Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

All right, it's 9:03 a.m. We'll begin this.

They're coming.

Okay, thank you. Maybe by face it local here. Maybe by face, not by name. Okay. Oh, all right, Andy. Okay, it's 9:03 a.m. We will begin this work session. Lake County Board of County Commissioners. Uh, we have Buzz Budget. Um, budget presentation on the agenda today.

Budget something. All right. So, we've got a couple of things we're going to cover today. Uh, we're going to talk about capital request and talk about the Q4 updates and dashboard that should be in your packet. Um, it sounds like there might be an issue with the way that this was published. So, I'm going to republish the link with Justin and send it to you so you can click through the dashboard like uh we did at the work session, but I'll show it to you today, but I want to make sure it gets back out to you. Um, you guys just don't have PowerBI licenses on your laptop. So, the way the link is published determines how you can look at this.

So, I'll look at it with you directly, but then send it to you so you can dive into it. Um, and then talk about the 2026 overview, the mill levy, and then I have a couple of just talking points on where we're at, what our overunder is, things that have changed in the last few weeks. We put quote unquote back from CTSI for workers comp, which we always know it's going to come in in the month of November. Um, and we've learned of a few other items like uh the homes, the housing at 102, those who need to be insured as they sit there until they sell. Um, that have changed some of our expenses. So, we've got roughly $337,000 to cut from the budget still, which is fine. I mean, that's just how budgets are. Things come in, we have to readjust, but those aren't things. I don't get to say, "Nah, I don't like your workers comp. We won't do that." Uh, so then we have to go and look for other places to to make cuts. I've got a few suggestions um for places we can make cuts. Um, and then a few decision items you guys will need to um be thinking about. What decisions do you want to make, we've got a meeting scheduled on December 4th where I'm going to ask you guys for guidance on where you're going to set the mill. This is not certifying the mill,

but I base the budget off of the mill. So, I kind of need for you guys to decide what you're going to do and then we'll come back and certify it on the 11th. Um, and then we'll adopt the budget on that date. But I'd like to get guidance about what you want to do um what you want to do before um before I have to reset numbers. Okay. Um, sorry. Okay. Two screens here.

Okay. All right. So, we're going to work uh through this document and then um we'll stop and let you guys ask questions as we go. Minimize this. Nope. Sorry, I'm working two mouses on two screens right now. Double fisted. Yes. Like patting your head. I would like to hide that. Times 1,000. Yeah.

There we go. Is that better? Yes. They're just at the top then. Okay. That's fine. Okay. All right. So, we're going to talk about capital requests. We've got Mr. Michael here with us. I um had a few other small capital requests, but they were things like there's a hole in the library roof and we're going to ruin the building if we don't put the roof on it. That is already in the budget because to me, that's not a capital request. It's a hole in our building's roof before it snows. So, that is in there. It's $100,000. We don't get to opt out of like putting something over the hole. Is it the whole roof or is it just a patch on the hole? I think they decided the whole roof that needs to be replaced, but right now there's a section missing.

Yeah. Um but just patching that section is really not going to help a whole lot because a lot of the roof jacks and stuff are not connected anymore to the roof. Gotcha. Yeah. Water books bad. Yeah. Okay.

Asbestous building bad. Yeah. So, we're doing what we can do, but we recognize that's not a thing we can not put in there. So, that was our that was included, but that was really the only thing we included in the budget was covering gaping holding. Um, okay. So, I want to talk just a little bit about a few things. So, capital requests, um, these are big, usually one-time investments for the next budget year. buildings, vehicles, equipment, IT, infrastructure, uh, usually really big purchases. Um, those get planned through capital plans, uh, and compete for limited amounts of funding. Um, because our budget's so tight, we don't really have much to put towards capital requests. However, we really are trying to get that capital, um, improvement plan in place and get information back about, hey, what all do we have? What all does it need? Uh, one thing we're working on in it next year is we have never had um a plan for replacing all of our our laptops. Uh, when it's time to do so, we just replace them one at a time as they

break or don't work anymore. Um, and so that is one of our really big investments this year. um is that um that we really want to work on having a plan, knowing our laptops will roll out, getting bulk government discounts to buy them all at the same time from a vendor giving us a government like discount things we just have never never done. and also actually tracking all of our digital assets so that we're making sure we get those back from people when they leave so they're barcoded. We know what we have. We know where it's at. We know when to grab it when someone is headed out the door. All things that are new for us at Lake County Government. So, while we're talking about capital, we know the IT items are those. We don't have any requests this year cuz not had a plan before, but we are going to. Um, so that's one of the big lifts for us this year and something that we as we build that capital plan, we'll be able to say, "Hey, we know in three years we'll be looking at X number of laptops or devices." So,

you don't have those requests this year. We pretty much kept our requests pretty tight until we know what we have and don't have on hand. Um, supplemental requests, uh, those happen throughout the year. Those are brought to you guys. That's when something comes up that someone hadn't planned for and they say, "Hey, I've got this project." Like we we had a few supplementals come up or some of our supplements this year have just been budgeting

rogue IDAs that we didn't know existed or the DA coming back and having some extenduating circumstances. And those changes can happen to the budget throughout the year. They come to you guys. We post them publicly. People get to give input. we approve or don't approve. Um discretionary funding, those are flex flexible funds that'll be left over uh after required ongoing costs are covered. So if you guys build higher and you'll see at the bottom of those discretionary funds, those will be additional funds you have to put towards projects or towards paving or towards whatever uh it is. Um, so that that's when you see that discretionary at the bottom of the mill table. That's what that means. Okay. We do not have very many capital requests. Um, the airport deicer was a capital request. Uh, this will be pushed to 2027. I have asked for us to explore an older deicer that lives at the airport to see um if it could be brought back to life, if there's an issue with it. It sounds like it seized up once before it was fixed

and seized up like the motor or the the pumps that pump the

deicer seized up and it was fixed. And it sounds like it's not everyone's favorite tool to use. So maybe it doesn't get used. So I said, "Hey, I want to explore that option first. I want to see proof of concept." If that smaller deicer we have on hand, I if we say, "Hey, we'll use it." Document how much we're using it data for me. If there is information to to really say, "Hey, this is worthwhile. This would bring back in the money we would spend on it, then we'll bring it back up." But I I do want to say that Josh has asked for it. um and let you know that it will be something that I think will come up if we have extra funds. It would be something that I do think could be helpful for the airport cuz a lot of people decide not to fly in if they don't know that they're going to be able to get back out.

So, I'm mentioning it here even though I had originally said no, you don't get to put that out there, but I was like, well, we should put it out there. What do we know? We just don't have it. What do we know thus like so far about that? Like Mike, do you know what year, make, model that truck is or? Um, actually, it's not a truck, it's a trailer. Trailer. Yeah. The the airport tag. Um, we purchased it from Loveland's airport. Loveland back in probably 201 10 11. Yeah. And I I never really knew what was wrong with it, why it didn't work or what it needed. Um,

I just know that we didn't ever move forward with spring. I know there's a lot of things issues with CDPHG and glycol on the ground and testing, soil testing and stuff that could be required. Josh has checked into it. Yeah, Josh alleviated our concerns with that. So, it's basically like a pressure washing trailer that has a motor that runs the pumps that pump the deicer out probably on arms. Like a little like a Honda motor. Okay. Okay. So, we're not looking at replacing a V8 diesel engine. It's kind of the motor is a pressure wash style. Yeah, pretty much. That's what it is. Pressure washer with a big tank on it. Yeah. Wow.

Some additional commentary that I've talked to Josh about a little bit. Um it he does have some safety concerns about folks out at the airport using it because it does require getting up on ladders like in the snow and ice. And so I think there's there's a little bit of that to walk through as well. It doesn't have like a lift or anything. The new one does, right? The new one has like a bucket. Yeah. Okay. People de ice their own planes. Um I don't think they let them do that. This for the runways, isn't it?

Oh, okay. So right now the winter traffic that we get in if it can't get into a hanger um a heated hanger then it has to sit outside and if it gets ice on the wings or anything it can't take off. At a minimum I'd love to record how many requests we get that ask to come but don't come. I guess that's my thing is a I've got to go cut money from the budget. It's not like I have extra fluff. We need some market research to determine like what is the ROI for this piece of equipment. Yeah. And I get that that's tricky if like historically we haven't had that. But I'm sure I'm sure there we could do some comparisons.

But I do know that there are people especially the um charter flights that come in people you know charter flight to come in to go skiing because airports is within an hour's drive of seven different ski areas. Yeah. We're closer than eagle is to bail. Oh, that's funny. But we are. Yeah. I will say this is one of the those things and also why I wanted to mention it now is if I was really conservative with our sales tax numbers because I just don't want to plan for it to be phenomenal not knowing what the

what the market will do. Um, if it looks like our sales tax numbers are really tracking along higher and are going to, you know, because we project them out as we receive them mid year, this is something I do think we could circle back to. We like, hey, great news. Sales tax was way better than the conservative number we held it at. This is something we could consider. It's not that I don't think it's valuable. It's just in the face of cutting even more from our budget. I don't know that that's the the smart thing to do is throw a deicer somewhere in there and cut surfaces.

Um the other item is the landfill. We want to mention this cuz it's $3 billion and at some point we're going to actually have to replace it and so I've asked Michael to come and talk about it because we really do need to start to have a plan for it. Yeah. Yeah. So did you get what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, this is just a map so I can kind of show you what we got to do out there. Yeah.

Um, basically 2017 they had approval for a three year 3 acre site that's now full. Um, CDH CDPHE said we would no longer be able to do anything on this part of the landfill. Right now, it's currently the landfill, so we can build it up a little bit, but um they won't let us do anything without without the landfill being lined. Um so, since this is still open, that's where we're building right now. But the new section that we're looking at at building is over here. Um it's about an 8.6 acre site.

That's the $3 million to completely get that operational. Um I don't think I really need $3 million right now. If we contract it all out to other people, I think we would need that because we'd have to make sure that we pay it. Um I've got um Colorado State Forest Service working on possibly getting all the trees removed that we need. Um maybe even through a lumber sale or whatever through them. Um I don't know that we' get funds for just getting rid of the trees. We have to pay someone to come and get the trees out.

Yeah. So, I mean, they would basically take the trees and it's all repaid. Um, we do have to remove relocate that road to around here. Um, car 45B is just a little bit further west

that we could just go there, I think, and get back over to this area down here and and get around the landfill. Um, road bridge can do most of that because the road already exists. Once we get this cleared, we have a gas well that's right here that would have to be moved out to here. So, we'd have drilling expenses for that well. And this well that the state put in right in this area would have to be moved over here someplace outside the landfill. That's a groundwater well where we test the water coming off the landfill. Mhm. And this is a gas monitor thing where we test that thing coming off the landfill. So, it just it right now it's outside the landfill, but we'd have to move it again.

Yeah. And we have another one. And I I'll show you as as this all progresses. We have another one gas monitor up here. Right now, the only one that is producing any gas sits about right in here. Mhm. Um so we we did move another one further up towards the property line. We still don't have any gas migrating that way because this is private property up here. Yeah. So we're really worried about it going that way if they're not keeping it in the landfill. But there's ways to mitigate methane coming off a landfill. All landfills have it. Yeah, I've seen like a lot of them have like what looks like white PVC pipes pointing out sticking out all over the place on top of it.

Okay. I didn't know they burned them. Denver rap site in Denver. They collect all their methane and run it through power generating plant. Cool. So they generate power for like a neighborhood that's right close there. Mhm. Um so there there there's ways to get rid of it that's not um environmentally unfriendly. Yeah. Um do you want to go to the next? Yeah. So this is just a little bit different. This is just landfill here. The slope's already down. So we'll actually be building up against this landfill, but it will have to be lined every time we get up against it so it doesn't contaminate that soil again.

But you'll see it's got a sub down here. So everything down here will be lined with rubber. It'll all flow to one place and we'll have to pipe it out and either we can put it back on this part of the landfill is lined so that it keeps going back through the landfill and eating up more garbage. Cool. Um we can spray it on the road dirt roads around the landfill to keep dust down. Um or we would have to if it depends on what it has in it, we can take it to sanitation and they could clean it out and Yeah. So we could swap with sanitation. We used to take their sledge. Now we can they can take our leech. Yeah. Totally.

And clean our leech aid out. Go to the next one. Leech aid. Is that like a leech? So this is basically the whole permitted land site right landfill right now. Um that section is right down here where we're talking about working. Um, so this is what with CDPHE is our certificate of designation for landfill.

So we have all of this area to work with. Right now the existing landfill is just in here and that 3acre site was just added onto this point out here. It's all up to the same level as the landfill now. Um, that's why we're looking at building a new one. Like I said, I I don't think I need the full $3 million unless we go out for a contract and then we would have to have it on there. I think we can do a lot of dirt work with the landfill staff, you know, cuz they're going to need dirt to cover trash. They can bring it up and store it up here. Mhm.

Um and that this is has to be about 27 ft deep total excavation. Um, so it it we'll be able to save the dirt for future placement on the landfill. Um, but I think landfill staff could do a lot of that or road and bridge could help, you know, like moving the roads and stuff. And that's all preemptive. The only thing I like I would have to spend money on like this next year is moving wells because they got to be before we start digging. Do you have a number on Um, I don't off the top of my head, but I do. The engineer has a price when they in the package. I just didn't grab them. This one one more picture.

This is when the landfill is completely full 260 years. Wow. Let's go see. These are all I was going to say to get another 14. This is the section that we're looking at filling right now, expanding to, but these are all different sections of zilling. Um, landfill is about 10,360, which is about this line right now. Mhm. Um, this point up here is 10,510 ft. So, it's another almost 200 ft. Yeah. F feet higher. There are legit North Midwest ski areas that are built on land.

Yeah. I told Robin to them and they exist. The one behind the Safeway, too. Yeah, there's a big That's where they used to go. That's where they used to go practice across the world. All the cool bottles are. Unfortunately, the only grants that they're offering right now is to clean up old landfills like that, which is not a county landfill. It's on in the county, but it's not a county landfill. Oh, interesting. Was a city landfill. It's all private private property behind them. Yeah, it's all private property. No, tell them about the grant. Yes, they can. Love the G word.

Michael, I thought that the most of the expense would be the actual liner. Is that true? Yes, it is. It's for the rubber lining and it's got like two or three layers of clay also with it. Wow. And the clay would have to be imported into Lake County. We don't have that type of clay. I mean, we have clay. It just doesn't meet the permeability that's required for the landfill. Check. So, is the liner an actual rubber liner or is it like a combination? HTP liner. Okay. Yeah, it's big swimming pool liner pretty much. That's exactly what it is. Wow. And then we just fill it with dirt. Yeah.

Um, well, we have the protection factor that we have to worry about when filling it. Also, it has to have like a layer of sand on top of that to keep separation the flow of the wall. Yeah. Make sure it doesn't pierce. Yeah. And then once we start putting trash on it and get a good layer of trash, um the compactor and everything can run out pretty good. Got to set a base. Okay. Um I wonder how to approach the subject of the community of like if you can reuse it. I know we do this all the time in some but we are so good at that. We're also working on that big grant with um EPA right now. Yeah.

Recycling grant to build a new building recycling building out there. Um have an anorobic digtor that eats food. Um actually power that building. Mhm. Um or heat that building. Um we should know next month. Yeah, that's our Christmas present, by the way. It's the same grant that that Chaffy County got last year or two years ago. Uhhuh. Um, even though it's EPA, it is still in effect. It is still available. What do you mean it eats food? Um, so it's anorobic. It it digests the food and turns it into methane. Oh. To burn as a source of heat for the building.

So when someone brings a bag of trash in, how do you separate food? Um, they would have to separate it as they come in. This is your food waste. Oh. um compostable stuff. Restaurants will probably be good partners for that. Yeah, that would and that's what we're hoping even you know households if we can keep it clean and separate. Yeah, you know that's one of the biggest problems with recycling right now is the drop off sites we can't keep clean enough to run through what we have to do cuz we have to touch every bit of that that goes into the recycling bar. Yeah. I mean it's pretty much handpicking a lot of it. Yeah. The new one that we're looking for is more like a a single source. So you can push it into a conveyor belt and it sorts itself kind of.

Those are so cool. I love watching those. So that that's Yeah. I've visited quite a few of those in Denver and it's it's awesome to watch. Yeah. Yeah. Like it takes the steel here. It takes aluminum cans here. Paper. It blows off the thing so it puts it in its own thing. Yeah. It's like it's really cool to watch. It is cool. What's uh how much time do we have to come up with 3 million? That's a key question. Um, that is a good question because, you know, we're running out of room here and we do not want to have to close our landfill. That would be the worst thing for Lake County. Yeah. Our woods would get trashed because Well, not only that, we would have to truck it out. Yeah. Yeah.

And the next landfill 40 miles away if they accept our trash. Yeah. They'd be having their own problems. Um, I know Graby has to do that right now because their landfill slid off the hillside. What? It wasn't stable and it it slid and so the state shut them down. Trash avalanche. Wow. What? So they have to haul upstairs and it's a 24-hour trip is going back and forth to haul the dent. Wow. So what's our time? Um I would say we need to to be at least doing this within the in the next 3 years. The amount of trash that we're taking in the landfill right now is crazy.

Yeah. um we have to pay the state to be able to take it and those fees have gone up this year at least three times um what we've been paying for them. Wait, what are we paying the state for? We pay a solid waste users fee. So every bit of trash that we take in that we charge for, we get to pay the state for that, too. We get to pay Colorado for the trash that we're taking in. That's how they fund themselves. And what percentage is it roughly? Do you know like how much how much do they take for us to I think like this last month it was um almost $6,000.

Okay. And that's like 17 cents a cubic yard. Okay. All right. But that's how much we've increased. You know, used to be like 12 $1,200. Now it's $6,000. That's how much we've increased taking trash in. How do we how do we get the revenue at the dump to kind of we feel about that feel? It's in the works.

Well, how do we get it to feel a little less like every time I go up there I'm like I can't believe how much less I beta dump here than I do say at uh uh a GFL dump site in Michigan or something like that. According to everybody in the state, we're the highest priced. But I I don't believe that. I don't believe that either cuz every time I go to raise the prices, which is hard to do every 5 years, which we had a resolution a couple years ago that the commissioners approved to raise it January 1st every year, but I can't find the sign copy of that right now. Dang. We can redo it.

Yeah, we probably should. I mean, it's just like keep we got to at least keep up with inflation. This is like a service that I I don't feel like, you know, it it needs improvements. It needs work. I feel like every time I take trash to our dump, I'm always amazed at how it seems I'm expecting to pay a lot more than I do every time I'm there. Not to mention, given our current situation of a the clock is ticking. Um, I really wonder how much we could look at out of area trash coming in. Yeah. I mean, really,

and I've kind of enforced that just last year. Everybody that comes in the landfill, if you don't have a local license plate or that we know that you're from Leadville, they do check to see if you have property in Leadville, if you got an out of state plate coming up there. Mhm. Like for second home. They check driver's licenses. I never had my driver's license checked. Am I just that recognizable? Maybe. Maybe they're like, but they do, you know, if if it's not on your driver's license, at least a bill that says, you know, you own property and let see I feel like I'm sorry. And that differentiates between someone doing a remodel in Summit where it's really expensive to dump trash. I've seen them driving over here. I'm sure they have copper.

Those are the people I'd really like to double shovel the race. Yeah. I mean, we've already got that for out of county stuff, but we can prove they're coming out of county. Yeah. I thought about doing that with trash starts coming from Salida or Jaffy County to see if they're hauling trash up here when they come up to pick up trash. Yeah. To see if you know they go to the landfill first thing when they get here. How would we not know if they're doing that? I tried I tried to see if the sheriff could pull them over to check their truck, but they said they couldn't without war. But how would you know it's a gate if a if a Chaffy County waste truck is pulling in to dump? How would we not know that? Um we would have to pull out from the county line into the landfill.

Oh, because we allow even though they're a business in a different county. Yeah. They pick up trash. Yeah. Since they're picking up trash here in Lake County, they're allowed to dump that in our land because it's Lake County trash. Somebody's uh mail gets loose. Is it legal to go through people's trash once it's in the in the land? It is. People always dump. Write your stuff, folks. I've done it on the side of the road. Has there ever been a discussion with Chaffy about getting together in the future? Um, regional trash. The state wants a region wants regional landfills. They don't want all these little landfills around.

But I would prefer that would be Lake Countyy's landfill. because then we wouldn't have to drive 40 miles or haul 40 miles. Yeah, I would prefer that. I would I I like I I like local landfills opposed to regional landfills for reasons I've discussed with other commissioners about the more prohibitive you make it to take your trash somewhere, the more people are going to look down the dirt road. But Matt's talking about a trash authority, not a trash not there's a whole difference to everybody in the valley. landfill authority different from landfill like those are talking about creating major he said regional landfills which I've heard landfill authority

yeah there's one landfill for the whole sound yeah that's what I was that's what I was addressing was that there's other I know that did um an investigation a while back and that's where they came up with the new solid waste plan um statewide Right. They did find out regional landfills work really good in the city because they could do transfer stations all through the city and then going 30 miles. Yeah. Geographically closer together. Yeah. And I mean that's why dad's works really good. Denver ra disposal site works really good in Denver. Um because it takes you know all the metro trash one side.

Dads cute. They're so cute. Um, but yeah, it doesn't it doesn't work the same in rural areas. Yeah, I mean it's harder to get it here obviously. Winter travel going over passes going south to be okay. Even covered loads stuff blowing out of the truck while you're driving and Well, so we need to start coming up with a million dollars a year for the next 3 years. Well, you know, not only that, if we close the landfill, I think we have 1.5 million in the closure fund right now, and we already need it to be almost $3 million to close it. Yeah,

we um let's get the numbers. Let's get the numbers on moving those wells and see if we can get started with that ASAP. I think that sounds like the first step. Get the ball rolling. Hangups I had on a CPG meeting was like, where are you going to move it to? How are you going to drill it? when are you going to do it? Mhm. And it's like, well, we're going to hopefully start 26. Yeah. Um, can we but we do got to kind of show that we are moving forward with it because they did finally approve it. The whole plan the EVOP this year. Yeah. Which going going with that, we just passed a major in inspection out at the landfill with flying colors. Nice. It has two things that we needed to look at and it's all recording. So, strong work. Thank you.

Good job, Michael. Um, yeah. I mean, I think if and if we can start making some moves, moving some chest pieces around and show that that'll get us some support from where where uh of the G-word. Yeah. I mean, we've been exploring like we we've applied for a grant for the scale. Yeah. So, we do have waiting for a scale to maybe help get better that would be sweet. Better numbers, numbers, better charges. Yeah. I'm telling you the price fluctuates like you know if if uh you're really nice to I don't know. Yeah, it seems like um

but it's going to make people not want to bring anything out because they get weight going in and they don't want to be heavier coming out cuz I'm going to charge them for the weight going out. Wait, what do you mean by Well, when when they go across the scale, you get weigh. Yeah. So that's your chair weight going in with the trash. Yeah. When you come out, you should be lighter. Yeah. But if people are taking steel and stuff. Yeah, that's that's probably an old bicycle. Guilty. Quick question on the the eight acres. What? Like how many years does that give the county? Um it'll give them probably 15. So in that time frame, we will still need to be working on the next section. Yeah.

And that's kind of what we're done, you know. um all the time that we did. That's why this last section was done. It was supposed to buy us time to get this one all covered, get ready to go. It didn't. But we did get since this one was full, we did get a notice that the state wouldn't let us expand anymore without it being lined. So that's why we're What kind of What does moving the Wells first steps look like? Do we need studies and plans and stuff like that? No. Um because we've already done all the environmental stuff. That's all and that's why our env our professional services for the landfill are high this year. Yeah.

Um because we've had to do this to get through the state stuff. Um so we can just go out. they've already located where they're going to drill it or where they need to be with the state's approval that it will actually read what's needed from the landfill because right now there's a um it's actually about right here a water well of water that comes in supposedly across the landfill. We found out that is not the way the water flows across the landfill. It flows from here to here. So that's how that's how they were able to pick it up with that weld that sits in there.

Mhm. Um, and we were not able to pick it up down valley on our well that we have down here. So, they're saying that we do have some volatile organic compounds coming in that water there, but we don't have it what we thought was down valley, but it's coming water flows down towards the airport now. So, that's where we're at with that. Interesting. That's why we have to move it this side of the lamp instead of down here. Yeah. So, we already have one down here that we will continue to check. We're required by the state to monitor down. I don't know why. I don't know why I find this such a fascinating subject. It is clean.

No. Um but that's why that's why they're forcing us to do um the line. There are some PC's that they found. They're not at a level right now where we have to do anything, but we don't want to get them at that level either because it'll clean it. Those will clean themselves out. It just flow. Yeah, it should drop as long as any additions are lying. We do have some peas coming off the landfill, but there's nothing we can do about it. That's it is. Yeah. Um but I do have to check on on the water, the ground water that runs off, the storm water that runs off. I have to check for PE though. Yeah. How deep are those?

Um this one here, which the state just put in a few years ago and they paid to put that one in. Um, I think it's 250 ft. Oh, wow. And ours down here is about 300 ft. Cool. Can we get the state to pay for the moving new ones?

So, I mean, the state has helped us a lot by doing wells. They did pay for that. Um I know in some of the CCI meetings I went to for the before the conference we met with CDPHC a lot of landfills. That's why they the grants for closing landfills came about because Alamosa County kind of did a boo boo. They went back to doing stuff off the top of a closed landfill which basically reopened the landfill and they didn't meet all the requirements of the current current requirements of a landfill. So they got the money do what they were supposed to do with it.

Well, they they closed the landfill was closed for several years, but they went back and were shredding stuff or doing something on top of the landfill without approval. So the state came down on them um because they they weren't a permitted landfill anymore. But there is one other landfill in Lake County too. Closed that the county owns the federal government owns it now. Where is it? It's down at Twin Lakes. Um the south trail head to Elbert. Oh, when you go up on the flats just off of the pave road. There's a nice really flat place in the trees. Yeah, that's all landfill. That was a Twin Lakes landfill.

When did it close? In the early '7s. Cool. It's been closed that long. Now the federal government owns it cuz it's on federal land for service. Yeah. Cool. Really interesting. It'll be really interesting to see what our biggest what metrics are on like what's the biggest cubic yard suck in the landfill. Is it like people not opening the caps on plastic bottles and there's all those air pockets in there or is it like you know Yeah.

I mean our compactor compacted really good. Yeah. Pretty good convection on it. Unless there's mattresses in it. That's why we're trying to recycle mattresses now because believe it or not, you can compact over a mattress 10 thou 10 10 times and it'll still work itself to the surface. You can put different layers of trash on it and it'll still work itself to the surface just because it expanded. What tires are the worst things to try to cover in film? Yeah. Wait a second. That's why it makes sense. How does it migrate? Yeah. What it does, it just goes back up to the top.

Putting styrofoam in a bucket of sand and shake it until it all Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. Operating on the landfill. Really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. All the laws that go with it are are nightmare, too. Yeah. So, how are we going to address this? Is it addressed at all in this year's budget next year? It is not. This is why we want to start to get that capital plan together. So things like this, we can say, "Hey, this is how much we know we need to allocate to them." Yeah. It's also why I really appreciate yesterday's conversation

because we have to say no to some of the things that are not things we actually need to be doing because these are things we have to be doing and services we we really should be providing for our community. And so I I think it gives us a great perspective to say, hey,

what do we need to be doing in the future? This kind of brings me back to well helps me with the conversation about our reserves. You said something yesterday. Um we we want to confirm what our reserves are. We we are working with the treasurer's office and and our auditor because we've been two audits behind for really we've done two audits simultaneously which is exciting times. Um but we just want to confirm that what we have is really accurate so we can start to make decisions with any extra money we have in the general fund. So some of our money that we hold is committed to other things like the landfill closure. We can't touch that money to go do a landfill, but we do think we've got some reserves. We really want to dial that in so we can start to make good plans and five-year plans, not crisis level plans. And so, you said something yesterday that I it made me feel like you don't under that you're well that we don't know for sure what our reserves are. I mean, I think the last commissioners thought we had reserves. We do have some, but because we were two audits behind, we can't say definitively what those reserves were because our books weren't closed. So I that is what I'm working on right now is getting that number in hand from our last audit and working with Patrick to say this is exactly what we have extra. Here's how much we have to hold for TAR. Here's how much we have to hold to operate for a few months should things go upside down. And here's anything above that that we need to be making these kinds of plans with. Yeah.

So, if I said anything incorrect, I apologize. It's just the the sense of like what how many things we have said no to already this year like no, we can't do this. We got to cut way back on this. It makes me feel like previously there wasn't a very good grasp on things and the line. I don't think there was because the numbers they were working with last year were with two years of books on closed. Yeah.

And two audits. Well, an audit and a audit not done a year late and also a full year of books not closed. You can't say what you spent or didn't spend, how you did or didn't do to know that you can commit to different projects and that's what we are cleaning up and getting that really dialed so we can start to make those plans. A lot of the things we've said no to are because we want to make sure our budget is balanced for the year we're in because we will have fund balances that we can commit to other things. But we actually need to know with real assurance what we're working with, not just shoot them from the hip with two audits not done, which is not best practice.

The best practice. Um I get it. They lost a lot of staff. There's a lot of turnover. Things change, right? But we want to really be working from a place of being fiscally responsible, having a five-year plan, knowing all of the deferred maintenance so we can have a list of like, hey, we'll do this first, we'll work on this second or we'll put 100,000 towards this or, you know, 80,000 towards project B because we know we have eight years for it. But we've just never had that level of planning. So, we are really saying, "Hey, we're going to hold ourselves to be fiscally responsible and work within the revenues we think will bring in and expenses that'll go out." And then we need to be actual planners. And when you're that far behind, you need to pump the brakes and know where you're at. So, you're making decisions from the place of knowing and planning, not just floating out in space somewhere. And that's what we're doing.

Yes, we're pumping the brakes. And I can't imagine what the previous boards were handed. Oh my god. You know, they they left things better than the negative. Yeah, for sure. So, I'm grateful for, you know, where they got us so that we're even able to identify, okay, here's what we need to work on. Here's what we need to work on, so I'm not trying to throw previous under the bus.

I think we've slowly seen an evolution of like just getting things dialed and having a good plan and not a crisis level plan, like an actual plan because we know what we're working with. We know what's coming up. We have five-year projections and projections change. You know, you don't know that CO's going to hit or whatever happens, you know, but we have like a trajectory to say, hey, we know that things will look about like this in 5 years. So, we can start to make shifts as we see how we're tracking against what we thought would happen.

Yeah. I you guys have noticed I like to approach things maybe like we're in crisis level budget mode because that gets results a little bit quicker than being like well it could be bad instead of like we really need to get this figured out.

Well, and also at the federal level we've had grants ripped away from us that we planned on. We've had funding sources that would go to DHS that are now being taken away and we know we're going to be taken away more in the future. We are in a weird position. and we're in a weird time that's not really happened in years past. So, we are making the right fiscal call because we can't predict the entire future, but it's looking hard and stopping and doing the right things now and taking the time to have that plan. So, we're not having to respond in a crisis is why we are saying, "Hey, we're pumping the brakes for a minute. we're getting our ducks in a row and we're making sure we have a plan so that we can actually pivot if something changes and makes it, you know, more challenging in the future.

You can't do that if you don't know where you're at, what you're working with, you know. So, we're doing the right thing and saying, "Hey, we're we're stopping right now because we want to be able to to weather what looks like it's going to be tough the next few years in terms of what the state and the fed will be passing down with cuts. Can't put the right wax on your skis if you don't know what the conditions are going to be. Exactly. I feel like I should send you my presentations ahead of time and you should just like insert.

All right. Are you Do you have anything else you want to add right now? And we're going to keep exploring grants. If we find a grant to do a landfill, Yeah. we will take it. We hope we find one. We just don't. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you.

Okay, so as we've been approaching the the budget and our capital uh projects, um things that we've been thinking about are safety, legal, and regulatory needs. Those are things like courthouse. Um maintaining existing assets. There's a hole in the roof. We can't just let it ride. Uh even if we have to patch it till we have a better plan. Uh HVAC our fleet. We are really trying to do some work of diving into the fleet and making sure we understand the ins and outs of, you know, what's coming in, what's going out, when we need to replace it. If something's not used as much, do we wait? you know, just asking ourselves, getting real data to inform our decisions instead of feeling it out. Um, leveraging outside funding. So, when we find grants, uh, we really try to match that. We're, uh, have the external dollars on the table. Um, so we went through every one of our grants this year that has a match and we budgeted that match. um aligning with board priorities, you know, done a lot with the housing at 10 2. That's one of the things we had to we had to work in is, you know, ensuring those homes till they move move out for under our purview. County facilities. Uh we're doing the work to know the delayed maintenance on each of those facilities, what we have, what we don't have, what we should focus, so we can build a plan for what you guys want to focus on or not. Um economic development, natural resources, etc. um ability to defer without major risk. Um because we're being really conservative in this time of spending.

We're looking at projects that can reasonably wait and trying to plan for those later as we look at just a capital asset management plan and and not just buildings, but looking at our wreck assets, etc. Um, so this is kind of how we prioritized

um really anything that wasn't that wasn't really like hey this is a this year we didn't put in capital requests. We've really said, "Hey, we really need to analyze all of our assets collectively." And we're doing that work right now on trying to get that assessment done so we know, hey, this is what we have, don't have, what it needs, what it doesn't need. Should we hold on to it? Should we take those dollars and invest somewhere else? So, we're working on that. But you guys um have the opportunity to say, "Hey, we want to put more more money towards this or not. If you tell me you need to go cut money somewhere, I'm going to do it. We'll figure this out. But I did want to at least get these. I would suggest we wait till 26 to start planning for the 27 budget with actual numbers in hand that we feel confident in. Um, and then really start to have that five-year plan is what I am asking you guys for. Okay. Um, so when we do capital requests, we're looking for board direction from you guys. Um, to confirm that that current list feels good, identify anything that you guys maybe want added to that list that you know off hand. Uh, anything you want us to reduce or remove. Uh, I didn't put the $3 million landfill into the budget. I didn't have room to uh so I don't know that I can remove it, but um I do want to I do want us to be planning for it and then um if we're deferring, we want to start to work on that actual 5-year plan for what does that look like

to get it done. Um if we want to use reserves versus staying within our current discretionary estimates, I think we really need to get our audit fully done, really analyze our reserves. But I do think we want to have some conversations about what is it, what will that look like. Um,

and then any specific board priorities you guys want us to also look at or if you want to wait for the capital plan, that's that's kind of the direction we want to look at from you guys. I personally would rather wait until the capital asset management plan so that we understand the breadth of our needed investment and then from there can prioritize. I fully trust that people have a handle on what is most critical for now until we actually get all the information in to collate. So I'm fine I'm fine with that. All right,

nice transition. Wow. Okay, so we've done quarter report memos in the past and we've decided we don't love that format, but what we do love is a great dashboard. So, let's talk about our new uh dashboard for keyboard memos. Um, let's see here. Trying to figure out the best way to actually to do this. Okay. Um, so you guys will receive a link so you can be clicking through this. We can click on our administration tab.

All right. and it shows you Q1 actual expenses, budgeted expenses, Q2 where we're at. And this blue line is kind of the average of of, you know, what we expected to see. We know that we don't just pay things consistently every month. Some things we pay um upfront.

Uh some things we we pay just as they come up. uh as we get a better handle on our cash flow because we have our books closed every single month and we can look at them, we can start to say, "Oh, we know that most of our revenues come into the treasur's office in quarter two." There are probably a lot of bigger expenses that maybe aren't due at the beginning of the year or some expenses that are currently due at the beginning of the year that we could talk with the vendor and say, "Hey, could you move this to a quarter two expense and really start to match dollars going out the door, dollars coming in the door, and have a little bit better of a cash flow?" Um,

as we really are tracking every year, hey, quarter 1, 2, 3, four, we know this is what's coming in. this is what we know what's going out the door, right? Um, so I'm not going to walk through this whole thing with you because it's really not about the budget, it's about the updates of where we're at. Yeah.

Um, but this dashboard is for you guys. You can look through any department you want to look at. You can um click on the ambulance and health and human services. I get a portion of our mail. Um, and then you can, you know, reset these and kind of go, um, kind of go back through it and just kind of click on, you know, whatever is Gazby or finance. How's Gazsby different from our finance? Uh, Gatsby, are you looking at that on there? Yeah, it's in the middle.

Thank you. Uh, Gazsby, those are audit adjustments. Okay. And they're a little different. They don't really necessarily impact our our dollars in or out. They're adjustments that the auditor sends to us every year. Interesting.

There we go. So, I'm going to let you guys work through this. This is, I think, a little more informative than you guys getting a static sheet that just says quarter 1 2 3 4. here's what we spent. And so what they've been before is they've just been a table with static numbers in there. And it rolled all of the expenses into like three buckets that were very confusing

to staff because they didn't realize, hey, when you look at pro services, there was actually several different types of items in there. Or when you look at transfers, that's transfers from the general fund to another fund or from um you know uh well mainly from the general fund to another fund like the ambulance. All of the dollars for the mills the ambulance come in to the general fund to Patrick and then they get put towards the ambulance fund and we pay the ambulance one big check in the year. Yeah.

Um, I think this is just a much better way to look at, hey, here's about what we thought we'd do. Here are revenues, here are our expenses, here's what we budgeted, and click through. Um, I'd love to give you guys some time to look through this. And if we want to schedule a time for you guys to come, like if you want to look through and send me questions, maybe we'll schedule another time if you want to come back and ask even more detailed questions or I'll sit down with all of you oneon-one. I feel like this and I'd love your your feedback if if you like the static charts or the static one pager, we can definitely go back to doing that, but I I really like that you guys can be going through here and come up with the detailed questions that you have.

I think it's wonderful. Thank you. Um just from my own understanding this is great budget conversations than Q four three so normally in Q4 we look back at Q3 because it's closed this is actually up to now so you can kind of see what we've started to do in quarter 4 and where we think we will end for the year and that's really important. Uh Will did a projection on here. Um and he I want to close. Well, how is this going under?

So he actually has uh in in the next two slides, let me get ahead of myself. He actually talks about how he calculated the projection and we'll use that projection to say, hey, this is where we think we're going to end the year. Yeah. Uh based on the expenses we have in each department. Yeah. grab a little gray dealer and said, "Hey, we have 134 days left in the year." Um, and this is what we think we will do based on the average dollar spend we've done per day for the year. So, um, he actually has a third page in here that's a a key might sound, but there's a map and it walks you through how to use it and gives you notes on cool on how to use this tool.

Cool. So, wait, my question though is actually not about budget. When do we get the reports from the departments? This is not not not budget. Oh, like what people are working on, what frustrations they're having, what they're hoping for. I know we did some of that with the like goal setting, but I'm just wondering, we used to get that like every month. And when do we report? Yes, I can do another one. I don't know when the next one's scheduled. I'll double check that. It'd be awesome to um these are really interesting and it'd be awesome to bring those back on board to see like the content of what people are doing and what it costs to do it.

That'd be awesome. Yes, I will get those updates back. Just missed one last after the budget. Okay, cool. Map map time. Uh I think this is actually Yeah. Okay. finance.

This is and I wanted to show this for a couple of reasons. This is actually the 2026 prelim. Uh they made an error in the table with the title and they were going to frantically try to fix it this morning and I said it's okay. I can communicate that. We can change a number in our head. We can yeah block out the little five. Will is sick and stayed here forever getting this set up cuz he wanted to be perfect and I was not going to this morning be like I know you're still sick. Would you change that? I can actually just say Josh just confirmed the link. I say Will actually did upload it. It does say 2026. Of course he did.

In your long link. It's correct. Um okay.

So this chart uh this chart I really like because it shows a couple of different things. it. If you hover over each of these areas, which I don't know why mine's not popping yet, but yours should. It's really hard to do looking at a different screen on mine. Um, so when we look at the blue ones, I can't see the key on. Oh, there it is. Full-time. So, this is frozen gold. Um, eight full-time people. You see we have a lot of part-time people. You see we have a lot of seasonal people. This is the biggest area. So even though their charts really tall here, that's numbers of humans, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

This is the actual expense uh based on what they've historically staffed. We didn't give them any extra humans, but we know that is insane and we will not be doing that. This is why we are looking at not even reorganizing the department. We're saying, "Hey, we need to look at whom we have that's full-time. You need to ask ourselves how can we utilize them more fully across the department no matter what programming or if you're part of goal or if you're part of bre we need to be asking ourselves can we be supporting one another a little bit more in our programming with our full-time humans where do we really need part-time humans I think seasonal people make a lot of sense but it's also like if this is what we're doing maybe we just need two more full-time people so what we've been doing with Wreck and goal is sitting down and having each person present their programming. When are you busy? When are you slow? What all are you doing? When does it make sense uh for you not to come in at 8:00 a.m. If you have programming till 10:00 p.m. Maybe you just come in at noon and do a little bit of hours and then really work on really work on just maybe we need to dial some things in. And we know we do.

Um there's some low hanging fruit there. Yes, absolutely. I'm guessing seasonal is rock is rock. It's a lot of things. Like we don't have someone working on the ice rink all year long. Like we just bring in a seasonal person who's, you know, the ice maintenance human. What's the difference between seasonal and part-time? Part-time are uh people who just work a few hours a week, but it's year round. Oh. Versus like some people only come on for winter programming, some people only come on for summer programming. Um, and so we're really trying to say, hey, we need to really think about and analyze um, and analyze like what are we doing

and be more intelligent with our staffing. Not about cutting the cool things we offer. Just saying, "Hey guys, if this is where we're at, maybe we just need two full-time people or to have a little bit different of a plan." Wouldn't that in a sense in certain instances cost us more? Mhm. Yeah. What is Yeah. Just query like what is the harm of having this many staff? Not I'm not questioning. I don't care about the numbers. I care about the $1.82 million right there. And it's harder to manage. That's what I care about. People who are only here for Yeah. Yeah. Um, and they're probably not

I'm just really curious cuz if it's like if it's a volleyball ref who really knows what they're doing and they are the volleyball ref year round but they only work twice a week. Sure. That's not the thing you're cutting. But like I'm really I'm just curious to see if those numbers how those numbers are going to shift. I'm just curious. I think we just need to have a plan. And that's what's lacking is we don't always have a plan. We're just like, "Oh my god, it's busy. We need 18 people." And it's like, actually, I don't know. Do we need 18 or do we just need to say

somebody who is already here? Maybe you don't come in at 8. Maybe maybe you come in at noon and you start Rick at noon and you do a couple of hours of admin work and then you cover some programming and then if you really do need some part-time reps, etc. Let's talk about what that looks like and start to come from a place of planning, not just being in the moment and responding. And I get it. Sometimes we have more or less people sign up for an activity. We're still going to have seasonal people. We're still going to have parttime people for sure. But this is really starting to And there's two sides, you know, for every volleyball coach we give a little bit of part-time pay to who really knows what they're doing. There's probably someone who's like, "Nobody knows anything about this. We'll just pay Fred to do this who has no idea what he's doing. % we're going to give it money to do something.

Absolutely. Don't worry. I've also seen those volleyball rats. I'm not singling out volleyball. I'm just I am. Don't worry. Because we lived experience

in budget season, I haven't gotten to join every one of we've been meeting weekly um to like walk through people's programming. What do you do? What does that look like? What does it cost? How many people do you serve? Does this program make sense? Would it be better to say, "Hey, these two actually make more sense." But we've never really analyzed any of our programs in that fashion before. And so I'm just really excited to say, hey, let's be intentional. Let's have a plan. We can be nimble, but we also I think with that in absence of a plan, sometimes you don't use your dollars as wisely as you could. And that's really why we're like, hey, let's talk about everybody's programming. What does that look like? What do you do? How many people do you need? How long does that take you? What resources do you use? Are you communicating with the school? Who are the partners that you work with?

Totally. Um yeah, if that 90 part and seasonal people um is the most cost effective path to maintain a level, then cool. But I think yeah, it would be great to take a deeper who are the seasonal people in HR. That's what I interns. Oh, cool. I saw that last night and I was like, whoa, what is going on there? But they they bring in interns that roll through throughout the year. So I was like, "That makes no sense to me." Lil and I had that discussion on my drive. And I'm assuming under lodging taxes, those seasonal folks are our visitor center staff. Mhm. Cool.

And lodging tax is separate. So some of the tourism staff are covered under that lodging tax we collect and we track them in that area as opposed to tourism and economic development. That makes sense. Um, so you guys can run through this and I walk through every single thing, but I think this is really nice to just, you know, some of these are less than 10, so the little thing would be tiny, but if you hover over them, it'll pop up for you. I'm not mine being weird, but click on 3 minutes. But you can filter down to like different levels like you can click admin, pick the person's area that you want to look at. But

this is what we are looking at for next year. I hope to really really analyze every department and the way that we're taking a really hard look at our our recreation staffing mainly because that involves a lot of humans and is really nuance. I don't think we've ever looked at it. But like for finance, um we'll move to the finance director. We didn't replace the deputy finance director. Um, we're really trying to ask ourselves, you know, what do what do we want to do there? Like, do we need extra bandwidth there? And if we do, is that a deputy or is that just another person who does accounting work? Yeah.

So, they've got room to add another human because Will and I are hanging in there.

Um, but also, we want to like explore what does this look like if we're not doing two audits at once before we fill that type of a position or a different type of position. And we've started to do that across all of our departments like where can we be a little more intentional to say is if we added a better IT system is this person who this is just an example this is not talking about an actual human that I know like is someone who's filing papers is that the best use of their time if it's just automated and we have better systems like a drive that's organized and we're not paper out. Yeah.

So, I think there's just some places where we're asking ourselves, could we improve our process so that human that is filing papers actually could be doing a different higher level task and have the opportunity to do some training, grow with us, and really just start to to improve how we serve people and how it can sometimes feel clunky to work through getting something done or,

you know, with the county. And we really want get we're still government. We're always going to move at the speed of government. It's just how it is. But we really want to make the experience a little easier for people when they have to to utilize services with us. I love it. So this is for you all. I have a granular question. Yeah. Are there going to be two people in the water and natural resources together? Yeah, there eventually will be. Cool. I budgeted for that natural resource because we our statute are actually supposed to cover that piece. Uh, great. So, we made sure we've really kept that there. It's budgeted for,

but we likely will we will not be filling that until we have a really great plan. We don't just want to like chunk someone in without a real like, hey, this is actually what needs to happen. Here's what you will be doing. Yeah. and making sure that we really have a solid plan. I think we've sometimes had seats that needed to be filled. So, we threw someone in it and said, "Figure out your job." And that's not that we don't want people to have some autonomy and be able to figure out what works in the space they're in, but we want to be really clear about outcomes before we just chuck someone in a seat and be like, "Run." So, in the in the 2026 budget, yes.

Is that full salary for the whole year budgeted in or just half of it? We went ahead and did the full knowing we could look for that person in the second month. Some of the positions, uh, he worked with us a lot and said, "Hey, my positions are really expensive." Yeah. I know I might not fill them till mid year. Yeah,

let's budget for a midyear. And we appreciate so much that he worked with us on that. You can see he doesn't have an astronomical number of humans, but the cost to get qualified people in. And and also like I'm not asking the rest of my staff to show up and risk their lives. Like you know, we we do finance work, Will and I, or I'm doing this job. I'm not like showing up for the sort of situation he's staff is showing up for, right? What they are paid to retain them looks a lot different than for us. So like public safety is generally pretty expensive. And we do analyze throughout the year where we haven't, but we're going to try to be looking at okay,

how many sat empty for how long and start to get a run rate. You know, it's hard to just say, "I have to budget for when you think you'll fill it." Because we don't know how long it takes us to fill a position. We don't know how long they sit out there. We don't know how fast we turn them over because we've never collected data on it. But Ashley and I are really trying to start to capture that. But I like having this so you guys can click through it, um, understand where we're at within departments. Oh yes. Oh, sorry.

Guys, this work in two different screens is really crushing me.

Okay, here's the map. So, when you are not with me and you're like, "What the heck? What did she say?" All of this kind of tells you how we developed our numbers for the projections. The personnel tab kind of walks you through it. You can jump through these. What's really cool is we've never had positional budgeting set up before where we actually really account for everybody's base salary um correctly. We can say hey we want to model what will happen if our cola is 2% 8% 1%. Those are things we've never actually had the ability to like really do quickly with the click of a of a couple buttons and Tyler because we we've actually had positional budgeting. We've paid for it the whole time we've had Tyler. At some point, Lil and I when I came on, we reached out to Tyler and we said, "We want a list of everything we pay for and a list of everything that's turned on." And we went through it and one of the things that wasn't turned on was positional budgeting. And so we worked with them for several weeks to get them to turn it on to work through the kinks and get it rolling for us so we can actually have real numbers. Um, so this is for you guys to help you out.

Okay. So let's start to talk about budget. That projection, that second one is for the it's the 2026 staffing. All right. So, this is back to what we looked at um in our town hall. Um it has not been updated with a few exciting items that have come up because Will and I simply haven't had time to update this yet, but we are going to sit down because we've got to start making some cuts. Um so, when we originally presented the um three limb, we were about 126kish.

Uh still left to cut. things that have come up in that time are um our are our cost for our workers comp. Mhm. Um we've made a couple of requests back to them on our workers comp quote. So our workers comp quote was about 100,000 higher uh than it has been in the past because I don't know what the heck numbers we've reported in the h past, but they just seem very low. Um, but we also are going to analyze them. We're rerunning the numbers um, just to make sure we got the the right right amounts to them. I just want to back check it.

And then we also uh have reached out and said, "Hey,

if this is where it's at, could we ask you guys if we raise our deductible, could it lower our cost?" Um, if we No, that's one of the biggest things we ask for. And that I think we ask a few other questions. Yeah. Could we increase our deductible or share in the claim cost to reduce our premium? Um Stuart has offered to become a Colorado certified premium cost containment holder. Uh he has a really strong insurance background. I was a licensed insurance agent. So it's great in Colorado. So he has asked if I do this training in 2026 could could if I hold that normally you get a 10% savings. So he is going to see about doing that for 27. I know that doesn't happen for us help us this year but we're just trying to really outthink problems before it goes up again the next year.

Yeah. Um and then he asked for them to really like break break down what constitutes the payroll, what constitutes what we've been due in the past. And so we're really analyzing that. Um but but we are going to have to increase the amount until we get those answers back. Yeah. To cover the bill we've been sent. What was our total bill? It ended up being I think I can't remember off the top of my head. Just general $7 million.

No, no, no, no, no. I think it was 19. I'm actually really pretty good at bringing numbers up out of nowhere. Okay. Out of the back of my brain. Uh I think it was like it was like 196,000 probably closer to 197 cuz there was it was like 196 something. That's more than doubled. Then it had increased by $100,000. Yeah, it increased like 102% I think is what we saw just for workers comp. Yeah.

So, uh that's exciting. But we don't get to opt out of workers comp, but we are we are exploring every option we can to say, hey, can we reduce that? and B, can we really start to get some safety protocols in place? So, our loss ratios are going down. Yeah. Um, this is all for this is why we have HR. It's new for us. It is new for us. Well, and we saw that great report. Yeah. Our loss ratios are going down. We are We are getting together. Okay. Well, as soon as we move out of that one year, it

it'll go it'll be great. And then the last year, not great. So, we have five more years. But that's okay. We're we're going to do the things we can to try to drop it.

So, that's that has increased uh our our amount. And then we also had um 40,000ish dollars estimated to try to the housing intend too. No one understood that. Um, well, I don't know how this was missed, but it was. When you have homes and the foundation is set, you own the property, you know, and the foundation, the um, Oakwood Homes, it owns the box, right? But once the box is set and improved, the improved box on your property has to be covered until it is sold to somebody. and they the in we didn't have a plan for insuring those until it goes to the seller or the buyer, excuse me, and then it becomes theirs.

And so we reached out to CTSI to get a quote and I having actually done this before, which is weird, having had to insure homes in fiveplexes that as one rolled off, we switched it out. Uh I've worked with um State Farm before. we're going to reach out to them and say, "Hey, what does that look like?" Because they're local and we'll talk to a few other local people. So, we're making sure we follow our procurement policy, but you can actually try to roll one on as it's set and roll one off. And so, we're going to talk about the timeline of doing that to see if we can't try to reduce the full amount insure to keep that number low.

Um, but we're going to try to get creative. But that's the initial quote. when the box touches the concrete. Once we start to improve it, it's a little different than just ensuring a box. Can we put like some shims on there to pull them out when it's time to just keep it like a half inch off the surface? Andy, that is brilliant. Yes, it's not touching airbags.

There is 337 797. So 337,000 almost 338,000 left they've got to go now find cut.

Um we do want to do that pretty quickly cuz we want to button this thing up and and we get it. This is a projection. A budget is your best guess about what will happen in the future. What the projects do you think are coming up, etc. But we know that's why supplementals happen and amendments can happen. Things change. Um, we do have a couple of ideas. Um, I did I I did put 20,000 in the budget. I have to double check the number for our community contributions. I'm going to do my best to protect those. Um, but some other things that we could talk about, um, we've been looking at rebuilding an excavator for $100,000 for Michael. Um, we could hold off a year or two. Um, other creative ideas we've had are to share the tractor with the landfill. Um, we normally renew our dump trucks every year. Um, so we've maybe thought we reduce the number of them that that we renew. Um, we've looked at selling some of our old equipment. I can't count that as a revenue

until I know that I can get that done, but we're trying to get that done this year. Okay. Um, we're looking at it right now and trying to figure out what could that look like. Is there stuff we were on the hook for that we can say or perhaps consider us not doing that maybe certain land acquisitions have those been factored in yet or so in this current in this current budget year we are looking at

where are we going to shake out it's why we project I really need to get some reports back from the treasur's office for October So I can close the month of October. Um and then as soon as so what happens is you hit the end of the month the 31st 30th and then the next day your bank statement is available. The way government finance works is the treasurer reconciles to the books that the to the bank. It says that whatever happened on the bank account happened on our accounting books and they have to go through every transaction and say

and then once their books are closed they go to finance and we reconcile to their closed books. So that's why that timing of getting them closed and getting reports is really important. You know we are the most caught up we have been in a very long time. the fact that we are looking at getting the reports to close October instead of the whole 12 months is a a new moment.

Um, so that's where we're really trying to streamline getting that information as soon as we've got October done and we are a little closer to the end of November. You know, expenses roll in before we get revenues on the finance side. So, our expenses, we know what they essentially are. What's hard is getting the revenues from the treasurer. We don't get those till he sends us the report because that's not how Colorado finances it.

So, we are getting those numbers as fast as possible. I really need October because I can project November and December with finance. Um, so as soon as we get that October report and get it close, we will try to get those projections. We'll come to you guys with the end ofear supplemental. We'll say, "Hey, we've projected this much more expenses for the end of this year. We'll do this before the 31st." We'll say, "Here's what we think we will have left for the year or where we think we'll shake out. We need to make sure none of our funds have spent more than they have. Uh they shouldn't have." That's why it's really important to get those monthly reports so you can catch it before you're going to be there. um and say, "Hey, here's where we're going to shake out. Here's what we have left. Uh do we want to roll anything over to next year projectwise? Um did we not do something we thought we would do like build a corner facility?"

Yeah. Um and then we can do those L those last supplementals to say, "Okay, can we move anything over to next year?"

That's why getting those reports timely is is really important for us. and and we've come leaps and bounds from where that was happening. So, we will come to you guys and say, "Okay, it does. We can adopt budget for 26, but we can do those last supplementals to to move things over if we need to. We'll also have our audited numbers fully back. I mean, we're going to do projected fund balances for our final budget. We don't really love using projected ones. We've been working so hard to get this our our audit papers have been with the auditor for 24 since uh end of July. We've hit a few snags and things that happened before most of us even worked here. And we're trying to get those really cleaned up so that ideally next year because our books are closed, we will be at the point where we're like, "Hey, you can audit papers in in July. The audit's back by August and we're making all of the decisions you're having to make now."

Yep. Yep. And without the information we'd like to be having with, hey, here's our audited numbers. Here's what we know we're doing. Yeah. And so I think for you guys, decisions we need you to make is what do you want to give to community partners? Yep. We would love some guidance on if there's something you passionately want to see cut that we haven't done. I gave you a line by line. I don't know that that's how detailed we've given the budget before. Yep.

You know, and it's it's just to say, hey, is there somewhere we need to be leaner or something you see that we're not doing well? A big part of this will be having a year to really work under an accurate, well thoughtout budget and say, can we be leaner? Can we do a better job of of how we run our rep problems and our goal programs? Then can we be a little more intentional, you know, with how we utilize the resources we have? I think we can. I think we're probably going to see we can come in under budget next year. And and that's the goal.

Um, so I think we really need those things from you. We need you to decide what you're going to do for the mill, which is our next conversation. So we know we know where we need to cut, where what we need to do, what other plans you guys want to have and we're going to come together on the 4th uh and try to get those decisions from you. Yep. So that I can come back with a budget on the 11th that you guys feel good about. Yep. That's great. What about the fire station and the Let's talk about that. I'm so glad you said that. Animal shelter. Yeah, there'd be two easy. Those are just for

Yeah, we still haven't had that conversation. Yeah, we can go on. Um, are we supposed to have that conversation on the 4th or do we Well, you'll make the decision on the fourth, so we can talk about it. We can talk about it now. Yeah. Did you I'm just going to say I put in the DA's office full request. I put in the animal shelters full request, which I think was 412. Mhm.

I'll send you guys all of these numbers. I'll do a memo and say, "Hey, here's the actual numbers." just cuz they keep they've changed a couple of times. I want to say the fire department ended up at 1.97 mil was the last and the DA's office their last request was in the 400,000 range. I'm sorry I not have all these I'm looking at so many. We don't have an option to not fund the DA. Yeah, we do. We do. Well, we can decrease what will fund them.

Yeah. We're they've been given some push back by all four counties and Elsa's been so helpful in meeting kind of with the other I think Clear Creek reached out to her. Um the finance teams have all been working. The county managers have said you know what's happened in the past is the DA's office just sends us a number and we all pay it. Mhm. They came back with a crazy increase and we all said like 2/3 Yeah. like three times the amount I want to say like e theirs increased by was a million. Yeah.

And we all said, "Whoa, we're all making cuts. We're all pushing back. We're all saying no to extra staff to all kinds of things." And we really need for you guys to line out to us where we're at and what you're spending it on. And in getting into those conversations, I think we found um that they've added a lot of things to their budget and we're like, hey, that's not this is this is not what we're all operating with. So, we've given some push back and have asked for them to come back with some revised numbers for us that are lower all collectively. The current proposal is that Summit and Clear Creek and I think Eagle is my impression. They are all their 2026 budgets. They're freezing everything at 2024's actuals

plus any cola or insurance.

So, we are trying to get actuals for what the counties contributed in 2024 and look at that difference between 2024 and 2025 actuals and try to split the difference. and that's the only increase. That's that's really wonky. All that to say that she proposed 8.8 million total. Eagle proposed 7.7 and we are trying to bring it down closer to 6.8. So based on the conversation today, we'll see how close we can get to that. Our actual contribution to that will be

much what's the surrounding way less than eagles in particular closer to Clear Creeks but we have the least amount that we contribute but it'll still be significant compared to her full amount. Like a 66% increase is what you're saying they it's like technically a 200%. Oh okay. In the last 3 years it's been a 200% increase. Well that's that's good news. So, that'll be our location. We'll see how much we can get out of it. For our third 338,000. Yeah. Which is better than what I was given. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah.

Um, I just had her make a note so I can get a memo to you guys with those actual amounts that have been turned in. So, what happens is people submit their budgets and then they change till they're at the final request and then you guys will decide what you want to do. We're kind of at that, hey, we've received final requests for the DA. we said, "Hey, give us a new request." Um, kind of the same with animal shelter and fire. We've said, "Whoa, can you work on that request?" And then, you know, we've got animal shelter and fire this week uh to go meet with those guys. But ultimately, whatever you guys are proving your budget is what I will pay. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

so we'll actually third of we'll actually have a special meeting on the 4th where we actually make the decisions and you'll get us a memo so we can actually know the exact numbers know the exact numbers. Can you give us a timeline of like what was originally requested and maybe what it's how it has changed to now just to help because we like I say hey this is why the animal in October or whatever when people sent me things and here's where it's come down to because people have decreased things that would be really helpful. Um, so the mill levy mill.

Uh, cuz that's the other thing I'll need you guys to decide, right? Earnestly, I could build the budget off of what I think you'll do and what I think we need and then you could certify the mill and then I'd have to go and amend our budget. That feels like creating an extra step. So I am asking for you guys to make the decision on the for what do you want to do and tell me and I'll go ahead and build our budget off of that. So I'm not in the middle. I'm not trying to amend and then go submit it to DOA. It makes it pretty wonky and I think that's how we make mistakes. Yeah. So I'm just saying, hey, give me the direction once you've decided that's what we're going to put in and what we're going to certify. Um

because you certify the mills for the whole county. So you'll get or the assessor has all of the the heat. There's so many different mills. It's like this is a tricky one for me to wrap my head around. They all turn it into us. We certify them and then we submit them. We submit them on behalf of every When I look at them

historically, it's like it feels like we're at the highest it's ever been. even though we're not as high as we could go, but it's like when I look at from 2012 up to, you know, now, although the 23 budget, I don't can't find the mill page on that one in that PDF anywhere, but um say uh 21. They dropped it in 22 23. I think they dropped it in the years that we got a bunch of co money. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And there was and it before the state offered the or did that like growth cap that relieved property taxes, they dropped it. But in 21 we were at 38.192. We're at 39.5 right now. Mhm. Um but it's like human services have it has its own mill. Insurance has its own mill. capital acquisitions which between it was at four mills in 2018 and 2019 went to.7 mills and there's a story there that I don't know mine closure

put the sweet in the capital acquisition bucket which it really should have been tracked there I mean you paid for it just paid for it out of the general mill instead of saying hey that's actually Mind closure mills are another one that are all over the place.

An ambulance. That's a ambulance is huge. I mean, how many It's almost like we got ambulances running all over town all day long or something. But there's 3.8 3. 6 or 3.3. Um, and that's a huge fluctuation or a huge amount, sorry. Um, so yeah, let's talk about this. So homeowners pay tax based on the assessed value of their property. This creates a stable local revenue source for county services each year. The mill levy is the tax rate applied to each $1,000 of assessed value. Changing the mill changes how much revenue flows into the county budget. Property tax dollars fund day-to-day services like roads, public safety, health, uh facilities which directly affect residents safety, mobility, and quality of life. Um, so we have built our budget off of 40 ms. Um, I should have grown up 39 and a half. I'm sorry I didn't do that scenario. I will send it out. Um, if you guys I think it's around it's aroundund Well, I can look really fast.

Yeah, if you don't mind. Yeah, it's about $180,000. a half mil. So, if you drop us down, it will drop us that amount and I'll go cut it. Um, which totally fine for me. I just need you to tell me what you want to do cuz I will make it happen for I will make it balanced before we're adopting the thing. So, right now we've got, you know, the amount I've still got to cut the 300 and grab my paper and memorize it. the 337797. I've got a cut.

If I cut that, it would get us to here for mills. Um, if you tell me you want to mill lower on the 4th, um, I will do so. And we will go find places to cut that. Um, you'll have to cut $518,000 then. Yes. Instead of the 338. Can someone help me understand this a little bit more? So, say your home is, for argument sake, your home is worth $100,000 and we raise the mill a half point, which is this scenario. How much does that add to your yearly tax bill? Do that for me. Thank you.

Sorry. It's just I I want to be able to tell people like, hey, you know, here's how much it could have gone up. We're only going to do it. This is projected at a half a point and we're we're scrambling with this. It's okay. We can we can do I don't want you to feel that this has to happen. I want you to do whatever feels I will you I know if

I will make it happen. I feel like I don't want to raise the mills, but if we're bar if the countyy's treading water with where we're at right now, we're barely treading water and there's a tsunami wave of inflation coming at us and everything else that raises costs. I want to be able to have the honest conversation of like everything in everyday life is going up in cost and you expect us to keep make providing the same level of services with the same amount of dollars. It just doesn't. The math doesn't math.

I think what's been hard is inflation has made everything more expensive and it doesn't mean that the amount that we have to run off of is is really changing at the same rate that things are exp. It's also why the conversation yesterday was so important. We have taken on a lot of items that aren't just our statutory duties. So, it's not like we're just covering the things we're statutoily required to do. We're covering a lot of other things that are a really big public benefit. And that's why we had the conversation of saying, "Hey, if um

what else we tourism were all right $50 is $1,000." Okay. So you're assessed though at only 6 something% of your if you're residential. Yeah. 6.765. 6.765. So if 50 bucks is the answer, then your yearly bill is going to go up $250 on your average $500,000 house. So half a point. That's I mean 250 bucks is you know that's Yeah. But then you break it they don't assess the whole value of the home. Right.

Yeah. So so if you have a $500,000 home you're ratio 6.7% of it. Yeah. Residential is assessed differently than commercial. This home actual value you only get assessed on this much. So you're only paying mills on the assessed value, not the actual value. Yeah. That's why we said that's why a mill is complicated. Yeah. No, but like your average I I just want to be able to say like, hey, if we raise the mill half a point. Yeah. If we raise the mill a point. Yeah. Your your actual cost per homeowner is going to be

50 bucks for every assessed value, which is different than your actual value. Yeah. And that I think that if you so 50 bucks per 100,000 25,000 that's you know $1250 whatever but then you can actually break it up into like hey you're you're giving the sheriff's department eight more dollars next year. Hey you're giving you're you're tossing two bucks to our wreck department. Yeah, that's what I want to be able to say to people like look, you're going to hear a lot of bitching and moaning, but nice drop.

Um, you but the actual cost per person is, you know, roughly this amount of dollars and you want us to keep doing all the things and you know, we're we have to figure out how to make it happen. Everything's going up in price, which means every dollar we have to work with is actually shrinking. And it's this unsustainable model of the county doing all the things. If we're going to keep doing that, then at least for now, this looks like this. Candace, is that the kind of thing that staff could put together or this is also a project that we could actually work on is actually communicating what the half a mill would how? I think it would be both. I think it

I think right in this very moment it's not something I can work on. I'm just trying to get it done. But I think in the future we can actually be doing this because we're not closing an audit back to back and then you know having 900 people leave. Yeah. Years of and them all at once.

We didn't lose 900 people. I just covered like five things for a minute. But in the absence of data, we actually are getting the right data and humans to help us like be able to say, "Hey, this is really where we're at and what's happening." And I also want to see what it looks like if we don't raise the mills and we can actually say all the hard work that's happening by the leadership staff here. This is why we're able to do this. You know, like it's if we can carve out say someone who's asking us for a lot of money who might have thrown us under the bus recently and we can say, you know what, we're not giving you very much and cool now we don't have to raise bill. I don't know like if there's if there's I I'd love to see what that scenario looks like. It'

be helpful to know how much we how much revenue we've take you expect to take in versus the last couple years. I think that is going to take a little bit to really a when people put in revenue numbers that I was like you haven't done that for three years let's be real with ourselves which I did uh well you know people are projecting what they think they'll bring in and so we had a lot of moments of

let's do your two-year look back this number feels wildly optimistic. Could you assess what you've done for the last two years and be real with yourself and let's come back with a different number that actually makes sense? Uh we did that this year because you can't just you be like I'm going to make a million dollars even though you've only made like two grand for two years. You can't just keep chucking a million dollars in the revenue line. And you got to be like, "No, Bob, you made four grand last two years. Let's maybe it's six, not a mill." You know, and those conversations can only happen when you have that actual look back at, hey, here's really where things shook out. And so we have said, "Hey, you need to actually build revenues based off of that are close to what you've done in the past and not just be like overly excited." I also think we can start to really look at what are we charging for services, what are we charging for permits, what are we charging for wreck, what are what are the amounts we're charging and where can we really have intelligent discussions about, okay, here's what it takes to provide some of the things we actually charge for.

Yeah. Are we charging appropriately? Are we charging too much? And starting to ask ourselves, okay, what makes sense? What helps us maintain our facilities? not just watch them crumble around us and start to to really say, "Hey, 2026 is the year we really can start to work on getting and it takes a little bit. You have to collect what are we actually doing?" Know that data point first and then to say, "Hey, could we change or could we outink a problem rather than throw money at it?" And I think that's where we're going to actually have the bandwidth to help directors do that. like people who are doing a jobs, they don't have the time to outthink a problem.

They throw money at it because they're in a crisis. And that's really why we've got, you know, Josh and extra support um through Rachel for staff to say, "Hey, I know you worked your 80th hour this week. Let me help you think through this problem and then let's get the correct IT resources instead of asking them to run a third mouse." Yeah. It's like, let us help you run the mouse and let's get it dialed before we just throw money at it. So, like the CDLs, not sending someone to Denver and paying for their stay for one CDL at a time. Why not just pay half the cost and ask someone to come train our people all at once to get their CDLs?

Yeah. And that doesn't mean we got to raise permits for like people building, but like maybe someone wants to have a special event or a party or something and it's like, oh, it's 10 bucks. It's like, no, it's going to be 100 bucks this time, you know, or whatever, you know, like parking tickets. I don't know. Littering fines. So, I did put other mill scenarios in here. Voters approved to mill up to 41.99. That right?

Yes. Um, and we kind of put the different like by half mil increments in here of the discretionary funds, the extra funds that you would have to put towards things. Um, discretionary funds I would say are towards the nice to haves or in our case probably toward delayed maintenance. Yeah. Um it might be a little bit before we're working on the nice to have cuz we we do actually have a responsibility to maintain the facilities to the best of our ability when they're public facilities and so that's something we're going to be raising these things does such a small it's really a drop in the bucket.

For some people that's their annual income, you know. Oh, we didn't do the discretionary. That's okay. We will get it in there. Yeah. And I'll make those. You can see the increments. Yeah, you could extrapolate what it's 180. I wonder too if we're expanding if we could also add that column kind of that you were talking about Andy about what does this mean in terms of dollars for like a median Yeah. property. Yeah. Um or or we could use whatever number 100,000 if you just wanted to see what that look like. There could be another column here that tells that. It would be hard to figure out an average home value assessed value and what you know an average house in Lake County. This is 100.

For a year, these are these are from Liz and will we can update these. Okay. Yeah, I can. That really That's a cup of coffee at a drive-thru somewhere in town. The money's nominal, but the concept is it is. It's the idea that and I can see the article on the table. Commissioners raise millenn 4 41.9 million. Well, that's called PR is also like making sure that people understand when you're doing that, what does it mean?

And that's why I think in that article, you know, the very first sentence or three is like this does only translate into an extra 20 bucks a year per person, you know, per homeowner, not per person, you know, and being real about it and some problems like that liner is a huge problem. Yeah. You know, like do you guys want to start what's it going to cost you more

to do? Drive to JP County to dump your trash or let us raise the mills and fix our dump or you know the the ball joints on your car or let us start getting more money into the roads. Um basically designed to improve paying for uh babysitting while your kid could be in a wreck program or you know $6. It's $6 for a $500,000 house to raise a half a mill for the whole year $6 tax. That's why it's such a drop in the bucket. That's why it's only 180,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I just double checked with that. It's 100. It's only 180,000 or so in your house. For I know your overall budget. 180,000. Yeah. Plus that's residential, not commercial. Yeah. Advertise that a whole county, you know, property. It's it's probably like six bucks. than that.

So I only put this in here because we know we receive things from climax about two years out I think is what it was and so this is the trajectory like they're projected to do a little less this year. These are projected I did not create this the assessor creates this table say that. Um, so we do know that, you know, they had a pretty good time. It looks like there and 23 and then 24 went up, but 25 is projected to be lower. So we'll capture less from climax mine in this future. Wow.

This is just this is what's where we're headed. Total revenue loss over 2 million from last year. That's projected and these projections were done by I believe Mark um 2.2 not as bad as 2020 or 21 but 22 that's they would have that would have been them paying for their co years shutting down. Yeah, skeleton through like

the 2019. Uh, and are these the the year to date or is that like that two or threeear lag catching up? Okay, that's when we get paid that, not when it was produced. Okay, so 21 was the 2-year lag from 2019 being shut down to a skeleton crew for CO. No, they went gang busters in CO. Then how come the 21 revenues are so bad if 2019 was our It's the 22 that you have to look at cuz they produced a lot and then they sold it and then they reaped the they got the money and then they paid their taxes. It takes two three years.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So So we're I mean it's average, you know, you see some lows, you see some highs. 7.8 any projected and we should remember when we went up there and they were like, "Hey, the best thing you can do is have a really good relationship with the actual like foreman of Climax because that's the person who knows how much is getting produced and that is what can project you two to three years out what you're going to be getting in your revenue.

It's other than that it's hard to get it. All right, wrapping up what I have to say to give you guys to continue to talk, time to continue to talk is we review two 2026 capital requests. I think we really need to have our audited numbers in in hand before we really amend our budget to say we want to use any reserves we have for this, this, or this. Um, I'm going to estimate them if we don't have the audited numbers back because I have to to turn this budget into DOLA. Um, but I really want to have those audited numbers in hand before

um, we actually make decisions with it if you guys are okay with that. when you might get those.

I am working right now to get the Fed to give me the login to the Treasury portal where we submitted our ARPA reports. As soon as they let me in there and I can hand those over to our auditor, it's kind of in the holdup. That's the last thing he really needs to like tie a bow. They've kept working, but I'm not Tim Bergman and the account I was created doesn't have Lake County government delegated to me, nor the finance department, and the Fed has been preoccupied with being shut. So, we have been reaching out to them and are exploring every opportunity to try to get in there and get those reports. It's the last thing we need uh to I think we need to make some adjustments to our ARPA fund balance. It looks like those ARPA funds were spent but not reported accurately by the humans who were doing that at the end of 2030 and 24 which is not the people who were here.

It sounds like there was just maybe miscommunication and that's fine. It's just you would make an adjustment or the auditor helps you make an adjustment to claim those correctly and make sure that what you did matches the reports. I can't say what we've done on the books matches or doesn't match the reports because I don't have the reports. So, we are getting those reports and as soon as that happens, we're going to work to make sure that those things are correct. So, if we need to restate anything, we can and actually move forward with uh audited numbers. I need to do some homework about sorry,

what ARPA funds mean for local governments. I hear it mentioned so much. I'm like, sounds complex. Q4, I need to learn more about that. You guys can look through. Come back with questions for me. The 2026 budget. We want to maintain essential services.

We've kept any we don't really have a lot of new commitments. We have some old commitments like the summit stage, some other IGAs that we want to look at. We pay insurance for a lot of different um items that are part of agreements with other people and Stuart has really taken on the project of working with CTSI to say, "Hey, can you tell us how much are we paying for insurance out at Ski Cooper and how much insurance are we paying uh for different facilities where we have agreements or out of the you know the motocross?" You know, there's just a lot of things that I look at things like And I wonder sometimes like

what do we need to do to get it to be like we're doing? Hey, can we change our Chris was like, can we uh

sell the land that the motocross track is on to that nonprofit and let them do their thing, you know, or is there conversations to be had about other larger entities that we work with like that? I think that's why Matt and I are like, "Hey, we really want to get a lot of the IGAs back up to say, okay, let's let's think about all of the cost associated fully with this agreement and know what those actual dollars are to say, hey, does this make sense? Are there other creative solutions? And do we have a place where we track all of our contracts one by one that's clear? We track them in Tyler because we have to have them for the audit, which didn't happen before. Now, we attach those contracts to the to the transaction, but that doesn't give Matt and I the running log of, okay, on November 1st, I always know this IGA is coming up, and I need to have reviewed it before this point. He and I are really working to get systems in place to say, okay, we know that this is where it's at. we know how many dollars is associated with the contract, what needs to happen, and just part of that is having professional staff who work together to get those things in place. Um, we're not going to be perfect

in year one, but we certainly are going to try to make it better and then mill straight to jail. Great. Collect here, but you're still going to work. Here's a desk and a laptop in itself. You can get out of those or sometimes you can't, I guess. So, I'll work on a memo to follow back up to each of you with. Thank you. Would it be great to just list in that thing, hey, these are the decisions we're going to be looking at December 4th. Um, so you guys can show up

and you can still ask us questions there if you need to. And you can ask more questions now. And if I don't have an answer, I'll be honest and say, I don't know. I got to look into that. So, I don't know what other questions you might have or what you want to know. Do you need to do a memo or can we just write it down in a notebook right here? Yeah. You want to just tell us? I don't have it memorized. Okay, that's fine. I want to go actually look at what we put in for the animal shelter. Yeah. And you also have to send us a memo anyway. So, yeah. Shelter. Um, and fire. I would love to say I've got every memorized. I have a lot of memories. I've looked at it way too much. Very impressive. beyond.

Well, good job, Candace. I mean, it's of all the things that give me concern with where every local government is struggling, I have a wealth of confidence and the team that you has been put together here, you guys are crushing it. Everybody just cares. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of counties out there that have people who have checked out working in that county like

Can I uh I do I have a question? Yeah, it's somewhere it's not big picture. You know how we had that or we still do have it open the um like questions and comments about the budget? I know you sent all the questions to us, but could you share all the comments too that have been made from the town hall? No. Yeah. Any any questions or comments that have been made from the I I'm assuming that comments have come in through the QR code QR code and the fillable form on the website. Yeah,

it would just be nice to see all of that. You don't have to answer everything. I just wanted I'm just curious about what people are or if it's accessible somewhere, where do we find it? Yeah. If it's in a place already, right? Cuz if there are 20 comments in there being like that have a trend, I don't feel like it would be important for us to know that. Thank you. Yep. We want to get it in our list for that. Thank you.

Now, I'm really excited about the fourth. This is all really so impressive. I feel like you and your team should be really proud of yourselves, Candace. Please send our compliments to the chefs. I will. They are finance team. Is there anything between now and then that we can do to help the three of us? Make decisions on fourth

so I'm not scrambling. You know the picture that I came into last year on the 13th. the finance staff, ops, they were here till 3 4 a.m. the night before. And that's how errors get made

because the timeline of making the decisions and the information they had to make decisions with, you know, because just two audits behind. Um, you know, it it just budget got done, things got in place, you know, but it it also is is where you're trying to make errors. You're not thinking intelligently. You're throwing money at problems instead of saying, "Hey, we have a 5-year plan. We can do this this year, you know, and that's just really hard on staff, too, like to to be here till 3 days in a row after working your full day."

It's not right. It's not right for us to do that to people. Like from purely a social aspect lens, like being out and about, nothing good happens after 11 p.m. If you're working, nothing good is like happening after like dinner time. People are just a little loopy at that point, too. And and budget season is budget season. Like finance people know budget season's tough. Yes, you're going to work some really long hours. personal all year long, but you certainly don't want that last moment change to be in the day before it has to be done. And that's why I'm trying to say, hey, give me six days if I'm making any real big adjustments. Great. Okay,

we will absolutely do that. I promise. We'll eat as much as I can. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. Nice photo at the end. Oh, I didn't know there was fine. I'm sorry. Oh, the yellow man saying thanks. Yeah, I put a nice photo of the Colorado River and it was like, you know, it was Sorry, Sarah. Thank you so much. Great. Okay,

you guys are awesome. It's like the uh the bright spot in like what is a very stormy and turbulent kind of situation for every county in the state and probably many in the country. Oh yeah. Right now, not the only ones. We are in uh good hands. It gives me confidence and hope that we get through this. What's to come is going to be freaking awesome. Yes. Yes. Watch out. 27. All I know is I would be very excited to just be doing one year's birth of work. Yes. In that year. It's like there.

That's after December, right? Yes. After we get So, because our books are so caught up, we're not going to be like scrambling to close the whole year while doing a backtoback audit and then trying to get the project together. is like it's just going to feel so sane. And I'm really excited for that moment. Yeah. I wish the community knew this kind of stuff, too. You know, it's just um not easily digestible. It's not easy to communicate and black and white. It's just um that's also just,

you know, co happened. They they happened to switch accounting systems as COVID was hitting. So, you know, like the accounting system didn't get set up in the best way. The people from Tyler didn't come up here and work with people oneon-one. Everything shut down. And, you know, it was one or two people doing everything. Yeah.

For finance for the whole county. And then you come back from CO and there's been a lot of turnover. before I stepped in in December in December 1 last year and or whatever the first Monday is in December and they hadn't had a finance director since July I believe and the whole team was new. Imagine walking into this and you're like,

"Oh, wow." Like you didn't know what you what had happened. You didn't know know what had been here that the system the Tyler system was broken. It is a lot. And you know what a lot of people do is they show up and they're like, "This is too much." And I'm going to walk away. Yeah. And that over and over. I mean, it just really requires people who care enough to stick out the really hard stuff to work the extra time to have everyone be putting the hate towards them as if they've they've done as if any of those humans were here in 23. They weren't. Mhm.

You know, it just takes people who are really dedicated to say, you know what, I can see that it's going to be better and I'm willing to stay here and continue to do it to see it be better and not just walk out the door. So, I don't know. We owe our finance team a lot. Yeah. Not being says a lot about you, that you inspired just do it. I just do it. Get it on. I don't know. We're working hard and we can see that it's going to be better and that's the thing. People have to be able to see that better to stay for it. So, I don't know. I know we're going to get there. You're getting emotional. I love our people.

I'm sorry. I'm not laughing. I'm allowed to see I care and I've had like 3 hours of sleep. Yeah. So, when are you going to get a break, Candace? After the approved on the 12th. Do not call me or 11th. Call me the next Monday. give me a weekend. But I don't know. I just care a lot and I see how hard our people, you know, keep showing up. So, you're getting a rock. That's heck yeah, canvas. We're getting a rock. Stop the meeting. It is 11:11 112. Uh, we will conclude this work session with the county board county commissioners. Thanks. You're so getting a