City Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Okay. Good morning. Welcome to Thurston County Board of County Commissioners agenda setting work session for Tuesday, 04/21/2026, 09:04AM. My name is Ty Metzer, chair of the board. To my left, vice chair, commissioner Wayne Fornier, commissioner Rachel Grant, commissioner Carolina McKeon, commissioner Emily Klaus, Zoom, county manager, Leonard Hernandez, assistant county manager, Jennifer Walker, assistant county manager, Josh Cummings, and director of the board, Amy Davis.

The meeting is being livestreamed to the Thurston County YouTube channel, and public comment may be received up to two hours in advance. The meeting is distributed to the board. Action may be taken at this meeting. The first item up is agenda review for this afternoon's business agenda, which is our second review. And, madam clerk, do you wanna highlight items that we were looking to follow-up on?

So, prior consent item, the resolution and call for hill bids for Thurston County PHSS solar installation was removed from the agenda. And if there was an inquiry on, what the potential impact to future sale of the building, and so we are looking into that with the Department of Commerce. That item was removed. The agenda in front of you, consent item 12 is the contract with the city of Tenano for law enforcement services. After some further discussion with the sheriff's office, HR, PAO, we recommend postponing this item, until sometime in May once HR and the PAO, work through some considerations for the contract and once the city of Tenaino has the opportunity to consider the contract.

So that would be done this afternoon at the business meeting.

Okay. So the first solar item has already been removed, but the, this one has to have a motion removed?

Yes. This afternoon.

That's okay. Quite let me stop there. Questions from the board on those two removals.

Commissioner Claus.

Mister Claus, go ahead.

Sorry. My phone was frozen. Yeah. Thank you. I was wondering two questions about the to 901. The first question is how does this impact any funds we might receive for providing the services? Will we just be back paid later if our sheriff's office continues to provide service in the meantime? And then my second question is has the city of Taino been notified that we're going to consider postponing this item today?

Thanks, Commissioner Claus. Hi. Good morning. This is Leonard, county manager. And the contract, if we bring it forward at the next meeting, will just be backdated to the time they started the service similar to the approach that we were going to take for this contract. And one of the reasons why the item is being delayed is so that the city of Tenano can review the contract details. We determined as late as yesterday that they hadn't had a chance to do that. So we need them to review that and review it legally and then circulate it among their counsel before we can bring it to the board.

Thank you.

Are there questions on those two items?

No. Have request item seven, moving that out of the consent calendar just so we can give it some airtime. That's a big contract that I know a lot of people have been asking about.

That's Quickly straight. Mhmm. We have multiple agendas, so let's just make sure everybody's Yeah. On the same page. There's different numberings because of removals. Okay. Any any concerns there?

Oh, that could be done

By motion.

Yep. By this afternoon.

Tease that up, I guess, for the

We'll work with staff to make sure they can be here to present the item. Okay.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, ma'am Clad.

And the last, item is department item six sub one for the auditor's office. That's the office of the secretary of state election information security grant. There was a request for an executive session, which we do have on this morning's agenda following this agenda review. Okay. We did request for questions in advance and did not receive any. But legal is here and is prepared to join the executive session.

Okay. We'll pause that item and we'll go on to the executive session. And then if we need to circle back to it, we can. So let's, from at this point, move to item three, an executive session pursuant to RCW forty two thirty one ten one eight two to consider if in compliance with any required data security breach disclosure under RCW 90, nineteen two fifty five zero one zero and forty two five six five nine zero and with legal counsel available, information regarding the infrastructure and security of computer and telecommunications networks, security and service recovery plans, security risk assessments, and security test results to the extent that they identify specific system vulnerabilities and other information that if made public may increase the risk to the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of agency security or to information technology, infrastructure, or assets. Fifteen minutes is allotted.

It's 09:09 will be consecutive session till 09:24. Board action may follow. And we will we do have legal counsel present as

if we can take just a couple of minutes to, switch the setup. Yeah. And pause discussions until then.

Recording in progress.

Okay. It's 09:29. We've come out of executive session and waited for the technology to fire back up. Commissioner Claus, before we move on to the next item, Commissioner Claus, was there any question, a nonexecutive session question that you had about the status of the AI ordinance or anything? I know there was questions that came up that might not have been right for executive session. Or did you hear what you need to hear?

I think I heard what I needed to hear. I guess, I do have one question. I know it's still working through the process of going through all the stakeholders. Do we have a rough estimate on, the timeline for when that ordinance will come back before us?

Commissioner Klaus, at this time we don't, partly because we need to sit down with those stakeholders and talk about what the scope, the operational impacts and understanding from their perspectives are. So once we have that meeting, we can happy to report out to the board on what we think the time frame will be. Part of that is you need to get the PO's input on how broad or narrow the scope needs to be for this initial ordinance.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Next item up this morning is public safety sales tax fund update. And we have a budget manager here, and I'll turn it to county manager.

Thanks so much. Commissioners asked several weeks back for an overview of the public safety sales tax and also thankful for some of the stakeholders making themselves available to be in attendance. And so I'll go ahead and hand over to Summer, who and her team put this together. And we're ready to walk through that information. Take away, Summer.

Thank you. Morning, commissioners. Summer Miller, budget and finance manager. Today, we'll be providing a budget update on the public safety sales tax funds. This is our third budget presentation of 2026 with our first meeting in mid January.

We have one in March and today. We will be back next week for your regularly scheduled monthly budget update and again in the following weeks for the first and second review and adoption of amendment one to this year's budget. So, I thought I'd take this time to review some of the, budget terms that we've been using over the last eighteen months or so as we navigate our 2026 budget updates. I wanna be sure that we're highlighting some of the recurring themes that you'll hear that the public will hear. Such as assumptions, estimates, actuals, projections.

And we'll start this presentation off with a quick reminder that some of the budgeting expressions we have used in our presentations. Again, assumptions are baseline expectations about future conditions, whether public or shared in executive sessions due to sensitive nature of the items, estimates or a mix of guesstimations that are coupled with calculations, Actuals are final expenses or revenues that are booked. And our budget projections are a mix of assumptions coupled with estimates based on actual data that show what could happen. So understanding the assumptions, we use assumptions and budget to create a baseline expectation and potential future condition when we're building the budget. Our focus is the future state by providing sound foundational estimates to help you as the board control your planned spending.

As we have shared in previous updates, there is a sort of fluidity to the budget process as we monitor our environment, our past and current performances, future environment needs, and sometimes politics, can pivot quickly. We focus on future goals and expectations and help you to understand how much Thurston County can afford. Our overarching goal being to help you decide how you intend to spend and save. So here are some types of assumptions, that impact the budget. Some are the economic and revenue forecasts that we've discussed over time, personnel and labor costs, operational needs and considerations, capital infrastructure policy and legislative changes.

What can impact our assumptions? Delays in booked actuals and progress, collective bargaining, cost of living adjustments, delays in hiring, employee turnover, unfunded mandates, and deferments in decision making are some of the impacts to our assumptions. And now we will move along. So RCW eighty two fourteen four fifty authorizes Washington counties with voter approval to impose a sales and use tax up to three tenths of a percent. This is often referenced as a public safety sales tax.

Thurston County has three public safety sales tax funds. We have law, justice, and our newest, which we are calling HB twenty fifteen. In July 2023, by resolution sixteen two eighty nine, Thurston County Commissioners authorized proposition one, which was a ballot measure to the voters for a sales and use tax or a public safety sales tax to be placed on the November seventh general election. Voters approved the measure in accordance with resolution sixteen thousand two eighty nine at two tenths of 1% or $02 for every $10 spent. Department of Revenue Collection began in April 2024.

Prop one created additional funding, for the first two of our public safety sales tax funds, of which the county distributed 75% to law enforcement and, enforcement protection and 25% to prosecution, public defense, and election security infrastructure. The allocation to law increases the number of deputies in the sheriff's office, increases law enforcement services and associated infrastructure to include facilities to safely and effectively manage the safety of our citizens. The allocation to justice increases the prosecution and public defense services to address increasing caseloads. Furthermore, funding has been provided to increase infrastructure for election security. Alright.

In 2025, the public safety sales tax brought in a total of $9,700,000 for law and justice. 7,300,000 of that was allocated to the sheriff's office and 2,400,000 allocated to the prosecution, public defense, and election infrastructure. We talked about, the public safety sales tax fund balance when we're looking at law. In fiscal year 2024, the fund balance was approximately $3,800,000 Remember that DOR collection began in April, in 2025. Fund balance was 4,600,000 And for 2026 and 2027, we're estimating $5,700,000 and $5,300,000 respectively.

If we move on to the public safety sales tax for justice, our fiscal year twenty twenty four fund balance was approximately 1,700,000. '25 was 3,500,000, and we estimate that 2026 and 2027 will end at 3,400,000 and $2,500,000 So now we're gonna look at our public safety sales tax dollars in action. Since the establishment of the two public safety sales tax funds, the sheriff's office has increased deputies' vehicles and upgraded equipment and modernized the centralized building to improve their response times and community safety. And you can see all of the detail there below.

I think it would be safe to say, Commissioners, that I felt this public safety sales tax has been transformative for this county. And so we really appreciate the voters approval to activate that. There's a small snippet of some of the value that it's brought.

Just over the last two years. So it's significant. Yeah.

And it's also impressive to see our sheriff's department, our prosecutor's department, the auditor in elections, public defense, and all of our internal departments really capitalizing that on those dollars and bringing them to value in a relatively short period of time, what we can see. I'm thinking about the backlog that there was in ordering of county sheriff vehicles and the work that Fleet has done to completely change their process and get those vehicles out in a much timely manner. And then that facility to have a new sheriff's headquarters and move them from the dysfunctional situation they were in to this new situation is outstanding work in that short period of time.

Okay. Thank you. So again, in that same period of time, we're just going to live with the sheriff for a while. Thanks, Amy. Let's see.

Funding on the justice side has increased staffing in the prosecutor's office with additional deputy prosecuting attorneys, legal assistants, and paralegals. Public defense has added public defender, investigator, and paralegal positions. And election security has been enhanced with a newly renovated facility with live streaming ballot processing and an emergency power generator, which enhances safety, security, and transparency.

Yes. I think many of the commissioners have been out to tour that facility. It's hard in pictures to represent what that means for our elections and the work, not to mention the space increase, the added security, the functionality. And special kudos to the auditor and our capital improvement team that worked so hard at delivering that project. And to me, it was record time from the time they started to the time they delivered, knowing that elections are often on timelines. They work collaboratively to get there. Wonderful to see that progress.

Thank you. Okay. So our new public safety sales tax fund HB2015, the Washington State Legislature approved a new councilmanic public sale, safety sales tax and grant program on 04/22/2025 with the governor signing on May 19. The sales tax is primarily codified in RCW eighty two fourteen three forty five and authorizes one tenth of 1% for qualified cities and counties. Much like the public safety sales tax proposition one, which was approved by voters in November 2023, this revenue must be used for criminal justice purposes.

So the Thurston County Commissioners adopted resolution sixteen five sixty seven. Sixteen five sixty seven. Yes. In December 2025, authorizing the imposition of one tenth of 1% sales and use tax. Collection is dependent on eligibility requirements, and authorization is strictly tied to the state's law enforcement grant program, which is administered under CJTC under RCW 40 three-ten thousand one five forty.

And that states that jurisdictions must meet specific policy, training, and accountability standards to collect the revenue. We expect that our collections will begin in July based on our point in time assumptions and estimations, collection amounts are projected to be about $4,000,000 for 2025. We will report that back to you as we start seeing that revenue come in. And then ending with, fund balance forecasting. So remember that fund balance forecasts are meant to inform your decision making and are based on a snapshot or a point in time.

As a budget team, we do bring back new information, assumptions, estimates, actuals, projections, and possible fund balances based on considerations such as our historical data, adopted budgets, trends, revenue protections, our trusted indicators, and economic publications, as well as the state and federal mandates. And

that's

how we wanted to end this one so that we're estimating what your projected fund balances will look like. And I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any.

I think as we end, one of the comments I'll make is that the PAO's office and public defense office, they're still operationalizing those dollars. And so even though there may be a bit of fund balance, I know that both leaders are working through how to best utilize those dollars and positions to kind of affect the increase in capacity. There's also a change in dynamic, especially with public defense, as the board is well aware, with caseload standards and other things of that nature. So it's not untypical to see a bit of an increase in funding when the dollars first come through. Also, there was a need for us to make sure we had a couple of cycles under our belt to see how those funds were going to perform once we did the calculations prior to the tax being implemented.

And the same is going to be whole true for HB twenty fifteen. We have to make sure that it can perform, that we get the dollars and then spend the dollars versus spending the dollars before we actually get them. So there's a couple of things that are at play. And I know that the office and departments are working hand in hand with the budget office in the implementation of these new endeavors in light of everything else they're working on. So hats off to them for a good job in monitoring that.

I know in the prosecutor's context, we accelerated our timelines and used this tool to mitigate what otherwise would have been a cut to the prosecutor's office.

Yes. And he was very creative and approached it with a great spirit of partnership, working with the board to minimize impacts. We appreciate that.

Because ideally, we would have been growing the prosecutor's office with these funds and we weren't able to do that. We had to do it. We had to use it to not absorb cuts to that group.

Correct.

I have some questions on if anyone else is. So this is a good overview, I guess, for the public and for reminders for the board. For me, in terms of new information, I guess it's slide ten and eleven that is telling me something I didn't already know. So I just wanna and I wanna ask a couple of questions

about that. Sure.

So looking at the fund, yeah, those wanted to tell us what the estimated funds are gonna look like. As the county manager said, with the justice piece, we that was more reactive. Right? Like, that was the goal of this whole project was to bring Thurston County out of, like, the basement nationally and statewide in terms of law enforcement staffing. And then there was going to be obvious corollary demands on the system.

We couldn't include everything, but we included public defense and, prosecutor. So in a sense, that piece is reactive to what the law enforcement piece was gonna create through its greater capacity. So setting that aside for a minute and just looking at the law piece, This one was more detailed because the sheriff brought us in multiple iterations of a plan. Like, here's what I think that this we had to decide how much to ask voters to fund, how much would get us kind of to the middle versus staying at the bottom or being the best staffed in all of state of Washington. We were shooting for trying to just be somewhere in the middle and reasonable, not asking over asking the voters for more than was warranted.

So I guess my question is, if the sheriff maybe is a quick person to ask, but does this look do these projected revenues seem in line with the plan that he presented to us? I'm probably asking more than Summers. Maybe the county manager remembers. But I mean, do we feel like we're we're gonna be, if the sheriff were here, we he said, yeah, that's gonna help pay for the plan that that we laid out or or we're falling a little short because, you know, I know most revenue sources are not coming in quite as strong as as they were projected maybe in 2023 when we passed the tax.

Yeah. So what we see as a five year outlook right now, it looks pretty good. The fund balance is declining a little bit year over year. But we also know that some of the expenditures that we have captured currently for salaries and benefits after consulting with the finance staff, Heidi Thompson specifically, that there may be some costs here that are slightly overinflated because the staffing isn't quite where it needs to be or there's a little bit of delay in staffing. But I feel confident that over the next five years, that fund balance is healthy here.

And that's based on the in your five year forecast, for the expenditure side, you're looking at what the sheriff had planned to do.

Full budget authority.

And we have the dial to turn, obviously, if it's not as strong, we can just scale that back. But you're feeling like we're going to be able to deliver most of what was contemplated based on the projections you're seeing.

And I think you said it at the outset. Just want to underscore it, Chair, that the one consideration is when the public safety sales tax was being approved by the voters, no one foresaw this historic downturn in our state and national economy to where all counties are really experiencing a stepping back and a reduction in their budgets. Had we not had these funding sources approved, it would have been detrimental to the county organization and to our law enforcement group. So it is good to see that these funds are maintaining a healthy return based on what was projected. But we will circle up with the sheriff and his budget team so that maybe we can further answer that question in

detail. Yeah. Just to put an exclamation or a period on this discussion, it'd be great to hear from the sheriff. Like, he's looking at the dollars and what he thought he was going to be able to do. And he could give us a sense like, Okay, we're gonna hit 75% of that and Yeah. Or or or, you know, we're right on track or I've scaled this way back because, you know, it's it's not what we were projecting back when he was put I mean, he had to, you know, just based a plan based on just, you know, speculative numbers.

I think it would be good to bring them to the table

Or Heidi or whoever.

Bring him and his team to the table so they can specifically talk to that. We'll do that in the next week or so.

Anyone else? Commissioner Grant? Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. For this, I think it's great. I really love that you kinda laid out in these, first couple slides, you know, assumptions and, you know, what types of assumptions are used. I guess, for me, I wrote a couple questions down. I actually wrote them on the same two slides, these two slides that you that commissioner, answer mentioned. But on slide 10, for me, I guess, I'm just gonna say this out loud that my head goes, okay. Well, what how what what are the assumptions that are in this? You know? And I guess, you know, what are the assumptions?

And I you know, it would be really awesome if at some point we had, like, a footnote underneath that said, like, because staffing levels are you know, what which assumptions you guys use to come up with this?

It's built on the financial plan that we provided to you.

Right. Right. And then and then the

next clarification. Yeah. Are you wanting the finance the ten year financial plans have the assumptions on there? Are you making the suggestion that those assumptions also be added to

the Yeah. Slide borrowing the slide just because if a person from outside is looking at this, they're going, oh, Okay. Well, why is it so the next page so if you flip to the next one, I guess my I immediately wrote question mark on right above fiscal year 'twenty seven. And because my just looking at the slide, I go, well, how come $3,400,000 goes down to $2,500,000 question mark? That was for me, it's like, oh, wonder what assumptions got us to that bigger jump when the twelve thirty law balance is only, like, about $1,000,000, difference.

And then, the other ones, like so, like, twelve thirty law law and the twelve forty justice have a big difference between fiscal year twenty six and fiscal year twenty seven.

Sorry, that

didn't make any sense. Well, I think we're tracking. Yeah. But do you see what I said? Because I'm like, oh, well, we're only going to go down

like 200,000

in the law side of things. But on the justice side of things, we're dropping a million. Does that make sense if you flip between the two pages?

I guess what she's looking at is the step down in the projection. I'm It

depends on how much we plan on spending and how much we anticipate bringing in. And that's

what Yeah. Right. So the

assumptions on the bottom would say the reason that this is the big jump is because staffing levels are going be higher in '27 or something like that, which I'm guessing are on a different sheet of paper somewhere, but it doesn't tell the public on this year's paper. Okay. Right?

And as Summer mentioned, it is in the In the backup. In the backup financial plan.

Yeah, it's a capital expenditure.

Because of that, I'll pick up ballot processing.

Which we right.

That goes into justice too.

The first two years of the debt service was interest only payments. And then beginning this year, we start paying principal payments. So the law public safety sales tax fund has a greater portion of the sales tax being deposited there. And so they also built up a healthier fund balance before the spending really started in earnest in '25. The same is true for the justice side.

We're looking at a lower fund balance or a difference in the way the fund balance is waning in 'twenty seven because of the shift that the board approved and worked with the prosecutor's office on moving some of those positions from general fund to this fund. So there is a more, I can assume more accurately what the cost will be on that fund versus the sheriff's department. There's a budget appropriation for a certain number of positions and debt service that may not be realized because we've been budgeting at a higher number, and they need to fill those positions. So there's a bit of difference there. So capturing all those assumptions on the slide deck would make it incredibly busy.

What we're trying to do this year is create a more And it's fluid. To follow visual with all of the details that you've asked be provided to you.

I think the important question is there a should there is there a fund balance goal? Is there a fund balance floor that should be established? Like, do we have a red line at $1,000,000 and don't ever approach that? Is that something that

By policy, the Board expects at least a minimum two month fund balance. Personally, I would prefer, depending on the activity of the fund, up to six months Because there is a bit of volatility when you look at the way that funds can perform and what's driving the revenues, right? Is it sales tax? Is it property tax? What is driving the revenues that need to support the expenses?

What would the six month and three month figure be for these funds?

So on the loss side, if we look at it at three months, then in 2026, it would be 1,200,000

Summers putting that information together. Part of the reason for a bigger capacity fund balance is part of what she said. When we get paid is also a component. If these were steady sources coming in month after month, it would be different. But some of these only drop a few times a year. What we're seeing is if it gets too low, the gaps in between can cause us to go into some negative situations, which we really don't want to be in.

If you'll go to slide nine, I'd like to highlight that I did put a note in here and maybe just kind of passed over it. But when I look at the performance of these, the first two sales tax funds, right, the law and justice, over 2024, which wasn't a full year, so there's some consideration there that I have to look at, the sales tax growth was 2.5%. But when I look at all of the other sales tax that come in to general fund or some of the other sales tax driven funds, have detention sales tax, treatment sales tax, I can average out the growth at 1.68%, right? So again, if Department of Revenue started collecting in 'twenty four in April, we don't realize those revenues until June. There's always a two month delay.

So when I look at growth over the year, it could be a little bit skewed, but I'm monitoring that. We did talk about bringing forward changes that we see in sales tax performance to help you make good decisions. And that was the intent of including that information here.

So that number is 2.5% because we haven't been collecting data as long in the other ones. But is that what you're saying?

I'm not sure, right? Because we'll have to see what a full year of collection looks like. But when I look at what we collected in 'twenty four and what we ended up collecting in 'twenty five, keeping in mind that the years aren't closed yet, the growth in the sales tax was 2.5% for both of the funds.

What makes the general fund both of 4.86 and the sales tax and public safety 2.5? Is it like are there certain things that aren't taxed?

Yeah, it depends. Not the

same basket necessarily?

It depends on what the statutes say. So some sales tax, depending on who collects first, right? If the county imposes the tax first, we might get we get a 60% collection where the cities get 40%. If the cities collect first, they may get 85% and our share is 15%. And it could be within the city jurisdiction. It could be within a larger area.

But it's all a general sales tax on everything. Is that what you were asking? Like it's not that the detention sales tax is not only collected on detention related

No, it's all.

But I know that when they pass the laws, when the next law comes in, they're like, well, let's exempt diapers and whatever. And so now that you're not getting the exact same taxes on the exact same basket of products. I mean, I'm just trying to figure it out because the split shouldn't change the growth.

It's tax on all sales and use that can be taxed under the statute, but it's the distribution of the tax, right, the DOR is adhering to it.

So it's the period in which you collected data. Have you been collecting data for this one over the last ten years, it would reflect the other?

It could be different.

That's what I was hearing.

Yeah. I'm seeing '24.

Was, yeah, 2.5 over '24, knowing that we've only collected about six months What prior

would the six month or three month fund balance be for that justice one? So the law $12,400,000. We're not anywhere near that in any of these estimates

would be about $900,000

Is that 3 or six? That's three.

Other questions for Summer?

Thanks for putting this information again. There's some reason your team. Thank you. The ops and departments to have this presentation. Well done.

Don't go anywhere because next item is budget calendar update. I'm assuming that's the summer.

Did you want to speak first?

Sure. Our commitment is to inform the board when there are changes, and we needed a bit more time to put the amendment information in. So we extended it for a couple of weeks. And that was reflected on the calendar. Pretty simple change. They're continuing to track it through and work those items. January to answer any questions.

You want this calendar, like, accepted by a vote or just acknowledged or

Just not. Yeah. The board's given the authority of the county manager to make the changes but then to inform the board. So this is more just information. Okay. Yep. Thanks for

asking. You.

Any questions on calendar by the commissioners?

We will get that distributed today so the departments and officers know what the new calendar looks like. Thank you.

K. Commissioner items and, madam clerk, I'm gonna ask you, do we tomorrow, we have a work session. That agenda is not sitting in front of me, and we we don't have an afternoon session. Is that correct?

Correct.

And is do we have a, like, a, you know, external board update on tomorrow's calendar?

Yes. We do.

Okay. So if I have something there, can wait till tomorrow. Okay. Any commissioner items for today then? I thought I would maybe just, give you guys an update on the Timberland Regional Library situation.

I had meeting, most of the morning, Friday, with the chairs of each of the county commissions of the five counties, and then I had a meeting most of the afternoon with our trustee about, kind of follow-up from that. So just, you guys have read certain things in the paper, I'm sure, about the there's a pausing of they they they work through a plan to I think only eight positions are gonna actually be taken off with people actually in those positions. They've been able to find ways to mitigate at least temporarily the other layoffs that were previously announced. The meeting with the county commission chairs was very interesting. We've never had such a meeting.

And a lot of the meeting honestly was about our open seats in Mason and Thurston County. The other commissioners were very supportive of our position and really leaning on the Mason County representative to withdraw. The chair, Tarswell, said that he had been outvoted in that. It was the other two commissioners who had been there to actually make he wasn't there when that person was selected. And even though he was defending that person to a degree, he said, at this point, I would be willing to pull it.

His other two commissioners weren't. Commissioner Miller from Georgia Miller from Grays Harbor, I guess, has a relationship with Commissioner Netherland from Mason. So she was going to make a phone call. Commissioner Tarswell said, I will call mister Dewitt and see if I can ask him to withdraw his nomination. I got a voice mail later in the day.

He had that phone call. Apparently, the person is thinking about it. No commitments, but person was considering withdrawing, which would break the logjam. There was no sense of, you know, that at one point, I was like, look, if it required us to withdraw I mean, I don't really think it's warranted, but if it would save everyone some face and break the logjam, if it would, he had to withdraw ours. You know, I said we my board would probably think about doing that just because of the difficulty of the situation.

Because what was emphasized over and over is that they have problems that need solving, obviously. And some of those problems could be worked on by subcommittees of the trustees, which they really can't do with only five members. So Commissioner Miller kept emphasizing that this is hamstringing the board's ability to solve the problems that are out there. So let's really, really got it. So that was lot of that, that was all good. I think there was some hope that maybe we could break that logjam. The other thing was Commissioner Miyia's letter. I just used that as kind of an outline. There was talk about what kinds of everybody agreed in there's going to be so finance like there's different kinds of audits you could do, right? You could do a financial audit.

Well, the state auditors, I guess, jumped in there. There could be an operational audit. That was commissioner Mahia's letter. No one had really thought about that, but they were receptive to that, asking our board to support that. And then Commissioner Miller talked about something more like looking at discrimination and harassment of employees. I don't know that. I guess stuff she had heard that gave her concern. Those are just things we talked about. Everybody was supportive of the idea of a nonvoting maybe union representative on the board. Commissioner Miyah believes that it's a bylaw change is all that's needed.

So I'm going to report that back because nobody really knew legally what would have to be happen to add that person. But there was support for that. And trying to think what else. I'll see the layoffs had already been kind of there were four things in commissioner Mahia's letter, the pausing the oh, the director. Yeah. So that's where I want to go to next. So we spent a lot of time about the internal the hiring of the interim director. We all agreed that it should be or the group seemed to agree that it should be external candidate with somebody with experience in taking on a difficult organization. Nobody wanted just a placeholder. Like Commissioner Fornier had one point said, an interim with a purpose or something.

And that was definitely the group's feeling. So we all agreed to call because that day, call our trustees and communicate that we wanted to see these criteria kind of apply. What I learned then later in the afternoon from speaking about all this with our trustee who was receptive to all the things that we talked about was that originally, you know, I had heard from commissioner here that there were, like, two candidates already and they were about to, like, hire an interim director and everyone was like, oh my god, who If it's that fast, it must be someone internal and that's not gonna be necessarily what is the right thing to do so quickly. It turns out that they weren't internal. It was two people that one of the one or two of the board members knew from some other context and thought would be good.

And they got those two. And they were and and then our representative said, that's not really appropriate. We need to list it. It got listed for a week. 21 applicants came in. They only wanted to interview three, but our I think our trustee kind of stepped up and said, no, we need to interview more people than just two or three. So six people were being interviewed. That was happening Saturday. It may include those two that were brought in by a trustee. I don't know.

I don't know who the six are. But six applicants out of a pool of 21 that applied were being interviewed on Saturday. I impressed upon Mary Beth Harrington, ours, just let's slow down a little bit, try to get as much input and listen to the criteria that the county commissioner and chairs are providing and that our board provided. And so we'll see where that goes. But she was keep saying that they're learning a lot.

They're asking good questions. They're all on board for, you know, taking a look at some evaluations or or audits, whatever is required. So it sounded to me like everything was moving in positive directions on all the fronts that commissioner Mihiel and the rest of us have have talked about. So I was encouraged. It was a good meeting between the the county commissioners. We talked about maybe having periodic meetings like that because we've got our the same five counties are involved in our new economic development district. So maybe we should meet periodically to talk about regional collaboration because it was good. So answer any questions about that, but I felt like it was time well spent and hopefully the public is seeing movement on bringing things into line at TRL.

Good job.

And levy lid lift obviously is something everybody thinks is gonna be required. So how to get that across the finish line politically is obviously a a chore, but that seems to be something that every is on top of everyone's mind. Any questions on all that?

Okay. Thank you for the update.

Yep. Any other commissioner items this morning? Alright. We'll see everybody at 02:00. Return.