Board of County Commissioners Business Meeting - workshop

Good morning, everybody. Let's get started with some introductions around the room, please.

Jeff Baker, Commissioner. John Christopherson, County Attorney's Office.

Michelle Halstead, Commissioner's Office. Rhonda Fields, Commissioner.

Callie Pecora, Personal Reporter. Leslie Summey, Commissioner.

Carrie Waring-Galley, Commissioner.

Kendra Davis, Commissioner's Office. Sorry. Jessica Campbell, Commissioner District 2. Wonderful, wonderful.

And we have Kathy Smith on the line as well. Oh, Kathy!

I would have never seen that. Hi. So please introduce yourself, ma'am.

Good morning, everyone. Kathy Smith, Community Resources.

Thank you very, very much. I'm glad that you flagged that for me, Michelle, because that's too small for me to see.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I thought that was you. So we are here today for a study session on the County Economic Development Program. I'm going to turn it over to Kendra Davis.

Thank you so much, Commissioner. We are here today to give you a little bit of context about the existing county economic development program, how you've chosen to structure that function within the county. And then we'll also do an environmental scan of other counties and how they structure that. And we'll talk a little bit about what some opportunities might be and what the preference of the board is. I do think also we'll have some finance folks joining in just a second. Okay. So we'll go ahead and, sorry, lots of arrows coming through. This is just a general sense of what we'll be doing. We'll give you a little bit of background. That background will include some of the information that you heard in March of this year when you did the Economic Development 101 with some of our economic development partners. It'll talk about what the county currently does and some partnerships that we leverage, an environmental scan of neighboring counties, some opportunities, and then what those next steps might look like based on some of the feelings of the board. So just to set a background of what you guys talked about back in March, Denver South and Aurora Economic Development Council, two of our economic development partners, presented about some economic development foundations. And one of the things that they talked about, they talked about definitions and objectives. They gave you kind of a snapshot of what Arapahoe County looks like from an economic perspective. That's up here. They track what our employment numbers look like, some of the leading industries, largest employers. This is all information that Kathy's team and AD Works also tracks, and they do that in partnership with our economic development partners. To take us even farther back, I wanted to highlight some objectives of the economic development that the board identified in 2021 and 2022. There was a deeper conversation about how the board wanted to. structure current economic development functions because there isn't a formal function within the county structure and these are some of the objectives that were identified by the board as part of that conversation so you'll see that the second one rebuild and or enhance tax base postcovid is maybe in a position to be evolved postcovid is a relative term but i wanted to um remind the board that this is a conversation you have had or the board has had from a county perspective and these are some of the things that were identified and the actions and activities that have happened since that conversation in 21 and 22 are based on these foundational items. So we can talk a little bit about what that county approach is. First and foremost, we leverage the excellent work of Arapahoe and Douglas Works. So they have extensive resources both for businesses and job seekers. These are just two of the high level things that they do, but Kathy could give you an entire study session on what they do, and then some. So they are an incredible resource for the county and for our economic development partners. They also help to identify Talent pipeline concerns, so in specific key target areas for the county areas where we have significant business or significant gaps that they might see, they work with our partners to leverage those talents and work with. universities and colleges to address those concerns. The county also provides a business personal property tax incentive program on a case-by-case basis. I believe you've talked about that recently. We will also be coming back in September with a deeper conversation about what that might look structurally from a policy perspective, and we'll have a little bit of information about what that currently looks like later in the slide. We also partner with economic development organizations, so across multiple focus areas. And these areas, I wanted to highlight them. These are also areas that were identified as areas of importance during that conversation in 21-22. And the board determined that these specific sections were where they wanted to focus their resources. So we have economic development corporations that includes Denver South, Aurora Economic Development Council. They support primary job creation, recruitment, they help identify commercial prospects and work with 80 Works to navigate the talent pipeline needs. We also support small business development centers, so Aurora SBDC. SBDC is, Aurora has a, it's Aurora Denver Metro SBDC, sorry. And then the Eastern Colorado SBDC. So both of those help support more entrepreneurial efforts and small business trainings. They also, if you remember from last year's presentations, talked about a growing area of business evolution. So businesses where folks were retiring or transitioning out and helping to find opportunities a soft landing for that business to have so it can continue operation. We also support a number of chambers of commerce. So those folks do a lot of community building and networking. They support existing businesses. They create opportunities to partner and to build that foundational network of businesses in our community. We also support some advocacy and interest groups. So those include our I-70 REAP is a specific group that is in quite a Chamber of Commerce that has some really specific project areas and is nimble in terms of the desires and priorities of that region that it supports.

Madam Chair? Yes, Commissioner Mwangali, thank you.

So the small business development centers, this is the SBA stuff, right? Like the folks that come and present to us that do trainings and those types of things? Correct. Okay, thank you. That's it.

Okay, thank you very much.

And then I just wanted to highlight, within the current strategic plan, we've talked about using this data to build out what this looks like, and these are some of the areas that it slots into. So we cover both economic resilience and stability, as well as workforce and community prosperity. There are some elements of supporting local business, building out those opportunity areas, and creating opportunities for education, apprenticeship, those sorts of things. So those are the areas in which we're really trying to leverage the partnerships with these different areas. Within that, the county has some very specific tools and resources. We've talked about a couple of them, but I wanted to dive a little bit deeper on some of them, see if there were any questions about what the county currently does, and just highlight ways that the county is trying to make inroads in some of those areas. Obviously, the first one is around Douglass Works. And if you have any questions, I'm going to make Kathy answer them. But this is generally a high level of what AD Works does. You all are familiar with kind of their operational categories and what a resource they are. But they really do a lot in data and in providing that data to our business owners, to the economic development partners. They talk about economic trends and employment. And those trends and that data help inform some of those projects and programs that they move forward in partnership with other folks. There's also the South Metro Interpol Zone. So this may sound familiar. We talked about it a little bit. There was an opportunity to expand the existing zone last year, this year, last year. The previous zone was pretty small. Inglewood was the manager of that zone. Our long range planning folks identified an opportunity in the eastern block to expand that zone. And then after that there was an opportunity to do a ten year expansion. So every ten years you're able to broaden the existing zone. We pulled in all of our partners, the cities, additional counties, Douglas County has part of the enterprise zone as well, and had some really substantive conversations about how folks could leverage the zone, who was interested in doing that, and what that looked like. So based on that, the zone blew up colloquially. So it includes parts of- Thank you. Sorry. That's good clarification, thank you. Not a technical term for Enterprise Zones. And not literally. Not literally. The Enterprise Zones still- Still exists. So Douglas County is also part of it. We have parts of Parker, parts of the Eastern Block. Our long-range planning partners at Public Works did an excellent job of identifying areas that were slated for projected growth and existing growth that they thought would be beneficial to have that commercial area included in that so it's a pretty substantive zone it also includes sheridan greenwood village sections of the county that didn't participate previously for a variety of reasons and is currently administered by the aurora chamber of commerce so they have transitioned from inglewood they are working with the state to identify ways to support enterprise zone requests these are mostly tax credits that folks can get as businesses in the enterprise zone And there's also an opportunity for what are called contribution projects, which allows kind of big capital projects to receive tax credits, tax credit contributions from residents and taxpayers, which is a cool opportunity and really broadens that zone across both our county and Douglas County. So there's a lot of opportunity here that is new and we're really working on trying to leverage that with your change of commerce. The county also has a tax incentive program. So this allows the county to offer economic incentives for new and expanding businesses. You can refund business personal property tax when the creation of a new business facility or expansion of the facility. The board talked about this as a program a couple two years ago, I believe. but I believe about two years ago and the idea from the book when when folks come for a potential incentive they bring the benefits to the board right so they talk about how many jobs do they create what's their median income what's the capital investment that they'll be making what do they think the impacts of this will be in the county and sometimes that can be kind of to borrow another official term, squishy math. But it is a conversation with the board and kind of expectation of return on investment. And so currently the county has 10 exempted agreements with six different businesses. So because you can have them for specific addresses. There are businesses that have multiples and has an average return of $550,000 and that's an average over the last eight years or so. So if the board remembers, we went back when we came to you two years ago. This program has evolved a lot over the last 10 to 15 years and the the weight of what the county has in refunds has changed over the years and it used to be I think as low as a couple thousand dollars and then over the course of time has increased to what it currently is which is about 550,000.

Commissioner Fields?

Yes. Can you highlight what six businesses there are? Because I'm unfamiliar with the six businesses that we have.

So the board currently has agreements with Arrow Electronics, Republic National Distributing Company, QTS Aurora, Gemini Mountain Medical, JP Morgan, and then Charter Communications.

And QTS, is that the data center? Correct. And the types of businesses, are they most aerospace? Is there like a range that you're just giving? Because I know that the data center was, and I know the banking one. What are the other topics?

I mean, if you look at Aero, that's heavy, you know, that's technical manufacturing, Aero Electronics. Gemini is a pretty large manufacturer of medical products. So typically, the business personal property tax investment works when you have a significant lift in revenue. fixtures, furniture, and equipment, or FF&E. So a lot of these companies, whether it be QTS, JP Morgan, Gemini, Arrow, all have made a pretty big capital investment inside the building, which is why they're looking for the rebate. But that's generally right now where most of the current, it's a little bit, it's more focused on advanced manufacturing is what I would say.

I remember Chartered Communications, I remember when they came to us. Yeah, telecom. We actually extended it because they were adding more people, if I remember correctly, the last time we talked. And they were adding several hundred new people. And that's a communications company. So it's kind of a widespread spattering. I guess I thought it was mostly finance.

No, and I think, if I may jump in, Kendra, I think the takeaway for us is we work really closely. You can see here, this is not like everyone gets a car, right? This is not an Oprah environment. This is really... but I would say that our economic development partners both at Aurora and Denver South do a really good job of vetting a lot of these requests on our behalf and so when they come to you they're doing the background work and then making their professional recommendation on the level of investment and you know what it's going to bring to the county But as Kendra said a couple years ago, because of our uncertainty in our financial situation, right, prior to the passage of 1A, you kind of put a pause on these things globally. And so we're starting to see more come through as, obviously, you know, the investments continue to grow.

Yeah, I would like to see, I'm not quite sure if Kathy has this, because it says on one of the slides that we are keeping track of trends. And so I would like to understand the demographics of, you know, those agreements in reference to who are they hiring and where are they coming from. Because when I think about District 5 and that population, it's very blighted. Many of the areas are boarded up and there's no really pathway at this point for companies to come into that area. because they don't have the richness of the dirt that you would find in the unincorporated parts of Aurora. So when we're thinking about, you know, incentive, I'm hoping that at some point we look at, and I don't know if this is partnership with Aurora City, but it's just everything is being developed out south. And so transportation becomes an issue in reference to if we want to see those folks get jobs, How are they going to get there? RTD or light rail is not a viable option for many of these agreements or businesses.

I don't know if we have that data. Kathy, maybe you do. Kathy's got her hand up. Kathy, you can't put your hand up.

You're going to have to text somebody.

Commissioner I just wanted to say we definitely can get data related to districts employment rates demographics those kinds of things unfortunately I can't speak to every business and the demographics of who they're hiring and from what district. With that said, if we had the specific ask, we could work with businesses in certain areas to see what information we could get statistically. But yeah, we definitely can get you some demographic information related to your district, related to employment rates, education levels, demographics in that way. But I don't know if that's what you're looking for.

Yeah, that would be helpful. The reason I bring that up is because I know how much time the county spends on dealing with those who are unhoused and homeless.

Yes.

And so when I think about, you know, we don't just want to house people, we want to eventually get them a job to get them into a situation where they can be self-sufficient. And I'm just wondering how we're tying some of these initiatives to getting some people not just off the street into temporary housing, but how can we align some of these initiatives where we're really getting them a job and maybe eventually getting them housing? so that we're not just rural housing homeless people.

Commissioner, that's probably a separate conversation from economic development items, but that is the goal of our housing stability services is creating that housing stability plan, getting people referred over to Arapahoe Douglas Works. So that's our goal with the services we've implemented with our housing stability services is really making sure that people have that economic stability and mobility, not just getting them into anything temporary. So we agree completely.

And I think to the comment you made about how does this relate to incentives or what data these companies are reporting back on, I think that would go to the incentive policy conversation of what could you do about wage ranges, you know, hiring groups, and then some of the demographic data that we can ask them to provide. So that's a great flag, and we'll make a note of that when we bring back the incentive proposal.

Commissioner Warren-Beller? Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up, Commissioner Fields, because this is kind of our current state, right? And what you're talking about is something that I think many people, many of us would have a real interest in, like what other types of incentives. I'm thinking about, I can't remember the name of the gosh darn grocery store. group that came in but remember we asked them one of the things that we actually put in place was you had to put one of your your stores in a designated food desert that our staff came up with so I think those are all really important conversations about forward thinking of Do we have other types of things that we ask of our businesses when they're coming into our community?

It would be great to have a list so I could just kind of see. Just make sure we're asking and putting in place the right incentives. Because one of the things moving forward would be child care. I mean, if we're building some of these big companies, maybe they could have I don't know what the list is, but if we have an opportunity to influence some incentives to make sure that it helps people keep their jobs. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think of even union representation in some of these large-scale projects. I mean, there's a whole host of things that we could somewhat explore that I think other organizations do differently. have as part of this conversation. It's probably a lot bigger than this conversation.

Right. Yeah. And I understand that this is past, but it's just like looking ahead, it's just really hard for families. It's really hard, and it's like the middle class is shrinking, and we have to be mindful of that as we're creating these opportunities across Arapahoe County. How are we feeding that pipeline and bringing people up?

That's a great point. Yeah, and I do want to say that you all are skipping to the end of the opportunity slide. I don't have those things listed, but I do want to say that those are the conversations we're hoping to spark through this presentation is what are you looking to get to and how can we bring you information that would be helpful and a structure that would be beneficial for where we're headed. So we'll keep going until we get there. And then I wanted to mention Revitalization areas, because the county has a number of designated revitalization areas, this isn't something we control, but it is something that is helpful to folks through home ownership opportunities. There's a calculation that the that HUD creates, or HUD has, that designates these areas, but they are areas where there is additional opportunity for folks in homeownership. So I just wanted to flag that those exist in the following areas in Arapahoe County. And we can certainly dig more. I'm sure Kathy's team is well aware of these spaces and navigating how to support folks in that. So that's what the county does itself. So currently that's what the county program looks like. That's how we operate. The list of cities is interesting. Yeah, I completely agree. But you know what?

Those homes are expensive.

HUD has a list, so there may be specific areas within those cities. It's not certainly the whole city itself.

So now we're going to transition.

I love my district. I love district two is the best. I love it. It's so funny.

So that's kind of how the county structures at a high level are an economic development program. We wanted to talk a little bit about how other counties do that. We didn't talk about cities because cities are kind of a different animal. They have different opportunities to help support and regulate that economic development element than counties do. Counties are very regulated in that area. There are some opportunity areas that we can talk about based on what other counties do, and we'll go through that. So this is just a list of the things that we looked at with other counties so we can identify that for you. First, we started with Adams County. They have a robust economic development department. It's mostly internal. It is combined with their community development, so it's a community and an economic development department. As you can see, that budget is 18.7 million, but it includes all of those different areas.

So it would be- So something like grants and different things are flowing through those as well? Yes. Housing, permits.

It's okay.

It has a lot of different elements and they combine those all into this one office. Six of the staff in that office are dedicated to economic development. So they have a team of six people who are specific to economic development and what that means to them may be a little bit different than what the county currently does, but generally that's who is doing the work that we leverage with our economic development partners. They have about six million dollars that's specific to economic development. One million of that is membership, so the way that we leverage with our partners. They have a different resource for that. So that is about a million dollars in memberships. They also provide incentives and have a formal incentive policy. They created a county revitalization authority, which is something that the state recently approved that counties can do, which is kind of like a URA for cities. It allows you to leverage certain areas And I believe counties can do that specifically for all unincorporated areas, and then you can narrow down what that looks like. And that's what Adams County has done. They created a county revitalization authority, and that revitalization authority is their board of directors or commissioners.

Okay, the board of the revitalization authority are the five county commissioners.

Correct, but that responsibility can also be delegated, and you'll see that in a different example. So they also leverage the Adams County Regional Economic Partnership, as well as having their own internal staff. So we're starting with a very robust, broad program of economic development.

Just a quick question. Michelle, this is really for you. Okay. Great. A million dollars in membership, is that like, what membership would require that accumulation of funds? Do you have a sense of how much this goes to the A-list sponsorship?

Yeah, I think it goes to sponsorship because they sponsor like Accelerate, they always do their A-list, Sabor. Emma had tickets to Sabor, like five tickets, seven tickets to Sabor.

I think similar to At a smaller scale, we support a lot of different chambers. I think they augment that. I haven't. dove into specifically what they give to an Aurora EDC or to ACREP. We don't see that. I can tell you that just because I talked to the EDC, our respective EDCs, whether it be Denver South or Aurora. other people make much more significant investments than we have historically done and again we've been very flat because of our budget situation so I think as you look at this and it gives you food for thought I think as we transition over the next couple years there's certainly opportunities to have conversations about what do you get for the level of investment and I'm really proud the board a couple years ago and like 20 and 21 made some of that shift to look at what are we getting for a $50,000 investment with the Aurora Chamber, for example, and how do we track that? We hadn't done that in the past, so I can't speak to... They put a lot more into those third-party groups than we do. I don't know what the return on investment is, but we could certainly look into that down the road as we go through these examples, because I think you'll see there's a lot of diversity. And other counties put... not a dissimilar amount of money into one organization.

What I like about the investments that we're making, because I've had a chance to look at the organizations that we support, and a lot of them are not big box organizations, like the Black Chamber and the Interfaith. We do invest in, I would say, neighborhood-type organizations that are really doing a lot of the work in the community. As well as supporting Award Chamber and others. I think we have a good balance. I was really pleased when I saw the list. I saw some names I didn't think would make it.

Like Whitney and Chamber. Yeah, that's a good one.

And I do want to say, just from an administrative perspective, the way that we talk about economic development partnerships, we talk about that in terms of memberships with organizations. And the list that's attached to your report includes memberships. We also maintain a list of sponsorships for specific events and for other investments that we haven't historically bundled as economic development.

Whereas other people might.

Yeah, but that may be something that when we say memberships to Adams County, perhaps that also means their sponsorship elements as well. Yeah. And we divert.

It clarifies it for me. Yeah, sponsorships.

So Boulder County, we're going to swing to the other side of the... Pendulum. Boulder County is not dissimilar from our office. They do not have dedicated staff within their organization. The county administrator's office supports efforts and coordinates with the external partners that they leverage. They submit about 180,000. I think that may be different. Those are 2024 numbers to fund about eight or nine organizations. And they leverage Boulder Economic Council to provide most of that external support. They do not do any tax incentives or business retention or support as an organization. Any of that work happens external to them. They also do not have a lot of unincorporated areas that are opportunities for that. Most of their unincorporated areas are open space. And so not an option to leverage this. That's interesting.

I never thought about that.

Commissioner Baker.

University of Colorado. That's all I want to say. That has an impact on Boulder.

So a very different structure and very different priorities. Let me see. Douglas County, they have very limited dedicated staff. They have leveraged the internal staff historically, not dedicated staff, but similar to how we've done it. Recently, they have chosen to use external support from the Douglas County Economic Development Corporation, and in 25, they committed almost a million dollars to the DCEDC for that work. So that includes all of their incentive programs, all of the work that we leverage our economic development partners to do. They also have a community development department that provides some of that business support, and they have a dedicated business coordinator in community development. So that person works with businesses to go through the licenses, permits, that sort of thing, and helps folks navigate that. They also launched a child care property tax incentive program in 2026, as well as a county revitalization authority. They delegated that responsibility to the DCEDC, which is another option for consideration. And they also launched in 25 a red tape reduction task force, which is just a group across the county that is dedicated to reducing the regulatory burden on commercial industrial development.

Douglas County.

So they have some tools that they have implemented in Douglas County that may be interesting if the board would like to look further. Jefferson County also has limited internal staff. They leverage the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation. They recently created an economic development planner position, which is in their in their own structure, and that supports URA contracts with cities, metro and special districts, and coordinates with the EDC. They commit about $260,000 in 26 to economic development efforts. They have an emphasis on supporting URA development and their cities through that, and all the incentives go through the JCEDC. Larimore County, they're a very different structure. They have an all internal support, but it is braided with their workforce. And so it looks like 8.1 is a lot of money, but it is primarily workforce funding. They have six staff, again, focused primarily on workforce. And the economic development functions are, my understanding, not the primary function of that office. They are secondary to workforce. Or I shouldn't say secondary, I should say braided with workforce in a way that we don't do. They have a contract with Weld County for any broader economic development, and they also use consultants to do any incentives that come before them.

Commissioner Warren-Gulley? Thank you, Madam Chair. Kendra, so just to be clear, the 8.1, that's, are they putting 8.1 million in there? or they're utilizing some of their workforce funds to do the economic development stuff?

My guess is the latter.

Okay.

I don't have a breakdown of how much of that is specific to general fund. My guess is not very much.

Yeah, because I wasn't aware that you could spend workforce dollars that way, but maybe they don't. Maybe they're just saying, you know, workforce creates economic opportunity. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know how they structure the use of those funds. I just know that they are combined. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. So those are the counties that we looked at. Structures all a little bit different and definitely identifying some opportunities that the board could look in further. So this is a list of some of those opportunities that the board may want to look into. This is certainly not a recommendation or any sort of staff is just identifying things that other counties do we want to make sure that you're aware of some of the additional tools that could be in the toolbox if you wanted to look into those and our idea would be if you identify some of these areas of interest we could come back to you with what that might look like here in the county what kind of effort that might need what kind of additional resources the county might need in order to launch something like that And the board could have a conversation about what that looks like.

I would just say that I think we've heard throughout the last year that the incentive payment agreement structure is paramount importance. So that we are moving forward. Yes. So we will be bringing that back to you after recess. But I think the other ones are certainly things that there's no time, you know, there's no timeline on any of these or how to. And some of these things you've already talked about in other spaces, right? So I think this is just an awareness of what other people do that you could also have us explore further with a, you know, shared group of people across the county.

Commissioner Wargo? I can't. Thank you, Madam Chair. I can't remember. Did you... What is the benefit of a county revitalization authority?

It's a 65-page bill. Pull it up.

It's a good read. I don't want to get out of my skis, so I'll let Michelle chime in, because certainly not an expert. But I think it allows the county to create goals and opportunities for...

incentives within a specific geographic area to help leverage the businesses in that area and so it's not dissimilar from that urban renewal for a city so think about um you know tax increment financing leveraging your property taxes right to build infrastructure for a specific area so that's jason's on his head so i'm glad i'm glad i remember the 65 page summary um but it is it is a newer tool in the toolbox um and i think understanding how you would use it where you would use it what makes sense um is something that that could be explored down the road but it's a newer tool for counties but it's akin to urban renewal so it's county's version of urban renewal so we identify an area of for example commissioner fields conversation about there's an area that we would want to tag

we're about I don't remember the bill do you remember the bills I know Jason has looked at this at a 30,000 foot level yeah very broad strokes because it has been quite a while since I've read the details but there's two components to a county revitalization authority there's the first step is for the county to establish it, take action to say there is a county revitalization authority and it is applicable in these areas of the county. Adams County has taken that step and they essentially adopted a resolution saying we have a county revitalization authority and it may happen anywhere in unincorporated Adams County. The second step is a more detailed process to focus on a specific area and develop a plan for that area. And my understanding is Adams County is currently doing that for an unincorporated area that's very near to Commerce City. Okay. And as Ms. Halston mentioned, tax increment financing is one of the tools that communities can bring to bear through the County Revitalization Authority and has been used in urban and rural authorities. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jason. Commissioner Campbell?

I can go like hit some of the things that it touches on or do we like feel good because well it just says area that upon implementation of the county revitalization plans especially substantially promotes the sound growth of the county improves economic and social conditions and furthers the health safety and well-being of the public by the actualization of one of the following opportunity factors. So it creates opportunities for investing in infrastructure, water, sanitary sewer, improvement of mobility and increased access to transportation, development of affordable housing, development of economic opportunities, job creation and growth, expansion of access to healthy food systems, community medical services, public parks, improvement of circulation patterns and enhancement, of safe, reliable public transportation, remediation, contaminated soils and waters, clearance, abatement, rehab of structurally unsound deteriorating thing, redevelopment of former landfills, urban level development in unincorporated areas. Thank you. Yeah. So.

Thank you. Go team. And I would be remiss, I'm glad Jason is here, I didn't see him sneak in, but I would be remiss in not highlighting Kathy and Jason have both been key partners in this conversation because the county has such a diffused economic development function. Both of them do excellent work in trying to gather all the tools at their disposal. And Jason's team really looks at the eastern plains and how we can support some of those areas in economic development.

I disagree.

Commissioner Fields.

Yeah, you had mentioned that there may be some challenges when you're dealing with the city. And I can tell you that what I've seen is great partnership with community resources as it relates with the housing authority and the city of O'Rourke when there's opportunity. So I would like to suggest that we continue to use that lens to reach at communities that have been, there's been no investment. in some communities, which happens to be in cities, the urban areas, for decades. And so if there's an opportunity to take a look through partnership to address that would be good.

Of course. Commissioner Baker? Sorry. Maybe for Jason. Because we have done the economic zone that we took from or didn't take but worked with Englewood and then got Aurora Chamber to take that on. Does an economic zone preclude a revitalization authority? Or can they be overlapped? Okay. I just didn't want, I wanted to make sure.

And layer as much as you want. I do want to say that it would be helpful if the board had specific tools here that they wanted to identify, they were interested in getting more information. We would love to think about how that comes back to you with more data.

Thank you, Madam Chair. okay so yeah I'm having a hard time consolidating all of my thoughts right looking at this list obviously we've talked about incentive payment agreement structure one thing that I think would be helpful also is understanding how getting a broader lens and like scope of how much land we have available to be developed in unincorporated areas right how their zone like kind of where they are because I think if when we think about commodities, which land is, the scarcity and the limitation. Are we running out of land? Where is our land? How is it zoned? How do we need to be thinking about that? Where does that fit within our other comprehensive plans so that we know how strict we can be? Because if we're starting to run out of land, especially in Dove Valley and some of these other areas, we can be much more strict about what we have, right? Whereas maybe in district three, we're kind of like, okay, it's at, or it's this, but I also am thinking about like developable areas in more urban areas are kind of more in the, or suburban, I don't know, whatever centennial that bridges between all the things, you know? you know, sustainability goals and how strict we want to be around those as well as to what Commissioner Fields was saying is knowing, it would be great to know what all we can require, right? And so childcare, so that incentive agreement is important to me. I also, and I will say as like a broader tool and I think it would be informative when we're looking at that is being very strategic in, our local economy. and diversifying the industries that are here. So while aerospace is great, we've kind of got a really strong connection between primary employers and then the sort of satellite little companies that go around to supply that. I don't want us to ever get too heavy in one, is kind of what I asked AEDC and Denver South as well. And so getting and making sure we have a diverse portfolio in the county of the industries. And saying, does that support also, and then working with our community colleges or colleges and schools and going, do we have that talent pipeline and creating that relationship there. So I'm seeing the whole soup to nuts of it, you know? I think, yeah, affordable housing policies, incentives, I think we've been working on that, but kind of going, what more can we do? Childcare property tax incentive program could be really interesting. I'm open to the county revitalization authority, but I think we need to kind of, that could be maybe down the road. We need to sort of feel that out a little bit. Internal staffing, I think that's more of a conversation we need to have, and I know we've been having it, but it feels a lot like the economic community development kind of perspective that Adams has taken, sort of that all-in-one. Economic development plan or program. Yeah, we would need to talk about that. Permitting, review, and process. I did write down, I remember in our conversation with Denver South, when we were talking about what is helpful to developers and people coming in. And I remember it was clarity and consistency on land development and building processes. And so thinking about that from that development process of kind of fostering and I know we've been kind of talking about some of that, but just the clarity around it and timelines and maybe how we communicate them. And so one of the things I do like about Adams County is they have a website that has all the kind of portions on there. And And so maybe even part of what we do because our economic development activities are so distributed, maybe part of what we do is just pull it all together on a website and just go like, this is where the information and you can find these things and it's all located, you know, we've got a hub for access, right? And we just kind of start there by just organizing the information, right? One thing that I like, find hilarious is like that Douglas County and Mayor Mondani are both kind of and I wrote down remove superfluous permits requirements for small locally owned businesses yeah there's the kind of like Douglas County took the commercial industrial route but I'm thinking like small businesses right your margin of error is a small business is like horrendous and I think I think it was the Mom Dami example was like restaurants had to get a separate permit to serve dessert or to serve ice cream or something. And so if there's stuff with either in public health or in building and things that we're doing that either we need to communicate with people ahead of time. And I know that public health does a lot of education, but or going like, what are we doing that? is more than needs to be done. And I know that the county has always resisted over-regulating, I think, because kind of to what Commissioner Summey has always said, like the Nancy's approach, right? Or I think you've talked about that, Commissioner Warren-Gulley, of like, well, if you do a thing, how are you gonna enforce it, right? And we've always been very reticent to kind of pick up extra things. So maybe we don't have extra stuff like that, but maybe things that have gotten through that don't make a lot of sense anymore. also what I think the objectives on page four would be a really interesting conversation for us to have either maybe strategic retreat or some other time or whatever study session when we look at creating a sustainable economy. It's not just primary employers, it's not just top-down, it's also bottom-up, right? And that's not really reflected explicitly in the objectives. In our approaches it is, right? But I think going kind of bottom-up and having that whole pipeline that also is encouraging small locally owned independent businesses because for like every $100 spent at a locally owned business somewhere between $40 and $75 stays in the local economy where if like you shop at Target it's like 15 bucks right and so just those kinds of things and and kind of pulling a bunch of pieces together I also wrote down focus on using locally owned businesses as county vendors and how we, there are different things for procurement that, I'm talking over you like shut up, I just wrote those financial policies.

He's like, I got the procurement ones done, and I'm like, guess what, Todd?

We've got ideas. But kind of how you space that out and unbundling larger contracts so that you can do that. So anyway, I have a lot of, I have a lot of different ideas. So I think for me, it's about going kind of where, where do we get kind of banged for our buck and what's easiest to like, as we kind of do, what are the easy gets first and then timing our workout as we flesh out a system, right? And then if we need internal staff, because it's at a point where we're like, okay, this needs extra stuff to run itself. But the thing I get nervous about with the tax incentive program is like AEDC and Denver South are, doing their job to kind of bring people in and how, I guess, yeah, we just really need to define it. If we're not going to be proactive ourselves and do that, which I don't think we need to, I'm with you on that, but we need to have a very clear definition of who we're looking for to come in and all of that. So, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. So, with that, I'll just say that.

Commissioner Wangoli?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it is hard to have this conversation because of what Commissioner Campbell just laid out. We all touch into these worlds because of the work that we do on different boards and chambers and economic development folks. And I know Commissioner Baker is out there in his community always trying to advocate for the rural side. When I think about this, and what I need your help with, Kendra, is how do we... Is there a way that we could say, you know, for the next five years, we really want to incentivize child care opportunities and affordable housing. That's really our goal. So how do we structure our incentives around... asking partners and businesses that are coming into our community, how are you going to do this? Or do we want to look at, I know at one time Jason and his team did actually go through and figure out Where are areas that are in unincorporated Arapahoe County mostly within cities? So like Commissioner Sumney's and my little pockets of these funky little areas of... Are there areas that we really want to specifically say, this is an area where we want affordable housing, or senior housing, or non-apartment housing, or those kinds of things? Then we... that kind of gives us the opportunity to say, this is the kind of development that we're looking for versus just whoever comes to that area. And I don't know if that's really possible or whether we can utilize these tools to do that. Like I look at the child care property tax incentive program that I've kind of chatted about with some of our early childhood folks. That's probably not going to incentivize the small mom and pop groups, which is the majority of people in our area. It's really these very large scale child care centers that are important too, but would I rather have some kind of incentive that supports the employees that work there? So it's so broad that I wonder if it's more beneficial to kind of start thinking about in the next three to five years, what do we want to focus on? And then the following three to five years, to Commissioner Campbell's point, we want to diversify the types of businesses, and we're going to incentivize the... I don't know. That's kind of where my brain has been trying to... hone it in a little bit, but that may just not be how this world works, and I get that.

I certainly think there's an opportunity. You bring up a great plan, and that's why the plan program structure is on there, because I think there is an opportunity to kind of scope out where you'd like to make investments. Certainly economic development tools are not a you don't always see the results immediately, so you kind of have to build it in. And I think it could be something that we talk to our partners with, because they are the ones recruiting some of these people, they understand kind of how that works, and if that's not a function that makes sense, if that's not a way that the world works, maybe they'll tell us, I'm sure. But there is an opportunity if you'd like to identify priorities. I think we can build out a program or a structure that says, if you want to focus on X, Y, and Z in the next three to five years, these are the three things that you should do. This is how you could potentially build it in here. And then if you wanted to transition, you could swap that out for something else. And maybe we could build out an idea of what kind of resources would be required to do that, because certainly we don't want to give you a plan that you can't do, right? What does it look like to make those investments and what would the county need in order to move that forward?

Yeah, I guess I'm kind of thinking like shade properties, I think it was, just did that redesign of an office space. Mm-hmm. But we all know how extremely expensive that is to do, but I look at and have heard from our colleagues that there's a lot of empty office space. Is that something? Right. So I like your idea of maybe talking in that manner with some of our development folk, or our, you know, our partners to see what do they see out there. What are businesses' employers saying? We're not coming to Arapahoe County because of X.

Well, I guess I would just want to say that some of the things that our partners do relative to incentives, attraction, retention are really specific and unique. So some of the things that you've talked about, this broadening of the ecosystem, right, are also things that are conversations with your directors and our strategic plan and our strategic work plan. What are those tangible things we're going to make investments in to achieve an outcome? So it may not necessarily be an economic development thing, but it definitely supports the ecosystem. But I think there is some of these things are super, like permitting and review is a super strategic thing that absolutely helps our business community all the way around. So what level of investment would... you want to put on that effort relative to some other things that might not rise to the top, right? So I think there's some prioritization and some strategy within the board and the county about what are things you can move forward. Because I know we're doing a lot on housing, but I do think you have to have some intentionality as well of where do you want to see that vision? And then it's which tools, what levers? They're not all economic development, right? But there's certainly some policy decisions and investments you can make that can incent those types of things to happen. So I just want to... pull it back just a titch, because it's all good stuff.

Thank you.

I just want to add to that, if I can. I'm Sharon. Because Arapahoe County is a county that's rich for many opportunities for economic development. And we see that people want to do business in Arapahoe County. And some of it is going to require us to make sure these companies that come in, that there's a value as it relates to corporate responsibility to the community and greater good. It can't just be about their profit line without the understanding there has to be some payback. I don't know what it looks like, but you just can't have a DIA as a cash cow and then you don't invest in the community that built DIA or whatever. there has to be some kind of integration some kind of involvement in all the cities all the people and you just can't take from the county and not invest in the county so what values can we make sure when we're pitching or they're pitching us that there has to be some investment back into sponsorships basketball team or whatever but there's there's got to be a link back to the community they're just not gouging the community and there's just no give back

We'll bring back incentives as the primary thing, and then we'll noodle on those, circle back with Kathy and Jason, and see what else we can bring forward to you towards the latter part of the year.

Okay. Great. Thank you very, very much.

All right. Yay. And so I think you're good till 1. We are good. Oh, yeah. Never mind. Never mind. Yeah, don't say that. Sorry. I lied. I didn't mean to lie. You've got one more thing, right? Yeah. Sorry.

And Callie, can you hear us?

We're not advocating for that, just so you know. Good. That's not the model we would ever suggest on many levels.

Yeah, that's not our model. So good morning, everyone. Let's go ahead around the room with some introductions, please.

Jeff Baker, Commissioner. Glenpool, open space.

Jenny Pincheneau, open spaces. Michelle Halstead, Commissioner's Office.

Rhonda Fields, Commissioner. Leslie Summey, Commissioner. Carrie Waring-Gully, Commissioner. Jessica Campbell, Commissioner, District 2. Sandra Bottoms, open spaces.

Dan Pesa, open spaces. Jason Reynolds, Public Works and Development.

Wonderful. Thank you very, very much. We are here. for a drop-in grant opportunity with the State Historical Fund grant. So I will start with Director Pagino.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm going to quickly pass it on to Sandy and Dan. But, yep, just a quick drop-in session. We are knowing that 17 mile house needs a little TLC. And so that is what we're here to talk about. This is on our CIP list. So just kind of make that connection as well. And Sandy, want to take it away? Sure.

So I'll talk a little bit about the grant and then leave it to Dan to talk about the scope itself of work that we're doing. But we'd like to apply for a grant from the State Historical Fund for up to $250,000. We're still working on our budget numbers a little bit. We have to supply at least 25% match. So we'll ask for as much as we can. And what else should I say? So we've received state historical fund grants for this property in the past, most recently in 2017 or 18 for some work on the barn. Glenn and I both worked on that project at the time. yeah what should i say so we uh the applications do october 1st so we have a lot of work to do before that but um and then we ideally would do our do the work beginning next summer that might be all from the grant side of things the only thing that i would add madam chair is um this is very competitive grant yes so um

We're not necessarily holding our breath, and we're already thinking about a plan B if that's the case. But we have been given overtures by folks in the state historical realm that they feel like our project is competitive. And so that's promising. But it's about 40% of grant applications are actually approved. But we will persevere nonetheless in this space. It's important to at least make the ask.

Yeah, it seems like you typically get around, it depends on the cycle, but they have two cycles a year and they often get it like three times the amount of requests they have available. So we're going for it. With fingers crossed. Do you want to talk about the actual scope of work?

So the scope of work is set to address the windows, the doors, the certain shingles on the roof. The main focus is the house as well as the siding. Obviously, we're going to be doing the gutters and the wood fascia as well. And so ideally we would do it all at once considering that they're all in some essence intermingled. Yeah. There is an element that we would, we could potentially improve the windows specifically on the barn as well since Those were not addressed in the last, those were not needed in the last grant application, and so that right there is the scope that we're looking to focus on as far as with this application, whether we receive it or not.

Commissioner Baker?

Thank you. The windows, some of those window panes are original. And you can tell because they're thin at the top and thicker at the bottom. Gravity has kind of done that. And so if there's replacements being planned, would we keep some of the original available to be on display or something like that?

So we would reuse all items that are possible to be reused. We still have, because of the easement, we still have to get everything as far as the specific details of the scope of work approved by the Colorado Historical or GEDA. So our goal is to reuse, even with the doors, reuse as much of the doors as we can. We would take this opportunity, and we have been working with to get her blessing, more or less, to update the doors from a security aspect as well. And so we met with her last week. She's given her blessing. She's willing to write a support letter as well. But I think for some of the artifacts that maybe we can't, we would look to... potentially use them in some capacity so that they're just not wasted. Thank you.

Yep. Yes, go ahead.

So just to add to all these other comments, this is another partnership we have with FFM. And their team did a great job earlier this summer with some painting and some other things that needed to be done. And we're just... mindful of capacity I guess at FFM and so we've been thinking about how maybe how can we work with some of the the construction folks in this space that really are strong in a historical preservation. We do have experience in the past, and there are some that come to mind. So I think we're thinking about leaning more on those folks in a way to just be mindful of our partnership with different departments. So just adding that to the mix.

Commissioner Wargo? Oh, okay. I missed the Q. Any other discussion? Do we have thumbs up for the grant application? Yes. Yay!

Thank you for finding us. Very smart.

Good stuff.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Anderson Windows. Thank you.

We're unmuted.

All right, we are unmuted. All right. It is 12.59.

We are going to start in a moment or two. Thank you. I like it.

I wish we had this much interest for all of our regular members.

Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon. Hi. Are we unmuted? We are. Can you hear us?

Wonderful.

Well, since everybody and their mother is in the room right now, let's go ahead and get started with some introductions.

Jeff Baker, Commissioner. Patrick Hernandez, HR.

Michelle Halstead, Commissioner's Office. Robin Fields, Commissioner. What's my name?

Leslie Summey, Commissioner.

Carrie Waring-Gully, Commissioner.

Jessica Campbell, Commissioner, District 2.

Dusty Sash, HR.

We'll go that way.

Jake Elder on Lockton.

.

. . . . . . .

Jordan McGinnis, EHS.

Wonderful. Thank you all very, very much. We are here for our 2027 total compensation and Dusty Sash.

Alright, thank you for having me. We will go through the same agenda we do most years. We will review our total compensation philosophy first and then we'll dive into benefits, look at what the market is and what our plan renewals look like and changes. As a reminder, we do need decisions on benefit requests today so that we can get to open enrollment on time, but compensation is part of your normal budgeting process outside of just this meeting. And then we'll go through compensation, and then we'll look at the total cost of the request and the timeline. Then there's a lot of slides in the appendix. I might refer to them from time to time, just in case you want some additional background and data on some of the requests we're going to be making. Also, I know the board knows this, but I don't mind interruptions, so feel free when it comes up. You just opened the beast. I like them. rather address it when we have it. Our total compensation philosophy has not changed in several years. We strive to equitably and competitively pay our employees to our defined wage and salary market and adjust as needed to attract new talent and reward performance. So our defined wage and salary is The midpoint, which means half of our peers pay less than us, half of our payers pay more than us. And our market area is 26 entities within the Denver-Boulder area. The five components of compensation, it's not just cash for comp rate, which is included, compensation, the dollars we pay our employees in exchange for the value they provide us. It also provides benefits which limit their exposure to financial risk, work-life success benefits, and policies like flex time, Vacation sick those types of things that allow our employees to be both successful here at work, but also at home. They bring their whole self to work to work. So we want to make sure they're successful in both places. Performance recognition to tie their goals and their efforts to the county and our successes. within that, and then development and career opportunities, learning exercises that enhance our skills and competencies so that they can grow. And we, I understand, but not for today, but at some point you might hear a recommendation to change this compensation philosophy from the e-team in the future. All right. So that's the overarching premise in which we're going to Put all the rest of this against. So benefits and well-being. We're going to look at the market. Not a lot has changed since we last met on this. So overall, our well-being and benefits are leading the market. We provide comprehensive and holistic suite of benefits to support our employees' well-being. And they can personalize it because it's all ad hoc for what matters most to each of them and their families. We lead the market in medical, dental, pay time off plans, pivot, your money line, caregiver support benefits to provide support for those caring for others, infants at work, and medical gap. At market, our vision, our flexible spending accounts, our EAP, life and AD&D insurance, and our disability insurance. And then we light the market in our tuition reimbursement policy. and our paid caregiver leave. Retirement contribution, I understand that the Retirement Board has asked the Board of County Commissioners to increase the county's portion from 10% to 10.25%. That's approximately $635,000. And we would need a decision on that today so that we can get the system coded for the first of the year. And then we have a note here that Empower is put in a bid to acquire Milliman. Milliman houses our 401A, our retirement plan, our pension plan. Empower houses our 457 deferred compensation and our 401A defined contribution plans. So at some point, assuming that this closes, we will be doing an implementation to move the pension over to Milliman. Empower and or the Retirement Board could choose to do an RFP to select a new provider. And so that is expected to close on September 1st. So more to come. We're going to talk about the net value, how it is I say that our medical plan is leading the market. This, as a reminder, compares plan design. That's the deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, and out-of-pocket maximums. The cost within that design plus the premiums to get a value compares our plan against similar plans in the market. So on the core plan, which is the DHMO plan, When you factor in our HRA, our deductible is less than the average of our peers. Our co-pay is the same. Our specialty co-pay is a little bit more. Our out-of-pocket maximum is less, and our coinsurance is less. Our premiums are also less. You add all that together compared to the average of our peers, and that makes our plan 12.3% more valuable. or leaving the market, it doesn't mean that somebody can't have a lower premium. That might be in there because it's an average that we're comparing to, but it also means that others have higher premiums. On average, the employee only is $35.05 more per month, and the family is $162.02 more each month than our plan. And then we have the choice plan. The design seems to be about the same, but our premiums are more. And that results in our choice plan being valued at 15% lower than the market average for the PPO. All right, our medical renewal. You will recall that last year we had a 19.3 and we negotiated to have a smoothing effect where we took 8.5 and we were going to have 3% for the next three years. We have, we being locked in, has negotiated that and we have that 3% smoothing for the next three years forgiven. That's gone. And then their first offer for renewal was 13.2, and Lockton has negotiated that to 9.5. So from the starting expectation of 16.2, our renewal will be 9.5.

Yay.

That makes our five-year average, 3.2, significantly better than the market, which tells me that since claims are 90% of the cost, our employees are using the plan appropriately. Health care is expensive, yes. We're talking huge numbers. But our employees are using the plan appropriately. The cost of that, 9.5, is just under $3 million total cost. Our primary drivers are that we've had some high-cost claimants with bone and kidney cancer, COPD, congestive heart failure, and an autoimmune disease that affects the skin. I can't say it. Bill can. I can't.

Scleroderma.

Yeah.

Scleroderma. Sorry.

Scleroderma. And then we've had additional high-cost claimants. So more than the benchmark, we've had some high-cost claimants or anything over 50,000. And then we've had a higher pooling point this year, which means we take on more risk. And so our premium for that kind of goes down, a portion of our premium goes down, but we are also taking on more risk of claims. And then Kaiser has also changed their underwriting methodology to be 24 months instead of 12. And so the idea would be that hopefully that smooths things out. When you have a really bad year, you've got 24 months to calculate that in. Unfortunately for us, that includes our 19.3 now that we got last year. So it was an advantage just for us this year, but overall, given our five-year average, it should help in the future. They applied a trend of 6.89, cost of a broken arm next year, compared to cost of a broken arm this year, right? At 6.89, that beats the national trend average of 9.5 and the Colorado trend average of 11%. So again, that comes in a lot lower than the average. Because of this, it's a rare occasion, but we are able to maintain the county employee total cost share of 75.25 by applying that 9.5% to the county's portions and to the employee's portions, both plans, all tiers. It's very rare that happens because they pay so much less than the county does that a percentage dollar amount on a smaller dollar usually ends up being bigger. In this case, we can maintain that $75.25 by just applying the $9.5 across the board. It will probably never happen again. So that puts the county cost to the general fund at just over $1.2 million. Any questions? So that we would maintain the same premium cost share. The DHMO employee-only, the county would pay 82%, with the employees paying 18%. The dependent coverage, the county would pay 72%, with the employees sharing 28%. On the choice PPO, which is a buy-it plan, it is more expensive, where the county contributes a little less to it in addition. The employee-only coverage, the county will pay 64% with the employee paying 36%. And for the dependent coverage, the county will pay 54% with the employees paying 46% of that premium, that total premium. That increases the total cost of the plan, $26 million for the county side and just under $9 million for the employees to share. The cost goes up even though the percentage is the same, $75.25, because it is a per employee per member cost. So as you add more people, the total cost goes up. This is what it does to the rates. So we've got today's rates in the second column, the 2027 rates in the third column, and the change from 26 to 27 biweekly in the fourth column. So anywhere from $6.29 employee only on the DHMO to $51.70 on the family for the PPO. We're going to talk a little bit about how that impacts the employees. So the employees often hear, well, if my rate is going to go up 9.5% and I'm only going to get a 3%, I'm going to make that up, 3% merit increase, then it's costing me to stay. So we wanted to show the impact of a larger percentage on a smaller dollar amount compared to a smaller percentage on a larger dollar amount. These are illustrative only, and they include medical on the DHMO, dental, basic life in AD&D, short-term disability, 401A and a tax rate of 20%, just a flat 20%. I didn't hear. So the first example is employee A is a 29-year-old single individual making $42,226. That is our lowest paid employee at the county currently. Currently, that ends up being gross, $16.26 per pay period. The employee has $218 in deductions, while the county provides $497 worth of benefits in addition to that base comp. And that results in his taxes, because you're going to take the gross minus the deductions to get a taxable income. And so you're being taxed on a smaller amount. So while it's a 20% tax rate, it ends up being 17% of the gross. So those pre-tax benefits lower your tax bill. And this individual currently takes home 69% of their gross for $1,126. Assuming, spoiler alert, 4.6% salary increase for the following year, his income will go to $1,700 per paycheck with the increase to medical. His increase will go to $229 for deductions, still remaining 13%. His taxes will go up to $294, still remaining at 17% for a take-home of $1,177. So he'll still take home $51 more each paycheck, even with the larger 9.5% increase to his medical and a 4.6% increase to his salary. Second example is a 49-year-old with a family making $90,059. That is our average pay across the county. If you remove the sworn staff, it's $84,272. And so $90,000 ends up being $34.64 today. You can see all those same numbers, 18% for her deductions, taxes at 16%, take home pay 66%. So interestingly enough, you add that family coverage in and your take home pay, even though you're making a lot more, ends up being less on a percentage basis. Assuming the same 4.6%, this individual would take home an additional 103.13 each paycheck. And so essentially it ends up being that being enrolled in these plans saves this individual $131.60 and taxes each paycheck, reduces their tax bill. So just a little bit of an impact on how this hits the employees. If we apply to all of that and that all gets approved, This is the same chart to look at the value, but instead of the 2026 versus the 2026 where we're at today, it's our peers 2026. We don't know what changes they've made yet against our 2027. So that drops it a little bit because they haven't changed their premiums yet. Our plan would still be valued at 7.5% higher than their current plan, even without them changing their premiums. So it still sits in a good place. Our target is always plus or minus 5% of the average. So we've tended to lead a little bit more than that 5% each year. So we do expect that this will go up once our peers make their changes. We have just found out that our 10-county comp meeting is scheduled for 9-14, so we'll have some more information on that from that meeting and on comp. So before you have to make a decision on comp, but after this meeting. A little note on medical renewal for 2028. I know we're in the process of doing the medical survey, which closed a couple Fridays ago, of doing a medical advisory committee. We're going to put all that together, but depending on what that circumstance looks like and what we decide to do, Kaiser has offered that if we don't go early, like we just stay with our normal schedule, which is 2028 for 2029 plan year, then they will offer a negotiated option. They came to us with no more than 9.5, not to exceed 9.5%. We asked them to sweeten the pot a little. They came back with two options. Option one, no greater than 9%. So if we get a 2% renewal, we get 2%. If we get a 15% renewal, we get 9%. Or option two, a fixed eight. I don't think that the fixed eight is reasonable because if we get that two, and history has shown, we have beat the market more years than not, then we end up paying that eight regardless. So I don't think that's on the table. We don't have to take it. Obviously, if we go early and that's the decision, then this is just off the table, but it's there in case we're just going to stick with our normal timeline in the first place. So it's there.

Commissioner Campbell?

So I know that we've been putting together a team to look at our medical and all of that. And that there's a little bit of urgency around it. It's been something we've been talking about for a while. But I also know that there's a lot of, clearly a lot of information that goes into this. Is there a benefit in sticking with the current, I mean like, deadlines are action inducing. And, you know, we laugh sometimes, like, oh, government. It's like, we're the problem, you know? But it also, to be thoughtful and procedural and to get feedback and buy-in, that also takes time. So would this, if we kind of go with this, does it have this benefit, but also the side benefit of giving us a very thoughtful process so that we're not rushing that feedback process as well? So we basically would have a year to talk about and kind of figure it out. And then we'd go out in 28 for 29.

Which is our normal schedule. Yeah. I will say that Bill and I have been meeting with all the BUCAs. Uh-huh. So that's the Anthem. Blue Cross. Blue Cross, the UnitedHealthcare, Cigna, all of them, one-on-one, informally. We've also met with Ryan, he's a CHRO over at Aurora, because they added in United Healthcare standard side next to Kaiser last year, so that we could get some lessons learned. What we don't want to do is, to your point, rush so that we get the same result as we got two years ago, where we put out an RFP, And all of them said, we can't do that, right? We can't meet those expectations. And so we only had one proposal that didn't meet the RFP requirements. So what we don't want is that. What we want to do is be thoughtful and intentional so that however much time that takes to make sure that we're writing that RFP so that, ideally, every single one of them responds. And we have a choice.

Are we doing an internal... Group committee process as well?

We're halfway through now. Actually, we just met from 12 to 1 today with Lockton to talk what are the next steps in the next two meetings. Okay. So we have a plan for that.

Okay, great.

That's what I thought. To be able to provide you information on a timely basis. Okay, great.

We have two more meetings. They end September 29th. It's the last meeting. We do have open enrollment between now and then and then we will hopefully have a committee member present the results to you in early November.

Okay, and then we can take that feedback and it can inform our work next year as well. But then this also, by kind of staying the course, this gives us a little more sure, surety within what we're doing. Okay.

More clarity. Yeah. Once we get the feedback right from these two groups. Because we get a survey and we also get the.

Well, clarity for that, but the no market, by staying on time and not going out in 27. Correct. Which I know some people were eager for us to do. But by not doing that, we also get this, which in a land of everything costs more and more and more, this feels like. Maybe it's disappointing to some people to not go out earlier, but it also saves money.

But you don't have to make this decision until November, right? Correct. So you can still get this feedback. That's what I mean. Okay.

That's right. That's what I mean. Oh, gotcha. We get the feedback from the survey. Okay, gotcha. We get the feedback from the group. And if this makes sense, yes.

Okay, cool. The drop dead to go early, if that's your instruction, is December 9th. Oh. I will need to know that by drop dead. I'll take every single minute you can give me on top of that. But that's my drop dead. There's no way I can go early if I don't know by December 9th.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Yep.

All right. That's medical. So here we go with dental. We did have a renewal for dental this year. Our claims went up 0.3%, one-third of a percent, which is $5,200. Our ASO fee, because it is self-insured, so we paid an administrative fee to Delta Dental, went up 2.9%, so that's an additional $3,000 for a total increase of $8,200. Wow. That being the case, we also have the dental reserve at approximately $671,300. I've been A previous board gave us instructions to keep that around 300,000. We have not been able to supplement the rates effectively enough in past strategy to make a dent in that. It just keeps going up. So I am deviating a little in my request this year. to take out the 8,200 increase from the reserve, but also to reduce the employee share of the rates for 2027 and reduce the dental rates. And we pay it out of the reserve. That would reduce the reserve by 322, which puts us right about 350. Gets me close to 300,000. And that ends up being anywhere from, $2 to $10.50 a paycheck, depending on your tier. Reduction for the premiums for the employees. Smaller cost, but it's still a positive message to say, yes, your medical rates are going up, but your dental are going down.

Madam Chair? Yes, Commissioner Warbel.

Thank you. So, Dusty, if we do that, which I think is a great idea... I'm just thinking of when we have to get the rates back up to what they normally would be and how that would feel also. What do we typically add to this fund every year?

We didn't add as much this last year. Some of it depends on claims, but generally it's been growing by about $200,000 a year. So I think we'll be okay. And we do the normal split going forward, assuming that this doesn't grow too fast, where we just, if it's a 2% increase, okay, how does that play out into the rates? And we'd allocate the increase again, but from this lower number.

Okay.

And we'd start building from this lower number up again.

So we wouldn't have to next year pop it back up. Swing, yeah. $10 a paycheck for whomever.

I don't anticipate that, no. Okay. Well.

Thank you.

Great guarantee on the ASO. But on the claims, I don't anticipate that. We've not seen it yet. Okay.

Dusty, I have a question. Do you want us to wait until you've finished everything for us to give you direction? This one seems like it could be simple.

If you're ready and you don't need to see the whole picture to make the decisions, then absolutely tell me and I'll write it down.

For the dental renewal. Yeah. Do we have the dots on the dental renewal? You have five thumbs up on the dental renewal.

Thank you. Do you want to go back to medical? Medical?

No, we don't want to go back to that.

Just check it.

That's a lot.

I just thought this one seemed really simple.

This one's informative, so you don't have to vote. Life, AD&D, Disability, and Medical Gap RFP was conducted this year. It's our third largest. We went to market to match or enhance our current plans. We had seven responses. The standard, who is the incumbent, Anthem, Hartford, Lincoln National, Securian, Symmetra, and Unum. The evaluation team, Dusty, Bill, Dominique, and Jay. And the standard received the highest rating and will remain our provider with a reduced premium cost of, say, the county $370,000 a year and some significant enhancements. So the guaranteed issue, meaning you don't have to fill out an evidence of insurability form, will increase for employee life from $200,000 to $250,000. For spouse life, from $30,000 to $50,000. And then the accelerated benefit, which is not something that's lovely to speak about, but accelerated benefit is when you've received a terminal diagnosis within the next 12 months. You can take a portion of your life insurance out. That has increased to 80% up to $600,000 so that you can get your affairs together. So some enhancements on that.

That is good.

Some notes on our well-being plan. We continue to have double-digit growths in the portal access and participation in our programs. We continue to offer more than 16 programs. As a reminder, a successful well-being program generally needs to have at least 10 programs a year to keep engagement. And six... different aspects to be holistic. And our plan does have six. It has career, community, emotional, financial, physical, and social components so that we can address the whole person. And we continue to see double digit growths each year since we've redesigned that program. wellness counts unfortunately has dropped so right now we still got a few reports struggling in but 32% completion and that's of the KP members 25% of everyone and last year we had 48% so it dropped significantly and we can we can look into reasons why it could just be fatigue it could be We didn't get the communication out as effectively as we used to. We'll have to look into it, but it did drop significantly, with still the easier process. Um, total health continues to grow every year. Total brain continues to grow. We've had 1570 participants since we initiated it in 2024. Your money line has a 32.8% engagement rate. That is more than double their standard book of business engagement. So our employees are definitely using these benefits in which the county provides for them. um for their well-being tuition reimbursement we've had we had 13 participants was a little low in 2025 but we've had 18 so far in 2026. mental health first aid we've had 398 participants since 2019 and i believe most of the board will be at the november meeting we just had one last week we got a lot of positive feedback again from that class And then our pivot tobacco cessation, we currently have 15 participants. If every single one of those participants were to quit, that would save the medical plan about $135,000 each year. A tobacco user costs the plan about twice what a non-tobacco user costs, and that's on average about $9,000. We have 189 employees who have attested to using tobacco chronically, and we've had 150 participants in this program since 2021. For 2026, we did add and we approved to add spouses and adult children to this program per the request of our employees. And then Home Thrive, which is our caregiver support, we've had 247 participants since 2022, 152 active users in the first half of 2026. And so active, they signed up once, but they're continually going back in and getting additional support. Again, this more than doubles their book of business. So while that seems really low to me, they're thrilled with the engagement our staff has. with it. Request, I will need a vote on this one. Vacation carryover. So our current carryover policy that all benefit eligible employees may carry over up to 144 hours of vacation regardless of their tenure or their accrual rate. We've made this choice intentionally, this decision intentionally, because we do recognize the positive impact of taking vacation on the employee's well-being. And selfishly, their productivity when they come back. So however, we often hear By we, I mean me. I often hear from employees that it just isn't always feasible to take all that time off because we lead on the accruals, but we lag on the carryover. So we give more time, but it's not always possible for them to take all that time off. And they end up feeling anxiety and stress over not being able to do their job and take their time and losing it. So we did look at it. We've actually looked at it for a couple of years to get to the right timing. We are going to propose that we drop the accrual down to three accrual tiers. So everyone under 10 years of service would accrue at the 144. Currently, we have under five years accruing at 120. And that they can carry over one year's worth of accrual. So it still might... like what some of our peers do. It's a balanced approach and it's a smaller step, but that we carry over and we tier it, same as the accrual. So if you accrue 144, you can carry over 144. If you accrue 168, you can carry over 168. And if you accrue 192 hours, you can carry over 192. So the potential liability, and when I say potential liability, if they're taking time off while they're employed, it's just part of their salary, right? But if they leave with a balance, right, the payout is the potential liability. That cost will be about $216,000, which represents about 2.5% of the total vacation liability in 2027. Additionally, the carryover, like the difference between 144 hours and 168 hours, if they were to term, is an additional $68,500. So we are requesting to make this change on behalf of the employees who have been begging for this.

Commissioners? Can I share this?

Yeah. My question is like I know that you responding to the feedback from the employees. Is it you have consensus? What kind of reaction might you get because of the three of curls here down?

It's positive. So we did get feedback. We had the five and under at 120, which means they would only be able to accrue at 120 or carry over 120. And we did get feedback that said that would be perceived as a takeaway. And our adjustment to that feedback was to move all of those that are accruing 120 up. So they're getting 24 hours more to the 144. So there's no takeaway. It's all positive. We also have feedback. This isn't enough because some of our peers are like 360 hours of carryover at that top tier. But again, with that standard principle of it's good for their well-being, it is good for our employees to take time off. I don't want to go so far over that they're getting burnout because they're not taking time for themselves.

Commissioner Baker?

Yeah, Dusty, has this particular, all of it, has it gone before the E-Team? Yes. And you got feedback from them as well? Yes.

Oh, we have thumbs. We have five thumbs up.

Thank you. No change in the holidays. I'll just note that because Christmas falls on a Saturday, we had to back Christmas up to the Friday for the weekend rules, which means Christmas Eve got backed up to the 23rd. So it'll be Thursday and Friday off, but neither on the right days. So other than that, those are our days. And then the court holidays, no Christmas Eve and no day after Thanksgiving unless the court closes. Therefore, they receive five floating holidays. As a reminder, they are supposed to be saving two of those floating holidays in case the courts close. If they don't choose to do that and they've used them ahead of time, then they have to either take vacation or take it unpaid if the courts close. All right, all the other benefits, our rate guarantee, except for our prepaid legal, it will go from $762 to $992. That is a 30% increase on tiny dollar amounts, but it has not increased in 12 years. So while it's a huge increase, it increased like two years ago when I pushed back and locked and pushed back on our heavy half, and they let it ride for a couple more years. So it hasn't really changed in 12 years. So while 30% seems huge, It's divided by 12. It's not that bad. All right, that's benefits. Faster than last year. All right, so compensation. Update on the labor market. Our employers are focusing more on costs than retention as their primary decision driver for comp and benefits. Now this does not mean that they don't think retention is important. It's just that in the last year, the cost is no longer sustainable for all organizations. And so that becomes a primary driver in trying to find what their decision making is. There still remains some economic uncertainty. And so as an example, one of the reasons why we may have some economic uncertainty is AI in restructuring of jobs in some fields. So example, AI has helped organizations target and skilling for routine roles such as data entry clerks. Just an example, which means organizations, even if they don't get rid of the role as a human being, they lower the salaries or they use AI and don't rehire. So that creates some uncertainty. But we also see some boomerang effect with that. Organizations who have laid off some of these roles If they think AI could do it, have then said, oh, this isn't really working, and brought back the staff. So that creates, that boomerang creates some instability and some uncertainty. Merit budgets have settled back to the approximately 3.5% each year that were the pre-pandemic levels. But our turnover and job openings remain at that 2022-2023 levels. And so organizations are looking at performance-based bonuses or short-term incentives, which we don't get here because you'd have to have stock options for short-term incentive, to continue to gain – they continue to gain momentum over base salary increases. So – We'll see how that plays out. Generally, government lags about three years from the private, so we should be able to see some of those outcomes from these changes before we have to look at any of those things as an option. And then there has been, because of that economic uncertainty, a structural slowdown. So organizations are becoming slower to hire. They're slowing down their hiring rates. But also employees, while those turnover rates are at the same as the 2022 and 2023, they are starting to slow down. Because of the economic uncertainty, employees are holding fast and slowing their willingness to leave. So they're slow down on both sides. And then salaries in advanced sectors like AI have continued to experience growth. And they are using what they would call skill sets to determine their compensation rather than experience. When you have a new technology, you may not have a lot of people with skill sets. That would not work for an advanced, very mature organization like us across the board. Some advanced subsectors.

Nor a large private industry.

Yeah, no large. So the first box, just a reiteration of its merit, is sitting at about 3.5, but with the top performers receiving between 5.6 and 6%. in the labor market. Denver's cost of labor is around 18% higher than the national average. That's by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But our cost of living is 12.9% of national average. So our cost of labor is higher than our cost of living. Still higher than national average. And we talked about those percentages on dollar amounts and how that impacts it. The Denver CPI increased 5% versus the national average of 4.2. And Arapahoe County's unemployment is now at 3.6%. So we have talked in the past about when unemployment rate is below 4, it can make it very hard for us to hire. recruit and so we start looking for some creative and flexible ways to incentivize employees and candidates to come when we're in those hard to fill positions when we cannot fill and so we have our eyes out for that and working on that 94.8% of our employees are in positions that match the market and 87% of our jobs are matched to the market. That is a very stable number. We love that. That tells us that we are, we do have the data to say that we are where we're at in the competitive market. And from three years ago when we had no data to this, makes our jobs a lot easier. Our comp ratio, however, is at a .98, which shows that our structure, not the employee's pay, our structure is lagging the market by 2%, which is not a surprise. We didn't fund 2.67% that we requested last year due to financial restraints, so the fact that our structure's behind is not surprising. But our average pay, and this is a new statistic that I didn't have for you all in the past, our average pay is lagging our peers by 3.9%. So the structure, 2% below where it needs to be, it's gonna move almost 2%, but our pay is in the lower percentile. And there are more demographics on that, like our average pay, how many people are at or below midpoint on page 45.

So, roger on the structure, but then our average pay is lagging or appears by 3.9%, but yet two boxes over, we're seeing that 94.8% of employees are in positions that match the market and 87% of jobs are matched to the market. If our average pay is lagging or appearing by 3.9%, that feels... Contra posed.

So these are the positions they're in place in positions that have a benchmark in the market Okay, so that we have a number to compare it against great and then this structure is 2% Mm-hmm, but managers are making hiring decisions and pay decisions that are in the lower half So our pay is almost 4% lower than our peers average pay.

Okay. Got it.

Okay So the copper ratio Yeah

Well, that 3.6 unemployment, I guess, is going to take care of that.

Maybe. Maybe.

All right, again, I mentioned that the total 10-county meeting, which we usually have in July, better late than never, won't be until September 14th. So at this point, I only have 36% of our peers reporting in their number. CPAC, which is our foundational market data, came back with merit moving 3.7% into 2027, the structure moving 1.93%. which kind of represents that 2%, right? Pay scale came in at 2.1 and 2.1, even, across. World at Work came in at 3.5 for merit and 2.5 for structure. Again, pay scale and World at Work, all industries and all public, private, and not-for-profit. And in our government peers, the 36 that have provided feedback are coming in with merit asks, they have not asked yet, of 2.43% on average and structure movement of 1.19. And so if you add the 1.93 and the 2.43, you get to a very similar number to what you're going to see on our next request. Which is market. So we will be moving the structure 1.93%, and that will be applied to the minimums, the midpoints, and the maximums. When we move the structure, it also lowers the comp ratio, right, because we haven't moved the pay. We move the structure up, the pay then lowers the comp ratio. So we are recommending that you approve funding, and again, not today, as part of your normal budgeting package, recommend funding that movement at 1.5%. So not the whole thing, but the majority of it. And that is that we are trying to get to a total budget number and allow for some pay for performance where it applies in our merit. If the decision is not to fund the market structure at 1.5, then there's still a cost to bring to minimum. We have 33 jobs, not including union represented jobs, that will be reclassified into higher grades. And we have seven jobs that will be reclassified into lower grades. Thankfully in this year, no one getting reclassed into a lower grade has to take what we have to take money away from. They're all within the lower range. But there are some that will need to get some money to move up in the grade. So that cost just about $92,000 between the two. So it's one or the other, not additive. Then merit, for those not represented or unsworn, we're asking for 3.1%. So going back to my spoiler alert, a total budget of 4.6. That does not mean that everyone gets 3.1%, right? That's the budget. Depends on their performance rating. Some people get 2.1%. Some people get four, so it's decentralized. Each department gets to make the decision when they're using it for pay for performance. This can adjust their base rate if they've got room in the range. It can be a lump sum if they're already at max, or it can be a combination of both. If you're at max, you're gonna get a combination, right, because it's gonna be 1.93 for the structure movement to your base and the remaining into a lump sum. This would cost approximately $4.6 million to the general fund $2.5 million and with benefit load $3 million.

I would like to ask that we revisit the one-time award. Our current policy is that directors and elected officials can award one-time awards between $50 and $5,000 per project based

awards. They are required to keep the documentation on that. I keep a list of how many just to make sure that, per the board's direction, nobody's abusing it. No one has. And we've had the average award is $1,130 and we've had an average of 70 awards given each year. So, but as those numbers increase, as our salaries have increased, the one-time award cap, that $5,000, doesn't always reflect the level of impact some of these projects and the contribution the employees on these projects make. And so I am requesting that we increase it to $7,500, the gross up award, and the cost of that would be about $56,000 a year.

Two questions. One, please remind me, this comes from each department or office's budget? Yep. Okay. So they have to find the money for this within that. And then, do we have data, since you're tracking it, are these awards normally given to hire Classified employees or lower classified employees? Usually lower.

Usually. Great. They are project-based, so it just depends on the project. Like COVID, for an example, five years ago, we had tiers of people who had worked on it. So we had tier one and who was working on it based on hours and impact and tier two and tier three. So we had a variety in that. Usually it's the lower paid employees that have been asked to take on an additional project that are receiving these.

Okay. So when we say the cost, that's based on the average, but it's, I mean, we do baseline budgeting, so it'd be within their budget anyway. So it's not really like a fixed ask from the general fund, really.

Yeah, it's... It's not.

You're just estimating based on the averages and the number of wards, this is how much money that would be?

They'd still have to find the money. Great.

Cool.

Thank you. The next ask is for the DA's office. They would like to adjust their new hire rates and do compression adjustments to go with that. The average salary of our county DDAs is $98,000 and the average salary for the DDA ones is $117,000. What they're experiencing is that sometimes it's hard to get DDAs to move from one of our other organizations that have this average to us with a new hire rate that's lower than that. So our new hire rate for the county DDA is $92,000 and for the DDA one is $102,500. The other thing that they're experiencing, other than being able to attract at those lower numbers than the average, is that they're having trouble motivating the county DDAs to take on the extra workload and impact of the DDA-1, going from misdemeanors, felonies, if there's not a big enough differential between the salaries. So there is a feeling for them that the internal promotions are not motivating and that they're unable to attract from our peers for their vacancies. So they did work with us. We are recommending moving the hiring promotional rate for the county DDA to 95%. thousand and the DDA one to a hundred fourteen thousand plus providing compression for everybody that's already in the roles so that cost is about ninety thousand two hundred one of the things that we have additionally requested and we're working with them on is that they have more levels than the market does so one of the ways that we could create that differential is by taking out the DDA one level and going from the county DDA to the DDA two and then the market would match. And so when we say the average DDA one is 117, that's a blend of the one and the two because the market doesn't have, our peers don't have that. So there is some more work to be done after we get these hiring rates started. That's a request for comp. I'll go over a summary of compensation agreements with unions, which have a lot of pending language on these slides, so still pending. FOP swarms structure. This is our original counter offer. The FOP asked for 5%. We countered with a 63rd, which is where they're at today, which is 3.01. The normal step regression moving from step one to step two, just over 600,000. The market increase to remain at the 63rd would be $1.7 million. Sworn management structure is a lot larger than you've seen in the past. Part of that is based on where the sergeants would end up, so that will change. But also the lieutenant's market moved almost 12%. So it moved significantly, and that has an impact on that number. So the cost on this proposal, again, pending negotiations, nothing's done, about 2.6 million with benefit load to the general fund. And then the emergency communication ticks, there's very, it's an average of 2.95% increase, step regression, again, 47,000 moving from step one, step two, 63rd percentile, 150,000, and the total cost, 233 with benefit load. Again, pending negotiations. Those represented in human services, depending on, and it's got pending county merit decisions. So depending on what you all decide for the merit budget, We would, if that was approved, what my request is approved, this is based on that. The annual increase across the board for those represented would be 3.6. That represents a combination of the 1.5 and the 2.1, which is the meets expectations. general starting point for pay for performance. So out of that 3.1% budget, generally if your meets expectations, you'd get about 2.1%. So that's what that represents. It's 1.3 million with benefit load. In addition to that, there are nine jobs being reclassified into higher grades, and those would cost about $2,800. Similarly for FFM, the 3.6, which represents 156, 157,000, 185,000 with benefit load. They don't have anybody being reclassed. Last year, remember, there were several. The custodians went up two grades. So nothing getting reclassed this year and no cost to bring to that month in addition to that. So the cost summary, I guess, again, it's an eye chart every year. We get to test our eyes. One benefits proposal in the column, two COP proposals. Our recommendation, I wouldn't have put it in the presentation if I weren't recommending it, so it's everything in the big blue box. In the white is the total cost, in the gray is the general fund. At the bottom, I've got with benefit load for the recommended. package so everything in compensation one and all benefits with benefit load to general fund ten point one eight million the only difference for option two is not funding the market that's the biggest piece just doing the cost spring to minimum no DA and no one-time award there's your totals

That's good. Well done. Here we are.

All right, so our timeline, oh, timeline's missing. Hello?

That's a timeline. It's missing. Oh, that's a, oh.

Missing six.

I don't know. But they didn't like the rest of the timeline, apparently.

Like the underpants, no. Step one. Step two, question mark. Step three, profit.

So we're at the third box. The EBC meeting to review the budget request, I believe, is September 8th. So there's where they would review comp. Open enrollment is October 28th through November 12th. Study session for the budget October 20th. November 10th is when compensation will send out performance rating spreadsheets to the directors and elected officials. And here's where it's missing. November 25th, supervisors will need to complete writing their performance evaluations. December 1st through the 8th, the directors and elected officials conduct their calibration meetings if they're needed for review. December 9th, The directors and elected officials send their completed performance rating spreadsheets back to compensation. And December 8th is the adoption of the budget. And December 15th is when we will open up the merit spreadsheets in MyArapaho. So change, right, not on Excel anymore, in the system. And December 29th, the directors and elected officials will need to submit their final merit within MyArapaho. January 7th, the pay increase letters will be released within MyArapaho, so we will not be printing them anymore or sending them by email. they'll be in the system. And then January 15th, pay increases and benefit changes are reflected on the paychecks. That's all I got. So would you like to go back to medical?

Sure. Let's go back to medical.

9.5% increase.

Commissioners? Can you put that slide back up? Yeah, I was getting ready to ask what slide number is that?

This is where it was going to be 16.5, but Magic Man back there did some good work. Okay. Probably some Magic Lady. That's good.

I just think this is a very thoughtful approach. When I look at the logic that you put behind this and what the county is contributing and the out-of-pocket expense for the employee is not that great. I think it's a very fair approach moving forward. So thumbs up.

We don't even need to discuss. Five thumbs up.

Make sure I have everything. Retirement. Retirement.

Yeah, retirement.

Well, dental, we already did.

Yeah. Thumbs up for retirement? Well, what page was that? Six.

It's going from 10% to 10.25%.

That's one to look at. Six. I'm going to have to tell my husband. I want to see it from my side. Two before. Don't tell me about it.

Okay.

All right, I see. Thumbs, do we have thumbs for the retirement contribution change? We have five thumbs up for the retirement contribution change.

But there's a question from Commissioner Longo. Desi, can you remind me or maybe, what's that?

Are you looking for Ben? Yeah. Retirement, he's out.

Okay. Well, I just wondered about... I think we have a goal that we're getting to, and if I remember right, it's 11%? Yes.

Is that right?

Okay.

Is that it? Thanks, Julie. It was 10%. Yeah. Yeah. Is that right?

Okay.

So it's everything I need from benefits. Thank you. Generally, there's some direction given to the EBC on what direction you want to take for comp. All right.

We're on EBC, so we're just... Yeah, we're getting our input.

But I guess, tell me what you would like from us on that conversation, Dusty.

Generally, it looks something like, could you reevaluate what wouldn't get done if we were to do this proposal first? It looks something like that, that direction. Todd? Yeah.

I'm looking at Todd.

Come on up, sir.

Money, money, money.

obviously with the budget process we're going to figure out what we can afford right based on the other requests that the committee and you as the board will see at some point later on this fall so I think usually what we go into the EBC process with is do the commissioners feel comfortable with the request or the recommendation that's before put forth today is that what you want the executive budget committee to try to fit in the budget obviously if it doesn't fit they bring that back to the full board but is there anything about The compensation portion of the presentation today that you as a full board would like to have the Executive Budget Committee look at differently than what's been proposed.

Commissioner Warren-Bellin? Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess what I would just want to start off by saying is I really want to thank our labor partners and the whole team here for coming together. last year was a really difficult budget year because we we hadn't gotten things all the way through and and you know this is new for us in the Arapahoe County so I just I feel like there was a lot of really thoughtful purposeful work around how can we line up a timeline that gives us the ability to really receive input from AFSCME and the FOP and also to be able to figure out like how are we going to do this and how will that be reflected across the rest of our staff. And so I just wanted to really say thank you for that because this is a big change for the way that our organization does compensation. And I felt it went much smoother this time than last year.

Thank you very much for that. Commissioner? What are you thinking, Commissioner Baker?

I just wanted to make sure. I don't know if Commissioner Fields had any questions. I know what kind of work goes into this, and it's a team effort. It's not only Dusty, although she's the presenter, I know that she gets input from a lot of different quarters in Arapahoe County, and the amount of work that it goes into. What a system in America we've got here. And so thank you to Lockton for kind of lifting the veil, so to speak, and making that a little bit clearer. Even though we don't like what we see behind that veil altogether, we wish there were way more options than I think. We have. So it's important for us to, one, understand it. And the effort that the team is going through to get people's input. Because we can speculate what people will use and what they won't use. And sometimes we're right and sometimes we may be off by a little bit. I think you've done a pretty good job. But I like retirement as someone who's I think we're doing a great job in meeting our obligations and I do consider it an obligation for the retirement because we said we were going to get to that 11% without raising the employee contribution, and so we can be more in line with what's going around. Just really kudos. Compensation, we kind of have to wait until the last minute, it seems like, a lot of times before we have all of the information that we need to make a good decision. Hang in there for the rest of the story.

Commissioner Gillespie, do you have something?

No, I think it's already been stated. Well done. Well thought out. I like the way that you do the comparisons as it relates to market value with Denver and other locations that are doing business as a benchmark. It appears by what you presented that Arapahoe County is in a strong position as it relates to employee retention, our benefits. I think the future looks bright, except for AI. When you had that slide up there about AI and having to lower salaries because of the skill set or the jobs or the responsibilities, AI was taking that over. And I was just trying to picture what that conversation is like with that employee. Can you describe what it's like when you have to, or someone, maybe that's a Patrick question, when you're looking at salary, and it has to be reduced. And I know it had on there that you're going to retool them. But I'm wondering what the dynamics would be in that discussion.

It wasn't necessarily for us. That was a general national theme. So as far as I'm aware, we haven't had to do that. Okay.

Because that would be a tough conversation. And so I'm glad to hear we're not doing that here at this point. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah. As far as I'm aware of, and Phil might be able to speak better to it, it's a tool set for us. It's a resource. It's not doing the job for us.

We see that just in certain industries. So right now we're not one of those.

That clarification helps a lot.

Yeah, thank you. So on your BSR, we have covered all of the staff recommendations. So what else do you want from us?

I think it's just Todd's question. Do you have any concerns about my comp presentation?

We have no concerns. At least I don't. Does anybody else have a concern? I don't think so. I think everybody came in here and Dusty knocked it out of the park and answered all of our questions and we gave some thumbs, but we expect things to go smoothly. Make it happen. That's right. No, we have no questions.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you very, very much. Thank you. That was awesome.

That was good. Oh, he's out in the room. That's perfect. Lovely.

I have not gone back to my survey.

I need to go back to it. Is it still open?

It is not, but we can talk about it at the study session.

Well, she won't be there.

Oh, okay. We will figure out a way to open it. Okay, no problem.

Because once I, that email that I sent you, once I got there, my whole brain went, no, I'm done. So I need to go back and do what I'm supposed to do.

Okay, yep.

So, but I am flying to Georgia.

Okay, okay. We'll get those dirty open again.

Okay, thank you very much.

I appreciate you.

All right, now we can go do our thing. Are we definitely unmuted? Yes, we are definitely unmuted. Can you hear me, please? wonderful let's get started with some introductions please jeff baker commissioner michelle halstead commissioner's office ronda fields commissioner leslie leslie commissioner kerry warren galley commissioner you

Mike Fraunfel, Executive Director for Centennial Airport.

Jessica Campbell, Commissioner of District 2. Yay. Thank you very, very much. And I'm sorry, Mr. Saraceno, for cutting in front of you on that introduction. So we are here for a drop-in on the Airport Improvement Program grant for the Arapahoe County Public Airport Authority with Mr. Mike Fraunfel. So what do you have for us today, sir?

Well, thank you, Commissioner Summey and the commissioners. So we're here for what's called a surface awareness initiative and vehicle movement area transponders for airport vehicles. So Centennial Airport was one of the first airports in the country to have a surface awareness initiative, and that allows the tower to be able to see aircraft on the ground even if they have a cloud deck and they're not able to, they have bad visibility. And so we were one of the first towers in the country to have that. So they've expanded that. Obviously there was the horrible accident that happened in LaGuardia between a fire truck and an aircraft colliding. And so as a result of that, the FAA is rolling out grants that they're making available to airports to expand that system. So basically you have transponders on all the airport vehicles. So not only will they be able to see the aircraft, but they'll also be able to see the aircraft vehicles. airport vehicles which is especially important during our snow removal operations in the winter and be able to see that because we obviously have low visibility and we're not able to see what's going on the ground so so we're coming to you today to ask for the board to support grant 3-08-0029-66-2026. If it was 065, maybe a yes. Yeah, yeah. One grant too far. So our original recommendation, and John, thank you for joining us, was to come to you. We were anticipating getting the grant in mid-September. Well, the FAA has decided to drop it on us early. And so now we're expecting the grant to come out very soon, possibly in the next week or so. And so we're kind of changing our recommendation that we're asking of the board. And so we're asking today to have the board allow the chair to sign the grant and then have that ratified at the September 8th county board meeting is going to be what our ask is. And so the total grant amount will be $115,339, and the airport would be required to do the 5% match on that. And we do have that budgeted, so that's not a problem.

All right. Commissioner Campbell?

We prefer to give you the authority before, but we've also done this in the past when they've come up and they've been quick, or in this case, where you're out on a break, normally we would have something right about there. So it's not uncommon for us to do that and have that ratification, just that cleans that up.

Yeah, and to add to that, I mean, now that we know that the grant is coming out sooner, the FAA wants it back early September, and so that's why all of a sudden it's kind of a rush to get it signed.

yeah okay and my question was about um the language in the grants that we've been discussing over the last several years just verifying yeah because sometimes as we know things with this administration are a really target yeah so i have i have not seen the language in there but that will but i see it before

I'm sure Commissioner some of you waits for a yes you can sign this now and then I and then it goes for it but I will verify that it's the language has not been okay that language we haven't that we've been concerned with has not been in these grants okay yeah we don't anticipate any changes but like the dog said I mean we'll look at it you guys will look at and make sure this is kind of a

weird question but is it a nofo a notice of funding opportunity that comes out or is it something else for the FAA I'm just wondering if they're like what transportation does.

Yeah, correct. I mean, they made us aware that the funds were available for making additions to the system, and then we applied for the grant, and then we're now being awarded that grant amount. So it is a NOFO, originated it, yes.

And did you get this from Normandy Group, by any chance?

No, we got it through

Those were just things I was curious about.

Yeah, and they knew we already had the system, you know, the foundation system in place in the tower. So they knew that it would be a good airport to roll it out on.

So this is an enhancement? What does the enhancement do?

So the current system just sees aircraft on the ground. Oh, oh, got it. The new system adds transponders to the vehicles, and so you'll see aircraft and vehicles.

Nice.

Yeah.

how many transponders do we get 34 cool all right we have five thumbs up we were getting tennis elbow

Great. So, yeah. Well, thank you very much, sir.

Well, thank you. Appreciate it.

Thanks for always finding all this money. Yeah, that's right. We appreciate that.

Yeah, we have some exciting stuff coming, too. That's great. Some more money we found. Awesome. Yep. You're about the only one. We'll be back at some point. That's good.

Thank you, Mike. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.