Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everybody. It's Tuesday, May 26, 2026. I'm Don Smiker. I'm going to call the Jackson County Board of Supervisors meeting to order. To my left, I have Mike Steinus. To my right, I have Nen Flago. Bjorn from IT. Lisa from the Auditor's Office. Good morning. And the first up is Visitors and Citizens. Is there anybody online or in person that would like to address the board this morning? We've got Michael Miller. Michael, is that the same you that's always been there? Just added your last name? Must be still silent. Hearing none, we'll go ahead and proceed. Next up is Elizabeth Townsend from the Environmental Health Director. Departmental Update. Good morning.

I've been in here to do a report since all this got changed.

We got fancy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, so the fiscal year so far for revenue for our permits, we've brought in close to $40,000. Nice. Our soil evaluation program is going well. We've been using the new machine and it's pretty easy to use for the most part. We've had a few hiccups with it.

That big, big human machine?

Just a little one. It's got the foot jack. It's a lot easier than trying to pull just a rod out of the ground. So it's been working well for the most part. Let's see. We've done 34 time of transfer inspection reviews. We got approval from the DNR to do a virtual septic inspection. And so we did go ahead and purchase the TruPIC. So we've started that. I've sent out two inspections for those so far. So it's basically kind of like geo in the sense where you go and you put the application together. But then I send the contractor the link. I give them the notification that they're receiving it. They get either text or email. And they go in and they answer the questions. So far, I'm going to be going out to the site and just kind of doing a check and balance. So they'll do partial inspection on that. And then I'll do the rest of my inspection. The DNR had said that they would like for us to kind of act as a pilot for the state of Iowa. So we're going to be doing this for about a year to two years. And then they may decide to open that up across the board to sanitarians across the state. So I thought that was kind of neat work. something new. Let's see. We had some DNR Army Corps issues with some properties up along the Mississippi. So they had asked us to go in and make sure that there aren't easements needed or bailing septic systems. So I went in and assisted with that. So we met with each of the homeowners and determined if, you know, property pins and septics aren't running onto core ground where they would need a renewal on their lease agreement. So we've got all those cases except for one resolved. We've completed our commercial septic tank cleaner inspections for the year, and we did get a $3,000 reimbursement for that. We had been given an additional pumper to inspect, but they were out of Dubuque County. So because they were still north in Dubuque County, I did contact the DNR and they actually gave that one back to Dubuque County. So the reason we ended up with that was because the owner's house is in Jackson County. So it didn't make sense to me for us to be doing that inspection.

How many inspectors do we have?

Oh, you mean for the how many septic tank cleaners? So in Jackson County, we have three commercial septic tank cleaners. That's Mickel Septic, Shearer Septic, and then there's a new one up off of Rockdale. um let's see if well permitting so we've issued 23 well permits um we've brought in um eight thousand dollars for that for the year twenty five dollars of each of those permits goes to the iowa dnr um private well program um so we went through most of our money um early on last year and then we requested that twenty thousand dollar reallocation which we received So we're still working on that. I've got around $8,000 left to spend, but we're gonna go through it pretty quickly.

Is that this till July reallocation again?

Yes, it'll go to the end of June and then July one starts. I'm pretty certain they're gonna phase this grant out. So we got a strange contract that came through. It gave us three years. So the contract is good for three years. We already know our allocated amount. It's like $30,000 each year for the three years. And then after that, you have to request to receive the money again. So I think where this is going is kind of that regionalization that I was talking about, which I'll go over shortly in a minute here. But as far as the private well grant, we also were contacted by the Iowa DNR because the Mississippi River was tested positive for PFAS. So we know the forever chemical is in the river. So they asked if we wanted to participate in a grant that the DNR had applied for where there would be reimbursement to any owners of wells that would qualify for that PFAS in their well. And then they would purchase a reverse osmosis or treatment system and then we would reimburse them through the grant. That's all I know about it. I haven't heard any more. I don't know if it includes the private well funds or if there's other funds. If it's the private well funds, we're gonna burn through that money extremely quickly because those RO systems are usually around $2,000 a piece. So when I know more, I'll let you guys know. I haven't decided if it's worth it for us to burn through that money for just a handful of people or if we want to continue to distribute that grant across the board for water testing. I'll let you know when I get more on that.

What's in the river?

Tell me what that is again. So it's basically, it's called the forever chemical. It's PFAS. It's basically plastic. So it's a microscopic plastic that is, it's in our bodies. I mean, we can't get rid of it. It's definitely toxic. It's just a cancer causing substance.

But almost everything you drink is a plastic.

Yeah, so I guess my thought is whatever affected by this well would be like some standpoints or something. I don't know that you've got a deeper well that's affected by this.

So it's a lot of the well, okay, so we currently do the PFAS testing, but through the grant, but they have to request a test and then I have to send it to the DNR and then they determine if the well is eligible. I don't know what their criteria is exactly, but I've done three PFAS tests in the county where these wells were eligible for the testing and they all came back negative, which is good. So I don't know if it would involve more testing, but we would still have to get that pre-approval from the DNR before we would just proceed with doing any testing for wells.

I guess when you say they have to qualify, is it because of

So they, um, no, so they would have to be in an aquifer that's contaminated for one thing, but there may be other criteria that I'm not aware of. Um, so like, I know we've had some requests on the west side of the county and they've been denied, but anytime I've had them on the east side of the county, they're approved. So, and I'm not sure that standpoints would qualify. Um, right. Yeah. animal control rabies prevention. So I know I've talked to you guys a little bit over the last year and a half maybe about animal control, maybe implementing something or putting something in place that gives us a little more of a law out there in the county. So I've worked with the CIA. We put together a survey that was originally just going to go out to the municipalities and our local leaders in law enforcement and things like that. But I decided it should be opened up to the county, like anybody in the county, anybody within the municipalities. So it is out there right now. Bjorn helped me put it up on the county website. So there's a QR code. Anybody can go in and scan that code and participate in the survey. We're going to have that survey out until the end of August. So we're looking for feedback from people so um if you guys have any questions or need copies of those qr codes i could send them out um yeah how do we get that word out there that we want people to participate is a just talk thing is a paper thing is it so it's going to go on the paper for a month all all of our papers in the county are going for a month i'm going to run that out of my budget and then It's on the county website. When I do water testing, I've got little things to hand out to people with the QR code. We talked about K and Q as well. So I'll probably get on there at some point to talk about that. But that's kind of how we're getting it out there right now. And then the municipalities are kind of distributing it on their own. So.

Could be something, I know a lot of your, like if, water bills or whatever, we'll send out flyers.

Yeah. Yeah. So they had, um, ECIA had put together this little individual, like things to put in bills and things like that. So, I mean, hopefully we'll get a bunch of participation, you know, and if we don't, maybe we'll extend out the period where we're, um, you know, trying to get that feedback, but yeah. Yeah. So I will let you guys know when I know more on that. It'll be interesting to see what the results are. Nuisance housing concerns. So I get a lot of calls from the DNR. They send me the stuff that they are too busy to do or whatever. But we've had a nuisance complaint. One of them is actually in regards to abandoned manufactured homes in the county. If you guys have been out on the back roads, you probably know there's a few of them out there where there's nobody's living in them. They're just kind of sitting there. You can see some of them from our, you know, highways. And so I've kind of talked with our zoning administration on a solution that we could come up with. I think it would end up being like maybe a five-year plan to get those removed from the county. So we're going to talk with our county attorney and try to come up with something, but if You know, I don't know if it would go in by resolution or if we would rewrite our ordinance, just like I said, give us a little bit more leverage on how to handle some of those. So we don't currently have anything in place. I have seen other counties out there where they say, hey, five by 2030, you know, all mobile homes that are, you know, this old or not being lived in have to be removed out of the county.

So you've run into some of them before and some of these dilapidated buildings or houses like that. And basically, I think a lot of it, the easiest is just contact the owners and say, hey, you know, this is a letter from zoning and say, hey, it's a nuisance or people are concerned about the

critters or whatever right and we do have some abandoned houses um we have some that i know that the board of health has looked at that don't have any means for wastewater um and we have not been able to you know force those people to demo those houses so it's kind of something that needs to be looked at i think we should have something in place that gives us a little bit of leverage and you know to move these Of course, it all comes down to do people have money, especially in those mobile homes? You know, what's the cost to remove them? You know, where do they take them? I mean, they have to strip them down and then you've got that steel structure sitting there still. Like, what do you do with that? So the hope is that it doesn't become a county's problem. And so that's why I think that like a long term plan to remove them would probably be the best.

Because zoning are a nuisance thing.

So it's a vector issue for sure with like animals and things like that, wildlife. It's also just, I mean, a hazard. You know, if you've got kids playing in the neighborhood, they go into, you know, an abandoned mobile home. Is it going to, are they going to fall through the floor? You know, if there's something in there.

For every abandoned mobile home we got, there's four abandoned barns.

Yeah.

You know, so how do you, how do you regulate that?

Right. And maybe it, you know, becomes a countywide thing. And that's why we haven't done anything yet. I've been out to the site. I was like, you know, people that complain, I'm like, I'll do my best. But it's kind of one of those things where we, like I said, we just don't have enough in place and who's going to pay for it. Who's going to do this, who's going to do that. So. Um, let's see here. Okay. So, um, I, okay. So when I first started working here, um, health and human services came in and they're like, Hey, you don't, don't need to go to these like, um, like health administrator meetings. Michelle Cullen will do that. She's kind of backing up the public health. You're more environmental. So I haven't gone to those meetings. And I know I brought this up at our last meeting because I was starting to have some concerns, you know, and I've tried to be more involved, although I don't get a lot of the notifications or know what to get notified for. And I probably need to call HHS, but... I had a conversation with Michelle Cullen about the regionalization of public health. And I asked her, you go to these meetings, what's going on? Oh, she knew right away. And she sent me a bunch of information, which I know you guys don't like handouts, but I did bring these if you want them. So basically what's going to happen is, and it's been a discussion over the last couple of years. And then this last six months, it's really kind of taken over with my department because they were not including environmental health initially, but they did in the last few months, all of a sudden we were included. So from my understanding, my job is going to change drastically and they are going to regionalize. They are going to keep boards of health. Um, we will have larger counties applying for the lead and then they will be the ones to determine which counties get funds and which, you know, and how much this and that. So we will lose control over any funding that we receive from the state. And so when I talked about the private well grant and how they structured that, it used to be annually we would receive those funds. Now they're still doing it annually, but they put it in a three-year, and they put it very structured. We're going to receive the same amount for the three years, and then they're going to phase it out afterwards. So what I was told is that private wells and on-site wastewater, that will still be a little bit of our role, but there's going to be a lot more added in. I don't like it. So, so I mean, you know, when you put more added in, like, so here's the thing. So our, our public health department has already been disseminated. So we have one employee that's, you know, here with the county and everything else has been contracted out. Some of these other counties across Iowa, maybe that hasn't happened to them yet, or, you know, maybe it has, but I don't know how much of a change there will actually be because we already have other counties doing work for Jackson County through public health and environmental health. Like we have Scott County coming in and doing tattoo inspections, pool inspections, different things for us at an environmental standpoint. Those were things that were kind of given up back when two administrators ago, three administrators ago. So I don't know that it's going to change a whole lot, and there still will be, you know, control at the local level what we decide, but as far as that funding from Iowa Health and Human Services, we won't have control over that. It doesn't mean that we can't still, you know, put our own things in place, you know, and have programs at the local level. But anyway, I want to let you guys know because I've brought it up a bunch of times and now we know for sure it's happening. So they're hoping by 2027, they're going to start changing. They're going to add the lead entities. And then by July 1st of 2028, they're going to basically start writing it out. So I'll give you guys each one of these, like all the other things that could change, you know, but they've been working on this for a while. And it's not something that came out of the blue.

I mean, hopefully it goes better than the regionalizations of like mental health and workforce development and all that stuff because

Well, originally they were going to eliminate the local boards of health, but they, I know that that was fought. So they, they do not want, I mean, like the counties across Iowa, they don't want that. So they are keeping the local boards, but you know, I just have a little concern because even right now, like we have contracted agencies doing our work. So we have like Michelle Cullen and This was something that was brought up maybe in conversation, but she's going and applying for grants. And she had contacted me last, or two weeks ago, and she's like, hey, we're gonna do this grant through Marion County. And then she wants me to do work and Clinton County to do the work, but we're only getting $6,000 for three initiatives. So it's basically $2,000 maybe divided by the two counties. And so I don't know if that makes sense financially for us. And what is the benefit to the citizens? And it was pretty minimal what she described to me. So I think as long as these grants are being applied for on behalf of the county, If they're a new grant, they should be getting approval prior to, and it should be a discussion. So I just think that things have become really loose where we've got people just applying for grants on behalf of the county, but the boards don't know, my board doesn't know, we find out after the fact. And I don't know if that's an issue with this board, but I know what's happening with my board right now we're kind of bringing it to light a little bit more, but, you know, does it have an impact on us financially? Because, you know, like, for me, it's my time spent. Is it really benefiting the county? Like, I think we should just be cautious on some of these grants.

And I think in the past, when she was kind of given more of the green light, it was stuff that was pertaining to what them themselves were doing. Not asking you to... do these things or another, you know, agency to do these things. So yeah, I think that's kind of the difference in what's drawing the red flag or the bringing the light bulb a little brighter here is, you know, how much time and effort is this grant going to take away from what you're doing already?

So I did send an email out to Michelle and I just said, hey, you know, if you're going to be applying for anything, it needs to go through the board prior to you submitting any application if it's a new grant. Or even if there is a significant change because of, like I said, essentially it's going to affect my department. I know there were some other missing pieces that maybe like Lisa's office wasn't receiving. So we weren't receiving copies of the grants. They were just applying and then on behalf of the county and then it wasn't, I wasn't notified. She wasn't notified. It wasn't, nothing was distributed in the meetings. There was, I mean, it was not great. So hopefully we're working on that and that won't continue to happen, but just want to make you guys aware of that as well.

Well, it sounds like we certainly need to have some communication, you know, with whoever, and then I don't know about the, I want to see what you have there, but it's a, One of them, if you can stay in front of it. Thank you. This would be the master of our region. Yeah.

There's a lengthier one, too, and I can email it to all of you. This is just kind of a one-pager. Any questions for Elizabeth?

I guess keep us posted, yeah.

Don't worry, but look like Huckabug, Lynn, Hudson, Scott.

Wow. So they basically follow the mental health. Well, the thing is, is that they're also going to be adding in like 30 initiatives, which is a lot. So, I mean, they're going to be adding more into, you know, like what I'm doing, what public health is doing. So I don't really know. I don't know what it's going to look like exactly. But I've told it my my position may be more risk driven, which is fine. But you know, good thing we came in with these virtual inspections because I don't know that, you know, I won't be too busy with doing other things. Or maybe it won't affect me because like I said, a lot of the other things that are being done are being done by other counties. So maybe it will just affect them.

I would just stay as involved as you can and obviously any calls or whatever and yeah as a group of your environmental people voice your opinions because it doesn't always you sometimes feel like you're falling on deaf ears but I know like with early childhood and that they're kind of as with everything looking at regionalizing and they have changed some things up that boards and directors have brought forward that.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I know already they've kind of been stopped with some of those.

Also, you know, we can, when we go out there to Des Moines, of course, we bend some ears here and there. And it makes a difference sometimes, I think, you know, for something that we need to keep updated on.

Yeah.

Sounds like it's, it could be something that all of a sudden we're going to need some more people in the office, you know, and now that's an unfunded mandate again. You know, that's what, that's what. They never do that. You get more responsibilities. Now we need another person and now we need, yeah.

Right. And like I said, maybe it won't affect us because those grants are all, it may hit more of the public health side versus the. Right. Like we might be, you know, down to bare bones enough where it's not going to do anything, but I'll let you guys know as I find more information coming in.

Good.

So.

Thank you very much.

All right. Yeah.

Are you going to be around later?

Until like one o'clock. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks.

Next up, we got Becky Chapin from Human Resources.

much less interesting than that. So we had three PRN vacancies yet in our corrections department out of the new jail. Our focus has been on females because of the need to have females always present if we have a female in our facility. We were able to fill one of those PRNs most recently. They did make an offer and we have started Allison Culper, um with the department um she does not have corrections experience she did wrestle in high school um but she is pursuing a degree in um in psychology right now so she's interested in the whole process and she they were able to kind of start onboarding her and doing some of the jail um requirements last week. So I'm here today to ask for a motion to approve the hiring of Allison Culper as a PR and corrections officer at an hourly rate of 2216 effective May 20th, 2026, including authorizing the county auditor to issue biweekly paychecks for the same.

Got a motion by Mike second by Ninh to approve a motion to approve hiring of Allison Cooper as a PRN corrections officer at an hourly rate of 2216 effective May 20th, 2026, including authorizing the county auditor to issue bi-weekly paychecks for the same. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

That's all I had unless you have any questions for me?

Anything, Becky? No news is good news.

Thank you.

And next up, we have Lisa with the auditor's office for her portion.

Good morning. This morning, I need a motion to approve the May 19th, 2026 meeting and work session minutes as written by Auditor Smith and authorized publication in the official newspapers.

I would make that motion.

I would second. Got a motion by Ninh, second by Mike. To approve the May 19, 2026 meeting and work session minutes as written by Auditor Smith and authorized publication in official newspapers. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

I know that we had first right of refusal on the building that is behind the law enforcement center, which is 140 Jacobson Drive. we have been contacted to know if Jackson County would sign a waiver of right of first refusal. So this morning I bring forth that waiver. I would need a motion if you agree. I need a motion to approve and authorize the chair's signature on the waiver of right of first refusal to Lightfoot Investments LLC for property located at 140 Jacobson Drive, Maquoketa.

So we did go and I went and looked at this property with Secondary Roads. large property, a lot more room than what they probably would need for, I said, the size of this building, we could bring all 10 of our sheds almost together. But it's a large property. They stress some concerns of different things that they didn't think would make a good fit for them. And So they, at this point in time, were not interested at that price range.

Well, I think at least somebody had to go look at it, and I appreciate that they went out there with you to do that. I guess we have some concerns, and we're all kind of wondering if this agreement that's in place would happen to fall through. We still don't have the first way to review if it To fruition. Do we need legal clarification, do you think?

I think so. I mean, because again, yeah, this falls through and.

Well, can we get John or Brian down here? Because they are somewhat time sensitive, so. Yeah. I don't have a list of numbers over here, so. I was going to say that was... Let me just text it and see, Brian.

It doesn't specifically say. I think I would want that added. It just says hereby waives and releases its right of first refusal with respect to the sale and purchase of the real estate and agrees that the Lightfoot Investments LLC may proceed to sell the real estate at a clearance.

I wonder, could we approve it with that verbiage and just have it retyped? Do we sign it and send it over? Because they just kind of, they just retyped it with the new information. So could we just add that?

So it doesn't reference

Not in this. It's just a seller. It does not.

The way that reads to me, I would say it's we're signing off all rights. And I don't like that idea because, again, if this would fall through and they would get another offer of a lesser amount.

Well, it does reference the seller, the buyer. And the total is... I think with that being said, it wouldn't be one that could be transposed to somebody else. It is specific to this parcel and this buyer. Third paragraph?

Yeah.

That it talks about closing before such date. It talks about offer. So I think it is very specific to this particular...

I don't see a name, but...

The second word, for sure. The second word. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's the seller, my bad. But it does talk about the offer by June 24th. make it specific.

It also just says that we're signing off on all rights.

Because it says here, Jackson County does not wish to exercise its right of first refusal to purchase the real estate and wishes to waive and release said right as to the above terms.

So with them not having any signature on here, I think if we could have our legal opinion, our legal people add for this offer then we sign that and send it over.

I would say we have to have a legal opinion on the letter itself somehow yet. So we're assured that we have still, first right of refusal, another one coming. If this one falls apart, I mean, I don't know. Maybe we should just take a recess.

All right, let's take a recess. Okay, we're back at this time and we're going to hold off on that. We're going to proceed with the other stuff and hopefully we can hear back from them. So want to continue?

Sure. The other thing that I'd like to discuss today, I know that it's been a long process and I think we're finally getting to the point that a legal description has been obtained for the lease for the Jackson, the transfer station that is with Waste Authority of Jackson County. It is a three-year lease. I just wanted to bring it before you today to see if you had anything else that you would like added to the lease. And if you are ready to sign the lease, or I can contact the county attorney's office and they can move forward with trying to get signatures from the Waste Authority Board. What is the wishes of the board?

I'm okay with it. Take it to the county attorney, have them move forward to the Waste Authority Board and the Waste Authority Board's attorney also approve the changes that we made.

All right. So you're okay with that? I'll just tell John to proceed. Yeah.

Okay.

I'm good with that. Then the next thing I have is I need a motion to approve resolution number 1186-05-26-2026. for an operating transfer from the General Fund 01000 to the Capital Projects Conservation Fund 33000 for $250,000 effective May 26, 2026. And that's that money that we talked about that isn't being spent in this fiscal year, but we want to hold that money for a future project. So that's what this operating transfer is doing, is moving it from this fund to this fund.

And these are just the paperwork to... Oh, sorry. This is the paper. We approve this in the budget amendment for this and the next item.

Correct.

But this is just the paperwork to actually physically for the transfer. Correct.

For the actual transfer. This is the finalization of that. We'll have to approve. I'd second that.

We got a motion by Mike, second by Nin to approve resolution For the operating transfer from General Fund 1000 to the Capital Projects Conservation Fund 33,000 for $250,000 effective May 26, 2026. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

And based on what happened last week with approving the resolutions concerning the HAB-Masyn Moyer- Money that we receive from outside county roommate board reimbursement we talked about $100,000 so today, I need you to approve the reimbursement warrant. from the General Fund 01000 to the Capital Improvement Jail Fund 33004 for $100,000 to reimburse the Sheriff's Office budget for inmate room and board expenses. I'd make that motion.

I would second. Got a motion by Ninh, second by Mike to approve a reimbursement warrant from the General Fund 1000 to the Capital Improvement Jail Fund 33004 for $100,000 to reimburse the Sheriff's Office budget All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries.

One of the things that I had on my agenda for today, and I took it off, is dealing with the insurance company regarding the accident that happened down at the Jackson County Senior Citizen Center. Did you answer? Did you see that you were supposed to answer, Joe Vins?

In regards to let them.

Okay. So what they, what Joe Vance is wanting is for him and Jennifer Mashandi from the angle agency to contact the insurance company. Because they believe that the amount of money that the insurance company has depreciated out in our building is too high. And he would like to be able to go back to them and say, let's reconsider some of these figures. So I had a nice conversation with Joe the other day going down the road. And he said he'd like to at least be able to try and negotiate that to get that cost down. So Jackson County doesn't have to.

He actually had explanation in his email or numbers and whatnot. So it seemed like it made sense.

I guess he did that already just informing us. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think maybe if you could reply to him, Don, that would be good.

I'm looking. I'm trying to.

The other thing that I'm really concerned with that's really interesting it kind of irritates me a little bit. These bills that we've had companies come in and do things, they haven't been paid yet. So I received another bill from somebody, past due, past due, so I contacted the insurance company, and they haven't paid any of them. This doesn't sit well with me. This happened in January, and none of those bills are paid, and I couldn't get a really good answer out of him Because I said, you know, has so-and-so, all of these bills, and he goes, well, that's part of the claim. So they want Jackson County to pay these claims. Here we are. We're sitting five, almost six months later, and these people haven't been paid, and they want us to pay them. I'm like, wait a minute.

I don't know how you can do that with an insurance company. Expect the... the defendant to pay all the claims and that way they get just easy bookkeeping for them? Is that their justification?

So his response to me is this is a liability claim. So we would not issue individual payments for each invoice. Well, why weren't we told that?

I think we need them to come to us or I want ECIA because to me, this is ECIA needs to handle this because this is ridiculous. We were the, we're the defendant, we're the damaged and we have to process this all, get it all done and then build them one bill.

Well, so that's my conversation that I had with Joe Vance. I said, you know, the issue that I'm having here is that the citizens of Jackson County should not have to pay for any of this. And unfortunately, it sounds like this is kind of the way that insurance goes. But I said, why would we? We did nothing wrong. Why should we have to pay?

Right.

I don't understand this. I'm not an insurance agent. I don't know. So I'm not sure who. I think maybe once Joe and Jennifer can visit with the insurance company and Maybe we can get some of these answers.

So we're supposed to pay these bills. Where are they supposed to come from?

Oh, exactly.

Or does he want us to file it with our insurance?

I don't know.

I mean, because these aren't little bills.

So that's what I'm saying. On your insurance. Well, the question I have is, are these bills included in what they offer to us is which. would then draw down from the payment to the contractor to get the building fixed. It doesn't make any sense to me. And the other thing that I looked in there is that there are going to be some ongoing expenses. Well, how are we going to get paid for that if they issue us one check?

I think this is a battle, like you said, between the insurance companies or with ECIA. And actually, we maybe have to, again, get an attorney involved and say, OK. That don't sit well because I don't know where we're going to come up with the money to pay these bills and then wait to see if we get reimbursed.

Exactly. And what happens if it goes over? What happens if they get into it and they miss something? I don't know. You know what? I don't know. I'm just saying I wanted to make you aware that we're still, we're almost sitting here at June 1st. I don't think we're any farther ahead today than we were.

Which is very frustrating. It is very frustrating. Because this whole thing is impeding what they're doing. I mean.

So have they had a conversation with ACIA regarding them bills?

I have not.

Sorry about that. That might be a way to.

Well, that's why I think, you know, maybe Brian can shed some light. We have a couple of issues. Right now I'm discussing the issue with the accident that happened down at the senior citizen building. And we're trying to get the insurance company to pay. So that's kind of where we're at right now.

They want us to pay the bills and then they want to issue one check.

Which bills? So when they patched the building, whatever work that had been done already had been done five, six months ago, and they haven't been paid.

So they patched the building.

The insurance company didn't pay them.

They had damage. So people had like sewing machines in there. There were sewing machines that were damaged and broken beyond repair.

I didn't see any of that in that paperwork that we were sent. I didn't see any of those.

What about the displacement insurance?

Displacement insurance. That's in there because there are invoices from Together We Build, the fairgrounds, and the third one. I can't think of who that is.

Okay. Is he aware that insurance isn't wanting to pay these bills?

Well, it's not our insurance, it's the insurance.

Well, I understand that, but what we can get from him is, is that a standard practice in the insurance industry in these situations? If an insurance company is giving a payment out, is that payment for the purpose of paying the bills that were incurred, or is that payment Generally, in addition to payment of the additional bills.

I guess going forward, how do we even know what they're going to cover? 100% for sure. I mean, I don't want to be paying a bill and they come back and say, oh, no, they didn't have coverage for that. So you're just out that.

Right. Well, and that could be, you know, if somebody wrongs the county and they're only insured up to $50,000 or whatever the case may be, We don't have any control over that. If they've reached their insurance maximum and the insurance company says, here it is, sorry, they're only insured 50K, we're out of luck at that point. We can file suit. There are other avenues we could take.

The other one is the Maquoketa Family Y. So there's invoices to Together We Build, Jackson County Fair, and the Maquoketa Area Family Y. Mm-hmm. And the depreciation on the building is $34,000. Other than that, there's nothing else. That's really my issue is we have to pay, according to this, it looks like we have to pay those three entities, but I don't see any payment then for the person that buttoned the building up when it happened and all of these other bills. So that's why I'm a little confused where all this money is coming from and who's been paid and who hasn't.

Well, that would be important to know. Who did immediately go in and seal the building up? Do we know who that contractor is?

And we forwarded that bill. And I know that he has, well, as of about two weeks ago, I know that he hadn't been paid.

And he was amazing. I mean, he got here right away, buttoned the building up.

Yeah.

What do we got to, we need to have correspondence. And I do believe, I'm sorry, ECIA or RTA needs to be on board with this. They need to be an active player in this. They're like, well, it shouldn't be then. We should make this. And then we keep getting this and we don't want to be stuck with a lot of unnecessary bills because what we're seeing in front of us is very specific. And what they want to pay for is just to fix our building now, disregarding. been paid because we're talking five months ago. And this is getting really ridiculous. They actually just got done removing their initial adjuster and putting somebody else on because of inactivity. Really? Yes. So they've been dragging their feet and now they get this new person and I don't know if the new person is thinking that all of this has been taken care of or, you know, so it seems like I don't want to say it's the shell game kind of thing. It's just this whole thing stinks that we're having to do a whole lot of stuff we shouldn't have to because we didn't cause the damage. We were the damaged. And it's not our job to pay for anything. Who heads up our TA in our area?

ECIA. Do we have a contact person there?

Yeah, Gail.

Gail.

Cool. I think

That would be the way to do it. I mean, if we're not, if the county's not satisfied with what... Because if we have to litigate, we have to litigate for these things, we're suing ECI. company that certainly gives them motivation to talk to their insurance company and say hey what are you what's going on right so i think that would be valuable okay especially if we've got a pre-existing relationship with our ecia person right which i'm sure we do we do well we're on the rta yeah yeah yeah

It all sounded fine to Danny when you talked to them. It's all good. But I don't know that they know what's happening here.

Do you have a copy of the first right of refusal?

I do.

Okay. Because this is not the original.

The original one he called you for.

Just so we can end that conversation. I'm thinking, what's the direction then? I can see that Joe Vance now, there's an email that just came through. He's reached out to the new adjuster. So I think at this point, we'll see what happens.

Does Joe Vance know about the concerns about the unpaid contractor that hasn't been mentioned in the...

I visited with Joe at length last week, so I can circle back and talk to him again. That would be a good idea, just so that pops in his mind. And you know what? Honestly, just to end this conversation, in looking at the documentation that the insurance company sent me, it doesn't include any of those bills. Just my quick glance doesn't include those bills. Yeah. So I'm a little concerned about that. Okay.

Okay. So right at first refusal. Our question is, if we sign that, is that just for this offer? Or is this for this property? Because there's specifics it talks about. It does a list of seller, but it talks about they will close by this date and stuff. We just didn't want to write a blanket right of refusal on this property. You know?

Well, we can... we can waive the right of first refusal as to this transaction. That language is not contained in this agreement, but the agreement can be amended to include that.

Well, my question is, because there's no signatures from them on there, could we just...

guys just retype that if we approved it with the language of for this offer yeah this is they just did this kind of as a as a courtesy right so so we wouldn't have to if we didn't want to but we can certainly give them written notice uh in our own form right otherwise could they proceed if we don't um sign off from our refrigerator without our approval that's an interesting question because that so bare bones in that original offer, it's a huge gray area. Most rights of first refusal, as you probably know, they contain all kinds of deadlines. Once we provide you notice, you've got 30 days to make a decision. And if you don't make a decision, then it's regarded as you've waived it. So you can't just be inactive and force something to fall through. what does that mean so so yeah we can we can redo this and we can we can specify as for you know for purposes of this transaction only and this transaction at this price yeah well yeah at this price um and then it's not to be construed as a general waiver of our rights under that agreement so I guess so could we pass that and then you just you guys amend it and we sign that yeah we can we can do that so what should the motion be today Well, we can't have a motion based on signing a right of first or a waiver of right of first refusal that doesn't exist yet because we haven't drafted it yet. Well, I guess could we... Is this on the agenda for today? Yeah. I guess my question... You could make it, if it's the will of the board to waive the right of first refusal for this transaction at this price... you can make that motion, direct the county attorney's office to basically pretend this doesn't exist to prepare a document for board signature that can be provided to the seller to inform them of the county's decision. Does that make sense?

So we can say type one up?

Yeah, you can say type one up. the board could give the chair authority to execute the waiver of right of first refusal prepared by the county attorney's office and that way you don't have to have another meeting if you don't want to to assign them okay yeah yeah we're allowed to pretend this doesn't exist so if this never exists at all so you can say the motion would be we authorized county attorneys to prepare

prepare a first right of refusal for the property under these conditions and authorized chair signature? Yeah.

Yeah. Don't move it.

Do we have to spell out these conditions in that motion? Well, it's listed in there. The contract that was presented to us from Lakewood.

Agreed. For the current that was presented. At the price. We had the purchase agreement. Right. So, yeah. That's the one we're pertaining to. I think it's specific, not a number on it.

Okay.

And I would second that.

We got a motion by Mike, seconded by Nan, to instruct the county attorney's office to prepare a first right of refusal for the offer on the Jacobson property under the specifics listed and authorized chair signature once prepared. Right?

Yes.

Any other discussions? We'll have it prepared within 24 hours. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. So we'll see what Joe does on the other thing. And I do think we do need to kind of touch base with Gail and May and be like, this is getting ridiculous.

Got issues. Yeah. All right.

Thank you. Thank you.

You're fine.

You're good. Nope. We're last minute. Anything else, Lisa?

No, that includes my agenda. Thank you.

Anything else for the good of the board? Any meetings last week?

Wait, sorry. Open, running, working good. Busy.

Yeah.

Five loads a day, four loads a day, whatever. That's a good thing.

Water Management Authority, we're hoping to submit an offer to get a new director on board. That would be nice. Get it back up. I don't want to say back up and running, but get it back where it should be and see where we go from here. We had two very good candidates and very enthusiastic, and hopefully we can have an answer here relatively quickly.

Okay. Early childhood, we met a little bit. Again, like I said in the past, we were looking at doing kind of a partnership with Dubuque County's group and had some Zoom meetings with the state. They don't think that just, they think it kind of needs to go more as a merger where We would have to, again, come up with a name of what the group would be or whatever. So we got to take it back to the full board yet, but it kind of sounds like that'll be the direction that it'll end up going.

Good. No further business, I'd make a motion we adjourn. I would second that.

Got a motion by Mike, second by Ninh to adjourn. Any other discussion? All those in favor, say aye.