Montgomery County Council - Regular Meeting

Father we thank you for this day. We thank you for the beautiful weather this time to gather and discuss the people's business Thank you for all these employees and department heads that work so hard to steward our money. So well, you know my friend. Amen All right, any public comment on any agenda item? Hearing none, we'll move on first to soil and water.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Leah Dick. I'm the conservation director for the Montgomery County Soil and Water Conservation District. I've met you guys before, so you know the spiel, but I'll repeat what we do at the conservation district. We do conservation education for both students and adults, as well as give technical advice to all Montgomery County landowners. We receive partial funding from the state and federal and county as well. So, which brings me to my budget. All of my line items are mostly the same as last year's ask, with the exception of both salaries for program coordinator and conservation director. Those received the 3.8% raise that we were instructed. The other increase is for repairs and maintenance. Our department purchased a vehicle for our business. Originally, that was $1,000. Our board voted to move that up to 2,500. And the last change would be our rent that I've reduced to zero because we won't be needing If you remember from last year, we were worried we may have to start paying our office rent. That is not an issue anymore, so we won't be needing that $9,500. For this year, 2026, I plan to get with MnD to do a reduction for this year, $9,500. But that is all I have. Any questions for me, concerns?

Questions or comments? All right, thank you.

I also have a couple newsletters and our annual report. I'll just hand them over here if you guys want to read them, pass them down. Thank you.

Thank you. And I will remind everybody, I forgot to start out with this. We're not voting on anything tonight. We're just going through the presentation, so. Purdue Extension.

Hello. Monica Nagle with Purdue Extension. And as you guys remember, Dee has introduced herself at the county council meeting last week, I think it was. She's gonna hand out a few documents. So one of the things I got questions after she talked with our transformation of like, what are the regions look like? So she brought a map to show you what region we're in and what counties are with us, as well as some more information about the general funding for extension. But for our specific budget, The only thing that we changed again was the office manager with the change that we were told to do there. And then moving forward, Previously, you guys have paid the mileage and our computer lease as their own separate line item. But moving forward, that's going to be part of our contractual service. So I think it was mileage or travel was reduced quite a bit because you will no longer be paying for all of our mileage. So that was a pretty big reduction. And then our computers, three years ago, we entered a new lease for our computers. And then the next year it changed from no longer leasing them to we buy the computers outright. So right now it only looks like you're only saving a little bit of money from that computer lease. But it's actually more like a $6,000 savings because this next year we would have had to buy four brand new computers. And now you will not have to do that because that's going into that contractual service amount as well. But we still have our office manager who will need a computer. So that's why that amount is in there. Who is a county employee? Anything you want to say? Any questions?

Questions, comments? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

I think I saw Steve walk in the corner. You made it.

All right. Thank you guys for the opportunity to speak with you today. Looking at our budget for next year, the personal services would be the standard 4% increase. Our supplies, we've had to change the way we've done our supplies. In the past, all of our body bags were ordered under the autopsy budget line item. And recently, through education, that's changed to where it's now going to come out of supplies. So the body bags would actually have to move that funding over to that. And the cost of those has gone up exponentially. They're, Brian, about $120 a bag now, where years ago they were in the 40s. Some of our other, trying to see, and they would go under our expendables. Autopsy fees, we want to stay around $40,000, and that's because the cost of the autopsies has increased. Also increasing are the costs for our lab testing. The state's no longer covering as much of the cost for our samples that we send in. They used to do a pretty comprehensive test, and now they do more of a baseline test, and then we have to pay for anything additional. So some of the exotic drugs and things like that. that are coming through that we have to test specifically for, and we have to pay for that. Some of those tests I've seen come across the desk are $500, $600 a test now. And then the next change that we have is for the, I don't see it up there. For equipment down at the very bottom asking for 95,000 and the reason for that is our cots are pushing in excess of 20 years old. And the battery system is no longer supported by striker so we've gone to other services that like county ambulances that have upgraded their stretchers and still have old batteries. they've given us their batteries and we're using them as long as we can, but an old battery still an old battery and they're not lasting. and then one of our electronic COTs, the circuit board is going out. So we've had multiple instances where we're trying to load a decedent and our stretcher doesn't work, so we have to get people to help us manually lift that thing in. What I've done is I've reached out to Stryker to try to get an estimate on new, and for a new system with auto load, it's about $95,000 for one in a new system with a COT and the auto load, For 95,000, though, I can get two refurbished systems and put one in suburban and one in the ambulance, where we would have newer that are with upgraded technology, but they've been refurbished and would be a much more palatable cost to the county. They would have the same warranty, and what I would want to do is try to incorporate a service contract with those so they get maintained. The stretchers that we have now, from my understanding, came from the city and the fire department. When they got new ones, we took their old ones. So 20 years of up and down have

One of those came from when S&W went out. I got it from the trustees, so that was... So, I mean, we've had hydraulic leaks that we've been able to repair. That was after I suffered a back injury that I didn't get reimbursed for. So, yeah, that's the reason we went to the power cuts back then.

We've had hydraulic leaks that we've been able to repair ourselves and keep the cost down, but they're getting to the point now that even the case that I was on before we got here, the battery was dead, and we had to go and go through about eight batteries in the truck to see if we could find one that had enough power to raise up.

Okay. Any other questions for Steve?

I fully anticipate to have enough to cover the rest of the year where we're at right now. The state changing the way they were doing lab testing kind of threw us for a loop because we ordered labs the same way we had and then we get a bill for $1,200 and i call they said oh the state changed it and then you call the pathologist and they say no i want this so it turns into a challenge at times is the lab testing part of the the expendables it goes it goes through the autopsy as the service line and then also the uh i filed a claim today for imaging from a couple of cases that we had recently that we had to have the hospital do imaging So instead of taking somebody to Indianapolis and doing imaging, post-mortem imaging like x-rays and CTs, we've worked with the hospital where they're giving us a really steep discount, but we can do them locally. So one, it keeps the money local to the community and also it saves us wear and tear and fuel and time driving to Indy for those same tests.

Any other questions? All right, thanks, Steve. Thank you. Treasurer.

Heather LaFone, Treasurer, but I'm going to let Morgan present since this will be her budget for next year. But if you have any questions, I'm here and I'll try to answer.

Is that what you had in the phone, please? Yep.

Morgan begs, so Treasurer-elect. So we've given everybody the 3.8% budget increase. The only thing we've really changed here is we're asking for training and seminars to do training for the whole staff for Excel. And there's a slight increase for our staff lunch. From 150 to 200, that's what we use to pay for our lunches for tax day. And I think that's about all that we have increased. We try to keep everything pretty much the same. Oh yeah, the dues and subscriptions have gone up 0.75% due to the increase in salary. Any questions?

Questions for Treasurer? Thank you. Thank you.

Hello Nancy Cox recorder my numbers are kind of jumping around a little bit we're having a new vendor in 2027 so things are shifting but, ultimately, it should be a little bit less expensive. And then. I did the 3.8%. um i increased mileage a little bit because we ran we're running under this year and then one thing that's not on here is we have a new enhanced access fund so with this new vendor for subscription fees typically we use docs pop who had a subscription agreement between docs pop and the end users like attorneys title companies and docs pop kept all of those subscription fees With Fiddler, we will share those subscription fees. So the enhanced access fund is a fund where we actually have the agreement with the end user. We collect from the end user, and then we pay Fiddler a part of that. So I know Jen was going to add that in, but there was no fund to add the $20,000 in. yeah there was no fund because we just created it Monday so I don't know if I have to come back maybe at the beginning of the year to ask for that money which actually we will be receiving the money that we actually spend but it still will come out as looking like a payment but anyway that will be I'm guessing what that will be I'm guessing we'll spend ten thousand dollars out of that fund but we actually will be receiving more like seventeen thousand and spending ten in that same fund so But it's not on there yet. Any questions? Yes. Right now, every year, we run about, I'm guessing, $5,000 to $7,000 short in perpetuation. We're eating away. Right now, we have plenty in there. And I'm hoping with this new vendor, since it's a little bit less expensive, that we can make headway on that and not spend so much.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Assessor up next.

Hello. Sherry Bentley, Montgomery County Assessor. Let's see. For salaries, I did the 3.8 increase as suggested. The certifications, there are four certifications on there. The state, there's legislation that every assessor deputy that has a level two certification get paid $500 a year. Assessors get paid $1,500 a year for their level three. It used to be that those were in a separate line, and then at one point, my 1,500, prescribed by law was increased to $2,500 because I also carry a professional designation, which is not in statute. It's something that you're allowed to do, not required to do. Those were kind of enveloped into salaries because those used to be paid annually in a separate check, and then State Board of Accounts wanted those moved into salaries, and then at some point those just kind of got encompassed I believe, into salaries. So my concern is that with the salary study that was done, that wasn't recognized. So I wanted to make sure that my staff, at the very least, gets recognized with the level certifications that they keep at $500 a piece. So we can discuss that further. If you have questions about that, I'm open to discussions on that. The other thing we increased was So there's part-time line that was zero, but that was the full-time line that I came to you and we split in half. So you'll see the other part-time line was decreased by half and then this is the new line that didn't exist at budget time last year. So that's the difference there. I increased my travel expenses. I have two deputies that are interested in obtaining their level three certification. And since this upcoming term is going to be my last one, it would be very beneficial. I mean, it's already going to be beneficial for me to have two more level threes. But in the interest of me leaving in four years, I think we're going to want that. So I did increase travel. For that, do some subscriptions. I have a new deputy, so those went up as well. And the software conversion went up. We added a tablet for field work. Just makes everything more streamlined. You can download the data to that and then make all the changes in the field. And so that's the annual fee for that. And then board of salary went up. They were at $150 a day. Per member they aren't really part-time employees They just come in a few times a year when I need them and they are all professional people with busy lives and busy jobs And so I would like to increase theirs to $200 a day per person so we can also discuss that further at your pleasure.

So Any questions Everybody's quiet tonight. Thank you.

Thank you.

Tom's up next.

Tom Cummins, county surveyor. With the surveyor's budget, there are a few changes. You'll notice the surveyor and part-time went up the 3.8% that was directed. The drainage tech position, we've zeroed that out. and created the new chief deputy position because the current person in the drainage tech position will be promoted to chief deputy for 2027. So the addition of that salary. Salary enhancements went up 3%. Fuel has gone up $250. That's just based on gas prices today. Office supplies, travel expenses stayed the same. Area photography, the same. Contractual services, this is for section corner perpetuation. So this contract is paid. about half out of county general and half out of the user fee fund that we collect. Some years I have to kind of adjust that based on what I expect to come in the next year to make sure I don't run into a point where I have to come and ask for an additional appropriation based on that. So I've increased that line by $2,500. I expect that next year we'll be able to lower that back down based on what we collect in 2027 and six quarter fees. Dues and subscriptions stayed the same and equipment stayed the same. That's it for the surveyors budget. Do you have any questions? Yes. I had originally included that in my original budget. You can see that that's changed. The commissioners graciously have offered to pay for that UTV and trailer out of their CCD fund. So we're working on getting quotes for those two things right now. So I was able to remove that from the budget. And they kind of made up for the chief deputy position increase in that, still be able to come in less than what I had originally submitted to you. I found that walking the ditches is a big deal. It's just all the equipment that I've got to carry with me. Walking a mile out in the field is not a big deal unless you're carrying a GPS, a measuring wheel, a probing rod, a shovel, and everything else. He was a shape, all right. Any questions on that? Yeah, like I said, the commissioner's been great to work with on that, so we're working on getting a post for that, so we should have that in place here pretty soon.

What are the salary enhancements? Is that for like certifications and stuff?

So the drainage code allows for an additional compensation to county surveyors. Basically, I certify to the commissioners each year the miles of regulated drains and the section corners that we have perpetuated in the county. And then I get $2 for each of those, $2 for a mile of drains and $2 for each section corner that we have perpetuated and certified to the commissioners each year. So that amount goes up just basically the additional section corners that we'll perpetuate, that we perpetuate this year.

Learn something new every year.

Yeah. I've always been told that that additional compensation is meant to clarify the difficulty of the surveyor's position, essentially. Yeah, it's really just the responsibility of the position. So obviously a chief deputy is meant to be able to perform the duties of the elected official if I get hit by a truck or whatever. So I've been kind of accelerating the training for my chief deputy, or my drainage tech currently, getting her out in the field, getting her familiar with contractors, she'll have supervisory duties over the contractors and as well as the other position in the office.

We've already built that salary.

Yeah, it's in the compensation study. That was the only deputy position that they actually quantified in the compensation study was the chief deputy position.

Any other questions?

All right. Okay. My other one is the drainage board and nothing's changed on it. So, do you have any questions on that one?

Even better.

Thank you very much.

All right. Thank you. Spear one. No? She's not here. You don't know her name? OK. Superior 2.

Superior 1, I think she had some late afternoon hearings with an inmate being transported from out of town, so. OK. Cycle background.

Doesn't look dramatically different anyway.

What was that?

Doesn't look dramatically different, so that's all right.

Not my fight. On my budget, I've got the only thing that's really increased is the interpreter budget. That's because we had in past years significant state grants that covered a lot of that expense to the tune of, I think, $5,000, $6,000. This year, a couple months ago, I got an email from the state saying, here's the allocation for the entire state, and we get $750 for interpreters. three courts in our county for translation services for the year from the state so we still need the services whether it's spanish got a couple burmese dialects american sign language other things they cost money so that's the only real increase for what i've requested in years past also popper transcripts when people request a transcript can't afford one we still sometimes have to give them access we try to be very limited on that but um So I've asked for going from 150 to 500 on that. Otherwise, I've tried to streamline and keep it low.

OK. Any questions?

Tough crowd tonight.

Are you enjoying your dry courtroom now? No more rain on the desktop or anything?

Yes, I've had zero water spots. That's good. Yes, everything has held up. Nothing that I can see has fallen down. So thank you for funding. Excellent. I do. I said she had a hearing with it. I covered.

I was going to say, Judge Baraz, yeah, if you want to come on up. Not a problem.

I don't think I have any changes except for the salaries that were recommended to us. So everything else looks like it stays the same. So I'll answer any questions that you might have, but I anticipate probably none.

All right. Thanks for your time. All right. Thanks for coming. Last but not least, circuit court. All right. Good afternoon. Mine's simple, but maybe not quite that simple.

I think mine is just like last year's with three exceptions, one being staff salaries. We've included the recommendation. I've reduced my furniture budget. You might recall last year I asked for a little bit more money so we get some furniture for our jury room. So I'm putting that back to where it used to be. And then somehow it looks like my proposed budget once again inserted a line item for a law clerk, and I think we took that out last year. So that's just a mistake. You can take that out too.

Okay.

So I think those three things save us $17,000. I haven't changed my interpreter line item. I have the same concern. I don't use them nearly as much. So I'm going to try to get by with what I have, but we'll see.

Okay.

Any questions?

Any other questions?

Hearing none, thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Sandra Sixbury, the clerk's office. I think mine is also pretty simple for the most part, just the salary increase is recommended. We did look at lowering our supplies from the perpetuation fund because we made a better deal with our vendor. One oversight I have is in my 4D fund and I inadvertently left that out. Apparently got lost in the allow financial software somewhere and So I need $11,000 back in that that we've had that pays the 4D contractor that helps us present those reports to the state. So that would be for the courts. Then for the election, next year we'll have the city election. So the numbers should be down a little bit there. However, on our equipment needs, we use an e-poll book that has decided to leave the state of Indiana. So we're going to have to get a new e-poll book to check in. And so I've got an estimate on the table for somewhere close to 25 grand. I think we can get that done for that. We might start that this year and use a little bit of the funds we have left this year to take care of that. But we are going to need a little bit more in the budget for that. At the same time, the software for the computers is dropping a little bit because of the city election. So they kind of offset each other a little bit there. So any questions on? . We will have to find that out, but we have four towns that are up for election in addition. Do what? Yeah. No. No, and they're talking about using something a little different, so we'll see what happens.

Any questions?

The recount is still going on if you're still interested in that. We don't know when we'll print our ballots for the fall, but we'll try to be ready.

Okay.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you. Prosecutor Jacob.

So my goal is moving forward. First off, Jacob Moore, Deputy Prosecutor for the Prosecutor's Office. I know last year I came in, had print out kind of historical case filings data for you guys so you can mull that over, have a better idea as to what our county is looking like. Good news is our filings as an office are down. They were down last year from 2024. They're down again this year, a pretty Pretty well, the number of warrants that we're doing is also decreased a little bit before we get into the budget, just to give you guys a little bit of a framework as to what our office is doing. Additionally, we have hired two new soon to be deputy prosecutors. Knock on wood, the bar results come in in about a month. Just to refresh your guys's recollection, we're having three of our five criminal prosecutors retire, leave the office in like a five, six month period. So we've already got two of those three vacancies soon to be vacancies filled. We'll all have to fill another one come the summer of next year. Our biggest goal is to make sure we don't have a drop off in service to the county, make sure law enforcement when they're sending us their good reports, those are still getting prosecuted and brought to conclusion. We have seen a decrease in warrants, but we have seen an increase in financial crime warrants. We have been pretty successful working with law enforcement to get stolen assets frozen. We've frozen and had returned back to victims within the community this year somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000. So that's been a good new tool in our toolbox this year that we're making sure we're hitting. In terms of our budget, it does look a little bit different. And I do want to thank the auditor's office for helping me kind of work through. Once we saw that there were some missing items in there, they got that fixed right away and they've been extraordinarily helpful to me. Biggest thing is we have to those two additional deputy prosecutor spots that you all were gracious enough to fund this year. The state's year doesn't start until January 1. The county's budget year, we have about two week overlap. So I've requested funding for two weeks for those two deputy prosecutors. And then that's all I've requested for those two positions. We will have two people leave the office. Those two will then move into those two vacant positions. We will not need continued funding for the remainder of the year. So I don't want to tie up any money from the county for that. We have... Also requested an additional support staff administrative assistant person for our office. I want to explain a little bit as to why we're requesting that even with case filings being down overall. I will let you know the amount of electronic discovery that we all are processing is just continue to grow and grow and grow as each law enforcement agency has body camera. footage that they are able to turn over, dash cam footages, footage from within their vehicles. We have to process all of that coming in. We then have to process that out to defense counsel. If there's something that needs to be redacted in that footage, our staff has to do that. And that has been a Herculean effort that our four staff members have been undertaking. We have two paralegals in our office. Each paralegal is wearing about five hats right now. um we've got one paralegal that screens every single case that comes in handles all the electronic discovery for two of our three courts runs our pre-trial diversion program runs our pre-trial deferral program which is separate and also does just general discovery our other paralegal in addition to paralegal responsibilities our other paralegal manages document drafting, discovery, filings for Superior Court One, handles all of our victim advocacy that goes on through our office, in addition to general paralegal responsibilities and running our prosecutor case management system for the office. So they are very, very, very busy. And I would like to open up a little bit of their time and provide more services, particularly for a victim advocate. to make sure that we can be way more proactive than we have been in reaching out to victims, trying to get restitution amounts for members of the community that have been negatively impacted by crime, and making sure that we're able to serve the community a little bit better in that avenue. And to do that, I think we need another support staff person. Overall, the budget request from this year to next year, we're decreasing about 18%. If you remove the amount of money that is allotted for pretrial services or pretrial diversion, that is a fund that the prosecutor's office has. If you're just counting taxpayer money, our decrease is about 14.3%, which again, we're trying to be as judicious as we can while providing services that we need to provide. Another increase that we do have a new line item that should have been added in was increased funding for controlled substances for operating while intoxicated offenses. You heard the coroner mentioned that we're getting weirder more foreign substances detected in people's systems. We need to be able to test for that, identify it, and successfully prosecute it. I do want to give a shout out to both the Crawfordsville Police Department and the Sheriff's Department. They do have officers. They have to go through an extraordinary amount of training out of state. There are drug recognition experts, but those people are those three officers that we have in the county currently are experts at identifying People who are under the influence, it can help us really identify what specific substances we need to test for and it can reduce the cost of our samples that we need to test because we're testing for less substances. So that's why there's been an increase in a new line item for controlled substance OWI testing. But again, that is still decrease overall from last year's budget and everything outside of the new hire has just been money moved around from we're not purchasing physical law books anymore we've just shuffled around money there so I would welcome any questions I really enjoy talking about the office

They've already got an administrative assistant position, so they're just adding another one. They've already got an administrative assistant position, don't they, but it's not.

They, yes, they already have that same COMOTC admin assistant position. They're just wanting to add a second one. And it's not going to show up in your budget books because we just discussed it today. So.

In case you needed it, you could get them on now.

There, there might be another. Well we'll cross that bridge I think at some point but once all the changes that we have gotten from everybody yesterday and today and other times are up to are all put back into the budget book we'll send it back out to everybody electronically. I hate paper copies but. i don't think so i think it's just that adding another one of the same positions which you guys have control of anyway any other questions for jacob oh man i was ready to talk for half an hour all right thank you thank you all and then 40. and it angela

Prosecutor's Office Child Support Division. We do DNA. We establish the parents of children and get support orders and parenting time according to parenting time guidelines. My budget is pretty much the same outside of the 3.8 change in the salary lines. But I'm here to answer any questions you might have.

Um, just so you know, uh, we, Angela and I were talking today too. It was, it was prosecutor day. And so, um, uh, we did notice that the, um, the published amount in your book for her administrative assistant, the reason it shows up as a new one is that that was called a secretary, uh, last year. and this year they've changed it to reflect the actual job title of administrative assistant, but it is a COMAP-B level admin assistant, according to the WIS study, so its pay is different than the one for the administrative assistant. For Jake's office.

Yeah. So that's not a new position.

It's not a new position.

So should you fill in the...

It's just retitled. Yeah.

Could you fill in the budget for 26 so it doesn't show a big increase? Did you say it's a different level of increase of pay?

No. No. No. I'm saying the reason that it's showing up as going from zero to 39 plus is because... They were calling it a secretary and it's not really, they, at some point, like in 2010 or I don't know, sometime they called it a secretary. And then she got it renamed to, uh, admin assistant and it's just now getting updated in our system. I'm like, well, yeah, I get what you're saying. It doesn't match the WIS and it doesn't match anything calling it a secretary. Yeah.

It was administrative assistant until they redid our salaries and then it, they just carried over the wrong name for the position. And at first I was concerned she was being underpaid. But with Jennifer's help, we figured it out today. And the salary, I guess, stays the same unless we change the comat B to a C, which would require work later.

Yeah, a change in the job. Yeah. It would require an actual change in the activities performed by the person. Right.

Yeah. Right, right. Yeah.

so it's not a new line it's just the name of the line is different this year than it was last year so you know it's showing her as a 14 increase when actually it's probably four And so it looks like you ought to have another line item for secretary 26. Right.

What probably happened is that this line that got zeroed out got removed from the budget. So instead of it showing up as a zero it's just not there. Otherwise it would carry into that calculation. So I suppose we could randomly put one back in there a pretend zeroed out line. so that it shows that percentage but it's six of one half dozen of another any questions all right thank you brian you're up next

Good evening. As you may recall, last year, you all agreed for us to get into the reimbursement commission, which we did. We started out the fourth quarter of last year. And at that time, I think I and Derek from the state were hoping to get back between $100,000 and $150,000 to the county for the first year. I'm very happy to report it looks like we're going to double that Looks like it's going to be over 300,000 for the first year at the rate we're going, if it stays, which I think it will. The first, well, the fourth quarter of last year, we got a reimbursement of 91,000. The first quarter of this year, we got reimbursed for 80,000. We just submitted the paperwork for the second quarter. It's going to be about 80,000. So in the next quarter, quarter end now, which would end up being the one-year period of time since we started, I expect it to be around the 80,000. levels also. So that's the great news. Now, to keep that money coming, we have to stay in compliance with a couple of their rules, or all their rules, but they've got a couple that, one is pay parity with the prosecutor's office. And so I was notified a few months ago that that applies also to our part-time contractors, which I wasn't really sure. We kind of picked some numbers and started out. And this is a long way of getting to the short story is that Part of what I had to increase in the budget was under the public defender line item where I pay four of my contractors out of, that needs to increase about almost 20,000, 19,600 I think it was. And then the other increase line item was the conflict public defender line item where I pay two, well, I still have two open contractor positions. If I'm able to fill those, they would be 33,000 each. They would come out of that. conflict line item plus the state has also agreed or has changed they're raising the hourly rate next year from 110 to 120 dollars an hour when we pay individual attorneys to do individual cases or to do appeals they get paid at that rate so that's going to go up a little bit next year and quite frankly we've had a rash of appeals this year right now we've got I think eight or nine pending One of them is up in front of the Indiana Supreme Court, and that's by an outside private attorney that we had to hire to handle that one. So I'm not sure what the bill is going to come in at that, but that's why those two increases, basically for fees and to keep us in compliance with the commission. Otherwise, the salaries for the deputy attorneys and my staff put in at 3.8%, and you will note on the chief salary and the chief deputy salary, there are zeros in there. There was no increase requested because those two positions are tied in with the, through the state, with the prosecutor's and judges' salaries. And prosecutors and judges have not got a raise the last two years. So, but then I found out, then I got a letter from the state commission after we submitted the budget, after July 1, that the governor, maybe you've heard this, has found money and is giving a one-time bonus to judges, prosecutors, and then also would be the chief position here of $2,500 if you've been employed since before January 1, 2025 in your position. And to chief deputies, it would be $2,000 because my chief deputy started after January 1, 2025. And the good news with that is those two amounts, $2,500 and $2,000, so $4,500, they told us can come out of our supplemental fund.

So it's not going to take any money out of the general fund if you decide to do that.

But actually we'd be required to do it to stay in compliance with the commission. So that's where we're at.

Any questions for Brian? Hey, Brett.

around the same amount this year getting back. So we just have these two things that we really have to comply with and then we're in good shape.

And we've got to maintain caseloads too. If they keep the caseload going down, then we won't have to hire more attorneys. Does that make sense? Yep. Good news. Good news. Great news. I mean, $300,000 is coming roughly back to the county general fund to do what you want with it. So we're getting reimbursed for basically, well, it's 40% of everything they reimburse for. They don't reimburse for misdemeanors. So I've got one contractor who does all misdemeanors. I've got one full-time deputy who does mostly misdemeanors. So portions of their salaries don't get reimbursed. But basically, we're getting reimbursed for about 36% of our whole budget, which includes the rent that the commissioners pay, which includes the... Insurance premiums that you pay for those of us in our office who are on the insurance policy program through you guys. So they're reimbursing basically everything.

Any other questions?

How do we account for the reimbursements? Where do those show up at?

Is it?

Yes.

Great. Any and every. reimbursement that we receive basically has to go back into the fund from which we received it. And those are, we assign an account number and a department number to those reimbursements. So most of his came out of County General. So when the money comes back in, it comes back into County General. We assign it an account number that says, this is the public defender's reimbursement from the feds the state or whatever it is because you get both and so and then assign it to his department number and then it just goes into the pool of cash of County General it is not in any way that that's how we keep track so we can it's available yes it's available for everything but you're keeping track of we're keeping track of where it comes from yes yes we We do that for so many reasons, but mostly, I mean, not all counties do, but we do it because of, we want to make sure that we, if we don't get a reimbursement that we're expecting, we know to follow up to get it. So that's why we do that.

And we're also getting the reimbursement still for the 4E money, the CHINS money.

Yes, yes. Yep, that's same deal, just a different number because that's federal money.

Well, a smaller amount, but it's, yeah.

Yeah.

So if we netted out your budget, we'd knock $300,000 off of it, and that's net. That's reimbursements, right? Mm-hmm. Thanks.

A lot better looking, isn't it?

Any other questions? Thanks, Brian.

Thank you.

Andrea Geigle, Chief Probation Officer. The state did not find any money for us so. I do, but I can I can be his 300,000. So as far as our budget always looks different every year, just based on. how I have to pay and who I have to pay and where I have to pay. As you know, we had a mass exodus this past year and a lot of knowledge walked out the door. So you see a significant reduction in the 1,000 fund. So it's $71,000 reduced from last year. I called up my education and my help went out the door. So moving forward for 2027, you guys in the 1,000 fund will see that reduction. You will also see two returned funds, the 2000 fund and the 2050 fund, which is administrative. State Board of Counts likes to say one thing one year and change their minds and say something different the following year. So probation departments across the state have argued this. And at this point in time, we're split. I've decided pick your battles, not picking this battle. So we've reintroduced those funds. Those funds specifically are administrative fees. And when those fees are collected, they go into that fund specifically. And that can only be used to pay salaries. It's not anything different than we're already doing. It just gets a new fund name. So you'll see that new again. And then within the 2100, one of my big ones is gonna be direct screens. Unfortunately, direct screen costs, you guys heard this last night, every service we have is increasing and increasing and increasing. I feel like every week I get a new email of, well, now this fee's going up, but it's not our fault this fee's going up, it's the delivery driver's fault this fee's coming. Bottom line, I've got an extra 10,000 in direct screens. The ultimate good news is that although every department in the state is expecting significant cuts within grants, because that's all changing. I mean, we're all losing our monies. Our grant awards came in, and we are only seeing, based on what I asked for, on salaries only, a reduction of 30,000. And that's over five positions. So we are very blessed. So that's where I can beat Brian's $300,000. Because within grants alone, I've got grants alone within salaries, $350,000. So that's the savings we'll get as far as. When you see our budgets, the grant consideration is not in there. So you'll see those reductions afterwards. Because we write this grant before we have any salary. before we have any grant responses. There's one additional grant that I have out that may pay a portion of a salary that is sitting in the 1,000 line. It happens to be Ashley Whalings. If we get it, it'd be half of her salary. But that one will start October 1. This past year, it started October 1. We got notified in December. Didn't see any money until February. So we don't count our chickens till they come. So that's my overall. I'm happy, of course, to answer any questions.

Any questions for Andrea? All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is us. Didn't really change anything in the council budgets. We got the placeholder there that obviously we'll reduce at some point once we figure out what's going on and if we need any extra from that. The attorney looks like we raised that. Is that just because the bills we've been getting or? Okay, yeah. Dan needs more money. Any concerns on the council budget? Hearing none, we'll move on to the auditor. You're going to fight over it?

I just cranked it because we had an audience request.

We had an audience request. Yes, I'm sitting here with you Oh Okay, well on that note then I

we'll talk about the auditor's budgets really not a whole lot of change we've taken out the legal services line in our county we have we have three budgets we've got county general we have plat book and we have auditors ineligible deductions so our most of our salaries and some of the other things some of the other odd little things that we're required to pay for are in the county general budget. The big thing is that we are we need to have a deputy back. We gave one up years ago trying to run lean and then Senate Bill 1 happened and the additional uh pressure that it has put on to our office it's shortened deadlines it's added deductions it's increased reporting requirements for us and um i we've tried to get by without adding another person we wanted to do it in 26 but it was past the time when we finally realized that we couldn't get by without it um it was past the cut off limit for salary changes set in place by the current policy. So we're asking for it for 27. I don't I. There's statistics about Senate Bill 1 of all of the state and county offices. The auditor's office is mentioned more than all of them. all the other county offices put together and almost all of the other state offices put together in that one bill and that's just one bill so it's been a lot and we need more help more hands on deck so we're asking for that person um and that's in county general The next one is Platbook. We did increase our contractual services costs on that. That's to pay for that's to pay for the TruRoll. I think so. Yeah. We're doing we we just had the commissioners agree to a contract for us for a company called TruRoll. and it does deeper dives on people who are fraudulently exploiting the deductions and so we're going to use them to be our heavies and do some deeper dives on where people actually live despite what they tell us so um that'll end up saving the county a lot of money in the long run but initially it costs about five thousand dollars so that's it for the auditor's office any questions which one oh Yes, we have one in Plattebook. The Plattebook, that's why I asked, because it's in Plattebook, not in Auditor's thingies, but Plattebook... We're kind of looking at expanding what we do with our parcel technician. We're going to get some extra training on the drawing of legal descriptions. So we have to hire a contractor to provide us that training and that's what we're going to do there. And then the second contractual services that's where we're going to be paying the uh true role out of i don't know why i can never remember their name it makes no sense true role it nonsensical but anyway that's what we're doing more training just training training training constantly what we have to do any questions for the other no we're keeping we want to keep a part-time all right last but not least

You're not going to make Matt do it?

I tried to. I'm just thankful to come up here where I'm not. I think probation is trying to freeze me out back there and stall my budget here. I've got the sheriff budget first. I've got very few changes on all three budgets. The top three lines have all changed a little bit. The pension, obviously, just with the dynamics of our department. with the retention, thanks to you. I mean, you know, for the first time ever, I mean, we have several deputies at the department that will retire from the sheriff's office. So the additional duty pay, we bumped that up just a little bit. Just, we have more deputies getting more certifications that would just fall under that additional duty pay. The overtime, we bumped that up a little bit. We haven't bumped that up I think three years. And just with the pay increasing, it gets really tight at the end of the year. So it's not a have to, but it would certainly give us a little comfort with bumping that up a little bit. The only other, the next increase, the pay lines have stayed the same. minus the 3.8 or where the deputies fell out on the matrix. Some got a raise, some did not based on their years of service. The vehicle police equipment, we bumped that up and that's mainly for the taser lease. It's 25, approximately $25,000 a year that we pay for the taser lease. We've kind of just finagled through that the last couple years. I would lump that into our body cameras and say that's a very cheap insurance policy. Normally, when we pull the taser out and put the dots on somebody, that normally puts the problem to rest. Towards the bottom on equipment, we did bump that up. I don't have a good explanation. But all of our computers, the majority of our computers on the enforcement side, they were COVID computers. When I talked to IT, they said we need to start planning for replacement. We've upgraded those as best we could. We've never had an IT budget. It's kind of like always falling under the county. There's going to be a whole lot of computers that need to be replaced. So when I talked to Brendan, he said that would be a good idea to incorporate into our budget. So my plan, well, I mean, halfway my plan, because it's not going to be my worry after January 1st, would be to replace all of the squad room detective computers, some with this increase, and then purchase the rest out of commissary. And then the vehicle purchase, that was raised as well. We've had, we've got three cars that we utilize on the jail, two transport chargers and one Explorer. We've always been able to just buy one at the end of the year. The issue is our car prices, I mean, they just continue to go up and go up and go up. We just can't, I mean, we have no vehicle money left this year to, to buy a car. We've looked at different options. I mean, we're exploring right now a leasing program through the company that we buy all of our squad cars through to cover that. So that's what that increases there. Both of the Chargers and the Explorer, they're getting around 100,000 miles. The chargers have both been out of service here recently. Just due to transports, they have custom insert cages. And they've both been torn up. The cages have been torn. They've gotten to the back lighting. They've gotten to the windows. So they're just about the end of their life. So that's what that increase is in there for.

The jail budget.

There's not a lot. We increased the travel expenses from $1,500 to $2,000. We just raised that up. We have more of our jail staff going to training, equipment repairs. We have some HVAC boxes on the jail side that need to be replaced. And we increased the seminars and training just to go along with the travel as well to try to get our jail staff more training. Those are the only increases minus the pay lines, which were the standard 3.8. The security budget, there were no changes other than the pay lines. And all of the user fees, they are what they are. I mean, we just asked for whatever was in there to be budgeted. The only one that would draw a red flag is the BVP grant. We've asked for $4,000. It's showing zero. It might be showing in the negative right now. But that's just because of the way the reimbursement works. It takes forever for them to get that reimbursement back to us. So it could be in the negative right now. I don't know. I mean, that's one that they always give us a little wiggle room. We know that money's coming. It just takes a while to get back to us. So that's all I've got. Unless you guys have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.

You said on email about cameras.

Yes.

And recording equipment is going to have to be replaced. That's not reflected in here?

That is not. I mean, that's one thing that I'm hoping to do in this year with just an additional. I mean, if I incorporate it into the 27 budget, it's going to increase that line item dramatically. And it's really just a one-time expense that I need that. We made a mention the other day from some of us. the probation or the public defender. I'd be happy to take it from wherever you want.

It's the recording equipment.

I just got a quote back from our camera installer. The price has gone up. I mean, from 70, what I thought was gonna be around 70, it's around 100,000. That's just for the DVRs to buy the storage. And I am fine with that. But it's, I mean, I'm truly trying to leave the place better than what I got it. And most of you, like I got it in a very good state. You guys have been great to work with. I'm tickled pink that, I mean, this is the last time that I have to come before you and present this budget and really ask for a whole lot of money. But yeah, it's just for the DVRs, we're looking at approximately 100,000. The cameras are separate. We asked them to include 30, I think 35 new IP cameras. And that's something I was going to come to you guys with in the next council meeting. want to try to get the DVRs so it can be recorded. Well, we have 106 old analog cameras, which translates into those cameras have been there pretty much since the building was open. The quality is beyond poor. I mean, some are so old, it's just a black and white, even though it should be color. They're very grainy. So when we do the new DVRs, they're made for technology today. So if we have to put that analog camera onto that system, We've got to buy a converter for this end and a converter for the DVR end as well. So, I mean, we're creating multiple points of failure for every camera. So, Matt, I mean, we've talked at length about this. I mean, I'd like for me to be able to purchase like 35 this year if you guys approve that budget. My thought is I would buy those out of commissary. And then moving forward next year, we replace 30 more cameras next year. And then 30 more cameras. The quality and image, it's just night and day difference. It is not part of this. Not in any way shape or form, no.

And you're thinking of commissary about working with those out of commissary?

For the cameras, yes.

Cameras and stuff? Yes. And do you have any funds available that there's money left over that could be?

moved around and as well just wondering at the end of the year you know when you go look to i hope cumbersome stuff um i i hope i mean that that's certainly an option as well um you know they've talked a lot i mean i just got an email today from the state um you know when they took away the handgun permits you know three years ago they had this formula and they've been issuing us x number of dollars every year and this afternoon they sent an email and said that's going away There's X number of dollars for the entire states. They're going to go back to the 2020 numbers. And they've got some formula. There's no doubt we're going to get less. But they're saying they have a cap on this. So every county is going to get less. Which includes us. I mean, it's the state being the state. I mean, they're just next to impossible to work with and just beyond aggravating.

Well, and it's like everything else. Ammo's going up. Everything's going up. Everything is going up. You've got anything you want to do, especially in your department, it's gone up. And you know how that one's done. It's just crazy because I knew you'd know what ammo was. It's just amazing how things, in this department especially, and then like he was talking about trying to hook things together, you might as well, you don't want to have an old car and put a new camera on it. I mean, you want to be able to have everything new because you don't want to have a failure.

Yeah, they get you.

and anything in public safety whether it's police or fire ems i mean they know you have to have it and they're going to charge whatever they want for it because they know you're going to buy it right liability too yeah so are you going to show us both you know with the new dvrs 30 cameras and new dvrs and what the whole package is i plan on sending that to you tomorrow um includes both though All cameras, DVRs.

It's got one total price on there. Even though I asked for two separate quotes, one for this and one for this, he sent it all on one. Now it's broken down a little bit with an option one or an option two. So you can see the different numbers. But, yeah, I mean, I just simply ran out of time.

So if you replaced all the cameras and the DVRs.

If I replaced all the cameras, oh, my gosh. I mean, with 106 analog cameras, that price would go up substantially. Can you talk 200? I would think.

Yeah.

I would think. How much are those converters? That I don't know because they, when they do a, When they put the converters on there, it's for like six cameras. So it goes on the back of the DVR. So the converters are for the old analog camera. They're not much. The problem is it's just another point of failure, which is what we're running into now with our current DVRs. So we've got like a block of cameras off of DVR one that have been moved to DVR two. So it still works. You can still view, you can still record, but the issue is When we put all those additional cameras on DVR2, that greatly reduces the amount of retention that we can hold on there. I mean, our goal is to hold that video for a year. That's what we've been getting from our legal counsel, from the jail, anything in the jail. I mean, once you're on camera and we have that footage, it's stored for a year. So when we start doubling up on DVRs, it greatly reduces that time because there's additional cameras taking up that space. Okay. Thanks.

Any other questions for the sheriff? Congratulations on your last budget hearing.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, everybody. Our next meeting is September 8th at 9 a.m.

I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.