Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Yes. All right.

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's July 6, 2026 issues. County Board of Commissioners will now call the meeting to order. And the first item on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Do we have any question for changes or a motion to approve the agenda and proceed.

I just wanted to bring up something that I was made aware of. You know, when we did the state did all those clear and objective standards, someone was planning on building an ADU in Angus Acres. And a couple of years ago when they checked with building, it was possible. And so they've been saving their money and they came back. And because of those clear and objective standards now, there's an issue. And according to my notes, it could possibly be done through us if some little project came off of their work plan, or the person would actually have to do a text amendment, which would cost $10,300 to put in. And so I think it's really unfortunate that the new rules made the parameters smaller instead of making it possible for more housing.

So would that be an agenda item to discuss? Because I do support the fact that we take a moment and say, if we're going to talk about something substantive, let's put it on the agenda. Yep. Or is that a future requirement?

Well, I don't know. I think maybe if we could, I don't know if we could do it on Wednesday or not, but I just think it's really important to bring it up.

There's certainly time to put it on the agenda for Wednesday.

Okay. That would be great. Thank you.

So just to acknowledge, so it's kind of a review of the situation.

Somebody was saving their money, doing it right, wants to have an ADU, and then they come back to our building department and they're going like, no, no, no, no, this has got to have, you know, walls, touching, you know, walls on each side. Well, his mortgage doesn't like that. Of course it doesn't.

It would be a review of that situation. Either it's an unintended consequence of a cleared objective.

I'm pretty disappointed that the cleared objective standards that were meant to facilitate housing aren't actually inhibiting housing development. With that, I'll move approval of the agenda.

Okay, thank you.

With a plan to add nine for future. Thank you.

Great.

Okay.

Is there a second? Second. Been seconded. Anything else? Further discussion? Mr. De Gaulle? Yes. Mr. Adair?

Yes.

Chair votes yes. form afterwards. Anyone online, please raise your hand if you would like to provide a public comment. All right. We're in the room. All right. We will proceed now to Commissioner announcements. Any announcements for this year?

I just want to commend Chief Patterson at the Adana Detroit Fire Station for I was at the opening of the building yesterday, and because of his public servants to his community, he actually raised the money to not have to do a levy or a bond or anything for that community. The land that the new fire station is built on was donated by a family who actually had 2,300 acres of timberland burned in the fire in September of 2020. Amazing dedication. They had to actually fire the contractor and the fireman finished the building. So really nice. And, you know, something that we all drive by when we're driving to Salem. So it's great that it's there. And, you know, their community is still incredibly impacted by that burn that took out their community. Thank you. And oh, the Roundhouse was one of the donors. So, you know, Roundhouse from Sisters. I thought that was really nice to hear that of their friends. So thank you, Roundhouse.

You have a lot of important things all over the state.

Any other Commissioner announcements? Just acknowledge participation in the Association of Oregon Counties Legislative Conference and Sisters. I think we mentioned it before. Well, it was the last week. If there's time, Commissioners from around the state were able to get together really focused on what are the lead priority items going into a long session next year, trying to define our kind of bullet points to start with and organized as a group so i know we were all participating in one way or another last monday and that tuesday morning uh instead of driving all the way from lupine back to sisters i decided to dial in which worked out great because it only went for about 45 minutes that was would have been a lot longer drive to participate each way hour each way yeah it was a lot of driving for a short meeting yes well someone who lives right outside the sisters i thought it was perfect yeah But as I say, I was able to be online on Tuesday morning. And then, yeah, just celebrating, you know, our 4th of July weekend had a good event. I did stay in Southern Deschutes County parade, just community. But saw a lot of people, spoke to a lot of folks. So it's just a great opportunity to enjoy the summer weekend.

Yeah. Yeah. There was a number of 4th of July events. Commissioner Adair and I gave comments in Redmond.

the event on Friday evening, and then I was having breakfast for Frontier Days on Saturday morning, very early. I would also like to mention that on Thursday last week, the 2nd of July, community members in Wasco County held a celebration of life for Commissioner Phil Brady, a deceased Wasco County Commissioner. It was a wonderful event. There was probably something like 300 people there. It was pretty amazing. And just a remarkable individual who did so much for his community and was obviously well loved by the people of Wasco County. Any other commissioner announcements? Seeing none, we can move on to our consent agenda. So moved.

Second. Seconded. Any further discussion? Just acknowledging commercial property insurance annual bill. So why not?

Yes. Yes. Chair votes yes. Okay, now we can move on to our regular agenda items. Item number two, consideration of the letter of response to Federal Register Notice OMB-2026-0034, Regulation of Federal Financial Assistance. Sounds super dry, but As we've become aware from NACO, this is a potentially very profound change in rules and regulations for our federal grant making.

Absolutely, that's correct. So for the record, Robert Tintel, Chief Financial Officer. So yes, today we're coming before you for the board to consider if comments want to be made regarding the Office of Management and Budget has proposed rewriting 2 CFR Part 200, Uniform Guidance. It governs every federal grant our county receives. And this is the biggest overhaul in the Uniform Guidance since 2013. Comments do close on July 13. So the rule does more than update paperwork or rules about how we administer grants. Key provisions at stake in this new proposal is new authority for the OMB to terminate grants mid-term, mid-program, at any point in time, Pre-award review requirements that could slow down applications, including e-verify for all federal grants and SAMHSA registration. There's a viewpoint neutrality rules for events on county-owned property, such as fairgrounds or parks, the few parks we have, that do not receive federal funding to ensure that there's no reputational harm to the county or the federal government. There's more monitoring obligations for pass-through entities and subrecipients, justification for payments, any time we would make a payment. And the uniform guidance moves from policy guidance to each of the federal departments to regulation as well. So that's just a highlight of some of the really drastic changes that are taking place with the uniform guidance. As of yesterday, there have been 80,803 comments received. Of those, 47,000 included documents, which if the board decides to submit a letter, our attachment would be a document. Otherwise, the other 40,000 or 30,000 are just comments submitted. So quite a few comments submitted, but I would also say, well, first, I haven't read through Highlighting, yeah, just as I skim through some of them, a lot of them are just one-offs. There's been some active, I think, universities and those regarding research. They've been pretty proactive in providing response. But it is important for NACO, GFOA, and all these other partners that I mentioned in the board agenda memo. To really they are going to provide letters from those associations in response. However, as you know, AOC association counties is really encouraging counties to provide their own letter of support as well. So what you have before you in the board packet is very draft. It's a draft letter. based on the template from NACO. So that's why it is long, but they did ask counties to customize it, and all the customizations are in the red, and that's per their template. There are a few additions from the NACO template that GFOA has asked to be included, and those are the questions. If you notice in the draft proposed letter, comment. There's some outstanding questions or questions in writing, and those are actually from GFOA. So we're kind of merging NACO's comments with GFOA's comments in this draft letter. I should point out, if the board should decide to submit a letter such as this, obviously there's options of who it's from. Right now, based on the template, it's from me, but on behalf of the Board of County Commissioners, it can be directly signed by the Board of County Commissioners as well. That's your choice. And there is a correction that's needed on one of the papers I referenced that we have 18% of our grants are asked through, but it should be 8%. So typo there. So thank you for that. And then just today, NACO came out with an additional recommendation in the letter that if the Board approves this or would like to move forward with comments, we would include the phrase, we request OMB to publish a fiscal impact analysis on states and localities before finalizing the rule and to delay implementation until at least October 1st, 2027. So counties have time to prepare. So it's just another sentence if the board chooses, I'd like to add that in there per NACoS recommendation. Right now, the proposal is that this would be effective October 1, 2026, which really isn't that far away for the amount of changes this proposed legislation brings. That's a very high-level overview of what's in your packet, but I would seek for direction and thoughts at this point, and questions, as much as we can answer at this point. There's a lot of unknowns, actually.

really happy that you provided us with this extensive list of federal grants that came to the county within fiscal year 2025-26, totaling $14,500,000.

And actually, just for the record, that's the fiscal year 2025 list. That's an annual list we prepare as part of our auditing, and that's part of the schedule of expenditure of federal awards that is audited by our external independent accountants. And so that's why it's last year's list. We're just in the process of developing the 2026 year now, and it hasn't been audited yet. But I did want to provide context of what kind of,

grants federal grants do we receive that could be at risk or could be challenged at any time based on a number of hours terminated at any time you know 14.5 million dollars worth of federal investments and things like wildfire resiliency health services victims assistance is pretty significant Are there any thoughts, questions?

Okay. Well, you know what? We just turned down a grant. What was it? $750,000, something like that, because they were asking for so much. But we have a federal debt problem, you know, $40 trillion. They've got to do something. And maybe this is too soon. But honestly, when you hear that people are driving Lamborghinis and they're on food stamps, you know we have a problem. with our federal government and their lack of oversight. And then I did ask about CCBHC funding, and it doesn't show up here because it's Medicaid. So, yeah. Well, but it's, we've accumulated a lot of money through CCBHC since 2017. And that money has come from the federal government. So, that's supposed to be able to accumulate. And they said, oh, we always pass that audit. And yet, normally, if you work for the government, I thought you had to spend all your money or you had to return it, that kind of, you know.

And that's a fee-for-service, which is slightly different than the grants listed here.

Okay, well, we're still accumulating a lot of money, and I hear Lane County's been doing the same thing, maybe?

I'm not sure recently.

Okay, well, that's what I heard. So, and then I, yeah, it's page three that I wrote. Yes. So, and then on the last one, the Department of the Treasury, I was looking at that one and I was going, hmm, I would flip the one, I would put the 49 underneath it. It just was hard to figure out, okay, actually, where did you come with the 5.2 million? It was the first number. I know you're at your... your schedule. I just think it doesn't flow well. You know, it's the first number, and then you add the next, the third number and fourth number. I would just rearrange that page just because I didn't think it didn't flow well.

These are actually from our audit report, and so I would be hesitant to change it. Actually, it's not required that we submit this list with our comments. It was more as a reference, although we can if the board would like to have It was more of a reference for the board to just get an overview of the types of federal financial assistance we received.

Don't you think it's important, though, to actually submit it?

We can't. We want to provide the detail. We absolutely can't.

And I'll take board direction. I think they'd like to see, actually, the numbers and the details. I mean, Russ Boyd is... I know this has woken up the world and they're not happy, but I actually looked it up. We started Social Security in 1935. In 1937, the first check went out. That's what happened. In 1882, the government started using that funding. When do we ever get a hold of our spend?

Well, I really appreciate the scope and depth of this letter. news published from June 15th. It's a front page item. OMB proposed a major change to the grant administration. So, as I said, it lays out Deschutes County's involvement, how serious we are with these funding streams in our audit, our accounting system, everything we're doing here. So, it does boil down to asking for this extension out 45 days. And then this definitely tells our story. So, I mean, I'm so proud of proceeding at this time. studied it back enough to understand, you know, is this kind of dropped on the table and it's going to proceed, or is this going to get stickier? I don't know what the next step is.

That's what I was just kind of thinking. I should also add, health services did provide comments regarding their services as well, so this has been reviewed by them, and I reached out with them because, as I said, the legislature put out the most federal plans, but I also intend to be on the webinar put on by GFOA in partnership with ANCO and other agencies. And then ANCO also had some, they're still having some drop-in sessions on questions. So we've been monitoring that. If everything proceeds as proposed, like I said, it is drastic. It will change our grant process. And we will have to have a lot of follow-up conversations, including with legal, looking at our contracts, and how we administer and our processes. So there will be a lot of discussion that will occur once we know what the final product is. So we've already had conversations, but really our procedures So the deadline is really the 13th for comments and today is the 6th, right?

Are we going to know that they're going to extend it 45 days? I'm sure that they have. Nobody's asked.

No, they have. A coalition of these groups have asked, but I believe that they haven't. It's been turned down. I don't remember, but it hasn't been extended at this point.

Okay, so it's been turned down or whatever.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, I support proceeding with a letter like this, and if... on behalf of or something. So it could be from you on behalf of whatever, however you want for it. And then right now it says something that you have to do.

I think it's appropriate for it to come from us. I can sign or I don't have to sign testamentary to me as long as it says, you know, we are the origin of this

And I mean, I support you being the point of contact, I guess, is part of that. That's what I was thinking. So other than that, I don't know why it's not better.

Maybe the point of contact and put your name at the bottom or the board at the bottom or just leave it as it is proposed.

It's fine how it's proposed. I just think we should get it sent sooner rather than later. If they actually have not made a determination, if they will extend it or not.

It has not been extended at this point.

Yeah, so it's

so it's five days this week so okay how you laid out you know the the level of rigor uh in you know grant management and fiscal management that that we provide to every grant funded project um that that comes to us i mean would be entirely appropriate for people to talk about should this should we have a grant program for this or should we not have a grant program for this but once the decision has been made that we're having a grant program for x y or z service you know that kind of the implication that you know I think that we are very good stewards of the federal grant dollars that are provided to us. And as this list demonstrates, we are putting those dollars to work, providing really important services for our community. So thank you again for this letter. So do we need a motion for removing this letter forward?

I would suggest probably says never recommended.

Yeah, we didn't. I didn't recommend a motion. But if it's if we're the record, if you want to move, it'd be better. I think it's in part because the letters from Robert.

Okay, it's from Robert. We just on behalf of us. That's I mean, that's fine.

If you feel if you feel comfortable signing it from the book.

direction.

All right, get the letter in tonight. Boy, we'll get back to you.

We all feel comfortable that it says on behalf of the court. Thank you. Number three, courthouse expansion update. or he was out at the revenue 50 event on Friday. Oh, that was a, that was a fun event.

So what postie? Well, we'll start with the introductions and then move into our, take a look on that. And I will turn it over. Yeah. All right.

I'm not able to share my screen yet.

Thank you.

As you know, we are open to the public. And so this report will be our final standard monthly report is our plan. And then our next report will be likely in September. And that will be our CMGC final report. As long as the board's supportive of that. I'm sorry. And then I'll just mention as well that we are planning the ribbon cutting for August 14th, and we'll send out additional information. We've gotten out an initial full date email to a group of folks, especially, and then that date has already been published in the PDF. That's going to follow up over the next month or so with additional information.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Eric. Okay, so Yes, our usual monthly update. We'll talk about recently completed work, where we're at in the construction timeline, and with the project budget. But the main focus the last couple of months has been on the remodel work. So one of those areas of work was the new IT offices for state courts. Sally Court garage into a nice office space. See here, that's all finished. That's it this week. Courtroom 1C. So this is a new hearing room, courtroom in the place of the previous public service counter. So where the entry doors are and the 1C sign is on the wall that was formerly bricked with... All that should be finalized next week. Carpet looks pretty familiar.

No, they do have blue at Lynn County. So, yes, there are other colors.

We were able to find one for a few areas of the courthouse, and we're already good with that stuff. I think I dropped a slide off, but the restaurants and the jury assemblies are also completed, so throughout. But though at any rate, this is where we're at construction timelines are finalizing the existing building renovations over the next month or so we'll work through a final project for that much of that is that.

They've been cutting August 14th.

Wrapping things up. Yeah, more of what I said, upcoming work, just kind of closing the project out. We are starting on reconstruction of the area where the temporary entrance was at between the brick building and the gray courthouse. So this one should take a couple of weeks. The goal is really just to reconstruct what was there before, putting the sidewalks back, landscaping back.

Board of Trustees Meeting. Any questions before we move on to the budget? If I can just ask one more question.

easements and all that good stuff. So I'm sure we're close. So soon.

So that's like a month or two?

Hopefully sooner than that. But we'll see. One item that we're working on is part of that street that was not under our responsibility has non-standard drainage areas. And so we've been working with the city to make sure that we're a good neighbor and that we can put that down in essence. So So that's the piece of work that we're waiting on. It's some additional work just to ensure that everything that we've done doesn't, even though everything we've done is designed and it works on paper, just a little extra measure to make sure that there aren't any downstream effects there. And that should, it's fairly minor improvement that's included in the project now. date for when that work might, we're in for engineering right now. So it's approved, hopefully, maybe a week after. So in the next two or three weeks, we'll finish that up. Probably have a seven-day pure time on the concrete. So that puts us out probably at least a month to be able to button that spot up. It has, it's a challenging spot because the east side of the road, which isn't our responsibility, it's non-standard and Any other questions and we'll shift it to wait for it on the budget. I guess actually don't, not to skip Corey, any other comments? Usually you have an upcoming work section, but no, this is a good thing. I'm getting butted up. Not needed.

Okay. All right. On the budget in your packet. So this is up to date through all subcontractors. This is through the April to date in June, and that's what's included here. So percent complete at the bottom of the second page there is 91%. That's obviously the physical work has been completed, but the accounting drags a couple of months behind. So as Lee was saying, we'll have a full reconciliation that's dependent. So again, it's been strong, using GC and accounting contingencies, but still with the original budget, approved budget.

Any items you'd like us to highlight as we related to the budget?

I noticed that Pence was a sponsor of the Malala Rodeo the other day. Are you guys sponsoring our fair?

I think so. If we're not, I'll double check. Please check. I would like that.

Pleasantly surprised to see your name there.

Thanks for the mention.

Okay, good.

I'll just add that, you know, as we move toward the end of the project, we have additional change orders related to the exterior, related to some changes that needed to be made. And so those who open

So we're not going to have a pile of cash left over to put towards the next project.

We're not expecting that. One positive side that finance is going to be working on with us is it's been a few months since we updated our interest calculation. And so typically, we've used a conservative calculation of those interest earnings. utilized from interest doses from insurers so that's less than those that we're currently forecasting uh when that next interest uh projection comes out so right we'll do that yes we will have likely we'll have that update then september all right any other thank you very much i'm sorry to understand about that road

item number four consideration of updates to personnel

For the record, Whitney Hale, Deputy County Administrator, and I'm going to send a quick note to our HR team. I think they're planning on joining virtually today. Oh, yeah.

There we go. Hello. That's good.

Today, we just have a work session discussion with the board to discuss some proposed updates to the county's personnel roles. As the board is aware, Susan and I have been before you a number of times in the past few months with a variety of HR policies. And this is one of the last substantive updates that we think we have as part of this year's policy review. So the plan is just a lot of the proposed changes We're not seeking formal board action today. We'll come back to you in a regular business meeting for those steps once we get there. But today, just looking to provide you with an overview and hope to answer any questions that you may have.

So question up front here, this is a kind of like a formatted document, sections and pages. How traditionally would an employee get this? They're probably not going to print it out, is my point. It's right on the paper.

Typically, we have a policy library on the county's intranet, the SharePoint page. In addition to all of our county policies, the personnel roles are also linked there. We also provide updates to staff. when these types of things are updated and provide them with a fresh link to the revised version. So those are typically the ones that would be accessing this information.

Yes, that's exactly correct. We provide everything to the employees once it's updated so that they get a copy, but they also have it available at any time on our SharePoint.

Thank you.

all right um i'm gonna plan to walk through a few of the larger revisions um in personal rules and then we'll turn it over to the board for any questions if that sounds like a good strategy great perfect um The majority of the changes that the board is going to see in the red lines for this update are administrative cleanup changes and compliance-based updates. It's been a number of years since we've last revised the personal rules, so it's best to do a comprehensive review, both on the HR side and with legal to make sure that if references have been updated or changed, that we're maintaining alignment with those changing guidelines. And so there's a significant amount of just what I would categorize as general process updates in these personnel roles. We also sought to add clarity to processes where we thought it would be helpful to employees. So there's some bolstering of language that wasn't previously available. So that process steps, we're trying to make sure that they're fully explained. change by change unless there's specific questions. We did want to flag a few of the more substantive changes in the update and the first of which is in Section 5 and that's 5.030 and this is a change that relates to PERS status and essentially this change as proposed would allow a retiree that's already collecting PERS to be re-retired by the organization and keep their pension while they were working. The board will likely recall that this is something as a state that has kind of evolved over time in terms of the statewide provisions that touch this issue. And generally the state has shifted to allow this for most types of employees and most types of employees now have an unlimited hour system for retirees. So this proposed FDA essentially doesn't put the commitments to engage in the practice, but it certainly would make it an option. Whereas with the current draft that we are operating under, it is not allowed. Susan, anything that you want to add with respect to the PROS change?

No, that's exactly correct. There's nothing else to add.

So following state law, and I remember that that was a bill that had come two years ago now

And to be clear, I think state law provides employers the option. It does not require them. So I think the board would certainly have an option to maintain the personnel rules as drafted with respect to this issue. But this is allowable and something that other counties have chosen to allow and have rules that govern that type of flexible use. So that is proposed change in Section 5. In Section 7, we have some pay period alignment changes to reflect the shifting of the pay period, but the . In the wage and salary sections of that section, we have some substantive changes. that are specific to how we determine the rate of pay for new hires and also how we determine the rate of pay for current employees who are promoted or demoted. And essentially, the overarching change, and Susan can jump into the weeds here if you all have questions, is that HR will be conducting a step placement analysis in all of these situations, and that step placement analysis will drive the step that the employee is placed at in all of those situations. Section 10, you'll see some addition of language that covers the addition of bereavement leave for nonrepresented employees. A few weeks ago, we were before you with a policy that represented employees. And so this specific insertion will cover nonrepresented employees and provide that option to them. Section 12, we have some updates to the grievance process, specifically timelines that we are aligning with some other changes that we've seen organizationally recently, where there's some increases of timing for certain steps of the grievance process, and then some proposed modifications to the grievance process that pertains to any grievances that might rise to the board's level. And then in section 13, we have language that would sunset the retiree health insurance premium benefits for employees hired after July 31st, which depending on our timeline for just that timeline a tiny bit, but certainly it would be not a substantive shift. It'll just depend on how quickly we're able to get this version back for final board review. So that, in a nutshell, is kind of an overview, a brief overview of the high-level changes that we focused on. I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have about these changes or anything else that's included in the red line.

So that payment for health insurance, if you've been here for 15 years, does it vary upon where you worked, or does everyone get the same amount to help with their premium subsidy? Susan?

I can't recall if it varies for, no.

The only variation is that the sheriff's office gets the full subsidy after 25 years, but otherwise it is the same. So if you've been here for 15 years or more, you get a variety of different steps based off the years of experience, but there's nothing specific to any other department other than the sheriff's office with that one caveat of 25 years or more.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for going through this. It's been a couple of years, but it's good to be able to touch base, you know, kind of go through the whole thing and see if there's anything heavy edited. I have that policy choice about the first item you mentioned there. Hired back after retirees. Yeah, just trying to make sure I was straight with my thoughts. And I support it.

Sounds good. Well, commissioners, we have a few steps that we'll take after our discussion today. And then once those are complete, we'll bring this back to the board for formal decision making. And we appreciate your time, but hopefully reach out to questions.

So I can get us up to date and state it well with our current thought process on certain questions.

Yes, you're welcome. And certainly with a document like this, it's a group effort. So thank you.

So that's item number four. At this time, I'll check to see if there are any other items. I mentioned that the Criminal Justice Commission will be here tomorrow. And of presentations from Sheriff's Office and health services staff. Anything else? Additional other items we can... Proceed to executive session. Do you want to read the notice? Sure.

The Deschutes County Board of Commissioners will now convene an executive session pursuant to ORS 192.660. The specific authorization for this executive session is ORS 192.6602H, which allows the board to meet in order to discuss pending litigation. Designated staff and the media are allowed to remain during the executive session. However, the media may only record that the board met in executive session and may identify based on the executive session. Recording devices are not permitted. No final decisions will be made. And at the conclusion, we will open the doors and invite the audience back to the media. Am I doing good?