County Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening.

I'd like to call to order notice of the joint meeting of the Health and Human Development Committee and the Human Services Board for Monday, June 22nd, 2026. It is 5.02 PM and we are in the Ives Grove Chambers this evening. I have the attendance here, so I'm going to move on to number two is the chairman's comments. I have a general comment and it is let's go Brewers. Let's do it with our payroll. Much unlike the payroll on the West Coast, if we know what I mean, um, could I have youth in governance read the statement this evening? Please.

Hello, we are members of Racine County Youth and Governance Program and we will be participating in tonight's meeting. This program serves to empower youth in Racine County by encouraging us to participate in local government. We have agreed to abide by the applicable standards of conduct that will govern any elected county board member. While we are encouraged to participate and are allowed to have a non binding advisory vote on matters before the committee, all formal action taken by this committee will be based solely on the binding votes made by county board supervisors. Thank you.

Thank you.

Get my notes here. What did I do?

Okay, next up, I am looking for the committee for approval of the minutes from July 13, 2026 for the human services, 2027 budget plan public hearing. Do I hear emotion?

Second, I have a 1st and a 2nd.

Thank you. I have a 1st and a 2nd discussion on this. Hearing none youth and governance all in favor. I committee all in favor. All right. Any names hearing none the minutes from the July 13th, 2026, human services, 2027 budget planning hearing are approved. Next up I have the approval of the minutes from July 13. 2026 for the joint meeting of health and. Of the health and human development committee and the human services board. I need a motion.

2nd.

I have a 1st and a 2nd, I, I need, uh, another, uh, board member. For approval 1, Brenda Thank you. Brenda any discussion in regards to those minutes. Hearing none, um, let's take a vote from the health and human services. Health and human development committee all in favor. opposed hearing none a youth in governance all in favor. Approved now a vote from the human services board all in favor. Any opposed hearing none the minutes are approved by the board. Also, I'm moving on to number 6 this evening. Uh, we have wood county resolution 26 dash. 6 dash 1 support for sustainable state funding for local public health departments. This is for information only. I believe our County has something similar to this. Could you just touch base on it? Hope yes of what it is. Thank you.

So we are working with Corporation Council to prepare a resolution for the County Board to do similar to Wood County. As you know, often other counties will initiate this and then it's shared with other communities to do the same to show kind of solidarity the lack of state funding regarding particular departments or programs. And I like to use a quote that WCA had told us about the state's tendency when it comes to federal funds and passing on to local communities. They said that they can sometimes have sticky fingers. when it comes to giving allocations to our local departments to carry out the work. And I think COVID really showed us that with the health departments that were responsible for being in the trenches and doing the work, whereas the state subsequently built capacity on their end and has done very little passing that money on to the local communities. This is obviously mirrored in other areas, but I think it's particularly important in the prevention area for public health to not make us be in a constant state of perpetual grant writing and competitive grants. And Jeff and his team are amazing at writing and securing grants for us, but that shouldn't be the way that we have sustainable funding to manage our operations. That's the high level explanation of this, we will be preparing a resolution for the board and the September meeting if it's okay with the Chairman and Vice Chairman Jeff will be facilitating that meeting and covering this topic, along with a few other things from public health.

Thank you for that sky-high view on it. And it's my understanding when we get enough support from different counties, this then is brought to WCA, and WCA makes it a priority and lobbies for it at a state level, correct?

Right, exactly.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Let me move on to number seven, which is very important. Pretty much the same it is Clark green and moral counties resolutions numbers 21 dash 7 dash 26. July 1, 2026. July 26. Excuse me, July 1 of 2026, supporting sustainable state funding for local public health departments again information only again very much the same as the prior 1 from wood county. Okay, any questions from the committee or the board in regards to these. To information only from these separate counties. Again, this is information only, so I will move on to agenda item 8 implementation of mental health symposium and transfer 3000 dollars from the opioid settlement fund. Information only, I believe this was brought in front of the finance committee. Last week, I think it was, and could you explain the purpose of this? The meeting and where it is being. Should it be approved?

Yeah, absolutely. In further assessment of the agenda, I probably should have put item number 12 above these because we are going to do an overview of what we did for the full county board to give the explanation of why 8, 9, and 10 are on there. So if it's okay with you, Mr. Chairman, if we could take that agenda item first.

Which one would you like first? 12. Great. Let me then address the Opioid Task Force slash Substance Abuse presentation by Dr. Galvis-Rieg.

yes so he as you know is unable to attend today so we are going to be moving him to the november agenda um so he had an unavoidable conflict but you have the lovely elena jones and me here to just give a condensed overview of what we presented to the board and then maybe just have some dialogue regarding these items in a little bit more detail if you have any specific questions Or we can obviously address them through the information-only items, too, of what our initial requests are with those opioid funds.

Right. Jelena, nice to see you. I'd like you to speak a little bit about that, then.

We can just walk through the PowerPoints. Yes, could you? I think that would be easier. You can pull it up, too. Either way is fine. I had it printed out, so we didn't necessarily have to.

We're doing good on time.

Okay.

Yep.

Okay. Thank you.

We can move to the next slide.

So just as a reminder of the Opioid Advisory Council, that was established back in October of 24 under then County Executive Tom Roanhouse. And I have chaired that council meeting or those council meetings for about 18 months. and the goal of that was to establish a multi-disciplinary team for guidance about what broader community needs exist beyond just like what we see from county government and in particular social services and i believe on the handout that i gave everybody before it has a list of members that were on there but essentially it was fire ems and law enforcement, as well as representatives of the hospital system, elected officials in schools. So we have pretty diverse representation on there. And the guy, the goal was to give us guidance of where we should, be putting our investments rather than funding municipalities or other areas. I think that was a little bit of a misnomer from the start, but help to inform like it's you know, the settlement dollars were coming to us because we were an impacted, you know, county and each municipality was eligible for applying for them on their own. But we do care about all the other systems that are helping to serve individuals with substance abuse issues related to opioids. So one of the things that we focused on from there, moving on, sorry. This is a reminder of what the opioid settlement is and that local governments would be getting the funds directly. So moving on to the next slide. I kind of already went through that too, sorry. So the the recommendations again were to guide us on how the allocations should be spent versus again giving to the municipalities next slide. So the recommendations framework, we basically go through these steps. And then if you were to answer no to any pieces of this, then we would not prioritize that or bring it forth to the county board for consideration because we need to make sure that it's aligned with the opioid settlement guidelines. It's not eligible to be used on anything. There has to be a close nexus to opioid abuse. It can't be any addiction. There has to be primary consideration of it being opioids. And does it have a documented gap or unmet need, which that part's usually a little easier to come by. There's a lot of unmet needs in our community, but again, it has to be tied directly to that opioid nexus. And then does it improve coordination or continue to add to fragmentation? And there's several examples that you could see of that, but when there isn't integrated care and it's adding into siloed aspects rather than coordinating law enforcement, and behavioral health systems and hospitals we don't want to further perpetuate those silos and then is it either evidence-based or evidence-informed because we want to have some guidance that there's actual effectiveness in these investments and ultimately the biggest takeaway from this is that the county board gets the final authorization and say for how the funds go this is just for us to make sure that those boxes are checked before you would ever consider anything

And then moving on.

So I'll let Yelena talk a little bit more about how our crew program, which is the County of Racine Essential Workers or Emergency Workers, you could probably use it synonymously, how we're integrating in substance abuse follow-up with our crew team. And go ahead. Perfect.

So, like Hope said, our crew team has been established since about 2020. What we're always doing is responding. We're trying to intervene early and often to ensure that individuals aren't having endless contact with law enforcement when it really is a mental health or substance abuse issue. We were able, I know we talked about the iPads being divvied out probably about six months ago. So we're able to provide those telehealth services throughout the county at this given time. And we'll get to how that kind of helps our day-to-day process. And then our next step now that we're going to speak about is our real-time overdose tracking. You can go to the next one. So our crew objectives, obviously it was to promote early and often collaboration and communication between HSD and the law enforcement agencies to ensure that we're able to intervene before the crisis emerges further, try to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations, ensure there's like a continuity of care throughout the county, no matter where you're located within the county. And then now what we're trying to incorporate in this is an overdose response. We obviously all are aware of the opioid epidemic. And trying to promote that early engagement and intervention with those individuals that are dealing with some substance abuse issues. So crew intervenes when residents are obviously at their most vulnerable. This is across the spectrum from mental health to issues. It's consistent making sure that we're offering resources when they're really truly needed. So for crew, the law enforcement behavioral health, when we were able to kick that off, the one thing now, obviously we're able to incorporate the mental health aspect of things. They're able to contact us with law enforcement presence, excuse me, and complete an assessment. The same will be with the SUD portion. If someone doesn't want to interact with us at this given time, we know following an overdose, it's unlikely that someone's going to be in the state of mind of wanting to talk to us at that given moment. So normally that law enforcement officer, EMS responder, would make a referral to us and then crisis our crew workers would be responding within 24 to 72 hours.

And just to elaborate a little bit on that, this is where we talk about fragmented systems versus improved collaboration and integrating in our two disciplines. We work very closely with Lieutenant Massey, who is a Phoenix expert and is really good at helping to design tracking systems and be able to tweak things to be able to collect information better and to meet the needs of all the different partners. So he has been working with Phoenix at developing an overdose modules that we would then be triggered these referrals as Yelena says. So we're just waiting on the technical assistance from them to be able to give them the go ahead. But otherwise we would have no formal way to be tracking any overdose and notification from our partners.

it just be them giving us a card and hoping hoping that that um they follow through so this helps us to have some accountability for that well and i think to hope's point when discussing how referrals come in throughout the county obviously law enforcement is using pro phoenix some ems services are using different technology so all those referrals are not coming through so we're not notified of who's overdosing where it's occurring yet and then we're unable to provide that necessary follow-up All right, so kind of what we were discussing right now and trying to figure out how do we collect data? How do we, you know, make sure that we're kind of tracking the progress on the overdoses, how we're able to incorporate and get the services out to the consumers that live within the county and making sure that everyone has access to the services that they need. And the biggest thing for us is making sure that community members are aware of the services that are available throughout the county.

Excuse me, I have a question.

You talked about tracking and there is some tracking that we cannot obtain, correct?

Well, with Lieutenant Massey, as hope discussed, we're working with the pro Phoenix creators to make sure that they're able, we've created, or should I say Lieutenant Massey has created, um, different check boxes that they're unable to get past without checking. So if it was, they were responding to an overdose, they would have to indicate that if Narcan was dispensed, they would have to indicate that as well. And then on the back end, it would automatically send us a report every morning. letting us know where those overdoses occurred, their contact information, and then our peer support team and our crew team would go ahead and respond within 24 to 72 hours to offer services, to offer more Narcan, to offer the, you know, assistance of peer support.

Thank you for that follow up and sorry about the interruption. No, you're fine.

So we were in the planning phase for some time now. We obviously during this, we were trying to figure out what overdose data are we currently collecting, identifying the resources that are available and making sure that we're implementing a follow up service procedure for our crew staff and then obviously developing different training protocols for our staff. Our implementation prep consisted of making sure that we're Holding different prevention training sessions for our staff, some community partners. We've done this through our crew meetings. We have quarterly crew meetings with all the law enforcement municipalities are invited. Um, we usually see 1 department had come to these meetings and it includes our team to discuss the different issues, mental health or wise. They were seen throughout the county discussing barriers to. If it's access to services, hospital systems, individuals going to jail, whatever it may be, we're discussing here. So it's really a platform for us to be able to bring those issues forth. Um, we have been able to establish a crew referral email. We will also implement that as hope said, until Lieutenant Massey is able to work this out with pro Phoenix on the back end. What we'll be doing is receiving referrals that way. via this email. That way we can initiate our team going out and responding to these calls. And then obviously right now we're at our service launch and we're hopeful that the peer support individual that we're requesting will be approved.

Yeah.

And do you want to just talk about, because it'll be coming up as an item, why peer support is an important part of the overdose response?

So when someone's struggling with SUD issues, sorry, substance use treatment issues, they really need somebody to guide them along their support. Typically an individual cycles between seven or eight times before they're able to sustain a level of sobriety. So we know with that, it can be very challenging financially. Usually they're unable to hold jobs. They're struggling to even get in services. Sometimes they've cut family ties or people have put up barriers of not wanting to interact with them because obviously they're, um, endless issues of cycling through the system and with the struggles that they're dealing with with substance abuse, that peer support really comes alongside them to guide them through the treatment, the support, whatever their needs may be. It may be looking for a job, trying to find housing because they've been homeless. And we know when your basic needs aren't being met, it's very unlikely that you're gonna truthfully engage into treatment and be able to give your whole self forth in trying to engage in those services. So a peer support for us right now, we currently have two peer supports through our SOAR grant, and that's our state opioid response grant. Obviously, those positions are maxed out with the number of consumers that they're able to serve. In order to pull off this initiative, we really need additional peer support.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you.

Um, questions. Um, 1st of all, from the committee.

Now, from the board supervisor, Shakur, thank you.

Thank you. Mr. chair. Just a quick question and. But I'd like to know, and I know that, um. That the Racine county human services. doing an excellent job on all levels as far as opioids and family issues and stuff like that. I'd just like to know, is there something on a collaborative basis that's dealing with behavioral health and doing some upfront planning as far as opioids and stuff? Why are people going to opioids? Is it the family breakdown? Is it the relationships without a job, homeless, whatever it is? Is there any way that we can expand there to make sure that we avoid some of these things because you know, and I know, and we all know that it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions of dollars. Once a person gets into this situation and yeah.

So public health is involved from that prevention standpoint in being able to help develop effective education and messaging regarding avoiding any sort of addiction issues in the first place. We do provide our education for prescribers, helping to understand that that's often a gateway into opioid addiction in particular. But in terms of all of the science behind addiction, That's why we asked Dr. Galbis to join us, and he will be here in November, and he will be an invaluable resource to be able to have some of those question and answer type things about addiction, because he's one of the region's top specialists in that area, to be able to talk about the whys behind it. I think he's probably best positioned to... to answer some of that. But we do are approaching it from a, again, a very high level view from public health and prevention all the way to treatment intervention, and even from the overdose fatality review team for what can we learn from those who, you know, succumb to the illness?

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Good opportunity, but I know it's tough. There's a lot of stuff going on that is tough.

Thank you. Supervisor core. Thank you so much. Supervisor Coleman.

No, well, I was just wondering, so we were talking about with the prevention and all those type of things. So, are we going to get something in place that helps with the housing situation being homeless and all that? Are we going to do something about that? Furthermore with I know that with our mental health building open up, I know that we're going to have 15 beds. Correct?

15 for behavioral health, crisis stabilization, and then 15 for substance abuse.

Because we have to know that sometimes mental health and opioid abuse, they all go hand in hand.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. So training, as far as police officers, being able to know if a person is having a crisis a medical mental crisis psychosis sorry or is it drug related what are we going to do for Racine so that we are more clear of what you're dealing with because it's crazy to have people in jail when it's really like mental health or substance abuse or, you know, things like that, being able to know the difference for our officers to be able to be aware, to detect what is what. So what are we going to do about that?

Sure. Go ahead, Iona.

So I think the biggest thing for us during our crew meetings, we're discussing this endlessly of having the capability to do direct drop-offs to our SAIL program. There will be a police entrance there. So if they're struggling to identify what is going on, they're able to bring that individual to SAIL. We will assess the situation. If they require further medical clearance or intervention, obviously we can drive them to the hospital. Um, with this, what we're really trying to do is create, like, a collaborative effort with working with law enforcement and really encouraging the contact of crew slash our crisis line to say, hey, can you guys come out and assess versus the law enforcement officer being stuck? That was initially, um, the co response model that we were reviewing, um, was to make sure I know we didn't take the embedded approach, but we took the co response approach. where we're able to meet those individuals, law enforcement officers, wherever they're at in the community. We added the virtual option as well to ensure that a crisis worker is always available. So if they think there's something mental health going on, they're contacting us. I will add that we work very closely with the county jail as well. If someone is appearing to have some type of mental health crisis that exceeds the capability of what we're seeing county jail is able to meet their mental health team there they are contacting crisis and saying hey we need you guys to come out and figure out you know next steps and what we're able to do so it's endless amounts of advocating trying to collaborate with community partners and continue to just kind of um advocate the mental health needs and what resources are available within the county Okay. One more? Okay.

And I want to expand on that. You go first.

Okay. That just leads me back to the emergency room. I'll never forget a year and a half ago when the question was posed, who gets it confused the most and who ends up calling the police? And it was the emergency room. I'll never forget that. How are we looking on that now? Has that got better with the sale program and implement? How are those numbers looking?

It's the 911 dispatch that you remember. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think for the most part right now, we've worked closely with a hospital leadership team to ensure that they know how to access us. We know when new social workers start in the ER, we're offering up them coming to the HSD building to basically tour sale, give them an overview of the resources that we're able to offer. I will say that I feel like we've strengthened that relationship to ensure that they're aware of who they can access. I think sometimes With the emergency department, what's difficult is a decision made by law enforcement to take somebody into custody supersedes our decision. So we don't have control over that. The best we can do at that point in time is advocate. Under our crisis certification, the biggest thing for us is making sure that if someone's in a mental health crisis, that we're appropriately advocating from our lens, the concerns, the needs of that individual, and what we believe would be the best course of action. But again, if law enforcement is involved, sometimes they kind of override our decision.

And I just wanted to explain the difference between embedded and co-response that we have and the reason we chose to go with the co-response model of joint response. If we were to embed our social workers with all the different municipalities, I believe we have eight or nine different jurisdictions and not all have the same level of need, right? So like the city of Mount Pleasant, Burlington, Caledonia, some of our higher calls for service, but that we'd have to be standing up an employee in all those different areas, managing them from different locations, right? And one of the things that starts to happen is, you know, there's a little bit of, I guess, scope creep of what an expert is doing because you're more into their operations. So if law enforcement were to come and work in social services, they naturally are going to start to become more of our culture where it's not honoring the distinctions between the two areas. um there's value to it obviously in bigger communities um where the the jurisdictions are much larger the sheriff's office covers a further area but um we for financial reasons and also some of the aspects of that we chose to go with that co-response model which there are hiccups then right because it's based on their referrals to us we're not part of their system so there's a cost benefit for either model

Thank you. Thank you very much. I just want to, for the record, go back to number eight. We did address the mental health symposium and transfer of $3,000. If it approved, the approximate date and time and location of that symposium, I believe, is October, is it? October 7th. Okay.

The starting time, I don't remember.

9 a.m. 8.30 if you want to go up. Okay.

At Roma? At Roma, yes, exactly.

Great. Okay. For the record, and we did cover the creation of one FTE contracted peer support specialist effective 9-30-2026 to 12-30-2027. 31 of 27 and the transfer of 95,068 funds from the opioid settlement fund budget of 2026. Thank you. We address that. And I don't think we addressed the request to accept the community health services block grant. If you could just touch on that briefly, please.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So Yelena wrote another grant to the topic earlier about public health having to chase money through grants. And she got it.

Yes. So the Community Mental Health Services Black Grant, we already receive about $963,000 per year. that covers some of our adult family home costs. This was an additional block grant that came out. There was a focus on housing regarding individuals that are dealing with serious mental health illness who are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness. So our team came together and basically discussed how we were able to quickly initiate spending this money and utilizing the funds that were available The funds became available at the end of July. The grant was due. I want to say by the end of July. 30th, um, they came out with their decision as of the 1st week of August. All these, the funds total 200,000 dollars to 200,976 dollars. Um, the funds need to be spent by 930 and entirety. Of this year, so I will make that very clear. Yes. So we were really going for it, but we came up with a good plan of how we were able to do this. The 1 thing that we know through the all the advocacy talk that we've had here tonight is really promoting the services that are available within that we're seeing county for mental health for services. So we were able to ask for $100,000 of this grant to go towards advertising of those billboards, pushing out different informational stuff, which obviously public health helps us out with a lot. The remaining of the $100,976, we will work with a local... A local nonprofit agency that deals with helping individuals that are homeless. We cannot pay for shelter specifically or rent specifically. However, we're able to engage housing, name, navigation, crisis, stabilization, community based supports for improving the outcomes for this population. So we were able to write this grant. We were able to be approved. We were able to tie this into our current sale program for individuals that are circling in and out of sale that we know may be dealing with mental health issues. But some of the root of their issues is dealing with homelessness and not being able to meet their basic needs. So, as soon as we're able, hopefully to get this approved, we're able to move through those discussions with those individuals very quickly. The advertising obviously will not be a problem because things cost a lot nowadays. Um, but we, we have a plan and we've been having conversations behind the scenes of how to get things moving and how to make sure that the resources are available to the residents of Racine county.

Is food on that list?

It is not. I know that's a classic, too. But our primary homeless shelter in the area is hoping to support.

Okay, great, great. Okay, we addressed 10 and 11, and I'm going to jump down to 12. We know the doctor will be here in November. On 13, opioid and overdose update, hope.

We do not have one today, partially because we're going to be talking about that with Dr. Galbis, but also we were unable to get our request from the city health department in time and we had some other people out of the office. So we don't have an update for you today.

Next month, we will put that on the agenda. Yes, absolutely.

And we will have both this month and next month on there.

And one of the most, not most important, but always on everybody's mind, Jelena, Meals on Wheels. How are we doing?

Go ahead. That's okay. Basically, we got the supplemental amount from GWAR, and so there isn't a waiting list. However, we have to notify people that they would be on a waiting list for not the allocation we got in order for us to receive the funds. So we will be telling people that call, you're on a waiting list, but good news, you're off of it. So it's just a little bit of a workaround.

And we're in the process of doing that, correct? Yes. Great. Great. Any questions from the committee? Any comments from the committee? How about the board?

Any questions from the board? Any comments from the board?

Great. Any other comments from Hope or Yelena?

Yeah, there was 11. There's another grant.

Yes, that's right. Sorry. Request to accept substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery services block grant.

And Yelena's really excited about this.

Information only. Yes.

I am.

Thank you.

I have to say this one. So this one was the substance abuse block grant. These are dollars that we already received. We utilize them for treatment. These were additional funds. Again, same timeline need to be spent by the end of September 30th. This total came out to $166,724. I am happy to announce that we wrote this to fund all our needs for the new residential and we were approved for it. So this will be all the supplies, all the medical needs, all the bedding, locks, anything that we need to secure folks stuff. So we are very happy about that. Good job.

Congratulations on. Accomplishing that wonderful. OK, um correspondence and other business. Hearing none next meeting September 14th, 2026. I've Grove complex auditorium. I need a motion to adjourn.

Let's all move.

We are adjourned. Thank you.

We did it. Roll here.

All right, I'd like to call a committee of the whole meeting to order. If you can make. Have a call.

It's okay.

I remember 1 is discussion regarding the 2027 bonding and debt service levels. Did you put up the screen? So, so everybody should recognize this. It's called the Bob Miller graph supervisor Miller. This is on this is the graph that's on page 398 of our. Budget for 2026, and this shows the debt service. That we have over the next 20 years. As you see, it's kind of an uphill because of the. Because of the bonding we've done for the. The law enforcement center, the Marina and. mental behavioral health so it goes up a little bit and then it goes down as we pay things off so just keep that in mind while we talk about this now that does not include the Foxconn bonding because that's taken from a special assessment so it doesn't hit the levee so this is what the levee is so Roughly in 2027, we're going to have about 10,000,000, 10,000,000, 2028 plus whatever we add for the 26. So, if you want to bring up the next slide. So this is this is what the debt service when you have. Different levels of interest rates. 4 or 5 and 6, that's how much in a 1Million dollars adds to the levy. So with 10Million dollars, if you had. Edit at an average of 4%, that's. You know, $740,000. So keep that in mind, too, when we're talking about the debt service. Now, I've talked to a few people that have taken a real deep look at this, and they're looking at somewhere between $14 to $16 million of debt service. Now, we're not going to talk about specific projects tonight. I just want to hear your thoughts on that. And also, you know, you have to realize that most of our bonding now is going to be at 4% or better. We have some lower ones that will be, you know, at 2 and 2.5 that are going to be paid off. But we're going to be replacing them with 4, so that's going to make 4 or 5. That's going to make our debt service go up just by that. That criteria, you also have to kind of remember that somewhere down the line. If if bonding or refinancing gets. Down back to the 3%, we can rebond some of these at a lower rate. So that would save the taxpayers some money. So I'll give you my thoughts on bonding. Now, we have somewhere about $23, $24 million of requests in the capital area this year. When you're talking about capital and bonding, we have to realize that there's different theories out there. Some municipalities go all the whole hog. because the pressures on a small municipality can go that far. We have a bonding that I don't think anybody in this room would wanna go all the way to a 5% of our equalized value.

That would be a disaster on the tax bills.

If you recall the conversation we had back a couple months ago about tax and levy, we were looking at the rate of growth to CPI. Now, they've got some preliminary numbers on net new construction, and that's about 5%, which is real good. And that's the driving factor, of course, is Mount Pleasant. And they're around 16. So, you know, that you can, you know, unless the economy really takes a tank, you know, we have to also consider that. So... when we put together a budget or when the staff and the county executive put together a budget it's kind of a puzzle you take a look back at the first one you got to make sure that you're not got that big bump like this or you go up a level and come across you know so i'd you know i'd like to hear some thoughts on bonding i don't know does anybody want to start uh there's no thoughts Surprise Rosterman Thank you.

Mr. I guess I'll ask you a couple of questions. We know that our bond rating changes that percentage. Periodically does it not double a versus AAA?

Yeah, I think we're if we're at the highest rating right now. At AAA. Double A, excuse me. Yeah, double A.

So that's what I'm curious about. I know Kenosha is AAA. What does that, in a general sense for planning purposes, change the percentage? How much does that typically change the percentage and how often would that occur? Director Zimmer?

Mike?

I have a comment on that, Supervisor Osterman. There's a variety. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman.

Go ahead. I'm looking for some education here.

It's not only one factor. There's a lot of different factors that are put into AA and AAA ratings. One of the major factors is income for the counties. That is a major factor. And the income for Racine County is different than that of Kenosha County, which may be 1 of the things that gave them a triple a rating. I'll let director Zimmer continue on this.

I'm talking kind of like in a general sense here, what, you know, the differences, you know, how much does it make a difference?

So we rate with S&P. There's two sections that create our rating, an institutional framework, which every Wisconsin municipality is given the same rating, and then individual credit profile, which is 10% of our economy. 10% of financial performance, how we perform to our budget, 10% to our reserves and liquidity, 10% to management, meaning staff and elected officials and then 10% to our debt and liabilities. We basically, our financial advisors have reported back to county board leadership and to the county executive that there isn't really anything more that we personally can do to move the needle. It's the economy of this area and it's the personal income of the residents of Racine County. So we had them run an analysis of how much would it cost Cost us if we went down in green or save us if we went up a grain, they asked me 50,000 dollars per 10Million of borrowing. So it's not significant in comparison. It's obviously something we want to strive for, but it's not the end of the world. If we go down, or if we go up.

You said 50,000 per 10Million.

Yes.

And they noted- Over the span of?

A 20 year debt.

20 year, okay.

They noted that upgrades in our rating would require material improvement in our economic measures and in the state debt metrics. So if the rest of Wisconsin increased in their metrics, then we would benefit from that, but there's something that we can do about it.

Okay.

And if I may, Chairman, I just wanted to know that you statutorily, we are limited to 5% of our equalized value. But this body adopted a debt management policy earlier this year where we self-limited ourselves. I believe it's 3%. 3% of our equalized value, which is $27 billion. So 3% of that.

Any further comments on bonding? Nobody?

Supervisor Rossi, nothing to say? All right.

Is there a particular question you'd like to hear?

Well, I guess that's kind of well. Well, I, I guess what the, what the level is, I mean, you know. You know, we get, I mean, it's, it's a, it's part of the part of the levy. Like, we had the level discussion. It was really good level discussion. Uh. I know we have some supervisors that want to build a lot more roads than we have, and that's kind of where we have to go now with the next step. You know, we put together a five-year plan and also a long-range plan for roads. You know, we also have to fit in the capital equipment, you know, that snow plows and larger equipment at public works. We also have to have, you know, Some of building upgrades here, so. It's, you know, that's kind of the, the question. How far do we go? Do we, you know, and. You know, we let the, the staff and and the county executive present. You know, a budget that has. What they feel is bonding, but I don't want to have. You know, the, the. Lengthy discussions about, you know, what we need to bond and, you know. And how much we need to bond if we give them. A general idea of what we feel bonding. Levels are, they can kind of work with the county board here. Versus, you know, if we, you know, we have, you know, some supervisors want to spend more money or less money. You know, then then let's, let's start with the 15Million dollars. Is that acceptable? Now we spent. two last two last you know two two two million dollars that's not that that we added a couple meetings ago is that two million dollars count towards the 15 million or is that two million dollars that we added and we're gonna go to 17. you know that's kind of the supervised roster man so

One thing, you know, I've never felt like it's that black and white, you know, 15Million is okay. 15.5 is too much. I think there's, there's plenty of other factors in play and 1 of them could very well be. The economic impact of those projects and initiatives, there may be a way. To discover what those economic impacts. Would be. From those types of projects, maybe analytics could help us with that to maybe make that borrowing more palatable when it's necessary. You may run into a project that. For for whatever reason, as the potential to increase. County sales tax revenue, or what have you anything like that that may offset the negative effects of of that debt. So that would be something that I would kind of, I think I'd be interested in finding out as one suggestion.

So something like the break wall down at the lakefront. That would be something that would have an economic impact.

I'm glad you mentioned that because we need to talk about that. Yeah, something like that.

Supervisor course, thank you.

Mr. chairman. I think that I'm just. In my mind, I'm trying to think about exactly. What the requests from the various departments is going to look like. And granted, I understand there's wish lists and obviously that has to be given consideration, but I'm, I'm, I guess I'm looking at because I'm and is an example. I mean, I know there was a very large number. And to me, having now had the opportunity, not only to be on the committee, but to walk the entire facility. I have a great degree of belief that what is being requested is not unreasonable. But at the same time, I understand it may not be practical at this time. So then I take a look at what I think you may have started out with, and it might be on, I think it was page 395 in the budget. All right. So what is the 3, 5, 10-year plan to get all of these things addressed? And to me, that's where I'd probably be my starting point on what the bonding would look like.

And that's exactly what the Committee on Public Works is doing. Now, some things like that are easy. It's not easy, but it's easier. Matter of opinion, but I understand what you mean. I mean, we know that this bridge needs to be fixed, that road needs to be fixed, and that piece of equipment is well past its retirement. So that kind of is part of the equation. And that's where the planning that you guys and Public Works did, Is very fruitful now, some things, you know, facilities is another 1 and that's exactly another area that you get that that that committee needs to work with. You know, and, you know, when when an air conditioner goes out and it's 95, you're going to fix it. Or are you going to have to find money to replace it? You know, if we get and. We're going to be working on that. Staff is going to be working on that to get a replacement schedule together.

And to me, that becomes, if I may just go ahead, that becomes really my starting point to be able to offer any input or thought, because I think that what public works may have done or started, it's not even complete, of course, but each one of the respective departments generating that kind of information then allows us to have a better picture of the whole expectation or desire. And then you can start to say, okay, we can't do all this, but we can consider what that number will look like and factored in over a period of time. So that you're at least starting it to get to that, whether it be up until 35 or some other period in the future.

And that's the kind of suggestions that I want to hear. Thank you, Supervisor, for bringing that up because that's, you know, it's hard to start a conversation on debt service because we know what we're going to have. And there's too many factors to go into it, but that's the kind of thing that we'd like to hear from the supervisors so the staff can go and say, you know, we need to replace... Chairs in the courthouse, or we need to remodel these courtrooms. How can we do it in a, in a method that doesn't impact the, I mean, we could go in there and remodel the whole card house. You know, for X amount of millions of dollars, but maybe we have to, you know. Make it staggered or every little bit every year and then. When we're done, maybe we have to start over. Right where we started, you know, that's kind of it's kind of how roads work.

No, and by the way, Rose, yes, but so do all these other areas as well.

Well, yeah, because there's a specific, I mean, it's, it's facilities, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, thank you.

Supervisor Rossi address to surprise. Sure. The budget does include a 3 year capital plan. It's at the very back of it. And I, I fully acknowledge that. It's not as robust as it could be the policies that were approved by that. I think our committee last week, and we'll be going to county board. At the end of August, include the expansion to a 5 year capital plan that will be put in place for the 27 budget. And I also wanted to note to you, supervisor Osterman that we do include in the budget a note of like a. Asterisk or or some way of notifying if a project would generate revenue. Or obtain operational savings. So, like, if you replace the boiler, we're going to save on energy costs, stuff like that. And that the public works committee reviewed some of the capital projects. I think it was last month in July. It has not changed since then. So the list that you guys received in that meeting is still accurate. It's 22. Right and a half million 23 and a half million, something like that.

Thank you Mr. chairman.

Surprise Rossi.

Thank you chairman. I'm just not sure if everyone's aware, but what they're talking about is in. In public works, we've, uh, we've started with what is a road capital plan. So just looking at, you know, what it started off as what is a 20 year. Road plan look like, and what we found out is after the creation of the 20 year. Um, plan with John rally and the staff worked on, um. Is that we're so far off of what would be. 20-year plans maintenance cycle that we can't really just jump into a 20-year plan so then we We fell back to what is a 5 year plan. So the 5 year plan is something that really jump starts us and gets us headed towards getting back to a 20 year plan. And the 1st year, I didn't look at that. I was looking at something else right now, but it was 5 to 6Million dollars for year. 1. I don't think that they asked for this year reflects that as plan was completed in time to inform current budget decisions on. capital spend for roads the idea is to continue this on for all the items that fall into the purview of public works parks and facilities so we've got a lot of work to do but um so then the 22 million dollar ask will obviously um you know that's that's more than what we look at each year but that service itself is excluding foxconn it was nine million i'm going to Just looking for confirmation 9Million and then 5Million of the property tax is allocated to debt service relief.

It was 9.6Million levied with 5.7Million of sales tax next year. It'll be 15Million because behavioral health and Marina and 911 and public safety are coming online. So, that's gross. That's without sales tax in there. So far.

Okay, so. What some conversations were had, um. Chairman Kramer was mentioning, you know, there's 15 to 16Million what I did and I'd like to see the county do something similar to this. So that it's not just someone who doesn't do this for a living is, um, I'd like to see what is a long term. Um, the forecast for our debt service, um, can we pull that. That, uh. Uh, the graph graph back up to that.

You put the graph up. Thank you.

So this shows our current obligations, but what's missing from this is what happens when we keep adding obligations, when we keep taking out bonds. So I always felt that a graph like this is misleading and not intentionally. It's just it doesn't show that we're going to continue to bond and that we never really get to what is the 2046, which is we get rid of all of our debt. We're going to continue bonding. So this actually continues to grow. And so then, well, what is the level that you can sustain and doesn't overwhelm our levy? Um, and that's where the 1516Million came from 1 thing about that. And this model is, it was based off of. You know, current numbers, so we have some, um, reserve usage in the 2026 budget. And so that actually that 15Million growing at 3, 4% a year. Includes 2Million dollars growing at that same percentage. And then also includes 5Million dollars of tax load of the sales tax applied to debt service. So we're taking that 5Million dollars that we're knocking off our debt service and then we're going to continue to apply that. And that's how I got that 15Million works. The problem is, then you can't, you know, you can't reduce that 5Million that you're Putting you're taking from the sales tax and applying to that service. So you have to keep that allocation. And I, I would like to not. Be going into reserves, at least on budgets. I know we did better when we did our reconciliations, but. It would be a little bit lower if you took off the debt service. It'd be nice to see something come from. The finance department on this, where we do have a long term forecast and what we can accommodate, because what informed. My decision is, you know, just taking the current trends and putting it forward.

I'm very happy to have our financial advisors here to speak on that. Specifically, I will note that when they come to deliver the bond sale results, which they do every time we sell and we're selling tomorrow or we're closing tomorrow. So they'll be here on the September 2nd Finance and Human Resources Committee meeting. They include slides on what the projection is for that. They've built in $15 million because we pay off about $15 million every year. So, while I understand what you're saying here, it's more of a flat because you're bonding 15 paying off 15. the biggest portion of it is that these larger capital projects are outside of our normal. And I would like to note that during the 26 budget that was requested of what our current debt services that is available on the website. So, the, the projection going all the way out to 20. 45, because the newer issuances are not on there. And the policies will include a long term financial plan. In the 27 budget, which was requested by you last year.

Excellent moving forward then with these new buildings coming online and that's the parts missing to this puzzle. And then the aquatic center. We've got maintenance coming up and we will with these new buildings that we've never had before. And that's, you know, some of that can be capitalized. Some of it cannot, but some of these items that are going to cut into. What would be classified as capital we classified as operational, but it would cut into what would be the operational side. It's not really not not every repairable buildings capitalized. So that's another component of this that I didn't really look at. but with new buildings comes maintenance and new buildings have a lot more maintenance to them. As we found out, I wish, Supervisor Wish was here right now, when we talked about the YDCC meeting, I think it was a 50 or $60,000 controls contract for building automation. That's normal now with these new types of buildings. So it's like your car, the more features you get, the more features you're fixing, so. Sorry back to the start of this. I like the idea of 15Million.

But, you know, it's, it is a concerning thing.

That's saying 1. Committees 8 departments that founder public works person facilities, we're asking for 22Million, which is more than the total ask and that doesn't even get into the sheriff's department. So, it's a concerning item.

Supervisor.

Thank you Mr. Chairman just for clarification. I think I got the idea, but I don't like to think I'd like to know what direction I'm going in now. We're having conversations. In regards to long term, short term, long term, short term. Bonding debt service now. What are we listening to everybody? Are we listening to the committees? Are we listening to the executive board committee of the whole? Um, the department is the executive budget. Um. Now, the budget is presented by the, the county executive. So, are we talking to give. Him ideas and concerns, so how he'll know how to put his budget together. That comes to us ultimately that's that's.

big portion why we're having this discussion uh to to to give direction i mean i i hear people want to legislate well here's the beginning have a conversation on where we think we should be or how we should get there you know we've never had this discussion i had supervisor wish last time when we talked about levy said you know Since I've been on the board, we haven't talked that beforehand. Well, that's kind of a parameter. I mean, the first thing you do with a budget is you net new construction to see where that top number is. In the olden days, you'd go through the list and buy the stuff, and then you'd go up to the top of the number, and then you'd fill it in based on But you were short, you know, I mean, it's not, you know, it was, and since we got levy limits in, it's kind of, you got to work with the top number first and then work your way through. Your capital budget, of course, is handled a little differently, but you still have to understand that, you know, it affects the levy. Did I answer your question? Sort of. You did okay. Well, I'm trying to get a C plus, but that's kind of, you know.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? See, normally for some years, we would, we being the county board would wait for the budget to be presented by the county executive. And then we had the budget hearings and all that and go through everything and, you know, present amendments and this and that. Uh, we're trying to get into this mix ahead of time. Is that what we had?

We had quite a few discussions after the budget was presented. So this is kind of a circumvent and it's not that. We didn't agree with a lot of outside. Pressures, you know, that were there were. In this, I thought this discussion was for everybody. To hear and talk about give some direction. You know, I mean, the county executive may not take it and he may have good reasons. Why not? Right? You know, because he gets to see. He lives at 24, 7, and he gets to talk to every 1 of his directors. You know, we have to. We have to have some faith in that these people are making good decisions, but we also want to set some parameters too.

I can appreciate and understand that, but I'd like to stay away from, for lack of a better word, micromanaging. No, I don't think this is quite micromanaging. Well, it could be.

It could be, but it depends upon who the county is. Yes. Thank you. Supervisor Weatherston.

Oh, just a minute. Yeah, just a 2nd. I just want to clarify this a little bit. I appreciate this discussion. Okay. My own gut feeling on this. Without doing the deep dive analysis that supervisor Rossi has done into the numbers was between 14 and 15Million dollars of bonding that. Means we landed at the same place. The priorities are things that I'll have to take a look at and come back to you folks with, but I wanted to have the discussion in advance and not go through what we did last year. So I invite invite this conversation to take place and listen to the feedback upfront to understand what what is everybody's feeling? What is everybody's intention about it? I don't look at it as micromanagement. I look at it as advanced feedback and I think we're probably on the same page with a lot of things, but again, I look forward to hearing your voice on it. Thank you.

Supervisor.

Thank you. I'm wondering, you know, I've been at all levels of government in the state here and I, I think it's easy to keep bonding things and forget about what we. Set up to pay for last year, you know, and so I'm wondering if do we carry a running. list of projects and the bonding on them, how long the bonding's left. I mean, I look at, we have a new building, aquatic center, 911 radios, lakefront work. We've got a lot of big subjects going on. Do we carry them all on the books so that we, the board, see them annually?

Yes. Prior pages, I think, would be even 397, if I'm not mistaken, in the last budget book, would have the list of all the bonds. On there and and their dates and the dates and the maturity dates and then the. The amount I'm not sure if the payments in there or not. Thank you. No, but I know the, the, you know, there's a, there's also a high graph that shows. Of course, those don't tell you what they're for, you know, it's more what series it is and, you know, when we took it out.

So, as long as there's some data, there's a way to fall back into how much other debt we have to pay off.

Yes, there is.

Supervisor horse.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. By the way, the summary of those outstanding bond issues is on page 394. You're close. You're real close. I don't have my book with me. I got one page. You did fine on that one. But I guess I want to go back to what I had mentioned earlier that I'd like to give you some informed or educated feedback on a bonding number, but in the absence of what I had shared earlier, it's very difficult for me to be able to do that without having some of this other information that I just talked about. Not that I'm trying to be difficult on it. Not because I, by the way, I think what we're doing makes all the sense in the world, but it's hard for me to be able to weigh in. In an educated fashion, if I don't know, I mean, right now, I know is 22Million. And I don't know what the other 6 or 7 departments are, what have you just based on what the initial discussions we've had have been. And so that that's where again, I don't know what the numbers would look like. So it's hard for me. And I'm sure Gwen's about to tell me something that I should have known, but I didn't.

Well, no, not of course, if I may clarify all departments are 23Million, you received all requests at that committee meeting. I can tell you, do you want to know just highlight? Like, what departments do you want to know the breakout for?

I think it would be if you're telling me that all the requests from all the departments have total 22Million. Yes.

23.2Million or 22. okay. Yep.

I guess my question is then, and maybe supervisor Rossi, maybe I'm not looking to put you on a spot, but I know when we sat and talked about. The public works committee that night we had that conversation and again granted, I know much of that would might have been a wish list and a desire, but that was 22Million.

Yeah, it was that I ran that report for you for that committee and it is all capital requests that were put into the budget. I did not break it out by department because some things translate over. You've got some things in land and water conservation, which is kind of a highway or parks thing. So we just the executive and I looked at the report together and thought it was fair to just give you the whole thing. So facilities is about 4.2 million. Golf is 300,000, which they have reserves to pay for that. Highway is 14.3 million. Parks was 950,000. And then from there, you've got clerk of courts and cultural and IT, jail, sheriff's office. And all of that together makes that 2023, what was the sheriff's department? The jail is 520,000. that's mostly equipment for, like, the kitchen and laundry and the sheriff's is 1.4Million. That's like squad cars.

And those are true. I'm sorry if I just ask the question.

Yeah, those are actually all the requests that they came in. So that have come in thus far.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

And they're pretty on par with what previous years have been requested. That's kind of crazy.

So the other thing that I've done that I've asked Gwen to do is send those requests back to the departments and have them list their priorities. In other words, from the experts, what do they see in their areas as being the most needy item? Because at the end of the day, I'm going to have to pick out what the priorities are. And I'm not an expert in every field. I'll be the 1st to admit that I might not be an expert in any field as a matter of fact. So, that being said, I sent them back and asked for them set your priorities. Give me 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever. So, when we sit down. When I sit down and take a look at this, I can prioritize this. If you remember last year, there was a discussion about cutting capital expenditures around revolving around some of the cuts. And one of the things on the cutting block was jury chairs of all things. And I asked the question, have you been to the courtroom and looked at the chairs? Are they sitting in lazy boys or are they sitting on milk crates? If we don't know and we don't get feedback from them, I think it's unfair of me and of you to arbitrarily set the priorities without knowing, without feeling and touching what those priorities should be. So just know initially that's the December 25th request, $23 million. That's not going to be what comes to this board. It's going to be prioritized. So.

And if I can mention 1 thing to point supervisor, whether sin, you wanted to know, break down the budget is really just outstanding that service. We do provide a lot more detail in our annual audit report, which is available on our on the website. I can send the link out. We just published the 2025 audit page. 39 of it does bring it down based on. capital improvement projects that's the annual stuff miscellaneous projects things that we've refunded the large capital projects so you can kind of see it broken out by category and then i also threw in a pie chart so 34 of our our debt is those annual projects and then 24 so far as those large capital projects

Supervisor Rossi.

Thank you chairman. I'm going to have to go back and look at everything that went in that presentation because I don't remember for the life of me. 1 thing being talked about about the sheriff's department as we sat in that room. So, um, if that number was included in there, and that got. Rolled into something that we just didn't see, so that could very much be the case. So I wanted to correct that. Um, the 2nd item then would be. You know, it's what we looked at before, you know, we had a visioning session and. You know, roles came up as what I thought was the number 1 priority and everyone remembers last year's visioning session. And so I'm, I'm hoping this year that roads do get some attention. Obviously, that's that's an important 1 for me. And, uh. Another supervisor who's taken to, um, going on news, uh, news station and and being somewhat attacked for not having roads paved. But that's another story. Um, the last thing is, you know, when could you. Could you point me in the right direction? You mentioned that in the last year there was a long term. It last year is this fog so if you could help me out, that would be great.

Yeah, it's not the long term plan. It's the current debt service. So if you go under departments, all boards and committees, then there's an link. Let me just pull it up. I can tell you what it's called. Outstanding debt as of. 1231 25, so this doesn't include what we've issued in 2026, but it does show the principal interest in total debt service for every year going through 2045, including what's funded by levy and what's funded by other revenues. Like, the children said special assessment.

so what what i and maybe this is you know my This is your world and I may not always have the proper language, but what I was looking to have from the county. Is, you know, assuming that let's, let's pretend we issued that on the same trajectory that we've done for the last 5 years. Does that type of document exist? Because what what I did is again, this is very rudimentary was just assume new issuance for the next 20 years and what our debt service would look like year over year, continuing to add on the levels that we currently are something like that exists.

It, it does our financial advisors have put something together and, like I said, they'll be at the September 2nd meeting. I'll make sure that they include that in the PowerPoint slide and be able to speak on it.

So it's forthcoming. It doesn't exist.

It does currently exist. It's been presented to this body several times in the past. It's a graph. It's not like an Excel file. I can make sure that we get something to, you know.

Is so there's a line, I guess I'm just drawing a blank here. There is a line graph that's that shows, you know, 20 years of continued debt issue.

And I'm sorry that you guys won't be able to see this. This is existing levy supported by that. And this is what it will be once we add in other and if you do a future at 15Million. So they do market out by specific color of existing, the large capital projects and future. So you can see how it flows through and as goes through 2046. Excellent. If you'd like numbers, I can have them. I know you prefer Excel. I can have them put something together. Otherwise I'll make sure that they include this slide when they're present before the committee in September.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Yep.

Any other supervisor Miller? Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Few comments this is really good process. I think I'm not a mind reader, but I think 1 of. Supervisor secures questions was why why are we doing this? And, um. Last year there was a request from numerous supervisors about more information and more time to deliberate. So, I think doing this now. Expands the budget discussion, which is is good government. And, uh, I said this before there are. Counties in the state where the county executive does not even fuck. to the county board until the day he or she sets down his or her budget. And this is historically we've had more collaboration, but I think this county executive is doing a significant good faith effort to keep us involved and to come up with a good budget and good solutions for people. So I think I just want to commend the process.

Yes, and also, we've, I mean, we kind of expanded it out because of the discussions we had last year. We added two weeks to it, you know, so you're going to, instead of October, you're going to see the, hear the budget address in September. That moves everything back two weeks, so these meetings, you know, the meetings that the staff are having are two weeks ahead of time, so we can have it have a conversation about this and get more public input ask more questions you know and get you know feel feel feel better about the process because i know that's a big process it's what we what we do here so Supervisor Austin, you got your light on?

Yeah, thank you. Last comment. Mr. Chairman just a quick clarifying question. If I might find series 2023, a general obligation bonds at 4 to 5.25% 1 of the higher interest rates. Issued for 8.2Million. Amount outstanding is after 3 years is 8.2Million. What? Why is there no movement? Is that a misprint or why is that? Just.

It was structured that way to keep it on service at a level step. But also, I believe that 1 included short term things that, like, squad cars that have a lesser useful life. And so we paid off more at the beginning, take a break and then resume payments again.

So, step payments, yes, but they put there's so it's been basically just interest payments to this point.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

County executive.

So last thing I'll add here earlier, you were talking about what impacts the rating, the AA rating versus Kenosha's AAA rating. And I asked Ray Mack to do some research on the city of Racine earlier this year and the downtown areas, because I'd like to understand what what is going on with that area, because it truly affects the county operations from The bonding standpoint, the economy in downtown Kenosha, 19% of the people that live in downtown Kenosha make over 150,000 dollars. Anybody care to guess. What that number is for downtown or seeing anybody. Less than 3%. That's that's the economy things that we really have to address somehow and it's not for this board to address, but that does affect our bond rating overall. So that is after I listened to last year, there's not a whole lot we can do to effectively move the bond rating up. or for that matter down unless we spend like drunken sailors, which you won't let me do and I have no intention of doing. So the biggest factor right now on the impact of the bond rating is the economy in the area. So just thought I'd give that out there to you.

So if there's any other questions.

No, just adjourn. Okay, we're adjourned. We're adjourned.

Yeah, we did it quickly to me.

They listen to me. Maybe it was. I do notice that what I'm talking about is. You know.

if we could take our seats thank you all right all righty i'm going to call the meeting to order uh the racine county board meeting for august 10th 2026 if the clerk could call the roll

Supervisors, Spencer Hoffman wish McReynolds price and wish are excused. Everyone else is in the chambers.

And then it's customarily that we have an opening prayer supervisor. Would you like to lead us?

James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, he's from the county board and asked you to bless the office of the executive supervisors all staff and all seeing all 200,000 plus let's be able to work together with. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, Another pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Item number three is public comments. Pursuant to Section 2-71 of the Racine County Code of Ordinance, each speaker shall be allotted a maximum of three minutes. Do we have anybody that wants to, any public? Seeing none, we'll move on to item number five, UW Extension presentation on a property tax overview.

Do we have anybody? Apparently.

okay we'll have to do that a little bit later if somebody shows up or somebody forgot item number six reading of the minutes of the previous meeting which is automatically waived unless requested by a majority of the members present no objections item number seven resolutions and ordinances referred to committee there are none

Item number 8, introduction of resolutions and ordinance for 1st, reading and referral ordinance number 2026 dash 41 by economic development to land use planning committee to rezone from a 2 general farming and residential district to to be 3 commercial service district section 22 town for North range. 20 East town of Norway owners English development LLC. Ordinance number 2026 dash 42 by economic development and land use planning committee to amend the town of Norway land use map of the multi jurisdictional comprehensive plan for Racine County 2035 as it pertains to parcel ID number 010042022004030. Resolution number 2026 dash 43 by finance and human resources committee denying the property damage claim of the village of Park. Resolution number 2026 dash 44 by finance and human resources committee, authorizing the appropriation and use of opioid settlement funds to pay 25% of debt service annually for the series 2026, a general obligation promissory notes for the behavioral health building in the years 2027 through 2046, not to exceed 8467,517 dollars. Resolution number 2026 dash 45 by finance and human resources committee, authorizing the implementation and mental health symposium and transfer of 3000 dollars from the opioid settlement fund 2026 budget. Resolution number 2026 dash 46 by finance and human resources committee authorizing the creation of 1 FTE contracted peer support specialist effective September 30th, 2026 through December 31st, 2027 and transfer of 95,065 dollars from the opioid settlement fund 2026 budget. Resolution number 2026-47 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing the acceptance of the donation from the Watershed Protection Committee of Racine County and transfer of $42,270 within the capital 2026 budget for the Krieger Farm Lease site improvements. And resolution number 2026-48 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing and adopting a financial policy manual.

Supervisor Meyer. Thank you Mr. Chairman, if there's no objection, we'd like to introduce from finance and human resources committee resolution 202643 for 1st and 2nd reading tonight due to the timing issue.

Seeing no objections. Item number 9 communications and claims.

Number one, 2027 budget document for the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

Item number one is referred to the Economic Development and Land Use Planning Committee.

Item number two is a notice regarding a claim. Number three is a foreclosure of a mortgage. And items number four through 19 are notifications from the United States Bankruptcy Court.

So items number two through 19 are referred to the Finance and Human Resources Committee and Corporation Council.

Any requests for copies supervisor horse?

Yes. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. I'd like to request number 1, please.

Supervisor also 1.

Supervisor Miller.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman 1 and 2.

Supervisor.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman numbers 1 and 2, please.

Surprise the Coleman 1 and 2.

Anybody for the name for the vice chair 1, and I'll take number 2. Supervisor core 1, please. Any other requests seeing none we'll move on. I don't remember 10 communications from the county executive.

There are not on the agenda item number 11.

Standing committee reports containing recommendations and items referred.

There are no reports.

Item number 12, 2nd, reading resolutions of.

And ordinances under majority vote, we have resolution number 2026 dash 34 by finance and human resources committee, denying the property damage claim of Veronica. Resolution number 2026 dash 35 by finance and human resources committee, denying the property damage claim of energies. Resolution number 2026 dash 36 by finance and human resources committee, denying the property damage claim of Maria Rodriguez. Resolution number 2026 dash 37 by finance and human resources committee, authorizing a compromise of Racine counties claim against Elena Taylor progressive casualty insurance company as insured. Andre. Ordinance number 2026-38 by Economic Development and Land Use Planning Committee to amend the Town of Waterford Land Use Map of the Multi-Jurisdictional Comprehensive Plan for Racine County 2035 as it pertains to personal ID number 016-041-9200100. Ordinance number 2026 dash 39 by economic development and land use planning committee to rezone a 1 farmland preservation district to a 2 general farming and residential district to section 20 town for North range 19 East town of Waterford applicant. Benjamin G. And ordinance number 2026-40 by Economic Development and Land Use Planning Committee to rezone from B3 Commercial Service District to R4 Urban Residential District 1, Section 5, Town 4 North, Range 20 East, Town of Norway. Owners Chad and Jill Passler.

Second.

Motion made and seconded. Supervisor Trottier? You had a question?

Oh, okay.

Chairman.

Supervisor Rossi might be a point of order.

But, um, asking for a. Court counsel away and on this 1, I plan on recusing for 43 or abstaining whatever the. Proper languages, but should it be as should we take that 1 off for special or separate consideration or would just. I see Supervisor Miller nodding yes.

Supervisor Rossi that will actually not be taken up with this group. We will do that after the 2 thirds majority. And if you would like to be excused, you could actually sorry. I'm going to stand up so you can see you can actually. Leave the chambers while the county board takes the vote on that item and we will note that in the minutes. So you wouldn't that even be present for the meeting for that item. Thank you. Okay.

Okay, with motions made and seconded.

Vice chairman. Thank you chairman. So, resolution 2026, 3435 and 36 are claims that we would recommend to deny and 2026 37 is a claim that we recommend to settle as always in past practices. If there are any questions on these, please reach out to corporation council.

Supervisor.

Thank you. Mr. chairman ordinance 202638 and 202639 is for the farm properties. The purpose of this was to request to facilitate a future land division and construction of a single family home. This was reviewed by the committee and certainly we had the staff's review of it. Subject property is better suited for a rural residential use rather than a farmland preservation. The proposed land and use amendment rezoning are consistent with the existing development pattern plans. We have for the county. This was approved by the town and by unanimous vote. We would like to move this forward for approval. Okay.

Uh, 2026, 40, we can do that 1 as well right away.

This 1 is the owners are Chad and Jill password. This applicant is actually requested approval of the rezoning of a property that, in fact, for multi family homes. In other words, they're looking to build for multi family for single family residences, which we're pretty pleased about because it also keep is in keeping with obviously the county's desire to increase availability of housing. Uh, this was also approved by the town of Norway back on June the 3rd, and also by unanimous vote. We'd like to move forward with the approval on this as well.

So, are there any questions on the. Seeing none, this is a voice majority vote. We'll take them all at the same time. All in favor say aye aye opposed. Motion is carried.

Next, we have the items under 2 thirds majority vote that would be resolution number 2026 dash 31 by finance and human resources committee authorizing the acceptance of a state and local cybersecurity grant in the amount of 100,000 dollars and transfer funds within the information technology department 2026 budget. Resolution number 2026 dash 32 by finance and human resources committee authorizing a new capital project for the purchase of an dump trailer and the transfer of 55,000 dollars within the 2026 public works budget and resolution number 2026 dash 33 by finance and human resources committee authorizing the creation of a new capital project for Sanders campground water upgrade and transfer 150,945 dollars within the 2026 capital budget chair.

We have a motion, Mr. Second. Motion has been made and seconded.

Vice Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So 202631 is a acceptance of a grant of $100,000. And this grant would enhance the county's cybersecurity infrastructure and strengthening our critical systems, including AI security. I believe IT Director Andy Shoemaker is here if there's any questions in regards to accepting this grant.

Are there any questions supervisor is this a 1 time grant scenario or is this something that we could look towards in the future?

This is the 3rd cycle of multiple grants that the state has. We've won the last 2 grants we're currently spending on those grants. Actually, the 2nd, 1 goes through the end of. Next year, or I'm sorry, August of next year and then no, sorry. 2nd, 1 ended on June 30th this year. We're reviewing the spend on that. This grant goes through August 1st of 2027.

So, but we were in the. This is the 3rd 1, so thank you very much. And there's 2 more in the cycle. I believe there are 2 more in the cycle now. Okay. That's really what I was wondering.

Any further questions on that.

Mr. Chairman, if I could- Go ahead. I just wanted to also commend the member of the staff that actually took the time to walk me through giving in my iPad to give back to get a computer because extremely well-prepared, nice list of things to cover. So for those supervisors that may not have gone through it yet, it's actually a fairly seamless process. And I just wanted to thank the group. Thank you.

That's good to hear. I'll share that with my team.

Any further questions? on the IT grant. Vice Chairman.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Resolution 202632 is through Public Works for purchase of an MTM dump trailer and transfer $55,000 within a 2026 Public Works budget. This is for what I would call like a riprap trailer. It's a 26-foot dump trailer that we can use for materials that the county provides with the roads and scrapping. And it also is another part of the tool that they can use for training their CDL drivers that are learning to get their CDLs. Because it's a shorter trailer than a low boy trailer that they currently use and train on. So it would be an asset to the training of the employees and as well as the adding to our fleet. And I believe director beam is here if there's any questions for him on this purchase.

Are there any questions anything you want to say director? All right, we don't have to know. All right.

So, I, I think it was a term resolution 2020, 2026, 33 is a capital project upgrade for Sanders campground for water and electric. This will enhance the electrical and water usage for the campground. This is 1 of our 2 campgrounds at the current county. Owns and operates. and are always looking for ways to improve the services for our campers. And I don't see Chad here tonight to talk about this, who brought it forth to Finance and Human Resources Committee, but Director Beam is here if anybody has any questions on that. It's kind of a combination of projects from some transfer of some money that they were sitting out there in a paving project that didn't get done and allocated to this, and utilizing that extra money to do the water and the sewer, or water and electric at the same time,

is a cost savings advantage for the county director beam if there's any questions supervisor trottier um i i think um supervisor um meyer answered my question i'm just was curious with the transfer of 150 000 so correct me if i'm wrong but

This project was not in the 2026 budget. We're, we're transferring funds from a different account that we did not. Use funds from correct.

We're actually transferring money from a parks paving account. That's a. It's a more of a reoccurring account that we have every year. The last 2 years, the parks paving is going to go towards, um, you know, some of the campground roads, any of the paving parking lots inside of there. We haven't been able to get to those. You've been extremely highways been extremely short staff and busy the last few years. And so that was one of the accounts that we decided to grab to finish off this project. What's been happening with this project is. Every time we go for quotes early on in the season, by the time we go out for bids, the bids come back to high. Well, we can't do it. And then we're basically been chasing this project for a while and now it come to the point. We just really want to get this done. And so that's why we're here.

Great. Thank you very much for the clarification and getting this project done for Sanders park.

Any further comments or questions. Okay, this is a two-thirds majority vote, so I should clear this up. Every time your phone rings, it scares me because that's my ring. I'm going, oh.

Okay, that's everybody.

Motion carries unanimously. And then the. Supervisor Rossi is excused. And I have noted that for the record. So we will be taking up for the first and second reading. This is a majority vote. Resolution number 2026-43 by Finance and Human Resources Committee denying the property damage claim of the village of Elmwood Park.

Vice Chairman.

Motion.

Motion has been made and seconded.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This, again, is something that came before the Finance and Human Resources Committee. And based on the information we have, we would recommend a denial of this claim at this time. And if there's any questions, reach out to the Corporation Council. They'll be happy to speak to you on those items.

The motion has been made and seconded. This is a voice majority vote. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Item number 13, reconsideration of resolutions and ordinances from previous meetings and or actions on vetoes.

There are no items.

Item number 14, reconsideration of and or notice of intent to reconsider resolutions and ordinances.

There is no notice.

Informational reports.

There are none on tonight's agenda.

Miscellaneous business announcements and oral reports. Supervisor Coleman.

Well, tomorrow is election day for our constituents, so let's exercise our rights and make our voices heard through our votes. Happy election eve.

Supervisor. Thank you Mr. chairman.

Um, I want to give a big thank you to Raleigh and his team. That spring streak from Newman road. to Highway 31 is now complete. And I am excited about it because over the last eight years, I have received numerous comments about that stretch of road.

And Raleigh, thank you so much for getting that accomplished. Thank you.

Any further comments? We are adjourned. Thank you.