Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Hey. It's impressive. Good morning. I will call to order the, county Dakota County Board of Commissioners meeting for 05/05/2026. I will invite anybody who is in the audience to stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance.

Next, we will go out to the audience for public comments. You have five minutes to address the board on an item that is not on the agenda or that may be on the consent agenda. And we do have a sign up sheet, and the first person on the sheet and the only person, is Katrina DeVore. I welcome you to our county board meeting to talk about Nurses Week.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Katrina Devore. I work in the Public Health Department and serve as the chair for the Dakota County Health Bargaining Unit of the Minnesota Nurses Association. Tomorrow marks the beginning of National Nurses Week.

National Nurses Week begins each year on May 6 and ends on May 12, which is Florence Nightingale's birthday. I want to highlight the outstanding work of Dakota County's public health and social services nurses, explain why supporting union nurses is important for our community's health. Nurses in social services and public health help support Dakota County residents at every stage of life. We help people live safely and independently through community living services assessments. We visit families at home during pregnancy and after delivery.

We help children with asthma manage their symptoms and stay healthy. We also protect our community by preventing the spread of infectious diseases through vaccinations, education, and case management. In 2025, Dakota County public health nurses supported over 137 child and teen checkups outreach events, sharing health information and resources with more than 7,854 people. We provided 9,928 client visits through our family health nurses and support specialists. We also held 95 vaccine clinics serving fourteen eighty six people in our community.

This work is deeply personal and often complex. Nurses are often the first people families trust. We help connect residents to housing, insurance, health care, and other vital support systems, especially for those who face the biggest challenges. Being a union nurse matters because it protects our ability to speak up for our clients and ensure safe, quality care. Union protections give us a voice in workplace safety and help us advocate for the resources we need to do our jobs well.

When nurses are included in decisions, patients and communities receive better care. National Nurses Week is a time to honor not only the compassion nurses bring, but also the expertise, advocacy, and public service they provide

to our community every day.

Dakota County is stronger because of its nurses, and I am proud to be here today to recognize their work. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, and thanks for the work that our nurses do and nurses throughout the county do. And we join you in celebrating Nurses Week. Is there anybody else who wishes to address the board? Welcome. There's a five minute time to address the board on an item. And you can introduce yourself for the record. Welcome.

Thank you very much. My name is Tim Milner. I live at 834 Park Place Drive in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. I'm here to give a comment on the River to River Greenway project, a project that is occurring somewhat in our neighborhood and throughout the rest of Mendota Heights. I'm not here to talk about the project itself.

The project has had its ups and starts, its delays, its challenges. I think the commissioners are all aware of that. I'm here to talk about what I feel has been the incredibly poor communication to the residents and the community with regards to how those changes and delays are impacting our use of that facility. When the project started, there was a spot to sign up for updates, to get emails, to get communication. I'm here to tell the commissioners that that has not happened for this for these park projects.

I've signed up for those for the road projects. They happen all the time. I don't understand why they simply don't happen for park projects. I've had to reach out to the staff multiple times. Sometimes I get a response. Sometimes I don't get a response. It's just an unacceptable level of communication. Last night, I talked with the senior project manager who called me at my home, and I applaud him for doing that. But in that conversation, he admitted that the staff is struggling trying to figure out the way to properly communicate these types of issues to the community. And I found that difficult.

And I said to myself, if the roads people can figure out how to do it, certainly the parks people should be able to figure out how to do that. And so I decided to take the time to drive from my business in Farmington to come here this morning to tell you that there is an issue. It needs some leadership on the act, on behalf of the commissioners to get the administration to improve the communication. Because you're doing it for the roads. You certainly can do it for the parks. And I appreciate you giving me this couple of minutes to bring this to your attention. Thank you so very much for listening.

Thanks for coming in. Thank you. And next, we can entertain an approval of the agenda. Are there any changes, or is there a motion to approve the agenda?

A motion to approve, Madam Chair. Is there a second?

Barbara I'll second that, Madam Chair.

Barbara Thank you. We can do a voice vote. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Barbara Aye. Any opposed, no? Hearing none, that motion prevails. Next up, we can consider the consent agenda. Is there a motion? Move approval, Madam Chair. Second. We have a motion. We have a second. We will roll call this vote. Any discussion to the motion? Jenny, would you please take the roll?

Commissioner Workman? Yes. Commissioner Atkins? Yes. Commissioner Holberg? Yes. Commissioner Haverson? Yes. Commissioner Drosty? Yes. Commissioner Hammond Roland? Yes. Commissioner Slavik?

Yes.

And that motion prevails. Next up on our regular agenda, we are going to get an annual update from Dakota nine eleven. Heidi, welcome. Good to see you again.

Thank you. Good morning. Morning, madam chair, commissioners. Thank you again for the invite back again this year to give you an update on Dakota nine eleven and talk a little bit more about our 2025 experience. For anyone, you all know me obviously, but just introduce myself here too for the record. I'm Heidi Heesrich. I'm the executive director of Dakota nine eleven. As the single countywide emergency communication center, Dakota nine eleven serves the community and our public safety partners and law enforcement, fire, and EMS twenty four hours a day, three sixty five days a year. Our role is simple but critical. It's to be the link between those who need help and the responders who serve them.

Our core values are at the center of everything we do at Dakota nine eleven as we aim to provide excellent service to build and maintain trust and partnership, own accountability for our actions, and of course, focus on continuous improvement. Here's a look at what I plan to cover with you today in the update. I'll talk through our 2025 experience, including our service and some activity metrics. I'll talk a little bit about some of our key achievements for 2025, a little bit about our community partnerships and our outreach efforts. I'll provide you all with a workforce development update, highlight some team recognitions, and then I'll close out with a financial summary for last year.

So starting out here with some service performance metrics. The team continued to manage a high volume of activity last year while maintaining strong answer time performance and high public satisfaction ratings. Answering a little more than 294,000 calls in total, of which more than 169,000 of those were nine eleven calls, accounting for 58% of our overall call volume, and leaving just a little more than 122,000 non emergency calls and then a little over 3,000 online non emergency submissions, which is something new we added in late twenty twenty four. So that makes up our call request mix there. As for answer time performance, we measure ourselves to a couple of national benchmarks there.

And I'm pleased to say we're hitting those benchmarks, answering 98% of our nine eleven calls in twenty seconds or less and 96% within fifteen seconds or less. Customer satisfaction remained steady at 97%, which we measure through some customer satisfaction surveys, something newly implemented in 2025. Since implementing in the spring of last year, we've seen a steady 43% survey response rate to that. As for CAD, computer aided dispatch activity, we had more than 422,000 total documented CAD events entered in 2025. That is a 4.9% increase from '24.

Of those, a little more than 337,000 were considered billable events. Just a side note here for anyone who's not aware with our governance and our operation. Our JPA and our governance model has deemed certain types of activity as non billable. Typically, that's based on the level of support provided by Dakota nine eleven resources. So, some of those lighter types of activity usually generated by field responders, things that are like follow-up activity details or premise checks are typically not billable.

So the billable activity making up about 80% of our total documented activity for the year. Our total calls, again, a little more than 294,000 that we took in, represent about 70% of our overall activity. So in other words, seven out of every 10 documented CAD events that we have began with a call received. Taking a closer look here at some of our top CAD incidents for 'twenty five, starting first with the fire and EMS incident types. The top five incident types there are made up 52% of the total fire EMS activity.

The remaining 48% there comes from 73 other fire and EMS incident types. You can see that the top five there consists of medical type calls and then commercial and residential fire alarms. On the law enforcement side, the top five incident types made up 51% of the total law incidents, with the remaining 49% coming from 84 other possible incident types. Topping the list for them was traffic stops, premise checks, nine eleven hang ups, suspicious activity, and follow-up activity. All right, moving on to our priorities and goals for 2025.

So last year's work was really organized around five key strategic goals for us: improving business efficiency, strengthening operational efficiency and emergency response, supporting our strong workplace culture, making Dakota nine eleven a great place to work, ensuring continuity of critical services, and then maintaining the highest standards of service. So a few key achievements here to share with you, really with an emphasis on modernization of service delivery. Starting out last fall, we implemented our AI attendant to help triage non emergency calls coming into the center. Since implementing this in the fall of last year, we've seen a consistent diversion of about 33% of our non emergency calls. And this is due to redirecting callers to the desired resources.

For example, previously, a common request that we would get would be for a copy of a police report. In this case now, the attendant will recognize that and transfer directly to the city they need to make that request with, bypassing the need to speak with a telecommunicator and potentially wait on hold for that activity as well. So we're finding this to be incredibly helpful with alleviating a little bit of the pressure definitely during those high call volume times. In the same vein of working to improve operational efficiency, we launched a public education campaign last year promoting the use of 911 for emergencies with a when in doubt dial 911 message with that. This lines us up with the national best practices on the use of 911.

At the same time, we promoted the use of some of our non emergency alternatives. So our non emergency telephone number and then that new online service request option that we implemented in late twenty twenty four. Also, as noted earlier in the presentation, we're pleased to share that we have been gathering community feedback with these community satisfaction surveys since the spring of twenty twenty five. These short two question surveys follow certain interactions or cat incidents and just engage the community to provide that timely and specific feedback to our team. Since implementing, again, we've been having a 97% overall satisfaction rating, tracking with a 43% survey response rate.

All right, a couple more key achievements here to highlight. Last year, we were also able to implement a platform that provided our team with live 911 call transcription, keyword alerts, and AI supported summaries, as well as real time language recognition and translation. This platform has really been a game changer for nine eleven. It's an incredible tool for them to have at their disposal. We're finding those AI supported summaries and keyword alerts really help improve situational awareness in the room for the supervisor and the entire team.

A couple of success stories to share with you here are examples. Obviously, numerous ones when it comes to language recognition and translation. I can't understate really just how incredibly valuable that is for us to immediately recognize the language and begin that communication rather than having to wait for an interpreter to get on the line. So, very helpful in that sense. On the transcription side of things, an example comes to mind recently where we had a telecommunicator taking a chaotic disturbance call, really focused in on gathering what they need from the caller and trying to support them.

While they were doing that, the live transcription picked up on some background conversation and the mention of weapons involved and gang related activity as well. Would not have really been detectable to this call taker initially, but thanks to this AI keyword alerting, brought it to their attention. They were able to let the responders know prior to arrival. So, a huge win for officer safety there too. I also want to share that we were able to enhance our next gen mapping.

We've got several mapping tools at our disposal, but last year we were able to integrate the Axon body camera locations into our dispatch map. Typically, officer location is available with the CAD mobile, so it's really a vehicle location. This allows us to really see the responders actual location outside of the vehicle. So another win for responder safety there. So last year really represented some meaningful advancement when it comes to next gen communications and emergency technology capabilities.

We also made it easier for the public to access the right services through updated messaging and through our non emergency messaging campaign. Moving on here to talk a little bit about our community partnership and outreach efforts. So in addition to our core operations, our team remained very active and engaged in outreach and partnerships there, participating in more than 30 public events, things like career fairs, city and county events, safety programs. We delivered numerous presentations to get out there and educate on nine eleven services, what we do, as well as to recruit and promote nine eleven as a profession. Along with that, supporting our local communities is really important to our team as well.

We were thrilled last year to adopt two families for the holidays and to have raised more than 2,200 food items and donated those to the local three 60 communities as a charity holiday food drive effort. All right. Shifting the focus here to a workforce development update. Like many emergency communication centers, staffing remains a challenge for us. But we continued investing heavily in training and professional development for our team.

In 2025, we were authorized 55 full time public safety telecommunicator positions. While we strive for that, we averaged 51 telecommunicators throughout the year and closed the year out with 49. Our average five year turnover experience is 21%. This is in line with industry norms and what you see with nine eleven centers out there right now. So recruitment and retention remain a priority.

I imagine this won't be changing anytime soon for us, and we continue to focus on anything we can do there to improve that experience. Our team is engaged in regional and industry efforts, focusing on things like professional certifications, training standardization, telecommunicator wellness and resiliency, and then some longer game options as well are happening to improve the retirement benefits and the appeal of this as a long term career type position. So those are some efforts that we're working on to help improve that recruitment and retention efforts. Some training and development highlights here to touch on. Last year, our team put in more than 6,500 training hours with new telecommunicators.

So a busy year for training. We also had numerous continuing education and development opportunities that we were able to offer our staff. We sent all operations staff through a comprehensive training focused on situational awareness, behavior analysis, decision making, and resilience. We sent numerous staff members through supervisory and leadership training opportunities through our industry associations APCO and NENA. And that was to support newly promoted staff as well as some of our potential future recruits there as well.

We were able to send five staff members through FEMA's National Incident Management Systems, ICS, All Hazards Communications Unit Leader Training. That's a mouthful. It's basically advanced training and certification for us to be able to support complex and large scale communications incidents. So we now have five team members that are working on getting that to us. We have three that have the certification, and we're working on three more.

And finally, the entire leadership team participated in a one day workshop rooted in the Brene Brown Dare to Lead Principles, where we focused on courage and accountability in leadership. It was fantastic. Highlighting some team recognition here. We always love to do that. We had a highly successful year when it came to team recognition, handing out more than 40 plus team recognitions and merit awards, including four life saving awards and one successful baby delivery awarded with the Stork Award.

Yes. That's exciting.

It is exciting.

Amongst that as well, we had two telecommunicators receive congressional awards for their lifesaving action in providing telephone CPR. So it was a fantastic year for team recognition. All right. And to wrap up today's update with a financial summary. In 2025, we took in $12,800,000 a little more than that in revenue.

The mix of how that breaks down, 88.6% of our revenue comes from member fees. 9.5% is funded through the nine zero one state funding. And just 1.9% comes from other sources, investment income and small grants. On the expenses side of things, we had closed the year out with $11,900,000 total expenditures. That includes our capital expenses.

The operating cost mix of how that breaks down, the bulk of it going to personnel, 77%. The other 23% supporting pretty much everything else that we do. 22.8% going to contractual other. That includes things like technology, facility, and contracted services. And then commodities, our smallest category there at just 0.2% funds things like our uniforms or operating office supplies.

One note too on the capital expenditures, as I noted, included in the $11,900,000 total expenditures, we had just under $292,000 capital expenditures to support IT infrastructure updates, IT servers, firewalls, and a new data logging solution. So that wraps up my summary for you. What questions do you have for me?

Members of the board, questions, comments? Commissioner Josti.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks for the report. First of all, I think it's somewhat enlightening and fascinating on how powerful to hear the positive impacts of AI, especially with handling 33% non emergency and to be able to overlay it on a call like you explained. But would you the one thing you stated, seven out of 10 calls originate of your cat events, seven out of 10 originate with the call. Has that changed over the years or is that pretty consistent?

I think that's remained pretty consistent.

And then, if I may, Text to 911, are we utilizing that yet?

Yes, yes. That's been in place for a number of years at Dakota nine eleven. We include that in our 911 call counts.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you.

Madam Chair, Commissioner Hayman Rollins. Thank you. Thank you. Your presentation was great. And on the workforce development, I was kind of piqued my interest. Are you working with Dakota County Technical College?

We are not working with the technical This has come up before. It's something that we're interested in pursuing. There's been a number of efforts over the years with nine eleven local agencies working with their community colleges. We've seen programs come and fizzle. We'd love to keep putting energy into something like that. So that's something we may consider here down the road.

It something Madam that you'd like me to Chair? Is something that you would like me to share at the board meeting for the workforce development? I'm willing to do that if that's Absolutely. Okay.

I think that would be a great connection. We would appreciate that. And we can start to talk about what that might look like. And some of it would be contingent on resources and what we can bring to the table. But it goes beyond Dakota nine eleven too. I would say we could talk with our regional partners as well. I mean, recruitment and retention and staffing is a regional priority. I think that would be incredibly helpful.

Yes. Well, thank you, Madam Chair. Michael Behrendt, who is the president of Inver Hills and Dakota Technical College, is on our board.

Great. Thank you for offering.

You're welcome. Commissioner Slavik.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank you again for the presentation. It's wonderful information. And I can tell you being involved for so long operationally it's striving for excellence and getting better each year. So thank you for all the good work that is done internally. But those on the board here know that this organization also is a little complicated when it comes to its governance and that many partners from police, fire to city and county partners. There's quite the governance structure with that. Can you give any update on that wasn't any of your slides? How's that been going? I'm hearing it's improving, but how's that been going for the last twenty twenty five?

For governance?

Governance, yes.

Yes, sure. Absolutely. I mean, it's been moving along pretty smoothly. I would say Our governance model, I think, is well established. And it was when I arrived in 2023, to throw that out there. But that's been going well. We have our different layers of government. So we have our governance, excuse me. We have our operational committees that help us focus on the day to day and running the operations. So we have law and fire operations committees that meet separately.

That's a really key connection for us to make sure that we're meeting our stakeholder needs there. From there, we have our executive committee layer, and that's made up of our city administrators and leaders that come together to help support our operation. We meet quarterly. And then we have our Board of Directors, which is our elected officials from all of our member agencies and also meet quarterly there. So I'd say things are moving along really well and pretty efficiently there.

Not much else to update on there unless you have a specific question.

Madam Chair, I don't other than the that would want I know that's been a concern of this Board for a number of years just because it was well established but challenging. And I do want to say that in the last couple of years it feels like we found the right group within governance that all of the partners not necessarily always agreeing. I would just commend you on you being able to rally the troops altogether on that. So thank you for your good work and being able to moving forward on a complicated but very successful organizational structure.

Well, thank you for your support on that too.

Absolutely. Thank you. Commissioner Atkins?

I guess, thank you Madam Chair. And I would just echo what Commissioner Slavik said. Judge it based on how often I'm hearing from folks about it. I, whatever magic formula you have is obviously working really well. You're strong. And it's appreciated. When we when we don't hear about it from our our local partners, that generally tells me things are going pretty well. And so I I appreciate that. I do have a a actual question, though, and that is the we'll see if I can remember it from the presentation. I think it was 98% Mhmm.

Of calls were answered within twenty seconds, 90 I'm sorry, I flipped it, but it was within fifteen seconds or twenty seconds. My question is, and that sounds terrific actually, especially when you're thinking about these operators, telecommunicators that are taking on all of these calls at one time. Is there a way to I think you referenced other communities or other entities across the country. I assume we compare well. Are we really speedy? Are we average? Are we slower than most?

For meeting those answer time standards?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, we meet the national standards and benchmarks there. I really can't speak to how we compare to agencies across the country other than we're meeting those standards. I know there's several that struggle to meet standards and many that exceed them too. So I'm very satisfied with our ratings being at 98% to answer within twenty seconds. You have that right. Good memory there. And then it's 96% within fifteen seconds or less. So we're tracking, I would say, on the higher end with that, with those high percentages. But I can't really speak to how we compare to all other PSAPs. There isn't a metric that really captures that.

And I just Madam Chair, I'm My we hear about it when it and it's not been in Dakota County, but I've heard about places across the country where they're not meeting that standard, not even coming close. And so, you know, we you know, the grass is oftentimes greener in other places. I don't think that's the case here. I mean, it's my sense is these are really strong numbers, really quick response time, mostly based on the nightmarish things that you hear in other place where people call 911, they don't get an answer in other parts of the country. So it's very much appreciated. And I take it for granted that folks are getting their calls answered so rapidly.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you add on top of that the fact that we provide those pre arrival instructions, the medical and fire dispatch pre arrival instructions, that's a time commitment. And so often that does impact answer time standards because you have someone locked in on a call. So very proud of the team. We are, I think, as you said, the high end of meeting those standards. And implementing tools like we have with the AI attendant to help us triage those non emergency calls helps us support those answer time standards as well, so we can focus on the 09:11 calls that are coming in.

Thanks. Very good. Thank you. Additional comments or questions? Heidi. Thank you, Madam Chair. Heidi, I

would like to know, is there a discussion going on among Dakota nine eleven and your colleague organizations about anything towards regionalization? What kind of discussion happens about that?

That's a great

question, Heidi. Yes. There's lots of conversations that are happening. I wouldn't say official conversations that I'm involved in by any means. But I know talking to my peers at the regional level that there is interest in exploring what that would look like. We share a lot of the same struggles and challenges, costs when it comes to nine eleven service delivery. So I know that there is conversations happening and there's interest at least in exploring what that would look like to varying levels. Regionalization can scare some folks when they hear that. But what we're really interested right now in our area is regionalization with technology cost sharing. So that's something that we are talking about through our local Metropolitan Emergency Services Board.

We've prioritized, you know, studies and assessments that look at that and the cost sharing benefits that we could have from regionalization. Yeah.

Thank you. Great question. Seeing no other comments from the board, I thank you for your presentation. It's always really great to hear the growth and success of Dakota nine eleven. And most importantly, to be able to say that Dakota County residents can count on nine one one.

As Commissioner Atkins said, we want to be sure that somebody is there on the other end of the phone during people's most trying times in their lives very often. And appreciate the growing efficiencies and the work that you are doing to support staff in their professional growth and ability to do their jobs. So congrats.

Well, thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you for having me. Appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Thank All right. The next item on our regular agenda is to go into a closed session for the mid year review of the county manager, which is an annual event. And before we do that, we will go through our interagency reports and our county manager's report before we go into that closed session. So we can start with

our interagency reports with the Association of Minnesota Counties. Commissioner Haman Roland. Thank you, Madam Chair. So this week we'll see a continuation of floor debates and on the remaining omnibus bills. And this evening, there is a legislative commission on pensions and retirements.

It's set to meet in it could be the last time that they meet and to put together an outline for the omnibus pension bill. So far, as I understand, there are no budget targets or agreements that are yet to be made. And on Monday, we'll have a virtual legislative update from AMC at 09:00. So,

thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Any other updates from AMC? Seeing and hearing none. Metropolitan Emergency Services Board.

Meets Okay. Next

Minnesota Inner County Association, we also meet next Wednesday, but work is as Commissioner Hemingillan said, our partnership with AMC is strong, we continue to work on the legislative agenda that was presented. Metropolitan Mosquito Control District Commission, spring is here. Yes, it is.

Thank you,

Madam Chair. This is I have a little bit of a longer report than usual. They introduced new staff members, and there's a handful. And the thing that impressed me the most was the level of education. They all most of them started out as seasonals.

There's a bachelor degree, PhD, two master's degrees, one in entomology. And I've got a none of them couldn't have been more than 30 years old. So I it was just incredibly impressive to see that level of education at the Mosquito Control District. We received a legislative update from Kim Scott and Peg Larson. They are working with Liberty Tire.

Tires is still a big deal as far as being a home for breeding for mosquitoes. So they're looking at possible future legislation. Not sure what that looks like, but they're starting the conversation. And there are also mosquito control hasn't had any renovations done in well, not since I've been on the board, and it's But been a really long they are looking there's bonding bills in for renovation of the lab, which is incredibly important because they do disease control. And there were conversations.

We spoke with them, and I said because they were talking about connecting with more with public health, but on the state level. And I put in a plug, I said, you know, you really need to contact the counties. I go, because every county board is public health board, and our public health's health are the boots on the ground. So I and there was a lot of head nods there. So there are and then the Maple Grove Building, there is a a senate file senate file fifty two fifty.

Limer was the authorization. The house file hasn't dropped yet as of yesterday. And the bonding bill for the lab is senate file 5,254 and house file 5,100. And I think that's just kind of a quick overview of what went on. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anything else from mosquito control? The building is vintage. I can we can all attest to that.

And moved in. And Melisa moved in. Yes.

Saw. Great meeting too. The and I can just tag on to that. So Melsa has had building challenges for many years. And there we got a new executive director and a new executive director of mosquito control, and these two put their heads together to figure out how to leverage resources together. And really impressed with this partnership and I'm excited for it.

Madam, cheers. The only bummer about Nelson leaving is that was Charles Schultz's elementary school. Yeah. That's how old the building is.

Yeah. That's very special. Excellent. Next up, we have the National Association of County Officers.

Madam Chair, just want to remind everybody that the NACO applications for residential appointments is due on May 8. And I want to just give a kudos. I am so impressed with all the leaders in this area who are all the partnerships and efficiencies that we can create together. It gives me hope for the future. Thank you.

Anything else on NACO? Hearing nothing next, we got the Transportation Advisory Board, Commissioner Holberg.

No meetings since our last meeting.

All right. In Harry Potter, they call that mischief managed. Vermillion River Watershed. Thank

you, Madam Chair. Vermillion did meet the end

of

April. The highlight of the meeting was we did receive a grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control for part of our watershed plan for the study on kind of the evolving climate and what that is doing to the watershed and the river in particular and what best practices we could do to make improvements. So, we got a good chunk of that covered and awarded the contract for that work to begin.

Yes. Thank you. Workforce Development Board Commissioner Thank Neiman you, Madam Chair. May is hire a veteran Month. And the twentieth Annual Veterans Career Fair is Wednesday, May 20 from two to six And it will be at the Heritage Center of Brooklyn Center.

The event will feature 100 employers, resume review assistance, interview preparation help, a complimentary LinkedIn photography station, and service providers offering assistance for veterans and their families. All U. S. Military veterans, current service members, members of the National Guard and Reserves, military spouses, and Gold Star families are invited to attend this event. And I just want to say we are so grateful for your service, veterans and military, and hope you can take advantage of this opportunity.

Thank you. We

can move now to the county manager's report unless any commission other commissioners have an update. Commissioner?

Got one brief thing, and it's just

I wonder what it could be.

Well, what?

Libraries? No. Yeah. Library? Oh, okay.

It's gonna be that too, but that's not you weren't guessing right. So the so I've got two things actually. Two things. But the now that you've reminded me. First, you all know about the the Wentworth reopening. Wentworth library reopening is tomorrow night. Folks are pretty excited. Kids are lined up, I guess, for days to get back in, and I I hope you all can join us. But I also come carrying nice tidings from what was described by County Attorney Keene. There was a thing in West St.

Paul, and I stumbled across Jim Baxtrom, Sheriffs Gutmanson, Sheriffs Leslie and Bellows, as well as Sheriff Lico. Something like five hundred years of experience or something like As Kathy described it though, the Mount Rushmore of sheriffs and attorneys. And every one of them Sheriff Lico's. It was. That that Sheriff Lico's line. But it was so nice seeing them. They all send their their their kindest regards. They all look very happy and relaxed, I might add. Oh, yes. But it was it was nice running into those folks in West Saint Paul last night, they were they were kind enough to to say nice things about the board. They miss us, but they're not coming back to work.

Well, thank you for that update and and for those greetings. Any other commissioner updates?

Hearing none. Oh, I was gonna just say Commissioner Hayman Ross. They they have they know that we have a very competent sheriff. So There you go. They don't wanna come back.

They don't need to come back. Yes. Mischief has managed. Yes. Sorry. I just saw the Harry Potter play. We're gonna move over to our county manager and get our county manager's report for the

meeting. You, madam chair. Today, on your consent agenda, you passed a resolution to highlight Older Americans Month in Dakota County on your consent agenda. And today, I'd like to use my time to have Gil Acevedo, who is an assistant county manager who oversees corrections public health for veteran services. And he's going to speak about this just a little bit.

Welcome to the board, Gil. And looking forward to hearing what you've got to present.

Yeah, good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about Older Americans Month. This month, Older Americans, is Older American Month. We celebrate every May. Older Americans Month was established in 1963 to recognize the many contributions of older adults, highlight trends, and reaffirm commitment to serving the communities.

In 2026, our theme is Champion Your Health. Focuses on prevention, wellness, and personal responsibilities, a cornerstone of healthy aging. Just as a side note, the state demographer predicts or projects that in 2035, we will be at about 9133 Dakota residents the age of 65 or older. That's an increase of about 40% since 2020. Just want to highlight a few contributions that the county as we work together to provide services.

We really take a health in all policy approach in working with older adults. You see community, us working with libraries and our social services, public health, and just across all of our areas of work. One area that I'd like to highlight is alternative care, elderly waiver, and essential community supports. This is designated to help individuals to remain independent living at their own home or apartments and or assisted living. And you have to be age 65 or older.

And our assessors will go out and do the initial assessments. You are very well familiar with our Ment Choices work in social services. They do the initial assessments. Once they complete the assessment, individual will be eligible for either alternative care, elderly waiver, or community supports as a whole. And so, one of the things that happens with that is that once they complete the assessment, they'll then be eligible for case management.

And then once case managers assess and get all of the services set up, then they transition over to a managed care organization. So our team does the work initially. In the presentation on the handout, you can see some data there. In 2025, there were six sixty three initial assessments completed for individuals 65 or older for various programs. In 2025, there were 165 individuals open to elderly waiver in Dakota County and then transferred to managed care organizations as a whole.

In 2026, there were two ninety individuals open to alternative care case management and two fifty five open to elderly waiver, and eight for essential care essential community supports case management. This is as up to now, the dates that we have the information that we have currently. We also have work in public health, our Community for Lifetime Falls Prevention Program. As individuals age, the risk of falls increases. And so we are concerned that there's education and awareness around falls prevention.

Our community for a lifetime partners with various fire departments such as West Saint Paul, South Saint Paul, Burnsville, Eagan. We recently added Hastings and Rosemount as fire departments that are partnering with us in this education for older adults. As a result of that, in 2025, there were 110 referrals made from the fire departments to our public health team and 73 clients contacted by community health workers so that they can provide that level of education related to false prevention and also case management. And then one other area that I just want to mention very briefly is our Gold Dakota travel training program. This is where we spend time working with adults to learn how to use apps so that they can request rideshare training.

In Dakota County in 2025, we had 73 people attend. Three rideshare training in Dakota County. The training is designed to teach older adults how to use Rideshare as a transportation option. So with that, Madam Chair, is just, again, the work that we do crosses all of our areas in Dakota County. And it's very important that when we work with older adults that we take time to honor their time and commitment to our communities. So with that, Madam Chair, County Manager.

Thank you so much, Gil. Questions or comments for Gil? No, I really appreciate the information that you shared, and it's been important for me this year to make sure that we are stopping and taking note of the important ways that our Dakota County staff impact the lives of people in our community at all stages. And recognizing that we are a county that is aging, that our 65 population is outpacing our under five population, which wasn't always the case. And it changes the way that we need to reach out into our community and make sure that people are safe, secure, and happy and healthy in our communities.

And really appreciate the work that is being done to make that happen and the partnerships with folks like DARTs and others. So, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. You. Thank

you, Heidi, for

sharing that time and that update. Happy Older Adults Month. Anything else with regard to our agenda? With that, we can entertain a motion to recess into closed session. And so I would be looking for a motion to the resolution that we close the county board meeting and recess into Conference Room 3A for a closed session.

Second.

There's a motion. We have a second. Thank you so much. We can take a voice vote on that. All in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. And any opposed, no. With that, we are in recess. Thank you so much.