Commissioners - Regular Meeting

leave there till like 9:30. Okay. I seen Maddie or your daughter. It said that it was a really long day. I wondered. All right. Well, we will start the meeting with the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well, Commissioner Asher is dealing with flooding at his farmstead, so he's unable to attend today, but we will go ahead and get started. Um, did you want to start with commission review, Trish? Commissioner Jono.

Yes. Um on well last Wednesday um u myself and um uh Mayor Butler and um members of the Stantech team um met and just talked about preliminary things of what what they were wanting to get acquainted with acquainted with our community. So, we sat and we talked about stuff, talked about the history and and talked about the past 2017 comprehensive plan and then uh just gave them a tour of our community, just letting them showing them different things and um and so um they talked about, you know, doing the the outreach and that's going to be done sooner than later. We talked about different ways to try to get the most engagement. you know, maybe Freedom Fest, um, Junth, just different things like that, you know, trying to get people engaged.

Will you remind me of what that stand what that that is? It's for the comprehensive plan. Okay. So, it's okay. Stand tech. Yeah. It was the first meeting that um to have and they were just getting acquainted with our community and they um that's just the organization that the Santex the company. Yeah. And they've done things in our um community before. Um but the three people that it's an areawide comprehensive plan like Milford is doing one um Duncan city Gary County is doing one together and then um Wiggo um Manhattan um

and a couple other places just in the region and they toured Fort Riley that morning. We were not with them for that because that is a component of of the comprehensive plan.

Okay. because it was a it's an oil DCC grant that we got for it. So anyway, yeah, and so we should we should be hearing like um soon on the public outreach. So if anybody asks you a question about that. Um and then um Mac breakfast was um cancelled, but um I went I attended the grand opening. I've done a tour of it, but we had a grand opening for the Stephen A. Cohen um facility um geared towards veterans and their spouse and their actually dependent and associates. um over in Manhattan and I think that'll be um very beneficial to the veterans in our area act and active duty just any soldiers that are um you know experiencing any health.

That was it.

Okay. Well, I was gone um part of the week, but um met with the the sheriff and county mental health and and discuss some um some issues. I think that just needed clarification. um the sheriff will meet with with them again and hopefully I think what came of the meeting is just look for ways to better serve their the inmates and uh uh understandably so I think pony mental health you know with um uh I know that they do a lot and and everybody is um working to to provide services but you know the fact of the matter is inc in incarceration of prisoners and all that. They're getting more prisoners and you know they need to have more more people more help there in the health field to to be able to do that. They did say they did had a a mobile crisis response team that's available 24/7. I think that would be beneficial. Um tea tella health is what the main um I think that uh they um thought would be beneficial. Um when the sheriff comes in, he might touch more on on those.

Well, is the mobile unit allowed to go to the jail because last I heard that they were not. No, they not. Yeah. I don't think they could even have communicate. They pick up or meet with the individual and that that's there that's separate from that. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think discussion was the typical um need for more help from the state was because um I guess I didn't realize that just being um new with this that um that um once an individual is incarcerated that if they were in dealing with mental health that those services cease. Yes.

Yeah. And then we take county takes over and then and the funding for us is Yeah. So I Yeah. That was I thought I asked the question that doesn't seem like and I just found that out. We just found that out in that juvenile justice um or not juvenile justice but the justice um group that that um the sheriff and under sheriff put together that you know if somebody's on Medicaid or or Medicare Medicaid um if once they get arrested their Medicaid stops which is ridiculous. Yeah. It just doesn't it I that's and that's a state statute. Yeah, that's what they said that statutoily they they won't Yeah, they can't. So, that just doesn't

But I feel with us and as much as we give to me health, we shouldn't have to be paying them to take care of the inmates when we already give money. Hi, good morning.

Good morning, counselor. Um otherwise I left on on Wednesday and and had a um went to a conference KCCA commissioner conference in in Hutcherson and I think it was uh really beneficial. We had uh talked about um you know of course um data centers that was a big topic as well as um you know property tax issues and um different ways of how to to um how commissioners can handle that um you know and in going forward because you know the fact of the matter is you know with this legislation that's pending and governor supposed to be um making a decision on that this week. So, we'll see where that goes. But, you know, a lot of concern um and I think the public needs to be educated in in the the fact that um you know, just with like with health um health insurance um I think it was Osborne County, Osborne County um you know, they've got like 68 68 uh employees, but their um their health insurance went up $30,000. So, you know, to make up, you know, that difference in that budget, you know, if they, you know, they cap it at a certain amount, but then you have all these increases because everything costs more and everything else. I don't think you know I and again um you know I've asked uh the finance person to put together some sort of packet that we could hand out with information about our county statistics our departments um you know some sort of something and also that we're able to uh present as a PowerPoint if you or I are for no fun for the unfunded stuff or just any information

anything that deals with property tax how they come about it split and into and to the different entities that how the appraiser you know I've asked Travis to contribute some something that we could educate the public more as to how the dollars are spent and how we're coming coming about with with what whatever you know appropriations again um is a big big topic and you know the fact matter is that might be um you know where um where we you know is how we're going to manage that but Um, we um also talked about they actually had uh Brandy Bailey from Sedwick County um she's SE County Treasurer and she talked about um uh Senate Bill 325

and how that comes into play and basically you know they they've got their right to uh the treasur's office can increase registration trans uh fees up to to transaction fees up to $5. Anything over that, then they have between five and 10, they have to come in for board approval.

And um there is a three-year moratorum or non moratorum on that, but a three-year sunset on that bill. Um so, um I think that uh you know, I don't know, the treasurer will have to decide how and how and you know, what they're going to do, but hopefully that um I think it's a a good thing. she did a very good job um educating commissioners. And again, you know, I said, you know, that should be happening in in um in in all your counties. People should be um forthright in telling you what's going on, why they need the money. You should see, you know, how much is being turned over and and the substantial loss. Uh because I know um you know the example that I use is when motor vehicle when we put the mover system in in 2012 and they said you know the paper there'd be less paper and you know the cost of counties but nonetheless they did that for 18 months and then we have to pay for the toner and the paper like I we had one meeting with the state I said yeah you all don't have any paper anymore it's all in the county buildings because they put the responsibility of title approving on there and um I said I sure am not going to get rid of the paperwork until those titles are issued and there's no problem but that you know still is a cost for storage of it and the the paper we're buying tons of of paper and uh you know so stuff like that I think the that the cost was justified and I think that and I hope that um you always have one or two treasures that may choose in any any organization that may go astray but hopefully I think they'll do the right thing and be responsible and hopefully the taxpayers will see the benefit in in in those increases. Um, they have this for KC. I don't know if I'm supposed to give this to tell your county story, but I think it's also a good u a good thing that we should do. You know, you could

share it with all the other counties as to what Gary County is doing. I don't know if this would be a thing for like Paige Mendoza that's good with or CBB or somebody that's put that information together. Yeah. To promote Perry County in some way, but uh I mean maybe can do it.

Okay. Yeah. But I thought that that was a good deal. Anyway, um I thought this um uh this I probably thought this and I was probably more comfortable this time, but um I thought it was a very good conference. you know, we broke down into, you know, county size and and discussed and and as you know, we all counties basically have the the same same issues as funding and um and you know, I guess, you know, property tax was just the main topic and data centers and um so um you know, I know it's I think it's Barber or Butler, one of those two counties. I think they're going to have uh I I think their commission meetings today, so I was going to try to watch it tonight when I got home, but you know, again, um a lot of people not happy about it. And you know, I you know, I I don't know if they they they have their place somewhere, but I don't think um in Kansas, they're looking for all the uh vacant land out here, and u I just don't think it's time to to do that for us. But anyway, um that is pretty much Yeah, I got home Friday and that was um pretty much all I had. So bet counselor, do you have anything to add? Anything for review?

Couple of minutes with Crystal. We need to amend the agenda because I was going to say I look down and it's like okay I make motion agenda agenda um for um the what would you call it the closing document for the property that was paying for um this was presented after the agenda had come out and I didn't see the paper whatever that was sent but I didn't know okay put Okay. What? We can put this at the end of the meeting. No, do it right now. I'm okay. You're not.

You got two. You got two minutes before Chris. Well, then we need to talk about it so I can talk fast enough. She can talk.

I did say although I did. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. No, you're fine. Yeah. Okay.

Good morning, commission. Jeremy Myers, public works administrator. Kaylin Ross, administrative services manager. Um, I was out Friday on annual leave. We received the document, the closing documents for the property located at 301 East 8th Street. We should have received a copy of that. We sent a copy of it to council as well for review. I think everything looks good. According to council, she's good with how it's written. So, we would recommend commission approval uh to move forth with these closing documents and obtain signatures as required.

I'll second. It's been moved and seconded and approved for commission. We also need to request a special check run to be made um for closing tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. So the rest of the payment that needs to be um made to the title company, the check will need to be made today if approved as well. And that amount should be $415,418. And that includes the fees for the title company and the rest of our payment for the property.

Absolutely. I'll make I'll second the motion for the check to be to be made for the amount of $15,418. Um, all those in favor. Thank you. A couple of spots to sign. It's actually 14 almost total. Yeah, but it's

Oh, okay. Thank you. What is it? 14628 is still closing 15418 the total. So the check tomorrow is going to be 14628 86 that 86

earnest money. Pretty good rain last night. Much needed. Have a few issues to deal with, but Yeah. But yeah, we definitely needed it.

Yeah.

That one just needs to print. I came through Florence yesterday afternoon. Boy, they had a rain up that way and a lot of hail, too. Wasn't very big. How pretty all the room. Oh my god, look how pretty it looks. Yeah, commission. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We were talking about burning because when we left on Saturday night, there was burning on the north side of the road closer to the deep end of throw a cigarette out. And then um then on further down was the fire and I said, "So we must have tossed that awful long. That wasn't a cigarette, but yeah, it was really burning." Yeah. Hey, Crystal.

Good morning, commission. Crystal Malos, HR director, special projects. I just have a couple uh out of office notifications and um the other CB director job applications have arrived in the last week. Just two or three I think the application. Yeah, this is these two. Okay. going to give their advice since the 20th. Yep. Thank you. I'd like to, you know, wait till, you know, May the and then next Monday.

Yeah, next Monday maybe um start looking at doing some interviews. Okay, that works for me. We have quite a few applications which I'm happy about.

Um not much to add. Um one of those is for me. I'll be out this Friday afternoon as part of my FMLA. You guys are aware of my situation. So, Friday afternoon, um visiting with the doctors. Um also want to let you know that last Thursday we had our first uh employee training day meeting. Got a lot of things addressed. uh some of the key speakers. One of the things that we're looking at is um doing an educational portion to help employees understand what other departments and divisions do at Gary County. You know, when somebody starts, they may not know much about local government. When they get going, they understand what their department does, but they might not understand how their department or office interacts with the others. So, we plan on on doing a panel to have all the departments uh department heads get up and talk about theirs and then also see about getting some uh onhand demonstrations from the sheriff's office for example with K9 unit. And um one of the recommendations brought up was to do a fundraiser. You know, in the past we've always had people bring food or similar items for the food pantry and we thought, well, money goes a lot farther than food. So, what if we did a fundraiser um where the employees could donate money and whichever department head got the most money could get tased. So, we brought that up at the sheriff's office and I said so long as they sign the waiver,

they could do that. So, I wanted to run it by the commission. We haven't fine-tuned the details and everything yet, but we think it would be a good idea, a good way to uh get some donations for the food pantry and for us to have a demonstration by the sheriff's office on how that stuff works and some fun competition rivalry. Uh because I imagine there'll be a lot of department heads wanting other department heads to get money but not them and and so on and so forth. But I thought it would be, you know, I told the commission I or the training committee that I would bring it up and see what your input was and if it's okay, then we will go with that. Well, I'd be fine with that. I know I'm donating.

Yeah. As long Yeah, all right. Then I will I will get with them and we'll work out the details on that. We don't have our next date scheduled yet, but we will be working on that. Thank you. And that is all I have for this week. We're busy working on a papers audit. Um re getting information available for uh our annual tag update. Um just plugging away all this kind of stuff all the time. So I'm going to say for Tammy's update if you guys need anything. You want me to go get her,

please? She's not watching.

Charles, are you another addition to the agenda or you just here? No, I'm here for Tammy. Okay. Yeah, she asked if the people who are on the committee. But now I've got questions about this tasing. I think that would make some money though. I think it would too. And maybe if they don't want to get tased, they could get like a piece or something

or maybe they have to match the funds. Oh, that would be good. Yes, the money does go harder than they can buy that very very cheap. I I got for charity.

I'd rather get the community like national night out. And so they kept saying, "Well, why don't you get tased?" I said, "If you can raise $500 for a shop with a cop, I'll do it." And like seven minutes later, they had said, "Dang, I should have said a thousand." I saw Sean Chanty get that taste. Yeah, I remember that. No, as soon as they stop tasing me, he feels

when Tony Wolf was sharing somebody in my office. I can't I can't remember the noise. I think the noise is awful. Oh, yeah. And when they do that for like like the volunteers only three seconds, it's not Are you wait Are we waiting? I think Crystal went to get some information that we had pulled. Jackie is the only one that hasn't made it in yet. I'm not sure if she saw the

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and get started if that works for the commission this morning. Tammy Robinson, the finance director. During my time today, we're going to be talking about a potential proposed schedule change. And just for introduction purposes, um part of this process with this project was to put together a team that would work with me on this information and trying to come to the best solution possible that we present to you. So, I did ask legal counsel Betsy to be in on it because it would potentially affect policy and so important to have legal involved in that aspect. Uh, I did request one commissioner to be in on it and uh Kathy Tmont, the chairman, volunteered for that. I have Crystal Malos again because it affects policy and she deals with the employee handbook. I asked her to be a part of it and also the schedules affect HR tremendously in tracking um how this is going to function. So asked Crystal to be a part of that. And then in addition I had Jackie Risinger the director from the register of deeds um office. She is the register. And then we had Jeremy Meyer from public works. He already has a modified schedule during seasonal time from Memorial to Labor Day. And then we had Sher Childs from the treasur's office. She's the treasurer because um she deals with a lot of the public and it's very important to try to make that function for her office. Also, as an upfront piece, Sher wasn't sure how she felt about this and so I really appreciated that she was willing to be on the team

and work through some of those options to determine whether it would potentially work for her office. Then I also had Charles Martinez, the H the health department director, and he also has a modified schedule where they take off on on Fridays at 3:00. him and Jeremy having that background I felt would be beneficial to us and maybe uh meeting roadblocks head on um based on their experience with that. Uh Jackie is also a millennial and that is another reason I picked her is because when you look at the workforce today 34% in 2025 was made up of millennials and I I mean I feel it's very important that we're looking at their their um aspect what they think about how the schedule is functioning how it is meeting their needs. Um, in addition, you know, we don't have any Gen Z's at this time that I could pull from, but they're expected to lead the workforce by 2035 with 31%. Uh, and that's based on studies that I pulled in looking at this research to determine what we could do. Um, so really the main thing that I started with Crystal and working towards this capstone project early last year because we knew that we had implemented a wage study. We had enhanced the county's benefit package and she has held uh multiple supervisory trainings um both in-house and also encouraged the supervisors to go outside of Gary County. Um but yet we were still encountering relatively high turnover and difficulty in filling positions. Some of them supervisory, some of them entry level. We've seen it both sets.

Now while we're in pretty good shape today with our workforce, we still have people coming and going and a lot of that is we have some of the department heads telling us that they still don't know that the pay is where it needs to be. Um, in talking with Crystal on that and looking at it from a budgetary aspect, we can't do a wage study every single year. There are other our competitors, Dickinson County, they did a wage study last year. So, they've taken some of our employees and that's because their wage study came in a little higher because as you know, when I present the CPIU every year, we don't normally give a cola to match that because we can't. There's just no possible way we can keep up with that. Um, Riley County had an 8% cola two years ago. There's no way we can match that. So, there's factors beyond our control in trying to keep up with the market because it we just there's just no possible way that we can do that.

Did the city do one this last year? Are they going to do one? I thought it Yeah, they did one. Um, I think they did a 5%. They did a cola, but I don't know that they did a wage study. Oh. Oh, I thought you I thought they did. I thought they had I know they talked about doing a wage study. I thought you were asking about a cola.

Yeah. So, all of these surrounding things has made it to a point to where we have to look at something besides just pay and benefits because there's no way that we can keep up with everyone on that level. So, in looking at the research and showing us that these two groups, the the millennials and the Gen Z, two things that they really look at is um work life balance and then technology. Um they also like growth potential in their positions. So when you're looking at those three factors, the one that's the lowest cost to implement is a work life balance change within your uh entity. So that one is why we pulled this one is to look at a potential to try to find a niche in the market so that we could potentially not only recruit people to come here but also to keep them here. And so in looking at that, we knew there were going to be some things that affected us. And when we sent out those surveys, which we did in January, um they were presented on in open meeting, the radio picked it up, they advertised it on the radio. Dwey put it on um the JC Post. We had it on our website as a news flash. We had the surveys down in the treasur's office for people to pick up and turn back in. We didn't get a huge response. We got 53 that were from the public and we got 21 that came in from the actual departments. A lot of those were made up of employees who completed the documents. And when you look at the numbers, we were about half and half. Half with yes and half with nos. And some of the factors that affected us on

the nose were and some of these were comments that people put on the surveys, but we knew that not all offices could possibly uh follow the exact same schedule because of how we function for the public. Uh we knew there were some offices that would not or may not be able to participate with 24-hour schedules or emergencies that they're dealing with. Um, one of the things we also did was reach out to other outside governmental agencies that have already implemented this change. I had seven county cities that came back with information for me. And one of the key takeaways from them was that if you were going to do this, you really should consider implementing it with a trial run prior to making it permanent to make sure that it was actually going to work for the offices. Uh, another thing that came up on the surveys was parents with schoolaged children or other dependents may not be able to uh make this work for them in their schedule. And one thing that Crystal's group did when they did employee task force was they talked about this. Um, a gentleman came up with a really good solution to consider and that was maybe you do this on seasonal like the public works do where maybe you could do it in the summer potentially. So that was a good leverage point for me that potentially if we couldn't make it any other way work any other way possibly we could do it with a summer schedule. Um and just to note the most popular answer on the surveys was a 4-day work week Monday to Thursday 7 to 5:30 p.m. with a 30 minute lunch and closed completely on Fridays. And that was one thing the team was really good about. We discussed that. We discussed burnout. We discussed the reality of family and potential chores

at home that you had to take care of. Um, and you know, while four 10-hour days may work to some degree for a period of time, it may not be something that would work for us on a permanent basis without creating burnout and creating more issues that we might have to figure out how to deal with later. So that reality check was really good to talk about, talk through and see what else we could look at. Um, one thing I also want to note is in doing this project, there was not a lot of cost to the county. We did have some paper and the printing costs for the surveys that we put out. And then this team working with me had time that they put in to do it. It was during work hours, so it wasn't an additional pay and they are all exempt employees. So even if we would have went outside work hours, there wouldn't have been additional pay that went for that. A couple of things we talked about for savings. Um we would anticipate there would be a decrease turnover cost and a small decrease in utility costs as we would be uh closing the offices in the afternoons on Fridays and the peak periods for utilities or afternoons and early evenings. Now we don't know what those costs are until we actually would do this project. So that's something that we would be tracking from now to the end of the year to determine what the statistics actually looked at. And if you guys approve a trial run with this, we would have that information to bring back at the end of the year for you to consider whether we would continue on as a permanent change or whether we feel like it's just not beneficial to the county or to the people.

So with that, our proposal instead of that most popular answer of a 4-day work week was to do a 4 and a half day work week for a six-month trial run beginning in June. Now, not everybody has the exact same schedule, and I did give you a proposed office hour worksheet to review. The one thing I want to note um is right now our office hours here at this building are 8:30 a.m. to open the doors and serve the public. What we're proposing is to change that so that the doors actually open at 8:00 here every day Monday through Friday. Currently, we have the treasur's office and the register of deeds office who open at 8:30 and they are proposing to open at 8 and work through till 5 Monday through Thursday. Um 45 minute lunches and that would allow the treasurer's office to close their office at 12:30 on Fridays and on Fridays they would have appointments only. the register of deeds because of their work with title companies. They're proposing that two employees work from 8 to 12:30 on Friday mornings and then two would be there from 12:30 to 5 which would still give them those half days off and they would make that intermittently switching with the employees so they're not stuck always having the afternoons or always having the mornings. uh finance and human resources. While we'll still start serving the public at 8:00 am when the doors open, we are proposing our office hours to begin at 7:30. And really, that's very important to the HR side because they do

investigations. They meet with employees before their shifts or sometimes at the end of their shifts if they're 24-hour shifts. Um, and that would allow them to have that extra 30 minutes in the morning to do that and to help serve the employees for that purpose. Uh, we're looking at closing our doors at 2 on Fridays completely um 30 minute lunches during the week and the health department currently they're 8 to 5 with a 30 minute lunch and then they do 8 to three with a 1-hour lunch on Friday. They're proposing to do 8 to 5:30 with a 30 minute lunch and then on Fridays 8 to 12 with no lunch. So that's going to allow them to be in their building 30 minutes later each day, which would help serve the public that need to come in after work for services. The appraiser, they're looking at adjusting their schedule to be in their office available at 7:45, open to the public at 8, and they would work through till 5 with half an hour lunch. And then Friday, they would be there from 8 to 1. The clerk elections office, they're looking at 7:30 to 5:00 with halfhour lunches, 8 to 12 on Friday. And then of course when election season is in place their hours are going to be modified because they have their doors open for voting and training differently than all the rest of us and that won't change. Public works they currently have that Memorial to Labor Day schedule 7 to 3:30 with 30 minute lunches Monday through Friday and the rest of their uh staff is 8 to 4:30 within half an hour lunch. They're proposing to do 8 to 4:30 with an half half an hour lunch and

um that wouldn't change for their office staff, but their seasonal hours will be 7 to 4:30 with 30 minute lunches and work on Fridays from 7 to 11 with no lunch. Emergency management, they already do an half an hour lunch and usually try to get out at 4:30 if it's possible depending on who they're serving. and they weren't going to make any additional changes to that. Then clear to the right, you can see a few of the offices chose not to to participate due to um how they function within their offices. The sheriff and the county attorney are both elected. County attorney deals with the district court schedules. The sheriff has looked at potentially modifying some of their admin staff. Uh again, it's not part of this study. and community corrections because they work through the state, they're not participating in this. They have a flex um flex hour schedule that they use for their after hours. And then CBB does not have a director at this time. And so we chose not to make a change for that office until there was a director in place to um look at that. And then GIS, they work with contractors. And so at this point in time, Troy didn't feel like he wanted to adjust his hours from what they currently are. So that's what we have for proposed. I know what you really would have liked is that everybody had the same schedule. Um, we weren't able to do that exactly, but what we were able to do was to get the doors open at 8 a.m. and everyone serving the outside people at that 800 a.m. hour. I would like to ask if any of my team has anything additional they would like to add to the presentation before I take any questions.

No, I think you covered it well.

From from the HR perspective, I do think that the flexibility um and the adjustment of the hours will increase our applicant pool um and uh hopefully our retention as well. I did do a um pull on our current employees, not counting vacancies, elections, or firefighters. We currently have 174 active employees. Um and uh only 10% are under the age of 25 right now. So 10.34%. Um not a lot, but that's where our new hires are coming from. 23% are between the ages of 25 and 35. 28% 35 to 45. And then we drop significantly with 45 to 55 at 15%, 55 to 65 at 16%, and over 65 at 6.9%. So I think by doing this, we'll actually get the um people that are actively seeking long-term employment um give them that flexibility that they're looking for. And two other things I do want to point out is if you would approve this today, we would start providing this information to the public uh on May one and we would do that for the whole month of May. So we would have it on the radio if we can get free spots. We would have it on social media on our website. Um we would ask JC Post to provide the information. We're also going to make half-page flyers so that the offices would have them in their offices for anybody that visits and we would be able to give them to the people at that point in time. Uh we really want to work hard to make sure that this isn't something that people are caught off guard on. Travis, when I was working with him, one thing he suggested is to send actual

emails to the uh commander garrison on Fort at Fort Riley, um just to make sure that that information is provided to the soldiers as well. And we would have that month of May to do that. And then as of June 1st is when we're looking to implement this schedule. and that would give us that summer time to kind of finesse things where people's schedules are just a little bit more flexible. We do have some things within the offices that we know that we may have to adjust or look at as we go and see how we're going to handle them. Um, so we aren't coming in here thinking that this is going to be just a perfect change and everything's going to work. We know there are going to be things that we have to look at and figure out how to handle and see if they're manageable. June 1st is a Monday, so it's perfect timing as far as beginning of a month, the beginning of a week.

Um, and so you'd go June only to January to November or November

and then then we would to the end of November and then we would have December to get all the information and come back to you to determine whether it would be final. Um, and that's the other thing. So, the departments would need to be tracking the hours from 8 to 8:30 to see how many more people they're serving. Are we actually serving people during those times? Are the employees happy with this change? Are they enjoying getting to have that half day off on Friday and take, you know, that extra day for a weekend trip? Um, are we getting feedback? I I think I provided you a feedback form that also would be available in all of the offices. And really, there's two reasons for that feedback form. We want the public or the employees to give us that information, but we don't want the same one coming in seven different times and us thinking we've heard it seven different times. So, we want one person with that name and that date and what their feedback was and not that same person a lot of times to tell you because it would be skewed. The information would be skewed that we gave you. So, we tried to think of a way to ensure that we're only giving you information one time from one person. Um so these will be available um like for the registered deeds they just would hand them one and ask them to fill it out and treasur's office on the counters.

So if someone comes in yelling and they don't want to fill out a form then also somebody in their office could say could I take your name put the date down write down what the what the information was that they were upset about or um or if someone comes in and says hey you're doing a great job. Okay, can you tell me your name? We can jot it down ourselves if they don't want to fill out a form, but that will help us to track it because without that information, we can't really tell you if this is successful.

I'd like a copy of them because I, you know, I want to hear what people are saying. So, uh, you know, once they're turned in or whatever, I think the commission should be um able to get a copy of them and I hope it's strongly pushed so that we get a lot of community feedback. Well, and that's the thing, too. If we're having our department head meetings, that's something that at those at that point in time, we could also bring them and provide you that information, you know, so it wouldn't just have to be at the end of the six months, but at the department head meeting, you could have that feedback provided as well, and it would be on the information publicly for the people to know, too. So, so there are a lot of things Crystal I think has um committed to adjusting her um application process so that people know that we would have a flexible schedule and then also doing follow-up questions when she does the orientations and also when she does exit interviews. Uh was the flexible schedule a part of your decision to either come here or to leave? uh so that we have that information as well because that's going to determine whether the turnover has changed.

Now is that information on those exit interviews uh given to the commission? I'm not seen any. Okay. Sometimes I'll let you know if there's a trend or whatever, but normally it's just it's when I give them to the terminating employees, I let them know this is just for we we can't fix something if we don't know it's broken. So we're looking for a trend. was can we do a change in our benefits and all of a sudden people aren't leaving for benefits and things. But the the most popular one right now is people are just moving out of our area.

So right now that's the biggest one is why they're leaving and sometimes people just don't want to fill it out. So they they just don't. But we're going to start having one-on-one meetings with them so that I can ask them in person. If they don't want to fill out the form, that's fine. Just come and talk with me. I'll take notes as I always do and be able to address the So, at this time they're just filling out the exit interview form and but you're not sitting.

Yeah. Sometimes they meet with me, sometimes they don't. I'm just going to start making it where it's they they will meet with me because that's in right now we mail their COBRA information, certified mail. And I think instead of doing that, they'll come in, I'll give them their COBRA information, have them sign that they got it, and then visit with them at that time. So that's all I have for a presentation.

Well, I I personally, you know, when I was on the uh the committee, but um I you know, I'm opening open to trying anything, you know, once and seeing how how things go. Um I wasn't real thrilled about different offices having different times, starting and ending times, you know, of course the vehicle um you know, we've always done that. And so depending on what day it is, then you either hear flack about it, you know, why, you know, why are they closed at 4:30 or they get the the you know, just the general, you know, because most people wait until the end of the month or whatever, their last day. But um I am thinking of it with the perspective of the taxpayer and um you know, again with um you know, some of these offices being locked, I don't like that. I've said that from the get-go. It's a public building. We're public employees and the public should have access to these office buildings during during office hours. Um, that being said, I I truly appreciate your your time and effort and all those of you that are on on the board because uh or the committee to look at these and the start times. I I could see you made a real effort and uh uh registered D's I applaud you because you really had to move yours around in scheduling it's it's tough Sherry with hers you know number of employees it's tough to you know it used to be you know our employees we had so many that were over so many times you have to we've got a lot of longtime employees so trying to make that schedule work and fitting it for everybody knowing that you've got over you know we had threequarters of our staff that that needed to mandatory time off. So to fit those times within a you know that certain time frame was hard and then to schedule different times for lunches and getting and all those other thing that's that's a challenge for for department heads. But

that being said um I uh you know I I see that the and also my comment was with this with the office building itself. I think that those and you know 8:00 for the treasurer and the appraiser and register deeds because in inevitably if you got a problem with the register deeds officer come to the treasur's office and you have to go to someplace else. I would be ticked off and I'm sure everybody else would too. you go to one office and they say, "Hey, you know, you're going to have to go to the register D's office first." And you go to the register deeds and they're not not uh they're not open or whatever, but I like the fact that you've got at least eight 8:00. I you guys worked really hard to make this work and uh you know, you've done a a great job in doing that. And in saying that, I you know, I'd be I'd be willing to give it a six. you know, if you guys are all willing to deal with it because you're the ones that have to deal with it, um, then I would be I would be willing to to, you know, have have you go forward with it. But I would I'm very interested and I and I will Commissioner Gono wants to see the results of those surveys and I hope that it's strongly pushed because we want ine inevitably we're going to do that, but we're going to hear it on the street, I'm sure. So yes, um I want

a motion. I want all that. I haven't yet because I'm not done. But in saying that, I just uh um hope Commissioner Asher uh said that he wasn't going to be here today, but he did send me a text and said that he would like to be part of the conversation and to save the vote and tell me to be present. And I Okay. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that, too. But um I mean look at everybody that's here. I mean, you know, I I do appreciate that. And if Kathy and I are on the same page, no, I I appreciate that he wants to be here, but if we're still on if we're on the same page, I don't see why delaying the the we could still have feedback.

Yeah. From him, but I guess J is that that is true. But um but um sorry going back with my motion I I guess do you want to make a motion for motion that we do it on the temporary basis and um and then expecting all the intel and um uh survey information uh feedback from employees um presented to us in December and to see if we're going to go through with this in 2027.

Okay. And I I would I would second that motion. All those in favor I motion here. again Tammy and I um you've done a lot of work on this and you know we've talked about it in the past but it just is you know how do you how do you how do you do it with this office and whatever but you know for again for kudos to the department heads that attended and participated because I'm sure that that was a wrestling match too as to how you're going to get it done but uh you know it's it's not easy but if you're willing to to go forward with it for

yeah I think it's a great idea to try and you guys worked hard on trying to figure out what was going to work for each of the departments. So, I appreciate everybody's input on that. Well, and I I think it's important that we track the information to to determine whether it really is going to be successful for us to go on because if you have the employees um unhappy with it and you're not tracking that or you know that or maybe they're afraid to speak up, which I want to make sure that they're not afraid to speak up. No one's going to be crucified. This is the only way we're going to know whether it's going to be a good or a bad decision. Um and Tammy, did you make sure that um too at the beginning of yours, this is a capstone project for your leadership class, right? So, right, you know, your presentation and and your work done on this is, you know, it's really good. So, I have to present it in May and the paper is due May 1st

and so um kudos to you. you've done a lot of work and and u well I really appreciate these people that are behind me that came in and and worked with me and talked about some things because you know you always think that you are going to meet everything headon and you never can. there's always going to be an exception that you have to think about. And um experience and institutional knowledge is super important when you're working through some of this stuff. And I feel like everyone that was on the team with me provided that for me to help determine how I wanted to address the paper and and the project. So, it was great. And I'm sure there's going to be some hesitation at first. Nobody likes change. And then, you know, six months from now if we're talking about not doing it. You're going to get those same people that are going to be complaining that they'll stop this. So,

well, the 8:30 start time, too. That's that's just, you know, that's the way that it's always been deal. But, you know, I know that that comments have been made before that, you know, that would be nice to have earlier times because those that are on their way to work or whatever, then they would be able to come in. So, that should be should be good for those at least that part of it is. Yeah. And I hope the public when they see that, you know, takes just a minute to tell the girls in the treasurer's office or in the register of deeds office or the appraisers's office to let them know that they appreciate that they're open at 8 instead of 8:30. Yeah. So, it'll be June 1st through November 30th is your

Okay. And then December, we'll um provide another presentation to the Yep. Okay. Well, we probably went a little long and I know we have the CIP. Uh, are you guys good with going ahead and moving forward with that? It's relatively abbreviated. Um, thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think we can do that pretty quick.

Okay. So CIP work session the second one for 2026. Um below I have pres pro provided you with the cash position through March 31st. I also provided you the non-funded CIP project list and the funding authorization form for the one project that's being requested during this uh quarter. And so at this point in time, um, cash that's available for new projects is 2.5 million. And that's taking into account our beginning cash, everything we've taken in, everything we've spent, and including and that includes what you've approved for projects that haven't been spent, and it's taking off any of the reserves that we have. So 2.5 million is what's available. um we didn't have any transfer come in in 2026. The only thing that we had uh for revenue that we were expecting besides interest was the EMS reserve of the 72,500 which we moved in there and has since moved to the city for their CIP program. And you can see there are several different departments that have requested funds, but only the one requested them to be approved during this quarter and that was for the GIS office concrete steps and landing replacement. Estimated cost the 25,000. Jeremy is here. This was a project that he brought forth. So if you have any specific questions on it, he would be able to answer those for you. Well, I did. That's there. Those are horrible.

They have been for a while. Yeah. I didn't realize it's that bad. So, yes, that's a good to get that done. Now, what will how will that impact? Will you you will you have to tear that whole out or are you just mending that area? They will tear it out. It'll be a total removal. So, how what will the access into that? How will they get into the ramp? We can use some access through the old snap office temporarily. Oh, can't you get it through? Can't you Oh, you have to do the whole entire thing. Yeah, that's what it's Oh, okay. I thought you were just going to do this this area. You're doing Well, it's just it's the steps there and then that cap on top of it.

Yeah. So, yeah. Temporarily while they pour it, but it it'll be a frequent turn around. Yeah, we have the Snapad office that we always gain access through there. There's nobody currently being housed in that office area. Okay. And we still have to come to work.

Yeah. Just so you're aware, there's a few items on here that I've been working with Jeremy and he's looking at some other uh potential revenue streams for projects. So, um, we're looking at that courthouse project to determine whether that's something that the facility funds could handle. And then, um, we're looking at the new lighting pools, the rodeo arena and softball field potentially with the sports complex funds, which we've talked about in the past. And then that exterior painting of the senior center. um their building committee is really good about helping fund that. So it may not be that full cost that we would incur. So I think that might be part of the reason why Jeremy's holding off on those at this point in time.

It is. And then with the motor grader, I'm still working on some lease numbers on that just to make sure what we're doing currently is making sense of the possible lease option. As you can see, the cost of those at $350,000 a piece takes a pretty good impact on that CIP fund every time we have to purchase one of those. But I've been actively working with Foley's on that and they're supposed to get me some numbers and have a meeting here within the next couple weeks with them. the 3/4 ton pickup truck. I didn't do a request on that this quarter simply because we have one approved for a vehicle that we're still trying to get pushed through and get finalized on that.

Have we ever checked to see um through the 4 um uh aspect of it of seeing if there's any grant monies that support the facilities that 4 activities are in? I have not myself. Okay. I don't know if you even know if there is any out there, but I know that they do there's a lot of support for 4. So, I thought maybe checking into something like that. I know at our meeting, Jeremy, that they were expressing the the need for the new lighting out at the, you know, lighting poles out there at softball field and and rodeo.

Um, do you have a projection as to when you might consider doing that? Because I they sound like that was a problem out there. Yeah. Um I need to get some updated estimates on that project to be sure that we're still relatively in the ballpark rodeo arena wise. But yeah, no, I would expect to probably bring that to you in a third quarter CIP request. And that might be something that we can use the um the new sports complex monies for, you know, that are improving our um sports facilities. Um,

and that was actually in effect on Monday, last Monday, the 20th. So, at any point in time, those requests up to 100,000 are up to 2 million on our fourth complex. Just over a millionart, right? The Yeah. So, but the charter resolution said once it's in effect, then the $100,000 would go into effect just Yeah. And that would certainly have to be an offseason project. I mean, we're getting into softball and fair and all that stuff coming up. So, now is not the time of year to

make that request and try to implement a project. Um hopefully when we start the project with the concrete, you know, they had that issue where they started all that stuff without telling the offices over there that they were doing it. So hopefully you are make sure that there's a public u you know on the website or however on our county website that people know that that's going to be happening. Yes, certainly. Yeah, that project kind of slid on us as a city project. Sure. Yeah. I wasn't Yeah. putting it on you all. I know that. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah. And I think that Yeah. That got away from them too because they they I think we're aware that they were specifically starting for them because they were So, okay. So, well, I make a motion that we go ahead um with the concrete landing and step replacement for G.

Yes, I'll certainly. So, I have the funding authorization form. Can I go ahead and have the sign that Thank you. All right, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, we will now move into the um public building commission report. You get off.

Can you do handle that by yourselves? Yeah, I think we could probably I figured you could. Well, Ken can I don't know about me. I don't know about me this morning. I don't know if he's like you, but I think I had just shy of 3,000 weather alerts last night. Man, that was crazy.

Um, okay. So, we continue to uh bring in more money than we we pay out uh for the the hospital uh there. This last month was $25, $139 60 almost $66,000 for the quarter. And this of course money all goes to eventually repaying or helping repay that bond that we have. I contacted the the uh collection agencies that help us and they gave me a figure of somewhere around $9 million it's still owed. That doesn't include uh bankruptcies. Now, how much of that really is collectible? I don't know or how many decades down the road it'll be collectible, but that's kind of the number that I was that I was given amongst all of them. So we continue to um take some money in. We are excuse me um looking at a little change in the way we do it. Right now all the letters that go through one company or the correspondents still says Gary Community Hospital is collecting this money. Well obviously Gary Community Hospital doesn't exist anymore. So they are wanting to move us to a different platform where it actually comes out with Hen Long who does some of our steel collected as you know I mean the same terms and everything is what they're doing now except the letters will now say that they are you know you contact them and and not

us not Gary Community Hospital or me. So, I'm still waiting for Peter if you can get him to call me on uh there's two they're just little onepage contracts, but I want him just to look at that before I do it. And I got one other issue I'm still trying to resolve, too. But it will they will then uh do all of the recording and everything. Uh so, basically my job goes away, which is okay. And um we'll continue to so basically it probably falls on Reese over here maybe to um record this these from the four different agencies those four different uh checks that we get or deposits and uh make up something. But um otherwise everything else should go through there if this all works out. But we're still, you know, bringing in bringing in more. I did the next thing there is I actually graph things out so you can kind of see um how we're doing. And now this month in April, it's going to be another big bump. We got a $140,000 check for I don't know, as far as I can tell, an audit that they finally completed. And I don't know why it takes them so long to do these things, but um so we'll have another big bump this uh in in April time frame. And so we've got um $100,000 in one count, 526,000 in the other account that I said will eventually go towards help paying this this bond off when we get to that

point. But otherwise, we're just continuing on. I appreciate all your hard work on this. Have any questions for John? Well, the only thing I know, I think we're coming along, they're coming along pretty good with the updates up there and we're going to be running out of money one of these days. Yeah, this old part of the hospital is pretty much going to take what we have committed, which is the same as we was last time.

Somewhere in the 3 million left, I think something like that still. And u Jeff had said that it's going to go fast here. So, yeah. But it does sound like from what I've heard everything's going well up here. Yeah, me too. I've heard that as well. Well, I appreciate the board, the PBC board from all their hard work on this and I know it was it's been a process this whole time. Yeah, but it's but it worked out I feel for the best. I mean I I I'm just how well Smart Bell is doing and I'm really happy we went with them. Yeah. Well, we've had a few things where we ended up in Topeka and it's so seamless.

Yeah. To go down there to a doctor and I mean, you can be checked in and everybody, they have everything right there on the computer. Just Well, even getting stuff done here, right? Crazy in and out.

Thank you. Well, we got pretty easy. Thank you so much. It's getting easier as we go along. We're head to jail next. No, I'm retiring. I don't blame you. Me, too. He says that. I keep seeing him. I know. He's always He's always You're always Oh, yeah. You don't have anybody. You need somebody on your board, call John. I'm usually the one dumb enough to not to say no.

That's not ruining. Somebody had to get something. Oh, I hurt my knee again.

Sounds like a lot of money. weekend, your daughter played softball. No, we didn't have softball this weekend. We had soccer and the school carnival and piano. Wow. Where did she take piano? Uh the boys actually Oh, okay.

Oh, wow. That's neat. Yeah. finally rain.

Yes, a lot. When Kellen used to play baseball, we used to go and then, you know, we started in the morning and, you know, sometimes late at night, but I haven't decided which one's worse. So we went to Addison. All of her dances again were on one day except one. So we got there at 8 and then we got home at 12. But just sitting in a the expo center in those chairs, you know, they're just stay I took my uh seat pad on Sunday because then we had to go back for one one more on Sunday. So I told the girls I'm going to start carrying this around. That was tough. So in Topeka

yeah it's just long days but you know they have it such that you can't really sometimes that you know one dance so close you can't really don't even have time to eat lunch you know or something or whatever but it was looking pretty ominous out yesterday I was surprised that looking west here I thought maybe and I guess it did rain here a little bit Now some people say those are

Do you know when the joint meeting is Kathy? Um May 18. I'm impressed. You just pulled that right on your head. Where's your hubby? He had a doctor's appointment to be Oh. I mean

basically we went down there walking one day and just feels so good. you know we down both they gave me a book And basically because that's grounded,

right? At least our cabin had grass down. Yeah. You probably got more down there, didn't you? No, not really. Really? Yeah. I mean, really came up quick. It was over the bank. When I came through, that Keith lives. Is that the creek? Yeah. Park Street goes through his place. So,

you can also A lot of our friends down there over by towards north of northeast of Dwight. They had almost 4 in. Yeah. And I think it was just a little bit that way that cuz I mean I think we had two and a half something like that. Yeah. I was surprised how and I know I didn't think when we went to bed I didn't think it was going to do nothing because it didn't look bad. No, they kept saying it was going to but I thought oh there it'll split again. Yeah.

Oh well. And then like Ken said, my phone went off, my radio went off, everything was going off. Yeah. 3:00 in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. I think I must have turned off notifications or something. I did because I didn't get anything because I was like nothing going on around here. Yeah. No, I'm bad. I put my phone clear on the other end of the house. It's like Yeah. Yeah. She didn't look in the stem cell, right? So something happens. It's like,

yeah, I'll let my dog come tell me. Army Ranger and he got had some injuries, you know, duty injuries. He doesn't have much good and he's very hard. They had to go several places. I wouldn't have

Do we need to make a decision on um you know our joint meeting on May 18th our team meeting? Oh, did we just want to leave a regular meeting? Yeah, we could just leave that as Yeah. Okay. May 18th because of the holiday because usually it's the joint meetings that Monday, but Oh, yeah. That's what I was thinking. Why are they together? Yeah, that's why it's cuz they So, you don't get one up to the 18th. Yeah. Okay. We'll just have a regular day meeting. Okay. Yeah. Yay.

I don't know if that'd be kind of a good um thing for like a topic that Tammy I'd kind of like having a department there to talk about something, you know, like Jeremy did with his. Is there anything else that we could schedule? Yeah, that's I put that on there. I Yeah, I was going to say the hours change would be a good one. I don't know who. Okay, I'll talk to Tammy about that. Yeah, but you just all then have the eight. That's all I've got so far. And I'm just, you know, and you make the agenda. Okay.

Yeah. And then so you might put that tentatively on there and then I'll talk to Tammy. I have to take Chase to his allergy appointment today. So that delete that off. Hello.

Hello. Hi, Sheriff. Good morning. Y'all waiting on me? We are a little early, but I am a tad early. Is Keith here? No. You ready to get started now? Certainly. All right. Well, first I'm going to hand out to you guys because Keith asked for copies the 2025 totals. Um, and if you remember, he asked for the 2025 totals for the year. I said that I do I did not do those because I do it quarterly and it's kind of reputating and repeating the same thing. But since he wanted it, I went ahead and edit it all up and got him a yearly. You're welcome.

So, we don't need to talk about that unless you guys want to because all the quarterly reports have been

documented all on Facebook. But uh I will continue with the bi-weekly report stats that will cover April 8th through April 21st. We average a daily gill population during those two weeks for 98. So our population is back up closer to 100. It's kind of been staying there. I imagine with new Senate bills and stuff, it'll probably eventually get a little over 100, but hopefully it doesn't get out of hand. eight accidents in those two weeks, 53 assisted outside agencies that we went to. We had four calls that either were battery or assault. We had 78 calls or correction, 78 citations issued in that time frame. 155 papers were served, civil papers. We had one domestic incident, four drug investigations, three DUIs, 11 prisoner transports. We had one shots fired call. We have conducted 171 traffic stops and we had 28 arrests for a total of 517 primary incidents with an additional 126 calls for service for a total of 643 during that twoe time frame. Any questions about stats? Okay. I don't know if Kathy updated you guys about Ponty mental health came by or anything with

I mentioned it and I said um that you might brief them, you know, more on your your take on how it went. I I appreciate the opportunity since I haven't been on it before to know. I was surprised at the that with the I didn't know that once a prisoner is taken in and goes into the facility that those that u those things stop and that's where the county picks up. So that yes pick up that we're dealing with because obviously Pony Mental Health does not want to use their resources and money because now per statute it's on the taxpayers but as you were probably aware of the meeting I said you know I did say well it it is up to you on

what that contract looks like Mike you know he can either charge us this much or give us a little better discount but as you mentioned in the uh meeting he's kind of consistent across the board on all jails and that's kind of the going rate. Uh but uh as he also mentioned, there's lots of stuff to write off, too. So, it's up to him on I think we need to keep track of it. And whatever they charge you, we subtract from what we give them the next year.

So, we're paying for it. you know, once the contract ends with our current medical provider, which we have no, you know, thoughts of changing, but it could be an option where we figure out what that percentage is going towards the mental side of things and uh maybe go with Pontia on that and just keep jail medical and then go with the ever possibility through Pont could be an option. Well, it's like everything else that you know until you um sit in that chair, you don't realize all the services and everything. And you know, again, um you know, some of those things we talked about at our our conference, all the stuff that the countyy's expected to provide with with money's going more and more out the door. Um but um uh we need to make sure that be would they say for 100 of the um inmates that over half of them need

Yeah. roughly roughly 50% need services of some sort that mental health can provide average of 100. Yeah. And it's getting worse every day. I mean, you know, it just like everything else and you know, uh the officers having to uh manage it out on the street and then when you come in and and having to do that. So, you know, it's another one of those places that can counties are it's mandatory counties provide those services. So, you know, those are the things I guess we're going to, you know, have conversation during budget time because you need to have those resources available to it. It is much easier in Raleigh County with the uh crisis uh unit that they have

247. They also have police response advocates that can respond out. Um they have a a team that can respond out Riley County for many different things. We don't really have Is that different than that mobile service with the police and sheriff? Oh, they will come to every single call that we need them on over there. When it comes to someone that is in need of assist mental health or who this those teams of people the teams of of that are under the mental health umbrella um it's a different funding right now. Yeah. Oh.

Now I have spoke with Junction City because they see the need for it. as as you know out of that let's say average of 100 inmates 50 50 of those probably need services or at some point in time maybe have a a crisis on the streets or in the jail and so talking to Junction City Police Department primarily assistant chief Cory Odell they're exploring and they may have it on their budget I haven't talked to him recently but they're exploring a police response advocate over here and and actually I think he's trying to get it on this budget for 2027 so you know they're going to deal with that much more than we are on the street because as you know the city takes the majority of the calls compared to what we take in the county but we assist them we need it more in the jail side so that's the avenue I'm trying to score

yeah yeah in Raleigh county do they go to the jail the the um crisis they don't you know okay no one's going to pay mental health or no one's going to pay it's they're not they're not going to take from their pool of money when they the taxpayers have to do it um it's it's a money Now, you know, Mike with Pony Mental Health, he said there's other avenues that we can explore. And I was the the the police response advocate the crisis. Do they go to the jail for for since they're they're employed by kind of employed by they will do they will do nothing in the jail when it comes to like treatment but they will go down there

if the crisis or if they have a contract which continental health you know I don't know what the hours of the contract is but they do have a contract with Riley County okay is my understanding and Mike did confirm that they do have a contract with county when we spoke with him but he said there are ever other avenues that we can explore. We'll see what that looks like. I mean, I know with our 10 hours what? Well, that's what I was saying with Tiffany, we do 10 hours and most of her I mean, yeah, she's in the jail, but a lot of that stuff's handled on tele tell via via Zoom or safer as well.

It is. And and most of those are now I don't want to like mistake I want to say she said like 8 to 12 minutes is a time frame like so you can get that done in 8 to 12 minutes an assessment it's not it's not like a 30 minute phone call or yeah it's very efficient and so those are the avenues if you if you uh you know remember that Kathy those are avenues like well maybe we can get a uh in at a more an introduction rate because we're just seeking over the phone assessments. an inperson assessment.

You don't by chance. Did you recite a a that Senate bill or whether statute the other day? I thought somebody said um you know again you know that's something that we need to talk to legislators about is you know oh the one with the uh the funding bag. Yeah, we definitely need to bring that up. I mean I am surprised that has not brought been brought up more but it's probably just who's going to fund it. Well, especially with that bill that they passed to put more in everything. It just is. Now, we were uh scheduled to, you know, they mentioned that liaison at the meeting

which will help with post when they're bonding out. We get their services right away and any assistance where we were supposed to meet with them at 9:00 a.m. today. They did not show. So that was kind of oh awkward because I was emailing her the entire time last week and then another ammo showed up. Oh wow. So that's something that we were not taking advantage of is getting the paperwork of their clients to them so when they bond they can immediately go back into their care. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's something we're going to really push for that would help. Yeah. Any other questions?

Nope. I appreciate you, like I said, being in on that um meeting because it just educated me a little bit more on that side of of your your stuff. So, yeah. Appreciate that. You're welcome. All right. You guys have a great day. Thank you.

Good morning. Hi. Hi. We're running a little bit early. So, if you all want to go ahead and go, you are welcome to do so.

And I keep had some flooding out at his his place. So, I had a typo on that email. You didn't? I did. Just on the runs part. You got the quarter one. Yeah.

Yes, they should have that. Okay, you want to do the first quarter of the month. So, you can see it's right off bat the $326,359.90 total charges posted from Omni for this first quarter of 2026. and it gives you last year's if you want at the beginning but

yeah what what was that I don't or the end which one the annual you don't have that one I don't think I have that you don't have it on I didn't have all my stuff here I got Okay, should have it.

Yes. Good. So, first quarter in 2025 was for yearto date totals was 337 36.50. So we're a little bit down as of this year because this year is 326 35990. So but last year we did end with increasing call volume to 417 EMS calls 484 responses. So this year she's a little slow and K will get to that in a second if she had any more questions for fire.

Yes. We the county. Yeah. Okay. We'll go to the um so uh unlike last year we where we tracked just incident numbers, we're tracking incident numbers and response numbers also. Um can you explain the difference?

Absolutely. So um on the top one is the incident numbers. So, if we are called out to a car wreck and there's uh three people in a the car, um that would be one response but three incidents because we'll evaluate all three patients. Um sometimes we may go to a house u for a domestic and there might be two people that are injured. Um so that would be two separate incidents but one response. And so that's why the number of responses will always be lower than the number of incidents. So um when we started calculating uh fire calls, uh rescue calls and then EMS calls, we're like wait a second at the towards the end of the year, we're like um the the math wasn't quite mapping. And then we started looking at it and it was the response number versus the incident number that was um causing the um wasn't really a math error, it was a calculation error. So um that is where how we're calculating both now. So we're providing a true and accurate information now. But um yeah, so uh you uh can see that uh January we were uh responses 242. February was down to 181. March up to 217 and April we're not very far in. So, um that's kind of a wash, but February was kind of a slower month,

but um you know, uh spring and summer's right around the corner, and we'll uh see what uh warm weather and lake season and uh construction on the interstate and everything else does for us. But you also have the um responses by zone. And then on the print out that I just provided you, it was the uh transfers that was what um was in the packet that was calculated incorrectly. It still had the 2025 data. So, um, last quarter we did 20, uh, nonflint hills transfers and 12 Flint Hills transfers out. And then I saw uh as you have requested you can see the breakdown responses by area uh Junction City, Milford, Grand Plaza, unincorporated or outside the uh county. I can talk a little on the CIP since I'm already here. It's all right. I know you guys just had your little session with that. Um Tammy did send that out which is I will fill that out and have it enter before May 18th. That just gives you guys a heads up of what was going on. But last year um May 19, 2025, we sent you guys that we were going to get a med unit and three auto pulses. And then we updated the auto pulses because the price changed on that and we sent that uh in January of 2026. The med unit

we still have that in our budget and we are looking at very much buying a type three med unit this year. So along with what you already contributed to for the auto pulses. So just a heads up. And next year too, I we will put in information on to possibility of starting a rotation on our ZO monitors, our cardiac monitors are needing to start to be replaced. So we'll do a transition and start replacing them with the the CIP. So with these med units, I've been looking and thinking and talking with Kit and Ian as well. Um we're probably going to go what I had um a meditate every three years. So what that does is gives us two rightway frontline units that are that are brand new and the two kind of in reserve which we still use and then one that's like a hold a backup. So when one goes to the shop that one goes to where it needs to go.

Where do you guys keep the extra one at station two until we get a third fire station which will come to you guys this weekend. So, I I will tell our commission that's what I that we still need one north of town for our response times, but I'll advise them too because our budgets this next week with them. So, um just to be thinking in the back of your head, we'll have the staffing, we'll have the engines, we'll just need a building built and we already have the property allocated for that up north. So,

I had a question on your um on your uh your ride offs that you had. Did you say um that you send those in to the state state settle program? Um yeah, you do? Yeah. And does that work well? No. No. They try as hard as they can.

Every every week Kelly gives me papers of these people that are sending to collections. I'd read somewhere that you know um some cities um are do you not have the ability then you know just like if you've got blight or any of those other ones special assessments is um this type of um debt able to be put onto a utility bill. that what they do is they'll get sent to they'll get what two letters to say pay your bill another one whatever months later pay your bill and if they don't then it goes to collection through omni it gets sent to them and if they don't pay then it goes towards their taxes or their employment put it on there I never seen their

their job yeah their job tax oh okay yes I was going to say that's set off program so you can do it through their taxes they will take and that's when they'll come to us Oh, a well sure would say I just wondered I thought I had read that um some cities were putting them on as like a special assessment onto their utility bill. That'd be I mean we they first go there and then usually gets pretty good luck but sometimes and then we don't charge like but I Yeah, but that's I thought that might be another avenue because that sure they got their water now that you know Yeah. Yeah. So, and like fatalities or deaths and there's only one person or a second person,

we track them down as much as we can. If there's no luck, then we write that off. Yeah, that's just a lot. Of course, that's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I was curious. But, you know, some of these people don't have any kind of insurance. Um, and so when we run them several times and we're still putting them into collections and we run them, you know, every couple years, um, we're still trying to get what we can. But

another one of those things, I guess, since we're in that budget climate that, you know, people, the general public, don't understand, you know, what or not, they're not paying. And when they don't pay, then that throws it onto somebody else's shoulders. than that. Yeah. So that's Yeah. In our two you feel bad but sorry in our the times we reach out we'll even work with a monthly or whatever we can with your salary or what do you get paid that's what else I had for a question you have set um set payment like a contract. So there's, you know, it's just hearsay really where how much do you get

you could make it more of a a contractual payment so that you could enforce it through court that way. Well, then yeah, it won't go through court. It's very much with Kelly or I that says, "All right, are you able to do this five bucks a month or Right. But I'm saying if you had a stricter if you had a payment policy that they signed and said there, you know, then you would have grounds to pursue it further. I know those costs and everything and time and stuff, but I at that point we just Omni takes care of it. They want to work with us. Omni sends them to collections. Yeah. at that point

again I was looking at something and just remedies to get some of those collections and that's too what I had seen is that some are just re enforcing that payment process. So anyway, yeah, and if the people want to work with us, then we can work with them. But if they don't want to do a payment plan and they're just or they say they want to and then they make a couple payments and then they kind of push us off, then off to collections they go. Wow. Wow.

Okay. Well, I appreciate the information. Thanks for coming in. We got 15 minutes. We got to wait. Um I'm assuming you've got public comment. Are you just here for I was say we got you have 15 minutes to wait. You want to do the um proclamation? Sure. Yeah. I don't have Do you have it? I don't have it. I thought I didn't notice.

Who put it on there? Um Ra did. So Ra should be down here. Oh, okay. So yeah, we can't do that early cuz she's the one that 12:15. So she'll be Yeah.

Yeah, she'll be coming. Okay. We'll wait and do the minutes next week when K is back.

Yeah, that's fine. Okay. That what I for that guy that whose name starts with R. Yeah, it's probably on my desk. I'm not sure where it is.

Yeah, I'll get it. Here's some drugs.

Weather my head's like a barometer. Whenever something's in the atmosphere that's making heavy No RS. I know there's no R in there.

What um you guys have? Oh, you you asked me that earlier. What' you say? Oh, you have it. Well, she Oh, no. She gave me an extra one to put on here, but I don't know. I think it smells good. It doesn't have it on there. I'll go ask Courtney. She She's It doesn't say it on the She It's just like linen. Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Now, somebody came in here said it smells like laundry. Yeah, that's what I said when I That's what I like it. I do fresh linen and cotton. Yeah. with the other ones at my house. I don't like those ones that have musker too too much. So,

I told Courtney, "Keep it nice and springy or fresh."

Yeah. Make a motion that we accept the change ordered. Okay, I'll second it. It's been moved and seconded to approve the change orders. All those in favor? I motion carried.

What' you do to your knees? Perfect. It's a long embarrass. Oh, you've done something else. Oh, okay. And you're skipping along pretty good. So, you're Yeah. Yeah.

Feels much much better. I wonder if it's good dry enough to mow. I have go do my mowing. I was going to wait till tomorrow because I had to pick kids up and take out Chase for his allergy shot, but I don't have to. I thought I'd mow. Sun hasn't been out, but So, are the bunnies still in your crime?

No, I checked their little home out there and and they were gone last time I mowed. So, Oh, okay. I saw them over in my neighbor's yard. I told Corey, I said, "They're over there waving in there, looking at me over there." That darn cat though's been back. I I don't know. And you know the you can't do anything about it with the cats because I called the animal shelter. I said, "Did you call the shelter?" And they would they

Yeah. I said, "Can you trap?" And they said something about, "Well, it's catch TNR and trap and release or something and and whatever." And I said, "Well, you can't I guess I I'll be one of those ones that pick it up and go put it on your doorstep. If I catch that little fella, I'll get that." Yeah. Yeah. He was in in my yard again going through and must have been looking for stuff in and then I'm thinking let's go to the bathroom in my yard too because Sky don't I

up I don't know anybody else climbing the fence to go to the bathroom so you have You don't have cats, do you? Nobody. You have cats, Des? No. Not. No. Farm cats. Farm puppies. Farm puppies out. I have some cats that go through my yard or whatever. BB gun. Do you really? Pelon. Do you? Because they you actually hit them. I mean,

depends. Most of the time when I come out the door, they know that they're going to run because I'm yelling at them or whatever. Um I don't like it when they spray because that stinks. Those male cats. Oh yes. Yeah. Well, my I've got a couple little house benches that are making trying to make a nest up on my porch again. And you know that one time too a cat jumped up and got hit them off in my porch. I had an oral on my hummingbird feeder yesterday and I thought, "Oh, really?" Yeah. He was so pretty.

But you could tell me he didn't want to care for that. You know, they eat jelly or whatever. I don't I don't feed them that. Yeah. Have you had hummingbirds yet? No, I haven't seen a hummingbird. Say they've seen Well, there was somebody in White City that said that they had one. I've seen. So, I put my stuff down cuz, you know, I love to wash them and they must not like my stuff yet. Do you just put the sugar water in there? Yeah. And usually they're here by the end of March.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's been so warm that they said they were moving early. My sugar will be getting moldy. I know. That's what I thought. I thought I'm going to have to change this cuz it's going to be getting yuck since nobody's drinking it. I have a friend that has a couple beehives there, but I can't drink enough of that.

Oh, yeah. Um, I did receive an offer um for 125 East Elm. Um, and they're offering uh $1,000. This is from the uh 19 sale, I believe. I'm not sure if the 19 sale was the first sale it was in, but it was in the 19 sale. It was in the sealed fit sale. It was offered at the auction. Um and since it's been offered, it is open for um a negotiated sale. Um he said that he is uh checked on the flight notices and he uh is willing to settle those. Um so he's offering a th000 for 125 East. He's the adjacent property owner. Um So, um,

is there a house on there? No. Just a lot. I'll drop by to make sure, but I could I know it's been so many. I was just curious. Um, so if you guys would like to maybe put that on the agenda for next week, to put that on the agenda to see if you guys good. Yep.

Sorry. Teresa, does the uh the chamber bills us every time that um we go to the max breakfast? Okay. Just with the number to show up that the deal I thought we

Yeah, because we get what is it? 10. No, I think we get quite a few on that. But I've been going every So So I was just wondering why we had two of them on here. So, because I thought we had a number that we were able to, too. Who? Who? Tam. Tammy. Well, I think because it's only for the commissioners. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, the chamber everybody's covered though. I mean, all chamber. We probably should check into that, but I know that that's what they're because they don't know if the ch if the commissioners are going to be using all of them or not. So wondering. Hi.

Are you here for public comment? I am not. I heard there was going to be a recovery court thing at 12:15. Oh, yeah. Heard the proclamation. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. R asked me to be here for that. Okay. Well, it's probably comment time, so we thought maybe that's why you Yeah, that's why I say we're gonna get started here in Houston. No, no comment for me. You don't have anything to say? No. You're not a politician like your boss?

No. Okay. Well, it's high noon. Um, Desiree, did you want to go forward with your your public comment?

No, I forgot what I was going to talk about. Oh, shucks. I bet you'll come up with something. There we go. I don't want to bore you. No. Uh, last week you had an executive session when you were leaving and uh, someone mentioned that it was something about interlocal agreement. I'm curious if we can know what that pertains to. about contracts and no decision was made but between city and county or it was about contracts and it was legal issues but and when there's something then we'll be able to we didn't have any u this oh

city discussion it was just uh the just county just update on issues that we may have heard of or or whatever but like she said there was no no action was taken So this time we're not able to I guess with no actual state. Well that that's just what I was interested because we used to have that interlocal agreement a long time ago. You remember that Trish when there was that which one? Um between the city and the county. It was kind of a blanket one where it kind of tied your hands with power within the three mile zone. Yeah. Remember that? That's that's Oh no, it wasn't anything to do with that. Okay. All right. That's just what you know when I see Okay. No, it was contracts. Okay. All righty.

No, no, no like agreement like Okay. All righty. All righty. That's just what I was uh checking. And also on the comprehensive plan. Um I've heard that that is uh starting to come together. Yeah, we had our first I I um briefed it on on today and we had our first meeting with uh Stantech um and just gave them a tour around the community and um they will be um putting together a uh outline of what what they're going to be doing and that they'll be telling us when they're going to be doing the town halls and the outreach public outreach. Okay. So, there will be town halls and Okay. is right.

No, you I've never heard that. I just heard that yes, we would be, you know, we would know a comprehensive plan. There'll be very much in Yeah, I didn't know there would be actual town halls. Sorry, I did not know about that. There going to be a lot of things. Okay, good. Okay, I like that. Thank you. And uh the next Flint Hills Regional Council meeting, I've heard that's in I told you that too. It's every other month in May, but uh they don't have a specific place or Yes, they do. It is on the website when you sent that. It's on there now. Okay. It was on there the day you sent that email. No, I talked to another person that goes to the meeting and he couldn't find it either. So, he reached out and that's

sent the email. I looked and it was on there. So, I don't know when it was put on there, but it was on there. Okay. Well, anyway, but they they're they're the same every month. Every other month, the third week, the third, right? But they're in a different location. Yes. So, okay. All righty. Um then on the um the data center issue, is that something um I was not able to go to the city meeting last last week? I had a campaign event. So, um but I know that it was discussed and I was wondering if I don't think they had a discussion. I think that um just one of the commissioners spoke.

Right. Right. And that's what I'm wondering, you know, if the county is looking into maybe having a moratorum on that. The thing I see, you know, Mark Powers was here and he was against the moratorum. And what concerns me is, you know, is the EDC actually thinking about or wanting to look into the EDC? And if they do, you know, at least if there's a moratorum, they know that they need protection in the city in the county because we only have there's only two different two you can either have agriculture or residential. That's the only thing that they can build in the county unless they get approval from us. So there already is a protection against that,

right? But wasting their time, you know, trying to seek something like this out. Yeah. Because when we were in the meeting, you you were at the meeting too on Zoom I believe, but um Mickey spoke about how when she down where she's from, she brought a small data center there and that's in Harvey. No, it was a data center

is what she said. I'm pretty sure unless I heard the wrong that could happen too. So, but she said there's nothing wrong with that, but yet that county has issued a moratorum on them. So that's what I'm saying, you know, praising a small one. You know, I I just don't, you know, want to see the EDC wasting their time trying to do something like that now. It just doesn't make sense. You know, if we're paying them, you know, the county and the city are paying them.

We kind of had a general consensus, but we haven't made any formal um motions to do so. You know, they have a moratorum, but okay. I think we're wanting to do that because you know there's kind of a difference with the pause and the moratorum where a moratorum is more of a a specific legal type but you know still you're able to if you go one year into it you're still able to get get out of it if you've right done your due diligence and found you know whatever to make a decision what whatever but nonetheless I think you know with with it needs to be brought up and we need to do a formal motion on it and and we are I think working on that to get that done.

Yeah. And I know I did talk to Sam about it a little bit and she you know and I think she's the one that spoke mostly about it there in the city meeting. So and I plan on going to the city meeting asking them and they were asking about you know working with the county maybe to you know they mentioned it anyway. So that's what I you know thought why

at our conference there was a you know they had people talking about it and they had a gentleman from acres strong you know and they you know they kind of like a proponent and opponent you know but he was kind of like you know talking some about good things and being able to work through a a contract and educating commissioners as to what good and bad and whatever. So, you know, I think the general consensus or whatever jargon that I heard afterwards was, you know, he was kind of there to to, you know, put a plug in for the data centers, but I think the the majority I Yeah, I I don't think that was Well, we just can't do it right now. It's just

I don't think we have the electricity. We don't have the power anyway. No,

no, but I see him, you know, saying maybe something coming down the line saying, "Hey, we'll bring you power here if you let us have a data center here." You know, you know, but yet then we look at the water issue. So, and the closed loop system won't work right now. It takes too much land to cool those. That that's those loops. Each one of those loops has to run that water that's filtered through there. It runs it works like a radiator. I used to work with them in heating and cooling. And it would take so many feet of probably miles of underground loop to be able to cool that water back down. And plus then, you know, it's not I I've heard that that's one of their problems with those data centers. So,

well, they bring absolutely nothing to a community or county either. No. as far as employment or anything. It's just just construction. So, I don't know. But anyway, that's all I had to talk about and I was just curious where we stood on the moratorum and other things. So, appreciate it. Thank you very much. Hello. How are you guys doing? Good. How are you guys? Good. It's Monday.

Well, whomever is the spokesperson for the proclamation, you could go ahead. Yeah, all of us. Would you Are you waiting on anybody else? I haven't heard from anybody else about Well, all the important people are here at the Absolutely. We have the judge with us. That's a little nervous when you guys can come on out.

You guys want to introduce yourself? Okay. I'm Courtney Craraver. I'm district court judge here in Gary County and I'm the judge who's assigned to handle recovery court. I'm Lieutenant Zachary from the sheriff's office. Chrisanne Fibs, the director of community corrections. Ronald Larson, community corrections. Thank you. I don't have the proclamation. This is answers to any questions you may have. Did you send that to me? I gave it to Courtney. Mrs. Gilbert. Sorry. I didn't We didn't either. We were like, "Oh, yeah. I thought Kathy had put it on. I think she thought I had put it on." No. I brought the proclamation down to Courtney.

Well, we don't have it yet. Okay. Well, so I'll give you a little information then.

I came prepared just in case you asked us anything. Um, but we had our first court session in Gary County on January 14th of 2025. We currently have 22 participants. We have 14 males and eight females. Um, we have five participants who have been accepted into the program. We're just waiting for the court process to to finish through. Some are pending replication into the program. A couple will be a sentencing straight to our program. Uh, we have had seven um participants removed from the program since that 2025. Um, two of which was because they transferred out of our district to another area after they did impatient treatment. They decided to remain in that area. Um and we are hoping that our first graduation will be sometime um late summer, early fall. Um kind of we have a couple participants in phase four. We have a fivephase program, but we're hoping by the end of summer, like I said, or beginning of fall, we'll have our first graduation. So, we'll definitely have invites to all three of you to be able to come and join us. Try to bring this to you, Kathy. You read it. Do you have practice?

I'm sorry. Oh, I'm not the chair though.

Okay. So, this is a proclamation for the National Treatment Court Month. Whereas, according to All Rise, treatment courts are the most successful justice system intervention in our nation's history for reducing crime by addressing substance abuse and mental health disorders. And whereas treatments court saved an average of more than $6,000 for every individual they serve. And whereas treatment courts provide a range of economic benefits to a community such as reduced costs important prison expenditures, increased tax revenues, lowered foster care expenses, and decreased costs related to victimization. And whereas treatment courts combine accountability with evidence-based treatment and whereas treatment courts annually refer more than 150,000 people to life-saving treatment and recovery support services. And according to allrise, treatment courts significantly improve substance abuse and mental health disorder treatment outcomes and fatal o overdoses. And whereas treatment courts facilitate communitywide partnerships bringing together public safety and public health and there are more than 4,000 treatment courts nationwide. And treatment courts demonstrate that when one person rises, we all rise. Therefore, be it resolved that the Gary County that Gary County declares that treatment month be established during the month of May. Signed this this day, April 27th, 2026.

Well, I just want to thank all of you. I know this is you guys have worked really hard to get this up and going and I'm I'm very excited for your first graduation. We are too. Thank you very much. and we couldn't do it without your support and being able to use some of the dollars that you have um allocated to

business and maybe I don't know if it's something we could do at a joint city county school district or if you guys could get on the city um uh agenda so they can understand what the actual uh recovery court is because I know that they've wanted to us to pull our money together to do stuff but I personally because of the cost and us being able to do this year after year after year. That's what I would like to use our money for. But I'd like for the city to understand what we're using it for because I think this is important as well as their um u activities that they're wanting to do as well in support. So, is that a topic for our joint meeting?

Yeah. Well, I don't would you one of you be able to come and talk at our joint meeting on the um 18th of May? It's at 5:30 and they do it's just an hour meeting at the most. It's a a Monday at 5:30 at the opera house. Would you guys would have you guys been able to do that? You could get both of us or you get all of you be there. That would be um but yeah, we'll put you down on the agenda. We're hosting so that you bring the stats. bring that stat those stats to them. Okay. I hope so. We'll have them updated by by that May 18th. So, Okay. Awesome.

For sure. And Kathy said she'd do a picture with us and you can be in it. Oh, okay. She's gonna be in the picture. How many do I not? Here we go.

One, two, three. Get one that way, too. One, two, three. Okay. Thank you. Did you get Lucy in there? That's okay. Dad is sitting pretty. She was. When she said one, two, three, she looked.

I know. They have been cutting it. I guess now I can do a little pig. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Byebye. Thanks. Hi, Lucy.

Is here. I was just going to ask concrete. No, that's important. Yeah. Okay. So, just executive session. Yeah. I don't 12:30. No, I don't have anything else and I'll do minutes for next week. So, okay. I make a motion we go into executive session with GIS and I'll second that with counselor.

Yeah. Is that it? Should we get up to Yeah. 1500. Yeah. Okay.