Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

It is 12:04 p.m. We will begin this work session of Lake County Board of County Commissioners. On the agenda today, we have an overall discussion of the larger budget picture. Very general. We're going to try and hammer down what the BOC sees. Specific asks questions. What do we want to gain knowledge on? How do we uh improve our own understanding of the bigger budget picture? I think um my philosophy with these things a lot of times is um hands-on just you know start going through the motions start doing the stuff first and you know like I I have a tendency to start you know just right off the bat like oh what about this and what about this and what about this and and what I've come to find is a lot of times I'll be asking questions that I look back on later and I'm like, um, I should have waited a little bit to at least understand a little bit more about what I was doing before I started going down all these rabbit holes and trying to figure out a million different things. So, what I'd like to do with this time right now is to figure out where we feel like our gaps in knowledge and identify what questions we even want to ask first. Um, before we start asking a lot of anyone, of staff, of you know, the process and even of ourselves, you know, like this is our first year. This is our first budget process. We don't know what we don't know. So, let's My my my desire would be let's figure out what we want to figure out first.

Does that make sense? Mhm. Okay. You um what what what do you have what are your goals like to figure out here for this cuz Well, actually I have my goals are actually to talk about some bigger picture how we fund all the services in this community. Okay. Statutory or other services or both? Others because we fund statutory services through us through a general fund. Yeah.

It's and other funds. But um I want to discuss bigger picture how we're funding all of our services and what funding mechanisms we have available, what kind of strategy we want to do. How does that set us up for mine closure? What have we taken on in the last years that it would be good for us to start doing some networking and policy creation that helps spread that load or reallocate the load of new services? Right now it's kind of if we were to zoom out and look at how the entire community is funding all of our things whether it's IGAS between the city and county just the city just the county only through property tax and grants like uh I think we should have like a a bigger plan to start alleviating our budget. it to make it more sustainable and then as a community come up with ways that we want to fund the other things that we also want to do. I have a couple ideas about that.

Okay. What about you, Matt? Well, I'm curious to know what your ideas are specifically. I understand what you're saying. giving a lot of thought to us. So, can we dial it down a little bit? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Let's start. Yeah. Let's start with your stuff then. So, how do we fund other services, options, sustainability, looking ahead? Yeah. Reaching out, trying to bring more dollars here. Yep.

Kind of. Yeah. Okay. So, right now we have the staff have put into our packets the our statutory requirements and they're they're not minimal, but they're kind of minimal compared to what we do,

right? And my impression is that the county has taken on a lot of the extra services that our community wants without actually increasing or diversifying our funding revenues to support those services except through the mill levy. We haven't increased sales tax. We haven't created any special districts. We haven't discussed increasing our accommodations tax. So, but then we also have these IGAs like specifically for the animal and fire.

Um, which we share a lot of that load for what are not statutory requirements for us, right?

And okay. And then there are other things going on in the community where I think that some of the requests that we got through our community requests program whatever those work sessions that we had last week where the community asked us for certain amounts of funding for various projects. Some of those could be bucketed into various categories like health and safety or economic development. And what the city has done is created a special tax that goes directly to housing. and they are discussing and potentially dispersing that funding to the regional housing authority so that all housing projects and requests for funding can go through that entity as opposed to going through the city and the city doesn't have to allocate more funding to housing. They're like, "We already have the special tax dedicated to it. So here, go to that bucket if you want that as opposed to our general fund." I think we could be doing that with other things like economic development. We used to send money to the EDC and people could request money through the EDC because the county and city had already dispersed funds for economic development through them. That doesn't exist anymore. Right now we have our own department but that's a very new department for us and funding requests I think could be going through for economic development could be going through that department and funding requests going through that department. So right now it just feels really dispersed. All of these funding requests and all these priorities and the burden is being put on the

general fund and the burden is being put on our property tax. I think that we could really look at it big picture as a whole community and say, "Okay, do we want a pool?" Right? I'm going to use the pool as an example. Sure. the pool, they went for a sales tax which is not as um it doesn't produce as much money as they need to get it done and is not as reliable. Whereas if we actually created a wreck tax, a recreation district,

we could be funding our wreck department and subsidizing bowl and building a pool. like all of those ideas in in investing in a community field, building out the Huck Fin ice rink, fixing our Huck Fin skate park. Like right now, all of those requests are going towards the general fund.

And I think that we as a BOCC have an opportunity to say, okay, these are statutory duties. This is how much that those statutory requirements stress our general fund. These are the things that we would like to see moving out of our general fund. Where are some homes where those could be community? Do you really want these things? And if you want them badly enough, are you willing to help us find additional funding mechanisms for that? Yeah.

Be on the vote. The onus would be on the voters to make this happen. And the three funding mechanisms that either are available to us now or could potentially be available to us are the accommodations increase that has been increased to 6%. That already passed last year. So we could ask the voters if they want to increase accommodations, I think. Yeah.

Right. So that's an option. I know other people are already talking about potentially asking for the accommodations tax to be increased for things like childare accommodations tax. um special taxing districts like a fire taxing district paired with child care paired with roads like we can we can make the special taxing district whatever we want it to be it could be a wreck and fire district it could be a wreck fire child care district and then the third is the one that's being proposed to the state legislature and that is the wreck excise tax so I just wanted to say that I think that we have options for diversifying our funding and we could do real policy work at the state level to help get even more options available. All of these would have to go to the voters. But I I just think that um us trying to make this this budget work over and over again and smash everything we can into it is already becoming untenable and will become even more so in the future. and our reliance on the mind makes that even more tenuous. So I think that part of our mind closure conversation also needs to be us looking at what else how we could be sharing the load of these costs.

Do you have any questions, Matt? Did that answer your question about what our options are? No, I like it. There should be a contingency plan if something it doesn't pass. And then also, you know, all these taxes add up. Yeah.

And people are going to get ler. So there should be a contingency plan at least 52 or if it doesn't pass then what do we do? And then you mention all these incremental tax increases. I think eventually especially if this housing bubble pops and our valuation goes down the next assessment period and then we're going to be constrained budget wise that way. Mhm.

I don't know. I think it's great. I think it's optimistic, but I think the reality is people are kind of like taxed up to here just barely flowing all the other economic pressure. So I think the concept is great. I think putting the power in the voters's hands is one of the best things we could do. I also think the writing is really clearly on the wall that Lake County cannot continue to operate these services at this level um moving into the future and rather than see us or the next board have to be like, you know what, we can't do a wreck department anymore. We're not obligated to do it.

Yeah.

I would love to be able to figure out how to when we have the bandwidth for this. um let the community know like, hey, look, here's here's why our roads are garbage and why our buildings are falling apart and why, you know, we can't um get a contingency fund together and and our our uh you know, if if everything hits the fan, we we've got a couple weeks worth of operating budget saved up instead of a couple months. And it's because for decades we've we've been doing all these things that we aren't statutoily obligated to do because we can and because it feels good. But the reality is in today's climate, this is unsustainable. And I would really hate to have to start saying, you know what, we can't we can't pitch in on the animal shelter anymore. Or what if we get to a point where we're like, we can't pitch in on the fire department anymore. So, I think if we were able to spell that out to the community somehow very clearly

and be honest and just straight talk to people straight up, you know, like this is where things are at, you know, and it's not do anything we did wrong. It's not do anything our predecessors did wrong intentionally or anyone. It's more of a a generational passing the torch on. This is just how we've always done it. and looking into the future. This isn't going to work. So, we need to make some hard decisions now and we're going to put those decisions in you, the voters's hands. And if you say no, we'll keep trying to figure out how to make it happen. But just be aware that there's a very real possibility that at some point Lake County is going to have to focus on what Lake County needs to do, which is our statutoily obligated obligation, our statuto statutory obligations and fixing our broken stuff. I'll also offer that the Matt to your point the incremental taxes like just increasing taxes is not actually what I'm after. I think it has to be paired with also combining services between the city and the county to save money there to build efficiency. It also has to be combined with like if we if we can take some of the burden of let's use fire as an example. If we can take some of the burden of fire off of our general fund or and or wreck off of our general fund and or uh airport off of our general fund. It also allows us to potentially reduce our mills. So, so right now we're looking at so just ser just providing all the services we've said we'd provide just breaking even we have to increase our mills within our cap

and if we can relieve the general fund of some of that pressure it keeps us from having to continue to increase our mills because eventually we're going to hit that cap and then have to ask for more funding just to do what we're doing. So, I think that it could have an opportunity to reduce burden. We're treading water while looking at a title wave of inflation and everything else coming at us. Like, at some point, it's something's got to give.

And it's not just us. That's why I'm saying that the county, the city would also have to be part of this. People have been floating like combining services for years, right? And I know we've tried some of them a little bit in the past, but it's kind of like you have to move everyone all at once for it to help the whole ecosystem. This is a systemwide thing I'm proposing. It'd be great if the city could be on board with us to do it. Well, I think it's optimistic to it is

to say that we're going to create a fire district and airport district and all these districts that would increase people's tax burdens, but we promise we're going to we're going to reduce the mill where the next administration might be like, hey, look, we got all this room in the mill. What's keeping us from just going up to the top? Well, we're going to hit the mill and have to go over like no matter what, we're going to have to go to the community to ask for increased taxes. And the question is where do we do that? Is it going to be in 10 years when this board asks to increase the mill or is it going to be now to kind of safeguard some of these services that we've been providing for so long and and disperse that taxation into a different district? And to be clear, I'm not proposing lots of different districts. You can you can have combined districts to meet combined needs.

So, so and and I don't know what we want. I think it's a bigger conversation. Fire is an easy one and wreck is an easy one. Yeah. But child care is something that we're not we haven't been asked to fund. No one is funding that and it is a huge issue in this community. So, childcare could also be in that district. And I don't think we should propose like all of them at once. I think it's the kind of thing we could phase just like combining city and county services is a thing we could phase. I'd like to see a combined building department. Yeah. Law enforcement, streets. Yeah. Road and bridge. Yeah.

I think that would save some money. I think that the the

But we can start talking about it, right? The thing that jumps out at me is having a little place in another state and having some close ties in yet another state and looking at what these people are paying in taxes and then look at what we pay in taxes here. Um, there's a pretty big difference. I love that about Colorado. I want to preserve that to the best of our abilities. I also just kind of seeing the writing on the wall that something's got to give here at some point. And we are just the this the work that the staff is doing right now behind the scenes in these offices in this building, 50 hours a week trying to figure 60 hours, 70 hours a week, some of them

trying to figure out how to who needs who needs sleep. um trying to figure out how to balance this budget that we've been taken the reigns over on and what's been what we've said no to already with the spending. It's it's unsustainable. There's just no way that another board's going to come in here and do all of the be as fiscally tight as we've already been this first year and continue that on some something's got to give at some point. Yeah. Next year we're going to get our wreck or our asset management plan and it is going to show us how like a billion dollars in in

there's going to be, you know, 70 years of deferred maintenance that we got to catch up on. Yeah. So, we're going to need to even if the mine is good, let's say the mine is great, like we're still going to need to relieve the general fund to be able to even fix

even yeah entertain the idea of investing in our assets. and everybody wants to see our roads fixed and that's on us. How are we going to do it if we're trying to do all these other things that we aren't obligated to do. So, I think there's a story there. I think there's a really good argument, not even argument, a really good point to bring forth to the public and let them know that, hey, the power is going to be in your hands. Here's the story or here's the story. Power's in your hands. Let's make a decision that you guys make a decision. tell us, you know, we're gonna we're going to give you options. Let us know what you think.

And there yeah, there are a lot of folks also already talking about what taxation measures could be brought to the ballot next year. And I think that we need to be part of that conversation because we're not the only leaders in this community who deal with taxes and funding. So, I think that in order to us for us to have like a concerted communitywide priority that goes to the voters, like we need to be in those rooms. Yeah.

My I just want to be really clear and sure that this is something we're going to start working on to bring forward in 27. This is like there's no way we can get this set up for next year. No, I think I don't I don't know. I I'm I'm I'm I'm bringing all this forward to be like, hey, maybe this is the strategy that we take on and other people in the community are already taking on a strategy that I think that we would want to implement. And kind of like what happened with the pool tax. Yeah.

The pool tax ended up being like myopic and only serving one point and other people asked to be part of that tax and it could have served many people and ideas.

And so these conversations are already happening in the community. We we should be at those conversations because if they happen next year, how will that impact our ask? or if they happen next year and they're just focused on child care, how could we work with them to to make it a a wreck in child care or roads and childare, you know, like how can we be part of the conversation to start this fall rolling because it's not an all at once, something we can start working on Q1 to get on a ballot for November that will come into effect for 27. Yep. That would be and that's a I mean moving at the blazing speed of local government that's a fast timeline.

Yeah. And the more people in the room you know the longer it takes but also the more impactful our action can be. Yeah. If all of the priorities are at the table at once. Okay. I think this is a super valuable budget conversation. It is looking ahead pretty far. But I also feel like what we've got to do to get our ducks in a row for 26 is already so stressed and strained that making any adjustments changes to that we're too we're too late in the game for that right now. Yeah. I'm not actually proposing a change to our 2026 budget. What I'm offering is that as we look at our 2026 budget,

where are we seeing the gaps and the pressures that need relief? And what kind of a long-term strategy could we be creating with our whole community to to relieve that before it bursts? Yeah. Like before we have to let go of the wreck department, before we have to say no to the fire department. Yeah. Like let's get ahead of ourselves if we can. Yeah. What would be a good communication strategy to like plant the seed? Oh, okay. I have an idea for that, too. So the leadership round table I think is a place where we could start. Okay.

Um and I think if we all showed up to that it would show that like this is a community, this is a county priority and we want to be at the table and we want to be part of the conversations. And that's all that's also where there's um what do you call critical thinking critical problem solving happening. Yeah. Well, it's a great

Yeah. So the energy in that room is really excellent when it comes to problem solving. So bringing this to that room I think would be a good place to start. And from there depending on where we see the priorities rising from that a comm strategy could be created. Mhm. And then also from our point you know discussing our comm's budget which we thought was one thing comm's outreach was we thought it was one thing this year but then canvas informed us that those that money didn't actually exist. Like we also need to be putting a lot of

places in the closet. We also need to be putting money towards our comms. Yeah. Because in order to to explain this to people, it takes some investment. Yeah, it does take some investment. And I feel like a lack of investment there has led to a lot of the local miscommunications, misunderstandings, um, and voids in stuff. I really wish I could tell every single person in this community now that I've had time.

Yeah. in this building because I know what it's like to think that everything's being frivolously spent left and right and that there's no rhyme or reason to it. And uh I burned $100 in the trash can this morning just for fun. Yeah, cuz I'm a county employee now. Oh, just freaking burning money. For the record, this is sarcasm. I don't want that to end up on Facebook. Come to my office hours, you'll find out. If you think we're lining our pockets, go look at the tires on my truck right now. Um, I think it's a tough cell. I think I know everybody's like your It's child care. It's housing.

We can't have it all. We can't pay for it all. The county. It's the schools and the schools just got a a decent raise last year. So, if I was going to go to the ballot box and start voting on more tax increases, I would be very reluctant given the increase in property tax, increase in the county budget. So, wow.

And as far as going to those meetings, like maybe after the first of the year, I might start attending, but for now, I I'll lean on you. I will I'm okay starting to show up to those. That doesn't add any burden to staff. That doesn't do anything other than just, you know, if we can start reallocating our like weekly schedules to include more things that maybe aren't in this room, you know, like maybe they have to be posted if it's like, you know, hey, we're all going to go to a leadership round table. Hey, we're going to um sit down with community coffee. You know, like I think those rooms might be a really powerful way for us to start getting checking off some of these community outreach and communication um seed planting kind of things

like you're saying. You know, I agree with that. And then and it's not us scheduling more work sessions to get people to come in here. I think if the three of us are getting out there Yeah. then we can have less to do that needs to happen in this room. What do you think?

Yeah, come join. It also I love leadership round table and I love it when I'm able to attend which hasn't been as much as I would have liked this first you know part of the year but as I've started to hand off hats that I've been wearing and finish up the budget in the next few weeks and wait um it that's really the place where you get to connect with people and really hear what they think and feel and and just get outside of the the normal crew that you hear your things from because I think it's really important to put yourself in different places where you really can hear, you know, what people are thinking. Um the community coffees, those are a great place. I I think it's really important because it's a little different than asking people to come to us.

Yes. And that's why I really love to do those things when we can and hope to have a little more bandwidth after December to do that a little bit more because that's what really helps you know this is what we should be focusing on. And for me it's like oh are we not doing a delivering a service great. like hearing that out in the community helps me kind of come back and be like, okay, well, we really need to work on, you know, the roads or, hey, we we need to really show up and be serviceminded and and and really polite to people even if we're having a rough day and I need to probably reiterate that with staff. So, I love the thought that we would go out and be involved in those things because that's where you get real feedback.

Yeah. I mean, you get real feedback on Facebook, too, but sometimes it's just not as conducive as like having a real face to face conversation with people. So, I think those would be great places to understand what people want.

I love the idea of we can't cover everything forever. Um, but if the community gets to vote, it it really gives them the option to say where they want their dollars to to be spent. Like, is is Wreck the thing you're passionate about? Great. Say it with your voting. If we are reducing our budget, we're going to be asking for less from people in terms of property taxes. We're going to provide the services, you know, and that's just an example. It could be whatever it is, the fire department, the animal shelter, the underwater basket weaving club. I don't care what it is. You know, we can really focus on the things we're supposed to provide and and do them to the best of our ability and do them well. Mhm.

Uh instead of trying to do be everything to everybody, which has just gotten harder and harder. And I do recognize the mind is going to peter off at some point and we're going to need to have a plan to keep running things and and rather than say, well, this is the year we got to cut the thing, it gives us a offramp to say, okay, how can we really actually maintain the things that are the most important to people in our community? So, I don't know. I think I love I love the idea of being able to explore those options.

Matt, what does it look like when the three of us want to go to a leadership round table or a city council meeting to start having these conversations? Do we have to post that if it's somebody else's event? I mean, I think ideally you post it, especially if there's more than two, but you know, again, you're not discussing public business. You're not really there to make decisions or anything. You're there to bounce ideas off folks and solicit input. Um, you know, to the extent you can post it would sort of be my recommendation, but you know, if you can't shows up, I wouldn't stress about that either. Okay.

Leadership round tables are the only things we're not posting. We're posting city council. We're posting community. Community coffee. We're So yeah. Okay. We can start posting the leadership round table. You said you got the numbers of what we're spending on statutory versus other not the numbers just what is our statutory obligation. So you can you can cross reference that with our budget with our total numbers. Extrapolate the difference. Yeah. Um, I could pull that number together, though. You don't do anything. We'll figure it out. No. Well, I mean, we do that. We can do that while we're working on the budget.

Working on the budget, so it's fine. You stayed up till 2:00 a.m. working the other night. Don't do anything. We'll figure it out. I won't do it again after this budget's done. Um, it can Yeah, it can easily be a next year plan. It's not a this year. Sorry. The reason I asked that is cuz it'd be really cool to pull up some, you know, come in with a little

easel, put a little infographic on there and say, "Hey, here's how we've been operating." And you want to know why stuff is falling apart and the there's cracks in the slides at the playgrounds that have never been fixed and the skate park's crumbling and the you know, the buildings are whatever. You know, there's all the stuff that we can't fix. And we don't have any we don't have nearly as much as we would like to see saved in the bank for contingency and you know, X, Y, and Z, all of it. And here's why. Here's the number. Here's what we've been spending on things most counties don't spend on. I'd also like to show here's how out of 64 counties in Colorado, here's how many have paid for this. Here's how many pay for that. here's how many use this as a funding mechanism, you know, like to be able to show that like,

you know, we're doing things a little backwards here and it's costing this community in ways that we aren't seeing every day. You might see them in your ball joints and alignments and tires on your car falling apart, but yeah, it's a lot of communication campaigning. Yeah. Yeah. you know, you're complaining about there never being enough uh law enforcement to to keep speeders in check on some of our roads or that there's, you know, we could fix we could put a little more into some of that if we didn't have to pay for, you know, the all this fun stuff. Candace, do you think in the future this could be a part of our dashboards

where it's like you could filter it of statutory versus non-stuto? Yeah, we would just have to completely set that filter, you know, to the different accounts that we want or departments I'd say to filter that way and then yeah, it should be fine. What's nice is once you takes a while to set a dashboard up, but once it's set up, you just like refresh it and it pulls the data directly from the income statement. Someday that'd be cool to be able to just click on as part of this conversation. Yeah. Yeah. That's not a this week project to be clear. Would you do that over Thanksgiving week? Yeah.

Friday. Yeah. Well, you keep working. We'll hit you up when we're back from Thanksgiving. Um, thanks you guys. That's what I wanted to talk about. That's perfect. I know it's ambitious. I know it's optimistic, but I really feel like it's part of the work we could be doing that would set people up for decades.

That is amazing. And that is a really huge component and like a direction and that we need to start thinking because you guys, you know, you guys know I love to just crazy stress about stuff and and think looking at what just happened with our budget, what's happening with our budget and trying and watching staff try and Tetris this all together in a way that gets balanced has been given me serious anxiety like how are we ever going to do anything? How are we going to move forward? So, I know we will, but it's just like what are some solutions? And we got we got to put them all on the table. And this is a big that's a big possibility. And I I do think that people would be pretty receptive to some some change in that direction. I think it's a great idea, Elsa. I think it's massive. I think one of the things that feels most Adam's not going to love that I'm saying this, but you know, I served on the tourism panel for like six years and that fund, all those dollars, we never had enough money to um hire a staff person and then we did. And then Tim Bergman decided that it would be great to create a department within the county and take on all of that all of that um cost of the whole staff. And now there are multiple staff in that department. And I remember having the conversation with Adam maybe like 2023 when this happened. I was like, man, someday though that will be a that that department might not be able to be funded. And then it's totally up to the people who are sitting at the BOCC table

if they're going to fund that department. And I would ra I personally would rather keep it separate so that it could be kind of safeguarded and just use the money that is appropriated to it. Yeah. I love the work that they've done. I love everything about our TED devel our TED department, but it's non-stutory. Like it's a huge cost that we've taken on in just the last two years. And and just like the the more we do that, I think it the more it puts those services at risk. Yes.

And so part of this to me is about making sure we can actually safeguard these services before they have to be cut. And um I think economic development is one of those things that I care deeply about. I think lots of people in this community care deeply about. We have not seen we we've seen stagnation for years now when it comes to our economic development and business advocacy. And much as I would want to take that on as um like I want to champion that as a commissioner and I feel like the way I can best champion economic development is to ask the voters if they would put aside different money to support that as opposed to us continuing to try to fund that as a government. And that's not it doesn't feel appropriate for this building and this organization to be directing and funding economic development unless it is through policy. So it's just an example of one of the things that I care deeply about and I think that other people in this community would resonate with their dollars towards economic development.

It's not just rap or fire. It's a great Q1 Q1 item. Um, I have another one of those which is would kind of go in line with this would be the assets divestments. What do we have that we don't need? We obviously need to get a asset management plan at least to some degree sorted, but I'm wondering if there's stuff we can identify right off the bat that we're like, we don't need this. You know, this is a burden. This is a burden on us holding on something that's not being used and and is costing us or it could be something that is really valuable we want to hold on to.

Mhm. We just don't know. Or we could be getting it back under the tax role and leveraging it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, so yeah, like figuring out we could identify some probably pretty big things that we should at least discuss. What are we doing with this? Why do we want to hold on to it? And do we not? You know, there's Yeah. So, Andy,

that's another Q1 conversation for right now. We got to take a hard look at um we're getting so close to getting this thing dialed, but we keep finding more little errors left and right that are still putting us. It's like we're two steps forward, one step back situation. Huh. Not really errors. It just sometimes it takes a moment to get information like and also a budget your best estimate of what you let's say printer ink didn't quite print right on a page and a zero got dropped off of something

and we found Okay, so we still need a little bit of we still got to get across the finish line and we need to cut we need to cut some more. Um I have suggestions tomorrow. Okay. I do like a I can sit down with Will and we can cut whatever

with finance. Sorry. Um but also there are some some places where it's like hey there are some options about what we cut back on and really want to give you guys the opportunity to say this is what we would want to see. Um so we can make those final decisions cuz there's a few different options for places we can say hey this seems like a lot. maybe we can write it in. Or um we had a few quotes for like our workers comp came back much higher than we had anticipated or we found out that some of the homes we're building will need to be insured for a while until they're sold. You know, there's something

these aren't things we can cut out. These are things more things that we have to pay. So she's saying it's not an error. It's just information. Just information. Okay. Yeah. And your budget will change throughout the year. That's why you have supplements. you just do the best absolute job you can and take it from there.

Um but that's what tomorrow we really want to talk about different mill scenarios and talk about um just some decisions you guys have to make um give us guidance on you know so we can continue doing the work to get everything balanced. accessible. So, have a balanced budget and start to after we get this balanced budget done, start to really, you know, make sure that we feel really confident in the numbers that we do have for, you know, our fund balances because we did have to do two audits at once.

And we want to make sure we're using audited fund balances and make sure, you know, that we start to have a five-year outlook for, okay, these are the trends we've seen for the last years. what are we going to see in the next five? And and really start to have a more complete budget picture and planning picture. You can't really plan for what you aren't at least projecting out knowing that crazy things can happen and DHS might not be funded, you know, at the drop of a hat or whatever the new surprise is.

You know, those things are outliers. Co's an outlier. But, you know, you can start to have that five-year picture of, okay, this is what we think we can plan for and and start to have a clearer picture rather than just being reactionary. And we are we're getting there. Yeah,

that feels good. Um, I think for right now, um, being honest with Do you think it's prudent right now to be honest with partners about what we can do for this budget versus what we've been doing traditionally? And while we're in this space of like I think people are starting to get the picture of like these guys are really trying to cut back on everything. Should we be having these conversations with community partners right now about like hey this year's going to look a little different. We got to cut things back, you know, like it's not not going to look the same. We're not We want to help. We still want to do something, but we got to take like 50% off of what we've been doing. Is that

Is there anywhere in the budget where we've done that? It feels like pretty not significant changes to services. No, we haven't changed services really much for this next year. I think we need just a clean budget where we went to spent the last two years before we created that budget. Exactly. The only thing that I've heard us talk about where there could be a change in services is with the summit stage and we haven't renegotiated a new IGA. So, we don't even know what that would be yet. We've said some we've said some we've implied some pretty hard nos

where to change in services. Oh, like I'm trying to wrap trying to wrap my head around like how that fits with uh like what we're just giving to like nonprofits or like the animal shelter or like when I think of change in services, I think of like what have we been doing to cut back on spending here in building. And I think if we look at that picture as a whole, I think we versus what we were going to be doing when we first got in here versus where we're at now. I think we've cut back like 17ish somewhere in the $17 million or something like that. So I I think we're doing a lot to cut back without cutting the services that you know people are depending on from us.

It's mostly capital investments that we've done the trimming. Yeah. And the change in donations or contributions to nonprofits. I think the difference up there has been the ARPA dollars that are no longer available. So we're going back to like a precoid number as opposed to being the pass through for ARPA dollars to our some of our community partners which I think has been really clear. These we're talking about general fund not ARPA dollars anymore even though I understand that on our side the ARPA dollars are comp complicated. Not talking about that.

Cool. When do we start? This next month. Okay. Leadership round table is on is next month. Well, I think we should uh combine the dream of increasing revenue with the reality of of cutting back, you know, figuring out where we cut staff. I would feel a whole lot confident in any combine departments, combine city and county services. See what if we could sell that to the public. Like if we combine road and bridge, we're going to be able to pay for two more blocks a year. Mhm.

All the mana all the management, middle management in both the city and the county. I just the building department alone, you know, so maybe that's where we could start all for that. Yeah, cutting we say two positions by combining the building departments. And I don't know how that would work tax-wise and how open they would be to it, especially considering we need to be very careful about how we talk about that until we have a hard sit down with our partners across the street. Yeah.

And talk about that. We It would be really damaging, I think, to start talking about that on our end until we really hammer some things out with those guys across the street in a positive way. you know, it's just not like I don't want to use the word hammer cuz that sounds abrasive and rough, but you know, until we

really tip, you know, find a way to dance around some of these sticking points and, you know, pain points that have been traditionally traditional roadblocks to this conversation. So, I want to start saying that I want to shout it from the rooftops, but cuz we have been since we've been running, but we we need them on board. We need their support, full collaboration, cooperation, communication.

Maybe that's a Q1 joint work session where we could really start talking about it with real numbers and ask staff for contributions about what's and I know proposals have been created in the past, feasibility studies have been done for some of those combinations. Like let's use some of those and see what real life it could look like. Let's get on their agenda. Let's get on their agenda to city city council meeting. I think doing a joint work session would be more valuable than getting onto their agenda so that we don't have this like time crunch to move through their agenda.

You know, it's just a process thing. But yeah, let's get let's get with them and start talking about it cuz their whole budget is there's hardly any statuto issues. Is that correct? Yeah. Fire. Fire is not a statutoation city. All I thought there's was Okay. Sorry. Yeah. They have city police. Even that's not a statuto obligation really. LPD is not We could really It's not statutory law enforcement. Yeah,

but I think we'd need um a lot of clarity on the temperature amongst city council and their leadership staff of how they feel what the what the pathway to these goals looks like before we start bringing that to the leadership round tables and things like that. I I don't think we we should avoid saying we'd love to work with these guys to figure out how to make this happen because it would save, you know, I yeah,

I would have a lot more faith in any government entity that was displaying and showing how they were actually cutting back on spending and being more responsible with dollars and be more likely to want to help support with new possibility of new districts or things like that if I knew or if I had some confidence that my tax dollars were being spent and used responsibly and appropriately. Andy, I don't want to cut you short, but I just want to respect your time today. I meant to say 10 minutes ago. I got to leave in a few minutes here, guys.

There you go. You too, Sandra. Good luck to Will you sign that real quick before you run out? Okay, here you go. There you go. Just kidding. Oh, yeah. Sandra, you have to go too. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, it's okay. No, it's great. I'm excited for this. Okay. Signed. Oh, all of you guys. Oh my god. We'll get it. We'll get it. You go go at home. We discussed. Wow. We discussed maybe collaborating on a different day so people could Sorry, Candace. What did you say? We discuss collaborating on a different day so all could join in future.

Oh, you're welcome. I love it. And do you want to end it? Oh, yes. It is 12:56 p.m. We'll conclude this work session. Lake County Board of County Commissioners. Thank you, chair. Thank you, CF. Thank you, commissioners. Good luck. I'll see you up there in a little bit. Bye. They're cheating.