Fiscal Court Committees - Regular Meeting

Start the meeting. It's 3.30. We'll start the meeting.

Well, welcome, everyone.

Has everyone signed in?

And if you would, silence your phones.

I think we'll probably be getting a bunch of alerts here in the next few minutes. I already got one. We'll begin with our financial report. Treasurer Lisa Kierman.

We ended June at $49,255,267.46. That's because the restricted was $15,979,688.27 and non-restricted was $33,275,579.19. Then I sent out a comparison. I had some typos on that. I've got a revised one for you. Any questions on any of that?

Everyone get the revised copy. Any questions?

The next item is on May. My plan is to close the credit card bank account since I'm doing the CDs as a rotation once a year. There's no need for that account after I've pulled that last bit of interest out the end of the year. So as of July 31, I'll be closing that account. So that'll come off girls reports. Yeah. The 60,000 was in that. But then we started doing the CDs that got moved into the CD 1102 1102.

Yes, sir.

See if there's no amount there. Zero. It Okay. But that's the account originated. And we had the money in there until I started doing the CDs.

So you're saying close the account. I thought there was maybe still some in the account. So I'm looking for a dollar number.

There was $2.37, I think, at the end of the year. And I moved that. So now I can close that account. So that's what I want to do is kind of clean that up. Unless they have to keep up with.

Any questions on that? I'll wait until next month.

We're never going to get through one meeting without that question. I think so. Sarah killed one of them. Yes. Okay.

Anything else on that one?

That's all I have on the credit card. Okay. Do you want me to go to the budget amendment? Yeah. Before I go to the budget amendment, I did reach out to Department of Local Government. I was talking to them in reference to something else. And they advised me that normally by the 20th or the 21st, we get our tax assessment. And when I was talking to him, he said all of them have been delayed. It was one day last week when I talked to him. And he said normally he's done already got 40 or 50 and he had zero. So I just wanted you all to be aware that it could be a delay, which it is now because I haven't got the document from them. So I don't know what month or what week we will get those. But just FYI, that probably won't be in the month of August.

We'll be doing that. It'll be more of September.

Anyone have any questions concerning that?

And two, I sent out the year-end statement. I didn't get any questions. If y'all have any questions on that, just let me know. That'll be a part of the court document. And then now I have a budget amendment. I just gave you all the explanation page, but it will be that ordinance with an amendment number on it. I'll just go down the line and kind of go over each one of them. The first one is... $2,900, $2,986.32. That is for a reimbursement for one of the volunteer fire departments. It got lost in some emails, and it was for the prior year. And so we wanted to make sure they got that money, but that would make that line over. So I'm pulling that through the prior year surplus. Then the next item is for $6,000, animal control. care got a grant check the last part of the month of june and they need to spend those on items in this budget and wasn't budgeted so that's why that's added um then i'll skip the other part and we'll get that to the end the next one is um we've received a grant through the kentucky rural health transfer transformation And that was for $54,787. And the next item is the contract for the mowing at Fort Knox had increased and had changed and I did not catch that during the budget process. And basically this money comes in and it's paid out. So I need it on the payout side. So that is just to make that true. It's not really anything that is hurting the general fund because it's just basically, we get the money from Fort Knox and we pay it to the vendor, just the watershed. The other one is we got approved for the rubber modified asphalt grant for $162,624, and that's adding that in there. And then unfortunately, our recycling grant, we received the money the first part of July and it was lowered. We anticipated, or Stephanie had requested 159,800 in, and we only received 89,200. So I'm taking that out of the budget. With all those added together, the other one is, I think we're going to be discussing today, is the equipment for EMS. And I have that $904,207. It's part of this budget amendment. So it makes a total of 1.2 million change for it. Do you have any questions?

Any questions?

My goal is to have the first reading next court and hopefully have the second reading the first court in August if I can fulfill all of my advertisement. I have to wait for DLG to send me back the approval.

Hopefully I'll be able to get all that done.

Okay, Sarah.

Just heavy stuff. So I'm not sure if everyone has seen that the administrative code has Chapter 7 of the Administrative Code covers the state regulates the bid threshold by KRS. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I was just talking to myself.

Oh, yeah.

This time when they did the KRS, they had some language in it. automatically increases the mid-threshold after a certain amount of time by $10,000. So what I have drafted here, and just I'll put this out here to lead with, all of this has gone to the attorney's office, check performance modality, use 100% on board. In lieu of having to continually come back with this information and update that number every time. What I'd like to do is change the language instead of saying less than $40,000, less than $50,000. To change the language to say the applicable small purchase maximum set by KRS 424. That way, when that automatically happens at the state level, we don't have to spend getting all of that done so that we can just move with the state. Doing that changes a couple things down the way. I added section B there just to reinforce who sets that and who is in charge of updating the state numbers based on the KRF, and that is the finance administrative care. So that A, where you see redlined, is my language. B is all new language. So that kind of shifts everything down. The next thing is small purchase procedure. In order to kind of stay with what Commonwealth is doing, I'd like to up the small purchase procedure number to 10,000. That is in section four there. That's what there currently is as set by the Department of Revenue Administration. Basically, that doesn't change anything about our policies, our procedures, our oversight. It just says if Mark needs a piece of equipment valued at $7,000, he does not have to jump through the hoops that he would if it valued at four thousand it doesn't change any of the reporting capabilities and it doesn't change any of these standards from the financial statement here so the next thing is this is all new is under the small purchase procedures i have added section c which is specifically at software subscription agreements. To get really into the weeds, guys, we have to report, they're called subedits. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board put out a thing a couple of years ago, actually like 2020, it's Gatsby 96, that says we have to report all of our subscription-based software IT agreements as if they are a continuing obligation. We follow the Kentucky regulatory basis of accounting, so we don't state that in our financial statements. We report it separately. That's what this worksheet is here. But we do track those. We do track the dollar amounts and the length of time. That is required by the Governmental Accounting Standards. What we would like to do is, in this small purchase procedure, allow for department heads to be able to sign a SEBEDA agreement without it going to court, provided that it falls under the $10,000 small purchase threshold annually. So to kind of clarify some of that, right now if mark needs a typing test or a typing software for his employees say he wants a three month subscription to typing 101 even if it's 200 because it is an agreement he has to bring it to committee he then has to have the county attorney vet it and he has to take it to court and it creates such an administrative burden for these items that would be considered small purchase And historically, prior to everything becoming subscription-based, you would have just gone to Staples, bought a CD-ROM, because I'm old, and bought a CD of typing 101 and put it in your computer. And the claim would still go before court, be open for approval. None of the claims process changes. None of the responsibility changes. The only difference is that rather than battling, for lack of a better word, all of the people involved in that administrative process with a small purchase, department heads would have the authority to initiate that process, make that payment, and then you would see it when it comes to court as a client.

There's nothing about the...

nothing about the technology that i can get ahead of you know everything is going subscription-based model and when i did discuss this with the county attorney she was very like yeah that that's actually an excellent idea it does some of the administrative burden that she's wasting on things like 200 typing contracts in lieu of actual important so that That's the new part. That's the biggest change. After that, the language is the same for the applicable small purchase amount for the negotiated process because that is very clear. And then negotiated process can be if it's for a service. The other thing I gave you guys was the actual KRS reference there. It's 50 now. Yeah, July 15th, it went to 50.

That was by KRS. It is set by KRS to increase in 10,000 degree in

There it needs to go. $10,000 acrement by 2030. I believe it's the next update. And that basically just kind of cleans up some of the things that you guys know that July 1, we need a new budget. So let's I've got to wait for this to buy this piece of equipment. If the threshold changes July 1, I don't have to jump through all the hoops. I can just go ahead do the thing. It doesn't really change anything administratively other than kind of lessening the hoops that have to make sure it's the same as the tariff. There is a dollar number specifically for these small purchases that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon. There was no legislation to change or increase that on the schedule the same way. Any questions?

This may be a silly question. So we have to go exactly by the KRS at the $50,000. We can't keep it at $40,000?

We could keep it at $40,000, yes. We could.

But it just can't go over the $50,000?

It cannot go over. But that is governed by are administrative documents.

Right. So if we decided to leave it at 40, then that wouldn't change in our...

It would not. And when the auditors come in, that's what they go by, not the state. Our documents are more restrictive, but not less restrictive.

Okay. That's what I was thinking.

Thank you. Questions?

Are you good with all this since it's outside of June? Do you have a comment? I'm going to have a comment. I mean, I know it's...

I'm just hypothetically speaking. You get this one, all of a sudden this one's software. This... and you start stacking them on, and whether it's budgeted or not, you may have to pull from somewhere else. How does this stop somebody from coming in and buying $100,000 worth of software?

Okay, so there's several different answers to this question. One, procurement, like our current procurement laws, don't allow that. You can't piecemeal or stack things.

And what I mean by that is like Microsoft here, some kind of data software for this like different different things like whether it's the track mileage or it's track you know what i mean like different like modules within the same software or totally different you know something that creates a gis software and then some you know i'm trying to like think of different departments but whether it being under one well you got to remember there's a ten thousand dollar threshold right so anything above that would fall into has

automatic. Or taking to court. I'm sorry. You would have to get the quote and bring it to committee and take it to court. So that releases your threshold. For your GIS software, your financial software, your I know the iWork software, all of those softwares are would be capital expenditures given the dollar threshold. So

I'm probably using it as far as the way up. Let's just say EMS. He purchases a software that's $8,000 to track. Completely irrelevant. He purchases a $9,000 software to track mileage. He's not stacking. There are different things that he's tracking. And then he spends $9,000 on training modules. And then $8,000 on something else, that's almost $40,000 right there. And it's different software, but it's, oh, it's just under $10,000. It's under $10,000. It's under $10,000.

Can I devil's advocate to you here? There's nothing stopping him from doing that very thing with physical goods either. You guys see the bills. You see that.

I think the easy answer, Sarah, is that they have budget. Right. track those budgets every month. So if you were to do that and he went over budget, then it was flagged. What's the questions about all of this?

And I will tell you for software in particular, when we build the budget, Lisa, when she builds the budget, there's literally lines for this software, this software, this software, this software, because Everything is becoming software as a service. It is not going to be that you can just make a purchase and move on. And as far as oversight, the rules are there to keep you safe. So we are very strident, and you can ask for Mark down there. If he is closed, we will flag that and say, hey, what is this? Now, it is not on me for the policy to dictate what his needs are that mark that judge but there really there is nothing to keep them from buying 17 different software other than it's not in the budget we won't let it the other side of that you said obviously it wouldn't go through court but you know is it still going to be a policy to even though it's under that threshold for the county attorney to If necessary, I did ask her that, and there are some stipulations that she put through, like she doesn't want to see certain things, and she does want to see certain things. That is at her discretion, not necessarily mine. You know, she doesn't review every copy or contract we sign for legality because they're standard, and a standard contract is a standard contract. So, once she reviews the first one and the rest are just renewals.

Yeah, renewals. Something new. Mark down here is like, you know what? I like this software. We're going to use it. It's a 100-year clause. You know what I mean? Where do we... Where's the protection as far as if we're not going to run it?

If there's a discretionary aspect.

Again, I don't mean to be insulting. But the implication that the department heads would not be thorough and would not do their research prior to signing those kind of contracts. I can't say enough good things about the current department heads. We have very skilled, very intelligent, very experienced people running departments in the county. And trusting them to make these decisions like I said, it is just to alleviate an administrative burden to kind of streamline things.

But don't all the software come with agreements that we have to approve? Yes, they are.

And Jenny's exact phrase to me is, even if I wanted Meta to change something, they're not going to do it. So it's not like some things are not just And you got to think about it in the grand scheme of things. Most of our software is a service. Most of our Civitas are run through Insight, which runs through the state contract. It has a master agreement number. And all of those are huge dollar amounts every year because that's a lot of software. You see those. Aaron brings them. These are four things that are small. And we do some training in our office. It is $600 per year. It had to go to court. And I mean, but I could go out and order a part for a vehicle for $600 and it would not have to be part approved until it's okay. So that's kind of what we're trying to fix is the administrative burden on what would be considered small.

I have a quick question. You should know this.

So yesterday we were presented with a $15,000 purchase for Brightworks 365. So are you telling me that we should have had three bids since that's over the $10,000? Or since it was in the budget, we don't need the three bids?

Well, you wouldn't have had a bid because it thresholds 40. Any kind of software, you'd get three quotes.

This was software, and we were only presented with one, the 365. That's what I'm asking. Did we not get that and we should have?

No, because when this election was made, there were several people with that, and the department had chose the software that they felt met their needs.

Okay.

And it was for $14,000, so it still goes through.

It was $14,870. Yeah, it would still go through the folks.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That'll be on the fiscal court agenda.

Yeah, I understand that. But I'm asking, were we not supposed to have the three bids for that program?

That's through the process of trying to figure out which one we want to present to you all. Yeah, that's on the department.

Okay. Well, usually whenever a department comes with something like that, they show us, hey, here are the three bids we got, but I like this one the best. So I was a little confused about the process there because we didn't get that yesterday. We just got, we're going right where it is.

I understand your point. The bids are brought to you all, but not the quotes. Okay.

That's closer.

Good question.

It's one reason we don't have to see them.

How do you know they do?

I'm just saying.

Well, according to this KRS, they don't. They have to alert him. And clearly he would alert us that they didn't pick the lowest bid, according to KRS.

Our administrative guidelines require that they present a fee for writing a bid.

Bid, but not quote.

Bid or quote. Bid. guidelines for quotes are strictly on the Commonwealth side, strictly on small purchases. And that's kind of how we figured that.

And also, I think we need to keep in mind that the department heads are the professionals and the experts and know which software package best suits the needs of county government. We have to put some element of trust into that. And just like, you know, Aaron was asking about what was to keep them from, you know, racking up $40,000 worth of software or whatever. I mean, that's why they're the department heads and we have to keep that in mind. We have to respect their decisions and their professionalism on what we need. So there again, there is a way to check that, and that's because it will be up here on the fiscal court agenda if it's over a certain amount.

Yes, if it's over the small purchase, it would automatically go to court as being checked by the county attorney, and not with these particular things. I do track those. We track the dollar amounts of those. Like I said, we have to report those to the Department of Local Government as part of our financial program. It is a governmental standard for requirement.

It is... Well, so we have checks and balances in place.

This does not change any of the standards for care. Like I said, we don't routinely let anyone color out of the lines without really sharply getting them back right back.

Thanks.

Anyone else?

I'd like this to go towards this time.

Okay.

Okay, Dina, you're up, I think.

In the month of June, we added 67 new accounts. We collected $43,521.91. For the fiscal year, July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, we collected $3,539,330.45. This breaks down, of course, what different types that went into.

just what we collected for each month since we started the pack. That's not that month. It's not what I would put our collection month at the end of a quarter. You may have any questions.

Any questions on industrial tax?

How's things going as far as sign up from the contractors and all that? Any

I made one trip down there. See how much activity is going on.

Yeah, they let you on.

You don't have a problem getting through anybody.

Not with this group, right?

I think it's changed quite a bit from that standpoint, I believe. Y'all had a walkthrough. I think the door's been opened somewhat.

Not like it was.

Yeah. Not like Fort Knox. No.

It flew over. Never got it right. Yeah. Walkthrough. Saw what they've been doing there.

Demolition so far.

To give you an idea, one room, very large room, 80% of the floor, concrete floor, looked thick. It was still working with all the purpose because the equipment that was going back in there was heavier equipment. So they had to have either thicker concrete or stronger concrete in that room. So that's some of the stuff.

And then one room still had all the equipment.

It's all going to be removed. It's very new equipment. It's all scrap.

Scrap? Wow. How are they going to scrap it?

It's coming out. They're not going to be using it or selling it.

Are they recycled?

Are they scrapping it through local companies here? Let me see. scrap it out. They were going to use some of the electronic stuff that's associated with you. I'm going to try to reuse as much of that as I can. And there was another huge room that had been empty. It sounded like through the end of 2026 there will still be

calling demolition phase basically getting rid of everything and preparing to start on that when you say judge are they going to actually crush it or something and sell it for scrap or are they taking it and putting it repurposing it someplace else or i don't think they're repurposing it didn't say that my understanding was it was totally

using that equipment. And it looked, obviously it looked good.

It was nice.

I just didn't know if they were going to have an outside company come pick it up with the money.

It sure did not quite. It's a big building.

Did you get your steps in?

Yeah, they took us all the way from one end to the other, about a mile. We came in, got to the middle spine, they call it, and it's a large, I mean, the hallway is as wide as this room for the length of that building. And you can look down the far end, and it looks like it's that big. And if you go all the way to the other end, you're looking down a mile, you can't see the end of the hallway. So it's, somebody said the curvature of the earth, but I don't think it's quite that far.

Yeah.

But it's pretty amazing. By the end of next year, they say they're going to be producing parts.

I look forward to the day that, you know, they'll invite Fiscal Board and others to come in and actually, you know, when they get it pretty near completed or whatever, just to come in and tour and see what it looks like.

This is just the first step at it. They'll they'll be asking more. There'll be opportunities in the future, I'm sure. Okay, here are the questions concerning financials.

Okay, we're going to the other one. As you all know, the Finance Committee was charged with the responsibility trying to figure out the best way to handle the monitors for Ms. And I think after Lisa got Keiko's rates and we checked other rates, we But see, all of us can see it's not the smartest financial move to finance it, especially with the year-end report that we got on our finances. It would be prudent for us to just go ahead and purchase it outright. And as chair, I would recommend we can't do it in the general fund. We use the pilot money to do that. That would be what the chair recommends. Anybody else on the committee want to make a comment about it?

Yeah, I think there's another option to consider, and that would be to, well, there's, let me just turn it over to Bonnie and just let her explain one of the things.

Yeah, the reserves, whether it comes out of the pilot, that's still a reserve amount technically because there's no future money coming in there except for interest. Then there's the general fund. Last year, just to make a comment, the CMS, they were budgeted to spend about $3.9 million that we would have to fund them out of the general fund. It ended up being $2.8 million. So they were $1.2 million to the goods, mainly about $809,000 in revenue increases. And then they also saved in expenses. Some of it was personnel. The other bigger piece was not spending $135,000 of the two that we had there for cost. It's left over there. And when you take out the $1,145,000 that we actually spent, you know, the operation really are down, costing us like about $1.7 million, which is a lot better than the two and three and four in the previous years. And also, last year's budget had $500,000 going from the HMH Legacy to help fund the general fund. We didn't need to pull that money because we had enough other money coming in, excess tax revenue, some other things. So I think it's best to pull, if you can pull anything out of another pot other than the general fund, I would say $500,000 of it come out of the HMH legacy like it was budgeted for. But if anything, it should just come out of general reserves.

So you're saying $500,000, the option, $500,000 out of the hospital fund in the remainder, which would be 400. That that would come out of our general not not pull it out. That would be the other off. That one out there is a possibility.

We have 3 options. Pilot hospital general.

Well, the option two was really kind of a mixture of

But we actually have three options to consider.

Well, yeah, I mean, you could have three options, sure.

Anybody else on the committee have a comment they want to make on it?

Maastricht. Anybody have a comment? No one have a position on how you want to finance this?

Given the general funding, I don't see why we don't use general funding.

It's all under strict general funding.

It's all general funding money.

No, it's not on general funding.

But you're suggesting $500,000 out of the legacy. I said we could because we didn't use it, but it was budgeted to be used last year out of the legacy.

It was a budget compromise we made last year, yeah. But the pilot was generated based on a tax base. It's not based on the settlement asset. So there's a distinct difference in those two pots of money. So that's the reason I say I've always had the position that if we're going to pay for services, we pay for it out of tax-generated or fee-generated or grant-generated funds, not a fixed asset sale. And we all know, too, that we're facing some issues going forward that we want to – make prudent decisions on whatever we spend our money on right now.

I would be, you know, I'll just speak first. I guess I would be inclined to pull it out of the ballot funds.

My position has not changed on the legacy money.

Mr. Muse? It's all four times.

It's all four times.

Yeah, possible tornado on the ground.

Oh, I just wanted to draw attention just in case anybody else wanted to go. I'm going to be like, uh, I don't know. Whenever it comes to EMS, my, my stance has always been like, I do think that's health wellness. Like period. Uh, that's one area. I can say compromising, but I think that that's one area where we could utilize as much from any asset.

Um, I do think, though, that if we, you know, first of all, Mark and them, good job with the revenue increase.

I think that comes from the contract right now.

Recognize Mark and his leadership. Well, and I think it's quality control. I think there's a lot of things that have contributed to that.

Also, we added the white films.

That's even covering that extra time. My personal stance is they were to the good. Whether you want to physically see it as using that money to wrap that up, either that or maybe not use them.

They're all unrestricted.

I'm okay with either way.

I'm willing to compromise with everybody else. Out of all the things that we pay for, this might be the most important.

Ditto. I agree.

I'd say general fund myself.

We're a million. 20 is good.

That's something we, I mean, what effect, I mean, we know that the last three years we've gotten in more revenue and expenses have been less that we've ended up each year just about, you know, over projecting and under projecting. And we've got, we had that before me, I think it was close to $4 million. So why can't we just go out of the general fund? Then if we got into an issue, we've always got a pot to draw from.

I think that's kind of what, That's what they're saying is we didn't use it. We made a million more. Let's just use that.

What about just our general fund revenues? That's $500,000. That was never taken, so it's not in that.

They gave two options, one using $500,000 or just using the general fund of the plan, which included the

I didn't understand. I thought it was $500,000.

We can take it all out of the general fund.

I think that makes the most sense.

You can take $500,000 of it since we didn't use that $500,000 from the hospital sales.

It's about part of the care. Those, those are, so whatever you guys.

And, you know, and I'm flexible with, with it. You know, the thing of it is we, we've got to do it. We have to do, that's true. I mean, we, we have to fund it. It's just, where's the money going to come from? You know, what, where are we going to pull it from? So, you know, I'm not set on any one thing, whatever.

Their revenue goes into the fund anyway. So it just, it just makes the most sense.

Yeah.

I think that speaks well of what we're doing.

We're able to negotiate and not even take the money out of what we proposed. We ended up on the plus side. It's good physical management.

You're a million dollars better off. Good job, Mark. So what I'm hearing is the general fund would be the preferred method of...

I just said my stance on the hospital money is not changed, so that means don't use the hospital money.

I think Kenny... Yeah, so I... So now this page is complete.

It'll come to us next week, you said?

Right. It'll be in the right format. But it'll be changed because I've got on this the pilot.

Oh, yes.

Instead of coming from the pilot, it'll come from the general. Brian, is there any change on the weather?

Sure. Bad for them. Good for us.

Okay. The next item is a discussion about an ordinance, our Ordinance 248, Series 206. I went to trying to do my own personal work on the fire services issues that we were facing with, faced with. I went to the sheriff's office and secured all of the opt-in and opt-out documents just to see how much money was being generated to the fire, voluntary fire departments and stuff. When I looked at it, I saw the rate was the same. And so I went and pulled the ordinance because I remember in 2022, we amended the ordinance. And if you'll look, if you want to look at the ordinance, I didn't make a copy for everybody. Ordinance 328, series 2022. On the second page of that, item three, G, the above applicable membership charges shall adjust each calendar year according to the Consumer Price Index. All urban consumers is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI, by multiplying the percentage increase or decrease of the CPI to the then current membership fee to create the current fee for each calendar year. In peers for three years, we have not added the CPI to the subscription fees. So the bottom line to that is that that money has not gone out to our volunteer fire departments. I have not done the calculations because that's above my mathematical skills. But just doing a rough thing, it's in between $85,000 and $100,000, I guess, somewhere in that range. total over the three years, but somebody else would have to either use cloud or, or somebody else to do the calculations on it. Cause you're going to have to use the CPI the last three years. And I also the compound in effect that would have been involved as well. And, uh, math was not one of my greatest skills. So, uh, but just roughly between, I think 85 and a hundred thousand. So, uh, as far as who's responsible, I don't know, judge, uh, maybe y'all can help me with that. It says in the, uh, ordinance that the Hardin County clerk shall have the duties of placing the membership charges or subscription fees upon the property tax bills on properties located within Hardin County with an exception of the incorporated city limits of West Point. And then he, West Point, Radcliffe, and membership charges or subscription fees shall be listed separately from taxes owed as to allow the property owner business owner, mobile homeowner, and or landowner to ascertain the fire subscription amount owed. Then it goes to the sheriff to do the collection. So I assume by that, it's not our finance department's responsibility because it's outside the county government as far as this, but I guess it's the clerk that has to come up with that amount of money and then give it to the sheriff. Is that right? I mean, I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

But we can serve

Okay. And I don't just as a member of fiscal court, I don't recommend that we go back and calculate that and add it to citizens because it's our fault. Yeah. And then when I say our, I'm talking about in county government somewhere we failed to follow through on the ordinance. I don't know who's responsible for reading their ordinances and keeping us up on our ordinances. But somebody I guess better start paying closer attention because that's a bit of money. Our firefighters, our departments, they ever pay anything. Get out there.

We know that. So it's been talked about whether it should be mandatory or not. Is that some change?

We're going to be trying to have that same conversation at the same time. Of course, this issue here, this is a process issue outside of your work. So what So we have to figure that out. What you're talking about, of course, is a change to importance. It's a good time to look at it and see if there's something that we'd like to do.

How much more would that, I mean, before, what I've been saying this whole entire time, before we go to the extreme of whatever we're doing, it's also all options. And if it's every little bit helps, if there's a gripe over just even instituting it mandatory where there's no more opt-out, does Do they want it? You know what I mean? If they're trying to opt out of something, why are they opting out? You can't complain about it on one hand and not be willing to help take care of it on the other. You know what I mean?

Just a lot of people that just don't want to pay the fee and they don't have to. Some people have multiple pieces of property or maybe have a parcel of land.

The vast majority opt out. Is that correct?

Yeah, and it's not a tax. It's a prescription fee.

I think

That part of it is the question, Jenny, is are we allowed within the Kentucky laws, the KRS, to make it mandatory? And I have a feeling we can't. Somebody would have, but I don't know.

I think there are other counties that do.

I think we can.

We can. Okay. I remember whenever...

Yeah, when we looked at it, we decided not to do it at that time. And we can do it in the unincorporated areas of the county. I think, according to what the sheriff gave me, the sheriff's department gave me, there was like $69,000 in opt-out fees. So, mandatory. You would be looking to recap $70,000. And that could be... Oh, yeah. Fred?

Fred?

If you read a little further down in the ordinance, I may be looking at it wrong. It says annual filing on the second page there. Or third page, sorry. Annual filing. After receiving approval of the Hardin County Fiscal Court to add its subscriber fees to the property tax bills, each fire department shall file the following on or before June the 15th of each year of its budget for the next year. On or before August 31st of each year, it's financial statements for the preceding year. Hardin County fiscal policy shall be followed for the purchase of any equipment. The county may audit the financial records of the fire department at any time. One half the cost to the county, one half the cost to the fire department. Is that not adding, is that not saying that every year they've got to come in and put that on there? They do. They don't get those funds.

They do. That's what it says. I was getting ready to go to that page. because there's some discussion now as to why we have two different dates, why we can't go to the middle and have both of those filings on the same day. Because it puts pressure, it would take pressure off of getting our tax rates, our tax bills out if we backed it up a month. So that was another part of the discussion that we could have on it, Judge, when we talked about the whole enchilada.

But that's not the dates for them to say, this is the new rate.

No, no, no. That's to file their testing and all that. If they're not in compliance, then they don't get their money. But it's been questioned. It's been questioned as to why we have two dates. And because of the pressure it puts on getting those reports out in tax time or the second report. So maybe the next meeting you can have a report on it.

Do you want to do that at the next emergency service?

We can do that.

Yeah.

Is that good with everybody else? Okay. Anyone have questions?

Anything that just happened five minutes ago that you want to bring up? Any report, Brian, on the weather?

Well, to do that, actually, Veronica, I did have a constituent ask about storm shelters. Any word back on that grant?

I had to sign, once again, a good time in a row to somebody. It is at FEMA right now, and I thought originally we were supposed to hear something by the end of July, but they haven't released They have everything. They haven't come back and said they need something else.

Going forward. So we're waiting on things at this point. Still hopeful. Ten of them. Still takes about six months. Anything else? We're adjourned at 425.