they have a bail condition about using the GPS and where to avoid. And then they're given the bracelet in tandem.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor. Any other questions? Okay, discussion. Not seeing any, unless I hear otherwise, I will assume approval by unanimous consent and we'll move on to our next item. Thank you so much. All right, the next item on our agenda is a discussion item about the automated license plate reader RFP. I believe we have the sheriff here. Sheriff, would you like to introduce this item?

Yeah, this is just something that we've been talking about before. It's come back here to the board and I have members of our staff, Captain Iris Simpson, to ask to answer any specific questions that the community or the committee might have in regards to the automatic license plate recognition. Just for background, the county board canceled the contract with the flock cameras at the end of May, but provided us with the funding to find another company that could do the similar thing while providing the protections that the community and the board was looking for. And that's what we're looking to do with this new RFP process.

Thank you, Shar, for that introduction, and thank you to you and your department for putting this together and coming here this evening to talk about it. Are there questions from the committee on this item? We also have Supervisor Andre here. who is more than welcome to participate in this discussion since she was the sponsor and knows PP&J well. So we can start with questions for the Sheriff Department staff.

I could start if nobody else wants to.

Go ahead, Supervisor. Go ahead, Supervisor Veldren, sorry.

Oh, okay, I wasn't sure if you were.

No, I got confused about a meeting attendee. All good.

No problem. Sheriff, I just have a couple of questions and then I'll let others ask some others. Is this relatively similar to the RFP that went out when we picked FLOC?

Yes.

There's really not a lot. Are there companies, I'll just leave this one out, are you comfortable that there are other companies that can fulfill this with the constraints that we've asked?

Yes.

Right. Okay.

Thank you, Supervisor. We have another supervisor just joining us due to a ton of traffic. We are in Q&A. Did not miss anything on the RFP for the automated license plate reader. So if you have any questions about it, you're welcome to ask the Sheriff's Department questions about the document that was part of the agenda. Great.

Thank you.

Yeah. While you get situated, does anybody else have any questions for the Sheriff's Department?

Okay. Do you have any questions? No, actually. It looks pretty solid for what I would expect. I do have concerns regarding enforcement after the fact, but everything that I would hope to be in there does seem to be in the RFP. So I do want to express thanks to the Sheriff's Department for implementing those requests as outlined in the resolution that passed the county board.

Thank you, and thank you for letting me put you on the spot. I know this was an important thing for you.

I appreciate it.

We'll move on to discussion then. Any discussion on the RFP? This is not something we're voting on. This is something that the Sheriff's Department did bring to us as part of the resolution that we passed, and if there's any additional feedback, now is your time. Supervisor Veldren, go ahead.

Thanks. I guess I just wasn't sure if other folks were going to ask questions. I don't know if the sheriff wants to jump back in there. What's our timeline? I know we want to get this up and running as soon as possible. Is this RFP going to hit the street pretty soon, like right after tonight? Sheriff, is this going to hit the street pretty soon? Yeah, sorry.

I thought it was a discussion for the group.

It was, but I wasn't sure if somebody else was going to answer. You decided to go back to questions. Sorry, Sheriff. I'll come back in a minute.

Yeah, so we have Captain Iris Simpson that could be on there to talk about this.

Yeah, as far as timeline goes, assuming everyone's comfortable with it, I'd like to get it launched and published so that other vendors can respond to it and we can see what we have for scoring.

I guess I do have another question since I saw on the one of the points was to get a couple of other agencies that have used. Are you aware that we have there are agencies using other companies around the country or wherever? Yes, not that flock that have been successful people. And those communities are happy with with their results.

As far as I can tell, yes.

Great. Do they come in around the same price? Because I'm sure Flock gives much better deals, and that's probably obviously because they went a lot of bids that way.

Yeah, they certainly have the market share, but I would imagine that other companies are going to be pretty competitive.

Sure.

Right. Okay, thanks. I'll just do a brief mention, just like Supervisor Trujillo said. I think you did. This is great. I think it does answer a lot of questions. And I think more communities pick up a system like this that doesn't have the intrusions that people feel are out there or just built into those systems will make the community just understand what it's for. It's for regional license plates. And if there is, but there is the, The contingencies, if there is like some, either a silver alert or an alert for a child abduction or something else that can be passed on. And that's really the other point that I'm gonna make sure if like there's a car going through different jurisdictions that, you know, then we can help out. And just like if somebody leaves Dane County, we wanna track them as well. So I appreciate that. And I think that's really what the crux of these cameras are.

supposed to be for and if i can add one more thing hold on so uh all right yep go ahead great um yeah i've made my ideological reservations known uh back when we had the original vote but you know now that we will be moving forward with having this alpr system implemented i'm really grateful that the sheriff's department has move forward the way that they have and that we've incorporated all the elements here. You know, if we're going to have this, it's really inspiring to see that it looks like it's going to have all of the elements that we saw as the best way to get public buy-in. And if I could make a request, I don't know if it's something that would be best to request for you, Keith, or Supervisor Fuhrman, or if it's best to request the Sheriff's Department. If I could have a sample of the criteria, if they have something similar like it's already made, don't bother making a new product. From the old RFP or whatever it was that Flock responded to, if there's anything even remotely similar to this, it might help make it easier to communicate to citizen groups that are generally very hesitant to this technology to have a comparison so they can see this is more apples and oranges than apples and apples.

Yeah, we could talk about that more offline, about the best way to handle likely probably just getting you a copy of the RFP that went out previously. That'd be perfect. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. Um, thank you again, Sheriff's Department. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. You too. Thank you, Supervisor Andre for joining us.

All right, we'll move on to our next item of the evening, which is presentation.

So our first presentation is from the juvenile court program. Come on up.

your presentation up momentarily uh but in the meantime please introduce yourselves yes thank you chair members of the committee my name is edrin pearson i'm the dane county juvenile court administrator hello my name is albert watson i'm the juvenile court superintendent great thank you welcome and perfect timing here's your presentation thank you for having us you can go ahead and uh go to the next slide So juvenile court, our funding, we have 36.8 FTEs, say 24-hour department. Staff is fully funded with the general fund. And so we have 3,023,329 FTEs. Our total 26 department spending was $5,283,803. And our total GPR spending was $5,043,803. Part of that is we get out of County revenue. There's only 13 detentions in the state of Wisconsin and probably around 20 shelters. So every County doesn't have those facilities. And so we bill a daily rate for people to use our facility. There is a screening process, but we get out of County revenue based on out of County facilities using the facility. Next slide. The juvenile court program is unique. My position is unique. Our budget is under the direction of the Dane County executive. However, our policies are under the direction of the juvenile judges. So I have a supervisor in the county exec and I have a supervisor, the presiding judge is my supervisor as well. So, yeah. Our program exists, the Juvenile Reception Center is a central hub. So usually when you see the news, someone's arrested, they always say, we brought them to the Juvenile Reception Center. Juvenile Reception is responsible for making the intake decisions. So that's the hub. And then you have the Juvenile Detention Facility. You have the Shelter Home. You have the Home Detention Program. And you have our Newly Added Program. And I will discuss all of those individually briefly. Next slide. This is our organizational chart. I won't go through thoroughly, but I am the administrator, and we have two M11 positions. Albert is the superintendent, and we have a community program manager that supervises the home detention program and shelter. Albert also supervises the adult program, and we're staffed with juvenile court counselors and social workers, and then we have two clerical staff. Next slide. Juvenile Reception Center. I personally supervise the Juvenile Reception Center. We have 8.8 staff. As I said earlier, juvenile reception performs 24-hour initial custody intake decisions. So basically, youth gets arrested, Law enforcement brings them to us. We're not responsible for innocent or guilty. We're just responsible for placing a kid until they can go to court. Anytime somebody is held insecure, they have to go to court within 24 hours. We average around 300 intakes a year. So we can go at night without an intake, and we can go at night and we could have six. And so GRC's responsibility is to take the statutes of Chapter 938, which is the juvenile code, and Chapter 48, which is the child welfare code, to make the appropriate decision based on what information law enforcement gives. Most kids are going to be sent home or to relatives. And so we can either choose to send them home. If there's a relative that's willing to take, the next step would be shelter home. And then for serious offenses, it would be juvenile detention facility. Briarpatch has four beds that we can use based on their decision. And it's more of like a domestic case where teenagers argue with parents, they don't want to go home and they could be housed at Briarpatch. So we have the ability to Ask Briar Patch, would they be willing to take a kid for a night or two? We also participate in court hearings. So we make the decision to hold initially in placements and we write narratives. And so we have to go to court and explain our narratives. And we also advocate for the kids. So we do custody hearings, which occur when a kid is placed in detention or shelter within 24 hours. We do plea hearings. We do dispositional or trial hearings. And we also, since it's a hub, we coordinate with all stakeholders. So, judges, court commissioners, the DA's office, human services, public defender's office, and law enforcement, everyone comes through our facility. And JRC is located downstairs in room 200. Next slide. Wanted to give like a virtual tour. Before I begin the tour, we started a mural project about a decade ago in our whole building. The brown walls is what our whole building was covered with, just beige brown. And we had a trauma study to talk about certain areas. It's a secure building. So it's already traumatic, and we identify areas that would be traumatic to kids. So this is the JRC custody intake. This is when a kid is arrested. They're in crisis when they're arrested. They're brought to us, and they have to wait in a cell until we make our decision whether to send them home or send them to shelter or keep them. And so we decided that this was a perfect place to paint. And so the way the mural projects work, we have a partnership with the Madison Public Library. They meet with the kids that are in the facility, they come up with the concept, and then they execute the concept based on what the kids want. Hence, you see the bright pink and blue colors. So next slide. This is a JRC holding room. An intake can last up to 30 minutes. What constitutes an intake, the kid is placed there and staff has a meeting with law enforcement to get information. We wanna know, has the kid been injured? Sometimes there may be a high speed chase. There may be a struggle. So we wanna get medical attention. We wanna make sure the kid is mentally able. We may have to make a journey referral. If they're going to be released, we may have to see if we can find a parent to come and get them. Law says that a kid can be released to themselves at age 15, but we just don't think it's appropriate that we're located downtown to have kids just roaming around downtown. So sometimes when they're released to home, they may sit just so we can figure out how to get them home. Sometimes parents are not able to come right away. So next slide. Now, this is juvenile detention, and I will turn it over to Superintendent Watts.

Thanks, Ed. So, yes, I do supervise the juvenile detention center. I'm the superintendent. I have 17 full-time staff. We're licensed by the Department of Corrections. We have to follow the DOC Code 346. Excuse me. 24-hour secure facility with 30 co-ed beds across four units. 171 youth were admitted last year. And the average daily population was six, around six in 2024. And we're at the city county building, room 200. Next slide, please. This is our multi-purpose room, and kids are in this space mostly on weekends and in the evening. They can play cards, watch TV. Chess is huge. In the back is our day room, too, and that's where they can play ping pong, foosball, air hockey, and things like that. Haircuts also take place in the day room as well. Next slide, please. All right, this is just another part of the facility, just looking from the opposite end where the day room was. But this is more of the multi-purpose area. You can see the phones that the kids can use. Yeah, pretty much self-explanatory. We also have medical staff. There's a doctor's medical staff office there also. Every kid is seen by the medical staff within 24 hours of coming into our facility. And who knows if they're behind on immunizations and vaccines and things like that, they'll get caught up. Next slide, please. This is our dining room. Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner takes place in this space. A lot of times also staff meetings will take place in this space. We also do special events like a Black History Brunch. We ended summer barbecue last year. We invite all our stakeholders to come. So we're always excited about hosting events. stakeholders and that's the day room one right there as you can see behind that door. A lot of our groups take place in there. Tonight we have community connections that are going to be there in about 10 minutes doing some religious group with the kids. It's not mandatory, but if you do not want to participate, we'll give you some other exercise to work on. Next slide, please. So our classroom, computer room, the Madison Public School District is in our building. They're in our space, and school starts at 8.30. Then there's a break at 11.30, and then school resumes from 12.45 to 2.00, okay? Next slide, please. This is another view of the day room. We also have other groups in there as well. My staff also will lead staff-led groups, and we implement the six pillars of character, character counts. So each week, there's a particular pillar that we focus on, and staff have to implement that whenever they're doing groups. Next slide, please. This is CPOD. That's where we house one of our housing units. You know, it's pretty much self-explanatory. Just a typical room. Next slide.

We'll get to see the room.

So this is what the room looks like. Pretty much you got a mat, a pillow, you have the toilet sink. And it's on a cement block. It's not the most comfortable. But, you know, it is what it is. It's set up for a short length of stay. Right now we're housing, the last two years, the trend has been housing adult jurisdiction kids in our space. And so when you have kids there for anywhere from eight to 12 months, you know, it can be challenging as far as comfort level. Next slide, please. This is our kitchen. I started the cooking program that we have in Dane County. Every Wednesday, staff will cook with the kids. It's an earned program. You can't come into our space Tuesday night and expect to get this beautiful lunch that the staff and the residents have put together. But if you lose a level or any room time, you will not participate in this lunch. We'll give you leftovers that we've had from food service, which our food comes from Consolidated Foods out in Verona. rural Wisconsin, excuse me, but kids make anything from Juicy Lucy's, cheese steaks, pancakes, waffles, and fried chicken, cheese curds, fried catfish, spaghetti, just a bunch of things. And there's always a dessert as well. And we love when guests come in because anybody's invited to come through, our stakeholders, and we like when they come over and sit down and eat with the kids. Next slide, please. This is a mural, one of our favorites that's done by the Madison downtown library team bubbler program. Autofax is the artist who put that together. Some of her artwork has been in the city county building on the first floor. And yeah, we just, that's one of my favorites. Next slide, please. I'm sorry, can we go back to that slide? My apologies. Kids also are transported to and from court when it's in person. So they would go through those doors right there. And then just coming this way is a solid port to take them to court. And court is underground, the route that they would take. Next slide, please. Sorry about that. This is our gym. Now, when I do tours of the facility, I can never explain that mural over there. But I finally found out, you know, what the mural is saying. And it was just kids that got together and just had a bunch of ideas and the artists put those ideas on that wall. Every mural that we have in our facility, there's a QR code that you can learn about, you know, how that mural came into fruition. But kids have access to the gym every day, weekends also. And we also have yoga every Wednesday. Sometimes we have kitty yoga where our yoga instructor will bring a couple kittens and they'll walk around while the kids are doing yoga. Next slide, please. All right, this is the visitation hallway. I remember when the kids did this particular mural, there was music, there was tape everywhere, there was paint everywhere, but kids have non-contact visits. They're typically about 30 minutes. If there isn't a wait, they can visit longer. We don't mind that. But that's pretty much what that space is for. It's not like what you would see on TV where you pick up a phone and your visitor picks up a phone. You can pretty much hear each other when you're talking without using that instrument. Next slide, please. This is one of my favorite murals also. I think it was the first one that was done. This is our visitation. So kids visit with sometimes police, law enforcement, attorneys, social workers, mentors, pastors. Contact visits also. When a kid is graded to leave Dane County, our policy is they get a contact visit with family members, and that usually lasts about 30 minutes, and then they can meet in our non-contact area for another 15 minutes. What I've allowed, though, because I believe in doing things that make sense, is we have these adult jurisdiction kids, and I've had kids who have gone six, seven months without hugging their mom, so I will give them a contact visit because they're under a different status. Next slide, please.

I can start. So this is Ada. I'm happy for this slide. Ada is our new pilot program. It's an alternative to kids going to Lincoln Hills or Copper Lake Prison. Next slide. So ADDA is supervised by Albert. When we designed the program, we wanted to have two staff because it's a two-kid program. So we wanted to have two staff that would be able to write the program and then kind of initiate some of the scheduling with the kids. So we hired two staff for detention. Since Ada's located in detention in its separate pod, those staff work directly with the kids in there. It was former D pod, and now it just says Ada pod. So youth are housed separately. These are youth that are kind of on their way to go to Lincoln Hills. It's a leap of faith that you have to take. to where we know the pattern. A kid has foster homes, group homes, and once they flush out of those, spaces run out, placements run out. And so inevitably, those type of kids are going to wind up in corrections. The fact that we work in detention, we just understand that pattern. And so ADDA is a 24-hour two-bed voluntary program, and voluntary is something new. It is something that our system wasn't used to. So a kid has to literally say, I want to go to ATTA. And so they have to know that, okay, you're running out of placements. You know, what's left may be Lincoln Hills. And so the attorneys have to kind of work with them. And that's not natural for an attorney to say, hey, you should go to ATTA. Attorneys are supposed to look at less restrictive placements. But, you know, when we were meeting about Ada, we had two years of meeting just explaining to people, you got to be real about the direction the kid is heading. Because once a kid goes through disposition, they don't qualify for Ada. And disposition is basically trial. And so once a judge makes an order, so Ada is not ordered by the judge. Ada is the DA the public defender and the kid agrees that the kid is gonna voluntarily enter to add a program, which for a teenager, knowing that a program is four to six months can be intimidating. And so congrats to, we have a kid in there now, congrats to a kid making that leap of faith, that's very mature of that kid, and congrats to the system of doing something different. And so the program was actually recommended by this committee, along with Honorable Judge Everett Mitchell. It was recommended, I don't know if you all were living in Dane County when we were having the car thefts. We were averaging 17 kids at Lincoln Hills I believe it was $1,400 a day. And this committee and Judge Mitchell got together and says, hey, what can we do to prevent this from happening? We were sending kids to corrections and they were coming back and we were sending them back to corrections. And so it took two years for us to come with that program. And we began it actually in January one of this year, we had a big open house and members of the board were there. We currently have one youth in that program and we have referrals coming in. And so it is a system that. It's hard to get everybody, stakeholders, to agree on things, but this is the one thing that I'm very happy to say that everybody took that leap of faith and we're just turning through. We chose two beds because it was a systematic change and we were... Very ambitious. Albert and I, a couple of years ago, we wanted six kids. And thank God we talked ourselves out of that because it's just been difficult in the way the court process moves. And even judges have had to learn how to move through this process. So it's going pretty good. Next slide.

Yeah, so at a program is a six month program. We have four phases, the assessment phase, treatment phase, transition, and aftercare. Assessment phase, we want to get to know these kids, see what your needs are. You know, what do you like to do? What are you interested in? They can get assessed for school, IEPs and things like that. Primary physician, things like that also. Dentist appointments, making sure that their teeth are good to go. Um, so yeah, that's, and, and, you know, and just, uh, setting the tone with mom, because this is a program or, or the family that, you know, we're not just for the youth, we're for the family also. Uh, then you have the 10, we have a treatment program, which is 10 weeks. This is when the kid can actually get into the community. Uh, that's when the kid is going through therapy, family therapy, also some DBT, uh, some life skills, um, um, um, some life skills, um, curriculum and things like that. Um, kids can go outside also with staff. We want staff taking kids, um, hiking, biking. I think they're, they're planning on going to, um, bowling this weekend. Um, we have a set schedule. Um, so when staff come, come to, uh, pick up a shift, they understand what's going on and what time it's going to happen. And, uh, so there's no confusion. Um, transition, um, 10 weeks also. And that's just, you know, this kid is getting ready to transition back home, back into the community. What that looks like is four hours signed out. We just felt like two hours wasn't, wasn't long enough, you know, but a few hours to sign out with, with doc, you know, with, um, information about how the visit went with, with the family, with the parents. We definitely want that report to see how things are going. Uh, we're trying to find employment as well. Um, for this kid, we're partnered with briar patch also, uh, for employment and for, um, banking, education, and things like that as well. And then aftercare is provided by Dane County Human Services. You know, the social workers will be checking in with them. Module and our career counselor will also be checking in with that youth, seeing if that youth has any needs. We also, our kids are qualified for CCS. And so once they graduate from the program and they complete it, those services will go with them as well. Next slide, please. So this is what the outer space looks like. This used to be D-Pod. As you can see, another mural, which the first kid that we had in the program did that. That was his idea. But one thing I want to talk about is, you know, we're licensed through DOC. We have to have a certain type of furniture because we're in a secured facility. And so... That three-piece you see sofa right there with that ottoman and that chair was $4,000. We had to drive to Chicago to purchase that. So I always like to share that because it's just amazing that it costs that much. Next slide, please. That's the mural. Latin meaning I came, I saw, I conquered. That was from a kid that we had. Next slide, please.

Okay, shelter home. Shelter home is supervised by the community program manager. There are 9.9 staff. It is actually licensed by the Department of Children and Families. The code is DCF59. Shelter is a 24-hour non-secure co-op facility with 16 beds. We have eight beds for males, eight beds for females. The issue with shelter is there's a mixture of delinquency, juveniles in need of protection of services, and child welfare youth. And so you are mixing the kid that doesn't have a place at home, the child welfare kid, with the kid that doesn't follow rules. And so sometimes that can be challenging with the space that you have. youth may stay in between placements. So let's say someone was at a foster home and they didn't work out, they come back to shelter until another placement is filed, the same as group homes, or a kid could be sitting in detention and they could be there a while and their attorney could petition to court to release them to the shelter home. And so you just have that much mixture of kids there that can be very challenging. Youth can only stay up to 60 days, and that's state law. And so shelter is a... Temporary placement and so that 60 days is so that counties can just sick kids in that placement as if it was a treatment foster home or something. And lately, you know, we go up to that deadline because Dane County has a lot of mental health kids who have been hard to place placements in the state of Wisconsin are down by far. And so human services is at the use shelter more than normal in the last the last couple of years. Last year, there were 156 youth admitted in 2025. The average daily population was 4.6 this year. Last year was 4.3. And numbers this year are going to be bigger than that, probably up to seven. We, with boys mainly, we were at capacity the last couple of weeks. Today was the first day we weren't at capacity with males in shelter. Shelter is located on 2402 Atwood Avenue. Next slide. Just a couple of shelter pictures. DCF is different from DLC. It's supposed to look like a home. So this is the shelter school. Kids have the option to either go, depending on their home school, they can, if they're suspended from their school, they go to shelter school. Every other kid can go to the school that they were enrolled in. So kids can take the bus, shelter staff can take them, transport them to their regular school. We prefer them to go to their regular school. However, Some kids have been expelled, and so we have to provide that service. And there's a teacher that is an employee of the Madison School District that has classes at Shelter School. Next slide. This is visitation. We prefer when kids are able that they go out for visitation. However, your child welfare kid that has been removed from the home is not going to be able to go anywhere. And so the onus is upon shelter staff, supervision, and social worker to try to find someone, whether that's a mentor or someone to come in and visit the kids and to be able to sign them out. Next, Deb. I mean, next slide, sorry. This is a sheltered bedroom. Again, there's carpet there, there's no stone frame there, a lot different from DOC 346. Next slide. This is a mural from the back garage. The crazy thing about the location of shelters, the state wants it to be what we call homey. So it has to be, it's usually old buildings because you're not going to purchase a new home. There's a bar across the street from shelter home that for years our community Kids can open windows. And so our fear is that they're yelling at patrons from the bar because it's their right. They're not criminals. It's their right to be in the community. So we try to get them out and away from shelter when they're outside because our fear is that, you know, some of that patron kind of bleeds into our property. Next slide. Home detention program. Home detention program is also supervised by the community program manager. There are two home detention staff. The comparison, I would say, home detention is equivalent to a house arrest in the adult system. HDP is used as a diversion alternative to detention. And so what happens when a kid goes to court, an attorney could say in lieu of being placed in detention or shelter, could they be at home detention? The only requirement is that the family has to have a phone. Kids can be removed from detention based on a judge's court order and placed on home detention. The total number of slots is 16. To date, we have 12 other slots filled. So our county does utilize that, which is a good sign that the mentality is we don't want kids sitting in detention. HDP has no time limit. The HDP staff, it's mobile because home detention consists of kids have to call and do check-ins every hour with the HDP staff, and HDP staff have to physically go to the house and meet with the kid. If a kid wants to go away from the house or want to go shopping or, say, even a vacation, them and the parent need to contact the HDP worker to get approval from that. And basically their offices are in the city county building, but they're rarely there. Their job is mainly to be in the community. Next slide. Notable topics. Just wanted to note that we live for tours. We have so many groups to tour. So if you're ever interested in touring the city county building facilities, you can just contact Albert or myself. A lot of times we tag team and do tours. There's always one of us there. Daytime hours we prefer. You can come at night, but daytime is a little more structured as far as to be able to come Tours of the shelter can be arranged with interim Diane Brown. One of the notable things that we are proposing this year, Human Services has proposed to transfer the electronic monitoring program to juvenile court. Since EMP is a diversion from detention, it just makes sense. The reason we came to that decision collectively is Human Services is a 9-to-5 department. So if a kid is on home detention and what's happening is there's a violation Friday night, The worker on Monday hears about everything that happens over the weekend on Monday, whereas we're 24 hours and we can fill in some of those gaps. And so they're proposing to transfer the position as well as the budget to juvenile court for that position in this year's budget. Every stakeholder's agreement from judges to DA to public defender just makes more sense that we have that. Honorable Judge Nia Tramiel was elected as presiding judge in January, and I found this out after I did my outline. We have a total judge rotation next August, which Judge Mitchell will be rotated to civil court, and Judge... Highland will be rotated as a juvenile judge August 2027, which I'm sure we will be talking before then, but just wanted to note that. Suzanne Studi was our community program manager, shelter home supervisor. She is retiring. She's on vacation until August 1st, and her last day is August 1st. So as I mentioned earlier, Diane Brown is an interim. We will be recruiting for a shelter supervisor as soon as we can. But for now, Diane would be the person to contact. Also, our department does an annual juvenile court report. Exhibit A here. It is online on the Juvenile Court website. We literally have every report since 2000. So if you're just interested in looking at patterns for the last 20 years, you can start with 2000 and look how far the county has come when it comes to juvenile justice and services that we provide kids. Juvenile Court website is listed below. Just Google Juvenile Court and there's a tab that says annual reports. Next slide. So thank you. This is our contact information. Does anybody have any questions for us?

Thank you so much for your presentation. I'll start with supervisors in the room. Any questions?

I do. Regarding the ATTA program, I'm ashamed I'm not familiar with the nature of the Lincoln Hills facility. Where do kids come from? Like if they come into ATTA, where were they just prior to that?

Normally detention, so I'll start with Lincoln. Lincoln Hills is a youth prison. Highly noted for, how do I put this? Highly noted for certain practices that weren't conducive to kids getting better, right? There was a, some sanctions on them, which brought counties red flags of, hey, what are we sending our kids there for? And so what happens is a kid breaks, they can break like a big law, like intentional homicide, and it can be ordered to Lincoln Hills on that. Or there could be We've sent you to all of these placements, and now the only suggestion is Lincoln Hill, so they could go that way. They usually start on lower-level charges in detention, and they kind of graduate up. So ETA exists to stop the graduation, right? So you always want to do least-restricted environment. The ultimate... placement is home, right? That is not always optimal. And so if you can't home, you want to do a relative or you want to do, then it's a foster home. And then it's what's called a residential care center. That's like a treatment facility. The problem is, is that everybody in the state is competing for beds for those because we just don't have a lot in Wisconsin. And so those places charge a lot of money and they can pretty much handpick who they take. And so what happens is sometimes kids are ordered to Lincoln Hills prematurely because there's no other place. And so the goal was for eventually Ada to expand to be a stop gap so kids won't go to corrections. So they started detention and before their dispositional hearing or their trial, They can voluntarily go as kind of like a deferred prosecuting agreement with the hopes that the attorney in the key can go in front of the judge at the dispositional hearing and say, we just completed six months of ADA. Can you consider this in your ruling? And the judge would just order you home because you've already put in the work before they've had to order you to link their hands. Yeah.

And you said it just started this year in January?

Yes, January 1. So it's a lot of kinks because the whole court process had to be different. We all collectively had to kind of educate ourselves what's legal. And so no program exists like this in the state. There are alternative to corrections programs, but they're not predispositional. So there was no model program. We just kind of went as we could think. We started with Carlos' group just to see the legalities of it, and we're just constantly working through some of the hurdles that we have.

What I told my staff and what I tell everybody is that we're going to continue to make adjustments as we continue to move forward with the program, what's working, what's not working. So that's kind of what we've been doing.

That sounds great. And you had the one graduate so far? No, we have one in there. One in there now. Yes. Okay.

Hopefully he graduates. He's on the right track, so yeah.

That's great, thank you.

Are there similar programs elsewhere in the nation?

In the state, there are alternative to corrections programs, but there was called post-dispositional programs.

It's after they've been acquired. Yeah.

Yes. And the problem with post-dispositional, it becomes, we were looking to do a post-dispositional program before COVID. The state was giving counties money to either add or build a facility. And Dane County at the time was looking into that. The problem was, is COVID happened and supplies went up and the state money wasn't adequate anymore. We had blueprints. We had everything to move along with this project. And so the facilities that are running it, like we're seeing is like the first one. They just open. They used county money, but they're kind of having some growing pains with, you know, when you use county money, how do you sustain that? And so a lot of counties backed out, but the problem didn't go away with the kids we were getting. And so the way we could go around it was be predispositional. And then the county can kind of control how it wants to operate that. And so that's why we went to that.

Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Questions from online. Supervisor Lewis, go ahead.

Hi, so Director Pearson, Superintendent Watson, this is just, this is fantastic. It's so obvious how much you care about the kids, you know, from the murals and the activities with them, continuing their education. I don't know, I had found out just recently how you, you know, pull their records from the schools that they come from. You know, if the kid is down in North Carolina, you get their school records, you make sure they're getting their education. That is, you just make it feel like you care. And I'm sure you get good responses from the kids for that, that you are doing the absolute best that you can for them. I guess there is a lot of mental health issue and work that goes into it. Are you getting what you need for that? Because did you have enough of that? Are there challenges? with that, like, are there enough therapists enough time? Cause you're a 24 hour facility.

I can do that. Unfortunately, no. But it's a crisis in the community. There's not enough services in the community. I know the last time I checked that Journey Mental Health had a four-month waiting period. But what we do is we still have the kids. And so we talk to UW students, somebody that is in a master's program or somebody who's in a doctorate program that needs to get some practicum hours. So we kind of try to do the best we can with students. Unfortunately, the only services around in the state for juveniles is if you're suicidal, which is so far on the spectrum for kids. And my soapbox has always been just nationally. This is just not a Wisconsin problem. Jails are funded with more services than juveniles just because their length of stays are longer. So for instance, we have a 0.1 mental health person. In our facility, which we have a person that comes once a week for four hours. That's it. Whereas jails usually have 20 to 24 hours a day because states don't put a lot into detentions because of the length of stay. However, detentions are burdened now to be used more because there's placements are not available. So there's a transition period that we're going in as a society to where, yeah, there's no group homes, there's no foster homes already, so the kids are sitting in detention. So there has to be some movement nationally to beef up detentions. Detentions weren't designed to have kids for this long. They were just designed for kids to sit, go to court, and go home. But we're finding now that kids are staying longer because there's no way to go or... They're on adult charges, meaning they're 16 years old and they should go to jail. But thankfully in Wisconsin, we believe that a 16 year old should not be in jail. So we hold them, but they're on jail terms. We've had kids for a year waiting on the adult court. And so we've had to try to navigate how to provide those services.

Okay, so you have had kids who actually graduated from school while they were there in detention. Has that happened? Because I know you have teachers and they have class. Like you said, have you had any successes, you know, where they like completed their education and went on? Any success stories? I know you have plenty.

What we have, what I have is, you know, our kids, they usually, unfortunately, they graduate to the adult system. And we participated in, you know, because, you know, we've never had a kid graduate from detention as long as I've been in my 18 years of working there. But, you know, I've attended, so I said, multiple graduations from our residents that have graduated to the adult system. Some success stories that I have is just, you know, when a kid, you know, is in the area or a kid makes a point to come visit and say, hey, look, is Albert there? Hey, look, this is my son. This is what I've been doing. You know what I mean? Like, I've been working. You know what I mean? Like, I made this pot roast in the back that you taught me how to make during cooking. You know what I mean? So those are the sex stories for us. Or just the kids saying, thank you. You know what I mean? I appreciate, you know, what we cooked today and what we made today. And just the fact that we have a very good culture in our space. Our use of force is way down. You know, we don't like going hands-on with kids. I mean, we will if we have to, but the objective is to not go there. And I like the culture that we have. That's why we're so open to touring the community, to people coming in to see what we do. Because you won't know unless you come in. So...

And it's not a bad thing that they're not graduating. Our kids, their average grade is middle school. The average length of stay is around a week. So... Fortunately and unfortunately, like most of our kids are going to be 14 years old. So the best thing that we do, they can get credits and they can work on reading. Their reading improves and they get credits. But we rarely would get like a 16 and a half year old that's close to that. Unfortunately, when we do, they end up going to jail and they graduate at the jail because they've had credits. there, but we don't have a kid that long enough or that old enough a lot to graduate. So it's not that they can't graduate there. It's just that circumstance never really occurred.

Right. We have had kids work on their GED and take that test. Do you know what I mean? But yeah, that's pretty much the extent of it.

Well, thank you for the work that you do. And thank you to your staff. Because as I said before, it's obvious that you care. And that's what they need most of all.

Yes, ma'am.

So I'm hoping that, you know, you will have help with the challenges, you know, and the things, the rough spots. And you've done so much already. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Lewis. Supervisor Veldren, any questions?

Yes, thanks. First of all, when you're doing all those murals, did you go to Dane Arts at all? Because they're that whole mural project? I mean, I don't know how old they are. I was, I mean, I was there when the facility, I've been here. I was here when I took the tour when the facility was first built. So.

No, what we do is we partner with the Madison Downtown Library team, Bubbler Program, probably for the last 15 years, something like that. And they have their own artists and, you know, they get grant money that's funded. We have been known about the paint, but that's what they do. And not only do they do the murals, but they do branding. They do t-shirt design, shoe design. I had a kid take his whole family shoes on one day. He made everybody a pair of shoes, like six pairs of shoes. So there's a lot of things that the bubble is one of our favorite groups. It's the most popular group aside from the cooking program.

That's fine. Um, just didn't play for Dane County. Uh, is I, I participated in a program a bunch of years ago now where we were doing, um,

mock interviews is that still going on for like job job interviews yes uh we have that through our uh through the uw psychology um program that comes in here that comes into our space and uh does that with the kids they do interviewing uh they do a little bit of dbt um i'm not back there as much as i used to be but you know i'm all over the place but they've been known to do things like that for us right and then finally so i'm all familiar with the whole

massive Lincoln Hills and and trying to get these facilities into the county. And I know there was I was as I've been on, so I know about the funding issues. And is that something that we can hopefully look to sort of resurrect, if you will, in the next hopefully in the next legislative session? Because we know everybody in the state wants to close Lincoln Hills and copper. So to get that, do we have, how much space for, and I remember talking to John Bowman, how many beds could you actually create in that same space? Because it would be on the second floor, right?

Yes. Six. We have six beds in D pod.

So it would be even more confined though, right? Yes. Because I know that I mean, I had a friend that was a police officer in Milwaukee, so he would tell me there were some horror stories. I mean, there was a real it was tough over there, and it was probably just the Milwaukee kids. That's where he was a cop. But how many people do we have there right now?

We have, unfortunately, there are five kids, four in Lincoln Hills, and one is in Mendota via Lincoln Hills. However, four of the kids were adult jurisdiction kids, meaning I think all of them were charged with intentional homicide. We were holding in detention. And so as part of their deal to have the case looked It moved to juvenile court. They agreed to go to Lincoln Hills on what's called a serious juvenile offense. So the state is responsible for funding that. So it's not a good thing that a kid is having an intentional homicide, but it prevented the kids from going to prison. So they're at Lincoln Hills. So that's not a failure on their county as far as deflecting from Lincoln Hills. It was actually the better choice than, you know, because of the charges they had.

And we were also counting as a big advocate for keeping the juveniles in the juvenile system as opposed to the adult system. But a lot of counties that we dealt with were like, yeah, we're fine with it if the state will pay. And that's where everybody came to the loggerheads, right? And just one more thing I was trying to remember. Oh, do we have anybody out of state anymore? Are we still doing that as well?

We have a kid in Indiana residential care center. There's a kid that's in a residential care center in Indiana that human services place. As I said earlier, there are not a lot of beds for for residential care centers in Wisconsin. And so this is a youth that was on that track. He had already had disposition, so he didn't qualify for ATTA, but the only solution they had instead of sending him to Lincoln Hills was to send him to a RCC out of state in Indiana.

Right.

Oh, and then, so when the Atwood facility is filled or over capacity, and that seems pretty high because I just remember it wasn't, it was only two or three kids would usually be in there. What do you do? If you have more males, can you use it? I don't know how it's designed. If you can use some of the female beds, I don't know how the buildings split up or what do you do?

We can't go over 16, but we have the way the rooms are situated. The male beds aren't like eight in one place. We have seven in one place. And then we have a separate room for what we call is a kid that maybe is younger or has a physical ailment that needs to sleep alone. We freeze that bed for GRC purposes. So like in the middle of the night, we need to place a kid there. But when it gets high, we call human services and say, hey, find a kid you need to move because legally we cannot go over capacity. We've come close. We've never gone over capacity. There's always a kid that if people dig deep, they can find if it's just a respite for a few days of a foster family that can take a kid for a week.

uh that they could do that and so they're good about trying to just move kids around right thanks thanks for the work i know it's challenging um you want to get those kids obviously we want to get them out as fast as possible as as many as we can so i know there's lots of different dynamics going on so thanks a lot thank you thank you

Thank you, supervisors. Any additional questions? Go ahead.

Yeah. I wanted to kind of ask some questions regarding the mental health availability stuff that you guys talked about. It's something that really matters to me a lot. I'm much more familiar, of course, with the adult side of things. My significant other actually works at a Oh, man, at Shorewood. Yeah. Yeah, for short-term placement, short-term care. The residential care center, Jason was talking about, it's more like inpatient facilities, right? Correct. Okay. What are the ones that are here in Wisconsin, if you know?

Ladd Lake, I don't know if that rings a bell. Ladd Lake. Northwest Passage. Norris. In Lad Lake, there's a lot of facilities in the lake that's a corporation. So say if a kid gets rejected by Lad Lake, they get rejected by four other places.

Rawhide is another place.

Rawhide?

Was it New Beginnings or something up in Green Bay?

I think they clawed.

Oh, did they? Yeah. What about the place in Milwaukee? It was in the kids, too, that the judges had issues with.

I'm forgetting a place in Milwaukee. I'm so sorry. No worries.

We can get that information to you, though.

Yeah. Do you know if all these facilities are private institutions? Yes. Every one of them are. All of them are private.

Yes. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Oh, we got the Grow Academy also.

Grow Academy.

Yes.

That's via correction.

That's DOC, though, and that's in Oregon. Oregon.

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah.

Any additional questions?

That's everything for me. Thank you so much for being here this evening for your presentation. You're welcome. As I said, thank you for all you guys do. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it. Pleasure.

Okay, our next presentation is from a familiar face, is from Corporation Council, and I was gonna see whether or not he wanted to come sit there. I think I should. Fantastic. I don't think you need to introduce yourself, but Stephanie will bring up your slides. And you can go ahead, thank you so much. Okay, next slide, Steph.

You can see one of my skills is not PowerPoint presentation. So bear with me with this here. So our office is called the Office of Corporation Counsel. And as I mentioned in the slide, it's kind of a somewhat archaic term, although I found out later on after I started here that many states still use it, but essentially means the municipal attorney. In our case, that'd be the county attorney. Our office consists of three separate divisions. One of the divisions is the Office of Civil Litigation slash General Operations is what we call it. Another division is Permanency Planning and a final division is a Child Support Agency. Next slide. We'll start with what we call the Civil General Operations, and it's exactly what you would imagine such a division is. We, in this division, our attorneys assist all of the departments in the county, all the committees, commissions, the county board, individual supervisors, individual elected officials, in a system of a various variety of things uh requests for legal opinions uh assistance with developing a project uh it's a kind of a feasibility a legal feasibility uh study of what they of a new initiative per se um and so you know edron here just mentioned that our office helped them figure out the ada program and that's essentially what i i think i find more rewarding in this unit is that while we're not really public facing What we try to do is really support the various 30 plus departments with whatever initiatives they want to do, which ultimately helps our residents and our folks in Dane County here. We also are a number of our attorneys in this unit also prosecute all the Dane County ordinances that we have there. If anyone's curious, they are in our Dane County code and they are. The public safety ones are in Chapter 32, I believe. There are some with public health, which are in Chapter 40-something. And Chapter 10 is our zoning code. So each of those codes require, at some point, enforcement. And the way it works in our county is the tickets are issued by usually department-level employees. They try very hard to sort of negotiate something or try to gain compliance with whoever may have sort of violated any of our ordinances. Well, ultimately, those efforts don't always succeed, in which case then they get submitted into court. And then at that point, our office kind of handles it, and we try to do the same in terms of making sure we achieve compliance versus actual punishment for these individuals. don't see our ordinance enforcement or prosecution, I should say, as kind of a revenue generator for us. What we're trying to do, like for an example, with some of our zoning codes and our stormwater erosion ordinances, we're truly trying to get the homeowner into compliance. So we threaten forfeitures. If we have to, we do pursue them. But our hope is that we can just work with the homeowners and any violators to make sure that we can just move on to the next case for ourselves. Next slide. The other division that we have in our office is called the Division of Permanency Planning. And essentially, the goal of this division is to assist people to gain permanency in one of two ways, right? One is if you're... If they are someone who is suffering from a mental illness or mental disorder, what we try to do is make sure we can assist them through the court system to make sure that they keep on taking their medication, or if it's an initial psychotic break, that they start taking their medications with them. And in that sense, we hope to help them achieve permanency in that regard. The other kind of type of permanency that we work on really hard are those involving children. So our office kind of prosecutes two types of juvenile welfare cases. One is those children in need of protection or services, and then the other is termination of parental rights. Typically, children in need of protection or services, the shorthand for that is CHIPS cases. Our CHIPS case is usually the first stage of the case. Our hope is that if we intervene, we try not to remove a child from out of the home, but if we have to, we try to make sure our number one goal is reunification with their parents. If for whatever reason that's not possible, then the next stage of that case becomes a termination for parental rights case. Again, it's the Department of Human Services does a wonderful job of ensuring that we don't have to do that. And so what they do is they've put in a lot of efforts in prevention. And so we've had a lot of success in making sure that if we do have to intervene, our intervention is limited just to providing services for families if at all possible. We, for our mental health commitment cases, those are kind of, they happen on a very short timeframe. So under Wisconsin law, what happens is if you, if a law enforcement typically sees someone who is suffering from mental illness and considers that person either dangerous to someone else or themselves, they issue what's called an emergency detention. The emergency detention is basically the legal document that kicks off the process. At that point, the law enforcement takes the individual into custody into either a private hospital, so think UW Health, think Meritor or St. Mary's. And there, the doctors, if not a private hospital, then the only option is the Winnebago Mental Health Institute up in Oshkosh. If the individual can only be detained for up to 72 hours, at which time we need to hold a hearing within that timeframe, find and have all our witnesses prepared to testify. If we're successful in terms of convincing the court that, yes, this individual is a proper subject for treatment, we end up having another hearing about 11 days later, which we should call a final hearing, The difference in that case is in the meantime, the court appoints a independent psychiatrist and independent psychologist to evaluate the individual to determine whether or not a civil commitment is what we call it is necessary for the individual. We also assist those individuals who don't really have what we call a treatable mental illness in the sense that medication won't return a person to baseline, but the individual does need assistance. because of dementia or some other kind of cognitive disorder can't be treated for medication. And they just need assistance with either various aspects of their lives, depending on their current situation. And those are cases that we call our guardianship. So we place someone, a guardianship of the person, sometimes guardianship of the estate, depending on how they're doing. Sometimes those guardianships are not enough. and the individual actually needs kind of a safer placement. And so what we do in those cases is pursue a protective placement for them, which typically would be some sort of adult family home where they're required to stay there during the course of the protective placement. As you can see here, those cases, the juvenile cases are roughly around 362 total for this year, and our mental health and guardianship cases total about 750. And the mental health cases, the churn on those are pretty quick in terms of we have about five to 600 of new cases a year. That's not to say that every case is going to last for longer than that initial intervention for us. You know, being in Madison, unfortunately, we have quite a number of times where we have young people who are studying at the University of Madison. They have their first psychotic break, which typically happens around your early to mid-20s. And that's devastating for families who have kind of expected their children to sort of go a certain track in their lives. And these youths are very talented, I guess, young people. And then to face this in a different city, in a different kind of area, it's very difficult for them. But those are Those unfortunately are a sizable number of the cases we handle. The other kind of sizable number of cases are folks who just live in a community, who have kind of a long history of mental health issues, who for various reasons are unable or, yeah, I guess unable to be able to sort of maintain their treatment regimen, in which case we would intervene to make sure they get back on that treatment regimen. Next slide. Our final division is our child support agency. So child support is a federally mandated program that was created by the Social Security Act, Title IV-D, in 1975, I believe. The agency is responsible that children can receive income through their single-family households who have a custodial parent. Those children can actually receive funding from the from the non-consortial parent, I should say, and also medical support if necessary. We do about four different kind of initiatives for families in Dane County. We establish paternity when that's in question. We establish child support orders and health insurance. So one of the things we do is we work, we sometimes proceed with cases where we have a order that if either parent has paternity, private health insurance through an employer at a reasonable amount that they are required to put their children on it to ensure that they can make sure that they have that medical assistance if necessary. We also help locate absent parents, so those non-custodial parents who either abscond or don't feel like they should support their children. We assist families with that. And then finally, obviously, we do collections for child support delinquencies. The child support program has morphed in a very good way in the past 30 years. And initially, it was intended to be basically just collections and only collections. And then the federal government had this great idea of, well, if you're collecting child support, why don't you also collect payments that will go to... So if a family member at the time was on what we owed, well, for AFDC, the federal government would require us to collect AFDC payments on behalf of the coffers there. They have since stopped that, which is very, very good because our main mission now is simply making sure that children are receiving money from the non-custodial parent. We don't really want to be debt collectors for the state or the federal government any longer. And that has been a welcome shift over the past 30 years, as I mentioned. The other big shift is through various programs, both federal and state. You know, we recognize that it's not simple to be employed and definitely to be employed with a percentage of your income being diverted to, you know, obviously your child, which you're responsible for. But, you know, there's only so much someone can do if they don't have a job. There are employer-responsored program, employment training and employer recognition programs where we actually try to help those noncustodial parents. find employment or seek employment in lieu of further enforcement of our child support orders. So as long as they're doing their best to sort of find something, we sort of wait and we've kind of encouraged them through sometimes court orders or of course status conferences to make sure they continue with their program. And those have been successful as well. Our total caseload in Dane County is roughly 27,500 cases. It's a large number and oftentimes these cases begin when a child is born and they don't end until the child is emancipated, which is around the age of 18. So that's why they linger quite a bit. Our level of intervention varies. It crosses all socioeconomic backgrounds. You know, we often have to do passport denials for those who are high incomes, and those are challenging, and there's other administrative processes we can try to find if high-income families are, or I should say non-custodial parents are not fulfilling their obligation on their child support. we do our best to make sure that we can successfully find that money and make sure it gets to the children that need it. Next slide, please.

Staffing.

So, and there are civil general operations unit. There are about eight attorneys, including myself and one administrative manager. The admin manager is a huge help to our department. She helps us with the budget. So all general kind of administrative support. She also does double duty as the paralegal for our civil team. And it's significant because in addition to those administrative tasks, he's also the one that helps us make sure that we get our briefs done on time, that we understand how the Court of Appeals rules are being applied. So it's quite a bit of work for that one individual. That's a total of nine employees for that general civil operations unit. Our Permanent Planning Division is larger, I mean, given the caseload and sort of the kind of imminent nature of the work there and the urgent nature of the work in terms of trials. And as I mentioned, those 72-hour hearings that we have to hold for mental health cases. There are eight attorneys there as well. We have kind of a manager of that unit. There's one paralegal manager that oversees five paralegals for those attorneys and one clerk, one, two. And that is a total of 15 employees for that division. Next slide. Power Support Division is the largest. It is a total of 56 employees. Again, there are eight attorneys, including the legal director. There's one operations director that oversees kind of the general operations of the whole agency, as you can imagine, being a fairly mandated program. There are both federal rules we have to follow as well as state rules as well. I guess it'd be challenging because the guidance changes, shifts, changes. As you can imagine, changes in administration causes different focuses or foci, I should say, to come up. Those are difficult to manage, especially given where we are now today. So it's important to have someone with a kind of a singular focus to make sure that every other subunit in our agency is kind of following those various guidelines. We have three managers as well to separate in different teams. We have teams of paternity establishment. Again, they establish paternity for those parents as well as for those children. We have an enforcement unit, which are those child support investigators that also help us make sure that if someone is delinquent in their payments that they start reaching out to those individuals quickly. Our research shows that if we can intervene early, it can prevent a problem from going off the rails rather than kind of waiting for a few months and then discovering the person doesn't have a job or just getting the person moved away. So we try to stay on top of those cases as quickly as possible. We also have a financial unit too, which kind of, as you can imagine, there's various issues regarding Income withholdings with employers, sometimes people get promoted and required us going back into court to readjust. Sometimes people get demoted or lose their jobs, in which case we have to go back into court and sort of modify those orders. Each time we modify those orders, it changes those income withholdings. So we need a unit to sort of make sure that we are harmonizing the changes in court with the latest kind of income withholding order that's out there and work with individuals who might have kind of unique issues that come up with that. So those investigators are split between those units. We have a paralegal that helps us kind of oversee the legal documentation that we develop. Sometimes when we have to establish paternity or establish child support orders, we have to go to court. It's a legal process. And then, so we need someone, we need a team to serve assistance with drafting those complaints and making sure we serve the individuals we need to serve appropriately to make sure we can get those court hearings on the calendar as quickly as possible. And then we have a lead imaging technician that kind of helps us scan all of the paperwork that comes from the court process to make sure we have a robust kind of repository of our records. As I mentioned, some of our cases have been around since the child was born, but sometimes if there's arrears of a case, then the child may have emancipated 20 years ago, but the individual may still be owed, it's still owed child support to the custodial parent there. You know, oftentimes, and those are arrears that we can't waive. They belong to the custodial parent. Sometimes the custodial parent understands or kind of has moved on. Many times they haven't because they have suffered sort of the loss of that income. And so they want us to continue to enforce it. So those are kind of difficult cases. Some of them kind of go cold in some ways. And we try our best to make sure we intervene as much as we can and see if we can help these parents who have been kind of waiting for this income for a long, long time. As I mentioned, there's 56 employees there. And so in total, our department's roughly 80 employees as of in 2026. Next slide. We've done a really good job of making sure we reduce the GPR draw required for our services. So our Civil General Operations Unit, as you can see, 26% of it is what we call enterprise department funding, and I'll explain what that is. Essentially, it's non-GPR funding. So we have a number of departments in Dane County that are not funded through GPR, but are funded either through outside, I guess, customers or services. One is the airport, right? They're not on our levy. They are funded through the leases they have with commercial airlines, private airlines, buildings surrounding the property. So they're off the tax rolls. And then our solid waste, our landfill, basically, are funded through tipping fees and other matters that they have there. And so we are able to draw 26% of that, both the airport and waste and renewables. They have a portion of our attorneys who are dedicated solely to their services there. And then, of course, the remainder is 74% of it is supported by general purpose revenue tax dollars. Our emergency planning unit is 23% funded by federal reimbursement funding. So the same Social Security Act that created child support also created reimbursement funding for child welfare cases. And we receive about, as I mentioned, 23% of that is reimbursed. And what I mean by reimbursed is cost of the position and certain costs of like expenses, such as paper, supplies, things of that nature. The remainder of it is GPR funding. Child support agency is actually the most robust source of federal funding. It is 66% of any child support expense, positions, costs, services is reimbursed by the federal government. And in addition, there are specific performance standards that if we meet, the federal government will provide us with additional federal payments. It's called incentive funding. Give you an example, if we hit 90% of our cases in terms of, if we're able to establish paternity in 90% of our cases, we get X dollars of federal money on top of our federal reimbursement. If we hit 80%, we get slightly less than that, 70% and so forth. And there's a four or five measures there that we follow to make sure that we hit our incentive funding as well. The remainder of it is 25% and that's GPR funded.

Before we leave this page, I know the next page is questions. I'm going to jump right into questions because there are two things I did not catch on this page that I'll just ask you about. Sure. On the 77% GPR for permanency planning, do you know roughly what that number is? You know, I forgot to put it there.

I can find out for you. Yeah, if you could let the... If I had some algebra skills, I could figure it out.

The next part, the math of 75-25 seems weird for the child support agencies. Is that because of the incentive funding?

Yeah, that's the incentive funding. I suspect that's accurate. Again, I can double-check those numbers. I went to law school because I wasn't good with maps.

Thank you. Questions from, we'll start with supervisors that are here. Any questions, supervisor?

I don't, but I'm impressed by the wingspan of all the different types of law and different types of management and operations you have to manage.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, I didn't have anything to add. Questions online? Go ahead, Supervisor Belgin.

Hi, girls. Thanks. Of the child support, where are they housed? Are they in human services? Because they're not here. They're not in City County building, right?

They're actually here. They're on this floor. If you know where 357 is, they're on the opposite side of the hallway there.

Okay. So not in your office, though?

No, not in my office. So they're on the third floor. My office is on the fourth floor.

Right. I didn't think there was enough space for all those folks in there. Do you get any state funding in those formulas?

Well, yes. So in order for us to run that program, so Wisconsin is one of the states where the federal government kind of contracts with the state and the state contracts with each county.

So it's pass-through.

Exactly.

Gotcha. How big is the, how many placement and families are you working with? Because that's so many people. I mean, so many employees.

For child support?

Yeah, I don't have the screen in front of me.

It's roughly about 27,000 cases, 5,500 cases.

Is that on average for the year? Do they linger or not? Or how long do they stay?

It's total. As I mentioned, it varies. Typically, in a perfect world, the case would stay open only for 18 years. But typically what happens is there will be some arrears, in which case our cases will go on beyond 18 years as we try to sort of claw back some of that money for the custodial parent.

Is there just a lot of carnage going on or...?

Wage guardianships are one, so we do wage withholdings. We often sometimes wait if there is a, let's say if someone, this has happened, but it's rare, if someone wins the lottery, we are quick to come in and sort of put our lien on their winnings. If someone, this other version is kind of more complicated. If someone receives a settlement or a payout because of an accident, depending on the circumstances, we step in and we try to call back that money for the custodial parent as well.

Okay. And so you said that goes on for years that you just, I mean, can you just have a civil suit or a civil judgment and just be done with it that way? Or do you still... Yeah. I mean, obviously you're not working those files that much.

We, well, we are in a sense that again, like we, you know, a civil judgment is one of those things that sounds great. It takes someone to actually do the work and actually collect it. And so we do work the files. Our investigators do a great job in making sure they try to locate an individual. Let's say the person drops off the face of the earth. We have tools that we can do to try to find them. If we, we, There's a national employer database that we kind of research and we try to locate them. The hardest thing for us are those individuals who live off the gig economy. And there's just, unfortunately, nationally, it's been very difficult to figure out how to make sure we kind of tap in some of that income. But there are people searching, finding, and trying to create what we call income withholding orders on those individuals if they do get an employer.

those sort of those new employers are they helpful in that in their area if it's the cars or the food folks or in the gig area they are not um they a

They are, I mean, we are trying to come up or nationally, we are trying to come up with ways to make sure those ride share apps and companies kind of do work with child support. But because it's kind of sporadic, like someone could drive an Uber, let's say, for a week and never drive it again, it's much more difficult to make sure we're able to tap into that income when it comes in. I mean, I think their inability to assist us is based upon that nature of it. But, you know, sometimes we get employers who, outside of the sort of the folks leading the gig economy, who are less than helpful, who either don't understand what their responsibilities are with the income withholding orders, in which case we do have to sort of be a little bit more adamant that they do assist us with it, because they're obviously legally mandated to do so.

As the person who's assigned to solid waste, are they still doing a lot of work? I guess now with the expansion of the landfill, right?

Yep, exactly. So actually, our deputy, Dave Galt, Matt, which I'm surprised- Oh, he does it? Okay. He has done it for many, many years. So he's still responsible for assisting them.

Right. I just remember former supervisor Rip was always wondering if there was enough- is for the folks on the board there, on the committee that he was always questioning if there was enough work or we were just sort of, he was protective of the solid waste money, I think, and seeing if we were actually utilizing the skills. But with the expansion, I'm sure there's plenty of work that Dave gets paid for.

Thank you, Supervisor Belger. Any other questions?

I did get your number in to the math. It's 1.97 million for the 77% for a total of 2.56 together. Thank you. Thank you. I got a math minor for something.

Now you can stamp that you used it today. Thank you.

I have a follow-up question to Supervisor Veldman's question. Just with regard, I'm just intrigued by the criminal, or not the criminal, I'm looking at the word criminal on my computer screen, the search for people, because that's something I had to do in previous jobs. Are you allowed to access the criminal databases and like Interpol and the ones that are all linked together in that fashion, or is that off limits for your purposes?

It's not necessarily off limit. It's not one that we've found to be helpful. So we do what we call a clear search, which is, you know, we were able to find individuals just, it's somewhat scary. Like, so if someone uses their Walgreens discount card, right, we'll get a hit that way to know where they are. But we have not relied on criminal kind of records. Sometimes, though, we do discover that someone who has had an outstanding child support order hasn't paid, let's say, for a number of years, and it turns out the person's been incarcerated. And so those are interesting cases because it goes back to, again, what is the purpose of the child support order if someone's in a federal prison or state prison? So we have actually a special docket that the legal director does where, you know, oftentimes those individuals are incarcerated. They ask for a modification of their support order. And there are a number of factors that you have to take into account before deciding it. Our position will, to be upfront, kind of depend on what the custodial parent feels, right? But quite frankly, you're looking at someone who's earning maybe $0.08, an hour, four cents, you know, an hour. And so if we do receive any income for an individual, it's probably because there's someone, that individual has a family member who's putting money in for, you know, canteen use, commissary use. And so it's... It really requires us to sit down and work with the court commissioner who typically handles these cases and see whether or not what's the purpose of it. And so what we end up doing in most cases is kind of doing what we call a zero dollar order, like a hold open session. We sort of suspend everything up until six months after the person is released. Because again, there's that horrible transition time where someone might be released and then there's recidivism concerns that go back and see where they are afterwards. And depending on where they are, we go in again into court to see whether or not we need to either keep it as low as possible or readjust it. Those are very difficult cases to figure out how best to proceed.

Thank you.

Yeah. Great. Thank you for presenting today, and thank you for all that you do.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay. We will move on to the rest of our agenda, which is just a reminder of future meeting dates. August 18th is the only time we meet in August, and then we don't meet until September 22nd after that. But right now, again, I'll remind everybody, we are scheduled to meet every Tuesday in October. If there are items that people would like to see on the agenda for our August 18th meeting or any of the other meetings, certainly let me know. We will have two, possibly three presentations, our final three, at the August 18th meeting, depending on scheduling. Otherwise, we'll wrap that up September 22nd. So if anybody has any items, they can certainly let me know, and we'll work from there. We'll move on to public comment on items not on the agenda. We don't have any. Such other business as allowed by law, there is none, and so I would take a motion.

Move to adjourn.

Great. Thank you, everybody. Have a good night.