County Council - Regular Meeting

money. I was looking for money to do a build up. Well, the only money you would get would be rented if they wanted to relocate from Randle. I'm not I mean that's a commissioner session but one watching must say we're five.

Yeah, you did. And I thought both in there. See? No. Excuse me. Make sure Tim knows. Hello. Hello.

We're live Saturday night recording. But we're mandated. Does it show on there? Somebody's live. Facebook watch. Oh yeah. Um on the fact you can go back and put that video.

Yes. I think right now if I go to YouTube it tells me how many people are watching. It says one one watching now. So I'm watching there's one watching you property taxes usually goes up here. She expects a family.

I got one too, but not for me. I got one for my daughter. I never donate. I didn't schedule any Nice.

I did. I just prepared to have a conversation about it. He appreciate it. I said last year this gives you the flexibility of not making it. I know.

Yeah, exactly. We want to give you everybody.

What's up, Danny? Take this one. Yeah. Wednesday. Thank you for your need council member are with what you gave yesterday gone. These are what's coming in on the bake distribution. I just haven't. So this is already adjusted for yesterday's meeting.

Yes. And then this is what's going to be going back in when I get a chance to. And is that in the next three months or just like it's there? [Music] And I want to tell you yesterday we took part of these things yesterday. Oh, really? this. This is the room with what you guys did yesterday coming out of it.

But this is the big distribution that's coming back in this week. I just haven't had a chance to do it yet. So, what your code will be. You're an amazing I try. What do you need? [Music] Who? Oh, okay. What you guys doing? I think that's Do you have one in there? Huh? Yeah. I got one, too.

So, and I wanted to tell you too, um, yesterday we decided we were going to take part of my travel and mileage and put it in the 127 county elected official fund. I need to keep that in there because sometimes we have district meetings and they're not state. You don't use it. I forgot. Is there anyone else that we move that we need to make that second adjust they have meetings all the time and she's at 12 the same way I So if you'll go ahead and put that make a mark going to fall.

How you doing? How are you? Did you just sing? Did you just assume this Tuesday first and get that out of the way? You want to do it after lunch? It doesn't matter.

Funds adjusted for yesterday's and then this is coming now but they can see. Okay. coming out.

I got say thank you for doing that. Y'all see when I get down in town, it's just non-stop. A guy, he's like, you know, everybody down there. Thanks so much.

Before we get started, I just want to make a comment. Uh this morning, David Bart from the AIC was here present a couple of scholarship checks and he mentioned that the AIC is looking to contract with Dr. Larry D'vor who used to be with Purdue University. He's an economist to uh help go by county by county and try to wait through some of the effects of Senate Bill One. Susan from Baker Tilly yesterday was here and they gave us the numbers that they could come up with, but everyone is still dealing with the impact of Senate Bill one on those funds. So Dr. D'Vor if he does that contract will, you know, drill down for each county. So we may get additional information from the AIC with Dr. D'Vo, which would be a a blessing. So just seeing Thank you.

Before we before we start uh budgets, you commissioners are up first. Before we start budgets, we approved the 911 agreements yesterday and we need to sign those uh those agreements for 911. I did I did get a call at lunch from Greenale Mayor was really happy about it. I wanted to let you know that.

Well, we're happy that we think we're happy when he called me if you don't mind. We just send me some housekeeping all the way. first. Our budget today is location 13. You have everything for that. the bigger desk. I have everything at my fingertips.

I'm sure you want this one. Oh, are you They were going to sign or are you ready? We're We're signing this. This is the housekeeping. We're trying to get these done so that uh it shows up perfect order. One of you get that and the other. Yeah. Location 13's first here.

I have one of those. I know. I've got you on. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Better than not. Yeah. That way we only have to get the cities and towns. Okay. So each one of those and then that's what we agreed for it. But we agreed on those 911 contracts yesterday. So we need to have our signatures on that. We're not

Get your hands failed. That were your fail. It is Right.

Quit.

Is your brother? Yeah. So father I help out.

There you go. So the car with Churches. Thank you so much.

Catch Doug. Okay, Miss Hayden, we're doing we're ready to start with commissioner's budget. Good morning. Location 13. Sue Hayden, county administrator. And I'm not sure exactly how you want to proceed. Usually you just go down our primarily if there are major changes. I mean, if everything whatever is the same in things that are um just like certain things are contracts or like health insurance, that sort of thing,

right? And I think the contracts were always highlighted. Um the major increases basically are the workers comp and liability and through trending. Um it was suggested that we raise that 6%. Um, so that's those numbers that are in there are reflecting a 6% increase of what we had last year. Okay. I do have a question on 31301 the Harrison EMS contract, right? Are they still just doing a one-year?

No, we had a threeyear and this is the last um three year. This is the last of the three year and each year it was a seven per 7% increase. So, starting next year, we'll talk with them or we'll make some kind of a an adjustment as to whether we're going to continue doing that or um if they will, you know, lower the percentage each year. But we we locked it in for three years and this is the last year.

Okay. One other increase that's a little bit higher about $20,000 is the pictometry which is 36503. And the reason why that has gone up is because every three years we were doing new flights and this flight um they are offering a new imagery which is a 1 in imagery and it comes down closer and um you can actually read the street signs on that's how well the um the imagery is. It literally makes it easier for the assessor's office and everybody else to tell if it's a whole barn, if it's a house because they can do a lot of that type site visit.

That makes a lot of sense,

dude. I got a question on the uh lawsuits and settlement fees. Uh the Yeah, the 31102, right? Uh you know, it seems like in 2024 we spent 10,000 and 26 you're asking for 25,000.

It's always, if you go back through the history, um I've been working here 17 years and through the whole time I've been working with the budget, it's always been at 25,000. The reason why they leave it, council has left it at at 25 is because we we used to get a lot of lawsuits through the jail and we don't know when those bills come in. You know, we might get a lawsuit um tomorrow that happened in, you know, 16 and so the billings come in after the fact. So we always kept it at 25 just in case we needed that cash flow or the the payment.

Most of the time we don't use it so it rolls right back over. We can move lobbyists out of there. Can we get lobbying and medic shots? Move them to riverboat. Riverboat. Yeah. So on the U 31303 EMT training um in 24 they expended close to 30,000 budgeted 50. So far this year we have expended nothing. Could we lower that to 30 you think? Um which one is that again? I'm sorry.

31303 EMT train. Yeah, I found it. Um, so that's a placeholder for the classes that they start up. And since we started paying um with the EMS lit, they I do know that there's two people that are going through paramedic training that I won't use this money this year, but I'll use it next year. So, um, that's probably close to 12,000 a person. Really? Yeah. That will reimburse. Where do they get that training? Um Indiana State, I think. Or not Indiana State. It's the

State. Cincinnati State. Yeah, that's what it was. It's There's some other colleges that do it. So, we probably I'll leave that at 50. Nope. That's not something we can take out of the EMS lit. I don't think the training you can. I I think the the lid is specifically set aside for staffing. Isn't that what that's what the contracts are? I don't know if you could make that EMS live or not. Well, most you probably he probably could.

Yeah, that's what we were just I think you're you're EMS only for EMS services. And I think I would I would think the argument would be that paying for the train EMS would fall under an EMS service. Our contracts with EMS providers limit those funds to staffing. But as far as statutoily, I think, you know, I think that would fly. And I guess I don't know how much we collect in the EMS lit. I thought everything we collected basically went for the contract. No, we try we tried with every fund to never expend to the penny, right? So we there should always be some carry forward. Okay. And that's the only reason we were able to fund the life squad that we approved yesterday, right?

It's if if you if you budgeted to the penny on that, there would never be anything for incidentals that come up. Yeah. And Baker Chile gave us we had some margin there yesterday in that report. So I would if if everybody else is comfortable with it, I' I'd prefer to move that to the EMS lit if we can. Leah, do you have a problem with the way this is advertised moving that to the EMS? Yeah. Does everyone feel like we ought to move that to the EMS? Let Dan let everybody any thoughts on that? Thanks to me.

That's fund 1236. Okay. Any other changes you want to address?

Um the only other change um would be for that fund that you were just talking about. I've added in the 12,000 or $20,000 and then whatever Leah added for PER and benefits um for the EMS director. You got anybody? Mr. Jason, let's let's stay on County General from Okay. Um in county general, the only other um larger change would be the polls and they're here to to speak with you about that. Which that is 38016. 38016.

That's Yeah. Well, let's just do that now. Then what's the live stop? That's the boine. The health department makes us do that. And yes, hoof and mouth. We rarely use it, but that's the amount that the state has has determined that we keep in there. It's an odd that amount. Well, it's uh that's when Larry Smith and that's the closest. Yeah. Only only one or two times since I've been here have I ever paid anything to the and we pay the veterinarians usually. Is everyone ready to hear from pause?

Dan, Glenn, Dennis, everyone ready to listen to Pause. There was a letter in your packet regarding their request for an increase. We have something to hand out if that's okay. Sure. We love handouts. Hi. We have several to keep them company. I see that you have a lot of papers in front of you. Thank you.

You're most welcome. Are you on the board? Please excuse those. You got I've got an extra. I printed it off. Y. Good morning, commissioners. I'm Patrice Lian. On behalf of PAUSE, I am the secretary on the board and this is Martin de Julia. I think some of you also know him um since he's been a longtime staple here in Longburg.

Yes. Since 2002 and also when I ran literally ran into PAUSE on Ridge Avenue in Greenale with the dog Michelle.

I personally have been involved in PAUSE um only for the last three years um as a board member. Um recently became secretary um but I've had a lifelong commitment um to just animals in general. Um, and I've also worked here in Dearborn County um, at US Bank uh, for 18 years. So I think I've seen some of your faces around. Um, they look very familiar to me. So within the presentation, you should have already um, have received the information um, about our ask and kind of the reasons why. I just thought I would putting it in a little bit more um, professional form. Um, it's very professional, but it's also I want to speak to a couple things that I've added to it. Um, so which is awesome. Um, so if you flip, um, I think you all know that the the state law changed. Um, in 2021, we were mandated to spay and neuter all of our animals. Prior to that, there was some, uh, we would offer help with spaying and neutering. Some people would take them on their own, some people wouldn't, which obviously led to um, animals coming back into the shelter um, for those reasons. So, um, with that, uh, change in the code, we now spay and neuter every animal that comes into, uh, the humane center. Um, our ask for this year, if you flip to page three, is, uh, to submit for a 20% increase, um, in monthly funding, which would total 165 per month beginning in 2026. Um, and that's just to continue to provide the high quality and legally compliant animal care that we do here for Dearborn County. Okay. Um, if you look at the next page, again, we're going pretty fast through this. Um, on page four, the background, obviously, we've been operating as a shelter since 2011. Um, and in 2022, we um increased uh the county uh the commissioners um increased

our um budget to 11,000, which we did appreciate. We came last year and said, you know, we actually truly need more than that um to help continue to run the humane um shelter at its level. And um the commissioners uh so granted us an approved 25% increase to 13,7750, which was amazing. Thank you very much on behalf of PAUSE and um the other board members that are here. Uh we do very much appreciate that. If I could just interject for a second.

Yes. Uh that was an unusually large one-time increase. Yes. And it was only because there had been many years, correct, where PAUSE had never asked for a change in the county support level. Yes. So we did the math. If we had done a percentage over those years in which no requests had been made, that way we felt like we made the pause commitment, the county's commitment to pause whole at that level. Okay.

So that's it wasn't like a a one-time I mean it was a one-time um increase but the reason was because there were those many years that nothing had been changed so we thought in fairness to make some um adjustment to that level that we had normally done and that's why there was such a huge jump last year

and we definitely appreciate that and it was under the understanding that um it was going to be looked at possibly each year for the next couple years just depending on what we saw all what was going on in the economy, how you know everything is increasing. So um that's why we're back um asking for some more support um to increase by 20% to the um to the new level and um how um how I recall it was we had asked for a substantial increase of approximately 40%. And um last year the council was very generous and we can't do all of that. So we were given like a 25% and then asked to come back each uh until so we can kind of get to that level. Um and so that's what we're here today for is um to come back and ask for some more. If you flipped to page five, you will see that over um the course since 2011, consumer price index has increased um by 41.23. So if you look at the inflation um with a projected increase of 2.3 here just in 2025 um our expanded scope of services if you go back to the left um we continue to house animal control. We continue to cover um the space that space that has utilities costs and everything. Um we also directly care for any quarantine or seized animals. Um I think that's well known that we do care for them. Um, we try and meet the growing animal welfare standards. Um, you know, there's a lot of push back from the community that is like, well, why aren't you taking care? You know, you probably see that online. There's a lot of that. Um, so, you know, we try and and help where we can. Um, we've elevated care and reduce uh reduced use in Asia through robust rehoming partnerships and programmatic

supports. So, not only do we do what we do through inside the humane shelter, but we try and give education and all of that outside. Um there's a constant um way. I mean, just me personally, I try and do that myself. So, with people that I meet, um going back over to the CPI index, um you know, if you take a look, the biggest issue that we are seeing year-over-year increases is in the medical cost, just in medical supplies, you know, with the changes in the tariffs and everything. Um, we're continuing to think about how we are going to more buy in bulk versus, you know, buy as needed. So that way we could maybe get a discount. Um, but we do not know what's going to go on with all of that and they haven't fully hit yet. So, um, but total expenses for 2024. This is line a line item off our P&L. Uh, 24981387 or sorry, 74981387. I wish it was two. Um, 749 81387. So, um, you can kind of see, you know, part of the reason why we're asking is that, but you may ask why. Um, so let me turn it over to Marty real quick and then I'll come back over to me um as to what our impact is as far as the live release rate. So we're on page six

of um of the presentation

and we have become um u uh members of a nationwide uh movement of no kill that is to try to reduce youth in Asia rates to about 90% in uh shelters and centers those charged with animal care and uh the leader leader of this was his best friends who initially was a group of people in Utah who started a a shel a shelter of their own in 1984 and since then it's just kind of become a huge movement. Not only do they have their original place in Utah, they also have a a place in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as the place in uh uh Canab, Utah, where they started uh Los Angeles, um Arkansas, Southwest Arkansas, uh also in I believe New York City. And so there's like a a nationwide uh network of facilities. We have been I don't know if it was last year or the year before uh become recognized by Best Friends and this edition of current ediction from Best Friends magazine. There was a an article on the no kill movement and how close the nation is nationwide of shelters and facilities meeting that standard. And uh one of the quotes at the very end was every shelter that has reached no kill has done it because the community has been there to lend a hand. And the county because we have the partnership with animal control and state law requiring spaying neuter which is a an excellent idea. I mean that needs to happen and it's mandated by statute but there are costs to provide levels of care. So in order to meet that, the county is a big part of reaching our what we need financially,

but we also ourselves as volunteers are um oh putting in a lot of hours and you had oh before I move on of what what we try to do to you know raise funds ourselves is on page eight is actual website on best friends that is about Dearborn County that Paul's center in Devon County and we are not just you know us on this website it's across the nation we're tied into a a nationwide program so that we're out there not just locally here in the you know tri-state area but across the United States and um so page eight is actually our website in the best friends u uh network

I encourage you all to go if you're ever under wanting more to understand about what a no kill shelter is, I encourage you all to go to their organization's website. There's a lot of information out there and we do quote them a lot um and our education to the public. So

and on uh page nine um we raising you know just ourselves and the whole process of history of paws at least from when I remember literally running into them in 2002 was the shelter in Manchester which when I grew up in Dearborn County was that's where it was at and it was not a a good experience to have as Boy Scouts we would go out and uh do maintenance and you know yard work and things like that. And I would never have imagined then that when I came back in 2002 that it still kind of

was there and it, you know, was like, "Oh." So the the history of Pause was in 2002, maybe even a little before that was to replace the shelter in Manchester. And in 2011,

a lot of time and energy went into getting the center built. And um and at that point in time, I sort of thought, okay, it's done. Well, I learned in 2022 when I was asked to be on the board that all the work that went to create the centric the same amount of time, energy, and commitment is you have to keep it up and running. Not just uh in a non just sort of ordinary way, but to actually reach a a place that there's a certain pride there. um is a lot of you know requires a lot of work and so this this past year in 2024 Do you want me to cover it? Yeah.

Okay. So obviously we know the ask to you is significant. We understand that to the to the community. But we wanted to show you what we as board members and as the staff of of the shelter have tried to do to decrease our expenses over the last year. Um there's been a lot of board meetings um budget meetings between us and the director to try and figure out how to get expenses down and to also increase um the revenue piece. So um our fundraising just in 2024 from the four large events, this does not include any of the smaller events that are run by the shelter. Um the two rumage sales which you probably are very familiar with that happen in the fall and the spring. Um the wagon purr which will be a little bit differently named this coming year but we are still having it. and the holiday expo that takes part down right down here. Um those events raised over $110,000 in 2024. But more importantly, those events were manned by board members and volunteers to the tune of over 10,000 hours total. Um I personally gave um 40 hours the week of the rumage sale um out of my own time either um through volunteering or taking it unpaid to um to go over there. And that's just me. That didn't include my kids and other family members and all the rest of the volunteers. So, it takes a lot to run these events. And we do not ask that the staff of the humane shelter do that. We do that because we know it is imperative that we get these events done to go to our bottom line. Um, we have been controlling payroll. If you look, we are down year-over-year $23,269.97. that is comes from natural attrition of um employees leaving um and not replacing all vacancies. Um we are down two full-time and two part-time since January of this year. Um we are controlling overtiming and uh we're

using more volunteers. We are working on getting a more robust volunteer system within the shelter um so that way we can call on them more when we have um extra need. Um we are also cutting medical expenses. I kind of talked about that um just a little bit ago. Uh down 15,129 year-over-year. Um we are using Dr. Keer to do spay and neuters. This is a significantly less than using local veterinarians. Um so I we wanted to show you what we are trying to do besides coming to you. Where's Dr. Keer located? Now, she is actually I know

to have uh looking she was she was here locally at Lawrenceburg veterary clinic and I actually had her as a vet. She's an excellent wonderful person. Um she's in Ripley County and I can't right now recall it's a veterary what was it? Lock Valley uh veterary clinic.

So do we transport the animals to LR Valley for the spay neutering and then transport them back or just comes in home. She comes in like on a set day. I just actually had a cat uh a community cat fix on Tuesdays, usually the Tuesday mornings. Um so she is, you know, a real asset and I know she's not necessarily doing it for free, but just the costs of medicine and uh you know, medical procedure equipment is itself the the cost, not her per se. Um, so we're lucky to have her.

It's roughly about between a quarter and a third of going to a veterinarian's office and without necessarily the transport. You know, that takes time, energy, and cost.

Yes. Right. So in conclusion, if you flip to page 10, we respectfully request a 20% increase in monthly funding from 13750 to65 per month starting in 2026 so that we can we can continue to make Dearborn County a model of compassionate and responsible animal care facility. And on behalf of all the staff and volunteers of um positive Dearborn County, we do appreciate um your consideration for this. And if you have any questions, we're happy to answer. I might have to defer to over to them um because they have been with them with us a longer time, but we thought we would give you a couple new faces up here asking um this year. Well, thank you for the information. It was a good presentation. Thank you.

I would say the one thing that Dennis and I were on the animal task force back in the day when this new shelter was uh purchased and the agreement between the county and cause on how that was going to be operated. And from day one, animal control was al always supposed to be a part of that building. That was part of the agreement. And the funding of the county's part was what we took was the uh shelter portion of our budget that we had been using for years. And that's how we drive first figure on how to go forward with this. Okay. The unpleasant news for different county council for not just pause but for everyone in the county is that our budget analyst was here yesterday and the effect of Senate Bill one if you follow legislation at all it has to do with property taxes. So there was a major um major changes. The auditor can attest to how complicated this is. And in fact, the the professional who was here yesterday that we contract with said there's still so many moving parts that it's hard to nail down an exact amount of how this is going to play out for counties. Okay.

And the Association of Indiana Counties is looking to even contract with an economist to look at counties to help you know, nail down a a number because it's so complicated. They I I couldn't even tell you the number of changes that were made and the way they calculate property taxes and how they changed classes and how they changed deductions and everything else. But the long and the short of it is different county government for 26 instead of having a slight increase in property tax revenue is looking at a $900,000 loss. So unfortunately we're not really in a position. We are

deeply concerned on how we're going to be operating in 26. So uh this is um y'all do a great job and there's no question that your volunteers are amazing and everyone who has been with PAUS from day one to to now. I would hope that the county could do a 3% raise. And I know that's not what you're looking for and that would I think we would round that up to $170,000, but this something that we'll have to look at u as we go forward and couldn't I don't think we can give you an answer today, but I think consensus on council is that given that shortfall, we're going to be struggling with our 2026 budget and that's because of Senate Bill one.

Okay. And we have no control over that. No, you don't. So, um, unfortunately that's where we are. Okay. Well, we certainly appreciate it. Um, obviously, uh, we will wait to hear back from you. When are we thinking that that, um, we would know something? Because, like I said, we're just trying to get our own budget in line for next year. I I mean, anyone here can speak, but I I feel like we're going to end up at 170. I mean, we're hoping to we're hoping to well, we don't even know if we can give our own employees a raise. So, we're not locked into that%, but that that to me is the best case scenario. And I I Are you anticipating any cut to ours?

Well, we're we're here this week to figure out, okay, how we're going to get to where we need to get. Okay. But you can contact the auditor's office. I would think by Friday we would we'd have an idea on where we are going to land, but it's it's going to be uh this is one of the worst budgets since 2017, I think, that we've had to deal with. Well, there's a saying, something rolls downhill from the top

down. I I have one question for you. Yeah. Um, you all are doing a great job with what you're what you got to work with there and with your fundraising and with what the county has given you. That's approximately 35% of your budget it look like just with the numbers you gave us. Where do the your additional funds come from?

Um, our additional funds come from bequests, um, from estates, things like that. Um, we get a lot of people that will just donate. Um and then the others is obviously adoption fees. Um so and then throughout the year um we are consistently like for extraordinary surgeries, measures, things like that that go over and above what we would normally do um to save the life of the animal. We ask, we have what we call an angel fund that gets money that people specifically designate to that fund. Um that would help save maybe remove a leg or remove an eye, things like that that we wouldn't necessarily do. Um so, and then we also um we have some other smaller, like I said, fundraising events that I really didn't even put in there um that many people in the community are that caring to to donate. We have the balance sheet. All right. at the present time. I mean,

um, we do do some cash infusions into it, um, uh, throughout the year from some, um, extra funds that we have from, um, older Bethquis to us. Um, but we are very limited to what we can ask for and why. Um, so certain capital improvements that we need, um, we will go to that and ask. Um, but those are due to the fact that one, we need it for, you know, the shelter to stay viable. um or two. We need it because romage sales bring in so much. We have recently asked for some extra space alongside our barn area so that way we can move an unsightly trailer off of our lot. And is that like endowment money then or something like that? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. If you don't mind coming to the and identifying yourself too. I know people who look forward to your run with sales.

Yes. Yeah. They always ask what is it? You know what? And we run contrary to the economy. The worse the economy is, the more in demand and soughtafter our rumage sales are. And I absolutely get it because we're selling some really nice stuff for just pennies on the dollar. But sir, I just wanted to answer your question about endowments. We are fortunate in that a former Hidden Valley Lake resident left us an IRA with her paying that is still located at Meyer Lynch. We have converted it into an endowment account and we take income from that every month. And I I know that in the past we've been questioned, why don't we just run that down rather than coming to you hatinand, but the reality is as we look at our long-term financial planning, we don't want to withdraw any more than a certain amount, we want the principal to be there,

right? Absolutely. For as long as possible because we would not be able to function at all if we did not take that income every month. So that that is the gap. And to just expand a little bit on what Patrice said, when we run into difficulties, we go to Mel and we ask to have some additional funds above and beyond what's just automatically transferred every month to close our gap to So they're like an administrator of that.

Yes, they are. They they are they run it. Um they will lecture me profusely if I come to them. hat in hand for money above and beyond the monthly transfer. Uh the caution being at some point in time you run this down and it will not generate any income. So that lady had her act together. You know she she really did. Emily Meyers just a wonderful supporter of us in in life and in uh in death. Her legacy keeps us viable. Do any of the municipalities uh help fund Paul's? No. For our fundraisers, we may get specific grants. Um, both Greenale and Lawrenburg have helped us out. Gotcha. With our fundraisers,

the city gives us $7,000. And yes, I'm sorry. 7,000. Yes. The city of Lawrenburg. They had all the nonprofits, they were contributing to them. So, if you had a capital improvement need, you could uh ask the community foundation for a grant.

We have asked them also. There is a portion of Ms. Meyer's estate that is in a trust also with Merryill administer uh administered by a trustee. And since we do not generate enough cash flow for meaningful capital improvements, we will put together a case with multiple bids defining the capital need and the trustee will evaluate that and decide if it is worthy of taking money out of the trust. But we don't control it. No, we do not. Well,

to Mr. To Julia's point, from where it was in Manchester to what we have today, I mean, kudos to Pause and all the countless volunteers who worked for years to make that happen. And there were numbers of locations were looked at over the course of years. And as it turns out, that turned out to be where geographically it's located. And it's just perfect for something like pause with the trails, everything. It is. So, we were very, very blessed with it. Wonderful. And thank you. I think it was a win for Don County government for animal control and y'all are doing with the shelter.

You know, it is. And I don't know, and I'll just take a couple minutes of your time. In the past week or so, the IT team has done an expose on animal shelters. I just brought that up. I just want to point out to you that we out looking pretty darn good in terms of the animals we save and the money we spend visav other shelters. So So we're proud of that. County got a black eye, right? Yes. Well, you know, they they did, but they're a large urban setting. They're taking in predominantly pits and pit mixes. It's a it's a tough business since they've gone to no kill.

Appreciate everything you folks are doing. One more question. You'd have a total pets entering 1155. Do you know approximately how many of those are surrendered on their own from folks versus come in through animal control or or I don't know what that different majority of them are um either found and brought in or surrendered on their own. Animal control.

The numbers changed a lot when we moved in town before people when the shelter was out in the county. it was too far for people to go, they would just drop them off and then animal control. But now they're located actually if someone encounters a stray on the property, they themselves bring it to us. Animal control still goes out, but not to the degree that they used to because people will take it be responsible and bring it to us. I don't think a lot of people even knew where the old place was back in the day. Yeah. And it was it was rather sad. Again, thank you all so much for your very valuable time. We do appreciate it.

Thank you for all you do for all um come next year, maybe you will have a better sense of where the budget, you know, the numbers lie. I'll just touch base with Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck on all of your decisions. I do not envy you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sue, do you have anything else for the commissioners? I know.

Let's finish that one. And we did move lobby shots into right. Thank you all. Thank you. So the EMS lid is on 1236. So originally it was 3 million. Then I added the 20,000 for the salary for the director. Um, and then you guys put the 50,000 in there, right? As far as I'm concerned, the EMS look budget is is fine. Okay.

Does anyone have any questions or comments about it? No. I mean, those contracts we pay for the other like at St. Leon and whatnot can't be in there, right? They need to stay in the commissioner's budget. The EMS contracts with like St. Leon and Oh, for the first responder stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Those stay in the commissioner's for the first responder. Those separate the ones that are smaller. Yes. Yeah. I don't have any questions. So, is everyone good with the commissioner's budget? Okay. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Next on our agenda for today is the treasure. That's location for here. Hello. Good. How are you? Thank you. How are you?

So, I am Haley Hatfield. I am the treasurer. Um, I just wanted to, uh, you know, make a little request, um, regarding my first deputy, Jacob Bilman. Um he is a very important part of my office. Um he runs the day-to-day actions. Um spot on with our calendar, handles everything, mortgage companies, customer problems, uh banking issues. I would be lost without him. I mean, when I came into the office, he trained me as an employee. Um, you know, I I just was requesting that if if there would be a possibility to get him a salary increase, um, even maybe even change his title to first deputy slashoff manager because he literally does manage the office. Um, his biggest task of course is reconciling the bank accounts. Um, most of them are fairly simple because we don't do a lot of transactions out of them. However, the savista general where everything is coming in um can be a bit challenging. There are a lot of transactions monthly and I can't think of one month where there hasn't been obstacles and and problem solving. Um mostly to do with departments not turning in all their receipts correctly. and um he goes above and beyond to do the research to find out which department it is, what date it was, and what we need to get that solved. Um needless to say, he's amazing at it. Gets it done in a timely manner. Balance to the penny and during our busy times,

tax collection is still on track while helping us collect payments and help customers. Um, in the past, from my understanding, during those times, whoever would be reconciling may have to come in on a weekend or work late at a night or take it home with them to try to get it done. He doesn't have to. He's he's phenomenal. So, I just I I understand just from listening to, you know, what you said to Paul is absolutely the budget is going to be hard to come up with and I fully respect that. I just wanted to make that request. Um because I definitely want to try to keep good employees.

Sure. Yes. And that's my thing. I I don't think he's going anywhere, but I would love to help him if I could because I really appreciate him and what he does. Was that the biggest uh I mean I know postage is going up. So you have a $10,000 postage. Yeah. That's that's in the works. Yeah. So that needs to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to mail certain stuff based on state law, right? I mean, yes. And are changing nowadays, but most a lot of that stuff is postage rates go up every time.

They're ridiculous. And um I mean, honestly, my office, we hardly mail anything. um the courts. My gosh, yesterday I came upstairs and there were three mail bins full for jury and I'm like, "Oh, well, I better better check the balance on the machine cuz I'm getting ready to leave for a conference." So, had to load more on there. Um they have to send that those things. Um I dealt with Wendy the clerk this morning getting stuff ready from elections and and dealing with mailing things out for voters who have incorrect addresses. Is that in this postage or should we mail our tax bills and our tax sale?

Our tax sale letters. Yes. All of that is in there. So, is the election postage in this item or is that in Wendy's election budget? So, Wendy requests, I believe, from the state an allotment for postage. And then how we do it is I give her a voucher to um place a claim with Leah to load that money onto the postage machine account.

Yes. But I think the bulk of our stuff is the courts and um their certified mailings that they have to send out. Um Margie from Superior Court brought this big packet to me the other day that was too heavy for the postage machine in general of a prisoner prisoner who requested their entire packet and it was ridiculous. But here we are. So um that's kind of out of all of our control regarding the postage. I definitely would rather be safe than sorry. Sure. I mean, my god, they're talking about raising the price of first class stamps.

They just did in July and it and it's like I feel like it's like it's every six months, right? Well, apparently they say they're still losing money, so it is what it is. But all I get is junk at my house. We'll um consider uh your request for for Jacob Bilman. Thank you. But the postage I think is something we have to do. Sure. Yes, I don't see anything else on the budget. Jacob was he is actually he lives in Dillsboro, but I believe that he is originally from Rising Sun possibly. Um I know that his dad raised the kids around here and he had like a concrete business.

Yep. Um so I think they moved a lot though. So it is possible that they at some point were in Sunmen. Yes. But he's a really good I call him a kid. He's a good kid. He's younger than I am. He's a good kid. He's dependable. He's here every day on time and professional. And Haley, would you say the office manager role is something new that he's taken on or is he always kind of done that unofficially?

My opinion is that he's done it unofficially. Um, from my understanding, he started part-time and um, worked his way up, finally made it to full-time, and he he learned the role and he just has taken off with it. It's fantastic. So, you're basically there's been a change in the duties from the third deputy. I guess that's what he is now. He's the first deputy. The first deputy, but there's a change. You're saying there's a change basically because of what he's done and the duties that

I feel like he's more of an office manager. Absolutely. I mean, I don't know if it's necessary to change his title or if it would help with my request, but he Well, there's other like your officer, someone who's something in and/office manager. So, the job description or his 11101 could go from be first deputy sloff manager. Yeah, she's settlement director slash, right? Yeah. So, yeah, there's the precedent for this. Yeah. And that way if we replace the first deputy that this doesn't affect the pay rates or if there's another, I don't know, another deputy just want to be careful about trying to justify why one person gets it and one person doesn't. It's the additional responsibilities as the office. Correct. Correct.

Does everyone want to make that change or you want to think about it? Does anyone have any thoughts on it? It sounds to me like he's kind of jumped in there and took the bull by the horns and he's Are we in agreement to make that change from I mean I think it's a good idea but I agree with Tim that it's I mean we have to differentiate between the first deputy and well this will be first deputy office manager or should I just leave it office manager because there's other people in that whole new

and not have a first deputy. Yeah, that's what I wanted to know if it was a stipen for the office man like he's still first deputy but then there's a stipen for office manager or if it's a new title whatever makes it work right with the rest of the system right and I and I'm not clear on how that all works like when I when Barb came and requested for the second full-time slot in our office to be returned and then it was given to me I was third deputy and the the person I hired to replace me is third deputy. Um, so as far as you're concerned, the title doesn't matter to you as much as his as his pay recognizing his abilities and what he's actually asked to do in the the paid change. Yes. You want to give him some type of promotion.

Absolutely. No, I mean the 488,000 I'm not quibbling with that. My concern is for the auditor's office on how this 11101 if that's going to be a change in the position or if it's going to be first deputy office manager change job description. That's what I'm asking. You just want to do office manager. I think that's better. No, it's not a first step. with better word to leave then and we can do that and y'all can just make that change. Okay. All right. That's okay. Thank you. I'm glad you got them. That's great.

I'm so grateful. Absolutely. Thank you so much you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Eric Hortman with maintenance and location.

Good morning. location. They said they're just everything. You're so lazy. Yeah. What number was it? Location 19. Well, there's no changes in his county general budget and we are not going to be able to make decisions about raises until the third. Yeah. So, yeah, you heard about the $900,000 total loss. Yeah, I heard it. Eric, how long has your position your custodian position been vacant? Uh, couple weeks.

Couple weeks. I got one hard in the wings doing the physical thing and all that kind of stuff right now. Great. The other person retired from the lost couple to retirement. Yeah, I understand Mr. Calwell's doing a good job. Yep. That's great.

There no changes in his county general. The CU building is the same. There's usual things that get replaced and things like pest control that sort of thing. The new item on cap is the uh balcony removal and installing a window instead at Hooser Square. And you understand that's a safety issue. Wow. safety issue and like I said help on the heating and air too because much cold air and that but the safety part of it just I thought might have been addressed but

it's not necessarily like you have to do it tomorrow but then they're just kicking the can down. So, it's currently a door to a balcony and you're going to remove that door, move the balcony or street balconies and then close it in sighting and put a window in a spot and then get rid of the balconies afterwards. Have you gotten estimates for this or Yeah. Okay. Well, I think it makes sense. Yeah. Does anyone have any objections to this 40 45300 for the balcony removal? No. Everyone's good at that. Okay.

I got in the way bad news. Okay.

You got a bar fire alarm system that's with Seamans. That's the courthouse and the jails. It's at the point of no return. You can't get parts, you know, because they've been saying that for a couple years, but I would say, "Oh, you can get parts." And it had been up until last week. They contacted seven different vendors to come up with part we needed for the EST system, but basically it's obsolete and we're going to have to do something and it'll have to be done. This is a heads up. I ain't got no hard numbers. a budgetary number today was like 225,000

but guys come down tomorrow go through the he's got all the points because they got all the information because they got the system but he they had no he has no idea where they have to go into the cells and the crawl spaces and the interstitial spaces and the interior wall have to be replaced and everything. Yeah. Really? Because you say 225 around that that's just a budget is said cap is healthy take it if you need because I know Liz you had asked me I don't it just didn't strike me in with this

we was that desperate because we had parts couple years ago was fine but well we're going to have um I we'll have a regular council meeting in November so you don't even have to put it in your budget for No, I I just wanted to but I'm just saying that we've got the the this is why you've got funds that you want to have a balance in KU courthouse because things like this arise and that's obviously a serious safety issue. So at the no if you have numbers ready and you want to present this in the November meeting to have that work being done sooner rather than later, right?

Then yeah, it's going to have to be sooner because well then let's plan on you getting the information to the auditor's office in time for them to know more after tomorrow. Okay. And it can wait till then. Yeah. What does that control? this the the alarm system or the sprinklers or it's it's it's tied in with the sprinkler systems or it's tied in with the alarm systems and takes it everything over to CC1. That's we don't pay a another firm to call the fire department.

Yeah. But and it's tied in with it all the seaman system in the admin has been upgraded a couple years ago and this this building is a different con but it still re it sees it if there's firearm it goes off they're in sync. So but it's all the old part of the jail and the new part of the jail and the courthouse. What about the system in Hooser Square? That's different. And it's in good shape. Yeah, it is work is it was redone when it was remodel. Okay. Then I would think we want to do this in November. Yeah.

And get it taken care of. Right. And we have always said when we set our schedule that as needed, additional meetings are so if it becomes an emergency situation, you need it before November. I just talked to Jim this about it just a bit a couple minutes ago because it's it's that new. Eric, is it uh something that multiple contractors can bid or is it just got to be this one that works with our system? See, I don't know. I have we're going to have to look into that because I don't know how if if they're going to have to change more stuff to be compatible. I don't know who's the company who's coming down tomorrow. Semens.

Semens. Johnson Controls the one that's got the this this fire alarm system used to be simple X and then they got bought out and Austin Controls be interesting if we could get a price for both of them. I know that because you're talking about kind of money. Yeah. And make sure they know that. Yeah. They sharpen their pencil a little bit more. We plan on, you know, at least doing in November. Yeah. And if you need if there's some you know it seems like it's more critical than if we need to call an additional meeting can't people have people's safety u shut down as far as the system is

it the alarm part will still work it's it's in the trouble state and we have communication fault which is they can't talk to each other right but the alarm system part still works so I'll try to look at it from a safety perspective we're compliant. We just can't monitor very well. But it ain't okay with fire marshall when they're in in trouble. I mean, he comes quite often anymore, at least once a year because he brings that up if he sees the light blinking on there. Not reset. So, because it's not compliant even when got a trouble even though firearms will still go off, it's no okay with firearms. Yeah.

So Mark made the comment about if it were uh if the condition is more severe and uh more dire. I'll keep you posted. But the commissioners could decide it's an emergency and then we would have to fund it, you know, when you after it's done. So we'll waste your back, right? But I mean, I think the council understands that it's something that needs to be done and that their funds are in place. And thankfully, the commissioners raised that King Cap rate a few years ago. So, it's allowed us to We've done a lot of improvements to these buildings. I know. So, and you keep us I mean, you keep us in good shape. We appreciate that. Right.

Okay. Well, you got another good 20 years left in you, right? Yeah. Mark will pick you up and bring you to work every He might be picking me up. Anybody has anything else for Mr. Hartman? Okay, I think we're good. Good job. Thank you for everything. Appreciate you, Eric. That's everyone who scheduled for this morning. Did you or the treasur kind of like that? Do you want me to put it in at her requested amount? Yes. Okay. And change it to office B.

Okay. Unfortunately, tomorrow is so heavy. Yeah. Some of the heavy headers are coming in tomorrow. Some of the ones are more difficult to trying to wrangle the judges and everybody's like cat. Um, oh, I'm not complaining about you, believe me. I'm just saying it's um, tomorrow's going to be the day.

Very, very small town. I'm no longer famous. and everyone's got different I ran the math real quick and showed Mark while they're talking. So their budget 700 Paul's $750,000. Well, they had $155 animals. That's $650 per animal was what they're spending. I noticed that per That's per animal that walks in the door and it might leave two days later because it was picked up by Hey, thanks for picking up my dog. That's a That's a pretty good budget.

When they you pick it up later, they charge you. Yeah. I asked him. So, so what if my dog gets out and some good well dude neighbor takes it to Paws and they spay or neuter my dog like does that put us in a possibly Yeah. When I saw that number of animals they had and the total number they found. Yeah.

I told you guys when we've done fun we did a fundraiser years ago at LaRosas and Paws and the compared to I don't know if it was a heart house or something. We're the same day and Paul's raised like 10 times more money. You know what I mean? Like people care about their Yeah. animal. I like having a copy of their balance sheet. I don't know how they have 10,000 hours of volunteer. That's aunt.

What' you do? Who do you hang out with? What? 10,000 hours is a lot of volunteer hours. Wants to Yeah. She likes him. We've got that's the thing that I think they would probably take control out there. We're done. His mouse jumped out of the cabinet. I was basic there. How many? Oh yeah. I thought five or six on the far left side. Yeah, my niece had and they've got a few cages for

came out of those dogs and she could not catch it. Catch it. It was a good three weeks or a month. She's a really nice house. They said it got in. I had 30% of them my dog got out. Somebody good took it there three hours later. You know what I mean? Is that what percent

I mean because you know if animal control brings it in that's our responsibility but if people are just surrendering their animals and they're taking it like responsibility we actually got it to leave you had two ba three babies in there. I just can't believe they got I don't know if they killed you could hear them crying. It's like it almost sound like birds. I think dangerous. She really freaked out. I'm put up there just out of

there. Children all this money on my dad. My dad. Oh my gosh. No. crazy.

Squirrel down the front door. Oh yeah. I've seen 25 difference. When I was in Bat State, there were that were around there. Like there was this one guy place out in rural northern Indiana or Louisiana and they would actually shoot those squirrels in English. would have struggle shoot.

They did. Oh, that is too funny. So, they were in the same group. Maybe one year apart or something like

the door. We had had worked on that. We address everything that's in her notes. Oh, I don't think so. EMA is not coming, are they? No. And neither is coroner. I don't think it's coroner any changes, but EMA, we were going to ask him about races. I emailed him. He said they he was here. I didn't think about it. They're still active. They're working on a red trailer is what he said. Right. That was the Yeah, give them that. Yeah. Okay. One way or the other. It might have come to health too. Recies.

So there was nothing else to be changed like location 17 is EMA. So was there anything else that we need to look at? I don't the two corners exactly the same and the veterans is the same.

So, we're going to keep racing in since they're whatever they do. put this wrong. [Music] is parkour common.

Um I don't I don't see on the schedule. He was supposed to be a That's your cousin. That's your cousin. Is that what you said? Rob, he's your cousin. Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, he's from California. That's what his phone said when he calls me. California. He could. Yeah. He actually went out to Freeman and uh Peter McCain.

So, the only thing on the part was whether or not Nicole will still be helping me with the fiveyear plan. Oh, I need to answer a question too because Nicole emailed me. I think it's Aurora. They're like their interlocal where they help them and they get money. It's changed a little bit. She needs council's I don't know if it's a signature or you agree with it, whatever it is. So, she wanted to know if she could come to one of your September meetings. And I said, "Normally, they don't do business. It's the adoption and the hearings." Yeah. Well, we have I know you have. Yeah, I would just do that

in a September meeting. Well, does it have to be advertised or not? No, I've already advertised it. No, no, no. Her request. It's not a financial request. It's just a agreement. Well, just an agreement. We have to have a quorum for both of those meetings. So, I would just do it at the first one and hope we have a we got out. Is everyone playing? I know Dan, you have a hard time making those meetings, but we just need four at least four warm bodies in this room on those two days. About a lukewarm body that we'll take whatever you got. You got a false

How's that working out with with the planning and zing girls having to handle all their scheduling and all that stuff? real realistically. Yeah. Is it? Well, I heard they Oh, really? I believe it. Cuz we were going to do it from nothing. Oh, you guys were Yeah, we were already set up with Jim Ren. Take all the money, right? Yeah. One's August 22nd, the other one's September what? Yes.

So for August for those two meetings, do we have five hopefully five people here? Are you are you able to come on Fridays? Yeah. Okay. Because on August 22nd we have budget hearing in September the 5th we have budget adoption.

That's all there at 9:00. By law, I think we have to be here for 15 minutes, but we can do the other item as a separate meeting. Close one and then open regular because these are advertised for 9:00. So, we could do that at 9:15 lady. I think I'm good with that. For hidden, I just want to stay just want to stay. Yeah. Yeah. from the Yeah, you probably usually can't, but it's August 22nd and September the 5th at we were calling in when co was going on. But you like

run my phone, right? We just have to heard everything. I think she's so you two wonderful people. August 22nd. It was only budget hearing budget adoption and then we'll do the Yeah, I already have August 22nd on my calendar and and September 5th at 9:00 on the second. Mhm. You'd put that on our calendar when you send it. I'd take it take notes from your calendar, things you send us. Those Fridays at 9:00 am, right? Yeah, correct. And kind of get some dates in mind for November.

Oh, we already scheduled that. November 15. No, no, no. because we always do next year's budget in I'll send you I have our ski conference next week and I'll send you that make sure it hasn't changed it later because we don't even have to circle break your numbers and you guys are supposed to review those. Can we do that first week? I mean, we can do them, but we're gonna we're gonna try look every day. I don't see them out there. Salmon start running about the middle of all the We can do it in July.

No, we wouldn't have any good numbers in July. I'm asking if it's the same week. So, it's the same week. So for the 27 budget, you want us to try to do it the third week of August, depending on when the ski conferences when you guys can all make it, but we we prefer not to do it the first week if we don't have to. Okay. That's fine. I mean, I can just because you would have better numbers because assessed values and everything else, right? Right now we have no circuit records, no assess values. We put one on last year like the week of the 10th then is better. I don't think he

because Yeah, that's what I'm trying to get the dates in my conference. So, it might have to be the week of the 17th if that's not too late. Right. So, when do you have to have stuff into the state? I mean, what works for you? What? So, we should we plan on the week of the 17th 10 to 12? Is it 17th on Monday? Yes. I know my by the end by the time lunch is over. I'll have a dates for our conference for next year so we can get I just need to know but I I can get whenever.

How about you? You have anything going on in August. Huh? Get out and go before we start the mail. 10th or the 24th? That's two weeks. He's probably gonna get out of bed about Oh, you're saying you'd rather do the 10th before the 24th. I'll see you. You've got to have things into the state by a certain time, don't you? When we did it last year,

our conference next year is the 14th through the 19th. I could do the 10th. I That's what he just sent me. That's weird. That's a Friday through a That's I I think it's a Sunday through Yeah, 14th is a Friday because I think they're changing to a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday next year. So, the week of the 17th has not worked for you. No, but the 10th might work. Yeah, that's that'd be great for me. Mark, were you serious about the salmon? Did you go to get off work anyway? Leaving Wednesday. Where are you going? Salmon fishing up Lake Michigan.

Frankfurt. How do you get so much time off work? Don't you worry about it, though. So, Connie, you can kind of decide between the week of the 10th and the week of the 24th what works better. Couple guys I know just left for uh let's see uh Norris Striper Fisher. Oh yeah. You wouldn't believe the pictures that guy was showing me. My brother uh Tom Jacobs goes down there all the time. Brother does that Cumberland. I mean they they he said we filled well every time. I was down there this weekend and I saw bass every bit of this big right underneath the this actually don't matter because we won't we don't leave till

I think 10th or 14th will work for you. when we're usually done by then. So, so Tim 10th through 14th, I think that works for me. Tentatively, we'll schedule the 27th. Sorry, always it so it each year is different. Every other year we go to different side of Lake Michigan and so it just depends on the ski areas that have different conferences and because they're event centers, right? So by that we try to shoot for that week to be less expensive. Fine. As long as I know I can you can drop me off or I'll stay with you. Usually we do things on the 4th. So you'll know one lady ahead of November whatever an hour.

He he just told me the 14th through 19th. I think they're next year they're changing into a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, which I would think 16th through the 18th. But when is your conference? Next week. Next week. What day are you? Monday through Thursday. And you're right. While we break

hers is mainly election stuff. Yeah. And she's at 1:00. So we need to go to lunch. Okay. We're breaking for lunch. Anybody who wants to go to lunch or you can stay here. Pull up on lifesavers. Yeah. First person's at 12:58 for you. I'll put you there. 12 58. Yes. Our conference is the 16th through 19th. So I can do that the week of the 10th. We'll plan on then we'll figure out what we need in September. You think we'll have our circuit breaker numbers and all that by then? Hope 7:14. They're due on what? July 31st. Coming soon. Yeah.

So you'll probably be on it coming Friday. We got a pretty good amount all our money. The back bucket schedule is the people. Yeah, but it's all before lunch. does a good job with everything. Yeah, he does. No, I had to go to high school with him. Huh? You don't kill. You guys want to go grab some

PG? You just have to understand PG is PG. I think we're going to want to put more for 26. Yep. With that $900,000 loss. very flat. Yeah.

It's actually what we're actually doing is using more hospital that I tell you what that's there's a lot of employees coming into this county from for the hospital too. All the stuff they're building. I mean pretty pretty decent pay. Yeah. I mean I I kind of calculated rough that the that turkey place if they do what they say and I don't know how you hold your feet fire something like that when when you're negotiating these abatements. I'm sure they're angry trying to make yourselves look better but that's like a that's going to be like you know like 120,000 something like that because what our income tax

yeah I was going to ask yesterday when the hospitals here for the cancer center how many employees they had. I mean, just again, and you'd think that's, you know, relatively good paying, right? But that turkey place, they they hire quite a few people, you know, and I I got that that's got me walking. That's got me thinking about that redevelopment and about these these these business personal property tax. Well, yeah, that and that the the uh the tiffs. I don't if we did a 20 25 year tip or whatever it is up there. I don't know why we would renew that. That's how you generate

He's here.

Nobody's back yet. Big man goes home for lunch, doesn't he? He generally either runs here or goes home. Feeds his dog. So, Clark is next. Yes, seems like for kind of a tight budget this year. Things are running pretty smooth though. We haven't balanced, but we're not going to. I don't think. Yeah. Well, it ain't looking good for that, is it? No. It's hard to spend more money and take less in.

Well, because of Senate Bill One, we just kind of I mean, what do you do? But the one thing like if you look at Susan's stuff in Baker Tilly or what we did with that money from tall that we told Leah to put back in there discussion whether she did or not, I don't know. But that way if we did all that then we would still end up with 14 million. Mhm. So after you look at that,

you know, the girl was that a good presentation she had. I I that brought a few things to light from because I've been just giving Garrett and Randy Maxwell raise the cane with them about that Senate Bill one. You guys caved. Well, I told Garrett, I said, "Senate Bill One is a disaster for the Clinton, but as a as a junior, as a first grade freshman, if you don't go along with the party, they're going to keep you on the back row forever." So, I don't like it, but I'm going to you advocate for you to vote for it. Well, I just kind of jokingly give them both of them. Oh, yeah. Miss Bundy. Got a big election coming up, huh? Yeah.

Only person in the whole county to cut her budget by 50%. Good job. Really? Not this year. I got what's whether there's an election or not would really impact your budget. Is there um the next big election? Is there any changes to voting locations or anything or pretty solid? Going to keep them the same. Didn't have any complaints. and 24. No, I didn't seem like your lines are a lot faster. Yep. So, so you'll keep the early loading up on the third floor.

Mhm. Is there talk about consolidating that a little bit or not? As far as time wise, they talked about doing it in legislation and only having it for seven days, election day. It didn't pass. How many days is it? 30. 30. It's 29. 29 and a half cuz like the last day it's only a half a day. It's only until noon. I was on Monday, right? I'm sorry. Is that Monday? Monday. Yeah. Monday before election day. Now, are you able to open those absentee things earlier now than you used to be able to? Yeah.

Yep. That went through legislation. So, we won't be able to open. We just can't We just can't tally them until election day, but they'll be out of the envelopes. Ready for your speed for us to throw them in. How much time will that save? Like hours. Oh, it'll save us a ton of time. Several hours, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Cuz you had some close uh really close elections last time.

Mhm. So the one question we've been trying to tell most office holders and elected officials is if you anticipate a big capital expense coming up in you know a year, two years, three years if we get some advanced notice because Rick did this when he was a clerk. He knew that the voting machines were going to have to be replaced. It's like four and a half four $450,000 less,

right? So we had two or three years that we squirreled away money from riverboat, they have the cash on hand. So any office holder that knows they're going to I mean a copier is going to go out or whatever, but I mean something major like that if we can have some notice it's very helpful. Oh, absolutely. Because that way we can you know we had start putting it aside. I think two years ago we had a person come in asking for $800,000 for some equipment. It's like, well, it would have been nice if had a couple years nonetheless, we could have planned for this. Right. Right. So,

I don't anticipate having to um get any election equipment um in the future. I what what I have I believe is sufficient. And your your biggest bump is because there is an election 20 26. Yeah. Your office is term limited, right? Yep. Two terms. And if you started you started early, right? So you So can you you can work two full terms plus that or is it Yeah. So this is actually my first elected year. 25 is my first elected year. Yeah. How many years how many years has Gail been gone? She left at the end of 23. So I was in there the end of 23 all of 24 fulfilling her term. Right.

And then my term started. So you'll have nine and a half years as Clark. Yeah. So I'll be on the ballot again in 28. Yeah. Oh no. Thank the person in your office and I don't know if you were the ones who heard actually did it or told her to do it. I asked her to do it but that notification about us having to file those. Oh my god. I would have not known. Yeah. I think it's so stupid cuz I closed out. We went to conference um at the m in the middle of June. That was our clerk's conference. That's when we found out that July 1st that was going into effect. So all the clerks throughout the whole county, all we had was two weeks

to notify anybody that makes over $5,000 that they have to come and open that back up. Yeah, it was it was something in one of the bills. Did you know? I only knew about it because I saw that David uh what's his face is running for David Shelton posted on Facebook. That's why I sent it to you and Mark to make sure you were aware of it because I assumed you had closed your campaign account. I didn't want to have to deal with anything. I'm not I mean I'm not going to spend any money until I'm writing again. Why? Why would I? It's so stupid. Like if Yeah. If you zeroed out and closed it, how stupid is it to do that?

I don't know. I don't know why they did that, but it was something in one of the bills that the legislation team failed to catch when they were reading through the bills. So it kind of slipped through the cracks or or the the clerk's legislation team would have said absolutely not. That's that's that's crazy. That is I wonder who the author of that bill was just got how it got slid into my boy doing all right. He's doing all right. He's a good guy. He's doing all right. He just uh he'll be in tomorrow. He had to uh we had a resignation in Greenell. Um Richard Richard Stewart Stewart. Yeah. Um

that's just an appointment, right? That's only that's Yeah, he appointment because um 3001 is the only one only people that vote on that, right? So there's only one precent committeeman. He had a little caucus there for that unconsequential job for a board position because he was talking to Brad and Angie at state. I'm like stalking somebody. Yeah, that's what I did. I know. When uh when Ben died, uh Debbie's husband died, remember? Yeah. Yeah.

Guarantee nobody's going to throw their throw a red flag up about that kind of stuff. Yeah. And he doesn't even I mean, he doesn't even make five $5,000. So Um, I don't even think most of those board members even make like $750 a year or something, don't they? There's some that make a little more than that. The tr almost all the trustees I think except for two of the trustees make over 5,000. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean that was a board position wasn't even a trustee. Yeah. And Maryland passed away.

Yeah. And she was she actually hadn't been to several um several several board meeting I uh Kelly Milan said that she hadn't been to a board meeting for um because she got sick and I never got a resignation. I had to She lived in the condo up there somewhere, right? Three mile. Three mile. Yeah. because I went down there. I had to get her to I think I got her sign a proxy one time. Yeah, sounds good.

Everything ain't going smooth with budget. Yeah, pretty pretty darn good. We're anticipating some um reduced funding from the SP1. Yeah. So, we're just trying to navigate that. Absolutely. Not only for this year, but setting us up for the trend of what's going to happen in the next couple years. Right. Nobody wants to have their budget cut. So, but see how's your office been? Same same people. No drama and everybody gets along. Good. Good.

Okay. Great. Great stuff. Pam's doing good. Yep. I hated them. I called her one day and uh but she was a a pole worker all the time. I was like, I can't work the polls anymore. I'm like, a crap. Yeah. Is she new to your office in last year or so? She I hired her as soon as I became a clerk. From from outside or from inside. Okay. But she had been um an inspector and a pole worker prior to that. Prior to me hiring her. Yeah. She was good and she always showed up and was always willing to serve. She's still learning. Um you know, but uh she's doing a great job.

We got the voter list maintenance going on now where they send out those postcards. So that's you anticipate that tightening up the voter role a little bit.

It will because like what we're doing right now because they're just starting to come into my office um is if their address has changed and it's on that like return label, we'll send them a letter saying, "Hey, we got this returned back. This is your forwarding address. Is this correct?" That'll clean up the v voter list. And then if they've moved out of um the county, like there's several moved to Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, we send them a cancel letter and if they sign it and send it back, then that cancels them. So it

and if they don't return it, does it at some point inactive and then it sits inactive until for two federal elections and then it'll cancel. Don't do it. If you put it if you put them out there, we'll just keep eating them. Throwing the papers back in there. I wouldn't do that. That's not me. Wasn't me. I ate one. I threw them on the floor. Some of them fall out of the wrappers. We had one up here yesterday. It didn't have a wrapper on it. Oh, no. He'll help himself. I ate it anyway. I don't think there's four or five of them.

Got some junk. I got mine in my pocket. I've got evidence. Yeah. My daughter last night, she's like, "Dad, what's this in your pocket?" I'm like, "Don't worry about it." So when you by law, like however, when I run for office, my voter thing has to say Liz Morris, my the card that I get. So when I go to vote, the book sometimes says Elizabeth Morris, right? So what happens is last week on your candidate name that's the name that I have to go in.

So if you run as Liz Morris then I have to go in and change your voter registration to Liz and then I played I put Brook Hill one time when you declare on Friday night there's nine holes. So to get it get it changed back to paper a little party up there and then I just Greg played good. He but usually you know he usually don't play that good. You like a random drink. Hi Leah. How was lunch? Peanut butter and jelly. Bologoney. Baloney with mustard. No.

Oh yeah. Who's back? He's home for he's the one six months. He'll leave in September. We running him over. Separate every day. I don't care. I mean, I'd rather like turkey. Hey, I think if it's black, the black or the When I was a kid, we'd always go to Logan Super, get our pick a loaf and our bronswagger or chicken liver or whatever you called it.

I don't know why. I don't know if that was just cheap meat or why we ate that, but we ate a lot of broad choice. My dad liver chicken liver loves it. Every time he buys something from us, he'll say, "I got your present to you." Yeah. Does he put limbburger cheese on it, too? Do you like that? No. My dad used to eat limbburger on crackers and cow tongue. And I mean, oh god. My brother-in-law used to all I've never had it. Pickled heart, pickled tongue. No, no, no.

I mean, that may be the most delicious thing in the whole world, but I'll never know because I can't get past the that mental part of it. Not bad at all. Watching pot shows that's get that tongue tongue and the heart. Do you like that? No. I said that's what them shows on the show. That's the first step. Sure. signed you up with the tender. He's always said deer

got tender now eat it while he's going see Bill and Judy again today was a special today. Same as yesterday for us. Same thing every day. The ribbon. It is good. It's hard to keep crouch out of the crowd. We smelled that after lunch yesterday. Hard to keep right out of the crowd, too. So, location one is um the clerk is who's up right now? Everybody here? Yeah. Unfortunately, Doug can't make it.

Okay. So the only thing that I am asking um of course this year is to up um up my election. We will have an election next year. It is the midterms. So I have um added what I need for the election for the pole workers um ballots um absentee workers. Um, everything else in the other budgets have has stayed the same. The one thing I would request is to um make Pam, Kristen, and Sylvia, who have been in my office for two years now, um, a second deputy instead of a third deputy.

Give us their um number. Can you give us that number, Leah? The line item number. Yeah, it's 111. I don't know who we're talking about. 11109. Oh, no, I'm sorry. 111 10. That's Pam. Yes. Yep. And then 12 is Coleman. Mhm. What's the other lady? Kristen. Um, Mansfield. The one 113. I got you. I kind of tried to put their This is where they were. This is where they be their names. Did you um get those names corrected?

Okay. But they're also paid out of another fund. So, it's kind of hard to follow the dollars, right? Pam is paid out of another fund. Um, Sylvia is paid out of child support as well. Kristen is not out of any other fund. So, you're talking about 4D when you say child support. Yes. You get twothirds of that reimburseed. Do I'm sorry. Do you get a twothirds reimbursement for 4 D like other departments do? Um, we we have an incentive. So, like if I have to buy like a computer or a printer or anything for Teresa or one of the ladies that does child support, I can take that money out of the incentive. The 40 incentive. You do get some of their couple thousand support.

Well, this third one it looks like it's about 14 so I don't know how much money we're talking about. 4207 415 207 to 41 about $1,300 from what? 4207 to 41506. That's what Mansfield is. Are the others basically the same? Yeah. About 1,300 bucks. But all three of them have been in the office for two years. So, okay. So, from 40, 207 to what? 41506. 13.

Hey, when we have when you have an election that's not county and it'll be steady, do they pay for it or do they? They do. They pay for it. Wondering about. So, I have to at the end of the municipal election, I have to sit down and calculate how much money I've spent on pole workers. this. Wouldn't it be nice to all be in the same year? It would be legislation one year. Legislation is trying to push that through. I be the a good idea. They're doing a study right now to see how much um the cities are paying the counties.

Um it did come out in legislation this year, but it didn't get passed. But it is something that the secretary of state's researching. They'd lose basically one year of term, right? How's that? They lose. I would say after I said, wouldn't it make more sense for the cities and the counties to be on the same election instead of her doing a separate election? And that's what the city of Hillsboro did in 2012. They did a ordinance to swap. So they're on the 2024 elections. So they're not on the they're not on the offers. So are they allowed any city or town's allowed to do that?

It would make a heck of a lot more sense. And I've talked to all the mayors. They do not want to do it. They do not want to they do not want to roll over cuz I've I said it'll save you money. We already have to have an election. I have to I the county has to pay for it. They have to reimburse you some of that, don't they? When it's a city, I I charge them for everything for the city elections. they pay. What if it was what if it was like Dan said and he had it during the They would just lose a year of their term. So they don't want to do that. I mean, what would they have to pay something still then or not? I would say no because we already have to have an election. Well, that's crazy because it would fall on I agree. I think it's silly that legislation has never it's been in the bills for years.

They try to do it again this year. When you do a municipal election, do you have to have the courthouse open for 30 days beforehand, too? I usually cut, excuse me, I usually cut the hours down for municipal and I usually only do like a half a day still 15 days of labor that's wasted whatever and those guys. Mhm. Well, Right. Right. Right. Is everyone good with the change in those deputies? There not much to be done about elections. What? There not much to be done about election costs. Yeah,

are we pretty successful in finding poll workers? Yeah, Republicans. I could talk to that one. Um Dylan is the party chair. Yeah. What's it? Little lidle. little little grandson. He he does not even try to search for pole workers. Debbie in my office has been doing it for years. So, she reaches out to the Democrats and all the high school kids that fill in. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we send um letters to the schools to get high school kids. What is the current pay worker?

It's 200 for inspector, 150 for judge and clerk. And then the democrat was a couple years ago was only 120 I think right? Yeah. Um Gail raised it right before she left I believe the pole worker do they got to be 18? No 16 and 17 year olds in school if we get them from high school but their GPA has to be a certain amount they have to have permission things like that. So, I don't think there's anything else in her budget that is really important.

Good words. Thank you. Anybody else? Anything else for Wendy? Inspectors, they earn their money. It's a long day. 5 a.m. to I wrote my wife into doing that one time. Yeah. I'm sorry. She would do that job, did she? I think that's everything for the club. All righty. Thank you all very much. Thanks. Thank you. Have a great day. We have other plans. It's It's 5 in the morning this It's a long day for a couple elections before I ran.

I enjoyed it, but it you have to be sick in the heads like we are to do it. So 130 is soil and water and that's location 15 was talking about yesterday. They do a lot of good things for the county. They already went over that. We looked over. They're coming. They've got in here for a computer. Paul coming. Is it Paul? Is that his name? Gungle Ken Gun. Sorry. I think Paul Gungle is a guy. They got a new district chair. He's vice chair.

He usually comes up. Oh, Matt Jarvis will be here. Maybe he Yeah, he is. I don't want to run the restroom. Too many iced teas at lunch. Yeah. Brown bottle iced tea.

What other do we There's some that hadn't changed at all. You just want you want to hit them real quick? I think Yeah, we can. But the ones that hadn't changed, I don't know if we want to do anything because they're probably pretty bare bones. Well, I seen uh Billy's he there's only one thing you could move over to uh into that CCD. Well, we would do that. Yeah. I think and then I think it's even if you move that 20,000 at the bottom. Yeah. Location 12 500 less or something because measures.

How are they doing on collections? cuz they've woken up pretty good with the everything being computerized with permits and all that stuff. I mean, I ain't burning anything. They got a smart little cookie out there that does a lot. She's good at what she does. Approval. Yeah, she's really good. So, 35105 movement. Yeah, they've collected about 160. She married Jamie son. Oh, she married she married Jamie Stru. Is he a knucklehead?

He's a good guy. He's just like Jamie. No, the kid got more sense than the dad. Oh, really? Yeah. What do you show yourself? He grew up against what?

Their budget increase hasn't brought that much. They bumped their budget too many positions.

He's got a bunch of ground back there. But uh when they subdivided that all there was a big chunk

that's him last year when he bought a vehicle he built. He's handy. He used to be real. Maybe that was an additionally used for I think it was pretty even. Oh yeah.

To fund their two new positions. One cost about 100,000 interest.

So it's going to be like at least 80 to 100,000 each. Awesome. Is a CVB lady going to come in? What What are we looking at? Well, we we did on on the moon apartment with that CCD. That's all we That's all we've actually done. And at 1:30, we're supposed to have silence.

Oh, Scott. Did you guys want to You want me to call you on speed bas? [Laughter] probably has LG little

so park board I mean the if planning and zoning is still doing their stellar and their fiveyear plan I mean I have no idea I guess they are well if you remember they were supposed to have that fiveyear plan done by August but then that that deadline somehow got changed so I'm not sure how that all came to be That's the difference, isn't it? 8,000 at the top.

Yeah, that's the only difference in their budget. And their county farm is the same as it was last year. It's not county general, but it comes out of county farm fund.

So, they get all the income off the county form cash. county farm uh receipts go into the 4925 fund and council releases. What we did one one year back in the day was that we tried to take some stuff out of count it removed from county general and have county farm 4925 pay for certain things that are only done at the county farm property. So that's how that evolved. I think one year there was like a driveway put in or parking or different things and we used 4925 instead of county general to fund those. So since they're under the county and I've had a lot of farmers ask me about the county farm property department and I guess they're renting it to

somebody Ripley County last year we got a payment from Jeffrey he's that'd be Ripley County BS yeah I think you brought that up last year and they said they'd look at that contract when I don't know how often they you know how it goes with farmers putting you product on the soil to condition it or whatnot. I don't know how much investment they had onto it, but well, and that's a big thing. I mean, you know, I would think in their contract, if they have a contract of that guy, it would be they'd have to maintain a certain pH level and nutrient level in the soil. And that's a common name out there. I know

my name is a lot of farmers have asked me, you know, how can I get in? Dixon farm want put it out for beds cuz I think might be beneficial to the park board, too. I mean, they they give them more competitive bids that way. I think the one time I asked them about it, they were only getting like $125 an acre cash. Farming with $6,000. Now, how many acres is tillable out there, I wonder? Commissioners have to approve that or is that something the park board has the right to I don't think anybody commissioners

I don't know I have to look I know the redevelopment down on redevelopment they farm that but that's in that's in their contract when they bought that they they rent that every year that's another screwy deal because I saw that 2500 bucks is all they get for that and they rent it to Palm Stone and he don't even farm it. He must be renting it to somebody else. Yeah, he does. So, I mean, that ain't right either. They I told them they should they should be getting, you know, bids for that.

Is there any way we can as a council can put pressure on them to to advertise and bid these? I know. We're not giving them any more money. I guess I guess, you know, because if if they're making some stupid low ball cash rent like Stones Ground down there. You know what? I talked to Andy about that. They just say, I mean, I don't know when the last contract was done. They do it yearly on that one there in Stones. Why? I know Stones, but I'm talking about County Farm. I never see any. I always check.

A lot of them just do it yearly and and Glenn's right about that nutrient. They the property owner should test the soil and everything, but most people don't, I don't think. Well, you should and I think there's a you know, the co-op and and Helenia and those guys will do it if you're buying the fertiliz. Well, they they do that grid. They grid it now because they can put that on by GPS and everything, right? So, they put it exactly what it needs instead of just putting, you know, they'll put out the whole field, 200 lb per acre, they'll put it needs 80 pounds in this area, they grid it all out thing and

it's all tied in GPS and combines are set up for same location. Let's see some of their people. Liz, you probably already said this. How come county farm's the only park that's got its own little farm? Because they have they have a land that's farmed. They have revenue. The other farm the other parks don't have crops or any other revenue source. Knowing the same way out there with timber harvest. Yeah, that's what she said. Bolts is actually the timber. Let's do the timber harvesting, not the farming. County Harbor. We're ready if you're ready.

Oh, is it? But you didn't get a check as far as cash for cops. Not for 25. Did you recover from your incident? somewhat ego.

That's awesome. I saw the security camera, buddy. Hey, Matt. How are you? That should be 200. How you doing? We're ready for you. If you want to

What? What? Uh, they brought you wrong with that. So, I guess they're my bodyguards. Well, hi. I'm Ken Gungl. I used to be the proud chair of the Dearborn County Soil and Water Conservation District. Now I'm the proud vice chair and Chris is the chair. So that's why I he's here. It's the first time he's been to a county council budget meeting. So I told him I would take the lead and then turn it over to him at some point. Uh actually after I do a couple of introductory comments, Matt Jarvis is going to talk and he's got something to hand out to you and then I'll talk about the uh budget and then uh there's a couple items on there that Beth will talk about and then to wrap up we'll let you shoot slings and arrows at Chris. Okay.

So um my understanding is that you all have a copy of our budget that we've submitted.

Yes. And we're going to be obviously talking about that, going through it line item by line item on, but like I said, Matt Jarvis um has something to hand out. It's the leverage sheet that talks about how many dollars come into the county for every dollar that's expended. And I was just um appointed to the state representative of the National U Association of Conservation Districts. And so we had a national meeting a couple weeks ago uh in Wisconsin and so Wisconsin hosted it and they boasted about that uh they their soil water conservation districts bring in $2 for every dollar that's spent.

Pat's going or Matt's going to tell you about how that's embarrassing compared to how much we bring in.

So just real quick, I'm Matt Jarvis. I'm the district conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Um, this sheet here is a sheet that um, a lot of counties use to kind of summarize what they've done for the year before. Um, get my glasses on. And I'm just going to kind of walk through it real quick so you guys can see some of the numbers. But on the front side, if you start at the top is what you guys are nice enough to provide for the district. U, we do get a lot of support from our state as far as our um, we have an engineering team. We have engineers, soil conservationists, foresters, and wildlife biologists that we can call upon to help the land owners in the county. And there's no charge to that, but there is obviously a benefit to that. And that's listed on on there as well. Um the biggest thing that we can do with all of your support and with the support from some others is if you look at the back um it list uh the conservation practices that were put in last year about how much in units those were and what those values are. So we were able to install about $474,000 worth of practices last year. Um our programs are not grant programs, they're cost share. So in addition to that, the land owners put in 25% uh along with that. So um we're pretty proud of that what we can accomplish in the county and provide for the county. And then for some of us that like pictures better than reading things, um we just did get this. This is from last year. It's a really good visual. So, it kind of gives you an idea of what we're saving as far as um how much soil and phosphorus and so forth aren't going into our river and streams in the county because we can do conservation. So, if you have any questions on that, let let me know. If you ever have any questions or concerns, um be glad to come up and speak or um you're welcome out at our office anytime. If you have any questions, I'll turn it back.

All is under control. Well, we're trying, but it's quite a quite an adventure in the county with our invasives, and we do have a lot of land owners that are are doing that. Um, the one thing that we could definitely use more of is more forester contractors because we're a lot more work to do than we've got contractors right now. So, Steve Mun's still doing that. Steve Mun's still doing it. Yeah, he works with us quite a bit on a lot of projects. Yeah. Well, if you don't have any other questions, thank you. more.

Oh, I'm sorry. Ken, why don't you mention the bottom? So, if you look at that leveraging sheet at the bottom, so every dollar that you are giving to the district, we in addition can generate another $44, um, that comes into the county that we can use on projects. So, um, we're taking what you give us and making more. So, thank you. Good information.

All right. So, he get to give you the good news. I get to give you the bad news. So, uh, in our budget that you have in front of you, uh, we have some things this year that we are anticipating that we've not had in the past. If we only look at the line items that we've had in the past and compare them to what we're asking for going forward, we're asking for a 2 and a half% increase. And I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. However, if you really compare um the total that we're asking for to what we received last year, it's looking like a 17% increase. And you all are probably going to go, "What the heck are you thinking, Ken?" Well, let's get into some of the details. Uh, and I don't want to bore you a whole lot, but on page again, I'm looking at one like pa page one, our our supplies are going up minimally. Uh, education supplies are going up u like $300, which is minimal. Travel and mileage is going up about $500. Uh when we take a look at advertising and promotion and publications, we're asking for $500 more. And these are all just kind of cost of living expenses. Then we get into a couple areas that need the further explanation. So, under uh equipment under repairs and maintenance light item uh 3500 uh equipment repairs, we're going from $800 to $1,200. Copier maintenance uh 35100. We're actually asking to go down because we found out that our copying expenses are not nearly as expensive as they've

been in the past. However, we're diverting some of that money to a new line item that we've never had before, and that is 451000 vehicle repairs. As you might know, we do have some repairs. We our vehicles, we've had general uh routine maintenance on them, but we're now finding out that we need to have some repairs on them. So, we're asking for $3,000 for vehicle repairs this year. And so some of the money that we quote unquote saved from copier maintenance, we're putting into vehicle repairs. Then we get into a new line item. Uh, and that last one's actually a new line item we've not had before, but another one is 3400, computer maintenance and repairs. This is $10,000 and actually would be for purchasing of equip of of computers. And I am going to elaborate on that in just one minute. like we've not had to buy uh computers in the past. And if you're saying why do you think you're going to have to buy computers this year? Let's jump down to under rentals. Um under office space, we've not had to pay rent in the past. We've been housed with FSA and NRCS over on Randall Avenue. We the uh lease expires at the end of this year. the building has a lot of disrepair in it. So in talking to NRCS and FSA who are the lease holders and we get to reside in there rent free and get computers for free under a memorandum of understanding. I've suggested that they do not renew that lease until the building is brought up to code and leaky ceilings and all this other stuff. What I've heard and Matt is from NRCS is that they have not even gotten into an

discussion on renewing that lease yet. It expires at the end of this year. Our board of Dearborn County Soil Water Conservation District's getting a little nervous about that situation and it's like in five months we could be out of a space. So, we need to start thinking about what our plans are going to be for moving forward. And so we put in a line item for office space rental. Beth, you want to come up here just for a minute and explain how we got the $20,000? Well, I'm Beth Terrell, the district coordinator for Denver County Soul and Water, and I have contacted 10 different offices in the state of Indiana to find out how they operate as far as if they rent, if they own, what it was, breakdown of it. There were five offices that were located with NRCSUSDA, which they paid no rent for. There's one office that's has is located in a county office of its own. There's one that has a vacant bank building that the county bought for them and they moved into it. There's two offices that's in the county extension office and then there's one building that a the county bought that was a vacant house and they moved into that. So, I got the 20,000 on there. I got because uh Sue had told me that uh Purdue Extension, they get $20,000 a year paid for their office from Purdue Extension or County pays for Purdue Extension. I didn't know what to put. We've never had this issue before. So, I'm grasping at straws trying to put a number in, not knowing what number to put in. So, I don't want you guys to lose faith in us. We're we're trying to

cover our bases and do everything that we need to do. And um Ken wanted me to pass this around. This is our annual report that we do each year. Also, this is what covers our printing cost that's on the uh budget for that. So, um did I answer everything that you said? So, you haven't actually looked at properties? No, we have not looked at anything. And your landlord is unresponsive. Well, he owned the building probably about a year. Um, unfortunately, we've not had much effort on his part to fix things. Um, and you've been there for a number of years.

Yeah. I've been here 11 years and we've always been at that location, I think, several for that. So, but this is a new owner of the building. Yeah. So, it's a new owner. Is he in out of state or is he He lives in Ohio, but he bought the building without even looking at it. He he paid cash. He didn't even come look at it when he he's been in one time to fix he put a new furnace in. The only tenants FSA USDA holds. How much is the rent there now?

Um don't quote me on this, but I think the last time I looked it I think we're somewhere between about 408,000 for the whole year for the whole. Um our side is trying to do due diligence before the lease expires. Uh we're working through FSA state office. We're working through our state office and we're putting a list together of what we believe needs to be fixed at a minimum. Um and that process is ongoing. I I've not spoken directly to our landlord. Um FSA actually holds our lease for us and so how he'll be responsive to that I don't know. Um I do know that I've heard rumors that he expects to increase the rent quite a bit. Um, obviously that probably won't go with the well unless they'll stick. So, we're kind of in a quandry as to where we may end up as well. Um, I do know through the whole reorganization that's in process right now for USDA from the secretary to our chief to our state office, there's no intent closing field office. They want to be forward facing. They want to serve the customers and our counts. But again, it puts us kind of in a unique situation because of the unknown because our Luckily, you got a good real estate agent on on your team, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So, I did talk to the land owner a few um couple months ago, right when we were putting together the budget, and he told me he agreed that the lease expires December of this year, and it was a three-year lease. what he's interested in doing, because he assumed that lease when he bought the building, he would like to renegotiate the lease for a five-year lease with a 5% uh increase annually. And I'm not saying that that's right, wrong, or indifferent. I'm just telling you what he's told me. I mentioned to him that we had a a number of issues with the building, and he said he was aware of some of them, and I said, "How about if we put together a list of all of them?" and provided to you. And he said, "Yes, please go ahead and do that." So, we we've done that. Um, but he's been unresponsive and NRCS and FSA uh in their attempts to try to get something done has not. So, that's the situation where we currently are. uh complete transparency particularly since Conniey's here and she was at the county commissioners meeting in July when I made the same uh story. Um Jim Thatcher asked me said, "Ken, uh can you come up and see me after the commissioner's meeting?" And I said, "Sure." than like being called into the principal's office in Hawai. But I I went up and Jim said, "There's some space in the county um

lower level

building in the lower level that's vacant. Uh would you be interested in seeing it to see if that might be usable for your purposes?" And I said, "Sure." So Matt and I went down and took a look at it with Sue Hayden that that day and it looked interesting. you you might be familiar with the space that I'm talking about. Um, and I said, "Well, I'd like for our staff to take a look at it because they're the ones who would reside there more than than myself." So, uh, all all three members of our staff, Beth, uh, Matt Simpson, and Aaron Huber, came over and took a look at it. If you've seen, it's gutted. It's got a great, uh, kitchen and great bathrooms. the ceiling doesn't leak and the tiles don't fall the ceiling because I don't think there are any tiles in the ceiling right now. Um there are some questions about how we would operate in that space and we've had a couple of other conversations with Sue Hayden. One of them was if we were to relocate in that uh lo in that space could NRCS and FSA also join us because we have a working relationship

large enough for that. Pardon me.

Is it physically large enough for that? We we looked at that. Yes, it is. Um uh again, I I forget what the number was on the square footage, but we compared it to where we are now. The answer is yes. Currently, we have a conference room. We may not have a conference room, but we have office space that's suitable. We use the Purdue Extension conference room for our meetings and so we could we could manage that. Um, I reached out to FSA and NRCS to say, "Here's an alternative that we're looking at." Jim did say that there's no money for buildout, so we would need to afford to do that. So, that $20,000 in rent might be used for for buildout, some of it. Um, but he said that it to his knowledge, there would not be any rent that we'd have to pay. Now, if NRCS and FSA came with us, we might still be able to get our telephone service and computer service through the federal uh

in le of rent. Pardon me, in le of rent from those two entities. Correct.

Yeah. Again, these are all this is as much as I know this. We're still exploring things. I a couple other alternatives that fell on our lap. Um is it Manchester school? Am I saying that right? Yeah. So, you all might know the Manchester school is vacant. I got a call from the school board president saying, "Hey, Ken, I hear you might be looking for space. Would you be interested in moving in for a dollar to the Manchester school?" And I said, "Well, a dollar sounds pretty attractive, but how big is it?" And he said, "40,000 square feet." I said, "I don't need that much, and I don't know that we'd be able to afford the utilities and upkeep, etc., etc., on it." Um, one Dearbornne we met with uh, Mike Pearlberg, you might know him and uh, this was just a part of the conversation that we had after our meeting. Mike reached out to me and said, "Hey, Ken, we've got some property. It's real close to where your current location is that we can't get rid of. We'll give it to you." And it's like, "Well, great, Mike, but then I got to build a building and it's going to take time and money to do that." So, we're looking at other options, but the most viable one right now that we have or two. One is find space that we can rent for about $20,000 or move downstairs before the end of the year.

So, we're looking at options, but you have not looked I'm sorry. You have not actually looked for rentals? Yeah, personally, no. Uh we got two real estate people on our one real estate person on our board who's the chairman and and Beth you might know has some real estate experience and so we've asked them Chris to to take a look at it and he's going to talk about that towards the end. Um so we haven't found any of them. We need a home. We need a home before the end of the by the end of the year. Yes. And even if they the new landlord says um you know we got a new lease. It's like you got a list of things that need to be fixed before we before I would suggest FSA renew that lease.

It makes sense for you all to be together like you are now though. Yeah.

Yes. As much as pos. It's not always the case. When Beth did the calls around to the 10 different districts, it's not always the case. Uh in some cases, one of the two parties are with them in some cases. and and in in the meeting in Wisconsin, I brought this up and I found out that it's from the national level. The person from NRCS National was there and he said, "This is not just a local problem. It's not even just a state problem. It's a national problem." And as Matt's in indicated, NRS is not interested in closing field offices, but because they need to have presence there. But there's offices that are going to close anyway because the landlord and so um one I think it was I think it was Wisconsin maybe not maybe it wasn't they said well our uh soil water district moved into a laundromat. It's like well I don't I hope we do that we're accused of laundering money anyway. But anyway, um, so people are looking at what can be done and um, my background, some of you may I I'm a business owner. I'm an entrepreneur. I like to be proactive and so I'm not going to wait until December and find out that we don't have a lease and we got to move out. That happened in one county in northwest Yeah. Northwest Indiana, Cass County. They were given a 60-day notice to get out. I and that 60-day ended um in the end of July. I don't I don't I haven't followed up with them to find out where they went. Maybe they went to a laundromat, but I mean I haven't found out where they went. And so some are being forced out and we may be forced out. So something's going to be have to be done. This meeting is about budgets and it all ends up in dollars and cents. And so

we're going to need some money to move or rent or build out or something that's in the budget. I hope that you can approve it. I I kind of stopped at that line item on the page and I really think that's the last line item that I needed to mention except for education and training. We're asking for a $500 increase in that from last year. That's just because of additional training that we're having to do with MS4 primarily that some of you might be familiar with. Oh yes.

Yeah. Um and we are our uh soil water conservation person um is on top of it. He works very closely with the county on MS4. Kind of an interesting note. You're talking about the building. When I graduated from high school in 1965, I went to work for Carl Lowhide at the NRCS measuring tobacco bases and corn bases and wheat bases in Dear and Ohio County. So the office then right where it is now. Really? Wow. Yeah.

I don't I don't think much has changed. No, you know there was a background plumbing down. No, I didn't look like this. Yeah, I mean you weren't born yet. I wasn't anywhere close to being born. You weren't even How many square feet is this building? But anyway, yeah, Carl had a back room and they had a what they called a plative and I'd go out and use change to measure the corn bases and the oil faces and the back bases and then on a lot of the fields you couldn't get to. You'd use a planer and figure out the area of that field. Well, you know,

the only question I had was on your equipment. You guys currently have for the farmers or whatever for a nominal cost, right? A no tail seeding. And you also had a burillion cedar, right? You buy the I mean, if you're sewing a a yard, you could you go out and get the brillian cedar to seed your yard. And you guys still still have those available? Yes. And they're stored on site. Yes, sir. So that would be my and and you you it sounds like you've been eavesdropping on our board conversations. Yeah, I know. Um and the other the other thing that happens is we have landowners bring soil samples in, right?

And they drop them off at the front door. So again, those are all things logistics that we'd have to work out. Um I don't know how much we've explored this, but again, right down the road from where our office is is the highway department, right? And we've been um told that we could even park our vehicles down here because at one time we had problems with breaking into our vehicles. So we thought about maybe moving the equipment down there. Now it would mean somebody having to run from here down there to do all that. But the logistics are things that we'd have to think about. But you do offer those Yes, sir. pieces of equipment too for a nominal charge.

Yeah, it is. They stored those those pieces of equipment. Are they under roof? They're out they're out exposed. So we couldn't do that here. Oh yeah. So that would be an issue downstairs. Chris, I want you to come up because these are kind of conversations that the board and you're the chair of the board. Um now so my name is Chris Paul. Oh Tom. Um what was the question? Well, by far when I was the logistics like equipment and soil samples, those are things that our board has discussed that we need to figure out also.

And yeah, that becomes some of the problems with even this building or being in this building is having that equipment parked. Um, access to this building as far as going through security and everything for just a farmer to drop off a soil sample is is as nice as it would be. It would be somewhat of an inconvenience, but that's kind of the thing. It's not ideal.

Huh. It's not ideal, but we haven't found anything that is ideal either. So, it's just kind of looking for because there isn't a lot of commercial um rental space available that's inexpensive to say the least. So, but that's we've definitely been looking and um trying to flip over some stones to find something. Like Ken like said, he's come up with some creative ideas. Even when he came to said, "Hey, they'll give us this school per dollar." Like it's like you may want to check it was like it's 10 times or 100 times bigger than we need but was that you may also want to check with Morris Hill. There was just an article about Morris Hill. I don't know if it's called that.

I believe that the town of Morris Hill got the building. Yeah. The the city bought bought it and they have an RFP out now to try to reurpose it for senior living or something like that. Right. Uh, you know, that's that's another school building that South D was designed.

We don't need that big of a school building or even any building. Just just trying to figure out a build a government building that's out there that's can, you know, again, it just needs to have that ease of getting in and out of. Yeah. And we need, like I said, you brought up the equipment and I think you were going at a different angle of having that available to people, but we also need a place to store that in this this this idea of a place to have it. So, so what's a no tail cedar cost that you got like what you guys that to rent? It's $8 an acre. But I mean if I had if I went out to purchase one 10 15 grand probably about about 15,000 in the same way

but about the cost of the bridge probably in that same neighborhood. Same neighborhood. So is there an agreement like a handshake agreement or whatever for all three entities to try to be under roof together? I've extended my hand. They have not shook it and and let me be very clear on it. So those decisions are not made at a local level by FSA and and our government moves so slowly. So we're we're talking just a few not the county council I hope. No, we're on it. We're on it. But so when you say three entities, you're talking about FSA, NRCS, and soil and water. Yes, certainly.

And and we kind of run autonomously. The soil and water does NRCS and Matt can speak to that and FSA. They're not here, but he works with them. It's from the top down pretty much, isn't it, Matt? For NRCS decisions.

Yeah. Yeah. We're we're working at our state office and above that. And the other thing that's interesting right now, we've not received all of the information for USDA's reorganization other than you may have read where they're going to close buildings in Washington and bring a hub out here and that kind of thing. So, um there's a there's a lot of steps in that process that we don't know. Um and of course probably leasing's down the peg somewhere for them because they're up here right now trying to figure out Washington. So, I don't know. But we do lose a lot of functionality. I've been in counties where water is not located with us and we lose a lot of functionality. We lose a lot of customers that no longer go to either Soul Water or to us. I mean it it's several times a day that we're going across the hall to FSA or people come across to our office and to know that someone comes and sewing water over here they got to drive to our office or vice versa we start to lose some of those.

Is there any other organizations that you have those synergies with? I mean it's with like for example the Purdue extension like it makes sense for those guys for you all to be in the same building. That would be awesome. And um in counties where they do have that um there's great relationships. Um Jeff's not there now. And and and Oh, he's not? No, he left to go. He went to go to Kentucky. Yeah. He he he uh got off the planning board. I'm wondering what happened.

But you know, we worked very closely. Jeff was a great partner on our field days on our part. um rain barrel that workshops and stuff that Aaron's put on. So, I mean, it would be awesome if we could all be in the same location and there's not enough room in Aurora. I reached out to Aurora at one. It's been a little while. I can follow up with them again asking see if they had around 2600 square foot of space available that you know they could I haven't gotten anything. I haven't got anything back. I can follow up with an ideal where you're at right now, isn't it? I mean with your except the building's falling apart, right? Is that guy's name that bought that? Is his name Drew? Yeah,

I know that guy. I sold him a building a couple years ago. The one thing that is really nice, we have obviously we have a lot of, you know, that come through in large trucks. You know, they can park out on the street, they can do FFA business, they can come see us. So, it's it's a good location, but areas

along along those lines. And some of the feedback I've gotten from our board members who have talked to some land owners and again not saying that this is what we're going to do. Um there is a little bit of hesitancy, but then they also say we come in and pay our property taxes at the county building. So I mean they're used to coming here. They know where it is and they have been in here before. So again, I think that it it could be worked out. You're talking about the low level. Yeah. Downstairs. Just for soil and warmth. No, I'm talking about if if FSA and NRCS would come with us. I mean, we we'll end up there maybe one way or another, Liz. Uh if we're if the lease is not done by the end of the year, but there's not is

there's space for all three. Okay. I don't know if there's space for Purdue also. I don't know that. Parking could be an issue, especially farm trucks and a judge might be an issue. Yeah. And then basic basically I mean we would have to approve any funding which um would be you know difficult but uh the commission I don't have a blank checklist let's spin the wheel uh but the commissioners actually oversee what the uses of the campus is right so the first step would be of course getting permission from the commissioners on on allocating that space to whichever entity they opt to

and and as I said, "Jim asked me to come up after the commissioner's meeting." We had that conversation. We've had couple other conversations followed up with Sue, so they know that we're interested. To our knowledge, nobody else has expressed an interest in that space. Uh Purdue did at one time, but then pulled back. How many vehicles do y'all tip like from staff? How many vehicles do y'all have a day parking? Then we have three two county vehicles. We're looking at third spots and backp

parking here is a problem a couple of times a year if there are several courts in session and then during elections. So that's the only time where when we bought the parking you know the lot behind it where Shamway youth machine leveled that and made that a parking lot. So parking is usually fine except for courts and juruction. So your uh your foot traffic isn't much I wouldn't think every day. Do you have much foot foot traffic every day?

I would say three to five day probably between offices on Saturdays. We just got done the sign up for site and they probably have several I said we haven't they probably have to come up and get them because to get down in the elevator you have to have a place that was the logistics of getting in and out of this place in travel through shade do they I thought I thought inmates travel through the basement sometimes they do sometimes but just the handicap or I thought they took I thought they took back then. Yeah. Anyway,

but there would be some issues because that was built out just because it was cheap to while you're while we built this. It was cheaper to go ahead and just build out a basement and have the space. So, it really wasn't configured with anything in particular in mind. So, it's storing hospital records and voting machines and then we build that little kitchenette thing in there. But I think the security to get into that, you know, from the outside is an issue as far as having access to the rest of the building. Is that right? Seemed like there was some kind of security issues. Well, when they voted down there, we have to have security. You'd have to talk to Shane. He's he's ahead of all the security.

But I know you cannot get down the elevator unless you have a badge. Can they enter from those outside doors? She would tell her actually you were looking at it that there would be a code that she could put in the elevators to allow people to go down in there during certain hours during certain during business hours because the security component is is very serious. So I mean there are there are doors down there. Yeah. I thought I thought when the judge was asking about that space the answer was that the the baiff out front was going to have to walk him over to the security and this the elevator and open it for them. So there would be some logistical issues

and and those are all things that we have not explored completely but again we can have a follow-up conversation with Sue Hayden and the people Sean and the people that need to be we would want to be as supportive as possible. We unders we've always understood that the space as far as the expense for the space was something that the county may have to address. We've been blessed with having space available to us for years at no cost. I just did some rough calculating. Uh oh. Watch out. And you did and did it with your page sack and a pencil.

But in 12 over the 12 month period, you're asking for roughly $1,700. And you say your requirements are 1,200 square feet. Is that correct? Well, that's is that 1,200 square feet for all three entities? You said 20. Yeah, it's probably less even than that. Okay. But if you look at that and Chris probably knows being in the business $14 a square foot for a commercial where Yeah. I mean I don't it doesn't I don't even know where that I don't know say there's no commercial property. It's cheap but yeah that's why I was looking for free stuff.

You know you know even for rent $14 a square foot. I doubt if you could find it. And then you're also talking about outside parking for your equipment and everything and yeah then and that's where Beth just came kind of we just took a stab at what I don't I don't know where we're going to find it at that number. It's just the number we had to put a number on something. Right.

So that's what I understand. sent me a text and she said that the space down there across from the bathroom, this was two weeks ago she sent this is approximately, 1280 square feet. Depending on what you need, you could fit comfortably eight office the size of the kitchen. The size of the kitchen that's there, which is about 10 by 12, she said she said eight offices and,80 square feet. But then you got to figure somewhere to put your cedars and your unless it's at the highway department logistics getting back and forth and convenience factor too. I mean like they're just for soil samples and just people coming and doing that kind of

probably a lot of guys stop in after they go to the motor terminal. Yeah. Or on the way back train. So are they in a semi? Yeah. That would be difficult here. I think they're loud down here. Yeah, probably not. They don't. No, they're not allowed in Greenale. Well, it would just stop that traffic. It would make it in inconvenient customer basically. I mean, at the end of the day, this hor it's just a, you know, customerf faced business for the most part. So,

right now, I mean, if we have equipment and Aaron checks it out, you know, once she has driver's license, insurance, all that, I mean, they can come get it at six o'clock in the morning. They can drop it off on a Sunday evening. you know, and so that's not a possibility either. If you're looking at the highway department, you know, they're going to be in there 6:00 to 2:30 or 7 to 3:30. And a lot of our farmers anymore, part-time farmers, you know, it's it's after hours when they pick up equipment. And this is all I mean that the the feds in the state might come in at the ninth hour and, you know, solve this whole problem anyway, right? You know, in what what way? You mean

keep the current lease? I mean, It's just the lease is not a you know it's there's the pro the biggest problem is keeping kid up at night is the unknown right that's what you know like the fact that we could be homeless I think that's why I'm getting this job is because you know hey they're going to be homeless you can do it you know so I mean wide some yeah I mean it all might and this all might be null void but it might you know so we're just kind of it's the unknown is why we're trying to like Ken was just stay ahead of it not trying to be I don't have a I don't have a problem putting this in here as a placeholder and we'll deal with whatever we have to deal with. Yeah. I mean, it might not even be something that's needed, but it's definitely something that it could, you know, we hate to be homeless.

And rest assured, I like to say my counterpart on the FSA side, we're pushing hard. We've had back uh we just got information yesterday to put together a spreadsheet of all the conversations we've had. So, I'm not like, "Oh, yeah. Well, what's all worried about?" I mean, we're pushing my I have meet with my boss this morning pushing as hard as we can against that ceiling to try and get something done. We're supposed to actually get a lease this time, but we were told that the last two times that we've had extensions. And so, unfortunately, under an extension, the way I understand it, it is what it is. They sign paper and go ahead. If we have an actual lease, then there's a lot more teeth in it to make things happen, get things fixed, if that makes sense. So in some cases either for the government just to do an extension up at a couple dollars a square foot if guy agrees to it or not and they drive down the road. So we're pushing for full lease so that there's some teeth in that in Switzerland County building got sold down there. They went to full lease and they worked it out to the landowner put some money in and the government put some money in to bring it up to the ADA compliance. So um so we're hoping for

So there is hope. Yeah. Well, we've extended past our time. I understand we have from 1:30 to 2 if that. Well, I know I appreciate the information you're bringing to us and I think the work that you do is very important. I've been going to your meetings for a number of years now and learned quite a lot. I had no idea how much value you've brought. So, it's something that we definitely want to make sure that we can make it, you know, happen of course for our county. But um I think we'll keep as far as I'm concerned keep their budget as as submitted and have that placeholder for for rent. We'll keep you apprised at how things are developed. Does anyone have any other ideas on their

about how many uh people do you have that utilize your service and NRCS in a year? What's your what's your volume as far as your total number of people using your program? you have any idea?

We normally for like our program side, we normally probably have a couple hundred people that sign up, but on the FSA side, they see every farmer at least twice a year. And and then the way they're doing programming now, there's a lot more traffic on the FSA side. And I couldn't tell you how many farmers there are in the county, but we have a fair amount of people that come through. I would think we're probably I would think we're around a thousand at least. Yeah, some of those might be repeats. Those are squaring in at annual meetings and it's increased every year which you think there's about 120 there last past year. I'd say

you guys have walk-in traffic too just for like information. You got brochures and all that. You don't keep track of all those numbers of people, do you? Um due to another we're doing we were getting 30 to 40 people a month that were just basically calling in wanting information. come in. And you know, I had a guy call in yesterday like, "Well, I got to take my trees down." I told him what about soils. I told him what we can do as far as that's concerned. Compliment species selection over the moon that there was someone out there that he goes, "Well, how much is it?" And I said, "It does cost." We do farm visits that don't fall. So, um exact number I don't know, but we affect a lot of people.

Yeah. I know there's a lot of folks out in my part of the country that utilize your service. The one thing that's really increasing and and Matt and Aaron have gotten more into this and our agency has too is the urban side, the small farmer. The people that are coming out from Ohio and buying ground and bright different areas like that that get three four acres and after about a year they don't want to mow it anymore or they come out and they're like you want to go garden. So we're doing a lot more on smaller parcels but it's just important for them. you know, I was, you know, they buy four or five acres, they they don't know what to do. They need a chicken, a goat, a cow, you know, they want to garden, you know, that's what they want to do. You know, they don't want to buy from Walmart anymore. So, um, we're getting more involved in that, too, which is even more time consuming really. I mean, you know, 500 acre farm or 12 people that's got two acres, it's all important, but some takes more time than the other, right?

And we're glad that we can provide that service. Anything else? No, I'm Does anyone have any adjustments they want to make to this budget? No, I don't. Okay, I think we're good and we'll keep our fingers crossed for some good news. I do have some information on transportation inmates just for everybody for what the transportation inmates through that basement area. So, it's only for depositions in the prosecutor's office seen and I was speaking with Shane and he said they can mitigate that and transport that basement. The inmates. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. very much, sorry, I know I owe you an email back. Oh, that's okay. Whenever. Thank you. Bye, Chris.

Okay. Location 35.

Yeah. There's what in their new spot. I mean, as a landlord, they're paying a third of what any other tenant would pay. You know what I mean? Like it's just too good of a deal. Where' you think of this? I would think between Aurora and Dillsboro. I would think somewhere.

Okay. Location 35. Mr. Steve Kelly. afternoon.

Right. So unlike last year, I don't have a lot of talking to do because I'm not asking for a bunch of increases. So in general, the increases that we are asking for are just required due probation officer uh salary adjustments

and the right you didn't really for the most part everything stayed the same this year out of the county general portion. Um we do have the probation officer salary scale did not get a um inflation and a cost of um living raise this year. The only way the officers went up in the county general portion is if they went up in years of services, but they did not get get like just a general cost of living. They did 0% this year. So, they did not do a cost of living uh this year in that salary scale. But we do have some officers who maybe moved from year, you know, three to four, which is an adjustment there. Um

Steve, you have your drug testing went up by 5,000, but you haven't expended anything this year

that we spend. um in that we typically try to spend out of a couple grants that we get first uh just to make sure that we can zero those out, but we will spend every dime in that. We spend for probation, we'll spend roughly about $30,000 a year in drug screens. We have taken some steps to mitigate some of those costs uh for this year and I should start seeing results because what we did is started using rapid drug screens. Um, and basically what a rapid drug screen is is you get the test results right there on site and it's $ 350 per cup as opposed to sending every drug screen in for a confirmation which is $11 per cup. So we're hoping um the vast majority of our screens will screen out as negative. So we're hoping to see a huge cost uh saving there. But between community corrections and probation, I spend about $130,000 a year on drug screens.

I'm trying to cut that down to like 60,000 is what I'm trying to do. Uh, but the probation drug screen, um, I'm trying to get that back up to what we were, um, circuit court, for an example, serves, um, my probation department collected about 5,000 drug screens last year. Cir uh, um, Southeast Regional Community Corrections collected about 5,000 roughly and then circuit court collected like 1,500, but they were appropriated more dollars in the county general than we were, even though we're collecting three times the amount of drug screens. Um, so I'm trying to get that back up to to proportion with what circuit courts and I think even then we'll be below what circuit court gets in drug screening money out of county general. Now I will say um Judge Nengard is uh really pushing drug screen. So their their drug screen numbers are going way up too just because he's really pushing uh more frequent drug screening and and the drug screening is expensive. I mean it is if you start drug screening frequently it is it's expensive. The the thing about drug screening though is what's important is um you know you can do all the case management in the world. You can do all the sitting down and talking with indivi individuals. The only way you truly know whether somebody's doing good on these programs is whether they're passing a drug screen.

I mean even if they're showing up to work, they could be showing up to work but using meth. You know what I mean? it's only a matter of time before something bad happens. So really the the most effective tool that we have to monitor whether these folks are doing well is just doing a lot of drug screens. Um and it's just when you do that it's expensive.

Well they have any other questions in the county general budget. Is there consensus to leave the drug at 20,000 for testing? The only reason it jumped out as me is because it's in three places and it's and county general nothing's expended and your probation admin account nothing's expended and then there is some in the probation user account that's been spent but Right.

Yeah. And I talked to our we have a financial officer Warren Bradley about that and he oversees those and I I told him when I was looking this over we need to expend that county general fund but um at the rate of you know like our bill is usually about $6,000 a month. So what we do is we use community corrections funding um then we use problem solving court funding then we'll use puff then we'll also use county general um and realistic use county general last. I'm not saying don't use to be to be honest with you, we should um use county general first grants and then county general um just because user fees are they fluctuate a lot too. Um our user fees, you know, are down a little bit um user fee accounts and that's partly because

give you an example. Don County government, county general is down 26 like $900,000. I figured it was down. So Senate Bill one has done a number. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. But we will use that that county general will be zeroed out. In 24 you use 10,000, right? So I'm having a hard time reconciling going from 10,000 to double in two years. Was it two years ago you had to come back for an additional for drug testing or was that a different court?

Well, I I typically come back for additional. I came back the other day. I I put in the appropriation, but it's usually out of user fees. When I do that, um I typically do not ask for appropriation out of county general for users user fees. Once or out of county general, once those are done, I typically am done just because I know I got to fight my battles and I'm not coming back to county general for user fees or for drug screens. 31200. Um I I would see us bring that down to 15,000 from the 20 total 55 to and that's about Yeah.

And then another I think another 40,000 out of out of um community corrections which is a different budget I get but it's about 95,000 total that I put in there. U and usually I do have to come back. I'm hoping moving forward I don't because of what we've done to mitigate the cost. Um but usually I have to come back and ask for some type of user fee appropriation to to get through the year out of us. Well, we were we're talking about taking 31200 down to 15,000 like last year. What was last year? 15,000. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's fair. My only thing with that and I get it like you know life isn't fair. I get that. The my only thing I get I'd come back to is um we you know circuit court does a fine job. I'm not you know they do really good at what they do but we collect much more drug screens. So I'm circling back to we have $900,000 death. Right. Right. I get that. Yeah. I get that. I just I would be remiss if I didn't at least stay. Go to batboard. That's fine. But we're doing our job as well.

I think we need to take that 31200 31200 down to 15,000. You do that, Leah. And then your other bill. That's that's because it's their state mandated. They've changed um the state. The state will never pay it. There's been legislation. The state the state the state the state have given us the ability to have a judicial lit. I would I don't have that in front of me. I apologize. It looks like Connley. Yes. It doesn't make a difference. M your pocket and going either way,

right? And so right

I think she's probably the only one out of trying to think out of county general. Most of them get raises would be out of um puff. And the reason there are a few that have gotten raises um out of probation user fees, but that's because they're taking on additional duties in 2020 moving forward from 2025 to 2026. Um for example, Amber Holman um is the director of the court alcohol and drug program and our intentions for 2026 is to expand that program. The reason we are going to expand that program is because we can collect additional fees. Um, and the more fees we we collect, le less fees I'm bleeding. Um, so but in order to do that, I have to expand her duties in that role. So, uh, two other officers, Matt Nelson, will become a court offer on drug program officer, uh, which will allow him to do substance abuse evaluations in house and collect a fee. That's state, the Indiana office court services, and the state legislator says we can collect those fees. Um, and then Christy Connley will also become the court alcohol and drug program. um per assessment we can collect a $200 fee. Um there's there's certification process you have to go through. They have to go through 500 hours of case management training um and supervision. They have to go through they have to pass a couple tests. Um so they went up and it went out of user fees, not county general because we're not that's not mandated, but it's a program we can take on. The reason I did that specifically with the cord alcohol and drug program is because I was collecting about 30,000 out of the cord alcohol and drug program money, but I'm spending like 70,000 and I keep having to transfer money from puff to the cord alcohol and drug program and I don't want to do that moving forward. So, it's like, okay, well, let's just make more people certified and the cord off drug program ramp up our numbers so we're actually spending what we're collecting and not not um bleeding in the red every year in that program.

Yeah. Yeah. Car Yeah. Aaliyah calls me twice a year telling me to transfer money and I'm trying to I'm over that and it is a headache and it's a it can leave you sleepless. So I just want to try to at least almost collect what we're spending in that program. But in order for them to do that it's a lot of extra duties, a lot of extra training, a lot of extra work. And it's I think I increased them $1,000 for them out of user fees, not out of county gen. So, does anyone have any questions for Steve? Any of his budgets? So, location 49. This is the first time uh JCAP director said to be paid out of anything other than a attorney general's grant or whatever. So, this is

opioid restricted. Um we don't know how long that money will last as a as a stop gap to fund this. I mean, we're I think we're good for like the next two or three years. Yeah.

Yeah. This is one of the things that so my department in general is relies really heavy on grant funding. Um and uh you know a lot of times when I come and request the grant you guys are open and honest and saying hey if this grant goes away we can't afford take this out of county general. So, we did lose um the the state cut the um J judicial reinvestment advisory committee grants by $ 8.3 million um which really equates to if you look at all the community corrections programs, there's 82 programs in the in the state. So, that equ equated to roughly $97,000 per program that they cut. Um so, we lost our fully lost our JCAP grant um this starting in 2026. Um, so that's the reason we asked offset that out of the opioid fund for one year and then we're hoping by 2027 we have a new plan. We're going to Judge Mclofflin, myself and Tisha will start looking at different grants and things like that to keep that program.

Is it funded out of the attorney general's office for the last couple years or

No, that's that's funded out of the um that's funded out of the uh Indiana Department of Corrections. So, when they rewrote the criminal code, and it's funny this happens because, you know, give credit to Steve Bradley because he called it 10 years ago. But, um, when they started the when they rewrote the criminal code in 2014, they said, "Okay, we're going to rewrite this criminal code and it's going to keep a lot of people out of the state prisons and because you're keeping so you're saving so much dollars in the state prisons, we're going to reinvest that money back in the community through these grants." Um, and Steve Bradley, to his credit, said, "Well, that's great, but what's going to happen is in 10 years all the people who made that legislation are going to be gone, and they're not going to remember those promises, and they're going to start taking the grant funding away." And it was exactly 10 years when that happened. So, he called it dead, you know, right on the head. Uh so what's happening now is even though we've saved all this money to the state by not sending all these people to prison, those legislators aren't there anymore and they're not remembering the fact that the reason we rewrote the criminal code is to save the state money in the in the prison system and now some of that money is drying up. Um and a part of that is I think too because they had the uh the state medic or Medicare issue that they found the uh the money that was that they had to fund that they didn't realize they were going to have to fund. So they have that huge gap that they're trying to overcome. So they had to start cutting budgets somewhere similar to what you guys

I read a nice article recently about the JCAP program and one of the or maybe it was a news piece this week or that young man maybe that was that one of the papers. Where did I see that? There was there was a there's a um channel 9 had something WCPO has a has a um story. Um, it's a two-part story on JCAP uh this week and um Tisha, Sheriff Mckenry, and Judge Mclofflin are in that. Luckily, I didn't have to do that because I was on vacation so I didn't have to be on video cuz

I think when Judge Mccclaclin started this, there was only the only one was in Boone County, Indiana in the state of Indiana. So then we were the second one and since then several other counties have started JCAP programs in their counties. So for people competing for fewer step dollars,

there was 23 jail treatment programs that got fully cut uh from their funding out of these grants. So u there was one that they lost like 357,000. Uh we only lost 90 90,000. Um now there was other programs that were running jail treatment programs, but they weren't like licensed therapists. they were maybe like a jail staff who would be trained in like a 40-hour class and would put on some type of educational program and they were calling it jail treatment. Uh there was probably only 45 that were doing the level four or five uh doing the level of actual treatment and um prominent care and stuff that we were with are with JCAP.

So do we have two or three uh JCAP staffers over there that are like with master's degree? Yeah, we have so we have um we have three full-time licensed clinical social workers. So those are uh therapists uh who have additional credentials like higher level credentials. Um then we have two part-time who are fa uh uh funded out of the JCAP Bridges grant and they just work part-time doing some family educational type programming. Um and then we have you know some other staff who do multiple roles in their duties. So, they're doing like pre-trial assessments plus helping with uh stuff with JCAP. So, about probably five total that are full-time over there.

Well, the beauty of this is opioid restricted is harder to to use than the unrestricted. So, right, this is great. And and and in that, you know, I've um looked at over a hundred times. It specifically says jail treatment, right? Um for the restricted. So it's, you know, there's no argument that it can be used for for jail treatment because it said it right there in the writing. And that probably has a fairly decent balance, I would think. Leah the 900 something. Yeah. So we could restricted is 900 something and then the unrestricted was like 270 or something like that. I check in with Lee on that too. About every three months I start looking at that one.

How many counties have community corrections? There's 82 agencies. Uh Franklin County is getting ready to start. There's 82 agencies, but I think I think 88 counties have it. So like my agency, I oversee Dearborn, Ohio and Switzerland County for community corrections. Uh so we're you know we're a regional agency. Yeah. But Franklin County for years didn't have one and they'll have one in 2026.

Um and then it feels like another county is starting one in 2026 as well. So, the frustrating I'll just be honest with you, you know, it's probably too much information, but the frustrating part with that is we've had pretty much the same funding with our community corrections program since, as far as I could go back in our financial records. Uh, they did give us a slight increase in 2019, but it was only 5% and it equated to like $20,000. But if you can imagine running a 2025 budget and your grant fund based on as far as I can go back at least 1995 the money we were getting that's really really tough to do. But then like Ripley County started a community corrections agency six or seven years ago and they get twothirds of what we're funded but they only serve maybe 25% of the population. And I think it's like you know it's like the c it's like the cable company the new customers get the best deals. Yeah,

but if you really equate that out to what we do in the population we serve, if I started a new one today, I would probably say, "Hey, I I can't do this for less than 800,000, but they're giving me 500 15,000." But if you overseed Ohio and Berkeley County, how can you get money from them? So, we do we we technically get additional funds for um from the grant for having those. I don't know what that I've never seen on dollar. Hey, you get this much for having switch. But I mean, why couldn't you go to their budget hearings and say, "Hey, I do this for you. You need to help fund this." Right? I think we could, but with our community corrections, we don't get like in Dear County, we don't get any county general. Yeah. For community corrections, we only get county general for

what's that? Probation to the state. Most of it, but I mean, yeah, it's grant funding. Yeah. Your insurance and stuff. Yeah. Insurance would be right. Can you ask them for that? Right. Yeah. That may be something we going to have to do. at least say can you fund one of these officers or something like that because the insurance is expensive. I mean that's that's our biggest expensing. Yeah. Like make them pitch in, right? Any other questions for Mr. Kelly? I guess our work is done here. But we did we did cut that test.

I get it. I get it. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Thanks Steve. our last schedule for today. Is there anything else that we can knock out today? Leah, she might she could have hit you should could have hit something there. If if you know he's going to Ohio County and we're praying for all their drug test. Yeah. Yeah. No We're doing that. You're allowed cuss. I feel exact the same way. I'm glad you said it. Yeah. You forget you're on camera. But that but honestly if you're doing it for Ripley Ohio Switzerland is the other one he said yeah that makes sense something

something well you got they travel to those other counties too I don't know honestly I didn't until today I didn't know they took care of other counties besides ours and I get the grants France are doing it all but now they're having to dip into county ch especially for drug testing and uh some of the other things and insurance employees and and our secretaries any of our secretaries that we pay why can't they pay for them too or at least some of it a proportional prora yeah something to look into he said funding's going down

or well it's been flat it's kind of like the 911 fee it's like the state hasn't raised u if they keep adding more counties to it, it's probably going to go down. But that uh DOC grant that you're talking about, it's been flat for like you said years since I started here. So who pays um like people is that grant funded? a lot of is grant funded and then some of his other stuff is user fees and stuff like that and then we provide them right

well that's something that we will pursue you probably need to tell him that before start working on that next year I mean you can't fix it right now going through budgets right now so they need to know for next year advertise. It's too late to 26, but for 27 that's something that could certainly be you're spending, like she said, 20 Well, that's that's community corrections. His county general part is 680,000. But that's only for Dearborn County. It's just community correction for the other

county superior probation. But then when you look at community corrections, that's what will pick up the other counties, right? Yeah. There's a $200,000 or $150,000 increase right there. But this that's funded is from grants, not this isn't some of these are user fees and some of them are grants.

Mike, do we collect this? We collect the user fees for Switzerland and Ohio County. No, I doubt it. He said he said

you know what I'm saying. We're we're not This is not funded from county general. This is funded from grants, right? And user fees, but I think his DOC grant is probably for all three counties. I think Leah said we get all of them. Not not for this one, but there is one grant when we scout. You guys don't see it. It's just not a budget. Ohio County does they get us all their grant that person. So, so they are kicking in some

but not even America, is it? Switzerland. Is that America? I agree with what Connor said a little bit ago. I mean I don't care. They should pitch in. Let's put the pill. Well, it's our peoples. It's no problem. Selia, when we were talking yesterday about the information that we got from Susan from Baker Chilly

and we were looking at county general and how the budget was presented at the time this was done and then the the changes. So, we talked about the Davidson Road 14 1.4 million. We also talked about the 1.6 in community crossings. Have you zeroed that one out and put it back in the county general or what's the process or just these numbers or the incumb what he had encumbered in that in that? He didn't have it encumbered. He just had it laying there, didn't he?

Well, she thought he did. I mean, I can't zero it out in this year's budget unless we do a reduction of 180s and then it'll go back in this year. So, at our November meeting, we could have a reduction, take that 1.6 that's sitting there. Is that what you're saying? Or just let it go to the end of the year. And I can tell if they're not carrying forward. They said Joe. Well, that's fine. Let's just I I just want it out and I want it here. Well, because I kind of did the math this morning

and if I put the additionals at what have actually been approved instead of just the advertised amounts, that's a big difference. And if I take out um if you add the community crossings money back in, it changes this number down here to 18 million instead of 14 as what would be left at the end of 25 to 18. Yes, that's even better than what I had. Yeah, I like your number. Well, she advertises out of funds. So, it's like double the money. But I'm talking about just out of county in general because we did a bunch of like $3.8 million out of 4916 yesterday. So

this additional appropriations that's everything that's been advertised this year 5.7 million but really the true number that you've given. Give me the number line number if you don't mind. Um it's on line 28. Okay. You guys really only given one 1.6 six. So it makes a big difference in so we don't have to cut as much or makes your bottom line you know the percentage way more.

The problem is like what we're to me what this is the way I look at it. What we're doing is we're supplementing county general receipts by the High Point money with the money that we got from High Point Health few years ago when we put a total of 8 million in rainy day and the rest of it sitting in county general. So, it's making county general look healthier than than what we're receiving in property taxes and then LIT monies. And then there's miscellaneous, but I mean, those are the two big ones. And so, they're showing the property taxes going down like almost 900,000 this year. And she's showing lit flat. I think lit will go up 400,000 or so. But to me, the the reason if we end up with what' you say 16 million

18 18 I mean that's and we were at 24 million at at the end of 26. So we got 18 in how much that's high point 5.8 But we had we move some of it to the rainy day or not. We moved eight 8 million to rainy day over a course of two years. Four and four. Yeah. Total of eight. We put 2 million for expenses and then the rest of is being carried in in county general and most of that. Yeah. Yeah. We're holding it as a

it's like one point. So then how do you know how much you how much how do you get what we need to get out of the budget to to please that lady that did it? All of our fund balances are fined. Yes. She's saying I thought it was like 3.3 on her feet world you want your expenses to match your receipts that way all of your cash right? So if you wanted to do that you would have to cut almost $3.4 4 million to keep that even though we got that you you got that extra 1.6 million at Todds that we didn't know we had that's yes that's

but that's on the other side that's not in your that's not an expense or revenue that's just money sitting in a somewhere else we're talking to have a truly balanced budget between what we're bringing in and what we're going to expend we needed to cut $3 million but so many things were listed in two different places that we're making really good progress on that 3.8 8 was out of both and it was taken out of 4916. So there's 3.8 million. I agree with what he's saying, but it seems like that leftover money should matter. What do you mean in them in that?

It matters in your your bottom line. Like if you look like they're saying if if all these numbers are accurate, you'll have a 45% like cash bucket left. So that number would go higher. So you'll have more money, but still to be perfect, you're going to bring in 22 million. Well, I don't see us cutting 3.3 million. My point I was hoping we could just take that 1.6 off that and then we cut a better number like two two million or 1.9, but I guess we can't do it.

Well, the only way to do that is to do what you were saying the other day and add cut it off the line item. cut it off the budget and let him spend it out of there, but he can't move that. He can fund this year's community crossings out of that, right? I mean, he could carry it forward, but I don't know if it matter. Like I said, whatever's easiest. It just seemed like to get to what not how much we needed to cut his idea of taking it off the zero that 750 off there will help us get closer to what we need to cut. Well, there I guess it don't matter. You know,

there's two things that in his budget that I think we need to address and one is the million and a half of batumis and he's got 754 community crossings. the most we have if the state allows counties to have as much as three million which is doubtful because I think they took community crossings from $150 million down to hund00 million for 26

so there's less money and they've made the match lower% some counties or some cities and counties were not able to come up with the match money they changed the match for certain counties counties in cities to from 25 to 20%. So the most Darren County government would have to match if the county received a $3 million community crossings grant is 600,000. He's got 750. That's only only $150,000, which I realize 150,000 is a lot of money, but in the overall scheme of what we're doing here. So the that's the first thing that 750 goes down to 600 and that's in a rainbows and lollipops world. Chances are there might be a $2 million

community crossing grant maybe. Maybe. So that means your match is $400,000. So and we may not even get a community crossings grant which would be devastating because we've been able to really get some serious work done with community crossings because we've gotten grants every year. One year was three million and we had to put up a million and a half. I might be off. I might not be looking at this right, but if he's got 1.6 million already in that account, why would you just take it to zero?

I want that's what I I agree that we need to take that account down to zero because to me that's cleaner bookkeeping. It wasn't used for that purpose. You take it out and put it back in the county general. At the end of the day, we're going to we're going to be in the hole by the end of budget hearings. There's no way to take what we were taking in in 26 and balance. We're going to be and we've done that for the last couple of years. If you'll notice, we went from a a balance of 24 down to 14 with some changes with things advertised out of different funds including county general and putting that 1.6 six in there, we'll end up with 18 million perhaps. So, I'm not uncomfortable with doing that in using some of the the fluff that's in county general because I don't see how otherwise we're ever going to get through. The other the other side of the coin of that for me is that we do have roads that need to be addressed and whether we leave that million and a half in there in Batumis. So it's actually in place for him to start doing stuff in 26. It's six and one. Either he's going to come back in 26 for an additional and we're going to okay it or we can okay it in this budget and have the budget a little bit lopsided but we're supplementing it out of the excess that we have in our county general balance. So, at the end of the at the end of the day, that's where I am. Now, I do have heartburn on the juvenile center of the budget, which is not as big a number, but as far as places where I think there's needs to be some burning and slashing, that's where it is. But as far as Todd's budget, the community crossings, I think has to be changed from 750 to six because there's no way in God's green earth that our match is going to be.

Make ourselves sleep better by saying we have a balanced budget or if it doesn't, you know what I mean? It's semantics. Leah, what's your total number right now if we adopt it as is one way or the other? You want to put your wallet in your right pocket or your left pocket? All in yet? Okay. It won't matter to that when you turn it in because it's advertised for that. Yeah. And because our fund balances are so strong, we're carrying more than the 15% minimum that they recommend.

I mean, there there comes a day of reckoning. Well, so long that you can, you know, do that and then in all of a sudden the rubber hits the road. But with any in 2028 when those lits go into effect, everything changes. So Don County government will not need the whole 1.2 two that were allowed and we can we can take what I think was going to if I were looking in the future because of the property tax revenue losses we're currently not putting the EMS lead into it but for county government operations 1.2 lead is what we're using and it's shared with other entities right

so in 2028 budget when we've got that 1.2 too. Um, I think we're going to have to what used to be certified sheriff's bucket or currently is certified sheriff's bucket. I think you're going to have to raise the lit enough to take up that deficit that you're losing from property taxes in when you're doing that lit calculate or Baker Tilly can calculate for us how much we're going to need to up that percentage in order to be whole. So I think I think that we're dealing with 26 and 27 until that new law takes effect. So I think that I mean I can sleep at night.

I can give Todd that 1.5 and patuminous and be lopsided and still sleep at night because if we don't approve it in the budget, we'll probably just do an additional next year. So it just kind of depends on where your comfort level is. I think that was the state's plan all along to get you to do the lift.

Oh, they've been doing that forever. Yeah, they've been saying forever that, you know, we we give In fact, this past legislative session, there were legislators who were saying you've got so much taxing capacity that we don't when we were complaining about things like the judges and all the court fees that we have or court services and stuff and salaries and stuff that we have to pay out of county general or our our money. They would say, "Well, we gave you the ability to head up a judicial lift." That was their answer. It's not like we we need to take on because you you consider put all these different packets in to cover all the different areas. They want you to do it so they don't look bad. Yeah. Yeah.

But they consider them state employees, but we have to pay for them. So then when we complain about it, they say they passed legislation allowing the county to have a judicial lid up to 2%. So it's just nuts. Why don't you get on Maxwell about that? Why don't you get on Maxwell about that? That was that was pre Maxwell. It's But it is crazy. But at the end of the day, just don't run again, Dan, by the time we get out of here. He uh I swear he come to one of the planning meetings last time. He's doing something up in Maxwell's putting a subdivision in. Where's that? I think they're finishing out the one street.

Yeah. By the building by East Central. Oh, Harvest. Yeah. The other street. Yeah. So to me philosophically it's a matter of like do you do you have your budget um where you're using your savings or your your reserves and and make Todd whole or do you wait and have them come back for an additional next year is six one and a half dozen of the other ones. You know more about this than I do so I trust you. But everyone has different

principles on how they want to do their their business. But I just feel like um that to me is like six one half dozen the other. On the other hand, the juvenile center budget is something that I think we need to have if we can if y'all want to look at it now. I think it's location 32, but I mean that one really went up. what you can do building.

Yeah. Juvenile Center is the location 32. I mean, he's he's got two new positions. Part-time wages went from 30,000 to 100 and he kept his overtime at 100,000. So, between those between two new positions and an additional 70,000 on part-time And then plus benefits on top of their salaries, you're talking about a a boatload of money. So how many of these other counties are paying giving us per juvenile? For juvenile. What does that money go? It dumps in general. It's dumpster in general.

Just like when we keep out of state out of county prisoners and deals. Do you know how much that is? 321,000 so far for half a year. They're bringing in way more than they ever used to, but it's still, but here's the thing. Those those counties that uh they're going to be shopping for the lowest and I I would not agree with lowering what their perm is. So, as far as that being a a big revenue stream, yeah, it's bringing in more money than it ever did. But, but still not enough to run the No, I was gonna say, well, that's the question isn't how much they're bringing in is is how much has the deficit changed? What What's our, you know,

how much are we in the red compared to what we used to be in the red? Well, he's the increase is is a little bit less than what it's bringing in. Well, here's the thing that gets me on that, too. There's no depreciation on the building figured far as a cost. There's no depreciation on the equipment that's over there that we provide, but none of that's figured in as far as the cost to house those kids. You know, we got to take care of the bill. Well, we provided the building. We're providing the place for them to sleep and everything else. So, how much is that costing us?

Yeah. Off of what they're making or they're bringing in.

Like a guy told me one time he was going to Kentucky and buying potatoes for $10 a bushel and bringing them back to Indiana and selling them for $8 a bushel. He was just making money hand over piss. But he never sat down and figured out how much he was losing. In the same way here, we don't have an accurate uh schedule of what our actual expense is per kid. We don't know if we're making anything. We probably aren't like Mark. We're not making anything for sure. No, we're definitely going to hold the question. The question well the question the real question is what are all what are all our alternatives

and is that something that a judge can mandate and we can make it mandate it but is that a service that's important for us to maintain in our community or are we okay with sending those kids you know if there's 11 of these things throughout the state alternative is send them to one of the other ones maybe there's no capacity I don't know that goes back to the capacity comment that that Doug made is hey Ripley Switzerland Ohio you guys want to have the ability to send folks from your community to Dearborn County, you need to pay some kind of capacity fee to maintain help keep this open

either. But they've moved $75,000 of that already into part time. So now they're down to $7,900 in overtime and still have multiple cover. Yeah. Well, I'd rather give them more part-time money than give them full-time jobs. Two positions, full-time jobs, right? Then you don't have to worry about your

Well, and the other thing is is I don't know if the ratios have changed, but the amount of youth attendance that we provide and the educator can count as a there's a ratio for every however many it's like seven to one or something like that. I don't know what it is. Like I think we're more than double what is the requirement from the state. Don't we have an attendant on duty and a supervisor?

Yeah, I mean there's one, two, three, that's vacant. Four, five, six, 7, 8, nine people counting, youth attendance and intake officers. Looks like it's an intake officer. We got to get one kid every other day that takes a full-time job. Yeah. Shane's taking them in faster than that, I think. And this is day and night. It's a 247 365 gigs, but right. Do they do like 312? It's like, yeah, I think so. Think so.

I don't know how many are working at one time. That's what I'm saying. I think they don't have to have they have way more working at one time than they are required to have statutoily. Do you remember when we had that study done in 2019? At that point, the study said that at that time, and I don't know how many they had, but at that time they could definitely deal with one fewer employee in 2019 per shift or probably overnight. They don't they want done for the day.

We're done for the day. We're just talking. Thank you. Colbury prison. [Music] Well, the state only pays us $42. They just raised it to 42. It cost 65 to keep in the jail. That's another way the state doesn't do right by us.