County Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Ms. Lawrence, if you can call roll, please.

Mr. Bellis? Mr. Coslett?

Here.

Mr. Haas?

Here.

Ms. Krishnowsky? Here. Mr. Lombardo? Ms. McDermott? Here. Ms. Simmons?

Here.

Ms. Smith? Here. Ms. Stevenson? Present. Ms. Williams? Here. Mr. Sabatino?

Here.

You have 9 of 11.

Okay, thank you. Now, we will do any public comment on the proposed ordinance adopting the 2027 Long Range Operational Fiscal and Capital Plan for Luzerne County. Is there anyone from the audience? Seeing no one, is there anyone on the Zoom? No. Is there a motion to adjourn?

Motion.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed, abstentions? We are adjourned. Thank you. All right, we're going to start the second public hearing. We've already had the Pledge of Allegiance in the moment of silence. Ms. Lawrence, will you call roll, please?

Mr. Bellis? Mr. Koslitz?

Here.

Here.

Mr. Haas? Here. Ms. Krishnowsky? Here. Mr. Lombardo? Here. Ms. McDermott? Here. Ms. Simmons?

Here.

Ms. Smith. Here. Ms. Stevenson. Present. Ms. Williams. Here. Mr. Sabatino.

Here.

All present.

Thank you. Now we'll open public comment on proposed ordinance amending the 2026 fiscal year budget for Luzerne County Probations. I have two slips. Mr. Griffith, please.

My comment on the budget amendment is that more unfunded mandates by the state. I do understand we're getting a PCCD grant from the state for this increase in salaries for these folks that are working in probation currently. And I know they work very hard in that department. I know Fran and I know Kevin and a lot of those folks that are up in that department that do work very hard. And I certainly welcome the state giving us enough money to pay them. My concern is when the grant is over, who's going to pay them after that? The county is going to have to pay three new probation officers. And I think maybe if we could get some kind of provisions in the ordinance that says they can increase fees from the courts, the courts have to regulate that, obviously. But somewhere along the line, if the courts would give us the ability to increase probation fees to backfill, that looks like about $162,000 for three people. that is going to cost us because as everyone knows, when we increase salaries, we also have a pension obligation that cost the taxpayers money from that as well. So it's not just salary increases that are costing the county taxpayers. It's also pensions, benefits, all of those things go into the big picture. So I really would hope the council would take into consideration when you talk about these budget amendments and the grant, we don't want to lose the grant for sure, but we want to make sure we have provisions to pay these people when the grant runs out. That's the concern that I have because that's an awful lot of money that we're going to have to pay on top of giving them their regular increases in salary. We just gave most of those folks in that department a 3% or 4% increase in January of 2026, starting the new year. Are we going to give them another increase in 2027? And I know the ordinance says that it's spaced out. That increase they're getting is spaced out. It's not one lump sum. But just if the council could consider that, where's the money going to come from in two years? I would appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Next up, I have Mr. Arnaud. Oh, not for that. Not for that? OK. Anyone else for public comment from the audience? Anyone on Zoom? Motion to adjourn? Motion.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed, abstentions? We are adjourned. We'll reconvene at 6.01 for the voting session.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right, everyone. We're going to start the voting session. We've already done the Pledge of Allegiance in the moment of silence. Ms. Lawrence, could you call roll, please?

Mr. Bellis?

Here.

Here.

Mr. Coslett? Here. Mr. Haas? Here. Ms. Krishnowsky? Here. Mr. Lombardo? Here. Ms. McDermott? Here. Ms. Simmons?

Here.

Ms. Smith? Ms. Stevenson? Present. Ms. Williams? Here. Mr. Sabatino?

Here.

All present.

Thank you. Attorney Skeen, will you announce the three executive sessions we've had over the last two weeks?

Yes, we had two executive sessions concerning litigation. that is currently undergoing and we had one today relating to employment matters.

Thank you, Mr. Steele. Are there any deletions from tonight's voting session agenda? Seeing none, is there a motion to adopt tonight's agenda?

I'll make a motion. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The agenda is adopted. We'll move into public comment. I have a slip for Mr. Griffith. Thank you. Ms. Cochran, did you have something on the agenda?

No.

Oh, the second one. Thank you. And all right. I'm going to butcher this one. It's Kuczynski? Yeah. Mr. Kuczynski? No. OK. Ms. Pissarro, I saw your hand up. No. Okay. Anyone else from the audience? Anyone else on Zoom? Okay, moving right along. Motion to adopt the minutes from the August 11th, 2026 voting session. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed, abstentions? Minutes are adopted. Number two, motion to adopt the ordinance, motion to adopt ordinance adopting the 2027 long-range operational fiscal and capital plan for Luzerne County. So moved. Second. Okay.

On the question, Mr. Chair. Can I propose an amendment? Please, if we look at page 10, everybody, of the long-range capital plan. If you look at, let me see here, there Not itemized, but it's the courthouse facade light item. It looks like to me it's six up from the bottom. I'd like to move that to the top of the 2027 list, which puts it right above boiler roof replacement. And the rationale is that I'd like to see us really prioritize the courthouse facade work. I said last meeting, it's a gem of Luzerne County. It's the thing people see when they come up 81, or if they come south, they see the courthouse gleaming there. right next to the Angeline and Doyle sign now, but nonetheless, I really think it's a beacon. I think it would serve the people well to put that at the top of the list. That's my amendment.

Mike. On the question. I would just want to hear from the county.

Is there a second on the amendment?

I'd actually like to see it moved to the third place.

Hang on, there's an amendment on the floor. Why don't I second it and then we can have discussion.

Thank you. Okay, go for it.

I would like to hear on that movement from the county manager on what she feels. Obviously, this is a prioritized list from top to bottom. That's my question. Was it prioritized already being that maybe the boiler roof replacement is in dire need and the facade could wait? That's my question. Like, was this prioritized based on need?

Well, it was prioritized based on need and what projects are already in the works. And obviously, the courthouse sewers and pipes are definitely something that we have to do. I stay up late at night thinking what would happen if the sewer pipes break and where would we put all the judges and the jurors. and Paul Highmarsh from Court Administration. I have no idea where I would put him, but that's primary. We have to do that. I mean, they're the original pipes. They need to be replaced. They served us well. The Bruminski courtroom renovation is already rolling. We have plans already in place. So that absolutely needs uh to get done um obviously the facade we can move it uh maybe to the third uh to the third uh spot uh if that uh would be okay with uh uh councilman haas that it's a priority uh and it's the first priority after two major projects that we have to get done.

Are you okay with that, Sean?

Yeah, that's even further up. I was just looking at the completion dates. It looks like 2026 are the top five. So, I mean, I have no problem moving it even further up. But without a doubt, my reasoning was that the first two, I'm right there with you. We need to fix the sewage and the Brominski, we have to have courtrooms. So, I mean, I have no problem with that. Joanna, are you still okay with your second?

Yes. Can I just ask a question?

Sure.

What exactly? So the R&B garages, that's heat. And that was placed third for a reason. Why?

Well, because that could be done quickly.

Okay. And the AED machines feel like those are probably pretty high priority.

They are high priority because not all of them are up to date.

And how quickly can that get done?

That can get done fairly quickly.

Can you give me like months?

No, and Michelle and Nick are at EMA for the Talon drill. But I can get you that information.

And the emergency building repairs. Why were those placed ahead of the facade? I'm just trying to get an idea of why these are placed in this order. Because while I also feel the facade is very, very important, I do believe that there are structural things or health and safety things that may be more important.

We can move those to the top of 2027.

OK. And the facade is only the first and second floors, right? For now. But this particular project, as we have a list, it is only the first and second for now. Is it possible that we change before the end of this project?

But there are leaks, I believe, in the sheriff's department that are fairly serious that we cannot we can't do the interior until we do the exterior.

So we would need to do the facade before we absolutely need to do the side.

OK, so moving this isn't. moving us to something of the boiler room replacement or boiler roof replacement rather isn't going to cause major public health and safety issues.

No, and we can move it to the top of 2027. If that it would satisfy everybody. I just want to be clear. I agree with Councilman Haas. This is our gem, our building. We would never be able to rebuild this building and we have to make sure that we maintain it and take care of it.

Sure, I totally agree. I just wanted to know what, these were put in order for a reason. Right. So I wanted to know the reasons. Thank you very much.

Councilman LaMarva?

Yeah, I was just wondering if Councilman Haas can repeat what his amendment was, where exactly he wanted. Absolutely. You're putting it above the boiler roof replacement?

So I put it at the top of the 2027 list, which is just above the boiler roof replacement. So it's the top priority for the next year. Again, assuming that the other five projects dated 2026, everybody can see that already underway or getting close to completion. So I just thought that prioritizes our agenda for the new year.

Sounds good. Thank you.

And that was what was seconded by my colleague over here.

Understood.

Understood. Yep.

Thanks for asking. All right. Anyone else on this question? We're going to be voting on the amendment to move the courthouse facade to the top priority for 2027. All right. Roll call, please.

Mr. Bellis?

Yes.

Yes. Mr. Coslett?

Yes.

Mr. Haas? Yes. Ms. Krishnowsky? Yes. Mr. Lombardo? Yes. Ms. McDermott? Yes. Ms. Simmons? Yes. Ms. Smith? Yes. Ms. Stevenson? Yes. Ms. Williams? Yes. Mr. Sabatino?

Yes. All right. Now we're back to voting on the capital plan. Any other amendments or anything on the capital plan? Seeing none, roll call, please.

Mr. Yes, Mr. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Thank you. Moving on, number three, motion to adopt an ordinance amending the 2026 fiscal year budget for Luzerne County Probations.

So moved. Second.

Anyone on the question?

Just on the question, we could speak to Mr. Highmarsh again. I know you saw him earlier. Yeah, yeah. Mr. Highmarsh, I'm just looking here, and just to clarify. Mr. Highmarsh, can you join us on the podium? Yeah. Again, I'm grateful for the PCCD to offer this up to us. We've been really looking for things like this for a long time, which we talked about last week. But just to clarify, the pretrial officers I'm seeing in the narrative, they are non-union positions, correct? Mr. Armour, is that correct? Am I reading that correctly? The probation officers are covered by a CBI. Right. Well, okay. Because I'm looking here in the narrative, I provide it said for... supporting non-union staff retention, JR2 funding. So is that salary? Is that in terms of salary or is that for?

The salary adjustments have nothing to do with anything covered by a CBA. They are for non-represented management members of the probation staff.

Okay. So we have that. And then we see also the three pretrial officers. So going forward, year three, these positions, it's going to fall upon County General Fund, right, to fund these things after that.

Some of it may. It's hard to tell. If I may comment further based on the comments that were made during the public comment period by Mr. Griffith. I think it's important to take this into perspective and to realize, and I think we touched on it at the last meeting during the discussion, that there will be some cost avoidance. So if some folks are placed under pretrial supervision, they will not be housed at our prison facility. I think we said 190 a day, the cost. I mean, it'll be a significant savings. I mean, we're talking dollars to 190. We're trying to figure that out. So I think that's really important to keep in perspective that over the course of the next few years as this program expands and where people are placed on pretrial services, that there will be a cost savings and avoidance. We're not sending people to a prison facility at that cost per day, which I'm sure goes up by any means.

That's the whole nature of the beast about cost avoidance for corrections, right?

So, I mean, well, I can't put a number on it, you know, per se. I don't think we're just talking about, you know, we're going to be bearing these costs into, you know, the next, what would be, you know, two years after the grants expire.

Does the CBA in that case, does it sunshine after two years if we're going to create these new positions or is that going to be going forward with the... with these three pretrial officers?

That would be going forward. I mean, I believe the county's currently in negotiations or will be going into negotiations with that.

We are. Sure, yeah. And obviously the bargaining unit's totally in favor of it, right? I mean, I'm assuming.

This was something that was discussed at CCAP. It's a project that is being promoted by the state. And the goal is to divert individuals who are in the system prior to trial, to divert them from being incarcerated. And to do that, we need to have the probation officers, and they get special training, I believe, through this grant in order to do that diversion. And I do want to say that our diversionary courts here in Luzerne County are stellar. They're actually modeled. Other counties come to Luzerne County to find out how we are as successful as we are. So there are costs associated with it. There's no such thing as a free lunch. And we will have to put general fund dollars to make up differences as Mr. Griffith said, but there are trade-offs and hopefully, and we can't give numbers because we don't know how many people are going to be in this program, but without the probation officers, they'll end up incarcerated.

Do you know, I'm going to Ms. Manager or Ms. Trimarsh as well, are there any reporting contingencies here? Do we have to keep records and show that we're yielding the savings with these diversion programs?

I mean, there are specific mandates in the grant application to account for the funds that are being expended and there's a quarterly reporting requirement back to PCCD to show them that we're actually indeed spending the money as we proposed and they awarded the grant.

But is there anything results driven?

Well, we're very results driven in probation. So, I mean, we do track trends. We do track, you know, recidivism, so on and so forth. So, you know, I mean, the pretrial programs work across the state. Allegheny County is probably the best shining example. They've got a very extensive pretrial program out there. Our folks have visited to observe what they're doing and use them kind of as a model. I appreciate the manager's comments for our diversionary programs. I mean, if you talk to anyone across the state, they refer to us as a champion court when it comes to our diversionary programs and their success in the manner in which they're run. So we're very proud of those things. I mean, this is just another step in what I believe is the right direction.

I believe we had, it was a Supreme Court justice who came.

Justice Brobson, if I'm saying that correctly, came and awarded us personally our certificate. I know some folks were in attendance for that. And I encourage all council members as well as the public to take part in those graduation events that we have for our diversionary programs. You know, they're very impactful.

I mean, and the last comment I just have to say, Councilman, it's a quarter of a million dollars, $250,000. But I know that kind of drops in that budget. It's a giant area budget with this area. And hats off to the staff that we do have. We definitely want to keep them.

Yeah, as I said, they're managing over $9,000. cases, whether they be in a pretrial program, collections, or just general supervision. They do yeoman's work down there at probation.

All right. Thanks, as always, for taking the time.

No problem. Thank you, Mr. Chair. No problem. Any other questions for Mr. Highmarsh?

Just one, Mr. Myers. Sorry, I almost got away. You did. Yes, counsel, you did. You were sneaking away. I'm never far, trust me. I have no issues at all with the three new officers, the training, everything. The issue I have are the raises for 13 people. Over the life of this, it's going to cost the taxpayers $83,000 in the general fund over the life of the grant, which these people are very much worth that money. My only question is, can we turn this into a one-time bonus for them and then put any raises in future years? budget negotiations. I just feel that that 83,000 that we're going to get hit with, again, that's another, you know, we're looking at raising taxes, which I would like to avoid as much as humanly possible. So if we give them a bonus, it's a one-time hit from the grant. The rest of the grant could go for the three positions. They can go for the training, which, I mean, we do have probably the best probation officers this side of the state. We really do. We have a phenomenal, and I've worked with them closely at the jail. So, I do agree with that. But if we could turn the raises into bonuses, it's their money. It's a grant for that department. So I have no problem with them getting it like that. But the raise part of it raises questions on pensions and taxes. And that's the only thing I'd like somebody to look into a little bit more. But again, that's my take on it.

Well, thank you for your comments. I mean, I think we touched on that a little bit during the work session two weeks ago, but the court has made the decision that that's the way that they would like to proceed.

Any other questions for Mr. Hindmarsh? Thank you, Mr. Hindmarsh. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Any other comments from council members? Roll call, please.

Mr. Haas?

Yes.

Ms. Krzynowski? Yes. Mr. Lombardo? Yes. Ms. McDermott? Yes. Ms. Simmons? Yes. Ms. Smith?

Yes.

Ms. Stevenson? Yes. Ms. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bellis?

Yes.

Yes.

Mr. Coslett?

Yes.

Mr. Sabatino?

Yes.

Unanimous.

Thank you. Number four, motion to adopt a resolution requesting a statewide local share account grant from the Commonwealth Financing Authority for the Huntsville Extension. So moved. Roll call, please.

Ms. Krishnowsky? Yes. Ms. McDermott? Yes. Mr. Lombardo?

Yes.

Ms. Simmons? Yes. Ms. Smith? Yes. Ms. Stevenson? Yes. Ms. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bellis?

Yes.

Yes. Mr. Coslett?

Yes.

Mr. Haas?

Yes.

Mr. Sabatino?

Yes.

Unanimous.

Thank you. Number five, motion to adopt a resolution authorizing the county manager to execute a contract with eCollect for the collection of hotel room taxes and related services. So moved.

Second.

Anyone on the question? Roll call, please.

Mr. Lowe.

Joanna, sorry.

I guess I just don't understand why we need another authority to collect taxes that were already supposed to be collected.

Mary, would you like to take the podium and answer Councilwoman Smith's question?

I've been struggling with this since our last meeting. So thank you, Mary.

So this company actually goes after hotels that are not currently paying both business privilege tax and hotel tax. So we do collect. We do collect the taxes, obviously, for the hotels.

So wait, can I ask a question?

Sure.

Why don't we know that?

Why don't we know that they exist? A lot of them are like bed and breakfast, Airbnbs, and we just, we don't know that they exist. So if we know that they exist or if someone drives by and says, hey, you know what? We see that they're like, people are staying there. They should be paying a hotel tax. We would certainly contact them and say, hey, You guys have to be paying hotel tax.

But don't they have to register something as a hotel?

They're supposed to, but there are companies that don't. So this company goes and finds those people that are trying to get away without paying them. So we are not losing anything in doing it. I mean, we collect the hotel tax for every hotel that we can identify. They're just, you know, they have a way of investigating and finding, you know, these hotels that are trying to get away with not paying.

Okay.

I mean, I don't know how much it's going to be. I mean, it could be, it could be very little or it could be a lot. I mean, you know, we've never, we've never done that before. It's like having an auditor, right. To audit your hotel tax. That's what it's like. So they're out there, you know, finding, finding these places and then we get them back on the tax rolls. That's what they do.

Well, I mean, we want them on tax rolls. Obviously that's not my problem, but they take a part of what they find.

They take 25% of what they find. Yeah.

a high percentage. And how long is the contract for? The term is three years, right? With an automatic one-year renewal.

Right. Ms. Roselle, I have a question. The 25% is only a one-time finder's fee. So if they didn't pay $10,000 over 10 years, the company would get $2,500. And then after that, we would know about it. So we would collect it and they would not pay the 25%.

Yeah, they answered that question at the last meeting. They clarified that. I believe the person who was standing up here clarified that because that question was asked.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

All the questions? All right. Roll call, please.

Mr. Lombardo?

Yes.

Ms. McDermott? Yes. Ms. Simmons? Yes. Ms. Smith? Yes. Ms. Stevenson? Yes. Ms. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bellis?

Yes.

Yes. Mr. Kozlet?

Yes.

Mr. Haas? Yes. Ms. Krishnowsky? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes.

Thank you. Number six, motion to adopt the resolution urging the Pennsylvania General Assembly to reauthorize Chapter 53 of Title 25 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes with an increase 911 surcharge to support next generation 911 services across the Commonwealth.

So moved. Second.

Anyone on the question? Roll call, please.

Ms. McDermott? Yes. Ms. Simmons? Yes. Ms. Smith? Yes. Ms. Stevenson? Yes. Ms. Williams? Yes. Mr. Bellis?

Yes.

Yes. Mr. Coslett?

Yes.

Mr. Haas?

Yes.

Ms. Krishnowsky? Yes. Mr. Lombardo? Yes. Mr. Sabatino? Yes. Unanimous.

Thank you. Okay, we've arrived at our second round of public comment. I would like to start with Mr. Griffith.

Good evening, council. First of all, I'd like to thank Sharon Lawrence, the clerk to council for her extra work in getting those petitions taken care of and the signatures counted and thumb drive copied. I appreciate the extra work for the clerk to counsel that is an awful, awful lot of work from somebody who had to tabulate all that information for petitioner committee. I know the work that was involved and I thank her very much for that extra work. Not that she doesn't have any free time to do it. So I really do appreciate it. And with one arm too, by the way, one arm. So she's done very well. So thank you, Sharon, for that. I'd like to address transparency, which seems to be a pretty key word around here. It seems how we saw an article today where Mr. Lombardo and manager Crocomo was absolved of their criminal lawsuit for violating a sunshine law. I think that's pretty important transparency. And there's always been that statement made around here, transparency for some, except some members of council who want to use it as a weapon. So I want to ask the question about Mr. Bellis's transparency. When he ran for office as a councilman in 25, he said accountability and transparency, promoting open government and ensuing residents understand the reasons behind decisions, even when those decisions are difficult. Well, we see that's not true. There's a councilman who has not fulfilled his obligation as a campaign. One would wonder if the reason for transparency by Mr. Bell is to intimidate and harass voters on a petition process. Does transparency mean that he will hide the use of taxpayers' money to fight his legal battles on a lawsuit caused by refusing not to follow the procedures of the Office of Law? Does transparency mean filing Sunshine Law violations against fellow council members and county manager for no transparency yet work behind the scenes with other council members to stop reading of public comment letters at council meetings, which happened in February? Chris Bellis has evaluated the county ethics code several times in a short eight months as a council member for no other purpose than to satisfy his political base. As a citizen of Luzerne County, I'm very concerned about transparency by Mr. Bellis and why Mr. Bellis feels the county taxpayers who he placed in harm's way should be paying for his legal fees when he acted as an individual person and placed everybody's signature on his own personal website for no other purpose than to intimidate, harass, stalk, interfere, and to stop the petition process, which we were very successful in completing. That's interesting. I'm still waiting for a motion by any member of this council for the recall of the county council chair, which has not happened yet, and I will continue to bring it until it happens. At least a motion. If it fails, then it fails. But somebody on this council needs to have the guts to stand up and call this council member out for working behind the scenes of members of this council, going behind the backs of members of council, getting legal advice, drafting ordinances, human relations commission stuff without other council members' knowledge. That is not appropriate for a council chair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Griffith.

Okay, next up we have Mr. Kuczynski. Am I close?

You're close.

Thanks.

Pretty close.

I want to know, could you say your name and you know, Jerry Kaczynski?

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd like to know how much you could tax us to death already. I mean, we the people of Luzerne County are mad as hell. And we can't put up with it anymore. I mean, you have these people moving in here with these corporations, giving them the koz 10 year tax free. I mean, it's, it's astonishing that you let them do it. And there's a tax base right there for you. Granted, give them a little bit of leeway, not 510 years, give them two years, you got to do something for us people. The roads are a mess, the bridges are in disarray. Everything is falling in the toilet. I like to see something done about keep on increasing taxes. It's stupid. I mean, if you can't balance a budget, you cut back. Simple as that. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. Next up, we have Ms. Cochan from Dallas Township.

Robin Cochan, Dallas Township. The only transparency witnessed in this council majority seems to be deceit. Instead of following protocol and law, you act on your own accord, completely disrespecting Luzerne County voters while flexing your power. You negatively view the referendum as overturning the will of those elected, yet its legal use is because of the unruly will of those elected. We've been told lies, lies about ICE, lies about Dropbox fraud, lies about campaign signatures, lies about doxing voters, and lies about your use of office. Pledges of common sense, practical governance, accountability, fiscal responsibility, avoiding excessive regulation, and fixing county roads and bridges were all lies. Like an abuser and typical of your party, you blame others for your actions. Instead of taking responsibility for doxing voters, which initiated the lawsuit, you have the audacity to blame them, stating you don't get to harass or harm anyone. You then act above the law. Your weak justification is the public has a right to know who signed the petition so everyone can have the knowledge they need to participate in the process. exactly how our names, knowledge, and how do they help anyone participate in the process, unless it's a nefarious process. To avoid more lawsuits, the county has a duty in this era of digital crime to rethink handling out citizens' information. Somehow the public's right to know didn't include radical Lehigh Valley activist Liz Bradbury dictating life in our county while creating more government bloat. In truth, if not exposed, you never would have told the public that this radical activist demanded you censor voters, that you must shut the people down and keep this off the ballot. Contrary to your misconception, voters were not ashamed to sign the petition. Voters are outraged. They are disgusted that you dox, lie, censor, intimidate, and abuse taxpayer funds. Voters loathe your tyrannical actions. You have angered over 15,000 voters to date, and that is before this goes on the ballot. The clock is ticking. Think deeply about what you are doing. You've misused taxpayer money on legal fees. You've sullied this council. Revisit the definitions of transparency, accountability, and responsibility. Have some honor. Repeal the ordinance and- Director, please.

I'm a candidate, Joe Butkowitz. I'm a resident of Kingston. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm on the board of the Delaware-Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. And I want to thank Luzerne County for including in the RFP for the rail sale, the desire for trails, more trails in the Wyoming Valley. Trails are a good thing for healthy exercise, for recreation, for safe places to go. They also drive the economy for trail friendly businesses. I recognize that we need a rail service here, robust rail service for the businesses that are here now and more that can be here in the future. But we can have both. And if we, the D&L Trail has, Congress enacted or designated the D&L National Heritage Corp in 1988. For decades, we've been building this trail from Bucks County through Northampton County, through Lehigh and Carbon and Luzard County. We're trying to bring the trail all the way down to Wilkesboro. That was always the plan. It's mostly built. It goes to Mountaintop now. It goes to Laurel Run. There's a gap. It goes to Wilkes-Barre Township. Those parts will soon be finished. We have to bring the trail down to Wilkes-Barre, likely through Ashley on this former rail trail or former rail line. That will bring a nexus of trails that will connect to all the other trails that are in the Wyoming Valley. That was the plan we've been working on for decades. So we hope that that desire comes to fruition for trails Think about the trails that are in our Wyoming Valley now. The Back Mountain Trail, Black Diamond Trail and Mountaintop, the Susquehanna Warrior Trail, the Levee Trails, the trail near Pittston, the recreational trail. Imagine if we didn't have those. Imagine our community without those trails. Now imagine if we could double that and have that many more trails through the west side and in the Pittston area, Ashley and Wilkes-Barre. That's what I hope you consider as we go forward.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next up, we have Mr. Arnaud.

All right. Last time I was here.

Can you state your name?

John Arnaud in Hanover Township. Last time I was here, I stated I ended up in prison for looking at a Lincoln site. I spent 16 months in prison on a detainer. On a detainer. I mean, that's ridiculous. And it was to stop me from talking about Mr. Bresnahan. All right, Mr. Bresnahan, he had an illegal garbage business over Wyoming Electric. That truck would be loaded with not Wyoming Electric garbage. It was loaded with garbage he'd pick up in the streets for $400, $500 a truckload and loaded in there and claimed it was Wyoming Electric's garbage. Well, I'm up in, they have 97 acres up next to Francis Slocum. I'm burying rocks up there. Here comes Robert Sr., to dump the garbage up there on the 97 acres next to Francis Slocum. He dumped two loads, 20 tons of garbage, and he wanted me to bury it, all right? Michael Kuharczyk, get that stuff out of here. All right. He got rid of it. Well, that's one of their businesses that went on for 10 years, throwing away TVs, computers, everything in them garbage trucks. Nobody checking nothing. And it was claiming it was Wyoming Electric's garbage. Wyoming Electric's garbage wasn't allowed in there, the construction garbage. That was the family side business. All right. I went to jail to stop me from talking about what this man did. All right. He pulls up, gets his car cleaned. At the shop. Cocaine found in a pocket. All right. There's a meeting at the office about it. All right. Robert Bresnahan's Range Rover with cocaine in it. All right. Because I brought it up. I'm the problem. I'm the problem. All right. They got to shut me down. They got to shut me up. All right. For this man's politics. All right. And the district attorney, they could have let me out. The public defender's office couldn't believe what I was going through. I couldn't get out of jail until Mr. Bresnahan was elected a congressman. So nobody would know any of this stuff. It's ridiculous. I worked hard for everything I've done. I helped a lot of people. I fought for people. And I go to fight for this and I end up in jail in this county? And everybody knows it. I wrote to everybody. Nobody cared. And when we talk about the jail, that's going to be interesting. Guard kicking my door at 12 o'clock at night. You ain't sleeping tonight, white boy. And then throwing me in the hall. Stealing $1,000 worth of my commissary. Putting me in the hall, sending inmates into my room. Stealing all my stuff. I know, time's almost up. But I mean, this is ridiculous. I ended up in the hall five times. I didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing. I was having Pete Bresnahan's friends in there who were voting for him, frigging slamming doors on me.

Thank you, Mr. Arno.

You're welcome. I wouldn't vote for that man.

Thank you. Anyone else in the audience for public comment? Ms. Pissarro?

Melissa Fusero, Luzerne. Thank you, first of all, to Sharon Lawrence, Clerk of Council. She had an enormous job in front of her, and she tackled it and succeeded. We are all praying for a speedy recovery of your arm, and may you regain full use of it. I would like to know why Mr. Bellis' attorney said in their documents that he acted of his own volition and his own time, yet his own attorneys are being paid for by the county taxpayers. I would also like to know why you are going above the Board of Elections when it's their decision to approve and place drop boxes, not yours, and you're not to tell them what to do with them. When is this county going to start concentrating on roads and bridges? We still have four bridges out in the county that I know of. And I'd like to finish by reading West Pittston first. Let me know when my time's up. West Piston first arrested Arnone on December 24th on multiple counts of terroristic threats, stalking, harassment, defiant trespass, and disorderly conduct. During his arraignment in December, District Judge Ferris Webby instructed Arnone not to have any contact with three victims. Police and court records filed Sunday say Arnone continued to stalk and harass three victims while with disturbing messages after his arrest December 24th. According to the complaint, Arnone wrote, "'Cause if it gets ugly, I'm not sure what's going to happen. I just don't want to think about how many lives it's going to affect." Arnone wrote in another message to victims they should listen to Black Sabbath song Iron Man, which has lyrics about planning vengeance and kills the people he once saved, the complaint says. Police in the complaint say Arnone wrote in another message that he was waiting to hear from Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic majority leader in the US House of Representatives, and was brokering a deal in the United States that required the victim's grandson. When a West Pittston officer spoke with Arnone on January 12th, Arnone claimed he wanted to see the world cleansed and was trying to get then-President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump to shake hands before Inauguration Day, the complaint says. Is my time up yet? No? Oh. A Biden-Harris flag hung from Arnone's front porch Thursday morning when he was arrested. Police allege Arnone's dropped letters off at the home of one of the owners resulting in the business located in Exeter to be evacuated. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Anyone else for public comment from the audience?

Can I answer that? No.

Next up, we have Deborah Jordan on the Zoom. Ms. Jordan.

Hello, yes. Can everybody hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Hi, Deborah Jordan.

What's your municipality, Ms. Jordan?

Yes. Deborah Jordan, Sugarloaf. So good evening, everyone, chairman, council members, and fellow constituents. So as I follow the events of the anti-discrimination ordinance and the lawsuit that ensued, I can't help but think of singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette's words, Isn't it ironic, don't you think? So what is ironic? What I find is that the citizens of this county were called upon to exercise their democratic right of freedom of speech, as outlined in the Luzerne County Home Rule Charter, to bring a referendum question to the ballot. During this process, I found an interesting fact come to light. That fact being that the people who signed the petition for the referendum question were veterans, they were victims of abuse, they were people with dreadlocks, they had tattoos, they had GEDs versus high school diplomas. So does any of that sound familiar? Because it should. Those are the same people listed in the anti-discrimination ordinance, and ironically, those are the same people who were doxxed, intimidated, and harassed by certain council members sitting at this meeting tonight. democracy a term endeared by so many a term so historically venerated for its ability to give a voice to the people was not honored by a number of luzerne county council members if it was there would not have been a concerted effort to persecute those who signed the petition there would not have been an underhanded attempt to convince voters to remove their names from the said petition Now, if these disturbing events weren't enough, the alarming actions continue even further. When a lawsuit was filed to address the charges of harassment and illegal obtainment and use of personal information, the county councilman named in the lawsuit has now been granted funding for his defense from the pockets of the very people he doxxed. Let's be very clear about the facts. The councilman has specified was acting as a public citizen, not as a member of council when he bullied individuals and business owners in the county. The same council member is now using the tax dollars of the people he intimidated to pay his attorney fees. Just take a moment to absorb the absurdity of this. Anyone with an ounce of integrity will admit that this is wrong. A private individual who's involved in a lawsuit does not have the legal authority to use taxpayer dollars for their defense. Says no legal basis. This is ludicrous. And the funding for this case should not come out of the pocket of the taxpayer. Thank you.

Thank you. You're welcome. Next up we have Mark. I'm assuming Mr. Rabo. Please unmute yourself, sir.

Mr. Chairman, this is Mark Rainbow of Hazleton speaking. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I would like to bring attention to you as far as a protocol in terms of county council bylaws that have been violated for quite, for at least several meetings. that she's been using her cell phone. Councilwoman Brynn Smith has been in violation of county council bylaws in usage of cell phone during meetings. So if she cannot put her cell phone down during the council meetings, I would suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that you remind her of her duties under the council bylaws, and if she won't adhere to them, then have the sheriff confiscate her cell phone and then return it to her after the meeting is over. That's one thing. Second thing, I see in the paper about the West Nanticoke Bridge, and I fail to understand why the manager yourself and other county leaders have failed to remind Secretary Mike Carroll that it is he who has the ability to do whatever he needs to do under his jurisdiction and the governor for this project. If it wasn't for them, especially Mr. Carroll, who has been, you know, meandering about this for Secretary Carroll for quite some time, this project would have been actually, phase one would have been either halfway completed or at least getting started by now. But nobody seems to want to push the issue. So that's the, you know, and that issue. And also with regards to what's been said about democracy and also with respect to the anti-discrimination ordinance and this stock trading thing, I would remind everybody of what our founding father, Benjamin Franklin said about democracy. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. That was the rationale of our founding father in that statement was that republics, that's why a republic was created for our country's form of government, not a pure democracy. Because as James Madison, the author of our Constitution said, that a constitutional republic is preferred better than a pure democracy because a pure democracy needs to model at the end of the day. So I would remind yourself and all of the progressive quote-unquote council members that our republic, our constitutional republic is the way it's created because so there's no majority mob rule that suppresses the rights of the minority. And lastly, on this, you know, this council member. Okay, thank you very much.

Anyone else? Motion to adjourn? I'll move it, Mr. Chair, if I have exactly the good of the order. We're going to go right through to the work session. Oh, yeah.

But just on that. A citizen, Mr. Buckowitz, came about the D&L corridor trail. And I just want to encourage him and everybody else that the Act 13 Marcellus Legacy Funds, we have several hundred thousand dollars available. The due date, however, is Friday. So it's an extremely quick turnaround time for the board. However, we just resurrected that last year under leadership of Steve Coslin with Patty Krasnowski, or I think you're the chair, Patty, on that committee. Actually, my bad, under Patty's leadership. And going forward, thanks a lot to Sharon Lawrence for bringing that back for the public and for groups, very worthwhile groups like the DNL, for the good of the group. Thank you. Thank you.

And I'd also like to thank Megan Stone and Mary Roselle and the rest of the aging staff for putting on a really good picnic up at the Irem Picnic Grounds. It was phenomenal to be there and it was truly one of the perks of the job. So to spend time with those people.

If I can, Chairman, if we're throwing shout outs, I'd like to thank Lynn, Kim, Meredith and Dr. Cortez from Wyoming Valley Behavioral Health Center in Kingston. A few council members had a tour this past week and it was phenomenal to see firsthand the system and process of being able to go to that facility. It's extraordinary. If you haven't been able to visit, please reach out to Lynn Brown. It was great. And I just wanted to thank them for all that they do. They are four extraordinary women running that program.

All right. We're going to have a motion to adjourn.

Make a motion.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed, abstentions? Seeing none, we're going to go right into the work session. We've already had the Pledge of Allegiance and Moment of Silence. If you could call roll, please, Ms. Lawrence.

Mr. Beallis? Mr. Beallis? Mr. Coslett?

Here.

Mr. Haas?

Here.

Ms. Krishnowski? Here. Mr. Lombardo? Here. Ms. McDermott? Here. Ms. Simmons? Here. Ms. Smith? Here. Ms. Stevenson? Present. Ms. Williams? Here. Mr. Sabatino? Here. 10 of 11.

Are there any additions or deletions from tonight's work session agenda? Seeing none, motion to adopt.

I'll make a motion.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? The agenda is adopted and tonight we have Wellpath with us for a presentation. Please feel free to step up to the microphone.

Good evening. Thank you for having us tonight. My name is Shane McKelvin. I'm the regional vice president of operations for the local division of the Northeast region for WellPath. It is a pleasure to be in the Commonwealth. We want to thank the council members here and especially a thanks to Megan Stone for setting all of this up for us and getting the approvals for us to speak to you this evening. We did, actually, we do have a deck prepared for you, but we felt in the best interest of all of our time that we would hand that deck out to you after we each speak this evening, just so you can kind of take that home and digest that or in another work session. But we would like to really cover, along with my colleagues, I would like to cover some highlights of what we do exactly, some of the focus points for WellPath, the focus points that we feel the county also has. And first and foremost, I would like to thank Jim, or we call him Jim, but James Jules. He is our health service administrator doing an outstanding job at the jail down the street. So he'll come up first and share a little with you. And we'll just go down the line with other colleagues today. and they will touch on their areas of expertise.

Thank you, Shane. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for allowing us to put on this presentation. I think I've had the privilege of working with most of you over the last few years. For those of you who don't know me, my name is James Jules. I'm the Health Services Administrator at Luzerne County Correctional Facility. As Shane mentioned, we're just going to hit on some of the points, the services we provide. I will start off by outlining those, and they will be further discussed by the team behind me. WellPath provides a healthcare delivery system tailored to Luzerne County. We ensure that patients have timely access to care to meet their serious medical, dental, and mental health needs. We are responsible for identifying patient care needs and scheduling appropriate treatment, as well as coordinating emergency and non-emergency onsite and offsite medical services, as most of you know. Our managed care system promotes efficiency and reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary services and encouraging preventative health measures. And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Ali.

Thank you, Jim. Distinguished council members, counties, manager, county solicitor, Good evening and thank you for having us. My name is Dr. Ali and I am the Senior VP Medical Director with WellPath. What Jim has laid out is the framework and the construct by which we provide care to our patients. Put simply, we put the patient at the center of everything that we do. We provide comprehensive care that is medical, mental health, substance use, and dental. And we strive to provide that care in a timely manner and in the right location. And sure, I could tell you about how we provide a robust intake screening and how we have automatic referral for chronic conditions and mental health and how we have processes to deal with substance use withdrawal and how we deal with urgent care matters through a sick call process and how we manage utilization management of offset referrals and medications. can also talk about our compliance measures and how we do our reports and how we're proud to say that we have over 120 sites throughout this great nation that is accredited by NCCHC, ACA, and CALEA. But what I want to impress upon you is our willingness to partner with you on issues that matter. The Times leader this past Saturday had an article that talked about the aging population in prisons and jail. And the county manager said it right, where the needs of those individuals is the most pressing driver of cost of care. We understand the current constraints and we are willing to lean in to have those discussions. We have experience with working with our clients to develop specialized units to take care of those that are aging with complex conditions. Providing assistance with activities of daily living and medical care that's needed for those individuals. You have a partner in us. I'd like to now introduce Bridget DeBeer, our regional mental health director.

Hi, everybody. I'm Brigitte DeBerry. I'm the Regional Mental Health Director for WellPath overseeing the Northeast. Thank you all for having us today. As I'm sure you all know, a lot of communities struggle with behavioral health services when we had deinstitutionalization. So there aren't a ton of mental health beds in our communities. Jail has become a mental health institution. I'm proud to say we have a wonderful team here in Luzerne County that partners with Corrections. They're made up of our licensed mental health clinicians, psychiatric providers. They work to be proactive to address mental health needs, both using psychotropic medications and using clinical interventions. One of the things that we've taken upon our mental health coordinator who's here. She helped working with corrections to develop a substance or a suicide prevention committee to be proactive, to make sure that we're talking about the clients that are in most need. They also work to develop a detox unit for individuals coming and experiencing acute detox from substances. We want to continue to partner with Luzerne County, whether it be developing behavioral health units that are specialized for certain populations, programming, anything we can do to continue to provide good services to our mental health population here in Luzerne. And I'm going to pass it off to Dr. Stephanie Ruckman, who's going to discuss MET services.

Thank you. Like she said, my name is Dr. Stephanie Ruckman and I'm the Chief MAT Officer for WellPath. MAT meaning Medication Assisted Treatment. I'm very proud and excited to stand up here and tell you about the good work that's being done at the Luzerne County Jail around opioid addiction treatment. We started this program a couple of years ago and I know that's always a hard program to start up. But the progress that we have seen over the last couple of years has been wonderful. The facility now treats over 70 individuals daily for opioid use disorder. That's individuals coming in on treatment and that's individuals who we were able to diagnose and get them the appropriate treatment. Those individuals are able to receive both oral medications and long acting injectable medications. The long acting injectables are of a greater expense, but we're happy to say that that is grant funded. So that wonderful treatment is being made available at no additional cost to the taxpayers of this county. We currently, like I said, treating over 70 people a day, which is roughly about 13% of the general population. We have goals to continue to engage individuals and grow that program because we know there are more individuals we would like to encourage to engage in treatment as well. And we also want to continue to improve that warm handoff to the community where we know these individuals are going to continue on their journey of recovery after they leave us. Thank you. And I'll hand it back to Shane to wrap it up.

so i'd like just to talk about a few things very uh very important topics and i think the first one that is top of mind are the high cost financial drivers of this contract and just of healthcare in general as we review those drivers the first thing that comes to mind at the top of the list is obviously pharmacy continues to be one of the most significant unpredictable uncontrollable drivers that we have in healthcare as far as cost goes, particularly as we see greater use of specialty medications, MAP medications, as Dr. Ruckman mentioned, those were fortunately covered under the grant dollars. And then also the antiviral medications, treatment for HIV, Hep C, and other high-cost therapies. Secondly, off-site, off-site cost. These are things like Doctor visits, patient visits to a specialty physician. It can be, as we have mentioned recently, rehabilitation services. It can be dialysis services, very high cost expenses in the healthcare landscape. Unfortunately, these are unpredictable. They're uncontrollable. There's nothing that we can do to address those issues unless we can take care of those patients in the facility in which we have them housed. So these things are necessary. But unfortunately, there's no way to predict that. Right. So how do we address some of those high cost drivers by working in collaboration with you as county council? other county officials, and with the custodial leadership to find ways that we can reduce those offsite visits. We have been very successful at other facilities within the country to reduce those offsite visits by over 50%. Of course, there are parameters that are required to do that. such as Wi-Fi services throughout buildings and many other things that we can go into later. But we are here to work in collaboration with all parties to try to reduce those expenses, because those are expenses. They're real expenses and they're unpredictable. Right. So there's a way to address it. Let's do it. The second topic is really about the different types of contracts. And some of you may say, we already know all about contracts. And most of you probably do know all about contracts. But I want you to view it a little bit differently. So much like our own personal health insurance premiums and our car insurance premiums, the question becomes, how much financial risk we as individuals are comfortable assuming versus how much predictability we want in our personal annual budgets. So it's not much different. When you look at a GEL, a facility such as that, there are different types of contracts in place. One I'll touch on is a full risk. We call it a full risk contract. This is where We price a contract with all the services that are necessary, and we take on all risk, just as it sounds. Meaning there's high predictability for the county to know exactly what their costs will be, because it is consistent throughout each month, throughout each year, because it's one price divided by 12 months. We take all risk. So that's a full risk contract. but it costs, it comes at a premium because we're taking on the uncontrollable, unpredictable, all of those events that may or may not take place. And we don't know the cost of that. Then on the flip side of that, we have what we refer to as a management fee or pass-through contract. That's when initially you're going to see a very low proposal or bid or overall cost because we're taking off the risk part, and we're passing that risk on to the county. So now all of a sudden, while you get a lower cost overall, you're taking on a much higher risk from a financial perspective. So those are two opposite of the spectrum types of contracts, and then you got one in the middle a little bit, and it's basically where you can cap a contract. It's more like a fixed contract, but a cap contract is where, and we have many of these throughout the country that we partner with these different counties, and they put caps on things like pharmacy and off-site. I have one contract now. We have an agreement where, just as an example, $300,000, we pay all of that up to $300,000 in pharmacy. We pay $300,000 up to that in offsite, anything above and beyond that passes on to the county. So there are different ways that you can structure your contracts and agreements for different pricing options. And really we're not here, it is not our role to steer you in any one direction because there's no perfect contract structure for each county. Every county is different and it really is determined on really the county's financial priorities, your tolerance for risk. And so we really would like to partner with you as we know that one day down the road, as the cycle ends for a contract and all cycles come to an end of each contract, we would like to think that we would be able to partner with you to help provide just information, data to structure the RFP as you will eventually release for bids. And we would like to be part of that if possible. We are starting to do this more and more across the country where not only are we building relationships to directors, wardens, sheriffs that naturally happen because we work with them day over day. But we want to develop relationships with people like yourselves who make the decisions and who really have to balance the fiscal responsibilities of the county. I do not envy any one of your positions or jobs sitting in this room tonight. I have a new appreciation for each and every one of you. So But we do want to partner with you. And we do want to work in collaboration to decrease cost, provide the best care that we can, expand these programs that are going so well that we have already started, and just have more dialogue. And this really is an opportunity for you guys to take the time to ask questions that you have. We welcome those questions. If you have those now, that's certainly fine. We will welcome those. Or you can take the deck home with you. And then at some point, if you would like to reconvene, we would love to have the opportunity to meet with you either virtually or in person to go over any questions that you may have after you dig into the PowerPoint deck that we're going to leave with you. But more than anything, we appreciate your partnership and we appreciate you entrusting us to care of these patients for Luzerne County. And it is our great responsibility to do the best work that we can do and to also be the best stewards of the county's resources. And we just, again, thank you for the time that you've given us tonight. We wanted to bring subject matter experts with us in case there were further questions. tonight. Again, if it's only for an introduction and this time, that is fine as well. But we welcome questions as well. So thank you very much.

I believe Attorney Skeen has a question for you. Yes. Shane, how would you characterize the contract we have now? Where does that fall on your spectrum?

So that one would fall in the middle somewhere now on the high side of the middle, because there are certain things that are taken care of and then you obviously the grant money. That's something if you remove that from the contract. That that is going to be a great deal. I think when we looked at the numbers and it's in the deck. But I think the medication itself was around, it's close to a million dollars, I think just for medications for 2025. I think now we are trending downward a little bit when you see the grid, the graph in the deck, but $400,000 of that $1 million was MAT medication. But really we are a pretty fixed fee contract, except the grant money for the MAT and then also, as all of you know, the recent LTAC or rehabilitation cost that is now, and a lot of you had questions about that, and I know that y'all were investigating some of those things, and we're happy to discuss that further tonight if you'd like, if you have more specific questions about that.

But most of our expenses are coming from people that end up having to go outside the facility and stay there. My understanding is that on the contract we have most of the regular out to the hospital and back is covered by you guys that's right and then we have somebody that um i guess the medical staff at the hospital says has to stay in rehabilitation or needs a longer stay at a facility that we can't provide services at the jail then then that bill is coming back to us yes sir now and there may be a little bit of confusion just because the previous contract

It was included in that were well path did take care of that that was full risk, which included that to lower the price of the overall overall contract, the current one we removed that language from the contract.

Would you say that it's trending across the country that the population is is older in prisons and we're having more of those kind of rehabilitative requirements.

Absolutely. Absolutely. We do have some data on the numbers as far as the ages go. But I think more than anything, and I would love for you, if you want to add to this, Dr. Ali, Dr. Ruckman, but more than anything, we're just seeing sicker patients, just sicker patients, multiple comorbidities. My background is also healthcare. I was an ER. I started my nursing in St. Luke's system here in Pennsylvania. So I they're just sicker patients who have multiple issues and require extensive care extensive medication treatment. That is a trend and it's not going away our opioid use our our substance use disorder. It is really, really high. Luzerne County is actually one of the highest percentage counties that has the highest percentage in Pennsylvania. And that's also in the debt comparing to other counties.

Councilman Cossett was first.

I do have a question. Within the very near future, I think we need to stop meeting with the administration of the jail. I am a retired 24-year correctional officer at that facility. And The problem is our contract with WellPath, I think it's very good. It does help a lot, but it also drives our overtime budget absolutely through the roof. And I think we need to come up with a system where You know, a jam finger doesn't get sent to the ER for five hours holding two guards with overtime pay at a rate of, you know, we're paying $700 for two guys to watch a jam finger. Now I do know they used to come in with the x ray machines right there. So, for things like that, I don't think it needs to be a hospital run. And I are overtime budget at the jail I don't even know what it's at now but it's astronomical I know we're over. our budget limit for the year. So I do think there needs to be a meeting to see how we can curtail this, because obviously we cannot continue to do this year after year. Our jail is 31% of our budget. You blow the overtime out, you're at 35% of the budget. It's a problem. It's a very big problem that I think needs to be addressed now. So I hear that loud and clear. Yes, sir. We can come to a consensus with that, with a meeting with us in the future, near future. That would be fantastic.

Sure. We would welcome that meeting and we feel your pain. So the landscape of healthcare provide provision overall across the nation after COVID and everyone's really kind of tired of hearing that, but it really did reset the healthcare landscape. And so cost is, And work ethic, that's a whole other conversation, as you all know, has been egregious. And so we are feeling those increased wages, things that we try not to come to you guys with until we absolutely have to. But yes, we welcome that conversation and we would love to help come up with a solution. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yes ma'am.

Shane, yes, thank you so much for coming in. I can tell you that the county does appreciate the partnership that we have with you. My question is really related to how much the county is paying in relation to the MAT services we receive on a consistent basis, right? How do we know as council members, right? Because I'm obviously not in the prison every day that we are receiving the highest quality of that you have to offer through your organization that matches the price that we pay in this partnership. Obviously, the work that you do has direct relation to the quality of life, despite how you might feel about anyone in the prison system, despite that stigma. So that's really my question. I want to know on a general basis and on a consistent basis that the services that are provided through the MAT program and other entities are matching our partnership cost with you. Can you speak on that?

Sure. We have some numbers as far as definitive numbers. I can't quote those to you right now, but I can get them for you. I can get them for the council. And then there are some numbers in the deck as well that would address some of those questions. So I know that one question that might clarify a little bit and how we determine the cost and what that expense actually is. So monthly, we have what we call a monthly staffing report that is provided. We go through that. Sorry if I did not introduce this. Charmaine Thomas is our regional director of operations. So she is here, boots on the ground a lot more. You probably are very familiar with her face. And then Jim James, sorry, Jim, He is very involved as well with reconciling those reports with Charmaine and with our team who produces those invoices at home office. And so we can look at those during the reconciliation process and we can realize if that allocation has been appropriately done. And so, Jim, do you or Charmaine want to add to that process? Yep, that's accurate, yeah. So that is how we determine the cost. And then that is for your viewing. That's what you see whenever an invoice is created, that information is provided.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Haas.

First of all, thank you for being here. This is no easy feat. This is not an easy job, so thank you for the work that you do. I'm just looking at a lot of the charts, like the Luzerne mental health data. A couple pages later, the Luzerne County total patients on med versus med costs, the total costs by therapeutic category, and the cost of use of long-acting versus short-acting meds for SUDs. And I'm noticing 2025 was a really expensive year. And it seems like we're already past half of where we were in 2025 now for 2026. And it says, I mean, it says on the graph, and it makes sense that we only have seven months represented here on the graph. So it seems like we'll be surpassing the costs that we saw in 25, which were much higher than in 24 for most of these things. Am I correct?

That would be correct. The reason for that, if you will allow me, as you saw, if you look at the uptick from 24 to 25 in that budget category, the pharmacy graph that shows the breakdown of the type of drugs, you will find that that was the year that the MAP program started utilizing the LAIs or long-acting injectables. Yes, ma'am. Long-acting injectables were started in that year. So that is why you automatically see a very significant uptake. And then there's another graph in there that talks about the difference in cost for a buprenorphine versus a sublocate or a Yeah, it's an injection, right? And then there's even another little chart, I think, in there somewhere that breaks it all down per month, like per injection. Injections, long-acting injectables, we refer to them as LAIs. So they can be anywhere from $1,500 to $2,200 per month. There's another one, but that's one too. Yeah. But they can be, yes, ma'am. So they can be incredibly costly. They are incredibly costly. So that is why you see that big jump because we had that grant money. Now you have to remember, as you're reviewing that, please remember to pull that $400,000 out because that's your medication that is covered not by taxpayer dollars, but by the grant money. So- If you pull that out, you'll see a significant difference. But that's why you see the big jump. And then as we want to expand those services and offer to others as we grow that program, you're going to obviously see an increase. So that's what you're seeing. It's not from the day-to-day perspective. year-over-year drugs that we are using. Maybe there's a little bit of movement up and down on the antiviral medications that are quite costly as well, but mainly it's your MAT drugs that are drivers. Ma'am?

Nevermind.

Yeah. I hope that answers your question.

It does. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Mr. Haas, attorney of scheme. Shane, welcome to Wilkes-Barre to you and your team. Welcome everybody. Good to have you. Thank you. I have two questions. The first one deals with the intake process. And that's been the difficult part of getting reports for the corrections area in the past several years. And I just want to know what you and your team were really thinking about. making that process better, more viable. You deal with a tough population, a lot of folks generally don't want the help, especially dealing with mental health. So they don't want the help and it's very difficult. So I understand that. But nonetheless, what ideas do you have? What solutions do you have going forward?

So James, do you want to speak to that a little bit? I can, but you're here boots on the ground, so.

When you refer to the intake process, do you mean after the initial booking, medical gets involved and does the screening?

The screening, yes, specifically that area. Because I think that's where we've seen in recent years the issues.

I can tell you we do a screening that involves a systems assessment, vital signs, drug history, any history at all. So when you say there's an area of concern there, what exactly are you referring to that we might be able to provide more clarity on? Because it is captured in the beginning.

When we see a loss of life. That's my concern. Absolutely.

And I could say that we are at the mercy of the patient's honesty. Um, sometimes they're not forthcoming. There's a stigma attached to people who come into the booking area. They feel if they offer up information that they might get in trouble for, which is not true. They don't tell us about it. Unfortunately, the outcome is not always positive and it doesn't happen. I like to say at Luzerne County Correctional Facility, we're doing a very good job at avoiding that.

So are there any new best practices? Because like I just said at the beginning, you have an extremely difficult job. I think we all understand that on this side of the table. Is there anything new? Because you're relying on two variables that are just extremely difficult to predict. And I totally understand that.

It is. It is. So observation is key. And just continually monitoring them. That's why we have everything moved closer to the medical unit. There's camera cells. There's more rounds. There's more

medical personnel readily available in the event of an emergency should we have missed something that was not offered up on intake i just want to add two more points to what jim is saying so you are correct our patients are most vulnerable when they first enter in so two things that we've done to try to identify those individuals one is automation of assessments that are related to withdrawal and having that be highlighted in our EHR. So that's one, because that will help if somebody's withdrawing from opioids, they're having nausea, they're having vomiting, dehydration, their vital signs get abnormal, we'll be alerted. That's one. The second, we are piloting, not at Luzerne, but at other sites, access to HIE, Health Information Exchange, to better know what the patient has gone through in the community. And that's a big game changer so that we can have continuity of care from the very start. And so this pilot that we've started is only about two months in and we have about 10 sites across the nation and it's going very well, great feedback. And our hope is after the pilot ends, which will be in September, we as a company will make a decision on to expand that to the rest of the enterprise. So those are two ways we're trying to combat particularly the vulnerability at intake.

That's extremely helpful. And I'm just thinking perhaps with AI, I'm sure there's a lot of data out there. There's probably a lot of research studies out there about how to identify these extremely critical needs. So that's very helpful, the HIE program. Take a look at more of that. Thank you. I have one more as well. With the other county entities that have prisons or the municipal authorities that have prisons, does WellPath, I guess this is for you, Shane, engage in like an economies of scale where there's perhaps like a bulk cost savings for pharmaceuticals? I mean, it's probably the nature of your firm. I'm just assuming this, but is that, if you could speak to that, and also is that savings passed on to county shareholders?

Absolutely. It's a great question. So we do work, it's a little different because we have the state and federal side, which are the state DOCs, which we currently have the Pennsylvania DOC. So we have multiple facilities that do share resources. And I know that we even spoke, I think, regarding trying to get a patient to another facility instead of out to a long-term care unit or a rehab unit. So we do have that ability to share resources. And we can cross over, if planned appropriately, we can cross over from the county, local, government side to the state and federal side. And we can share resources, which solves a lot of problems sometimes. If you are geographically positioned appropriately, right, you wouldn't want to drive three or four hours somewhere. It would be nonproductive and problematic. cost prohibitive really. And then to answer the second part of your question, absolutely based on volume alone, we get the largest discount or just the cost of those drugs. It's greatly reduced just based on sheer volume that we do across the entire United States where we have 37 states that we are partnering with So you can only imagine how many patients that are part of that population that we receive the volume discount on. And we pass that directly to you guys as well. That is part of our pricing. We base our pricing on that. So on that big discount. So, yeah.

All right. Attorney's scheme. So...

There's a cost for the medication. But is there an administrative fee to administer it? We don't pay you guys to do that.

No, sir. No, sir.

That's just part of what you do.

That is just part of what we do. What we do as clinicians.

All right.

Thank you.

No, sir.

Ms. Karstowski.

I was just curious. Have you considered holistic medicine at all? More people are being more healthy and thinking that way. And I just can't help but think, are you at least entertaining it?

Dr. Ali, do you want to speak to that? I'm not a physician, so I'm going to pass it over.

So in general, we do prescribe to making sure that we are following society guidelines and recommendations that are medical standards. That's first and foremost. We are open to working with specialists, functional medicine in the right circumstances. I can't say we universally do that. It's on a case-by-case scenario, depending on the individual's condition and the reason why they're in that spot. I hope that somewhat answers your question.

But are you proactively doing more than less, if that makes sense to you? Are you more proactively wanting to do that? Because more and more people find that to be a better way than the pharmaceutical medicine all the time.

Right, so we do a lot of being proactive in the sense of the recommendations for in the recreation time and in what we can control with the diet in that way. We do try to emphasize those things, but then the other components, if you may be thinking of things like acupuncture or things of certain types of proteins or medications that are just like vitamins, We don't do that much at all. Yes, ma'am. I think we'll be open to looking at it for sure. I think if the literature suggests that, if there's the functional physicians that are encouraging that based off of the trials, we definitely would be open to that. What we strive to be is community standard of care and following that standard of care.

Any other questions? Ms. Williams?

Hi, thank you for being here tonight. I have several questions. So my first question is in relation to the recent opioid money allocation for 2027 and 2028, which is $2.2 million. So my guess is that would be split over those two years, 1.1 million. And based on what the costs are here in your packet, Do you plan to increase the use of long-acting injectables over oral? And it's kind of also, how do you determine using oral over one or the other?

Dr. Ruckman?

Great questions. It really comes down to patient choice and what's going to help them be successful. So oral medications are typically our main treatment in every facility. Long-acting injectables are typically only used when a facility does have grant money. People like to use them because it cuts down on officer time, it cuts down on movement, it cuts down on nursing time. So that's one of the benefits of the long-acting injectable, but it really does come down to patient choice and what we think is going to make them the most successful while they're with us and then after they're released.

Do you find that the long-acting injectables are more successful?

No.

No, okay. The second question I have is, and my next three questions are related to your page areas we would like to improve. So the first one is, on the first one, where you wrote, You would like to improve percentage of the population receiving treatment. Seven percent is low compared to most counties. How can and does the opioid settlement money factor into that increase?

And actually, I'd like to correct myself and we corrected on another slide. It's actually closer to 13 percent. The first that I had was a little low. In most facilities, and I say most, it all depends on your average length of stay. A lot of our facilities, people are brought in and they may only stay a short period of time with us. So you are not able to engage and get as many people involved in treatment. A facility that has longer lengths of stay like yours tends to be 20, in the 20s, 23, 24 days, average length of stay, I feel like that gives us a little more time to be able to spend and capture and get people engaged in treatment. And I would love to see you closer to 20%, if not closer to 30. And that's realistic, but it requires good coordination and cooperation between medical and custody to see that happen. But it is doable. But there's a lot of things that we can continue to improve about our program and our relationships with our patients to get them to engage. I mean, they've got to have a sense of trust with us to start the journey of looking at recovery. And we want to make sure everything we do is quality, not quantity. So I'd rather you be at 13% and us really impacting that 13% of the population than say you've got 30% but may not feel like there's quality behind it.

Thank you. Thank you. The second one, improve community relationships for post-release care. Currently working with Robinson Center to have improved worm handoffs. Are there any other community relationships to improve beyond that relationship? or other entities besides that?

Yeah, absolutely. I know that was one of the main ones that Luzerne is currently working with, but I think having multiple options for our patients, because we never know where people are going to end up. I always say, you may think you're going to go live with your mama, but she doesn't want you to come back home. You got to go live with grandma, which may put them in a totally different county. So I think having multiple resources for people available We also have a lot of relationships, even with virtual platforms. So if you don't know where you're going, maybe you think you're going to go to that facility and we've got an appointment set up for you, but maybe you end up 100 miles away for whatever purpose. So having other options like virtual options, bicycle health, for example, is one we do a lot of work with. They're completely tele platform. So literally you can pick up the phone and you can continue your treatment or you can get online and see a provider. So I think having great contacts in the community is vital because that's what we want is we want them to have that person if they can, but we also want to put other places out there in case they don't end up where they think they're going to after they're released.

Are you currently working on this right now or is this something that you want to work on?

That's kind of next steps. Working on those relationships in the community, but we would like to have those extra safeguards in place too.

My last question is on the last one, patients would benefit from better notification to medical about releases. Can you help me understand this, what's happening now and what would be better with this better notification?

Yeah, absolutely. And this is a challenge everywhere, not unique to Luzerne County. So you have people who may be incarcerated for a short period of time and then they're gone. Or you may have people who are incarcerated, they go to court and then they're released and they don't necessarily come back to see medical prior to release. So anything we can do to have better notification that an individual is leaving the facility, we can give them resources in hand, medications in hand to be released with where we know they're not just kind of thrown back out there again. And like I said, this is something not unique to Luzerne, but it's something that we're always trying to improve with our custody partners.

Thank you.

Ms. Stevenson?

Yes, I do have a question. I know that we... Councilman Williams mentioned the relationship with the Robinson Center is there in a relationship established with the right Center because i'm aware that they do warm handoffs as well. that's another organization that's here in lasagna county that we should be maximizing and benefiting from So what does that relationship look like currently between your organization and the right Center as one other resource.

We do not utilize them as much as the Robinson Center, but we will utilize any offsite treatment center for follow-up. We've used Geisinger South. We've reached out to centers in Hazleton. Like Dr. Ruckman mentioned, it depends on where they're going. Our medication assistant treatment coordinator works one-on-one with the offsite treatment centers to make sure the ROIs are completed. We have all their background information, where they established at a site, to make sure that that warm handoff is even easier because they're already established or that they need a new intake. But it's not just limited to the Robinson Center.

Is there any significant conflict that you guys have with the Wright Center at this time or just that relationship doesn't quite connect yet?

It's not like that at all. We will work with anybody who's willing to work with us. Partnerships are based on a two-way street. Like I said, Robinson Center is not the biggest choice, the number one go-to, it's just, that's how it is right now, but we will partner with any offsite agency.

That's great to know, thank you.

Go ahead, Ms. McDermott.

Going back to the offsite visits that you have, hospital visits, I know we touched on that just a little bit, Mr. Coswell did, but there's a PA or a doctor that's always on duty at the facility.

Not necessarily at the facility 24-7, but we do have what we call telehealth or emergency platform services. Now, I don't know if – are you actively utilizing that now or just the telehealth? Telehealth. Okay. Yeah. So telehealth is what we utilize when there is not a provider on site. And they are, they reach out to a, an emergency room provider, experienced provider for either a plan of treatment. And that can either be, okay, this is the plan of treatment after we've given report on what's going on with the patient. They can see the patient. If it's a, I say this, an example, a good example is if someone claims chest pain, right? They've got chest pain. Okay, great. Let's get them down here. While we're doing an EKG, because that's the first thing we're going to do and doing vitals and all of that, getting some history there, we can get in touch with the telehealth provider. And then that provider can either say, hey, you know, they'll see the EKG that has been done and they'll say, send them out now. It's an emergency, right? Or they might say, hey, this is what my plan of care would be for this patient. And do you as a provider, if it's in the middle of the night, do you as a provider, whether it be a nurse or someone else, obviously they would have to be licensed appropriately to work within their scope. But if they are comfortable and they have the tools and the resources there available to them, they can choose to go ahead and carry out that plan of care and carefully observing afterwards, or they can certainly just say, no, we don't have that scope of practice currently in the building. So we're gonna have to send them out. So it really is based on when that happens. And I know that a lot of times that happens overnight. And we don't have 24-7 provider coverage on site.

So if it's something very minor, they could still go to the emergency room? If it is overnight, if it's just I have a stomach ache or something like that, would that be sent to the emergency room because no one is on duty?

So that's just kind of a loaded question. So I'll answer this the way I would respond as an RN. And I am an emergency room RN. So I had a patient come to me and there was not a provider. Let's say we get a hold of a provider and, you know, I've done my assessment. I've looked and it's, let's say it's flank pain, right, or abdominal pain. Now, I don't have a way of knowing that. really what's going on without seeing what's going on in there, right? So I would venture to say that I am not typically going to, first and foremost, risk the patient's life by making a decision that I'm not trained to make as a nurse. I'm going to also protect, and each nurse would do the same, their licensure by not making such a decision. Because Say I said, oh, it's just stomach cramps or, oh, it's just flank pain or, oh, you've got an infection in your mouth and we can get you some antibiotics tomorrow. Well, guess what? That could be sepsis and sepsis can kill you within 24 hours. So I can't pretend to play doctor, nor can the people at the site during some of those hours where we don't have the coverage that we would like to have, but it's not really costly. You know, it wouldn't be an efficient way to spend our money. So I hope that answers your question, but it really is a difficult situation for the staff that are there when that happens and there's not a physician available or at least a mid level provider available. It puts them in a hard, hard place. Now if we get someone on the phone and they are confident as a provider, an emergency room provider, and they've given us directives and said, hey, you know, this looks to be more like this. And the signs and symptoms are, you know, they line up. It really is going to ultimately be the provider that is on site, whether it be an LPN, RN, or a mid-level that makes that final decision. But we can't, the thing I think I have to remind everyone Staff in general that are not physicians are mid-level providers for an emergency room. And I have to remind custodial staff many times, we don't have a license to be a physician. I can't make that call. It could turn out really to be a bad outcome. And then we're all on the news. Our job is to keep us all out of the news and to, more importantly, protect that life and treat it accordingly, Dr. Ali. Thank you, Shane.

What I'll add to maybe get to your question is as long as our staff is using our telehealth platform in the middle of the night, those providers that are on telehealth, these are physicians or practitioners, PAs, most of the time have 10 or more years of experience. They're there to help be a clinical decision support to make the call. Is this a minor thing that we can deal with maybe in the morning time with the provider on site versus this needs to be taken care of at nighttime? So as long as we're using that tool, that's a helpful distinction and knowing minor versus major issue.

And then with specialized visits, do we have statistics? I'm sure we have the numbers on how many people actually do have to leave the facility to go to a specialized doctor.

Sure, we do have those statistics. We keep track of that. We track and trend just like any healthcare provider does. And we can get those to you very easily. We have reporting that we can pull up in a moment.

Can some of those be done remotely or virtually? Or do they all have to go to the physical site?

I think that would vary, but James, you might want to...

It definitely varies by the situation. It's dependent upon the situation. If it's a specialist that can handle it via remote telemetry or that way, yes, we could do it that way. But it's unique to what's going on. If it's ortho, if it's a fracture, if it's something that they were seeing initially and the orthopod wants to see them again within a month, They're not going to want to see that over the computer. They're going to want to see them in person. They're going to want to follow up x-ray to make sure that everything's reset. That's just ortho. We have wound care issues. We have diabetics that sometimes they get complicated. They're not taking care of themselves out in the street. They have neuropathy. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but it gets to the point where it affects their lower limbs. It is not something that somebody is going to be able to deal with over the computer. Dialysis is another huge one. Cardiac. And this is mounting in the aging population. The comorbidities are through the roof. They're not taking care of themselves on the outside. They're presenting with an acute problem. And as we deal with that acute problem, the underlying issues start to come to the surface. And it's not something that a mid-level who's in the jail setting might always be able to handle. We need to get other people involved, cardiology all the way through. I mean, I hope I'm answering your question. It's so unique.

It does, but again, the cost of obviously taking them there, the officers that have to be there. So of course, the inmate's health, of course, is number one priority, but to try to keep the cost down is important.

I understand. And if there was a way that we could bring the specialist in in person, we're open to any suggestions, any collaboration, but it would take a group effort. I'm sure everybody's familiar with the local healthcare scene. It's impossible to get doctor's appointments. It's impossible to get specialists. And when you come into the jail, it's that much more complicated, not only on the medical side, but it's a strain on the custody side as well. It's two officers every time somebody leaves the building, and we feel that. It's a strain on a working relationship because there's short staffing issues. There's the overtime that's openly discussed. We do our best to curtail that, we really do.

Thank you.

Ms. Stevenson?

I'd like to take a moment to go back to the discussion regarding injectables versus pills. It's my impression that the injectables are a way better resource despite the fact that they are more expensive. Does WellPath want to consider or would consider moving towards having injectables wholeheartedly instead of providing the choice of pill and injectable? Because in my mind, I mean, you're able, can we divert from taking these pills? Like you can have inmates in the facilities who are her cheek and her tongue in pills, and then now you have those drugs that are still being maintained outside of a controlled environment. So I think that's a very important part of this discussion to consider, and has WellPath considered that as a long-term option, a finalized option instead of offering both.

Great question. Long-acting injectables, I can tell you, if you're looking at Sublocade, for example, it's supposed to be a once-a-month injection. It typically lasts about three weeks. So we're seeing that we're having to do it every three weeks versus every four weeks, which does add to your cost. Also, when we give Sublocade, it's kind of an unusual medicine. If I'm giving you an oral medication, The dosing starts at two milligrams and it goes up to 32 milligrams. So when I give you that oral tablet, I know exactly what your dosage is and what dosage it took to control your symptoms. When I give you an injection, I just have to have you on eight milligrams and then I give you an injection and that's supposed to last you. So it's not like it's an equivalent of 16 milligrams or 24 or 32. So you have a lot of patients who almost have breakthrough symptoms when they're receiving an injection. So you're having to give them orals on top of the injection to truly control their symptoms. So, you know, they do a really good job selling the medication to people. And it is a wonderful medication, don't get me wrong, but it's not the end-all, be-all cure for everything. There's still a lot more that goes into it. I know everybody loves the idea of cutting down on diversion and cheeking and all that kind of stuff. And yes, if it worked beautifully for everybody, that would be a great fix. But we just see it's really not. And, you know... There's a lot of our facilities too, and I'll just bring it out there, that just put these medications in regular MedPass now and are not as concerned about diversion like we once were. We've kind of found that the more controlled we are with these medications, we've actually added to the stigma of the treatment itself. And we've almost given people a challenge to try to divert. where in our facilities where we just put it in the regular med pass, yeah, you're going to have a little diversion. But if we're treating all the people who need treatment, who are they giving it to? It's really lost the street value. And we have a lot of our systems, especially the big DOCs, where we've got thousands of people a day in treatment where we're just putting it into the regular med pass. So it's not the perfect solution, I know, but it is kind of a shift that we're seeing across the country where we're just putting it in the regular med pass.

Any other questions? OK, thank you all for your time tonight.

I just want to say thank you very much. This was very informative. I learned a lot. Oh, yeah.

No, thank you so much for allowing us to be here. And we look forward to further collaboration if you have questions after taking this home and diving deep. please, please reach out. We're happy to come back here in person or we can do a virtual meeting. Just please let us know how we can help and assist you in making the best decisions for the patients of Luzerne County.

Thank you for your partnership.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

All right. Next up, we have receive and discuss budget reports. Ms. Roselle, take it away.

Okay, in your packet, you have your July budget reports. The first report, as always, is your revenue report. Revenue earned is at 84% of budget or $143.4 million. Our current tax collections at the end of July are at $119.461 million, representing 94% of the current year tax revenue budget. Our expenses are at 96.2 million or 58%. Next, you have your listing of the budget transfers and the accounts payable detail. Last report is a treasurer's report. We currently have a cash balance of 161.8 million at the end of July. Cash balance at the end of June was 172.6 million. We made a pension payment in the month of July, so that was a significant change to the cash balance. Our interest earned for the month of July is $361,103. Of that, ARPA accounts for $81,200. Our year-to-date interest earned is $1.873 million. Our ARPA cash balance right now sits at $22,055,000. The ARPA's interest earned year-to-date is $467,000, and year-to-date is $10.28 million. I mean, I'm sorry, since inception, 10.2 million, not year to date. That'd be great though, right? Since inception. It's been a long day. The opioid cash balance is at 10,497,000. Opioid interest that we've earned year to date is 203,944. And the interest earned in total, 1,050,000. Anyone have any questions?

Any questions for Mr. Rozelle? Thank you, Mr. Rozelle. All right, number three was discussion regarding the resolution of Luzerne County requesting that the Luzerne County Board of Election examine potential locations for additional ballot drop boxes for the 2026 general election. Miss Stevenson.

Sure, I'll jump right in. So after reading this resolution, first of all, this council is not advising the election board to do anything. We are simply asking that they assess the geographical locations and other data necessary for potential drop boxes in the near future. At the request, we're very well aware that we do not have a say, that we do not get to tell them what to do. That is not what this resolution is. but it's for them to be able to find out how we can keep security, keep drop boxes safe, figure out the best locations to put them if they are to, if we are to get several drop boxes back into the county. That is my understanding. Other commentary from other council members at this time?

Mr. Lombardo? A couple of things. First, I just have a question for Manager Krohkamo. Is this something You know assessment reassessment of the potential need for dropbox is this something that you know as. The entity that works more closely with the elections Bureau that your office does every single year and that the elections Bureau does on a regular basis.

I know that the election board has on numerous occasions discussed the drop boxes. I can tell you the extra drop boxes that we do have are at this point antiquated. For example, they don't have the flammable uh prevention uh in the drop boxes uh if we do get a more modern and safer drop box they're about twelve thousand dollars each uh obviously if the board wants uh additional drop boxes uh and they find locations that will take the drop boxes uh we'll deploy them can you talk more about the uh

the very last thing that you said that there are locations that maybe previously have had drop boxes, but then they no longer desire to have them. I know one example is the city of Pittston had one at the, I believe at the library and they stated that there was, um, too much concern over the right to know request. It was costing them too much money and becoming too much of a burden to physically have the drop box in that location.

There's a lot of tangential issues that arise with drop boxes. And I mean, we have difficulty with places for polling sites. I have not in the past few years reached out to any entity. To see if they would take drop boxes, I know the the older drop boxes that we had there. There was a resolution from the board that required certain safety measures, meaning we had, for example, the Dropbox in Hazelton, we had a drill into the floor. Sometimes they have to be attached to a wall. There were issues with Misericordia because where they had it placed, it was, a pristine wall, they didn't want to have the drilling or the attachment. So there are those issues that are related to the older drop boxes, the extra drop boxes that we do have. The newer drop boxes are different. A lot of them have the video camera inside the drop box, like the one we have at Penn Place. So there has been an evolution in Dropbox technology, but we would have to purchase those Dropboxes. I don't know, no one has reached out to me that they would want a drop box, but if it's something that the board wants to do, I will honor that and deploy the drop boxes and keep them as safe as we possibly can.

Finally, I would just say on the record that I do not support this resolution. I think that what we have in the county right now while it may be sufficient, there is always and has always been controversy with these boxes. And we see that with the numerous emails that we receive and discussions that are had in public. But I think the biggest reason why I would certainly not support this ordinance is Just earlier this morning, I was actually sitting on my front porch and having a cup of coffee like I do most mornings. And I looked across my street and I just had to squint a little bit, but I happened to see a drop box across my street. I looked up the street a little bit further and I saw another drop box in the next house. And when I went back in my house, oh my gosh, there was a drop box on my house too. It's called a mailbox. That's what mail-in ballots are for, to be mailed. and there are drop boxes at every single post office so for us to be talking about this and bringing the county back into this discussion which we've had a number of times that at this point it's ad nauseum i just think it's a waste of our time and being that it's something that we don't even have a say on saying in the first place it's just not a necessary piece of conversation thank you

Mr. Williams, Mr. Haas, and then Ms. Kruschnowski.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Atkin, with Mr. Lombardo.

Haas, Councilwoman Williams will be going first.

Oh, I'm sorry, Councilwoman Williams.

Mr. Haas, then Ms. Kruschnowski. OK. Well, first, I'd like to just address some misinformation. Dropbox is not a mailbox and there is significant difference between a Dropbox and a mailbox. You know your mailbox is with the postal service, those blue ones that are down the street or the mailbox on your porch. A drop box has a really strict chain of custody. When you put a mail ballot in a drop box, that mail ballot is only getting picked up in Luzerne County by a Luzerne County sheriff or a direct member of the election bureau administration, the office, the director, the deputy director, or one of those assigned in the office. to go down and retrieve them and they will go directly to the election bureau office it's not going to get your mail ballots not going to get lost in the mail and it will get to the election bureau guaranteed. prior to or on by election day if you put it in a drop box. So there's a big difference. Now, I just wanna say a couple of things. I didn't put this resolution forward and I'm sure a lot of residents of the county think it was me because I think I am probably the biggest proponent of ballot drop boxes and have gone to the mat for them while I was the chair of the Board of Elections constantly. I was such a big proponent of them. When I first started on the Board of Elections, I remember the Election Bureau was very much pro ballot drop boxes. I remember County Manager Crocomo was the solicitor at the time, the chief solicitor. and secured the Wright Township Fire Department and Misericordia. And our goal was to get a north, south, east, west, and central ballot drop box. And the election bureau was gung ho for it. They went and they got them all, the Pittston won all of them and we ended up with them. We went from very small ballot drop boxes initially to the larger ones which now may be a little bit outdated and they were about $6,000 each. What we did was we heard from the public that they wanted more security which wasn't mandated by the Pennsylvania Department of State and so we put cameras on them or made sure any locations had an MOU that they had their own camera and that there were always cameras on them. Then we heard more, well, there could be fraud. These need to be monitored. So then we established strict chain of custody also with these ballot drop box pickups retrievals. And then we implemented the process and the procedure of reviewing the video footage of the ballot drop boxes to a bipartisan team. uh we did when i was on the board of elections would sit and review and we'd pick a different ballot drop box each election so it was it was a progression of listening to the public really hearing what they were saying and addressing it uh i a big proponent in favor the ballot drop boxes because it's a service to the citizens of the county who now especially now with what's going on in the news now have more fear of using the Postal Service with all this stuff that's going on with possibility of voter rolls. And if you don't have a voter roll turned in, we're not going to send that mail ballot through the Postal Service is saying. So this is something that I'm very much in favor of. And I will definitely support this 100%. But I think everybody knows that by now. Thank you.

Mr. Haas? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just agree with Councilman Lombardo. I just think this invites more unnecessary controversy. We've had enough controversy. We're done with the controversy. And frankly, at CCAP, this came up And not just drop boxes, but the old convenience type of voting things that, yes, makes it more convenient, but the other side understands that you risk fraud and you risk cheating. And there's certainly evidence about that out there. Plus, Mr. Manager just talked about more expense. So as in general, I just see this as more of the door dashing of society. Now we've got to door dash our votes. And when we are in a republic, being part of our republic takes a little bit of investment. And you have to show up sometimes. You have to show up, and you have to participate. And again, I don't want to door dash our elections. I don't want to door dash it for three months. This just invites more things that we don't need. We've got to pave the roads like one gentleman said, and we've got to focus on the bridges. Thank you. CHRIS JERRAM, JR.: Mr. Krasnowski?

Well, I just feel that whether you like it or not, we should have one because people want them. And that's why we're here to make sure that everybody can have something to vote. And you're right. You can't guarantee that it's going to make it there if you mail it. But if you go to the Dropbox, it's going to make it there. And there's a lot of elderly people that use the Dropboxes. So I don't see why you'd want to get rid of them if somebody's using them. If they weren't being used, I'd say get rid of them. But they are being used.

All right. Thank you for that commentary and discussion there. I would just like to bring us back to the center by saying that with this resolution, County Council is respectfully requesting that the Board of Elections consider geographical accessibility for voters throughout the county. We live in a huge county. So that is major number one for sure, but the security, operational feasibility, the costs associated with establishing and or maintaining additional locations, and the compliance with applicable federal and PA law. We're not talking Council has once again does not vote and does not have a say in what the election board does with these drop boxes. But we can respectfully request for them to assess our current situation throughout the county and kind of see where we are and what is possible as far as keeping drop boxes safe and protected. and accessible to as many of Luzerne County residents as possible. So that is the center of this discussion, not whether council is deciding or not deciding to have drop boxes.

Ms. Smith.

This has always been an interesting conversation. And I'd like to say again that voter fraud, if you actually look at the numbers, is a problem looking for a solution. It always has been. This isn't really a problem. We absolutely need to expand our access to voting. Voting is one of the most fundamental things that we do as Americans. Any elected official, in my opinion, who spends any time making it more difficult for anyone to vote is a big red flag. there will always be controversy about many things and i have noticed in my time on this earth that anger is usually much louder than contentment and happiness there is many there have been many controversies over the years in fact in 1970s it was controversial for a woman to open her own bank account in her own credit card and look at where we are today that's not controversial at all Time will keep marching forward. I would like to be on the right side of history of voting rights. I would strongly encourage this council to send this resolution to ask the Board of Elections to look into drop boxes. Specifically, what else will continue to march forward? Technology. Manager Kokomo already discussed new drop boxes with technology, and those are only going to get better. I would also ask that the Board of Elections look into these new drop boxes. They may be a cost, but I believe that the access to voting would be worth it. i believe it was councilman krishnowski who noted who mentioned the cuts to the postal service there have been incredible cuts to many many services i'm not sure if any of you saw in the news there was a weatherman who literally during his weather broadcast in florida said because of the cuts that have been made federally like the post office, he could no longer tell his viewers as he had for his entire career, with certainty that he could give them the weather and keep them safe. And that is a sad reality of what we're looking at. And that is why the chain of custody, as Councilwoman Williams mentioned before, is so important with drop boxes. I am extraordinarily in favor of this resolution and I hope that this council sends it forward. And again, would note that I would like the board to look into those new drop boxes with better technology, which will only get better.

Anyone else? Ms. Williams?

First off, I'd like to say, where there's a will, there's a way. And if the administration, the county manager said this week, I want drop boxes to the election bureau and election board and chair that we'd have them. Secondly, the $12,000 new drop boxes, I was told in our the Board of Elections was often told when I was the chair, you don't have a budget. So even if the Board of Elections wanted the drop boxes, if there was a cost involved, the Bureau of Elections and the administration then called if. if they would want it to put out the money. So it became a budgetary thing, which the Board of Elections couldn't do. And the last thing I'd like to say is, if you really want to save this county some money, there are many states that are all mail ballots. And think about this. I've thought about this before many times. You wouldn't have to pay for any of the polls at $100 a clip. There are 180 of them. You wouldn't have to buy any voting equipment, maintain it, transport it. prepare it put put all the information in which costs a lot of money a lot of staff you wouldn't have to um pay all the poll workers 180 polls and you're probably i'm saying four people at a poll sometimes there's six sometimes there's two and they're about two hundred dollars each that they're getting money wise you add that up and see what that cost is add all that up and then take away the polls and just do all mail ballots and just process mail ballots it'd be so simple so cost effective to the county boy you you probably would eliminate a tax increase for you thank you anyone else chairman i i just want to respond i i do wish i had the power to say uh if uh

I wanted drop boxes or the administration wanted drop boxes that it would happen. I wish I had that power to do over a lot of things, but I don't. What I will say is this. I certainly will work with the Board of Elections. If the Board of Elections says, administration, we want five drop boxes and we want the most current technology that a Dropbox has, I will do that. And I would sit with Mary Roselle and we will look at the budget and we would have to pay for them. So I just wanna be absolutely clear, This is a board decision. I will work with them. I certainly would. If this resolution passes, I certainly hope that the board would reach out to me and that we could work together to make sure that the drop boxes are in locations that individuals who may not have access to go to the polls or may have some challenges that they can have access to. But this will come from the board. And as I said, I will work with them if they would want to do that. I will take my direction from the election board.

Anyone else? Okay. We've arrived at the second of the public comment for the work session. Is there anyone from the audience who'd like to make a public comment? Mr. Griffith.

Thank you. Interesting. It's about the will of the people. 15,000 people signed a petition. It means in 30 days, you're going to repeal it, right? Good idea. It's all about the will of the people. That's what I just heard. We're all about the people here. We don't care what the boxes cost. We have mailboxes. Why are we not using the mail? We don't trust the mail. Geez, I hope Ms. Williams doesn't get her bills in the mail. Geez, I hope you don't get any credit card statements or anything in the mail because you don't trust the mail. We've been trusting the mail for decades, centuries, and all of a sudden the mail's no good. Here's a new thought for you. Why don't you all quit and run for state representative? Because that's where you need to be. You want to change the laws. You want to change the laws to allow mail-in drop boxes. They're illegal. They're not in the election code. They are not. Not where I saw it anyway. I don't see why they're any different than a mailbox other than we want to, and everybody wants them. Who? Who is everybody? Why don't you go out and circulate a petition and see how many people want a mail drop box? Do that and then come back and talk to us because I don't think that's accurate. We want to save money. We want to go to straight mail-in ballots. Good luck with that. You got 67 counties. Let's see if you can get 66 of them to go with you. I don't think that's going to happen. Transparency. Let's talk about that. You want to save some money? How much did the lawsuit cost us for the Sunshine Law violation? I'm going to file a right to no request. I want to see how much Attorney Olszewski charged the county for that. I want to see. be very curious to know how much that cost the county on that silly lawsuit against Mr. Lombardo and county manager. I want to see, because I'm sure that he doesn't work for nothing. But we're all worried about saving people money. Oh, yeah. That's all good on your resume when you're running for county council. Good luck with that, because we're going to remember. Insider trading, that ordinance gives more work to the Ethics Commission, which they can't handle now. But we're going to make another insider trading for political purposes, just like the anti-discrimination ordinance. It's all political here. Insider trading, referendum question. We all know what that is. It was all put up by Action Together and all this political nonsense. It's going to cost the county more money to get these annual reports, which we have no authority to get, by the way. We have no authority to get an annual stock report. But we put it in that referendum because it's good talking points politically. This is nonsense. Where are you people coming from? When are you going to start worrying about the things that are important in this county? Roads, bridges, things like that. Instead, we've spent eight months talking about stupid nonsense. Let's get with it. Let's start talking about the things that are important for the people of this county and stop worrying about this other nonsense.

Next up, we have Ms. Cochan.

Same thing about the drop boxes. This resolution, as explained tonight, seems like a moot point for council if it's in the hands of the election board. I don't know why you're wasting time on it. It just seems like you're trying to influence them. You conveniently disregard election integrity and you forget taxpayers while waving your ordinance and resolution wand. More drop boxes mean more expense, including sheriff's department staff who are supposed to monitor the drop boxes, but don't. And that statement is per eyewitnesses. To say we have to have drop boxes because people want them is absurd. People want the roads and bridges fixed. We haven't had that. We want our taxes lowered, but guess what? That doesn't seem to be a priority to this council. Just focus on what really matters for a change if you really care about the people. Council could choose to encourage community unity or personal responsibility to vote at the polls or even to obtain a mail-in ballot. Yet instead you consistently work to weaken and destroy a system that has been effective for years while burdening the majority with more taxpayer expense to give privilege to a select few. We do not need more drop boxes. And I thank the common sense council people who have expressed that tonight as well.

Anyone else in the audience tonight? Ms. Fusaro?

So as a former member of the Luzerne County Board of Elections as well, I have inspected video as well as chain of custody forms. Chain of custody forms are often not signed, not filled out properly, time and date not noted, and or incorrect information provided. minimize the risk and say no to drop boxes. Just for the record and not to be a drama queen because I have a pretty thick skin, but Mr. Arnone threatened me on his way out the door just to record it. Thank you.

Anyone else from the audience tonight? Mr. Ravo, I see you have your hand up.

Mr. Chairman, this is Mark Ribo of Hazleton speaking. Can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to speak on civics and the levels of government and what you yourself, Mr. Chair, and the other council members are able to do under your authority on your level, on the county level. I could swear that you guys took an oath to uphold the US Constitution, the Pennsylvania Constitution, and the Home Rule Charter. Now, you've been somewhat following the Charter when you still cherry pick a few things, but for the most part, the solicitor has been giving you guys, keeping you guys on the straight and narrow when it comes to the Charter in most cases. But when it comes to the Pennsylvania Constitution, this majority, your majority, Mr. Chairman, has an animosity, at least an animosity, and at worst, a hostility towards the Pennsylvania Constitution. Because if your majority members had any regard for the Pennsylvania Constitution, which was used as a basis for our U.S. Constitution, you would know that Article 7, for example, under elections, that all election and registration laws shall be uniform throughout the Commonwealth. And to miss to Council person Williams's points on misinformation, which she is given quite a few instances of misinformation on her part, because the fact of the matter is, there is no drop boxes in Act 77 of 2019, which created mail-in ballots. The only reason drop boxes are available as I've said for many years during COVID after the 2020 litigation is because the Supreme Court, the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania said that the health and safety of the voter was at risk and there was an emergency declaration in place. Now, Mr. Chairman, there's no emergency declaration in place, nor is there any statutory authority to put drop boxes in place, which as a former task force member of the Luzerne County Election Task Force, I have said, and I actually was stopped from saying it by the moderator of the task force, that the Luzerne County does not have insurance coverage, and the county manager can attest to this, that there could be litigation, and that's why she got into a dispute with the Attorney General, Michelle Henry, at that time. So therefore, what's to say that the chain of custody, if there's not a problem, as was brought up in public comment, that there would be no litigation towards drop boxes. And as far as if the insurance provider for Luzerne County would cover the cost of the litigation. Same thing holds true. Thank you, Mr. Rayburn. It's not three minutes. I didn't even have three minutes. I didn't have three minutes, Mr. Chairman. You're stopping my time. I don't know why you're doing that, but I think it's true. I don't know who set the timer, but I have it in front of me. I didn't speak for three minutes. I didn't speak for three minutes. So the last thing I just wanted to say.

Mr. Mascara, please unmute yourself.

Good evening, Mr. Chair. How are you?

Good evening.

Good. I got two things for you. First, I want to thank Councilwoman Williams for taking the time out of her day to try to educate Councilman Lombardo on the difference between a Dropbox and a mailbox. I know that couldn't have been an easy task. God love you for trying. Second, I just have one question. Did the county pay... for Walter Griffith's legal fees for his wiretapping and defamation cases.

Is that the end of your comments, sir?

Well, I'll finish by quoting State Rep. Jim Haddock. John, you don't always tell the truth.

Okay. Seeing nobody else, motion to adjourn. Motion.

Motion second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed, abstentions? We are adjourned. Thank you very much.