Board of Supervisors - Special Meeting

I'd like to entertain the board, consider adding a discussion item to the agenda, discuss the budget. In case we have to talk about money, I want to be able to discuss the budget. Also, too, regarding what Michelle sent out, the timeline. So I want to be able to discuss that briefly. Will I entertain a motion to amend the agenda to add the budget discussion? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor, please vote aye. Aye. Motion carries. All right, so we'll go ahead and approve the consent agenda, which is the approval of the full agenda as amended. I'll entertain a motion to approve. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? All in favor, please vote aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Okay, we have since this special meeting, we do allow public comment, but only for the agenda items that are on the agenda. So we have discussion of the elderly services building and public health, courthouse cameras, and then budget. So if you wish to speak, go ahead and state your name and where you're from, and you have three minutes.

Good morning. Vicki Brenner, sometimes known as the Energizer Bunny, Winterset. This rush to sell the public health building without due diligence or logic raises many questions. Who's responsible for the plan? Members of the Board of Health affiliated with a private school? The local who teaches math at a private school and manages campaigns on the side while doubling as a consultant's assistant who doesn't want to listen to any more of his stories? Is it a supervisor's husband who wants her to run for auditor if they need the money? Or is it the man behind the curtain? Taxpayers have already paid $7,353 for a consulting report, which may or may not exist. Citizens have been asking these questions for over a year, begging for accountability, transparency, and fiscal responsibility. They have pleaded with state entities for help. But no knights are coming to our rescue. So we're on a crusade fighting for veterans, our elderly, every taxpaying citizen, regardless of their political party. Let me share another analogy. We're all familiar with the movie Rocky IV, aren't we? Rocky's the underdog who won't give up no matter the odds, and neither will we. This was a premeditated plan to infiltrate Madison County government, to outsource any problem employees who stood in the way of the plan. Some involved in the plot might have been unwitting pawns, but they are implicated, even if they were duped by supposed friends. Believe me, none of us are so delusional that we think any of those involved will suddenly grow a conscience and do the right thing. So what we're hoping is that the same fate these people forced upon others, outsourcing, firing, or creating such a toxic workplace, causing dedicated employees to leave, karma will come to those people with full force. Those involved put more planning into their scheme to take over the auditor's office and make Madison County the test case before moving into other counties. They spent more time than actually serving the needs of Madison County citizens. Those involved didn't even try to create the illusion that they are making decisions for the public good. A clear example is pushing for the sale of the public health building, regardless of how it affects our community, especially our veterans. Let me tell you, we've had our fill. These perpetrators need to pack up their carpet bags and get out, or maybe law enforcement will be happy to give them a lift. I ask that you receive and file my comments. Motion to receive and file comments.

So we have a second. I will second that. Any discussion? Thanks. All in favor, please vote aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. All right. Anyone else wish to public comment? If you're on the phone and you wish to have public comment, please hit star six to unmute and then state your name and where you're from. And you have three minutes. So Lance, it's usually about a five, six second delay. So that's why we kind of wait until you have a chance to speak. Unless it's early. Absolutely. Not for you. Not for me. I've already been at work. All right, here are no more public comment. We'll go ahead and move into the first discussion item. This was, Jess, I think this was your instigation on the elderly services building. You sent us some mold testing.

Yes. So, Jess, is this the rainbow and mold test company? Who is that? So they're here in Winterset? Boy, this is a huge disparity. Between them and all three of them? No.

Yeah, so the other company, so let me just, let's pull that up. So we've got a quote for just mold alone. Now let me take a step back. I first heard a couple weeks ago that there was a mold problem in those back office spaces in the past and it had been corrected. So I engaged with three different companies to find out what it would take to look at mold testing. I also included the elderly services portion of the building just to ensure the elderly section is safe as well there are two different air healers that serve the two different spaces um and they are separated by the warehouse but we got a quote from rainbow uh here in winterset for 2013.55 A non-local company, mold test company, that does work across the country and they contract with local contractors. And they were $1,314. Where are they out of? They're everywhere. I'm not sure the gentleman I talked to which state he's from. And then I got a price from Eocene out of West Des Moines. And what I liked about Eocene, their price was $2,230. What was good about Eocene is they have a lot of other varied experience that we might be able to utilize in the future, but certainly they were not the most competitive in regard to the mold testing. So in my opinion, we need to kind of narrow it down between, you know, maybe another, and I could get some other prices too, but I just want to get some baselines here so we kind of knew what we were talking about and what we were dealing with for that. And so once I heard that concern, While I pursued some other matters with that building, and we can talk through those, in my opinion, this was the number one concern. Ensure that that space is safe for anyone and workers that are potentially going to be there in the future. So we still have to take a step back and decide bigger picture. What's the best spot for the veterans? that there were a lot of complaints about going into the courthouse, moving them into the courthouse. I know that we had a citizen in tears approach us after one of the meetings concerned about the impact to her sons who are veterans and having to walk into that courthouse. The length of the walk for them, even if we move the parking spots, the lack of handicapped accessible bathroom, and the lack of privacy in their opinion too are very big concerns. And so that's when, as you both know, in a meeting a few weeks ago, we talked, hey, well, maybe we should go back to what my original plan A was, move them in the back of the elderly services building where they would have total privacy. I have gotten, I've met with contractors, three different contractors to find out what it would look like to convert that bathroom space into handicap accessible and what it would look like to remodel the office space. I was quite surprised. I've got one quote back on that, but we need to fine tune the scope so that we can ensure they're all pretty close in scope. There might be some variations in quality or something like that. But I have met with three different contractors on site and gotten their ideas. Now, there are some things where it's specific to the elderly services space and their usage of the washer and dryer, for example. It's right outside that bathroom there. That's not vented properly. There was a Resner heater that's in the top of the bay that was removed and the gas line was in pipes. There are a few minor things like that that I think that we should address regardless of what we're going to do potentially with that space. I also think we should continue to pursue remodeling prices, narrow down the scope, get some hard numbers to remodel that space and that bathroom. I'm open to, you know, do we utilize it for the veterans and get some feedback on that? Or do we, you know, we could potentially lease that space out. I'm not okay with leasing out the public health building that has two part-time employees in there. It's over 7,000 square feet. We've gone through this a million times, a lot, excuse me. I started meeting with, this has not been a rushed decision, I started meeting with Public Health and Veterans Affairs last March when we started talking about this. So I wanna make it clear, this has been a very long process. But it's all just preliminary, so I think the board needs to decide you know kind of what direction we want to go with this and i'm happy to pursue more quotes there are some other concerns regarding i learned about a tank where uh used motor oil was stored it was a garage a dollar for the building as long as we don't sell the building the tanks can be made Well, I kept pulling on strings. We struggled to find any information on it. And I found, this is where EOC found this information for me. Is this what you attached from the DNR? Mm-hmm. Okay. Where that tank has been addressed. And I'll read through that work. Yeah, it was capped. But my concern was that it was capped and all that used oil was still in it. and it doesn't appear that that's the case based on the documentation they pulled up. Now I'll circle back with the DNR. When I first reached out to the DNR, asking questions, trying to, and they sent me a list of questions back that I didn't have the airtime to, so trying to just kind of keep piecing this together. I'm engaged, you know, with our assessor, with our recorder, you know, do we have any data, do we have any documents to back this stuff up, so of what that status is. So I was quite relieved to get that information regarding their tank. I thought, you know, that could be a very costly endeavor, but I, so it looks like that concern is no longer concern it was taken care of what was this 2012 yeah yeah so regarding uh making sure that we had a handicap accessible bathroom the one of the concerns is asbestos in that in that uh building so that is why i went ahead and got asbestos testing pricing i haven't gotten that from three yet

Are you sending it to these same three companies or three companies? Not all of them do it. And it's really expensive.

It's expensive because of the quantity. For example, they've got to test your sheetrock. They've got to do, I think, two tests for that. And then they've got to test the baseboard. Then they've got to test the floor.

But if you keep it enclosed, it will pass. Right. As long as you don't be closed. Yeah. Yeah. yeah do you know that you don't have a lot of parking there it's limited because it belongs kind of are we planning on having a rush of people well i don't know about veterans how much they need but we do have limited parking there because we have to share with her i did reach out to i do agree with you we need to clean that up and take care of the building yeah um we need to allow because Conservation Board needs that garage to store their stuff. But he said he only needed one bay. He needs the bay. But then there's three. That's fine. I reached out to, there is strong rumors that Quick Star wants land by the current Mature. Mature building is way too small. They've outgrown it. They own it. So I reached out to Mature. They love the idea of moving into public health. I had another meeting, DHS would love to have a stop. Last night. DHS already has an office there. They got it. We're going to be moving them into the courthouse. Well, if we have them all together, you'd have the veterans, you could have mature and DHS all one stop. And then you'd have that way you keep a valuable asset. They're all together.

And a little lower cost for us, because right now, just eliminating the cost for the building, the annual operational cost, is going to save us quite a bit of money, over $80,000 a year, Diane. And I don't think the tourists will be paying us $80,000 a year in rent. I think, I don't know. I think that... And I can tell you now, they do not have a budget for that. We just went over our budget.

They are going to ask you, sitting with the governor last night, They are going to, we need to consolidate. And that is a huge consolidation.

We are consolidating. Well, I think. Even when Matura is not a government entity, it's an NGO, it's a private entity. So, and for DHS, we are only required under Iowa code to provide them office space, which we are planning on doing in the courthouse because it already has a node, the ICN, which they are required to use the ICN. They cannot use our network. They have to be on the state network.

So do we own public health or does the public health board own it? Because taking all of our medical supplies to Warren County without anyone's knowledge

I don't think that's true, Diane, according to the chair of Board Health. The stuff is gone. What stuff? The drawers are cleaned out. They took all the stuff. And when I asked Michelle for an inventory of all the stuff, Did the previous public health directors, plural, keep an inventory? She didn't have one. There's no inventories. No, so we don't know what they took. Exactly. Who gave them permission to remove all that? The Board of Health. And do they own it? They are in charge of all the medical supplies. The only thing we are in charge of is the actual building.

But that grant wouldn't come through the county.

So how the grant now will be going through Warren counties at this stage now.

So all the grants actually come through Warren on behalf of Madison. Shouldn't we have been up and up and say exactly what they need to move from the building? If it's not, we don't have to do that. That's not going to help. Well, when Boone left all of their stuff, I had to. I called Boone. They didn't want any of it. I inventoried every single thing, and we had a garage sale. Shouldn't we have done this somewhere? There's still a lot of stuff in there we need to inventory. That's going to be part of the discussion, I'm hoping. We can give that to, well, I would give it to all of our EMS system before I send it over all in Enola.

The only thing that, I mean, you were copied out of that email. So she lists all the stuff. After the fact. well again we're we're not in this conversation this is where to help you know so we can ask them for the information i'm sure the chair would provide that but you know we are not in charge of that that's that's a separate board we have to make sure we stay in our lane won't you um on that so if if we had an inventory which is unfortunate we don't apparently if we have an inventory of stuff then we can try to figure out what happened because keep in mind diane a lot of that stuff is was brought by the actual nurses that's their they use their own they did and if the toenail equipment is gone that was really really expensive

Do you know what equipment? All of them tell me on equipment. So that guy that he was telling me has to be very specific.

That got walked off years ago because according to the Board of Health. It did not.

I called one of the nurses.

It was there. We named that. Right. And who knows where it went after that. So this goes to the point. We really need to have better management of our, not just for Board of Health, but for everything. We should have inventory of everything.

Do you think selling...

really big assets like that in the long term is wise. I guess it depends on where you think government is going, Diane. And so I know that I was elected to make government more efficient and to streamline it and to lower taxes. And we can do more with technology with less people now. So when we have empty space in the courthouse, we have empty space in the elderly services building, and we have the bulk of that building sitting empty, on a half acre lot, one and a half, thank you, one and a half acre lot, why would we sit on that and why wouldn't we put that back on the tax rolls and consolidate with what we have now in our open office space?

every job that you outsource or give away will destroy rural america we will no longer have rural america because you will outsource every job and with technology everything will be gone we won't have anything and if you think you get rid of local government higher government won't step over and take over i know we're not going to get rid of local government we're local government is here what i'm asking is that it's efficient

And it efficiently uses taxpayer resources. And sitting on that building that's empty nearly is not a good use of resources. So let's put it back on the tax roll. I'm open to whether, you know, I know Thaddeus was pretty adamant that he wanted to move into the courthouse. I'm open. I'm open. If he wants to be in the courthouse or if, you know, we talked about the annex building here, it'd be a lot simpler to remodel that assessor space and they would have a handicap accessible bathroom. But to me, we need to invest in that elderly services building regardless.

I would love to have, how many, how much office space do we have?

There's, so there are, I wish I had a whiteboard. There, there are five. That's a, it's small. It's white. Yeah. So it's, there are two main offices and you have an entrance by that, uh, You know, the driveway.

The original entrance.

Yeah, the original entrance. Which, by the way, Diane, every time I've been to that building, multiple parking spots open right by the door. And if there's an elderly or disabled person that wants to visit Veterans Affairs, guess what? They could pull into the dock. I mean, they could pull into the garage. Whatever entrance, you know, we could work that out with conservation. So it would be very accessible. And there's currently two offices on the south, bigger offices. There are three offices on the north. Now, there was a temporary wall added back when it was EMS, so they could have sleeping quarters. So that wall, it makes sense to me, remove that wall and have a bigger office area. So they would literally have space for, they could have, if Veterans Affairs moved there, they could have... Thaddeus, Joan could each have their own nice offices, windows, and then there's two big enough spaces then that could be storage and or conference room. They could have their own conference room right off of their offices as well as a big storage area. There's also storage upstairs. Now, in order to get that space up to snuff for anybody to move in there, of course it would need to be remodeled. You know, we would need duct cleaning. We would need things like that. The bathroom, making that handicap accessible. I think the best suggestion was where the washer and dryer are now, they're stacked, and elderly services would really like to have those down side by side. So if we turn them, little little parapet wall for those washer and dryers there we can have the entrance right there that goes straight in from the west from the elderly services building we put the entrance there or the doorway to make it large enough uh a handicap accessible doorway to go in a handicap accessible restroom there's a shower in there we have a shower All that could be reconfigured. Where the toilet is now, that could just be a little storage closet. But there's enough space in there to do that and have a door that swings that they could pretty easily access it. Now, we would have to make sure that we, and maybe it's just some lines on the concrete on the path, that we make sure that conservation doesn't park over their vehicles, but we could give them a straight path to that bathroom.

Do you... I'm thinking loud here.

Hello?

Do you want me to check and see what it would take to have an ICN node there and then maybe put DHS in office there? You don't think there's not enough space?

There's more than enough space for DHS to go there and then some. So I think things that need to be identified Oh, fun little find too. There's so much stuff there that I've started going through it. We found two brand new AUVs. So we're getting one up at the elderly services building and one at the third floor at the courthouse. So that was pretty good. Cool to find Brady's leading that charge and make sure we get new pads for them. So I had IT and phone needs. Stancil, if you can help with that, given your background and your experience.

I've already put in a request to see what the cost would be for them. Okay. Because they'll need, I don't think they'll need a note. They could probably just access our network through VPN, but I'm not checking it.

Okay, that would be great. Of course, we'll need duct cleaning. Now, electrical, that's going to vary. The stairway to go up to the attic part above these office spaces. That is not a safe stairway. Not at all. So what I'm asking them to do is to put a platform at the 90 degree turn and removable railings. So if people need to store something that's a little bit bigger, they can take the railings off to get it up there.

Do we really need that though with all the garage space?

It's a big, nice space up there. Now, I haven't been up there yet because there's no stairwell. I had a few people climb up there. And so we're going to probably need to address maybe some penetrations for the building on the envelope. And they would do an air quality test up there.

It's really not, even though it's storage, it's more of an attic. So it's really not something that. Because I think all they had up there before was just the old phone equipment that they used for EMS building. Those new services said they use it. Oh, they use it.

Can you take off those covers and put us just a stairway? Yeah, let's go. Those cupboards, there's cabinets, there's, yeah, there's some things that we need to do, you know, county, just as a county to understand, like, for example, there was some gas cans stored by the furnace. We can't do that. We need to make sure we have those secured and it's not a fire hazard. But that's some things that I think it's great to go through these exercises so we can all kind of get on the same page and make sure we know what the standards are that we need to adhere to. Okay.

So what I'll... What I'll do is I'll check with DHS on to see what it would be to put one there for them. Or if they can jump on our network temporarily until that's put. So I'll talk to them about that. The other thing I wanted to ask is, to Diane's point, The public health director now with Warren, they've been out there, they've done everything they needed, they gathered everything they needed already in order to manage our public health for us as part of 20B. So I think what we need to do next is start figuring out what we're going to keep, what we're going to sell, pack up, and get it moved into one of the bays of the elderly services building and maybe just get it moved there temporarily. It'll give us more time to figure out what we want to do so we can prep the building for sale because we really need to get that done because a lot of the remodeling stuff, you know, we're going to have to replenish those funds that we pay if we decide to do the elderly services building. If we decide to move people to the courthouse, you know, that's not an issue. We already got... Well, there would be.

There would still be an issue because we'd have to widen the doorway and we'd have to do some modifications to get accessibility in the restroom. You're talking about Veterans Affairs or you're talking about VHS? Both. Okay, both.

So we'd still have some costs moving into the core? Right, we would still have that, but we would have a transition plan. So you guys have the ADA, I don't know if you had a chance to have those reports. So there's a lot of things that can be done right away. But none of it was, we had to do it. No, it was recommended. Recommended, but you don't have to do it. I think, well, I don't know if that was a conclusion on that, that she was just giving us a report of what she saw that was missing.

Do we have our meeting set up to talk about the AD report? Did we get one on the calendar? Do we need to do that?

No, the auditor asked us not to have meetings. Okay, we can honor that. The auditor asked us not to have budget stuff, but we need to be talking through this. We can't just shut down when our job is dying in. So with the ADA thing, we have a list of stuff, and then according to the consultant that came in and did the evaluation, as long as we have a transition plan on how we're gonna get this stuff done, we can be seen compliant under federal code. So what I'd like to do is talk through what we'd like to direct our facilities folks to get done, immediately so we can show compliance and then a timeline of when, because I still really would like an ADA bathroom in the courthouse. We spent all that money on a ramp for ADA accessibility and we just did it halfway. And we have people that need that. And now we have a nice conference room So everything can be on the first floor if court needed to be held to accommodate an ADA need. They could use that room if they wanted to. It's actually around the same size as the second courtroom we have now. um so i'd like to explore that so we can at least make it a compliant or get some kind of certification from the federal government that we are exempt because right now we do not have that everyone's making assumptions but we do not have that there's nothing in writing that says well historic preservation let you put a bathroom in that courthouse first floor because the walls are all curved load bearing walls

So you cannot start knocking out any lower than that?

They managed to do it for the Capitol building, and that was designed in the same way. How much did it cost? I don't know. Millions of dollars.

This is that serious stuff. Would you start knocking out the story?

I agree, Diane.

Where would you put the bathroom on the first floor?

I was thinking we'd pick, again, I'm not, I would leave this to folks that we have consultants to do, just like we did with the courthouse restoration. is I'm thinking the smallest office. So probably where HR is right now, that could be just a single stall or maybe a- What do you do with all the windows? We put shades on them so no one can see in. So, but they managed to do it for the Capitol building down in Des Moines, Diane. So I think we can do it for our building. But again, that's more long-term. That would be a goal that I'd like.

Yeah, I think we could do, like with that ADA report, for example, we could just, maybe we need to have a work session. We can just do a ranking of here's our priority, our goal, and recruit that we could do very economically and address. But maybe here's some longer-term goals we want to address later and start thinking.

And then we could also put lost money towards that as well, since our lost money has to be used towards the courthouse. So we can put that towards that. Even tie a revenue bond to that, depending on how much it costs, so there's no tax increase for folks if we decide to do it that way. So there's lots of different options to do that, but I think that should be the goal, is that we should, since ADA accessibility seems to be very important to our employees as well as the public, we should focus on basically our county jewel, which is the courthouse.

But again, that's a long-term thing.

because that's going to be more costly, to Diane's point. And we want to make sure that we are doing that, not doing that in a rushed way. But in the meantime, we still need to provide some sort of accessibility for the folks that need it, especially since we're going to be selling the public health building. That will also free up funds once that's sold. We may not even need it.

Free up our taxpayer funds, and they're paying for it, but it'll also get it back on the tax rolls.

Right. And bring in some revenue. Yeah, so we'll have a reduction of about $8,000 a year just in operational expenses. Do you know if it was added to the tax rolls? What if a nonprofit buys it? I don't know anybody's bidding on it.

But if it goes to auctions, anybody can bid on it. Yeah, if it's non-profit, it's off the tax roll. Do you know who has any kind of non-profit?

Well, then we're doing something.

So we can still be off the tax roll.

So if- You're making assumptions. You shouldn't be making assumptions. I'm just thinking that- I'm thinking that right now the bulk is receiving $80,000, at least $8,000 a year in ongoing operational expenses. We'll have capital funds coming in and adding the taxable would be a great idea, I think.

It'd be just a bonus. But Diane, to your point earlier regarding Matura, if you can negotiate a situation with them that would make that financially feasible,

Well, the one thing, too, is they are dependent on federal funds. So if they lose federal funds, then we're kind of stuck. And I'm not sure if counties should get in the business of being a landlord, especially with folks that are dependent on a very finicky, currently, Congress. So that makes me very uncomfortable.

But if I put together some numbers of what that looks like, I don't think you'll, if I go to the work, I think you guys have in mind the debt.

I truly don't think Matura has the funds. They don't have the annual funds to pay the rent to justify this. I wish they did, but they don't.

so well i'm open diane uh this is the first mention of this i've been sure if i i think you might have mentioned my name in the last previous yeah the previous meeting um but again i i'm just you know trying to look at the the financials here and what makes sense so know i'm open i guess if if the board would like me to go ahead and pursue you know i can get a a defined scope for these contractors and what they're quoting um for for general construction in the bathroom i can get um defined scope and in hard numbers on asbestos testing um on duct cleaning um and we can evaluate what that would look like and who might be best served by moving in there. I want me to check for the ICN note. Yeah, I think that would be great. Yeah, if you can handle the IT phone parts of it, I can handle the rest of them. Steve said he needs the three bays, just to clarify.

He needs three bays?

Yeah, I was texting him because I thought that that's when I heard the last time.

I thought he needed all of it because he has nowhere to put it. So what we'll have to figure out then is when we move, when we pack up publicly, what stays, what is sold, and what we can probably put in the corner of the bay. Because those bays... Those are huge bays, and I don't think he's going to take up 100% of the space. I think we could probably get some boxes. But he doesn't have a shop anymore, so he might need it all. This is going to be temporary, Diane, because eventually we're going to be... getting rid of the stuff, either selling it.

No, Steve needs the room.

No, I'm talking about the public health thing. It's only going to be a temporary thing. Because the goal is to either sell it or repurpose it. But right now, we just need to get it out of there so we can prep the building for sale.

I think there's one other room on that. Let's see the... the west side of the building and that whole area there's quite a bit of storage area predominantly conservation stuff has been by the bay doors but if as long as we just have a path to the restroom um that they don't block with their their vehicles and their equipment we could also with that do you think that as part of the renovation is there enough space there so we can make a storage room

So they could have a conference room for their board meeting, the two offices, three with UDHS, and then do you think there's another room where they need to put boxes in there or something like that, or no?

Should we just assume?

it depends yeah if dhs goes in there they're going to need an office and then the way that they're configured because it's more like an l because you have the you have the offices on the north side that used to be for whatever they were used to be for i don't even remember what they're for and then you have the the north south part where they have the the um the bedrooms and the laundry room and all that, and the shower. So all that space can be repurposed. It's not really an L. Let me draw it.

It would be easier. Excuse me.

You can tear it. How long are these? That's a long, short period of time.

Here, I can... Can I set this here? Yeah. So right now, the space, let's go north. So right now, there's an entrance here. This is the driveway on the south side of the building. This goes over to the Sheriff's Department, right? And these spots, like I said, these parking spots along here, I've always been able to park right there every time I've been over to this building. So there's two little man door entrances and there's a dock door here going in. There's a dock door here. There's a dock door here. This is all storage, potential future use can completely be redefined how we're using it. It's just kind of a hodgepodge right now. But these are the spaces that we're talking about here. And there's currently I'm going to say there's a I'm not an artist, sorry. There's currently Everybody can see this. I didn't line this up. There's actually a door here that goes into this office. There's a door here that goes into this office. Then this space here is currently separated by a little temporary wall. So we can easily take that out. And then there's actually two spaces. Now there's two doorways going into this space. Easily fill in one of those doorways. Yeah. But they're not soundproof. They're not, you know. but both of these spaces would be big enough for a conference room. Now, you could, by rights, you could have, you could keep this door shut and secured, and you could have one set of offices with a separate entrance for here and here, two decent sized offices, and then another set here. If it was just Veterans Affairs, you could have, you know, fattiest support person, You can have then a conference room and storage. So there's quite, it's a nice little area.

So for DHS, they're not really on a schedule. They're more sporadic. So they would probably be in and out. They probably need a key for that. Because sometimes they say, what was it, an emergency situation? They told me that they may have to come down to Madison County late at night or whatever. So they would have to have access and they would have to have an office. It would have to be a secure office with a lock.

I would think that they would like this space better. Easier to get in and out of quickly. But now, it is a little bit more isolated. Back there, what's right next to the sheriff's department is as far as if they're there late at night working by themselves.

Well, usually for what they do, they like privacy as well. But do you think that would work? I'd have to find out. Excuse me. I see a note there.

I think that would work. I don't think there'd be enough space for veterans affairs then.

unless well there could be you don't think there's space for two offices or three offices in that space there is but veterans affairs says they need a conference room well they can if they have a meeting they can always meet in the courthouse for their board meetings we could probably use that hodgepodge you said here on the north side for storage And the attic area. And the attic area. Yeah. So, but the goal is, is not to store things forever, is to repurpose it or sell it.

So, I think Veterans Affairs would balk at that because they said they have, you know, sensitive things that they need to store.

Oh, I'm just talking like desks and stuff like that.

So, other offices have gone out and put their names on desks and things. okay well they need stuff and then filing cabinets nobody wants but i think the landfill in the office not in the pit they want those so i'm wondering we could give them to other agencies yes because you don't make any money on a garage sale or no so i'm wondering what we should do maybe is have a day where we open the building and we have people come and get what they want and at the end of the day whatever's left that we have to figure out then we'll inventory and sell it or donate it some of the chairs i had to halt at the curb because nobody would take them but um the other offices there are a lot of things they want there's very good shelving in the basement i would have i know the landfill has nothing to do with accounting but i'd rather give it to agencies everybody uses and to get nothing for them so what why what do you think about that what do you think diane about having just a day where

If they want it, here's your day, come out on Friday, get what you want. At the end of the day, anything that's still there, we're going to figure out. I think all offices need to, yes, I'm for that.

All offices, I even think what they don't want, the landfill, because that's huge. Everybody uses that. So give it to other, yeah, I'm for that.

We'll have to check and make sure we can. We gave them stuff before, after the tornado.

We decommissioned it and left them because they had everybody else. Because there's really no value to it.

So did you have an inventory list then?

I made an inventory. We decommissioned it. We had an auction. We cleaned up the third floor and we made about $14,000 on an auction.

So you have experience with this is what you're saying?

Yeah. So maybe Diane can leave the auction piece of it. There are things in the basement, like those old clock bases. We could sell those at auctions. I mean, that stuff is a commercial stuff that people want.

They have clock bases?

Yes, the fiberglass ones are down in the basement. And they're just going to get broken. In the courtroom?

No, in the courtroom. That needs to go. Oh, okay. It just lays down there. So... So would you be willing to kind of pick a day, and do you think we want to give folks, what, a month? Here's the day. We're opening up the public health building. Well, I would only open it up to our colleagues. Right, of course. But I'm saying send it out to the department heads.

Well, I think we should give them two weeks. It shouldn't take you very long to figure out what you want. I think they already know. They've got their names on stuff.

No, I'm saying, I'm just trying to give a month notice, not a month to do it, but a month notice, and then just have them do it on that particular day so they can plan accordingly. What do you think about that?

Sure, I think we need to clean it out in the most efficient way. I think anything that is not, that Indianola didn't take, we have a lot of ambulances. Those, they should get all that. Right. And I know, I know Brady is interested. I assume he's already done it already, but according to his email, yet not. So, well, and I think you've got Truro and St. Charles that transport. Brady could probably take it and he could give me that out. So where are the blood pressure cups and all the stethoscopes? See that?

And the problem is, is that there is no inventory. And that's a shame. So how can we know that they didn't walk off a year ago if there's no inventory? We don't know when they walked off, if they did, or if they belonged, they assumed they were ours, but they actually belonged to the nurses. I don't know. I have no idea. Well, a lot of nurses buy their own, so they use their own, and then they can store it where they were. So we're making assumptions here, but again, we have no documentation to know whether that's true or not. and i'm not comfortable accusing people of things without proof so going forward however this shows that we need to do a better job inventorying things so i think what we need to do is have a day to where we invite the ambulances folks both county and the cities to come in and see if they'd like anything.

And the things that are at the public health building then would stay at the public health building? The things that are at elderly services would stay at elderly services for people to come look at and see what they want? Or are we going to consolidate them into one or the other?

Well, we don't want to move things twice. I know.

That's what I like.

We have two spots and we just have... I would suggest going out to... Don't move anything. We've hit the date. a department head or whoever they want to send, all go out to public health. They put their name on whatever they want. And if they both want the same thing, we'll draw straws. And then we'll go to public health, same thing. And then they'll have two weeks to remove it. If they don't remove it, it goes up for garage sale or auction or whatever. We involve an inventory. You can't drag this out because I have been out working here for so long. We had a table earmarked for the landfill. that went through a meeting, it just got gone. It did not go to the landfill. It went wherever it went. You can't do that.

It's public property. I think that's a good idea. So let's pick a day to do that on our calendar. And then I can let public health, I mean, the board health chair know so they're aware. And then we can have folks come and put their name on stuff. And then they would work with probably Chip to get access to the building and take that, what they need and anything left we would have to dispose of. We just want to make sure we keep, because according to the chair, anything that's like equipment, chairs, tables, desks, shelving, that's not something that they are over. They're only over the whole medical supply stuff. Anything to do with the actual building is the county's. So are the medical supplies, is that still public health or are the ambulances going to remove what they left? Warner County has already advised the chair that they have taken everything that they need in order to provide us. So it's the ambulances. So the ambulances. So we would probably, let's pick a day. I think we think Fridays would be easier for everybody. What do you think?

I would do it more in the first of the week so they can have the rest of the week to remove it. Okay. Because Fridays, I don't want anybody to come back when it's after hours. Good point.

Okay, so what do we think? Do you want to do Monday the 9th? So that's going to give us... I'm just inviting... Just over a month, yeah. We want to do the 9th for maybe the ambulances and then maybe the 16th for everybody else.

Or do you want to do everything all in one day? I would do it. Do you want me to do it? I'm getting her done. Let me do it in one day. All right, Ms. Bishop.

Because I and you are good at that.

Maybe 60. A two-day period, the 9th and the 10th. Well, the 10th is a supervisor meeting.

We have a work session. We have a work session. So if we do it, we can do, I mean, we don't have to do Monday the 9th. We can do Wednesday the 11th and Thursday the 12th. I'm just thinking maybe two days. Are you guys doing it or am I doing it? Well, if you want to do it, do it. So, you've done this before and you've done it very well. I mean, I don't know if you don't want to do that, I understand.

Well, I do, but let me pick the days if you're having a hard time. What days would you like? What works best for you guys? The beginning of the week probably.

The only thing that I thought of off the top of my head is that for Michelle, I don't know if you'll... Oh, that's right.

And I think there are things they needed out there. Well, I think we could probably help the auditor's office.

We'll find out.

I think that's just my... Yeah, we'll make sure they have what they need.

How about February 9th? Would that work for you?

I mean, for me, but I just didn't know for...

I will send out an email and we'll all kind of find out. February 9th or March 9th? February 9th.

Because keep in mind, we need to get the first wave and everything else we'd have to either box up and move and get it out of there because we need to... I think, how long did they advertise for the conservation building? Was that 30 days? Green Dirt Day? It was 30 days? So we want to have, because it has to go to auction, so we have to make sure that we have enough time to have it be advertised and then go to auction.

Well, I don't think I can get through the elderly services building and all that stuff. In less than a week. I'm there any more time than that. To do what? There's a bunch of stuff there still that I would need to sort. And some of the stuff we could potentially just take to public health. Some of it's smaller. I could carry it and take it myself to public health.

Well, we wouldn't be doing anything further. Don't move anything. We're not moving anything. This is just a schedule to get folks to come in and have our people take what they need. And then we know what's left. And then we... Because then we have to figure out what to do with it.

Well, there's a few items in the elderly services building that people might want. So there's a few desks and things like that. But there's really not nearly as much as public health. But maybe what I could do instead for those is just take pictures. And we could just share those. Anybody who's interested in this stuff here, we have stuff over at elderly services too.

Why wouldn't we just take them up to public health? Let them put their names on it. They can go to the building. Because like, we remove them twice. No, she was saying we had people come over. Oh, you just come out, you put your name on it, you have two weeks to remove it, then they go to elderly service, put their name on it, and they have two weeks, and it's gone. We can do that, but I'm not going to have it all sorted by then. Well, I don't know.

Do we really need to do elderly services right now? Because the priority is to, so why don't we kind of put a pin in that? That would work. And then just focus on public health right now, and then see how that goes.

then we'll have a better idea of what what's left there's not going to be there's not going to be much left of the older services when i get done with it but um yeah there are a few desks and things like that that people might want okay okay so diane about that as much right now it sounds like the night on thursday the 12th or what you said at the beginning the week's better for you guys you think

It doesn't matter. It won't take long. You kind of know what you want, I think.

So you're going to send it out to all the partners? Okay. All right.

So we have you, Diane. So who's going to give them access? Diane, or are you just... And I'm just going to set times and camp out there, or do you need facilities?

I'll just go out there, and they'll come, and we'll set up times, and we'll go through it, and we'll write it. And then what doesn't take, then we'll go. Maybe I'll set up a second time, and then I can handle this. Okay. I need a chair, by the way.

A better chair than what you have. There's a lot of chairs. Yeah, there's a lot of.

And then what? In your office? Okay, so we have that done. Let's go back to direction for you for... Are you going to do a deadline for pickup? Deadline for pickup? Yes. Diane, what do you think deadline for pickup? End of maybe February 20th? I'll give them two weeks, what do you think? Or no? I'll figure it out. Okay. But no more than two weeks? No. Okay.

So if you ladies would like me to, what I'll pursue then is I'll get, I'll finalize a scope, if you will, to share with the contractors for the general remodel in the restroom. I will also check on the other item that I didn't mention is sewer line scope. We can get the camera down there. Because we don't have any drawings for that building and because there's likely asbestos, we need to scope those sewer lines and figure out where they're located before the work commences. And that pricing is, you know, Smith Sewer, a lot lower than... several of the others i called it's like 225 bucks plus i think 86 they think they can get it done and for about 311 bucks but it'd be worst case would be 536 to get that scoped so if it's okay with the board i'll go ahead and pursue that you need to write a resolution well we have a we have a motion to

We have a motion to sue, but we would have to do a resolution.

Because I don't have an actual hard quote from them. It's just verbal because it's so minimal. Right. So we can get a resolution for next Tuesday.

So next Tuesday for the mold test, the asbestos, and the scoping of the sewer? Yep. Okay.

So we'll put that together in a motion here in a minute with other staff. And I'll see if I can get some other bits for asbestos so we can do it all in one. Okay.

You don't need a motion, just write your resolution to get in on the next review. Well, to give her direction to do it. I want to make sure we have a motion to do it.

Well, I don't have any clothes for asbestos review yet.

Right.

So, okay. So, what else? So do we want to put this together and what this looks like and get a more firm number and then before we make a decision? And Diane, you could talk with Thaddeus maybe and see what his... where he wants to go.

He doesn't want to go, so I'll have to go. I don't know. The release is going to be sold. That suit is already made. So now we need to figure out where we're going to put folks that they can service the public.

Well, you told him at that meeting that he kind of agreed to the auditors, and now that's changed. So I'll talk to him, but he's mad, so I'll have to fix it.

There's veterans that are mad, too, about going in the courthouse. So how do we weigh that out?

How do we weigh that? The public comes first. We're here to serve them. So if they, you know, the lady that came up here tearful, I mean, it made an impact, you know. So we want to make sure we put our veterans first, and sometimes that means as public servants we have to sacrifice. So I like the idea, but if it doesn't work out and it's better in the courthouse, then...

Yeah, I'm open to that. I like the idea of knowing what it would take to remodel the space and even if we don't do it now um at least we're going to know um to potentially invest in that space for the future i mean that'd be nice nice space but if it works for phs or what have you we'll get it we're gonna figure it out but diane you seem to have a good relationship with that yes and maybe you can talk through this with them um and we'll see what he's thinking um so all right so um

So it looks like, let me kind of recap. So Diane, I'm gonna go check with DHS to see if they can get a quote for moving an ICN node in there, if we do that. I am waiting quotes for the internet already. I've already put the internet and phone out there. I've already put requests out for that. So hopefully I'll get that yet this week. They have taken a little sweet time. The 9th is the day for folks to kind of put tags on. what they want, you are going to- Pick up deadline is the 20th.

I'm sorry. Pick up for the stuff they want is the 20th. The 20th. And then after that, I would probably suggest like a tag sale. Just let people walk in, whoever, and put a price on it and they pay for it. But we have to commission everything so we know exactly what we took.

Because it is taxpayers. Yes.

So I have a confession to make. I donated a bunch of clothing and items to Futura that were in this space. I did not document it. I didn't inventory it. It's been sitting there I think since the tornado.

Oh, in the bay.

But going forward, to your point, Diane, I'll create an inventory there, too, so we can make sure we know what we're doing. And I will also document what's thrown in the trash. We have a whole pallet of water that's expired. I don't want the liability if somebody claims they got sick from it.

There are gloves out there that I think have six fingers or no fingers.

Those are all donated, though, so they weren't technically purchased with taxpayer money.

See, I don't know what's donated or not, so I'll just talk about it. But there's drinks that are expired.

We're going to need it. Yeah. so kind of knows i think and i i know some of it we did find homes for those chainsaws by the way diane except for i think there's still one more left there but if they don't um they gave it to like offices but i think they don't they have one more secondary roads one so because they have the types yeah okay i actually found a fuel pump handle brand new oh wow

Mike, can you use this? Yeah. It's a nice spare part.

Finding things that will treasure. Alright, and then you are going to get finalized quotes for mold testing, asbestos, and scoping the sewer and have that ready for a resolution on Tuesday. You're going to work on that. So, I don't know if we need a motion because most of this stuff is no decisions. But while we did make a decision for the For the sale? For the sale. Tags? Well, technically not. Some of it might end up going to landfill. So I don't think we need a motion other than let's, you know, I'll entertain a motion to do what we just said we're going to do just to make it official. I think the motion we pursue. Just get it done and then come back. We'll come back. So let's make sure we get it done. Please make my minutes simple. Fair enough. Fair enough. So can you, on the agenda under old business, put basically elderly services slash public health building, please? So we have that. And make that a standing item as well. Until we get this completed, if you wouldn't mind. You catching all that, Ma'am?

And then do we need to schedule the ADA review?

I think we need to schedule this. Let's kind of go through, because then I think we'll need a work session. We're about to have old business last week, and we tabled it tonight.

Okay.

Okay. We can do a work session too, but it's on this agenda too. So I think we do need a work session. Let's finish this and we'll talk about that. So if we're done with the elderly services and public health, we'll move on to the cameras. I put this on here because you had expressed concern, and I wanted to make sure we as a board discussed it. So did you want to kind of? Yeah, Chip, can you come?

Do you mind talking about the camera system and come up and talk about that? Chip, just getting down to the nitty gritty, it's $10,954 more because we aged off the server. So it's an additional cost. Is that it? That's what the resolution says. That's it.

Well, I think we understand the price, I think. just brought up some concerns and I didn't want to discuss it, except outside of me, so that's why it's on the agenda. So do you want to go ahead?

So I guess if you could lay out for us, Chip, I know back when I dove into the camera system, there was some just, I had discussion with the contractors and there were different platforms and different buildings and what's this look like in the longevity of the systems? Are we going to need upgrades? Does it really do what we want it to do? And at that time, I'm thinking, man, maybe we should evaluate. Maybe this isn't the best platform for us. I know I indicated in my email, just industry-wide, Johnson Controls is very expensive. They are the toppest. hourly rate, one of the top hourly rates. Now, I'm glad we have, it sounds like, I believe our Johnson Controls tech is great, and it's really responsive, is that correct? Yes. Yes. So, I mean, that's valuable. That's tremendously valuable. And I don't want to diminish that. But at the same time, we just passed another resolution to invest in that system. Now we have another resolution to invest in that system. So what I want to know is, is it going to be future-proof here for a while? Are we going to have some time

This investment in the server brings it all up so we can catch all of those upgrades. We didn't move forward with that originally because we just opened the old server. We'd be able to accommodate that, but it's not.

Is there any reason why we can't tap into the server that's in this building? Because when we put the cameras in here, I think we have a newer server in here.

Because we separated because of state. State's not in this building. We have to have a separate.

No, no, that's no. They have their own for the courthouse. This, the... annex and the county stuff they can be joined so that's a misunderstanding you don't have to be separate for if it's just court i mean if it's just county stuff but yes the for the state stuff they have their own server when i'm talking about server i'm talking about the one we put the brand new one newer one we put in here for the camera upgrade we did in here So we should be able to tap into that server, because there's plenty of space, and do that without purchasing a new one.

I don't believe that this server will handle that accommodation of those cameras. Did we check? Can we check? Check, yes.

So what I'd like is to have a unified, I don't want two separate servers. That just adds additional, that adds additional. load and add additional delay and it's frankly it's a waste of money in my mind so we should be able when we did the server in here when we did the updated cameras here it should be able to get upgraded out If I'm wrong, that's fine. We'll spend the money because I want to make sure the cameras can be accommodated in any future upgrades. But this is something that should have been brought to the board when we had the proposal for the cameras originally because they would have known when they priced out those cameras if we would have needed an upgrade server at the time. Because the quote we were quoted, now we're coming back with a change order, which is almost the same price as the original quote. So a $12,000 quote is now a $22,000 quote. And we can't be doing nickel and diming. That's not, to your point, that's not very efficient. And it's not very cost-effective because it prevents us from actually doing a big deal.

Yeah, I'd like to just explore, if you don't mind, Jeff, if you could explore, what's this look like? I think you've had really good success with the contractor you work with for this building system. Formerly Summit. It's a different name.

It's a different name. We're Johnson's. It's the same company. We've always had the same company. In this building, in Annex. It is Johnson. Summit did the upgrades in this building. They did all the upgrades. That's what Johnson Control now is handling this building. Also for Direction Supervisor Hobbs. If that was the case, we'd be able to use the jails. What? I don't think we... I never directed you to use Johnson Controls for this building. When we was having issues at the courthouse last year, yes, you wanted the same carrier to be looking over all of our stuff.

I wanted to explore that option, yes. And did you specifically say Johnson? No.

That's not who I would pick, because I have experience with Johnson Control. I know how expensive they are. Because that should have been something we put out to bid.

That's not a decision we should be making. Because it's a very expensive, this is very expensive, and I want to make sure we do it right, one. And two, lease costs. So I think we need to kind of take a step back here. Have we already purchased the cameras that we approved already? Yeah, okay. So I think we need to take a step back here before we do any more change orders, because I want to make sure we're not purchasing a server we want. Can you find out these? And I'd like to, if you could, I think there'd be value in understanding exactly what we have, and inventory exactly what we have, and that kind of data. I think that'd be important. I know that's probably something we can't disclose to the public, per se, because of security, but that's something I think that the board needs to look at so we understand exactly what we have, end of life, because we're gonna need to replace some cameras in the courthouse in addition to that one we just replaced. Some of the other ones are older that will need to be replaced too, soon. So I'd like to know what we have so we can plan on purchasing, because we're doing budgets and we may need to purchase more cameras to replace some of the old ones. I wanna make sure we're aware of what we got. So do you think you could talk to Johnson to get that all together?

Does that answer your question? Yeah, and Summit, too, or the new Summit, I guess. What's the name of it?

Summit put in an original bid to replace their thing, and they were hired.

They were hired because they were using, per our requirement, USA equipment. It still came back. Some of their equipment wasn't.

Yeah, some of it's still made in other countries.

Well, it'd be great to have a lot of ordinaries provided, though. I mean, everything was confirmed as made here. So, and that made it more expensive to have it USA-made, but from a security standpoint, we wanted USA-made, and we didn't want to do the cheap Chinese stuff, especially if they weren't compliant with federal rights. So, if you could, did you, am I hearing you correctly? Did you want to...

I guess I'd like more of just a summary, an executive summary of our systems, the age, future upgrades, and what the contractors think we're going to need. Let them tell us what are we going to need for five, ten years out, and what I would like to know from you is their level of support, who they have to support it, what are their hourly rates, because that creates glaring differences, and And I get it, like with Johnson Controls, you know, it's very regional. They have great technicians in some areas that are fabulous. They have other regions that are awful, awful. So I just, you know, I want to make sure we're evaluating that. And I know there was another camera system here, a different platform here in this building that was great. And we actually pulled it up. That technician was fabulous. And we pulled that up and walked through that. We were able to pull that up actually from emergency situations. medical services that has that same system too. So we have two buildings with that platform and then we have the courthouse. Back last year, last spring when I was diving into it, that's what I was questioning. I didn't realize the decision was made, but that's what I was questioning is maybe we should consolidate. Do we have a vendor that's more economical and has good service that's going to help us make sure that this equipment is maintained and we're in a good spot for the future?

It might be good, as once we have the inventory of everything, is to actually maybe go out to RFP. So if we have a five year plan of say, we have to replace 15 cameras, that's gonna be costly. And I don't wanna be doing that, that'd be dropped on our head and say in six months, oh, we need all these cameras because they're dying. Or what happened to us with the fire alarm, it broke and we had to make a split second decision to get replaced. So I'd like to do a little bit more planning for that.

And that's okay. I think Chip can gather info and talk with your contacts, but what I don't want to do is I don't want to put Chip or anybody else in a position where we're doing an RFP and we get low bid and we go with it. It's lowest qualified bidder, right? We don't want low bid garbage. We want it to be good economical equipment that you, I understand, have to work with and help maintain and work with the contractors. So there's a value there to it if we get good support too. But no, I'd be perfectly fine with an RIP, but I think at this point we need more data regarding these two different platforms and what that looks like and what would it look like to bring consolidated to one platform for all the buildings.

Well, we can't do an RIP until we have all that.

Yeah, so, but I know Sheriff Barnes has access, you know, remotely, so, you know, I'm sure he has an opinion on it as well. He might say, I don't know. He might say, gee, I like what we got. Don't mess with it. You know, it's valuable to get all that insight. Well, technology is changing.

All the time. But it sounds like shipping. We have to trust our staff to know what they're doing. If he thinks that Johnson Control is the best, it's kind of like the old story. You're sitting here in a meeting and there's water up to your knees and somebody says, call the guy. And the board says, well, I need RFPs and I need bids and the water's up to here. Call the guy. and pretty soon the water's over your head and you're grounded. I think if he knows, and they're the company that's prompt, they come on time, but it's more expensive, but it's quality work.

We don't know, but we can't make assumptions until we actually do the work to prove it, Diane, because we are accountable to the taxpayers. And if we can show, yes, we're spending more money on this system, and this is the reason why, then we can document that i don't know about you daniel but we get lots of open records requests to prove the decisions we make okay so i would like to be able to provide documentation to the public that the decision we're making especially for spending more money a particular entity is the best way so i think the proper thing is to first of all have an inventory of what we got and when it goes into life when the expectation for replacement is if we can use the existing server to join both of them together because right now ems and this building use that one server okay so completely different server in the other building all right i think what we need is to have all that information watch the board And then we can decide on if we need to budget more.

So you're tabling this action, this motion?

Well, there's, how do we? It probably would be a table, wouldn't it? Well, we're not doing any action because the action is directing them to give that information to us.

So are you going to approve this 10,954 that the resolutions work?

i'm not today i want more information all right that's bottom line there's no resolution it's just a motion for action because i didn't know what the board was going to do but she did they did send a resolution Not for today. Not for today, correct. So we're gonna, so yeah, so I don't know, I mean that could go on the agenda next week, but I'm not, I'm not comfortable doing anything on that until we get more information. So, but no, the reason why I put a motion for action is I didn't know what the board was going to do, and I wanted the flexibility. If we wanted to do something, we could do something. So it sounds like we're directing you to provide us more information so we can do that and better plan, um, So thank you. Is that okay, Chip? Thank you. Thank you. All right. So the last item on the agenda, I guess, does that address your concern? Okay. The last one was what we added and then was the budget timeline. Michelle sent us a timeline before she left regarding that, and I had some concerns that we are going to have a very short window to go over the book, four business days basically, which is very concerning to me, especially given the fact that we don't know where we're at. And if we don't get to where we need to be, we are going to have to make some very tough decisions very quickly. So what I was wondering if the board would consider is that we start looking at ways to cut costs now. So if we have to make a very short decision in a very short period of time, we're ready. So I know we discussed things on where to cut. It doesn't mean we're going to cut, but I just want to be prepared to make a decision quickly if we have to. So in the past, we've, I know you have mentioned, I think this was last year, is looking at contracting out custodial services. We currently spend about $215,000 a year just in salaries and benefits for custodial services. That is not public facing, so there's no cutting in public services if we save money there. That's an option. The other option is I know you're looking into potentially a different benefits, health insurance. I need, that reminds me, we need to figure out where we're at on that. On that date? On that date. So I will follow up with Kelly on that because we need to have a meeting with our benefits. So you're looking into that. I think we need to continue to look into that. Yeah, they're ready. They're ready to present to the board. So we're just trying to get a time to do it. Okay. So let's, will you work with Kelly to get that on the calendar? Yeah. Get some dates. The other thing too is we can move some HR services to a third party. So you want to outsource HR? I'm just exploring everything that is not public facing down here. I researched outsourcing HR. So I'm not saying fully, because I talked to some other supervisors in other counties when we go to those conferences. Some of them actually have a good portion of their HR services is handled by Allison Cooney, which surprised me. I didn't realize that. Not everything. Obviously, they don't do COBRA. FMLA and all that kind of stuff. But the things where you have HR complaints or you have onboarding or onboarding and stuff like that. So I don't know fully, but I'm just looking for ideas to where we can explore potentially saving money that would not be cutting public services at all. Now, until we have a better idea of what our budget looks like, I'm just kind of shooting in the dark here. But I'm afraid that we might be over a barrel again, like we were last year, and we're going to have to make some tough decisions. And I really would like to not raise taxes.

Do you have that data you can share with us, Diane?

No, I just did it. A long time ago, when I first came here, there was a discussion, and I... reached out to other companies. They found companies of this size, they found it to be disastrous because they didn't have any in-person anything.

Well, I'm not saying completely do it. I mean, obviously, you need to have a warm body, for lack of a better term, to get that front-facing folks. And normally, in the past, it did roll up under the auditor's office, either as a deputy, and we had dedicated to, since I've been here, but prior to me, I think prior to you too, It was actually handled by one of the deputies in the auditor's office. It wasn't as dedicated as it is today.

And there's currently a part-time position opening in the auditor's office to where then our HR would not lose their job, right? If they were part-time and they could do dual use? Possibly, yeah. Potentially.

Potentially, but then we'd have the added costs and benefits. So we'd have to kind of weigh... And I don't know if it's cost-effective. I won't know until we investigate and get feedback. But this takes time. And I think that it might be good to consider an RFP for that, just to see for both of these things, just to see what's out there. And if it's not cost-effective, it may not be cost-effective. And if it's not, then we'll have to figure out something else. But I'd like to explore things so we're ready. The other thing that I'm thinking of is, and I had conversations with, again, those conferences are very useful in getting ideas. Regarding, I don't think we should outsource. If we do decide to outsource custodial, I don't think it should be 100%. We do need at least one person here that is vested in the county. They should remain as a county employee. But I think we should kind of change up the title to be more of a, what's the word? Facilitator. Like a facilities manager slash county administrator. Kind of like how they do in Winterset. They have the city administrator. We have Drew. He's kind of over kind of making sure He does the will of the council and then he makes sure that, you know, he directs things. So I'm thinking more of someone kind of changing the role to be more of a facilities director, facilities manager slash county administrator. This person, he or she would manage outsourcing the custodial staff. They would be the ADA contact. That's another thing. We're required to have an ADA assigned person for ADA compliance. That was something I learned from that consultant. So they would be the person that would handle that. Another option is to take, right now, Michelle is the IT liaison. Have that be the facilities person, or facilities director, or county administrator. That's a very broad role. I'm spitballing here. I'm just thinking, and we can discuss it further. But I think that not be an IT person per se, but be the liaison. It's like, hey, I need a new computer. This person would contact Solutions. Rather than logging down the auditor, who should be doing her stuff and focusing on that and having someone else focus on it, because technically that's equipment, facilities, you can follow me there. I know, I think there's one county, and I have to look at my notes, I think there's one county that does that. I'm trying to, I may be misremembering. Anyway, I just think there's value that we have at least one, we still have a staff member that is employed by the county at four facilities outsourcing 100%. Now, if the board thinks we should do that or at least look into it, see what the cost is, I don't know. But I personally don't think. I think it'd be worth looking at.

I know people had expressed concern before when we talked about this last year regarding sensitive areas. For example, a county attorney, and we can't have the servial staff in here after hours. Well, but they could do it during the day. They already do it during the day. They already do it during the day. Now, I think a county administrator... when i hear that term i envision somebody who's our right-hand person that circumvents and helps with some of the crazy and dealing with a three-person board where we can't speak outside of meetings i picture a county administrator in that role a higher level helping to navigate and coordinate i would pick but i love your idea regarding a facility manager that would be um you know, the keeper and overseeing that, overseeing that stuff. Because, you know, Chip's been acting, you know, more in that capacity in a lot of ways, but he hasn't had a title.

I think his title is head custodian, right? It would be a completely different position. It would be a salary position. It would be an exec position. And it would be something where he'd have more responsibilities, report to the board, But I kind of want to kind of unfold more of a county administrative position because I'm not saying 100%, but have maybe, or have that under the duties as assigned, that 5% or 10% part that they always do in our job description, kind of a catch-all.

Say, yeah, that's what you're doing. It's right in there.

But have it more defined and have it more of a, just change the kind of the role. So, and then that person would manage the vendors and take that responsibility out of the hands of our department heads so the department heads can focus on their, what they need to do, rather than this. I don't know what your thought is on that. I think we could potentially save money. I know we could potentially take a lot of headaches out of the auditor's office, a lot of our headaches out. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

I think it's wise for us to stay ahead of this and try to at least gather information You know, we know people are going to flip out and say, oh, they're going to do this, they're going to do that. No, we're talking here about what our options are so we can make informed decisions. So I would be open to potential RFPs for custodial and HR just so we know, so we can ensure we do our due diligence.

So do you – I'm not comfortable outsourcing 100%. I would like to have a staff member still, you know, county staff member, but if the board wants to consider it as an option, we can do that. I'm not open to that, though. What? Open to what? To outsourcing it 100%. For custodial? No, I think we need it. Okay, so... okay so and then for HR I don't know what's out there to Diane's point there may be nothing out there but I'd like to at least explore it to see if there's any option to to save money on that and potentially you know who knows maybe we could also change her part-time second deputy to a full-time second deputy I don't know I don't know. So I'd like to kind of at least see what's out there financially and then run the numbers. So if we have to make some tough decisions, we have the time to do it. And RMPs, we usually do an RMP for about 30 days. We want to do 30 days, but we want to do it because next week, we get it on the agenda next week to go to an RMP and we let it. That would take us, a month would take us into the middle of March. And we have to have our max levy done by March 5th. But we don't have to have our budget done until April 30th. So that would give us time. So if the board is open to that, I can get an RFP on the agenda for consideration. For both of them? Yeah.

So I had asked Chip previously about, you know, just kind of, you know, document the tasks. Last year when it was mentioned, potentially outsourcing, and just, you know, document the tasks and what your people do. And so I haven't seen that. I don't know if that's ever been done, any follow-up later.

so my concern would be that you know defining on the front end what those needs are i don't know that we've done that in-house to be able to well we can ask kelly to give us a job description of what we have currently it's probably very old and his tasks their tasks have probably changed over the years we could always look on you know to see what typical facilities and again his tasks might change we can put what we want That we actually want our facilities folks to do. This is what we want them to do. We want you to change trash every day. We want you to glass the floors once a month. Or however we want to do it. And then, I don't know. And for how many buildings. Because right now they mostly do the annex, the courthouse. I know they do occasionally secondary roads. They do secondary roads. They don't do the engineering office, but they do the shop. They do the shop. All of them does. But I don't know what exactly they do. Do they just change trash? No. They scrub all the toilets. They mop the floors. Okay. So we'll do that. And then EMS, they don't do anything. Public health, they didn't really do anything, but that's a new point right now. So secondary roads, elderly services. They do their own. They do their own. Because that's kitchen. But that might change if we do – so what I can do is I can do – On there we can do three buildings with potential to add two more. So we would do annex, courthouse, secondary roads, and then I don't know what the sheriff's office does. And then overview services. So we can do elderly, add on potentially elderly and sheriff, because I don't really have to talk to Sheriff Barnes about what you would do. I don't know. They clean their own. It's part of the jail. Oh, okay. They have to. Okay. So then we just leave them off. So it would just be elderly services as a potential. This is part of prison. Okay. So I don't know what elderly services is doing now.

They clean. They're doing it themselves.

So it would just be the back. Yeah. Just the back rooms. what we could do is we could request for them when they bid it out they can give a call for hourly so that we know if we decide to add them later on it's for the contracted price and i can reach out to the state because i know they outsource their custodial staff and they did an rfp for that and they do it i don't know if they do it every year they do it every two years But they do R&P's for outsourcing their construction staff. So I can ask them to use one of theirs as a template. Okay, yeah. If you're able, then I'll just focus on the L&D services for these contractors and all that then. Okay. So let me put that together and then... Do you want to send us a draft? I'll send you guys a draft and see if you have a chance to read it over and then... we'll have it for Tuesday and consider. I think that would be great. And if you guys know of companies that you would like to invite to the bid, that's fine. Otherwise, we'll just post it on the places we posted for the public sites and the audit.

You know, janitorial is interesting because it seems to progress in the industry. you have one company that stands out, and they're doing great, and they're doing fabulous, and you have the bottom dwellers that have terrible service, and it changes. So ownership changes. There's a lot of variation over the years with that.

So I'll also make some calls and see who's reputable today. And I can get a list maybe from the state to see who responded to their bid, what I bid, to direct invite. I think that when we posted it to those other public sites, though, those were very effective because apparently companies look at those quite regularly. So anyway, so I will do that.

And just to clarify, I mean, that would look like they could do the main hallways and more public areas after hours, but the office spaces they need to do during business hours. They do them in the morning.

If I get there before 7, they've already got it done. I mean, they're doing our office in the afternoon. Steve comes by and does ours in the afternoon. Actually, I vacuum in the mornings. Well, you shouldn't be vacuuming.

Yes, I should. Serving. That's what we hired him for. I'm not saying you are.

I'm just saying, you know, if we're going to be doing it, then we don't need custodial because we'll just hire you down here. Okay. So, okay, so I will work on that and I will maybe get a draft to you guys in the next couple days and give your feedback on that. And then Mac, this will probably be a last minute, just get it on the agenda, but the actual resolution and the actual RP will probably be a last minute Friday. Okay, so FYI. FYI, Lance. so okay so yeah I don't know if we want to talk more about the budget or we want to just wait for other stuff I'm concerned that as we really can't talk about salaries until we get done with the union negotiation you have a lot on your I'm just kind of wondering where things stand Yeah, well, according to Michelle, we have to get it done in a week, otherwise. So worst case scenario, we can't tax more than we did last year. And it's not the levy, it's the actual amount, which I'm sure our taxpayers would love that. They would love it even more if we could actually reduce that amount. So I guess we're kind of waiting to be seen. At least for the March 5th one, we just have to get what our maximum is. That's just the timeline. Mm-hmm. um i was hoping we'd be further along but unfortunately we're not so we need to do what we got to do to get ready for worst cases okay um anything else that you guys want to talk about regarding the budget otherwise i'll entertain a motion to adjourn second any further discussion all in favor please vote aye aye all opposed motion carries