Board of Commissioners - workshop

I'd like to call the Jackson County Board of Commissioners study session for August 4th to order. Madam Claire, could you call the roll?

Yes, Mr. Chair, Commissioner Bear, Commissioner Walls, Commissioner Kennedy, Commissioner Duckham, Commissioner Pulaski, Commissioner Willis, Commissioner Williams, Commissioner Snell, Chairman Shotwell, we have a quorum.

Thank you. Public comment guidelines. Each individual will state their name. You have three minutes to address the board. Subject matter must be pertinent to items on the agenda. You may not address the board more than once under this public comment opportunity and may not yield your time to others. Board members will not debate or answer questions at this time. Any public comment? Any public comment? Any public comment? Public comment is now closed. We've arrived at the meeting minutes. Entertain a motion. We have a motion in support. Questions, comments, corrections? Hearing none, all in favor please say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed? Duly carried. Item 5A, Department on Aging Wellwise Services Area Agency on Aging Grant Application. Is this an actionable item today, Mr. Administrator? Wellwise? Yes. Thank you. Good morning. I often don't make it to the session, so I'm going to do it today.

Jane, could you turn your microphone on?

Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Again, the reason I'm here today is to seek approval to apply for the well-wise services Grants, they currently have an RFP out. It's due on August 14th. We'd be applying for 11 different grants. Currently, the Department on Aging has 13 grants with Wellwife Services. We last applied for the RFP back in 2022. at that time when we applied the department director in the past has been authorized to sign the rfp as well as the subsequent grant awards it's not unusual that we may get like five or six different grant awards as they release the funds throughout the fiscal year of each grant period so we might get like in october we might get one for just to cover that month Maybe November, December we get another one. So it's kind of an ongoing process as funds are released from the state and the feds for these grants. And so we're trying to look at making sure that we apply for the deadline of August 14th for the grants. And it would be over a million dollars for Jackson County. Questions? Questions?

Good morning. According to the cover letter here, you are requesting a motion today? Yes. Okay, I have a comment on that. Study session is for study. The normal way for issues to go is they go from study session, where we discuss it. It goes to a committee, the appropriate committee, where it is discussed further, and then that's referred to the full board for final approval. Shortcutting that system shortcuts our citizens. Citizens aren't aware of this. Citizens can't make comments about this. We shouldn't be pushing our citizens out of the loop here. I see that this is due August 14 deadline. Well, we have a committee meeting August 10. I love the work that Wellwise does. I love the work that you do. Just as a general principle, don't bring this stuff to us at the last minute. You are giving us no adequate time to discuss it, no adequate time to go back to our townships and tell our citizens that this issue is coming up. If you have input or question, show up at the meetings so you can make your opinions heard. Because I like what you do and like what Wellwise does, I'm going to vote in favor of this today. But my request is, don't do this again.

And I do apologize for the short notice. I went to Human Services in July, and the RFP had not been presented at that time. So as soon as it was put out for the public to view, I looked at the next committee that I would be able to go to to be able to present this to the commissioners.

When I managed projects, I had a project schedule and a flow chart And I always included in my deadlines that I had to meet what were the deadlines the client needed the stuff. Where the client put our dates in your overall project delivery schedule. Thank you.

Commissioner Snell.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, if I could ask the clerk a question. Are we duly constituted to vote on issues that are on the agenda today?

This is a full board meeting of the Board of Commissioners, and you can take action on anything and everything, Commissioner Snell.

Thank you. So I'm happy to vote on this.

Yes, sir. Any other commissioner comments?

Make a motion to approve, Mr. Chair.

I have a motion from Commissioner Kennedy, support from Commissioner Snell. Further questions? The vote will be appearing electronically. If you have issues, please look at the clerk and give her a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Finance 2025 audit presentation, the Administrator Controller's Office, Michael Overton.

I didn't know if you were going to do something.

Go ahead. You get to.

Okay. Yeah. Good morning. In front of you, you have Amar and Hannah from? Clark . Pardon me?

Clark Sheffer Hackett. Thank you. Can you guys hear us? Is that working?

It's on. It's on.

So we're here to present the audit. This is going to be reflecting the year January 1st, 2025 to December 31st, 2025, except for the pension. Other things, standards make us use the last year. So any pension-related numbers will be December 31st, 2024. It could get a little confusing when we're talking about market performance. One will have the 2024 year end and user county investments will be on 2025. So I just wanted to clarify that first. On this year's audit, there was three reports issued, one for the financial statement, one for the government audit. other things standard. If you can go to the next slide. The government on other things standard reports that talks about internal control, the ability to handle and manage money, that there is no abuse in the government. The last report is a reform guidance report which talks about federal grants specific and compliance with the federal grants. that the funding spent under the requirement and the compliance supplement provided by the federal agency all reports were clean opinion that is the highest opinion you can get it's unmodified meaning no findings no weaknesses in internal controls and there was no issues to modify our opinion on the next slide this is The communication to governance were required under auditing standard to discuss with you certain additional topics that the financial statement had no creative accounting, which mean usually it is a sign that all your record, all the transactions you engaged in within the year is the typical transactions that accounting would be participating in, nothing unusual out of the ordinary. There was also no disagreement with management. Management were incorporating with us on the audit. They helped provide the support in a timely manner, which is important for the audit to ensure that the document is not being created upon our request. It's already been prepared. It's ready. They just provide it handy. On the next slide, here we're going to cover a little bit on the financial statement. And the biggest change on the asset side is the capital assets. There was significant investments in road infrastructure and some construction projects. There was also some investing in the airport infrastructure, also along other areas. On the next slide would be the liabilities, and it's mostly driven by the pension and the market impact from the pension plan that decreased the liability, and there was also some scheduled payments as you're paying the debt that you have, so that's also moving in a good direction. On the next slide, that's net position. It's equivalent of the equity for public companies, which is the net results of operation revenues minus expenses. You can see it's going in a steady line since 2021, seems very healthy. direction and it's driven mostly by strong capital grant and operating grants. So grants this year were very strong compared to last year as well. On the next slide, this is kind of the breakdown of your net position. This is the slide that we're required to show you because it matches the financial statements. But on the next slide, which is the one that I would like to show you a little bit more, is going to show a little bit less unrestricted. In this slide, we removed the pension liability because it kind of makes it Very different from what you see on day to day on your operation. Usually when when you're presented to you wouldn't factor in the pension. It's not really operation related, but we're required to put that on the financial statement for external reporting. But you will see there. The largest portion of the county net position is in net investment in capital assets, less in your related debt that has to be paid on these assets. So very strong there, investment in the community, that's very powerful. There is a little bit of restricted from grants, which is typical, and some funding for pension as well. And unrestricted is just a little bit in deficit timing of paying certain liabilities as well. On the next slide, this is again revenue and expenses. The revenue is the orange bar. Expenses is the blue bar. It seems compatible over the past three years with a little bit of increase here in 2025 from both. The expenses increased a little bit just because of wages and some payroll expenses and pension also expenses increased. and revenue were driven significantly by the grants like I mentioned earlier. On the next slide, so now we're focusing a little bit more on the general fund. And this year expenses increased a little bit, but it's mostly not from the general fund expenses. These were actually transferred out to other funds. So whenever you have other projects going in on other funds, usually the general fund could make some transfers These are always approved by you and the way we would record them by going through your board minutes. So we ensure that every transfer has been approved and reviewed by you first. On the next slide, this is the pro-party tax. It's one of your most significant revenues alongside with grants. We always like to show you that. It's very good to see that trend it's going up, not sharp increases because then Citizens would be struggling with any sharp increases and paying them. But also you want to show an increase to show that the property values in the community is going up and improving, which is a good sign of a healthy community. So this is really good numbers there. On the next slide is the general fund balance. Again, that is mostly because of the transfers out, but other than those transfers out, the general fund itself is going in a very healthy direction and would have increased without those transfers out to help with the other funds in the governmental activities. The next part, Hannah will present to that.

Now we're going to discuss the business type activities a little bit since Amar covered the governmental activities. So here on this slide, this is just your net position at your end of your business type. You can see over the past five years there's been an upward increase. So business type activities did increase 6.5 million with most of that being in the delinquent tax revolving fund with 2.3 million and then the medical care facility making up the majority of the rest. Um, here on this next slide, you can see this is a similar slide that armor just presented on on the governmental type, but what's making up the net position of the business type activities. So you can see a majority of this is restricted. Um, that is all in the medical care facility for their pension. And then the net investment in capital assets is also majority medical care facility. And then the remaining just being the unrestricted, which is made up of. the delinquent tax revolving fund and then the medical care facility being a negative 19 million bringing that down and And then here on this next slide is the revenues and expenses of the business type activities. You can see there's been an increase in revenues. That's mostly from the medical care facility and their operating revenues increasing. The delinquent tax funds stayed similar from prior year with slight increases in revenue and expenses just due to another year of delinquencies. And then here on this last slide, we wanted to show you the operating income or loss of each of the enterprise funds that the county has. You can see the delinquent tax revolving fund and the non-major enterprise funds stay pretty similar throughout the years, just with those bigger fluctuations in the medical care facility, which does have other auditors that would just incorporate their audit into the counties. Are there any questions?

Just a question. The delinquent tax fund that seemed to be trending at about 2 million. Is that how did it look prior to 21? Was that same direction type stuff or did you not go back five years or more than five years?

On this slide, we did not. I mean, we could pull that data and send it to you by email if you're interested.

I'll go back and look at my older audits, but I just wondered. That seems to be where it's been trending, though, for at least the last five years. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Pulaski.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm thinking about the general fund balance at year end and I think you made note of it during your commentary that while the general fund balance has declined from 2024 to 2025, I'm just gonna kind of say it again in the way I understand it and make sure I'm saying it the correct way. We, I think, decided right at year end to transfer out funds from general to other activities that we might be doing things in in future years. which resulted in an expense to this general fund, of course, income to those other, whatever other fund we transferred out to. So while it may look kind of bad to be down, we did that purposely with a plan to use those funds in some other way in some future year. So it's not like the money was gone. We purposely decided to dedicate those funds for other activities. Am I saying that correctly?

Yes, essentially, it's not bad that the general fund position go down because the revenue is going up. The expenses went up because of investment in the community. You invested in other funds. The county has. 244 funds. They all carry different missions and different important things to the community. Throughout 2025, there was about 19.5 million were transferred out from the general fund to all these different funds to encourage momentum into these different activities.

And I know you have an unmodified opinion and that I think I saw that your interactions with county management were professional and timely and not problematic, which is also good from our perspective. Would that be a fair statement? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Other questions? Please continue.

Oh, go ahead. Mine's probably more for Mike. What's our percentage on the general fund currently?

Yeah, it's roughly around 20%. Thanks.

Any other questions? Yep, they can continue. Okay, do we need to receive this? Entertain a motion to receive.

Move to receive.

We have a motion in support. Questions to the motion? Hearing none. Could you post the vote, Madam Clerk?

IT APPEARS THE SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING. WOULD YOU MIND IF I DID A VERBAL CALL? NOT AT ALL. COMMISSIONER WALLS?

YES.

COMMISSIONER KENNEDY? YES. COMMISSIONER PELESKI? YES. COMMISSIONER WILLIS? YES. COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS? YES. COMMISSIONER SNOW? YES. COMMISSIONER BEHR?

YES.

AND CHAIRMAN SHOTWELL? YES. MOTION PASSES.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

THANK YOU, AND CONGRATULATIONS ON THE CLEAN AUDIT.

Go ahead, Mike. You're next. Finance, budget update.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah. Hello, Cecilia. He said, you're next, and I'm like, I am? Finance, yes, please, budget.

I think you're the controller, aren't you?

I am. Okay. I am.

Good morning. So I am here to kind of give you a 2027 budget update. Just so you know where we are in the process, we have met with all of the department heads and elected officials, gone over their budgets, made notes of different things that are affecting their departments. And so that's kind of where we're going to give you an overview. primarily this is the general fund as you know if we can get our general fund balanced and in a good place all the other funds kind of take care of themselves in a sense because they have for the majority of them they have their own millages or their own grants there are funds we do transfer out so that just makes sure that we have those funds available in the general fund in order to support those funds like the airport for example So we'll go ahead and get started. The first thing we always look at is where are we at with our revenues? Because we need to know what those increases and decreases are just so we know where we are going to fall within our expenditures. So on slide two, the significant increases to the revenue, for example, The first one we'll be talking about is projected property tax. We're looking at an increase of about $1.4 million. And how we break that down is we're anticipating 3% increase due to inflation. And this year, we are budgeting a 1.5% growth projection. In the past we haven't been Budgeting a growth projection and we can always see that at the end of the year where we have to make budget amendments So we feel comfortable to go ahead and budgeting that for this year So that would give us our total budget property tax at thirty three point six million dollars The next thing is interest revenue, an increase to the budget of $558,000. Again, this was going over this with the treasurer. She feels comfortable with that increase. And again, over the past couple of years, part of our budget amendment has been increasing interest revenue. So we can go ahead and budget that for 27. Transfer tax, an additional $150,000. After meeting with the sheriff, the police services, we can increase that $107,000, and the sheriff school liaison program, $105,000. So again, those increases have been discussed with the department head or elected official, and we feel comfortable with those increases. Are there any questions on the increases so far?

Yes, sir.

Thanks. Hi, Cecilia. So the 1.5% growth projection is exclusive of inflation, which is what the 3% number is.

Right, exactly.

That growth projection would be where properties have transferred and property values have uncapped to some extent. Is that in the nature of the growth or just new house being built? New construction, yes. New stuff going on.

All of that, all of the above, yes.

All of that kind of lumped into that number there?

Yes.

Okay, and that's something we haven't previously budgeted for?

I haven't budgeted for it. I guess I was just being- You're a careful thing, you. Well, it's more that conservative I'm scared to go be wrong, but over the past, again, over the past couple years, we've been needing to increase doing a budget amendment, and so this is why I went ahead and did it this year. So just, but based on history, I feel comfortable with it.

I was gonna say, historically, it's been there. Yeah. And so you're gonna cook it in this year. Right.

Well, just add it in.

Well, it's a recipe.

Okay, we can go there. You're going to cook it in. To some degree, too, the budget is, this year's budget is much tighter because we have had a few extra million dollars hit us. We haven't gotten there yet. I know. That's why you're seeing it in there, per se. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the past, we kept it in reserve, if you will, for the end of the year.

Commissioner Behr?

Thank you, Chairman.

The transfer tax, $150,000, what's the source of that money?

I believe, Sarah can correct me, but isn't that the transfer tax whenever properties are sold? Yeah, between properties. You're moving one property to another property by ownership, so it's just a transfer fee.

All right, thank you. That's my understanding. The police services increase of $107,000. That's good. What's the source of that fund?

Their contracts, the police contracts, townships.

The sheriff's school liaison program, what's the source?

Again, those are contracts with the schools.

Thank you.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Good morning. It's not on here, but it's something I've watched for the last couple years. The marijuana tax revenue was on a steady increase, but I've heard the industry's on a decline in Michigan to an extent. Did we see an increase or a decrease in that this year for our portion?

There was a small decrease of what we had budgeted last year. So I'm leaving it as a stable revenue source for 27. I'm not increasing it or decreasing it. So flat? Flat, yes.

Thanks.

All right, so moving on to now our decreases to budgeted revenue. The biggest one is the decrease in our jail telephone revenue of $300,000. There is going to be a source of revenue that will replace some of it. It's just at this time we don't have a good dollar amount to budget for it right now. But there was a change in the law on what the jail can do with the telephone revenue. And then the other thing I just want to make note of the revenue sharing there was no increase or decrease with the state It's just that I do want to note that last year's draft last year's draft We had anticipated an increase of one hundred and sixty three thousand five hundred and seventy dollars, which we're not going to get so Any questions on this page? All right So if we go ahead and go to page four, we look at our salaries and wages and benefits. And again, primarily this is a general fund. The wages increase, including step increases, about $596,000, which is about 3.2%, which gives us total annual wages of $19.3 million. And then we talk about our benefits with our health care. We do have some major increases within our health care for active employees this year. So for our active employees, we're anticipating between a 15% to 25% increase in health care, which would give like 1.7 million countywide. Again, nothing's been finalized. These are, but we feel comfortable that this is what it's going to be, even though things aren't finalized. So that gives us total health insurance and wellness costs about $9.9 million. So for our retired employees, we're expecting a 50% increase for retired employees. General fund portion, $471,000. And the total increase countywide, $785,000. Is there any questions on that? So those are our biggest increases and more within our benefits. The other thing on page two is our retirement. There is an increase of our annual required contribution of $1.4 million. And general fund portion is $627,000. Any questions? Okay, so on page six, there are some additional things we do need to talk about. The circuit court is requesting a judicial secretary, which is one FTE, and the salaries and benefits is $73,430. There were prosecutors requesting three FTEs, but it's all going to be paid by a grant, $351,000, and again, paid by a grant. And then the HR is asking for a reorganization, and they're, so they're limiting, requesting one, limiting one position and creating two new, so it would be one additional FTE. But the impact to the budget is around $30,000. I rounded up. So any questions?

Commissioner Behr?

Thank you. Page six, the increases in circuit court staff, prosecuting attorney staff, and human services reorganization, were these things not known when the original budget was drafted?

Well, these are for the 27 budget. So this is for the 27 budget. It's not for the 26, it's for our 27 budget.

Okay.

So it's for the next fiscal year.

Has the Circuit Court come to the Board of Commissioners and asked for an increase of one full-time employee?

They haven't, but they will before this budget is... They've been requested to do this in August. So you should be seeing it at August committee meetings.

Okay. Same thing with the prosecutor?

Yeah.

They're just...

Starting the process right now.

Yes.

Okay.

So I'm giving you a heads up that these should be coming next next committee meeting.

So you're basing these numbers on the assumption that when the.

circuit court prosecutor human services come before the board and ask for these increases in staff you're just assuming that this board will approve those requests right now i am because i am at a draft budget and nothing's been approved so if you if you come to they come to a committee and you and the board says nope that's not a good idea then i adjust my budget but right now it's in a draft form and this is what my updates are all right well

When these three agencies come and they say, we're requesting these additional employees and the budget's already there, I'm not going to like that statement from them. My way, you make the request for the employees before you modify your budget. Just my opinion. Thank you for your information.

All right. So we're continuing on to page seven.

Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just one quick question on the prosecutor's office with the grant. Is this just a one-time grant by chance, or is there an opportunity for reappointment?

I believe it's a grant that's for three years.

Three years. Perfect. Okay. Thank you. Nothing further.

Please continue.

Okay. Page 7, so additional expenditure increases after talking to the departments that are pretty significant is the computer software, $255,000. That is adding and upgrading BS&A and the Microsoft licensing. And then internet services are $200,000 and autopsy charges of $70,000. Okay. And so then on page eight, we have decreases in general fund expenditures. So this is a positive. So we moved three juvenile probation employees from circuit court, which is our general fund, into the child care fund. And so that was $431,000 of wages and benefits, and 75% of that will be reimbursed. So that was significant, positive. Is there any questions? All right, and so amount for the general fund for capital, we have the sheriff's department, 295,790, and that is replacing four vehicles, and they have total sheriff vehicles of 37, and then we also have information technology of 305,000, and that was for infrastructure. Yes?

The sheriff vehicle replacement, that's following the model that we created probably 10 or 12 years ago where we replace a few at a time instead of doing them all at once.

Exactly. Correct? Yes.

Thank you. Please continue.

So that is all I have. So are there any questions where we're at so far with the budget?

Do we have any further questions of the controller's office? Commissioner Pileski.

So just for my edification, this is a summary of the larger changes from 2026 to what we anticipate for 2027. Yes, sir. And at some point, management will put forward 2027 budgets for all the various funds and everything else, and we will have a chance to discuss that further and ultimately vote on it.

Exactly. So my plan this week will be getting the draft budgets out on the internet, and we'll probably send you an email with the link and the schedule so you know where we're at with the other funds and a draft form. And then we'll have a public hearing at September study session where I'll present the whole entire budget and then have discussion, that type of thing. And then September's board meeting is when you guys would approve it. So for the next six weeks, we'll definitely be talking back and forth with budget.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And so we understand we're required by law to have our budget passed by October 1st, correct? Or do we try to have our budget passed so that way we align with the state?

Definitely with the 930 funds, we definitely have to do that. If for whatever reason we need to approve it in November for the December funds, we can do that. But we do try, if there's no cuts or any questions, to do everything at one time. Okay. Okay.

Any further questions, commissioners? With the understanding that this is a draft and the beginning of the conversation and that stuff will be coming to committee as needed for each one of those FTEs, correct?

Yes, that is what they've been told to do, yes.

Correct, they're coming to the committees. In fact, I think there might be an additional one. I recall, so yet to be seen.

Okay, no further questions. We'll say thank you.

All right. Thank you.

Item five D sheriff acts on AI plan and focus real time crime center technology.

Morning. So I trust you have that. I don't have it on my screen here, but I trust you have the, looks like you do. Okay. So I'm going to go through this and please feel free to stop me at any point. If you've got some questions, I'm sure there'll be some. Essentially what this does is it upgrades our 2021 contract from Axon to a more AI platform. I'm pretty excited about it. This is something that's been implemented at Blackman Township already and is working out really well for them. What we look for it to do essentially is reduce administrative costs. It will do that in a number of different ways that we'll get into a little bit later, but it also provides us with a virtual reality platform for training and gives us advanced evidence management and a real-time crime center, which is absolutely fantastic for Jackson County. And so we'll get into that a little bit more in a moment. If we could switch to the next slide, please. We're gonna cut right into the nuts and the bolts of this on just exactly what this is going to cost. Our current plan is $764,000 over five years. So that's about $152,000 a year is what we have paid to Axon for our current plan. And essentially what that plan provided us was body cameras, our in-car camera systems, and tasers. So the increase here is about $138,569 per year to get the package that we're going to be discussing here in just a moment. So the total package, it seems like it's double, but it's not quite double, is $1.4 million. And interestingly enough, too, when we go to the platform, if we get approval on this, it'll be a very shortened year coming into it. So the first year will be considerably less than the $291,000. So that'll be considerably less in the first year because of the timing of the contract. So explaining to you exactly what all of this is. So the report writing system works through the cameras and it essentially dictates the reports inside the camera system. and writes it for you through an AI generated report writing system. It's a fantastic way of doing business for police because it picks up on things that even the police officer doesn't necessarily recall or even see in some certain cases. So it makes the report much more accurate. The thing that I'm really excited about is the AI-assisted Freedom of Information Act processing. Why that is so critical for us, we have two ladies right now that work in the front who work on FOIAs all the time. And if you recall, we had to reduce one of our business hour days down to four. We had five because of all of these requests that were coming in. They just simply did not have enough time in the day to fulfill these requests. As a result of that, we weren't able to get people in to process them for fingerprintings. A lot of them were people that were coming in with CPLs or purchase permits that we needed to process through and we just couldn't get it done because we didn't have enough hours in the day. Real quickly, what that means is if you get a 20 minute to 30 minute video that the police officers are out on we get these FOIA requests for these videos that's about two to three hours depending upon how much interaction there has been with people and how much has to be redacted so the federal privacy laws require us to blur out faces to blur out addresses to beep out names and all sorts of different things and they have to go through that and do it manually this AI-assisted program will go in there, you tell it what to do, and it actually takes longer to tell it what to do than for it to actually do it. It'll go in there, and within five minutes, it's all done. So two to three hours to five minutes is phenomenal for us. It's really a game-changer and a force multiplier in the AI-assisted processing. It's going to make things so much better for us to be able to process people i believe uh we're going to be able to do that at a much more rapid rate and in addition to that you know we'll be able to do a lot more with our front desk that we haven't been able to do in the past the virtual reality training is pretty exciting as well Right now, you guys have seen, many of you have come down and actually gone through it, our Milo system, which is just a big screen. It takes up an entire room inside of our Chanterelle Jail. It's a big screen where it's all darkened, and they go in, And they have this projector project on the screen about these different scenarios. And they go through and they walk through these scenarios. And some of it is really, really good. But it's dated. There's not a lot of support for it anymore because of how long we've had it. But this virtual reality is, and you've seen it, they put the goggles on and they're right there. They can interact we can do it anywhere. We can do it in our mat room. We can do it all over our police area and It makes it so much more user-friendly because of the fact that we've got an instructor who's watching it right on the screen We can point out the things that were right we can point out the things that were wrong and we can make it better So it's a much more better system. It's a finely tuned system, and there's a tremendous amount of support for it the other thing is the fuses real-time crime center and And before I talk about that, the one thing I want you to understand is just kind of how we do an investigation now. So for instance, if we had a robbery at a gas station or we had a felony assault at a gas station or a party store, most of these systems are all operating with something from Sam's Club, something from Home Depot, something they got off the internet from Amazon or whatever the case may be. and they're not compatible systems. A lot of times they're taking our phones that we give them on the shift and they're trying to record on the TV screen what's going on in the incident itself. Not real good evidence. A lot of it's blurry, grainy kind of thing. What this allows us to do is collect all of that information under one platform. It's a much more crisper video and it secures it evidence-wise in a much more secure way. And it also prevents a lot of these silly motions, I call them silly motions, that defense will bring up as a result of, hey, you know, there's no real good custody of evidence, we don't really know what this is all about, all those nonsensical issues that are brought up that just bog the system down. This takes it away because it's right in and is a part of our system. The Real-Time Crime Center is built upon that premise. So what happens is Axon will then go to these different places and if they want to, it's totally up to them, they can elect to be a part of our Fuses Real-Time Crime Center. The way this has worked in other locales is absolutely phenomenal. As an example, we were watching this as it worked through in one of the bigger cities that has this already, and they showed us an armed robbery that occurred where the lady went into a gas station. She was addicted on drugs, and she happened to have a knife, and she held up the store clerk, got the money, and then ran out and went to her home. I as this was occurring they had push their alarm button and activated that crime center as it was going on, so the police officers responding to it were able to see the video of the lady as she was robbing the store. They got an accurate description of who she was, they knew exactly what she was doing, and then the AI assistants on that followed the lady out of the store, and there was ring doorbell cameras that were watching as well of these other folks that elected to be on the system, and followed her all the way to the hotel that she was living at, which also was on the system, captured her going up to her hotel room, so as the officers are responding, they just went right to where she was at, and before she even got in her hotel room, they had her in custody. And I'm going to tell you, as a detective for 18 years and investigating hundreds, if not thousands, of those kinds of crimes, that goes unsolved. you have a really hard time of trying to nail down who that person is, just because of the fact that they're transient, they're in and out, they're doing all sorts of stuff, they're drug users, and they're looking for opportunities, and they just leave all the time. So you just never know where they're gonna be. Or they hit that store, then they hit another store, then they hit another store, and then they go to another city and hit another store, and they're just doing it all over the place. This is a game changer when it comes to investigating these types of incidents. Plus, you assign that to a detective who goes out, tries to figure it out. They have to go, just like I told you before, they go and look at the camera system. It's not compatible with ours. They get their phone out, or they use a video recorder, and here it goes. And the process is long. cumbersome and takes a tremendous amount of man-hours just to get through an investigation that likely has a very small chance of ever being solved. And this one was solved just like that. What they've seen in these larger cities is between a 15 and 18 percent reduction within the first month in the activation of this Fusis Rural Crime Center. Now that's real, real work. That's incredible. And the reason for that is because that lady, just like I told you in this example, she's not going out and committing three or four or five more armed robberies before she finally leaves the area. She's caught right away, and she's held accountable, and it's taken care of. So really important stuff, and like I say, has to be something that they want to go into. The other aspect of this that I think is exciting, but maybe difficult, maybe some hurdles, is that schools will have the opportunity to also be involved in this Fuses Real Crime Center. So God forbid if we ever had an incident here in Jackson County involving our schools. But if we did, immediately we would know where the perpetrator was at, so no guessing down which hallway they're running and which the last door they were seen running by. We'll know exactly where they're at. We know where they're going, and we have a perfect description because we have it right on the screen. Was he wearing a red shirt or was he wearing a pink shirt? Was it blue? Was it green? We know right now who that person is, and they won't get away. And we can go in and take care of the situation post-haste. So really exciting stuff. It's the next generation of crime fighting, and I'm really excited about it. Excuse me. You guys know I like to talk, so. Digital evidence management, we talked about that already, it coincides. And then corrections division is included. This is really important as well. So corrections has to write reports. And their reports typically are involving circumstances that have to do with high dollar liability situations for the county, specifically suicides, jail assaults, and different things of that nature. They have to write reports. They need their digital evidence captured as well. We have a couple of different systems in our jail right now that are cumbersome, don't work together. You've probably heard a little bit about it after we had the lightning strike out on Channa Road and just how crazy all those systems were. This will allow all that to work together. And in addition to that, the corrections officers will get the real time report writing as well, along with the patrol deputies. So huge increase for all of us. Next slide, please. This just talks a little bit about the operational gains from the average deputy. So if you look through this, you'll see that approximately or a little bit more than 25% of their time, they're spent writing reports. And that's a killer. We can reduce that by nearly 50% on the estimate and up to 75% on the estimate. And by doing that, you can see just exactly how much time we are giving back to the community and the ability to be able to go out and investigate or stop crime before it happens. So 7,488 hours returned to patrol activities just by eliminating that, or reducing, I should say, not eliminating, reducing that administrative duty. Huge. And I got to point out one more time, way more accurate. They are way more accurate and better reports. They pick up on things that frankly we just miss. So next slide. So this shows you how much money, potentially, that this saves us as well. Now these aren't dollars and cents that you can put in the bank, right? This is the money that people out there working, if we had additional deputies, It equates to this kind of cash, $275,000 a year on a low estimate and $516,000 on a high estimate. This is truly, ladies and gentlemen, a force multiplier for crime reduction. And this is the new wave of where we need to be.

I've got a question here, Sheriff.

Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I was looking or listening to you and then reading through the report over the weekend. I like the program as a whole. I think this may do some great things for us specifically. I like its connection with camera systems and that. I appreciate that. However, I do have my personal opinions on the uses of AI in terms of writing and things. And so my question is, does the system record or keep record of the prompt that you tell it to do? Does that make sense?

I don't understand.

Okay, so in AI, if I understand the process correctly, as it's making a report, some type of document, you have to tell it what to do or how to write the report.

No, you don't. So this is a different system than I think what you're talking about. So what it does and what I think is absolutely fascinating about it is that, so for instance, if I'm investigating a malicious destruction of property, somebody broke your window, right? And I get sent to your home and maybe John's your neighbor and Earl's your neighbor and they all come over to see why I'm there. So I'm talking to you about your window being broken and how that happened and what's going on with it. What were the times of it? The AI will pick up that I'm talking to you. If John wants to interject and say, well, you know, I was out here at midnight and I didn't see anything. It will differentiate between you and John because of your different voices. Facial recognition software that's in there will differentiate between that. And It will interject John's interview in there as well, but it'll separate it from it. And it will say things like this, for instance, I spoke with Mr. Williams at 1.58 p.m. He provided me with the following information, and it'll list it all out. It'll talk about the elements of the crime, what was met, what wasn't. Mr. Willis, who's the next door neighbor at 123 Main Street, came in and said that he had seen something at 12 o'clock. And then Mr. Pileski, who was living next door, he walked in and he said this. So it's a little bit lengthier of a report, but it captures all the information. It sits through.

You don't have to tell the soft ones. So you as the administrator don't have to tell the software to do anything. It just tabulates as it's happening in real time.

Correct.

So what happens if you go to the same scenario, but for whatever reason no one actually states the address? How do you put the address in the report? This is just, again, hypothetical. sorry say that again i didn't understand so using the same scenario let's say we're discussing your at my property whatever it is and it leaves out for whatever reason we don't discuss my address right so how does then my address get in the report so if like if i guess what i'm saying is if there's something that needs to be in the report but somehow is not stated or not stated clearly how does it get into the report

Well, so it wouldn't get into a report if I didn't ask you. It's not going to prompt me to say, hey, you forgot Mr. Williams' address, right? It's not going to prompt me to do that. That would be a hole in the report that we would have if we didn't have AI assistance, right? But if we're dispatched to your house and we get out and you're Mr. Williams and you called, it's going to link your address to the report. Right.

Well, I just use address as the example. Well, I guess what I'm trying to get at is if there's information that's needed for the report, that's not clearly stated or it's just, or not stated at all. How does that information get into the report?

It can't get into the report. If you didn't ask it and you didn't do the investigation properly, it won't. That's what we have supervision for. So the sergeant will then go over the report and say, hey, you've missed this. There's other little features in there that will show that, like, for instance, if it's an element of the crime that we're trying to establish, It will tell you you didn't establish intent.

Hey, Sheriff, if I may jump in there. For instance. Yep. Because I know a lot about the software, too. Nothing like quite he does. But I think what he's asking and what I'm hearing, at least, I'll say it this way. Okay. It's recording all the information from the subjects and everybody around and all that stuff, putting it into a document, automated. And then the officer has to edit that document. They have to review that document looking for errors and things like that. But in fact, as I understand it, it will put in some errors that are blatant that it will, if they're not changed, it clearly the officer did not spend the time editing the document he or she should have. So it does have fail-safe on safeguards, but as administrator or as the officer they're responsible for that document at the end they have to sign off on it so they're going to review it all it's just so much faster because the information's all all there it's a lot easier to edit a document versus type a document

Okay, thank you, thank you for that. So with that being said, so if there's information that's not there again, so instead of inputting it, would there be like some type of notation that says that we, it did not pick up this or not clearly stated, I don't know what the language would be, but is there some type of indicator that says that the software did not pick this up?

I think I understand your question. So if the report's not complete yet, Yes, it will tell you that you haven't met, for instance, all the elements of the crime. Yeah, it'll tell you that.

So it shows up to you. I'm just going to keep going to the same page here. So when it shows up on your desk or the officer's desk and it has that this information was not complete error, whatever it is, what then happens with that?

It would be up to the police officer then to follow up and do additional investigation.

So then the officer does have the opportunity to implement their own findings from what they remembered.

I see. I see. Okay. I didn't understand what you were driving at with your question. Yes. The officer will have the ability to go in there and do edits and do additional information and things of that nature. If it wasn't captured by body camera or if something was done off body camera, say there was a failure in the body camera. Sure. Yeah. The police officer would be able to go in there and add that additional information. Yes. Absolutely.

My father was here. He'd say, okay, now we're cooking with gas.

Yeah. Now we are.

You're right.

Thank you. Nothing further at this time.

Yes.

Go ahead, John.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sheriff, so I had a chance to visit the Detroit Real-Time Crime Center with Elmer Hay when he was chief here, and it was absolutely amazing. Matter of fact, they showed us out a day before they basically solved a robbery. Gentleman robbed a store. Later on that day, he went to a family dollar with his girlfriend, did something in the window, facial recognition, recognized him, and then they arrested him. So it was actually a pretty amazing system. If anybody's ever in Detroit, any building you see in Detroit, It has a green light on it. Those are part of that system. That system is monitored there in Detroit at the Real-Time Crime Center. For the monitoring of the Fuces Real-Time Crime Center, is that something that you all monitor or is that monitored by Axon?

So it's not something that's monitored. It's something that is triggered by a complaint. So for instance, in my example, with the armed robbery that occurred at the party store, that triggers the fact that that needs to be monitored. So then that activates the AI, activates the cameras that are in the area, and then they make a determination as to where the person's going and how that all works. So it's not something that we would have people actually in watching big screens. And frankly, I think that that's going to become a thing of the past with the advent of this.

So with the with the system, it's not monitoring until somebody at one of those businesses, some activated. Is that correct? OK. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Follow up question. So on average, how long does it take prior to this software? On average, how long does it take for an officer to write a report?

It's about 25% of their day. So on an eight hour shift, a couple of hours, um, uh, on a 10 hour shift, a little bit more than two hours, probably, uh, two and a half, three hours, uh, 12 hour shift, probably three and a half, four hours. Um, it's significant.

Okay.

Uh, it's a lot of work.

Roughly how many, uh, reports does an officer have to complete in a week? Roughly.

You know, it varies depending upon their work schedule and depending upon the time of year, frankly. Like I can speak from my own experience. At a high on a 12-hour shift, I handled 32 reports. On a low on a 12-hour shift, I'd handle one or two. So it just varies depending upon the circumstances. But the additional thing that you have in there, too, and I don't necessarily call report would be a UD 10, which is a traffic crash report. It's a little bit different. The other thing is tickets. A lot of that's digital today as well. Different things like that. So they're doing a lot of writing. They've got. Um, they're keeping track of, um, their daily log. They're maintaining all the different things that they go places. They go different things that they do that aren't necessarily a police report. That's gonna go to the prosecutor kind of stuff.

So on average, about 25% roughly. Yeah. I would say 25%. Yeah.

I would say more like 25 to 30%. 30. Okay. Yeah.

So with the implementation of this software, how, what, what does that take that 30% down to roughly?

It cuts it in half. In half. Yeah.

And then in terms of just reviewing the document, what percentage do you think that it took it down to as well?

What do you mean? When the police officer reviews it? Yeah. After the AI platform? That's a good question. You know, I don't know for certain right now because we don't have it. But faster nonetheless. But I would think... You know, as a guy who's written a number of police reports, it's a whole lot simpler, and reviewed them, it's a whole lot simpler to review the report and find out the things that are missing than it is to try and write the report and get it accurately. Especially, and here's the thing, you know, you see this differentiation between 40% and 75%. A lot of that is because it's taking into context the seriousness of the crime or the criminal activity that the police officer is investigating. Obviously, if he's investigating a homicide as opposed to the MDOP or the malicious destruction of property, in my example earlier, that's a real quick report, right? There's not a whole lot to that, not a whole lot of thought between three people for a suspect that doesn't exist, right, or they can't find. But for a homicide? um especially a complicated homicide where the the suspects out roaming the streets still i mean the estimate was 75 and that's probably a whole lot more the reality of it is it lays that information all out for you in some of the examples that i saw a pretty complicated homicide scene that a police officer had went into And there were things that were picked up that probably would have been missed during the officer's initial response. So think about somebody who, God forbid, is murdered inside their home. We don't know who the suspect is. Welfare checks called in by the neighbor. The police officer goes in, sees obvious signs of a struggle and then has to make a tactical entry into the house. Right. So he's going in there. She's going in there with the idea that I have to protect and preserve human life. So they go in there, guns drawn. And it's super intense. And they're clearing the house to see if there's any suspects that are inside. Right. While they're doing that, they may see evidence of food preparation. They may see evidence of a struggle. They may see all sorts of different things as they're walking through. They're processing very little of that because the reality of it is they're thinking, I got to protect myself and I got to try and save whoever might be in here. So they're going through that house quickly and methodically, but they're not picking up on those things that are really important in a criminal investigation. They're stomping on things. There's this thing called transfer of evidence that they're stomping all over, but they have to do it, right, in their initial response. What I thought was really fascinating was the patrol officers that went in legitimately destroyed this murder scene trying to protect the person that was injured and ultimately died, they destroyed evidence of food preparation, which was really important because the suspect had prepared all that food. And some of that food, when they found the suspect, was on his clothes, which would have been totally lost. But the AI picked up on that. And that's kind of what I'm talking about, little things that they'll pick up on.

Have you seen in your research, I don't know if they've had this or not, but I'm curious if they've had an opportunity to have an officer write a report and then have the software write the same report and then compare the two together.

Have you seen anything like that? That's absolutely happened. It's tremendous on the detail that the AI picks up on that the police officer was lost on. Now there are a couple of incidents where It's a little bit more static, not quite as demanding and dramatic as what I just explained, where the detective or the officer does a phenomenal job, and it's comparable to the AI. And that's important to understand because they're using, AI is using the best of those report writers in order to write every report. So you get a variation between police officers of, you know, this guy writes a really great report, this guy's reports are lacking a little bit, but he gets the job done kind of a thing. You know, it makes everybody that really great report.

Thank you, my final question.

Oh, you got a follow-up? Go ahead. Then it's Ray Snell next, and then Tony Bear.

And Sheriff, if you could give them a little information, because Blackman's using this. And I know when we had a conversation with Blackman, they gave some examples that were tremendous in productivity increase that you can share.

Yes. Yes. So Blackman Township is using it right now. And they were kind of the guinea pig in all of this. And essentially what happened is, you know, we went and said, hey, to Kelsey at the prosecutor's office, hey, is this worthwhile? And she said, it's absolutely fantastic. She says, I was a little skeptical in the beginning. Of course, we all are during these circumstances when technology is taking over some of this. But she said it was absolutely fascinating how quickly the reports came in. We typically do something called a probable cause sheet when we have a serious incident occur and we have to make an arrest absent a warrant. And those probable cause sheets are one sheet of paper. For a really serious incident, they're one sheet of paper. It's just the probability that a crime occurred, probability the person we arrested did it, right? And we try to knock it all out. Well, the beauty of this system is those probable cause sheets have essentially become archaic. We don't need them anymore because the report is done before you get back to the police car. It's phenomenal. And it's better than if we would have sat down and tried to write it ourselves in many cases.

So my final question to this is I'm just curious if the report, does it show maybe some type of marker that it was created by AI, whatever the name of the software is?

It says AI-assisted in the report writing. Yeah, because the police officer still, like... Mr. Overton was explaining, the police officer still goes through the report and there may be some things that are changed as a result of that. And certainly there's markers inside of the report. For instance, it'll say, you know, and the cow jumped over the moon or something silly like that. So it proves that the police officer went through and actually, you know, took out that little snippet of nonsense information. So it'll go through and say, yeah, it's AI assisted in this report.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Nothing further.

Right, and then Tony. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A lot of information and triggered this thought. So an officer makes a report and he gets prompted somewhere that, gee, you could have better information here. So they go out and get it. Well, will that be time stamped and who put that back into the project or into the report?

Yes, it will. Okay. Which I think is really important as well, because a lot of that stuff, that's what we were talking about. A lot of that stuff is lost in today's police report because a police officer, he's just he's getting the pertinent information, the important information and going and doing it as he sees fit or she sees fit. And a lot of times they forget about, oh, I talked to him, you know, two days afterward or whatever the case may be. It's recorded that way. when AI does the generating of the report.

So we'll have a timeline of everything that happens with that report.

Yes, it's beautiful. That's so important.

Thank you. Yep. Tony?

Thank you. I've seen some videos AI generated, and it's amazing what AI can do. AI can do whatever you tell it to or limit it to. So the stuff you've talked about, Your use for the AI sounds great. My question is, and once you're done with the whole report, I have a couple more questions. Does your system, your AI, have the capability of taking that crime scene where somebody was robbing a convenience center, take the image of that person out and insert my image in there? I've seen images of people that I couldn't tell it was 100%, even the background, even the voice was 100% AI generated. Does your system have that capability?

This system will not. This is simply what occurred, when it occurred, and interpretation of that event. Okay, that's all I needed. Thank you.

Further questions?

Go ahead, Earl. Thank you. I guess maybe to administration. So we have the potential to spend $150,000 a year, let's say extra, to achieve greater productivity by our people. What's going to be our process of approving this and have we cooked it into our 2027 budgeting estimates that we just heard from Cecilia?

Go ahead.

It's not cooked in there. Although we believe we have enough funds for the next at least two years because the sheriff has some new money coming. What, $250,000 a year for the next two years, I believe it is. So maybe three years of funding to manage this additional cost. And by that time, one, we'll know if it's really truly what we believe it is, which based on what I've seen thus far and heard from black men and so forth, I believe it is a game changer as far as productivity and therefore allows the officers to do what we really want them to do, not sitting in the car or the office writing a report, but out on the street making a difference in people's lives. And so we would have roughly, I'd say, three years to get the additional funding to figure it out, make it into, if you will, to the pie.

And so we'll have plenty of time to evaluate it, vote on it at future meetings. Correct. Very good.

And we aren't seeking approval today. Okay, good. We're going to take it through the process that we normally would.

So this will be here Monday, correct? Yes.

Yes, sir. So if we can move on to the next slide, this is what I'm really excited about. I mean, I'm excited about it all, but this is huge for us. Our front lobby has been just swamped since we've had the advent of these body cameras and you get these YouTubers and all that kind of stuff. They want to, you know, we get a serious crime scene. They want to get the... video on it and all this and that kind of stuff and we're sitting there trying to get it because we got to by law fill all these FOIA requests and they pay for them but we just don't have enough people. This is huge. This is absolutely amazing and in fact And there's a couple of other proposals that I'll be bringing in front of you that I think if we're able to improve this, that it's going to make us even better. But our customer service is going to improve. I'm going to say we're going to be able to open up our lobby another day. It's just going to make things much, much better and allow us to serve the citizens of Jackson County in a much more efficient manner by doing this. Any questions on that before I move forward? I can kind of buzz through the rest of them. We've kind of touched on everything. The virtual reality training, it's the state of the art stuff that I think will reduce liability and make it so much better for us. The stuff that we have right now is geared exclusively for patrol. This stuff will also be geared for our corrections division and make things much easier, make our training much better. Then going on to the Real-Time Crime Center, again, we talked about a lot of this already, but the connected systems that we have will strictly be volunteer. And having that connection with the community is really important. People in certain areas might want to do it. People in other areas might not want to do it. It's completely up to them. The schools may want to participate. I think eventually they all will, but they may not at first. The other beauty of this is that Axon will help us. It's not something we have to go out and solicit people to be involved with. Axon will actually go out and try to get people to be involved with it and explain the pros and the cons to them. So moving on to the next slide and why it matters to Jackson County. And frankly, I know you all understand this. The big one for me is employee morale. We're asked to do more with less, and I know you know that. This helps them continue to do more. It helps them be better. It's a force multiplier for them, and it's fantastic for their morale to be able to have stuff like this. The other thing that has really been important to me as the sheriff is being compliant with CEGIS, the Criminal Justice Information Systems, making sure that all of this stuff works and that we're not violating the law in some way, shape, or form, and all of this stuff is compliant with it. And the final slide. So we're going to be asking for approval of this here within the next week or two. And we're hopeful that I can and my staff here can answer any questions that you might have. And I don't necessarily think you're going to have a ton of questions today, but you might have some next week or the week after. Or even if you approve it, you might have questions later on down the road. I hope you know that I'm an open book, and I'll always entertain your calls and answer any questions you might have. So with that, if you have anything additional.

Commissioner Behr?

Thank you.

Couple questions. Overall, I think this is a great idea. Many advantages for our officers and for our citizens. What's presented today is a motion requested today. I don't like that. Study session is for study, not for final approval. And yes, the board, it is a meeting of the board, and we can choose to do final approval. But to me, that's a very poor choice, because that totally leaves the citizen input out of everything. And if this gets passed today, Nobody's gonna know about it. Nobody will have had the opportunity to have input into it. That's why I personally don't like motions passed at study session. Wrong place. Motions, I think, should have the cost of the project. And the motion that's presented here at the end of the first sentence, real-time crime center technology at a cost of $1,400,000 for five years, $138,000 increase over each year, motions need the cost in them, I believe. back to approving this at study session, your current contract doesn't expire for another two months. There's no urgency in getting this done now. You had made the comment that we'll discuss this again over the upcoming weeks. Was your intent that this would then from today would go to the committees for review and then would be forwarded to the full board for final approval? Or are you expecting approval today?

No, I'm not. I'm not expecting approval today. That, when this was initially placed into the board's agenda for consideration, it was supposed to go to committee first. Study session wasn't something that we initially had thought about, but I thought it was a great idea that the administrator brought up. So I think what you're looking at is something that was not intended for today. So the intent today was to open up the discussion you know bring you all of the information so that you could kind of absorb it and then formulate additional questions uh for later meetings i don't i'm not seeking approval for this today um i would like approval next week to go to the full board for the following week But no I am not seeking approval today It's just to open up the discussion to introduce you to all this technology, and why I think it's important Thank you.

I think it's important to Other Commissioner questions According to the administrator controller's office this will be moving to Monday committee meetings for discussion And we'll follow it through there Thank you, Sheriff.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 5E, the 911 fee ballot measure.

Am I free to go ahead and make my presentation, Mr. Chairman, since we're running over, or did you want me to summarize?

You're free to make your presentation, sir.

Thank you. So I'm here at the request of the Township Supervisors Association, essentially speaking on their behalf about the 800 megahertz radio's 9-11 surcharge ballot proposal. This is an overview of what I'll be talking about. I'll briefly summarize the 800 megahertz radio study. Then I'll talk about two incidents that happened recently in Napoleon Township that illustrate through difficult example exactly how important these radios are. Then I'll talk about the call center financials and the proposed ballot language. So the 800 megahertz radio study was completed and issued in December and Essentially it begins by asserting that Immediate emergency first response by fire and police is the most important service local governments provide to the people of Jackson County It is the service that our residents experience firsthand when they have a medical emergency a crime is committed and a school shooting a drowning in any of those that's when To our residents nothing is more important than our emergency first responders So the radio study was launched in or chartered by the Supervisors Association, primarily driven by the fact that the current radios are approaching 10 years of age. The vast majority of them were bought in 2017, so they will hit their 10 year mark next year in 2027. And at the 10 year mark, The company stops selling those radios. They will still support them. You can still get repair parts, but they no longer sell that model. You cannot replace them. So the radios begin to become less and less reliable from that point on. So that's the cause for concern. The concern was that there didn't appear to be any plan or funding for replacement. So the study team was formed comprised of leaders from township and city government, police and fire, and began work on October 16th, completed its work and issued its result on December 3rd. So the study evaluated three alternatives and recommended a ballot proposal. So I'm gonna just move on to these two incidents because I think they could be argued as the most important part of this presentation. So the first is the Wolf Lake drowning incident. A tragic drowning incident took place at Big Wolf Lake on Friday, July 10. At approximately 5 p.m., the 9-11 Emergency Dispatch Center received a call that an adult male had disappeared under the water while swimming and was feared drowned. Napoleon Township emergency first responders were dispatched immediately and established operational control. A search began and continued until shortly after midnight when the missing person was finally located at a depth of 35 feet on the lake bottom. Organizations participating in the search, I won't list them, but there were 16 different organizations, including five separate dive teams from different counties. So the organizations en route were already in contact with incident command, knew exactly where to go and what to do on arrival. One search group worked from the Bellmere Court boat launch on the south shore, while a second search group worked from a private residence on the north shore. Organizing, coordinating, commanding, and performing this complex operation on water and in the dark, and I would add in water, would have been virtually impossible without the 70 interoperable 800 megahertz portable radios that linked all the first responders together into a single team. And the second incident occurred at the schools The afternoon of May 5, a call was received at the township office from a man claiming to be at the Napoleon High School with an AR-15 assault rifle and a bomb. A second call was received with the voice of a young girl saying she was inside the school and there was a man with a gun. 9-11 emergency dispatch was contacted immediately and Napoleon Township Police and Fire established a unified command for operational control. Additional first responder organizations arrived. They were quickly integrated into the response team and assigned a role to perform School was locked down while an organized sweep of the building and grounds was conducted by a team of police officers Thankfully finding no actual intruder scared students and worried parents were quickly reunited at a coordinated rally location once the school and grounds were judged safe a And again, there were 16 organizations participating, 16 for the most part different organizations that of course weren't dive teams, but there were other police and fire organizations instead. So coordinating, commanding, and performing this complex operation was extremely difficult. Speed was critical, and arriving resources had to immediately integrate into a fast-moving and fast-changing operation. First responders were already in contact with unified command while enroute 67 interoperable 800 megahertz portable radios had already linked all first responders together into a single team before they arrived So next foil is some information that I pulled directly from your county website. It shows the emergency dispatch revenues and the explanations below came from my conversations with Jason Hammond. So the largest revenue source, of course, is the 9-11 surcharge, $2,460,000 a year. There's a transfer in of $552,000. That's your subsidy from your general operating fund budget that goes to emergency dispatch. There is a 350 charge that is a state phone surcharge that comes in so those are the major sources of revenue and there's some other miscellaneous transfer radio tower leases and some other smaller sources of funds so for a revenue projection of 2026 of 3 million 434 740 and it's a balanced budget so if you move to expenditures it shows the same total The contract services are for the CAD recording and contracted services that are key to information capture and the operation. Personal services, of course, are the largest expense at the $2,209,000. Those, of course, are the people expenses. And a major transfer out expense, the $983,000, that is the annual payment on the existing bond. And the final payment there will be So I asked our accountant to go ahead and do a bonding projection for me if we were to bond for the full purchase of the radios. It would be 272 police radios, 369 fire radios for a total of 641 radios. So that's what's on the next page. He went and did the projection with $60,000 of issuance costs, which is normal around 1%. He assumed 3.5% interest and a 10-year bond. So it comes to a payment of $666,000. 910 per year. So the next FOIL is summing it up. Could you go ahead and jump to that other version of it that you added for me this morning, please? Display that one. You have it. Okay. So my original summing it up FOIL showed the annual revenue. That's the amount that would be collected if the full $1.50 additional surcharge were levied. I had originally calculated The cost of the radio is based on list price, and that's where the $666,910 annual expense came from, which would have left annually $1,793,000 of revenue for other purposes. But in digging further into that, having discussions with Jason yesterday and others, I concluded, we concluded, that we should anticipate being able to get a discount of somewhere between 30 and 35 percent off that list price. This is a large purchase, 641 radios. There will also be some trade-in value to the existing radios that the company will accept. In addition to that, we will know in November if The issue has passed and the money is going to be available. So December is the ideal time to be negotiating with salespeople for prices. It's their last chance to meet their sales targets for the year, their last chance to earn their bonuses. So it should be an extremely good time to negotiate. So I went ahead and conservatively assumed a 31% discount. We may even get more than that, but that generates the nice round number of 460,000. So working down from the 2 million 460, if we subtract the annual cost of the radios, that leaves us $2 million per year to work with. and of course you would want to stop subsidizing from the general fund so you'd subtract the five hundred fifty two thousand from that which would leave one million four hundred forty eight thousand to do other things with and jason wants to add eight people to the call center at ninety thousand per person that would be seven hundred twenty thousand per year leaves still seven hundred twenty eight thousand for technology upgrades The reason I put that together is some people have expressed concern that if the money was used for radios, there wouldn't be enough left to the other things that are necessary. So that's why I put that view together. And I had put together some proposed ballot language. I won't go through that. Mike had proposed a slightly different version of it, but it still has the wording that I consider most key for the ballot measure. And if Mike's version is what's proposed for approval today, I would be fully in support of that rather than my own previous wording. I'm trained as a scientist. My degree is in chemistry with minors in mathematics and physics. So I tend to like numbers. I tend to include numbers in things. I see numbers as how you explain words rather than words being how you explain numbers. But Mike's version works just fine. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions commissioners might have.

So at this time, I'd like to go around the room and answer questions from each commissioner at least once. And if you have no comments, that's fine. But I'm gonna start. Commissioner Behr, are you ready with your questions?

I am.

Go ahead, sir.

Thank you. I've said this to two previous presenters. Approval today, to me, is not appropriate. Study session is for study and discussion. And yes, we can because it's a full board. We can choose to approve it today. But to me, that's a bad choice because it leaves the citizens out. The citizens won't have any input on this. They won't have any knowledge of this for another month. So I would not be in favor of approving it today at study session. Second comment would be that Yeah, Dan, you and I talked earlier, and you are comfortable with the revised language that Administrator Overton had proposed. I still see one flaw in that, because the proposed language just says that we're going to provide within the county portable radios, replacing current 10-year-old radios. a voter in the voting booth looking at this language we're just replacing portable radios I think it's important that citizens know we are replacing them with 800 megahertz radios and that we are going to be providing 369 for fire use and 272 for police use I think the citizens see the numbers and And knowing it's 800 megahertz compatible with our 800 megahertz system, that you'll get more citizens voting yes. And so to my thought, just saying new portable radios is not enough. I would expect better odds of approval if that wording was expanded. Thank you. Thank you.

In response to your concern, I would say that the study was completed and issued way back in December. every township supervisor every police chief every fire chief was aware of this we have endorsements from the supervisors association the police chiefs association and the officers association in addition we have formal resolutions of support from eleven township boards so this has been thoroughly communicated and thoroughly discussed i believe too to our communities There isn't any surprise. And the other source of urgency and the reason that I'm here is that we only have until August 11th to get this on the ballot. If we took any longer than that, it would have to wait until next year. So that's the reason I'm here today. We didn't intend for it to come down to the last minute, but it did. The process didn't get it before you until now.

Well, the support and endorsements that you have received through the community was on your proposed language, not on Overton's proposed language.

Actually, it was endorsement of the study, not of specific ballot language. In fact, the study... Recommended a ballot proposal it didn't specifically only say a 9-11 surcharge We left that decision to the county commission the the study Primarily said don't just leave it for everybody to go off on their own Let's do it as a countywide initiative are the way we evaluated the pros and cons of those three choices and The surcharge certainly emerged as kind of the obvious one if you really look at the evaluation, but we didn't try to say to the County Commission, you should only do this. Understood, thank you.

Commissioner Walz.

Good morning. Although I don't disagree with allowing the constituents of Jackson County to vote on this proposed radio millage, I do have some concerns regarding the conflicting reports and the county commission's fiscal responsibility, not only for today, but for the future. As commissioners, we're charged with being responsible And I don't want to have the county's hands tied financially 10 years down the road. So one thing is that if this proposed millage ballot request were to pass, I'd like to establish some boundaries. I'd like an accurate number of radios, and that should be determined on current needs. And I think this number should be determined jointly by the county and the 911 director. They know what's being used out there, how many people there are. They can discuss it with the townships and figure that out. So I'm not sure where we got the 369 and the 272, but I'd like to make sure those are accurate numbers. And I believe that written agreements should be established with the participating entities. What has happened is 10 years ago when this was first established, there was a committee formed. That committee decided to do this, but said that in 10 years, the townships would be responsible for having their own replacement monies. But... I don't think we can continue with that. I think we need to have some sort of boundary and I think we need to have it in writing so that when oncoming boards can look at it and say, oh, this is what they did and this is why they were thinking that and have people understand that the new board coming on in 10 years will be able to look at that history and understand it fully, and it will be documented in writing with an agreement with each entity. And if the millage is not approved, what's the backup plan? What are we going to do? What do the townships have established, but I don't think it should entirely fall upon the county to do it. So yes, I am in agreement, but I do believe that we should have some boundaries set that establish where we belong and what everybody's supposed to be doing so that when we come to the future, because in 10 years, likely I won't be here, right? So somebody else will be sitting in this seat and I want them to know what we did and why we did it at that time.

If I thank you if I could respond to some of your points the details of where the 272 and the 369 came from are in the study and each one of the organizations provided their details So if you look in the study you'll see exactly What each organization provided it's documented in there in a spreadsheet that? And with regard to clarity on who said what to who and who intends what for the future, I think that's an excellent idea. We're in an awkward situation where people remember different things about what was said 10 years ago. And it certainly created some tension between the township supervisors and the county commissioners. No one is intending to lie to anybody, but somehow the memory is different. I don't know why. But also to your point, whatever gets documented today about the intent of today's decision makers, there will be a different set of decision makers 10 years from now who are not really bound by anything that's written today, but at least they will understand what people were thinking when they made the decision today. So I think it's an excellent idea to document it.

Commissioner Kennedy?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Both commissioners have already expressed ideas, concerns, whatever you would like to call it, that I have, so I won't expound on that too much. To Commissioner Behr's point, ultimately, it'll be the citizens of Jackson... that would have to incur this fee. And $1.50 a month doesn't sound like much, but to a family that might have five, six phones, or a small business that may have 10 to 100, it's a substantial cost. So whether it's leadership, township supervisors or here on the county board. I think it is important that citizens have some opportunity to chime in on this should they choose to do so. So I'm a little apprehensive taking a vote today. I'd like something to be posted so that the public has an opportunity to comment before placing something like this on the ballot. The other two issues that weren't touched on that I'll just bring up. just thinking in the future is number one, if we were to do this, that fee would now be maxed. And so if there's any other costs, and I value your work in looking at the amount of dollars that would be there, also offsetting what's coming from the general fund to subsidize it, no longer having to happen. But once this, if the voters approved it happened, we could never go back and ask for more. So it's important that commissioners know that My other concern is, and part of it is from our audit today, the county has been fiscally responsible, previous boards, this board, and because of that, we have a pretty good bond rating. Each time we go and take out another bond, that can be affected, so I'd like the county administrator to look into that and see if there's any concerns if we went and did an additional bond for another 10 years, if it would affect our rating at all. Beyond that, if we were to do this, I would like to see this current supervisor group, since they did this study, look into what's the plan 10 years from now. Are we going to come back and ask the voters for more money? Are we going to come back and ask the county commissioners to put stuff on the ballot? Or are supervisors now going to understand that you have to come up with a plan to fund this? replacements so that we're not here 10 years from now. And granted, probably none of us are gonna be here, but planning has to happen of some sort. So that's my outlook on it. I'm not comfortable voting on this today. I understand you got a time deadline, but I'd like to post something so that the public would have an opportunity to weigh in should they choose to do so.

Okay, to respond to several of your points, the ballot measure will just approve the maximum amount that can be levied. The County Commission does not have to levy that maximum amount and probably should not. It can, depending on what the plan becomes to staff up and at what rate people can be recruited, what technology is going to be upgraded at what point in time, I would see more of a ramping up and that's exactly what other counties have done. They don't simply levy the full amount and try to spend it right away. They keep part of it in reserve for the future, just as you said. And I think voters have the ultimate decision when they vote on this. Nothing is going to be imposed on them without their will. And part of how we intend to approach this is Supervisors the police chiefs and fire chiefs will go out into the community make sure everybody understands what the reasoning behind this is and what?

Approving that ballot measure would mean to people so they're not going to be any surprises to people by the time they get to the voting booth Yeah, and I'm not I don't think I insinuated that there would be but I do feel it's important that the public has an Opportunity to chime in before we just vote and put something on the ballot that was my point I

Commissioner Pileski.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I see it, the proposal has two significant aspects, one being the radio purchase and another being adding eight people to the call center. And I guess a question to management would be is

adding eight people to our call center part of our staffing plan for nine one one currently well that that's not really my proposal that was my response to concerns that there might not be enough money left to do the kinds of things that are being considered if part of it were spent on radios this is what was in the earlier plan back in twenty twenty two when The proposal didn't pass and it's also what I talked with Jason about that's what he would like to do with his staff But it's not really part of any plan It's just a here's the way to look at the other things that money would be needed for but it's not part of the proposal okay, so so to get to the point that you made earlier about maybe not assessing the entire fee and

every year if we are able to achieve the public's approval of the $1.50 increase, but we say, you know what, we really only need 75 cents of that to do the things, to do this and that of this plan. Am I correct in saying that we can decide to only assess the 75 cents, for example, and then in some future year when we say, oh, now we're ready to do something else or something additional, and now we want to take the increase from 75 cents to a dollar or a dollar and a half. Can we, the Board of Commissioners, unilaterally do that without an additional vote of the people?

That is exactly my understanding, and Mr. Overton and I have had discussions about that. If I understand correctly what Mike said, once each year the county commission has the opportunity to increase or decrease that levy. So every year you can reassess that and make a decision of how much more or how much less you need to levy.

And then I guess my last comment, Mr. Chair, is kind of an overarching comment, is is if we decide today, which I think is the concept is to approve the ballot language today, put it on the ballot, there's not much time between now and the general election. This board has put three jail millages on the ballot in the past four or five years, which did not pass. And if this is unable to pass, it's not the supervisors that are gonna look like they got egg on their face. It's gonna be the Board of Commissioners. So I'm concerned about how energetically and effectively the ballot initiative can be supported and pass in November so that we don't end up with egg on our face one more time. And I don't know that there's any answer to that, Dan, but that's my concern.

I think there is, because we've had lengthy discussions about this among the supervisors. What's different about this proposal is that it's very specific that some of this money is going to buy radios, and it's easy to explain to residents how important that is, replacing 10-year-old radios. Our police chiefs and our fire chiefs have a vested interest in making sure this gets passed whereas the previous one was very generic language and In fact, it was somewhat misleading. It made it sound like the voters were being asked to approve an increase from $0 to $3 rather than an increase from $1.50 to $3. So that's why we were careful to include that language this time. So I think it's a whole different situation this time. I think the supervisors and the chiefs are committed to going out and making sure this gets passed. I think it didn't miss by all that much last time, even with all the obstacles. To the extent you can guarantee it, I would almost guarantee that we can get this passed.

I guess another concern would be if the public said, okay, you're going to raise $2.5 million from this fee. Looks like you need $1.5 million for radios. Where does the other $2 million go? And we can say we won't we won't assess it or we'll do it for these very good things but it becomes a question of credibility and as to what are we approving versus what are we actually saying we want and need.

That's the concern. You're asking them essentially to trust you and to give you the ability to levy that additional amount as you determine necessary as their elected representatives is the way I see it.

Asking government to be trusted is a tough call right now. So I think that's all I've got, Mr. Chair. I'm just bringing up concerns that I've had. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I guess the other way to look at it is this is really the community coming to you and asking you to do this. This isn't something you have to go back and convince the community of. It is the community leaders who did this study and are coming forward and asking you to put this on the ballot. That's all you have to do. We'll do the rest. That's what's very different from the previous time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So a quick question for you, Mr. Weimer. The charges are for every phone, wireless and landline?

That's my understanding. So one of the good things about that is it doesn't just get levied on property owners like a property tax would. Renters, everybody who has a phone ends up helping us with this.

Okay. As an elected official, I'm always concerned about anything we're doing where we're asking for an increase in taxes or things like that. But I do think one of the obligations that we have is to take something to the voters to give them that opportunity to decide. The language as I see it, what you're asking from us is just to get it to the ballot. So if I understand you correctly, it has to be... Completed by the 10th. Is that correct?

I believe it's the 11th and the 12th is really the deadline Sierra can answer that I think that would mean it has to probably be to her by the 11th Okay But you're absolutely right. All we're asking is approval to put it on the ballot.

Right. So essentially, we will be taking it to the public and ask the public to make that decision on how important it is to them.

Exactly right.

OK. Are you complete? I'm complete, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Whiteman.

Through the chair, the clerk would like to respond to the debate.

Yes, the date for the county clerks to receive ballot wording for local proposals qualified to appear on the November election is Tuesday, August 11th by 4 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. So a lot of what... has been stated today by Commissioner Walts and Commissioner Kennedy. I echo a lot of their response in some regards. But I do have some concerns as well. One, obviously with the timing and not allowing for in my opinion, adequate opportunity for constituents to raise voice to this. I do have some concerns with that. Secondly, you mentioned in so many words memory of past experiences with this being differing from one side of the fence to the other. I struggle with that a bit as well. It's my understanding that when this was discussed some 10 years ago that we would move forward with the provisions that were made, and then from there, individuals needing radios and et cetera would have X amount number of years to try to figure this out on their own. But yet, here we are again, and with no plan in place but to, again, assess or to raise taxes, if you will, for lack of a better word, for constituents. And I guess my concern is, And I think maybe Commissioner Kennedy mentioned that we were reaching a cap, which I did learn today, if I understand that correctly. I guess, let me ask it this way. If this does not pass, what is the plan for radios?

Well, there isn't really a plan. Each organization will have to come up with their own plan and figure out where to get their own money. So wasn't that the original ask in the beginning?

That after we went through and got the radios and things through the previous ask, that from there, townships, city jacks, et cetera, would have however much time they needed before it came time to get the new radios, that they developed a plan to do that?

Well, that's exactly what some people remember, and other people either remember it differently or weren't even around at that time. So...

So I guess that's a little bit more of my concern is we're, again, being asked to put a ballot measure out raising X number of dollars for this project. Again, I know when you look at it maybe for your own home, an additional $1.50, that's very low. nothing at all. But when you look at small businesses, et cetera, or that's going to truly make an impact on things, I think that's something to consider. I know this is important. It's certainly something that needs to be done. But I'm just struggling with moving forward with this, as well also has been mentioned, that we've tried to put out several millages that have failed, and I would hate for us to go forward and do something yet again. One thing that my constituents share with me often is they're, when it comes to taxes and millages and things, they're just millaged out, they're taxed out, and at one point, do we stop? And again, I know you've come today just to do the presentation, and so I don't want you to think that I'm kind of arguing or yelling at you specifically, but i guess my frustration is is that we've had 10 years and yet nothing was done and so we're back here asking for for more money that i quite frankly i'm not sure if i'm comfortable with just due to the timing of this i guess a couple of things in response if the voters don't want to do this then they can tell us no that we have to go find the money elsewhere but the other way to look at it is

One way or another, the money for these radios is going to have to come from the public. Rather, we spread it out across individual organizations and have to get it from those smaller communities, or we do it as a countywide measure like this. There's only one place for the money to come from, and that's from our residents out there.

Have we considered that as an option, that we would go to each individual township and allow them to figure out how to raise those monies themselves?

We did. That was one of the three options that we evaluated in the study. And some of the disadvantages of that are that... Some of the smaller municipalities are going to have a hard time coming up with that money. They're going to be tempted to go with cheaper radio alternatives that won't integrate as well into the larger network and potentially could make it less reliable. Different municipalities are going to end up buying the radios at different times. We're going to have a churn of old and new radios rather than a one-time upgrade of everything. So those are some of the things that we did consider when we looked at that as one of the three alternatives. There are some definite drawbacks to going that route, independent of whatever people said ten years ago.

Okay, thank you. So as I mentioned, I won't labor the point, but I do have some concerns with this as we move forward. But I do have a question for administration. For this type of project with radios, et cetera, is our process of how we're doing this, is this standard, would you say, across the state that it's a more county-wide project versus individual townships?

I can't say with 100%, I haven't necessarily looked at that. Generally speaking, when I think of 911, I do think of countywide, even regional and wide if you go to the UP. So it follows that funding would likely be the same. There's different ways of funding this. Obviously there's the fee that we're discussing and the other option is millages. Some communities have a millage for their 911 to supplement it. Because the fee itself fundamentally is a regressive versus a progressive. So it doesn't matter how much money you make, your fee is the same as someone who makes triple what you make. So it's considered a regressive fee, if you will.

I think if I could also respond to what you just asked, the fact that we're even allowed to do this as a county level initiative suggests that at least from a state law standpoint it is acceptable to treat this as a county level initiative. Otherwise, we would not be allowed to spend this money collected in association with the 9-11 operation to do this with because there are many other things that we're not allowed to use that money for. It can only be used for things that are considered to be directly connected to the call center operation. So there is that aspect of it also, I think.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, if I can ask another question.

I've given you the opportunity to ask as many questions as you want.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I appreciate it. What is the drawback, or what would be your response to say let's, if government, county government says let's wait a year, let's wait two years?

I would say because then the radios are going to pass their 10-year mark and they're going to become less and less reliable. There's another aspect to this that I'm almost hesitant to bring up.

Do we have radios that are currently not working?

No, but the older they get, the greater the risk is that they will not work and cannot be replaced. They can only be repaired.

I want to respond to that, if I could. The state, and correct me if I'm wrong, Deborah, but the state is beginning the process of different levels, and I'm going to only use the word encryption. I know that's not what it is, but where organizations of certain size must do their radios now versus other organizations have time to implement two or three years out. And I believe the separation was law enforcement versus fire and emergency, am I correct on that analysis? There's gonna be some that are timing out earlier and our sheriff is in that position and the city is in that position.

So as part of our CEGIS audit, which is the federal comparable, not necessarily the same thing of lean. Lean is the local. As part of our CEGIS audit, we have to have a plan over three years to become encrypted on the police radios. Fire radios don't generally have access to the channels that need to be encrypted. And so they don't need that information and aren't entitled to have that information because they're not lean certified. And so the police radios have to be encrypted. We had to have a three-year plan to pass our CEGIS audit in 911. And so, yes, they do have to have a plan over the course of the, that was last year, I think. So they have to have a plan.

We're in the middle of that process right now. So the question is, the answer would be, we've already begun dealing with that. And while fire doesn't have to meet It is fast, law enforcement does. And so we begin doing stuff now in the follow through of electronics.

So I'm hearing, if I'm understanding correctly, so we have this three year window, we're a year in, so we still have two years to go.

Yes. We have one and a half years to go.

A year and a half. So we could potentially wait and do this a year from now.

Has it in his budget right now for it to occur start occurring in 27 So yes, so that would be You could argue that you could wait a year for 9-1-1, but you don't have countywide ballot initiative next year in any way shape or form so now we're going to have to pay that we would have to pay that ourselves which costs about a hundred thousand dollars to do a ballot initiative countywide and if it's a special election So you're better off to drop these into either the governor's year or the presidential year. And our board of commissioners has stated recently that they will not do things at the primary, that they will do things at the general election. So we're coming up on the governor general election and this is our window for doing it or it'll be two years.

So we're tied now, essentially.

Yeah, we're effectively tied back. Now, the other thing also I want you to consider, and I'm sure Michael has explained this to you, you're going to have three millages coming up in two years. Parks and Rec and Animal Control and Lifeways. So we're going to have other ballot initiatives that are going to be renewals, but they're going to occur... on the two year cycle and do you wanna drop this with those countywide at the same time? So again, this is kind of our window of when to actually do this is with this timeframe.

So essentially this is the best time to do it is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, this is the best of times and this is the worst of times. I am sure that qualifying it that way, yes. And the Board of Commissioners, when we established it at $1.50, there was an opportunity to go three and we said no. The Board of Commissioners authorized $1.50 at that time. And that was what we chose to do. And now we've been making a contribution from our general fund of about a half million dollars since that time period. We did the same thing originally when we did the Department on Aging Millage. We did the same thing to show good faith to the public that we're only asking for the money we need. And I think we're at that point on this.

So have other townships put forth any dollars toward this at all?

Well occasionally have to buy replacement radios, so I know that's been done But I'm not aware of any coordinated effort to do a replacement of all the radios of an individual township Okay, I'd like are you complete with your questions areas yes, and no Can I get one more response to that please? one thing that I'd like you to consider, and it's a broader issue than just this decision, is the working relationship between the county commission and the local leaders is not good right now. And part of why these millages are failing is that you're not getting the support that it takes from the local communities to get these passed. And part of what the chiefs and the supervisors are looking at is we did a study we've given you a clear request that we want this to go on the ballot uh... we've got letters of support from the three major organizations we've got resolutions of support from eleven townships we could have gotten more if we kept going we probably could have gotten them all So if that voice of all your communities to you is not going to convince you to do this, then are you really representing your communities? That's essentially how some of the people out there are looking at this. If you really don't listen to a message as clear as this, how are you making your decisions? And I think if this goes on the ballot if you do respond to that message in this way i think it's a good first step in rebuilding a positive relationship and i've actually talked to the supervisors we are willing to launch a second study team just like we did for the radios on the jail and have the community come to you with a proposal rather than you trying to convince the community on a jail proposal. And I think that's our best chance of getting a jail passed. So there's more at stake here even than just whether to put this on the ballot or not. So I just would...

I have some follow-up to that, but I'll pass. But I will say this. I would just recommend that townships, city of Jackson, have a serious conversation on a plan B. I'll conclude there. Thank you, Mr. Chair, nothing further.

Do I edit my thoughts here, or do I just start in? Dan, thanks for being here. A lot of things thrown at you and you've handled it well. So here comes some more. Talked a little bit about millages from between May and November this year, there'll be 10 townships, or not 10 townships, but there's 10 requests for millages from township fire police. I was kind of surprised that didn't have a little bit more for radios. Of course, you're expecting us to put it on the ballot. If we were to do this, and it passes in November, the first levy would go into effect, I believe, in July of 27. Yeah. So it's not going to be immediate. There's a grant request out there. I think it's gone through the first steps. But I have to say that looking at these three ballot proposals, proposed language, the supervisor's language is, I would ask that gets removed from consideration. I don't think we should encumber future commissions to funding more radios than what we may do right now. There has been, and I've talked to a lot of supervisors, I've talked to a few police chiefs, There's some thought that maybe Blackman-Leone summit in the city could fund themselves if they had to. And that makes some sense to me. But we're banding together, the supervisors are, to help those who can't afford it. And we appreciate that, I think.

I also look at Blackman Township as being one of the,

major contributors to this. But if it didn't pass, we'd still get the radios through the township. And one of the problems I have, too, we don't know what the future systems are going to look like. We don't know if they're going to cost. I mean, you look at the cost of what we did 10 years ago and what we're paying now. What is that cost going to look like in 10 years? And I don't want to make a commitment to a future board that I may or may not be on in 10 years from now. We've said from this, from 2026, yeah, you're going to have to fund that. We don't know how you're going to do it. Certainly the 911 millage, we won't cover that in 10 years, at least in my opinion. And then it's been brought up a little bit, too, When this agreement was first made about 10 years ago, who said what about how's it gonna get funded in the future? And it looks like we pinned all our hopes on the county voters passing an increase on themselves. I would have liked to have seen something from the townships going, we've saved this kind of money and it's just not enough. Boy, we need some help here. But it looks like it's just like, we're gonna give it all onto the county's shoulders. I think that if we do fund additional radios this time, that it needs to be a separate agreement. Those things aren't on the ballot, the number of radios, and that we're gonna pay for township radios. And that if there's a separate, contract or agreement between the county, and this has kind of been suggested already, the county and the townships and city. Don't want to forget the city because there's a big component of this. That, hey, we're doing it this time, but you're on your own from here. And then we get everybody's signs on it. And then 10 years from now, they look at it and say, yeah, we should have done that. I was glad that, and this has been brought up in a couple discussions with supervisors meeting about HIPAA compliance. In emergency situations, we're not bound by HIPAA at all. It's also been said that fire radios don't need to be encrypted at this time, but it doesn't make sense to do them all at once. And I'm not sure, I wish the sheriff was here because he knows this answer, when, if, or if ever, radios would have to be encrypted for firefighters. I'm not sure when that is.

I've had that discussion with some of the chiefs and the ones i've talked to have a general sense that at some point it's probably going to be required but it hasn't been established as a specific requirement at a specific point in time yet but it seems like something that will logically evolve toward given what's happened with the police because it's very similar data that's being communicated in an emergency you know and and i know this has been said before but i'll say it again we need to vet those numbers uh...

I'm not saying your numbers are wrong, but you're asking us to fund it. We need to independently confirm the numbers that would be needed if we put this on the ballot and if it passes. And I think I said this already, but I think it bears repeating. In my opinion, the first ballot language there, the 2022 ballot, would be modified as projected. We don't look at number two, number three, maybe, but it still puts us on the hook. And that we do a separate agreement on how this is gonna work so that it's not part of the ballot. Uh... that's all I have Mr. Chair. I appreciate you allowing me to pontificate there.

Are you done with me Mr. Chairman? Go ahead. No, no. I was going to sit down if you didn't have any more questions for me. Well, don't sit down.

I'm going to start with Commissioner Willis because he caught my attention first.

um my question is have do we have any type of analysis or figures on on how this is going on how the way out throughout the county throughout the city as far as the the the How, what, where does the money coming from? I mean, I know it's coming all across equally with my, my concern is passing a County vote where the city would be the heaviest bear of the costs.

I don't know of that kind of analysis being done for work. It would be where the money is currently being collected from now, if there's a way to go and look at that. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir.

Where's your bear?

Thank you, Chairman. I would like to move the approval of the revised ballot language.

Commissioner Behr, I would politely ask, would you please let us finish discussion first?

I thought everybody got to speak once and that's been done.

No, I told, I said that we had other commissioners raising their hand to ask questions and I identified you right after Commissioner Willis to ask more questions. At this time, the chair is not accepting motions on this issue at this time, sir. Could you please, because I'd like the administrator controller to speak. Can you please wait? Thank you, sir. Administrator Overton.

Just a few things. First, the revised ballot language, the reason that language there is missing the number of radios, what you put in a ballot measure, what the people read, if you say you're buying 500 radios, you're buying 500 radios. That's it. You can't change it later. It's in the language. And I took out 800 megahertz because there's no guarantee that five years from now or next year for that matter that radios will be it. I've heard talk about phones. Everybody has one. These iPhones are incredible these days and so forth that someday it's very likely we'll start using phones instead of radios using the existing infrastructure that's maintained by the private sector, if you will, and save everybody much money. So And since a ballot measure is good for, well, in this case here, we'd be shooting probably for, well, this fee is indefinite, actually. So the language is the language. That's why it's that way, more broadly written than what was otherwise presented. As far as options, yes, we do have to have something, if we're going to go for the November ballot, Uh, it has to be in, as the clerk said in her office by 4 o'clock on the 11th, that's Tuesday. We do have Monday committees. We could post a special meeting in between committees. If the board was inclined to wait and vote this up or down at that time, I would anticipate a full. uh county commissioner i mean we're missing one currently he's usually at those meetings as well so you do have that option i believe the clerk correct me if i'm wrong we can approve it on monday and hand it in to you on tuesday easy enough right yes you may thank you so that is an option as well as far as the math and the numbers i would uh tell you that while i have not gone through the fine tooth comb these numbers I would say they are correct. If we get this many dollars from $1.50, you take it to $3, and it doubles that number, and that's a fact. And as far as the debt service on a bond, even if his numbers are not correct, say it's even a million dollars, that still leaves $1.4 million in excess. So more than enough money there to cover those costs. The thing that I have expressed more than once is concern about, we don't know what the future holds. We really don't. Generally speaking, in government, local government, in Michigan in particular, if you've heard me rail in the past about, our revenue never keeps up with inflation. And in time, we will be in a difficult situation. Now the question becomes, how difficult? Well, we're already in a position where we do subsidize 911 with general fund dollars. That's a fact. So would we be in a worse position at that point? having to subsidize it 10 years 20 years from now probably not however as was mentioned the maximum amount is three dollars so if we achieve the three dollars and at some point that's not enough we either have to take it from general fund or seek a millage because you can do millage requests for emergency services 911 And who's to say that the state won't have a different way of funding emergency services by then? There's a whole lot of ifs out there. That's really what it comes down to. So with that said, I will yield the floor, sir.

Anything else? So at this time, I would like to entertain a motion to postpone this decision to a special meeting on Monday. day of committee meetings to occur if everyone's comfortable with 1.30 p.m. on that day, so that way we will, one, have all nine commissioners here, and two, it gives everyone a chance to go back to their supervisors and or their constituents the weekend to talk to them.

I'll move that.

I have a motion in support to postpone, I'm getting there, to postpone to Monday at 1.30, Commissioner Kennedy.

I have a doctor's appointment that I cannot reschedule at 2 p.m. that day. Is it possible to push it to 1 p.m. instead of 1.30?

I can do that if the Chair of Human Services can promise me a complete meeting.

If it's within my power, Mr. Chair.

Okay, if nothing else, we will note in the publication... of meetings that there could be a possible adjournment of human services and then start up after the special meeting.

Or a recess. Yes. Thank you, sir.

So everyone understands. Okay. So that gives everyone a week to go back and talk to their people. And it also gives the administration to include commissioner walls and other commissioners ideas to make sure that they can all be implemented correctly. The contract, the radio count, all of that type of stuff, so everybody knows, separate from the ballot language, what we're doing.

We won't have a radio count, but. No, no, I know we won't. Okay, but we can definitely discuss some, yeah.

So the motion is to postpone to Monday at 1 p.m., and I have a support and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed?

Nay.

Motion carries. Thank you, Dan.

Would you like me to be at that meeting, Mr. Chairman, or is that not necessary?

It's a public meeting, sir. You're more than welcome to attend, or you can watch us Zoom, whichever you feel most comfortable with. You being here is helpful. Thank you. Yes, sir.

I guess I would say it's been a very good and thorough discussion. I've been able to say all the things that I wanted to say today, so I think you have a thorough set of information to consider in making this decision.

We've arrived at a second opportunity for public comment. Each individual will state their name. You have three minutes to openly address the Board. You may only address the Board once under this public comment, and you may not share that nor yield your time WITH OTHERS, BOARD MEMBERS WILL NOT DEBATE NOR ANSWER QUESTIONS. ANY PUBLIC COMMENT?

HI. DAVID HAMMENTREE. HAPPY TO BE THE PUBLIC HERE TODAY.

OVERWHELMING MEETING.

I HOPE PEOPLE VIEW THIS. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THINGS SHOULD BE AND HOW THEY SHOULD GO. GOOD DISCUSSIONS. GET THE IDEAS OUT THERE. COME BACK AND GET IT LATER. the presentation on the real crime center technology. And I appreciate all that Sheriff's done. I appreciate all the work you do. That is not uncontroversial. And I hope for the best on that. I just hope we also can be in front of that and continue the discussion with folks. Thanks a bunch. Have a good day, everybody.

Any other public comment?

make a comment on the sheriff's presentation. We're also experimenting with using AI with our police. And what he mentioned about the AI software inserting pieces of nonsense in there so that nobody can just let that become the final report. We saw that as very important. Some of our reports will suddenly say something about a bear sticking its head out from behind a tree or something like that. So you can't possibly not go in and edit your report. It still has to be the police officer's report and not AI's report when all is said and done. And I think that's important for the public to be aware of that, that this is not really being automated. It's just a draft helping tool.

Cecilia, you're left. Thank you. Commissioner comments. Any commissioner comments? Commissioner Behr.

Thank you. So as I was making a motion to approve the revised ballot language, if I had been allowed to continue, I would have wanted that done in such a fashion that I didn't leave the clerk one single day to get it done. So my motion to approve the revised ballot language, I was cut off in the middle of that so that our chairman could make a motion to postpone everything until Monday at one, leaving the clerk incredibly little time to get her work done. So I find those actions, I find those actions to be a personal attack. Second comment is that the information, that was provided by the administrator. It's still available up in the administrator's office. And when I stopped in there on Friday to pick up for some other business, I was told that the audit reports were available and they were over on a desk. So I picked up the audit reports and I picked up the two letters were indicated as part of the audit report i struggled through this through the weekend because the letters that were provided indicated to be part of the audit report are dated jan june 25 2025 and they reference audit of the December 31, 2024 budget. If we're going to hand out information to anybody, including commissioners, about this is the information you need to be ready for the meeting, it ought to be correct. Nobody's fault but the administrator's. The buck stops with him. Everything should go through a final review with him. That's why he gets paid $195,000 a year to make sure everything is correct. He needs to start doing that job. Disappointed that information pointed out to commissioners as being needed is just wrong. That's the end of my comment.

Any other commissioner comments? I want to thank all the commissioners for being in this meeting, being well informed on the issues, being straightforward, and sharing the opinions that they have at this time of their constituents. And I look forward to us making a decision on Monday on this at the best possible outcome for Jackson County. I thank you all very much. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Do I have support? All in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries.