Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the meeting in order. We'll do the flag selection.

Tyson, you have a few words.

I want to lead us through 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.

If you'll remind us before we get going, please say your name and title when you first begin speaking. While the comment will be loud to the extent that it's on topic, Persons participating via Zoom are currently muted. If you have a comment, then please let Mark know via the chat function. Mark will then inform Chairman Trinkle who can take up the comment in a manner that doesn't disrupt the agenda. And if an executive session is needed, then we'll mute, turn off the video, and when we're done, we'll turn everything back on.

Catherine, you want to come up?

Yeah. So I'm Catherine Rohr with Community Corrections, and I'm here today

I can tell you don't have good news.

Oh, no, this actually is pretty good. So I'm here actually for a couple of things. I'm, I guess, requesting approval to give raises to my staff, a dollar raise per person. And just to like basically submit our annual employee reviews, essentially. So I guess good news is just that we were expected to take a financial hit of like 90,000 across the board because of a funding formula that was actually created by Johnson County. Since for whatever reason, the Department of Corrections hasn't actually had a funding formula, even though by statute they're supposed to have something. So they just created in a number and that was what we got for funding every single agency across the state since, I don't know, Like the early 2000s, I think it's been pretty much the same. So, um, DOC has now contracted with another agency and everybody sort of literally like everyone, um, across the U S uses them when it comes to these kinds of things. Um, they have, they're going through a really lengthy process. that reviews the actual state statute that determines like what things we're supposed to look at to see whether or not that needs to be updated at this point since it was created back in 1975 and nothing's really changed since then. And then they're going to be looking at kind of the structures of like how community corrections looks like in Kansas versus the entire country. And Kansas is what I've learned is completely unique. We are the only state that functions the way that we do. but we have a, what is it, a trifurcated system where you've got one entity, another entity, and another entity. Most of the community corrections programs that exist have some kind of funding that is grant funded, like all of them have some kind of funding that's grant funded, but we're the only agency that's just, we're separated. We have it like distinctly DOC, even though it's community supervision and we have to partner with all of the different counties, DOC determines what, what that supervision looks like because they fund it. So we have to follow basically everything that they say to comply with it. So I guess I was relieved because we were expecting to take a hit this year. And with the new possibility of a funding formula that looks at everything, I don't think it will be as dire for us in the future. It seemed crazy that such a county, they were going to lose a little over 2Million dollars. So, yeah, and that's insane. Like, so I knew it couldn't be that bad, but that study will go through. The rest of 27 and into 28, and so we probably won't be looking at an actual funding formula until 29. So, I feel really comfortable going ahead and giving everyone raises at this point, knowing what we do.

This is kind of a pass through, right? Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's not going to affect our budget as much.

Yeah, I mean, this is more of a Scott question, but yeah, generally, I don't want to get to the specifics of it, but generally, it works like a pass-through. Yeah.

So, part of that statute actually has language in it that expressly says that there should be some kind of counties should put something into it essentially. And so it doesn't necessarily specify whether that's like office space, but it's like in kind kind of thing. And so some agencies, they're really large, like Sedgwick County, for example, even though Community Corrections gets the bulk of their funding through a grant, actually Sedgwick County itself puts in like a million something. So they get funding from different sources to be able to run all of these different agencies that they have. They're one of only two that visit the work release program that they have. And then they also operate what's called GIAC basically, but it's like juvenile intake and assessment, but it's its own separate entity. And they actually have housing for youth that is temporary until they go back to court and it's determined what else happens to them. They stay there, and they have their own detention facility that they pay the beds for. So we have in kind, for example, Kingman, Barber, and Harper County all provide office space to us. And so we have, except for one person, Jennifer Etiker, everybody travels from here out to the other agencies, and then they just use the office space that's available.

So when we do cobras, they're part of that, correct? okay so that clears that up yeah more longevity I don't believe no no you have to pay that out of separate funds yeah that's what I thought that I thought who knows what my brain is does a really great job tracking all that yeah it's so they're all one of them oh I think they are so I've been really fortunate that the staff that we have um whatever I've asked

Because our population has changed and like some youth, we have more on probation here versus there. Our juveniles kind of dropped to nothing right after the passage of SB 367 back in 2016. Literally, we had almost nobody on supervision. And now it's beginning to really significantly pick up. And almost all of the kids that get arrested and get placed on probation are in Pratt County. So, for example, Meredith Olds. was doing all of our programming. And so her position is sort of split because now she's had to pick up the juvenile probation here. So we just have so many of them. And I know that they're anticipating the changes that we sort of expect with the passage of the newest house bill with that 90-day residential period that any youth can be essentially ordered by the court into the secretary of corrections to spend 90 days in some kind of residential facility. Um, even knowing that there's only 35 to 45 beds, um, we're, we know we're going to expect an influx of youth that come in and they'll have to be some kind of plan for that. And since we are, we represent essentially the secretary of corrections that'll fall on us to do, which is why I'm scrambling to like replace vehicles that, um, are, Since the weather's have gotten in like the weather's just insane now I need vehicles that sit up higher so we've always in the past just purchased just cars essentially but now I'm going to look at like actually all will drive small SUVs knowing that if we have to transport we're going to have to transport. So I wasn't sure if I needed like do I need to actually. Probably. So I'll have you just look at it so. Being such a small agency, for example, like Alan Hitz, who's been with the agency 28 years, I think now. I don't know why, but for some reason in Pratt County, we have the highest number of adults placed on community corrections and probation that actually live in places like Texas or California or just right over in Missouri. So he's the one that has the most experience with compact. So he opted to go ahead and pick up the, I guess the sort of the semi title of compact supervisor, which has been wonderful because there are some agencies in the state that have had issues and, um, making really large issues could eventually result in Kansas being fined tens of thousands or even like a hundred thousand dollars. So he's done a great job with that. I said, Meredith has kind of taken over, um, our probation, um, here in Pratt. We have, uh, Joni Olde, who's just been great, has in this county in particular, I guess, worked. There's been, I should say all counties, essentially. I don't know exactly what's happened recently. If it's a matter of some of our old timers that are retiring, but we're getting like a huge influx of just young, new officers that, you know, don't have any experience and they're literally brand new, haven't had a lot of training. And so there's just kind of an influx. So she's been working really great with them. In fact, if they have questions, they just call and get worked out.

There's no plates on here to sign.

No, it's just I guess I wanted everyone to have an opportunity to leave. We've had no problems.

There's no pay amount on here.

There is here. So everyone gets paid according to how long they've been here, whether or not they have a... like a bachelor's degree, that kind of determines it too. And then if they've taken on other responsibilities, they do get paid for that.

Thanks, Colleen. It's a dollar.

It's a dollar flat for everybody.

That's... A motion to give a dollar raise to, and I'm probably going to murder some names here. Jennifer Edgar, Edgar. Alan Hitz. He doesn't need everything. Katie Hessel. Meredith Olds, Breanne Tilly, and Joni Odle. Did I say that right?

Oldie.

Oldie? Really close. OK. I told you.

So I've been moved and seconded. We approved the raises for all the employees in community corrections. all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carried as stated is fine You need copies of the assessment? OK.

I just want to stay a minute and wait. Does that work? Yeah, that works for me. Do you need copies of the performance evaluation? um but she can she needs a matching i mean i'll just stick them there sure good so i just put them together basically yep yep and then i can put them alongside that's when you'd like it to start and with this next one that comes through yep yep looks to be the first one of july

Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Lisa Hopkin. I serve as the treasurer for the Pratt Area Humane Society. and appreciate the opportunity to come here and speak to you guys today and appreciate supporting the Humane Society with your monetary support of $1,250 a month. And the consistent funding has allowed us to operate effectively and serve the community. We respectfully ask for the continued monthly support of $1,250 a month. your partnership's essential to maintaining these services and ensuring we can continue serving crack County responsibility responsibly um I'm not sure what other questions you may have um yes pretty full yeah um we do have a new director Maria Rios I'm not sure if you're familiar with that she's doing an excellent job just in the short time that she's taken over those duties.

Do you have official requests that we can stick in our budget? Or just the same amount?

Same amount or we would be open to more too. But kind of what we were told is that probably there wouldn't be any increases

Probably right.

For a while, I was wondering if you could do some of the bills.

No, I don't have a formal request. I haven't actually done this before. I mean, I can write up one if you'd like, but okay.

We're working on budget now.

Yeah.

Why we look a little cross-eyed.

I know how that goes. Usually do that in October, but.

Nope. Good job.

Appreciate it. And we did have an inspection just recently, and they said that our shelter was probably one of the best ones that they've seen in this part of Kansas.

So that's good. Yeah.

We appreciated that.

Thank you. Right.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Finally, he's bringing somebody to supervise. I need to go into executive section for non-elected personnel.

How long? 15 minutes. 15 minutes.

They discussed multiple issues. We got to have a reason for the non-elected personnel to discuss multiple employees. okay i'll make the motion we go on an executive session for non-electric personnel discuss multiple problems i guess no employees multiple employees problem yet yeah i'll second the motion 15 minutes been moved and seconded we join the executive session for non-elected personnel for employees

For 15 minutes, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. We'll be in executive session. make a motion to have an executive session without action taken second it's been moved and seconded we come out of executive session with no action taken all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign we're back in open session

we need to get a hold of inner green i imagine again for this yep i think susan already called them since it was currently raining down she went ahead and called them and got them all the way so we could maybe get it taken care of today but it's on the air conditioning vents in the attorney county attorney's office at the fourth house yeah the kdi is currently oh okay it is their office but the kbi is currently okay utilizing it

I had to clean out my constant condensation drain on my neck. I wonder if that's not... Could be some of it.

His is the closest.

Yeah. I got something real quick on the lagoon. They sent us the final bid specs and signed it. And... I guess they're ready to go out and bid with it. You saw it.

Yeah, the specs they have. So we had issues with specs in the past, but this is the first book that I've gotten that is accounted for all the things that I send emails on. So good work Kirkham on that regard.

If you want, I can send that to you guys.

You know what? I actually have multiple issues, and I wouldn't mind talking about that specifically for any client. So it's just a 15-minute executive session for attorney and client to discuss the lagoon project, tax foreclosure, senior citizens, and the appraiser's office as well. Hit them all while we do.

Oh, we'll make that motion.

Hold a second. But maybe in a second, we go into 30 client executive session to discuss.

Fraser's office.

Senior citizens tax sale. And then there was a.

And the Lagoon project.

The Lagoon project. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. We'll be back in executive session.

Got to wait on Mark. On our IT guy.

Yeah. Thank you.

We went back into executive mode.

You're ready then?

Yeah. Yeah.

make a motion we come out of the session no action taken second we moved in second we come out of executive session with no action taken all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign we're back in open session wanna appoint or do the minutes or point the bipartisan team

Were you appointing them or were you just...

They're appointing a bipartisan team to oversee the destruction.

I'll make a motion to appoint Holly Howe and Deshauna Dudry for the Pratt County Clerk's Office shall destroy all ballots, envelopes, and associated records for the 2024 primary election at 22 months. uh Tashana Dudry Democrat and Holly Howe Republican are appointed by the county commission to supervise the destruction of the election materials this is in accordance with BSA 25-2708 I'll second that motion we've moved in second and we have point to Tashana Dudry and Holly Howe to oversee the destruction of the election materials from the 2024 primary

All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carried.

i'll make a motion that we sign the renewal contract for red rock for bugs and reminds here to pull it out i'll second that motion some of 275 dollars they've moved in second we signed the renewal contract with red rock

for termite inspection for the courthouse all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carried did we

I thought we did this.

Yep. So if you look, there are some changes to that. They added a map, what they wanted to do. I think that last quote did not have the sheriff's portion on there. And they came back and they added that in front of the sheriff's office out here. So we received this after we had done last week. So I wanted to see if you guys wanted to go ahead and do that, Sheriff. Yeah.

uh do we just make a motion for this new contract since we already approved it last week i think our part is a little lower and then the sheriff's a little higher i'll make a motion for uni lawnscapes to uh take care of the weeds around the courthouse the sheriff's office also put in some mulch

some other chemical for both the courthouse and the sheriff's office for two thousand two hundred and eighty five dollars second to motion so we moved in second and we approved muni lawn skates reducing mulch at the courthouse and the sheriff's office and do some pre-emergent herbicide All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign.

I think some of this is rock, too.

It is. They decided it would be better if it was rock. It's a green mulch and orange and rock.

Yes. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carried.

Mark, will you pull that chat back up? I'm going to respond to Mr. John Wayne. Can you get me to scroll up at all? Yep. So I don't know who John Wayne is. I assume it's not the cowboy. But the commission has the right to go into an executive session for certain statutory exceptions. We take open meetings seriously here, and we go into executive session pursuant to statute. That's all I have to say. If you have anything specific that you want to ask the commissioners about, you're welcome to do so. If not, I'd appreciate it if you quit polluting the chat with copy and paste comments.

On my commission, we approve the minutes from June 22nd, 2026. Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. We approve the minutes from June 22nd, All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carried.

Thank you. The only other thing I had was Lauren's email. I don't know if you guys want to do that before or after. Yeah, what? The last thing I have is Lauren's email. Oh, on the budget? Yep.

Let's take that up at the last, too.

Okay, yep.

That way... Did you send us this? Yes. Unless you missed it.

It was earlier today, but not terribly.

Yeah. I saw it before it came in. Can you make this bigger?

You know that? I don't know. It needs to be, doesn't it? I probably could. I think that's the information the city gave us that Tyson passed along. I just printed it out and hole punched it so we could stick it in our binders for consideration.

And that got to stop.

Do you guys just want to keep that in that appropriation line?

Yeah.

And are you guys only considering, just because I know Lauren is going to ask on that, are you guys just considering, like, is it this total amount down here or is it just that salary?

It's like a little over half, like 360.

So it's total personnel, which is third way down. It's half of that number.

Just that one line item.

Yeah.

It's only half.

Okay. It should be the same as last year. I'm not sure about that.

Well. So have this 4503 or whatever. Okay. Yeah.

I got a meeting next week with them on the radios.

Yeah, it's pretty tiny font.

I think we got 360 or something in there. I have 160.

160? You guys can come on in, Jeff.

David on there. I'll just introduce you from back here.

Front and center guys.

We're waiting on our outside counsel to jump on Zoom here, so I don't want to get too far down the line, but we can give introductions if you want. Great.

Perfect.

Happy to start. I'll start and just kind of introduce and kind of set the stage where we're at. As you all know, or maybe you all know, that we did reach an agreement with Accordion. So we did, I think you got that engagement that we agreed to on our side. I don't know that your legal counsel has had time to look at that agreement, but we did. During that time while we were also talking to Accordion, we also met Erica Beeler with Beeler Consulting out of Kansas City area and thought that we should at least look at a more local option that is heavily ingrained in the healthcare in Kansas. And so we met with them last week, Thursday, I believe, she jumped on a last minute Zoom call with us. And then we got a proposal from her, which I believe was shared as well. They came and presented to our board that we just had a board meeting at noon. It was voted on unanimously that this is the group that we would like to recommend to help us with the financial situation that the hospital's in at this point. A couple of reasons why we would choose them over one of the other companies is the boots on the ground engagement that they have and the amount of people that they have that resources that we could utilize so that's that's really part of it they do have a physician on their team um which you'll get to meet him and uh someone else that has cfo experience as well as uh leading physicians as well so that's one of the things that we've been kind of lacking on in our leadership so um anyhow bill is there anything you'd like to add our board

discuss this in detail, listen to their presentation. The thing that I like the most about what they can offer versus accordion is the boots on the ground. It's actual people who have worked in healthcare in the Midwest, have dealt with rural hospitals, have a lot of that experience. And I think one of the keys is they have a chief medical officer, a person who's a doctor, to deal with doctors. And that's always a challenge. And in our hospital, we have challenges in dealing with our doctors. And I think that's a real plus for what they would bring, what we're trying to do. And they could start working on it essentially tomorrow, as soon as we had information to them, and be here in person probably next week. So, but the best thing is to let them describe to you what they would do.

Yeah.

Happy to. You want to? Getting on. You need to wait still?

Yeah. Yeah. David and Frankie's on. Is Mark getting on? Do you guys know? No, he's not. He's traveling back.

He's driving. Frankie's on. You can unmute David as well.

Yeah. David and Frankie.

So, yeah. You guys can go ahead and do introductions and we'll jump right in.

Yeah. Happy to. Erica Buehler, CEO of Buehler Consulting, worked, did some hospital turnaround work, ran multiple physician groups, and then opened our company two years ago really to say, how do we go make an impact and really do why we got into healthcare and help rural hospitals stay open. I live in Kansas. My brother is a critical access hospital CEO. I don't know if you know Austin Gillard in Clay County, and our family is all from rural America. Really, we take our knowledge, and now our goal is how to help impact, transform, and turn around rural struggling hospitals. So that's what we do. And we also help manage and run independent physician groups. So I would love to tell you more about these gentlemen, but luckily enough, they're here today to talk to you guys. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves, and then we have a proposal and would love to earn your business.

So Jim Brown, I retired from HCA Healthcare after 28 years, a couple years ago. Um, never thought of myself as a consultant, to be honest with you. Uh, but Erica called me and asked me if she, if I would help her with some projects, um, soon after I retired and I enjoy doing the work and everything. But, um, so I help Erica on certain projects whenever I have the opportunity. Um, I spent, uh, 28 years with HCA. I, um, and before that was with some other companies, but basically, uh, chief financial officer as the, One time I had a thousand hospital beds that reported to me as a CFO, as a regional CFO. And I spent the last two years of my career running all the physician practices for HCA in Kansas City. So I had 110 practices as a regional president, had about 400 positions that worked for us and about 1100 employees. And we ran everything position related for HCA for Kansas City is my group did. So a lot of experience with physicians, a lot of experience physician agreements. And then obviously I spent over 20 years doing hospital management. So that's kind of my background.

Good afternoon. My name is Darrell Nelson. Nice to be here. I'm a board certified family doc by training. Spent my first 25 years out of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, practicing in a suburb of Kansas City. Became interested in quality and patient safety during that time. Our health system, our small hospital became distressed. We went through an acquisition, a couple of acquisitions and ultimately got acquired by HCA. So I spent 38 years, I guess, with our health system. The last 15 or so was on the administrative side. I had a regional role similar to Jim over the clinical services of about 14 hospitals. So anything regulatory quality or patient safety did that in collaboration with our nursing leadership. um spent a fair amount of time on the road and asked to finish up my career back in a facility did my last eight years at a 300 bed hospital on the east side of kansas city as a chief medical officer there as well similar situation retired about a year ago erica reached out just to ask if opportunities would arise where there would be potential input or help from a physician with my background and skill set and told her I would be happy to assist. So I help her part-time in addition to a lot of other community work that I do as Jim does in our retirement.

Yeah. So my goal is bring the experts. I think when we talk about hospital transformation and reorganization and really looking at a facility and saying, how do we get this to where it needs to be? What does that look like? I think you lean on the experts, right? You lean on the people that have done the work, that have been there, that have been in those hard situations. And then my goal is the leaders to assemble the team and deploy them quickly. Because we know every minute really matters in these rural facilities. You don't have time. And you need to be on the ground and you need to be working alongside the team to make the hard decisions and get them done. So I always say we're the doers. So we're the boots, we're not the loafers. We're not here to give you a 100-page deck and give you recommendations like the big firms. We're here to fix the problem. And if we can't fix the problem, we don't want to be here. So I think that's really what sets us apart. That and we use physicians. We have physicians that have led organizations that have been in the room and had the hard conversations. And Dr. Nelson also is a pilot, so he can fly here in an hour and 30 minutes.

The weather cooperates.

Yeah.

It wasn't a good day today, so we spent a little time in the car so that we could make it. But yeah.

Yeah. And Kansas matters to us. Rural health care matters. Keeping your hospital open and in your community one way or the other matters. So that's why we're here today. And I have a proposal I'd love to share with you guys, if you don't mind. Is that okay? Okay. really passionate about what I do. So, but I'm also, uh, we have been on the side where we've worked with consultants. Um, and I spent most of my life like running from them because one, they never sat in a seat. So I would have these people come in and give me presentations when they actually never did the job, which is extremely frustrating. Um, and so we kind of structured this statement of work in two different scenarios. Um, one is we would come in and do an analysis, which we would be able to start tomorrow. Um, and we would say, okay, based on what we're seeing in the data, here's the decisions that need to be made. And then we would fly into town next week and we would actually sit down with your team and make those decisions and have those conversations. Um, so we have a little bit of review, but our review and our actions are happening in parallel. It's not like, Hey, we're going to do a 12 month review, give you your report and then make the changes. And here you have immediate financial stabilization. That's objective one. You're losing a million a month. Our goal is to eliminate that as much as we possibly can. Operational performance, a lot of this comes down to operations. That's the immediate need that needs to happen to stabilize. Medical staff, obviously there's a lot of disruption in the medical staff. That's why Dr. Nelson is here today. Really looking at that, what do we need to do? Validate the concerns, look at the data, look at the numbers, and then strategic transformation. We have Bob Couple. I don't know, Bob is on the line. Bob was a CEO of a hospital for Ascension in Manhattan. He's actually in Great Bend right now, but he would be on site a couple of days a week along with this team. to really work through all of that. So that first phase we're saying is 16 weeks to do that really heavy lifting. And then after that, we would like to probably place someone onsite full time. That would help keep the stabilization and keep executing any additional recommendations that we have. But right now it's deploying the multi-specialty team and really strong on execution. So that's kind of when you look at it, you'll see phase one and phase two. In phase one, I budgeted at 250 hours of work after talking to the team. And then I also have Austin, who is going to be ad hoc because he was at Pratt and he cares about Pratt and he wants to help. So Austin Gillard, he was here, worked with Susan Page.

He was here as an intern preparing for a career in healthcare management.

The United States top 100 hospital CEOs for critical access facilities. So he knows how to help and what to do. He was giving me lots of ideas when I was driving down here.

And David, just so you're aware, the handout doesn't differ from the previous email exchange.

Okay, perfect. Good. Yeah, that's how it works. It's pretty

not trying to make a money money on travel we market up five percent just for expenses but i mean everything hopefully you guys find price wise is reasonable i've got a question but it's not for you guys oh okay we asked for this six excuse me six months ago how come we're just now getting it you're talking about this proposal any proposal or for help for help we have we asked you guys to supply us with a company or something for you to look into to try to help you guys out in january and this is basically the first time you talked to us about a proposal you gave us recommendations through your attorney for three companies right we talked to two of them we spent a lot of time talking to them

We had a serious disagreement with them on indemnification.

Why did it take that long? Why did we have to give you three when we asked you for what you could do to help us out to make a decision or what we could do back in January? And we had to basically force you guys to do something.

We came to you in a meeting. I was with Tammy and Eisenhower said, we don't know what we can do for you. He said, you need to hire an attorney and we will hire an attorney and we will get together and we will decide what we're going to do. That's what happened in that kind of commissioning meeting. I know. Okay. And so we've been working on that.

But we had to recommend, you guys didn't recommend bringing forth a plan to help us out back in November. You just came in, you wanted seven and a half million dollars of cash, a $15 million loan.

Co-sign or sales tax or bankruptcy. And when you recommend it to us, let's go see what the experts will advise. We agreed with you. We didn't know what we could do.

But it took forever to pick anything out.

Mark, is it possible to unmute both David and Frankie? Yeah, but he muted himself.

I didn't mean to mute myself. Can you guys?

I did be to be myself. Sorry, guys. I just didn't want to be having background noise over from you guys.

Right. I think that and I understand that the the frustrations that have occurred over time and from November and January. But I kind of had thought since February and March that some progress had been made in that the PRMC board did select of the three restructuring groups. They made a selection and I think the county said, good, I'm glad you guys made the selection. And then we Started to negotiate the contract and kind of got bogged down in these as Bill said, these indemnity provisions. I don't think that there's been a slow walk or delay when it became clear that that the 1st choice didn't look like an agreement was going to come in play. They went to plan B. They have Plan B, the second choice, they have them ready for an agreement that's now to the county. But in the course of this, the Beeler Consulting Group had come up for potential and it was vetted now by the PRMC Board and it's being provided. The vetting with Beeler, if you don't mind, I'll just kind of go real quick on how they came to play, is they're a relatively new company in that they have been around for two years. And I think what the Beeler Group has done is really smart in that they're taking advantage of people that have recently retired, taking advantage of their skills and opportunities and being able to kind of repurpose that for rural healthcare. Also, I think they work with executives sometimes that maybe can moonlight, have the capacity to do that, or executives that maybe are in between full-time positions. It's very nice. The way that I came to know them isn't because we're in Kansas City together. I actually was working with another rural hospital that had, wait for it, challenged with their revenue cycle, and they were in litigation with their billing company. and i needed an expert witness and i was talking to an expert that we use for valuations on a separate issue and said can you guys be my expert i need for this revenue cycle dispute we've got an arbitration and they said have you heard of the beeler group they're in your backyard and that's when i had reached out to erica so that's when they first got on my radar um When I found out that Jim Brown was with them, Jim is sitting right in front of you, Rick. And what I've noticed about these guys is that they're very, very humble. The reason I know Jim Brown is I negotiate a lot of contracts in Kansas City with healthcare providers, a lot of physicians. As he said, he was in charge of 400 physician group in Kansas City. That's the HCA. All of their docs are employed. So I probably have negotiated 20, 25 contracts with those physicians that ultimately went in front of Jim. So when we're talking about what's market value, what is standard terms and employment agreements, he kind of knows that. The other thing is I have dealt with hospitals that have been financially distressed, one of which we looked at for potential leasing opportunities or sale opportunities or potential management or even, like I said, sale opportunities. The person at HCA that I worked with was Jim. And so when we're talking about what it is that you look for, for a hospital that's in distress, not only to get it right operational, but to get it right, you know, if you have to sell it, he's the guy. And as I understand part of what the transformation group can do is that's part of the role that they're kind of looking at it at two prongs. These guys can do it. Nobody wants to sell the hospital in Pratt, but These are the guys that understand those issues. So hopefully that's helpful.

I think this group is great. My question was not with you guys. Nothing whatsoever.

We just found out about it.

So on your phase one, is there a line here where phase one stops or is it all of it?

No, phase one is all of this. So when I talk about phase two, it's optional, right? So this is where phase two. So that first phase, we're saying 16 weeks, 250 hours. And this is all our deliverables and what we'll be doing. Obviously, we'll be talking to you guys through that and they will be meeting with you personally. And then optional two is we'd like to stay on. We always say we don't want to be the group that just is there for a little bit. And then we give it back. So one of our other hospitals, similar situation, we are still there today. So their CFO has to meet with us once a month and go over their financials. Cause I think that's where people go wrong.

You get called back then and it's just, you get called back the next year and it's like, no, let's just stay.

They're on our, I mean, we're consultants now, but that's not our reality. We're not really, that wasn't our intent. We're operators. And so we, that's, that's just the way we've always run our hospitals is basically we're Manage them every day, right?

Like I said, I have no questions, problems with you guys.

I'm happy to answer any questions, too, because I know this is all kind of new to you, so we're happy to answer any questions and make sure you're comfortable with the way we operate.

Yeah, I've got questions, but I think David probably will answer them better or ask them better than I can.

Hopefully, I won't answer them. Hopefully, I'll just ask them.

All right. I don't usually get a lot of Q&A from attorneys, so hopefully I don't turn too red.

You've actually answered quite a number of the questions that I would have asked. So this may sound slightly repetitive, and I apologize if it does. But let me just start with kind of the experience. I went through each of your resumes. Does your group Or individuals within your group. By the way, I was not here to catch all the names. I caught Jim and Daryl, I think. And then are you Nan?

I'm Erica.

Erica. Okay. All right. I didn't catch who that was, so I apologize. Is there any experience with the group or any of you individually with distressed? Well, obviously with some distressed situation, but turnaround management?

Yeah, I can go first. I think we all have experience in it. So I was at St. Joseph Medical Center. You'll see it on my resume. When I was there, we were losing about $4 million a month. When I left that facility, we were at a 20% positive EBITDA. That was a five-year turnaround project, but it was also a 300-bed facility. And we did, unfortunately, have to close a few service lines. We had to do a couple layoffs, but we got it to profitability, and it's doing well today. So I I don't know, Jim, if you want to give some examples.

I think we all have. My first leadership job really was I worked for a hospital management company. And what I found out when I took the job, I didn't know this, was that only people in distress call hospital management companies. If things are going well, they don't call a hospital management company. And so my first hospital was in Oklahoma City and it was in bankruptcy. And we were basically, our job was to get it right and then sell it for the banks. Because it was, you know, back in the Oklahoma City days, whenever the oil had hit bottom and everything. And so the banks had taken back over the three hospitals, actually. So I was in Oklahoma City, spent some time in El Paso doing the same thing for one of the hospitals down there. And so, yeah, dealt with all that. And then working for, you know, even though we work for big hospitals, Daryl and I, the reality is a big for-profit hospital is always working to be more efficient. They're always looking for more savings. They're always looking for more opportunity to make money and to provide better care and to add services. So that was just kind of our model every month, every year was to get better and bigger and stronger.

Sorry, I was just going to ask you, Jim, when did you say that was? That was a while back.

That was, if you look at my resume, it was Doctors General Hospital back in the 90s.

Okay. And so when you were turning that, were you doing that from inside or were you placed there by the bank?

was placed there by i was placed there by the management company who the bank hired yes and so i was on site in uh oklahoma city and then we had two other hospitals one in el paso and one in lubbock i think the other one was i never went to lubbock but i whenever we reopened the hospital in el paso i spent time in el paso getting their revenue cycle going and making sure just because it had been a closed hospital and they were reopening it and trying to get it sold okay so So yeah, I spent time down there, but that was a while back.

Okay. Thanks, Jim. And I apologize, Darrell, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Oh, no, not a problem. Just a couple of quick examples. First hospital, small suburban hospital, about 75 beds, outskirts of Kansas City, young family physician. part of a group, got anointed to kind of be the spokesperson of the group, hospital became distressed, consultants came in. I remember we had a few choice words back in the day for consultants, some reference about coming from a long ways away, got paid too much and then left. So that's why Jim and I are a little sensitive to the consultant perspective. But what I learned was, is that clinicians and non-clinicians alike really can sit at the table and have constructive conversations. And a lot of those challenges I was so negative toward when I was a young doc thinking they were going to take my autonomy from myself and the care of my patients away from me. wasn't really accurate. And so that was my first learning. And then over the time, just had a growing interest in quality and safety. The hospital ended up, in my case, acquired ultimately by a local nonprofit health system and then HCA. And then I transitioned about 10 or 15 years ago and spent time as a regional and a hospital-based chief medical officer, helping physicians and medical staffs kind of manage the difficult times that are happening obviously in rural America, but frankly everywhere. I mean, hospitals and their medical staffs foresee a lot of challenges. So hopefully I bring a skill set that can just help kind of have the doctor conversation, if you will, although I don't like to think of us as doctors and non-doctors, but the reality is some medical staffs that's pretty deeply ingrained. So once in a while I can help with that credibility to kind of bring them along and kind of that the options on the table, because sometimes we get a little narrow sided and we play the, you know, I'm advocating for my patient card. You may hear occasionally from some of us. And the reality is, is that you can still do that and be constructive in the dialogue as we work through difficult times.

Okay, great. Thanks, Terrell, for that. Do any of you have or does Beeler have any experience dealing with even more distressed situations, things that might have ended up in receivership or bankruptcy? Any experience in those areas?

We've experienced our last hospital engagement that we're still on today was very close. They had 12 days of cash on hand when we got there. Before we left, we got them to 42 days of cash on hand, and that was within eight weeks. So I would say that was the one that was on brings a bankruptcy, but our goal is to not get you there. But if you need to get there, that's a decision we can help you guys with and help you through and ideally get out of that situation.

And David, at the PRMC meeting, Bob Koppel spoke, and he's the CEO at Manhattan. And he had kind of a similar journey as Jim did as far as working with distressed hospitals. And the impression I got is it was pretty bad shape, a couple of the ones that he walked into.

Yeah. And we do have three revenue cycle consultants. We have two CFO consultants. So we've got a deep bench on the finance side. Jim and I were kind of talking about that too, is bringing in additional, a couple other folks on the revenue cycle side or the analysis portion of it.

And our impression is you want to make sure that any money you spend is going to be well spent and that the hospital is viable. That's my impression, right? So I think that's our first job. is to come in look at this figure out a plan and then let you know whether we think that's the hospital is viable or not viable because it has been losing money for quite a while just from the anecdotal information that we received at the board meeting it's you know it's it's not going to be an easy um an easy task but we can look at it let you know whether we think that these changes were made here's what the here's what the the cash flow would look like and here's you know maybe opportunity down the road six months or a year So the goal obviously is to get it break even or at least as much cash as possible and move forward from there.

No question. But in terms of having had experience in that area, it doesn't sound like you've had that type of experience. That's not a knock. I'm just trying to figure out if that's something that you guys have offered services in or had experience with previously.

Well, I'm not proud of it, but I've closed two hospitals in my career, and I've opened one brand new one.

That was my next question is, have you had to close?

I was lucky enough that the two hospitals I closed were in big cities, and I was able to merge them with other hospitals. But I was the guy who walked out the door, turned the lights off, and sold all the equipment. And so I hate to say it, but yeah.

I was party to a couple of rural health uh, hospital closures in, uh, in Louisiana many years ago and my division based role, um, and really primarily responsible. We had a large financial team, obviously a lot of resources in our company, um, but did help with some of the transitions of clinical care, uh, and help the clinicians kind of retrench and all, but I wouldn't say not a lot of recent, uh, experience with bankruptcy or receivership for me now. Our goal is not to ever get. Yeah.

Yeah, no, and I'm sure I'm making the folks here for the county kind of uncomfortable because that's obviously not their goal, but I just want to kind of get a... If this were to go, I'm not saying it is going to go, but if this were to have to go into one of those zones, into an insolvency type proceeding or receivership or bankruptcy or... if this were needing to be closed? You know, kind of worst-case scenarios. Is that something that Beeler would be comfortable staying on and leading the hospital through if that had to happen?

I mean, I think, yes, we'd be comfortable doing it. I mean, that's the last thing I want to do. As I said, I've done it twice. It's not a good experience. It never works out well for anybody, especially the staff. And so I think, yes, we can do it, but it's the last choice on Hail Mary for sure.

It's the last choice of everybody at that table there, right? My client.

What we're trying to figure out is where they're at. Can they survive? Yeah. You know, they're going to have to meet some pretty heavy duty benchmarks before we even think about giving money, which it sounds like that may even be six months to 12 months out still.

Might be, although we heard some revenue numbers that gave us a little help, honestly, earlier.

Do you want to kind of say your thoughts?

Yeah, we've not seen any formal numbers. Just understand that. But the stuff we were talking about at the board meeting, just in terms of a question and answer, you know, is what I heard was that there's a large account receivable outstanding, that they're generating $4 million in cash a month, but they're losing $1.2 a month. so there's some leeway there to me i mean when you you know the position practices are losing four million dollars at five million dollars a year so that's a big chunk right there um so that's to me it's it's definitely an expense play if you look at it if you're if you're collecting four million dollars in cash you know it's not about the revenue it's about the expenses now that means there may be tough decisions that be made about services that are offered and staffing and everything else, just being honest with you. That's the tough decision that we made. And from the situation I'm hearing, it needs to be made really quickly. And that's why I think we're thinking that we do as analysis as fast as possible. We come back in a week or two and we sit down in a room with the board, yourselves, Tammy and her staff and say, look, here's what you gotta do tomorrow. close this program or what? But once again, this is very premature because we've not seen any numbers, but that would be the model or the way I would look at doing it to try to get that $1.2 million loss a month down, because nobody wants to put more money out there if you're going to lose $1.2 million a month, right?

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. We're going to have to hit some art before that. Exactly.

And if we can't, I would tell you, you can't.

My main concern has always been that we have health care in this community, whether they're going out of business. I'm saying, you know, I'm just saying whether they're going out, they need to sell. We've got to have health care.

And it's a great idea, but

So that's where the transformation comes in. And I think that's what David is kind of getting to.

So let's kind of segue then. Thanks for that, Rick. And let's just kind of segue into the interface and how this would work. It sounded like from what Erica was talking about when I joined, this would be a boots on the ground, in-person sort of engagement. Is that accurate?

Yeah, that's correct. Who would like that?

needs to happen who would be there initially like during the first four to six weeks say it would be these two gentlemen and bob couple and i'm not saying we would be there full time not full time i don't think we need to be there full time yeah but i think but i think we could be there once a week or whatever's needed for a day you wouldn't be just bob on i don't want to speak for bob but he should be yeah okay bob great ben today he's a great band so he's already in the local market, in the area, so he could come over a couple of days a week. So we would coordinate that, but I would see Daryl and I maybe coming in for a day or two, getting decisions made, talking to medical staff, working with the team, moving some things along and making sure that those, you know, things are being done as quickly as possible. And then, you know, and then working from home where we can't stay the rest of the time, but we can always do Zoom calls. We can always do all that type of stuff. being on the ground at least you know a day a week or something and trying to make sure that things are moving as we want to um because that's the first thing is get that loss down because none of us want to put any more money into anything if you're gonna lose a million dollars a month

so you're saying i just just for my clarity and really um for for the commissioner's clarity um when you say one day one to two days a week is that for each of you one per person or is that one person and then rotate the next week it's a different person or i'm just trying to get a sense logistically of how you anticipate the engagement going initially i guess i would just say that we're going to do what we need to do

I mean, I'm retired, Darrell's retired. I do have some other things planned as Darrell does, I'm sure. So I can't guarantee you what day I'll be here next week. Until I look, but we would be here. We've also got another CFO who works with us who has as much experience as I do. And he's great. And he could be here and keep the things running. We've worked on projects together. And he's another good guy that can do that. And then Erica has support of analysts and people who can do a lot of background work. So they're doing that for us while we're, you know, doing boots on the ground if needed. But the reality is, if we're getting the results, hopefully, that's the main thing, how we get them.

And I do appreciate that. And maybe I'm being a little bit obtuse and not following you. But just in terms of man hours on the ground, on site, like first four weeks, how many hours a week would there be somebody on the ground at the hospital, give or take?

I would say there's going to be someone there at least two days a week. At least two days a week. If you guys want more information, If you, I mean, we can make them, we can have our team be there every day if you need us to. The one person that's available full time right now is Nan. So she can be onsite every single day if you'd like. My thought is to keep your costs down. I was trying to think through how do we do it efficiently, effectively and cost efficient. But if you want someone boots on the ground full time there every single day, we could make that happen.

And I'll let the commissioners comment on that. That's not really my role, but just want to make sure everybody's going in heads up to understand what that looks like. And then, so you've already talked about who the people would be. So it sounds like Bob, Jim, Daryl, and Nan as well.

Yeah, Nan. So Nan's background is more on the nursing side. She worked for HCA, same organization as these gentlemen, and she's been working with us hand in hand. Yeah.

All right. Very good. And then this part, it did sound like you answered already, but my initial coming in question was going to be, are you going to be focused more on recommendations or implementations? And it sounded to me like you're going to be focused more on implementations. Is that a fair statement?

Absolutely. I think that's the only way to turn an organization around.

I would agree a hundred percent with that, but we have to have buy-in from, for the things we're going to implement because the board and everyone has to be in agreement with it because it won't be easy. I'm not going to say it's going to be easy. Some of it may be very painful. The community may not like some of it because it would be changes. Staff may not like some of it. Physicians may not like some of it. They definitely won't like some of it. If you're losing a million dollars a month, they definitely won't like some of it. So I think that's where we would come in and whoever wants to be in the room to be in the room and say, this is what we think should happen today. This is what we should have next week. And let's make a decision as a group if we're going to do it. It's the way I would do it personally and make sure everybody's on board and hold hands, say kumbaya.

When you leave there, you got to go do it. And that's what's really, really hard.

We do it right then and you deal with it after we've left, but it's going to get done one way or the other if everybody agrees to it. If they don't agree to it, well, I think that's where somebody... we can deal with that. Yeah. Somebody has to deal with that. Somebody has to. Yeah, exactly. Whether that's the county, the board, bill himself.

I don't know, but I do want to hit on one thing really quick, the transparency issue and having everybody in the same room, I think is really important. It's not necessarily set forth in the agreement like that, but I think we'll have discussions after this discussion with our legal. And I think we're going to want it in writing set forth like that. Um, So more to come on that. Sure.

Well, that's a good segue to my last line of questioning. Thanks, Ty. And then I can shut up. But my last line of question was really about reporting. You talked a little bit about this, Eric, I think. I heard you talk a bit about this. The two primary goals, one is the implementation and the turnaround. That's obviously goal number one. And then for the commissioners, the other giant goal is transparency, and that means reporting. You talked a little bit about reporting. How often do you all foresee that reporting happening, especially at the front end, and in what format? And maybe you could give us some sense of what that would look like.

We would do, we typically with all of our clients do weekly reporting if we're doing at least 20 hours a week of work. So I would say weekly cadence, and that will come from your lead consultant. So in this case, the person that would be Bob, he's a former hospital CEO. So he would be sending you a weekly report of where they're at. He's organizing the team, making sure they're executing, and we're all staying on the same page. It's a coordinated effort.

Both boards, the hospital board and the county commission board. So we'll work on that.

That's really how you guys all did it.

And Tyson, we also understood that there is a county hospital board as well. Okay.

so so we were just trying to make sure we knew who all of the stakeholders we would be expecting oversees the actual facility structure right this is this is a lawyer's dream guys all the boards we can manage it's just right so what we have a standard format i can send you a template of it but basically it says here's what we executed and did this week here's our recommendations here's what we're focusing on next week

Okay, so it'd be in writing. That was my next question.

Oh, yeah, yeah. It's typically an email in writing on a Word document, but we could make it a PDF.

And kind of consistent with what the position's been for the last, I don't know, three or four months that we've been working on this, is we want transparency with the county and have everybody on the same page. Our know position has always been if they're going to talk about prmc business we want to have prmc personnel that can also attend so as long as is is that's fine we give you as much access to these guys as y'all want yeah yeah we don't have any problem with that never have yeah great that those are all the questions i have if if the commissioners or ty you have anything else you you want me to talk about feel free otherwise i'll i'll uh be quiet

I mean, more than anything, we need to talk amongst ourselves. Yeah. Certainly appreciate you guys coming. Yeah, thanks for having us.

You can see it on paper, but it's much better hearing it from you in person.

Well, yeah, and like I said, we're here for the right reasons. We want to be here. This is very mission-driven for us.

So you're thinking 16 weeks total just for phase one?

Yeah.

Okay.

Probably in October.

We could try to do it as fast as we can, but we also don't want to go long.

I think we all appreciate it.

I want you to do it thorough.

Yes, that's what I would like. Speed doesn't always necessarily win.

Speed isn't necessarily, I mean, it is, but it's...

It's like an emergency operation. Get the operation right, but get it done.

Yeah, I agree. So you talked about a day or two or a couple days a week.

I'm being theoretical, obviously. If you get in there and you find out there's things that we need to actually jump on immediately and it takes more than that, would you be in a position to you know, come in with a little more force maybe initially and address some issues short term and then go from there.

Yeah, Nan would be available to come in and be on site full time. So I didn't include that initially in this, but if you guys decide you want that, just let me know and I can make adjustments.

And one of the things too I wanted to bring up was is we had a conversation with, I had a conversation with Erica early last week. Last Thursday, Tammy, Bill, and I had a phone call, and I said, hey, I think, and Josh Nicolay, and I said, I think, and Mark Maloney, and I said, hey, I said, I think that Erica may be available to jump on a call, and it gave her about five minutes of lead time, and she joined the call, and that was, I think that was last Thursday. That's the first time the Beeler group was in front of either Tammy or Bill. And in a short amount of time, they made a very good impression. And then they said, we'll be there in person on Monday at the PRMC board meeting. And then Tyson said, we'd like to visit with them as well. And it worked out great. Dr. Nelson's a pilot, so they were four hours in the car. Yeah, so it was too hot, but they went to plan B and jumped in the car and got here. I think that speaks volumes of how quickly they can mobilize because they care.

We certainly do. And the irony, just full disclosure, is having worked in a really big health system for a long time, all of us decided if we ever did anything else, it was going to be really different than that. And so the nimbleness that Erica's created with this organization, you've already heard her call to the mission, I think has been what's been a desire of us to really try to help out. So that's... That would be our only intent here. And if it doesn't work or this isn't what you all need, well, we certainly understand that too. But it sounds like there's some mutual agreement on some stuff that needs to happen fairly timely.

We just need a really, we need some restaurant recommendation.

Are you buying us dinner since I have to drive here and I have to drive back?

Yes.

Any other questions for us? Anything we can do?

I just want to ask Bill and Tammy, out of Beeler and Gordian, you're leaning towards these guys, what you're saying.

Well, after we met with them today, we had them leave the room and our board voted unanimously to recommend them as our preference.

I just want to make that clear.

Just so I'm aware of what's been happening over the last couple of weeks on your communications with accordion, what have, what has that been like other than, I obviously know there's an agreement.

Yeah. Um, I've been in contact with them and it's been, it's been a little challenging because they're, um, they haven't been available as much for calls the person that they're going to put on, um, as our chief transformation officer, She does have some healthcare experience, but it's not her primary background. And she's on vacation. She's been on vacation for the last couple of weeks. I like them. I think they'll do good work. I don't think they can bring to the table everything that Beeler can bring, especially in the relationship with physicians that I'm hoping to have during this time.

David, do you have anything else?

No, I don't. Thank you.

especially on a windy day is she like my wife the passenger princess over there became the navigator jim had a little jim had a little trouble with the gps so but i'm a terrible car writer because all i do is say well i could already been there so anyway yeah thank you all thanks everybody

David's still on.

Yes, David's still on. Yes, I'm still on.

Do you have time to do an executive session here?

Yeah, that's just fine, Ty.

Okay. Let's do that then. Yeah, he knows that. We'll call you, David.

Yeah, we'll call you, David. Very good. You want me to log off of the meeting then?

Yes, please.

All right, I'll do that. Thanks.

All right, I make a motion we go into executive session for...

minutes 30 minutes to discuss the prmc lease this is for attorney client privilege with david and jack holly present let's get in there yeah we're really clear on what's going on that's my motion i'm second been moved in second we go into executive session for attorney client privilege to discuss prmc leases with jack galley and david enron present with us All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Motion carried.

There will be an executive session for 30 minutes.

We'll make a motion we come out of executive session with no action taken.

I'll second. It's been moved and seconded. We come out of executive session with no action taken. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, same sign. We're back in open session.

Mark, is John Wayne still on there?

I don't see him.

If he is, he can be unmuted and he has three minutes. If he comes back on before the meeting is recessed.

How many papers?

You got anything else?

lauren's email that she wanted me to go through with you guys and get some answers and i think she could have a budget all prepared and ready to rock and roll for wednesday what do you have to do i know that same place there i had to dig for mine too so there's too many papers Does it now print it off the lawn?

Is that the barrier?

I didn't dig back far enough. Go into the debts. Okay.

First question.

Debt service closing the fund. Well, we still have one more payment. On the debt service. Wouldn't that be for 28th? It needs to be closed then? After 27. Yeah. I think 27 is our last payment. Okay.

I don't think that that money is coming out of that fund.

Debt service?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. We pay out of capital improvement, the bonds.

Okay. So this, the debt service. I think based off Scott's comments when he was here is that it was going to be closed.

Okay.

And they're asking when is, whatever's sitting in that account leaving what's in there is that there's just that part of that money for that road i'm not sure that i don't know what i don't know it's a small amount and i don't know what it represents either i'll go to that one is that i think that road can't have like 71 000 That is a separate.

Yeah, that can't move.

I guess I'll have to look at that one. And I spoke with you guys about the employee benefit fund. And I'm waiting on an email back from Barney to see how they want that expressed in the audit from now on.

Because she's still thinking it's showing a negative balance.

No. it's not no yeah we have 750 right her question is still showing okay yeah so if we don't up the mills from where they currently have it for 27 budget that's right we'll be we'll have a negative cash we can't have a negative cash so it's going to go up and that's what scott was talking about yeah so yeah it's going to have to go up as the answer okay and we need to account for the loss of the reimbursement before it'll look more like it didn't this year instead of last year.

Does the Light Fund have enough mills? I think they just need to put the money back. Yeah, and let's see what they did with food. Do you remember? I know we talked about it, but I don't remember.

That's what we decided the other day was the money that was supposed to be in there. We go back in there and we thought he had enough money. Yeah.

But they took it out for some reason. We never did figure that out because we never even touched it. Yeah.

The proposed budget is at $115,000 for 2027.

And while he turned in the meeting, $4,000 is $7,000.

30, I thought.

Wasn't 30 that was messed up on the light.

Was 110. So I think that we are good because they have it estimated at 115. Is that what you're seeing?

Well, we find a dang thing.

So it's on page 17 of the first draft. The bottom part. Oh wait, no, I lied. They have it, oh, because they're getting their cash reserve back up. They have it at 158, but that's because they put in 57 of cash reserves to get his cash reserve back up to where it needs to be. The bottom part of page 17. And then what he turned in is alphabetical under department budget. Sorry, it's on page 12. Like he wrote 17 down here at the bottom. Sorry, it's on page 12 on the actual PDF. I was having his big writing.

It says 7-7 at 25.

Where'd that come from? Grab your binder. See if it's in there.

All right. You said page 12?

Yes, like 12 on the PDF, but 17 on his big numbers written in. Looks like they have it at 168, 120. But that's because there's 57 of that cash reserve.

That's why they took the 30 out.

It was contractual.

They got it for 2025. It was 16,000.

Right.

Instead of 63,000. Yep. Looks like 26, we got it for 16,000 again. I don't 25 and we didn't catch it then too.

No. And prior year, actual for 25 was 44,000. And then for whatever year, it went down to 16. I'm thinking the cash reserve got taken out is what happened. But then now his proposed for 27 is that 58,750. Okay. So to me, that looks okay. Does it?

Well, it went from 124,000 down to 74,000. From 25 to 26.

124 to 74, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And then 27 is what?

That 168, 120. First draft. Or is that, are you in your prior year? I think this is prior here. It is, yep, prior here.

That's what I wanted to look at.

This would be your first draft. Oh, where is your first draft?

What'd you do with it? I don't know.

It's probably in your binder. Right here. I can take this one out. It's that big packet that Scott gave us. So, I can make copies of this one if you'd like, that way you have it.

Oh, I think I stuck it in here. That could be too. But somehow. I think looking at where we're at, where we're at, it does look a little more because of that 57,000 cash reserve.

But I think that's just to build up his cash.

um since we are going to be running well for this for sure okay that's fine okay and i may have it might look big well if not i'll i'll check them and make sure it's not going to be final either way i mean yeah we're going to have new ones so yep i think she just wanted to know if she needs to change that um okay and then i'll do the fcmi to me it's looking it's looking pretty good Um, yeah, I went ahead and made that, um, transfer. So in 25, I just, we didn't have an FCMI transfer, but so I just moved it out of the health insurance this year. We actually do. So it's a lot easier to track, um, that. So I think, I think we're looking pretty good, but I'll dig into it deeper tonight before I email her and make sure that we're good on the FCMI. But to me, it looks like we're.

Should I add three or 4% for COLA? But we agreed on three, didn't we?

Yeah, I think you guys were kind of waiting to see where the R&R was going to be and if you had room for that.

The next one, she says we're close, but not quite the R&R. I'm going to do some more thinking, but we may have to just go up a little bit. We're still down on the mills from last year.

so when she's making that statement to one of the things that you had expressed i think last monday was so her statement is based off using the interesting yes yes and i don't know if you don't want to do that they're not close at all yeah uh because that was what five six hundred thousand it's uh in my mind i was thinking of it as three meals yeah yeah uh

That's something we can discuss with Scott because that's three more mills we've got to make up extra because we may not get that money out of that account. It is what I was... It's not funding the budget is what I'm saying.

Yeah.

So if we stay at the same mills, I don't...

This is a conversation that should happen. So have them put 3% in. We'll have our conversation on Wednesday. It's not going to be a good conversation because it's going to include the 3%. it's going to include the interest income, you're going to be looking at to get revenue neutral somewhere between four and six to cut, mills to cut. It's... Yeah, not good either way.

Do you want me to confirm whether she has that interest included in there already?

Well, I know she almost has to because Scott said he was going to do it.

Okay, yep.

But I would confirm it.

Okay. Yeah, I can confirm it for you. It's in there because if If it's not in there, then we have to cut.

Because that's what I thought he was going to include.

I mean, he said his comment was, well, there's two months.

There's a couple of other ones, too. I don't remember.

So I'll just tell her to put the 3% in, keep the conversation going about R&R, see when Scott comes, see where he thinks we're at, and he will be here in person.

She will?

No, he will. Scott will be.

He just wouldn't come see us.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep. His email said we're some of his favorite people.

Yeah, that's what he said.

That brings lots of issues.

And then I'll get back from keep you guys updated on how they want that expressed too. Scott, would they be away now that he knows how .

do you have it i've got it it's somewhere yeah

Probably somewhere very safe, along with all my stuff.

Yeah, it's probably right in front of my face too. You know what? It might even be on my kitchen table.

We're working on it this week.

Not this week.

I did look at it last week. That's why I was telling you 10,000 questions. Yeah, I don't mind. You guys need to hurry up. We need to get Tyson out here so he can get home and do laundry. You won't have anyone to worry about.

That's true.

Yeah. Our ugly faces. That's fine. He skipped a couple weeks, so we were

Got to give you a few more. Yeah.

Hard to live stuff down around you.

Do you ever get the breakdown on the insurance? No.

But I do feel better knowing that we're pretty even-steven.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'll make a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to recess. July 1st.

I second that motion.

We recess until July 1st at 9 a.m. for budget workshop. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed same sign. We are recessed.