Board of County Commissioners Work Sessions - Regular Meeting

Hello everyone. Welcome to April 14th, 2026 work session. We're going to switch things around a little bit while we wait for our uh technical services um loss control representative get out of a meeting. So, we're going to start with item number two, which is overview and discussion regarding personnel matters related to county employees under the authority of elected officials. This will be led by Matt Hobbs, our county attorney. Okay. I see there's a Cole. I'm assuming that's Ashley. Is that Is that you, Ashley?

Yes, I'm here.

Okay. I just wanted to confirm what's what the uh AOL was. Um, so this is a a complex issue. I guess it's complex and simple at the same time. You know, it's it's complex in the fact that we have this human right resources department that essentially runs all the personnel matters for the county. Um, and you have the board of county commissioners that sort of controls the overall budget for the county. And then you have these individual elected offices outside of you all. uh you know, the clerk and recorder, the treasurer, the assessor, coroner, um and sheriff. Um and they all have their own independent statutory and legal authority. And one of the things that's pretty clear in the case law and in some cases even in statute uh specifically the sheriff and the clerk and recorder I think um is that they have the ability to sort of manage their their staff meaning they get to say who they want to hire who they want to fire. Um, and unfortunately that's doesn't always mesh with overall employee handbook or accounting policies and things like that. So,

so the law is pretty clear in terms of that that they get to manage, you know, their staff. Um, you know, I think we've had some success working with the electeds and helping them manage risk a little better and making better personnel decisions. Um, for example, right now Heath is trying to get a outside uh firm that we can use as a county actually and almost every county uses an outside firm. even larger counties like Denver and Boulder uh to do more complex HR investigations and that sort of allows and we're hoping we can use it for both you know Ashley's purposes and he's because a lot of times what will happen is it's been happening is people come to the Ashley and they're like well you're work for whatever elected official you're working for and It's really it's really a delicate you know walk of how we how we sort of manage that risk without interfering with the underlying uh elected abilities to manage their staff and we've been fortunate so far they they've all sort of worked out. I I've seen it come up a number of times in the just months I've been here. I imagine it's gonna continue to come up, but I think we we are trying to find ways to address it. One one thing that's allowed by statute that I think um and actually you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but there's a couple things that HR is working on this year. one is sort of updating the the handbook uh which ostensively

applies to every the whole county. Um the sheriff has actually adopted its own handbook that applies to sheriff's employees. So there's a little bit of fuzzy overlap there, but really no other elected official has has done that. Obviously, law enforcement is a, you know, layered with much more complications than than any other department in terms of their obligations and what they do. Um and so the HR we're updating the handbook and by statute uh the county is allowed to adopt um essentially a a compensation plan, you know, step wage schedules. Uh, so these increases aren't, you know, just being handed out willy-nilly that, oh, here's the schedule. If you come and work for the county and you're a good employee, you know, you're going to get these step increases like most large organizations have something like that in place. Um so if you adopt that by statute and all the electeds sort of agree to adopt it that's sort of binding on on those other offices which you know sort of ties back to the board's fiscal prerogatives over these um you know other offices and at the end of the day I mean that's the ultimate sort of authority that the board has is the the fiscal authority but yeah so It's it's simple in the fact that uh the law is pretty clear in terms of what we can and can't do.

Yeah. The complexity is just the underlying relationships that how it all functions in reality is is not simple at all. Um, what about the like financial risks that come with hiring and firing employees? Because that's where I see like I mean, you're talking about risk. I appreciate that there's like an attempt to reduce it, but but I wonder about the lawsuits that can come or whatever insurance payouts that have to come from poorly managed or rehired folks that we know are not appropriate to work in the county. like where is there any case law for that being a line that commissioners can hold or that our we can have our HR hold?

Uh at the end of the day, no because they have the authority to hire. Yeah. But we we certainly have those conversations in private um with the electeds of hey uh here here's the problem with what what's going on here.

Okay. Um, and this would, you know, since Dana is going to be here next, that would be actually a great question to ask him as well. Um, how, you know, CTSI looks at these issues. Um, because sometimes what will happen in courtrooms is people that are otherwise aligned, you know, uh, they start pointing fingers at each other, you know, and Say you could have a situation where one elected official. So the board of county commissioners is going to get you're always going to be sued whether it's somebody in right sheriff's office assessor doesn't matter. It's it's always it's all going to come back to the county's general fund one way or the other, which is the the weird legal paradox we're in of having the financial liability but not being able to really control the risk in terms of who they're what they're doing. It's it's elected office and you don't know

how that's going to turn out all the time. So yeah, it's it's a strange ones, but we we certainly have those conversations in private uh in an effort to you know protect the county uh when those situations arise. Okay. So if official wants to hire someone or rehire someone, uh they have to come to HR and ask permission. Well, a has to be a budgeted position first and foremost. So if it isn't budgeted, then that's sort of the ultimate. I'm sorry, it's not your budget.

But maybe Ashley, you can kind of speak to that a little better. I think in practice they do. Um

yeah, I think you know we have great working luckily great working relationships right now with um all the elected officials. So that's currently how it works. They come to us and request as long as it's in their budget then hey I want to post this position. They post it. Sometimes we're a little more involved in the hiring process as far as helping with interviews, sitting in on interviews even sometimes. Um, but I don't know if it's necessarily asking permission, but they come to us because they're essentially using HR services to be able to hire these people and then to get them on payroll, get them onboarded. So, they're using county functions and services to be able to get these people employed. Now, if we said, "Oh, we're not going to do that." they could still bring that person to their office and put them to work and then we're in a whole other scenario where they have to be compensated for their work. So, it's it's an interesting balance.

Just curiosity or this is pertinent. Is there something? Well, I mean there's nothing burning it. It just um it's an it's an ongoing thing and it'll probably always be an ongoing thing especially in a small county where you're you know your employment pool is is somewhat limited. Right. So no there's there's nothing specific that's you know causing this discussion right now. Okay. But there there yeah it bubbles up constantly pretty pretty routinely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of comingings and goings around here.

Okay. But this these would be this would be great for Dana because I've actually so Cti has a resource that I just became aware of recently where um they have uh engaged an attorney uh I'm blanking on her name right now but uh is it Melinda?

Melinda. Yeah. So, we're allowed to consult Melinda for up to 45 minutes for each matter. and and I actually just called her recently on one of these issues to see if you know she had any great ideas on how to manage these these situations and they're just as far as I can tell so far there's not a great answer. Yeah. Other than what we've been doing which is just sort of I I think the main thing is just keeping good relationships with all the all the electives. Yeah. just helping them understand the risk of who they hire and when they fire.

And you know, they're all public servants and they're presumably want to do what's best for the county. And yeah, if you can lay out, hey, this is why this may create a pretty large risk for the county and they're receptive to it. Yeah. And is it fairly easy to paint the picture of like how much money the potential risk is or even the range of how much money it I mean those are so case specific but yeah it's uh

you know I I would say again this would be a great question for Dana but probably probably employment liability is one of the greater losses for that sets your insurance risk loss range but like that employment liability is certainly within the top three, if not number one. Yeah. Do we have any lawsuits pending?

Well, there's a number that not lawsuits, uh, but certainly people that have filed claims with the Colorado Civil Rights Division on discrimination allegations. Um, there's one with the former HR director. Um, what other one is that the only one that's kind of hanging out there? I feel like there might be one or two others that haven't been resolved yet. All the other ones have been resolved favorably with no findings. So discrimination, including one recently from uh the sheriff's office where I think I probably finding no discrimination or no probable cause.

Yeah. Uh but no no lawsuits just pending sort of precursors to lawsuits if they decide to take the next step after filing a you have to file a claim with the civil rights division before you can go to court in a discrimination claim. Okay. So, is this something that's going to go into our employee handbook and our elected officials subject to our employee handbook?

I I think we'd like to address it a little more to provide some clarity. Um, you know, how we do that within the confines of the law is it's going to be interesting. But, yeah, I think we'd we'd like to figure out a path forward. I think we're, you know, doing that with the sheriff who's probably one of the larger, if not it's probably the largest office. Yeah. In terms of employees, I guess, and that's where we've seen some of the most the highest claims in our 5year whatever it's called. Yeah. 5 years something.

Law enforcement's always going to be a high liability. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for thanks for bringing us on to the work session. Yeah, I mean if I figure out any uh magic solution, I'll let you know. But I I think just relationships and good keeping good relationships is really the the key to the whole thing. Yeah. Right. I remember when we were when we were on boarded through HR, we all had to sign the employee handbook as elected officials, but we're also told that as elected officials, it's not actually binding cuz we have different. It's more like informative.

We can't fire you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We can like file uh what was that that Miguel had? Grievance. No. Oh gosh. What is it called? When you you you're not allowed within a certain uh protection order. Protection orders. Like you can file criminal issues against a Yeah. But not employee. Okay. Cool. So hopefully that helps. It does help. Yeah.

Do you have anything to add to that, Ashley? No, I think um just focus on keep on keeping on while you know while we get some more answers. If there are even answers, I'm not super hopeful, but I like Matt said, I want to reiterate the most important thing is relationships. So those good working relationships and um you know instilling that trust so they want to follow our recommendations knowing that we all have the county's best interests at heart. So that's going to be my main focus moving forward is is maintaining those good relationships with the elected officials. Awesome. I imagine you're pretty good at that, Ashley. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Do you want to take a And now we wait for Dana. 30 30 minute break while we wait for Dana. Yeah, let's do Have you heard from her at all? Uh, not not since then. Yeah. But yeah, these would be great questions for Do you just want to announce that?

We're going to take a 30 minute break and we'll resume this work session at 12:00 p.m. Okay, everybody, we're back. April 14th, 2026. It's now 12:00 p.m. and we are going to have an uh presentation from our county technical services. Um this will be led by Dana Foley, our CTS senior loss control representative. Welcome, Dana. Thanks for coming.

Thank you, commissioners. And uh I I apologize for the delay this morning. I I was tied up with uh Gilpin's BOCC meeting uh as well and they definitely uh wanted me to express thank you for uh working with us while they uh they work through some of their issues as well. So uh but we're here and would you like for me to share my screen? Yes, please. Yes, please. And someone can the host uh enable me to do that, please? Yes. It's just co-host, right? Mhm. Should be good.

See if I can do it now. Here we go. All right. Can you see my screen? Yes.

All right. Well, good morning, commissioners. Again, I'm Dana Foley. I'm your uh loss control specialist assigned to Lake County. I've been doing that since starting with CTSI almost four years ago. Um and have been following the the county and the claims. It's that time of year where once a year CTSI presents to the BOCC a 5-year loss analysis and we also kind of give you a brief update on the pool as a whole. Uh just to remind the commissioners what CTSI is for the county. We provide your insurance coverages for your auto liabilities, your property, your general liability, sheriff liability, your workers comp. And CTSI is we're we're not like a traditional insurance company. I describe it as a co-op self-insured entity uh that is made up by the counties and county members of of Colorado. That's all CTSI does is we are a pool of counties and we are owned and operated by the counties of Colorado. uh and the commissioners from around the state are on the various uh CTSI boards whether it's the CAP board which does the liability side and then the CWCP board that does the workers comp and then we also have a health board uh that provides health insurance for counties as well as well as CTSI's board is also made up of county commissioners from around the state. That being said, the way it works, essentially your contributions go into a pool. We pay the claims out of those contributions and then the boards set a surplus level for the next year. Any additional funds that are left over, those go back to the

counties and county members in the form of equity distribution. That money also sits into a in a an account. That account also earns interest as well. So it doesn't just sit there. That interest also goes back to the county members. So that being said, the CWCP or the work comp pool, they gave back $4.25 million back to the uh county members last year. And then the surplus of the cap pool needed to be increased. So there is not a distribution uh this year from the cap side because they needed to build up that surplus level uh because of the additional claims and the and the expense that those claims are having. So that pool has opted to increase that surplus level this year. So what did that do for Lake County? Out of that 4.25 25 million, Lake County got back $41,331. And of that $1.1 million of interest, Lake County got back $26,799 for a grand total of $68,129 back in the in that equity distribution aspect. That being said, your loss ratio on the on the cap side of the house is at a.795, which is in the second to the lowest tier. So, we have a little bit of room we can move on that one. And then on the work comp side, you're at a 1.03, which is the second highest tier. So, we have a lot of room that we can move uh to to bring bring you down and get you into those lower tiers as well.

So, I'd like to start off and just uh first off, is there any questions about CTSI and how we work for you as as uh your provider for your risk and insurance? No.

Okay. All right. So, we'll jump in. I always like to start off the 5-year loss analysis with how did we finish last year? What are what are the current trends and the current things that that we're seeing before we get into the five-year because that trend really takes a while to change because it is a 5-year u 5-year trend overall. That being said, we'll start off on the cap side. That's your liability side. your property, auto, sheriff liability, etc. And from the cap side of the house, you can see on your screen, can everybody see that screen?

Mhm.

Okay. So, we break it down by department and we break it down by the type of claim that we have along with the dollar amounts that go into there. And we can see we had a total of eight claims for $37,351. The overall theme that we're seeing here is we're still having uh vehicle incidences and vehicle incidences are actually the number two overall pool uh concern and exposure for all of our county members as well. And one thing that we have to remember with vehicle claims is they can hit multiple lines of coverage as well. So, you can have a vehicle claim that also is a property claim, but then also can be a work comp claim as well because you have county employees in there. So, there there there's a lot of tentacles that can happen uh that where it actually jumps onto both lines of coverage on your auto side, your property side potentially, and potentially your work comp side as well. You can see here real lowhanging fruit here. Tree claims were vehicles backing into something. Thinking about having that that county policy of of a no backing policy uh where they're actually doing pullthroughs or they're backing into a parking spot and not backing out of a parking spot as well. And that that's lowhanging fruit because literally it's paying attention, looking in the mirrors. U and then as our vehicles uh get replaced to newer vehicles, a lot of them have that collision avoidance uh detection in there, too. Any questions on that?

No, none for me. Thank you, D.

All right, slide through here. Just kind of give you a snapshot of the pool as a whole. The pool had a total of 641 claims for 12,425,36 with our average cost of $19,384. When we break it down to what caused those claims, we we have kind of a category with those claims and the dollar amounts. And when I did my analysis this last year, the number one, even though if you if you add up all of the vehicle related incidences in this, it still comes down to number two in the terms of the severity and loss cost. We're seeing an increase in the in with the pool members of what I will call legal liability claims. those legal liability claims, they take longer to close out and then that you have to a lot of times go through the court system. And so you're just constantly building on that legal liability, the the having legal uh advice, you've got attorneys involved. All of that stuff raises the cost of those types of claims. and they have moved up to number one past auto as well. So, we have number one is legal liabilities and number two is the auto uh that we're really kind of concentrating on as well. That being said, is there any questions on the cap side of the pool or county for last year on the cap side of the house?

No. I I I have a question of course. Okay. Uh Dan, this is Matt Hobs, the county attorney. Um the legal liability, what that seems like a pretty broad category. Can you kind of just give me some examples of what goes into that? Um

talking about employment, we're talking about 1983 claims. you you're going to see a lot of um a lot of arrest related uh law enforcement constitutional violations employees term so employment claims I you know fortunately you don't have the jail aspect so you're not you don't have that exposure where you're getting a lot of due process issues uh that come into play but certainly we're seeing on these constitutional violations. We've seen a number of employee uh subjected to termination uh claims that have come in, employment related claims uh that have come in recently over the last year, year and a half. They've been starting to have on the rise. That being said, CTSI does have an HR specialist on staff in our loss control uh area that is available uh should uh terminations and employee related uh issues that come up. You can definitely bring us in as a sounding board for you and to be that additional resource uh should you should you deem that uh that that you need a little extra help in that area as well. Have you has CTSI seen an increase in uh law enforcement claims since that bill was passed in 2020? I forget what it was, but

Senate Bill 217. Yeah.

Yes. Absolutely. That that bill in itself has has caused a lot of increased liability risks. Um that is something that we do, you know, bring awareness to when we're talking with our sheriffs. Uh for example, uh every year and in the five-year, we break down break out specifically the sheriff related claims for the sheriff. As you can see on the screen here for the last 5 years from January 1st of 21 to 1231 of 25 total of nine claims for $328,975. And this is on the cap side of the house for the for the sheriff with our average cost of $36,553. So that's something that we break out for the sheriff as well. And what that also does is we say, okay, because all we do is insure counties, we can then say from sheriff to sheriff, how are they comparing

in there? And so they're able to see how they're stacking up. Are they higher than the average, lower than the average? But then also we break it down to the claims that are affecting them as well. And you can see here like this fatality, one of the big legal liability aspects here, you know, a couple of years back we had a $10 million settlement for a law enforcement claim that happened with one of our counties. And that's a claim that every single one of our counties could have had. And it was a multi-jurisdictional claim where you had the state in there, you had a MUN in there and our our county uh member in there as well. And I think the overall total of that claim aggregate over all entities was over $18 million.

Wow. So, did that answer your question? Yes. Thank you. Can you just tell us what Senate Bill 217 did?

So, what Senate Bill 217 is it it removed the governmental immunities on a lot of our law enforcement actions. And now what that has done is it really kind of opens that that gate that almost everything they do uh could potentially have a claim surrounded by it. and then we have to defend against it you know all the claims that come into play. So it increased the the the claims that we have gotten from a liability standpoint of everything from wrongful arrest and uh to policies training etc.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions on that? Uh where does our sheriff line up terms of the other accounts?

So our sheriff lines up very well. Um as you look here, we look at the average cost is $ 38,285 per claim. So 38,000 as opposed to or 36 36,000. So less severe in in terms of of what has occurred from the from the law enforcement side of the of the house. Okay. Nice. Thank you.

You bet. All right. Any other claims or any other uh questions on the year end?

No, thank you.

There we go. I'm like, where is that? That's Gilpin. All right. So, let me jump into the work comp side of the house. So, our work comp last year, this is just one year, we had 10 claims for $170,753. And what I want to bring to your attention is is these indemnity claims. So, the indemnity claims are the ones that not only are we helping to put the employee back together for medical treatment and things like that, but we're also paying lost time, lost work time. So, a way to reduce those and you can see that those indemnity claims are considerably higher, which is standard because you have that lost work time aspect in there. And a way to combat that is really looking at ways of what we call uh return to work, bringing them back to do something of value for the county. And it doesn't necessarily have to be in their specific department either. They could do any work uh for the county and bringing them back to help replace some of their wages uh from that. And then that aspect would would help reduce that indemnity bucket that comes out of there.

That make sense? No. Can you say it again? Sorry. So, so the indemnity bucket has a a the medical payment and the lost work time. The return to work if if they can come back and do something whereas sure they might not be able to come back and do full duty, but can they do something in the county? Mhm.

Whether that's um building audits, whether that is training, whether that is uh some sort of clerical need, uh bringing them back to do something versus sitting at home reduces that. And then we know that the county's insurance contributions are determined on a factor of of the five years as a whole. So if if we can keep this lower, the lower we can keep these numbers, the less impact it has over that fiveyear period. Yeah. Okay.

If that makes sense. It does. Okay. Great questions. Any other questions on that? The one thing I will ask the sheriff about is what academy did our our employee get hurt at? I'm I'm trying to figure out a way because there's a number of themmies that the sheriffs can send their uh their people to and I'm trying to figure out a way to track whatmies are hurting our law enforcement personnel because at the end of the day they get the same certification.

What they don't need to get is hurt doing the job. And it it would be nice for them to know this academy has a much higher incident rate of employees getting hurt versus this one and you don't have that data because there's no way of actually tracking and if we don't get that in the in the first report of injury that it was ABC Academy versus XYZ, we have no way of tracking that information. Are you meeting with Heath separately? Yes. Okay. I I think it's El Paso County, but you can confirm that with Heath. Sure.

Dana, when somebody fills out a workers's comp claim, don't they have to like state the location of the incident and all that?

They they can the the information is only as good as what's put in? And sometimes it's not. It's just it just says training academy. It doesn't necessarily say where. Um, so that that being said, that's one of the areas that I would like to work with the county on this year is working at um our incident investigations that we're seeing. I get to see every claim that comes in from all the county members and I can say there's a lot of area of improvement that we can go with with looking at root causes and contributing factors through those incident investigations. They're not they're not the best. And I I will tell you that one of the biggest things that I see when it says what could be done to prevent uh this injury from or incident from reoccurring time and time again I see nothing nothing. So I would like to be able to to work with and train our supervisors because I can't fault them if we've never trained them how to fill these out to get us that root cause and contributing factor information. So that would be a class I would recommend that we do this year is an accident investigation class uh with supervision to make sure that when we do have these incidences overall whether we're talking about the annuals or the 5-year incidences that we're getting the best information we can.

So is it ultimately up to the county or to CTSI to do that uh like root cause investigation or both? ultimately the county.

Uh but certainly if you ever need help with that um we can definitely come up I can come up and help with a root cause and contributing factors analysis. I do those for the pool members on major incidences that have occurred. We've had two fatalities in in our county members over the last 6 months and I have went out and actually reviewed those fatalities and look for root cause and contributing factors on those for if nothing else so that I can understand what those where where those opportunities were so that I as your loss control person can say that to the rest of our county members of what happened in those and how can we prevent that so none of our other counties have to experience that.

Yeah. Thanks. Do you in like a county our size, do you typically see that being done by individual departments, the root cause and contributing factors analysis or is that mainly housed within operations or HR? Like we're just wondering where you see it. So often times the counties have a packet in general and then whoever's reporting the incident.

Generally the supervisors are the ones reporting that their employee was hurt, they have a lot more of the knowledge. A lot of times our supervisors are the ones filling the supervisor incident investigation report out and then they submit it up to oftent times HR or county administrator or a designate and then it gets submitted to CTSI.

Uh certain certainly any point in there if there's ever a question we're free I'm free. you can they can call up, they can ask um I can help walk them through those things. What we don't do is we don't generally tell the county what to do. We tell the county how they can do it as a resource. So okay, thanks. Yep. Any other questions?

Um sorry, I have another question. Um, are there certain pieces of information that keep a workers's comp claim from being um, fulfilled? Like, does CTSI have a standard of You're saying that like there's no Do you get some reports that have no action steps that could have prevented something? Is there any information that you would say no, we're not going to you can't submit this until this has been completed?

No, unfortunately we if you submit the claim, it goes to our claim staff and they look at compensibility and and they they're under a time crunch as well to be able to admit or deny on that. Um, now it's important that if there is a concern that the county staff has that they let the claims staff know that, hey, there might be some more investigation that needs to be done. They can put it on an initial denial pending further investigation. Um, so there there are opportunities there. It's just where I come in as I'm really looking a little bit further down into the weeds that we just paid for a claim. Let's learn everything we can from that claim and and improve our processes and improve our our training needs or you know take the corrective actions that are needed. Uh not all claims uh are you know where they have all these little tentacles. Some are very cut and dry and we can understand what happened. Um,

yeah, some people just trip over their own feet and and we, you know, it's and you get, you know, under what could have been done, you get, I should have paid more attention. Okay, that's that's fair, you know. Yeah. Um, but at least we have a process that we go by to ensure that if there are opportunities, uh, that we're actually capturing them for you. and then taking those corrective actions and being able to have a a tracking mechanism so they don't get lost when people leave. Someone else can come in and pick up right where they they left off.

Yeah. Where that other person left off. Right. Yeah.

Okay. If there's nothing else for the annual, let's jump right into the five-year and uh and get through this. This is our our five-year loss analysis from the cap pool. So again, that's your property casualty, auto liability, sheriff liability, general liability, and you can see Lake County is doing really well. And we talked about that right now you're at a point uh a.795 on the loss ratio calculation factor for your contribution. And you can see the five years here. We had a little bit of an in uptick in 2022 on the cap side of the house. But this is what I really like to see. We dropped right back down after having a a rough year. And so if we replace 2026 and 2027 with good years, 2022 will drop off and drop you into that lower tier. Okay.

Have we had anything so far this year that would show that we're trending upwards or staying flat? So far this year, I have no concerns. and you're going to get another report out mid year. So, we kind of take a snapshot in time mid year to look at our counties and say, how are we doing on that first half? Is there is there a course correction that we need to make for that for the second half of the year? So, if there was something triggered there, we would definitely jump in there for you. Okay. Thanks.

Okay. So, the five-year report, it's broken down into graphs and then we have the data behind the graphs later on in the report. So again, this is 5 years of data. It was a snapshot in time at December 31st, 2025. So when claims are closed or as they materialize, those numbers can change immensely. So again, this is just a snapshot in time to give us an idea of what we're having here. Um, so if you remember, we're slightly higher because if you remember, our average cost per claim was $19,000 on our cap side of the house here. So, we're up a little bit, but understand the the reasoning for that is because of the increased cost of liability claims overall and auto claims. The the they've steadily increased over the last 5 years, which is why the cap surplus needed to be moved up as well. So, it's not saying that you guys are doing anything wrong from that standpoint. It's just it's costing more when you do have those claims. You had a total of 35 claims for $544,48 with that average cost of $15,544. We break it down by the top five frequency and severity by department. Keep in mind administration doesn't mean that that's your staff. Administration is also your property. So if you had property damage whether that was due to weather etc that's going to be tied into this. So you had road and bridge and law enforcement generally are your highest

exposures because of the auto liability side of the house and what they do. We can see here on the severity. So law enforcement was third on the frequency but higher on the severity side of the house. $328,975. Whereas our road bridge had a higher they were tied for first place there. They had a higher um or a lower severity range from that which is good. Normally what I see with counties is law enforcement and road and bridge on severity. They're they're neck and neck first and second place. So your road and bridge department is doing phenomenal. From that standpoint,

we then break it down to the top five frequency and severity by the type of incidences that we have. And as you recall, we had three backing related incidences in last year. So that's still driving. That's a number one frequency is backing related. So, my recommendation there is uh to consider instituting a policy, a countywide policy of backing, of no backing. And I can help whoever is drafting that up if that's the wishes of the commissioners. I can help review some of that and give them some sample language and things to consider. The last time we did defensive driving in the county was last April, so a year ago. Uh we did that defensive driving class. Uh the advantage of that is after that class you get a certificate. Oftent times they can go to their personal auto carrier and sometimes get a discount for attending a defensive driving class. So it does have a benefit from the county and the benefit from the personal side of the house. You can see here on the severity side some legal liability aspect here employment term subject. Uh so employment related issues uh definitely were a severity driver and then although backing was a high frequency were relatively low but still that's $29,000 of lowhanging fruit that just don't back into things. So they're they're usually low low speed impacts and so you don't see the severity, but it's definitely a an area

that's it's lowhanging fruit and easy to not spend money you don't have to spend. Dana, isn't a big part of our employee severity because of the 2023 or 2024 payout? Like, won't that go down once that year, knock on wood, 2022, once that once that year is out of our fiveyear snapshot, that should go down significantly.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You're you're correct because once that year drops off, it's no longer in the calculation. And then it's re it's it's going to have you know what's nice is when 21 drops off at 16%. 25 kicks in with 10. Yeah. So that's a that's going to be a nice factor there as well.

Yeah. That being said, when we really want to look at where the what where's the detail of the information that we put into those graphs, that's in the actual claims itself. And you can see each claim and where it occurred and what it what happened in there as well. We did have one uh that we categorized on on the admin ground. So that's that property. I believe that was a uh I believe that was the case of the guy that went down the sled hill and shattered his leg.

What when was that? Oh, Dutch Henry. Dutch Henry. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Dana was Oh, I remember that. That was not an employee. No, that's third party outside. So, keep in mind those those slip and fall liability claims are general public whereas work comp is going to be our employees. Right. Right. Okay. So, 131 I mean we talk about fixing up Dutch Henry and it's like oh how much a return on investment for Dutch Henry. We could put a lot of money into that place and still get a good Yeah.

return on our investment in terms of liability.

Yep. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I did work a little bit with staff uh and we talked about signage. We talked about ways to reduce liability. Again, CTSI isn't in the position to tell a county, no, we are in the position of if you want to do it, let's look at ways that we can help minimize and be able to have the ammunition to go to bat for you and help to defend the county against those claims. Um, Dana, speaking of speaking of which, when where is the line between when the county wants to go to court versus when CTSI wants to pay out? Like, how does that conversation work and who ultimately has say? Well, ultimately CTSI would have the say as the as the CTSI being the the one entity that's that's carrying the overall cost of that. But certainly there's a conversation that is and should be had with the county staff and CTSI staff and and legal representation in there as well.

Okay. So there's there should be a conversation and if and and if there isn't I'm sure Meredith would love to know that there isn't that conversation happening. So Okay. Thanks.

Okay. Any questions on the county's aspect? You can see that employee term came out of the sheriff's department. do two two uh two claims on that employee term side of it. And again, that's where if if you're having a a a sensitive situation like that, it's not a bad idea to bring Siri in on Siri Vensel on on the front end of that just to help be that that sounding board for the county. It's free. It doesn't cost anything. And again, we work for you. So, as the pool as a whole, you can see so you your average cost is $15,544 a claim. As we look at the pool, their average cost was $22,479. So, you're doing well in the capsite even at the 5-year uh aspect as well compared to the the overall pool trend. That being said, that trend is going to be skewed a little bit because of that $10 million uh settlement on that uh law enforcement claim um from the pool standpoint. So, it's going to skew the numbers until that year drops out of the equation, if that makes sense. But you can see just like you were having a number of backing claims. Uh again, this is kind of why I've hit that. Uh back in 2023, we were at 17% of our total claims autoreated were backing from the pool as a whole. In 2024, we dropped that down to 7%.

with the initiative that CTSI's been pushing on defensive driving training and the county's initiating a no backing policy uh from that standpoint. Last year we bumped up to 8% so we had a little bit of a hiccup there uh at 8% but we're still trying to drive that number down uh to to cuz that again is lowhanging fruit that that we don't need to uh spend. Here's where that fatality really comes into place on the severity side. You could see where that's over the last 5 years fatalities have cost us over $15,190 $190,998. And then the second piece is that arrest related. Those two combined are really our legal liability uh exposures. uh from the where where's the where's the biggest aspect of that. We did see a number of fires in counties this last year. We had three county facilities uh have fires in them. Uh one of them was a a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window of one of the courouses. Um, another one was a laptop battery, lithium ion battery that um caught fire and uh and then there was another one in a road and bridge shop with oily rags just like on the annual we we take and list out what the overall pool uh and then this is where we start to trend. So again, filing claims at $0 does not hurt the county at all. It's not like a traditional insurance company where if you file a claim, oh, your rates are

going up. That's not what we do. It's how much did you put in and how much did we pay out and then where are you at in your calculation. Um, so one of the things I can do with that information is help trend even those ones that we only have zero dollars to. Are we starting to have a whole bunch of those to where we can look at say, hey, this is kind of the canary in the cave. Uh, that's kind of giving us a a a test of saying, hey, we might need to get ahead of this.

Mhm. So that's where we start to see and be able to dissect the data from that standpoint. So moving on to workers comp over the last 5 years, you can see remember we had said that you know you're at the second highest tier uh from the work comp. Um we're this one's about to drop off. So we should see an improvement on your tiers on that loss ratio side. Uh once that starts to drop off and as long as we replace uh replace that in 26 with low numbers, we should be doing pretty good. Okay, any questions on our graph here? Yes, it went off the chart a couple of times. Um, this one uh was as a result of a a gunshot wound. So that's why that one's way off the off the chart. Over the last 5 years, 53 claims for $817,575 with our average cost of $15,426. Break it down by the top five frequency and severity by department. This is your staff, whether that's your facility staff or overall the administration side, not assigned to law enforcement or road social services or the health department. Typically, we don't see the admin staff that high. Normally, it's roen bridge and law enforcement. Again, those are your top two higher demand of physical um exposure.

But as you can see here with our severity that that one claim in that law enforcement aspect is what's really driving that one up.

Okay. And then we break it down by what the incident was. And there's our there's our gunshot wound right there at $252,7 or $17. That I believe that one is still open as well. So that number is subjected to change. The good thing is is it stays with the year the incident occurred. So it's not like if the incident continued to raise in cost that it's going to go against each year moving forward. No, it stays with that year. And then here's our devil in the details here with what made up those graphs and where the incidences occurred. Do do does CTSI see subregation if there's a you know like plaintiff's lawsuit filed for on a third party that was at fault for a worker's comp client that played in. Is there any a time that you see subregation under those issues and does that push down the loss ratio?

Absolutely. You know unfortunately segregation doesn't happen until after the claim is closed. because you don't really know what your true exposure is at that point and you definitely don't want to settle on the mid mid claim of that. Uh but certainly I can say that CTSI's stance is is if there's money to get be brought back in for the counties of Colorado, we're going to do it. Yeah. I think there's pending you may be aware of it on the on the gunshot issue, you know.

Yep. As a matter of fact, I did a lot of the preliminary on that uh on uh and against Sig Sour. Um and of course Sig Sauer um you know the good thing is is you guys moved over to Glock uh immediately you got rid of them. Um and then but since then I personally know two additional people that that happened to.

I can't believe anybody's still using those. Yeah. Or or anybody's carrying one around with one in the chamber. I mean, that's the uh that's the the bad the bad thing. And then, as a matter of fact, this came to light a couple of months ago in Minnesota where they had taken that firearm from the protester and then that firearm went off. That was a sixh hour sour P320 as well. And so they think that that also played a factor that when that firearm went off uh because it wasn't the officer that that shot that round that the firearm went off. So

wow.

Yeah. So, you know, that's a great question on subregation and certainly, you know, if there is something there, we we definitely, you know, we look at at ways to integrate into that if possible because it it benefits the county members, it benefits the county as well that the county didn't take that hit and CTSI didn't take that hit either. If we can recover overall in the past five years, the county pool as a whole, $3,739 claims for 31,373,93 with our average claims cost of $8,391. So, we're a little higher, but again, that gunshot wound really kind of kind of use the numbers a little bit as a shock loss from that stand.

Mhm.

And then let me see if I can figure out what that that large one was other than the gunshot. That one, it looks like the other one was also in the sheriff's uh office. That was a $223,000 claim right here. This one, that was a slip and fall caused by a K9 unit. So, any any questions on those claims?

No.

And then here's the pool as a whole. And one thing I wanted to note on this is that here's an example of where those autorelated claims start to come back into play in the work comp side as well. So when they lose control, uh, front end collisions, when you start to add all those in, employees were hurt, as well as the vehicles damage, the property, potential property damage, and then there's an increased liability. Uh we had a claim in one of our counties where uh they used the patrol car to essentially run someone down and that is not an acceptable use um from that standpoint. So you can have additional sheriff's liability on top of that as well.

Yeah. So, so with that, that's that's the five-year loss analysis in a nutshell. Do you have any questions or comments or maybe some do you agree with the training suggestions um etc?

Yeah. And I really feel like some um you know, one of our priorities is kind of working on our internal policies and just reestablishing the foundation of our administration as a and operations as a county. And to me, it really feels like our internal systems to be able to collect the data to then determine where we need to be focused on our root causes and contributing factors to reduce our liability feels important. So, I appreciate you bringing all of that up, Dana. Um, where do we where do we get our general liability insurance from for

ETSA?

Um, I'm sorry if I just wasn't comprehending, but like where are other than um like hail damage? I saw that. But like our property, we pay a lot in our in property insurance. And I'm wondering where we're at in terms of um our liability for our property insurance. Are we paying a lot out? Are there claims against our property that we're really racking up? So from the from the property standpoint again that that goes into your calculation as to um how many buildings you have, what are you ensuring, what are the values that you're insuring those at. Um, CTSI doesn't doesn't do property uh liability insurance the way a traditional insurance carrier does. Uh, a traditional insurance carrier is going to look at uh replacement cost as a cost factor into the analysis of the overall uh calculations. CTSI doesn't look at it that way. I could definitely have Brenda and Rhonda and possibly Meredith uh break that down a little bit more for you as to how that's calculated, but a lot of it is what are you insuring and you know the overall cost factor of what that is along with you know when I look at the at those those tiers those tiers are important. So, when we look at our um our property tier, once this drops off

again, we should see a a potential drop. As long as we're replacing these years with equal to or better than what we're dropping off, you're going to get into that lower tier. So, there's room to move there uh in that lower tier. But what you're seeing is the effects still of that 2022 uh incident from the property standpoint or the liability standpoint as a whole. So it's liability and property and sheriff's liability all locked into into one contribution. So the pool as a whole is it covers multiple lines of coverage and not just property if that makes sense.

It almost makes sense. And and one of the things one of the things that we do is we look at in this equation as well is how many vehicles are you are you insuring as well and then how many road miles are covered by those as well. So that's a a factor into the into the equation for uh the cap side of the house. Okay,

that that's also where your um your liability coverage for your boards and commissions come into play. That's where your liability for your volunteers that come into play. also the the board itself, the commissioners um and your liability. All of that stuff is factored into that one one contribution number for CW or for uh the cap pool, the CAP. All right, I'm going to ask a dumb question.

So, help me understand. I might I might need your help, too. So say for ski cooper ski cooper is something that we play pay insurance for and we are paying it to CTSI. So if someone got like when when would that insurance be covering anything that happened at Ski Cooper?

I think and maybe somebody else Candace or Josh could chime in. I I think we're just covering our our our property up there, but I'm not quite sure how like just the general liability would play in. Maybe maybe Dana knows that or somebody's else. That's my rough understandings. We're just ensuring the the buildings and other things. Yeah. So if the building caught, say the lodge caught on fire, heaven forbid, then Ski Cooper is carrying insurance for that building. And we are as well, aren't we?

I don't know what Ski Cooper is carrying. Yeah, cuz I thought they had a general liability insurance as well. I would assume they have a general liability. Yeah, I'm pretty I feel like they do. I would imagine they must have. Yes. So when when would that insurance actually come into play? Well, like like Dana said, our insurance is a little different. So their general liability may not be covering property damage up there. Okay. I don't know.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, it definitely covers the gaps that your agreement may have or may not have in it as well. Because often times what could occur is someone someone could slip or fall and then they're going to name the operator of the facility, but because the county's the owner, the countyy's going to get named in that as well. So there there's going to be a line of coverage. if for nothing else the defense costs that that come into that factor. Okay.

And then the other thing would be is let's say they didn't have the correct coverage or they were underinsured with what it was and something you had a total loss. Well now certainly you know we're going to come in and help make the county whole but then all of that backend stuff is going to happen after the claim. is closed. If that makes sense. It does. Yeah. Does CTSA carve out have an exception for ski related injuries since they're so unique under Colorado law?

You know, that would have to be a Brenda or Rhonda question to ask in terms of of how they would what that coverage would look like. But again, when in doubt, you put the you submit the claim and then allow our claim staff to start to review the ins and outs of that and look at whether there's a denial or or not that we could we could go through because certainly if there's a government immunity aspect to a claim, we're going to apply that. And unfortunately, there's a lot of times where, for instance, if you're uh using a road grader, grading out or plowing out a county road of snow and you happen to clip a parked car with that, there may be a government immunity that's applied. Well, the the citizen is, you know, livid like your county greater just hit the vehicle and now I'm the one left holding the bag. I have seen where counties have developed kind of like what they call a make it right fund where maybe they cover the citizens deductible or something to that effect. Uh but certainly this the county would not be uh on the hook and and CTSI would in fact um take that government immunity if it's offered.

Yeah. You know, so that makes sense. Okay. Thanks. These are great questions. What else can I answer for you? I'm going to ask one more just because we're about to have a pool conversation. If we look hypothetically, if we had a pool, but but the pool was empty and not being used. Do would our insurance rate change for that pool? No. Because we have the pool, we have the property, and that's what we're in charge of. Yep.

That's If you close it down and you're not going to use it and you're going to mothball it and you know certainly the county can choose to what buildings and facilities they want to cover. So, you know, from that standpoint, um that's certainly a question to to have. Okay,

that makes sense. Yeah, but you still have a potential liability. uh if for nothing else, it could be an attractive nuisance or something like if it was an outside uh pool and it didn't have a fence around it and wasn't secured and have signage and someone were to go and take their skateboard in there and and you know try to make a little halfpike out of it um and then something were to occur, there's still a potential risk and liability from that standpoint. Okay, that makes sense. Thanks, Dana. Okay. Well, thank you, Dana. All right.

Well, thanks for uh working with me and letting me uh switch time slots there. And and like I say, Gilpin uh sends their apologies and and thanks for your graciousness on that. And we're here to help you. All you have to do is call and, you know, if you come up with additional questions, uh, shoot me a quick email or or reach out to me on on my on my cell number or phone number and and we'll get you the answers as quick as possible. So, are there any follow-ups that I need? Like, do you want more information on that ski copper uh factor or how your calculations are are formulated? Uh, no. I feel okay.

I'm I I I would like more information. Yeah, good idea. Um, I think you have my email. Um, I had another thought and I totally lost it as soon as I started speaking. Yeah, I think that'd be interesting to look at this Ski Cooper piece and see uh you see what we're paying and what's covered and if they have any building supplemental building insurance and there's any way we can lower the premium or duplicate coverage. Yeah. Uh,

who would you like me to have Brenda or Rhonda reach out to to talk about, you know, just kind of uh coverage reviews and and kind of premium? I don't know, Candace or Jaws. This is probably in your side of the house. I would I would probably say uh what's Stewart? Yeah. or Steuart Clark maybe. Yeah. Okay.

Include um both Stuart Clark and myself. I'd love to sit down with you and do a little bit deeper dive into into sort of everything we're covering at this point. Okay. And I've got Stuart's um email. Uh I will I will craft an email. And Josh, what is your email? It's the same format as the the county emails with the suffix, but it's just J Becker is the Okay. And if you uh if you get it to Stuart, he'll loop me in, too. That that'd be helpful.

Okay. I'll I'll kind of tee up the conversation and bring Rhonda and Brenda into that and and have them reach out to you because they're going to be the ones that are going to be able to answer your coverage questions, your calculations, your, you know, contribution questions, all of that stuff. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Thank you for your time, Dana. We appreciate it. All righty. Thank you. See you. Youall have a great day. See you soon. You too. Okay. I need a plan for lunch. Yes.

So, we're going to take a break and our next uh item that is scheduled at 1:30 will resume at 1:30. Take me back. Hello everyone. This is a continuation of our April 14th work session. Uh it's now 1:30 and item number three on our agenda is overview and discussion regarding Lake County Aquatic Center. This will be led by Jane Harrelson of PB Swims. Welcome Jane. Welcome everyone.

Thank you. I'm Jane Harelson, uh, representing PB Swims today and we're here to, uh, discuss Lake County government's responsibility for Lake County Aquatic Center and consider uh, how to move forward and get our pool, which incidentally was closed uh, April 21st, 2021. So that's five years ago, next Tuesday. and $400,000 of surveys and plans since then. And um the community wants a pool and there were good intentions when the board who shut down the pool said, "We think it'll be more beneficial to build new." So, we've done the research. We've done those plans and it's not realistic to build new. And the new we were presented with almost a year ago, nine months ago, it was a steel fabricated building with the pool had 20 yard lap lanes. It had a leisure and kitty pool with it. And it had a lifespan of 25 years. Whereas the pool that we have that's been sitting empty for five years, it's a 25 yard, five to six lap lanes, a diving well, diving board, climbing wall, sauna, jacuzzi, and it has a 50-year lifespan in a brick andmortar building once renovated. So, we at PB Swims, we are working toward getting that building renovated. The building belongs to the school district.

The county has an intergovernmental agreement from 2003 that's good through 2028. They agreed back then to operate and maintain the pool. And so we just like to discuss how are we the taxpayers, how are we going to move forward so we can get that um building renovated. And the thing is both the aquatic center portion of that building gym and the classroom section, whatever's done with that, whether it's demolished, sold, renovated, or left in place to decay like it is, we the taxpayers are going to have we're on the hook for it. No matter what's done, we're the ones that are going to have to bail it out one way or another and live with the consequences. So we at PB Swims, we would like to have we thought we had the green light to raise money at the from the June 10th meeting last June when it was a joint meeting and the options were presented. We thought we had the green light to go ahead and start raising money to fix that pool. But when we started applying for grants, the school district made it clear that they did not want any recreation renovation or renovating of that building at all to happen until there was a united decision or a unified decision between the county, the city, and the school district. Now, you may wonder, what does the city have to do with this? Well, they hold the aquatic center tax fund and that money, the city council, it's their responsibility to ensure that the money in that fund and

there's about 570,000 I think. Is that what I sent out right now? Anyway, the city council members, it's their responsibility to ensure that money is spent on what the taxpayers or voters intended it to be spent on. and it was designed to primarily cover operations and maintenance. However, the ballot language in there, it can be used for capital. It would take 20 years to raise enough money to do the capital improvements on that building, but so that's not realistic, but we would like to be able to raise money to renovate that building. And it's not going to happen unless the county shows the school district and agrees with the school district that you're behind this taxpayer driven effort to renovate our public pool. So, um, do you have any specific questions for me? I have a wealth of information, five years, facts and figures. Um, I've looked at your budget book and your um, priorities. A pool is not in there. However, a pool, I do believe, align with the county's priorities. We're not here today asking for money. We are asking that that recreation replacement fund be renewed and resolution 1632 be honored with savings in that recreation replacement fund to go to the aquatic center. We are asking that conservation trust funds which at one time the recreation advisory board recommended 130,000 going to the aquatic center.

Now, I think CTFs are at 60,000 last I heard, but we do request that conservation trust funds be set aside for the aquatic center. But in general, we're not asking you, we're not here today saying, "Hey, fix the pool." We're asking you to support this taxpayer driven effort.

Thanks, Shane. Um, I I want to address a couple of things that you spoke about that I think are maybe not quite aligned with what we all understand through all of the surveys and discussions that we've had. One of them is the lifespan of the pool that was presented to us by our last uh wreck feasibility study. Um, that's the lifespan of the roof, which is like any roof needs to be parts of a building need to be replaced after a certain amount of years. So, it's not that the building would only last 25 years. It's just that the roof would likely need to be replaced after 25 years. Same with like the roof on your house, the roof on my house, etc. So, I don't think that that's like a fair comparison to say a 25 year lifespan versus a 50-year lifespan. um especially when the 50-year lifespan we're talking about is a very complicated building and you can't take the pool out of the whole building and that building has a lot of needs. Um, the other thing is that I I just want to clarify I remember our meeting from last June and I don't recall a a green light to PV swims to go seek funding for renovating the school. My impression was that we were all on the same page that nobody had the capital to be able to do either a renovation or a new build. So, can you just clarify where are you where you feel like you got a green light from our joint work session?

So, I do stand corrected on that uh roof and thank you. I did not realize that when I read over that. Yeah. I thought it was the whole building. Yeah, totally. Um and as far as the green lights, no decisions were made. Yeah. Um, I felt, and I don't want to put Matt Bulock on the spot, but I felt like he at one point toward the end of the meeting, and it's recorded, Commissioner Bullock said, "Well, you know, new one's out of the question, but I would support PB Swims in looking for grants." I thought that's what I took away from that.

And I did not I didn't take away anything that um anything to stop us from continue continuing our mission. Okay. I think the whole point of us having that and I don't we can come back to you Matt in a second but I think the whole point of us having that joint work session between the city, the county, and the school district was to make sure that we're all on the same page and we're moving forward as one community because often times when we make decisions that are ad hoc or without proper planning, we get ourselves into situations that we wish we could have backed out of. So my impression from that meeting was that we did not have a unified front in moving towards an aquatic facility because we did not have a viable aquatics facility to move forward with. Not that not that the pool not that our old pool isn't viable, but that feasibly we do not have the funds and you can do grant you can see grants all you want but it the capital investment is too great to be only funding it through grants. It's hu it's a huge dollar amount. We can't fund our county courthouse, which is like a required statutory facility, just through grants. So, I I did not think that there was feasibly a way to move forward without some sort of investment from one or all three of the entities. Um, and then the last thing I just wanted to bring up is so that we can move forward is the you talk about the wreck replacement fund and the conservation trust funds. Those have been spent. So those aren't funds that are like that we're choosing not to spend on the pool. Those were spent on the field replacement.

So I don't quite know what you're actually asking about. I didn't articulate that very well. I would like to start saving in that recreation replacement fund again and the conservation trust funds that the county gets say 60,000 a year or what have you for about 20 years the recreation advisory board would advise the commissioners on because with their public outreach on what those funds should be spent on.

Yeah. To me, it seems like that recreation advisory board has dissolved. And um I would just like the recreation the uh conservation trust funds, some of them to be allocated toward the aquatic center. Okay. When as they come in. Got it. Okay. That's a very clear request. Thank you. And it's I'm when I say I I get it. Okay, we get it. It's okay. The universal eye. The Yeah. Yeah, we get it.

What are the realistic and latest? There's been so many different numbers put to that pool from one to two million up to over 20 million. Do you have a sense of what the actual cost is? So, um, and Matt, I can send you the spreadsheets where it has the line items that were presented to the county last year. Um, when was it last year or two years ago? It was two years ago when they were trying to sell it, wasn't it? No, it was I think it was two years. Was it last year? I think it was two years ago. It was two years ago. It was two years ago.

The previous board. Yeah. Okay. So I do have numbers um that were derived from so the line items were originally taken from the 2020 audit that Lake County paid for and that was done by Asenza architecture and then the school district did a 2023 uh master plan update and they took those line items and HCM, another architectural firm and FCI I who contracts with them.

They updated those numbers um in September of 2023. So, I have those updated numbers and then the county determined the county manager's office in um the beginning of 2024 determined that a renovation of those locker rooms would be about 2.5 million. So they added that on to the 14 million that the school district stated would take to renovate that aquatic center. So now we're at 16.5 million and that was 2 years ago and you two would have a much better handle on what the construction inflation has been like since two years ago. Didn't we do that work last year with the wreck committee where we were trying to be able to create a spreadsheet that showed renovation to whatever the feasibility

and I have that stuff. Do you because I think that and we came we came we came in last year at about 18 million. Yeah. And um 18 to 22 depending on your finishes I guess. Well, in contingency and and when you renovate when you renovate anything cost Yep. And when you renovate anything like we know about this building, you inevitably find the ghosts in the system, right? Like you can't assume that what you see is what you're going to have to fix.

Yeah. So, I think conservatively 22 thou 22 million. Um, okay. Well, 22 million. Honestly, Jane, what is what is the realistic process pro prospect of raising $22 million as a 501c3? It gets harder every day. And the reason, one of the reasons we didn't move forward last June, there's no money, right? And there's never been any money and we're never going to have any money if we don't work toward it. Yeah.

Um PB Swims, we have attended those highle meetings led by the EDC on possible future taxes to go to the ballot in 2027. when the school district passed their mill level mill levy override and PB Swims passed um 2A and 2B, the economy was a lot better than it was last year when we were at that June 10th meeting and I said, "Boy, I don't think anything's going to pass. I don't think the economyy's gotten better in the last year." um my purchasing power has gone way down in the last well since the bull closed. So, um one of the reasons we're here today, you ask realistically, how can a 501c3 raise $20 million? Maybe we can't, but that's why we're here because as taxpayers, we're responsible for that building. Bottom line. Same with that. You know, the old junior high gym, it has been closed since 2015. Back in 2015, it would have been a million and a half to rectify. Now, I have no idea how much it is, but the more we kick this can down the road, the more we put it off, the more expensive it's going to get. So, we're here today to say, "Hey, let's work on this." You know, there was that task force that began in um October that really didn't get us anywhere. Had it started 5 years ago, it may have, but it's it's just not getting us anywhere.

In fact, it's it's been and this is my opinion, not PB Swims, not my families, employers, any other people I'm associated with. My impression of that task force is it was a barrier in front of PB Swims. Just another barrier. Um the school district 5 years ago said, "Hey, it's the county's responsibility to fix that pool." The county said it's not our building, but it is. The building is all of our responsibility and environmentally I think the responsible thing to do is renovate it.

I don't think there's any question that it's, you know, our community's responsibility. It's just gotten so it's been so long and now it's gotten so the dollar amount. I don't know, Jim, you said you wanted to start you have $500 and some thousands You said you'd like to start renovating.

Well, and I personally said that last fall and uh then in our PB Swims meeting because I'm like, you know, that building, and this is just hearsay, I hear that faucets have been closed off by public health because lead's coming out of them. Now, I know Parkville water is clean water and the water going in that building isn't leadridden, but there are faucets cut off in that building because there's lead unacceptable levels of lead coming out. Why haven't we as taxpayers fixed that? Well, I think the school district has asked us to fix that through ballot measures that the community has turned down. So

they they have asked us to fix that many times. Yeah. And we've said no. Well, and that um so that's that brings me up to some old baggage. That 2023 ballot measure that the school district put on the ballot. They had a probably a $5,000 survey that told them had they included the aquatic center, it would have passed. They did not. and the ballot the ballot experts were right. They put on other things rather than uh the aquatic center. So, the school district didn't get any money. How is that how is that helpful to the conversation?

It wasn't. Sorry. I was just bringing up my baggage. My bad. Forgive me everybody because that the board even told me, Jane, zip it on that. It's okay. I just don't think I owe I owe I owe PB Swims $10 for doing that. She buys you something nice. No, it goes to the pool fund. Okay. Excellent. Good.

Um, yeah, I just I I want to I want to have a conversation that moves us forward and so far I I still don't see what is the feasibility of us doing this. So, can you can you be a little more explicit? What has changed since last June and the joint work session that we had that gets this building to be like this is our shining star? This is our option when I the school district does not agree with you and so far we don't have any information that would change our that would change my perspective about putting money into that building. So, um, and this isn't baggage, but I know that recreation, the pool to Pivy Swims, we look at it as more than recreation. We look at it as recreation, education, and health. An aquatic, a public aquatic center checks those boxes. And we know the school district isn't statutoily required to have a pool or recreation. The county, you're not required to have recreation or pool. I do have a problem with $22,000 going toward another recreation plan when we don't take care of what we have and when we have spent so much money on recreation plans over the last 5 years. You weren't here. You didn't approve them. But why are we spending when the pool was the most num most it was the number one most used facility according to the report from 2020.

All these surveys, it's been the top top choice for the public except for this last one that your recreation department put out and they said we're not talking about the pool, but it still came in second. Trails came in first. The city voters approved a tax to operate and maintain it, but that's not where our recreation tax dollars are going right now. They're not going toward this pool. They're going toward um other things that I I completely enjoy. Yesterday I went to the senior citizen functional fitness. Fantastic. Sixth street gym. Kim Perons a great teacher. We were walking our laps. Somebody that's was born and raised here. Couple years ahead of me in school, never went to that school. She said, "Why are we doing laps in this Sixth Street gym when there's a track down at the school we paid for?" So, the kids leaving next fall that will give the community an opportunity to spend more time in that gym hopefully since the kids aren't eating breakfast and lunch in there.

Yeah. So, I don't think I answered your question, Elsa. I think I just dumped more baggage on you. No, it's okay. I want my recreation tax dollars I want my tax dollars my tax dollars our property taxes double from 2020 to 2025. Yeah.

I want my tax dollars going to recreation but going toward the pool. I don't want them going to pickle ball. I don't want them going um to more plants. Um, what is the I hear you obviously. I hear you. That is that is your your driving statement. I get it. But what is this $22,000 wreck plan that you think that we're spending that's frivolous? I didn't say it was frivolous. It's just another plan. What don't we have enough plans? Which I don't know which plan you're talking about. I'm just asking.

Um, it was um I just got all the information from you. I I think it's the maybe Ken is can speak to this. I think it's the reorganization. It's with the me uh merging of pros and go. And I'm not saying they don't need that or not go. I'm not saying they don't need it. Yeah. Those people are sharp people though. I don't know. And Rachel is just it's 14,000. Oh, it is. Okay. Cuz I just saw in the approval Yeah. that it was approved up to 22,000 and I think it's funded. I think these people are really smart. I think Brian

Mary can't all these people are very smart. So I just think it's weird we hire all these outsiders to tell us what we want. Candace, do you want to speak to that a little bit? Had your hand. Yeah, I do. Can Can you hear me? Okay, we can. Yes.

Okay. Um, so I just want to be really clear as you said earlier, Jane, recreation is not a statutory requirement and we have really had to rein our our budgets in the last year because we have a lot of statutory items that we're not even touching. Uh hence the work with the recreation department and get outdoors leadville um to be a more cohesive team that utilizes our full-time staff more equitably across the board uh because we cannot afford to continue to use so many part-time staff. So we have to learn to do a lot more on the recreation front with a lot less money to put towards it, which is the goal of getting two different groups who have operated independently to really be able to work more cohesively across the department. Uh mainly because we cut their uh part-time staffing budget uh pretty significantly over 25% uh in this last budget year. So, I understand your desire not to have any plans. Uh, we're not creating plans. We're doing work with a department to help us work with the same people uh at a 25% staffing reduction to that department. So, I just wanted to clarify what that was for, what we're doing with that department, and the why. the 25% staffing cost reduction to that department is well well over uh what we've spent to get the team working cohesively together. I think it's really important to note that we are having to prioritize other items than recreation just because there are things we don't get to opt out of. We don't get to opt out of fixing the roads. I don't get to

opt out of public safety. Um, and for years the county has carried a lot of items. The pool was one of those items. Um, and in looking at historical expenditures, the county lost roughly 1 to2 million a year running the pool. And that certainly is not in 2026. So, I I think on the whole you you really hit the nail on the head. Recreation isn't something that we're statutoily required to do, but there are a whole host of things that we are. And I I think that's why we and the school are having to say we if you want to raise money for a separate facility, no, no one is stopping you there. But I I think we're all having to say what do we prioritize? How do we continue to do all the things we're required to do? And you know for the school district that's to educate children in a building that's safe with water that's safe which is why they are prioritizing you know the buildings that they can maintain and not every building. So I I think it's a really important thing to note is that all of us, the school, us, the city, we're all having to say what are the things we're required to do and how do we prioritize those items first and then focus on the nice to haves secondarily. It's not saying the nice to haves aren't important. They're very important and it's why we are trying to do more with less um so that we can continue to offer recreation activities.

Yeah. And I'll just chime in on that too. You know, when we came into office, I think the books were kind of there was, you know, open books and audits that weren't done. So, right now we're trying to inventory all of everything we own, including land, assets, old vehicles, and once we once we figure out what we have, then we can start to move forward. But, you know, as far as having open books for two years or three years and two years behind on audits, it's really hard to, you know, make any kind of plan when you don't know what you have. it'd be like not balancing your checkbook for two years and then deciding you want a new bicycle or something. So, I think personally that's where I'm at is we're still in the reorganization period. And I appreciate I love the pool. I love diving boards. Uh, you know, love deep pools. I can swim my kids. So, I I don't know what the path is forward, Jane. And you know, I'm smart enough now not to speak out of turn without consulting the board.

But uh well, you even said to be fair, you said at that meeting that was just you personally that you couldn't speak for the board. So I'm not I'm not calling you out on that last June 10th. You call me out anytime. I've just gotten smarter. I'm going to get harder to call out. So, so I don't know what the path forward is. I really don't. Is it a Would the, you know, that that tax money that's about $500,000 a year? Would that cover a bond payment for

So, that's what we need to look into. Yeah. Can we leverage that money? Um, I'm not big on borrowing, but would that leverage give us leverage and The thing is, I can see why the school district, the county, and the city are all gunshy.

The thing is it's it's going to come. We we need to go for that building because if we don't if we don't start raising money now one if we're just saying some just some affordable aquatic center funders aren't giving us money for that.

Yeah. And I I just hope that we can all get together and work so that we can get the green light from the school district who's the steward of that building, the county who has the IGA for that segment of the building, and the city get their blessing to raise money to renovate that building because um that That's the only way it's going to work is if we get the go-ahad to work on this. So, please help your taxpayers help you find a way to get this building. You know, it's a beautiful building. It just needs work.

Jane, I'm sorry. I feel like I just heard a contradiction. You said that nobody's funders aren't funding this, but then you said, "Give us the green light to go and seek funding." like where is this funding that you think it's coming from? That's really what I'm I'm waiting to hear is like what has changed since June other than all of our budgets becoming more constricted. Um where is the room for this funding? So um the funding so say if I'm asking um McKenzie Scott for some funding. I'm sorry you don't know who that is. um yield giving that's um sorry I don't Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos we appi we've applied for a grant um in fact Lake County Build a Generation umbrella us uh to apply um for a million dollar grant well they want to see line items so if we're asking for and it there are grants actually Mackenzie Scott she's boy she's really uh

altruistic She she yes and doesn't put a lot of restrictions on it but they did want line items um not just some concept the voters did approve a concept of an affordable public aquatic center and that was the ballot language because at the time that feasibility study was going on PB Swims was open to the results of that PE uh that feasibility study. Um, so the voters did vote to approve for just an affordable public aquatic center, not specifically the intermediate school pool, right? Um, but I did I don't think I answered your question.

No, it's where is the funding? Where is this funding that you said nobody's funding things like this and then you said give us the opportunity to go find the funding. Where is this funding that you think you're looking for? I see. And I see some of your So we're looking um So it's 20 million is a lot. It is.

We're going to we're looking at corporations. Corporations only as a whole in the nonprofit world. Capital expenditures only 7% of capital projects come from corporations. We're going to try to beat that. We're looking at government um federal, state, local foundations, corporations. We're looking at all of it. And it's a huge It's a high bar. Yeah. But we're going for it. I hear you. And I just I And I

They want line items is what I tried to miss saying. I'm sorry. I didn't articulate that very well. I mean, I think we can look across the street at the Taber Opera House as a great example of a of a foundation, like a a nonprofit foundation working to raise money for capital improvements in conjunction with a government entity. And they are working really hard. They have been tireless. And they have raised money in lots of different ways, but they are nowhere close to a $20 million capital campaign. And they've been doing it for years. and a lot of their work has been floated by the city. So, so I don't How is the PB Swims raising capital money different from say the Taber Opera House where you don't need a government partner to help float until the funds come in?

Do you hear do you does that

question? Yeah. Well, I don't know if we are different. I I think that's where I'm like I I don't hear the difference yet in how our conversation from June is now more feasible. How is it more likely? And that's I think what I'm I'm hoping to hear from PB Swim someday. Um but I'm not I'm not hearing it today. So, do you as a commissioner, do you feel any any obligation at all for that building?

Um, no, it is not our building.

Okay. And I think that we are trying to take accountability and responsibility for the buildings that are under our purview. And we're taking steps and investing and trying to make sure that we have a strong understanding of all the needs of all of our assets, all of our capital assets, so that we can make concerted and um efficient decisions in the future about what we can or cannot fund. because currently we can't fund all the buildings that are our responsibility and and so it doesn't make sense for us to take on obligations for another building that isn't ours. I don't feel obligation.

So when that 2028 IGA runs out, what do you what what's going to happen then with that building? Do you know? We don't know. We don't. That's Do you care? Um, as a commissioner or as a taxpayer or as a How about as a taxpayer? I mean, I care about the school district and how that building the answer to the question.

I will finish the I will finish the answer. I think that how that building plays into the health of the school district. I care a lot about that. And I also care about who's on the board and supporting that board to make the right decisions for our kids and whatever they choose to do with that building that supports the health of our children learning. I respect that. So I don't have a specific like care for the building as though it's outside of the context of the school district. What about you, Matt? Do you care about the building?

Yeah, I think it it's a really volatile and emotional issue and we appreciate the calmness everybody's showing right now. I'd like to Yeah, I'd like to just keep that calmness going because we're not going to get anywhere if if people start getting mad and accusing us of having emotions about a building. I mean, we're up here to try and do what's best for the community as a whole. And um so that's where I'm at. Would I love to see a pool? Sure.

Could we come up with $20 million? Is it a bond issue? Is it does it need to go to the voters? But I don't see a path to the 20 million and I don't see a path for peace meal renovations. I've seen that before in this town where someone doesn't address the foundation and they put a $50,000 kitchen on a mudsill and it all starts creaking to one side. So, it's a really complicated situation and you know, we're not here to defend ourselves personally and our feelings. We're here to try and do the best job we can and make the best decisions in conjunction with the city and with the school district and with you guys. We care about you guys and you know, we're we're I I personally am I'm I don't know how to move forward and I wish I did. So if you want some sort of emotional commitment from me to the pool, you're not going to get it. Did you have a question? Not a question so much, but and I'm not totally savvy with the whole thing, but from what I've heard, because you will not back our grant applications, that keeps the people that we're applying money for from saying if the commissioners, the city, and the school district doesn't back it, we're not giving you money. So, we're I think PB Swims is asking you just to back this not

financially back it in grant applications so that PB Swins can go out and try and get the $20 million that it takes. From what I've understood, just hearing tidbits, is that the grant applications that have gone out have gone out without the backing of the commissioners, the city, and the school district. And uh any grtor sees that and they're going to say, "We can't give it to you without these backers." Yeah.

So, I want to see the commissioners, the city, and the school district to back the attempt to raise the money to get this school fixed. You're spending I don't know how much you're spending on Get Outdoors Lego. I think it's a great program. It's only a small segment of the population. A pool is open to everyone. I'm I'm all for kids learning to ski and be outdoors. That's great. But it's only that segment of our population. That's all I have to say.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. And if we could, you know, if you could just ask and answer that question of why why is it that the county and school district and the city won't back your asks. And uh I guess I don't know the answer to that question, but maybe we could ask somebody who was on that the pool board. I mean, why why is it like that's a genuine question for me? I don't know the answer. Well, and to be fair, the last board of commissioners, they wrote PBS FIMS a letter and they asked us to start going after a new rec center because they did not want to put any money into a building that was likely going to be demolished.

Mhm.

They believed that building was going to be demolished. and the school district went after a best grant three times where had they gotten the best grant and the public behind it. The options for that building were either to be handed over to another governmental entity, sold or demolished. The best grant would have given them the money to demolish that building. I have sent both of you the public records from when they shut down that pool to fix it and then four months later said, "No, we're just shutting it down." Where it explicitly states, "The good news is we didn't need a new pool." So my question with that is would you revisit that and say okay what would it take to get this pool operational in the short term. Um, it may have been sitting sitting idle for too long because I know the HVAC. I know there's all sorts of upgrades and um, which brings me off on a tangent. How much does it really cost? The people giving us these numbers, did they just want to build a new school or a new rec center? So, I think we need to look and see, okay, how much will it cost to safely reopen this pool,

but that's the work that we did do, which was the 18 to 22 million. That is, we have done that work. We're not doing it again. Yeah. Oh, I agree. But no, those are those are the those are the costs. But are those really the cost? When do we stop asking that, J? Like what is Good point. Good point. Because this community is full of

No, we can't do any. You heard me say, why are we hiring these outsiders to tell us what we want? You're right. Excuse me. I digress. I think I should probably let other people talk. I think just back to what Matt said though is that like in order to in order to have these conversations with eyes wide open and soberly like we have we have to trust sometimes that the numbers that we've worked really hard on are the numbers and this community right now and for years is full of lots of different numbers about the pool. So that's I think why a lot of my questions are like can we clarify can we clarify because the narrative has not been clear. So so I don't know I just

let's go I think you had a a question or a comment.

Yes. So, it's it feels like without some sort of a an agreement among the county commissioners, etc., that if you say we're not going to say we're in favor of this group trying to build a pool, if you say that you're not in favor of us trying, we're never going to get one. We're never going to get to work this way. All we're asking is for you to say, "Hey, go for it. We're behind you. We're not going to we're not talking about money, but we're behind the effort of trying to find the money to do it."

And that's that's all we're asking at this point. And and I don't understand. I it feels like you're standing in our way by not doing that. Well, like I said before, I don't understand that either. So, I'll try and understand that better, but uh I think it's a priority issue. But you're right, the city, school district, county, and everybody would need to be on the same page to go for the grants. 20 million's a lot. So, uh so I don't have the answer. I I don't I don't know that that way forward. I feel like we're asking permission to get grants.

We don't need your permission, but we do need your local support, institutional support. Yeah. And that's all we're asking. I I get that. And since the whole community has said it's number one priority, you should be willing to do that for us. Well, that's that's true in many ways, but also the point of being a county commissioner is to look at all of the needs of the community. It is. It's not saying that it's a priority to you, but it is to us. It's just that

I hear that, Lane, but but listen, but but we are trying to look at all of the departments that we use to serve the community. And so when we do a wreck survey and they say the pool is the most important thing, that doesn't mean that all of a sudden we shift all of our efforts recreationally to the pool. It also doesn't mean that we shift all of our priorities from other departments. Like it's our job to look at all of the needs of the community and balance that. Do you el seems like you're not agreeing? I I just don't understand what how how you have to change anything you're doing to say, "Hey, PB Swims,

go for it. Go for it." And and we'll sign a letter that says, "We're in favor of you going for it." But

it doesn't cost you anything. But the thing is back in June, we are when we had a joint work session with the county, the city, and the school district, we were not on all on the same page about you all going for it. And so nothing has changed that would make me say, "Okay, now things are different. Go for it." But Matt, Chris used to be here, but Matt said that it's uh what's the next what's our next step to move forward? Well, we're we're asking that it's not a money issue and you don't have to personally uh be a you know for the pool, but we need to have the u the written assignment that says, you know, that this group is a valid group if you trust us and we would like you to and then you go to that funding. Where's the funding coming? this from donors. They're out there just haven't asked the right one. And so they we you know they'll these group they'll keep asking if we can get this agreement with the city

and the the pool or the uh city council seems like they're kind of going or the school board is sort of pointing to you guys. We're not doing anything until these guys say that we'll we'll that will be okay. And we think that each one individually would probably agree with the other group if it starts with you. It has to be one step at a time versus first is this agreement that or the ability to uh move on with these grant applications. They want what do you have for support institutionally? They ask

Candace, hold on just a sec. I got a question for you. Why do you think it is that no one will sign on to your grant? Well, that that was actually my question. Yeah. Why is it I mean I'd like Did the full task force give you we have in here as well. Why is it that no one will sign on? Did they give you a reason or do you have any Yeah. Yeah. because they want a unified decision that the city, county, and school district will support this. Candace, I think you had your hand up. Kate has a little finger. Oh, hello.

Candace, if you don't mind holding on, I think Kate wants to jump in.

Good to see you all. And I want to thank um board of ed member Oh, Miriam dropped. She was online. Melissa Early and Grayson Cooper here. and I invite them to speak on behalf of the school board. I think the answer is um more complicated than what Jane just said. It is true that the school board decided last June that the reason they felt that it was important to have this unified decision is because we don't do wreck. That is not our jam, right? We believe in wreck as a good thing for kids, but it is not our mission and is not our superpower. Right? The county has traditionally operated wreck in the county. The city holds the funds that will theoretically operate the facility. So, everybody has a piece of the puzzle, right? So, this idea of a unified decision is meant to reflect that fact, right? that all three of those entities have a stake and have an interest and have something that will be needed, right? We have the potentially the building, the county has the experience operating wreck facilities and the city holds the cash. Okay, so that's part one. But the part that hasn't been lifted up today that I feel um a duty to lift up and I'd love for Melissa and or Grayson to weigh in is the second sort of guideline that the board of education had goes to something that Matt said which is they um we do major capital projects, right? of any of the elected boards in the county, the school district probably has the most

recent experience with building 10 plus million dollar facilities, right? So, what we know is that incremental renovation is tricky, right? And that's what Matt said and we agree. And so that that was the school board's in addition to the unified decision, their second sort of guideline was hey increment incremental renovation has the chance to actually waste taxpayer dollars because you're going to start something and if you're trying to raise $20 million one grant at a time that's going to take years. That is going to take a decade. That is going to take

I'm sorry 5 years of been moist. Hey, can we just let Kate finish? She's she's got a

It's just that is what I would say as being part of running multiple bond campaigns for the school district. I was not here for the bond campaign that failed for um LCIS, but for the other ones, if you are going to do a 20 to40 million capital construction project, you will save money and headache by having all the money there when you start. Which is why I think it was said at the June work session, and I remember Jane agreeing with it, that the only way we raise this much money is by asking the voters to pass a bond.

Yeah.

And I really believe that that is the path here. I appreciate that PB Swims wants to try to do this one grant at a time. I I'm afraid I think that that's unrealistic and the school board has hesitations because the CDS grant that you all um asked for all of our support with requires the project to be shovel ready, right? This project, if it's a $20 million project, is not shovel ready when we get the first million. It's just not. So, I think that PB Swims, I appreciate the sort of um pull up our bootstraps and let's try to do this one grant at a time, but if this community is serious about this, the way to do it is to run a ballot issue and pass a bond. I I believe that very firmly. The school district is not going to run that ballot issue in all likelihood because recreation is not our mission and not our superpower and we have other extremely pressing needs. But that is the second part of why the the board of education is not trying to like stonewall the idea that we should have excellent recreation and pool facilities in this community. We're simply confronting the reality of what a capital project of this magnitude takes to be successful. While I have the floor, I want to point out one other thing. I do agree that the $20 million figure was pretty unimpeachable in June. But since then, and this is pointed out in public meetings that the board of ed has had, staff has shared with our board that the infrastructure issues in that building are increasingly concerning.

There are plumbing leaks that we don't even totally understand cuz the plumber's camera won't even go to them and they are under the pool. Mhm.

We asked the school district to ask the voters in 2023 to help renovate that building. The voters said no. So that does mean that the infrastructure is declining. I think the district at the time was incredibly clear about that. If this doesn't pass, this is what will happen. This is what is happening. The infrastructure is crumbling around and under the pool. So, I would argue that $20 million is probably light by about half because I think you're going to have to consider if the $40 million ask in 2023 was for a complete infrastructure upgrade. Granted, that included all the cap classrooms and all that stuff. Okay, fine. Let's cut that 20 in half or that 40 in half. Now, we have 20. 20 for the infrastructure, 20 to renovate the pool, right? I mean, I I don't know, you know, but I think that to say that the unimpeachable figure of 18 to 22 in June is still realistic, I think is might not be right.

So, Grayson, Melissa, would you care to add? The other piece I would add is um I came on the board just over a year ago and since then we've been looking for creative ways to save as much money as possible um so that we can sink as much money as possible into the direct education of our students making getting the most bang for our buck in Lake County schools because we know that we care we value education here. Part of that work was to choose to consolidate schools to take students out of LCIS and split them between LCEES and the high school. So, not that we've abandoned our responsibility for Lake County Intermediate School, but the long-term plans for that school at this moment are unknown

from the school district's perspective. And so, I would love a pool. I love to swim. I would love a pool in my bill. Um, but at this moment I as a school board member can't support sinking money into L that pool at LCIS just because the long-term plans for that property are unknown. Yeah.

So it doesn't to me it doesn't I would hate to see people use their good time to write grants which I've done a lot of and I know how hard they are to not know what the long-term plan is for that building. And I don't know that we can run a I mean I don't know the politics of running a bond issue, but I'm guessing we don't want to do that quite yet because we need to know and the school district's the board is going to work on a long-term plans for our various buildings in a meeting coming up. I think I don't know what's on the agenda. It's coming up in June maybe. Um so I get why I mean I get why PBA PB Swims might feel stuck. Um because it's a knot. We have a knot that we slowly have to tease apart and that's only going to happen if we work together and right now we're school district has some things that has to figure out.

Well, that's really great information. That was really helpful. Thanks for uh letting these folks talk. Did you have something you wanted to add? talk about it quite well. Candace, would you still like to uh chime in on on this latest development?

Yeah, I was just going to echo um what the what Kate and the last few ladies said. Um you know, for us as a county, the the request wasn't just to support a grant application. The request was to support a grant application that specifically named the school's building. And just like we are assessing all of our assets to determine what do they all need, what is the top priority, we know that the school has already embarked on that process. And and for us at the county level to be in support of a grant application that specifically calls out a building that the school district has not identified as their top priority at this time. um was really at the heart of uh not being able to support that request because it's it it is not our building. It's not our asset. Not saying we don't care about the asset, but I I think that was really at the heart of the request wasn't just to raise grant funds to build a new pool. the the grant that we were asked to support or the commissioners were asked to write a letter of support for specifically called out a building that as we've just heard really may not be at the top of the school's priority list at this time. They have a lot of other items to tackle education of students, safe drinking water in the buildings, and with wreck not being named as their priority, I I think that I just wanted to echo what the ladies have said and help people understand why there there was no letter because the the specific ask wasn't to just raise funds to go apply for grants other than specifically for a building that we do not own. That's all I was going to add.

Thank you, Candace, for the clarifying comments. So, yes, sir. Well, I got here a long time ago, and everybody keeps talking about recreation and everything else. That swimming pool taught every individual in this town how to swim. It was one of the largest part of education in this town. This is for Kate and everybody else. And that was part of the program they went through. I taught life saving and everything else there from the high school. Those kids could do anything else. It's not recreation. It's a lifestyle and people needing to learn how to swim. We live in Lake County. We don't even teach kids how to swim. I'm sorry. That's not it's not even part of it. But my my question is that the school district and the county signed an agreement. one to help take care of it, the other one had it in their building. And I want to know what happened to that agreement because as far as I know, it's still in writing, but where what happened to it? And why isn't it? And Candace, this is goes, you know, she mentioned taking care of the roads as part of their budget. I'm sorry, I haven't seen any roads taken care of except one down county road four, and that's if you're going to spend money on roads, spend it on roads. But this pool is is not recreation. It's a place for kids to go, not get behind machines or anything else. It's a kid for adults to go. It's a it was a place for seniors that had were struggling with their knees, their bodies. They couldn't do anything. They were using it to walk and do physical activity that way. That pool was a major part of this community. And everybody says, "Well, we're just going to tear it down and we'll build new I'm old. I don't I can't afford to tear

anything down. I got to fix what I have. I'm sorry. That's not, you know, and I just want to know where that agreement went. If is is it still in place? Yeah. Well, it's still here, but there's a there is a section that says if there's not enough funds, we're not obligated to run or fix or anything. There's a section in that agreement. You want me to read it to you? Well, I'd like a copy of it.

Okay, we can do that. I'll just read it just so everybody knows. Not with notwithstanding anything herein contained to the contrary, the county's obligation under this agreement are expressly subject to an annual approach appropriation being made by the board of county commissioners of Lake County. uh in any amount sufficient to allow county to perform this obligation. In the event sufficient funds shall not be appropriate appropriated to allow the county to perform its obligations, this agreement may be terminated by either party without penalty. So when when was that was that written in the original? No, that was 2003.

That was in 20 That was 2003. It goes to 20. Yeah. the 1974 contract. I still have a copy of that. That was breached long ago, but it'd be nice if it was honored again. Um, and then the 2003 agreement, it goes till 2028 and who knows what's going to happen in 2028 and which is the big question. What's that's our building. What what are we what are we going to do with the building? So is that when that was added, was that added by the county commissioners who in 2003 and the school district? An IGA has to be signed by both parties. Yeah. So it would have been the school district and

so in other words, let's just do away with it.

I don't think there's any question that everybody in this community would like to have a pool to what degree and I agree it's a safety issue for the kids. Mine is to Kate and the school board here. And you know, I've watched things disappear in the school district, but I can go to other school districts. They still have all their programs, but physical education and the pool and teaching kids how to swim does a lot more for the entire population than just a few kids here and there. It's something I mean, I'm sorry. was the basis of this community. People came from around the world to train up here. We used to have triathlons up here.

And what do we have now? It's just I think it's not a it's not a question about whether it's of value to the community. Like I I won freaking triathlons pregnant in that pool. I feel very connected to that pool. It's not about whether we care about the pool or not. It's how do we solve the financial task in front of us to get a pull back.

And it's also that I mean honestly to me it's that I wouldn't when we're facing it kind of with the courthouse right now it doesn't really make sense to renovate a small part of a larger infrastructure problem building. So, so as a community, we really need to be effective with our money. And I I brought up the roads, right? And we are spending money on roads. I'm sorry it's not enough for you. It's not enough for anybody. And I I'm happy to talk about how we get funding for roads anytime you all want. I would love to.

Awesome. Um I think that the is that we we need to come together as a community to figure out how to how to tackle this. And as somebody who was raised in renovation, I get really leery about trying to think that we could save money through renovation. I I cannot cite a single time where I've seen that be true. Really? Yes. Renov

different from a different from residential. Right. We are talking about we're talking about completely different codes. We're talking about accessibility that is different from a residential home. I'm happy to duct tape my refrigerator compressor together as much as I can, but I am not going to ask the school district to do that. I want I want quality infrastructure for our community. And it's it's different when it comes to commercial and governmental renovation. It just is. So that's one of the reasons why I saw the requests for PB Swims. I said we're nothing has changed. The school district is not on has not changed their take and I have not been convinced that renovating the pool is a more effective use of taxpayer dollars. So just to answer that question that was asked of me, why why we're not signing on to a letter of support for CDS money? I think that it's also a little more complicated than just like these sound bites like this. The county has tried to you leverage grant funding and so much of the funding that is available has strings attached, has matches that currently we don't have a capital stack to be able to provide. And to Kate's point, what we're trying to talk about renovating isn't shovel ready. And so some of those funds would have to potentially be given back and we don't want to get into a situation where we've sunk millions of dollars in and we cannot bring it across the finish line. And so as a county, separate from the pool, separate from the school district's buildings, and to Candace's point, we are really trying to get our house in order about what buildings we are responsible for so that we're not just peacemealing problems all over, but

we're trying to be effective about solving multiple problems with one capital investment or capital fix, just like the school district has been doing with their school consolidation. And and I I know how disappointing that is to hear when we have lost so many amenities. We have lost the pool. We've lost the movie theater. We've lost the roller rink. We've lost the mining hall of fame convention center. We've lost a lot. Bowling alley. The bowling alley. I don't want to.

Those buildings were mother nature designed. Fire built destroyed the original movie theater. Snow destroyed the bowl. Those are both private entities. They're not the way this government is. I hear you. But we are going to lose more and more assets if we don't get our house in order because eventually those our assets are going to collapse because they're not in good shape. If you don't take care of them as you do it. That's right. Somebody agreed to do that with those two agreements between you and the school district.

Between the county and the school district. Yeah. And the county did not have the funds to do that anymore. And here we are. I don't want to be in this position where I'm saying no, I can't financially support a pool or or no, I'm going to go rogue away from our partners. Like, I don't like being in this position in any way. I want a pool. I want one badly, but I do not think that it is currently feasible given the other constraints and needs of this community at the moment. So, I'm I'm sorry, and I know how disappointing that is. I just I need more of a plan to move forward and so far the plan hasn't changed.

Do you know or maybe you do um can an entity other than the school district float a bond issue for that building like LURA or something else? I don't know. Does anybody know? Uh I I'll look into it. don't

um like I said it's the building and the sooner and I I do respect not peacemealing it. I do disagree like I believe you're more than likely right on we're not going to save money but I think it's the environmentally responsible thing to do to renovate that building. I hear you, Jane. But I think there are other there are other ways that we can invest in environmentally friendly practices as a community than just renov than just pouring millions more dollars into a building. Well, the green building council.org says that it takes 80 years to recover from the environmental impacts by demolishing a building and building new, even if the new building's energy efficient.

Yeah, I hear that. I don't want passing that down to future generations. We're already raised in generations that will never learn how to swim. Jane, are you saying that? Because I I heard you say very clearly in June that you did not think that this community had an appetite for a bond. Are you saying by asking who could run one that you think the community does have that appetite? I think it'd be worth looking into. Okay. So, I didn't think sanitation uh tax rates would pass a year ago. It did. I love to be wrong about things like that.

I don't think you can look into, but I'm pretty sure I you have to have certain entities run those bond issues by statute. So, the the board has been giving statutory authority to do that. School district has. I don't think you're going to find that for like Lura wouldn't lura is a different taxing location. I mean they may have but it may only be specific to their project over there. I don't know that they could do it. I mean it's a sun says it would be pretty complicated to do that if if allowed at all.

One more question. You said on your I noticed on your budget that uh there was nothing about a pool. Is is that not your interest at all? Well, you you guys keep asking those questions. I don't think that's the question. I mean, we've already established that, you know, you're trying to accuse us of not being interested in the pool, but you know, we're we're trying to reorganize the organization. We've hired great people to do that for us. So, You know, if you're trying to get me to say something, you're not going to we just want you to put it on your your list somewhere.

Yeah, we we'd like a poll on the list. It's not on the list. It's not in anybody rec department's job description. It we just like it to be on the list.

Well, I understand that. and you you're going for these little wins and stuff, but I think to go back to what Kate said, I think the only answer is is to get a big lump sum of money in a bond. And so if that would pass or not, I don't know. But, uh, you know, I would never start a remodel or a house if someone said, "Hey, I'm just going to give you a little bit of money at the end of every month." And I'm not sure my job's stable. So, you know, well, if somebody gave you $20 million strictly for the pool, would you guys sign off on it and maintain it?

Well, uh, Candace alluded to the fact that we lost a million plus per year maintaining it. So, I mean, I think, you know, we'd have to look into it. You're you're trying to get us to commit to something. Hypothetical question. I just that tells me whether you would do it or not do it. If if I handed you $20 million right now just for the pool, what would you do? You'd say no cuz we can't maintain it.

I think to to Matt's point, you guys are trying to look at this as like a a one. We are trying to look at the entire county. Okay. So So we keep trying to say it's not just about the pool. It's also

It isn't just about the pool. It's about do it's about I mean to Candace's point if like recreation is not statutory. So just let me talk this through because we have to look at the complexity as county commissioners and if we make one decision over here it can have huge impacts over here and we don't want to do that with our eyes closed. So if if Wreck isn't statutory for us, but all of our other statutory obligations that we have to comply with by law keep increasing in cost and increasing in the requirements that we're obligated to fulfill, then the amount of our budget that is available to do these non-stutory things like wreck becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. So, if somebody were to say, "Here's $20 million." We are currently trying to restructure our wreck department to make it more efficient so that something like goal is only funded by um grant money and it's not being subsidized by the county. We're trying to make sure that like wreck can even exist in the future at all. So to have $20 million given to us, I don't know if we could say for sure, yeah, we will have a wreck department in 30 years that would be able to maintain the pool. The

question wasn't for wreck. My question was for the pool and it goes to the school district, too. If somebody gave you $20 million

to build rebuild a pool and have it in the school system and you and help maintain it. However, that was my question. It's not about recreation. We live in Lake County. We don't need There's not a person in here that needs the recck department to recreate in Lake County. We ski, we bike, we fish, we hunt, we do all that stuff without the recck department. And you have a very small entity of people that you're dealing with with your rec department. That's all I'm saying. I That was just a hypothetical question. I wanted to see what your answer was. I feel like I feel like kind of to Matt's point, you're trying to trick us. I'm not tricking you. I'm just asking the question

a little bit because you're trying to like really simplify the conversation and this is not a simple conversation. I think for anybody involved and if it were simple, we would have a simple answer for you. Well, we don't. That's all right. You don't want to support it just by by that answer. you won't just let them try and raise the money and say, "Yeah, go for it." And you won't do that. And that's what surprises me. And it's disappointing. I I know that by sitting in this chair, I cannot help but disappoint plenty of people. So, I'm sorry it's you.

I really appreciate you putting Pey Swims on the agenda today. Thank you. Yeah. Um, can I offer something, Jane?

Please. I I I want to be clear like what I would look for in a in a nonprofit partner to to get us to a place where we have capital investment available for an aquatic center. It's really similar to the Taber Opera House, but it would have to be even more independent than the Taber Opera House is now. And to me that means that there has to be a significant amount of capital that could be used to leverage to go out for these grants where you don't need government entities as your partners because we can't I'm I'm not willing to invest in a partner where they're going out for grants and they get partway through a project and something becomes urgent and they need our financial support and and I really want PB Swims to be that. So, if there's a way that PB Swims can get to that situation, I think that would change the game for me where I'd be more interested in saying, "Hey, this actually sounds like a really viable partner that could help us move us in the direction that we need to because the other entities involved don't sounds like we're not willing to take that financial risk. So, and then I think the other thing is a little bit of I would need to see some willingness to invest in or work on a new facility just knowing the constraints of LCIS because LCIS I worry is like a root canal. It's like a tooth that needs a root canal but currently has a cap on top of it. And once you take the cap off, you realize that you actually

need significant surgery. So my hesitancy will always be there if PB Swims is hyperfocused on a renovation of LCIS. So I just want to be really clear. Those are the two things that I will be looking for to kind of change my tone and my willingness to to to support your efforts for this thing that we all really really want. That's well said. Um, just wrapping it up here. I I think it's important that we don't simplify this and say yes or no. We just answer the question because there's so many other questions. So, you know, when you go when you do go in the community and start blaming the school district or the government or the last board, I just think it's more complicated than that. And I'm asking you to show some grace towards us and not say, well, they said no because we didn't say no today. I think this meeting brought up more questions than it answered. So, seems like we're going to be in a holding pattern till the school district figures out their capital plan. We have a capital plan. That's that's really how I'd like to wrap it up. If uh you know, being adults and continuing the conversation, pointing fingers and blaming, that's all. You know,

I actually think that this was a really good meeting. I got a lot out of it and um had a lot of answers, a lot of questions answered for me today. Thank you for Thanks everybody for you know showing up and caring about the community.

Matt, can I just say one thing since we're all in the same room and I think that there's been a lot of confusion about goal. goal is almost completely grant funded. So, it's not being funded by us as taxpayers. And we our our county manager's office has done a significant amount of work to try to decrease anything that goal is doing that was not grant funded. So when you think about well the county is spending money on goal versus the county is spending money on this. The county is not spending significant amount of money on goal. So I it's really important to me that we clarify what's true and what's not true in this room and I want to make sure that we all know what's true about goal and how we fund it as a community.

Thanks. Well, thank you. Um, we'll see you soon. I'm sure we will. Thank you. Everybody, give us back your safety.

Do you want to close us up, Matt? Yeah. That that concludes our work session for today. Is 2:55. That's