Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

in counties. So, I've had a lot of questions of somebody that lives in the rural, they're like, "Where's that bottom one?" That's because townships were not required to put it on there. And I'll remind you, the consolidated taxes in the county, it's not just the county's levy. you're paying approximately 30% is going to the schools cities. We have the egg extension. We have E911. We have benefited fires, EMA. We have all those other entities that make up the consolidated tax rate. So, we can only specifically talk about the counties tonight. So,

I guess one thing I got explain that letter to us. board. So, what that letter does, if you look at, let's just pick on the residential for example, I do have a couple handouts from the Department of Management with the explanation and on your mailers there is a link. So, if you click on that link, it'll direct you right to the Department of Management and you can go out there, watch videos, you can, if you know your assessment, because I know the assessor is going to be sending out those assessment notices, you can go out and plug in your assessment. You can plug in your levy rates and kind of play with it and make it more specific to you. But what that what those values are. So, for example, the residential, it's comparing a $100,000 assessed value last year with last year's levies, comparing it to $110,000 assessment this year. So, it's already increasing. So, for example, the county, we're lowering our levy, but it's still showing that it's increasing because our tax base increased because there's more taxable value than there was last year. So, our tax dollars bringing in is going to be more regardless if we lowered our levy. So that's and the schools and the cities what that value is on there is just the blanket. So like for you it would be the Vent Shellsburg school district as a whole and then Taylor Township.

Is that where you are Taylor or B? But so it's specific to that tax district that you live in. Those values are okay. as a blanket, not as an individual parcel. And it's just hypothetically and the whole thing is confusing. Yeah, definitely. That that form is confusing. Uh Haley sent us a bunch of links where we could go out and read it all and understand it. I'd say I've tried to understand it, but it's confusing. The other thing is you say the levy's going down,

but what's that going to do to our taxes? Depends on your assessed values as well. Yeah, cuz I just looked today and mine went up 40%. And we also won't get the roll backs until probably late July, June, I don't know, next year. But is a factor. This is how much money is being spent. Here's the tax base. So your levy is a factor. How much money is being spent is how much taxes there are. So excess values can change up or down, but how much money is being spent, that'll change that levy. So, and I'm not picking on them. I'm picking on school and whoever else too. Well, our levy went down. Well, you're still spending more. Doesn't mean it's wrong spending more, but you are still spending more. So,

yeah. Larry, you want to introduce yourself? Sorry, I'm the bank assessor, so I was asked to be here. And the values that this is based on is our 2005 values. We're always kind of a a year back or sorry. So like the treasur's office, what you're paying taxes, what you're just paying for this March based on the 24 values. So and then we're already working on the 26 values with Larry's. So, it's always a three-year circle.

I have a question, but first, thank you for doing the pledge. That's much appreciated. I was at a school board meeting last night and not only did they not do the pledge, they didn't have a flag in the room. So, very fitting. My question on the there several reasons why there's a increase request. One of them is um unfunded mandates or something like that, which is a nice way of saying crammed down. But give us some examples of what are these things that the counties are being told you do this, but we're not giving you any extra money. I'd love to cost the county $11,000.

Um do you guys want to list some of the unfunded endings? Well, I was thinking without naming names. We have a problem child we had for a while for over two years up to Eldora. We were paying $400 a day to take care of her. She was a juvenile. We got just shy of $400,000 wrapped up in this youth for one person. Yes. one person and 170,000

now here in February we actually had four of them up there the state does not help us out there are Benton County residents we have to uh pay the bill for them up there not only do we pay the housing but as they're juveniles and once they're placed in a facility like that if they're on Title 19 that drops off. Okay. We paidund almost 170 almost $170,000 in medical expenses.

None of those state mental health dollars go to cases like that then? Not on the juvenile detention that I'm aware of. Unlike substance abuse and mental commitments, it does. Those do but it's strictly the juvenile that part does not or if a inmate in the jail has medical issues we have to put the bill. Okay. That's not a new mandate is it? You the county's had to pay that for some time. No, we've got a few more pushed back but um cuz like normally if those people would have title 19 outside of this they would cover it but they do not. Okay. So is there any recourse to get this money back from these people?

They don't know nothing. So, if you see I'm going to have an amendment coming up already next week in paper, it's because of our juvenile. We have um $180,000 to pay because we were we were fighting it, weren't we, Derek? Yeah.

We didn't budget $180,000 total to start with. We don't we generally don't spend that kind of money. the last couple years it's been out of hand. Uh, another one that you don't think about uh that we have put a lot of money into is uh medical examiner cases. Uh unattended deaths. We the county has to pay for all those. Do you pay per capita or a flat fee? We have set fees.

Okay. But if if for example a Benton County resident dies in Lynn County or another county in the state, they will turn on a bill list. They can send them to whoever they choose for autopsy or transporting the body to the medical examiner's office. That's also a cost we and they don't have to. Yep. Okay. But if we have an outside the county resident that we have to have a case, we can build that other county back to. So some of it we can recoup. Okay, thank you.

So, I have a big one which um again I'm not county but I've been around forever kind of. So, um and I don't know maybe somebody else remembers I'm not picking on somebody I'm looking at but 20ome years ago the state basically turned over almost all the paved roads to the counties and they paid a few million dollars at that time and a million or two or something. I don't know what the number is but the responsibility has been the counties ever since. So there's liabilities like that that the state has helped their budget on and put put down on local taxpayers part of it. And with the school, which I know from talking to Kyle about some things and stuff too, that um in their case they've got uh $1.2 million for special needs students. And I won't go into all the details. So if it's not everybody that you think of it could be speech impediments and a variety of other things, but um that the school district has $1.2 $2 million that you know a number of years ago that would have been taken through whether it was the braille school or other state programs and stuff too. So um the state is moved a number of things. I'm sure they've done it for the cities and stuff too. They've moved a number of things down that you know hold your line which is a reasonable thing to say but they have done they've balanced some of their part by dumping it on other people too. So,

it used to be all the counties or all the towns had one state highway coming into them. No.

And that million dollars lasted what? 6 weeks. Depends on the week.

I got a question for Larry. Why did assess values go up so much? So we'll assess values for commercial industrial and residential properties based on market value. The year before the sales that we have we have um 300 some normal sales in for residential. We are by law have to be within 5% of that. If not then the state will take us to 100%. So you're shooting for like 98. We're actually on the lower side of that for what it was last time. Um, agricultural is based on productivity, which is input costs and expenses and income and stuff that part of it too. So, that's not the same formula. It's a 5-year formula, but it's strictly off of sales in Benton County. It's not sales in L County or whatever else for residential. For commercial, it's sales, but then the state also puts in um uh I think 12 um appraisals that they put into that. So but at the same time which state has an assessment roll back or assessment limitation system that's been in place since 1977 and when the so the overall allowable growth in the entire state is 3%. So when I'll use the example in particular our values went up in 25 24% uh 25.4% 4% but the roll back went down um almost the same amount. So our taxable value for them they're you know you might think oh yeah well they're a lot more value than agricultural it went up 0.7% our taxable value. So for residential in town uh the cess value went up uh 12.76 after the roll back adjusted for that part of it stuff is actually a 6% difference. So there's part of that across the state that's it's a system that basically keeps that more level for the taxable part of it.

Uh one of the bills in the Senate they're looking at elim eliminating that and having everything at 100%. So there's some big changes

say values went up 25% or 24%. egg did because it's a 5-year average of income and productivity, but in the end and that change in values was we had about that we had about that percentage in and I don't have that sheet with me in 23 we went up somewhere in that 23 to 25% taxable values went up like four or 5% too. So it it it actually the system actually is a mathematical system that corrects itself and it it came about in 1977 primarily because of egg because egg was on market value at that time and in some cases the actual taxable value of properties went up from 40 to 70%. So that's what changed in 77 and there's concerns of getting rid of it. So that's why I'm saying again the the taxes is how much money is being spent. Your valuation, everybody's valuation go up 20%. Same value. If everybody's spending the same amount of money, that levy is going to go down 20%. The assess value you see calculated by that, but it doesn't create the tax. I know that roll back is kind of hard to understand and I think it's just thinking about and maybe the thing about changing that roll back maybe been doing away with it. Is that what you've heard? Have you heard?

I sent I sent out a detailed something to the person who's really pushing that and um is that right? But what that's going to do I mean I'm not blowing your smoke on this part. what's it's going to do is because I mean it is kind of hard to understand,

right? But but you're saying you're getting rid of that. So what happens is remember it's a it's a pool. There's this much money being spent and this is how much the taxable values are. Commercial over 150,000 is taxed at 90% of their market value. Okay. a is on and I figured what our um sale value compared to which is what I shared with somebody today. So we're we're basically we're assessed at about a fifth of what the market is. Egg is uh like 59%. Yeah, I think that's what the current one is for that part of what the taxable part of that is. But residential is 44. So the bottom line if you go from 90 to 100 that's 11% change. If you go from 59 to 100, that's 160ome% change. If you go as residential, from 44 to 100, it's 220% change. So that process will shove a lot of the tax burden onto the residential. And then there then the conversation is, well, we'll give you a lot bigger homestead credit. That's not a bad idea in some ways, but then small rural counties and small towns that homestead credit can really eat into if you're if you have a fairly large one, it can really eat into how many people can actually spend the money. So again, it's a shift. It's a shift. Mr.

I don't want to get off the subject, but I just wondered if you heard anything about that's a Senate side of I'm sorry. Right. And then like another thing that we the homestead exemptions like the 65 and older, they passed that 2 years ago. We do not get reimburse when this the state anymore. I don't know. When you were supervisor, Terry, I think we'd send all that in and we would get money back. We need that difference. We don't get the military cutting, right? Military and homestead exemptions. We do not get that back. Pardon? We don't get that funding back.

No, I knew that. I knew that. And then like a lot of people don't realize we have to provide court space. So like for the judges and and storage even for the clerk's office, we have to pay for storage and all that. House DHS here in our buildings, we put the bills for that as well. So there's so many different things here. Sorry. for

but any exemption shifts it from whoever is getting the exemption to the other people because the same amount of tax dollars are being spent. Well, I said it wasn't going to say anything say couple things couple things you want to look at. Uh we put quite a bit of money in for special school elections, special city elections, special county elections. Uh

we don't put we don't we we put the authority in there. It shows up in our budget. Okay. We don't know if we're going to have any of those elections, but if we do, we have to have the authority to spend the money on it. We don't plan on spending that money, but it has to show up in our budget that it's there. And some of that I can bill the city and the schools back for that. But, but to begin with, I have to have the spending. But we as the county pay for those mailing notices for bonds. We have to notify the voters. If you ever get those postcards from me, that's unfunded, too. We can't re get reimbursed for those.

Any more questions? Overall, our legging went down slightly. That is the maximum.

We had to increase general basic back up but because of that otherwise I couldn't have levied journal sub. So with that growth factor we were forced to reduce the last two years but this year I could I had to increase my journal basic to the maximum or I couldn't utilize the general suck that we always utilize. So, but and also I've pointed out over the phone today, we've had numerous calls. Um the EMS levy that was passed by the voters that was not in our control. That's 68 cents. Um we we are in the middle of what about halfway through our debt service levy for the E911 towers. So, that will fall off in a couple more years. That'll be done. um just things that that were added to it. The mental health levy is no longer there either. So, it's kind of a jungle game. We've always tried to keep that bottom levy the same, but you play around with the funds. So,

one of the things though, I think I always preached on this. We had really smart made look us that we were really intelligent when this new towers and the radios and all that went into effect. We had to borrow money. We borrowed uh what was it? $6 million. Just 7 something. Okay. 7.2 was the total project. We used some of the I think we borrowed about five too. But the we borrowed out of the ARPA.

Yeah. And we let the ARPA funds pay 2 million of it back. But anyway, we got that locked in for 1 and a.5% interest. I mean, that saved everybody big time. I mean, interest now is five, six, 7%. And I'm thinking they should have borrowed more money at that rate. Because you're never going to get it again. No. But I think we got two years left to pay on that after this budget. Yeah. But the maintenance agreement will be there for 10 years.

Yep. Be in year two this year. How much is the maintenance agreement for year? 235,000 for this year. I think year five it jumps to 453,000. We're trying to have E91 split it, but again, we'll see. There's been some things go on there that general public wouldn't know about. uh at the end of last year's uh session in De Moine, they came through with something that basically said if we have un fun unused unreserved

unreserved unreserved spoken for

in 911 then the state could come in and take that well out of that fund what 6 years ago, 7 years ago, uh we had let it sit and we spent half a million dollars and put in a countywide paging system for all fire and EMS. 911 paid for that complete system and that money uh came from the telephone line service charges over the years. We'd just let it sit. Well, it sounds like maybe they were going to undo what they did last year. Uh, and hopefully they do. Uh, so we don't have the state coming in and pocketing three $400,000 of money that we have waiting for a project. So hope hopefully that gets taken care of this year. And it's important that we have fund balance reserves because taxes we don't start collecting until September. So from July 1 to September 3rd, we still have bills coming in that need paid. So we always have to have those reserves for that.

And the state recently said we should have a reserve of 10%. that didn't go. And of course then our folks come back and say a 10% reserve does nothing for us. We basically need a third to a fourth a fourth to a third of the year setting in reserves

cuz our our general operating expenses increase just like a household. We have our insurance costs go up, our fuel, our electric, all that stuff is we've seen a drastic increase. the food cost at the jail. Um, which our jail and our new sheriff, he's working really hard to get revenue back from the federal inmates. Um, we upped our law contract amounts. So, he is generating more revenue also to help offset some of his increased expenses. Would you agree?

Yep. And Byron even said today he ordered a tanker full of fuel and because of the date he ordered he saved 27 cents a gallon on a tanker truck. So I mean just by ordering them one day earlier he saved 27 cents. I mean all of that stuff makes a difference. Did you uh supervisor raise the revenue of what the sheriff can take in for outside prisoners? Yes. You think about raising it. Did that we did and went to 75. Was it you went to

$75 a day? Uh to my knowledge, he hasn't got the contract signed with uh federal cuz he's been holding 20ome federal prisoners. How many? How many? 20ome. 20ome. Yes. In the name of 40ome 40ome. 38 comfortably. How many? 38 comfortably. Okay. The only problem what comes in is that I don't know if you're familiar with the jail yet. If you remember, ever been in there, you got at least six beds in each block. The problem comes in if you have one female come in. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. We're tying them up. So what he's going to try to do is if he gets like a female prisoner in do a swap with like Tama County, Buchanan County, you know, will you take her or we'll take one of your guys.

M's always on when you run and raise it cuz I knew you were talking about good five and then like I said the contract that he's trying to get with the Fed, he wants to get they were arguing over $5. Uh they're off at 90. He went at 95 per day. to house the federal prisoners. So I mean that's a chunk of change are coming in also here the 1st of March that they are going to start doing 100% of the collections of the prisoners that are in there uh whether it's room and board you know or medical that that's one of the big expenses that we got that we pay the medical and if that person has some kind of health insurance why shouldn't you we get reimbursed for their bills, you know what I mean? And if they don't, we can still go after them if they got any money or something, you know?

But, you know, prescription I don't hold too much prescription medications. Well, that's good. That's good. Got one more question on the high school out here. Somebody was mentioning that that bond issue was what 20 years ago for that and it's never fallen off. That have to talk they by law they couldn't still levy for it

cuz they would have to have the bond payment. We have to list our long-term debt within our county budgets and with this their budgets as well. There's a sheet on the very back page and they have to list their long-term debt in order to levy for those things. So, okay. But you could go to the school board and talk to them because like I said, we can't discuss anybody here knew about that or not. A lot of the calls I've been getting were complaints about the school and I I've forwarded emails on or I've told them to go to that public hearing. Okay. Now, some of the schools do have that what P

PPL. Some of them still have that. I know communities ran out and never got it back on the ballot where they don't get it passed again and they keep trying.

That's some of those referendums or mailings that are like why we'd have a special election. Sometimes they would call for one. I did have another gentleman call in. I won't mention names. We just wanted to make sure we were weighing our needs versus wants and just be very cautious. So, I did explain how you guys have dug dug in and freezing the wages and cutting some other things. Well, so far looking at it, we are asking $1 million less than last year's budget if we spend everything. You know what I mean?

Worst case. Yes. And there there are some things in the budget that we don't plan on spending, but we got to have the money there in case it comes up and we have to. So, you said you're spending a potentially a million left. Where did you cut? Well, I can thank our head or our department. I can start throwing some numbers out. I know this technically don't have nothing to do with this hearing tonight. Yeah. If it doesn't, then I don't you don't need to answer. I mean, you can move on.

Well, I can throw a few figures out. uh our a supervisor board alone, there's 20,000 we cut out of our budget. Okay. Uh auditor, she cut another 19,000 out of her budget. Uh treasurer almost 10. Yeah, she cut almost 10 9,000 something. Uh sheriff's has went up. Of course, he's got more going to have more deputies.

And we we added some things when we knew we did. We hired a full-time nurse. Our the biggest uh oh, what do I want to call it there, Derek? the county's biggest uh not our asset. Our biggest liability is running a county jail. That's the biggest liability we have. So, hiring a full-time nurse on the uh on that stuff was just a a no-brainer for us. Answer it.

Yep. Mr. Board of Supervisors. Yes. I'm hearing you guys discuss this opportunity we got going here on on the cuts. Yeah.

Okay. My question is is what have you looked at for the payroll portion of it? That's usually the first part where people take charge and look at the need of what's necessary for county employees and if they're actually doing their jobs to fulfill that obligation. So, have you looked at that? Have you done your due diligence on that? the we have two departments in the county that are covered by union contract and that is secondary roads and the sheriff. Uh we went a 0% with elected officials. We and that that also went for the people that are tied to the elected officials uh wage as a salary. Uh

that doesn't answer that doesn't answer my question, sir. Um my question is my question is if you're doing your due diligence for taxpayers dollars being paid out which is the bottom line at the end of the day what have you done and have you done your due diligence to follow through if trim the fat? Do we have fat in certain areas? And not only will there be employees, but what about uh county assets? Do we have things out there that we are spending money on that are unnecessary? And because if it at the end of the day bottom that percentage of our tax rate by a half a percent, that's huge. And I want to know if you guys did your homework on any of that. We We cut the county budget so far. We're still working on it. We cut the county budget by a million dollars. I understand that you still are answering my question and I don't give a crap whether it's union, non-union, that's immaterial. You're not answering addressing my question. The question,

have you done your Have you done your due diligence on looking at all the proper things that could be addressed to cut the budget? Everything A to Z. We've gone through everybody's budget line by line and we've looked at everything and we made we got the one person's judgment and department would make that correct. Is that what I'm hearing? Uh yes, I would say so.

And why would that be? Why would that not be your job to oversee that? That's what you're elected to do. And and we have looked at each line in every budget to see if we could make a cut. Yes.

Well, again, are things being managed properly? Because have you looked in the payroll? because I have a I have a really hard time believing that and I have a lot of things that I could share that I'm not going to do on this phone call and plenty of you stuff in that room know as well. So, I have a hard time believing that you've done your due diligence making sure you can make the cuts where they're necessary when you're going to raise people's taxes. We're not raising people's tax.

We're not raising people. We We actually The county's levy rate went down. It could go down further if you do your job correctly. Is that not true? We're still working on it. Well, are we going to be working on it 10 years from now? Are we going to take care of this today? Well, I'm going to say it's an ongoing process. every day.

Is that fair to say? I think I think everyone's got the point and I think you obviously um expressed enough that people now know and it's on public record and that that's what I wanted. All right. Thank you very much for your time. Yep. Thank you.

Can I ask you a question about Um, if this outside the scope of this, let me know. I'm just curious if with the jail I'm wondering, did I understand it correctly that it's we can get $75 per person per day outside of the community? Um, but it's also the biggest liability. I'm wondering how many numbers were crunched if you've really done the math with food, the extra employees, the nurse, medical. Have you?

It it costs us the same to operate the county jail with one person for 38 people. Well, not really because medical the more people there are, the more but as far as us having employees there. Yeah, that makes sense. We We have to pay the same amount for one person as we do for 38. What about collections? Are you hiring more people for that? No. Okay. So, is the sheriff's office doing collections or will the somewhere else in the county? They will be doing collections there. Okay. So, no extra employees for

No. Okay. Well, then isn't the one person that they they just brought on board is going to be trained for that? One retired and one's going to retire. So, the one's doubling up to learn the other one's duties right now. So, this we're getting a head start on there was always three in that front office. Exactly. But there's somebody that's being trained right now. Yep. So, right now there's four temporarily. Let me go back to that um nurse for the jail. If um or when a staff member is injured in an altercation, is her scope of practice, can she attend to that staff member's issue?

Never encountered that cuz then that would become a workman's comp issue. That's a whole another true. I'm just thinking if there's a minor injury to be handled in house then that person doesn't have to take time away from work to go to a clinic possibly like maybe a big scratch or something. Yeah. We we have had people we have had our employees assaulted by Oh yeah.

So what is the purpose of the nurse then? we wouldn't have to take that inmate to visit an ER in the middle of the night. Even if it was just they could say they have a headache or it could be a very minor thing and they would we could eliminate that that cost to the county. She's so basically that's um I'd say we that would be best we continue that conversation outside of this meeting. Okay. That's that's outside of the scope. Yep. and some of that current year we're utilizing our opioid fund money for that which isn't a levy fund.

I've got a couple more questions maybe outside the scope they are. Tell me and I'll shut up. But how much did the sheriff's office budget go up? That was going to be my question to follow up on. What was the sheriff's budget this year? What where did David come in with our sheriff's budget this year? Uh last year it was 6273 almost 62 6,274,000 over $6 million. Yes. 6274 the difference. Yeah. Haley's going to give us the the difference last year. Yeah. Fiscal

576,000 576 576,000. It went up. Yes. Okay. But but his revenue side of it went up as well.

And we we did some things that we knew. We had a a very aged video system in the vehicles uh that had been being recorded on to uh it was being stored in house. We knew that equipment needed replaced. probably needed replaced 10 years ago. We limped it along. They wanted to replace it. Well, now we they couldn't buy a system that we could record in house. All the the recording of all the the vehicle cameras and the body cameras is now cloud storage. So what you're saying, Ron, is a lot of the increase was in the equipment.

My point is my point is I uh I kind of follow the Iowa tax relief people. Does anybody know the dam David Stanley? Does anybody know anything about him? David has Iowa tax relief. And um they were on Facebook last winter, not this winter, last winter. and and they were comparing Benton County with big counties like Buchana, TA and Iowa County comparable counties and the all departments pretty much were were in comparison in fiscal spending except for public safety. Our sheriff's department was so much above everybody else's and so was our legal service which would be the county county attorneys. Now, I do remember the first year when I was in office, Randy came with a 2.9 million budget and he went increase of $250,000. Now, anybody in their head, you know, that's almost a 10% increase, of which I told Randy, if we keep going 10% each year, in 10 years, you're going to be doubling your budget. Well, we have apparently summits and and equipment, but we did freeze his budget that year. refuse it. But we did give him another $100,000, but we did not give him spending authority on it because in case at the end he need the money, and he did. We gave it to him because he needed three new cars. But my point is the sheriff's budget office went from 3 million in 10 years to 6 million. If it's an equivalent, I can understand. But the one thing that I always kind of watched was and Lex always had the best money that she would come in with maybe $500 more the next year than year before. But one thing I was kind of following the 2 or 3%, you know, rule, but

I just think that I know some things are out of your control. This health insurance is probably the biggest thing for you guys that you can't keep handle on. But um $6 million is a lot of money on on public safety. That cloud storage for the video, pardon, the storage for the video was $100,000 a year. That's big money. The other thing is, you know, you let him spend what, $300 and some thousand on this armored vehicle. I think that's a waste. That was American Rescue. That was That money could have been used for something else. Definitely could have been used for something else.

That's just that's nuts. And then the other thing that's real foreign in my side along with a lot of other people is security in this building and security at courthouse. I went to every courthouse in the state of Iowa and there's three where you got to go sec through security to get your pay your taxes or driver's license. Why do we need to have two people setting up here all day long? That's I think about 240,000 a year. That 200 I'll get the year wrong. I'll throw out 18.

We started in 18 and the the governor said if you're going to restrict firearms in your courouses, in your county buildings, you must have armed security. Then quit restricting firearms. But the judges also and that and that goes for court occupied spaces. Well, put them at the top. Put one guard at top the stairs and get rid of two other ones. Well, we've got court occupied on the second floor, which is the clerk of court. That's a court occupied space. Uh we also have magistrate court on the second floor. And I'm trying.

That can still be done with one person at the top of the stairs. Why do you need somebody out here? The first floor. Yeah. No, he's on the second floor. When you're square. What? Well, uh, juvenile court. Okay. Oh, Luke. That's second floor. C. Can you build a judicial system for that service?

I'm going to say no. We did have um some of the district judges said they would move to another county which would then increase our cost to transfer the inmates to another county for court too. So we back when we were discussing that in 18 I remember some of those discussions. Some of the judges don't feel safe in courouses without it. I I just said other counties I can walk into a court in session with a gun in my pocket and nobody cares and I don't know why we need to spend that and I don't know if it's still it's probably more than a quarter of a million dollars a year now. How much is that for them three extra people and I don't know if there's more than three usually just

that's right in there and that goes along with the caller that just called in. I think you guys need to go after things like that and cut them out. I see his point same way. I I guess if there's no security here, I myself will be harmed.

That's fine. You can have somebody out here for the supervisor's meetings. I don't I don't disagree with that. Uh I'm trying to think if Lynn County does. I don't think I went to the supervisor meeting down there a few months ago and there was no Well, I know you can't you can't get into Lynn County without going through security. Lyn County is a lot bigger though. I don't remember going through security. Maybe I did. Absolutely. L County has security. No, I'm talking about the Goxville for the supervisor. I don't remember. There's a security. No, I don't think off to the right hand side. Off to the left hand side.

At least I don't go through, you know. And then there security's right there at the door. I have a question. So, we have an armored vehicle, right? It's not It's not It's coming. We've only paid a down payment on it. Okay. But we don't have a a special team like if we have to take the armored vehicle into a real high high pressure situation. We do have a special team like a like armored vehicle usually goes with like a SWAT situation. We have that. We we actually had to borrow was it Johnson County?

We have we have we we usually end up borrowing Lynn County, Cedar Rapids Police and the State Patrol. So why are we not using their armored vehicle? Seems kind of nuts. This site the size of our county to have this equipment. We have to borrow a team. There was a situation in Benton County where these vehicles were not available and the team had to come from Omaha. So what situation? I can't specify the situation, but there was a situation in Benton County in the town that I lived in that those vehicles were not available and the FBI had to bring one from Omaha. Yeah, I kind of remember what

to handle that situation. So that's what is the expense of that armored vehicle? Does anybody know? I think it was 350,000. Right. Mr. chair. I'm not going to depend either position, but one time we were I was in a supervisor meeting, Gary Vincent was in there and a guy did try to jump over the table at at uh Don Freeze and I and so, you know, I'm not thankful Gary was there that day. I'm not opposed to having one here during the meeting. Yeah, that would be I I agree with you on that to have one at the meeting because it can get kind of tense. Well, we're and we're we're way off or something. Yeah,

I can tell you more stories that happened in this building that you maybe see it my way, but I get it. But well, we're actually talking about expense that affects the budget that we're talking about, are we not? So, we're not really off the subject. No, today is just about setting the the dollar amount what we're asking. It's a percentage. Correct.

Correct. The levies we can't go above what we publish for the levies expenses. We can still reduce and and do that for our publication for that. But the armored vehicle is not paid for by a levy fund. So it was grant funded for the American Rescue Plan Act. So, it wasn't technically tax dollars that went towards it. Okay. I'm not saying I'm for it or against it, but I'm just explaining where it was paid for. It didn't grow on a tree, right? County tax was tax. Any more question? You got

I guess I have time for opinion about the sheriff's budget and the jail budget. The first responsibility of you guys is to keep us safe. Correct. It's not to buy healthcare. It's not to treat mentally ill juveniles. It's to keep us safe. I guess my attitude is if they need money, give it to them. I don't understand the need for a Harvard vehicle either, but I understand what could go wrong if we need it and don't have it. That could be bad.

Okay. Thank you. Well, Are you looking for a motion?

We done questions answered. Okay, I'll put the motion. So, I'll make sure I get the right numbers out here. Anyway, these are the numbers, though. I would move that we close the public hearing. Okay. Second.

All right. Call for a vote. Temp I came and I Okay. Ready to hold the public here.