Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Good morning everybody. It's April 8th, 2026. This is a work session of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. Our first item on the agenda this morning is an overview and discussion regarding options for the courthouse renovation project. This will be led by Candace Bryant, our county manager. All right, we um we've got a memo in there for you guys. Um and I shared it out, you know, ahead of the meeting so you guys had time to digest. Um so we've got a couple of options and we uh really need some direction on which of those options we really need to pursue. you know, the the first option, a strategic capital reset would involve, you know, returning to the COP, which we can pay early with no penalty, and I haven't spent any of it. Um, it would also involve uh returning the USDA funding, which Josh and I spoke with the USDA last week. Um, it it wouldn't impact any ability to apply for future funding. We would just need to be really conscientious in speaking with the senators who agreed to give us that money to be realistic about, you know, we got it extended. I got the project amended uh to fit this new project that we're trying to do because it was originally awarded for the um justice center

um which was, you know, something that we absolutely could afford. Um and um so if that were an option we chose, the goal would be to get our capital asset management done, management plan done, really come in and spend some time digging through what properties we have, what buildings do we have, what buildings are we paying to rent, how many people do we need in this space, how what does he need? um it wouldn't absolve us from doing things for the courthouse or for the courts, right? If Heath were not in this building, we'd still have to work on those pieces. But this would give us some time to say, "Hey, here's what we actually have." Really, before COP is taken out, there should be a shovel ready plan in hand. like all the work we've been working on with RNA, like that should have been done and like here's what we're going to do and we can't afford it. Um, so that is option one. Uh, option two, um, if we decided to do it now would require us to put money into exploring like what site could we use, how much would it realistically cost? You know, we got an estimate of 25 to30 million dollars to do an offsite share facility and that was just um from um Colleen just

yeah, her big guesstimate. Yes, napkin math. There were no like we would definitively need this infrastructure on the ground blah blah blah. Um, we have talked with Stuart just a little bit and and are just curious talking Heath has done a lot of looking into other um facilities and it seems like that that estimate of 25 to 30 million is quite high if we're talking about just like a a steel building that's fitted, you know, to to be what we need.

Um, so if that was the option we chose, we would want to delve into that a little bit more and again have a shovel ready plan before we dive into that. If we went that route, um, you know, I've got to spin the p spin the cop within two years to not incur a penalty. Um, I would have to go to bond council and and request to use the coop funds for a different project. And same thing for the congressionally directed funds. And I feel like that one would be really which that's $3.575 million. That would be I would be shocked if they let us after having had it held it for 5 years and not spent it.

Uh changed the project twice now and then really begged to get it extended. uh that they would let me extend again and pivot it to a new project. So, I have some concerns about that money really being available if we go that route. How much is that? 3.5

3.575 million. um options that we've heard from RNA and um Colleen's team were the partial courthouse renovation run with the project we currently have which we've kind of pressed pause on everything they were doing for us of you know spending money for a plan that I don't know we're fully going to go that route um so we could really scale it back I think the concerns with that are old buildings you get into them and there are things you don't realize we were going to come across that become that well we have to fix this why we're here right now. Um and then the last option is the full courthouse renovation which then we probably would need to borrow a little bit more. I think the concerns with the $8 million a lot more.

Yeah. A lot more. Um I think the problems with the the coop are that it's not just $8 million. It's a $8 million COP that ends up being a $13 million payout, right? Just under 14 actually by the time we paid all the interest on it. Yeah. And I think that's fine. There's nothing wrong with taking on on debt that's purposeful and planned for. Um I don't know that that's what we're where we're currently at. Yeah.

Um so those are the options. Um, I would say if we did option one, I think it would be wise to think about continuing to explore what option two could look like, you know? So, when we do have a better idea of like here's what we have, here's what we need, here's what we could part with, here's what we should hold on to.

Yeah. we we still could be planning to make those changes for, you know, not only just Heath, but I think it would be Heath, E911, um, OEM, they all probably kind of in the a same a similar space. Um, and also thinking about if even if we did a metal building that house all of those things, thinking about, you know, some sort of like parking area that could be like paid parking. we have enough big events like the race series that there could be a way to kind of offset those sorts of things. So I think still exploring that option while pausing wouldn't be a bad idea. Now

thank you Candace. Um when you said in regards to option one um we become conscientious how how we talk to senators congressmen. Yeah. Uh that I feel like that would be pretty easy. We just kind of have some formal written thing that comes with our sending everything back that basically just explains the real world common sense approach that we're taking.

And that might even be beneficial if these people are seeing this and be like, "Okay, these guys are actually being real smart about how they're going to spend this money. taken something and you know taking a better approach than maybe their predecessors did. Um well I think when that money was borrowed we were in a bit different of a of a funding outlook. We just come off of you know the co years we had lots of money handed down. I don't know, but the state recognized how big of a deficit they were even.

And you know, I just think the funding the funding outlook that we're in right now with, you know, entire, you know, federal dollars aren't being passed down to the state in the same way. States able to pass on in the same amount of money. They're receiving less. I just think we're in a very different time and financial like forecasting outlook than we were when money was borrowed. We will still retain some value in the studies that we've already had done. You know, we'll have something to hand off to whoever we pass to John to moving forward, right? Like

Well, I think that's where we'd want to know from you guys some direction. Do you want us to wrap up the current plans with our ANA? You know, we kind of paused at the pooling Yeah. permits and fully saying, "Hey, you know, because they gave us options when they last talked with us. They said, you could do this or you could do this or you could do the everything." And I think um making sure we have that fully done. Yeah. would be really important to leave even if if it's not something that we we end up that we Whoa. Where are we going? Wasn't about to drop. Good morning.

Meditation time. I just wish captured on the camera. I had to go. Oh. Um, so I think that it's just yeah, we need some direction from you guys because right now we are just holding everyone at bay and saying, "Wait, we need to know what we're doing before we continue to dump money into something that we isn't the direction you guys want to go."

Okay. Number one feels smartest to me. looking at the whole picture, which we've talked about a zillion times I feel like in this room. Looking at the whole picture before we make a move. And when we make a move, probably making multiple moves at the same time with Raa, like sorry, with number two, we're likely going to be moving some sort of sheriff's facility off site because we're just at capacity. And probably one of the things we'll want to solve is all of the leasing and renting that we're doing around the county and try to shunt things back into capital that we own. In which case I feel like it'd be good maybe Colleen is the right person to ask but would it be possible to get from RA are I don't know are we paying them through construction documents right now or just design documents

design documents okay so maybe if we just get design documents about what about the renovation of this building without that assumes that the sheriff's department is not here. Yeah. So then we at least have paid for that so that when it's ready to plug in, we go and obviously the estimates wouldn't be accurate anymore, but the design work would be done. Yeah. And they that's not how they designed, but we could ask them what would it take to get there. Yeah. Just since they've done all that work, it would maybe just be a smaller pivot than fully going out for new RFP, new test, etc.

Yeah. And I that's why I kind of paused where we were at. So, I still have the money that you guys put towards that that's in the in our um in our budget this year. You know, we decided not to touch the COP to just use general fund dollars to to finish up that work because we knew we weren't sure where we were going to shake out. Yeah.

Um so, we do have those funds still to to work on that this year. I honestly feel like in two year we will be lucky if we're ready in two years to break ground on something. So the cop in my mind has to be returned. I don't want to have a penalty. I want to look like part of the capital and asset management plan is not just where we are like what buildings we want to keep, but it's also what buildings we want to maybe let go of and and

those sales could be potentially part of the financial picture that makes the new facility happen. In which case, I don't think it'd be smart to keep the coop. We should look at the whole financial picture and then go out for whatever we need left over and try to frankly borrow as little as possible with an interest rate as high as it is.

That would be my gut. I like the hybrid one and two kind of idea where we do reset button everything but that reset button is kind of the understanding that I don't think we can feasibly continue with trying to cram everything into one bucket here in this building. The offsite law enforcement is the best. So, I'm curious as to actually how much square footage that whole side of the building contains of law enforcement and how much that adds. And is there capacity for maybe even bigger and better things that we we haven't even talked about yet? Like, is there can we carve out 4,000 ft somewhere in this building to add some child care facility or something? Like, is there room for a pool with it.

You know what I mean? Like what else can we do with this building? Well, like even got up into my frontal lobe or something. Even like can we bring public health and DHS home?

Yeah, definitely that. You know, cuz that's going to save us some tangible dollars. Yes. Yearly. That's why I I really like number one because it's more of a holistic and I don't want to just do number two. I feel like that's what we've done as a as a government for a while. It's just kind of like one thing at a time whereas we need to be really efficient and try to do multiple shifts with our capital asset management plan. I also I also think there's some value to what is the whole of everything that we have, what is the hole that everything needs and what's the best like 50year plan. Yes.

For all the things. And that's where I I think we didn't fully have all that information. I I you know, and also just we're in a different funding camp. I felt like, oh, that'll be easy to come up with, you know, versus, I think, trying to be a little more strategic.

Trying to force an older courthouse to be a modernday jail. It's It just seems like we're trying to cram a square peg into a round hole with really no way to to fund the changes that would it would take to get there. kind of no matter what. I mean just real life on the ground this building though. No matter what we are going to have to do that elevator uh portico yeah situation. So is that worth making part of the courthouse safety upgrades? So the grant that we were trying to get the match reduced for part of trying to get that that match reduced is because we we recognized from the work we did with RA that we can actually just look the direction of the courtroom

to add some items that make it a little more safe. Okay. Um, Heath also is applying for a grant that we're we're not incredibly it's a court security grant that we're hoping we get, but we know a lot of people are applying for a small batch of money, but part of what was written into that grant is to make some safety upgrades.

Um, but we would continue to pursue some other grant funding and we're going to go to the underfunded courts. What we hope is that by getting that grant match reduced, we can show, hey, we have started to work towards getting this done. This is a priority for us and we can go back to the underfunded courts this next year and ask for just what it would take to like get the Sally port and you know the the safe transport into the building and up.

Yeah. um especially if we knew Heath was going to be offsite at some point or the sheriff's office. Um you know because we're still going to have to get people safely in and and out. Um but I think there's a lot of benefit to having more space you know with Heath and off in an offsite facility. It's not the Taj Mahal facilities. It's just like what we need. Mhm.

Um, you know, like yesterday while we were in the meeting, there were people being taken from in there and wheeled out on a journey as we're meeting. You know, there's just a lot of things that are beneficial to considering, you know, they're having to come in where people are trying to do day-to-day business, you know, safety thing. So, I don't know. I think there's a a lot to be explored with real information about Our books are closed. Here's what we really have. Here's what we could realistically contribute from our general fund reserve without violating our own general fund reserve policy.

Here are other funding streams with a plan in hand that we could go after and say, "We've got a plan. We know we can do it. Here's what we need." So right now in the conversations the quote for just the Sally Porton elevator situation was like $4 million, right? So, is it worth just using our COP to just get that done along with the court safety grant and and that be our COP be part of the match? Even if we can't get it lowered, you have to do that. You could just pay back,

wouldn't I? You know, I would want to sit down. We're when our we don't take a penalty for not using the COP until December of this year.

I think we realistically can get our audit done fast enough to say definitively here's our general fund reserve and then we could ask ourselves, do we want to finance $4 million? Maybe we don't. Maybe we just want to say we'll commit four million of general fund reserve and just be really budget conscious as we work these next few years. I don't think that's off the table once we, you know, are at that point with books closed to know what do we have and ask ourselves is is that what we could do or maybe we can only do three and we need to get

maybe that 3575 could go towards that. I don't know. I just want to know what we're trying to do to to really get that get answers from our partners. I'm I'm only trying to be financially savvy in that things will just continue to cost more money and the unknown of what will cost more money is any CRP we go out for. Yeah. What kind of interest rates we get, right? So that's why it's like no matter what we choose, the courts will live here and we will need to have a safe entry

for people coming in and the only solution that has been proposed whether people are whether the sheriffs are here or not is that elevator. So, is it so is it better to just get that done while it's cheaper than it will ever be or or do we put a cost on everything? Yeah. And I can set up a meeting with the USDA to ask about, can we really rein it in and just be like court security getting people in and out safely is what we're going for. Yeah, they might say no, but I did get it extended through this year, so maybe they will let us use it for another project cuz that would be most of the 4 mil. Yeah.

And at least it'd go towards getting that piece done because whether we keep sheriff in this building or explore a different option, we're going to get people in and out safely to the courts anyways. So then there's also the upgrades, the half a mill from the underfunded courts and then potentially half a mil from us if we can get it if we can get the grant match lowered, right? But up to 1.5. Yeah. Which I feel like is way more directed spending can be our match. That's already they've already said that's fine. So I think if I

And is it okay that we're spending it on that though? Well, I just have to make sure that the USDA would be fine. I'd have to So, I've already gotten the project amended once. Yeah. I would just have to ask, you know, to do another amendment. Is this a full amendment or is it just like a shrinking of scope? It's another amendment to it, but I think if we have a project ready to go that they're probably more likely to allow us to do that. Yeah.

Okay. Um, I felt like the Sally port was something that needed to happen anyway. And, uh, if there's even a slim chance that we can get that 3.75 that's supposed to go towards court safety or is that just congressionally directed spending? It's congressionally directed spending that was awarded for this justice center project. The original justice center. Yes. And then when we came in and we're going to do this project to the courthouse, it hadn't been amended to this project. So I amended it. I got it extended

and amended it to fit the project we're currently working on. Okay. Um and I'll probably just have to say, hey, we're really scaling back and probably amend it and see if they'll let us continue to use it for this year. So yeah, the Sally Court I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt anybody.

Um, the Sally Port checked so many boxes, you know, it would probably plate some of the court people and give Heath some attention, show some love there. Like, hey, we want to get you guys a better situation with that. The court people will be happy. we've got something that's going to be needed even if we build offsite. I mean, this alleyport just seems like such a nobrainer, then we've got something going on. We're not completely like I don't know. I like that whole uh path. I do too. I think it's I like number one a lot, but uh if we think about long-term 50 years, the Sally Ports in there in that 50-year plan, like you said, switching the courthouse around, those guys, they they want it and they need it. And it sounds like

some financial wrangling we can do to to make it as cheap as possible. So I think all that's smart and uh I'd be willing to try and pursue that and then eventually we know the long range plan is to divest and consolidate get people back in there and do some kind of ugly metal metal building up there in the middle of Fris. I mean similar to what they did in one of Vista where we met. That's a very simple building. Yeah. How pretty. I mean, this folks aren't going to like it, but we'll get it done. We'll get it done. Yeah.

I think the the point is like the safety of of of and being in compliance with what we're supposed to provide for people who have Yeah. who are, you know, arrested and detained. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the the look of the building is

and there's always been a problem of where are people going to work when we all get kicked out of here to do this giant renovation. This just doesn't work. I mean, there's no way where do we meet? Where do people go to get their permits? You know, it's just a giant 2year mess. I I do think that there I mean it's been long enough since DPM presented on the plans, but I do think there are some dependencies related to the Sally Court that we can't just say we're going to do this $4 million piece of the project and not touch some of the other things as we can get in there. Like yeah, there's office space associated with that that CPD is ultimately going to move into.

I think there's some mechanical stuff that's that's connected. So we would still be looking at probably, you know, probably half of what the total cost was. It's not just a $4 million project at that point. So, um I'd like to get DPM back in. Yeah, that's important to consider because and run through it with them because also the Sally port before was going straight into like detainee rooms that I think we would be like, "No, we're not doing any of that." Yeah. So, the Sallyport was like way more built out

programmatically and they had and there were a couple of options. One was like just to secure the vehicle could be a fully built sally port or it could have been like a chain link fence. So, I do think that we have like range there to go like cheapest. And now that we're taking out all the programming too, maybe they could do some finagling. I'm gonna, if it's okay and you guys feel okay with that, I'd like to reach out to DPM and get them all back in here so we can formulate a plan. I don't want to go to the USDA without a plan

without saying, "Hey, this is what I'd like to amend it to. We're going to do it this year. We'll at least start this year." Yeah. Um, you know, because I think that if they know we're going to get started, they're going to let me like actually keep the money and use it for the project versus saying, "Hey, I want to amend it. I don't know what to what, but you know, cuz I've already been kind of through a lot of getting it extended, amending it." You know, we've held on to this money for quite some time. Yeah. Um, if we do any kind of significant work on the building, we might have to cut down a bunch of trees, right?

To follow our own rules. No, we're in the we're in the city limits. All right. and those surges. We should will we code will we code for the um in the scope we should include some of the asbesus if we can and mechanicals and that rad that radon is a terrible thing down there. Can you imagine working in that evidence room down there and just it's like I'm smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. Yeah, I'd rather smoke cigarettes. Could we get sued? No. No way. It's a problem. No, Matt.

I mean, there's EF governmental immunity, but uh the extent, you know, about a a problem that unsafe work environment pumps the risk, you know, for sure. Um I mean, radon's a really hard thing to prove, you know, get sick from. So, the causation of that would be incredibly difficult, I think. Okay. So, what I'm hearing is that we want to do number one. Yes. But we're going to take the opportunity to do some pieces of the courthouse. And what we need is to get DPM and folk back in this room. Yeah. to talk about shrinking the scope for

to just focus on courthouse security radon and like anything else we have to touch from doing those two things and the window and the window. Those three things. We're doing the window. We do nothing else. Period. Unsafe work environment. Um, but then we're going to try to have it as small as possible and then financially be really savvy about if we're touching our cop or if we're sending it back and give and we're going to commit to it. We're going to commit to it so that Candace can go for the last time for the funding.

I think depending on you know what DPM comes back with returning the cop frees up five. So our COP would have had a better interest rate, but our audit wasn't done. And because that audit wasn't done, we didn't get the rating that they thought we would have. So we got issued the COP. They were waiting, waiting, waiting on the audit. The audit wasn't done. I had to plunk down $539,000 to secure the COP. That will be freed up if it's returned. Um, and I'm not even a returner. there's no penalty to pay off early. That would be what I'm doing is just paying the thing off early. I've been making payments with interest the whole time.

Um but that would free up that secured deposit. Um and we we do have some flexibility in our general fund reserve now that we've got books closed. We actually know what we're really working with, you know, so it's not like we don't have anything in our reserve that we could touch, you know, we do. We just want to make sure really big enough that if we have tight times, we have a buffer. Yeah. And also, you know, we have um a little bit that we could put towards the project. So, you know, between the 3575, whatever they come back with, maybe it is something we can cover ourselves to get ourselves in a better position. Yeah. To do what he needs.

That's really smart. Thanks for thinking about this. And I think uh we almost fell into a big mistake. It's not an $8 million coop. It's a $13 million one by the time it's all said and done. And if that's, you know, and it's it's over, you know, I think it was it 30 years. It's 20 or 30 years. I can't remember. It is over a long time, you know, but to not really be able to fully do the project to pay that much over time is where the not even that doesn't even get, you know, close to the finish line, right?

Yeah. We would probably be borrowing trying to borrow more had we just let this whole thing keep rolling. We scramble cuz it ended up being that we needed 20. If I remember correctly, it was closer to 20 or 21 million if we just did the basic what we needed in this building. Y that didn't even get That's if there's no surprises. Yeah. Surprise. We would have had to buy $13 million. Mhm. Since the CDS. Yeah. No, I'm I'm happy with how this is turning out. I think this is great. and uh thinking long term 50 years down the road that's how we need to think

not our own comfort the window not withstanding yeah thank you for um what you want that is not where I want to end hearken hearken lads um how's the how's the capital asset management plan going we can't do anything till we decide this. No, till Dola lets us know if we got our grant or not. We start before they award us. We can't use the grant, right? Cuz they won't retroactively pay. So, we have Come on, Randy.

So, in house though, Stuart's gotten every property that we have. He's done like an estimated value of it. Um, clearly we haven't paid anyone to go assess it, but we've at least got that uh dialed. We know all of our buildings. So, we've done a lot of the lead work to really hit the ground running as soon as we know from Dola whether we're awarded. Even if we're not awarded from DOA, I put money aside to to start the project. Mhm.

If Dola is able to give us the grant award with the money I've got set aside, it would be enough to like value everything, do a full uh plan, and then have the five I wrote the software to like connect to our um accounting software so that we start to have like that fiveyear outlook of what we're going to do. here are the roads we're going to do and here are the buildings we're going to work on, you know, so that every year you're updating and and budgeting out the net like the fifth year you drop down. So that that's why we really would like to get the grant, but they said we can't have a contract in place with anybody to do it or anything

until they award it. So we are Do we know when they're Do we know what the timeline is? They said midappril is when it was going to committee. Um so then hopefully by the end of the month we would have an answer. Yeah. How much is that for him? We asked for $1.99, I think. Yeah, just under 200,000. There's there's tiers, you know, tiered levels and the the work that we're looking to have done kind of fits in that tier one. So, up to 200,000. Yeah. And I had 250 back for it. Nice. Let's do it. Very smart smart strategy. I like it.

Well, I I think it's hugely important like it's not you Ken just mentioned the valuations. So, we're going to have a sense of like across the county, what do we own landwise, like facilities, what are we renting, but it's also an ability to to assess the condition of each of those properties. So, I think pretty smart for decision- making in terms of like if we've got we're going to go out to get a cop, we can look at all the five buildings that need the work, you know? Yeah. Um, and then pull the right amount of money. We're going to do something different there. Yeah. Is there a chance we can lower the interest rate after we get our books in order or was this borrowed at a time when interest rates were so low? What do you know what our interest rate is?

Can we refinance on this EOP? 4 something%. Can't remember off the top of my head. I know what it was supposed to be pretty low and then our audit wasn't done so we didn't get what they had originally quoted. I'll have to pull up the paperwork on it. Yeah, if we could send most of that or all of it back and do most of this out of pocket with some grants and some more financial finagling and that would be terrific.

Yeah. I just don't know how long it would take us to know what an off-site facility for heat would be. Well, then would we I guess the the whole point of the camp I'm going to call it the camp from now on. Whole point of the camp is that we could see what else we could solve. Yeah. Right. Is to not do these one-offs. So, does the coroner need a place? Do does probation do we want probation to come back and be here or with heat or is it a pub works and sheriff's department facility? Right. Like just I'm not like what can we solve in one as opposed to lots of you know just inefficient buildings. That's right.

That's the whole point of the camp in my mind. Yeah. Well, the whole a big point of camp. Well, yeah, to know what you're working with and what it's going to need for the foreseeable future. So, yeah, start to say this actually is, you know, and part of a capital asset management plan is they do go to the community and they say, "We have all these assets, what are the most important and I think that's information to have from your community." Yeah.

You know, of course, we have things we statutoily have to do that get to be a priority whether we want them to be or not, right? But it is important I think to to also know what in in order of importance what's valuable. That's really opens up so many options pivoting on this.

Yeah. So many options. So Candace, next steps is that we'll see DMP and RHA and the crew in here and talk about changing that scope. Yes. One final time. What would it take? Y I'll go to the USDA as soon as we get that answer and see what we can do with them to at least do that work.

Great. And then I I think maybe when we're in that meeting with everybody to understand what would it take to start exploring an off-site facility um that's really basic. I think I think it'd be smart to do that work. If we think we're going to return to COP, it frees up that 539 we already plunkked down to to put towards that work. So we could say, "Hey, we do have a plan and we know in two years we could could go back for a coop with books in order with a healthy reserve with a plan." Yeah. So we'll make the decision by the end of the year about the CP. Yes. Yeah. I'd like to do that by

without a penalty like November so I can be handing it back in November if that's the choice we make. Yeah. Sounds beautiful. Yeah, that uh sheriff's facility in Buenav Vista, there's a new one down by the prison. Kind of looks like a trailer, but uh do you know what I'm talking about? Not not the big one where we met, but there's a there's a newish modal modular building. Is that what you're talking about? Or we're just talking about a metal building. Just a metal building. And I think that's the thing is we want to go and ask the people who've done it around us like what did it cost you know knowing that we would not be doing it in the exact same time they did it. Yeah.

You know but I think that's where we want to make sure we fully understand what you know what would it about cost us? Yeah. As part of that management plan. Are we going to assess that site down to comparison? Well, you'll know what the the property the value of the property is, right? But I wouldn't be able to tell you it would take this much to put infrastructure in the ground. That's what we would need to like have somebody do a plan. We'd need to once we know what we have, pick a site and actually have someone like RA tell us what would it take to get Mary did that. Yeah, there were some problem site. Well, you've done that for the Taj Mahal of facilities.

Yeah. So, it probably wouldn't be exactly what we need for this smaller facility. No, but to get the we can get some estimates of course estimates. Yeah. Would there some issues with that site? The top soil the soil. sort of in a smaller footprint that might that

yeah there was some um in in the quote I think is built in some of the groundwork and like essential engineering to to do anything on that site if we did if we did scale it down I think there are some different engineering options for like Stuart has described it as tensioning concrete I think is is the term he used that might be a little be a little cheaper but the the 25 to 30 that DPM provides it included some of that site work that they were aware of based on the earlier studies. So there will probably need to be more exploration of that. But at least some of that has been done if if Monroe ends up being the trajectory. Yeah.

Right. And maybe it won't be especially if we're combining it with public works andor just going to throw out there the airport industrial park. We're putting in infrastructure might we as well try to enhance a certain area that we've been trying to do. Didn't we uh what came with that study that we allocated funds to for the public works? So, it'll be done. We let them go back to Dola so we could apply for this capital asset management plan because it would be done with this. So, it's not quite it's not done.

No, it's not. We return the 25,000 to ask for almost two because we know we would do we could but it's all one. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. One umbrella. Understood. Thank you. That was the guidance Dola gave us if we wanted to come and ask for this. Yeah. Come on, Dola. Come on.

Okay. Do you have enough guidance about our next steps? We do. That's what we needed. And I think honestly, we've got some free time this afternoon. Um that I think we can go ahead and start to reach out to those guys, get them lined up to come and be with you guys. Awesome. Thank you. Very good. That's good. some point I'm going to want to sit down and see if I can spin this into good talking points for campaigning later.

Are you going to talk about that with with the Hatch Act? Careful. You can't campaign as an elected official. I can't talk about the accomplishments we have. You can't talk about You can't campaign. We can't help you develop talking points for public outreach. I would like to develop the public outreach talking points so the VOCC can let the community know the great work that we're doing. Excellent.

That was what I meant to say. Sorry, it's the Nova that sound different coming out of my mouth. You're slurring your word. Yeah. A nice out talking points. Out.

All right. That's all we needed to know. Now we have margin of order. We can get back in here. Yeah. Nice. I mean, to be fair, these are really good positive improvements. gives me great hope where things are heading.

You ready now? Yeah. I'm ready. We're ahead of schedule. So long yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. I could have done your dentist appointment after. We just get it done. Yeah, we got a lot of packing and preparation work to do today. Next on the agenda is overview and discussion regarding policies, procedures, and priorities. Uh led by Candace Bry, our county manager, and Matthew Hobbs, our county attorney.

Um I'm looking at you since you did a talk in the last one. So, we've we've taken a crack at a couple different policies. Um, let's see. I was trying to find the uh packet for today and I didn't see one. It does not exist. It's It's in the work session. Okay. This is a special meeting though, right? No, work session. It's a work session. A work session. It's only a special when it's a regular that we do it a different time. Oh, there's nothing in there. Special work session. Okay. That's really interesting. It's a very special work session. So special.

I'm talking with you guys. There's nothing in the packet though. In the work session packet. I didn't see it. Well, let me put them in there first so they're all looking at the same thing. Apologize for that. It's hard. Okay. I did the same thing when I was starting to figure out where to put my memo and Sandra was like, "No, it's a word." I was like, "Okay." Well, we didn't prep for this part of the meeting cuz he has them. I think he didn't know where to put them cuz he didn't see the packet.

It was special. I was disappointed at how cool these cups we got look and how like functional they are not. Why? Cuz there's not much volume. Yeah. It's like they're tiny and the opening is too small. It's like a throttle restrictor on your I'm doing it. It's for special drinks. I try to steal it. It does look cool. It's cool looking. I do. No, I said it looks cool. She dress you up. Was that great? Get out of there. I gave mine to Will.

This looks nice, man. I know. I have to shake it. I'm going to sound like that movie cocktail. All kinds of teachers and powders in here. requirements into your 80s. Well, they take creatine. Does everybody supplement with creatine? I do not. I don't, but I've been reading really cool studies about like what it does for your um like cognitive health in your brain. Yeah. They'll be on board soon.

Creatine, Mr. I can get a Um, okay. So, I put a couple policies in there. Um, one is, uh, sort of an update of the signature policy. That's probably the easier of the two. Um, the second is sort of the overall governance policy. Do you guys want to have a preference of an order? You want to discuss these? Let's go signature first. Let's go signature first. Let's go easiest first. Um since this policy was initially adopted last year um by you all uh looks like probably last Mayish sometime

um I think what we've encountered operationally is you know policies are always meant to be updated right and revised and tweaked as organizations grow and change and especially when they're brand new they're almost never going to be perfect from the outset So uh we you know operationally we've identified uh a number of things that I think we would like to the operation side would like to see um in the signature policy that would really clarify and help uh you know the government operate a little more efficiently. Um, I think the probably the most significant one is increasing the county manager signature authority to 100,000 on all budgeted items. So, it would still require anything that's unbudgeted to come back before you all. It would still require everything to come back to you all for ratification, but 25,000 is is really low for uh, you know, an organization with a $40 million budget essentially. Um, so also there's a lot of kind of recurring agreements uh that continually need to be moved through just with the state with other partners and it's not clear in the current policy whether the BOCC has significantly or explicitly delegated that authority to the county manager. Um, so this one kind of cleans that up too as well as you know what uh you know grant agreements and all these other things with again with the constraint that all

of all we're talking about is sort of operational stuff that has already been budgeted. You know the the requirement that these agreements all be reviewed by the county attorney's office. Um, so there's, you know, the checks are still there that were initially there. Uh, another big change is section three is adding some authority for the elected officials. Um, you know, this may be probably, you know, subject to conversation. Um, but I came across a contractor to Tracy and it was, you know, it was less than 5,000 bucks. And I was like, why why don't you guys have your own authority? And she's like, oh, I think we thought we did. And Keith always thinks he does. And so part of the I think what operations has been running up against with the elected officials is they're not cooperating with developing their budgets.

Yeah.

So there's there's a little bit of a carrot and stick in this policy. uh says, "Hey, if you work with finance and the county manager to develop your budget, um you're going to have authority to sign off on your contracts up to 25,000 for uh the clerk, coroner, assessor, treasurer, and then Keith's budget is just so much larger uh that we felt like 75,000 was more appropriate." Um there's no magic to these numbers frankly if you guys want to discuss them and adjust them. Uh you know it's just uh I think we just kind of looked at it from a perspective of like he's you know one equipment order is is can be over 25,000 pretty quickly. Um um what can I just jump in real quick and and I apologize if you will answer this in your next sentences, but um

what what happens when they if they start like conveyor belting these 25 or $75,000 still need to be ratified by you all. So, if contracts aren't either approved by the county attorney and ratified by you all, they're not going to get paid. Yeah.

Finance won't process it all if it hasn't been ratified. But you guys and also if it's not budgeted and I think that's you know what the point that Matt brought up is Will and I other than he have for the most part made every elected officials budget for them because we scheduled a time to meet with them. We asked them to come. They don't show up.

Yeah. And you know, I I think what I'd like to do is if the you guys are on board this year, I'd really like to say, hey, if you don't meet with finance, doesn't even have to be me, like I I don't have any control over the elected people, but at least finance. If you don't meet with them to create your budget, the only line item they're going to put in is your salaries and payroll. Mhm. Because they do that for everybody. We we run it in um our software. But other than that, I mean, it's hard to give them the ability to sign and they're like, "It's budgeted." And I'm like, "You didn't even make your budget, so how would you know it's budgeted?"

Yeah. You know, so how how does the how does this threshold change the is this supposed to impel people to get to engage in their budget so that they don't have to go to the VOCC when if they've budgeted it from to from the beginning. Yeah, that's the carrot. Yeah. And just giving them a little more authority to run their offices.

Totally. uh as long as they're doing it within, you know, the budgetary process of the county, i.e. working with finance, county manager to develop your budget in the first place, not just, you know, not just having canvas or will develop it without any input. I like this. It sounds like how we should have always been doing it to be honest. Well, I mean, I I get elected officials are always going to have their different perspective, but you know, at the end of the day, we're all on the same team, right? Like, how do we

function better as as a team?

But, so this year, like there probably aren't that many contracts budgeted for any of the elected officials that would be under 20 that would be like $25,000. So Will was went over to um meet with Tracy um because she wasn't available when we first scheduled and he did sit down with her and go through line by line with her and so we can see what they've historically done, right? Unless people are adding 5 million new contracts a year, contracts that they've historically had, but you can see from past years that they're in there. So what he did is he went ahead and mocked up something and then went and met with them and adjusted it.

Yeah. Um, but we don't always get people to meet with us, right? Like if we couldn't have caught her, we would have had to have run with something, you know, but what we'd like is that they're more engaged in that process. We we don't mind mocking up like here's where what you did last year. Let's talk about what you think you'll do. Yeah. Um, we just would like a little more buy in from them to work with us on it. Yeah, I'm okay with that. So, for instance, that one we just approved for Tracy's security and light remodel, she would have just been able because that was a nonbudgeted item. So, it's nonbudgeted, she still has to bring that kind of stuff to you.

If she had budgeted it though, she could have just gone and done it without even bringing it. Had she known, right, during budget season that that's what she wanted to do, she could have put that in her budget. Yeah. and she probably would have shared it with you at that point, right? And that's the other thing. We'd like for them to come present their budget. Yeah. Cuz they know what they've planned for in the DA does. You know, I don't fully know what they've planned for.

Like if if if that had been in Tracy's budget, you know, what she just asked for a supplemental for, she could have told you and this is a thing I plan to do, right? You know, when she was in here presenting it. But it's hard when we're presenting, you know, like Heath Cam presented his. It's hard when we're just we don't full, you know, we don't have memorized everything they know about their department. We have every department. We just don't have everything memorized. That's why we really would like them to to be a part of that process and share with you what it is they plan to do that's outside of their normal

day offs. one that helps with continuence of government as these elected positions turn over. Yeah. Did you just bring up the DA? Yeah. How does that affect how does that come into play with this? I'm saying she's the DA is an elected official that pres has came and presented her budget. So when I see all other elected officials, is that should we make sure that we're clear on that that would or would not include the DA? Yeah, I mean I I think it's it is pretty clear, but but yeah, I mean the DA is not the send one big chunk. Yeah. Okay. There's no

I'm just saying that the DA comes and presents her budget even though we're not like approving all of her contracts. No, I get that part. I just Oh, I see. For clarity so that they don't see this and be like, "Oh, cool. I guess we can see it that way at all." No, like she doesn't follow. She has She has her own entire budget. She She manages with officials. Yeah. Being people getting her input from all the other counties, she's in the fifth judicial district. I I don't know how those people down there think sometimes, though. Throw it out there. I I I think it's clear. Okay, cool.

Then I then I'm good. Yeah. Um, the other piece in here I need to, you know, Candace and I just talked about this yesterday, so I haven't really had time to update it, is emergency spending authority for um, public health and DHS um, and really haven't thought through what the that language look like. But, uh, you know, DHS and those two agencies continue, they're always going to have stuff pop up. Yeah. you know, time weekends, middle of the night. Don't we have that written into our I feel like it was up to a certain amount that that could be spent

by the county manager unbudgeted and we just ratify it. Yeah. But this is more like who can sign the agreement, not the level of paying. Like if they need to do an invoice, they can. Sometimes Laura needs to get a contract in place to like deal with an emergent issue at like 2:00 a.m. and she could just sign the contract right then and there. Yeah. You know, and we do, you know, respond, but we don't want the hold up to be that she's like, "Well, I can't sign this and I need to get, you know, kids into housing." And so, we'd like to have a little bit of emergency, you know, signature authority for her. Yeah. when we're in those instances or she needs anou with another county because it's something we can't take care of for our family.

Yeah. She can check in with that and sign it, you know, versus we don't want the process to be the thing that stops her from being able to take care of people. Has that been a problem so far? We've had one or two small things where it's, you know, she's trying to get a hold of me to get the contract signed and and she's like, "Can I just sign this?" And I have to say, "No, email it over. I'll get up and sign it." Yeah. you know, because we're trying to follow the rules that we've put in place, but it would be nice for her to be able to have signature authority, you know, up to a certain amount. Yeah. In an emergency. Yeah.

Well, I'm sorry. I thought kind of had that conver similar conversation before and I thought we'd already like taken care of that one. So, if that needs further enhancement, then I'm all for whatever they need.

Me, too. Okay. Um I think the rest of the sort of the the red lines here are really just clarifications. Those are those are the big changes. The uh signature authority uh the clarifications to the county manager and you know just being able to execute these recurring operational type agreements. um you know the authority of the elected officials subject to um you know the condition that the it's within their budget uh that the budget's been developed in coordination with county manager and finance. the agreements reviewed by the county attorney um and the agreement otherwise complies with county procurement and finance policies and it's subject to ratification by the OCC is possible after it selling and then you know anything unbudgeted um there's this section in here that county manager has authority of10,000 was in our last one for unbudgeted items subject to again being placed.

Um what about the um emergency feel like there's a separate policy require emergency for the emergency management director and that's when we declare an actual emergency OEM then has spending authority and we have to track that like in a completely different way. That's a different policy. Yeah. Okay.

And we have $200,000 set aside like that's earmarked dedicated for when we declare an emergency that that's what that would be built against and it's restricted unless we actually declared the emergency. I see. And and one thing I I've talked about with Cammy at least internally in our office is organizing all these policies and policy book or something. Yes, that because they're just all over the place. I'm just learning about this OEM policy just it's in the finance policy.

Um but it's a little bit ad hoc. There's a lot of things around here. For example, we tried to track down your ordinances recently. Uh because on the website, they only go back to 19 1975. Um Cammy went over to the clerk's office because the clerk by law was supposed to keep track of the ordinances. Um so this isn't Tracy's fault. This is way back. Yeah, Tracy just got here in like the life of the clerk,

but there's no record of any ordinances that we can't find without a significant amount of digging. I'm sure they exist, but they're they're not housed in the clerk and recorder's office. So, they went, you know, they were like, "Oh, there might be something in the basement." So Cammy went down in the basement and there's Yeah, which you I mean obviously the county adopted ordinances before 1975, but yeah, I have no idea what they are.

I've been told that filing cabinet in my office contains hidden wealths of knowledge someday. I'm going to keep saying it. We need to go through what that filing cabinet is. I can't make out tails anybody gets in there. Stuart actually got some quotes because we were trying to work on what we were going to do if we had to move people and move the records on what it would take to get those digitized digitized but then they have to be stored correctly which they're at works um kind of uh but they're not they're not cataloged or digitized and it was pretty expensive. I can bring that information. We can see if Stuart could get that information together so you guys know at some point that probably should be done.

Yeah, it is quite expensive. Put it on the list. It'd be stored on a disc or a floppy disc or something. Yeah, they'd be digitally accessible, but then they have to be like cataloged and preserved a certain way and stored and we have to keep the original. Yeah, for certain. But you have to keep the original paperwork. Yeah, but we that's part of you would pay to have someone store it for you correctly, but there's only a few places that do it. But I we could do a work session on it just so you guys have the information. Even if we decide Yeah. that we don't do that in our lifetime here. Somebody knows. Yeah. Um

it' be cool. Sorry. It' be cool to look at some of the ordinances from 100 years ago. Yeah. Let's find them. Like no donkey poop. I'm sure there's stuff like that. the sidewalk. You can really get after some stuff. I mean, no spinning. I can't imagine it would ever be a legal issue cuz it's so I can't find it. Who else can? But it's just kind of odd operating as a attorney knowing there's laws that are out there and you don't know what they are. So, I love your job. Honestly, can we help? I like I want to go look for ordinances. If you want to go down your basement, well, there are no ordinances in there.

Yeah, like give me a scanner and I will scan everything in that filing cabinet that I had and try to categorize it and you can't run it as you scan it though. Be careful. So, I do really want to go look. Okay. So, if that's allowed. Yeah. I mean, like I Yeah, I would just like take breaks out of there cuz it is in the radon area. Um, but it's pretty high down there. And I I haven't even down there yet, Cammy. Cammy went down there with Ver I think from the clerk's office. Yeah. I would just go talk with somebody at the clerk's office. Could dig through the public records. Some big discovery party down there, you know, snacks.

Governmental version of an Easter. I mean, there's there's a ton of history down there, right? Cool. Well, I think this new policy is great and I know that people are not going to understand it. They're just going to see $100,000 and lose their mind. I was thinking the same thing, but this is the right policy for the Well, there's nothing for the entity. I'm sorry. They all still come to you guys. Yeah, that's what I was

on the consent agenda. if there's anything, you know, cuz we don't finance our current finance policies. They don't pay anything that hasn't come to recording and gotten back to them. That's kind of why we're we're trying to change the level is we end up having in, you know, invoices that are hanging out there. People are waiting waiting waiting to like get paid and we're like, well, we're not going to pay you or do anything until we have a contract that's been recorded,

right? you know, and so this saves us from having to wait till we can get to a really big meeting where we can get every single one of these. It allows us to be like, "Okay, let's move things up and forward." Um because it's really the people who are paying for services that are just hanging out there waiting forever and then it makes us look like we can't get our stuff paid in time. We're like

holding holding up just like normal dayto-day operations. Yeah. Um this system um and the way this operation would flow works will be amazing, a huge improvement. It will work great with the people that we have in place right now. The people who are just, you know, like doing an amazing job in their positions for the community, for the people of Lake County. Would it be weird for me to ask what happens if say we have somebody in the future in finance who's not really good at their job? Is that throw a wrench into some of this as far as like like we're going to catch red flags with everybody who's here right now? We're going to know if something's out of place, something doesn't look right, you know, anything. But say there's someone who is really not that great at their job and just happens to be in there. That could happen at any point, but ideally that's why you have policies like the finance people are bound to those policies no matter who's in that seat. And that's kind of what a big part of the problem was before is we never actually So I don't know if you guys remember but I redid the finance policies in July last year.

Yes. And those have never existed before. So there weren't these like checks and balances that you know these people are actually held to. Okay. So it would be like a multi-le it would take a multi-level failure of like people not doing their jobs and the people who are supposed to hold them accountable not even holding them accountable and then we'd have them okay this would have like five checks. Yeah. Yeah. Five unique positions. Yeah. Cool. Well, when we talk about 50 years I just want to like think about future proofing stuff against what a possible bad scenario could be. And that's exactly why you have policies, right? You don't design policies for individuals. You design them for the organization.

Yeah. Also, a whole policy book would be so satisfying. It would make my life a lot easier. So much time for contracts and yeah, policies and resolutions. There's no manual. I love Michael was talking about that littering ordinance yesterday. Wherever that is. I haven't seen that one with the whistleblower. Yeah, with the binder speed. That's game cameras all over these things. They can make a living honestly 500 bucks a day. Yeah.

Like what constitutes dumping? Is that more than like would say more than 2 ft wide of trash or litter? I mean, it's littering. Anything. Anything. Wow. Could drive a vehicle back and forth on 24 with cameras all over it. Yeah. The sheriff's department could make some money. Well, I like this. I think uh kind of wrap it up here. Sorry. Um I think we should wrap it up since we Well, that's just this one. We got another one. Oh, another policy. Yeah, this one's probably a little larger discussion. Putting your shoes back.

Imagine this this one's a new policy. This governance policy uh leadership governance policy. Um this one's probably the highest level policy uh you know you have as a county. So a lot of boards that are in your position have either rules of procedure or some sort of operating manual, right? I know you all have struggled with, hey, what's what what can I do? Where are the lines? And this kind of helps clarify those lines. Uh, which is obviously all subject to what you all want to do and how you want to operate and um, you know, how the county like to see the county operate if you're not sitting in that seat as well, right? Um, so this leadership governance policy, I pulled it from a lot of sources. Uh, Eagle County, I've been pulled heavily from, I think, uh, El Paso, San Miguel, um, Ura, uh, Chaffy doesn't have one. Uh, a lot of counties don't have one to be honest. But I think the more betterun counties usually have some sort of governance policy when you have a county manager in form of of operating your your government. Um so this uh you know states the purpose uh the purpose of this policy is to establish governance roles, responsibility and working relationships between the BOCC county manager and county attorney. This policy provides a framework for leadership decision making and organizational oversight while supporting effective transparent accountable government. And then it you know lists the various statutory

authority of of the BOCC in section two. Um scope of the policy kind of a repetition but yeah it applies to the you know the board's relationship with its two employees you know county manager and county attorney. Um sets out the sort of the board's overall governance role. Section four uh board focused primarily on strategic lead leadership, policy direction, fiscal stewardship, oversight of county operation. The board does not directly supervise county staff except for the county manager and county attorney. Uh only actions taken by the board as a body and properly noticed public meeting constituted official board action. A lot of this is kind of just restatements of the, you know, meetings law. Um, you know, there's some standards in here regarding commissioners and like what you'd like to see out out of yourselves. Uh um the two there's four in here. So um maybe we'll pause after this one and chat about these a little bit. Um so open meetings compliance uh commissioner shall avoid communications or actions that could be interpreted as deliberation outside properly noticed public meeting conflicts of interest. Um commissioners shall disclose real or perceived conflicts and comply with applicable Colorado ethics laws. individual authority. No individual commissioners or represent the official position of the board or direct county staff unless expressly authorized the board. Public communication when expressing personal views in county matters commissioners should clarify that their views do not represent the

official position of the board unless authorized by the board. Um, so just pause there, see what your all's thoughts are on those things, tweak them, change them, add anything. So many past blenders that could have been avoided had this been in effect earlier. Um, what I'm trying to to wrap my head around is how could this uh, you know, like open meetings, compliance, all this say we make a mistake, you know, like um, just shooting from the head talking out in public. It's gonna happen.

Yeah. um public communication aspect, you know, like what happens when we violate our nothing leadership governance policy. People going to come at us with torches and pitchforks like recall petition. You're violating your own policies and you know is that um I mean they came at us with a recall about the animal shelter and nothing actually happened. So like we're accountable to the people, right? Yeah. This is more of like procedure than sorry in my mind it's more procedure than policy because there is no consequence. Yeah. I mean it doesn't spell out a

five lashings on your hand. No, but it is it is a good reminder uh for us and for future board members like hey yes this stuff is really important and we expect you to uphold the standards of this office. Well, and it's important if you ever get a, you know, all three of you are great, which is one of the reasons I took this job is, you know, and I've worked with boards who if you have one or two board members, uh, it's horrible. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, it makes it horrible for the other people, the whole board, the whole community, uh, people that work for them. Having something in place where you can hold each other accountable, I think, is is important. Yeah. Can't you um Isn't one of the options to censure a a fellow? It is. I've been through that process. Is it worth putting that in here just like not not to say these are the consequences, but kind of as like an onboarding document pretty much to inform board members of what their options are for engaging with each other? Put in the policy. I think that's allowed under the law. Um

I think if you my my concern is if you put it in the policy like Andy said, what happens if you violate it? You're going to have people use it people coming in here and you know demanding u be censored for saying some off the cuff remark that really has no Yeah. Like I need talking points, right? I'm already done. Sorry guys, I'm getting the century hammer. Yeah. Century Century Hammer. Yeah. And that's that's always going to happen. There's just there's too much gray area in the law. Um and there, you know, just humans being humans and we all we all make mistakes. Yeah.

So So we're basically on behalf of Lake County government looking at applying this policy to us as elected officials. Can we put in place anything similar for other elected officials? I love that. That' be nice. I I don't think you can. Um do best. I'll think about that though a little bit. Um, I mean, you might be able to have some sort of general statement that we would hope all elected officials follow these same principles or something.

That's a lot of work. You know, it's I think combing through everything that we know some people maybe things they should be doing by CRS statutes that maybe they interpret differently. I don't even know how we'd get into that mess of trying to in encourage our interpretation of CRS rules for other elected officials and then tell them that's how they should be doing their job. So, you know, it's was just a thought. I don't know. You know, I know we're very limited on what we can do.

Well, hey, we all take an oath of office. A lot of this is in the oath of office or can we can we edit the oath of office? No, that's it's a statuto office. Yeah. I mean, I think like I we're in such a we're honestly still in a transition with moving from county commissioner run government to a county manager run government. like we're in chapter two of it with Candace and with us as a new board, but I really think this will help in this will help get new commissioners on board with the new style of our community running. Yeah.

So, I really like how spelled out it is honestly all the way down cuz there are people that may run for office that think that the old way was better. as misinformed as that opinion is. Oh, they're they're out there. This uh they almost out here. Well, yeah. And if and if three of them or two of them get on a board, they can change the policy. Get rid of canvas, get rid of myself. And yeah, you know, from an operational standpoint and a risk liability standpoint, it's it's night and day.

Yeah. the the difference. I think I think I would hope most of the community starting to see that. But yeah, there's always going to be four years they'll see it. Long memories. Yeah. Yeah. I do think that they are starting to see it, but the whole community would take a while. And being more consistent like this as as commissioners, I think will help with that. Oh, I didn't know she know what to expect.

Yeah. I mean, it all starts with with ego, right? And culture kind of flows down from there. But having this policy in place uh I think helps solidify it and draw clear lines for you all for for new commissioners that on board in the future for us is you know Candace how you interact with each other.

Um, okay. So, I'll move on to to six if we're good with that. So six kind of just spells out uh interaction with staff which has come up you know quite frequently which just because of the historical legacy and there's always going to be some of that uh which this policy clearly allows for um that you should be able to go to staff and say hey I need information on XYZ. Um the issue comes I think uh you know for from an organizational standpoint um cuz when you come to staff it's a priority for them. It's going to be a priority. Oh sure. Yeah. They're also a little tear. Yeah. When you walk in

really when you walk into the room, you know, you carry that commissioner weight uh and they're going to be paying heavily attention to you. They're going to drop everything they're doing to to to do that duty ask, which is a boot. It's like I actually have like no power. So, I don't know why. It's I get it. I'm just saying it's just wild. You have a lot more than style for sure. It's crazy to think about that. You know, you just kind of win a popularity contest and then you get to do all this crazy stuff. Yeah. And it's wild.

It's, you know, how that happens in different organizations and cultures. It's, you know, there's there's different ways to do it, but this is sort of standard, I think, uh, to draw that line to make sure your county manager, uh, you know, because a lot of times staff's not going to know the bigger picture. Um, sometimes you may not even know what the county manager knows operationally is going on just because there's so much going on every day and how these all these pieces fit together. Um, which is why it's important, I think, to make sure everything kind of goes through Canvas as she or your whoever your county manager is to understand. Yeah. The bigger picture. Um,

because Yeah. staff will drop everything. We've seen it happen. Yeah. And that's how it, you know, how it used to be. Um like someone could have in a previous version of us could have leaned on road and bridge to hey pave my street now out ahead of the that would no ahead of the road that has that would violate policy. Well will now would that be conflict of interest?

Oh it' be direction of staff. direction without, you know, the backing of the board overall. Yeah. Because staff, if one of you goes to them, they they don't know whether we discuss this in a BOCC meeting or not. Like you could have a rogue council member who just wants whatever it is that they want done, you know, and we do ask staff like, hey, some someone comes to you directly, loop us in so we can all be on the same page, so we can make sure everybody in this room is on the same page. But that's really why this is in place. Without this in place, it is just like anybody can go to staff and give them direction whether you all agree on it or not. It might be something one of you really feels passionately like, nope,

we're not doing that. You know, tried to be really good about the skate park thing. I was going to say the skate park. That's why I put it in there yesterday. But that's the thing is if you let me know that, I'm going to be like, "Hey, let's get in front of everybody." So we do have that direction as a board that that's where you want to spend our time, energy, resources. Same with Matt and his grooming. You know, everything came across this table. There was no, you know, and her go in the meeting. I was going to say diapers. Oh, that's something you all care about, too. Yeah. You were talking about the whole load, not the crumbs. Remember before we were commissioners and we had that meeting at um the Nordic Center.

Wow. And we all shared up in the Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all shared like the thing that mattered to us. That was ancient history. I can't even remember that. I remember sitting there. We were all You cared about grooming. Yeah. You cared about OV. I cared about something. Our memories the whole Yeah, it was the whole time. The whole I went big.

Okay. Um I love this. Can I So, let's just clarify this for a second. So, I think I understand this. It's very clear, but say we need information. Say I need information about a housing bill. My impression from you, Candace, is that I can totally go talk to Jackie about it, but I just CC you. Yeah. Or let me know you're go talk with her. Yeah. I think Josh and Rachel, if you don't mind to copy them, cuz we each manage the department. Yeah. So, whoever's in charge of the department

cuz I'll try to remember to tell them, but it's it's kind of easier if they're already on there. So, I'm not like, "Oh, yeah. I need to tell them and then I tell them after it's happened." I don't I don't have a problem like that because if they have a question they're going to ask you before that happens. So then if this is just easy to use with Jackie cuz we've done that and say then um I really need talking points that is a project I'm asking for staff time. That's when I go back to Josh and I say hey I would really like talking points or a one pager on this. And then I clear it with the whoever the county manager person is to make sure that I'm not asking for staff time with

and I'd say just like copy me with them, right? Because I think we're that's when we can be like, "Oh, whoa, you guys don't realize Steuart's got 18 other things that are kind of a high priority right now that we're working on that are like required because the state makes us do something, right?" And that's where we can say, "Hey, that's great, but they are really swamped. Could you keep it to like a 30 minute it's of their time? Yeah. You know, if they're like really underwater, which sometimes we know Ann is, you know, her department is doing all these other required things that never come up in here. It's like we all have things like finance has stuff they have to submit to its state by certain times and that's not like something we're talking about in here, but those requirements,

you know, if it's the end of audit season, I'm probably going to be like, "Yeah, could you reach out to Will next month if you have a question?" That's really, you know, if he's underwater right now, whatever. Well, then the the county manager's office can say, "Okay, we're not I can see how you would go to Jackie, but we're actually going to go to these other people and still get it to you in time, but let us coordinate who's actually putting the photo." Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Sounds like a great stabilizing effort. Yeah, I mean these provisions too are really valuable. We've been um we've been going around all the departments. We're calling the county manager's office road show. Um visiting with each staff, you know, each group of staff to just kind of take the punches, learn, you know, learn feedback, get ideas for process improvements and things. And this is one that's come up fairly consistently and I think it makes sense to to include in this policy because it there's it's been raised that there's confusion about when they're when they are supposed to shift gears and and work on things that come directly from commissioner. So clarifying this not only helps I think you all but also help staff understand okay this is my responsibility I know to check in with the county manager's office and Katie if if something like this comes up and that just keeps everybody kind of informed as to where we're at. It's like the hourglass and you guys are in the middle and everything is above and below whichever way is going it's going to go through you guys to organize, coordinate,

incentivize efficiency. I mean, I struggled with this issue personally when I was on the Salida school board. Um, because there was a very very bright line on the Salida school board that the school board members did not communicate with uh anything other than the superintendent who's on the board of education. That's the board of education's only employee. Yeah. And then the superintendent

and that's traditionally how school boards function. And we had probably two or three maybe four new members on that board that were like no we want to be able to talk to staff on some level and super you know there we we respected you know superintendent authority and we we finally came to this cohesion where yeah there was a balance like we could go to them and ask questions but we're not like getting into personnel decisions like that. You're just asking questions. Yeah. Because we also need to be informed in a timely manner. And that that is where it that seems really clear, but we're in the transition. Yeah. Where it hasn't been. Yeah.

So basically with staff, it's discovery, not direction. If we need to direct, it goes through leadership. Yeah, unless you know, yeah, I mean the direction should always be coordinated with the county manager, but you know, sometimes the direction is going to come from directly from the board and you don't have a county manager doing their job. Yeah. So, I mean, there's always going to be this gray area, you know, but this is a general framework of just organizational structure.

I like it, too. Uh, will this live within the policy handbook? Uh, yes. Policy book that doesn't exist. Heck yeah.

I mean, one of the things, yeah, I I'll probably if that's the direction you guys want to go, we can certainly start working on that. Sounds like it is. And uh, I'll probably start assigning some sort of names to these policies like, you know, A1 or two or whatever categories. Yeah. to to break them out and make them easy for everyone to find the board and stuff like otherwise it's people are looking at different versions and everything else.

It would be really good for everybody that works for the county to know what this says so that they can know that hey one of the commissioners is in violation of the policy. Yeah. who can I talk to and then that that's another way of policing and if it comes to me I'm gonna go to the chair you know and then let the chair kind of you know manage the BOCC because a lot of this is policing you know at the end of the day it's all going to be self policing but at least there's a guideline there's something there to go off of

yeah these are like agreements between These are agreements between the whole team at this our commitment to the team and the community. I guess what I'm saying is if staff knows even like the janitors like hey I know I read the policy and you're you can't tell me what to do. You can't tell me to do this first and that second. I don't know. It's just good. It's really good. I like it. Yeah. Makes me want to develop my own policy handbook for my job sites. Yeah. Um, okay. Should we move on to number seven? Just this

kind of a commitments from the working boards. As as I was looking at this, I'm wondering if just the structure maybe we can try to structure this as commissioner conduct five above. But anyway, um just kind of working commitments that both PCC is committed to working with one another, elected officials, staff, the public in a manner that emphasizes collaboration, respect and prepar preparation and communication. Commissioners agree to work collaboratively to reach informed decisions, respect differing viewpoints, and maintain professional conduct. Prepare for meetings by reviewing materials in advance. communicate openly with each other. County manager, county attorney, share information relevant to board decision making. These commitments are intended to support a collaborative governance culture rather than establish enforcable rules. So that's kind of to your earlier point. thinking about what happens if you know we violate these policies really meant to establish a culture punitive framework. Yeah.

Okay. Cuz I will make make mistakes. There are times I look at stuff that's on the agenda and I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's going to be easy." And then in the meeting it's like unpacks into this giant thing. I'm like, "Okay, I'm not I didn't do enough." Well, there's going to be times when you just don't have time to read packet or you get the information late like yeah these policies I have not reviewed these policies yet.

Uh okay. So chair responsibilities chair of the board will preside over the meetings of the board. I guess we need to talk about the second one. Coordinate with the county manager regarding meeting agendas. I don't think that's currently happening. Uh facil I don't know if we want it to happen. I think we've had some chats about that. Uh facilitate board discussions and deliberations. So this is another one I've been sort of changing. I don't know if you all have noticed but signing documents on behalf of the board. It it seems kind of silly to have all three of you signing these things. Uh if you all three want to sign them, that's fine. But uh seems to create a lot of work and it seems just having the chair sign resolutions, ordinances, contracts, uh makes it a lot easier for everybody. Uh tracking down signatures, you know. But again, it's your call. If you want to have three people, we can prepare them. But I've I've been making it the chair sign up a lot of things. Yeah. Rather than three people, so which I know it's happened in the past. I mean, I really I really feel that like especially when we're going back and like which commissioner did this. Like I I think it's nice nice historically to see all the commissioners who were seated at that time as opposed to knowing like oh that was 2009. These are the people who were seated.

So what we could do is in a resolution or an ordinance uh you could have like a roll call vote section. Yeah. Commissioner Bulock Lee. I love that. And yes or no or absent or abstain. Um so that that would be a historical record. I'm for that. And then still the chair would be signing whatever gets passed. Okay, we'll start doing that. Awesome. Um what about the agenda piece? Let's chat about that a little bit. Uh I mean yes

how that's getting set and uh what's working, what isn't working. I think uh Air Table has been a huge improvement from what happened in the past in terms of pushing information, making sure everyone's on the same page. Um but uh it still seems a little if you all want to get something on the agenda. I'm still not clear on that how that's happening. I know the work session there's something in air table now. Yeah. So when you guys request one of the other two of you will say you want the session and then we work with Sandra to get it scheduled.

Yeah. Um, I'd say in the development of processes in Lake County government, we're probably not at a place where I can be like, we fully plan this. I mean, we all know that this meeting is happening because at the last minute, we had to make a change. Um, so I think I can let people know kind of this is what we think we're going to do, but if somebody's not, and this is really part of us holding staff accountable. If a staff member is not ready to go, this this is what would happen in a county where the clerk helps actually put the agenda together, which that's not what's happening here. Yeah.

Normally, that person and I would work together really closely. And if staff don't have things in on Friday when they're going to post and put out the packet like normally your, you know, clerk's office is doing that, it doesn't go. Yeah. Right. And that's the clerk's lined up that they hold. Yeah.

Um because we have done that internally with a staff member. Um and I think it's been pretty flexible like people are scrambling in the last minute. um we might discuss what we think we're going to do and something comes off because if staff aren't ready to go or we get a document back from them that I'm like this is just not well thought out. This isn't you don't have all the information. Part of us being able to hold staff accountable is that if they're not ready to go by the deadline, which would be happening if we had someone else who wasn't on our staff doing it, they'd be like, "No, you didn't have this into me and this isn't ready." So, I do think I don't mind running through what we are planning um knowing that if we have staff that aren't ready or an external partner who comes back and says, "Oh, well, actually, I can't do that now or this person can't join." We're still at a point where sometimes the agenda is changing up until like the deadline that Sandra has set with people. We are trying to get out of that life of sliding into home base. Yeah,

at the last minute, you know, but that is a huge organizational shift. And the external partner component of Yeah. matching that cuz I feel like that's it's kind of out of our hands a lot of the time. You know, we can't help Excel to get their packet together. Yeah. And sometimes we're trying to get people to give it to us ahead of time, but sometimes people are like, "I brought it with me on my flash drive even though we've asked for it. Yeah. 90 different ways and times before we sit in here." So maybe that line is something more of like um

you know I I don't know how to add some flexibility to that second bullet point about coordinate with the county manager meeting agendas to the best of your ability within reason happening right now a little bit of a shift

when possible. I mean, I don't know how you all feel about, you know, your agendas and ability to get stuff you want to discuss on your agenda and how you go about that. It seems like I've sensed a little bit of frustration. You know, you're all elected to do whatever and, you know, you have your various goals and you want to move forward, but you know, you have to do that as a group and convince your other two fellow commissioners that direction the county should keep going. But yeah, how that I mean it seems like it's happening, but I don't know how you all feel about it, which is the important part. Yeah,

I can imagine Elsa's frustrated cuz she's requested a few that have taken a long time for us to get on there. Not that that's I think that's like a work session. I get why the work sessions are, but I think what I'm hearing from Matt is the agenda for like a regular meeting and sometimes that's not I get it.

It doesn't matter. Um, I think I just watched city council go through this. They spent like the last like six months going through because there are seven of them and they did not have a process for getting something onto their agenda. So, it was just the the mayor and the city administrator would decide what was on the agenda and an individual city council member couldn't request something to be on the agenda and actually get it on. So now they have this whole process that is it's overbuilt, but they're building something. And I feel like with us, it doesn't have to be that convoluted. Like I would I I think that in order for us to follow our open meeting laws, even if staff isn't ready to talk about something, the only way we can talk about something if is if it's on the agenda. Yeah. So, I think that it's really I would personally like for the chair and the county manager to work together on the agenda just so that there's like that oversight going on of like, oh, this got taken off again. Oh, this got taken off again. Just so that there's some like supervisory accountability for like, okay, how's it going with your staff? How how are people prepping? How what are your plans to try to get them on board? I just think that that's like a professional way for the chair to be able to be working with the county manager. But I personally would like it if any one of us could request something to be on the agenda and it's up to for that to that person to put together the memo to prepare the other people about what they want to talk about. So, like if Andy wants to talk about the skate park and staff isn't ready, if Andy wants to put together his own memo, it can be on our agenda.

Yeah. Let's say I just want to talk to you guys about how something goes, but due to record laws, I want it at least to be an item on the agenda, just open discussion about one subject. There will be no, you know, like serious direction or allocation of funds. This is just more of like, hey, let's talk about this thing just so we can all Yeah. understand what I know.

Yeah. I like that because there's only three of us. Like like if if all if two of us had to agree to even talk about that, I just feel like that's really gatekeepy a little bit to me. Like if if one of us were the odd one out in terms of things that we cared about, the other two could keep it from even being discussed at this table. And I don't like that. Yeah. Or could the chair under this sentence coordinate with the county manager? Could the chair say, "No, we're just not going to put that on the agenda." Right. Well, the chair is always going to have a little more discretion. Yeah.

To do that. I mean, again, depending on how you structure it. Um, I hate to bring keep bringing up slow school board, but but

that's okay. How how we did it there was the it was a little easier because you you have a seven member board. So, um the the the board president and the superintendent would meet, you know, a couple weeks prior to the board meeting and another board member and they would go over the agenda. It's usually the superintendent kind of structuring it and leading that conversation with like you said also just some oversight from the president or and there would be a check-in like uh like the board would the president would send an email to the rest of the board. Hey, we're having our agenda setting meeting. Yeah.

Um anything anybody would put on the agenda. Um I love that. Nine times out of 10 it's no occasionally stuff bubbles up. They're like, "Yeah, we need to talk about X, Y, or Z, or I'd like to talk about X, Y, and Z." Yeah. I think that I think the smoother the pipeline of getting discussion pieces in front of us that we want to be able to talk about so we're not having sidebar conversations, right,

the better. And then also like the way I watch city council just do it, it's cuckoo pants. It's like one person has to have the idea and they have to get at least two other city council members to agree to bring it to the next city council meeting for the whole council to vote on whether it should go on to the next agenda and I don't like that. Yeah. So anyway,

could we add to your current air table? Like I want this to be a regular session item. So that way when I go to sit down with the chair, I have a running log and the chair is not like going to collect these things or not remembering exactly what was asked for. So the person who wants something, it's like written there. Yeah, it's kind of clear. And then we can talk about, hey, there are some time slots here because usually Sandra who really quite frankly is the one re I'm not reaching out to hundreds of people being like, are you available at 2 p.m., you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Sometimes I do, but like really she's getting things dialed so that I'm like, "Okay, I know this is what we're rolling into for next week." Um, then I could sit down with the chair and say, "Here's what we've kind of got knocked out." Sometimes she's got to hold because we're waiting to hear back from somebody and then we would have the list of items from Air Table that any of you could say, I want this to be a regular item. Heck yeah.

And I think uh you know that meeting with the chair and the county manager, there's always going to be times when you know the county manager is going to say, "Hey, can we hold off on this?" You know, this really needs to be fleshed out more by staff before we can have a good discussion on it. Um, and that give or take can happen, you know, like Canada said, up to the point of the meeting. Yeah. Well, until we have to post hours ahead of it.

And I think you can all I don't see this as an open meetings law violation when you, you know, send out an email and say, "Hey, any anybody need anything on the agenda? We need to discuss." And you reply, "Oh, we need to discuss this."

Yeah. That's just coordination. That's not discussion of what you're actually wanting to talk about. You're just saying, "I want to talk about this." It's not a policy making thing. That would be an open meetings law violation. And that, you know, that way you're all sort of on the same page. Uh, and I I don't know if we need to spell all that out into that level of detail in the policy or if we need to flush this out a little more. We can just have like so we're kind of looking at like two different categories of where I want this as a subject on a work session so we can fully bring in staff and and you know get a lot of discovery and back and forth versus I want just want to be able to talk about this briefly with the people in the room kind of situations and can we just continue to use the same air table setup that we've already got but just have a different way typing a title or

use an asterisk or something that just like, hey, here this is a just a discussion item, not a deeply involved staff item. I think you could put that in the notes and then I I might just talk with Justin to see. I don't think it'd be that hard to add like a radio button that's like I want this on a work session versus I want this on a regular. So that way I know Yeah. what the intent is. Well, I guess the only difference you can type it in the notes.

We can have any of those conversations in a regular agenda on a regular agenda or a work session. The only difference is what I'm proposing is that any one of us can request a discussion be put onto a regular or a work session, but we we can't ask like we have to have some sort of two of us agree to dedicate staff time. Yeah. To it. Yeah. Like that's the distinction, right? Yeah. So any one of us can request a discussion or without agenda agreeing discussion. Yeah. Just so we can legally talk about a specific subject that

we want to be able to cover that might not have already been on the agenda. Yes. Above this.

Okay, that sounds good. And then I al I mean I also really think it'd be great if we you know in those air table things it has like we'll talk about this and this and this. Let's say I wanted to bring the sales tax of the incontinents and period products. I think it would be I feel like it would be my responsibility to put together a memo like I'm the one who wanted to talk about this. I'm the one who wanted to bring information about it and try to have a conversation. I would write a memo about why if it wasn't already part of county operations

if it's just a brief, you know, Yeah. half paragraph like something that sets it up a little bit helps us prepare for the conversation. Exactly. Same with Andy. If you wanted to talk about a skate park, Yeah. you would put together a little memo if it didn't involve staff. Yeah. If our conversation didn't involve staff, right? Yep. Yeah. Um, how do we access the memo template? Is that in one drive? One. You can also ask Sandra to make your memo. That's part of what she does, right? Um, but you would have to be like clear, you know, what what you want in the memo. Well, it's like so she's not like guessing.

There really only like two categories, right? It's the background and then decision and then there's budget and yeah, who who would I ask and say, "Hey, can you help me with one drive and help?" Oh, okay. Um, do we think Justin if they need help understanding it like one drive, could Justin do like the same training we just did for staff for each of these guys that need it? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. He's he's always welcome or open to any like direct targeted trainings. Um we're also doing a recurring training series now that staff can attend. Yeah. But yeah, Teams, one drive. Um I honestly to solve the memo question,

you might be able to include that as a part of the air table. I think I have like a couple things I would like to that would involve staff time. So I'll just get real specific with what I need. I would like to formulate a better understanding of one drive and I'd like to have something that maybe I could ask Matt about added to my emails as a disclaimer at the bottom about um hours and you know like the oh yeah you know everybody has these really cool lengthy things at the bottom of like like mine said just cuz I respond at this time doesn't mean I'm crazy and I think you should yeah like my hours might not be your hours kind of thing and please be patient. And you know, like there's a lot like all of this is horrible.

Yeah. I'm not going to say crazy stuff and neither should you. No. Yeah. Um call me if you want to have a crazy talk. Um you know, don't don't take a lack of responses, you know, like there was Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Ror, Mr. remember with him yesterday after that long meeting I responded to his email that he I think he CCD you all on right

and I said hey working through this with stuff and and I was just catching up on stuff last Friday you know that I slipped through the cracks like late Friday before I went home for the weekend I emailed him like whatever like close to 5 on Friday he made this big stink about in court how I like sandbagged him and This was on and on. Oh my god. Apparently I shouldn't respond to emails at 5:00 on Friday. I mean, the judge thought he was crazy, too. He's just kind of ran raving, but that's lucky. I thought it was funny.

Yeah. Well, you know, people get there's a lot of longtime community members who are used to things being run a certain way. He requested three of you appear in court at the next next year and the judge is like no order that I'm sorry. Yeah, sure. Yeah. What's up?

We're dealing with a lot of holdovers from the from a time when these three commissioners basically knew everybody and everything that was going on. Like, oh yeah, that's my buddy. I'm going to go do this for them. you know, like so, you know, I I think uh when we're looking at long tenur locals, um their expectations might be might seem pretty out there to us, but I I think the way this county used to run might be why some of these things come up like that. It just seem wild to us, but not to other people. So

Jeff Wilmer, would you guys care if I work with Sandra to look at schedules and schedule like a IT training with you guys and Justin in here so he can get all of us at once? Also, cuz somebody might I think there's a value in training with more than one person cuz somebody might have ask a question that you don't even know to ask and then he's going to do all of it. Totally. I think that might be helpful. I was going to mention we try to do a Tuesday when we're already around. That's not as long as yesterday. Put it on the agenda. I don't the public can watch. Yeah.

So, in terms of this policy, I'm not sure we need to change this anything anymore. we just coordinate the chair responsibilities and under with this underlying understanding that I mean I guess we can make it clear that you know maybe the chair or something coordinates with this commissioners and ask if there's anything that needs to be discussed. I'll think about that some language that that we can put in a policy around what we just discussed. Thank

um okay nine and 10 deal with sort of your delegation of authority to your county manager. Um you know making it clear that county manager serves as the I just put chief administrative officer of Lake County. You can call it whatever you want. Um the board's connection to day-to-day operations of the county is to the county manager. County manager serves at the direction of the board and is accountable to the board for administration and county operations. Um except for legal matters deciding the county attorney. County manager has supervisory and operational authority for county staff and daily operations of the county government. Board direction only decisions of the board acting are bomb binding on the county manager. instructions or requests from individual commissioners do not constitute board direction. Uh communication expectations from the county manager is expected to form the board of significant operational matters. Identify issues that may require policy direction. Provide information necessary for informed board decision making. inform the board of significant public concerns or trends affecting county operations and then just relations with other elected officials. Uh county managers will work cooperatively with other elected officials to coordination of county priorities while protect respecting the independent authority of those offices.

Pretty high level I think a good framework. Oh man, I forgot something from the previous policy that I wanted to bring up. We can go back.

It's okay. I feel like last year there was a lot of concern especially because at least from the clerk's office our concern with the clerk's office with going into contracts that were like antithetical to the operations of the county specifically around it. And I do think that so so I wanted to bring that up, but maybe the way that this gets caught is that that is a discussion at the beginning of the year when we're doing our bud or the end of the year when we're doing our budget conversations. And that's where we say no, you can't go go into an IT contract. You can't budget for an IT contract that would spend more money than

Yeah, we have an IT IT department. Yeah, exactly. But where is that line when it comes to not being able to dictate to other county officials how they do their jobs? Well, that's a budgetary decision at the end of the day, right? It's not telling them how to do their jobs. It's saying, "Well, you can do your job. You just need to use IT department." Um there are a lot of you to play devil's advocate for Tracy a little bit. She raised a lot of the issues with me like around elections specifically and why

she needed to use this independent contractor and uh I think they all decided it just wasn't a battle worth fighting. But there there are specific issues around elections that I I don't know how up to speed our IT department is on. I think they are they will be more up to speed with it, you know, since we actually have an IT team. Yeah. Which really, you know, we had someone who was tackling IT issues. Yeah. While doing 18 other jobs.

Um, but I do know that our IT team is working, they're working on pretty specific IT policies about provisioning new IT equipment or and I I would think that Maybe it's worth saying in here or in our finance policies which we'll update in July. Um we update them every year July if a change is needed um to say like in accordance with established IT policies or finance policies or or maybe something of that nature. So people are still following the like finance HR and IT policies that are in place. I don't know what you think about that

because you guys the IT policy will come to you guys to every Yeah, it's so hard with these elected officials but I think the more you can kind of gently encourage them and uh again at the end of the day you have the ultimate power to say no to their or yes to the budget um which is a big stick you know. Yeah. I'm just so sorry. You know, we have an ID. We're not going to allocate an extra 25,000. It's going to be handled in the house. Yeah. Okay.

Um, so because it's financial and that's our statutory responsibility, is that the difference from us being able to say, "No, you can't use you can't budget for that equipment. you have to use ours versus no you can't hire that person you have to hire somebody else like we don't actually have that authority you don't have but we do have the financial authority to say even though everybody is under our HR policy it's it's very just trying to find the lines you can't fuzzy lines yeah that isn't

we can't say you can't hire that I remember we hire them saying that we don't dealing with in one department. Yeah, I know about it. I'm guessing it could be any number one of them actually. I have no idea. The way it was explained to me based like from really knowledgeable folks was like you can't tell them what to do but you control the person. Yeah.

But that's the I think that's the difference, right? It's easy to see that with the DA where it's like, yeah, we're just giving you this whole pot of money. You got to justify the pot of money. But that's not actually what we're doing with our in-house elected officials where it's like, I can see how they would make the argument that something nitpicky like that is telling them how they have to do their job. It actually is pretty similar. You know, it's almost like we're not, you know, it's an echo of what we're doing with the VA. Here's your budget. years that you have to work with. Anything else, you know, we can control it.

But it's that initial budget allocation where I mean, just like with the DA you did last year, right? Like, sorry, we can't afford giving you your entire allocation. It's the same thing with the elected here. It's like, you know, we're not going to budget for this additional extra, you know, software requirement because we already paid for it, you know.

Yeah. I think it might be worth um planting the seeds early too with anyone who is coming into these positions of like hey like this had always been done this way but we are implementing systems to save the county money and give like advanced notice of this will not be a process moving forward. Well, this is also where like if you have to work with Matt before, you know, because Matt does say like the contracts got to kind of be reviewed. Like Matt and I meet all the time, we check in with one another when we get requests for things like that. That's really where like if someone is trying to buy,

let's just say Docyign, right? I know that maybe we're going to have a DocYign contract for legal and if someone else is going to go try to get a Docu Sign contract that's elected, I'm gonna say, "Wait, we use DocYsine already as one of our our IT systems.

Let's get you guys licenses, which are already under our contract, and we pay less for an additional license for whoever needs one than I do to pay for a whole new Docu Sign contract." Right? So, we're going to try to get them under that whatever that IT system is before we go purchase a new contract. And that's kind of where we're going to be able to catch those things is we work really closely, you know, even when he gets contracts from elected people, we kind of check in because like if we already pay for this or like I don't know, pick another system, whatever it is, somebody wants a air table login. Yeah.

Right. We pay by lock. We pay by seat, right? So, I'm going to say, "Hey, well, if you need to use that, we already pay for the overarching software. Let me get you a seat on the bus." Rather than pay for a second round of the software. Is there room in the commissioner's governance policy to spell out something about how we interact with the other elected officials about when we are when an ask is made of the BOCC, they will defer to most like more fiscally responsible basically spelling it out that like well we control the burst strings and we have an obligation to the taxpayers to do what is the most

Yeah, I mean that's a good point. There's nothing in here, but that that's certainly uh something we could uh that when there are requests, we defer to the most fiscally responsible take at uh some sort of provisions around set sort of relationships and interactions with the BCC and fellow elected officials. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Especially when it comes to budget budget items. Yeah. Says that in our finance policies. It does. Okay. Yeah. If you want to reference it then. Okay. I definitely said that. I was like

just I think we've had that situation a few times. If we can reference something like, hey, it's our job to do this this way. Sorry. Get in here. Sh.

Yeah. I mean I think the only the the real statutory bright line is just you cannot dictate how they what they do with their staff basically. You know they have the power or or you know their statuto authority authorities that they all have too. You obviously can't interfere with them but you know the budget's a big one. That's really the ultimate checkup where you all hold everything together and you can't control who gets elected offices or who runs for them. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I like that.

Um All right. So dele delegation to county attorney. Um role of the county attorney. The county attorney represents Lake County as a legal entity not individual commissioners except when authorized by the board or required by law. County attorney provides legal services to the board. County departments are elected officials is authorized by the board. County attorney represent Lake County as a legal enemy, not individual commissioners. I think I'll take that out. Um, lower commissioners is the county attorney's client matters uh involving the governance. Um, I appreciate it.

County attorney provides legal advice to council assistant board, elected officials, county staff understanding legal requirements, risk, available options. The county attorney does not make policy decisions or operational decisions on behalf of the county. Final decisions regarding county policy direction actions are made acting as a body except authorized and has been delegated to county manager. Um, county managers responsible for overseeing legal matters affecting the county, including providing legal ser legal advice to the board, county officials, reviewing and negotiating contracts, managing litigation involving the county, coordinating outside counsel when necessary. Um, board direction, only decisions the board acting body or bonding on the county attorney. Communication expectations. The county attorney shall keep the board informed regarding legal matters that may affect county operations, finances. For policy, this includes potential litigation, legal risk and liability exposure, significant changes, local law, legal issues affecting county programs or policy, requests for legal advice by individual commissioners. Uh individual commissioners may request legal advice to county attorney um regarding their duties. The county attorney may provide such advice is appropriate. However, legal advice provided to an individual commissioner does not constitute direction from the board or an official legal position to the county unless the issue has been presented and considered by the board as well. And then there's stuff about performance evaluation in here for both myself and the county manager.

Um, and I know this came up recently as well with with uh performance evaluation. So, we need to make sure all this stuff probably need to run through this run through, you know, our contracts, uh, you know, make sure it aligns with what's over in the contracts. I think this is pretty broad. Yeah. Evaluation criteria that probably fleshes out uh our evaluations a little more than what it says in our contracts that just we shall be evaluated. actually provide some some criteria of what we get evaluated on.

Currently, both your contracts have that the performance evaluation will be what is used by all other directors. So, right now there isn't actually room unless you all explicitly like volunteer to have a different performance evaluation. You just get evaluated the same way as everybody else. But I like this better. And I which there's probably I mean again this is pretty pretty general criteria. I imagine I imagine there's a lot of overlap with how other directors are are being evaluated. But uh just saying you guys don't have different performance evaluations in your contracts, right?

At least for 2 years, right? I just messed your document. I'm trying to delete that space. No touching. That extra space has really driving me crazy now. Yes, it is uncomfortable. Please make it better. Uh and then there's just a general waiver uh you know the board okay has a specific item that the board can kind of wave uh wave that I'm not sure when that would come up. kind of thought through whether it's good or bad to have that provision in there, but ultimately kind of left it in I guess.

Does this come from another communities? Yeah, I'm guessing it came from not sure where, but yeah, I imagine it's not like it's the board can leave. It's not a commissioner can leave, you know, which feels okay. I mean, you guys can all you can always do it anyways. It's like I don't know that it needs to be it's probably better to have it stated as in just thinking out loud because uh because it's something legally you can do anyway. So why not just put it in here? Well, if you want to do it, here's how you do it. You just don't act individually to do it. You uh you do it as a board.

So Elsa, just for you, it says that we'll be evaluated in the in the same manner that other staff are. So if you want to change our criteria to these and our contracts that you can change the criteria you use, you know, they don't have to be the same buckets that other staff are in. It's in the same method that they're done in is what the contract says. So, these are the things that we wanted to focus on. And it says that if we want to change the things we're going to focus on, we all sit down together and discuss that and then make that change before the start of the next fiscal year. So, you go into the year knowing what you're working on. Yeah. Um but it it doesn't

say it has to be the exact same criteria. Sweet. That's great. Yeah. in my just kind of preluding things a little bit for the year, I I would like to take a look at my contract um and get a performance evaluation with the three of you prior to the election when Yeah. Uh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seems more fair to to Yeah. Well, yours should be coming up in September. So, we'll start it. It's a six week process. So, we'll start it in mid July.

And then, you know, we've I we signed a contract with Lions Gatus for them to have um you know, this conflict council as well. So, yeah. So, I'm negotiating my employment contract with you all. And yours is a twoyear, right, Matt? I think it's one year. Oh, it's just one year. So, okay. So, we can use them this year. So, but Candace is on a two-year, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Candace. Yeah. I can't remember. I think yours is. I can't remember. Did you like us so much that you were down for a two-year content?

Anyway, uh we can I'd like to try to renegotiate it with three of you just, you know, consist. Yeah. Sounds good. Cuz who knows what happens in elections. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is wonderful. I really appreciate you putting both of these together. Both of you working to get these in front of us. Thank you. Thank you. While we're in this session, can I ask for any specific ones? So, we're working on overhauling the handbook.

We We're working on IT policies. We recognize we need a records retention policy. Is there anything else? The stuff on the lawn policy. Um, we've got a couple of policies we're working on, but I think it'd be great to have a a list. You know, it's a policy. Yeah. There's been a lot of comments I've seen where staff are posting. They're like, "Stop." on county related issues on their public accounts. Just responding and defending themselves. or defending the county under with these other personal accounts. Yeah,

it'd be great to have the list so we Isn't that something you wanted to have, Matt? So we kind of like you could get direction from us about our priorities for all the things that are on here. Yeah. Um can we take a little bathroom break and kind of come back and talk about that? Yeah, cuz we got I think this is scheduled till 1. Yeah. So yeah, we got some more time. Yeah, that's what I wanted to kind of get into next is more what policies are next. Well, policies just direction, what you want me to be focusing my energy on for the year. Okay, cool.

Okay. So the other piece of this I think we kind of just started talking about it a little bit sort of these overall there's a number of policies we've been working on and developing and just wanted to you know make sure that sort of aligned with your all's goals and priorities uh before we get too far out over skis Um, there's a number of them we talked about. I don't have a list, but you know, Cammy is already has the drafts. Cammy's a rock star, by the way. I'm really

impressed with her. I'm so glad. Yeah. So, she's she's amazing. Um, so she's already has sort of a draft social media policy. She actually put together the drafts of these policies. I mean, I reworked them pretty heavily once she but it's helpful getting at least something down on paper to start. So, she has a has worked on a draft social media policy, a draft email policy, which legally we're supposed to have that under the Colorado Open Records Act request act requires governmental counties to have an email records retention policy. Oh, yeah.

Which we don't have. Um, but I think we're trying to develop that policy and the overall records retention policy, which I don't think they Oh. And we tried to start one um with Liz, right? Yeah. Yeah. Got really shot down by us. No. Um, we needed input from people who would be dealing with records and Oh, I see. I think it dropped there because, you know, I just don't think we were waiting for Matt to come on to figure out how to Yeah.

statutoily required to have it an email policy for sure. An email policy. Yeah. Statute in records. Yeah. that kind of puts any weight behind who is responsible for the record retention. I don't I don't think so. Um, I think at the end of the day, um, you know, it's pretty clear Tracy has the the clerk and recorder, uh, role and uh, you know, there's a lot of records that she'll retain just by function of them getting recorded.

Yeah. Um, I think we can miss out if she's not willing to work with us. I'm not sure that matters in terms of developing a overall records retention policy. I mean obviously the email things like that it would be good to have again have everybody on the same page that hey this is how we're dealing with emails which I won't be able to handle on back end anyway it anyway so it doesn't matter right now we keep emails forever because it's also where a lot of our documents yeah find those yeah I mean that's Yeah,

that's just part of becoming more organized is that we don't that's not the place you go to find documents in mind, you know, for contracts for map. We looked at a software that like we could all go find the documents that exist instead of hunting for diving.

Yeah. Um, so I'd say, you know, most of my time is just day-to-day operational stuff, but there's definitely a time to, you know, get 10 25% to to move forward on this sort of more policy, you know, digging into these other issues like like these leases have have come up a number of times that we have with other partners. Um, you know, and I just don't know how much you want me to dig into all this stuff. And and I I think it would be helpful to finish up sort of what we did with Randy as well to

know where where where your guys's priorities are overall as a as a board. And then um you know I can sort of bring the stuff that sort of fits within that that rubric of like oh this fits in here or here. Um but I think again policy direction I'm not sensing any don't waste your time on that. I think that's a good use of my time. you know, policies will definitely help uh with risk management, which, you know, it would be good to get our insurance costs down a little bit. I don't know if they're fixed or if they're based on, you know, payouts we've had in the past, what they're based on, but

so some some of our insurance is based on our loss rate, which has been historically um but we're trying to work on those pieces. Some of our insurance is just based on you know you saw that break out from Stuart we're not when we are having leases with people we're not so we'll use the one we talked about yesterday talked about the golf course it's about $7,000 a year to pay their insurance and we pay it we pay in we pay insurance on the pool that's like $110ish a year yeah so hold up just let me process that for a second That's a so much money.

It's about the same for Ski Cooper, too, right? It's about $100,000 for Ski Cooper. Yeah, Ski Cooper's like two two that we pay. Okay. Seriously, let me But that's where it's like if we if we that's a subsidizing things, right? But I think we we should at least charge enough that we're not losing money on insurance. you know, we're not trying to make money off the entities, but we we do have to cover the cost of like insuring some of those sales.

I mean, I'm not against subsidizing things that are beneficial for the community. That's the rec department, right? That's so much money that doesn't have the same like public access much cheaper than Yeah. I mean, I I can understand why it's cheaper, but why is it so much cheaper compared to, you know, I mean, isn't there the same kind of somebody runs myself over with a golf cart or gets hit in the eye with a golf ball or breakdown of the like constructed facilities? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah.

Okay. So, I'm looking at the list now and Steve Cooper is 87,000. Thanks. of our total due course is about7,000 animal shelter 3700 the aquatic center 110,000 the aquatic center cost a pool water even though nothing is happening there we are still paying for not operating how do we get out of that like it's every month they're like oh there's something else that's wrong under the building that we can't fix without spending good jillions of dollars. And

yeah, I mean that's a it's a larger discussion too that we've been trying to work through in all our spare time. But I think there's the problem is a lot of the counties using that for storage right now is my understanding. Storage has got to be cheaper. It's got to be cheaper than 110. Did you say 110? Yeah. 109 680 is the okay we're going to say county's portion after CTSI adjustments and the pool has been closed since 2020.

So that will be over half a million dollars that we have paid to ensure a pool that isn't being used. I almost feel like we're doing this to like keep from hurting people's feelings at this point to like not just completely cut and run out of the pool. Well, we got a pool discussion coming up. Yeah. Well, Angie, I think you want to see where that we'll talk about it next. If you want to It would be cool if you did zoom in from a roller coaster. That would be amazing. No, it's going to look I mean awesome. Yeah,

just consider it. Okay. You know, we really like to be on the news for all kinds of things. You may as well, you know, for being cute, you know, for being cute and hot. I can do it from Star Wars land. Millennium Falcon behind me. Oh my gosh. Okay. Sorry. That's so much fun. Thank you.

So, sorry. Yeah. So, so policy development here and that's, you know, that's a big one. It's a big push this year. Um, Ellis and I talked briefly about 1040 on regulations, whether I should be reviewing that. was I get the sense I should probably be taking a look at these leases and coming up with some strategies to to re renegotiate them. Yeah. I mean just because just because the lease is expires in golf course is 2035. I think we said 2031 but it's 2035.

Uh just because they expire you know 10 years from now that doesn't mean you can't have a negotiation negotiate. Just like I said with my own contract, if it's two years, well, I don't care if it's two years. I'm gonna try to renegotiate it before, you know, Yeah. Um, and it doesn't mean doesn't mean you have to negotiate it. It's just

it just doesn't mean you're bound to bound for it forever just because it says it's it's you know, you try to renegotiate it. If they say no, then you take a step back and say, well, you know, well, we're kind of reevaluate our options at that point. Well, I think some with some of these things, we've definitely had gotten to that point already where it's, hey, this isn't really beneficial to Lake County. Then the hard no, we're not changing a thing. And then now we're stuck where we're at. So when we're looking at policies as a whole, how do we look at any changes to lease negotiations as a policy? Those are it's two separate things. I think I'm talking

he's just trying to get direction on where to spend his time. He's he's one person with Is that extra person in the agenda language that we're in a meeting to discuss directing? Are we allowed to talk about that right now? Sorry. I'm just trying to be mutually have our bases covered. No, thank you. I mean, it's a it's a work session, so it's a little bit loose. I appreciate that for

I hate that you have to click between tabs and channels and then you have to go refine the folder. Yeah, I mean, this is a priorities for me. Policies, procedures, and priorities. Priorities. Cool. All right. Sweet. Just want to make sure we have Yeah. the the freedom to talk about priorities. Yeah. Um yeah, I would really like a fresh set of eyes now that we are talking about what uh we could be allocating some bandwidth to to look at the ski cooper situation. Um, and the pool.

And the pool, you know. Yeah, we're going to do that next week, but I think the pool will inevitably get on to the become more of a priority. Um, I should pro I'll I'll try to do something for next week for the year have a discussion about it next week.

Um, but yeah, we got into some pretty uh farreaching potential potential options with what we were considering the county's future relationship regarding Cooper may or may not look like. So, um I think uh with you know fresh perspective that might be interesting to revisit.

Yeah. Okay. um um policy development um you know the 1041 regulations. Do you know what those are?

I I do, but can you just refresh me because I'm on the brain? So, so 1040 run regulations are for larger development projects that sort of have statewide implications that happen within the county, whether it's a pipeline or power line or water. You know, a lot of counties are looking at it from a water perspective these days and they are basically a much more rigorous land use approval process. uh that that your ordinary land use development code would not capture these kind of somebody wants to take a bunch of water rights from the county for example your land development code doesn't cover that but 1040 regul one regulation it's properly drafted it could potentially allow the county to have say and larger projects of statewide implications of this

I've heard it used in in conjunction with like things happening on the front range between counties and like uh power companies, things of that nature. But I I I don't know where I haven't had any firsthand experience with Lake County using 1041 towers on anything.

And I I don't know that you have you have you have regulations that are currently in existence. Um you know, this would also involve a pretty heavy list with CPD as well to develop these. So, um I mean I could take an initial look at it. Probably wouldn't take me much time, but uh again, it's there's only so much time in the day and so many days in the year and they don't know where your priorities are. There's only so much math. So, it's like so much time I have. Yeah. Um interesting that you already did have 1041 in place.

Yeah. So, I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't consider that a high priority. I don't Yeah, since they're already in place, but I don't know how good they are. Yeah, I'm guessing they don't cover water projects. Um,

I think you've got a lot on your plate already with model traffic codes, with um policy stuff we've already discussed. Um, are I I and I I'm going to apologize. I didn't get get a nod from you guys about like are you guys okay with requesting him to take a fresh look at just the Cooper situation and I think all of our leases Yeah. Yeah. The golf course, Key Cooper, the pool. We've got things where we're just kind of hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars that could just

I said it because I think that it's not fair to like not look. I know if I could hide that and feel good about myself, I would do it. Put them in a little protective envelope there and not make them go through what the motocross track had to go through, which I don't think we will. Okay. But just to Oh god, you're not. The new motocross people have gotten everything to be like they're on it. It's going to be So that's a good thing. Yeah. I'm so stoked. And we're not losing the asset. It's actually going to become more accessible. Yeah. So

Well, yeah. I mean, I I would love to help them out, you know, from wreck standpoint of like I think they uh have struggled with outreach and some organizational stuff. But I love the archer range as it is. I would really hate to see anything be like, "Oh, you guys can't do this this way with No, me too. Me too. I'm just saying that look, we have to look at it's it'd be good to look at everybody just like we do with capital with capital projects

to not just do one thing at a time, but to have the holistic what are our leases? How are our leases built?" There are some I guess taking my archery hat off and my love for the range, there probably are some things we need to look at up there with where arrows are shooting versus where other people are recreating. I was thinking more like access and I think that it's probably fine but cuz it's going it's kind of the way that it used to be at the motocross park and a way that they're going back to at the motocross park. Yeah. So, I don't actually know if there's an issue. No, it's me how it's set up up there. It's pretty

I'd like to see more people even know it's up there. Yeah, exactly. And are we paying insurance on it? And if we're not, we should, right? You know, like we have to look at it. We have to look at it. Yeah. I don't know what's expensive. What's more expensive? Water or flying projectiles? Well, the uh the rifle range is less insurance than Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Significant. Yeah, the freaking gun range. But that's managed by us, right? That's not with a separate that is not a separate entity who manages the gun range.

No idea. It isn't. It's just a public gun range. What about could you fire IGA? Can we talk about that for a sec? Have they got back to you? Okay, I can I'll just keep broad. We have a meeting Friday morning. Okay, that's on the agenda. It is on the agenda. IG next steps. So, are we I mean, we're waiting to hear back. Yeah, I haven't heard anything. Okay. No worries. Thanks. Friday. That's a good point, Matt. So, our IGAS, MLUS,

leases. I mean, maybe it's a lot. It's a lot. Do you have just like a master list of when they come up? Prioritization of like, okay, dive into this and

I don't want to like bring this guy out of an asset for us. So it's like there's no rush. you can put that you know or sorry I keep just saying coup but it's all the lease is you know for me personally I feel like um you you know our IGA probably fire IGA should probably be pretty higher on that list as as important as I feel like the the leases are because we are it's dollars and cents but like the fire IGA has got a I think the IG is anou okay let's back up a little bit yeah when we did our strategy session One of our main priorities

was organiz organization and just like foundations, right? Building rebuilding our base. And so it feels like Matt, if I were to sum it up in my mind, it's like the priority would be getting a sense of all of the agreements that we have and getting the list together of when those get updated and when they expire and all that and determining priorities off of that. And just off the top of my head, it's the fire IGA and it's the regional housing authority IGA that are currently the most urgent, right? Mhm.

But other than that, I feel like it needs to be built off of the full Yeah. I mean, I like the idea of a whole master list together. I don't know how we can do that. Maybe I can work with Will and see if he can pull stuff from Tyler from vendor agreements. Um, yeah, going to have to pull all the other from various sources, I think. But I do I do like that idea of having some sort of master list, but yeah, the fire and the RHI that's Yeah, that's already on on the list for sure.

It's part of why we've tried to get this software, which we are about to move forward with. like a contracts software in place because we'd be building the list as we're redoing these and they do come up every year. Yeah.

At least the nice thing is that finance can't pull a list the way they have it set up because no one ever put contracts in until Will and I got here and we started uploading them. but they're not like injured and like you can pull a queue but every year at the beginning of the year and we're not that far into the year if we can start doing it he's not going to pay any invoice when an agreement pops up that hasn't been done and that's when we're reaching out to you to get the agreements and I get that that's not the most ideal way to build the list but I think it does help and then I have made a list as things have come up that I'm like oh yeah we should do this every year because we never had a list. So, I can at least share that list with you because I do have like part of building the budget is knowing that I'm gonna have, you know, all the finances and OUS that I'm going to need him to review and Kelsey has a list.

Yeah. And so, I think that could be helpful and get that list for me director who is paying attention to their things. Yeah. So, we have a ton of us. Yeah. I mean, that feels like something. Well, also you can just you can get like most of it from all the folks where we can find the most current agreement which is half the battle sometimes. But

now is there currently too much on your plate right now? Like when it comes to priorities, how much direction do you need from us to tell you what not to do?

No, I I don't feel that. Uh, you know, legal work has a way of having it flowing and there, you know, has a way of displacing priorities. You know, if we get some massive lawsuit, all of a sudden I'm spending most of my time on. But right now it's uh you know I think I'm able to focus a fair amount on this proactive stuff you know which I think is really important like the foundational sort of organ organizational stuff. I think that would be most beneficial to you know my my personal ones aside I think that's going to be the best moving forward valuable resource that we have with the great staff we have right now working on things that are going to become more permanent for Lake County.

Okay, cool. I don't know if it's helpful for you all to think about the priorities in terms of that strategic planning session. I know we're a little Matt alluded to it. We're a little ahead of bringing that back to discuss again, but you know the priorities I think things you're talking about do fit into some of the high level priorities that we work through with Doolo. Like looking at the draft right now, fiscal stability and financial resilience, I see the lease exploration fitting very nicely into that. Yeah.

The organizational and workforce and organizational excellence. That's the IGA. So, it's helpful to think in terms of those categories that might, you know, help provide some, you know, I guess some clarity around like are there specific policies that align with these bigger priorities that we should we should bump to the top.

Yeah. And you know I just want to give some respect to the colleagues sitting next to me for all of us for everybody putting aside their uh hopes and dreams for other things you know whether it's world class grooming or world class rec departments or skate parks on trails to focus on what's best for the county. Thank you. Well, who said we were putting that stuff? We are, but we aren't like, "Hey, Matt, figure out how we're buying in conjunction with

contract for your smoke cat. Your first year was adorable." Um, Excuse me. What about grooming? Excuse me. It was such a bad snail. I know. It's such a shame. You crushed it and then mother nature was like, "You shall have nothing." Oh god. Well, I did discover that I really like driving that little ranger and I don't mind doing it a couple times a week. So that's awesome.

Next year's budget can just count on Smokey. We got Smokeoky a waiver. So between the two of us and maybe Sterling. Well, next year we'll look at enhancing our grooming to groom a community trademark. Love that. Pete Cooper will build one. So, it's really disappointed. I had such big plans of having my cross country skis in the back of my car. Like, she's so close. Yeah, there was no

for for next year. We'll make sure your office has a rack for everyone who wants skis be there right on the walls like lunch break. Use our amazingly grooved mineral belt drill. Where's the mat on the way? Cool. Well, I think I got some interaction from you. Did you? Okay. Well, we appreciate you guys. All all three of you and everybody. So, don't let people yelling at you in public. Oh god, it lose your zen. That was zen. I I wonder if it's something we should address, you know, cuz somebody somebody did ask me about

Everybody has feelings. Somebody did ask me about um severance pay, the reason employees, and I set them straight. So hopefully that gets Oh, you did with Kim Jackson. Yep. Yeah, I responded to her. I did too. So hopefully that gets out cuz I don't know if it's appropriate for us to go on social media and say, "Hey, this is I would never respond." I don't think I don't I never have. I've been tempted, but I haven't. But that kind of stuff fers like a a splinter.

Yeah. So, I think what we're learning collectively is that there's you can really get the crayons out and explain it super simply to certain folks and they're just never going to understand. Yeah. And they're never going to believe you.

They won't believe you. Yeah. And then in this day and age, you know, anything that has to do with anything, government is the lowest hanging fruit to place a lot of anger, blame, and I don't think I know what we're doing in this room is the right thing for Lake County and the taxpayers. And I feel really hopeful about where things are heading. And to dilute that by taking some of this bandwidth where we're getting really important things accomplished and trying to focus on the the few people who just want to sit there and constantly misinterpret, misinform, you know, stay in their same bubble about everything government is bad, you know, like it's it's a disservice to our staff and to, you know, you guys and to to feed into that, try and plate that. I really wanted to do that non-stop when I first got in here and it made zero difference. It didn't even put a dent in things and it was like all right like and it kept me from doing my job better, you know. So, I don't know if it's fair to try to even go down that rabbit hole because those people that change, you're right.

That's why it's nice when they actually email or reach out. Yes. Then you can be like what I said. Yeah, I said the same thing. Thank you. Like to clarify. Shall we wrap this up, folks? Yes. This concludes the work session of the Lake County Commissioners at 11:44 a.m. on April 8th, 2026. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, chair. Mr. Bard