Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Good day everyone. It's April 28th at 11:01 p.m. or A.M. and we will begin this work session of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. We are going to start with a presentation of findings regarding the Heritage Museum led by Brena Smith, our library director. Welcome, Brena. Thank you. Okay. Oh, thank you. Okay. Um, how do I get it going? There it is. Uh, a little There we go.

There we go. Okay. Um, okay. So, uh, welcome. We're gonna um so this has been a project that's obviously it's been kind of in progress for several years. I think we're ready at this point to like call it or not. Um so we thought we would just go over a few things. We know that we probably went over this stuff with you in our last work session last year, but we thought it'd be nice to go over this stuff again. Kind of the advantages of the library taking over the management um of the of the heritage museum. um we are in a um you know a good position. We have the expertise to kind of oversee the um preservation and conservation of its collections. Uh um we you know while in the the uh civic cent's bylaws it is said that if it if they dissolve or if they're unable to care for the collection it goes to History Colorado. And history Colorado is a little bit of a wild card. U we don't know if they want it. they might not want it. Um, and even if they do, we don't know if they will, you know, take care of the things that we find important as a community. Um, what they may see is like this is not important, maybe really important to our history. They may not know. They don't really once they take something over, they don't really work with the local communities

as much as we would like or as much as you think. Let's put it that way. So you know so we would be protecting our local history. Um we are also we have the expertise and experience for community outreach partnership uh um programming all that stuff like we already do that stuff. This would be add-on um in terms of like leading that um and you know if we were able to fix the boiler we would be able to do year round programming instead of just you know summer stuff which is what they do now. uh um we already manage a space that you know is available to community you know so we that's already in our wheelhouse so that's just kind of the you know just getting everybody back up to speed. Uh um so the expenses these are and I want to preface this all by saying this is you know these are Jen did most of the research on the expenses and you know these are best guesses. Um, we kept this slide a kind of 30,000 foot view. If you want to get in the weeds and pull up the spreadsheet that we created, happy to do that. Um, but we're guessing, you know, probably about, you know, 260 uh um a year. I mean, this is another department essentially.

Uh um again, best guesses. Uh um would you like to get into the weeds? It's in our packet.

Okay. So, you can you can you're fine reviewing that on your own. Okay. So, we don't need to get we don't need to get into the weeds. Um, and again, all all best guesses. Um, this is potential revenue. You know, there's already membership fees for the um for the civic center. Um, I think that can be leveraged more. There's entrance fees that probably not been raised in a quarter of a century. Um, if we're able to create it as an event space, it has the potential to be rental. Um, and then there's grants and potential donations. Uh, um, again, these are I did not add any numbers to this because these are all, you know, these are just I do think that these are areas that could be leveraged.

Mhm. How much? I don't know. It depends on who's running it. Yeah. Um, but is this bigger than just the Heritage Museum building itself? I don't Well, it' be the oper It'd be the operation. Oh, creating Yeah, I think there's I think there's potential upstairs to create an event space. Oh, okay. Yeah. And um so and this is where I'm going to hand stuff over to Michael. Um we did a we did a walk through last summer. Here are some of the things that we know of. That back wall is scary. Yeah.

I mean, we're not going to we're not going to gloss over it. We know that there's problems with this building. Yeah. Um I did walk, you know, that back wall and if we could keep water from getting there, we wouldn't have they wouldn't have that problem. That would take some partnership with the uphill neighbors. Yeah. With the neighbor because it's like sitted in between the two and I think it just fills in down there and runs towards that building cuz it's downhill. Yeah. Um the boiler I don't know if the boiler could be repaired. They said it couldn't. I don't know if that's just the boiler part or the whole system. I mean, because the radiators and stuff could be leaking. Yeah.

Um, best option for that would be to add electricity to that building. I think the pipes they they were explaining that once the pipes have sat empty or unpressurized for so long that reressurizing the system could like open up a can of worms as far as Yeah. You find leaks all over just because of you know extension and contraction of the metal. Yeah. went wrong, you know, and stuff like that. And, you know, seals do break seals at some point, too.

So, HVAC instead of boiler. Um, anything else you want to add? Well, obviously with you know, the water could be mold in the building, especially in those wet places. Um, there was a little bit of stuff with the windows when I saw it, but not much. It was mainly in that back side cuz I could get up and actually touch them and see them. But other than that, the roof seemed like it was in pretty good condition. Looked like it had been replaced, you know, within the last 20 years. Okay. So, um, they said there was any leaking problems at all. What was that? I don't think they said that there were any

I don't think so. I think it's got to point. So um so when we met last summer, you asked for us to come up with something revenue neutral. We are unable to do that. That is not a possibility.

Um you know, we talked about it. We thought about it. I mean, it's I I mean it's at what degree do you want to do it? Sure, we could try to do it and just, you know, take over the building and to have us try to run the museum. I don't think that's very efficient or very, you know, I don't think that's good for the collections. I think getting, you know, a professional um, you know, archavist, museum person in there would be, you know, that's really the best option if we want to do a well, which we like to do stuff well. And you do do things.

Thank you. I appreciate that. uh um that's how much it's going to cost to do well. Uh um you know the you know the the potential you know revenue streams um yes I think that can be leveraged. I think it would take 5 to 8 years to get that stuff in place. Yeah.

Um maybe down the road that could be you know more self-sufficient operation to start off. I don't I just don't see uh I don't see that possibility. So um you know so I think at this point it's up to you know it's up to you three if you you know want us to move forward or not. We are prepared either way. If you say no great we're moving on. If you say yes great we will move forward. So um do you know the civics the civic center do you know what their timeline is? I mean I think they're fine handing over that building and the operations whatever.

Okay. So that is my that's my understanding. Yeah. But if we decide not to jump into that swimming pool Mhm. what happens? What's their timeline on like being able to keep the collection of valuable local artifacts local versus the state taking over? I don't know cuz that's that's the one thing I that would be really unfortunate to happen from what I gathered when we were there doing that walkthrough tour and Yeah, there'd be enough time to remove collections if we had another place to put them. The landing museum. Yeah. No, no, no.

They don't do local history. That's throw ideas out. Um, you know, and it's uh I mean, sure, we don't know. The point is, we don't know. Again, we don't know if they'd want it. You know, we don't know if they'd want it. Yeah. Um, I have not met them before. I don't know. I haven't. Yeah. So, it's been a long time. Haven't they Didn't they get here a long time ago? I don't know. Thank you so much for doing all this work. Mhm.

But yeah, I think we're at the point where it's like, you know, we've put a lot of uh I don't know if quite blood, sweat, and tears, but close, you know, over the last couple years. And I think we're ready to like if we're moving forward, let's do it. If we're not, we just we want the we want it off our plate kind of, you know, like cuz we keep talking about it and talking about it and we've talked about it for I think we're on year four. And we still help them in Yeah, that will continue. Yeah, we will continue to support them, you know, in any way we can, in any way we have been. That won't stop. Um, do you know what revenue they do generate? Uh, membership membership fees and and entrance fees. Do you know what that number is?

I don't like we've asked them for but we've asked for a lot of things. If they're not profit, shouldn't they are record? Yeah. Yeah, they should be. It's only the public record. Stuff is posted somewhere with the state just your tax returns. Yeah. So, we could ask again and get that information for you. No, no, no. Okay. Well, just right off the bat, there's a be a large capital outlay just to Could be as could be lead. Um the mold part I don't know.

Michael, do do you think there's a lotus moves? Especially after boiling stuff for I remember when it was closed and that was going on. Yeah, this isn't a cheap project. I mean, I mean, I'm not going to I mean, it's not. We all know, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's an investment on the on the part of for sure. And it's just a matter of if you feel, you know, we have the, you know, it's up to you. I care about this. It's a value, but it's not a priority, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think so.

Yeah. I mean, if we had deep pockets, you know, if we weren't in a in a situation where there's, you know, serious economic issues on the horizon and, you know, things being thrown at us from the state and the federal level and the county is just not in a position to take on more. We approach the city. They don't have money. I don't I mean, I could I mean, I've never talked to Lori about it. I could ask her, but I don't I don't think they have the capacity. And they used to own it. I mean, they owned it. I mean, it was city library when it started. Yeah. And it moved over to the county in 1946.

Sounds good. Yeah. That number. And then the civic center bound. So I think my my only request would be that if you all hear from your relationships with the civic association, if you hear of anything changing or their timeline shrinking, I would want to know about it just as a civically engaged. But um yeah, it's not an Yeah, I didn't think so. But I thought we would just tie a little bow on it. No, I love it. Put it away. I love it. And I loved doing the little tour last year. It was really exciting to

It's always exciting to dream and old buildings allow us to dream. So, I'm glad you all did the work. I'm appreciative. And I wish this was something we could say yes to. We understand. I did not accept. No, I know you didn't. But reading through the packet, I was like, "Okay, cool. We're going to have the conversation. You know what we're going to do, but we're going to have the conversation." Yeah. Awesome. Okay, moving on. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That's you. Um,

we do have that legislative next up next, but I was wondering if there was a couple things without having the lobbying team in the room if you guys wanted to talk about possible positions we would take as a county just us before they got started. We have some time before they join. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We wanted to chat about some things now as far as the next agenda item. Sure. Um, so I am still learning how this whole state level thing works and it's vast and complex and okay our legislator

postpone indefinitely is like on basically everything that jumps out at me as like oh here's something that I could get behind or here's something I would be really against and then you're like oh wait postpone. Um, but I I wanted with your expertise on this subject, which is is definitely it's minimal. Well, from what from my seat, it's it's respectable. I'm like, wow, you've been putting a lot of time and effort into this and probably know a lot more than I do about it. Um, does that mean like it can get carried over to next year or like if there's counties who are like, "Hey, we

want to see something happen with this that they can take it back up again." No, the committee would have to get it back onto their agenda to re vote on it. And pretty much once a committee says they're postponing this indefinitely, it means that they can't come to a consensus that would bring it out of committee and even onto the floor. Okay. So, so we would have to do a lot of lobbying and I don't think we we don't know enough people. So, we would have to I think we'd have to like really shift what we want our lobbying team to do. That would be my impression. The What did you What were you excited about though? So, we can talk about it.

Oh, there's a couple that I liked. the um some of like my little pet uh passions were like motor vehicle stunt drive and takeover penalties. Oh, that was really interesting conversation at CCI actually. Um are there a couple commissioners who used to like drag race and have gotten many fines for illegal riding? Really? Yeah, that's a hood to listen to. Interesting. Especially those Eastern Plans folks. Oh, yeah. They got a lot of road flag straight.

Well, it's not as um social media worthy, but I know that that is kind of something that is still in its infancy, but definitely there's a small aspect of that happening here in this community for sure, Leadville Junction. And um if you sleep if you sleep with your windows open at night, you can listen to it all night long. If you're a light sleeper, it'll keep you awake and you off. So um it was something I was like, you know, on one hand, I'm like, it sucks that people will be kept awake by this stuff at all hours of night. On the other hand, I'm like, well, people should have I mean, it's not like they're

they're just generally youths out having fun, enjoying their cars they worked on, and you know, and I'm like, how do you like we like come up with some local solution? I was like, okay, here's here's late hours, the airport's open to do track racing like a few nights a week or something. Yeah, I think that's what a lot of communities do do. And the commissioners were actually make a designated spot or something. But one of the things that they were talking about because it's such a huge deal in urban areas, it's more dangerous. Um they were talking about how what a huge bummer it was that Jeffco County commissioners shut down. Shut down.

Yeah. Um it's reopening in a different spot. But is it really? Yeah. Oh man. Yeah, that makes sense. High high plains raceways. Yeah. Anyway, it's the sheriff's association was really wanted that bill to pass and I think the commission I think that CCI in general I think we were either in an end or support for it but if we want to work with Keith to figure out a place where we can do that safely here. I think that's a local solution we can come up with. Yeah. But they were specifically talking about um increasing penalties.

Yeah. which I think is what I've seen other states do that I have some disagreements with. I really wanted to uh dig into and find out what their plan was was when they impound vehicles. Yeah. A lot of times they'll go to the crusher and watching these like m nice machines get turned into scrap metal. I'm like they should be auctioning those off like at least you know then the the person who lost it could get first bid or what you know. I don't know, but like totally agree. You know that that's a revenue source. It's just getting sent to the first. They do the same thing with um imports that are in violation of the 25-y year import rule. They crush them.

I'm like $100,000 fees and stuff. It's like crazy. Well, Andy, I didn't follow that bill.

I didn't follow it out of like in committee, but if you want to ask Elizabeth why why it got tabled, that'd be good to know. What was the opportunity? also reach out to I just wanted to talk to you guys about a couple of these little things that were not um some well some of them were more uh would have bigger effect I feel like from what I'm understanding in the language I'm reading uh usually just the summaries but um would affect us here locally especially with with children um and and at risk kids and safety and child welfare felt like um I'm looking for it right now. Uh it was the uh the kinship one where um was family stability and kinship care HB261314.

Mhm. Um and it the the the headline of it isn't what I was looking at. It was further down. Um it wasn't the addressing non-compliance with parenting time orders. Further down, it says it prioritizes kinship placements when children are removed from their homes. And I feel like if that was something that um would allow Laura more flexibility with some of our issues um with foster care shortages here.

Well, I think I guess I think it's going to my impression is that it's going to pass. Yeah, this one's not not tabled or not postponed. It's uh assigned introduced in Senate, assigned to Health and Human Services. I don't see Yeah. that it's gone to the governor's office yet, but No, but the impression from the lobbyists was that it will pass. Like it's been stripped down enough that it's going to get through both chambers. So, when I said yesterday like nothing that's going to affect us, I meant like not in a harmful way that is potentially going to keep moving forward. Okay. Gotcha.

Yeah, that'll be great. It expands doesn't expand kinship to like great grandparents. Uh, it just said started scrolling again. There's so many. I I'm pretty sure that's the one that expands kinship care to mean great grandparents and grandparents as part of the tree. Okay. In their summary, it prioritizes kinship placements when children are removed from their homes, which it already does. And that bill expands kinship in terms of like who gets priority in terms of placement to include great grandparents as part of the kinship tree.

So that's already a policy. Okay. is to prioritize kinship care. Okay. But um a lot of people under the current law, great grandparents were not included in that. Okay. But it creates a foster care prevention services pilot program which was self. I think that got stripped. Oh, because it had a fiscal note. Okay. Um, again, we can ask those expanding the Cottage Food Act 1033.

That's the only one that I think might actually impact the county. My impression is that it's probably going to pass. Yeah. And it will it'll be good for our community. It'll be a little hard for public health. Wow. CDPHE um I think was either in a monitor or oppose position because it does expand the requirements that public health adds workload for that. It adds workload but it will expand who's able to access the cottage food industry.

Yeah. And it and it what it does is it legalizes what's already happening and it ensures that the people who are already serving some of these foods that aren't under the cottage food industry, it requires that they get the same training as people within the cottage foods industry. Yeah. So, it's it's more like it's just making safe what's already happening, which is great for the community, but definitely work for public health. So, yeah, tough compromise there. Um,

I think CCI is in a an amend or repose position to it because it adds if they're in a propose uh they amend most likely if they uh monitor monitor. Nice. Yeah. Um allows the sale of certain refrigerated foods and foods containing meat. Mhm. which I didn't know that wasn't allowed as far as cottage food. So that's interesting. Cottage because it's heat because it's temperature managed. Yeah.

And that falls under a different license. So moving on from that, um 1095 digital publication for legal notices seemed like something we should be behind, which we are. I think we're in a we're in a support position on that one, right? Okay, cool. And then the updates to Medicaid, uh 12:35. Did you guys have a opinion on that? Is it House Bill 26 1235?

Yes. Sorry. HB scrolling through hundreds of rows of these bills.

So non-emergency medical transport. Uh yeah, but it also adds accountability I think for how we get charged which felt to me like the root of a lot of the problems with uh medical industry orers um providers having un like murky billing murky layers of billing and then you end up it felt like it was going to bring the costs of things down by how the billing process could be like deceptive. Um, so it would the way I was interpreting it was that it could allow the state to spend less on Medicaid, especially with transportation services. There we go. multi-art Medicaid omnibus bill um Medicaid NMT broker transparency which is non-emergency medical transportation to report provider level performance and cost data. Hey, Alan. Uh, CCI is in a support position on that one. So, I wasn't sure if if you guys had gotten a chance to look at it and see if it was something we wanted to take an official position on.

Sure. I'm happy to take a support position on that. Okay. Then SB 26101 uh land I think it had something to do with the landfill. My notes were not super comprehensive. I just scribbled support and big letters on it. If it's about the methane management, that doesn't apply to our county. Okay. We're not one of the counties that that will apply to. Oh, I thought we had to put a methane gas measuring well in at some point in the future. At some point in the future. We only have seven of them. Check methane.

Okay. But that specific bill doesn't apply to Lake County. It only applies to like four or five kies. Okay. There were some other ones that were really interesting. Um, I wanted to ask about uh what was up with Morgan County and them wanting to be like top of the list like fix our roads first before anything seed up. SB SR 2601. just was curious about what the whole like process was behind that. I mean, squeaky wheels get grease sometimes. It was really interesting to me. Oh, hi guys.

Here. Can you hear us? Okay. Yeah. Can you hear us? Yeah. We'll go ahead and start with your uh updates. Political advocacy group. Um advocacy group. Um, whoever would like to start, go ahead. Yeah. Um, Candace, do you have our PowerPoint ready to go? Yeah, I can share it.

Awesome. Thank you. Just one second. Move this guy. You can make it little. There we go. All right. Can you guys see that? Okay.

Yeah. Thank you. Um I can get us started. Um it's nice to see you all. Um you can go to the first slide, Candace. Um we are nearing the end of session. We've got um 15 days left, but um who's counting? Um so far there's been over 600 bills that have been introduced. Um most of those bills are still somewhere out in the process still. Um a lot of bills have been parked in the appropriations committees um until after the state budget is passed. That should pass this week. Um but we expect a lot of bills to die in those appropes committees. Um really anything with a fiscal note we expect to die if they can't figure out how to get their costs down to zero. Um and they are still introducing bills every day. Um so lots of work still to be done. um with two weeks left. Um so we're expecting long nights, probably working on the weekends for for the remainder of session. Um Elizabeth, anything you want to add high level?

Um go to

I think the only thing I'd add is since the last time we talked to you all in person, um we did have um the director of healthcare policy and finance was let go. Uh so Kim Benuffer is no longer leading that department. Um she was let go after it was clear that there was going to be a vote of no confidence against her on the Senate floor. Um and uh they do have an interim with Gretchen Hammer who has been put in place and she um she had been at Medicaid before. She knows this world. I think that there is a lot of hope that maybe maybe Medicaid can get turned around a little bit better under this leadership. So, but that's the other high level thing that has happened.

Go to the next slide. Uh the state budget, as I said, is almost through the process. We should have um a signed budget here sometime this week. Um as a reminder, they had um a pretty huge deficit um definitely over a billion dollars. Um no part of the budget was really safe from cuts this year. Um all departments were asked to cut um though probably not equally. Uh Medicaid of course got the brunt of the cuts um seeing as that's the part of the budget that is um you know really driving the budget to unsustainable levels and is as part of that structural problem. Um so a lot of the cuts happened there. Um we're hearing now that in addition to the cuts they've already made um they are asking departments to be ready to cut another 4% from their operating budgets. Um, so we're we're not out of the woods yet. This is going to be a structural problem that we deal with for for many years. Um, today on the House floor, they are debating um the bill to not return um about $300 million in Taber refunds. Um, as you can expect, that's pretty controversial. Uh, the state also um is decreasing their reserves from 15% to 13%. Um and of course this just puts us at risk if we actually see an actual economic downturn downturn here in the near future. Um the JBC also picked the more optimistic forecast um which is something that they've been doing for for the last couple of years. But um so instead of cutting um $1.5 billion they only cut a billion dollars. Um but this will be uh this will cause some trouble uh if that forecast ends up being um incorrect. uh we could see some of those mid-year adjustments coming from an executive order like we did this last October.

Alan, yeah. Can I ask a quick question? That $300 million, is that the overpayment that they're trying to like claw back? Yeah, this is um this is the money that they say they no longer need to refund um after the passage of HR1 at the federal level. Yeah. Thank you.

Uh next slide. Uh these are kind of some reminders some of the the cuts that um and changes that are happening that are uh specific to you all. Um that cut for local public health agencies was approved. Um however, they only did half of the amount. So it was going to be a $3 million cut. It'll only be a $ 1.5 million cut now. Uh they are still working on the regionalization of county administration. Um CCI had an emergency meeting last Friday about it. Um it's a new cohort mo model for counties and it will be a working group that meets this summer and it'll be led by a third party consultant. So um we'll we'll be sure to uh keep track of that and keep you all plugged in there. Um there's also several changes that passed as part of the budget for Tannif. Um they're going to be pausing um those cost of living increases for two years for the basic cash assistance um and making some changes to when the state and counties reserves have to be backfilled. Um any questions on budget stuff in general? No. Great. Uh we can go to the next slide.

Not too bad. I didn't even recommend you for a second. Um this is the house bill. Just a quick update on uh 1037. This is the bill um that would have prohibited um some uh law enforcement and government from uh getting uh personal data from third parties. Um this bill was postponed indefinitely in committee. Next slide. Uh, Commissioner Lee, I think you asked for an update on this one. Um, this is House Bill 1202. Um, the strategies to prevent homelessness. Um, it's passed. It's already been sent to the governor. Um, this is a bill that was they tried to pass last year. Um, and they made some some changes to it to make it actually workable. um but creates kind of like a multi-government um group to kind of come up with some strategies um to reduce homelessness mostly in the Denver metro area but it includes everybody um you know we have some county partners that are in monitoring CCI is monitoring um uh but CCAT was supporting

okay thanks uh we can go to the next slide uh this is Another update just for you all. We talked about last time this was the bill that would have set different property tax and mill levies for um different land use models. Um this bill was also postponed indefinitely in committee. Uh next slide. Uh Commissioner Lee, you also asked for an update on this one. Uh Senate Bill 35. Um it makes some increases to penalties for um different traffic violations. I think the one you were most interested in was um the increase in penalty for dangerous passing. Um so that would make it a mandatory 100 $100 penalty. Um and we have uh CCI CCAT and the sheriff's um that are in support. I don't know if you guys wanted to take a position on this one. Um I I didn't get a chance to chat with my fellow commissioners about this one specifically, but I feel like this is a issue in Lake County, especially with our commuting population and dangerous passing on uh Highway 91 and Highway 24 here seems like something that directly affects us. And uh I personally was um wanting to ask them if they were okay uh taking an official position on this of support.

Yeah. Yeah. I voted in favor of CCAT and CCI. Okay. So I'm a I'm a fan. So I think that's uh all three of us are nodding our heads yes here about um taking an official support position on this. Great. You can register that. Cool. Thank you.

Okay. Okay, next slide. Uh update on Senate Bill 40. Uh this is the the bill that change makes some changes to Prop 123. Commissioner Thart testified um when it was over in the Senate. Um an amendment was added in the House to allow for flexibility for those local deed restrictions. Um and that was something that you um had mentioned wanting Commissioner Tharp. Um so that was added over in the House. Thank you. Uh, next slide. Um, Elizabeth, do you have any information on this one? Senate Bill 70.

Yeah, so Senate Bill 70 is it's having a tough go. Um, there are some rumors that the bill sponsor might go ahead and lay this down because there's so much opposition from different entities on that. Um, it did get through uh appropriations. Uh, the bill sponsor chairs appropriations. So that always helps things move along. But so far it's been laid over on the Senate floor because it looks um there are a number of us in an opposed position and it looks like it's unlikely to pass. So we will keep plugged into the efforts on opposing this. Excuse me.

Uh next slide, please. Uh this is the one you guys were just talking about um a little bit before we logged on. Um Senate Bill 101. This is the landfill methane regulations. It creates some grants to help um you know some smaller local governments that can't afford for with the new rules that were passed at the air quality control commission. Um but I don't believe that it applies to Lake County.

Great. Thank you for clarifying that. Appreciate it. No problem. Uh next slide. Uh this is a bill that we were also in support um Senate Bill 92 um that modifies um elected officer salaries. Um so we did get the amendment added in house local government to um reclassify you guys. Um and Sheriff Spuckman was there to testify in support and did a great job.

And a thank you to CCI's help with us on this. Um, Senator Simpson was actually a little bit prickly about wanting to add this amendment. Um, I think CCI might be changing their process on this in the future u because he was just frustrated that there kept on being more and more asked as it went through the process, but we were able to work with him with their backing to make sure we got the amendment. So, um, really excited we were able to get this done. Thank you so much. Okay, next slide. Oh, that's it. That's all we had for you guys. Yay.

Um, the other thing we wanted to highlight for you all that is probably move that you're probably hearing about from your county attorneys. There's two issues out there. One, there's a big overhaul happening with competency in Senate Bill 149. Um, and uh, it's mostly within mental health and behavioral health, but I just heard this morning that some county attorneys were having some questions. So, I'm going to plug in and see what's going on there, and I'm sure Candace can kind of get us some information. But the other bill that we might want to take a position on is Senate Bill 176. Um, this is from this is actually coming from the governor's office. Um, the two entities in support of this bill along with the governor's office to date are ACLU and the Rocky Mountain Gunners Gun Owners Association. And in opposition is basically every other local government in this state. Um I expect that CCI will have a position soon. Um we are in a meeting later today with the governor's office, with the special districts association, CCI, CML, school districts, and others. Um we've had our staff take a look at this. Candace has passed it along and they agree that it's a huge problem. Um what the bill does is um and you might have seen it. There's been some information about this. Um the bill sponsors are calling it the no kings bill and it is taking old case law and it's an attempt to get at federal ICE agents. But what attorneys what every attorney is telling us outside of the governor's office but from the DAs to all the groups that I mentioned is that this is going to open up litigation directly against state officials. um and not just them but also the those employed by local governments. So when we talked with the attorney general's office, they said this is going to impact teachers in schools. This is going to impact different staff.

And then that you start to understand why you would have such opposing ACLU and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Association supporting the same bill because it's potential litigation opportunities for both of those when it comes to how state officials are voting. So, um, we will be in that meeting and we'll send information back to you all today. Um, but that was one that given, um, the conversation with our county attorney, we thought we would recommend an opposed position on as well. Could you just explain that to me real quick, Elizabeth? Why why you would support this bill? No, she supports and opposed.

Yeah. No. Why why ACLU and the Gun Owners Association may support this bill? Because they could potentially sue state officials for votes that they take. Yeah. See, for harming the public, that seemed kind of shortsighted. Something that summed it up really well as to why it's going to open the door for just endless amounts of legislation from basically anyone to cause problems non-stop and keep things just tied up and I don't know it seemed like a big big mess. Sounds like a mess to me too.

Yeah, the goal was again the goal and the intent was to address the fact that state law cannot and this is happening in some different states. They're all a number of different states are having this conversation because you have state law and you have federal law and state law is not able to provide oversight over federal ICE agents. So they're trying to, you know, when something happens at a state level, they want the state to be able to do something when it comes to the federal ICE agents. And so this is that attempt. The problem is like they're two separate courts of law and you can't just cross over from one to the other. And so now you're just opening up the liability for state officials is what we are being told by um numerous attorneys.

Sounds like kind of what you wrote, Matt. Yeah. And and and there's no remedy in federal courts either against ICE agents really is is the issue under under 1983, which is the civil rights uh statute where claims are frequently brought against state actors and municipal actors and local government actors. So they're trying to create an analog essentially at the state level um that not only gets these local government and state actors but also the federal actors as well. Mhm.

So, it's an attempt to, you know, sort of rain and ice, but it's it's so overly broad. And I suspect the reason they had to make it overly broad is probably they run into some constitutional issues if it's just targeted at us. Um, so, um, yeah, I mean, it it'll it'll open up the doors for litigation and it'll almost guarantee our insurance costs will will go up. Elizabeth, how strong how likely is the tell us about it likelihood? Tell us tell us about it possibilities.

Um so it got rescheduled from Senate Judiciary. I think um that um some key votes on this are likely to be Representative or Senator Basisley who is our senator and Senator Zamora Wilson um because they tend to um they tend to have a slightly different view than a lot of the traditional Republicans when it comes to some of these issues. Um, and so, uh, we have had initial check-ins with Senator Basisley and it was a good conversation. Um, but I think an opposed position just it might be a little bit helpful with them.

But the governor's office is in favor of this or bringing this. It was their idea. They they say that they say that all the attorneys from um from counties, from school districts, um from all special districts, all the local governments that and you know your attorney sitting there that they're all wrong, right? And so that's the meeting that's the meeting we will be in at 3:30 today. Okay.

So you said that Senator Basley is in favor of this. No, he just sometimes can be an unpredictable vote when it comes to some traditionally Republican issues um which this would fall into. And so we are just um wanted to have the conversation with you on where you all officially were so that we could circle back to him. I mean based on the way that he voted on the one piece of legislation that we actually testified on, I don't think he cares. But if you think that it would matter at all, I'm happy to take a position on this. I'm just really unimpressed.

I think overall it is helpful um given where your attorney's advice is for us to join the chorus against the governor's office of you are this is a bad idea. Okay. Yeah. Happy to take position. Yeah, I would. Let's oppose it. Yeah, I say oppose. And the mental competency stuff um I don't think is going to affect Lake County. The DA's office handles those mental competency issues and in smaller counties less than 50,000. So,

uh you know, I know some county attorneys have been tracking it, but it's only the larger counties that have really been tracking that. Okay. Thanks, Matt. That's helpful. So, so 176 opposed the competency bill. We continue to just check in and keep you guys engaged on. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. That runs us through our list for you. Great. Andy, was there anything else you wanted to talk about? um at this late in the game without more homework on my end. No.

Awesome. Just one quick question. the uh the county elections that that uh has that passed or I I wasn't clear on if that had passed already and been signed into law or no the county commissioner's salary. Oh yes, the one that the sheriff just the sheriff testified the salary one that we just talked about. Um it is uh it's not completely through the system yet. So, we'll keep you updated on that, but it's through we were able to get our amendment on in committee in the second chamber. Um, and I think it still needs to get through third reading and then um repassed in the Senate.

Okay. So, we'll continue to work on that. Is that a standalone bill or is it on a How does it get passed exactly or not? Yes. So, our portion of the that that applied to Lake County, we added into that bill. Um, so now it's part of that standalone bill that's making its way through the system. Okay. Thank you.

Anybody else have any questions? Thank you guys. Good luck. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thanks. Bye.

That concludes our legislative legislative updates. Alex, are you ready to present even though you're a bit early? Absolutely. We'll move on to um overview and presentation of our first quarter supplemental request for the Lake County Coroner's Office led by Alex Creek, our county coroner. Welcome, Alex. Thank you. Do you have anything you want me to pull up for you? Uh the visual summary. Okay.

Please and thank you. The visual summary is this one all the way down down there. Um I don't know. Did you guys get a chance to read uh the full one? Okay. So, basically, we have some unbudgeted expenses and we wanted to reorganize our part-time positions. Which one do you want me to talk about first?

Okay. So, this is Candace. Candace has a degree in forensic science, has moved here from Virginia. For two years, we had another full-time position. It was not carried over into this budget purely by accident. It took us probably six months to fill that position. So the budget was done by someone else um and purely as a miscommunication that she was hired I think like literally the day it was adopted. So that didn't get um carried over but that is something that we have always had for the past 2 years. So, uh, she was hired into a position that existed, which then did, uh, was not funded the day after she was hired. So, um, she is here, she lives here. Um, I would like to not ruin someone's life by a clerical error. Um, so there's that. That's what I would like to do. She is here. She's paid full-time. We will run out of money by September. So, Um, our chief deputy wants to go contract, so we will have a bunch of part-time positions. I'm going to be real with you when I say I don't know why I thought there were a bunch of qualified death investigators in Lake County who wanted to work part-time on call for no benefits. Um, these positions are impossible to fill. Um, it costs just as much to hire someone part-time as it does to hire a full-time candidate in terms of background check, psych assessment, uh, and training. They have to be fully trained. So, basically, I would like to roll those positions into one full-time position. This is in

line with what other small counties have done. Basically, they have found that part-time positions are a whole lot more trouble than they're really worth. Um, at this point, we have no one for our part-time positions, and there anyone who was in the county who is going to apply has probably already applied. So, that's where we are on that. Um, and I could justify why I'm asking for another full-time position if you want me to. If you want me to. Okay. So basically I have notes here. Um we deploy in Paris and there's a couple of really good reasons for that. First and foremost is safety. Scenes are not safe. So unless it is a hospice death where the family says we do not need you. Please do not come. We deploy and we do our own removals. There is no such thing as an undertaker. We are the ones who are there and we remove everyone. So,

you need two people for that. At least between the two of us, we can get that done. If there's one of us, there's a couple things that go wrong. First of all, it you have to have a lift assist. If it's just one person, there's no way to move one person by yourself. So, at night, that entails getting 8 to 10 other first responders out of bed because fire is the one who provides that. That is not a considerate use of their time and I do my absolute best to avoid it when I have another coroner. I can do that. So, we also we have very little in the way of law enforcement here. Uh they help tremendously, but if they got to go, they got to go. It can one of our last investigation for um over uh over there in the uh boarding house would you say took six hours?

Yeah, it it usually takes um somewhere around 6 hours um for us to do a thorough investigation. Yes.

So if it's just one coroner, we have to have law enforcement with us on scene at all times. So then there's a couple good reasons for that. First of all, scenes are not safe. I have personally run into traps on scene before. Um, second of all, people can show up anytime and be like, "Who are you? What are you doing?" Uh, and last, I don't have any honesty concerns with our people, but having two people there keeps people honest. You open a drawer looking for someone's ID and there's $20,000 cash in there. Yep. I'd really prefer to have two people there for that. Um, so we do sometimes lose law enforcement cover. Uh, the question is, am I going to keep like on the last scene, the only person on was Chief? Um, I don't really want to keep Chief there for 6 hours. He works really, really hard. To be clear, he probably would have stayed with us. But, um, the other thing is this. So, here's a very typical scenario for us. Okay, this happens very frequently. So we're up during the day, we're answering calls, we're doing training, we're reviewing cases, so on and so forth. So we go home, 2100, we get a call, both of us deploy. Okay, I will also add, by the way, policy dictates that we don't deploy alone. Um, this isn't our written policies. Um, so we both deploy, okay, we're not getting back till 3 4 a.m., right? Personally, I'm not going to sleep until 6:00 a.m. Okay. Those calls pertaining to that scene, that person's next kin. So, I try to inform that person's next kin in 30 minutes if I can. I'll call I'll call them at 11, 12, 1:00 a.m. Um, but often times they don't answer because it's they will usually reach out to me after

I leave them a message 7:30, 8:00 a.m. We're talking about 2 hours of sleep at that point. Now, we have to arrange transport and autopsy. We try to do those same day. So, transport's coming around 10:00 a.m. So, I'm one of us is not going back to bed. Um, then we have to drive 2 and 1/2 hours to get to the autopsy, be there at the autopsy, and then that person's probably not getting back until 2100 that evening. So, that person has been awake bare minimum about 24 hours, probably a little more like 36. That is not conducive to good investigations and not conducive to foreigner health. Um the other thing is at that point now you've got someone at autopsy. Well the Gordon County is alone. So you have all the problems that started there. Likewise you cannot leave this county for so like for example I need an MRI in my left knee and the only machine that would have worked for it was in Grand Junction. Well I'm just not getting there because I can't leave for a whole day because that leaves her completely alone. So to summarize it, the reason I'm asking is it's a better use of emergency services time in terms of both fire and law enforcement. It is a huge headache to hire a part-time deputy. Um the professionalism just it's just not there. If you want to ask a lot of someone, then you kind of have to own their time. Um and all of us are on 24/7. So we like when I say 247 I mean have you had a day off since you got here? No neither I don't take days off either. Like we are on 24/7 365. So basically that's what I am hoping for.

We're going to convert uh Caleb to 1099. Um I don't imagine that he will be utilizing that but we trained him. He is still highly trained. uh he continues to train. Um it would be nice to maintain him that way without him taking up a part-time position. I do not imagine that we will be seeing much of him. Uh wait, can you say it again now? Which part? Who who are you talking about and what where is he? Caleb Yoder does not live in the county anymore.

Um he handles a lot of admin for the office. Okay. but does not want to anymore. So, he is our ballistics expert and he is pretty pretty well renowned. Um, both him and I have been called for an as expert witnesses um for ballistics case. Um,

the cost of keeping him on ranges from so I only budgeted 10 grand for his like contractor status. Uh, and that is at an hourly rate. So like I do not anticipate paying him 10 grand. It's not like a flat 10 grand. It's like if he, you know, for example, comes here to cover or if he comes here to testify or if he does expert witness stuff, then that 10 grand cap would would be the maximum amount that he could be paid on a yearly basis. So, I would like to remove our other part-time positions. I just I I can't fill these positions. They're very expensive to fill. And I know that I bring it up often, but when I look at the cuz, you know, everyone needs boots. You can't wear your own boots to a scene really. Um, when I look at that row of boots that just sits there in the gear room at the morg for people who we spent money hiring and I know that those boots walk to one scene or zero scenes, it just drives me insane. Like that is I would like to feel like I am being responsible in the people I hire and equip and train. Um, after the last one lasted one autopsy. Uh yeah, I think we I think the professionalism changes are in order. What do you guys think about that? Do you have any questions?

Can you go down to the What is the Is there anything below that or is that Yes. Can you go down to what that is, Candace? Sure. Thank you. I forgot I was in control. Is it okay? Thank you.

So, and this is more in line with our prior year budgets. Um, so this is what we're asking for. And by the way, if we're not set on keeping Payload on as a contractor, then it is what it is. Um, but that's basically what I would like to do. That's the summary of my ask. You guys have any questions? So, you don't have a full-time deputy. That would be a position that you're that you're looking for someone to fill that position. So, she is full-time. Oh, okay.

I am full-time. She is full-time. We are asking for a third person full-time. And if you want to know, are we going to ask for anyone additional? Nope. So, one person is impossible, two people is brutal, and three people's hard work. But I'm not I don't hire anyone who doesn't do hard work. So, And you're saying that that so Candace is up there twice because she is the full-time deputy. She is full-time. Her position was unfunded due to a clerical error and nothing else. Okay. Her position was funded in 24 and 25.

The fact that her position was unfilled when the budget was filed led to a mistake where her position was not carried over, but she was hired before that. So, it was purely a clerical error. She is here and I want to be clear, she moved here from Virginia for this job, signed a lease, lives here, lives in the county, is registered to vote here in the county and so on and so forth. So, I think that based on that like it's did you create you said you did not create the budget? No. So, uh it was created and I'm not imputing finance by any means. No.

Um it was a miscommunication. Finance assisted with the budget this year. Um due to us being completely surrounded um we you know really barely had time to sit down and even look at it. Um I did not notice that the position had not been carried over but it was funded for 2 years and the only reason it wasn't carried over is because the position was emptied at the time the budget was written. Totally. I think in the future I would expect elected officials like Heath comes in he is fully engaged with finance. Absolutely. He comes in and he presents his budget. We talk about it and he he is engaged to help check any catch any of those things. Yeah. So I hear that there's a mistake.

I hear that you were slammed. But we are very flexible in like rescheduling times. Got it. So, I think if you if you don't want this to happen in the future, you need to really be in control of your budget because everybody made concessions to fit everybody else's budget. And this is a huge amount of money that will impact other people's budgets that they could have planned for back in December. Understood. So, I I hear that it was I hear what happened this year, but I'm going to ask that in the future you you engage because I I don't want to just approve supplemental requests to create our budget because that's what we have done in the past.

That's very understandable. And that does not serve our community. So, and I will say um every year prior I have been deeply involved in the budget and this has not been a problem. This is a one ratio. Yeah. But this is what happens when you're not adopting and yeah so understood uh duly taken into consideration and I will implement this suggestion. I'm not a professional with this department. So right off the bat I want to ask what's the the proper vernacular that you're using to describe every incident or every call that you get? Scene.

Scene. Okay. Um, how often do you have to respond to a scene? Just so I can help wrap my head and understand. So, it it comes out to roughly once a week. Um, each dad creates about 40 hours of work for us. Um, along with setting up the morg, which we are still working on with Stuart, um, still working on with the hospital. That's pretty much what fills our time otherwise. Uh, two deaths a week. We had two in one day recently. Um, so that's not that unusual. Um, and just like every other emergency service, there are some weeks when we have no deaths. Was there 37 deaths last year?

Um, not 100% sure. So, 37 autopsies, I believe. And I believe cases were more like 45 to 52. I can pull that post at another time. I don't have access here. Don't you Don't you Every death that you attend doesn't have to be an autopsy. like everything you don't attend. Sorry, go ahead. Yep. So, I attend basically everything unless So, there's two that we don't attend. A hospice death. Mhm. Where the family directly tells us, "We do not want you here." Or unless there's been a physician attending, correct? To a hospice death.

Well, and we'll still attend. If the family is like, "Uh, the funeral home's not coming out. They said they would and they're not. Yeah, we'll go." Sure. You don't but but based on your statute if an a physician attends a death the coroner isn't required unless they can't or won't write a death. Yes. So and that's the normal case. Um the other one is in so if somebody dies 72 hours after admission into a hospital the death is a natural death and they are under the care of a physician who will sign the death certificate. So that scenario doesn't really happen very much.

Um, and often times our ER docs are great. Um, but finding a death certificate is, you know, not usually what they learn in medical medical school. So often times we'll go there just to assist as well. We'll talk to the family, give them resources, so on and so forth. That's not unusual for us. Um, if there if we can find ourselves work to do, then we find ourselves work to do.

Yeah. Um so what what my want or my ask is is to figure out um how to get more data around the like cost per scene, cost per incident um and how we compare to other like there's nothing I want to be able to ignore than to give you guys, every tool that you need to do everything that you have.

Unfortunately, the reality with the county and and what my position needs to be able to do is to be super stringent and tight with every penny that we've got right now. So, I'd want to be able to see some numbers and comparisons on like how is our coroner's department doing, you know, like how is versus what are we spending versus what other counties are spending like per incident or you know, like at the county that has the same similar population. Like are we on par with how things look across the state and then be able to decide like, oh, we're way under what these guys are spending. Maybe we do need to add fill this bucket up some or vice versa, you know. So

I have some data on that at hand, but it is not recent. Okay. So we were considerably under Park County and some of the county and Chave counties budget in 2022 and 2023. Um things have changed. I don't know what their present budgets are. I can find out for you though. Sure.

Um Summit County has three full-time deputies and a full-time coroner. Park County has full-time coroner and I think four or five. Uh don't quote me on that one. That may have changed. Uh full-timers. Uh Chaffy County has I think fulltime. So I know Jeff's full-time and I think he has two people. He might have three. I know he has some part- timerrs as well. Okay. So just for some context on that as to what they have and what they're doing and I chose similarly sized counties. Uh Summit County is not exactly directly comparable but they're there. So

not really close. They're 30,000 23,000.

Pinkin County um they're pretty different as well. Uh their setup is pretty unusual. So Park County and JB County are a little more similar. Um I will say uh we have been um working to save what we can. We recently got a um a grant um with uh Colorado State for our toxicology. Um so we shouldn't have to pay any of our toxicology because they pay up to $45,000. I don't anticipate that um we would spend more than 45,000 um in a year for toxicology. Um so yeah, we are um working to save everything that we can. Thank you.

Thank you. She was the one who got us that grant by the way and she got a scholarship for her training for our last conference, so we did not have to pay for that. Sweet. Thank you, Candace. Let's make sure you get paid. Something maybe we could all agree on is making sure that Candace is Yeah. done. Yeah. Candace, you're going to get checks clear. And then uh it's a shame that we couldn't have a third part-time position as opposed to a third full-time position. I can't needs.

And so you say you're going to you're going to remove two part-time employees. So are they currently employed with you? So we have so basically Caleb has been doing part-time admin. We have two empty part-time positions. So we have three part-time positions. Uh Caleb does not want to continue doing admin work. He is a death investigator and wants to go be a real death investigator in where he is now.

Uh and you know I try not to at this point I I feel like I'm standing in his way. Um, he's pretty dedicated to helping us in any way he can, but I would like to give him the way to go live his life. Um, so I would I would like to convert our three part-time positions into one full-time position because otherwise I can't fill one part-time position. Um, the applicant has to live in the county to begin with because who's going to move here for no benefits, for uncertain work? No one. Um, we want only certified death investigators. Um, at this point, one of the things that I've come to realize is that death investigator certification, a forensic science degree, that's that's really just the start. They have a lot more to learn after that. Um, and they're just it's just it takes a long time to train them. You know, our costsaving measures for doing that are pretty good. Uh, a lot of our training is completely free. um other counties will basically do our training completely free but we have to own their time um because it takes a long time. So the other thing is everyone who gets hired they go through a very extensive background checks like eval polygraph etc etc and that costs the same no matter who they are. I'd rather just do it one more time. I can't instead of my god three more times.

Hey Alex, I I hear you. I've worked on call most of my professional life. Some emergency, some non-emergency. and I totally understand your scheduling complications. I just want to say I'm looking at the Chiefy County budget book and they have 1.4 FTE in the corners office. So that and they have a population of 20,000. Got it. So So when it comes to comparables, they've got to be running their department differently from you.

They are. So it would be interesting to hear how they're doing that with just a second just to say with less than half of the FTEEs that you're proposing. So I just want to offer that I I think it's a reasonable request from Andy to say like what are other people doing? So okay, tell us tell us. They run theirs out of a funeral home. Uhhuh. Um we do not do that. I will not do that. I will never do that. Um, what do you mean? What? Why would How would you have the option to run it out? Right.

Yeah. It's impossible. Um, and if I did, I wouldn't. So, I would maintain a strict separation between my office and any funeral service. Um, how does that impact how Chief County is doing it? Can you explain like what is the difference between running it out of a funeral home or not? They have reliable full-time employees at a funeral home that they can deputize. Mhm. So they have those people on 40 hours a week to begin with. So they have them there. So then they can say, "All right, turn your badge around. Go respond to that scene." We can't do that. And you don't like that? Why? Was a huge conflict of interest.

Why? for the same I mean for the Kent case, the case with Brian out of PBLO, um the Montrose case, it has been a disaster again and again and again. So if somebody can drive business to their own funeral home using a government position, it's not illegal now, but it probably will be in short order. Um, this has been a constant thorn in the side of Colorado and it happens again and again and again and again. Brian Carter, the PBlo County foreigner, owned a funeral home and uh they recently found 15 decomposing bodies in his funeral home just like with the Kent funeral home just like with the Monroe's funeral home and so on and so forth.

How does it change? Like what is the tell me why that is more likely in a funeral home than in just a government department. So let's say I suppose for the purposes of contradiction that I own a funeral home. Okay. Okay. I go to a scene where someone has died. This person now needs funeral services. I have a vested interest in helping them choose a funeral home. And in particular, again for the purposes of contradiction, my funeral home. Sure, I get that.

That is the conflict of interest as to why this occurs because Colorado is maybe fact check this, but my understanding is that we are the only state in the entire union that has no particular training or licensing requirements for funeral home owners. So, I'm not dragging Jaffy County. They're one of the good ones for sure. Mhm. But they also have access to resources in a facility that we don't. Mhm. So for example, their morg is a funeral home. We don't have that option here. Yeah. It's like a public private partnership. Yeah. Which we do all the time and anybody can like anybody can exploit that.

And I'm not saying we don't need a funeral home here. Uh that would be great. But you're just saying that's the circumstance that allows them to have smaller budget because they have reliable part-time people that they can go pick from from their actual employees. Mhm. Which isn't like that's not a bad thing. Jeff is a really good coroner and he's a very honest coroner. Do any of those employees work in Lake County? No, they do not. Um and the other thing is this. We tried hiring somebody from BV for one of our part-time positions. M um and that was a constant thorn on our side as well.

The BV or the Chievy County Corner's budget is 328,000 for 2026. So, and I what is our total budget? I don't know. Proposed is 265. So, so for salary and wages, right? Um I think that's the total that we're asking for actually. 265 is your total. Can you pull up the uh Okay. Yeah. So, it would be nice if we had a reliable part time, but we just we don't

I hear you. I think I'm trying to talk about the whole department at the moment because you're asking for a supplemental which will affect the whole county. Got it. So, that's this is kind of our time to talk talk about it since we didn't talk about it at the budget. And to be perfectly clear, this is what you were elected to do and I support it. It like would if I came in here and you were like, "Yeah, sure." That'd be very That would be that would be maybe it would be easier for me, but it would not be good for the county. So, yes, please ask me 100 million questions, push back, right? You know, I developed my answers to this for a reason.

Yeah. But you're responsible for taking care of the financial well-being of taxpayers who haven't even been born yet. That is a huge responsibility. And the fact that you take it seriously is that you were hired to do so. Please don't think that I take it personally cuz I don't. Okay. So, and to be clear, a huge part of this is neither of us is able to leave this county when we have to leave the county for our job duties puts us in violation of our policies. Yeah. Um,

never mind the fact that there is zero days off. There are no days off for either of us. We are on call 24/7, 365. This phone lives on my bed. When I am asleep, when I am in the shower, it is right next to the shower. I answer the phone in the shower. Somebody calls me at 3:00 a.m. answering the phone. I've been on call for 5 years. So, well, with three people, you should be able to take time off. Everybody should be able to take time off. Absolutely. Yeah. That's really what at least two days a week, you should be able to. Okay.

So, that's what a huge part of why we want a third position. Yeah, just because you know at some point you do get burned out. Um I'm getting there. Um but yeah, so that's my ask. Um and again, if there's any other questions, happy to answer. And I want to be I want to also mention I'm not dragging Jeff. There are bad funeral home owners and Jeff is not one of them. Jeff is a good funeral homeowner. He has good people and he's a good coroner. But he also has resources as well. He's a great worker.

Just doing some math, so give me a Well, I think you made a good case, Alex. It's not uh you have to have time off. You have to be able to be able to go to your doctor's appointments. Mhm. So, I think we're all Well, I think I'm I'd be in favor of it, but we just have the little money problem, you know? Yeah. I don't know how that portion of it works and where that money would come from.

Well, we've got, you know, what's in the current budget is 40 for Caleb and 28 and 28 for two other part- times. those wrapped together all added up. Um, equal canvas and a little bit left over.

Um, and I feel like that the the problem is is that we're kind of looking for a unicorn for a part-time person is how where I feel like we're at right now. It's just you're saying it's basically not happening up here and when it does they have a such higher chance of leaving that it ends up costing us more dealing with these endless conveyor belt of part-time hires leaving rehire you know hiring again um and it doesn't serve the community because they'll you know we like to when I say our cases are vertically integrated um Everyone works on every case. So that's a big part of what we do. But if a family prefers one deputy, so recently we had a dad, somebody uh the family was from the deep south. I'm also from the deep south, but I don't have my accent anymore. Candace, they she does and they preferred to work with somebody who was more from their own culture. They had my number and they did call me, but they mostly preferred to work with her. What they don't like is when they call me and I'm like, "Oh, so and so isn't with us anymore." And they're like, "But it's been a week." So, you know,

could you explain that to me? What? Say that again. Like,

so basically, we'll get calls from deputies who worked with us for one to three months because people want because they were the ones. So, it was somebody who was there and the family is like, "Oh, I remember that coroner. I have a question about the death certificate or um insurance arrangements, that sort of thing. And then I'm like, well, that deputy isn't here and they're not available and we've dropped everything and I have to start from the beginning and now they have to work with someone new. So, and yeah, the revolving door method is uh not great for the office, not great for professionalism, and unfortunately not great for the community. Do you have any candidates for another full-time position?

No, but those are a lot easier to find. Um, we're pretty picky about who we hire. We hire very high quality candidates um for those positions. Um, uh, I mean, she went to George Mason. So, what's that? She went to George Mason. Oh, so she um, is this including Benny's Um, I don't know this actually. Good question. I think it is. I think I think it is. I think I did my best to include them. I wouldn't. Okay. I I do not work for finance or HR and it was in the packet. Okay. It was I think that's total compensation.

Yeah, it should be. Okay. Okay. three. Well, like yeah, you know, the candidates that apply here, you know, it's people who will list general home experience, um, which is disqualifying for us, you know, unfortunately, you know, our line of work is very uh, it it's not everybody wants to do it. It takes a certain kind of person to be dealing with death all the time, be with

a lot of gross stuff. Um, you know, like people might be interested in true crime, but then you go and you see an actual decomposing body and you're like, "Oh, but never mind."

Yeah, this is a lot for me. Um but I think the benefit of a full-time position um is like for example for me this is a very highly competitive field. So people there are more people willing to move um to find uh this type of position. Um, but again with part-time people really aren't able to move for a part-time position, especially out here. Well, that makes sense. Um, I'm going to offer some numbers.

What's yours? So, Chaffy County is a population of 21,000. Their budget is 328,000. That's $1560 a year per person who lives in Shaffy County going to their coroner. We have a population of about 7,200. With this request, your budget will be at about 387,000. Okay. And that is a cost of about $54 a year per person. Understood.

Okay. So that is more than three times the amount of people's taxes between us and Chaffy County going to their corner facility. And I hear your reasons and I also understand economy of scale. I just want you to hear that difference because to me it feels like there's room. So okay, let's talk about that room. Yeah. What can we get out of that room? How How can we How can we get more? I don't know. It's not my job to run. It's important that it's not our job to run. Of course. I understand. I'm not asking for that. I'm saying like

I'm asking more as a rhetorical device like Yeah. So, we we run pretty efficient. Um at the same time, I have managed to run a budget surplus uh every single year. um often times significant budget surpluses um often uh upwards. So I think that we have run a budget surplus every year I was in office um ranging from 20 to $45,000. Uh I think I brought that up at caucus actually. It's not great, Alex. I just want to say that. That means that's that much money every year that other departments can't

sure use. So budget surpluses are great when you're saving money, but when you when you can't apply that savings year-over-year, then we're then that's say 20 to $40,000 a year that other departments aren't using, but that was available. And I would I'm certainly considerate of their needs. Yeah. The question is, how do I identify the unspent money? And I understand this is my job, not yours. Yeah. And you know, give a reduced ask next year. And the answer is I can probably find a substantial portion to do that with but I have to dig into those. Yeah.

So, uh, what I can tell you is this. I pledge that I will certainly do that and I will try to cut our budget in other ways and in other areas in order to make that summer fall. So, regardless of whether or not this is approved, by the way, I will do that. Cool.

We can't make decisions for a work session. It'll be on the next regular for vote. Yes, ma'am. And it needs to be scheduled for a public hearing. So, it's a supplemental anything budget related needs to go through here. Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't have any other questions. I do not. Awesome. Thank you very much for Thanks for coming in, Candace. Nice to meet you. Alex is an old pro, but uh it's your first time in here, so it sounds like you're a huge asset to our community. So, thanks for being here.

Thank you so much. See you guys. We have

Okay. Shall we move on? You ready, Candace? Fourth quarter of 2025 in beauty led by Candace Bryant.

All right. So this is in the packet. So you guys can um click through the different departments uh that you want to check on. So um our budgeted revenue actuals were 40.3 million. our um budgeted revenue is 40.5 um which we were really benefited um by um some of our receipts from sales tax last year um which is really beneficial because if you take a look at so hard for me to read from this far away cuz it's old

Can you zoom in a Oh, look. These are um so when you look at our um I was trying to put our property taxes on here, maybe taxes at the bottom.

Yep. So, when you're looking, you see that our our taxes were and I identified this last year. We had um well I had inherited a budget that accounted for more budgeted property tax revenues than you would see and we caught that in really October. Um which doesn't give you a lot of time to to pivot. That's when you did the hiring freeze, right? We only did a hiring phrase and then we really uh asked for departments no non-discretionary spending unless it's just an absolutely have to do right now. Please don't.

Um which is great um because we just didn't know how much that was going to impact us overall, you know, for where we shook out. And so you can see that our our expense actuals were um were roughly three three millionish less than what we had anticipated, which is great. Um we were able to plan on using a little bit of the funds that we ended up not spending last year once we actually got our revenue totals dialed um to put towards things like our capital asset management plan for this year. So, we knew we had a little bit extra in that in that budget year that we could uh appropriate this year to work on that capital asset management plan, which we know is really important. And like I shared with you guys this morning, we were able to get $160,000 of uh grant um grant revenues um that we'll be able to actually combine with that extra money we set aside for that. Um we also um paused on some of the spending, you know, this year for the courthouse renovation project until we know exactly where our plan is moving forward. Um and some of that is is captured in, you know, we had planned on some work getting done last year and we didn't really get to that work. So that also impacted our our actual expenses relative to what we budgeted. Um so when you consider the fact that 2025 we didn't have 2 years we had two years worth of unclosed books really when we started uh that budget really not too far off considering we don't get like a 2-year look back

and in and in 2026 we started with a 2-year look back with books closed. So, we know that our budget should be a lot more accurate from the get-go, not that we've done all of these supplemental requests

and then we end up at the budget we should have likely started with in the beginning of the year. So, you can click through any, you know, of these departments that you want to. We had them bucketed um by kind of bigger groups um last year to align with the budget book. So our 2025 budget book kind of groups everything into into buckets when you read that budget book. And so this dashboard is grouped by those buckets that our 2025 budget book

outlined for you. So you can look at the budget book alongside this tool and kind of see how did we shake out. And really a budget is what you think you will do. It's not set in stone. You can you can do supplementals. Um, but we want to start to get a better idea of when do we expect revenues to come in? When do we expect um expenses to actually hit? And so one of the things we we did in this dashboard and we did again in um the dashboard that we're about to look at for quarter 1 is we've you know broken things out into like the different quarters. So you can see, you know, we don't receive all of our property tax revenue in quarter 1. We get a pretty big trunch of money in quarter two for June and then in quarter three, excuse me, quarter two for April and quarter three for June. And those are kind of our two biggest chrones. Doesn't mean we don't receive any property tax revenues on either side of those quarters. It just means the bulk of the money we're expecting for that come in then. Um, and you'll notice as far as expenditures go, we have a pretty high chunk of expenses in quarter 1 for the year just for the simple fact that we go ahead and pay all of our um insurance up front. It's build to us, right? Then we pay a pretty big chunk of the cop up front. So, there's a couple of expenses that are just upfront expenses like, you know, due January one for the year. So those timing of revenues and expenditures, this sort of tracking helps us start to plan for those sorts of things.

Um, I don't know if you guys have questions or if there's specific ones that you want to look at. No, I was really impressed at how you managed the end of last year. That was exciting to figure out in October. Yeah. Yeah. I was really impressed. And it's why it's important that your your books are closed, you know, each month. So then you can start to recognize, oh, hey, that didn't actually hit

or where we're tracking doesn't match, you know, but if you're closing your your books for the whole year in the next year, you're already beyond that point. So you actually can't adjust throughout the year, you know. So that's been a big lift for finance to get the books closed on time every month.

Is the coroner's budget on that for 25? Yes. And remember he had he had quite a lot budgeted that you guys ended up um cutting because of the facility. because the facility. So he was at 346 last year in actual expense expenses. But wait, he was at 346 last year, but he's trying to get back up back up to like normal. So what he just proposed is actually an increase of about $40,000 year over year.

Yeah. Um And that's mostly payroll. The $40,000 is payroll. Is that a pretty typical increase ac across departments to see that? Payroll's expensive. Yeah. And without doing the part- timerrs, it goes up one person by one person, whether it's two or three. Got it. Well, then next year it'll be even higher because we're having that bill passed. Yeah. and we expect pretty significant increases in insurance costs between 26 and 27. It's really the thing that has got

um you know there are a couple of things that have had Summit really scrambling. One is just the budget reductions across the board. So they're having to terminate positions and doing did rolling layoffs this year. that they have actually had a a reserve for insurance increase like the cost of insurance increase. So part of their reserve was planning for that

and it's about to go quite significantly. We have no such reserve on our side. We just have our general fund reserve and that will be what has to fund increases. So, it's it's really it's been really challenging. And one of the biggest things that I think we hear a lot about is the staffing cost. The staffing cost. The staffing cost. Well, I inherited a lot of people who already work for us. And just because the staffing cost has gone up, I don't have a right to terminate somebody who is in a position that existed when I got here unless there's an actual issue. Yeah.

So, it is really important. And one of the big things we're working on together with Ashley is looking at what positions do we have that are not filled, what do we need, can we start to rightsize some things. Um, but we we do know that our staffing costs are going to go up significantly just because of the insurance costs. And so trying to balance retention, paying people well, figuring out what to do with positions that already exist that you may or may not have created. And had you had the choice to create, you might have done it differently. Yeah. Um as our our cost for staff is going up is is pretty challenging.

How did Summit do that? Did they have like their own fund and how long have they been using it? Like how long have they been planning for that insurance increase? I think they had it for several years. I mean, I've not done a deep dive into their budget. We had discussed this before. When we were talking about the DA's budget, I was meeting, you know, with their county manager, you know, so it would just be interesting to know how they how they planned for it.

Yeah. They probably just said, "Hey, this is what our insurance costs have been, you know, for staff staffing related insurance, not building insurance." Yeah. and just ask themselves, you know, what do we think a real increase will be and and plan for it. You know, this is the 2026 is the first year that we've actually used our software to have real staff cost in the budget. Previously, they've estimated that staff will cost us X and what is it? 3%. Yeah, they would do like percentage guess and we got lucky with this year's health insurance that didn't go up that much

cuz it went up so low because everyone's so healthy and that is a big thing. Um, right. But that was very favorable. So our Tyler software being able to like being able to show the future model of five years is potentially all Summit had to be able to make that. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. But that's important. And your projections are only as good as the historical data you're using to create those projections. So if you haven't had your books closed, you've never really had and you just didn't have a good, you know, idea of exactly what you were doing,

you don't have that historical data. So every year that we have our our budgets are created based off of actuals that are done well. Yeah. you know, things are closed, you can look back two years, that really starts to create a much better projection of what we'll spend, which is important for budgeting sake.

Okay. When it comes to having a flexible budget, do you all anticipate that we'll be able to in the future in our in our as we're doing supplementals also be able to start right sizing other budgets where it's like, oh, we we anticipated we were going to spend this. This will also be part of our supplemental is changing these numbers down along.

We do that at the end of the year and that happened at the end of this year. Um, so no, you wouldn't do it in the middle of the year. You get to the end of the year and you take a look at your budget and that's what that end ofear supplemental is. It's like what did people do relative to what they thought they would do and we have to do that for DOA. So that end of year supplemental is pretty huge. You're looking at what did people do? What did they think they would do? But also when we do the budget with departments, we look at the last two years actuals and we look at what did they budget for the current year we're in plus where are they at for that year. Yeah, totally.

Um to really help inform, okay, here's what we think we'll do, you know, next year, but let's actually talk about where we at for the year. We budgeted $50,000. We've never touched it. Why didn't we touch it? Is this money we'll touch in the future? If it's not, we're not going to reappropriate the same dollars in the budget because like you said before, we then it's taking it from other things it could have actually been used on and just sitting there earmarked totally to be to be used and never be touched. So when you're doing supplemental requests from departments, is that one of the things you're bringing to the table, Candace? It's kind of like you've seen you will have seen at least where everybody's at

prior years and where they're at for this year and you'll be able to say, "Okay, you're not going to spend that $50,000. I do know somebody who's going to need it in a supplemental so you're kind of the one being that filter." Yeah, that's why we're doing it. Yes. Great. So we can kind of see where we're at. I love it. or, you know, if somebody has a a need in their department, but maybe they had a position that's set unfilled, you know, for six months out of the year.

Where we do have flexibility is you ask for a supplemental when you need money to go from one fund to another fund, right? if we're all within the same fund. And it's why it's really really crucial to to keep everybody in the general fund where you can I can look at my budget and say, "Oh, well, you know, I had a a conting contingency line of x amount. Bryce over here and water needs to replace the flume." Mhm.

I can replace the flume, right? And start to have those discussions. And especially when people are in the same fund, you don't have to do a supplemental. You can actually just make a a budget adjustment within the fund. Yeah. And report that at the end of the year. And so that's one of the other things we're trying to do is close any funds, you know, that we don't really need to have. Like we've had a grants fund forever, which isn't required, and honestly makes our accounting incredibly challenging. You're trying to budget for matches to grants and having to do transfers from the general fund to the grants fund, from grants fund to the other funds that are using the grant. And it makes for really messy accounting.

Our and that's one of the things we talked with our auditor about is we don't need a grants fund. You should just account for the grant in the department that has the grant. And I don't know why we did that to ourselves, but it is one of the things we're cleaning up this year is why make our accounting harder than it has to be. I don't know what the thought was there other than maybe they just didn't realize like you could use the software to track things. So if you so so question

if you wanted to move like a crazy number like a million dollars from DHS to public works but there was no funds transfer like say it was all I mean those are the wrong departments to use. So, let's say you wanted to move a million dollars from the library to the water enterprise. That would not be a supplemental because you wouldn't be doing any funds transfer. No, you would have to reappropriate the funds. And so, DOA still requires us to all have a meeting, have the discussion about what we're moving, have to refile it, do a budget adjustment, and refill the budget with DOA.

But it's a budget adjustment conversation as opposed to a yes supplemental request. When we're doing a supplemental, we're saying, "Hey, we didn't give this department enough money or something came up that we didn't plan for. Um, we got awarded a grant that we didn't plan on." It requires a match to the grant, right? If we decide to accept that grant and the department doesn't have the money to match the grant, what we're doing is supplementaling off of our our reserve to say, "Hey, you can actually use this money." Totally. It's like in addition to the budget we're already operating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. Okay.

So, really, you just want a pretty d budget and only make allowances for a few things you didn't plan on. Yeah. Not supplemental your way to the budget you should have started with. You know, just this time last year, I think we had a Didn't we do a supplemental of like $800,000 or something? Yeah. Yeah. Very fun. Her fleet got left out of Yeah, that's right. It's really fun to see the change. Like that's a huge that's a huge change. There should be a big big pat on the back for everybody. Not forget the fleet this year. Just one corner position. Insanely large fleet. Sorry.

It was like $500,000 of a lease. Yeah. We could all just share that rap for just I love it. Thanks for letting me take Yeah. space.

So, you guys can go through this. If you come back and have questions, we can you can just bring them up. I mean, up in our next meeting or whatever you want. Um, but these are all here for you. Um, so you can click through different departments. Um, I don't have anything else on this one. This is very cool. One exciting thing, Candace, is that the close for 2025 is still on time. Yeah. The auditors are here right now. So once 2025 closes, then it'll have basically this with finalized numbers. Mhm. Which is pretty exciting. Yeah, it is.

Are you on 25 or 26 or 26? Get to 25. It's linked in the packet packet. Okay, I'm going through the county website pretending I'm an average person which can which once community members access the we will post these links once we get finalized uh adjustments made with auditors. Okay, but pretty much we've done the majority of them. Yeah. Oh yeah, I see the links for 24. Yeah. What is the date that we're supposed to have the books closed for 2025?

There's a lot of timelines that come at the end of midyear for the state. So, it's basically July 1st. Yeah. Audit's due by July 1st. Prior to July 1st,

and that's closing the books and completing the audit. M so we close the books and we allow for invoices to come in for January until the end of February because sometimes we're getting invoices that have to be posted back to the year that were budgeted for. Um so those are acrals and deferrals. We make those accounting adjustments uh to either acrew something back or defer it to the to the next year depending on you know the timeline of the invoice. And then um we get adjustments from our auditor. So we when we finish the 2024 audit, we had to make those adjustments which impact you know or we shake out in 25. Um and then our auditor will tell us any items they want adjusted before we fully close the year. Um because there's there's Gazsby adjustments adjustments which are the general accounting standards for its adjustments. So there's some adjustments we are required to make by law. Those are dictated by our auditor. We get those made. We close the books. When we know that the books are fully closed for 20205 and we can't make any more adjustments, we hand the books to the auditor and that's when the audit starts. Once the audit starts, we can't go back and change anything. the auditor just tells us how we did, what we need to do better on, uh what we need to work on in the future if there is anything. And so we should have that report back from him um and present it to you guys in time to file it with the state by that first deadline.

Cool. Yeah. But honestly, we've never handed our papers over to the auditor in time. Like anywhere near in time. We've been like a year behind for the last 2 years when we've handed those over. So handing them over ahead of the deadline. Massive exciting changes. Very cool. Do you guys want me to I can't stop then.

Make some noise. Where are we going? Yes. Like I thought there would be a break. No. Yeah, let's move on to 2026.

All right. From fourth quarter 25 first quarter. Yeah, I might nibble on some lunch. I hope that doesn't offend anyone. Not at all. Does anybody need five minutes?

I could wait. No, let's go. I'm happy to wait. Let's go till someone has to take five minutes.

Okay, so this is quarter 1 2026. I just realized I didn't screech her that last one. So, I am going to screech her. Okay. Um, so here is quarter 1 for 2026. Um, so you can see that we brought in about 6.4 million. This number, this 10.3, our budgeted revenue for the entire year is around 40.6 million. This is just that divided by four. And we know that we have a lag in when revenues are received because of the timing of property tax. And also most of our grants are reimbursement grants. So we spend the money then we submit the reimbursement. We get the reimbursement usually in in the month after um the reimbursement has been submitted. So there's always a little bit of lag there. And then for budget purposes this year, our budgeted expenses, this is just divided by four. Of course, expenses hit at different times in the year depending on what we're paying for. Um, right now we're about 8 million. And when we do this next quarter, um, I'm going to add here's what we actually budgeted for the whole year because I think that would be helpful to see. Nice. So this is total where we're at. And then you can kind of see month one, two, three, what did we actually what do we actually do? And we know, you know, for revenues that we expect next quarter, um that April tranch of money that comes in for property taxes will be included in that. So you'll see that our revenues kind of bump back up

for that time period. So you can look at, you know, different departments, what we budgeted, what we've actually spent. So you can pick, you know, whatever department you want to look at. And the road bridge was very favorable due to no stone. Yeah. Kind of sad, but it's good for the

They saved money on not on time, but maybe on equipment or Yeah. On fuel, a lot of plowing. Yeah. It's favorable for the county. Then we will post I'd like to get through with the auditors this week and get adjustments made and then post these online. Isn't this for 2026? Mhm. Oh, you'll post both of them.

Yeah. Um the do we have enough data to see like our revenue percentage anticipated for Q1 versus how much we've received? No, we don't yet. But I think that once we really have our because we've never had the books closed at the month end

and these are this is the first budget dashboard where we've actually had the quarter closed before we present the data. So what I don't know if you guys remember this they used to do Q1 updates but it was really quarter four. Yeah, because they didn't have the books closed for the quarter. And I just think it was a misunderstanding of like when would the quarter end and the fact that it takes finance receiving that ended quarter a month or so to close the books for the prior month. because that wasn't understood

before. Um they were they would always do like a quarter backwards instead of just wait two weeks and let the books get closed and then present the quarter with the books closed for each of those months. Um so this is the first time we've had our

our our budget to look at with the time period actually closed before it's brought. So that means the treasurer is reconciled to the bank and for counties finance reconciles to the treasurer. This is the first time like that's all been closed at the same time. How far back will we be able to actually input data for people to be able to see table or will it not be useful because we've changed so much of how we're accounting for? And can we put that caveat at the top of our

Sure. I think we should. Yeah. Because we our historical data is just, you know, 2025 we actually the books book. Yeah. So that's accurate. Like for 2024 like none of us were really even here, right? You know, we just inherited whatever happened on the books. We can't really go back and change that much of that when you're already into the next year before you're closing. Yeah. So, you know, really 20 25 when did we get the books closed like actually caught up? This is the beginning of 25. So, 25 bad about 6 months

and then you know 26 really will be more accurate and then every year that you have the books actually closed on time, it just becomes more and more accurate. So, your planning is more and more accurate because you actually know what you

did in real time. personally feel like a like a statement along with the links would be valuable to say, "Hey, this is so cool that we have this. This is one of our top priorities is to get our finances in order. We want to be able to show historic year-over-year trends, but currently we don't have enough data or consistency to be able to compare previous years to what we're presenting." Yeah, this won't be an issue in the future because of what we're doing right now. But here is our here is our beginning. Yeah, this is the

this is like the level of professionalism and transparency that we want to continue moving forward. You know, I just I think a statement like that would be really valuable. Personally, do you guys like that? I agree. I like that. That's going to be that's going to be addressing a really common question and concern from some people. Yeah. That want to see 5 years of comparables. Yeah. We all want to see that. Yeah. But it's not people aren't going to be able to tease out the information they want, right? Based on what we're giving them.

What we noticed. So that would candies. Yeah, we'll work on a statement and I'll send it out and just get a feel from you guys if that's if the language sounds good before we put it out there. Cool. So, that would go on the county website in the annual budget right under the heading. Yeah. Yeah. Right at the top. Okay. Kind of like a statement of making statement. a mission statement and a commitment to the people of like what what the staff are doing and why and that we support it. Cool. Without disparaging the the past too,

right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one of probably the the biggest issues is that the county decided to change accounting software. Yeah. Was that in 2019? like 2019 2020 was the implementation right when co started. Yeah. So they decided to switch to Tyler accounting software and then co hit and the implementation we're one of the first counties we we agreed to demo the new Tyler software

for Tyler and there were a lot of bugs a lot of people working for Tyler that were like remote all of a sudden. So the implementation of the software wasn't really done well. We didn't have IT team to support the finance team and the finance team was two people which you don't even have appropriate separation of duties like the person entering accounting things shouldn't be the person running payroll. Um you know but they were cuz there's only two people and so a big challenge was coming in and all of the software wasn't set up correctly to even do the accounting properly. And then I also believe there was a lot of turnover

that was frustrating to have software that didn't work and then it's all in your the the lap of the you know two people that worked in finance at the time. So or the commissioners. Yeah. Yeah. Kayla Marcelo read payroll often. Yeah. Fun. All right. That's all I have. Yay. Lovely job everybody. Yeah, great job you guys. It's really It's really nice. Really nice for people to be able to see. Very professional.

I like the idea of the look back, too. That seems kind of like a good idea. Yeah. Good. What's that? how you guys were talking about doing the look back from maybe 2024 or 2025 and then it has like increased visibility and transparency so that people that want to look at things can drill down to what they want to see and everything's onetoone connected instead of being put into a big bucket where you can't really determine what it is. Yeah, that's a big part of our budget plan is doing the one to ones so people can see. Everybody wants that. Yeah. Like makes it so clear. I think it's a good idea. It's like financial before and after. Mhm.

Who doesn't love a before and after? Like for some people it's really exciting. Mhm. To me. Absolutely. Well, absolutely. Clearly agreed. Oh no, I can't escape out of here. I'm not sharing it with anybody online. Oh, sad. I've hit escape. Not escaping. Oh, look. It says endow. End show. End show. Yeah. Okay. Thanks everyone. You did it.

Show's over. Okay. Share. There we go. Matt, do you want to announce the next? Yes. Moving on uh to our first quarter updates by department. We'll start with finance. Okay. I tried to not to talk too much in it. So, let's see when it comes up. Okay.

All right. Just a quick recap. No changes in staffing. Um, for a county finance, it's very important because so many things are unique. We have a unique instance for Tyler for the ERP that the county runs on, right? It could be different from Chaffy counties or whoever else. It it what mostly matters is how you use it and set it up. And that's a big change now with the county. We do trainings with Tyler. So instead of people saying, "Hey, I don't like Tyler." It's more of, "Hey, what do we need to fix to make say payroll work correctly?" similar to the five-year budget plan that will be ready this summer, right? It was always there in the background budgeting for positions. No one did it because it's hard, right? That's why um but now we're doing it. So turnover has a profound impact for finance because it's so specialized. So I would say that's very favorable. um put in a couple of things. Bryce is working on finishing his bachelor's degree, so he's very conscientious, works very hard. Um but just by chance, he was a ski bum for a while, so now he's catching up, so that's good. Um Alicia has grown incredibly. She likes to learn. Um Nikki, it's the same way. Um at some point was talking to Nikki just as a side note and we got to discuss hey you have maybe this education and I do this and it's like no that doesn't matter matters how you do things right and the closer you look at how Nikki does things it's better and better for the county year

after year and it's just a profound Mike it's a huge difference um so I would say that is favorable, too. I agreed to three years of punishment. So, I'm going to do that and finish what I started a third of and lost. So I like that the Lake County will have say a team of people whether it's a small group I don't think the size matters but if you have some people that are highly motivated and trained you can do a lot of things right so I'll finish my PhD um I think that'll help the county but it'll be a painful progression for me

you got this Well, I just would be fine. I just want to say I already passed a third of it. When I came on as the finance director, none of the team participated in CGFOA, which is Colorado Government Finance Officers Association, and they have gone to trainings this last year, which our staff weren't engaged or going to. We got all of um our accounting staff, Alicia and Bryce, set up with like a mentor from CGFOA. So those are people who've worked in government finance, which government finance is really different

from from general accounting because of all the fund accounting that you have to do. And so it's been really cool to just see the people that we do have like really continue to learn and grow while they're with us. Um, and that's really a benefit, you know, to to us. they're going to get better at the jobs that they do, you know, for us, but also continue to to feel like they have room to progress so they don't end up somewhere else, you know, that that maybe has, you know, a little higher pay or whatever. Not saying people never leave, but it is like in investing in people is really important and wills really encourage that for teaches. So,

nice. Yeah, it helps. If you're reasonable, it usually works out pretty good. and being fair to everyone. I think in the past it might have been a little more maybe stressful in the county because of the uncertainty. So it was stressful for say I don't know payroll or finance functions but once you get rid of as much uncertainty as possible I think it makes it much better for everyone less stressful easier to plan time off um quality of life really helps. Yeah. Okay. Do you have another slide?

Yeah. Um, basically finances on track. Um, our payroll set. It may change or maybe the organizational structure may change, but ultimately all the finance positions are budgeted. Our expenses, I put this up just so you could see it. Expenses for the county in finance come really early. Um, for example, we pay the Tyler bills. So, we pay the $30,000 for the entire county for the annual subscription and the treasurers. And it it includes marks as well. I'm sorry, the assessor. Yeah.

So, those come early. Um, and what I'm expecting, Candace and I have talked about it is one of the long-term goals in the background was to not pay external accountants to do work that the county should be doing, whether it's AP, um, grant management, DHS, um, public health stuff.

They do a lot of grants. So now all of that is with the DHS kind of finance component of that department. Um, we're closing all those on time, monthly, which is never done before. So, the professional services that the county is going to pay for external, call it work, um, is going to be pushed to zero ultimately. That's awesome.

Like, you get a better return with people than contracting out. Like, some people do really well at it, but over time, if you can do it yourself, you can always do it better. What? So what's left in the professional services in terms of expenses for this year? Yeah. Your difference between act year to date and your total budget. Oh, it'll be highly favorable. I think it'll be favorable by like I'm shooting for $50,000 of no spent. Oh. And then but that includes got only 35,000 left. Yeah. But that includes the treasures. That includes other departments. Oh god. cuz other departments spread around the county

used external help. Yeah. To close their books on time. Yeah. But even then that didn't work. It was still a year and a half behind in some cases. Totally. Right. Okay. Cool. Sweet. Yeah. There's still one left for our services. Yeah. And we do have things that will be used for it. Like for example, the auditors are here this week. Mhm. Um and that'll pay for the audited financials that roll into next year. Uh DMC is the big one and that's required. So yeah,

and for just for background for you guys, the level of quality and due diligence between DMC and who the county previously contracted with, a company called I Bailey, they're not even comparable. Like you like I have to use I Bailey stuff and it it's fearful for me because I usually just redo it no matter what it is. Jesus. It It's just the difference in quality. Some people do things well even though they're at the same level. Some people are just better. Well, at least they were slow. Oops, they did have that.

Uhoh. But now that's part of the big change. And as a background, finance basically with all the changes that Candace has made in finance, if you look at it from say a 50,000 ft view, ultimately what you want is a finance department that can help everyone else in the county, no matter what it is. Yeah. Whether it's Brena, um, DHS, um, Mike for road bridge stuff, it should be an asset to the county. in addition to doing finance stuff. Yeah. Which I think it's getting there.

So is it So does DHS no longer have their own books? They still have a separate accounting software because their reports are due to the state by and it's a specific time frame and we find that most counties keep a separate set. But what has happened in the past is CVS accounting um was paid to close their books. well, close the treasury, so close the books for the whole county. And so in 25, we paid CBS accounting to work with our accounting staff to explain to them, here's what I've done in the past. So at this point, our accounting staff is closing our own books. Yeah.

Um, instead of using this person, she also closed DHS's and now that's being moved over uh to her finance people with support from our finance team. Um, and then our hope is to in this year to get them to work with the treasur the treasurer because we by statute can't help them close their books. It's why it's separated. The money coming in is separated from people who are paying things. So our hope is that this year we'll be able to get someone in Patrick's office trained to do that close because we don't close to to the bank. They do. And until they do that, we can't close her books.

So that is our hope is this year to finish off that her training them. Also, we know that like CVS accounting, the person that's their CPA, they're going to retire at some point. So we can't continue to rely on them to do a chunk of the work. Yeah. You know that as they have in the past. So slowly getting that off of our plate. And the DHS is pretty exciting, Candace. all the changes like Candace put in the is it the finance manager for DHS is that the technical

Mhm. But teaching DHS to close their books with their funding, it's going to be constricted in the future, right? So to properly um let's um do DHS work continuously going forward and have it be closed month after month correctly and have it tie into the county correctly is a big like that's very exciting and it's going to help in the future when they their funding just keeps going down and down and down. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a big part. Yeah. Nice job, Candace. Yeah. both you guys. Great job. Thanks. Well,

I haven't been in this room for a really long time. I know. Welcome back. And now I'm here like twice in one day. Okay. Um and I might have some other stuff because I I will say because I was getting ready to go out of town when I and it was going to be due while I was gone. So I was like so there might be a couple other things. Maybe I should just announce it for uh You can add formality. There we go. Oh, sorry. Uh next uh on our quarterly updates is the library.

Okay. Uh so we are so we review our policies once a year. Um mostly um just to like fix any language, make sure everything's up to date, see if there's any changes. There's very there's, you know, like few little tweets here and there. Um I'd say we added like um it's not really even a policy but we have a lot of groups that come into the library full circle uh you know project dream and it's been a little wild. So we're trying to rein that in for a few boundaries up. So we created a group visit guidelines. Um, it helps them so they can like so we can set their expectations on what they can cuz we realized project dream was just expecting us to do a lot and I'm like we need to not do this. We need we need to work together a little more. So uh um and so we just completed that. Um we the planning open house is probably going to get kicked to fall because um it's so we have so we hired somebody in January. She just gave notice her last day of Thursday.

Yes. I'm sorry

cuz she was really great. Um for a variety of reasons it wasn't working for her. Um so she's chasing an opportunity up in Alaska. So, um, so now my my focus is back on recruitment. Um, but we have five phone interviews set up. Um, like four for next week and then one for the week after. So, um, and all really great candidates. So, I'm hopeful. Um, so I think that right now is probably not the time for that. Uh um but part of what we were going to what part of the reason I mean we want to do an open house like at least once a year. Um but we as some of you might know we just purchased a uh a laser cutter and so we wanted to um you know have an open house recreation station and and stuff so people really know what we have and we've upgraded some of the equipment and um but I think we're going to probably kick that to the fall is my guess. We're going to be wrapped up with summer reading here in a hot minute. Uh um which starts on 27th of June I think. Whatever the last Saturday of June is, that's when summer reading starts. Um we have our that is wrong. It's the 15th, not the 5th is the 15th. Um and we also there was also a change with that. Um we are not doing a field trip um because it didn't work for some staff. But what we are doing and everybody in this room is invited. Uh um we uh somebody from the um from the VA down in Denver reached out. He's the he's like the outreach coordinator for like the you know his region and he does some trainings. And so I'm bringing him up. Uh um and so

we're doing a training called SAVE SAV like if that's an acronym uh um and it's kind of working with vets in crisis and that has been a thing for us in the library. And um and so I invited um I invited DHS, I invited public health, I invited the sheriff's office, I invited fire, and I invited uh um I invited all the county manager peeps and and um and the police department and I ran um so um because we feel like he's coming up in person. He has um he has done some trainings online, but I feel like in person's a little different. Um so we're opening up. Let's party. Whoever wants to come can come. So the first training will be from 11 to 12 and then we'll break for lunch and then we'll have another training from 1 to 2. Um so we're looking forward to that. Any questions about any of that stuff? Okay. Um and I don't did my um does my budget get put in here? Are we doing that?

Yeah, that's all. You don't have to do that. I do that. Okay. Hello. Um, we're working with Stuart on some building repairs. We're going to be doing the roof this summer. Yep. Uh, um, we are in desperate, desperate need of a paint job. I just feel like I watch it deteriorate like every month. Exterior, interior.

Exterior. Especially the um, well, the window frames especially are rotting. Um the it's especially bad on the legal room side because that's like west facing that side of the building is just getting thrashed. And um Michael's worried that it's as you know that has that's um keeps the windows in the building whatever. I don't know what to call it. You might know what to call it. Cocking. No, it's not the cocking. It's something else. Um gaskets. the sills cladding.

Well, this I mean the this I mean the the window sill like the framing the wood like that's rotted like like we're going to start having weeks if that's not fixed soon. And um so my hope is that that's on the agenda for next year. That's what we're working towards. Um and then lots of other kind of like little things that we're that I'm working with him on. Uh um we've been building up our creation station. We have not made the the laser cutter um ready for the public yet. We're still getting some policies in place cuz already when people want to use the creation station, that's the third orientation. So, we're adding a special orientation just for the laser cutter. Uh um and that's just about ready. Um and Jen has been um working with a gentleman. He's in Silverthorn and I can't remember his name, but doing oral history. So, we're trying to do like three or four oral histories a year. So, um so we're plugging along on that. Other than that, just doing programming, doing our thing, some readings about ready to go. And um if you uh if you I think the I can't remember if this is the registr I think the registration prize um cuz we got um fudge pine classes and has our logo on one side and the summer reading logo on the other. So you can get a um so register and you can get a groovy pine class. But um and we have lots of fun programming planned for the summer. So uh that's what we're doing. just kind of pointing them along. Questions?

Are you doing some Are you going to do the band books event? Oh, yeah. We have um her name is um Gabby Rivera. Um and her book is um Juliet Takes Breath. That will be on October Oh, we have one other thing. That's on October 8th. Yeah. Um really looking forward to her coming. And then this week we have um Camille Dunie. She is an environmental writer uh um from Fort Collins. She she's a professor. She's a creative writing professor there, an environmental writer and poet. And she will be here on Thursday.

And um so if you guys are free, calendar will be at Freight. Doors open at 5:30. We always serve food at these kind of events. So you don't have to worry you don't have to worry about dinner that night. Um so yeah, so that's that. Any other questions? No, just compliments. Library is basically my daughter's favorite place now. Yay. Such an asset. Thanks. The new roof will be exciting. What was that? The new roof will be exciting. The new roof will be very exciting. Will be super exciting. Yeah. Amazing, Jenna. What was that? Amazing. Thanks. Love your work.

Thanks. Um, but just a couple I mean even though I know she went over the budget, just a couple notes just so you guys are aware. Um, our collection budget we because we have a grant from the state library. So I'm in the process of spending that out. I'm like a couple hundred away from spending that out. And then I that's when I and then after that then I tap like our regular collections budget. So if it looks like you're like you got a lot of money just kind of sitting there. That's why. So how's the how's the conversation with the schools going about their consolidation and you all

good. Yeah. good. Um I had lunch with um with Kate that was probably like a month ago. Um and well there's two things that two big things that are going to be happening. One is we are see there's more stuff. Um we're going to be rolling out what's called a one card. So that means that every student that is registered at Lake County School District, they will have a library card. Uh um so when kids get registered and it's an opt out thing so they like automatically get it unless unless the parent is like I do not want my child to have a library card and um and then that will so the kids that already have like a youth card it'll we're going to consolidate those. So uh um and then the other and then um we're still working we don't have like a plan in place but we you know we will be working with uh um with someone who will be you know like kind of managing the class visits. So we already do the class visits with um for second first and second graders and so uh um so then we'll just add in the other ones. Nice.

So yeah. So we're looking forward to it. Thank you. Yep. Anything else? Thank you, Brena. Okay. All right. So grateful. All right. Thanks you guys. Thank you. Next is No, I'm going to pack my stuff and go.

Up next is development. You can Oh. Oh, okay. Cool. Hello everyone. Hello. Hello. Okay. Almost didn't come back from vacation, but Oh,

okay. So, starting off um just giving you an update in the building department. We've really been focused, as you know, on code adoption um and creating public information and engagement access and um e-committing. Um starting down the very long road of um onboarding a digital software um that will oversee um building permitting for um not only building permits but ancillary permits like solar permits and mechanical and plumbing roofing. So really excited about that. some some milestones this first quarter of course was the adoption of the Colorado wildfire resiliency code which you adopted on March 30th and we'll start enforcing in July that was a collaboration between the board of review um CPD fire and um we used uh Shel's Kota we will be participating in the wildfire resiliency fair at the fire station 2 in May and um we've really created a very robust um page on the website um that gives all kinds of information, a summary of the code um the different zone um definitions, best practices. So, there's just a wealth of information um on the on the website um for the public. And Bryce, sorry, I'm driving, aren't I? Okay, let Bryce. And then um we are venturing now into the 2024 I codes um which uh we've got our final draft in from the board of review. Um it's been in legal by the city and the county. Um I saw that Matt has the few red lines for us done and I think that Hillary has it in the city almost done too. So, we've got um the

public hearing coming on that on May 19th and next week we're having an open house at the college for the building community and property owners just to have kind of a presentation of the eye codes which um is the 2024 um and just a Q&A and provide some information on that. I can move that. Where's the hide? There we go. Okay. And um let's see. And so the effective date on the eye codes, we're trying to get in before that July 1st um deadline by the state where we'd be forced into a newer version of the energy code that our consultants are kind of warning us that we're really not ready for.

Um so we'll be able to make that deadline. um will be asking for adoption on May 19th, but then we won't be enforcing it until um the end of June. We will be letting um we're already communicating with um all of our contractors, inviting them to the open house. We'll do the same kind of thing that we did with the wildfire resiliency code. We'll have an online presence that just walks through um what the codes are, information. We are going to I met with C4 today. Um they're going to be a partner in helping us um provide resources to building community um developers, builders and property owners on the energy code. So they're going to help us through the implementation of the CAP um as far as the energy code is and even the wildfire resiliency code. So, they're going to help um conduct different education opportunities for the public and we'll also work with um Shrooms as well um to do some webinars. We'll host them online to just help shepherd us into the new codes. So, in Q2, we're going to be focusing on staff training and code administration, the revised codes. So, all of these codes will come with new forms, um new practices that we're going to have to implement on the staff level. So we'll be working on that inhouse and C4 is going to really help with the public engagement part of that and continuing to onboard um cloud permit. So going over into the planning department um we are actively working on the one community project. Uh we have hired our planner one who starts May 18th. We are so excited um really focusing on the moratorum development review and um partner collaboration um in a lot of different areas. So the one community project this first quarter we

wrapped up all of our different topical areas um with the stakeholder um the action planning teams to arrive at the action plan that you've all seen now and have I believe a copy of um we've been presenting the draft of the comp plan and the future land use um types map to you all and the planning commission um it is now currently um posted on the one community website um for the community to see. And of course, we're having the public engagement tonight that starts at 6:00 at the high school. Um and so that's just um a uh come people can come and go as they want. There'll be a um five or six different stations uh that people that can visit and get information on the comprehensive plan tonight. So really excited about that. Um and then the moratorum obviously is the other big piece of work that we're working on this first quarter. Um we got the adop uh the resolution adopted. Thank you so much. Um we created again another web page with a public engagement portal. So we are actively already taking comments in from the public. Um we are currently in the research phase of the moratorum. So, we're creating the best practice matrix. I was actually working on Mesa County right before I came upstairs. Um, but we've got about I think eight different communities that um we're diving into their land use regulations. We're interviewing their planning departments um and asking uh what we think are meaningful questions that will really help us create a best practice matrix and see what's going on in other communities around these um issues and topics. We've created a survey um through Survey Monkey that has been sent out to all of our emergency management partners. So with Samy's Health, we went

to last week's um emergency management meeting and um sent out the survey to over the 200 um emails and asked everyone. We created just a five minute survey. So we're hoping for good participation and ask them for their engagement on that. Then we'll be moving into other stakeholder groups to talk to C4 today. Um we really want to look at the environmental impact um and we'll be meeting with um stakeholders on the infrastructure piece um both water and sanitation and then we'll also be um meeting um with economic development representatives as well as any um interested community members. So we still are going into the stakeholder portion of kind of individual um engagements and hoping making the the best use of our time when we call on our different partners for researching the the subject and the topics. Um so excited to kind of see how this work is evolving and the information that we're finding out. and already mentioned that uh Rachel Pollock is our planner who will be joining us from Chicago. She's um finishing up her master's in regional urban planning um and so she'll be headed our direction here very shortly. So excited about that. She's found housing and excited to join our team. Um so also just thought it was important to talk about all of the collaboration that the planning department has been working on. We've been um working on the industrial part, the feasibility study and review and kind of next steps evaluation that'll be coming to the board for consideration. We're nearing the completion of the mobility study and we have a meeting um

Thursday this week with C DOT um to talk about what are the next steps um there is additional funds we believe um that we can leverage for engineering and possibly even construction. So we are meeting with our regional partners um from C dot to talk about um next steps with mobility study and so we can bring all that information to the board um to let you make some um decisions on next steps. um met today with C4 on implementation of the CAP um and excited to be partnering with them on that work and really see how they're going to be able to build out um capacity for us um in uh work that we do in the department specifically around obviously the building codes. Um they also had some questions around septic um and some different other um key areas that we'll be collaborating on together. I thought that it was um really refreshing today that they said they didn't they were really focused on not adding more for us to do but to hopefully take some things away from us. So we're excited to hear that.

That's great.

That's exciting. Um we are working on a uh so I would say work session but this is really a multi-EP departmental coordination work session of getting all of us together um law enforcement um public works CPD um uh parks and wreck together to just talk about the actual administration of the OB use and the um permits and how can we kind of coordinate together to really look at enforcement and um administration of of the ordinance and the permits themselves. So, we're going to um look at trying to kind of fine-tune that a little bit.

Then um we met with the EDC um and have provided some feedback on the development of the concier position um to help with development. And so we um they uh invited us in for kind of a listening session where we had an opportunity to kind of hear from different um developers and individuals that have gone through the process in the community um with some great feedback on ways that they thought that we could um potentially um help and um support small development in in the area. So just really leaning in and looking for ways that we can work together and find better outcomes and better supports. Um participated in the building better places uh workshop in Grand Junction uh with community builders and different partners um on u place-based economy. And I think you're starting to see that final um report is just been finished. And so some good um maybe future steps that are also aligning with the comp plan around economy coming out of that. So um we participated in that as CPD and then um just worked with public health on um their uh report and just provided uh some engagement and and um with them as they go through that and also we participate in LOSI as well. um housing. So, housing has really been focusing on the 102 project, uh grant administration and um making sure that all of our polic policies aligned. excited to hear. Um Jackie just shared she's at a um housing um uh workshop at

U Mount Princeton yesterday and today and Dola highlighted us um as one out of 103 different jurisdictions that came up with an expedited um process. They highlighted um Lakeville and Lake County as having exceptional policies. So, we're really excited um to um she emailed that or texted that to me yesterday. So, I was excited to see that that they shared that out.

Wow. Um so with her help we continue to align policy and uh we uh housing secured funds as you know to work with root policy again to update our housing housing action plan and start or our housing needs assessment and start working on our housing action plan. So, um they've already done a little bit of a kickoff and they're just starting to get some great base ground like um uh baseline information from us. So, we've already started working with them um and that we were awarded the grant for 40,000. Um we've been working as I think you all know with Excel um to kind of overcome some challenges. is we have to do some engineering redesign and we've been waiting on the moratorum to lift so we can get um that power to the houses on Third Street. So, we are nearing that resolution and we're excited about that. Um but Jackie's been holding um weekly coordination meetings uh with the project team and Excel and um her tenacity is getting progress going. So, that's exciting. Um we've got 15 homes of the 24 um reserved with buyers and we have nine available. So uh they're already being listed on Zillow and we're hoping to we've been talking about getting a intern to help us with showings once Jackie's not in the office anymore.

Um so excited to have a model and we really think that those nine units will probably go relatively fast once we can actually show them. so excited about that. Um and then we're going to have a celebration with all the project partners um and the community um to be determined um bas basically as soon as we have a certificate of occupancy and we can get a house ready. We're going to coordinate and just celebrate the 102 project. So excited about that block party.

Yeah, it sounds awesome. Yay. Mapping. Oh my gosh, Shelby has done I just have to say uh she has done extraordinary work. She has done all the maps for the one community project which I being one person the amount of work that girl does is amazing. Um I just I can't say enough about her level of um commitment and her attention to detail and just a passion that she brings to um her position. And so I just want to say this is an exceptional amount of work that she's done um recently. So her priorities have been working on the comp plan, increasing public engagement and communication um and strengthening operational systems. So all those great web pages I just talked about, she built those on top of making all of the maps. Um, and she also has um just looked and found ways, you know, she's been the intro's kind of admin assistant um my admin assistant since CC left and she's been doing a remarkable job. So, everything from getting us to take our notes for our office meetings in teams um to just overseeing and scheduling things. So, she's really been on top of it. Just want to mention she is the co-manager for e- permitting. So she and Torstston um are our leads um on overseeing the um e- permitting project. So leading communication and coordination with staff and really getting the training so she can help train she and the rest of staff. Um so it's working out really nicely. Um and again she's just been my assistants on on operations. um she's stepped in as the reporting secretary for the planning commission and again um created those amazing um web pages for us.

OWTS um Torsten likewise has been um doing a great job with for his first ever code adoption. He hosted a webinar online um for with engineers did a great job was able to answer all of their questions. the uh regulation draft regulations are on the website and there is the recorded webinar um to give information to the public. Um we will be having the public hearing on March 30th um to adopt the um new regulations and these are the update to the OT regulations just to be compliant with the state. So these are the state changes. Of course, you know, we're going to have a phase two um as we go through the moratorum if we look to update the the OWTS regulations further. So this is just meeting our our state uh requirements that need to be done by the middle of June. Um so everything is on schedule for that and he is the co-manager for the e-mitting uh project. Also they've been providing support through the moratorum on looking at alternative methods around sanitation in other communities for rural lodging and events enforcement. Um so enforcements have been really working on case management review with the county attorney's office um and where legal intervention is required in collaborating um between state and local agencies. So as far as like CDPHE for asbestous um and uh just different agencies that um Don is is actively engaged with. He works with public health and state. So we've got the cleanup that probably a lot of you have seen on Highway 24 South

right past Saturdays. The demolition of the structure is complete and yards and yards of um debris material have been um removed from the site and we do have an agreement with that property owner to remove the the last of those materials in August by September. September by September. So, um there'll be we but the good u amount of it is gone and um September we've got an agreement for the rest of the items to be removed. So, excited to see that. Who who did the demo?

Um it was a company that the railroad um hired, but I can't I don't know if Don was here a few times. But the railroad paid for all that. Yes, the railroad paid for all of that. So, they paid for the dump fees as well.

Yeah. Yeah, they paid for everything, took care of them. Um 1515. Well, this is actually in the um city and not in the county. It's still probably good to just know um that it is um oh, excuse me, wrong address. 1515 Popler is the um multi-family or unit um rental property um next to what used to be Parker physical therapy. So, it is currently red tagged due to the fire and lack of utilities, but all of those uh residents were successfully re uh uh relocated um and placed into uh secure housing. So, that's a good outcome. We have had an a visit by the insurance adjuster and we have reached out to the property owner to find out what they would like to do as next steps. Um there's probably a good chance that this will be another demolition project coming up. Um but with an interest for redevelopment um into some type of potential affordability. So we'll see if we we're we're talking to both the lean holder about that who is an individual

and um the current owner of the property. they both have communicated an interest in trying to come up with some kind of public private partnership um on maybe doing something around um community housing. Awesome. So, we'll see um 11:01. This is the one that while it's not in um the county, it is in the city and just give you an update um that it is going to this is Floyd's um it has been approved for demolition by the fire department. Um there are certain orders uh surrounding it. It does have to be fenced for safety for um the neighbors. There are certain hours of disturbance. So I think it it goes from 8 to 6 is the only time they can do demo on it.

And they have to coordinate with C DOT and the street department because they may have to do some road closure to get all of material out of um the property. Interesting.

But all of the asbestous has been mitigated at the property. So that part is complete. Um but there was enough um impact to the structural integrity of the structure that there has been an order um given to to demolish it and the property owner has agreed. So it's coming down um 121 Mount Trevor. I think this is a property you've all noticed before. It has um been purchased through tax sale and um the new owner is working with us. He has hired an environmental firm to come in and start doing the testing of the property. They were supposed to be here today, but because of the weather weather, they rescheduled. So, he's going to start with an environmental hygienist that will come in and test um for in uh airborne hazards in the property, which we think and have identified, we think there's several um so that we can determine what they are and that that property can also be safely removed. Um so, lots of progress. Um, other

Trevor, was that not home state? Yeah, I thought it was home state, too. Oh, it is homestake. I'm sorry. It is home stake.

Sorry about that. Um, pending legal cases. We've got several, but I know um two that we've got coming up are 640 and 680 Edward E drive, Edward E. Hill Drive, and 1715 Popler. Um, so those are active cases that we're working on. And then Don is collaborating like I mentioned with CDPHE public health um Matt law enforcement fire and the city of Leadville. Um but good progress is being made. So we're really excited about that. Um our short-term object objectives are really to um for Q2 and three are getting through the code adoptions and the administration of the new codes. um the comprehensive plan adoption um which we anticipate will be at the end of June. Um the moratorum um and implementation. So we're looking to have that wrapped up by August and then looking to implement um onboarding our new staff. Excited about that. and hiring a building professional. Um transition planning um and just looking at um having some good um uh SOPs in place. So we do have um making sure that every discipline really um kind of this should be more like succession planning kind of idea. Um 2026 CPD priorities review. We'll be reviewing all of the things that we brought to you at the beginning of the year, making sure that we've made good progress on those. So, that'll be two and three. Um Q4 and beyond, it'll be implementation of the comp plan, getting e- permitting over the finishing line, um departmentwide SOPs done. We're giving ourselves until the November to have those done. Uh standardize our digital file management. We've had a lot of different iterations, decades of different ways of doing that.

And so, that's a a big plan for us. and then our just a our communication plan internally and externally is kind of a what we'd like to see wrap up the year. I think that's it. Awesome. Thank you, Ann. You bet. Thank you guys. That was a lot of work. Oh, and I did provide the monthly reports from the building department, too. They're probably in your thing. Just so if you want to kind of see how the department's doing, but we're really picking up on building permits. Things are getting much much busier this month. We're already seeing a big influx of new permits. So, yes. Okay. Can I ask you a quick question? Sure.

So, uh C4 is going to have public engagement or something about wall assemblies or insulation or energy code. So, um, when I talked to, um, Richie today, he thought that he could do, um, lead some of those and additionally find some resources like from a building science standpoint of meeting, um, energy code requirements. So, yeah, that would include um, assembly work probably going through and figuring out those exchanges too um that and the trade-offs um, through the energy code. Absolutely. And I we'll also be looking for Sean's to help us with that as well.

Our new board review member, Steven Mack, would be a really good resource. Great. I'll I'll connect those two. Okay. He's a wall assembly expert in I asked him if he would be willing to help us with wall assemblies. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He's a um he testifies in defects cases, right? So he figures out what went wrong, right? No, that's great. That'd be really good for builders to Yeah. with this new energy code and that condensation issue in the walls.

No, I think that's great. I think that um this is a more complicated code to shepherd us into than the last time. um 12 to or excuse me 18 to 24 is definitely significantly different. So that's a great resource. Thanks for bringing I'll I'll tell Richie I'll connect those two so you don't have to. That's great. Yeah, we have an engineer and an architect joining the board of review. So we're excited about that. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. We will move on to tourism and economic development. Do you need a break? No. No. like 30 seconds. I need I need two minutes. I need 20 seconds.

Okay. I just went outside for the first time since like 7:15 and it's was nice to You're all like just holding it together. Bryce did that. It wasn't prepare yourself. I was just going to try. We are I'm going to give this to you. I was actually just trying to get out of this. Oh no. Oh my god.

I don't know how to

We're recording. We are. Okay. Next up is tourism and economic development for our first quarter update. Wait, sorry. It thinks I'm not in the meeting. It's still sharing the screen. Oh, so he probably did not. I don't know what just happened here. I think if you just go to the PowerPoint that's open still. There we go. Look at this. back here. Can I do it? Does this do I don't know if that does anything.

Cool. It looks cool. Yeah, it does look cool. It looks very just click and it'll advance. Okay, sweet.

Should Okay. Uh let's start with tourism. Um, I hate reading words on a screen, but yeah, we uh have worked a lot uh this year in helping. We were a cornerstone sponsor for Fat Bike Worlds and for skioring again this year. Um and uh that meant through financial sponsorship but also just being a part of the steering committees for uh Fat Bike Worlds and then working a lot with the ski join committee on messaging and helping them with the maps for like the parking maps that we created and the public messaging around parking. Um and um really focused on trying to provide both fat bike worlds and ski jouring with data. uh our placer AI um trailing data so that they could have a sense of who showed up in the past and then who showed up this year. Um and then uh with Fat Bike Worlds, the reason why we were a cornerstone sponsor for them is because we helped um create the Fat Bike Worlds and Sauna Fest this year for the first time. Um and the plan is to have Fat Bike Worlds uh come back to Leadville every other year. So we got it 26, we'll get it again in 28. And uh we've already talked um with the organizers of that event about bringing the Sonnet Fest back and ways that we could kind of improve that and elevate that experience. But that went well. Uh they had over 250 people for Fat Bike Worlds and there were 39 individuals who came specifically for Sauna Fest. And given it was the first year,

it it felt really great to have people coming from Colorado Springs etc. just for a sauna festival um and just to uh experience that in that way. And uh as I do I have been reporting out to county management um and other partners around um data as it comes out around fat bike worlds and ski drawing. Um so I'm not sure if this is uh made it to your desks but um we did actually have more people this year for ski drawing than we did last year. So last year was our record and this year was another record. Um, and what's significant about that is is that we had many more people on Sunday. So, um, we had about 1,200 to,500 more people come. So, it was something like 26,000 Humans, but many more of them came on Sunday, which is a really good indicator of overnight visitation. And their points of origin were from within Lake County for Sunday. So, that means they were staying overnight. Um, so that's really helpful. And we've heard from a lot of businesses through the Chamber of Commerce. They're setting up a new system. It's called like business pulse. And many of them are suggesting that ski drawing has really helped um their winter significantly. Um I do have it on my list of things to do to get with Will at some point and try and do like a year-over-year for sales tax for that weekend and see if we can attribute some of that. that that's a project and I will's been a little busy so I haven't bothered him with that yet. Um but yeah, we did develop these um this year for the first time we developed these targeted 4-day itineraries which sort of really um we partnered with local businesses who wanted to sort of if you're here for fat bike worlds or if you're here for skis you're running here are things you can do here are discounts and we're going to do that um for the um the Rocky Mountain um

philanthropy days that's coming in October and we're going to also do that for the um high cool um mountain bike series that comes after the race series. And uh we'll be tableabling at that event because we've heard from the uh high school um mountain bike series folks that they would really like that that th those visitors when they come, those families, they would really like information about how they can support locally. So, um, we're doing that and then we're also helping to do a lot of the same thing with the All About Leadville, um, event that's happening this weekend. So, that's Friday through Sunday. Um, that is a collaboration between Main Street and a whole bunch of partners. And if you want more information on that, I'd email you. But, um, yeah, we are hosting a lot more events at the visitors center, rural philanthropy days, um, climate copy. We just hosted the cloud city food lab. um taste and tell event um and that was significant. We had uh 78 people uh come to that event and get to sort of taste from our local food entrepreneurs. There were eight vendors, new food businesses in Lake County. Um bless you. That's been an awesome partnership between LC bag and the EDC and the tourism pan.

Cool. And then um get that out of the way. Um yes. And then we did we are just wrapping up our get out of here. We're wrapping up our um sentiment survey. Uh we had uh 900 surveys completed and those are residents, visitors, and uh tourism stakeholders. And it's the sixth most responded to um tourism survey that the Colorado Tourism Office has ever had. Wow. They had they've had over 2,000 surveys, so feeling pretty good about that. Um

yeah, that was mostly all Katie. Gold star. Yeah. Impressive. Um and we remitted over 30 31 just shy of $31,000 to the early childhood council to support uh uh childcare needs um through anou with Rocky Mountain DC and LC. So that's the tourism side of things. I'm trying to go fast. Sorry Sarah.

You're doing great then. And then building better places which is comes out of the one community project um Lake County government uh um city of leville bill EDC chamber. We're all we've all been we went to that thing in Grand Junction and then coming out of that we developed a list of priorities for ourselves monthly and then it turns quarterly and then it turns yearly um with um sort of goals and KPIs and we met in April. We're going to meet again in May to actually check ourselves and make sure we're holding partners accountable to make sure that at least the economic development goals from the one community project have kind of a project manager aka me to make sure we're all kind of doing the things that we said we're going to do.

Um and um the airport industrial uh park feasibility study uh it has been completed and we are going to be setting up a meeting with the BOCC here soon

and then uh to talk about next steps and that is has been exciting. some good progress uh there. And then RHA buy down pilot program for deed restriction um infield community development has been stood up and piloted and um uh the funds um for that uh will be dispersed eminently to um the first recipient of that and if you want more information on that I can I'm happy to fill you in. Uh, but that's really exciting cuz Chapla has reached out to the RHA and said that this is a that no program like this exists in the state of Colorado and that they want us to do a road show on it in 2027.

We're also going to offer a grant that would potentially allow us to get more money to expand the program significantly, which is exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And so Becky and I were workshopping the that language for that grant. That grant's due May 15th and it's really Yeah. That's exciting and there's a lot of opportunity and the awesome thing about that grant is you need to have a it needs to be shovel ready and you need to show success. So the fact that we already have an example of a pilot um project uh helps that application quite a bit. That's so exciting, Adam. That was really smart. Thank you. Yeah.

Uh and then the strategic investment plan uh is finishing up. We have given ourselves the deadline of May 18th. Um, and I am becoming a bit of a taskmaster on making sure that we hit that deadline so that we have something to share specifically with um, the BOCC, the county, the city around exactly what that's going to look like. Um, and it's coming together. Uh I'm really impressed with the work that um has gone into that and how thoughtful it is and how um the level of professionalism and sort of like it will actually um put in real dollars and it's going to be scary like everything else. It's a huge investment. Um, and but it will give us a really clear road map of sort of how we how we uh get from the current 24% of children served in Lake County 0 through 5 up to our goal of 60%. I can tell you all about why we chose 60% and all that stuff. Um, if you're interested.

I am so glad to see that on there. That was going to be one of my bigger questions. Yeah. So, thank you.

May 18th. Um and then tourism. Um yeah, we got this grant um through the CTO um for short-term and long-term waste management solutions in Twin Lakes. Um and we I did apply for a LOSI mini grant for the summer of 2026 to hopefully have a plan in place for trash in for the summer of 2026 because as of today there is uh no public place to put trash um when the pass opens. um in Twin Links. So, uh and we're supporting the All About Leadville um event this weekend and that will be hosted at the visitors center. So, that's where folks can come in and learn about it. And yeah, we are um uh that's the 250150. So, Col is 150 years old. The state or the country is 250 years old this year. So, um, we are supporting those efforts through a variety of things. We just I just submitted yesterday our NFTts. So, um, there'll be some Lake County nonfgeable tokens that people can purchase.

Who does that? But cool. And, uh, I know. What money? Adorable. It's adorable. Yeah, it is. That's a whole thing. But I took that and I consider yourself told I took care of that yesterday and uh they asked me for pictures and I was like Adam's going to do way better at the same time like of your face. Are you no of Lake County and it can't involve any humans? Yeah. Oh,

it has to be iconic Lake County and our heritage and all that stuff. Uh, and then we're working on trying to, well, there will be an exhibit for the 15250 about the mineralbuck trail at the mining museum. And then we're working on another exhibit with the creative industries to try and bring in 2027. It's called Space Cowboy. It's about the frontier and how it used to be the railroad and now it's space. And Colorado actually has the largest concentration of space exploration um, companies, aerospace companies in the country. So, it's it's a cool exhibit that I'm looking to bring here to the mining museum in 2027 and but it even though it'll be here in 2027 even though it's a part of this 20 the cesquis 250 um and then long-term objectives uh as part of the OCP we've identified a destination stewardship plan. We have the Colorado destination stewardship plan that I am on the council for that for the state but trying to come up with the lake county specific one but waiting through to get through the uh implementation plan for the climate action plan. And then um yeah that uh the analysis of the tourism sentiment data um the good news there is we have like a 4.3 um net promoter score which is uh really really high for the state. So people who the subset of humans who really who like Leadville Twin Lakes really love us. So um we have really high retention um which is really good and then there are some things that we're lagging in that we can work on. So um we'll have a full analysis of that in like 2 months and then um we are also coming up with uh something called a frontline training. So, it's a soft skill training for all

um tourism oriented businesses that sort of talk about who we are, how we want people to act when they're here and what sort of things people should know about our community. Um, you know, everything from history to our natural uh resources and things like that. And we'll be providing that training to all of our tourism businesses. And if uh we'll be incentivizing that so if local businesses take it, they have chance to win prizes. And then also they get little window clings that say like come in to learn more about Redville Twin Links. Um and that is in cooperation with the Colorado Tourism Office. So they're they're called learning labs and they're um they're specific to uh our community, but they're part of a larger ecosystem of information about Colorado. And um we also are now officially a Colorado um an official Colorado visitor center. Um so

what does that mean? Um, so the state has a set of 14 and now it's something like 24 um, official visitor centers. So if anyone like and we're going to try and work with C do on updating signage and everything, but basically if you want to know information about Colorado, we're an official visitor center. So the state provides us with resources and training and interpretation and stuff that's just sort of talk about lead bill and how it works into the larger ecosystem of destinations in Colorado. Cool. Um, and then, uh, yeah, we are working a lot with our local businesses and the chamber on sort of like how we can prepare for a summer that could be different than others based on our winter and economic development, uh, airport industrial park, which will be presenting. Sorry, it's a joke. Just kidding. Uh and then uh can yes we are uh we're meeting in May to talk through the um econ development task force. Uh and then uh we're going to conclude um the SIP for the early childare as I mentioned and then uh we're still working through the um the yeah Freeport Macaran the mining transition stakeholder team. Um

oh my gosh I am working on that. Awesome. I promise. Amazing. Sorry it's taking you so long.

No it's fine. And then we are we continue to support the commercial lodging investment. Um having really good conversations, active conversations with two, three developers right now um on just um potential projects and just basically providing them with data um background data and information about um our market and regional markets and regional forecasting. And then um we're actually we were approached by a couple that lives here in Lake County. They've owned a second home here for a very long time, but now they live here and they do they're data analysts and they are uh volunteering 80 hours of consulting to work on uh basically updating our um lodging feasibility study from 2023 to be a little more futurep proof and we're going to be looking it'll be good from 27 through 29 and also they're going to hopefully build us a data tool so that we can actually get Real-time reporting. Don't need to get into the weeds, but we don't have a lot of real-time reporting because there's only one system that allows people to have data and insights around commercial lodging. And none of our commercial lodgers use that system. It's called Co-Star.

And so, we have to ad hoc create a system ourselves. And then, so are they volunteering their time? That's amazing. Yeah. Are they on the tourism panel or they they wanted they wanted to join. they they've reached out to me a long time ago and so they wanted to join but they didn't feel comfortable because they were not full-time residents at the time. Okay. Um so now they are here full-time and they want to help. Cool. So

very cool. And then um yeah, just supporting uh and in active conversations pretty regularly now with the EDC in the chamber um because they're actually talking to them uh and they are uh doing really good work, future oriented work in terms of what what how they could be most of service to our community as standalone uh organizations outside of Lake County government. So, it's been exciting. That's it. Well done. Well done. Thank you. Yeah.

Thanks, Adam. Move to the hot seat. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Next on the agenda for first quarter updates is public health.

Great. I will say it feels like a lifetime ago that I made this presentation. Don't even really remember what's on it. So, in quarter 1, we've overall just done a great job keeping up and keeping things really stable, which has just been really important, especially with how things have been in flux um and the current environment. Um, and we got our tobacco ordinance and regulations updated with you all. So, thank you. That was a huge milestone in um successful programming and enforcement there. Um we are currently up to date on all of our retail food and tobacco inspections. There was a time not too long ago that Lake County was always behind in those. So that feels really we're proud that we continue to stay on top of these things. Um we have been working on the public health improvement plan which is statutoily required every 5 years. Um, in quarter 1, we finalized the community health assessment portion of that and now we're moving into the public health improvement plan portion and we are on track to finish that this year, which is amazing. Um, we've worked really hard with the region 5 opioid abatement council um to ensure that those funds um in our region are equitable and supporting Lake County as much as other counties. Um, the other counties in our region are Summit, Eagle, Pickin, and Garfield.

Oh my lord. Thanks, Elsa. Kelsey. But what I will say is that I am like so amazed with this group because we put out a massive RFP for a treatment and recovery organization for substance use disorder to serve all five of our counties in some fashion. and they decided to award it to A Way Out, which is a nonprofit that already serves the other four counties. And so they granted them over $400,000 to start serving Lake County. And this was a massive win

for us um in Lake County. This is a nonprofit that basically helps with case management for folks experiencing substance use disorder and provides scholarships. And if someone needs to go to the front range for treatment for 3 months, they help with their housing costs and like all the life things you have to do to be able to take care of yourself and like choose that journey when you're ready.

So really excited. Um A Way Out hosted a meeting with local partners um last week. I was not able to attend it but um see um but they are going to come to the harm reduction coalition in two weeks and present in person and work with uh the group that's really been working on this locally. So that is amazing. Um and I was just so excited that all of those counties were like, "Yeah, we need to be serving Lake County. This is absurd." Oh my gosh. And they did it. Oh my gosh. Um yeah. and Lake County didn't even used to come to the meeting, so they didn't have any insight like oh my god.

So, it's that's been really great.

Um, okay, moving on. Sorry. That's some of the work that I get the most excited about. Um, we have continued our community partnerships through the harm reduction substance use prevention coalitions kind of connecting with that work. Um, and then quarter one is typically a slow clinical quarter. um saw 17 blood clients and 54 immunization clients. For like reference, in the past five days, we've seen 80 immunization clients to just show how that changes quickly. Um and have probably given out over a 100 vaccines. Um but thankfully we had a slow uh quarter 1 so that we could be prepared for quarter two. Um accomplishments and projects. Um, we've been active on the Lake County Pride Committee to help organize the Pride Wellness Fest for the third year running to support our LGBTQ plus community. Um, and anyone else, obviously, everyone's welcome for health and wellness resources. Um, we also worked with the school to launch a safe firearm storage campaign. And we've been giving out free cable locks, free trigger locks, and free small lock boxes to support people locking up the firearms in their home so that children are less likely to have access and cause injury or death. Um, we also received some new funding and started work on our chronic disease assessment, um, which is due at the end of quarter 2. Um, we're meeting all deliverables and all of our staff has stayed. These are our these are our wins. Um, questions about any of these things before we move into like what's on the horizon. Before we move on, and I wanted to say this before you even started, we have heard so many wonderful things about you and your department from last week, Kelsey. And I know you've heard it from other places, but I just want to make

sure we're publicly saying thank you so much for all the work you're doing and you must be exhausted and your team is amazing and just thanks for being a professional every day and serving our community. Thank you. We are still working very hard on that. I know. Well done. Uh thank you so much. I appreciate that. And our team is amazing. I'm so proud of them.

You guys rock. Um upcoming priorities, we should have the public health improvement plan finalized by quarter three. Um we're working on our um strategy and implementation plan for our new chronic disease funding stream and tobacco prevention funding. Um we will be working on increasing blood testing as we approach the summer. That's generally when we see kids more exposed to lead. Well, I guess this winter we saw a lot of dirt, too. But, um, we'll be incre increasing that outreach and partnering with our schools and childc carees. Um, we're just going to continue to work on maintaining staffing stability and all of um, our statutory programming so that we can remain strong recipients for our funding. um going to keep working on our community engagement and growth and our substance use prevention work as we're kind of the leaders in that work um in our community. Um we have applied to start doing active tick surveillance um which is really interesting and I'm pretty excited about this but there are ticks in Lake County. You wouldn't think it, but it's honestly been like the last like fiveish years that I feel like they've started showing up.

Yeah. We actually had someone turn in a tick to us on Wednesday. If people find a tick on them, you can bring it to us and we send it into the state and they state test the tick for free. It's really cool. But we'll also be taking out like dragging equipment this summer and running through like we define areas and we'll run through and try to pick up ticks and then send them in for testing. shadows. Yes. Sorry. I don't know what happened. Let me just if you click adjust. Yeah. Sky.

Um and as a nation, we're seeing a huge uptick in tick related diseases which is concerning.

Yeah. And a lot more um in 2026 already tick activity. So, um, this is a really I think for us it's going to be really fun. Our team's excited about doing this. Um, anyways, moving on. We're also looking forward to increased collaboration with our new OEM director once they're on board. Um, and then increased outre outreach and communication surrounding seasonal communicable disease. So, we are also working on that. Any questions about things we have coming up? Do you kill the ticks first?

That's a great question. We sent a live tick to CDPHD last week. So, they're hard to kill. Yeah. Okay. It's fascinating. Depending on like what it is, some things need to be dead and other things are bats. Bats need to be dead. Yeah. Ticks can be alive. Tick. Wow. Weird. Yeah. And tick should be dead. I think so, too. But it was great because then we just got to leave the tick in the bag that it was delivered at. So um right next I have the senior center I think. Yep.

Um okay so shifting gears, the senior center has been popping all year. Um, our transportation program has already expanded a lot since we received the S DOT grant because that allowed us to spend more and that um, program. And something that's been really cool is having a lot more capacity to take those medical appointments for folks. We're able to support folks more with dialysis appointments and cancer treatments that are routine whereas we supported them as much as we could in the past, but we certainly had some limitations. Um and then also um for food support and then also recreational activities. So that's been great. Um we've also seen increased participation um really in all of our programming. Um a lot of it has to do with food access. Um and then also getting seniors out and about for recreational activities. Um we're also really excited about how Saint Vincent has been showing up for the seniors. They do at least one lunch and learn every month. Um Michelle doesn't even have to reach out to them anymore. They just are like, "Hey, can we come talk about this?" And it's great. They have a ton of specialty programs right now that are super beneficial to this population. Um so that's been great and kind of rebuilding that relationship and trust with that community.

Um working with medical case managers to just ensure proper referrals are happening for seniors in our region. Relle works on that a lot. Um, since we don't have a ton of local case management and folks need to be referred out of county, often it gets pretty complicated. Um, we had some folks come, I did look up this acronym, but I don't remember what a VITA is at this given moment, but they came and helped over 45 seniors for free with their taxes. Um, which was great. And volunteer income tax.

Yeah, thank you. Sorry, my brain is tired. Um, and then I kind of just looped in veterans affairs here, but they continue to offer office hours Mondays and Wednesdays at CMC and then are at Fridays at the senior center. We have been exploring moving them to the senior center, but with some space constraints that hasn't happened and we'll see if it's super feasible or not. Um, cuz a lot of the space at the senior center is only accessible by stairs, which is not an accessible location way for our seniors to receive support. So, um, we can't like set Veterans Affairs up in the basement where there's tons of room. So, he might stay at CMC, which is totally fine.

Um, any questions about things that have happened in quarter 1 at the senior center? The the 60,000 from Ced? Mhm. Do you think that's secure funding? Yes. Okay, cool. It's reimbursement. I mean, year-over-year. Sorry. I get that it's a state grant because I've just heard so much about a lot of transportation dollars have been getting cut. Unclear. I've heard that once you get it, it's easier to contend you're receiving it. Okay. Um because then you can really already have been telling them the story of your program. Um but no, we will have to reapply for it. And the application was in July of last year, so I anticipate it being around the same time. Yeah.

Again, we want to see that funding, not Yeah. Great. Okay. Cool. Any other questions? How far do you think that'll take us? Like, do we typically spend that money from our general fund? Do we just not provide the service? Like what? Um, so we just increased our budget. So that looks like for us like increased driver hours. Yeah. Like we used to only budget for 20 hours a week and all of the senior center funding except for a very small amount came out of the general fund.

Um, and then this is a matching grant. So the 60k matches 60k that we've already been spending which we have spent probably in the past um between 80 and like 90k on the transportation program. So then this takes the total budget of the transportation program up to 120k with 60k of that coming from dot. Um so it just allows for more hours and more trips. Um they're also for fuel and vehicle maintenance and things like that. Nice. Okay.

Okay. Cool. That's awesome, Kelsey. We are working through the reimbursement process right now, which has been a bit of a learning curve.

Um, upcoming priorities, uh, collaborating with the Yuk to determine future sustainable staffing model for the nutrition program that we deliver with them. Josh met with the Yuk on Monday and I think we'll have some exciting things to share soon. Um, we are also working on hiring more on call staff at the senior center. What we found is that when you have part-time folks, when life things come up, then there's no one really to fill in for them. So, we're trying to beef up our on call staff so that our programming is not um impacted when someone is sick or needs to go somewhere or takes a vacation. Um, so same for on call drivers. Um, and then as far as veteran services go, Harry Beck just went to the VSO conference, uh, is that last week? Yes. Or the week before, very recently. Um, to get trained and up to speed on everything. Um, I recently Harry became under public health at the beginning of this year and I've started meeting with Harry Monthly and I have been learning so much about our veterans affairs and services and um, really grateful for Harry to be there.

Um, and I think that that's it. I guess so. Okay. Awesome. Nice job, Kelsey. Thanks. Thank you, Kim, so much. Next up for first quarter updates is public works. Awesome. How are you all doing today, Michael? Pretty good. I'm going to try this. So, public works on the bridge. Number one thing, plowing snow. That's a joke. What snow?

We did plow some snow the first quarter. A little bit. Not lakes. We helped with the city um ski during set up tear downs and haul this way to the avenue then hold it off Sunday night to get the avenue back open. Um guys have been out doing a lot of pothole patching but with the free thaw we keep moving about the whole similar increasing number.

Um so we'll be getting some more patching material soon. Um we did get the pressure repaired. We're having some difficulties after it runs for five or six hours. it likes to shut off for some reason. Trying to figure that out. Um, but we have been crushing. We have about 10,000 cubic yards or tons of road base on the ground right now. Pretty close to that. Most of that will get used this summer with road building and bridge repair, bridge replacements. Um, right now we're also doing road repair in Twin Lakes. We had a covert that at some point in the past was not put together right. So one end of it froze and then at the joint between the two culverts the water decided to wash out and kind of wash the road out. It is put in correctly now.

Is that under a dirt road or a pave? It's under dirt road. It's under lang street in right by the old the fire station down there. Okay.

The old fire station. Um, and the water runs through there. It's a um irrigation ditch that runs through there all year long. So when it does move up, it freezes in the polar purse. Likes to run over the road. Um, but we are doing a little bit of realignment to that road too cuz it was hugging one side of the rideway and so we're moving it more towards the center so there's parking on both sides, making it look like a road instead of a trail through the woods. Um, we're doing a lot of street sign replacement, especially street blades. They're fading. Um, stop signs were fading. So, we're doing a lot of that when we have the chance right now. Um, some of the other things that we're doing, we did do some work at the fire station that we've been putting off for several years. We've got some drainage issues down there since the building got finished that we're trying to fix. Um, we are getting ready to do bridges, doing two of them this year. Hopefully we can get them ordered and online. The Forest Service, we have to do theirs, help them with theirs this year, which is clear up at Mount Massive Trail Heads. Um, so those are our summer projects. We're looking at pavement county road 11 from 300 to the elevated part where 11 turns to go to a half moon tree. Um 9C parts of it to repair. It's got some bad repair spots. Um 5A,

the part that we um tore up last year when we did the bridge, we'll extend that to the Colorado 300, which is on the corner down there. um part of County Road 17 from looking at from the bottom of Silver Hill to County Road 9, which is a really bad section that hasn't been touched for years since I've been here. It's all wavy. Yes.

You can tell where the where the paving the good paving stops and the paving starts because it gets really bad quickly. Um, actually 9C, we're doing parts of that, but we're also looking to to do an overlay on 9D, which is a cut across between four and 9. That's getting really bad, too. A lot of um alligator cracking on it and stuff, so it's falling apart. Um, those are our short-term goals for the summer. Long-term goals, we're looking for grant funding to repair county road 4. I know you've all heard that I closed down road 4 because it's trying to disappear from our face of the earth. Um storm water improvements in and around West Park to try to control runoff. Um we're looking at grounds for that. We did a swer for that last year and we didn't get it. So maybe this year we can get something like that. Um working with partners to get underground repairs completed. So roads can be repaired in neighborhoods, but I know West Park is going through a lot of sewer line repairs now and we've got gas in there. We got electrical. We got

So maybe the with the water and the sewer, maybe we can get some so we can repair some of those roads, make them good again. Um that's one of my high priorities right now. I've already been looking at some real might be able to do it without a lot of, you know, comparison like got newer homes and stuff. That's pretty much it for road bridge um landfill. We're still working with Carter Department of Health. We did get the EDOP approved. Um we've got some things that we have to show that we're moving forward with something here pretty quick. doing a good surveying and stuff out there. Rearranging. Well, right now we're rearranging the landfill to accommodate for the next lift because we are have do have to move up to the next lift pretty quick. Um, a lift is about 5 to six feet at a time. So, we keep having to all the other stuff we're trying not to do so much of that like tires and all the other recycling stuff that we keep out there for a while. You have to keep moving that around as we move. So, just redoing work. Um,

we're still looking for alternative recycling opportunities. Um, more plastics. Every time I get something, even other counties, I'm only doing ones and twos and not taking anything else right now. Um, cuz the bottom fell through that market and China's not taking it no more. And that's been for a while. So, for some reason, I got a bill and I need to find out why for our card cardboard recycling the other day. So, we take it to Denver and we usually get money for cardboard, but they charge me $400 this time. So, I'm wondering why out of 24 tons of cardboard.

I'm not sure why. I'll find out. Um the 3% price increase went in at the beginning of March. I haven't heard that much complaining about it. I mean I've gone out there twice and it's cost me 50 bucks. So it's like that's a new price. Um and we are working on grant opportunities out there too. Um we're looking at C3 um refund stuff right now which is or recycling basically. Um, we are looking for a grant to move forward with some of that other stuff there. Thank you.

And short-term updates. Um, we did receive the Swiffer grant last year. We found we didn't find we found out in December that we didn't receive it. That's the one that Chaffy County got. I'm not sure if they've done anything with it yet. Um, but that one might be coming available again, but I heard it was. So, um, and we are having a meeting to discuss why we didn't get it with EPA coming up in next month. So, awesome.

Hopefully, we'll find out some good stuff. Um, long-term objectives, land expansion or deciding what we're going to do. That's about it. Sweet. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Michael. Absolutely. Appreciate you guys and everything you do. Next. Okay. Sorry.

Next update will be from our facilities and fleet. Um, thanks you guys for letting us do this. I know that uh you don't really know my team, so I thought I would share a few things about my team. I brought a couple people. I thought I'd introduce you to them because you don't really know. My team's a little hidden, I think, from the county. This is Hosapina. She's our lead of the janitorial staff. And you know, they do a fantastic job. Our buildings, we come in, they're they're clean. Um 5:00 this morning, we had a kind of a mess in the annex for someone walking in the carpet with oil shoes. And uh five o'clock this morning, Josephina scrubbed that carpet. That's beautiful. Hosina.

And uh she's also got a basically an all new staff this year that she's trained. So I just want to thank her, introduce you to her, too. Um this is our facilities uh maintenance foreman, Jesus Quintana. I don't know if you knew who that was or not. You've been here roughly 20 years, right? Almost almost 20 years. Um, his team is nine people. Um, they do a lot with a little. Mhm.

Especially in parks and wreck in the summer. Um, anyway, super excited about him. And next to him is Nora. This is her oneyear anniversary working with H6. Congratulations, Laura. Yeah. Um, really excited. She actually started cleaning with Hosaphina and uh a year ago today she started with Jesus and I want to say she's she's doing fantastic. Um Jesus also just so you know this this year he got his GED Jesus passed his CDL test. His graduation is righty right?

Yeah righty. Yeah. and he's also taking computer classes because at one point he'd like to stop using his back and now do something else with the county. Yeah. So, thanks you guys. Um, and we've had a talk about mechanics in the past. So, we got two new mechanics started in March um

to replace the one we lost. And I just I this is Zachary Stamps and Erin Gonzalez. And I can't say enough good for the about these guys. Um they both started in March and we have 300 units and they have went above and beyond. They they've even serviced all of our lawn equipment at that end before we start that this year. Our Zamboni that we've been operating with a battery charger and turning it off when it overheats. They've got it that in the shop all tore aparts. I they're working miracles. So, I thought you guys, especially you, Andy, you're the one that uh was most concerned about Lance's work.

I, you know, I know enough about that subject to have seen red flags there. Like, we have so much stuff to work on and didn't seem like there was enough hands up there. So, at least there's two people now. Stoked you guys are here. Thank you. Yeah. Um Erin actually is just finishing high school. He'll be done and he'll be 18 in June. So, um, Zach's taking a CDL classes right now. Zach worked 10 years at Dependable. Nice. Worked at a local shop for years before he came here. But, I mean, Zach can fix no starts that dealers struggle with. It's just this team is amazing. I

It's It's my It's my wheelhouse also, and I really appreciate this guys. So, if you don't mind, I'd inter I'd like to excuse our going to go back to work. Yes. Thank you guys. Thank you guys. We appreciate everything you guys do. All right. Hostess was worried that you were going to have to have her talk. So, next time always wants to go home, baby. Um, was the fellow you said had the concrete experience to help with the repairs at the skate park, I believe, right? Yeah, we're getting ready to start that. I um we could talk about that at another time. um

connect the dots, put faces to names. Yeah. Cool. Um bring up a slide. I only made one slide. Hopefully I wanted to talk about our team and that's not our whole team, but uh those are some key players. Our we're going to change to microtransit from fixed route May 19th. Very excited. May 19th. May 19th. Nice. There's a lot to that actually. I bet.

So, um, we have a meeting this Thursday with C DOT, with our contractor, and with, you know, the the people that work in the county on this project. So, we're super excited about that. Um, as you know, we're working on a capital asset master plan that's in progress. We're allowed to mention what we do. Yes. Yeah, sometimes I speak out of turn. Um, you just did just now um last week.

That's awesome. We're working on various facility projects. Um um we have some talent on our facilities team. Um, we're we're hoping to do um move our wraparound program from Pitts Elementary into the public health building and I think we can save the county about $100,000 by doing it ourselves just buying materials. So, we're going to do some training. We're kind of excited about that with our team and helping learn some new skills. So, um, right now we're putting new flooring in the patrol room in the sheriff's office. I wonder what's going on down there.

Yeah, now you know. That's great. Thank you.

Thanks. Um, anyway, um, and last week we went over most of the parks and wreck properties. Um, I wish we had a little more money to spend. We're going to try to do a lot with a little. Our dugouts are sinking, things like that. But we're going to do what we can until we get more funding. Um, that's actually kind of fun working with them actually. Um, we've already talked about our mechanics. Um, I I really can't say enough. I'm very fortunate to have these guys. Um, Zach also is a brand new dad. Cool.

He looked like he had brand new dad. Lack of sleep eyes. See Josh with those too. Brings back memories. I was like, "Oh yeah, is that um they helped me today. We um we were in the process of listing about 20 vehicles to sell the government deals." Cool. website along with other things were tires and old equipment and things. So those guys were great. They had the sheriff's department actually spent two weeks trying to get their old expedition going and our mechanics had it going in like 15 minutes. Nice.

Yeah, they're just I'm I can't see it. Um you probably are aware that cameras throughout the county are failing. They have about a fiveyear life cameras. Uh the sheriff's department, we have 58 cameras in this building. We would like to have 60 to include a camera at this door and those kind of things. Uh but um they we're at the point like with the sheriff's department that no one can repair the the cameras and stuff. So we we have some problems and we're having the same difficulty at the library. That's an area where you wouldn't think that we would have problems and need cameras, but that's an kind of a high demand camera area placed. So, we're on the back burner. Um Josh gave me direction. It's not my top priority right now, but we're working on the camera project. And then I just want to mention since we were we split up public works a little bit, I want to give a special thanks to Joshua Becker. He's been more than patient with me, my complaining. Uh Michael Irwin's been a really good asset and our HR director's really wonderful to work with. Um, if you guys have any questions about our fleet or the facilities, I think reviewed our lease program for all the uh all the cars that are that are lined up there on is it, you know, by the

12th Street. 12th Street. you're comfortable with the number and the amount of vehicles we have. I mean, I think before we got in here, we thought that's a lot of cars and we I still think that can we pair that down a little bit or or is it at a good number? Do we need more? That's a great question, Matt. And I believe that your instincts about use that word correctly is are correct. We have too many vehicles and um we're in the process. When we can let go of cars, we will we'll reduce the amount.

Stuart spent a ton of time just thinking about how we use county vehicles, where they're stationed, are they accessible? Josh and Stuart have spent a lot of time, you know, reaching out to departments to understand what do they need in terms of vehicles. like, you know, public health and DHS are a little different. Yeah.

And just really trying to be conscientious with the vehicles that we do use and and then try to get staff into vehicles when appropriate. I think that's the other thing is a lot of staff use their own personal vehicles, which is fine until an accident happens. And so really trying to get good policies in place and get people to to to use a county vehicle when it's appropriate so they're, you know, we aren't having them have an accident in their personal vehicle while they're on staff, you know, on county time would not be great for us from an insurance perspective. So trying to really figure out when do people need cars? They've done a ton of work.

Can that be in our handbook? So you think can it be in their hand the handbook? I do think you'll be able to figure out that policy in time to publish it in our handbook. We've had some uh one discussion with Ashley about that. That'd be great. So, thanks for the reminder, too.

Um but yeah, we're we're a little topheavy. I think it was really hard the people that were making that decision before to kind of guesstimate that. We we have we're in a whole new thing. We've got we can keep vehicles longer. um we can have older vehicles. Um we um we have processes in place that we don't have vehicles. So yeah, we're we're topheavy. The exact number I'm not prepared to give you at this moment, but we we can get rid of some cars. We've also we have we discovered some needs where we need cars more over at the public health building. We had employees including bike directors 24 hours a day using their personal vehicles for emergency things.

Um I'm not an expert of what they do but uh we dedicated some vehicles to them and we do some similar projects at the senior center. uh disadvantaged individuals in our community have doctor appointments and things. We distribute a couple there, but even with that, we still have too many vehicles. Yeah, that's a really good question. Matt, do you have do you have a followup question for that? No thanks. Commissioner's RAV 4 is the only Toyota in the fleet, so don't get rid of that one because this will last for another 20 years.

Actually, someone asked me about today and I said it's a second gen. We're going to keep it a million miles. Um, Stuart, how's the kind of insurance deep dive going? Okay. Uh, sorry, since you're here. No, I'm I'm actually really glad that you brought that up. Um, we're going through and there's it there was quite a bit of work that we have done that we need to do more. We were missing a building at the airport for heard. But um like right now we're um Matt and I are working on a a a piece for the insurance for the public health.

There's a lot of questions and there's there's a lot there. Um and we we're trying to get up to speed. Do do you have a specific question about an area of the insurance that you're concerned about or

I guess my I kind of wanted to know like how what we might not be insuring based on all of the assets we have because a lot of assets uh we are not personally using but we have IGAS or all use that um we should still be insuring that thing but to what level because the person or entity that's using it is also insuring it. So just kind of like an audit of are we paying the appropriate amount of insurance for all of our assets. Kind of like a capital asset management plan but more of like an insurance capital insurance management plan. I was just wondering how that was going.

Okay. Um we did our own internal piece on that. We also had CTSI follow up to verify that we were doing it correctly. Nice. Yeah. We we've identified a number of well how much we pay per building buildings that we don't own. Yeah. Or land that we don't own but other people are operating. Yeah. Now that's really good question. So the land piece like the liability section. Yeah. That's the same because that's based on our revenue with the county. So no matter what we own, it's covered to land.

Now there's a lot of exclusions. Um great they call them broad form statements that CTSI publishes. There's a there's a lot of exclusions and there's a lot of deductibles. Um if you let someone go and there's a wrongful termination thing, there's a $20,000 deductible. That's just an example. But the liability piece, I'm glad you brought that up. We're covered for everything based on our revenue. Now, the the actual asset, a structure, now we pay for those pieces. Okay? Um

so no matter what the activity is on the land, it doesn't change what our coverage is. for instance, a ski resort or a uh gun range versus a mineral belt or a you know, we've got like some high li high risk activity on our county lands and if that doesn't change our liability or our coverage then awesome. I was just wondering if that if you have discovered anything about that. Okay. Uh, that's a a really great question. Um, and I wish I had more time there for this. Sure. Yeah, maybe this isn't great,

but I I I can say that we we share liabilities that other counties have, similar liabilities, right? Um, but there's a lot of exclusions that we should talk about that we have. Okay. There's exclusions for areas where you think there might not have be like our bridges for instance, um, lost a bridge. We do not have insurance. that's an exclusion in the policy, but um there's a lot of things that aren't covered. So, we we should really set up a work session if you'd like to learn more. If I could bring up the broad form policy statements by law, they're written to like even a person like myself could understand and um we should go for those. Cool. I would love that. Yeah.

Would you guys be with that? Yeah. Do you want us to submit a work session? I already had Sandra hold the spot for you. Oh, yay. Thank you. And we have the data for like what every building we're insuring and how much that is. Yes, I want that so badly. Thank you. That's a really good question. So, I don't think we've ever really done a deep dive into the insurance until we had Stuart in this seat because you really just have to understand the insurance and it's really complex. Yeah. So grateful that you're here, St. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks for bringing your team to

Yeah. Some days I just feel very thankful that I have these people working with me. I know what you mean. Anyway, thank you guys. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda, water and natural resources. How far behind you are? Uh 21 minutes. Oh, it works really good. That's okay. Word. Hi. Hello.

Everyone keeps trying to use like this isn't the thing.

All right. Well, as far as Q1 updates go, the big one is um the establishment of this department. Right. So, this department was created on the 1st of January um as a consolidated just kind of getting our ducks in a row having one source that covers water concerns, natural resource concerns, especially trees, forests, wildfire prevention, and then open space, open space protection as well. So, a big focus of mine the last in Q1 has been consolidating all the different functions of those three elements, sorting out legacy grants that we have and making sure they're under this new umbrella. Um, and just figuring out the lingering priorities we had from existing departments that are now under the water and natural resource department. Big thing we started this quarter too is we onboarded the sustainability contractor C4 and so they've begun work on the county sustainability plan the implementation of the cap. Basically this is the followup to the climate action plan that you guys are due to pass next week. Um me and Matt at the beginning of the year we onboarded a new water council. So we got a new water attorney and they hit the ground running. Man by the first week of January they were already diving into our work and and they've made a lot of progress. The big piece of work we need to work on is the Aurora IGA revision and negotiations and we feel like we're in a good position. So, we actually have a meeting with the Aurora staff and legal team next week to kind of hammer out just trying to get that IGA across the finish line as soon as possible because a lot of things I'm doing are contingent on that new IGA.

Mhm. They were we had new water council just in time for the Mount Massive Golf Course issues that came up earlier this year. So, you know, just to recap, Matt Mass Massive Golf Course found a new water source. Um, and that was really timely because of the dry year, right? So, it actually freed up some county water supply. But through that process, we found out that um the county owns the well on the golf course. We own the land. We own the well. So, we do have some say in future water supply negotiations on the that the golf course is going to have to do. The big thing, and we'll get to this a little later in the long term, but with Mount Massive Golf Course finding a new source of water, it kind of removes some of the urgency that I was working under to give them some more supply of water. Right? They found something. It's a really unique legal construct that no one else has seen in the basin, but it works. And so we're going to take advantage of that and that gives us some operational leeway on some ditch rehabilitation and some water rights development that we've been thinking about doing on their behalf uh to free up some of that augmentation water for our use otherwise in the county. This last quarter I rebooted Losei Lake County Open Space Initiative. Um and so that's a really important stakeholder group right that's folks that care about the Arkansas River wershed. They come here to Lake County. We're kind of trying to leverage the networking, the relationships, everything that Mike Common had established and cultivated for over 20 years when he was in charge of Losei. We had a little bit of a transition period under the old uh parks, rack, and open space department. But now we're feeling really confident about how we're moving forward. And my goal is to make LOSI meetings really valuable. They happen six times a year. Everyone comes all the way to Lake County. As someone that has to drive three hours aways to some meetings, I understand that you want to get some

value out of those meetings that you travel a long ways to. So, I've tried to make each LOSI meeting have presentations and information presented that's timely, relevant, and very applicable to the stakeholders that are working in the Arkansas upper Arkansas headquarters. Big one that might be a little bit new to you, Andy. While you were gone, we had discussed LFR is Lake Fort Ranch. So, there is an opportunity to submit a request or a proposal to the state land board for a long-term lease on the water rights at Lakeport Ranch. It keeps coming away. It keeps it keeps going and coming. We're we're really feeling confident about this one. Um, last week I actually met with state land on the Lake Forge branch to discuss the particulars of how this proposal would work and what elements they want to see out of it. How old are those?

Those water rights? Complicated question. Never mind. Different time. Uh yeah. Um there's this there's something called the postponement doctrine that's coming in to those water rights that we need to sort out first. But we're feeling pretty confident that even if water rights administration and the upper headwaters changes, the lake forth water rights will be will remain whole. They they won't be as impacted as other water rights in the county, unfortunately.

So we knew the RFP was coming. However, it dropped on April 1st with the May 1st deadline. And so, we have been sprinting to try to figure this out, put all the pieces together, cultivate and bring on the right partners that make sense to help us develop this water for our long-term water security, but also to, you know, a big element of this RFP that state lands wants to see is stewardship, right? Is stewardship of the land, is stewardship of the water for the benefit environmentally of the upper headarters. We feel like we've found the right partners to make that work. Um, and it's a really exciting prospect. It could be essentially, you know, I feel like I'm wrapping up the prior 30 years of water work in Lake County and setting us up for the next 30 years of water security so that we have options in how we want to grow and how we want to move forward as a county from a position of water security rather than water constraint and scarcity. So, we've found the right partners. We're collaborating. At 4:00, I have another coordination and alignment meeting because we're still just trying to get this ready because the deadline is 1:00 p.m. on Friday for this proposal to go through. I've talked to you guys briefly about this. I just want everyone to be aware that the proposal is very high level. It's very loose. We understand that. state landlord understands that if we're selected with our proposal to be a finalist or one of the finalists, then it'll trigger a period of negotiation to actually work out the technical side of things. And that's when we would bring in legal and the board to kind of decide how we want to go forward on that. We're just doing a high level. Yes, we're interested in this water. Yes, we can put it to good use. Um, yes, we have the financial capability to do that. One element that's changed since I presented this to you guys in that executive session, and I'm okay talking about this publicly because it's it's going to be a public process. Um, we've found a

partner that can really reduce our financial side, right? So, because it's going to be really expensive to acquire the water. It's more water than we need as a county realistically, but we have to change all the water and water cord, which is a very lengthy and expensive process. So we found the right partner to keep the water in the upper headarters or the upper Arkansas wershed and to bear 50% of the cost essentially. That's what Upper Arc agreed to. It's a 50/50. Upper Arc y is that partner. That's right. That's awesome.

Yep. So we are changing the game. Upper Arc historically has not played in Lake County. Lake County through all of our history, we are more aligned with Aurora. that this is a golden opportunity to align ourselves with a different partner that's much more aligned with everything else going on in the basin, keep all the water in the Arkansas basin and um basically find multiple uses for it because of how our systems align with each other geographically. We can use the water up here for our purposes, they can pick it up again in Chi County, use it again and they have the storage vessels, they have the sophistication, they have the engineering to really make this all happen. Yeah.

Are they that big sistern on like the east side of the Arkansas like go up the hill? Yeah. That's actually the pipeline. And so that's where right there springs. It goes to to Aurora and the springs. Aurora and Colorado Springs own that system 50/50. Okay. And then it goes over the hill and then they split it up between their reservoirs in Park County. Where does Arkansas have their storage? They have it throughout the B throughout Chibi County. Really? They have accounts in Lake PBLO, Twin Lakes, Turquoise. So, they're part of the Southeast Water Conservancy District, which Lake County never joined. Okay.

So, we're not eligible to use those vessels like they are. They also have some smaller lakes up like Cottonwood Creek and Chaffy County. They have an interest in the DWI reservoir in Kuster County down by Westcliff. So, they have a lot of different buckets. And then the really the most exciting thing is they have what's called an aquifer recharge program. So they actually take some of the water, they use it consumptively, and then they put it back in on these farms down by Johnson Village, and instead of a reservoir, they're storing it in the aquifer. Cool. And I think that's the future of water in Colorado because of how hard the reservoirs are to being built. You know, City of Gley just like forewent a reservoir project to do one of these recharge projects.

So it'll be great for us to get tuned in to how that system works so that we can eventually maybe use it up here. They're draining antero cuz the evaporative loss. Exactly. Right. Freeforall for fishing down there right now. If anybody's into fishing, no back homes like shooting fish in a small pond. Yeah. We're pulling crazy amounts of massive Jurassic trout out of there right now. Inter reservoir. The evaporation on Ontario is 5,000 acret a year. Wa. Just for perspective, because of the wind and the sun. It's shallow. It's windy. It's out baking in the sun. And that's with it being frozen five months a year. So, is that reservoir gone for good or

No, it's not gone for good. They're draining as part of Denver Water owns it and they're draining as part of their drought agency. Moving it to a different reservoir for this year. Um, and you know, this just goes to say like partnerships and collaboration and just finding ways to work together is the name of the game in the Arkansas basin, right? We're finding a new partnership that's really going to open up opportunities for us. We also need to amend and cultivate and just do a better job of being a better partner to other partners that we promised things in the past to. That's where Parkville comes in.

So, I keep calling it the 88 CW19 water rate. That's just the name of the court decree. It happened in 1988 and we've never developed it. And that is a joint Parkville County project. And so it's one thing that I'm working on right now. It's two different parts. That's why I like to use that number because it encompasses the two different parts of the water rate. One of which is the Empire Gulch diversion which we need to develop and the other part is actually taking that water from Empire Gulch and transferring it administratively up to the Dilap ditch. This is where that dilap rehabilitation project got extended out. Right. I was really thinking we needed it urgently. We needed to get that done this summer or next summer to provide part provide the golf course with more water. Now it's less urgent, but it's still something we need to do. And I'll go into that in the next slide.

Bought us some time of

it did it bought us it bought us four years is really what it did. So I have a whole slide of challenges because that's kind of where we're at in my position, but also hydraologically this year. We are dealing with an unprecedented year. I mean, the water call that happened last week at the at the Ark Forum is the water call that we saw in 2002 during our historic previous dry year for 6 weeks at the end of the summer. We're already in that water scenario in late April. Um, all this snow and rain is great, but it really doesn't bail us out like good snow pack would. Two months ago, this would have been amazing. So, there's just tons of knock-on effects that came from that. We had an unexpected shut off of our water flows on Upper River Ditch by Division of Water Resources and their water commissioners. So that just, you know, that's another thing I wanted to spread that work out over a year and we had to do all that work in two weeks. It's done now. We've done the ditch work. We've shored up the banks. We've drained the beaver ponds. I learned a lot acquiring a new flume. drove down to West Cliff, picked up the custommade flume for us, and that is due to go in the ditch next week, at which time we can call DWR and hopefully get water restored to Hayden. We've been bailed out by this month's cool weather because Hayden hasn't evaporated or dropped as much as I anticipated.

So, we're lucky in that aspect, but we still got to get water back in as soon as possible. How often are we going to have to break down the beaver dams, do you think? So, the beaver the artificially created ones that like our ditch was feeding, they're gone already. And um we've already get they will get reestablished, but like I'm going to take Rachel out. We were supposed to go out yesterday with the bad weather. It's going to be a weekly process of walking the ditches to make sure they don't have any beavers affecting it. Can I please come? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

And it'd be great for you to see it. We're also going to take that opportunity to go up to Mount Albert and see the Dairy3 AUG station, which probably won't work this year because Dair 3 is not going to be in priority by 15 years this year, but it's a huge part of our water portfolio. It's the only ditch right we currently own.

So, u this has been great though. It's actually been a great opportunity to connect with DWR staff. They're kind of this like side element that works for the state but administers all the water rights for better or worse for everyone. or for the negative or positive outcome for everyone. So, it's shown that we're solutionoriented. We're working hard. We're willing to work with them to make this happen. Um, and so, you know, now I know I can call or text the water commissioners, which I never had that relationship before. Ma'am, sorry. Are they going to keep downream flows going on this summer?

They have to keep it. Those are going to be some of the last ones to go. That's a complicated disc discussion because yes and no. It depends on the physical availability of the water. It's it's coming down to actual physical wet water now beyond just the rights. Um basically you can think the river is running at 200 CFS right now. They have an 1874 call because that's 200 CFS worth of water and they have nothing else to provide any other water rate that's senior to 1874. A lot of those instream flow rates are junior to that process. They're always given priority if the water is available, but it's not this year. But we do have peak, pardon,

didn't the river already peak? The river river flows river flows already peaked. It didn't get to 600. That would have been great. It got to like 350. Oh wow. And then as soon as that happened, then all the entities started closing it and cutting cutting it back to make sure that the reservoir is filled first. So that that natural peak was even the top was dropped off. Yeah.

Mount of golf course supply got changed unexpectedly. Right. It presents the opportunity near term for us to lease that water to another partner. We're currently talking to Climax. Climax is hurting for water right now. they can backfill some of the reservoir, some of the revenue we're not getting from the golf course by leasing that same amount of water and then the cost is on them to kind of take it through the processes to to utilize it. But it's it's a good little source of revenue and it's good to just use the water we have available. Um, we can also, if the golf course supply that they found works, that gives us a great opportunity to claw back what has historically been used at the golf course for everything else in the enterprise. Big challenge we have, right, is financial constraints countywide, statewide, everywhere. The grant funding sources throughout the state have dried up. The county has a million different needs and priorities and pressing projects. and um lucky that you guys have given me the support to be a small part of that. So, I appreciate it because I really do believe that, you know, we're we're so close to realizing the benefit of this water that we own and we can we can put it to good use so soon.

Go get it, Bryce. I'm working on it. Just wait. We're going to have an Alania. There's going to be water for days next year. That would be my dream. That would be amazing. I would love to deal with more water than we know what to do with. Get ready. Same.

So, as far as like short-term what I'm working on right now, right, the Aurora Ga that is essential and existential to the enterprise. So, we have to get that running. Like I said, negotiations scheduled to begin next month like the real hardcore negotiations. Um, that said, we haven't changed the existing IGA that much that I think there's going to be so much push back from Aurora. So, I'm hoping that is a relatively fast process, but I've been wrong before. It's taken two years where I thought it would take a year dealing with the historic dry year conditions and just everything that's going to come up with that. I know there's going to be future challenges and there's going to be impacts that the public will start seeing soon if not already. We got to install that flume on the upper river ditch. As far as long-term, you know, I have this as a long-term pri priority enterprise up and running. That's really a short-term priority, too. But it sets us up for long-term success. It gives us that revenue mechanism that the enterprise needs to actually realize the benefit of the water we own. Continuing to cultivate partnerships for future water supply resilience. Um you know we got to increase our supply but we also need to be more efficient with what we have. And then we need to develop existing water rights that haven't been developed like the the park water right the dilap ditch. Like I was saying it's not pressing. However, we own the ditch. we got to keep it off the 2030 abandonment list, which means we would lose the rights to it forever and it would just go back to the land owners. That's that's not ideal for us. So, I've talked to Michael about a phased approach. What can we do? What can we bite off year to year that's not a crazy budget concern um but just works towards that progress and then any of that progress we can then show DWR to to prove that we're not abandoning it. We are using this ditch and you want to use it. But we already have it in the budget to to get the thing that measures the flume,

don't we? So, I used Candace's contingent contingency budget to buy the one flume for the for the Hayden for the pond. And my idea originally was, let's install that one, get through this year, and then install it with a better one later. Yeah. I really think that Flume we do is so well built that it can last us a few years and I would rather wait until the enterprise is actually making revenue so it can hopefully pay its own way to buy the new flume that is needed and then we would replace the flume on Upper River Ditch with one with one that's galvanized so it lasts in water for a lot longer and move the one I bought for upper river ditch because it was the one that I could get in two weeks.

We can move that to the the lap ditch so doesn't hurt us any to have it. But I'm not going to remove the flume this year after we put it in. It's just been too hard to do, too hard to get in. Michaelels has other things going on by that time of year. So, we're going to wait a couple years until I actually have the money out of my budget to buy a new home. And then for your request, and I think it's just it's very relevant, we need to get a return on investment analysis under the water. needs to be shown to you, to the public, to everyone that the juice is worth a squeeze on this, right? I think we can all agree to the theoretical concept that water is the new gold. But, um,

there's prove it. We can prove it. We can show it in numbers and we can we can really make the case that this is truly the most important thing that we have as far as like our future long-term security goes. Mhm. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, Bryce. Well, thank you, Bryce. Good job out there. Yeah, really excited about the Lake Foranch stuff. I'm happy to give you an update after next week when we have everything done. As far as we understand, we're in the driver's seat. We might be the only proposal. Oh, hey, so crazy on a year like this.

So crazy on a year like this. And for water things that take years and years to develop for an RFP to drop that's due in a month is extreme. It's because we're so flexible. This is where the investment of prior boards when we were looking at acquiring the Lakeboard Ranch. Yeah. We did all that due diligence. We invested the money in it. It looked like a sunk cost at that time. It's paying dividends now because we have all the data that no one else has to really really know what the asset we're looking at is. Yep. Excellent. Text your fellow commissioners, former commissioners. Sure. Yeah. We're going to skip out of order just a little bit to let Laura pres present before she's going to be on another state call.

Thanks, Laura. Thank you. Sorry. You did great. Next, we're going to skip to human services. Where's the driver? Oh, sorry. It's okay. Can I just go get some water real quick? Sure. Thank you. Hydrate or die right? And then I'll give this to you sign. I always wear too much clothing for this room. Yeah. Is it warming? It's not the same. Yeah, I think it

Oh, no. I've actually been too late.

Thank you. No, I wouldn't drop. Thank you. Is that Michael's? Uh the Kling season. Yeah. Yeah. Did I have to?

Not yet. Day. Sorry. Just Tuesday. Hello. Sorry it's so hot in here. We've been breathing for like six hours straight. Well, we just we just turned our heat off at the office. We just we can't manage it. We're going to turn this off, too. We have the technology. It's like a Is it a a wrench? Screwdriver.

Strip screws. Four hands and a screwdriver. There was a window. You could probably throw it up. Yes. Yes. Window is going to be the new pool. Word. Okay.

Human services. I did not follow uh the prompt of just two to three slides. Um, but a lot of mine's just data. I know I haven't really presented a lot of data on like case load and things like that to this group in a while. So, um, just a reminder, these were our goals for the year. Uh, the highlighted theme of it is basically we're just we're set to do the things that we are required to do statutoily and by the state. Um and so one of the things that um I do also want to highlight that's beyond that is just um the changes with HR1 continue to trickle in um just got out of another meeting about that. Um continue to trickle in to us, therefore trickling to the community. And that's a big challenge because you can't really get ahead of it. Um, and the idea of the state being ahead of it is anywhere from 3 to 3 months of lead time for us to know what's actually going on and then the actual implementation of it. three days was what happened a couple of weeks ago when we got the final guidance around immigration status from for um uh CDHS um and so and we had 3 days to fix it in the system. Luckily, we only had 10 clients that it impacted. Other counties had thousands. So, these are the things that we're kind of grappling with um in terms of meeting our goals. Um some other things that cool things that we're doing though is we received

the Gary Foundation grant last year. Um the Gary Foundation grant was really to help us operationally kind of understand some of the um things that we could do internally to help with our productivity, but also how can we connect people to services that either are on the verge of losing their benefits or have never entered the benefit world. And so we've been really focusing on the loss of benefits piece and how do we keep our customers and and community members that are on benefits if they still need them still having access to them.

So let me explain to you a little bit. So like every benefit has a redetermination period. So a reup like you have to um you know turn in new information that kind of thing. Um we identified with our consultant that we've been working with that our biggest like churn is because of people just falling off the program by not getting their documentation in or some of this is just not their fault. they get their their notice of re reertification and from the state past the date that it was actually due. Yeah.

Cool. Um so what happens is when they miss that date it automatically drops them from the program in the system. So what that in turn people come in regularly and need to reapply. Well, that takes uh doing a reertification can be anywhere from like 15 to 30 minutes for one of our case workers to to complete. Um for a new application, you're talking about 60 to 90 minutes for them to do that. M

and so we're looking at some some efficiencies and how can we kind of um reduce the amount of administrative burden on us and on the client and we found we've had some success. Um we have started calling um or emailing people um before the redetermination date. Love that. It's just a simple low hangings fruit thing and we've had about 60% success just in doing that in the past three months. Wow.

And so it's just kind of one of those simple things that we're doing. It's really hard for a large county to take on, but for a small county, our front desk person that we just incorporated that into something that they do. So over the next few months um working with Mathematica, we're going to continue to track that um uh and see, you know, what are some of the push and pulls. We actually randomized it this time. Mathematica wants to randomize things so that they can um talk about it from a statistically um valid perspective, I guess. Um, but so we're doing some cool things around that and and it's simple things that are grassroot level small county accessible things. I have county directors when I tell them we're doing this, they look at me like I'm a crazy person and I'm like, well, we're saving money and saving staff time by just keeping people on their benefits if they still qualify.

Do they think it's crazy because of the workload it would be for them to do it? Yeah, but I mean if it's working proven small scale, even upscale, it would probably have similar.

So, one thing that Mathematica and Gary's trying to do, um, they're working a lot with the state in the new iteration and building of CBMS, which is our like benefits case management system, which is terrible. Um, but they're trying to automate more of these types of things so that it could happen at a larger county level, right? Um, maybe it sends out a text to an individual or a ROOC call or something to an individual um reminding them of their their redetermination date and what they need to do. Um, so they're kind of using us as guinea pigs and I like that because we're able to kind of work make changes, tweaks, those kind of things in a much easier way than a larger county. And then the idea is to figure out how do we automate it and scale it. So it's been good for us though just in general in building a better rapport with the community. That's

okay. Um um like I said, I wanted to go through some of our stats. Um, and this is a quarter, but I do want to give you guys a snapshot on where we are with Medicaid and SNAP in particular, because those are the two programs that our workload is significantly increasing, not because of more people, but because of more work to maintain those people on or enroll those people in benefits. I'm a little post-it. Um, right now our current case load with Medicaid is two uh 2,600. So 2.6K. Okay, that does not necessarily mean that all of those folks are eligible and or enrolled in in Medicaid.

That is literally the applications that we're having to applications and cases we're having to maintain. Um and so when you apply that's a case for us because you apply we have to process that case whether you are eligible or not. Okay. So we talked about we're still staying around um the 2024 numbers was about 40% of our population was on Medicaid. Now we're down to about 27%. Because of the public health emergency roll back. So um so we're looking at case load data is about 2.6K. Um but that the actual enrollment is about 1.7 1.8. Okay. That's a shame. Good job. And that's a shame. Yep. Okay. Um, as far as SNAP case load data, so we have about 514 um, families that are on SNAP in our area. Um, but we are are managing a case live of 1.1K. So, 1100. And it's so confusing because I want to bring this to light because there's so much conversation at the state right now with like the redistricting or whatever we're calling this and they're they're basing it they're they're talking out of two sides of their mouth. One's like participation rate, right?

Like who's participating in the program. What they really need to be talking about is our case load. What is the actual things that a county office is having to touch? Mhm. So, this is why I'm providing these numbers um as well. So, oh my god, Laura, slow down question. Yep. That number 2.6 of your case load or even your case load you said was one or not the case load but the actual number of people who are enrolled 1.7. What? How does that align with what you have up there of the new application reertification?

This is quarterly. This is just what went through this quarters. Got it. Yeah, this is just the quarter. You uh you know looked at it from just the pulling the quarter numbers for this year. So when you when you talk about like this redistricting, oh my gosh, it's so many conversations and you have been part of some of them, right?

Yeah. How how are we supposed to like how can we help advocate to the state and these conversations about the redistricting of these like nuanced differences in case load versus enrollment? Can we is that something that we can help with? Is that something you're doing? I think when I mean it's something that that I'm doing but as we start to look at the further planning efforts of the cohorts which is what you know CCI is hopefully we'll all see language around that

in the next couple of days but the cohort model we're really going to be going through that third party facilitator phase where we have that plan I think this is like The operationalized piece is where we're going to dig into a lot of this and making for sure that it makes sense for small counties and large counties and medium counties that that that we are truly looking at case load data. What's a funny caveat though is this is pulled out of CBMS. You look at Cognos, which is another state ran program, these numbers are completely different. Why?

Yeah. So there's inconsistency and that's one of the things that we've been drilling at is we need to be consistent with the numbers that we're looking at. Mhm. Um why are there two state data? Cuz you have producers not why but what what is the difference in their function?

Jesus Christ. Okay cool. Will any of that solved be solved do you think with CBMS overhaul? Would you think all of that will be solved? Okay, never mind. One more questions. Yep. Um, okay. So, coming I mean on the right hand side we have accomplishments. Um, the ES team when I first started here we had less than a 50% timeliness rate on applications. Now we're, you know, anywhere from 89 to 100% on average on an average if you're looking at three three months at a time. Um, which is great. I mean, um, we worked really hard to get that all cleared up. I mean, back this time, March, we had 300 cases that we hadn't processed that were untimely. And so now we're sitting and looking at a dashboard case load at around 30 cases at a time that we need to to process and that we're timely on. So that's

one thing though that I do want to note as we're getting into um the cohorts and performance contracts with the state which is our new normal coming up is that timeliness if that is a measure one application for us in a small county can kill our timeliness. If we we have one thing go wrong it can kill our timeliness percentage. So it can like if you're looking at you know Colorado works right in the past 3 months we've had six applications you have one wrong what's that percentage dropped you down to quite a bit

so it's uh it's tough for us and that's one of the things that I want to articulate through the process of building out these performance-based contracts between the state and the counties is that that needs to be taken into um into account because some of these things some of these things that we have that affect timeliness are not necessarily things that we can control. It could be on the client, it could be on the system or it could be on us. So yeah, so it's kind of back to the back to the original problem which is to not look at the percentage of each county's error rates or timeliness individually. It's looking at their contribution to the whole

Yeah. of Colorado and that's where we need to be really loud as a small county in these conversations. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. Moving on. Child welfare metrics. Um over the past quarter we've had 54 referrals. That's a lot. I think last year we had around 75 total.

Wow. Um, and so, um, I think we talked about this before as a group, we have a process of where we screen in a referral or we screen them out. Um, just because we get a call in through the hotline doesn't mean that we take action. Um, it has to meet the criteria for action to occur. So we have a team or team meetings that we go through and look at the reports from the reporters and assess whether that that report meets criteria. One of the things I also want to say though is that if we see that one report doesn't meet that criteria but we get a history of reports will also screen it in. So say for instance there's three reports on a family within the past two years that history plays into that criteria. Um just in this quarter we have um 14 intakes. So if we screen it in it becomes an intake case. And then we have eight ongoing cases. um which ongoing means essentially the case has moved out of intake. So we've been voluntary assessment and then we we assess that there needs to be more action on the county um to ensure that those kids are safe. Then we go to court. So ongoing equals court. um that doesn't necessarily mean that we remove the child, but that does mean that the court's involved and the court will start ordering things for that family to do in order to maintain their children. So, we have about we have eight of those going on right now. Um have 10 kids in

kinship care or foster care. Um and that's just within this quarter. I have about nine kids that are potentials right now, which is not great. Um, and very costly for our department when we have to place in foster or kinship care. Um, yes, APS, we had 10 referrals, which is, this sounds weird, but this is great.

Um, it's, you know, this just means that the community is really paying attention to our older adult population, which makes me happy. um when we see not a lot of referrals, it kind of questions whether we have a good connection. And so we've screened in seven of those over the past um quarter. We have a new case worker with APS. He's been awesome. Um we have seven intake cases. So we have some carryover in intake cases. Um and then that's our case load data. Well, I accidentally moved over. I thought it deleted that. Sorry. Um, but yeah, it's uh it's been good. We we are also closing a lot of APS cases right now just because we've been able to put in place interventions. You know, we had a individual that had a really hard time um remembering to take their medicine, which completely messed them up. We bought them a Echo Dot and now it reminds them when to take their medicine. We've seen some great improvement there. Just small things like that that this team works on. Laura, when it comes to funding child welfare and adult protective services, how much of that comes from the state or federal government and how much of it is county?

Yeah, so it's um child welfare comes in two different pots. The biggest pot is 8020. So it's 80% fed, 20% US. Um, and then we do have a much smaller portion of that that's 100%. I'll have that exact split out, but it's around 734,000 a year between the two allocations. And we are, if we don't have nine kids that I have to put in foster care in the next few weeks, um, we will be right on budget. Um,

how much does that fluctuate? Is it just a lump sum or is it based on case load? It is a formula and they're redoing the formula for for um splitting out the child welfare dollars. So there's about 10 different criteria that they're looking at. Case load is one of them, but also case load complexity is actually been one of the biggest hangups in them being able to establish the new formula is being able to define case load um complexity. Yes. Um to me, at the end of the day, if you can't define it, you just need to move forward and find some other data point.

Yeah. Um because ever since I've started here almost two years ago, they've been talking about redoing the formula and that's still the sticking point. So Okay. Yeah. Um and I think was probably when you were there. Yeah. Y still there. Yep. So it's a nice idea, but it's hard to define. Yeah. Yeah, I can see why people want it because it is it it's like one case may be completely different than the other. Well, not may it is right. One may be with you for a couple of years, one may be with you for, you know, a month

kind of situation. Um or like my Saturday was for 11 hours, right? So,

okay. Um, child support. We don't talk a lot about child support with with this group because it's not the fun and frilly thing. Um, but we we do have 215 cases that we maintain here. Um, I have 1.5 FTE that do child support. Um, basically it's it's not just enforcement but insta establishment of child support orders. Um and that is a program that is we have a match of 34% on. So but the great thing about that is it's kind of an unlimited bucket for us. Um so it is it is something while it's one and a half FTE it is something that does have sustainable funding behind it. Um it's just our highest match program. Um, and I put CCAP underneath this because these my.5 person works with CCAP and also child support and CCAP have um automatic referral points to each other. I didn't know that until a few months ago. Um, so if somebody comes in, applies for child support, child support staff looks at like their income and that kind of thing, they're like, "Oh, you probably qualify for CCAP." It's a it's a automatic referral for CCAP. So um that team is actually working together. So we had four new applications in this quarter. Um our current enrollment is seven when we sat here a year ago. I think our enrollment was four or two.

I thought it was two maybe. Now we're seven. So things are growing. Um, and we entered into that contract with Mesa County back in March, um, to do our eligibility side of it. Um, and so far, I think that's going to help us financially in a big way to be able to support more kids through CCAP. So, yep. Is CCAP going to be one of the things that's I can't keep track. No, that's consolidated in the region. Yeah, that's I can't remember. At least that's what's in the current presentation.

I had no idea that child welfare or not. Um that the last thing go back. Nope. Child support. Child support went through DHS. I assume it went through the courts. You must inform the courts. It's so child support can be voluntary or involuntary. And we handle both. You handle both. Yeah. So if it's a court order, Yeah. it will go through our office. We'll establish do the actual establishment which is basically the data entry of it and create the system for the

the parents to contribute, right? Or you know somebody goes has a divorce or separation or whatever um they will voluntarily apply for our office to manage their child support. Is there a uh like is it a fee based like a paytoplay? Is any part of it like an administrative fee a percentage?

We get we get money back from the feds for establishment. There's an incentive that we get um back from the feds is very tiny but an incentive for establishment. We don't really get like a kickback for maintaining their money, whether it's voluntary or involuntary. Correct. You get a kickback, not a kickback, but you get a whatever from the feds. We get whatever 100% minus 34 is. Yeah. Right. 66. Yeah. Yeah. We get 66%.

Yep. Okay. Um, and it's amazing how much money runs through child support in this community. It's a lot. Yeah. And the thing is is we'll manage we manage child support for like it may be established here and it may stay here for a long time. Like yeah, it's uh when you're talking about child support, you're talking about uptick like kids 18, right? So if you start that at two, we're maintaining that for a long and the parents may move, that kind of thing, but that case oftent times just stays with us.

Yeah. So um okay, collaborative management. This is all wrap stuff. So we had seven referrals over the past quarter. Um we worked with 15 families. um we have referrals and then we just we have outreach that comes through our child welfare system too. So that's how we get a little bit higher there. Um and this is our current case load for for RAP. So we we have family engagement meetings. Um some of those family engagements can be anywhere from one meeting to 6 months worth of meetings. And so right now we're at a a four case load there. Um we're trying to increase that. Um one of the challenges that I that we've been through this year so far is when I have to pull a staff member for something, things kind of have to stop. And so I pulled a staff member to go through the child welfare academy um so that we could start doing child welfare prevention cases with wraparound because I think it lives better with them in particular. And so, um, we have sent John through Child Welfare Academy and he is now working with Child Welfare, um, on our prevention cases, but also we're now because of that, we've been able to access core funding for wraparound for sustainability purposes.

Cool. Okay. Um, John's also worked with the school. the school incorporated wraparound into the life cycle of truency cases. So we have gotten a lot of um referrals that haven't been super fruitful through um truency. Um again it's it's a voluntary thing for a parent or family to go and participate in wraparound.

Um so if they don't play then they move further down in that life cycle. Um, and then school prevention, McKenna Vento. So, we used to get money from the school system for the McKenna Vento program, which is helping homeless families um with basic needs. Um, and we've served 37 families in the past quarter. And that's with a lot of different things. It's not just like hard goods, but things like school fees and things and things that are just sometimes difficult for families that are unhoused or struggling to be housed. So, cool.

Um, here's our priorities. Um for economic security, the OPC, the O overflow processing center is was kind of our saving grace when we didn't have a lot of staff in in economic security. They are a entity that is paid for by Medicaid to help process applications for counties as an overflow. um it's going away and we're actually discontinu we're basically going to be moving completely away from having to utilize them for anything. Um again, expanding SNAP outreach. This is something we've really tried to figure out in our community. we've put a pause on because of all these changes with HR1 um and trying to make for sure we're setting people up for success and not things that may not be great for them. Um in addition to that um for TANIF, we have a new TANIF case worker. Um we weren't in great shape in TANF, so we are cleaning that up. Um, and that is our our big deal. We're cleaning it up, but we're also about to hit all new rules with TANF. So, that should be fun. Child welfare. Um, we have mostly 75% of the team are new case worker. So, it's just going to be still a lot of training and supporting that team. APS, we need more inhome care opportunities. We I feel like our workers are having to do things that inh home care people should be doing or case workers should be doing. Um but there's just nowhere nobody here to do that. Um, one thing that I would like to see, um, and have put it on Edwin to help

navigate is just trying to start engaging the faith-based community in some of these opportunities, one-off opportunities to support older adults and families with children. Um, we had six kids we needed to find beds for last week. Um, and I'm just like that would be a great thing for a faith-based organization to like if I had a way to funnel those needs to them

instead of us using our block dollars to do that to I had you um to purchase a bed for six kids. Um, that'd be a great way for that community to get connected in with some of the needs that we see. You may not be able to know who the family is, where it's going, the circumstance, but you can know that that's helping them get through this child welfare event that is that the kind of thing that we could just make more of like a I love the idea of the faith base, but I also think that they're broad community. Yeah. Broad like how do we make that an accessible way for people to support each other?

Yeah. I I don't know. I could use some help. Yeah, I would love to brainstorm that. Yeah. Yeah. I've been talking a lot about like mutual aid in our community and I think that that could really tie in easily. Yeah. Cool.

Um there's a nonprofit in Colorado Springs that builds bunk beds out of a church and I called them cuz I used to go to church there and I called them and I was like, "Hey, can you do y'all have I'll drive down there. Do y'all have bunk beds for them?" and they're like, "We have a waiting list a mile long." But I think that was that would be like a cool even thing for like a high school or CMC or, you know, whomever cuz the beds is actually one of our big challenges in a lot of these homes. Got kids sleep. This isn't like finding a place for them to sleep for the night. This is like a physical bed with like a mattress and sheets. Yeah. Cuz they go into somebody's home and somebody's home might not have that. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Yep. What church was it, Laura? Was it First Lutheran? No, it was uh Pullpit Rock. Yeah. Hey, just to keep this moving, we're now an hour behind schedule. Okay, thank you. We're done. What else? Behind schedule. Yeah, we're an hour behind schedule. We skipped ahead. But we skipped. So, we're 45 minutes. Okay. All right. And then here's our other priorities. They're not This is not as fun expired and rears and things like that, but these are the things that the team has decided that they really need to continue to work on. Cool. Done. Thank you.

Thank you for all your work. That's hard hard work. I shall continue on. Let's let's move on here. Uh Duncan's next. Duncan's next. Okay, we're going to move to parks and recreation. Duncan, you have three minutes. Good. But yeah, you've been in here this room long enough. We've talked with you enough this quarter. You're good. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I've kept this this really simple uh and straightforward. So, uh hopefully this will be a breeze. So, first quarter we've we've focused on obviously winter programming. Um getting ready for summer operations. uh progressing you know our department goals related you know to participation financial stewardship and equ uh so that's that's been our priority I just wanted to run through some some some quick highlights so we we've done we did a spring break camp in conjunction with project dream uh was only like 3 days off the top of my head Um, so we had 48 young people attend that. Um, so big credit to project team to stepping up to deliver that because we were in the middle of recruiting our our red coordinator uh in the in the gold team. So we've delivered uh learn to ski programs at Cooper and Copper uh in association with SOS outreach uh and they've attracted 25 families and again we had a separate one for for uh high school kids and and slightly younger intermediate kids. Uh we got 40 of that that's consistent with what we've done year on year. Um so that's that's really good. uh winter trail grooming or lack of uh story there. Uh we're in the process of still negotiating with Mountain States um extending their current contract into next season and at no cost to us. So we're just figing out what that actually looks like. Uh we didn't operate the duct ten hill

because of lack of snow. So that means we're going to be down in revenue uh for this for this school since we we usually get quite quite a number of users there. Uh how much you usually make? 20 grand. Okay. Yeah. Give or take. Um that's like gross. Yes. We we we do it. Doesn't it cost more to run than we bring in down there though? So I think it would be

Yeah. depends on how many people we get and how many groups come. All right. So, we do a different sort of charging model based on the people who come from out of Lake County versus versus locals. Uh, and we only really operate on weekends. So, yeah, it it does. Again, I think there's room for improvement around our charging and our fee structure for that. We've touched on that a little bit in previous conversations that this could be a real earner for us if we want to get some snow making straight out.

Yeah. Yeah. Again, you work with CMC cuz usually they do supplement natural snow with with the man-made stuff, but but not this year. I think next year is going to be a lot better. Yeah. Uh two unfortunate things. We're unsuccessful with a youth pathways program funding from the Tony Grampers Youth Service and the Colorado Health Foundation. Uh usual story, more applications than I had money for.

And we had been given that funding for a number of years in the past. So our turn to slip off. So we're still going to continue that uh but just using departmental funds. We tied some things to make sure that program program happens. Yeah. How much was that grant? Remember he applied for a significant amount mainly because for both years. Yeah. Yeah. Mainly I thought we might not get it. So I was like you may as well ask for what we would like to have. I knew that they were cutting funding to the TGYS. Yeah. Yeah.

So there wouldn't be as many awarded as like might as well ask for what we need. So I think we asked for over 100 grand. Yeah. I can't precise figure but I think they funded like two organizations. Yeah. 10,

you know. So that's that's life. We will survive. Uh I always wanted to talk about registration. This is something we we haven't really brought to you on on a regular basis and I want to start doing that around building a bit of a model around how many people we're getting what that looks like. Uh the next part will be around how we prepare that year upon year. So building those models right um so yeah we I'm pretty happy with with what we what we got. um you know there's growth in in a few things and again a number of things are also at capacity right because of venue limitations and and bits and pieces the other thing to remember as well is that this quarter is literally one January 31st of March some of these programs would have started in December so those numbers might not be 100% accurate So

close. Uh that'll be coming up, right? Uh multiple pages. That's nice. Yeah. So we had to cancel a couple of things. It just simply wasn't a demand. Sure. Uh have you had to cancel anything due to lack of instructors or coaches? No. No. Uh we didn't have the functional fitness numbers because they are collected independently

and not in our registration system. So uh we rectify that uh again hockey you know open gym for Todd's does okay you know they it's again this is not counting uh it's counting individuals right yeah who sign up for my program not how many times they attend. Yeah. Okay that makes sense. Uh again we had to cancel the paint in the ice.

Uh so you know uh reverse co colleague volleyball is one that surprised me. It's really it's actually at capacity you know 13 teams. So they're at six street gym twice a week. What's reverse? What's reverse? No, sorry. Yeah, women on the table. I think it's other It's just about how you hit the ball. You can have more men than women, but you But a woman has to touch it before it goes back up.

Yeah. Yeah. So popular, right? 13 teams uh there at six gym from roughly 6:00 till 10:00 Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's it's all the wall. That's great. uh in soccer happy with those numbers. I'd still love to see more uh um and I think it's opportunity for us to grow some of that but get the capacity but you got to have the coaches. You have to ask for coaches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, having seen that some of the other communities around here don't even have a girl specific soccer team, it's cool that we have one here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is very cool. It's okay. We did over a thousand registrations uh in the first quarter. I'm I'm happy with that. You know, we are a small community. So, yeah. Uh yeah, nice one. That was it. Done. Painless. Gorgeous. Good. Thanks. Thanks, D. Thank you, Duncan. Duncan, how's Wait, sorry, I know you're done, but I have questions. How's the reorg going? It's going well. So, we've done Yeah. Come chat with us. I'm going to take this.

Yeah. Yeah. We've done our our first workshop with our consultant where we've talked about our mission and our values and our goals. And it's really interesting to observe because back our team talk about it themselves rather than me saying this is my ideas. Yeah. How similar we are. All right. when you break it down, you know, everybody wants to do the right thing for the, you know, for the right reasons. And, you know, observing that, you know, gold current mission and Rex's current mission are currently here and here. Actually, they're really, really similar.

I think people some light bulbs are going off uh people's heads, which is which is really great. All right. Yeah. So, we've got uh two more sessions next week. Uh next Wednesday is our next one. Yep. And then another one two weeks after that. Yeah. Yeah. And then we'll be we'll be done. We'll come back and chase things. Show us everything. Yeah. I love it. It's good. It's gone really, really well. Going well. Thanks. Thank you. I'll edit it. Who's next?

I am filling in for Diana. She's out today. Um, but in true Diana fashion, she has given me some great notes to work off. What a pro. To be clear, this is CSU extension. Other than there you go.

All right. So short-term goals, increase awareness of programming by enhancing promotion by establishing a stronger presence at local events, fostering a deeper connection with the people of Lake County, and promote high altitude gardening educ as the high altitude gardening educational opportunities for Lake County residents uh through that master gardening program that they're launching in August. And then a long-term objective is offer an expanded portfolio of programs designed to empower individuals and families supporting their pursuit of happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. So, no pressure with that one. All right. So, there's a new Colorado or CSU extension website. It's really nice. If you guys haven't checked it out, it's definitely an improvement over what they had before. Um, so that's been really nice to get that taken care of. I think Diana's been really happy to have that. Um, in last fall, the extension office received a $5,000 grant through CSU to support outreach education, primarily through STEM, and to provide education surrounding artificial intelligence and agricultural concepts. So Diana's partnered with C4 and Project Dream to um provide those deliverables as part of that grant. So she's been teaching weekly STEM focused programs with part project dream at LCSI. And then C4 has been hosting the farm club which has been really popular. Um they did have a setback with another grant that they received. Um they were set to get an intern for this summer

which was going to be really exciting. They were going to work with Rocky's Rock through goal. Um but that fell through even though the application was approved. They just didn't find a qualified intern which was unfortunate. Um so that will be available again next year. So we'll try again for that next year and hopefully we'll actually find somebody to fill that. Um they're also she's also focusing um with food safety. So before an extension professional can teach food related classes and offer food preservation workshops to their communities. They're required to take master food safety advisor training. It's kind of what that cottage act. Um, so she is actually um working on getting that so that she can provide those types of training.

That's awesome. I really hope she can actually do that. Yes. Take it off of public. Yeah, it's on her list for sure. Something that she's working on. Um, so she's actually working with the family and consumer sciences professionals at CSU to schedule the MFSA, which is that master of food safety advisor training here in the mountain region so people can participate in that. Um, it'll be in Salida on May 17th. And then Diana will be able to be certified and be able to teach those classes in Lake County.

Can't you just take Sorry. Okay. I probably wouldn't be No, I forgot it was you Rachel. It's okay. Rachel, I have a million questions. She did say if you had any burning questions, we could call her, but she's on vacation.

No, we're not going. Uh she's also going to be able to work with the health department and build a generation's food access coalition to start offering those training in the fall. Third focus area has been gearing up for fall, summer, fall and summer of gardening and other plant related programs as well as launching the new Colorado Master Gardener program which is starting in August of 2026 um with the first Lake County apprentice cohort cohort and they've been working with C4 on planning that workshop series which is expanding the range of topics and partnering with new organizations to host workshops. For example, we will be hosting an indoor plant workshop at the CMC library, which already has 24 people registered for it. And then also a fire resistant landscaping program in June. Um to teach best practices in home ignition zones and planning low planting low flammability landscapes and also pollinator friendly mountain hearty plants. They're also going to be having a gardening basics planter box workshop taught in Spanish at the Lake Fork um community center. And then they've also partnered with the Healy House to host a pollinator workshop.

Cool. God, she's so I know ambitious, capable, and what she's so ambitious, but she gets it all done. She has it done. She's amazing. That's the capable part. Um, and then we the second year of that $4,000 grant for the Master Gardener program. Um, and then also they have, sorry, that was the $4,000 grant for CSU to provide the free raised garden bed.

Um, and that's available to residents at an income of 120% of AMI or below. And this year they had 39 applications for five kids. So it's clearly something that people are really interested in and want to learn more about. So um there go she's going to definitely focus on that going forward since there's such a big interest in it. Finally, Diana has spent a lot of time this quarter preparing and planning the launch of the Lake County Colorado Master Gardener program. Advertising for the first cohort of CMG orientes will begin in June. The applications will open in August and the cohort cohort will start green school which is a six-month university course that provides a foundation in horiculture and it will become active they will become active certified master gardeners by the summer of 2027. This is an extremely exciting development and it will be great to have local lake county master gardeners.

How many people how many spaces? Um, she doesn't say, but I don't think it's very many. Six sounds from six familiar. Um, that I can find that out. Well, no. Nope. Yeah. Nope. Um, so yeah, she's doing a lot of very exciting things. Gosh, so cool. Yeah, very good parts where I get Duncan back in there. and she had like some some personal things come up that made her have to be out of the office for a while and she still accomplished everything. So, it's amazing. I follow that. You can do Josh via Josh.

Josh. I'm going to do my best impression of someone named Josh. Since Josh worked together all the time, we had calling him Captain Airport. So, I'm Josh. Okay. Next up is the airport.

Yeah, Josh is out coaching today. So, I'm going to cover for him. Um, so if you won, one of the things the big goal for the year and one of the things we spent a lot of time and energy around at the airport is trying to put together a formal formal business plan um in terms of revenue generation around the airport. Um, Josh and and Matt and Jim all have some really great ideas. I mean, you all you're all aware of the merch and you know the revenue that brings in for the county. They've got a lot of great ideas to expand um traffic and operations at the airport. Um and so we're just trying to formalize and get some of that down on paper and eventually hope this year to to bring that to you all. Um sort of present the direction I'm wanting to go in terms of further re revenue generation. Um, one of the big kind of instigators for this is we know that um, Aspen is going to be shutting down next summer and doing a ton of work on the runway. So, we're hoping to try and capture some of that traffic that is going to going to be needed. People are going to need to land in the area. So, we're trying to put a lot of energy in that right now. We've got Josh connected to um, some business development resources at the SPDC. So, he's kind of building that skill set as well um, putting some energy into developing the plan.

Josh, wait. Gosh, sorry. Take your breath. What? I did not follow I did follow a lot of that. But is this new consultant going to like when you say business plan plan going to figure out a return on investment for the airport? Ah, good question. Let me clarify. So, the business plan is completely separate. It's something we're working on internally. So Josh is connected to the small business development center resources and developing an internal business plan for like as the county, how do we want to operate the airport? What different services can we provide? What's the revenue? What, you know, are we priced right on certain things? We've done rent studies and things like that in the past.

So that's all feed into our ability to plan exactly what you're talking about. Okay. Um and ideally, you know, as it as its own enterprise fund being able to to boost the revenues coming in from the airport. Yes, please. For the capital enterprising current. Yeah. Enterprising. Um currently, what amount what is our overunder on the airport? It's not it's not too far off. It's like depending on how much testing we get. Roughly my understanding from Josh, it's within $100,000. Um you know, and that could that could all change with one booking of a testing company. And so thinking about how we do some marketing around that as one of our more lucrative opportunities. Awesome. Um I think in this room we've referenced the the deicing

and we get a lot of requests for deicing for larger jets. Um and they can't land here if they don't feel comfortable that they can take off. So we we've got some ideas about how we might you know budget for for some pilot programs and stuff moving forward to next year. Awesome. Um so you hear Yeah, you hear more about that. But um yeah, everything from pricing to we've been talking to Matt a little bit about um you know, what does the airport look like as a as an event space? What are we allowed by the FAA to to do in terms of facility rental for events? Um what's the liability around moving someone's airplane out of a hanger, right? So that we can use that for, you know, seated dinner or something.

Um you know, one cool partnership that's coming up is the the philanthropy fair that's coming up in October. Yeah. Yeah, they've reached out and asked to use the airport. So, they're going to they're going to book the airport for that event. Um, so yeah, all kinds of I mean, there's just a lot of different revenue streams that can come in. Um, do you think we'll be able to get all that done by August when we start talking budget for next year? I think the business plan, yeah, that's the goal is to try and have that help guide those budget discussions. Yeah. So, I think we're we're in pretty good shape in terms of the kind of overview and drafting. I think we need to do some looks look back at the finances.

Yeah. plug those pieces in. I know Josh has reached out to Will and his team. Um, and then sort of think through what a marketing plan could look like to to promote this. Cuz one of the things we don't want to get ahead of ourselves in kind of reaching out to a a clientele that has certain expectations, you know, when they land at an airport and what they're going to find at the at the FBO. And so we want to make sure we're ready with the services that we can provide and really thoughtful about that before we before we say we can do things essentially. And I hope you'll work with Adam. That's great in that marketing. Absolutely. Yeah. And then Josh has obviously been looped in on some of the industrial park discussions as well. So partnering across those.

Um but I appreciate that great clarification. So that that's sort of a separate entity than and separate planning process that we're undertaking versus the the new contracted engineering firm. So, um, the FAA requires that all airports have an engineer basically on retainer for projects that that might come up um on FAA property. Um, and so we undertook an RFP process and we're switching um from um on Kimy Horn, right? Yeah. Uh, Kimy Horn at the airport to Bolton and M. Um and so you'll all see that you know an upcoming meeting um in terms of the signature for getting that agreement in place.

Um sorry Josh why did we move why did we change rooms? So we we have we have to the contracts are 5 years and so then we have to go out to bid and um cuz they they submitted the strongest bid according to the panel. Okay. And we still use we still work with Kimley Horn and other parts of the county. Um public works has them as their master services agreement. Um but for the purposes of kind of the things on the horizon at the airport particularly around um the hangar development um there's some you know a lot of a lot of good ideas that came through their proposal that I think um suited the the folks at the airport. So awesome. Thank you.

Yeah. Um so yeah so we they they've actually already come up um for courtesy visit. We met with them a few weeks ago um and have some you know some good ideas for for things we can do to get some of those like development ideas moving to the airport. Um this is exciting news. So as of last week uh we found out that Airbus is going to going to book some space for the summer. Um so roughly 6 weeks in mid July doing some testing on some helicopters. Um not so just the facility rental fee for the course of that time is going to bring in almost $50,000. Um and that doesn't include fuel sales or any other service. So that's going to be a pretty lucrative lucrative contract for the county.

Um so excited about that. And then truly my understanding from from Josh and the team is the you know the testing is really the bread and butter. You know we have such a unique opportunity here with high elevation um you know and just just components to helicopters and planes that are looking to be tested here. So um you know when we're thinking about those conversations in the airport industrial part obviously those are some of the the same types of entities that we you know shop around ideas for that space. Um let's see. So that is it updates. Um so yeah in the near future we'll be bringing that business plan draft um to a work session probably just to to show you all and um and to get the direction that we're looking at looking ahead and get some guidance in there. Um we are exploring some additional options. We've had an an open RFP for the hangar ground leases going on probably four months now.

Yeah. Um with no interest uh I shouldn't say that with no formal uh proposals. Um and in that initial conversation we had with the engineers, they've got some ideas about how we might drum up some interest in that. I think they're they're still seeing some hurdles in the RFP process that's maybe detracting some some private individuals from bidding on it which I think you know in most cases they're they're assuming that a developer would come in and build these things but what they've seen in their experience is it's usually a private person who has the the means to come in and build one to store their own plane

and then they rent that space out to offset the cost. So, you know, they they've um indicated that they have some resources that can help us, you know, try to try to pitch that and sell it um to to some individual investors. So, um that's something to consider and we'll we'll be in touch with, you know, with Matt's office certainly on any any changes to that RFP process. Um and then, yeah, so we did have a project for paving the road um the entrance to the airport and that's going to get over to next year. Um, and just a a note here that's the FAA is gonna they're gonna help fund some of these surveys and add-ons for plan projects that we have in the future. So, um, that's where we're at as quarter one. We'll hopefully be back in in front of you with the business plan in the next couple, let's say, a couple months probably.

You think like July? June. Yeah. Hopefully. I mean, again, like to try and inform the the um budgeting process hopefully before before July. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Exciting. Any questions? You answered them. Okay. Yep. Sorry. I like power 7.5 sitting in your chair. I'm a little questioned out. Fair enough. Yeah. I Hey, you saw my line. How are we all doing? Good to see you. Yeah. Oh, it's so perky. Ready to hear about

Okay, mine should be pretty short and sweet. So, take all the time you need. Okay, thank you. Dedicate a meeting by itself to this next time. I had some notes for next time. Maybe my DS. Okay, so um quarter one. So key updates and accomplishments. Most of quarter 1 for my team was me out on maternity leave. So I would like to highlight operational excellence while short staff. So huge shout out to my team. They did a fantastic job and a big thank you to Josh. I know he really truly enjoyed his time in nature.

So thank you so much for filling in. We had a baby and we're back to work. Oh sweetie.

Yeah. Um, we had some interesting employee personnel cases that we handled. It was a wild ride for Josh. A great introduction, but they did a fantastic job. We worked really closely with Matt and I think we came out of those fairly fairly well. Did a good job. Um, so projects that we're working on, um, especially during quarter one while I was out, a great thing about being out and long absences like these is they highlight kind of some areas where we can work on processes improvements, systems improvements. So, we're working on doing some standard operating procedures for some of the things that we handle on a regular basis. So like our year- end procedures, billing, payroll, kind of um writing out those SOPs very detailed. So that way um if all of us, as Candace says, got hit by a bus or what I prefer, Josh says, abducted by aliens. So if all three of us were abducted by aliens, my whole team, our um work could continue. And then we're also really focusing on cross trainining. So ensuring that each one in our team we can all cover the functions of um the other person on the team. Right now we're doing payroll cross training. It's really fun

challenges that we face. Everyone hates payroll. I know payroll is the best. People love getting paid. I do want to say that even though we've had two issues with the bank not processing our file after we send it to them, which is insane. Insane. that payroll has largely been correct. And what you guys didn't get to experience is that payroll was never correct before. Like never. It was always a fight between finance and HR of who should do what and then no one agreed and then payroll was forever being corrected. And so this the fact Yeah.

And people didn't even speak to one another to try to get it fixed. So, the fact that it's accurate, it goes out and I talk to each other a lot. They do like each other. They're kind It is huge. Um, and Alicia and Will's team did a great job filling up her payroll while we were hiring on Sierra. And now Sierra's doing a fantastic job taking that over. Um, good. Alicia is still a great team player when there's questions and she's now the payroll expert in the county, I would say.

But it's going good. Um, challenges that we face and um, this is kind of highlighted in some of our projects that we're doing is disjointed systems. So, you know, we have one platform for our applicant tracking system, which is Jazz HR. We have one platform for employees to sign up for um benefits. We have culture amp for um you know when we're doing our performance evaluations and we have Tyler. It's just all over the place. So that leads to a lot of clunky manual processes that we have to do. And um then we're always constantly fighting Tyler and doing payroll. And Tyler, as you guys know, Tyler, we always talk poorly about that poor guy Tyler. Um, and so that's that's kind of what we're fighting against our challenges right now.

Questions on in quarter one. Is there uh any progress in Tyler or is it always going to be like this? I think we're having some progress. Um, we're learning more. I think there's just a huge learning curve. We don't always have great support to help you learn is my biggest complaint. It's not necessarily the software, it's the challenge of learning the software. Um, so sometimes we get a great rep and they don't charge us and we can get some good answers. And sometimes you get on a chat with a rep and they're using statements like, I think this should work. Yeah, this may work. I'm like, hold up.

It's hit or miss. Sometimes I need some hard statements, some 100% confirmation that what you're telling me is going to work. So that's the challenge and then when we want a quote unquote expert to help us with these larger projects then we end up paying them for those trainings which is very frustrating. Yeah. So instead of doing the workound we do share with HR Mhm. the trainings to do it correctly and Tyler permanently. Yeah. So everything's there in the system to do it. You just have to learn how to do it. I found that with every software like every software they give you the

initial tutorial and then you want to add any users to train up or you don't understand anything anymore they charge you. Yeah. And we don't know who set it up initially. And I also have a huge suspicion that Tyler was found for the county for the finance accounting side and it was set up really well on that side and then HR was kind of tacked on and it doesn't it seems like a lot of how the HR side the module was set up wasn't done correctly in a lot of ways. We're going back and fixing a lot of things that were set up improperly. Well, was there wasn't even an HR person when it was probably Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, Tyler's like Photoshop. Like, it can actually do a bunch of stuff, but someone has to sit you down and show you how to do it. So, you don't have to just like, what? This program sucks. I hate this. And there's a lot of times where the one thing you have to do, you have to go to a bunch of different areas to do it. Mhm. I will say that a lot of counties don't use Tyler for their HR information management system. They use a different platform and we are looking at maybe trying to do that in the future. She's actually Yeah, that's on Q2. Well,

um actually I don't I don't think I have that in the PowerPoint. One more system, but we are hoping to do it in a smart way. So that one more system would take all these systems and put it in one place. And I am not just wanting to tack on another system. So we're going through an entire evaluation process with Justin. He's helping us um look at all of our needs, identify those pros and cons, and so we're doing demos with a few different platforms just to get an idea of what they can offer and pricing. And then we'll have to go through the traditional probably RP RFQ then RF

RFQ because we want to quote right so we can budget for it for next year if we're going to go that direction and then RFP

yeah um so priorities well our main priority is serving Lake County government employees we do that in a lot of different ways um I like to always highlight that we have I think at last count 274 full-time part-time and seasonal employees and there's three of us on the HR team. So, we're working really hard to serve all those individuals and do our best. So, a system would really help with that, but that's our main priority. There's lots of roads to get there, but we all love what we do and hope we're working in the right direction. Some initiatives we are currently working on in Q2, um employee engagement, we added that line item to the budget this year. It's going really well. Um, so recently we visited the library for, oh gosh, I'm going to get all these names correct. National library appreciation week. Brought them flowers. Um, we went over to public health for public national public health week and I know celebrated them as well. Um, we brought them some goodies as well. And then we hadn't visited the airport yet. So we went out and met the employees at the airport. So, we're just trying to do more dropins with HR where we get out and talk to employees. And it's not always a scary, not fun thing when you connect with HR. We're going to do some fun things with employees as well. Also, in employee engagement, we do every year the employee appreciation party and then the holiday party. Um, we are we have a big focus on connecting with our middle manager level. So, we had our manager one-on-one trainings with them and instead of falling off of the face of the earth with them, we want to keep connecting with them. So, Karina and I brainstormed and Karina's really heading up this manager connect that we're doing. It's a quarterly meeting with them. It's optional at this point and they can drop in and we give them an HR update. So,

that way we have direct line of communication with them about like the hiring process. um the uh kind of the performance evaluation process, things like that, any questions that come up about being a manager in Lake County. Um then we talk about kind of typical manager topics. Like this past time we talked about the cultural expectations that the county manager's office put out and we talked about what that looked like in practice for them, how they modeled that. Um, Karina also came up with this really great handout to give all the managers that had activities based on each of the different cultural expectations and how to brainstorm with their team and connect with their team on those cultural expectations.

And then the last part of the meeting is them all networking together. So we give them a space to kind of have that support group of each other, bounce ideas off of each other, commiserate, what have you, so that they can just feel supported, feel like they have better communication from us, um and then um not feel so alone on an island as a manager here at Lake County. How many guys will participate in that? So the this last time we had eight show up. Cool. So we're hoping for a little more. So, as a fun incentive for our next one, this next quarter, we're just going to do a game and we're going to do trivia. I love trivia.

We're going to try to connect it to management somehow. I don't know. We'll see. Um, so that's our next plan. Um, and we had some snacks this past time, so we're hoping some more managers decide to participate. Cool. Um, trainings and HR touch points. So trainings um at the manager connect when we drop into different departments like we do we offer trainings like how to read your pay stub if they have some task questions things like that and then learning and development this is something that we're still brainstorming on. So if anyone has any suggestions or ideas but we're trying to continue to invest in learning and development of employees at Lake County. Hopefully in the future that will look like some sort of official plan that we lay out. Um, but I know budgeting is tight, so we'll keep trying to figure out how to present those opportunities for all of all of our employees to invest in their careers. Big projects on the horizon, evaluating the new HIS human resources information system. Also, you'll see come up in front of you hopefully in the near future is an update of the employee handbook. We're going through that right now that revision. Um we're getting support from the HR consulting group to do that and we are working on that in our administration team on brainstorming what updates need to be made, making those decisions and then it will come in front of you all for review and adoption. And then another big topic is a compensation plan. That would also be a project that would need an RFP. So, kind of looking at getting those quotes right now with RFQS. Um, and that would be a great thing to have set up. I think it will make everyone's trajectory here a lot more clear. It would also do away with um our struggles

with a merit-based system, which is very frustrating for a lot of people. It would do away with directors feeling like they have to and managers feeling like they have to advocate for raises and then it's not always evaluated in a well thoughtout manner. It's just kind of like who's advocating, who's not, how it goes, etc. So, a true compensation plan would help us a lot. also help us plan because staff would know when they could expect to see that their pay increases and we would be able to be planning for that because it wouldn't be like every single year an increase it'd be like hey if you stayed this long this is the bucket you fall into and so we'd be able to plan I really like that the federal government I don't know about Josh but it's like hey we know you gave your step increase and this time it's pretty easy everyone's on the same playing field

it's the one area by staff statue that you can, you know, as long as the other elected offices agree to it, they can sort of be bound to that compensation plan. Oh, really? Okay, good to know. Wait, as long as they agree to it, they can be bound by it. Get out of here, Matt. Elected official have to agree and then it's like like if we get the right one and the other Oh, I mean I would hope they would want to agree to it because it's a good deal for everybody. You just have to be good sales people. Oh, there's one more slide. Sorry. Almost done.

Start back. I just wanted to touch on the budget book objectives since it was on the slide. These objectives, the the ones for 2025 were made by the former HR director. I didn't really update them for 2026 at the time it came out because I was still um getting my head above water. I was getting pretty pregnant at that point. And so um

these are some of the updates that I've added kind of as I've come back and re-evaluated everything, but I already talked about those in the previous slides. So we did the short-term objective. We did kind of re-evaluate our benefits offerings um to make it kind of more streamlined and straightforward for employees and then yeah still working on the learning and development road map. That's it. Lovely Ashley. Well done. The most fun department. It it can be I would say it's probably the most entertaining department. Yeah. That you can't talk about.

Yeah. Which is such a shame. It's the most fun. And we're all missing out. I talk to Matt all the time. All right. Shall we conclude? Yes. Okay. This concludes our April 28th work session at 4:47 in the afternoon. Thank you all for coming. Almost. Almost. Congratulations.