Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Lake County Board of County Commissioners work session. It's July 14th at 11 a.m. We're going to start this morning with the overview discussion regarding the partnership between commissioners, veterans services officers and veterans as part of the Look, Listen and Learn Tour. This will be led by members of the Colorado Division of Veterans Affairs. Welcome.

Thank you, thanks for having us. By way of introduction, maybe? Sure, please.

Bruce Cowan, Director of the Division of Veterans Affairs. Okay. Eric Winrode, I'm the Veterans Services Supervisor. So what that kinda means is the regionals fall under me, but I also have a, the training section would fall under my purview, along with women and minority veterans who, her last day was last Friday, so we'll be hiring for that, and then special populations. special populations we've kind of what the counties cover and the state was covering there's some seems like we've been invested a lot of time into going into prisons to make sure that the veterans when they come out have all their benefits maybe it helps with recidivism also nursing homes assisted living facilities specifically on the veterans living centers of which there's five in the state and then we're gonna starting the spring semester get on some of the campuses where some of the The younger people get on the military may not realize their benefits or when you're young you may not care about them. So we're going to get in there and try to adjust that to get them in the system a little bit earlier.

My name is Matthew Cummings. I'm the regional supervisor. So the three teams of the regionals and the regional lead throughout the state supervision and oversight for that and assist

So the whole idea behind look, listen and learn is that when I came on board, I've been on board about two years is that, um, to no one's fault. Right. But we, we've never talked to you guys. Right. So we, we rarely, whatever, like I meet Harry training events, but we never have an opportunity to talk to Harry supervisor and we'll, we'll, we'll pass things down. And we're like, who are these people? They have no idea what it's like here. And so it's just to get to know each other and understand that, oh, they're not bad folks. So if Bruce sends out this email, I hate to talk to myself in third person, but if I send out this email to you, you're going like, this doesn't make sense, right? This doesn't sit well with me. You can just pick up the phone and call, right? Versus the Darth Vader of the state, right? Another one funded mandate, what do these dudes do and why don't they just leave us alone? So it's just how you get to know everybody. And to listen, like, what are your concerns? What do you want from us? What are we not providing? And for us to do the same for you guys, to share what we think the veteran community and the veteran space can look like, maybe what it should look like, and then we modify, right? Because it's going to be different here in Lake County than it is in Denver or El Paso. But Lake County is not unique, right? There are 64 counties. You've got similar rural counties. Do you guys consider yourself a rural county? Yes. Okay. I didn't want to say that, and you're like, no, we're not. but you know I mean there's there's groupings of counties that are similar enough and and one of the big things we we contend with is we go out and it's like every county we've been to is what's different here right we're different we're the things you talk about that doesn't work here doesn't apply here and the nuances of how you get the job done are up to you right we're not we're only here to help but I what I will often see is when people say that is it's a basis for performance or statistics or data not being where other counties are. Because we're not here to poke people. We're not here to throw spears or rocks. We're just here to share information and have a conversation. And that's really what we want it to be, is more conversation than just me sitting here with these guys sitting here talking. So that's the purpose of the localist network. When we talk about stuff, we have no idea. I've seen Harriet train. I don't know Harriet. So none of this is directed at Harry or how things are happening in Lake County. This is our experience of working through the 64 counties we've been... Almost 50. Yeah, we're approaching 50. You don't realize how big a state it is until you have to drive from all over the place. It can take a week to cover four or five counties sometimes. So we're trying to get to all 64. We're at 50. So it's just our experience. So none of this is... I am 100% transparent, 100% honest with you guys. I'm not going to... I'm not going to try anything. We are not going to try and say something that's implied. It's just conversation and experience. So that's important. So I want to go through my notes here. One of the things we do experience that I would love to, if we can have a conversation or you guys can have the conversation offline. is that the VSO, veteran service officer, which is what Harry is, is a unique piece, right? There are only 90 in the state, county VSOs, 90 in the entire state. There aren't many professions where the number is that limited. So it's not unusual. We wouldn't necessarily be surprised to find that you don't know how to manage or supervise that because you really don't know what it is they do, right? Hey, they're just off in their own world. They do their thing. We're happy. They come in. They seem busy. Um, we're happy. And so what we would like to do is help maybe find ways to, if you're interested, engage and to help do things that we, one of the things we oftentimes don't see in counties is like goal setting and objectives and what, what for the time that a veteran, the BSO spends with you, what do we expect to get out of it? And the reason we care is because the veterans they're serving. on average, if they get VA benefits, their average dollars are 40,000 bucks a year to that veteran. So it's not small, right? I mean, that to me is life-changing money. And if we can get veterans who have a 10% disability to 50, it's life-changing. If we can get veterans that aren't on, if we can get veterans that aren't in the VA system, in the VA system, it's life-changing. And so that's our goal, right? Our goal and our objective. We just kinda wanna work with you guys if you want our help to help you get there. You can tell us to pound sand and we're happy and we don't care, and that's okay too. But that's kind of what we're here. So it's about serving the veteran. That's it. Honestly, God, the only thing I care about. That's the only thing I want these guys to care about. A lot of things we'll see, especially in small rural counties, is we've been to counties where there's no office hours. We've been to counties where there's no website. We've been to counties where The VSO doesn't have an office to meet with veterans. And the biggest thing we see is counties where they look at activity, but they don't look at productivity. And it's like, and I'll give you an example. We were at a county, a rural county, where the VSO was so proud of this breakfast they do every year. And it's like, we had almost 200 veterans show up for this breakfast. And I'm like, so how many new claims did you get out of it? I mean, how many people were you able to help? None because they didn't ask. It's not, it's not that it's like, man, what a beautiful opportunity. You finally got all these people in a room and you don't have a chance to talk to them about, Hey, the pact act, which happened in 2022, um, changed everything, especially for our Vietnam era veterans, actually for everyone. And so unless you, if you've gotten out prior to 2022, you may not know this exists. And so that's, to me, it's leaving money on the table and So how do you convert an outreach event to, or do you have an outreach event, how do you convert that to claims? Those are the kind of things that we struggle or we oftentimes don't see. The other is metrics. We were in a county recently where in nine months, the county VSO served two veterans. And this county paid them almost in a year, they'll pay them close to $20,000. I mean, that to me is almost criminal, right? I mean, we supplement that, but that's almost criminal, but that's how disengaged the county was. And so we just wanna share those stories and to help, we can help you with, hey, yeah, we do want some metrics. We wanna understand how many veterans, you know, how many veterans we saw this month, how many new claims, things of that nature, just to be able to understand what, for lack of better terms, what you're getting for your money For me, it's how many veterans are really serving those veterans?

Because how many veterans do we have in Lake County? 359. And that's based off of the VA's numbers. And it's on the geographic distribution of expenditures comes out every year. So we'll be getting a new number. And the trend of veterans is World War II folks are not with us in a very high percentage. Vietnam, they're in the part where they're dying off. That's a bad way to phrase that, but you know, and the Army and all the military was larger then, so we're getting smaller. So, I haven't seen the new GDX, but I can guarantee your number's gonna go down from 359. That's just the general trend.

How much money do those 359 veterans bring in, just in terms of the VA? I know I'm getting ahead of here.

Lake County total for direct expenditure well let's just go compensation and pension so that's the money that comes into their pockets for veterans not even survivors is that three dollars one point seven seven eight million dollars and in the spouses that are getting money because their veteran pass is $53,000. So, you know, it's $1.8 million to your county from that.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm not good at public math, but that's a lot of money for a veteran.

$5,000.

That's a much better public math. $5,000 a month. $5,000 a month for a veteran. Yeah, so that's for the direct expenditures. And then there's health care as well, You'll do your whole thing.

So direct medical care. So this is what is being augmented by whatever medical, $1.4 million. That's what the VA's paying for medical care for veterans in Lake County. Now, they're not getting that service here unless you have, do you have community care? Because I know you don't have a clinic, but if you have a clinic, community care providers, then that contributes to that. But if they also zip down the hill to the nearest clinic, the VA clinic that will also still count back here even though it's provided somewhere else. 1.4.

And that's separate from the 1.8 or is that a portion of it?

No, no, that's separate. So the total direct expenditures through all things including education and home loans and all that stuff for Lake County is 3.367 million.

So the next thing I'd like to share or talk about or whatever is is what does it mean to be a good VSO? What should they be focusing on? And again, the idea is it's a conversation, but one is new claims, right? The biggest thing that anyone can do is provide more, bring new veterans into the system. So I'm not going to go over the numbers. C is going to go over the numbers with you. And then the other is, hey, if you're working X number of hours, review the old claims, right? How many Vietnam era veterans have we not talked to where you can go through BVMS in these different systems, retrospect, and be like, oh, Joe or Sarah, they serve in the Vietnam Arab vets. We haven't done anything with them since the PAC Act. Let's give them a call because the number of presumptive conditions have changed what illnesses will. They don't have to prove that it's service-connected. It's just they're going to assume it. How many of those individuals, maybe you reach out to them, have hypertension? Why that's important is it can be a benefit, but also, heaven forbid they die of heart disease, then their spouse can get benefits, surviving spouses can get benefits, but it's only if we're aware and we file the claims. And the only way you do that is through quality outreach, right? And I'll give you an example. A friend of mine, when I retired a couple years ago from the military, I'd run into her, I hadn't seen her, and I knew her husband passed away from cancer. And I was like, Susie, you're getting DIC because your husband passed away from a blood disease, some kind of blood cancer. And she's like, no, I was told I wasn't eligible. I'm like, oh my God, you are eligible. I mean, I'm not a veteran service officer. These guys have all the details. But I knew from his cancer. So we got her with one of our veteran service officers. And now she'll get $1,700 a month tax-free for the rest of her life. It's great that her husband died seven years ago and she got bad information or the information changed over time. So we can never assume that something is done, right? The VA is always changing. So how do we, you know, outreach, education, informed community involvement, community engagement, and then training. The information, the breadth and depth of knowledge that a veteran service officer has to have is immense. Like, it would scare the crap out of me to be a VSO, because the responsibility of taking care of the veteran, but what they have to know is insane. It's just, yeah, so training is important, and I know Harry comes to the training, so we appreciate that support. And so it's really up to you guys to define success, right? For me, the biggest, please don't fall under that myth, it's different here, our veterans are different, they don't wanna be found, they're here because they wanna get away. I've never met anybody where I'll say, I will hand you $350 a month for the rest of your life and give you free healthcare. I'm not interested. Now there are a few, right? But it's overcoming the challenges of the VA told them no in the 70s. The VA told them no in the 80s, 90s. It's a different VA now. They figured out their business model, right? VA is a business, make no mistake. The number of veterans are declining year over year. So the VA's going like, we want to maintain our employees and we want to maintain federal funding, we have to bring more veterans in, or we have to give the veterans we have more. So they're marketing their program. And they went from no, you have to prove everything, to a lot more presumptive. Honestly, God, it's an easier environment to operate in. So we talked about just the way you guys can help clarify success. We do have a policies and procedures manual. And you guys don't need to read it, but is Harry's supervisor here?

Yeah, so are you familiar with the policies and procedures manual? I'm not, I recently just became here.

Okay, perfect. So we have, every year we come out with a new one, and we will get that to you. And it's just a good thing to review. And to help with supervisors, we have something called Civic Roundtable, are you familiar with that? I am. Okay, and so we're gonna be sending emails out through that process, and we'll be handing out documents there. But if you ever have questions, man, reach out to these guys or you can call me anytime. But that's kind of what provides the guidance and it tells what Harry has to do every year in terms of training and what our requirements are. But it's an important thing just to be aware of. You don't have to read the whole thing, but what the county does is important. But our responsibilities to you are important. We want you to hold us accountable because we sometimes, right, we all sometimes maybe beer a little bit from left of center when we just get busy. So please use that to hold us accountable for our job. The two things I really want to share, Veteran Trust Fund and Veterans Assistance Grants are two grants that my department, my division offers. The Veteran Trust Fund, if you guys have an active VFW or American Legion here, we do about 1.1 million in grants a year. And typically we don't have enough grant applications to give the money away. So we ask people, the local VFW, last year, to make it easier, we actually started a neighborly, it's a software program to make it easier to apply for the grants. We're doing everything we can to give this money away. We just need organizations to apply for it. And then the other is the Veterans Assistance Grant. That's what counties and non-profits can apply for. So you as a county could apply for a grant, and I will share like some counties, perry would be the one who would help administer it so when you have veterans coming in and they have hey i can't pay my electric bill my car broke down um i have mental health issues i can't address it's whatever the veteran needs just emergency assistance and so that can be done at the county level and non-profits if you have a non-profit in town to work with so those are two grants and you guys can what was the second one again it's a veterans assistance grant thank you yeah applied for

to individual veterans, or is that just a block of money that comes into the county to be used for the veterans?

It's a block of money that will come into the county to be used for the veterans. So you can establish your own policies. You know, you can say, hey, we're going to limit it to $1,000 a veteran a year. We're going to limit it to whatever. But it can be for anything from fixing a car. Because if they can't get to work, right, then their crisis gets bigger.

For example, we had a land enforcement case recently with a veteran.

trying to figure out how to help them that be a situation where hey you need to clean up your property i would say that would be i don't that's an interesting one right that's a little bit of a unique situation i don't i wouldn't want to answer it unless i until i could read but very potentially right it's an emergent situation to help this person I think the answer is yes. I think we did that once before.

If it's going to cause them to lose their housing, then it's kind of like behind the ramp, do you have a fee? Because we've done that in the past for somebody's, I've heard where the yard is like overgrown and they keep getting tickets because your yard looks like garbage. Now we pay that off and we pay the kid down the street to mow the grass once a week or whatever that is.

It's really your policies that limit it. So, you know, we can fix a hot water heater, but we can't replace it, right? We can't do capital improvements. We can fix, you can fix their furnace, but you can't replace it. Things of that nature. There are some limitations to it, but it's really that most of it's the policies you would establish.

My interactions with the community get into real specifics and real personal connections, you know, so like Um, I don't have like too many super broad questions, but what you're just talking about brings up something in my mind that I'm like, oh, maybe I could find out a way to help someone specifically right here in this instance, where like, I've got a friend who's, um, veteran he's. Landlord is selling his house. He's like, I don't even know how I can stay up here anymore. I can't afford this, these rents that you guys do rental assistance or like help someone. get a down payment on their first home?

Yeah, so to me that's an emergency financial need, right? Hey, we're going to give them $1,500 as an emergency financial assistance to keep them from being homeless. Here's the other good news, and it's Andy, right? Yeah. Andy, you can call me and we will get you in touch with Lisa Stamm. She's our grants manager. You don't have to have that grant to help that veteran. We will find out, anybody in the state, we can find any available money in the state to help that veteran. So let's just say for the sake of argument, it's the VFW in Los Animas County. If they have money available, we will use that money to help your veteran. So you don't need to have the grant to make that happen.

It's easier if you do, because then it's a lot less people in the room.

Sorry, it's my daughter. No, it's all right. Ray, you can come in.

I was going to say she could join us. She'd be bored. I told her she had to.

What I'd like to additionally add is that's kind of like a triage treatment, all right? So with a lot of the other programs that we work with, with the VA and other connections, there's HUD-VASH programs and other assistance programs that if we're aware of the situation, we can build connections and so on based on who's in office or on vacation or who just took over. There's other resources to it. With the majority of these things, there's no one right answer. There's a multitude of answers. But unless we know about the situation or Harry's tracking everything on the situation, which Perfect example is the life alert deal that we talked about not too long ago. There's other programs that are out there and depending on what region or what healthcare system you're in or There's a bunch of different ways to skin a cat on this. There's no one absolute answer that's just going to be this grant and that's for the life of the need for the better. There's other steps to go into it. So that's why we encourage the communication and reaching out to the regional teams and Cross communication between that and other counties because other counties may have a program that they use that can be developed in your guys's county, but they might be able to you know, get on board with. So it's situational based, but there are other options and other answers in almost every single case.

You guys have some Swiss Army knife type approaches to look at things.

Hood Bash is a great one where that voucher ends up with the veteran, right? Like I said, I'm not a VSO. But that literally can provide housing for life for them. But there's criteria. I mean, you know, if you're making 100 grand a year, you're probably not going to qualify. But there is criteria. that they have to qualify for, but yeah, it provides them, that voucher stays with the veteran. So yeah, there's opportunities out there.

Why wouldn't there just be a budget that goes into every county to provide some of those emergency services? Why would, it's just

So the grants come from two sources. They both come from the state. The Veteran Trust Fund comes from the Master Tobacco Settlement. Years ago, late 90s, they sued the tobacco companies. So that comes in through what they call a cash fund. And so the legislature has said, we will give you 1% or 1.25% of that every year into a Veteran Trust Fund. The second part of it is the Veterans Assistance Grant's general fund money. And the legislature has said, here's a million bucks a year or whatever they give us in the long bill. But with that is the criteria. And they do it through a grant program. So we just have to execute what's in the Colorado revised statute. That's why we don't.

I feel like that's actually part of your budget.

Yeah, we're not creating. We manage the grant, but we don't create the grant.

Are there any clear examples outside of providing an office and a website that other county leaders have done that stand out to you guys that have really supported their local VSO?

Man, I think there are certain counties where it seems like the outreach programs, if you will, like if you guys do a county fair, it's just making veterans not the focus, right, but a part of it. And just outreach to me is the best, is the biggest thing where I see counties being successful. It's a team, it's a team. It's seeing somebody in your local store that's got a Vietnam veteran hat on, although it's hard here, right, because so many people come for vacation. But it's to walk up and say, hey, man, thank you for your service. Have you filed a claim with VA? Have you met Harry, our VSO? Because we have somebody here to help you. And the answer is no, man. Well, give me your number, and I'll have Harry give you a call. And it's surprising, or I have, when did you file a claim? Because did you know a lot of stuff has changed? And I've had a lot of success, man, just being in King Soopers down in Denver, of having people reach out and file claims.

We only have one grocery store, so that makes it easier. I'm kind of like the little stats guy, so I got some stats. So out of the 359, only 97 of your veterans, which is 27.02% or what? are getting either compensation or pension. And that 97 is not just using Harry, but that includes anybody that's the American Legion, VFW, DAV, that's any organization that the VA recognizes, or some people that self did it. And then, and so that ranks, Lake County has 52 out of 64 counties, but then when you break it down even further, they're just what, and when you look at us, the CDVA which Harry operates under is 039. So when I say 039, I just mean the Colorado State. There's 23 veterans, so 23 of the 97 are being worked specifically by either Harry, whoever was here before Harry, or in surrounding counties. So if you live here, but you work in Summit County, maybe it's easier during your lunch break to go see that VSO, because you leave at five and you don't get home till eight. Well, I'm sure your office hours aren't before five and after eight, so maybe they use a different county. So that's 23, and so that's 6.4% of it. So I think the outreach, at least where Lake County is right now, is a huge portion of that. Nothing comes out of the funnel until you put something in the funnel. So you gotta get those folks, and some of them may be resistant. Some of them, if they got a dishonorable discharge, aren't eligible. And then some of them may already be at 100% with the VFW. Well, you're taken care of, that's fine. Go on with your life, but if you need something in the future, come see us. You talked about 29%.

Was that what it was, 29%? 27.27. 27%. Yeah. So the state average is 39.7, right? And so we talked about goal setting. Maybe that's a goal. It's not to be the state average because maybe that's not appropriate for your county. But those are the kind of things that we look at, and it's just why, right? I mean, that's all we want is we're hoping for people to start thinking about something that they just accepted before, like, hey, why can't we be a little better? Or what can we do to be a little better? Those kinds.

I think it'd be helpful for you guys to know that a big part of Harry being moved under reporting to Kelsey is so that he is established with our senior center and we're getting him moved to a different area where people know where they can engage with him. And also we've helped Harry make some flyers and get some communications out through our public health and other channels that weren't really being utilized before. I think he may have been reporting directly to Lauren before I came in and was up at CMC without regular, you know, like, hey, let's try to get you where we know that you'd be engaging with people. And then also being able to utilize some of our outreach with being able to actually get people to places through our transit in the senior center now that we've gotten a CDOT grant to expand actually being able to get people to appointments, get them connected with And so that's a big part of really moving Harry into an area where he has a little more direct support this year. So it'll be interesting to see how those scores change and also taking into account some of our residents are less than excited to come and meet with us. So trying to think of unique ways to get him engaged with people.

You have to go to where they are. You really do. So the county VSO, it's your program, it's not ours. We, though, have regional VSOs, and you're gonna probably talk about that a little bit, but we'll help here. The first time, like, if you all wanna join us, we'll all get together, no, we will join you, is we'll come and do an outreach event, and we'll kind of show you, or we'll sit there with you and share with you what we see and how we would conduct business, just to help, right? Because sometimes, to your point, if there's never been guidance in the past, man, you're only, it's experiential learning, and maybe went down this path, but oh man, I never even knew I could do this, or I never even thought about doing this.

We'll bring people to help you with these outreach events. Especially because he's such a small office. He's one person, and if it's an hour per veteran, which is not unreasonable for an appointment, and he has a clinic, and more than eight people are there, he's already disappointing some people at the end of the line. So we will flex people up to come and sit, so now there's three or four and you can do more than that and everybody feels a little bit of the love and if we do their claim the initial claim it's we're all into the same thing so he can see it on the system they're never going to come down to Denver to keep talking to Eric they're just going to turn around and talk to Harry and he can see everything in the system so so Harry does use Civic Roundtable and he communicates with Matt and Scott that's another that's our regional VSO on on the what are we using teams whatever the automation is today. So we're in contact with Harry. And the education piece that the boss talked about, in order to stay certified by us and accredited by the VA, so he's accredited by the federal VA, you have to do 16 CEUs a year. Harry last year did 44. So he's involved, he's getting the education, now it's just a part of Fill in the final form. We'll definitely come out with that, especially since you're a federalist.

One of the other things that is key, and you asked about one of the successful things that a lot of the other counties have done, and word of mouth is what brings the majority of veterans in. That's just flat facts. We don't care what we read on a website. We don't care what we read on social media. But if George tells me Harry's the man to see, I'm going to go see George. Or I'm going to go see Harry because George and I have been cutting firewood for 28 plus years. Especially up in communities like this. I've ran mountain properties and stuff like that. I'm well versed in it. But the other part about it is, let's face facts. Veterans love free stuff. So like the donut socials and the coffee socials that a lot of these counties do once a month to bring in donuts and veterans come down and just meet with other veterans. That provides another open source for getting veterans in to talk. But you guys have boom days, right? Or is it boomtown days? Boom days, yeah. Boom days. OK. And is that coming up at the end of July?

Fingers crossed.

Hopefully. First week of August. First week of August.

I was in the ballpark. We have a big fire.

I got you. I got you. Well, hopefully everything goes right But if there was a table being set up and Harry was going to be out there and needed support from Scott or from me or from Linda, who's also in this region, we're willing to come out and help out. We just need a proper notification day before. Hey, we got this tomorrow. Can you guys come up here? That's going to be a little bit harder to manage, but we'll do our best within reason. We're happy to come up and there's a difference in different areas. So we have people from multitude of errors and talk to people differently. Anybody that has worked with me, I'm a very energetic person. It is very draining for me to be out there and talk to people, but I do it to make sure that he gets assistance. So if you want somebody to come help out while he's talking to veterans behind the table, putting stuff in, getting appointments scheduled, we're happy to do that. but the other part about it and when we talk about all this money we don't consider it just on that basis his office is bringing money back into the county all right so there's that but with the rule of fives where every one dollar is touching five hands before you know it dissipates out that's a lot of extra money um the mathematics on what i did based off of that if that number breaks down from that 1.8 all the way down 1 547 dollars per veteran that's pre-tax so you times that by And that's bringing a different level of income in there. And based off of the numbers that we're looking at, the average income per household per individual is $58,000. That would change that substantially. So just throwing that information out there, we're happy to help with where we can.

In addition to that, we will, like, Harry can't be there, but if you do Boomtown from, I don't know, like, whatever time these festivals start off at 10 to 10, right, or whatever the hours might be. It's too much, right? So we can also fill in those voids where, so there's somebody there. not just be there when Harry's there, but to be there when he can't be there.

Awesome.

Yeah, and so we can, I'm telling you, I don't want to commit resources, but I will. So we'll help.

Yeah, I'm hearing resources committed.

We'll come to Fairtown. We have tables, we can help make that happen.

We'll get you up there. Yeah.

Committing resources and all of them.

I will make one.

Yeah, no, we're honestly, we're happy to help, yeah. That's great.

Does the VA ever work with any non-VA service providers? Like, locally it would be like Elevated Healthcare or St. Vincent's. Is there any, is that a thing?

You guys are all shaking your head yes. So it's called community care. And then the facility would have to request to be a community care facility. I think it's through the credential process. I do the, not do, sorry, Andy. The VA is not always easy to work with, but that's exactly how you can expand services in here is for that organization to request to be a community care provider through the VA.

Do we have, I'm sure this is probably something that can be found somewhere. Do we have a breakdown of the demographics of our local veterans, especially age groups? Because I think that would steer what kind of services we'd be looking at would be expected moving forward.

So the VA doesn't break it down to the county level like that, but it does it.

to the state level and if you just like transpose the percentages of the state onto the county would get you somewhat close like like juxtapose it against our local demographic yeah so 10 demographic younger folks moving away because the cost of living hurdles and if if you want those percentages based on that average you are welcome to email me because believe it or not i'm a numbers guy as well i have broken all that stuff down based on the federal

Yeah, so we are working right now. It's not that we've not excluded people, but I've had the opportunity to talk to Congressman Hurd and Senator Bennett's staff. The VA won't give us his data. They have it. They won't share it. It's maddening, right? And I had an opportunity to talk to Secretary Collins. And it's like, what's the reluctance? And he's like, that it will be sold and that it will be weaponized. right, oh look at these, look at this data, and I honestly can see it, I can, the selling part I don't quite get, because I can.

What are you selling?

If you're taking out identity. Well think about this, I've got 360,000 plus veterans, names, phone numbers, addresses, email, phone number.

Yeah, yeah, if you take all that out though, like there's nothing to sell.

That would be, all I have to do is sign an agreement between a state entity and a federal entity not to do that. Yeah, yeah. Then it becomes criminal if somebody If Eric's like, dude, I can make a small fortune selling this to some company that markets to veterans.

Right, like Amazon starts selling Vietnam hats here instead of, you know.

Yeah, so one would be sold and the other would be weaponized, meaning that we would use that data to show the VA in a bad light, which, again, it could be done, but that's not our purpose, and we can sign disclosures. So we're working with them, so maybe... at some point when the time is right, I can reach out and you guys can reach out to Representative or Congresswoman Pat Pedersen. She's my rep too, I should know. And say, hey listen, would you support this legislation to force the VA to provide state's data? Because they will not, we've been asking for it for years and it's always the highest. Last time we were with them, the lady actually got angry with us. As National Association of State Directors, we were at one of our national conferences, she's like, if you want the data, buy it just like we do. And I'm like, there's a total disconnect over what we need and what she's talking about. We cannot, we can't seem to fix it. So yeah, the VA won't give us that data, but they have it.

But they'll sell it. But they don't want you to sell it.

What she's trying to, what she's saying is buy it from like TransUnion or go buy, you know, when we fell out, hey, I want to join some selling, you know. Costco. Yeah, where you, are you a veteran? You clicked a veteran. All that stuff gets wrapped up into TransUnion. And then TransUnion's like, hey, here's our database of veterans. Now, is it complete? Is it accurate? But that's not what we're looking for. I want to know who's gotten benefits. And then we can reach out to them and market to them individually. And it's not under the VA's. We're not going to market that in the VA, even though people confuse us.

How many state directors are asking for that? I don't understand why it would be nobody.

I think there's 56 of us.

Okay.

Yeah, and it's just the hot territories. It started off, yeah, we've all asked for them at this national conference, and initially it's like, yeah, we'll work with you, we'll work with you, and it's just year after year. We meet twice a year. It just constantly gets pushed, and now with Secretary Collins and Congressman Herb, we're together, and then he basically heard what He basically heard us need to get to Heisman, right? And so afterwards, Congressman Hurd and I spoke, and he's like, I will help you get this. We'll put this in the NDAA, National Defense Authorization Act, or we'll find a way to compel them. So I just need to, it's all my priority list of stuff to do.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, let's get it.

No, I'm serious. I am too. It's absolutely insane that we can't, as a government agency, I understand, we're not like the VFW, right? So anyway, I don't need to share with you that frustration. But then we can get that information, right?

Yeah, that would help make informed decisions that would increase efficiency.

And you know you've reached out and you've touched it. Now if I've asked you, Andy, hey, this is what we have, and you're like, Bruce, I'm not interested, leave me alone. Okay, now I can kind of check you off. I mean, you've definitively said no. But I come to you and you're like, oh, maybe. Probably next month. There's only 359. Honestly, we should be able to go through each. They each get one day a year.

Eric, do you have more you want to share?

No, I think that covers it all.

Yeah, I would say like the boss said, 40%. And so we, at the state, the way our model is here, it's not the same. We're a county model state. There's other states that are state model states. So we're 30, his entire team, including the cemetery and everything else is only 34 people. So we need to partner with the counties because we're at 145,000 veterans. getting services out of $362,000. So the state is not kicking butt and taking names. So we can't come throw a bunch of stones in a glass house, but we can't do it without the counties. And so that's why we've come along and everyone that he puts in his pot is also going into our pot. So that's why we're willing to come down here and spend a week doing claims, whatever we need to do down here, to set up a booth or whatever, because it helps the entire cause. was the pact act and how did that change so 10 august of 2022 the pact act did it did basically like three things so health care now if you're exposed to a toxin so even if you didn't go to vietnam you didn't go to the middle east and you are a fueler, you're around fuel all the time. You're not gonna, you know, that stuff's toxic. Whether you cleaned a weapon, you cleaned a latrine even, all that stuff is toxic chemicals, so you're exposed to toxins. Now you can get healthcare. Prior to that, you either had to have a disability rating or be below the poverty line. So this, basically I talked to the national director for toxic exposures is in our building, and I don't know why she ended up in Denver, but she said there's really no way that the VA can fight that you haven't been exposed to a toxin in the military. Unless you show up and you're like, not for me, I'm leaving. It's part of basic training, isn't it?

You just get asked a little bit. For basic premise, everybody that has served in the military that has fired a weapon has been exposed to lead. That simple, because it's used in the propellant. And if you have questions about the level of exposure, you're welcome to ask me. I am that scientific guy as well who goes down rabbit holes farther than the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. But there is a bunch of information.

But back to the backpack. So the second thing is for Vietnam, Agent Orange exposures. So it used to be you had to be boots on the ground or 12 nautical miles outside of Vietnam. Those planes were being loaded with Agent Orange in Thailand. But the VA didn't really recognize that unless you could prove you touched the C-123, which is the splint. So now they've traced it from where it was created on ships, went to Johnson Atoll, went to Guam, went to Samoa, went to Thailand, all these other places. So now all those veterans who have been fighting that are now included in the club, including the DMZ in Korea during a certain time. And then the third thing is for Middle Eastern, the burn pit, all that stuff. So now there's 26 conditions, body parts, because some of it's general, like cancers of the neck. which could be the skin cancer here, or esophageal, or there's a million, when you want to break it down, there's hundreds of different things that are now presumptive. Nine countries and waterways and at the time, so all those are now presumptive. And so we keep going presumptive, but what presumptive is, is you don't have to prove that the military caused it. The law says you were in, you proved that you were in Iraq, you approve that you have one of the 26 listed conditions, you can get it 50 years after you left Iraq. The law says you were there, you got that condition, that bridge.

You don't have to prove it anymore.

No. You don't have to prove it. So a common one we see way after services sleep apnea. That's not a presumptive. You want to say you got sleep apnea after service and you snored real loud in service, now you need a medical professional to connect those two things, which is very hard 25 years after you left the service. Presumptive just wipes that whole middle piece out. You only need beginning and end.

Historically, people were told no. Now, they don't have to prove anything. That's why we need to continually re-attack our existing veteran population, because in the 70s, they were told no. you can't suffer PTSD because you weren't in combat, but yet we had nurses over there seeing horrific things, right? They were told no. Well, the answer now is yes.

And that's why we need to continue to revisit. And additionally, if I may add on to that, The PACT Act is the first benefits law that has come into effect for Veterans Affairs where it's a living document. It's a living law. There are things that are being continuously added to it. Just within the first few years of it passing, three more got added to it. And it is continuing to be regulated, maintained, and developed. It is ordered by law that that has to be developed. And if they find more stuff, they have to add it. So just because it's not on the list now doesn't mean it doesn't need to be revisited in two years. So what was a mindset of a lot of the veterans that were getting out after Korea and Vietnam and so on, where I applied one time, the VA told me no, I just can't do anything. It's not. It's a continuously developing situation, and that's why we are encouraging the veterans to check back in and touch base like every one to two years to see, hey, anything new in the zoo? What should I know about? That kind of deal.

Is there also a way to potentially get people just on a newsletter? It's like, hey, update to the PAC Act. Have you been diagnosed with any of these things lately? Well, guess what?

how many 70 or 80 year old Vietnam era people have high blood pressure? Even if you didn't go to Vietnam when you're 70, 80 years old, you have high blood pressure. But that's now a presumptive condition. So the line outside of all the BSO offices should be incredibly long because that's just a very common thing that got included.

And it doesn't have to be, we talk about diseases and hypertension. If you have sinusitis, if you have a runny nose and you served in the Middle East, it's a presumptive condition.

So the way I was talking about how the VA, that goes more under Veterans Benefits Administration. But what's not talked about is VHA has to do a check-in every year about toxic exposures and everything on the annual physical. That has to be continued to develop. So if they start seeing a pattern there. So VHA and VBA are both going through that. So the Veterans Health Administration, Veterans Administration is touching on it. So I mean, that's a huge change. But we have to get the veterans to go in to talk to them, to get into the benefits, to get into the health administration, to get that kind of going. Because that creates a ripple effect. But we just need that pebble to drop in the middle of that pond to start that process for them so they can continue to get that developing care. That's where our interest is, is to get that pebble to drop. That's the first effect, and to continue to develop off those ripples.

So if veterans are going to a community care clinic, Does that information still get sent to the VHA?

Yes, absolutely.

So it doesn't kind of matter what your entrance point is. It's still all getting collated.

Well, your entrance point will always be like a VA facility, and then you'll request a community care, and then they'll send a medical record to the VA.

But they do virtual care, so if you do a virtual appointment, and they're like, hey, Eric, it's time for your blood test, I'm going to put a referral in to... Dr. Jones, Leadville, Colorado, you don't have to drive to me, you can see him, he draws the blood, gets the results, sends it over to the VA. That's uber convenient, if it works out. And in theory, that briefs well.

Actuality. And I hate to, I don't want to take more of your time than we're authorized or a lot of it. So we went down to New Mexico, we visited the hospital down there, the VA hospital, because Southern Colorado is served by New Mexico. they have a 1-800 emergency health care number that any veteran can call with an issue. And 65% of the calls resolve the issue. So let's say you have a veteran up here who does have access to VA care, and it's like, hey, I've got this going on. OK, we think it's based on your, it's clearly x, right? Or we would. They can get the medicine sent to their homes, and they never have to leave their house. And 65% of the calls to that number are the resolution for the call. I didn't even know that existed until we went down and visited there. So it's how do we get the information out to veterans, right? There's so much information out there. How do we get the important stuff? How do we consolidate it?

On that note, is there a technical support department or group or staff with you guys or associated to you that would look over or help us implement, if we don't have one, the website component? Because you mentioned that as part of having an office, having a website was part of the effective outreach. Do we have a website? Do you have a website, Harry? It's all listed on this county website. OK. It's like a menu item on our county website.

Yeah, we have somebody that we can help. We have Andy, is that his name? No, Alex. Alex. Alex, who's our IT guy, can help, I think, with that stuff.

Maximize our potential with that.

Make sure we've got it placed prominently. We're using the right language. We've got... Because we could also look at it from the BSO perspective and say it'd be really helpful if you put...

I don't know.

RMR? Yeah, RMR. Like, or just some helpful phone numbers, a helpful document or something like that that Alex won't know about now when it needs to get techy stuff about on there and look pretty and all that stuff, then Alex can help out with that or you folks can. But just make sure we got everything up to date and no current info. Because some of the websites across the state are anywhere from like, you know, Harry, ours, this address, this phone number, that's it. Hey, some of them have automated appointment generators you go in there and it's kind of like when you get service on your car when you want to come in i want to come in friday and hope i have a little big slide of 10. yeah then auto populate some of them will do a whole bunch of stuff so it's as much as you want to do but we can you know definitely look over a template and say hey you should add these three to five documents or have these three to five notes on there or something like that yeah and if you if nothing else maybe we can find a partner accounting to partner with you right to yeah that understands your firewall issues and all that stuff but yeah we'll absolutely work with you guys to

Okay, cool, thank you.

Is that something we need to reach out to you for, or are you all going to put it in motion?

If you want to send me an email, I'll make a phone call. We can sit down and go over any of that information and identify what next steps need to happen to try to figure out what's the best time, best use, everything from there. Just make sure. Plus to set up the boom. Yep. Boom days.

To set up boom days.

You don't want to miss boom days.

I kind of want to come.

If you haven't been, I recommend it at least once. It's a good time. Yeah, I mean, you know, 359 veterans doesn't sound like a staggering number, but when your entire county is 7,200 people, you know, it's a big deal.

Yeah.

Do you guys have a demographic of those veterans, like ages?

We don't have the specific demographics, but I can give you the state average to try and identify a better perspective on how your population would be split out. I've looked over your guys' populations by demographics, and it does seem that you have more women in this county, which I found an odd. I haven't seen that before, but I've looked over quite a bit of the information. Rough estimate at best, but we can't get that specific information in the VA right at this moment.

We're going to change some legislation to make that happen. Yeah. It's crazy. That's wild.

But we're here. We're truly a phone call away.

Any three of us. My office phone goes directly to my cell. We'll get you that information because I was unprepared today.

I'm very much hearing that you're offering and asking for as much teamwork as possible to try to serve more folks. Absolutely. And I'm hearing that loud and clear. And if they fail to do that, then you call.

Oh, okay. It feels disingenuous to look at this from an economic standpoint, but there is definitely an economic component to this by getting more services to the people on the ground here. It's not disingenuous.

The word investment is overused. I'm not trying to poke at Lake County, but if we can just be effective in the time we have, then it's free chicken. just need to be across the state and within our own division we if we can just be more effective because it's this year it's 5 000 bucks right next year it's 5 000 plus 5 000 next year's and it just continues you know all right anything else i checked all my question marks off we have we have party gifts so our our coin We've got to do it the right way. You've got to be handshake. And then we just want to say thank you. Put that on your desk or wherever you might take a look at it. And honestly, if you have questions, call us. Unless we're talking, we're not. but we can't make progress. But thank you for giving us all the time you've given us. Oh yeah, don't feel in a rush. We gave you guys as much time as you needed today. And one final thing, what's the recommendation on a place to eat? We're going to spend some money here. Although you don't have a college here, so some of the... Good food? Anything? Where would you go if you were one of God's?

Famous? All the time in the world. My name is also spelled in a way that... Well, if you're ever here in the evenings, go to Quincy's for steak. Okay. There's no menu. It's just what size steak. All right. And how do you want it cooked. Very cool. If you're moving quick, I would always recommend the Tacro truck, El Mexicano. It's like people come from out of county to eat from that truck. So the name is for the Tacro? And they've been around for decades. That's the Safeway, yeah. Okay. What else? Bucci, me personally, I really love their Cuban sandwiches. It's phenomenal. If you're up for pizza, High Mountain Pies, very well known. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much. Last thing before you go, I want to thank you all for your service.

I'm sure you're all veterans.

I think we're all retired.

I'm just tired. And you're still serving, so that means a lot. It's fun. It's a good job. But thank you all.

Thank you, guys. It's really nice to meet you.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Yeah, make sure you get all that stuff. Sounds great. I just e-mailed Matthew.

Okay, item number two on today's Lake County Board of County Commissioners work session is discussion and direction regarding an intergovernmental agreement between Lake County and the Leadville Lake County Regional Housing Authority. This will be led by Becky Longberg, director of the authority. Hello, Becky.

Hello, County Commissioner. Thank you for having me.

a work session I'm sorry before we start is there anybody in the room would like to make a public comment after okay sorry Ray thank you so much bringing this to the county commissioners because we're at a stage in

very close to finalizing an IGA between the jurisdictions in the continuing of the formation, well not the formation, we've been formed, now we're continuing the existence of the House of Representatives. And there are two points that we would like to discuss with some clarity on from the county side, county perspective. The first point is that in the original IGA, it was created, it stated that if the housing authority were going to do a mill levy, which by state section we are allowed to do, up to five mills, the IGA limited us to two mills. And my reasoning is, it's not on anybody's radar, but why limit the possibility we don't know what's going to happen in 20 years why why continue that limited mill levy when we can address it now make it um commiserate with the state statute and um so that's something to consider that's the first topic the second topic is that the county has been supporting the housing authority by both in two ways services provided so you have been acting as the housing authority's payroll department benefits provider and um it and in the new iga we are candace brought up that that is sort of a backwards process for the county to be doing that. And so she asked that the housing authority take on our own payroll department. Perfectly reasonable. So what I'm here asking is that the county consider continuing to allow us to access your benefits package because as a county with as many employees as you have, you're able to get a much better benefits package for less. and that you consider extending that benefit to another regional housing authority staff person. So that staff person would not be at the same pay rate as the executive director. However, it would, I don't know, ballpark. I think I came up with currently it's about 25 grand, 28 grand for the benefits package. and adding a new person would be another approximately $20,000. Ballpark.

Thanks, Becky. Does that summarize it well? Yeah, so we haven't provided IT support in the past, and I think that only happened because Jackie was our employee. We don't give out IT equipment of the counties, especially now that we catalog it before it goes out the door. to other parties and that's pretty standard because of the security pieces. Just to clarify, what had been happening is we were paying for the payroll and the benefits and then having to bill the RHA back for the payroll portion, which there's no reason we can't just pay for their benefits if that's the thing we're gonna do. But we were gonna work with them to let them get a payroll system set up Um, and actually we talked about, we can sit down and talk through options. I want to.

Oh, great.

So, so that's like not, you know, right now we just have money going out the door and then having to rebuild her back, which just gets to be confusing, but we can just pay for the benefits outright. So that's the only reason we changed that piece of the agreement is.

And to clarify the it part is that I have been posting all of our agendas on the county website. Um, when we now have a live website. Because i'm going to announce it tomorrow, so in 2027 we would be able to then also. Through the rest of this year, I should have posting agendas on the county website because that's what we said we were going to do at the beginning of the year so continue to do that, but then I could. Be just a spot that you because again, we would have a legal way of doing that yeah and so that's been support. I've been allowed onto the website to post those agendas, post the vacancy, that kind of stuff. And I have had some personnel hours. I've used your IT department just for advice. So it's been a few months, but last summer for sure.

So really the agreement for the the payroll and the benefits that's just up to you guys if you want to pay for a second round of benefits in the agreement but we we plan to continue through the end of this year processing your payroll really until you feel like you're even ready for that transition i'd like to be lined with that on january 1st so that you it is at the middle of a fiscal year but yeah um

I'm trying to look at the bigger picture as far as the dollars and cents obligations on the county's end. And looking through that lens for everything is somewhat exhausting sometimes. But I do feel like we're moving some responsibilities that we have had in-house with Jackie onto these guys. So they're shouldering more burden that traditionally has been ours. And we're dropping an FTE.

Yeah, we are not going to refill.

So I feel like from a dollars and cents standpoint, we've got a pretty good benefit out of this organization existing recently. So that kind of, for me, that's like sort of a, puts things in a little bit more favorable light. Like, okay, we can help out with the benefits package.

We just get such a better rate for benefits than if they have to go out on their own with two people. That is an astronomical difference.

And it's not just like, can they use our benefits? It's we're covering the cost of benefits.

Yeah, we pay the benefits directly, and they just get enrolled like any of our other people.

Then the other thing I need to hear more, forward again both sides of this mill levy thing because that's um i think i when i brought that up to you guys i was like i have no idea on this one i'm undecided i need to dive into it so that's why i feel like we're having this work session because the mill levy thing is still well and i don't know if anyone in the room was party to the original conversation around the levy back in 2021-22 i don't i don't know what the reasoning was behind moving it below state statute

Yeah, I mean, just for a point of clarity, the current IGA that's being renegotiated, it's one mill, it's not two mills. So the issue, and by state statute, housing authorities are allowed to levy up to five mills, obviously. Any increase in mills would need to be subject to a Tabor election and go through a vote. The IGA is also written in a manner that The bill levy can't be advanced by the RHA board.

So it's a super majority vote of that board and the two of you on that board, as well as the City Council. Two in turn. One in one. OK.

So that's just a mechanism, just so you're aware, to have that conversation of where you want to put this thing out. But it's by statute, it can go up to five. But any increase is going to require an OTA for election and a state majority vote by the housing authority to even get it to an election.

And there is no mill levy at this time?

There's no levy. I can only imagine that it was probably put in place because if you go up to five mills and it gets passed, then something else, some other ballot initiative is going to suffer because people are going to be like, We went up to five. On that last year, let's not vote for this next thing. That's just a guess.

Ballot initiatives are such tricky. There's so much to weigh, because you're trying to predict.

There's a lot of boxes to check, and there's only so much ink in the pen for this community.

That being said, I don't know why you would otherwise limit it to one or two percent, or one or two mils.

It feels a little silly that, like, I mean, just for now, I know sometimes the community is not great about, like, having a plan before we go to the voters. Right? Right?

What do you mean?

But I do feel like there's a culture shift happening that we're going to be in a chapter of actually having a plan first. But let's just say, like, the housing authority came up with a plan And to implement it, they would need 1.2 mils or something. It just seems a little administratively burdensome to like set one mil and then they have, and then the RHA, which is half, which is two thirds of us have to come back to our body to say, can we change our IGA? and then it has to go to the city, and the city has to say, yes, let's change, just like, just to even get something on the ballot, it just feels like we're setting ourselves up for administrative silliness.

I just have, you know, I have a point, like, both, I'm still very neutral on this, I'm not, you know, my, on one side, it's like, well, this would have to go to the voters, and I always have this strong feeling like the people should just be the ultimate deciders on big things like this. But on the other hand, I feel like it's at a certain point, like you're crossing a threshold where you are trying to produce affordable housing by making housing ownership more expensive for everyone. Something in there has like a weird moral conundrum in me. And just raising taxes like out of, So, you know, I don't need to go down that rabbit hole too far, you know, but it's like, how much more expensive are we going to make it for everybody so that a few people can get benefit, like benefit from this. And there's a, there's a, there's a happy middle ground in there. I don't know if that maybe also touched in on why initially someone was like, well, you can't, we're not going to let all five bills fly on this. I wasn't in the room. I don't know what the reasoning is, but maybe it was a combination of things that were discussed in that room, but. So again, you know, I'm just, I'm really, I could go either way.

That's a good point, Andy. Five mils is a lot. It probably wouldn't happen, but in the future it could happen depending on who's voting. All those people that didn't vote for that, their tax burden is going to go way out and it's not fair necessarily. It is the way it works, but if you're somebody who voted against it and your tax has went up anyway,

maybe that was part of their decision i don't know she's really like i don't want to say dramatic but it stuck with me really i'll take it to my grave i'm sitting in this room listening to people who are out of fixed income talk about if this goes up any if my bills go up anymore i'm choosing between feeding myself or feeding my cat you know what it's just like it breaks your heart you know so it's like i always want to be really

cautious thoughtful about things like that i did a little light research to find out what other similar counties have passed mill levies and um i didn't get very far i did confirm that um the grand county so that's winter park and granby did pass a two mill levy in 22 And obviously, that's a different community. They have more municipalities, a lot more area, a lot of second homeowners, even more than here. And Winter Park, Mary Jane, is quite the tourist driver. But that two-mill levy, it comes up to about $2 million a year, depending on the years. Does that make sense? And I, what is Durango, what's the county that Durango is in? They have one as well, but I wasn't in the details. It has happened, but I don't think it's a very frequently used tool for housing. And I don't think it's anything that's on the Regional Housing Authority's radar for quite a while.

It's failed two times in two years. Have you tried to do that?

Yeah, it's really not in our five-year strategic plan. even discussed, not even mentioned. So I don't think it's something that we need to address immediately. And I don't know, not having any legal background whatsoever, I don't know if there is language that could be put into the IGA that could say, we're going to do what the state statute says and recognize that this is a topic that we want to address every time we review the IGA.

Yeah, I think that's implied any time IGA comes up for renewal. Yeah, all the parties are going to re-initiate it at that time.

What is the duration of that cycle?

So this is another thing that's being changed a little bit. I think we're to just the three-year term, is that right?

What I remember talking about with Ashley was, let's get us through our current strategic plan, which is through 2028.

Yeah, so this new IGA would be a three-year term.

Supposedly including 2026.

And you said it's limited to one mill?

Right now it is. It's currently limited to one mill.

And then in the new IGA, that is what is up for discussion right now is?

Is whether to allow this authority the ability to levy five mills, yes.

Well, it's supposed to be a mechanism, like a governing mechanism, right? That the FCC or the city could put on to the regional housing authority. But we also have four seats. We control a supermajority on the RHA also, which is needed to even put a mill onto the ballot. So that's two governors. from the elected officials to get a mill onto the ballot, which again, it just feels like administratively a little overbuilt to be like, yeah, we're gonna limit it to one, but then also we're limiting ourselves in that conversation. Like when we talk about the regional housing authority, that's two of the three of us. So we're talking about, are we going to limit ourselves And in that conversation, we already have the ability to have really strong voices from the RHA. So we have voices here and we have voices on the RHA. I feel like we would already have a place to say, no, we don't want to go up to five mils because we're two voices on a board. Yeah, very strong point.

That's true, but also those voices on the board are generally going to be interested in the subject in favor of whatever we can do to help so yeah it's not like there's dissenting voices in that room i like not over building a separate authority that we are deeply involved in

It's like if we were trying to write, you know, like the sanitation, Parkville, they can put mills on the ballot too. And I have no interest, even if it came across my desk, I would have no interest in telling them how much they could or couldn't put on the ballot.

Yes, you'd like to see it.

allowed up to five in this idea you'd like to see yes and but i'm i'm just trying to be really clear that it is not as though i want the regional housing authority i'm trying to say it for also the the record that it's not that i'm saying yeah i think the regional housing authority should be leveraging as many mills as possible i'm saying that feels overbuilt to me and so i am not in favor of putting another governor onto that board when I feel like I have enough of a voice there and that the BOCC has enough of a voice there.

And ultimately the voters will have a voice.

Exactly. It's just getting it onto the ballot that we're talking about. And we don't know what this community will be facing when it comes to housing in two years even. So I don't know. I just don't want to do this again to have to raise to change this in the IGA. The Regional Housing Authority comes to us with a great plan and it will take more than one mill. We will have to go through this whole process and it will take months. And that seems like we're shooting ourselves in the foot administratively.

Yeah, there's a lot of safeguards in place or a lot of fairness guards in place to keep this from getting wild. Thinking for those folks on fixed incomes, I do still have some slight concerns only because I've seen ballot measures that were really well strategized. You hire the right people to push the right language on it. you're going to have a lot better of a chance of passing something, even if it doesn't pencil out right for the community, for everybody. You know what I mean?

Yeah, totally. I think that's the problem.

And I'm trying to imagine anyone being in these chairs. It's not us. I feel like we've got a really strong balance here. Like, what if that wasn't the case? What if there was just three very charismatic and very popular proponents of something that, you know, and they also knew how to run ballot languages. So I don't know. I mean, again, I agree with that. So I'm sorry I just went down a verbal rabbit hole and chased my tail.

Can I offer two things?

Absolutely, please. I need more.

I think two things. One we've talked a lot about in here, especially you and I, Andy, is like mills are regressive taxes. Like they burden people who have fewer resources more than they burden others. And that's a really messy part of our taxing structure is that most of the tools that we have to tackle any of the problems in our community are regressive. And hence, something like a second home fee or an excise tax, because those become more progressive, where you're actually removing some of the burden from the people you're actually trying to serve.

Yeah, when I'm targeting the people on a fixed income, so we're barely getting by.

But those aren't any of the tools currently available to us. So currently, a mill is. And even though it's more... even though it's not as clean as say an excise tax, the regional housing authority through program building and capacity building, which is what the RHA is trying to build towards with more staff with taking on some of the work of the county, they're trying to build so that they can offer more programs that help unburden some of the folks that are the whole point of the regional housing authority. So it's going through more steps than just a simple taxation measure. But Becky's whole job is to figure out how to create programs that lessen the burden from those people with fixed incomes, from those people who are stuck in rental properties in a fluctuating market, et cetera, et cetera. So until we get some of those more progressive, tax levers, a regional housing authority is a way to accomplish that. And if we don't appropriately resource a regional housing authority, then we aren't even helping unburden some of what you're talking about through one of these tools that we do have in the meantime. That's one of the reasons why a regional housing authority is so important to me is because It is talking exactly about the people you're talking about, trying to help them fix the income. And we don't have other ways to do it through taxation. So I just want to, and Becky, will you correct me if I got any of that wrong?

No, that was absolutely right. Although I have been asked to also broaden the income streams, which we are working on. so we will be received crossing our fingers here if we get a land bank award and enter into a special limited partnership with tributary we're going to get a sizable chunk of money for the in lieu of property tax payment in lieu of property tax so that would be another income stream when we get the affordable housing property management program built in February of next year, we will start having rental. We'll be collecting rents and, or if we're not the owners of those units, providing a service to the owners and collecting a fee. So we're diversifying our income streams. And so that we're not relying on, because in the past we've relied only on the county and the city. We've had two sources of income. So we're working on providing services writing grants, creating partnerships.

Since I'm so new in that room, the lens that I'm looking through only shows like, oh, affordable housing projects. But still, those are the only things I've really felt like I've seen coming across my plate as I've been out of the front row seat. So it's not always super clear to me. a regional housing authority can implement that are gonna help with you know tax assistance or help some of these folks who are on these fixed incomes that's something that I'm just completely unversed in and I will own that strategic planning in September be there be square

I also would say check out the Chaffey's Housing Authority. Check out their website because that will give you an overall view. I would say they're pretty thorough in all the assistance services they offer.

If you look at housing on the spectrum with people who need no housing assistance whatsoever, on this side and people who are chronically homeless on this side. And the spectrum in between, so you've got college kids who are moving every six months or four months, working seasonal jobs. You've got people on fixed incomes. You've got people who are former homeowners but had a life-changing medical issue and lost their house and are now renting and the whole family is in a two-bedroom. You've got folks experiencing all kinds of housing. JP Housing Authority does work with families who are homeless, so they serve a broader spectrum than we do at this time. But it is a really good example of the kinds of things that housing authorities can do at JP Housing Authority. And they do provide property management services for all of the Chaffey Housing Trust home ownership opportunities that are vacant. With the idea that, hey, you live here for a year or two, get yourself stable, maybe you can buy it. Let's get your credit cleaned up so that you can apply for a loan. So there's a counseling aspect to it. So there's a lot of things that we can do on the housing spectrum. But we're just still waiting. Our ankles are not quite wet yet.

I mean, there's a potential middle ground for you all. I hear both sides of what the board's going on. We could build into this agreement as well the situation where you allow up to five mills, as the state statute allows, but also have a mechanism where it needs to come back to the Board of County Commissioners prior to proceeding.

That's another option.

That's a good idea.

Yeah.

City Council and the Board of Commissioners to approve before the housing authority.

And then you have essentially three boards having a check on it before you have the final check, which is the voters.

Wouldn't it go to the housing authority first?

Probably the PAP board would need to pass it first.

It would be the same thing because there's two of us on the housing authority. Potentially.

I've seen board members switch votes and somebody super persuasive gets in the other board members' ear and makes a case of why it needs to be go down.

Just one city council only?

Just one, yeah. Would anything that the Regional Housing Authority do, would that be a county-wide mill, or could they ask for just a city?

I think it would depend on what we created. I have only been...

It would be county-wide. It would be? Okay. Yeah, county-wide.

Okay.

So it's different than how it would be the sales times.

To me, it would make sense that it come back to the county, not the city. Not the city. Interesting. That feels crazy. I don't know how anything would ever get onto the ballot if you have to persuade three boards, and that feels even more crippling to me.

So in Lethville, there's not any property taxes assessed, like in Salida, whereas B2B does have a property tax assessed. The town of B2B does.

There's no separate property tax? No. Okay. Yeah.

That would make sense. You know, if I were to consider doing it, I've only been involved in two, and very from a far distance, two tax initiatives. And both of them were pretty well thought out. But the way Adam and the Early Childhood Coalition and Carly have all been being very thoughtful about bringing community together and saying, hey, we're thinking about this. Who else is? We don't want to be in competition the waste water treatment plant or the school district or whomever might be doing something else, public health or a tobacco initiative, whatever the case may be. So I think that a lot of homework up front for six months or a year up front before even putting it together would be... Yeah.

Oh yeah, definitely.

I feel like what you mentioned earlier, that there is a very mindful approach to bringing like introducing the possibility of a tax, or a new tax, now, maybe more so than there's been in the past. And that's not to say that it might change again in the future, but I do feel like there is a very big shift in the way organizations are functioning in this town, that there's a, especially the There's kind of this moment, this moment is all about commitment to coming together and working together.

And so, asking about what other organizations are doing.

I mean, aside from your six months of planning too, I think, I feel like I've seen statistics that show, I mean, it's progressive tax initiatives. each of those. And so it's, I mean, anything would, not anything, this isn't an absolute, but it's like, you know, there's a good chance that, aside from that six months of planning, there's only certain windows where these things even have a solid chance of flying. You know what I mean? Like the Magellan strategy seminars and stuff.

That being said, would a 2% limit help protect some of the other people in this town that wouldn't get included in the conversation somebody that's not in the circle or you know somebody that had some some other balance that there might be a level of protection of two percent for somebody else that's not a statement that's a question that's a question what is my it leads me to ask another question two mills on a hundred thousand dollars is

$200. It's $200. Right. That is moving the period over. It's $200. So the average home year is between 4 and 5. Let's go to 5 because it's easy now. So we're talking about the 2 mil tax initiative costing someone $1,000 a year. That is a lot. It's a lot. People would have a hard time with 5 mils. I'm sorry, with two mills, on a $500,000 home.

Yeah. A lot of these folks in these $500,000 homes did not buy a $500,000 home. Right, they bought a $70,000 home. And the windows are completely cold air, and the roofs.

I'm curious about, is this also limiting if there was ever a short-term rental tax that If you're talking about limiting who you're taxing, or not short-term rental, but certain homeowner, no, retail tax or certain homeowner tax, any of those, like if there's a potential way to tax those folks who are not the ones who are

Not yet.

There's currently not. That's why it's called a regressive tax. But if there was in the future, that's another way that it's like having our options as, you know, so that if that changed and there was the potential for that, like that we could be as flexible as possible.

Yeah. That's a big conversation when you get into the vacancy tax thing. And that's one I think would be requiring a lot more safeguards in because you put a vacancy tax in front of voters and they're like oh tax people who don't live here and you can run wild with those those could be beneficial and damaging depending on how how big they are so but it's currently colorado state law prohibits any kind of vacancy tax so that needs change wait what if you're home alone

Are you allowed to?

Oh, that's a good question.

If you're a Home Rule, you can. And so if there was ever, you know.

That is a thing we could do. That almost seems harder than persuading the Colorado legislature.

Because if you go to Home Rule, you lose all kinds of funding.

There's a lot of, I don't know, I'm learning about this.

Yeah, there is no easy path forward.

This map has, that's going everywhere. I just want to jump in and clarify because it sounded to me like something was a little off with that mill calculation. It's actually more like $20. Thank you.

It's not too much.

So we had done this calculation when we were considering the budget last year. It was like a cup of coffee. And we were looking at like a half mill versus one mill, what the impact to homeowners would be. So for the average, like $507,000, we'd be talking about $15 to $20. for two months.

That then says, let's look at its state statute.

Your property tax bill. Not per month. That's like... That's your overall property.

Increase to your overall property taxes. Are we billed six months or yearly?

Yearly.

And you have, yeah, there's two payments basically.

Yeah. Thanks for that clarification.

Thank you very much. Yeah, just remember we went through this kind of exercise. Yeah.

I remember. 200 felt crazy in my brain.

Yeah.

I said, that's $1,000. But then I look at what I paid in taxes, and I was like, well, I don't know what mils we have either. We have 40 mils. We currently have 40 mils? Whatever, 40. We're at 40. No, 39 and a half. 39.5.

39 and a half right now. So we would be paying. out of our noses, if that were right. Great, so we're talking about the difference between a cup of coffee and a boujee sandwich, between one and five mils.

Yeah. Per year. Per year. Per year, yeah.

Well, it's not just that. I mean, it's all the other taxes and all of these.

Absolutely.

Everything just piling on top of each other, so.

Absolutely, but the broader question, I think, is like, How much are we going to limit what the voters have choice on? And we're talking about the difference between limiting whether they can make a decision on a cup of coffee tax or a sandwich tax. And a Bucci sandwich is a lot.

Does this affect commercial properties as well? Yes.

So. I don't think we can make a decision here right now.

We need to direct Matt, though.

This will come back to you all for a final vote.

Since we're not putting forth a mill lending tax initiative in the next five years for the next strategic plan, can we keep it at five now and readdress it in Three years when we are renegotiating our idea.

Well, that was the ask, right? Not keep it at five. Right now it's at two. It's at one. So we wouldn't be keeping it at five. We'd be raising it to five.

My argument is let's just make it commensurate with the state. I know. Yeah. Yeah. But then any increase. Yeah. Yeah.

I think regardless, I'm fine with it being

At five, I think that if we put it at one, we're just going to have to do this all over again if the RHA worker wants to go to a ballot initiative. And that would take us months, which I think could kill any ballot initiative, which we shouldn't.

So I'm in favor of going to five.

I also just want to state that I would be in favor of supporting, just to make it really clear, in favor of supporting two employees' benefits. I'd like to see the capacity of the RHA increased and for us to have that.

yeah the benefits thing i'm good with because i feel like they're taking over responsibilities that the county has been doing and they've earned that and we actually are saving money in the long run because we dropped a full-time employee position now that they can they have capacity to take those things over other thing is you know the weird x factor for me on that is now i'm thinking about commercial properties and what's that look like if you've got assessed value of a million dollars for your your snowmobile company or something like that it does start that you know it does start to add up and i guess since i'm so undecided we've got one and then we've got five and i'm like i'll just go right up the middle and say three that's the easiest way i can you know un-complicate this in my brain because there's a million things on each side going on. Three's fine with me.

I would say 2.5.

We have a city council person here. Let's say what our opinion is.

Oh, no, no. I mean, I just feel like it seems unlikely that you're going to go beyond two if you ever made an ask. So, you know, three seems very... reasonable and again if that's more comfortable 2.59 chances are it's never going to even come to 2.5 so and and there's going to be a re-examination of it in three years anyhow before any potential so i think you're pretty safeguarded there and maybe putting it at three and then coming back and examining it and you know at the next uh revisiting of the IGA.

Yeah, it could be other folks sitting in these chairs for two years.

I won't argue with three. Okay.

And I'll be grateful.

I'm so directed.

Okay. Three mills and then about two benefits.

Okay. Excellent. Is there anybody in the room now who would like to make a public comment?

Any questions?

What's this meeting about again?

Oh, good question.

Do you want to tell them about it? This meeting is about anybody who owns a home has to pay taxes. So what we're talking about is charging them a little bit extra to help folks that don't own a home get into a home, basically.

We're also talking about a regional housing authority. which is an agreement between, Gita is on city council with daddy, and it's an agreement between the city council and the county to say, hey, we wanna create this separate authority, separate from us. And so we have to write this document, Matt has to write the document that we all agree to.

It's always on Matt, always.

And so we're all trying to negotiate, well, what is gonna be in the agreement? So that we can actually, so that Becky, with the Regional Housing Authority can actually go do her job and not wonder if she's doing it legally or not.

Yeah, because up to this point, we've been working on goodwill. Still working. It's a lot of goodwill.

That's a good question, everybody. Thank you.

Easy reach. Yeah, thank you for coming to our meeting. I appreciate that. Okay. That's good, eh?

That's good. Thank you.

Thanks for coming.

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. Now I'm more familiar with this whole process, I'll be able to get on it a little easier.

Every time I think something's going to be a little easier, I'm always wrong. Careful!

So this concludes the work session of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. It's July 14th at 1.48 p.m. Thank you all for coming. Thank you, staff. Thank you, Becky. Thank you, Geeta.

Thank you, Geeta. Glad you came. Yeah, me too.