Fiscal Court Committees - Regular Meeting

Becca's not here, so Lisa is going to talk to us about message desk service order form texting.

Yes, so Becca's been trying to find a program that she can utilize by sending out mass texts and also be able to send out texts to people that are interviewing or onboarding or onboarding and make it a lot simpler than doing phone calls and having missed calls and all that kind of stuff. So we're really hoping that this will streamline all the activities she does and also the The insurance thing that happens in October will be mandatory. So there's going to be a lot of correspondence going out to all the employees about that. So we're hoping to utilize that with this. There is a 14-day grace period, but in order to get the grace period, you had to sign an agreement. So Jenny's already reviewed the agreement. As Becca uses this in that 14-day grace period, if it's not something that she can utilize like she thinks she will be by what they have advertised it for, then we'll just disconnect it. But it's based on a annual fee of the $948. It says on here renewable each year, but we will evaluate that each year to see if it's something we're still gonna be using. So we'd like to put this on the agenda. If there is money in the... 9100 account, 319, the computer programming, there's enough money in that to cover this.

I assume weather delay, we can send out a mass text to that too, you know, two-hour weather delay for just to go to the employees.

This here is just for HR to send out and say, hey look, Are you able to interview on these days? You know, hey, look, we have job openings. There was people that had picked our thing. This is just for HR. This has nothing to do with the emergency or sending out alerts for employees.

That's what I was confused about.

I think he was talking about sending it to just employees to let them know that there's a two-hour delay or whatever. That's done by Ray.

That's done by Ray.

Yeah. Yeah, that's still, this is, this is different. This is HR related issues. So if there's a update or you're missing paperwork, you know, Becky can text you, Hey, look, I need your paperwork while you're, you know, you may not be in office or that employee may not be in office.

I guess why would we send them, why wouldn't we just send a text to, could you only send it to one person? Why would we need a program? Go ahead.

Go ahead.

You're probably going to answer it a lot better than me.

Not necessarily just one person, but employees. Not all our employees have email accounts that are county email accounts. Not all employees are here during the daytime shift. So when HR is here, the employee is not at work. Employees at work, HR is not. They can text that person versus emailing. So if you email that person, well, now I have to have their And then new people onboarding or getting job applications, you can text that person. So you can text a group of people, not just a person, but a group of people and say, do you want to come in and interview on these times? Choose a time.

So in an HR program, would it have the ability to be able to acknowledge policy and procedures, like if a new policy and procedure come out, to push it to employees and they go in and accept it and acknowledge it? Do you know if it would do that?

I don't believe that's a part of it.

It's just a messaging program. A lot of it, but it's really helpful with these enrolments, these mass enrolments that you have to have and some of those still need to be set up.

So it's just communications then? There's no reply on this? Like if you sent this out to employees Can they reply to this texting?

As far as I understand, yes.

When you do that, and you know, and I'm thinking, when you send, with this program, let's say, and you're sending out a text message to 30 employees because they're affected by the message that you're sending. Do they each know who else is on that tag? Okay, so it goes to them privately and independently. And then when they reply, it's only from them and it goes directly to HR and no one else.

That's why you're purchasing this type of program.

That is the purpose. That's really the main purpose.

Yes.

It's a privacy thing too.

I notice it has an opt-out option. So 90% of our employees opts out.

and we know which ones. We get a report on which ones, because that was my question. Yeah, we would.

It's the same point. Correct. If we're not utilizing it, we won't renew. And if within the 14 days we don't see that it's working what we want it to do, we just won't continue it.

Any other questions? So the money is budgeted. I mean, you do have the money in the budget, obviously. It's strictly a communication tool.

We're hoping to save money with Becca's time.

Is she having trouble getting responses back from the emails?

She's been trying to find something now for quite a while.

Okay. Any other questions? Any opposition to placing this on the fiscal court agenda for this coming Tuesday? Jenny's already looked at it. All right, I'll make note of that then. Do you have anything else?

No, ma'am.

All right, thank you. Appreciate that. And so we will move on to Erin. Anything? Mike McNutt.

Magistrate Yates called me the other day and essentially in 2021 E-Town put an ordinance into theirs limiting the sales of dogs and cats in retail locations. It was something that was talked about at that point with the rest of us, but I guess at that time, none of, I mean, several of y'all weren't part of that, but at that time, they wanted to see how it would work, and it has worked, except for now, we're running into, they know where Radcliffe and E-Town end, because Radcliffe and E-Town both have this ordinance, so they're setting up right outside so that they can get away with this. And the one group that we recently went out on were actually from deep in Indiana, like three or four hours away from here. But they came here to make that money. The ordinance that stopped pet stores from selling dogs and cats are good because they shut down the supply chain for cruel puppy and kitten mills. They protect animal welfare, save shelter animals, and stop fires. from getting hidden costs. Hundreds of cities use these rules to promote adoption all across the nation. When we say it stops bad meals, there are actually places where they will take one male and put it in a cage with four females and basically all they do is breed. Some of these dogs never see sunshine. They don't know. Times have been parts of rage. When you go in, they don't know what it feels like to touch the ground and they are, it is strictly a for-profit breeding facility when we have an abundance of animals here already and we don't need anybody breeding these animals. This will not have anything to do with reputable breeders that are trying to keep the bloodlines for breeds and, you know, the good breeders are still, this has nothing to do with them. It's basically humans distorting something to make money. And it will help me out, help us out, because hopefully there's only so many homes each year in Arden County. And if we're cutting out these people from coming in, maybe we'll get more homes for Arden County animals. Plus, the ones that we're putting out there with them will be spayed and neutered, have their rabies shots. stuff that, you know, we can make sure health and safety and they're not reproducing it. So we still need Jenny to give her approval. And I'm sure there may be some wording she may want to change. I can't speak for Jenny, but I do feel it's a good idea. It is going to be something that will cost my guys some extra work. Typically in the beginning, I've done some more research on this. But typically when they know that you have this set up and that you're actively enforcing it, they stay away and they move on to the next territory.

Penny says she hopes to have it reviewed by the middle of the week. I'll provide feedback.

This is something we can. Just bring it forward again after we get the ordinance reviewed and the wording and then bring forth at our next resources meeting.

Yes, that would be fine. Hopefully. Bill?

Needed, definitely. I'm not opposed to any of this. Is there anyone that has a problem with proceeding with this? Or has any comment about this?

What about play markets? day, it would prevent them from sitting there. And kittens are on there too, Larry. So there are places that they breed kittens just to sell kittens, which I don't understand. How many kittens are there? That part, I've never seen that, but evidently it's in other areas it's being

I can't think of any downside.

Yeah, I can't either. I don't know.

The issue came up a long time ago. Did we have the same issue about an ordinance? You know, I brought it up.

I don't know if it was Jim or whether it was Daniel who was in, because this was in 2021. And I was part of working with Julia on writing this.

So...

But I don't know, I think it was more let's just see what happens with it and then we'll decide. Because I knew if we were keeping them out of the two cities, it wouldn't be long before they were coming to the county to do it. And that's actually happening now. We've seen it multiple times.

We were able to find another reason to persuade them to go on.

But we're not always, every time we come up and say something, they get a little smarter. come back with what they need to maintain the market.

The issue I understand right now is the flea market in between Raclette and Elizabeth Town. A lot of people are trying to cross from Old King.

Yeah.

I've seen puppies there.

And the problem, you know, half of them ain't bedded probably. So it'd be good if they had lice.

And like I said, the group we talked about, they were Deep in Indiana, they drove quite a ways to get here.

There's a reason they're driving four hours to get to Hardin County and not- Yeah, that's right.

If I remember correctly, Mike, there was some of the discussion about regulating retail sales, getting in where you're gonna draw the line. You got vape shops, you got this, you got that. So I think it's why it died.

Yeah, there was a lot more to it than just- Yeah, dragging other issues into this issue. and I don't want to drag anything. I'm not trying to go anywhere. Sure.

Okay, well, I'll put this on the agenda for September, and we'll look forward to seeing that. Thank you. Let's see.

Judge Tal, right work.

Yeah, I think our last meeting software that we currently have that's a free version of it. And the price tag to upgrade that is $14,870. And so I just wanted to take some time to clarify what this is so that there's not any misunderstanding. There was $6,120 of this almost $15,000 that is actually the software cost. So that would be, that's for 30 users, $17 per month. That's where the $6,120 comes from. And the rest of it, almost $9,000 is for professional services, basically to train and bring all the users on board this upgrade, all of the, you know, all the differences from what they've become a little bit accustomed to. So it's, so that's, that's where the, that's the breakout, I guess, of this proposal for software, right, for 365. Okay, so, and what this thing is, there may have been some misunderstanding there. Basically, Bright Work 365 Free, we are currently using that and have been since some training got everybody kind of on how to use it back in the first of the year. So really since about March, we have been adding projects, each department to all kinds of different projects from quality improvement projects to anything that might cut waste out of the processes to be more productive, cost down projects, any type of improvement project . We currently have 61 projects that are in progress. So I can get to those. I can see what the projects are. Our department heads are updating these or trying to each week, whether there was any progress or not on their projects. So that information is currently being put in really a few drop-down menus and then a couple text boxes that they can put stuff in. There's no way to, if they have email information or a Word document or an Excel document that's got some chart in it or any kind of data that's being analyzed, any of that stuff, this free version, like I said, it's a very basic version and you can't attach it to that project. So we've kind of done some workarounds to try to to be able to handle some of that, but it's kind of cumbersome to do. So, anyway, it's been a good start and we, you know, just to take even a step back from that, when we look back last year, we spent, our team that was looking into this, spent several months reviewing various different software packages that would do this type of thing, where you could document a project and keep it going and then have its percent complete, the health of the project, whether things are moving forward or not, action items that move the project forward, team members, all these things that make up a project, and to document it. And there's a lot of them out there, and there's a lot of very expensive ones. So we thought after we finally narrowed it down to this particular software package, this was the most expensive. And the other thing that I really liked about it is that it did have this free version so that we could try it out, basically, and get used to using it before we would start to invest money into it. So that was the reason really behind starting out this way. And we did get it, just a note, again, that this software package, this almost $15,000 is budgeted. It's put in for this purpose. And the timing was good in that we could utilize it for five or six months, get projects in it, play around with it, understand it, get used to using a project management software. And then we would have the ability to upgrade this particular case without going to a totally different software package and having to start over again, basically, with all these projects. So that's some of the background. Basically, we're trying to manage all these projects that are going on. something like this, it's been very difficult over the last several years to try to track all the different projects that are going on and understand how things are progressing, have some accountability and so forth. And actually have some reporting that is happening. So this software, the upgrade especially, makes it very much easier to understand how things are progressing. I feel like we've already demonstrated value by using this free platform since March. And the paid version is a significant enhancement for sure. So control, visibility, staff efficiency. And so all those things will be enhanced. It definitely is a step up. So I think a few key points. There's things that have to do with, it is a centralized system, reduces reliance on spreadsheets, email updates, which is basically what you kind of depend on. Okay, well, we've got a problem here. Let's address it with a project. Let's document it and send that out as an email possibly or discuss it in a meeting. Then you follow up later with another email. Well, how are things going?

And

Maybe two or three weeks later, you're trying to figure out, well, did it get completed? Are there any issues with trying to get it completed? It's going to cost some money to make this improvement. How did you arrive at the solution? All these types of things are going back and forth email or verbally or during a meeting, maybe action items during a meeting that may be associated with that particular project. So all these things take up extra time whenever there's not a process and a way to document them. So I think this type of software, which is really fairly minimal in price, is going to show itself to be very beneficial. It already has this limited version, and this just takes it up to level some dashboard that allows me and Bonnie and department heads to look and see how things are going within the department with all their projects and all the projects in the organization. So the dashboard part of it is very effective. It helps a lot with the time it takes right now for me to try to figure out how things are going overall. even with the free version. So yeah, there's some staff efficiency that's improved. The implementation risk is going to be low because we kind of already got it started. So we're not starting out and paying money for software that we know may or may not work. We already know it works. this is going to enhance it so the implementation part of it is solid. We don't have to worry about that. I don't know. I have some other stuff, but I guess if you have any questions about this, why we're proceeding with this or want to proceed with this.

Let me clarify this. Now the free introductory software, Was good since March, from March to, what, the end of the year?

It's good for, it's good forever. I mean, there's no time limit. It's unlimited. It's unlimited time. You can use it as long as you want. So, you know, which was good. That was another positive thing about it. Some of the software packages didn't do that. This one did.

All right. So you're wanting to move forward. to the enhanced project management software at the cost of, well, nearly $15,000.

Yeah, the initial cost, not the software cost, but the, let's say, $8,000.

Well, it was $9,000. $9,000. $8,750.

So a total of $14,870. Right, which is a one-time thing that doesn't happen. That's a one-time charge just to get it implemented.

Okay, that's to get it implemented. And what is the annual fee?

$6,120.

All right. Okay, that's the annual fee. That's correct. And does this involve like a yearly contract?

Is it an annual contract? It's an annual contract.

6,120 that's included in the 14,870 to initiate this okay I'm gonna I'm gonna open this up for discussion then any of the committee members have any comments about this or share right go to the other side of the table I'd like to say about the the

enhanced product that the free version doesn't have is cross collaboration with the departments. Right now it's verbally when we all sit in the room and whenever people need help with another piece of the project, a lot of times it's Erin, depending on what the project is, then you have the department head. They also might have their, um, assistant or somebody else working it with it. A lot of times what EMS is doing on some of the projects, it involved 911 too. So you needed to do that in this, in the free version, you just have the leader and then like a sponsor, which would be me or Keith or somebody that could also go in there and look at it. But everybody can look at all of it. It just gives you a lot more levels and plus the ability to actually attach documents to it. So people can You end up all getting into a meeting and then trying to go over stuff. And also, I know from me coming on here partway through, trying to find prior projects, they're all kind of like saved in a directory under maybe a prior employee or you just have to do these broad searches. There's not a uniform way or uniform spot on the network where things are safe, this would help get major projects into one area. If you're just looking for those. And grants, too. I agree. We have quite a few grants in on this, too. Right. That are bigger projects.

There's a lot of things that are fitting into the project talent. So, safety. So, The free version doesn't even allow you to categorize your projects like it's a safety, cost down, quality. It's very restrictive. I'm not complaining about it. It's just what it was. And we knew that going in. It was a place to start. So we're at the point now where used to using something like this and now I'm ready to make a step forward. You know, a lot of these projects are team projects where you have the team engagement, like Monty was saying, and this version that we're using now doesn't allow you to, you can put your team members in a text box, but it doesn't automatically bring information out to email or whatever.

Teams to

whatever you're trying to communicate, you have to do it all by email. It just goes back to email. It doesn't necessarily tie back to this project. So the other thing that just reminded me of, too, the nice thing about this, too, is it also uses Microsoft 365. Right, Aaron? So Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams. Beautiful. All of those are tools that this software utilizes and functions with versus some of the software packages kind of trying to do their own thing. Automatic scheduling, there's obviously centralized project tracking, live visibility, streamlined communication. identification I can look at particular department department head and see how many projects they've got some there's some data that is provided through some dashboard says hey there's too many projects there's too much time associated some of these if you need helpful whenever you're trying to get things done and prioritize, I suppose. So anyway, that's kind of where we're at.

We have three department heads here sitting at the table. Do you all have any input? I'm assuming you've used the program. How do you feel? What are your thoughts?

Well, I'm not the most heavy person, so I'm probably slower than everybody else is on it. But, I mean, I'm putting my stuff in, and it helps keep me on task for what I'm trying to do.

Currently, I'm having Sarah do this for me in my office, so that's how I'm streaming it here.

Did you have anything you wanted to share?

I mean, some of the downfalls is task, the current version can't assign task, so the paper. trying to get whatever patient pushed through whether it's an ordinance or and they can assign a task to somebody say hey look view this tell me what you think make modifications whatever ask that doctor you can we can do that now it's just using other tools if it's not sometimes hearing that

benefits than the enhanced software?

I mean, all I know is the one program I haven't seen yet.

But do you agree that you would benefit from the enhanced software based on what Judge Taubes just explained to us?

Yes.

That's kind of what I'm asking.

All I know is the programming.

Do we have any feedback here from any fiscal court members, questions?

So you're wanting to use this for everyday routine tasks or just special projects?

These are projects that are outside of routine. Okay. So these would be improvement types of types of things that are going on. I mean, there's some things that kind of you might say might overlap a little bit. For instance, may have grant that they are going to work on. There's a bunch of actions and things that they need to pull together to make that thing come to fruition. But they maybe have done a similar grant last year. they still want to put it in the project they only do it once a year and so they may not have it well documented so we might I said yeah I mean we can put that in here this time by the end of this project maybe we have this thing documented so you don't have to it's part of your work right it's part of what you're responsible for if it's an ongoing grant year to year now if it's a new grant then yeah I mean I think that's definitely that you can put in there as a project. Because you're having to develop it, you're having to learn it as you go through it and hopefully have success in taking it.

So you have 61 projects right now with the free software. That's correct. Right? Okay. You're wanting to expand that with the enhanced software.

The enhanced will take the 61 that we have right now. bring those into the enhanced software. And any new projects would automatically just go to this version.

Unlimited number of projects.

That's another good thing about this one, it had unlimited number of projects. Some of them had limits on projects and then as you expand the use of it, you had to start paying.

You mentioned grants and then projects. What other type of give us a couple of examples. What other type of projects, like the main projects that you've got going on right now? Just curious. When you say projects, I guess that could mean a lot of different things.

It does. It means it encompasses a lot of different things. Each department, of course, is quite a bit different because they're doing, a lot of times, just totally different things. But for instance, One of the big ones here is the service time, shoot time. And this is in EMS. So looking at the time that that's the time it takes from whenever ambulance is dispatched to the time to leave the station. So we have goals there of how quickly that needs to happen. And so this project is to meet that goal. I'm not sure, I can't think of what the final goal is, but 95%, 99%, whatever that goal is of compliance to meet that goal.

So it's a measurement.

It measures that... Yeah, each of these... You put your measurement.

Yeah. But you have to go, like an individual has to go in and put the information.

So this measures... It measures, yeah.

It gives you hard data as to the success of... while you're doing meeting the goals that you set out. We already have this.

Somebody doesn't have to enter it. It comes out of our systems and EMS. But actually setting up a process to monitor and let people know that this is more of a requirement change. It's trying to reduce by a whole lot of different methods. And that's why this project is there. It's not just report this. It's trying to enhance it. make it better, and we've done that on several things. 9-1-1 has their own. They had the whole CAD system, redoing the CAD system was a project in there, and they're now, they're done. They have this stuff that has a lot of different pieces that you also need to involve other people in on.

And who accesses this information?

Any of our department heads and adding projects themselves. Any of them can see any of these projects.

Aaron, would it not be possible to essentially build the same system using our Microsoft's existing platforms, Power Platform, SharePoint, Teams, Power BI tools? Can we not do that instead of buying all of this? Yeah, we can't do that with the stuff that we already have in system. I don't have a team to build software.

I don't have a team of programmers dedicated to build software.

No, I mean, not building software. We're using what's already there. Using the power platform that's already there, the SharePoint, Teams, Power BI tools.

You have to pull it all into one system, into a dashboard so everybody can see everything at one time. That's what he'd have to program. That's what this program.

So you'll be doing that, Erin? Will you be collecting all the data and putting it into the dashboard? How does it manage the migration, integration of the old system, new system, the old information, new information?

Going from the free version to the paid version? Yeah. That's what we're paying them to do that. This is all the same company. RightWork will manage taking what we've got in the free version.

Oh, yeah. There won't be any. What's there now will be integrated into the new software. It'll be pulled over into it.

And then all the pulling in of Excel spreadsheets and PDFs and want to use BI, all that will be done by the users in the system to attach to their project. It's all part of their project.

So they're going to be inputting the data into the system.

They're going to be uploading the data. For their project.

What type of feedback have you gotten from your employees? Have you gotten any feedback? Oh yeah.

Yeah, we've gotten feedback. It varies. It varies from some positive feedback all the way to some negative feedback. Initially, I've done this type of implementation a lot of times in other areas, other industry types of companies, and it's always the same. There's always gonna be some that appreciate it, see the value in it right off the bat, some that don't like it, They haven't seen the value of it yet. And then you have a pretty big chunk that are like, yeah, let's give it a shot. They'll come around once they see that it does help them. It helps them to organize. It has the accountability that's there. Some people lack accountability. Some, maybe not so much. So it's a wide range that... that are feeling this as we're going forward. So yeah, it's not surprising. If you have 10, 12 different departments, that many people that are overseeing them, a lot of different personalities. And not too many of them are used to documenting their projects. So this has been a pretty big deal to get us even to this point. As we continue to move forward, this software will help us to continue to document these things. There's also that benefit at the end of a project. You've got all the evidence. You can get a report out of this. A very nice report that will come out automatically versus having the first time to make a PowerPoint presentation or something like that that explains your project. You've been putting it in all along, so it kind of helps you to pull that out, to spread that kind of celebration that you've accomplished something and learned something along the way.

How long has it taken for them to enter this information in versus just completing the task?

It varies, but right now it's not been very time consuming. It's just some drop-down menus and some text that define the problem, basically define the project.

As the new program gets more enhanced, will someone want to add more time for them?

There will be some more time involved because you're asking for more information to be put in there. But right now, there's also time being that as they are working on their project, they have some Excel spreadsheet or some data or some communication using a Word document or just an email that is hard to track. So with this, they're able to easily download that into that project software. So they can get out of there quickly if they reference back to it.

So there's some give and take.

And it's a little hard to tell right now. It'll really change it that much. What's going on? This type of software is, one of the things it does, it does enhance things. It makes things easier to track for them. Some of them may not see that.

But for you as well, though, I guess.

Oh, yeah, it definitely helps me. No question about that.

It's probably easier to track. I get that. It's also going to be time-consuming. From a sense standpoint, somebody's got to input that data. I don't want to put you on the spot, but you've already been asked one question. How long are you averaging now, putting in the data every week?

With projects that I'm working on now, 10, 15 minutes.

One time a week? Yes. Is there a follow-up to that? If you had put the data, then is there a follow-up as to questions about it or results?

They can tell if we've updated our projects.

You can see when the last time that they put . Right now, we attempt to have a discussion at any of the projects that might be falling behind or some on a weekly basis. But that would only be maybe five minutes at the most. So it's not been overly time consuming. It's expected that there's going to be some additional time to document these things. It's part of it. As time goes on and you start to actually use this to solve the problems, then you don't have these same problems cropping up and solving. So if you actually do go through this process, you're more likely to solve the problem and get it put behind you. It's right now where there's this combination of I've got this problem that keeps cropping up, so I keep addressing it. I never really fix it. I keep it under control just through sheer force of trying to, that I've got to do it. And so now if I tack on some more time, I'm going to start documenting how I'm going to work through that project, get help where I need it, get people involved with it. That is going to tack on more time on top of whatever. So it feels like, and it is, more time, more time that it's taking to do all of that. But as you solve those problems, then those start to go down

start to feel like so it's uh right now would be one of the harder times that projects so in training for this program you already had the initial training I know that but the continuing training continuous training Aaron are you doing that or is this taking time for you to go in and try to troubleshoot anything that somebody might be having with the software or anything like that?

Currently.

Currently or do you foresee that in the future?

Not in the future because I mean they there are a set of time for the software provider to train us So they're basically going to train the department heads on.

The provider.

Yes, the provider. Then you have it involved. It's basically, hey, here it is. Go figure it out.

He was involved with everybody else in learning the system. We had all that training originally, just the first part of it. But the systems have built-in tutorials. So you train the super users first. And then as things change, you can still go back in look at the tutorials and train yourself. It's just nice to have that one big one at one time to train everybody.

If we have 17 individuals designated now to be users, if they delegate to a supervisor or whatever, would they then be a user? Have to pay the subscription fee on that?

It's possible down the road that supervisors show interest in some value to it, yeah, we could add a feature to it.

I mean, it could be, 17's not a limit to it. You could expand it.

If you want to do 30, add $17. I mean 30.

Yeah. No, you can add to it. I think the 30, though, is sufficient for some time per user. So, what about $200 a

any questions over here from fiscal court members any comments you want to share do you retain your documents if you decide not to we would if the decision was not if we don't

But after a year, oh, I probably wouldn't have access to them.

Thank you. Not have access to them.

Yeah.

We're not going to.

So this is something that we need to continue for sure.

Well, we're uploading documents that are already on our system. So basically, you're getting to two spots. You're not losing anything. we would lose what the documentation within that project is about. Any notes that you made in there, but...

It's tied to the project.

Yeah.

The document is still out there. Right. If that's what you were asking.

The measurement element is gone.

If your measurements... We have a lot of our measurements are outside.

You can have the history and the info, but to continue measuring the gold...

But the measurement for that particular project, so if we take, for instance, the shoot time, service time, improvement project, that's being done on Excel spreadsheet with a graph. So that graph is being uploaded into the project so I can have access to it very quickly. But it's not to say that the Excel spreadsheet is gone.

Okay, so you don't need the BrightWarp 365 for that particular one?

get monitors it monitors what bright works gets you is is pulling it all in one place where everybody can see it and some accountability but detail work can be off site and you get reports out of the system before you would ever stop it you could print reports out it gives you the whole thing probably in the pdf i'm sure right works the new

Are you having to input this twice? You do it in your regular program, and then you have to upload it to the 365? It takes a second.

You don't have to do the work twice. You're uploading the files. You're doing your work file, and you're uploading. Just like we do that with a lot of our programs.

You're not doing the work twice.

Any other questions, comments?

I'd really appreciate it if we could move forward with this. I think it's part of the strategy to try to continue to improve, save time, and do a lot of things that I think this organization, any organization, should be doing. And this would be very helpful. We purposely did this because of the cost compared to the license. It's one time case. It's almost 15,000. It's nothing Steve's had for what we're trying to do here. Projects that we already have out there, it'll be a really positive step.

I'm just going to be honest with you. When this was first discussed, cause my employees, and I've never received one policy, and I already talked about time that they're required. That's why I asked you the question, Mike, earlier. I don't know what the timeline is for everybody, but there's concerns about time to put in, the time to respond, micromanagement. There's all kinds of issues that people were bringing up, and I understand all that.

I'm looking at it, and there is the potential here to

this thing to mushroom and we got 61 projects now with no clear definition of what a project entails, we could end up with a whole different scenario six months from now. I'm just saying what the negatives are that I'm here. I went through and looked at pros and cons to the system. I got three pages of pros and 13 pages of caution when you research the system. Just reading through all that, I could see some of the issues that some might be concerned with. So I'm not an IT person, but I try to listen to the employees too and their feedback. So I still have some reservations about it, I really do. And we're bringing it to the end of this term as well. And maybe they may not all be here the next time. So that's always an issue of bringing something that's laid into our terms and somebody else might not like it. Then we are locked into something that maybe it won't be beneficial. Maybe it will be official. I have no idea. It's just concerned about bringing it this late into the into this court's term.

Well, I think every department head has daily monthly yearly deadlines that they have to do. And sometimes this can make that difficult, to be honest. But it's just new, so we don't really know what advantages we'll have if we did go on this. I just know that with my job, I have so many deadlines that sometimes that's why I gave it to someone else to do in my office. But as to six months from now, if we go to this program, it could be an advantage. I just don't know. I have to take that, you know, as he's been experienced at that, and I'm not.

Well, that's what I'm hearing. Just one more thing, and I understand the other side of it too, Judge. I'm not, I've been in management too. You always have the change issue that's involved, and people are opposed to change, and it is difficult, but I'm just trying to throw all the issues out there that we're being faced with. We're going to have to make a decision. I also noticed on some of the research that the county government's fiscal court is using this as a dashboard as well. But we're not going to be, I don't think that's your intent to allow fiscal court to have dashboard access?

Oh, no. I mean, it's something that we can get to. It's just so new to have a dashboard. Assault and transversion, we allow that to summarize in a way that you can see it and understand it. That's an extra user cost. That's what's going on.

You're adding the user cost. But yeah, what we don't have now is the dashboard.

I'm not saying, we can print out reports that we have to add. And this thing will allow us to have some reports. I think that that will be beneficial for fiscal too. If you want to dig into it enough to see what these projects, how they're tracking. I mean, it'll be available for you to see.

Well, how would we get it? We'll ask the department head.

do we have to be no each each request go through you it would be i don't know i don't know how we'll do it i mean it's kind of it's kind of new so i don't know what this dashboard is going to look like for our organization so at some point it needs to be there's an initial part where it's kind of messy and but the dashboard is that accurate it's only as good as the information that's going into it right so If I were to say, hey, as soon as we buy this and we get all these projects in there and then we put this dashboard out there, I'd be hesitant until I'm able to verify that things are going well, we've got good information going in, and we've got some good information coming in. That will probably take some time. It'll take a while. From my past experience, I know that to be true.

Yeah. So what are we going to do if Lisa's not using it? Mike decides that he doesn't like it. They don't use it. Is there going to be a repercussion to them for not using it? Or it's just going to sit in our toolbox that we have it, but our employees don't want to use it? How's that going to work?

No, I mean, it'll be an expectation that all the department heads will know. Other departments, in Lisa's case, she's got somebody escape using it so far. Utilize it pretty well. So as long as we've got each department represented their lives in, it's all good. So it's not again, this gets into what my responsibilities as judge executive to oversee the everyday functioning of all these departments. So this is a tool that I need to make sure that we're That's for me to take care of any issue like that.

So is this more of a tool for you to keep track of what they're doing or to keep them more on task?

It's to help keep them on task. It's both, really. It's for me to understand how things are progressing in their departments, but It's ultimately from them to make the improvements that they need for their department. And without this, it's all relying on organic approach. So if you go into wherever you're working at, and you go in, maybe it's your own department, but maybe it's somebody else's department. You're managing that department, and you're wondering how things are going. You might ask, how are things going today? The answer was, things are looking good. What does that really mean? So this helps define that much more. It's a lot more accountability. Things are progressing in a good direction.

I've gotten a lot of feedback as well from some employees. But again, You know, some people have problems with accountability, so that might be a problem. I don't know. Or it might not be useful. I'm not for sure. But I have a lot of feedback.

Initially, I think there are questions. I don't doubt that you've got some negativity. It's to be expected. This is a big change. It's been working through it slowly. a couple of years. I've been waiting for the opportunity to implement this and then we're able to implement now to continue to progress. You're not making some movement and continue to make movement in good direction. That's going to be things will tend to go backwards.

I definitely judges to help me understand. Still trying to sort through this. Let's just use the road department for an example. Would it be an expectation that the supervisor the next day would come in and say we did 89 potholes, 200 feet of guardrail, 20 signs, 8 miles of roads paved today, put that in daily? Is that the expectation of this?

Every department has got to figure out and still in the process of how to measure. All of those that you just mentioned could be key metrics.

But all of those are routine tasks. Right. That's not projects. Right.

There's a difference between putting those routine tasks. He's not trying to put the routine tasks into this system. This system is to help people meet their goals and objectives, which that was the first part that you probably heard resistance on, because a lot of people have not done goals and objectives. And if you haven't done that in your own workplace, which some of the department heads have not, but it's the projects. And then the individual key performance indicators are a different thing. You're not putting those into this system. You're developing them, but you're not putting them into this system that we're trying to get here.

Are you guys going to give them the KPIs or how does that work?

We're just working with them, trying to figure it out. They're the ones that know what they're doing. So it's really a team effort to try to figure it out. But to your point, say potholes, let's take that one. No, this... You wouldn't put into this system how many potholes we did today, this week. But initially, if you're measuring, say, hey, we've got a team out there that are taking care of 30 potholes a week. If we're looking at productivity, is that good? Is that acceptable? Is it or not?

Should we be doing 40?

and so those are the things that say I mean it's the same type of idea time for for EMS for the you know for the ambulance to get the average time is two minutes and 30 seconds is that acceptable it's not good shouldn't we be doing it two minutes at 30 So those are all the questions that we're still asking. We're still working through some of that right now. The road department's a good example. It's trying to figure out what constitutes a good day.

All those things have variances, and they're inputted into this too?

They're not put into the system. It's only when it becomes a project. So in the case of potholes, if we just decide, hey, on the average, we have to look over the last two or three months and say, You know, we're usually filling, I don't know, 30 potholes. And we see variations, sometimes 25, sometimes it's 40. And we decide really for that team going out there looking at what they're doing, that's an acceptable number.

So that wouldn't be a project.

That wouldn't be anything that would go into it. We may want to monitor it, figure out a way to do that, and maybe that becomes a project, or to capture a day that was at 35, a week that was 35, and decide, hey, let's look at that and see how they did that. Let's standardize that or something. That might become a project. But just the daily, where they're at right now, that does not go, this has nothing to do with their daily tasks. just improvement of these tasks that would be included. And to measure that, that's a lot of times the very hardest thing to do is to figure out how to measure. And I know that's frustrating for some of our employees because they've never measured.

Well, the potholes. Are you filling up a one-by-one pothole or an eight-by-eight pothole? Yeah. So that

That makes that one more difficult. So that may not be one that we can even measure. That was just one that came to mind.

Do department heads, would they have access to see anybody's project?

Right now it's beneficial because it'll be something somebody else could help with. We've seen that, suggestions. That happened in my department where I can I can help you with that. That's what's really been good about it. And...

When it comes to my mind, we talk safety. Happened to be in our animal shelter. They inclined that the person that was going to go in the morning, it was maybe slippery to go up that incline, so they had to go get the, say... they have a mat that they would have to put on so this person forgot to do that slip and hurt themselves so we're going back through that and saying okay how we're going to make sure that that back goes out there and then it this was just in a big group discussion and um i think it was a road department came up non-stick tape they were able to take that over there and they put that non-stick tape on there, something you don't have to remove or anything, you don't have to remember anything, it's there. And so that was just a very simple, I guess, example of how this is supposed to work. We have collaboration and teamwork to figure out these problems.

So then are they going to be required to read everybody else's projects? there's no requirement to do that but we discuss them in the department meetings and people there'll be some yes there'll be a comment or something yeah come on so it sounds great i would have loved to have access to that during my construction project oh yeah that's that's typical of this project but so much of that was not under my control you know i was dealing with vendors and subcontractors and So it would be hard to measure the effectiveness of that project in that way. And so many things I didn't control. But I would have loved to have tracked it.

Tried to collaborate with it.

Absolutely.

Some of it's communication, for sure.

Larry, you have any comments you want to add?

I'm not going to use it, so.

You may access it at some point, though. Any other comments?

When you said you've got 30, I guess you can move and remove people as you needed.

Yeah. That's not one of those deals where you've got a person in you. they're part of this and then remove them and take them to somebody else. It's like all of our software.

It's flexible. It's like service, users, Microsoft, Outlook, everything. And to track users.

Is this, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong. I might be wrong. Is this enhanced software? associated with the Sigma Six.

Six Sigma Lean. Yes.

This part of what you're doing with that.

Yes, there's some overlap.

It's a project of this.

A project.

Program, one of the projects.

Well, it's a project by definition means that there's a gap between where it should be performing and where it is right now. Some kind of gap. And so how do you close the gap? And there's different ways to do that. Generally speaking, most of the time, just our own abilities, just going out and trying to solve a problem, usually end up trying to solve the symptoms. Okay. It takes extra effort and research and work to get to the actual cause so that whenever you fix that cause, you actually solve the problem. So that's all Lean Six Sigma is. It's really just trying to learn a methodology using some data and some tools to try to more likely get to the cause so that you actually fix the problem. And so what these projects are is part of it is utilizing some of the things that Lean Six Sigma, Plan, Do, Check, Act, these types of methodology that trying to train and get people to go through that process and document that process so that we have a solution. And so, yeah, that is part that kind of fits into it.

And then my understanding is that there are different levels of achievements. And would that be part of this?

Not really. Not really. I mean, the certification part of that is really just to understand a certain level of body of knowledge that you have. Maybe a certification says that. There's others that did not go through that, that have. that same basic knowledge. But it's a growing experience of doing and understanding and it's worked through 60 projects here. I'm not saying they're all going to be using that to the greatest extent, but we're learning as we're going through this. It's a learning type of organization. That's where we need it.

Is there an expectation then for department heads to achieve different levels of certification?

Not really. No. I mean, it was just put out there that they couldn't get certified. But it's not a mandatory thing.

Well, it started with some of them not knowing how to do goals and objectives and to plan a project.

They asked.

They asked for you know, help us. So that's when he came up with the class on how to do that, following those methods. But I mean, they had no idea. They had not been exposed to this before.

So you're saying it started with that. So this is kind of what initiated this software? Yeah, I mean, those objectives.

Yeah, it just happened.

You know, you have, if you've got two... Police were asking for help. What's the difference between a task and a project?

They were asking, yeah. Talking about that, what do you mean when you say cause? What do you mean by trying to work on the symptom, not the cause? You know, just terminology and just trying to understand the method of actual solving.

Maybe more comments? questions? I am assuming that you want to place this back on the fiscal court agenda.

I would like to. I mean, if the majority of you all don't see the benefit, you don't want to proceed with it.

We are missing some fiscal court members at this meeting that are not here, of course, to speak or ask questions. But for those that are here, this is something to move forward on. We need to table this. What's your pleasure? I know that we don't have 100% attendance at this meeting from fiscal court members, so.

I'm not comfortable with it right now. I mean, like I said, I've been trying to dig through it, and it's a challenge for me to understand it. Goals and objectives. I'm old school. I managed, or I worked for someone else. They brought me in once a year. I sat down with them. They told me, okay, but my goals and objectives for my particular profession or what I was doing, my job responsibilities were. So I guess I'm trying to confuse my old, my history with whatever you're talking about, Judge. Goals and objectives are different. I mean, if I'm running a department, road department, my goal is going to be to try to get every mile I can paved and every pothole filled and all the complaints taken care of. But we're talking about putting other stuff in there as goals and objectives. So I'm confused about what you're actually asking for.

Goals and objectives is a subset of all these 61. Some of these are specific to your ground goals and objectives. So if something is important for the EMS department, like meeting the service time, that's a pretty big deal. Seconds count, right? For any run that you're trying. So that would be a goal, specific large goal for that department. Some of these are things that just crop up there. Something that goes wrong, something that isn't working the way that it should. And then that becomes a project.

from the goals objectives so there's different things that are associated that different things that make up these projects and so is there a printout or a model that you can we actually actually can see that someone has that use this system to give you reports and see an example of the reports go on right

to see what it looks like. The problem I've got here is that this is a cultural change. It's internal stuff that I believe is best for our organization internally. All we're really asking for you, for all the magistrates, is to help me here with this what will end up being six or seven thousand dollars a sixty million dollar budget right I've read it this first year it is almost 15,000 but I'm not I'm not asking for a million dollars here to help me with putting a tool in place that's all it is it's a tool internally to help me become more help our people become more efficient in their particular areas and their departments. I don't know that I'm going to be able to convince you in what is now maybe 45 minutes or even if you gave me another hour or two hours or the next week to convince you that this is the right tool or the right thing to do. I believe it is the right thing I've got a lot of experience, about 30, 35 years experience in doing this exact thing. Not in county government, but in all kinds of other organizations and all kinds of other projects that even if I'm in industry, not everybody in that industry, in that company, is out there making widgets. There's a lot of other processes that are going on that can go just as wrong. Things like billing, invoicing, accounts payable, all kinds of different processes that are out there that could cost the company just as much as the person out there assembling this part in 15 seconds. I just don't know what I'm going to be able to do here to convince you, and I was hoping I wouldn't have to, to go through a week-long dissertation on how this thing works and how this type of change works in an organization. All I'm asking is really, this time, less than $15,000 for this tool to help make this thing work.

It's not that it's not. I mean, money is a concern, yeah. All dollars we spend are a big concern.

Sure.

I'm more concerned with our employees, the effect it's going to have on them, whether or not it's going to be bad on morale, whether or not it's going to be time-consuming when they could be putting their time in there. Do you know of any other county that has this? Not really.

There's been some other cities that have it. I'm not aware of any counties, not in Kentucky.

Any cities in Kentucky that you're aware of?

The only one I had in, I found, that's somewhat of a pain, I think it was. I had training. You could go to Fort Wayne and look at what they're doing.

So would it be the only county or only government body in the whole state of Kentucky that's doing this?

I don't know. I wouldn't say that I have looked that deep.

I've never, I mean, I've never heard of the takeover plan or anything like that.

No, this is, this really is something that is.

But project management is in several cities and counties. And that's what this software is, is project management. So that's it. He's just using the basis of Six Sigma. The hospitals are using it. Six Sigma is going into hospitals. We had it in our accounting firm, taught it in our accounting firm. A lot of service organizations are using it. It just started manufacturing. It's spread.

Anybody else want to speak to how they feel?

I don't trust his judgment on whatever this is but I also would expect the magistrates to have access to it view only or whatever in the year or whatever just so we can see all the projects if it's a management tool supposedly we're part of the team, so we should be able to see what projects you're working on and whatever. Like I said, view only. Can't input anything, but to see what's going on. And maybe not every magistrate, but two or four or something, whatever it's agreed on.

Larry, did you have something to add?

Well, I'm just going to say it's, you know, if it's a well-oiled machine works better than one is not. And if this is something the judge needs to keep track of everything, I don't see the problem. If the employees don't like it, I don't know why that's an issue. They've got a job to do, and if they're expected to do it, they are to do it. If they don't like it, they can go somewhere else, the way I look at it. But if the judge thinks this works better and is going to be beneficial to the county government, I don't see the problem with it. I don't know why we're even discussing it, to be honest with you. He is a judge. He was voted in as a judge, and he should have some say-so on over some of this stuff.

I think we're just looking for clarification on what project, definition of project, which we've done that pretty clear, and what this entails. I think there's just some additional questions that were carried over from our last committee meeting, and some of us didn't feel comfortable about voting on it. At that time, if I don't have any objection, I'll go ahead and move this forward and place it on the next fiscal court meeting. I'll just go ahead and vote on it.

That's the best way to do it, and if you don't like it, vote against it.

I'm not hearing any objection to moving it forward. Place it on the fiscal court agenda for next week.

If there's other specific questions that any of you have,

Give me a call.

You want to come see me? I can sit down and give you more specific information as if you need to understand it.

All right, thank you. Laura?

I don't have anything.

Thank you.

And Sarah Jo? I just have a, our FY26, our fiscal year runs July 1. through June 30 every year. And so we've got our FY26 impact report. So you can pass those around. The report I'm passing around has the number for the district. It's not everything we do. Everything we do will not fit on one of these papers, but it's a highlight. So what I did is I went in before I came here and I pulled out just Hardin County's numbers so you would know what those are. So out of the almost 22,000 nutrition education visits we did across the district, 10,493 of those were in Hardin County. Our prenatal case management participants in Hardin County, there were 20 of them. We received 190 referrals and 20 women took us up on prenatal case management. That's just connecting. We do a screening form. We connect them with the resources they need to make sure mom and baby have the best outcome possible. Our hands visits, 3,935 of those were Hardin County. The pounds of adulterated food product removed, that's when our environmentalists go and do an inspection and they find something that's either contaminated, stored improperly, out of temp, in some way it's adulterated and not safe for consumption. In Hardin County we removed 2,862 pounds of adulterated food product. We conducted 4,041 environmental inspections in Hardin County alone. We distributed 1,406 harm reduction supplies. That was an increase in Hardin County, which was unique because that decreased in most of our other counties. That includes things like Narcan and our Narcan distribution boxes. That also, that total number on that sheet also includes some supplies that are distributed out of our Strange Service Program. So in Hardin County, when I say it's 1,406, that's only, that is only at community events. That doesn't include, because we don't have an SSP here. And then also if we provide supplies to quick response teams, treatment or recovery programs, those types of things, or if we're at community events, things that we give out to help unintentional injuries. Our harm reduction visits and community encounters, these are community encounters only in Hardin County, but 175 of those are in Hardin County alone. Total immunizations given 743 of those are Hardin County. We did see a decrease in immunizations administered in Hardin County from FY25 to 26, but we saw an overall increase if you look at Hardin County. So people are getting vaccinated, just may not be at the health department, so it's still a good thing. Tuberculosis services, 1,440 were in Hardin County. Sexually transmitted infection tests, 1,008. That was down a little bit from FY25, which may be a good thing. Total disease and multi-drug resistant organism investigations, 2,146 were investigated in Hardin County alone. We did 29 mobile unit events in Hardin. We referred individuals 2,182 times to other community services. That's something that's really normal at the health department. They'll call us knowing that we don't do that, but asking us where to go for certain things. So that's what's included in theirs. We've referred them to community services they need. or another agency. Community outreach supplies distributed, 2,695 of those were hardened. Those are, they can be materials just to increase general awareness of what the local health department services are, education about chronic or infectious diseases, We target hard to reach populations. We have a social vulnerability index map that we use that helps identify areas. And we can also do that by magistrate district. So, if you ever want your information for your magistrate district, we can tell you that we can show you where the issues are in your area. And then we also give out dental supplies included in that. And this is one that I'm really proud of, students receiving evidence-based prevention education. In FY25, that was 802, and FY26 is 1,645 and hardened. So we more than doubled that. That includes choosing the best, which is an abstinence-based education, reducing the risk, which is abstinence and protection, Too Good for Drugs, which is a drug prevention program, and Alternative Stanford Program, which addresses vaping. Those are your numbers if you look at that impact report of what was done in Hardin County alone.

Like the businesses that we have in Hardin County?

I don't know. There's been proposed legislation for them to have to register and it hasn't passed yet. So that's hard to say because there's not a process for them to have to register. So you have gas stations that may have it, and then you have stand-alones that may have it. And so there's not a requirement in Kentucky to get those registered. There was proposed legislation for that to go through ABC, but it hasn't passed yet.

A lot of discussion about the flu shots, the new M, R, and A. Is that going to be mostly for folks my age? I don't know.

You know, I'm not sure about that, but, you know, they supposedly very effective and there is special vaccine for people that are of a certain age group. You know, and I wanted to say, too, right now we're doing a lot of education on measles because we've had some confirmed cases of measles in Kentucky. So look for that information to come out and then thought I brought my cyclospora numbers. I'm sure you've seen that, and everybody's scared to eat lettuce. So in Lincoln Trail District Health Department alone, this is as of 8-14, so this is Friday, and it is slowing down, thank goodness, but we had 75 total cases with 32 of those in Hardin County. So that's a 12-page history and investigation that we have to fill out every time we have a case. And we've had, I think, couple hospitalized locally too. But that's slowing down and our environmental team and our epi team worked really hard on doing a lot of work there from obtaining samples and submitting them to the FDA for testing as well as doing visits in our retail food establishments to make sure the product is off the shelf.

Thank you for sharing those numbers with us. We appreciate that. And I appreciate you breaking it down for just the Hardin County numbers too. That kind of gives us an idea of what we're doing right here in our local community.

Thank you.

That's all you do. All right then. Nothing else? Meeting adjourned. Thank you.