Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Hey Courtney, thanks for listening. It's weird. You want to hear about Kathy and I's school problems you've been talking about? You want to hear all of our angst and anger today? Well, that's what you say. That's what you claim. Are you calling us liars?

I don't know if you do that. We're all thieves and we're all liars. Who said that? Speak for yourself. God's word says that.

We're all sinners.

He doesn't say what our sin is.

Oh yeah, he does. Because they're all equal. Well, I'm glad to see you're refreshing.

I said I've had all kinds of issues since then. You're just too serious.

You're like a crushing old lady on my basement. We are getting a new That's right.

You'll be retired. I'm sure you'll still text me. I was in the White House.

I got a card from the president back in 72. He has a really nice I thought you guys were leaving now.

They just had another tornado warning or something. Woodbine got damaged.

don't know how bad it saw some pictures harrington didn't get anything looked pretty bad out yeah enterprise enterprise in detroit

See, and I just, I didn't know him. I had him, but he's not that big. Just kidding. I didn't know this guy. I did. Gary, the site, if you can put your phone up on that side. Another site. I'm fine. He was. I don't know where he's at. He was. I don't know where he's at. You guys ready?

Oh, sorry. Are you guys working?

Are you ready? Okay, we're going to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please, and then we'll get started. Thank you for everybody for coming, and

gary yes yes good afternoon gary burgess gary county emergency management fire chief also kurt yonkey assistant emergency management and also assistant fire chief start out by saying it's good news this morning we received a check for the 2025 fiscal year for EMPG, $29,353.21. That was money we talked about. And we had not planned for that because we didn't know last year when we were doing the budget if this was going to be given or not. There were some questions. So we've been nice to get that this morning. I've already given it to the Treasurer's Office, and Tammy's aware of that. We think we've done a good job in 2026 watching our spending for both the emergency management We've tried to, as we work on the 2027 budget, continue with that. However, there's a lot of things that's kind of unknown. Right now with the crisis overseas, that's going to affect our propane, it's going to affect our fuel, and anything that we try to have to buy is probably going to be expensive. We've also had several severe storms in the area where we could have major fire or major which could cause extra expenses to both departments. So we looked at that also. Under the emergency management budget, we added some money to our repair and maintenance of our vehicles. It's still running good, but it's probably going to need some work here before long. Also with the taking over the command vehicle now that went over to the service office, there might be some expenses there. so we put that in there gas and electric keeps going up and that's for our outdoor for our office and also for the outdoor warning signs and the capital outlay once again we put that 5 000 in there because when grants come available we never know how much match is going to be or timeline. So it's kind of hard to do a CIP on that. So we put that in there for that. Any questions on the emergency maintenance budget? Pretty well like it was last year.

I see where your benefits went down. What was the cost for that?

So we formulated, we adjusted how we're going to pay our benefits. so the formulas change. Okay.

I think that's a question that I didn't get. Yeah, Gary. Otherwise, I think the repair and maintenance, you know, I think you're know smart to include that budget because i think we visited about doing that so yeah yeah if it can be repaired in-house we've got some good volunteers down there that would help do it and we could do some of the repairs ourselves there's certain things we have to send to the repair place now in the emergency vehicle like have they changed the tires recently i mean those because

The tires were on my truck were put on.

No, no, no. The command. Sorry. The command vehicle you used to possession of.

The tires looked like they were still in pretty good shape. They're in good shape.

That would be a big expense.

Right, right. We had to. So we had to put two new batteries in it. I think there's eight batteries in it. Yeah. They replaced six of them, but when we got it, we didn't keep it charged because the two batteries up front, that means the star vehicle. So we replaced those, but that thing's looking good now.

Where do you store that at?

That's up at Station 8, the state park fire station right across from there. So that way, in case something happens here, the downtown where our main dispatch is, we can immediately roll back where we need to. computers it's got a computer system already in it that keeps updated so all they have to do is plug the laptops in and it's ready to get online receive 911 calls and dispatch from there so we're still outfitting them with a little bit more paperwork and see what else we need to put in that have you ever seen it i've never been inside it but yeah so impressive and we trained our Volunteer firemen live up there about six of them up there that know how to drive it so if we need it We could page them and have them pick it up and Sheriff's Office had it usually if something's going wrong They were all tied up. So this way we've got people that are available Makes sense for you guys to know that. Yeah, yeah Farm budget A little bit different start out by saying the airbag grants save our taxpayers over $500,000 this year by receiving that grant. Cost of the county is about $25,000. So 5% max. Those things are coming in. And so that was something that we've been talking about for the last several years. How are we going to pay for those? So it makes it nice to have that station for As you know, a private citizen put about 60% to build that station. They poured the footings. They're starting to put the walls and stuff up now, the concrete and stuff. So it's starting to have its work done on it. So both of those are savings to the taxpayers when they do not have to put the bill. And you've got to remember, the only people that are paying for rural fire are the people that live outside the city limits of Georgia City, Grady Plaza, and Norfolk. SO IT'S NOT SINCE IT'S A FIRE DISTRICT INSTEAD OF THE REGULAR GENERAL BUDGET SO WE DON'T HAVE AS MUCH INCOME COMING IN FROM THOSE SO THERE'S MANY INCENTIVES FOR 2027 LIKE I SAID THE FUEL AND PROPANE OR CALL VOLUMES THAT LOOKS LIKE ABOUT 25 INCREASE IN OUR CALL VOLUME RIGHT NOW OVER LAST YEAR WHICH MEANS EXTRA FUEL COST STIPENS FOR THE TRUCKS ALSO MORE WEAR AND could be breaking. So we had to look at that. This year so far, we've had two poopers have had to go in and have pump valves replaced. It's nothing that we did. It's just annual wear and tear. It's like tires. Stuff wears out. A lot of them, it's the gaskets are worn. If we don't fix that, water can get in, rust, and then we've got a major problem. It'd be like $30,000 to $40,000 to fix that. each one of those is about eleven thousand dollars to repair that truck it's not cheap anytime you talk about fire vehicles and stuff the piece of equipment goes down especially with the pumper we've got to try to get that truck fixed because if not if we have to pull a truck out of service at one of our stations it could affect the iso rate and the insurance rating for the taxpayer in that area iso could say hey you have a pumper there so the insurance is going back up in that area until that pumper comes back in and So that's why we have to hurry up and get these trucks fixed when they do go down. Software maintenance. We just got the software reporting this month bill, and that hit a yearly increase in about 8%. So that's why we put some more in the software budget. We've already talked about the fuel. We got an increase in our propane. We pay our propane ahead of time. We're prepaying now for 2027 and it went up 26 more gallons of propane. And now with the addition of Station 4's addition, we'll have to be increasing our propane usage just a little bit more. And it depends on how mad the winter is. If it's a calm winter, we don't use much propane. If it's a real cold winter where it's below zero for several days, we use a lot of propane. We try to keep that temperature around 50 degrees in all of our stations just to keep it above freezing. We don't want it 80 degrees in there because then those trucks will get shocked when they go out and then the water facts will freeze and burst. So that's that. Emergency vehicles. That's always like we talked about last year. That's always been a hard one to figure out. Not knowing what we need. Last year, we talked about we needed a fast attack vehicle. We needed a tanker unit. Once we get the station built, we're going to reassess where we're at and see which one we need more of. Will we need sooner? We need the tanker to help haul water, or do we need another fast attack unit to replace one that's getting old? So we're just going to have to keep looking as to what's going on. It's not like law enforcement or the county shops they can go say I need a dump truck this year or whatever they pretty well can know what they're going to need if we start having a lot of grass fires it might be we need a tanker unit we start having a lot of structure fires or we need a whole lot of water tank or tender might be our vehicle that we need we talked about last year bringing in a mutual aid we're talking response to those 20 to 30 minutes even coming from Riley County If you have to haul water, once you dump your water, you're going back 20 miles for 20 minutes, 5 minutes to fill up, and then 20 minutes back for water. By that time, the fire is pretty well gone and out of control again, so we need to look at all that. We keep looking for what the price of used vehicles are, used fire engines or tankers, and they keep going up. A lot of departments aren't getting rid of their vehicles like they were because of the cost. We talked to you, and I know when the Jersey Fire had been over talking about ambulances, how much prices went up on that stuff. What we used to buy a fast attack for about $120,000 is now up over $300,000 for a brand new vehicle. We haven't done that much increase in it other than Somebody's trying to find a way to make money, and downtime to get one is about two and a half years for new ones. So a lot of departments are keeping their stuff more, which means on supply and demand, you're gonna pay a lot more to get a vehicle. We wanna make sure we get something that's good, that'll last, and won't cost us an arm and a leg. And we continue to research and apply for grants for both the emergency management and the drill fire. THE NEXT AFG GRANT IS DUE HERE IN A COUPLE WEEKS, SO THAT'S WHAT I'M WORKING ON NOW. WE'RE STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT TO APPLY FOR. YOU CAN APPLY FOR A VEHICLE. THEY ONLY AWARD LESS THAN 5% FOR VEHICLES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES ON VEHICLES, THE AFG GRANT. SO OUR GRANT PEOPLE LAST YEAR SAID IF YOU'RE GOING FOR A VEHICLE It's really not worth it for the amount of time you have to get into it. So if you have any questions. If you have questions.

I like doing it. There are several departments around that says I don't want to spend time on grants. And I say, it's worth it.

They pay a nickel on the dollar. I'll do that. It helps us out. It helps the taxpayers out. And that's what the grants are there for, is to lessen the budget on everybody. If you have questions, Curt and I are available any time, one-on-one, to talk to anybody about what we're putting into the grant. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Tammy.

Courtney Gilbert, Garrett County Clerk. I will start with the clerk budget.

So for my clerk budget, I either went below state flat or low. So one of the big impacts obviously is Teresa retiring at the end of this year, which I'm very sad about, but we will have a decrease in personnel because of that. So at the bottom line for clerk overall, I have a decrease of $39,957. No increases. The only um issue with the clerk this year for 2027 is that the state is not going on reimbursing us for revenue neutral rate letters so i have that budget in there with no reimbursement expected i guess that was coming wasn't it yeah um we've always budgeted as an expense for that with the hopes of getting it reimbursed which we have the last three years but we're just not including that in our revenue what was the cost of that did Last year, I was almost $10,000. So with the postage increase, I estimated $12,000.

But I believe it will be less.

Are there any questions on clerk? Okay. So I did include a memo on my election budget. Our voter registration database, which is called Power Profile through ESMS, is a contract that the Secretary of State enters into and the counties are mandated to use that software to manage the voter registration database and facilitate elections. That has been on a 10-year price cap with and the Secretary of State's office. So that contract is up starting in 2027, and the state had told us to prepare for a 75% increase since it was on that 10-year price cap. It's only costing us $5,300 a year. So I did 75% increase on the $3,300 and included that in my hardware and software line.

Oh, I should move this shit. Sorry. I'm not used to moving things.

Sorry. Okay. In that software maintenance support and hardware line, that really is the SMS that I pay that to, either for preventative maintenance on our election equipment, the voter registration database, onsite support, tabulation, programming. That really is all that goes to. So I included that increase in that line there do what i included that because i have a with es and s we have a two-year contract that's paid it's for two years but you pay it you know one year and then pay it again the second year that's about 76 000 and that's our preventative maintenance where they come they test you know run diagnostics and test all of our all of our equipment, and they do that twice a year. Like I said, that's $76,000 every two years, and I levy for it a year at a time. The voter registration database I take out of software. Everything else either decreased or went down. I really don't As far as commodities, I have $10,000 in election supplies.

That can be your activator cards, security seals, all that good stuff, ballot stock.

If I go down to capital outlay, I've completely removed that from my budget. I don't have a need for it at this time. Tammy has included my election equipment in her capital CIP plan, and so I didn't feel the need to put anything in there because I haven't used it ever since she's done that. So I took it out completely. So for my bottom line on elections specifically, it's an increase of $18,898. Which is mainly just that software and maintenance support. Other than that, that's really all it goes to.

I don't- Is that a requirement evident twice a year?

The state, yeah.

You really want to.

Yeah, I just didn't know if it was. Yeah, the Secretary of State requires us to do that.

I give myself a little bit of legal room, but I don't really like to over budget. Do you have any questions on that?

Okay, Courtney can ask the question.

ask a question um you said the software in elections it's going down though you didn't touch it i i increased my line item hardware and maintenance up from 10 to 46. that's because i feel like um when they're here on site working on machines, that that's more classified as hardware instead of software. So I kind of just re-aligned it. I felt like it made more sense if they're here physically working on my machines and it's more of a hardware. I just missed her. And not a software.

Yeah, I thought you said software and you said hardware. Like your software costs were going up 75%.

Yeah, the software cost is for what we call Elvis. It's really called our profile. but that's included in your hardware concept. So my software went, I just kind of, I re managed how I wanted to line item those. So my software really, all I'm funding is voter registration database and when they come on site and program our ballots, program our election, our poll vote services, stuff like that. That's, to me, more software. If they're on site with my machines, I think that's more hardware.

Okay. I just misheard that. Again, I'm not trying to argue you going down. I just was not hearing right. I'm like, please don't short yourself on that.

Oh, no. No, I get it. I just, I like to... And I know Tammy would already have caught that, too, and asked you about it. Yeah. I like to code things as... as possible as to what they really are.

Well, and that's something that we've been working on because as we've started this new coding system, there's some adjustments to be made, so not very recent.

It's just easier to track that way in my opinion.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Any other questions? No, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Langston's up next.

I'll be sure which presentation you have, I'm sure.

All right, Ms. Special.

Good afternoon. Everything for the GIS office is pretty much held even or gone down with the exception of the truck lease. I inherited those payments from the health department starting this year. That $4,000 that you see from last year was a reimbursement to Charles. That was just kind of a stab. I didn't really know. So it didn't quite cover the full year's worth of payments. But since we're doing that now, it bundles it up to $6,900, which will cover it. So that $2,900 that got increased, I took another, what, $1,350 out in various other different places. So really my overall is $1,550. And that should still give us plenty. work with other than the personnel services that's suggested by our finance, we're really not going to help.

Troy, what record preservation do you do?

That's when, if we have something that gets platted, we have to pay to have those plats recorded in the register of deeds office. And depending on how many pages there are, like 60 bucks a page. Oh, good.

I did that. Yeah.

Other than that, everything's pretty much the same as last year.

And I know we did, Tammy, this might be a question for you. I know we looked at if leasing was still feasible for us more so than purchasing. Are we going to look at that?

They have to go through 27 and when their lease will end. And the intention is for Travis and Charles and Troy to all To purchase the vehicles. Okay. Because they basically, what was it? 7,500 is what you'll end up owning. I think so.

They're very cheap at the end of that term. Yeah. Still realtor when you pick up.

So next year when we do CIP towards the end of the year, we'll have that approved so that immediately in 28, they'll be able to get those purchased.

That's what the plan is.

And I think they are on that CIP list. They are.

Yep.

That's our list.

Yep. Thank you. I knew we had looked at it before.

Yeah. So yeah. And that shouldn't be anything moving forward. Like I said, it's still going to be relatively new. Right.

That's all I've got, unless you've got any questions. Troy, you might just mention your revenue just so that they understand.

Right. So yeah, put $50,000 down there. So we do have a small revenue stream. from permit fees and inspection fees that Lance does for his real estate transactions and stuff. In 2025, we hit a pretty good mark. So for this year, I'd estimate it'd be about 60 grand and we're on call shorter. So we'll put down another $10,000 and hopefully the construction will pick back up. We just got a donation from the appraiser.

You know that grant that you got for people? Yes. Was there any kind of an admin fee?

There was no admin fees. No, that goes to cover the cost of those installations. And that funding stream got cut considerably. So that's going to be super competitive for next year. And as I said, it's probably not going to be worth the whole paperwork we've got to do some of it. uh 27 28 going forward maybe they'll get some money back right now they got cut how is that going to affect them i'm sorry how's that going to affect them good people were applying for the grant oh no so we got we got the grant money for for this fiscal year, right. To spend that $50,000 to spend, which we were going to have it pretty much all spent here in the next two weeks. So, but for next year, the grant money that came from KDHE, they're not going to have that funding available. So hopefully maybe in 20, maybe we'll see. I don't know. Yeah. So, I mean, we've got three people, new systems. Yeah. So, I mean, and obviously you have to meet financial guidelines and stuff. So, I mean, they were certainly in need. Yeah, it's a neat deal.

Yeah, precisely.

So, yep. All right. Thanks.

I don't have a lot of changes start on my contractual side really just three things postage freight and shipping just did a Google search and it looked like both postage is going to go about 5% so I've increased that 15,000 15 750 hope that's all it does um i also had to do a slight increase on training and registrations the state raised some fees on their classes um and we we're going to hire hopefully two new folks yet so some of that will come out of my 26 budget yet but we'll have training and continuing ed to do in uh 25 7 as well um And then the only other thing, the consultant fees, that's normally we do a hotel motel cap rate study and a mini storage cap rate study for our income approach. We share that with several other counties. I did earmark that increased $5,000 for a fee appraisal. I'm going to leave that there for now until we decide, you know, if that's something, you know, If we need a free appraisal, maybe we can pay for it through that, part of it through that. We'll leave that there for the moment. That's all subject to change. That's it for the contractual differences anyway. The rest of it, I think, is the same as last year. I don't anticipate too much difference. We did change our copier contract. It's almost exactly the same price, but it's a local company now. Talking to other departments, I think it's a much better company. The cost didn't really change on that. On the commodities, let's see, I don't think that changed on the clothing. I get the folks a polo or two, and again, I'll have some new employees, some that'll come out at 26, some 27. we're out in the field to get some wear and tear and staining and stuff. So I do require them to wear a polo in the field with the county logo. So we will do some replacement on those as usual. Um, and then capital outlay stays the same. That's just the C the CIP. minimum five thousand dollars for any capital outlay we might need for office furniture chairs you know anything like that um we keep that same amount in there so slight increase on the contractual side of it um i think i guess the employee benefits is all calculated but i think overall a little lower than last year but a couple line items changed on the other side Any questions from anybody? Okay. We're personnel heavy as always. It's just the nature of the beast here, so. Keith? I underestimated the website. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah. Yeah, so on the software maintenance and support on the contractual part, one of those is the website we maintain. Realtors and all the appraisers, they have that subscription service where they can go search for their own data. That's a pretty conservative number. You never know who's going to use it one year, from one year to the next. And it kind of all comes in at once, usually right before the end of the year, because it renews January 1. So our revenues this year from it, I think, are almost nothing. That'll all come at the very end of this year. So it's just one thing. But I think $2,500 is a pretty safe estimate. a lot of repeat customers, but it's really hard to tell year to year who's going to win and who's not. It's personnel and that's kind of set. We do have the vehicles and some clothing items. And then the statutory, I guess on the mailing, the 15,000, the 5% increase, I had hoped when they exempted a lot of stuff that they exempted that would lower that a lot. It didn't. Even though those items are exempt, it's like real estate. Though it's exempt, you still list it and it still gets a value notice. It didn't really help. All the boats went exempt and if you only have a boat, you still got a value notice that showed its market value and its assessed value of zero. I'm hoping in several other counties, if we can get some clarification on that, that if they're just not taxable, it's just a, I mean, that didn't help anybody this year. So we're hoping maybe that number could go down if we, because I was thousands of them that we wouldn't have to send. And that would obviously lower that number, but I have to anticipate we still will until we get that answer. And I probably won't have it before we set the budget. That's an ongoing conversation with counties and PVD and figuring out what our responsibilities are. Yeah. Any other questions?

Hey, thank you. I'm Charles Martinez.

I'm the director of the health department.

So to start off,

Here's the budget overview. We're requesting $395,782.52 from the county. This is a 14% increase, and this is mainly due to one-time grant is expiring at the end of this year. That covers our nurse's salary. This makes up for it. As you can see on our revenue, about 28% comes from grants. We're writing new grants right now, but with what we've got, we're expecting about 28% to be from different ones. So with the expenditure breakdown, our top 10 expenses are things that we're not able to change. of our budget. The only thing that we can reduce would be our office supplies. And that's at 0.5% of our budget. So we use a different system for classification and that just moves like the medical director. He's not an employee of the county. But in ours, we count them as a personnel. So we've got 80% going to personnel, 10% going to equipment, and 4.5% for services. Those are our big spenders. So the return on investment. So we saw 2,800 patients at the health department last year. That's including the immunizations, case management, STIs. Now that's only a portion of what we actually do at the health department. It's about the same. A big part is we do system interventions. And with those interventions, we've made a huge difference in Erie County. From 23 to 25, we've reduced syphilis by 56% in the county. And the models are showing by the end of this year, we'll reduce it by 87%. Now that doesn't sound You know, it just sounds like numbers, but considering Gary County has been plagued with syphilis since the seventies, that is a huge drop. But same with COVID gonorrhea, lung cancer, suicidal ideation, all of those are dropping and we still monitor for rabies cases. We have not had one since 2023. So I know it's the jump that we're requesting with the extra 13%. But if you compare us to neighboring counties, we're still requesting less than what most of them get. So I took the average of their local tax support that each one receives. So I removed all the grants and everything. This is just taxpayers in that area and calculated how much it would be per resident. And we're at $9.72. And the average, it's around $21. So what we were able to do with less funding is pretty amazing. What we're looking to move up to with this additional funding is to $11, which is still half of what the average is. And if you look at our historical local tax support for the health department, you can see back in, this is adjusted for $2026, but in 2012, We were a standalone agency, but we had county and city support. So it was equivalent to $800,000 that we were getting. You can see in 2015, when we moved under the county, it started to climb. In 2018, it was equivalent to about $500,000. 2019 hit, we had COVID. And there was a huge influx of federal dollars. So we didn't need to rely on local support as much. So we were able to drop that down. We are steadily increasing back to where we should be. This will get us to like $20.19. Any questions on that?

How many nurses do you have?

We have one nurse. And so even with the reduction in funding from last year, we're still providing all the same services except for WIC. And WIC was never funded by local tax support.

That was all state funded?

Yes. might let the public know how many we're operating with in total right now uh we've got five people right now that is running the health department so one nurse one case manager one biller slash clerk uh finance analyst and myself and those numbers compared to years back when um you know you speak uh city and county

Are they substantial differences as far as employees? Well, just with the number that they take care of.

So if you remove WIC from that, it's about the same.

Because it's another one of those costs, you know, when it was a shared entity, you know, that I guess I'm getting at, you know, the cost is another. separation so just saying sometimes when you have two humans working together it can be cheaper than you're a standalone it was 21 employees at the time you know the health department used to be busier than it seems like it is now I mean that's what I was just trying to think than it was back when they were, you know, it was back in 2012, the numbers.

Yeah, I know back then they had two sanitarians, a single person for a FEP coordinator, one community health educator, one community health planner, and all those, those three are just rolled up into my job now. So it's a lot of condensing of jobs.

Didn't it also, some of the programs that they used to have separate in the counties, they consolidated and like one county took over specific programs?

Yes. Some of the people that received. That's exactly what happened. So with the daycares, daycare licensing, that went to a regional format where Riley County was handling it.

And that just changed a week ago.

So that's all I've got.

What county would you consider the most peer county in terms of demographics or whatever?

So it's, I'll go with over at Leavenworth. So the military actually makes a huge change with us. But if we're talking population and how we run things at the health department, Ottawa is pretty close.

We have such a young community, so I'm sure they probably immunize more kids than we do. Yes.

More than some other kids, even our own size. Okay, is there any other questions? No.

Thank you, John. Thank you. Thank you. I'll leave that one there.

Thanks, guys. Okay, Crystal, whenever you're ready, we're ready for you.

I'm just trying to freeze this out, or what? Crystal Malthus, HR Director, Special Projects. Overall, I did the best that I could to try to keep everything the same as last year, or even decrease some areas. So overall, while it is slightly more than it was last year, that's mainly due to personnel increases, are my operations expenditures. Less personnel is actually less than the previous year. So reallocated some things, was able to talk with our recruitment, applicant tracking software. They requested, well not requested, said, amount per year was going to go up. It is still going up, but I was able to talk them down a little bit if we sign, if we read for a three-year extension. So I took that to save us some money. So overall, pretty cut and dry. I was even able to look at the possibility of outsourcing our COBRA administration, and that still stays within the budget.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes.

Courtney, did you get hail out of your place last night? Big hail, or just? Probably like dime-sized. Dime-sized. See, and I think that's about what I had.

Not bad.

A lot of rain. They're saying it's, yeah. How about you in Manhattan? Did you always have good there?

No hail. It was, we captured about an inch and a half of the rain that blew. And then the night before, we had four and a half inches.

Oh, wow. And so... Yeah. I saw on third street, they had that flooding again. I thought they fixed that, you know, down by Dairy Queen and stuff. So that wasn't going to flood, but I saw where they were pretty deep down there.

Yes. And always right there between Aggieville and campus and that Blumont hotel, it's always flooded.

I don't think we got in the air yesterday. It kind of feels pretty humid today too.

Yeah. I don't think we had so many trees down, but we went to Salina for that conference yesterday and driving in, like the majority of their stoplights weren't working. And there were a lot of big trees down, a lot of big trees.

I thought there was a gentleman from Salina yesterday that had said that that was the first time. how many years that they've had that trees and that kind of event in slime.

Yeah, straight line winds and I think 113 miles per hour with the clock stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. I had to go to Manhattan and it was, right when we were getting on interstate, it was evergy or PAR, P-A-R. I don't know where they run. I don't know. It was one after the other after the other.

Yeah, I've heard several say that they still don't have power, so. And that the building we were supposed to be in yesterday had no power, so they had to move us to a different smaller one, which kind of cramped us. But we made it work. They said they used it as their disaster recovery plan and having one real place go down, and they had to pivot and go to another place to operate for the day. I think it's supposed to rain some more Saturday. Yes, I think Gary had posted that.

Even today, right? I think anything on Friday and then again on the weekend. I'm tired. I've got my wagon. I take my plants out. I put them in. I take them out. I know, right? Yes.

I didn't see Keith sneak in there.

He's pretty quiet.

Good afternoon, commissioners, Tammy Robinson, finance director. I have the budgets to present to you as well. Ms. Courtney, our county clerk, provided me the valuations. And so for Gary County, when you take the TIF district out, our value is 330-140-817. for the 2027 budget year.

Kerry, you writing that down so you don't text me tomorrow?

330-148-17. Yes. So the value of one mill would be 330,141.

Is that up?

It should be up. Yeah, it's up a little bit.

It is.

Last year, it was 315. Our November final value was 315, 347, 738. Okay, so that will be the number we're working with when we pull everything together and you see the requests and how they're affected by the valuation and the needs. All right. So the first one we're going to start with is finance. And just looking at that, personnel costs increased due to the proposed 5%. Previously, it was just discussed to consider budgeting for an IT position. We didn't really talk about it much this year and we dropped it off in 2026 budget, but I didn't want to completely ignore it in case you still have any intentions of looking at that as an option. So there's been no numbers added in to account for that position.

And the IT would be shared with all or were you talking?

Well, it would be the entire county except the sheriff since they have their own IT.

I guess we, like I said, haven't talked about it.

Two years ago, we actually had discussions about the position and how much it would cost us versus outsourcing to Next Tech and having their agent come in once a week. And the numbers didn't make sense to make that change at that point. then we pivoted with next tech and we we did our disaster recovery and they actually recommended us look at it again because we really need a person that's creating those kinds of plans for us and overseeing all our compliance issues with it because next tech does not do that and so we looked at it again but we just have not done anything about it this is I mean, I truly believe that Next Tech is our best option to oversee and protect us with Because all of the programs they have, we're not paying for those 100%. We're only paying a share of it based on all their other customers. So that saves us a lot of money. So that oversight, I don't really think we would want that to go away. And it also, part of our lease is all of the equipment, which we get new computers every five years to make sure that we're all current and up to date and we don't have anything falling behind. So whoever we would have in here, it would be a very big admin role for the IT side, and they would need to be okay with working in conjunction with Next Tech if we went that route, I think would be our best solution. And so those are all things that I think we would have to work through if we were going to move forward with that. And it's fine right now because nothing's happened, right? But if something happened, we would probably really notice the fact that we don't have an IT person. Okay, so moving on with that, you can see my contractual went up a very small amount and commodities went down and capital outlay went down. So overall, my three C's decreased by $1,750, which equates to 5.38%. And just for information purposes, dues and membership is for the Kansas GFOA and the national GFOA chapter. I did have CPM costs in the past, so that won't be in there again. We do have leadership courses that some of our people have taken. We try to go to those IT conferences since we don't have an IT person so that we can stay up to date on the things that we need to know to be watching for. And then we do have some webinars that we watch within our offices. Software maintenance and support in my office, we purchase Adobe for all of our users and we have a copy release payment and we also pay for printing and duplication services for that. So those are the main expenses that are just a little more than the other line items. Office supplies, when we moved, payroll and accounts payable in there, we really didn't know what our costs were going to be. And we've done okay so far, but if we have to replenish check stock or anything like that, have to buy a new printer, things, scanners, I mean, those, they go out. That's really what that line item is to protect us to make sure that we have those funds available to do that. So my overall increase, bottom line, including personnel is a 1.96% increase. The next one I have is your budget, which I provided to you to review if there was anything that you saw that needed to be adjusted. I didn't get any feedback that you wanted anything changed. And again, for the public that's here, um, I believe it was in 23, no, maybe 24 is budget. The commission voted to keep the step in COLA, um, to take no step or COLA on the commission wages. And that has stayed. And if you want to make that adjustment, it was motioned that it would have to be voted by and approved by all of you. So the numbers you see do not include any increases for your wages. Now, looking at it, you can see it's an increase in the number for the wages. And that is because we know Commissioner Giordano is not running and will not be here next year. And so you will have two commissioners being paid for that first payroll in January. And so that's what that number is accounting for.

So once again, why is benefits down?

Because when we originally budgeted it, we didn't know who was going to be sitting in that seat. And with the actual benefits people pick, that's the adjustments that get made.

And Tammy, I've asked before, and maybe I'm missing it somewhere, Where did you stick the, where did you take in consideration the administrative fees that we were gonna try to- So I have that to talk about.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure because we keep talking.

Yeah.

And in fact, I'll talk about it in this next section with the general services, but-

then uh on your overall three c's there was a small increase in office supplies and that's really about again you're going to have a new commissioner coming in they may they'll need a new nameplate they'll need business cards those kinds of things so that's what that additional is in that line item to cover any questions on the commissioners I guess I'll just mention too, dues and memberships, you have the Trooper Regiment in there, the Kansas Commissioners Association, the Chamber, and then you usually give a sponsorship fee to Crime Stoppers. And in the past, you've had a school leadership program on your donations. And so I left those dollars in there in case those were things that you're interested in. Is that on there too? The donation? Yeah. It's on the second line down on 3310. Okay.

Do we want to talk about if we want to go in the chamber, especially if there's going to be some changes to do the higher thing for the chamber?

Yes, because right now I do have the 25-25, the smaller, the level that you've been on currently.

It's either 25-25 or 25-25. Yeah, for the top tier one, it's the $4,500.

Yeah, so it would be a $2,000 increase.

And that would fit us on the same model as the city. And that's what we've done in the past, right? No, we've done the $2,525.

So you don't have to make that decision today, but you will have to determine whether you want to stay at the $2,525 or go up to the $4,525. So I'll make a note that that's something that you'll need to decide on. And I'll keep that on our budget work session topics as one of the things to talk through. Okay, the next one is general services and Commissioner Tremont had brought up the fact about the admin fees. Last year, we talked about potential of implementing admin fees for the port trustees the VIN fund and the 911 fund for services that we provide that you have no control over, no oversight on, nothing. They're basically an agency fund. So it's just sort of a pass through. We get the money and then we do what they ask us to do with it. I sent you some information on the numbers concerning those funds. And I recommended if you were looking at wanting to go forward with that, that we would want to maybe consider a 1.5% admin fee for them.

Based on their budget. On their own budget.

Right. And again, it's not something that you have to make a decision on today, but if we're going to do it, it'll also need to remain as a topic that you're discussing as we move through. So we do do it.

And then we say, okay, this is what we want you guys to do. And then they say, well, we're not going to do it.

Where are we going to be at? You mean if they're not going to pay?

Well, I mean, that would be a legal question.

Are we legally obligated to do that pass-through? You would have to have her do research.

I know what I think.

Yeah, and I know what I think. She had another appointment. She's like, do you need me there?

I was like, no, we don't need you here. But I think that would be something that would be very important for legal to be involved in.

Yeah, are you associated with other counties? And some do and some don't, right? The ones that do, they haven't had any ramifications. Well, I think we should. I mean, I do think we should. I mean, we're doing their work for them, right?

Much cheaper than it goes to us.

your own finance person and that's exactly the thing even 1.5 is like so small compared to what they would have for a bit with a person but we use our personnel use our you know printing out right right we deal with all the benefits that have to be paid and accounted for and um they're they get the benefit of being a gary county employee even though they're not an actual gary county employee Yeah, we've been talking about that.

We've been here just back and forth. Yeah, I wouldn't agree to do that, but when we have our discussion, I'd rather have Betsy here too.

Yeah, in case there's anything she needs to look up, I think that's the best is to have legal be the one that sure gives you that advice.

It's kind of like too when we budget and then we don't take into consideration with them at that time what the cost is for a the senior center and those other things that the county takes more of.

That in-kind service that we're providing. We talked about that last year with the appropriations and how we provide buildings to certain ones and if we took that into account with what they're getting in appropriation and that.

Speaking of that, since we do that for what the soil conservation gets because they get based on what we give them, they can't use the in-kind. So isn't there a way that we can like charge them and then reimburse them?

Yes, we talked about that too. So if we charged them rent and they actually paid us and then we gave it back as an appropriation, I think then they could actually... That's what I was thinking.

That would lower their... Well, I'd be saying an extension too.

I don't know. Do they get paid based on... how much we pay them, they don't get it. They don't get a supplement.

It's statutorily required.

Yeah, I know. But I'm just saying that that would help out, you know, and offset some of that if we did it that way. So they'll maybe get more from the state. And less from us. Because they would have a... Well, technically less from us. We're still paying for, you know, them to have maintenance and utilities.

Right.

It's just they can't claim that because it's not actual cash we're giving them. But we are paying for it. Yes.

Okay. So then on the expense side for general services, we did increase personnel services, that's employee separation. And the reason we did is because each year I have the HR department look at who is eligible to retire and who is likely to retire. And we have more people eligible and that number needs to increase to make sure that we can cover it. benefits just so that you're aware we also have the retirees health insurance that we pay we pay that in full and then they reimburse us for their share of that cost so we budget the entire expense there and then with the revenue to come back in against it in our reimbursement line and then on your contractual there isn't too many adjustments differently from previous year. One thing I would point out on property and liability insurance, I did increase that 20% from what we paid in 2025 because I do not have an estimate from K camp and everything is telling me that other insurance is increasing. So I would expect to see an increase in this as well. The lease payments, the hospital to PBC, that's that new hospital bond that we give to pbc and then the state takes that money from the pbc account so that's a lease payment it's not an actual debt payment so it's not it's considered an operational rather than a long-term debt cost um timmy would you say that again about the property insurance on 3130 which part um i expect an increase and i increased it 20 from 2025s So also take into account in that line item, we pay a portion of community corrections insurance along with their other entities. So the increase that I put for 20% is what we actually paid. I did not change Chris Ann's because K Camp actually gave them an estimate. So I was able to use an exact estimate for her. Just get an astronaut. Just, again, to make you aware, transportation services, that's for our county coroner costs when someone is transported to another entity. Software maintenance and hardware maintenance, I did ask HR to stay here because she's worked with Civic Plus. So you may not be aware, I think we have talked about it in the past, but there's an ADA compliance bill out there that we have to comply with. And for our size of entity and population-wise, it is required in 2028. Bigger entities, it's 2026. So we know that likely we're going to have to pay this at the end of 2027. And that's an additional $10,000 that we have to pay for ADA compliance. And $10,000 is a lot in my mind. That's under the software maintenance. 10,000 is a lot for ADA compliance because this ADA compliance is for our PDFs. So the first time around for any PDFs that's on our website, they have to make it so that it's user or reader friendly for anybody with a disability. After that, it would only be upkeep of any new PDFs that we put on. So in my mind, it makes much more sense to say, well, how much do you utilize PDFs? And that's what your share of the cost is going to be. Right. But that's not how they're calculating. They're calculating it based on population. So I reached out to Gary or to Riley County because they are already needing to comply with it. And their cost is like 18,000 a year. And their population is double ours. And so we have a $10,000 cost based on our population. So $10,000 and say we have five PDFs, maybe even 200 pages and we paid $10,000 for that. So Crystal went and she tried to find any other entities that might provide those services to see if we could get some competitive bid on that. And there's really nothing. The one that she did find, Once they got into the weeds of it, they really couldn't do what they told us they thought they could do. And so we're kind of stuck because we have no choice but to comply or take a risk of a lawsuit. And so there you are. We're, we're. Appreciate your diligence.

In addition, that's a lot of work to have to do to try to save money, but that's, that's nice.

It's being done. Yeah. Uh, also software costs CIC around 70,000 a year. Um, and that provides all the support and all the training and, uh, over the phone, not in person, uh, that is part of their package. Any updates, any enhancements, that kind of stuff. And then of course we have our next tech contract as well. We do have a copy release. So that's what's in your software and hardware maintenance line items. We do pay KAC and NACO through the general services because it's a membership for the entire county. It's not just the commission. It's not just an office. Our legal services, we increased at 5%, and then I also put in an additional $50,000 for other services that are rendered because we have not been budgeting anything in addition to that, and we've been paying those costs. So I feel like To be prudent, we need to add an extra amount in there. Miscellaneous fees, was asked last year what that is. That's the TIF, Dick Edwards. We paid over $50,000 in 2026. So want to make sure that we have the right amount in there that we aren't short. Indigent attorney fees, we increased that 4.5%. One thing to notice on appropriations, That number doesn't include silver haired legislature, so that would change very small amount, but if you guys wanted to approve that. And then on the transfers, just a couple of things to note. The transfer to CIP, we did not transfer anything in 2026 because we had transferred extra in 25. So we do have a request of $750,000 to go in there to make up for that difference. And I did bring the CIP folder just to make sure that you're aware. In 2027, right now, the projects total $775,000. In 28, $1,360,000. In 29, $1,358,000. So when you're looking at those numbers, we have to try to make sure we can sustain all these future requests. And those are the ones we know. There may be some things that come in that are unexpected as well, so you need to take that into consideration. So 750 is what I have in the budget at this point in time. Also on the special bridge, and I saw Jeremy's here, we talked about this, and he has some projects that are coming in on the special bridge that he really felt like we needed to look at increasing that from the $200,000 to the $250,000. On the economic development, that's in conjunction with the appropriations you approve. So that could go down if you decide that you're not going to fully fund any of those costs. And then the health department, Charles had already been in on what he provided you with the request for that.

And tell me again, we have to fund EDC up to a mil or?

or half a mil, based on the resolution in place, which Betsy I think has told you that you can adjust that if you so chose. And then the budget reserve, if you recall, we increased that from 2.1 to 2.2 from 25 to 26, and we didn't know the full 250,000 that we have in our policy, and I did put in the full 250,000 increase from 26 to 27 this year. So I'm looking at those numbers down here at the bottom. You can see that 6608-367 and the 7033-669. Those numbers do not include the transfers and they do not include the appropriations. So if you're just looking at those numbers, then we have a 6.4% increase, which equates to 425,302. And the majority of that is your personnel services and the budget reserve of the 250. So that makes up that 425 difference. Anything on the general service you want to talk about?

On these TIF and those fees on the 3657, when you say TIF fees, I'm just trying to think in my mind. It's what Edwards. Yeah. Okay, we paid them.

So there's a contract and we have to pay a portion. Okay. If they need certain criteria and then.

Yeah, I'm thinking of fees as like when we get so much money.

Oh, well, it's their district and it's a TIF district.

And so that's why it's called TIF fees. Yeah.

There's been a few years we haven't paid anything back to them, but this past year we did. Other things to just keep in mind that we pay, we pay the auditor, we pay the coroner, we pay autopsies. Indigent costs, if anything comes in where there's no one to pay the costs of a funeral, those are required by statute. We have to take those on. We have tax sale costs in there.

The indigent attorney fees is a lot as well.

That's a 4.5% increase. Yeah, it's hard to get people to do that.

Betsy works with those contracts. She does. Because we have accountants, I mean, I don't know where they're at now, but they've struggled. Yeah, they have struggled. An indigent attorney. It's gotten worse since there's not very many attorneys. Yeah. Right. I don't think that, you know, once again, when you go through some of these costs and stuff that the general public don't understand, you know, all the things that the county has to pay for. Right. You know.

Well, and even. Yeah, publication costs. Yeah. there are statutes that say we have to publish financials. So the treasurer publishes them. And then I also publish them on behalf of you guys as financials. Um, we have janitorial services that we pay for because we don't have employees that do those services. And again, that's something we've looked at, but looking at the numbers, it makes more sense to outsource it based on the cost and the benefits than it does to try to hire specific janitors in. Um, phone and utilities get paid in the general services, and then copier paper is also put in there that is available for the offices to use at their leisure. They can also come in and use that copier in the workroom, which is, the lease is paid through this department as well.

Copy paper and that, I mean all that stuff economical anymore and if we've ever thought you know years ago they talked about kind of like warehousing you know and get an essential thing for like paper and that i don't know if that's ever maybe that's something we need to look into you know you bought i mean you know paper for everybody and then public workers would have to come and get their own paper well that is what we're i mean it is supposed to be that that they buy is that just for is this for here in the building well

I mean, I would say no, because that general services budget is for anybody in the general fund, which Public Works is in the general fund. So it's not for this building. It's for the county.

Did you know you could come to the paper up here and keep it? I don't think you could do this.

We're going to keep it. It's in the workroom. And so that's probably something at department head meetings we should talk about.

I don't know. I just was shocked because, you know, I just don't print an awful lot of stuff in my place for this job.

Okay. The next one is the debt service fund. And this one's pretty simple. We have the 2016 hospital bond in there. And that is funded from that quarter cent sales tax that we have. And then we do have a little bit of money in CDs. And so we're getting a little bit of interest in that fund as well. And then we also had some reserves that had been sitting out there for quite a while. And that's why we're not levying funds for this is because we have those reserves where we levied in advance. And so now we're using them to deploy towards that cost.

Are all the CDs or they, you know, we used to do the three, three points over the TVL rate, is that none of those is done? I mean, what is interest rate now? Is it below 4% still?

It's between 3% and 4%. And they passed that legislation that we can't go to the state for their KNIP or their OMIP without going to the local now. And they would have to be lower in order for us to go to them. And with our local banks,

rate, so that always seemed to work.

Well, we do competitive bidding, and so we take the best bid from the banks, and we send them to all the banks. Right. Yeah, and we send them to all the banks here.

I know you do a good job on that. I just was

Okay, the next one is economic development. And again, this one is based on the requests that have been made in appropriation. So that can be adjusted depending on what you approve and what you don't approve. Keep in mind too, that in the past you had the Juneteenth and Freedom Fest and Main Street that you decided was to be funded from CBB. So what we did was transfer from CBB into economic development and then paid them in the same timeframes as the rest of the appropriations.

So that's where you see that transfer from CBB and then the CBB appropriations that are paid out under the expenditure line items. And that's just so that we can track them and we know which ones specifically. Great idea to see that point there.

Okay, the next one is special alcohol. And special alcohol is money that we get from the state. That money is divided between the special alcohol program. They get 50% of the funds. And then Parks and Rec and the general get the other 50% divided in half. And so that's what makes up the revenue on this budget. And then we had community involvement come in and request funds in Circle A Club. And in the past, those funds have came from here. And so that's what's reflected. Again, keep in mind that we present balanced budgets. So we have that other contractual line of 60,000 to 65. That does not necessarily mean you intend to spend it, but it gives us that authority should you need it. On the opioid, again, same concept. We have that money in there. We provide it for appropriations. to the drug recovery court. And it doesn't mean you can't use it for anything else, but at this point in time, this is what we've been using it for. So you see that $26,000 request for the recovery court. And then the state actually gave me a document of what they anticipate or estimate us to get each year, and so that's what I'm using for the revenue side of that. Again, we put projects in to balance the budget out, doesn't necessarily mean that they intend to spend all those dollars, but it does give you that authority.

Are they the only ones that basically ask for money? I was trying to think, who else asked for opioid money?

We did have something come up with Riley County that they wanted to, but we didn't end up doing that.

Personally, I wouldn't be able to be able to, because we're going to run out of this opioid money, and I don't want it.

So the next one I have is your capital outlay and the special bridge. And just for clarification for the public who are here, A multi-year CIP fund is not legally required to be budgeted per KSA 19-120. And same thing with Special Bridge per KSA 68-590. It's not legally required to be budgeted. However, in the past, we levied those funds. And if you levy a fund, then you are legally required to budget these. And since we did budget them in the past, we are continuing to budget them just for a transparency aspect for the public to see that this is what we have for projects. So with that capital improvements, I'm estimating a $2.1 million balance coming in. I show that requested transfer of 750,000. We also have CDs under capital improvements and anticipating 75,000 in interest income. And then I, again, balance this budget. So I put the full amount of resources available under an expenditure line item. should you need that authority but not necessarily intend to spend and then the last one is your special bridge and i did work with jeremy asked him to provide some information you can see that on the bottom where it shows 2027 potential bridge replacement projects and then 2028 submitted applications through kansas local bridge improvement project funding So he gave you some of that information just to give you an idea of what would be happening in that fund. Again, that's all based on timing on when these things can take place and whether may play a part in that. So whether it may play a part in that, but also grant funding would play a part in that. and where we are on the list to get it, or if we actually get approved for things. So we don't necessarily know that these will fall into place in this timeframe, but these are the things that he's working towards to do in those years. So again, we go ahead and budget that entire amount of resources available in case we would need the flexibility to spend those dollars.

No, that's for what he's planning on doing in 2027 and then what he has for 2028 right the very bottom line says hoping it can wait until 2027 Should that be true? Doesn't make sense Yeah

I don't know. My guess, and I could be wrong because he's not in here, but normally you have to do a project and then you get a reimbursement. So he would have to have that project done in 27 to submit a grant to get the funding in 28.

Right. You have to do the project first.

I know I'm running long, but I have a couple more things. A silver haired legislature requested $200. He is unable to come on Monday and so I did let him know I would let you know today what that was and that if you wanted to ask additional questions that he would be available to come back at a later time. So there's that request. And then the other thing I do have is CBB and I am presenting this budget because we don't have a CBB director at this point in time. I did send this to Commissioner Giorganos and she's working in conjunction with their leadership. And so with that in mind, looking at the revenue of where we're at in 2026, I did decrease our expectations from 2025 down to 650,000 in revenue. And you can see I'm anticipating revenue to start at 461,000 in 2027 based on the decreases we're seeing in the TGT. And I did account for that extra 1% in the second half of the year. Even with that 575, that's what it looks like based on what we've collected so far. So not sure. I mean, if we get more than that, that's great. That's just additional revenue that we have. for other projects, but at this point I wanted to be a little bit conservative. Anything that has the 019 project code number, so you have the four digits and that's your object code for the revenues and expenses and then the three digits that follow. So right here where it says 019 under other miscellaneous collections, that is for the visitor's guide and so I anticipate 15,000 for that. And then you'll see the expense line down under 3 0 8 0 0 19. And it looks like I have 20,000 in as costs because it was over 15 last year. And if we just keep having increases, I didn't want to short that. So salaries are based on on the change in personnel and not having 27 pay periods. So there is a little bit of an adjustment there. On your expenses, the overall three C's increased because of the expected resources available. And when I say that again, it comes down to having a balanced budget. And if you look at this 3990 line item, You can see $248,118. That is what has not been designated to any other specific line item. So that is to balance our budget. And then the $45,000, that was in talking through the fact that we have a 2018 Suburban with over 100,000 miles on it. And so we need to be looking at the potential of replacing that vehicle. So I did put a holding dollar amount in there and it doesn't mean you have to get another suburban. That's subject to discussion, but I did go ahead and put the 45,000 in there. And then the transfer to sports complex, that's based on 2% of that going to be 7% in 2027. What year is that vehicle? It's an 18 with over a hundred thousand miles.

Yeah. Well, I know this because we just had an insurance thing I had to deal with and I had to know the miles and I had to know the year of the vehicle.

So, and so far the maintenance has been okay, but I wouldn't let's just start now instead of, you know, break down or whatever. So now I think I'm done.

unless you have any other questions that you might have or if the public if you want to ask them ask questions or I don't have any okay I am presenting for Krista at the end of the day unless she happens to get out of court so you will see me again okay

You guys are . So I can't read.

How much is ? $200. $200. That's it. Hello. Hello.

Hi. .

OK. Or if you don't want to, that's fine.

I'll still pass these on if you guys want them or not want them. Don't bring your cell phone Well, thank you very much for inviting us in. It's always nice to appear in front of you folks. And I want to always introduce the people I'm with.

We have Nikki Davenport, who is a court administrator for the 8th Judicial District. We have Katrina Adams, who's the clerk of the District Court in Gary County, Kansas. And Courtney Parker, I think, is this your first time here as the head? Yes. So she's the new head of court services, and you're doing a great job. We submit our budget. You know, if you remember, when I first started, I made a point to tell you guys about the servers, the big ticket items. don't have any big ticket items to talk about this time i have some grandiose ideas in my head floating around on what i want to do with courtroom three but that'll be for another day um the budget is is i think you're up about eight thousand dollars uh in the gary county budget percentage for the overall eight judicial district remains the same at 52 percent um and i think you're up a smidgen there i think around four thousand dollars um But other than that, I'll be happy to take any questions. It's pretty straightforward.

Yeah, I didn't see anything sticking out. I'm not going to come back later and say I want to do something for you.

No, no.

Except for courtroom three, maybe. Courtroom three.

We've done two of the benches. Judge Scott took them over. And those benches are great. But in courtroom three, you have a jury box that never ever gets used. It's never ever gonna be used. That room is used by Magistrate Coppola mostly, and she uses it for the sink. And so to get as many people in there as you can, as many tables as you can, is a good thing. And there's just simply not enough room. So at some point in time, before I call it a day, I would like to take out that jury box. But we'll get some things together over and talk about it you're building not ours i really don't have any questions have you had enough rain the judge rose were texting me last night and he said i'm going to need an ark to get out of here and i said make sure you take two of everything

Well, if he had a problem, we're going to be in big trouble. He's on a hill.

He's on a hill. Yeah, I don't really have any questions.

So refresh my memory.

We had talked about jury fees and what did we ever decide on that? It's different than, I think, they're all different. Dickinson County is $25 a day, but Gary County is $20 a day. But I tell you, the jury trials are really close between Dickinson and Gary. I wouldn't believe that. In fact, the mediation costs, we use more mediation costs in Dickinson County than we do in Gary County. making my life at my age a little bit more difficult what i imagine but i guess that's okay okay i guess we don't have any questions so i appreciate you coming over and presenting the budget now thank you very much and of course we always ought to use the word You've been good partners with us. Thank you.

Thank you. I think he's bringing a PowerPoint, so let's plug in and show you.

you can see on the first page

Thank you. I'm sure I'm reading it. Was that for the district? Oh, hello. Yes. you know there's a different one that's they do receive revenue from the other districts so if they pay the cost you might allow them go ahead and put my thumb wrap up as long as you're not corrupting the computer we're gonna i hope there's no bugs on here so you're checking her

Do you want it as a slideshow?

I'm good, right? Just in case if you guys... We're gonna update that vehicle. We've been too busy to get a current picture. Just in case if you don't wanna stare at the screen, there's the same thing in the package. Just let me know when you guys are ready to get started. Are we still waiting on Courtney? Yes. We don't move that quickly. Just get that vehicle up.

Two weeks ago.

Gary was very excited to get that done.

I know. I know.

We have an updated side-by-side as well. Updated graphics. Yeah, it's a few years behind. Still have those tacos. Oldest vehicles in the fleet, I believe. They're solid, but we have replaced an additional one and a transmission in the last few years.

They do last a lot longer. They have less maintenance costs. They do. Generally, they're a little better. They also cost a little more. The two-wheel drive, not the four-wheel drive. Yeah, well, I mean you should I think they should yeah, of course, yeah Ken Rose Look at

We've got a phone call. Phone time.

I'll call you back. All she's reporting is the amount. Oh, here she comes. Tim's calling.

okay well if you guys are ready i'll get started nate beckman gary county sheriff and i am here to present the gary county sheriff's office uh budget proposal for uh well that's the wrong one There we go. All right. I will be presenting the proposal budget for 2027 and we will go ahead and get started. So I will cover our mission, the office breakdown, personnel and responsibilities, the 2025 review, revenue, budget review, and some key considerations. Due to the time constraint here, we're going to go ahead and skip the mission statement. You guys can leave that real brief if you wish, but we're going to skip that and keep moving so we can make it through here in 15 minutes. This is our office breakdown overall. As you can see on the left side, the personnel is consisted of 35 sworn employees, as well as 38 correctional staff, nine administrative support staff, and we have six part-time personnel. That is a total of 88 employees. And three of the major divisions are going to be obviously corrections, operations, and then administrative. And as you can see on the organization chart, each one has other duties and responsibilities below them. We are unique because we have a dive team in conjunction with the fire, Junction City Fire, as well as an interdiction team that we are combined with Junction City Police Department. And then we have our own IT director as well as our own financial analyst. So that's kind of a quick overview of the overall with the sheriff and the under-sheriff overseeing all of the operations. We're going to focus on operations, the division of operations, which if you guys look up there, Major Gilbert will be in charge of that. In 2027, we'll make a switch. Major is in charge of that right now, but starting in 2027, there will be a switch. and as you can see in 2027 major gilbert will oversee all of his lieutenants and the lieutenants oversee the sergeants and then so forth down the chart we generally run with three deputies per shift you can see we have four shifts two on days to cover on the 24-hour period on days and two on nights. There is a split with the canines. They kind of work a split shift there to cover what we usually anticipate as the busier hours where we need canines. With that being said, at the bottom left, SRO, Harley and SRO Benzer, they usually leave and go back into the school during school timeframe. So when that occurs, the canines generally fill in those spots at that time. But when those were on the road in the summertime, we do have two canines floating on that split ship. Look to your left, you can see some responsibilities of the operations division. We provide 24-7 response and active patrol, and that is land and water, because most of you guys know, even though we don't really have a Marines unit, we do have someone that operates the boat when the boat is needed, and we actually have two boats. Our primary function is to serve and protect. We also respond to critical incidents. We investigate all cases. Investigations falls into the operations division. And this is something that we have recently combined back with Junction City. So we have combined resources with Junction City Police Department as well. They provide their own field training. So we get new deputies and we will train them and go through so many months of training before they are released on their own. And then we attend multiple community events. A little more breakdown on that side of operations. We have 16 deputies with 10 supervisors. So we will be moving on to the admin division that is going to be overseen by Major Rick Corey in 2027. He's in charge of our evidence technician as well as a lieutenant. And then the lieutenant oversees civil process, which is on the left side. Then inspections, second from the left. And then support division. a Sergeant Administrative and our Sergeant Administrative oversees for two courtroom deputies, but he is also our accreditation manager and grant writer. We will talk on the responsibilities on the left side there. They are responsible for event inspections, service of risk, evictions, and protection orders, as well as summons and subpoenas. In charge of court security and transportation, Kansas Sea Post reporting, records and case management, in charge of office inventory, grant writing, the overall training program, and then as I mentioned, accreditation management. And you guys can stop me at any time if you have questions about any slide. Moving forward, corrections division. Major Zoeller oversees that, and you will see later on that we did cut one spot. the captain position and you can see uh the major the jail oversees all those lieutenants as well as a few other positions on your left you have some support officers we implemented that position because of the high demand of our whole facility we have court officer and then another officer underneath the sergeant court officer there is once again four shifts because they run 12-hour shifts as well as patrol and each ship has a lieutenant and a sergeant as well as you can see six COs below. If you look at the bottom, those four spots are vacant. So we're running about five COs per shift for a total of 101 inmates on a daily average. We'll cover the responsibilities on the left side. As I mentioned, we have an average daily population of about 101 for that year. We can house up to about 160 people or more. And as I mentioned before in these meetings, if I feel like 120 is the number and we start floating or starting to get by that number, I'm going to have to come in and ask for more personnel in the jail. But I feel like six COs, a sergeant, lieutenant, and support can run what we have currently right now. But I would call it a skeleton crew just to keep the taxes down for now. But if we do go over that, I will be asking for more COs because as you guys know, I've cut part two COs when I first got here because they were never filled to begin with. So why have them if they're not filled?

Some of them have not been filled for 10 years.

For a long time. So instead of having that budget so big and not filling it, I decrease the budget and then I will request that if we need it. But at that point, I didn't feel like we needed it. We have jobs to safeguard inmate population and ensure appropriate classification, support medical, dental, food, pharmaceutical and other services provide ms sports to court and other facilities and provide training to our correctional staff that's something we did do we revamped our training on the jail side these are our stats for our 2025 review calls for service was 16 963 we served 3 722 civil papers been inspections as you can see three thousand seven hundred sixty five was in Gary County and the rest was in Raleigh County we can we did 72 drug cases in that year we did well when I say we the jail did 2037 booking arrest but that's all jurisdictions out of those 2037 764 was our employees Gary County Sheriff's Office employees conducted 4,763 traffic stops and out of those, 1,520 were cited. Moving on to revenue. On the left side is going to be the 2025 real numbers for revenue and then on the right side is the projected 2027 numbers. I'm not going to cover every single thing unless you ask for it. The biggest thing to note is code 5102, which is prisoner maintenance. And then you see JCPD right there. That is the jail dispatch contract that we negotiated. So we were getting a revenue from Junction City of $360,000, which is on the left side, 2025. We no longer are getting anything for 2027. Well, currently actually right now we're not getting anything because that contract's already been negotiated. So that is going to be a big difference that you're going to see if you look at the total on the general fund, 619,601. And then you go look on the right side, 388,900. You're going to be like, wow, that's a huge cut in revenue, but I will kind of explain that later. It's actually going to be more beneficial to the county. So I will explain that later, why that big cut is and what the difference is. We do, if you look at the non-general fund, we do have probably a slight decrease is my projected estimation and then inspections, because that is kind of a downward spiral, just a little bit, a trend and more, not a spiral, but a trend. So we'll probably come in 10,000 less is my projected number in 2027. So overall revenue in 2025 was $849,000 roughly, and we're anticipating $609,000 roughly. But once again, I will explain why that drop is when I go in more detail with the jail dispatch contract.

Why is there a decrease in the vehicle inspections. It seems like vehicle registrations are up, which a lot of those are demand of state vehicles.

For some reason, 2026 is on a trend, downward trend, just a hair. So we're going to go ahead and project that it may continue or at least flatline, but I don't want to overshoot revenue.

Where do they do the VIN inspections?

At Riley County District Department. Yeah, we have an employer that checks in over there so many times a week. We've considered putting two over there because that is kind of the bigger income generator but talking to the lieutenant jones who's my subject matter expert he doesn't think it may be worth it at this point so any other questions on revenue and just keep in mind these are projected we're going to be off 10 000 or 40 000 they're just projected the budget review as i mentioned earlier we cut one spot the captain in the jail so we went Right now, we have 89 employees. We want 88 employees. Moving through, if you guys have any questions, you can ask me, but I'm just going to get to the important number at the bottom for the total expenditures. And that is going to be a $406,626 decrease. So the budget will be from 10,114, or my correction, 10,114,713 was estimated budget. We're projecting that's gonna be down to 9.7 million. And I'm pretty confident that we're definitely gonna be under budget and two primary reasons, extra pay period, So we don't have to pay personnel as much. And then cutting the captain's spot. So technically three things we're going to be down. And then that jail dispatch negotiation contract is going to help us do it. Just saying. Key considerations I think we should consider in thinking about this budget is we are going to continue this contract with the school district. When I came in, I asked for a second SRO to help kind of offset two deputy salaries. And so just so you guys understand that each deputy's offset about $60,000 for a total of 120. We initially had one SRO. I negotiated with the PD and the school district to get a second one. And the PD agreed to give us one of their slots for us. as i mentioned with salary and benefits the jail captain position it would cost the county 102 000 roughly to pay for that jail captain position after evaluating the situation talking to current staff over there, primarily Zeller who came in. I mean, that's the thing, like if I'm going to get rid of the captain position, Zeller's going to take on more responsibilities. He thought he could handle all that appropriately. So to me, it made sense to get rid of the $100,000 estimation on that position to save the taxpayers. We also have money coming in from the VIN fund that helps offset five part-time positions. And the number that Tammy had on the worksheet is $123,000, but I believe it's closer to $143,000, unless I'm incorrect on that. On what worksheet? Your worksheet that you sent me. But either way, it's six figures that is being offset. So you see, if you guys look at my worksheet, you see six part-time, I believe is what it says, but five of those are offset. So two in civil process and three in dent inspection. It's on my personnel file, but account so i think that's important to know and then with this negotiated jail dispatch contract with junction police department um you can see that's technically going to save the county 125 000 and i'll break that down for you so we would pay the police department 500 000 that's the budget contractual mine item but then we would get 300 some thousand and revenue for maintenance as well as another $15,000 for booking fees. So if you do the math, it's about $125,000 savings for the accountant. So that's kind of why revenue is down, but you got to understand a half million dollar of contractual is out of the budget right now. Yeah, I already covered the 360 and the 15,000. So biggest thing that we're focused on is continued fiscal responsibility through strategic cost saving initiatives, including overtime management, contract negotiations and vendor optimization. So you guys know that we cut, I think it was 300 some thousand dollars in overtime by just getting in there, changing the schedule and making some adjustments. So I think we can be highlighted by itself. Well, that was the previous year, so I didn't highlight it for 2027, but yes, I would assume there'll be hundreds of thousand dollars of overtime still cut because we're not going to let it get wild unless our numbers get up and we can't hire The vendor optimization is very rare that you have a vendor that does not increase your price every single year. But with this new vendor that we brought in for our food contract, which is a huge contract, we have a great relationship and they're pretty honest with us and they said they're making money so they're not gonna increase it, which is amazing because almost everyone increases it three to 8%. So that was huge that it wasn't much of an increase at all meaning and at the very bottom we are projected to be 4.18 percent lower than this current year on our budget what about pharmaceuticals that so we we have that covered the medical contract we have a certain amount of pool that pool gets used up fast but with the contract it should cover it unless we have something very random pop up like we can't We can't guess what's going to come in. We get an inmate that has a high maintenance care, we're going to start having some high costs. But I try to project the best I can. Any other questions? No.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. I know you do. You know, you guys do. And I was happy to bring you a decrease because I know last year I did not bring you a decrease. So I'll be glad to be able to make it up this year. All right, thank you all. Thank you.

You weren't here last week, but, you know, thank you for your work, you know, with all the work you did over the weekend and stuff.

I'm still catching up on my sleep from that, and that was a really, really devastating situation there. But I think with all the cooperation and all the hard work, not just my employees, but I mean, I was very impressed. And I think the family, even though they're going through a difficult situation, I think they're very grateful of the community.

So yeah.

Thank you guys.

Oh, I just, I wanted to just point out since 2023, there's 17 less, you have 17 less staff.

Yes, we have made some cuts for the last two years. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.

Hello. Hello. I didn't see you come back. I didn't see you come back. Oh, yes. You missed that red shirt. Right. You looked pretty, like, middle-aged or something there. I'm just a little happy.

Tomorrow.

Okay, we saved the biggest.

Good afternoon, Commissioner Jeremy Myers, Public Works Administrator, Kaylin Ross, Administrative Services Manager here with me, here to present the 2027 budget request. An agenda here and you can see we are responsible for over seeing eight different budgets in our department We're going to work for that I thought Timmy was good So we've got Noxious Weed Waste Disposal, Solid Waste Environmental Fund, Public Works, Water District number two, Sewer District number four, Parks and Rec Fund, and Cloud Community College. And non-budgeted funds that we utilize would be special bridge and facilities for that. First up is our Noxious Weed and Waste Disposal restructural request in this budget. Requesting to move all household hazardous waste HHW expenses from waste disposal fund to noxious weed fund. This thought stemmed from two main ideas. The first idea is how can we build a healthier budget reserve in the waste disposal fund? Removing some expenses that don't necessarily relate directly to waste disposal is one way. The second thought was payments towards the Big Lakes regional HHW are extremely high. for how little we use this program and facility. A quick background on Big Lakes Regional HHW. Being a part of this region allows us to have our HHW facility. We technically are under their permit as a satellite site, so we pay annually to be a part of the region. and assessment fees are based off of population and census results. Our assessment fee for Big Lakes is $20,067.50, and it has been that for the past couple of years. However, when we need them to pick up specific disposal from us, we still do have to pay them. per trip and for the materials picked up. This is not included in that annual fee. From 2023 to 2025, we paid them separately eight times for a total of $4,262.04 plus that annual fee of $20,067.50. To us, we pay a high amount of money and don't use the facility for the money that is costing us annually. we in turn would like to go through the process of becoming our own permitted satellite facility or hhw site we would no longer be a satellite facility at that point there would be some initial upfront costs with that that we would incur as potentially to make any minor improvements to our facility to meet the requirements but they would not need to pay anything annually to have our own permit as of right now the annual renewal permit through kdhe does not incur a cost now there are some other counties that are set up this way county has hhw in their general fund and raleigh county has noxious weed and hhw department in there as well we've gone through and dissected we've gone through just dissected waste disposal expenses from 23 to 2025 to pick out as closely as we could the expenses that were truly transfer station hhw and landfill from our overall total expenses i see break down there and how that works 2023 subtract big lakes and fuel no longer needed in the general fund 2024 uh subtract big lights 20 06750 no longer needed in the general fund gives you a total of nine thousand three oh four and three so long there moving on to noxious weed Couple things here. Line 1001, line created for tracking standby only. This would increase from 3.3 and a half to four employees. Budget employee full-time instead of split with proposed fund changes. So how that's currently structured is Part of that salary comes out of the solid waste fund and part of it comes out of noxious weed. We would be moving that all into the noxious weed fund, keeping it out of solid waste. And our revenues, requesting to move e-waste revenue to this fund, 2025 had about 2,500 from e-waste. Chemicals year to date, 38,294. And 34 cents on that. Contractual expenses, 3430 budgeted for STAR program. 3450-061 budgeted for HHW truck. 3560 increased by 300 due to annual CDWA conference that the Noxious Weed Supervisor would attend. 3626-061 budgeted $5,500 for howies and safety clean. And we have 3657-061 budgeted $22,000 for the Big Lakes Regional HHW. With the Big Lakes, we would like to give notice end of 2026 for leaving Big Lakes Regional HHW. One year notice is required, proposed to be our own HHW permitted The facility satellite in 2028 was previously mentioned. And then we have 3810-061 budget 7,000 for HHW and recycling and building. And then those were all costs that were coming out of solid waste. They would now then come out of noxious weed. Commodities expenses. 2045-061 budgeted 500 for hhw recycling 2085 budgeted 600 for hhw recycling forklift 2140-061 budgeted 1000 for hhw recycling and 29 90-061 budgeted 500 for hhw recycling again those are capital outlay increase of 5 000 for addition of hhw and recycling expenses if the proposed changes are approved this will allow for hhw needed expenses the ability to be requested through cip such as new hhw recycling truck forklift recycling bins etc as they are not within the general fund, they cannot utilize the CIP at this time. So they're basically running off of solid waste revenue or cash there for any of those things. I can pause at the end of these if you have any questions and we can come back to you. Okay. Waste disposal, personnel services, scale clerk one still the same for 2027 hhw recycling showed that half of the employee there that was changed to zero with the intent to move them to the noxious lee department in the seasonal temporary or seasonal position um was a budgeted at 75 2027 is showing 100 There was 25% of that that was budgeted out of Public Works. We no longer want to budget that 25%. We want to move that 100% into this fund there. So 105 hours in Public Works is how it was budgeted before at that 25%. And then 585 hours in waste disposal was another 75%. So we would budget 832 hours in 2027 for that. IST labor position. Some statistics for the proposed change, seasonal line only, 2025 payroll, worked 171 hours in PW, worked 650 hours in waste disposal, total hours worked were 821, 2025, go down through there and see. kind of how that all worked out we were never over in our overall personnel line as we do monitor that closely but it has been difficult over the past couple years kind of watching towards the end of the year that we don't go over that budgeted amount there so we we've had to occasionally do some jogging around with employees to go down there and work is that running out of hours and that people revenue in this fund would include user fees and scrap metal 2026 year-to-date scrap metal revenue 4 000 well went up a little bit here 5 673.35 and 2025 metal revenue was nine thousand nine hundred and thirty four dollars and sixty cents uh we will move landfill tree debris and e-waste revenue to another We'll cover that here a little bit later. Contractual expenses, line 3130 increased $1,226. I have a more accurate depiction of what to budget, and that is property liability insurance as we have moved to starting to pay those. 3490, other repairs and maintenance increased by 2000 for scale repairs only. And we have $36.57 missed fees decreased by $25,000 to move to Noxious Weed Fund, keeping $5,000 for city-county joint cleanup efforts. And then $39.90 other contractual service increased by $145,800, estimated $45,000 tonnage for 2027. estimated at 68.65 per ton price 2024 tonnage you can see there was 43 and we had 20 25 43 and as of now for that 5 28 26 we were at 17 302.70 ton Commodity expenses decreased $600 with moving to HHW expenses. $2,990 decreased $7,500 with moving to HHW expenses. And those are parts and tools and other supplies and materials for those two lines.

And Jeremy, would you talk again about that $3,990 that increased by $145,800. You're estimating $45,000 10-inch.

2026 total tonnage is 17,000. That's what we are to date. We're estimating it to be that 45,000, 3990 other contractual services. That's our balance, zero balance number.

So we, we do that to get total Republic services are contracted through the waste or through the transfer station. So that's the money we pay them to run that facility. That's always a really high number.

Right.

Yeah, they are per contract. They're going to go up probably about like 5% each year on their per ton price for disposal that we pay them. And so estimated for 2027, it would be 68, 65 that the county pays them. The tipping fee rates for like residents will stay the same because we did it for a three-year price. But our price we paid to the contractor is going to go up probably around the 5% amount.

Yeah.

A lot of numbers.

Well, again, everything is just going up.

yeah, that was a big way of like, how can we build a better reserve? Because there's a lot that flows through this fund.

Yeah. And as she did mention that it's expecting around 5% on an annual increase through the life of the three year contract with that. So that that's kind of where you see that number come from. INCREASED BY 600. MOVING TO HHW AGAIN. CAPITAL OUTLAY BUDGETING 300,000 IN BUDGET STABILIZATION. CURRENTLY THIS CAPITAL OUTLAY HOLDS 200,000 IN CD. IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING A HEALTHY RESERVE. THIS IS A USER V FUND. NO TAX DOLLARS IN THIS FUND. SO NEED TO BUILD A RESERVE FOR EMERGENCIES, FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS. AND OR POSSIBLE TRANSFER STATION REPLACEMENT. THE FACILITY IS AGING AND WE NEED TO BE SURE WE'RE DOING OUR DUE DILIGENCE TO CREATE SOME RESERVES IN THIS FUND FOR FUTURE REPAIRS AND THOSE THINGS. PUBLIC WORKS, WE HAVE FEMA REVENUE IN 2025 AND EXPECTED FUNDS. WE'RE ABLE TO GET BACK TO THAT DECREASE We were able to get back that that decreased other expenses which in return helps carry over going into 2627 Trying to keep the taxes lowered Personnel 29 employees to 28 employees. That is that Seasonal position that was budgeted that 25% will no longer have that so that would be Road and bridge crew leader one, equipment operator two, equipment operator two, there's proposed a three, heavy equipment operator seven for a total of 12 there. Currently this seasonal is only budgeted at 25% out of PW requesting the budget 100% out of the waste disposal as we just previously covered. Line 1001. line created for tracking standby. We have previously not tracked that in the past and we'd like to get a better, clearer picture on that. This reclassification better depicted the employees currently hired in public works also better aligns with applicants when hiring for vacancies. As of right now, we will likely ask for an increase in overtime line next year. This would affect public works to include building maintenance and noxious weed. We're not asking for an increase in that line this year, but just kind of wanted to throw that out there. Ideally, as our salaries increase each year, there will come a time when this line will be increased to keep up with the salary.

This one's just lots of numbers up here, but just wanted to point out your budget total on years 23, 24, and 25 for public works, for instance, it shows $34,575. That really combined overtime and the standby figures. So really just overtime of that figure was We have it split on 2026 budget. It is strictly just overtime. So you see the 21, 775 number there um wasn't a truly a decrease it just is better aligned and a little easier to read but as you read like 2025s um seeing that we only use 40 is not truly accurate because if you take what we used out of the 21 775 that was just for overtime um we use about 62% of our budget instead of the 39. So we have that fixed on the budgets. Um, we're going to break it down. Like he has mentioned on the standby line even further for it's being fixed right now as we speak. So the overtime will really just be over time. We'll see a line strictly just for standby. So we can better see that figure. It's just a little skewed from previous years. I just wanted to mention it. So that way, um, you guys can remember. Out of the overall total, it is broken out between overtime and standby. So on each fund, public works, building maintenance, and noxious weed, the true figures are to the right in that little box there.

Overtime is always a tough one.

You never know what we're going to do, and we certainly don't want to be short in that area. Contractual expenses increased through the addition of Foley's Links program. increase in the price of diesel laptops 3450-014 increased due to samsara maintenance program that was approved 9-2 of 2025 and we have line 3490 increased fuel pumps fuel pump costs only commodity expenses increased by 500 as we are fully staffed 2080 increased by 75,000 due to the uncertainty of fuel prices. That's our fuel line. 2081 lubricants and additives. We did decrease that by 15,000, but we will need to watch oil prices as we go through the year. 2170 rock and gravel increased by 10% to stay consistent with annual increases and to keep that application rate the same of 100 ton per mile on gravel and on the asphalt side there hasn't been a deep increase in that for a couple years and as oil goes up those materials go up and if we don't keep up with that then that's less that we can do on an annual basis to the roadway system and then again that deadline hadn't increased since 2023 capital outlay there was no changes for capital outlay in that line we will move on to cloud county community college this fund is generated by lease payments received from cloud county community college current contract runs to 2032 general maintenance of the buildings and ground will be continued to be a continuing expense and total budgeting total building expenditures are not split out by each building to not limit the spending authority however we will need to continue to code expenses with designated building numbers that way we can accurately track repairs and maintenance and we've kept everything the same in this budget feeling we can get through pretty good how it is will be some rather expensive repairs coming up in the near future with the parking lot needing to be re-overlaid and things like that a solid waste environmental fund this fund is intended to maintain the landfill cap on closed landfill expecting revenue this is where we would move the landfill tree debris revenue to this fund REVENUE WAS $10,528.91. 2026 REVENUE IS $7,533 AS OF 5-28-2026. AND WE ALSO HAVE A HAY LEASE CURRENT CONTRACT FOR 2025-2027 OF $2,735. the expenditures in that fund consists of line 30 30 budgeted 900 for a landfill camera internet 3690 increased 850 dollars that is chemical analysis and sampling 3810 budgeted 450 for the landfill camera electric and then 3990 shows budget of 69 272 dollars to balance the fund into zero cash balance to allow for total budget spending authority should it be needed but not intended uh parks and rec fund we've got some expenditures in this fund as well 2170 budgeted 500 for field stand needed at fairgrounds 2240 budgeted 500 for chips needed at the fairgrounds and 3810 show 93 increased by 200 overall expenditures show an increase as the fund was balanced out to end the zero cash balance to give that total spending authority for those dollars but should it be needed but not intended Water District number two, revenue as of 5-13-26. We have 36 customers at 32-20 per customer. Expenditures, 1,001 line created for operator stipend, 31-30 budgeted, 1,576 for property insurance, 35-50 increased by $100. that is licensing and permits 3810 increased by 500 based off of 2025 years paid expenses. 3810 would be your gas and electric utilities and 3990 budgeted 40,486 to balance budget to end with zero cash balance to allow for that total spending authority should be Budget number four, revenue as of 5-13-2026, we have 33 customers at $68. Expenditures on that 1001 line created for operator stipends, 31-30, budgeted 160 for the property insurance, and 39-90, increase of 128,396. for that zero cash balance to allow for total budget spending authority should be not intended. Minor adjustments were made to this fund. The finance director tracks and monitors the revenue and expenses related to the bond payments in that fund. And then we have non-budget funds. covered the special bridge and her presentation of increased transfer by 50,000 to 250,000 total on that. The commission have any questions on that one?

And then the facilities fund as well.

We did just break out the 2025 expenses just by building in case it was something we've seen. The undesignated at the bottom is just if there's kind of buildings that are all encompassing together, like some of our contracts are not broken out by each building, so that is just kind of if there's more than one building together.

tca contract and our rooftop maintenance program they're not broken out individually by each building on invoices so we just code it to facilities in general without a project what's going on with the sheriff's warehouse last year they were mentioning they were going to sell it or something

The one on Monroe, I think, had a HVAC. Maybe there's some of them that had to be replaced last year. That's why that one's high on 084. Yeah, 085 is the one I think they're selling.

I can see 082 is always up there with the age of the facility over there and the issues of the Sheriff's Detention Center.

But this is really great because since we've changed our coding system and we've added these project codes, this is exactly what they can track to see, you know, do we need to look at something? Is there a problem? I mean, it gives them a lot of information that Public Works to utilize, which they also, just like at the buildings at the Cloud County Community College, he knows exactly which ones cost him.

anyway that concludes our presentation of our budgets that

we can certainly look into it yeah numbers i think

We're trying to build numbers to get a good average. Some of our winter months, it's not really that busy at all. So I would think maybe a possibility of restructuring the timeframe throughout the year to maybe in the summer times, just maybe. You could have two Saturdays a month instead of all year round in the winter time when no one comes. So I would like to look at this year's stats to see where it falls and then maybe get some different game plans to present to see which would be more beneficial.

And I've called a couple times when I'm out there because people have dumped non-treaties. Yes. Do you have any success on figuring out who it is and can you legally penalize them to increase the revenue yeah we do have a camera um it does have a flight reader as soon as you cross the gate um so we do get that footage and we do share it with the sheriff's office um so third question why can't you increase the revenue at the transfer station to offset cost you know what i'm asking i know you have a contract with the trend the hauler but

why can't you chart why can't that be more a higher fee for users to offset cost well the tipping fee is increasing yeah we did increase it but i think right but to build there's kind of a balancing point there because you've got riley county you've got dickinson county and then you've got gary county and you know in thought if we get those tipping for fees too high we could run ourselves up this

Well, it's an enterprise fund, correct? It covers all its costs? 100%? Does it build any reserve for any future? That's what we're working on now. Through the fees? Yes.

And that's why we're looking at adjusting costs because right now the waste disposal has been eating costs that are not their costs. So that's why it's looking at restructuring is to help save some of those dollars. So, I mean, they've been looking at it very analytically.

I don't have any complaints about it. I think it's, they're both, Rupp and Geary County are both well-run, both burn piling. Other one, I just, I just think that there are, you know, the burn pile is a challenge. It's got to be because, well, like in this storm, there's, there's several tree services that are out here and they're hauling, They don't need to, they can put it on the curb, but they're charging people to haul it through the dump, and you don't even know it, because they're not, it is what it is, and it is a storm, so I understand.

And that's part of moving that HHW out of that fund is to help build some revenue with that one as well, on the solid waste end. Thank you. You're welcome.

I've got a question too. I woke up when I heard a contract of around $7,000 for hay. That means that's a fairly large piece of land. Where is it, and why does the city own it? The county.

Or the county, I'm sorry. It's actually located at the closed county landfill, and so all of the cap areas that were reclaimed, so to speak, and covered, all the cap put over all the cells and stuff, That's what is considered the hay ground there now.

So it's really until everything disintegrates under the ground, so no real value to sell, nobody would want to buy it. Okay. Because it sounds to me like if you get rid of it, then

there would be a lot less but i can see the point in order we're responsible for keeping the landfill cat maintained down there and before there was a landfill or before there was a hay lease on that property public works was responsible for mowing it okay yeah so it was a rather expensive expensive public works to keep all that mode when we could generate some revenue of doing a hay lease

That's what I was going to say. Before we'd already mowed it. Yeah, we had to mow it. We weren't making any money.

Well, a lot of ground to mow is an expense, but now it is actually generating some revenue.

And it's got a real good methane source. Yeah, he's probably not going to want you to sell it. Well, methane is good for a lot of stuff. Depends on who you're talking to. You can cap it and sell it. Methane gas. Any more questions? A lot of questions.

Jeremy, how did this happen there with the storm in the last storm? A lot of tree limbs out in the county. Not a horrible amount of them. Not near like the city, but the city's got a lot more trees.

Did you say there was flooding? Or did I hear somebody say there was a foot of water on one of the roads out there?

Just the little water crossings. We didn't have actually any roadways flood, but all of our little water crossings. Maybe that was the sheriff that had the storm. They were up a lot of debris on the...

You're responsible for that road, right? Not really. But we did get some trees up at midnight.

So I was worried. Somebody else came to take my computer.

No, I pulled down my driveway and I had to turn to the technical director of that position. There was tree limbs all over the road and my wife said, we need to clean this off. Somebody didn't run into him.

Jeremy has one more thing he needs to run by the commission concerning his personnel budget.

Yeah. On the personnel budget side of things, there has been a change since what you have received on that. I did want to ask for an additional $6,721.60, which would be an overall increase in the public works budget to $4 million. two hundred ninety thousand seven hundred and thirty one dollars and sixty cents and basically that that personnel increase would be to cover additional salary costs for hiring of an employee we have a pretty good candidate for that that has some really good experience for one of our positions down there but that entry level pay for them would not be sufficient. So we were going to add that into our budget to give us the ability to possibly hire this individual. So not a huge increase, but how the budget was before it was at a step B for 2027, and this would just be up to a

the city to mill and overlay the road in front of hhw boy that would be a blessing he was out taking pictures he was fixing fixing wow aren't you doing something with the east street yeah we are yes yeah so you can negotiate hey can you pay this one at a time

So you're going to do county attorney then? Yep.

She said they're waiting for a verdict, so. Okay. Okay. So I have Tammy Robinson.

I wanted to give her a hard time that there's almost as many jury trials over in Dixie County.

I'm finance director and I am here presenting the county attorney's budget on behalf of Krista Blades-Dunford, county attorney. And she provided you the documentation. Couple of things she asked me to point out is the numbers that you see in front of you for personnel would be adjusting her office from 37 and a half hours to 40 hour work weeks. So that is the increase you're seeing in those numbers. She said that her budget really the changes that you'll see here based on contract spending increases. And then it's pretty difficult to predict the amount of travel lodging and witness expenses in a given year. So, you know, those were estimates and she's at the mercy of the court schedule and how that all falls out and what she needs. So the other thing I want to point out is that that diversion account that used to be outside, is closed now and it goes into the general fund and so we estimated about $20,000 to come in as that revenue. And just to give you an idea, in 2025 we received $28,414. So you can see her budget increased from the $1,946,268 to the $1,992. 605 and about 17,000 was due to the three C's and the remaining was in personnel. Any more questions?

37 and a half to 40 hours.

Because she believes that they can use those extra hours for the jobs that they're doing. I mean much like you know, several of our offices changed from 37 and a half to 40 down here. Now all of her attorneys are already salaried, so that makes no change in there. So it's just the hourly people that that's going to affect.

She had on her first page there, you know, on the third line there further, based on how certain expenditures are coded, the amounts reflected have changed to line, but not necessarily amounts. Unfortunately, it's difficult to get just that first sentence.

So that's much like what Courtney had, where she's reassessed her line items, and her hardware versus software wasn't accurate. So where she's been posting it, it really And for instance, I know one of them is the software versus the hardware maintenance because of her next tech contract that she pays, she was putting it in software and it really should be hardware. So you can see like literally we spent 61,025, but we had nothing budgeted there because she had it up in the lease payments really shouldn't be a lease payment because we don't own the equipment and we're paying for their services and we're, we're, um, they're basically supporting the hardware that they've provided. So it's those kinds of things that are adjusted that you're seeing. It's us doing a better job of being consistent so everybody's using the same codes and there's not- Sorry, jump in.

I thought that was some of that coding was not in understanding.

Right. So we've talked through it? Yeah. Good.

Okay.

Anything else? No. I think that is it. Thank you. And that is all that is to be presented today. She said she would be happy to come back next week if you have questions and you want her to come in.

And you're going to get back with us sometime as to the dates

Yep, I have numbers. I have numbers since she gave me evaluations, and I didn't put in to present on the 15th, but I was going to go ahead and put it in on the following week to bring everything back for you to see what the outcome is.

And I'm not sure if I will be here either. It depends on what time we get back, but nonetheless, I'll get on or whatever, but go ahead because you're just going to present it and then we're going to still go over it and then come back.

You'll see the numbers and you'll decide what you want to do.

And if you have it available before I leave, I would appreciate it that way because we've got a couple midday hours that I can read and stuff and look over it if that's okay. I'd appreciate it.

yeah and i think that the appropriation sheets are there and the packets and you guys have seen those as a total for the appropriations the only one that's not on there is the silver legislature one so you have all those so anytime you want to start talking about the appropriations and anything that you want to look at for changes adjustments approvals we can do that at any time as well

Did you guys have anything back there?

No, I asked my question.

Well, again, if you put your information together and you have comments, both of you would appreciate any input that you had. I saw you taking notes back there.

Oh, yeah. Well, I put in, I asked on the out of us website and asked you said you mentioned that you get ridership in the minute or i thought they'd be in the minutes of the meeting and they had a place to email if you wanted copies and so i emailed my question and stuff and i haven't i haven't heard back yet but i'm hoping to get that but okay you know just some you know riley county is barely putting in barely anywhere than we are, for a pretty substantial difference in ridership. Yes. But even my county is putting in a lot. Are they? I haven't gotten that far yet to look how far east, but you know.

I mean, that's the evaluation that they need to look at is when you look at the population, the ridership and how much are we paying per ride versus any other county. And in my mind, and not just out of us, but there are several of them that provide services to Pott, Riley, Dickinson, Gary. And if they're not charging that same fee to all of us, then probably we could ask questions to see.

And I meant to ask the other day when she was here, why the school district quit using

But we, like some of the other things that really take off on what Tammy is saying is so many services are shared among, and I remember some of these, you know, I looked at years ago, but haven't of course recently. And then some, I never thought of how many transportation, how many agencies are providing transportation. Not that that's your problem to solve or our problem to solve like hey But through the budgeting process you can encourage them maybe to look at ways they can work together even between out of us and Senior Center because they have those two bands that are general services They should they do on demand, you know have for years, you know 50 years and Then big lights that have the 45 vehicles or whatever, you know, a lot of costs.

And that might be a little more specialized because they probably have to have like experienced trained people to deal with them with those individuals.

But they, I think they send that same person could send, I mean, yes, but they can have somebody, a company. Possibly have somebody a company and not be maintaining quite so many vehicle expenses And then yeah, you look at you know services and I Think it was for 30 people and again, those are valuable services. I'm not arguing that at all, but Even looking at we're budgeting $90,000 for 30 people for these services then How many people are we serving through another similar agency? Where's the crossover? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of good services and lots of good programs. But, yeah.

Tough decisions? Well, I'm preaching to the choir. Hard decisions. But that's why we pay you the big bucks. And make them tough decisions.

That one has been my whole career, so I'm preaching to the choir. But I do say that at least you're making educated decisions with really good information from Tammy that never was available.

Yeah, it is much, much easier than my first time doing a budget hearing. Much easier. Yeah. Because then you can also tell the public this is exactly why, where it's going up. Is it salaries? Is it equipment? Is it overtime? Is it training?

And that transparency element is important, even though you don't get a lot of feedback from dozens and dozens of people that it's important. It is.

i appreciate all three of you being here all the time because you know i wish more people were involved i do because then they could see what we had to do well i appreciate it keep reaching out and you know saying hey would you come and do this like sure no i didn't say would you come do this i said would you be willing to come in and listen to all yeah that's what yeah i wouldn't just say i just didn't i just didn't i still would like to see

have fees cover costs instead of taxes cover costs. I mean, if that means every time you go to the transfer station, you pay a $2 tipping fee on the scale, then you pay a $2.

Isn't there some restrictions though, Tammy, that the cities can do that and send us what they want?

We just don't have really strong. So that's one of the things they're looking at. They're looking at admin fees for some of the services we're providing. costing that we're not getting paid for and taxing the taxpayers. The other thing that we do, and it's super important and no one really talked about it in the presentations, but the department heads, especially the ones that have the ability to tap into grants, Public Works, Fire, Sheriff, they work really hard to get grant dollars. And those grant dollars and those tax credits that they're getting are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars that we would have to come up with otherwise. So that alone, and that was not being done as much in 22 and prior, but the people that are in those places right now are working very hard to get, you know, you did hear Gary say he got a $500,000 grant for the fire stuff, and that's money that he would have had to tax his district. Those are ways that we have the ability to bring in more revenue, but we're relatively limited. We don't have, like, fees we can assess. We don't have dog tax fees. Like, the city has dog tax that probably people pay. We don't have that ability to even do things like that.

Well, they've increased jail on the utilities, too. Right. Right. We can't do that. Counties can't. Yeah. I mean, you don't have that.

And we have increased. So you have your sewer and your water and we have increased those fees so that we can take care of those districts. And that's only those districts that pay on it. So, and we've done, I feel like we've done a really good job of looking at where costs really need to be. For instance, in the past, we paid a hundred percent of Gary and Kurt's salaries through EM, which means ad valorem tax dollars.

Yeah.

the county your half is now being taxed to the fire which is still tax dollars but it's for the right places so we made a lot of changes to the cost where they really should be so while we don't have the ability to necessarily adjust revenue streams we're trying to be super efficient about where our costs are and matching them up with the revenues that really should be

Supporting and how many mills do you assess right now?

The mills for last year was 54.

So if you even kept it at that and you had a $15,000 per mill increase in valuation, you've got a bump. If you kept the mill level the same, that's what I'm saying, because you assess valuation when there's a county construction or city construction, at least you've got more revenue coming in. It may not be enough. It may not be enough to offset the cost.

But it's still tax dollars.

No, but what I'm saying is, so long as there's growth in the county, okay, it allows you the increase. Now, you've got to manage the increase. But at least, I mean, what would you do if it's going the other direction?

Well, that's where the grants and those kinds of things are so very important. Yeah, I meant construction grants.

So that's how we're being created, is trying to figure out other ways so that we can take that burden off the taxpayers.

Sales tax is another thing that takes the burden off of taxpayers. That's one of the things that's funding one of our bonds right now. Instead of assessing additional costs there, we're not levying anything for that because what we have and what we get in that sales tax covers that full cost.

Well, you all, I've said this before, you seem to be very, I appreciate your conscientiousness, if that's the right word, of the taxpayer dollars. I hope

talked with elected officials before in the past and they just don't seem to get it well i think all the department heads are working really hard for that exact goal i i mean you have to commend all the the department heads because they are looking at all of their lines and they are assessing and seeing what they can do so there are good people to work with because they do see they are taxpayers so they do see You know, this is their cost as well. What can we do to help save others, right? So.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you all. Appreciate it. Next time, it'd be nice if we had some Chick-fil-A if you're going to bring a cup over here. Is there something called EDC that you could work on? Oh, that's right.

Give a Chick-fil-A. You really want a Chick-fil-A. All right. So 22nd is when we're going to plan to do the first budget work session. Do you want to set me up with an appointment? Is there anything else? You've got all the stuff provided to you now. Is there anything else that you want to?

see or work through or before i bring you all the numbers no i didn't know kind of what direction um are the commissioners looking at uh with the those you know appropriations you know all of them are we gonna just kind of all a certain percentage because one thing i think we did need to do is um we're not going to do anymore for right now whatever, not any new appropriation requests. I think things like Main Street, I wouldn't want to cut. I think that they have showed their ROI. Well, I think that's what we should do with the papers.

go through it one by one or?

Well, like you did last year, we all just need to do our homework and look at it. Because that was good. I kind of did that on the side there, but I do think we need to maybe keep Mac and EDC the same until we figure out what we're doing.

Yeah. Yeah. That guy and him, he wasn't able to go yesterday.

either but i was in on it with a a zoomed in on that so i'll share what notes i did have on that i've just been having a terrible and i'm not one to say i have to you know whiner but i have