County Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we're live We'll call the Wednesday August 12 20 2060 Kelp County Council meeting in session at this time we'll have opening prayer by Bob Kraft I just

Thank you for another day of life, another day for us to serve you, and we ask that you help us to serve our fellow citizens to the best of our abilities with the decisions and things we have to talk about today, that we would use good discernment and use wisdom there. We ask that you give us wisdom to perform our duties. We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Hey, would you stand, please, for the pledge? I trust everybody has had a chance to go through the minutes from the July 15th and then the July 15th through the 16th budget meeting minutes. Do we have any additions or corrections to either one? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve. I'll second. We have a motion by Rick Ray and a second by Amy Prosser to approve the July 15, 2026 minutes and the July 15 through 16, 2026 budget presentation minutes. Any further discussion?

I'm going to abstain. I wasn't here.

Okay, Bob will abstain.

I think I will, too, because I missed most of them, too.

Okay, so.

If you don't, I can vote, but I didn't miss most of them.

Okay, so bill van while be noted it will abstain so all those in favor of approving the minutes signify by saying aye aye opposed Motion is carried minutes are approved Okay looking at additionals We have, first one we have is coming to us from QMCAP. And it is social communication. Fund number is 1138. The account number is 44430. The title is equipment. And it is for $121,784. Was this included in the annual budget request? And the answer is no. The reason it was not included, the item has been on a five-year plan for several years. How will this appropriation be used? It'll be used for the replacement of the battery backup systems that are at the end of service life and are no longer able to be under the maintenance plan. Specific cost, $121,784.00. Was this cost determined it was a quote received from CM buck is this a recurring expense and the answer is no Will other expenditures be necessary and the answer is no Was it discussed with liaison and that liaison is yes, and my liaison name is covered up I don't know who was the liaison on that. That's me. Is that you Rick? Okay. Thank you I Okay, do we want let's see the second let's do this one first. This is a large amount Do we have a motion to approve? 121 thousand seven hundred eighty four dollars for the Battery backup system that's at the end of its service life. Do we have a motion to it?

I'll make that motion just to get it moving so get Brian up here so that this is the one that we delayed last time and

Because we didn't have multiple quotes so he needs to explain some of this we do have we do have a motion Okay, we have a second I'm gonna call for the question then we'll let we'll take your comments there He needs to talk about it first. Okay, we vote on it. Okay. Well, I was gonna do it with the council discussion part So no go ahead.

We're gonna have to speak As we did find out we did require three quotes I Did reach out through APC, which is Schneider Electric, and they provided me with quotes from two other partners. Erico came in at $126,278, and Genmark, it was over $130. Both of those two did not include freight delivery or anything like that. Our original quote through Schneider Electric and CM Buck came in at the $121,784. That was delivered. We will find the money for install because the lead time on this stuff is about 20 to 24 weeks. So by the end of the year when it comes in, we'll know where the money sets. Installation was about $15,000 for them. we should be able to find that no problem or we can wait until after the first of the year to get that.

You're talking about taking it within your current budget?

Yes, within the current budget, no further additional for that project.

What about disposal of the stuff that you're taking?

They handle all that in accordance with federal and state guidelines as far as recycling the electronics. One unit has 48 batteries, the other one has 36. So those will all go for recycling wherever

Contractors are my only question was was it included in the cost? Yes. Oh, yes.

Okay. What are you saying? You're taking into your budget?

I'm sorry.

What are you saying? You are taking into your budget?

I will figure out by the end of the year where I have I can move money around for the install to beginning of next year or Okay, we can handle the install out of what money has this year if not It'll be close up the end of the year to I can do it at the beginning of the year.

I

Are these, with technology, after five years, are these batteries a lot better? Are they going to last longer?

They're five to seven years. They are a lot better battery now. They're not just a standard lead acid like in our car. I did not opt for what they call a lithium-ion battery, about double the cost. And you get a couple extra years out of them. I couldn't justify that cost.

By the end of that time, the battery systems are going from lithium batteries to sodium batteries. So there'll be a whole different change. Sodium batteries don't have the fire potential that lithiums do.

And what's the current life on the ones that are in there?

We change those about every five years.

Okay. So this system currently is five years old?

Yes. The system itself is original to the building. The systems are just no longer able to be put under any type of maintenance plan. They're not going to continue to make parts. These things have 15 or 20 circuit boards, about this big of them, and at least a dozen or more bands, like in the back of a computer, up to ones this big to help cool everything.

But what is the difference between high-tech for $11,320 and the others that are...

High tech, that is the install. I just put that in there so everybody knew what the cost would be. High tech's cost will not change.

So really, all of them did not include an install price, right? The only difference between the three was the freight.

Yeah, they want to wait and find out if they got the bid before they started to put that in it. That's why they didn't even give me freight and delivery. Well, we have to wait and see what it's going to cost. If we get the bid and then when the systems are ready to be shipped, how much is it going to cost them?

Okay. But CM Buck has that in it. Yes.

We've been using them for quite a while, and they've always treated us very well.

And this is one reason that it's so important to have that five-year plan for capital because we know now that, and this has been on his plan, on the plan. but you know it's coming you can't you can't let something this large be a surprise and It needs to be planned for in advance. So Yeah, the more we can refine that five-year capital expense plan the better All right.

How long a period of time does that back up like if you lose power? How long does it give you?

We have our generator this It's just to fill that gap between the power failure and the generator start.

So you don't go down or nothing goes down.

We don't lose our radios. All of our computers don't have to restart. I did do a head CM buck check. At our current load, we can actually get 122 minutes out of the large system, and the smaller system was 92 minutes. So if we don't have a generator start right away, we've got about an hour to get somebody there to figure out why that generator's not running. Or we have to grab everything and leave the building.

And I'm sure that if you talk to BESA, I'm sure we've got some kind of battery backup on what servers and stuff we have here. And with the major electronics that we have anymore, having battery backup and generators is very important.

And very expensive it's a very if we lose all power when we lose our Spelman system every police agency will not have access to their records we are back to we have a IT bill is a SharePoint page. It has a what we call an alternate CAD system so we can do our record-keeping But none of the police agencies fire agencies can get any records or do anything with their records and tell our servers or backup So that's why another reason this is so important

Anybody have any questions for Brian Any more getting all the quotes thank you for pointing out we need them Any further questions for the council discussion On the 121 784 we do have a motion we do have a second I Okay, we'll call for the question for the approval of $121,784. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion is carried. And if you want to just stay there, Brian. The next one comes to us from Central Communication. Fund number 1138, the account number 44430. The account title is Equipment. The amount requested is $85,807. Was this included in the annual budget request? And the answer is no. The reason not included. Item has been on a five-year plan for several years. How will this appropriation be used? It'll be replacement of the complete HVAC system. All furnaces and AC units are at the end of their service life. Specific cost of the item, $85,807. How was this cost determined? It was a quote received from Auburn Heating and Cooling. Is this a reoccurring expense? And the answer is no. Will other expenditures be necessary? And the answer is no. Was it discussed with the liaison? Yes, and that liaison was Rick Ring. Brian, would you like to discuss this?

Again, we found out we needed three quotes. I reached out to another local company and another company in the county has used, specifically the Sheriff's Department, to get quotes. The other local company came in at $99,000, and the one that the Sheriff's Department has used a lot came in at $122,000. Now, there has been an adjustment on the Auburn heating bid. It's $89,000. I can find that money someplace to cover that, or I can get them to work on that $4,000 difference. The entire industry, HVAC, saw another increase, and this is a large project, but I am good with the first bid that we brought to the council, which was Auburn Heating, and I'd like to be able to move forward with them. Like I said, I can find the difference and get them to come down on that $4,000 increase they just had. I can make it work.

Brian, was this the one that you and I talked about that they were anticipating a rather large percentage increase in the equipment in the latter part of this year? Trying to beat that equipment price increase. One of the reasons that driven this so quickly.

They were looking at another possible 20% by the end of the year. Then at the beginning of the year, there's always another increase. So I'm trying to save us between 15 and 30% by getting this done now. On both issues, the contractors will hang on to the equipment in their warehouse free of charge until The schedule allows to get all this stuff done. They're not charging us anything extra for that. So I can make the Auburn Heating bid work, no problem. They've done excellent work for us in the past. If we have an issue, we call the owner. Hey, we need this. And him himself or one of his staff are there within an hour.

OK, I have a question. Because if the original Auburn Heating proposed on May 14th, and we didn't talk about it until June, and on the bottom it says after seven days prices need to be re-evaluated. Was this going to change by the time you... By the time we do the project?

No, this price will not exceed this 89.

I know, but the first one was 85, and it was after seven days when the council looked at it. So I'm just trying to figure out why they redid it if it was already over the time and they were going to accept this to begin with?

Their internal processes, price increase in materials. I can ask that question.

Do you, I mean does everybody understand what I'm trying to ask?

So we're asking about whether or not they'll honor that first price Brian said he can find the difference between the price that's on here now of 85 and 89 he can find that out of his own budget You can only approve the 85. That's what I'm saying because that's all that was advertised can what can he do then? and he

He'll either have to transfer or he'll have to come back and ask for another additional appropriation for the difference.

I will get it done without another addition.

Well, I think one of the issues is that the size of the furnaces changed from the original to the new one, right? So I'm trying to look here. The original...

I did have them change it. They had a price increase in materials, but I did make, because I know you guys like apples for apples, and this is... Not...

So the revised one, they changed that.

I'm trying to look here. They changed the 260 to additional 880.

And looking through the other ones, they also, the configurations were kind of all over the place. And so it was really difficult to kind of read through it and figure out, Is it apples to apples? It didn't look like it. Every different company had a different setup. So for instance, Auburn had two 5-ton, so 10 tons for the dispatch cooling. But TNT had two 3 and 1 half tons, which was 7 tons. So that's a 43% capacity difference. Not sure. How do we know which one's right, I guess? If we're comparing 10 tons to 7 tons, those aren't even, they're not even close. So I'm not sure how we go through and figure out which one do we agree to because it's not apples to apples.

Every HVAC person has their own idea of what's correct. Correct. I'm sure there's some mathematical calculation that's going to come out between 7 and 10. I would much rather be a little bit on our cooling capacity because our building gets beat by the heat and our server rooms need to be able to keep all that equipment cool so you're saying their original one was wrong it wasn't cool enough I'm not gonna say they were wrong right but if they they changed according to Because what I did do is I scrubbed all vendor information.

Okay.

I said, hey, guys, this is the equipment I'm being quoted by everyone bidding on this project.

Yeah.

And then this is with the price change in equipment for the industry, and then I've called a reconfiguration of what Auburn came up with. That's where your difference would come from.

Did they all get the same scope, or did you just ask them, like, what was each company told? Scope is the same.

Scope is the same. Everyone just has their own little slightly difference in the way they want to set it up.

So it wasn't a replacement. It wasn't a, hey, please just replace what we currently have. It was, here's, I don't know what they have. Do they have, like, a layout of the building, a square footage?

They've come and walked through the building. Yes.

I was going to ask.

They have walked through and looked at everything. Our original HVAC installer did a lot of things they could have done differently and better, but it was lowest bid. So we're correcting some of that, like where it says twinning. That process of using 200,000 units, two 100,000 BTU units makes more sense and is more cost effective than trying to go out and find another unit that's the size of this table, literally. That's twice the cost of doing what we're on. And if that unit dies, then we have no HVAC for our dispatch room, where one unit will still work versus two.

Yeah. I just want to make sure that it's not over-engineered. And I want to make sure it's not under-engineered. And so I wasn't sure how did it take place. Did everybody get the same scope? Did everybody come through a walkthrough? Just trying to figure out what was the process to get here.

Everyone came through. walked, everything, took pictures of every unit. We found a couple issues that needed to be addressed as well. But everyone knows exactly what they were going to be bidding on to replace and or change slight configuration of to be a better financial option.

Yeah, I want to just mention here that and not to I appreciate all that Brian has done here with doing this, but this is exactly demonstrates why we've made the changes we've made with the maintenance of the buildings. You're asking somebody who is a superior and excellent dispatcher and manager of a function of the county going over and having him be the engineer and the manager of the building and the building functions. So while I think we need to continue with this, but this just demonstrates why we've changed Larry's job description to be the manager of the building so that he can work out all of these types of issues and comparisons. We have the same we have the same thing in community Corrections and and we'll have the same thing with the highway department That's why we've put this all under with the one person Was kept in the loop on all this Larry was aware of all these and He also liked the Auburn heating did He did not walk through with them, but Larry's been in the ceiling and

under my floor, everywhere in that building. Okay, that's helpful.

Yeah, and I, if I was trying to make you the engineer, I was not, that was not my point. No, I understand. My point was that.

I did keep Rick and Larry and Evan in the loop on what was being done. Sure, sure.

No, it wasn't to say you should know how to do all the HVAC work, that is not. I just wanted to make sure that I understood if we're gonna, if this is supposed to be apples to apples and looking at,

Supposed to go in the building I want to make sure that everybody's very aware of that and understands it and that I understand that before I vote on it because I really appreciate all the questions I do because we have to be the good stewards of the money and I Guess saying it's apples to apples. It's very close to apples to apples Honeycrisp versus Any further questions for Brian

Okay. Let's see what the council's place is. Do we have a motion to approve the $85,807? So moved. Second. By Bill VanWy, we have a second by Rick Ring. Any further discussion? Hearing none, we'll call for the question. All those in favor of approving the $85,807, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion is carried.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you, Brian. Thanks, Brian. Okay, next additional comes to us from the highway department And the fund name is MVH the fund number is one one seven six out number one two two zero zero the account title is insurance the amount requested is thirty seven thousand dollars and Was this included in the annual budget request? And the answer is yes. How will this appropriation be used? It will be used to pay for health insurance for employees due to premium changes, Commissioner's added wellness benefit, and HSA match. Specific cost of the item, $36,427.24. How is this cost determined by payroll reports? Is this a reoccurring expense? And the answer is no. Will other expenditures be necessary? And the answer is no. Was it discussed with the liaison? Yes. And that liaison was Bob Kraft. Do we have anybody from the OIS to speak on that?

Ben talked to me. And yeah, when they do their budgets, they don't know what the increase is going to be the next February. And then when they added the health benefit, Means we're paying more you know his departments made more for you one of those When you have a very large department and those increases go up and you have a lot of employees that are taking all taking the insurance It has a significant impact when that increase hits.

It's the same thing that Brian had to do for central They have no way of knowing what the increase is going to be Premium is what the premium is, but it was when we added the the deduction to the employee that I That cost doesn't go away. It moves from the employee over to the department.

You're providing a budget in June or July. May or June or the year before, it goes up in February.

We'll probably be in this predicament next year also because commissioners change to instead of $50 for everybody, it's $40 deduction for employee only. Then you can possibly get up to $65 deduction if it's you and your spouse that both do the Other departments where that department pays for their own health health insurance we community corrections highway And those have been set up that way For as long as I can remember honestly and that was chosen because they have their own their own general fund because they don't use our general fund so like highway has their motor vehicle fund 1176 health has their regular fund of 1159 where their revenue goes into and so since those departments have their like their own source of revenue kind of then it was coming that's what happened with that's

Same way with Central Communications, that they have the 911 Fund and the Public Safety Fund. That's where their funding comes from. These are departments that don't utilize the general fund for their expenses.

Do we have a motion to approve? I'll move to approve. We have a motion by Bob Kraft. Do we have a second?

I'll second it.

Bill van why any further discussion from the council? Hearing none. We'll call for the question all those in favor of proving the $37,000 to the appropriate insurance fund for the county highway signify by saying aye transfer or additional is approved and The last one we have comes to us from DeKalb County Community Corrections the fund name is CC donation fund and FUND NUMBER 4113. THE AMOUNT OR ACCOUNT NUMBER 33900. ACCOUNT TITLE IS MEDICAL TESTING SERVICES. AMOUNT REQUESTED IS $1199.89. WAS THIS INCLUDED IN THE ANNUAL BUDGET REQUEST? THE ANSWER IS NO. THE REASON IS C ATTACHED. You want to take a couple of minutes and read through it real quick? No, I will read it Bottom line the current unexpected balance of seven hundred ninety nine dollars and one cent from Redwood toxicology invoice three zero seven five two two two zero two six six is scheduled to pay on August 3rd of 26 and $799.01 of it from fund number 4113, which will leave a zero balance in the fund. Do we have any questions from the council?

Is the Walmart grant, is that okay to use that additional funds? Because it looks like it was just for trainings. Say that one more time. Yeah, so in the paragraph here, it says that that Walmart grant was to be used for training food, snacks, or anything else needed for the trainings. And they're adding the remainder of that balance to the other drug-free funds for this balance that they want to put towards the drug screening. Can we do that? That grant seems pretty specific, so just want to make sure we don't.

There's two different things in there. So in the donations, they get the drug-free, DeKalb County drug-free money, which we don't know how much they'll be awarded. So I estimated $4,000. And then they also received a Walmart grant. Their Walmart grant has the $431 balance remaining. What they're asking for, I believe, is the additional of what they receive from Drug Free beyond what I had planned for.

Right. What it looks like is they're taking the $768 from the Drug Free funds, adding the balance from that Walmart grant of $431.89 to give us the appropriation amount of $1199.89. Oh, I see. So I'm just asking if that grant from Walmart seems very specific about to be used for trainings. I just don't want us to appropriate it somewhere where it's not supposed to be. It doesn't say anything about using it for.

Let me reach out to Shannon.

And that particular fund gets all of their donations?

Correct.

No matter what the purpose, any donation is into that fund. OK.

I'm not opposed to it. The verbiage there seems very clear that the grant is very specific.

You don't want to ruin your chances of getting your grant again.

That's right. It's very generous of Walmart to give that grant, so we want to make sure that we use it appropriately.

Do you want to hold off for a second? Just don't do anything with it, and we'll come back to it.

Okay.

Okay, that's the last additional. Let's move on to transfers. Right now, the first one we have is from Information Systems. Fund name is General Fund Number 1001. The amount to be transferred is $30,000 from account number 44820. The account title is Network Info. Request is to transfer it to account number 34140. The account title is Software Maintenance Licenses for $30,000. Why is this transfer needed? This is to pay for yearly licensing and support for a backup software. Last year, at implementation time, there was a hardware involved, so we took it out of network infrastructure. This year, it is only for licensing and support. Invoice is paid, but there will be a shortfall Thirty four thousand one hundred forty dollars by the end of the year Was this additional appropriation? I'll be will this additional will this additional appropriation be requested due to this transfer and the answer is no With the discuss liaison the answer is no and the liaison is Bob Kraft So discussion from the council any questions on this transfer of network infrastructure to software maintenance and licenses Hearing none do we have a motion to approve a move to approve we have a motion by Bob craft Do we have a second? Now second second by Bill van why all those in favor of the $30,000 transfer from informational systems signify by saying aye aye opposed Transfer is granted The next one comes to us from the courthouse. And the fund name is County General. Fund number 1001. Total amount to be transferred is $192,287. And that is to be required or transferred from account number 10500. Account title is personal service fees. Request to transfer it to account number 3001. Account title is A1 Janitorial. And the amount requested is $189,287. And that is, the next one is from account number 33620. Account title is Equipment Repair and Maintenance. Account title is 22310. Account title Repair and Maintenance Supplies. $10,000 why is the transfer needed the one hundred eighty nine thousand two hundred eighty seven dollar Transfer is to be moved there is to move the a1 janitorial to be paid from the service account instead of a payroll account And that was prior set up from years ago the $10,000 transfer is because our maintenance team buys supplies and fixes things instead of paying someone to fix these things and Plus the normal increase in prices for cleaning, toiletry items, etc. Will additional appropriation be requested due to the transfer? The answer is no. Was it discussed with the liaison? And the answer is yes. The liaison was Amy Dembski. So we have two. If we have consensus, we can do both transfers. And one, do we have consensus? Yes. Okay. Do we have a motion to approve? That would be $199,287 from the courthouse. Do we have a motion? I'll make that motion. Do we have a motion by Rick Ray? Do we have a second?

I'll second it.

Second by Bill Van Wye. Any further?

Is this just a correct something? Sounds like it's just a correct something. Do you know?

I wasn't listening because I'm getting answers. Which one is it? Courthouse?

Courthouse. Yeah, that's all right. Anyone janitorial?

Oh, that was just because we're paying for a service. We're not paying wages. And for years, it's been paid out of a wage account that starts with a one, a personal service. And so Accounts Payable asked me what I thought. And for 1099 purposes, it is me. Better to have it in a three account. So that's why we changed it.

Thank you for receiving the answer.

A1 Janitorial is the same person as our maintenance guy, right?

I'm sorry?

A1 Janitorial, is that Larry and his business?

A1 Janitorial is the supply company.

A1 Janitorial is the cleaning company owned by Larry's Wife Care.

And so we're...

We're paying his, not his, Kara's staff that come in to clean our buildings after hours and whatever else they do. That service, not Larry's maintenance.

And this goes all the way back to Clint.

Oh, like?

Yeah, years and years.

When the courthouse was built.

But it's now, it is a service that we hire, they're not employees.

This is not an additional, this is just transferring it from one account to the right account. Correct. From a labor account to a service, like a contract account.

Correct.

Any further discussion? Do we have a motion to approve?

Is it put out for bids or is it just we carried it on for years and I mean, how does that work?

I'm sorry All I can say is that for 13 years that I've been here it's always been a one janitorial and I That's just how it's always been.

That goes back a lot longer than 13 years. It goes back to when Clint started, probably 35 years ago, maybe 40. But that is, that truthfully, I mean, yes, we approve the money. All we're doing is changing this from one account to another account. We're not involved in that. It's a commissioner issue. Commissioner issue as to who they hire to do the cleaning at the council because there are caretakers of Administrators, okay, so that's where that comes from so They have to put it out for a bid though that you'd have to talk to the commissioners and the county attorney They have to put it out for bid I Don't know the total amount of the contract they have but I

These numbers they would at least have to have a RFP There's some question about personal services there's some fudge language in the statute on personal services Thank you Any further questions from the council hey do we have a motion to approve We have a motion Rick and Bill, okay

No further discussion. We'll call for the question on the approval of transfer four hundred ninety nine thousand two hundred eighty seven dollars all those in favor of Passage signify by saying aye aye Those Transfer is granted the next one comes to us from sunny meadows The fund name is County General fund number one zero zero one the amount to be transferred is eight thousand dollars and It is being requested from fund number one zero eight zero zero count title is other to account number three three five six zero the account title is gas and as for $5,000 the additional one is from account number one zero eight zero zero the account title is other and being requested to transfer to account number 33500. The account title is electric for $3,000. Why is this transfer needed? Gas and electric accounts needed more money due to rising costs. Will additional appropriation be requested due to this transfer? And the answer is no. Was it discussed with the liaison? And the answer is yes. And the liaison's name is Bob Kraft. Bob do you have anything you want to add to this?

Well, there's this fundamentals is closed There's no director to discuss it with me. Susan just sent me the email saying we need to pay these bills.

So I mean, there's no Administrator out there to handle these things and I would only like to point out the fact that if the we would tear down the building We wouldn't we would not have this expense and this is going to go on and on and on until either we get rid of the building or

something else happens and and for next year for 27 I Combined all that to courthouse budget so that they can pay You have an amount that you put in for that for next year Susan I Get an idea of that expense

This is not the only expense.

We've got security and everything else out there give us an idea liability Electric and gas is paid your courthouse for the rest of the county also, so I Mean I have a hundred twenty five thousand in electric and sixty eight thousand in gas, but that's not just sentimental

Okay. But there is definitely an ongoing expense. Possibly.

If we could get that number for the budget discussion meetings, that'd be great.

So I added $6,000 from 26 to 27 in electric, and I added $11,800 in gas.

During budget deliberations, we'll be able to see those total costs for sunny meadows This still says you and another actual costs It'd be it'd be good to know what those ongoing costs are going to be for just to sit there I can estimate it great.

Thank you Okay Did we have a motion I Don't think we did Okay, do we have a motion to approve the $8,000 for Sunny Meadows?

So moved.

Okay, we have a motion by Bill VanWyde. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Seconded by Bob Kraft. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the $8,000 transfer from Sunny Meadows signify by saying aye. Okay, the next one comes to us from From superior one Here court one the fund name is County General but number one zero zero one the amount to be transferred is two thousand two hundred thirty nine dollars and Requested from fund number three three one six zero the account title is Casa Requested being transferred to account number one one four Title is assistant court reporter two thousand two hundred thirty nine dollars Why is this transfer needed? Budget time the whisk category wage is figured and not the higher wage for the courts This corrects the account to avoid a negative at year Additional procreation be requested do the transfer answer is no was it discussed with the liaison? Yes liaison is Dave yard. This is to avoid a negative end of year So any further discussion Do we have a motion to approve the two thousand two hundred and thirty nine dollars from Superior Court one Don't move Motion by Rick ring. Do we have a second? Second by Bob Kraft Chris Kraft Chris Kraft. I'm sorry. Thank you All those in favor of the two thousand two hundred and thirty nine dollar transfer signify by saying aye aye opposed carried the next one comes to us from Superior Court to One name is the general fund fund number is one zero zero one and The amount to be transferred is $1,000. It's from account number 1101-22410-000-027. The account title is Legal Reference Materials. The account is 11... I'm sorry, 1001-32820. Day zero zero zero day zero two seven account titles requested a transfer to his legal fees amount is a thousand dollars Why is this transfer needed legal fees? Funds are low Will additional procreation be requested the answer is no was it discussed with the liaison and the answer is no and that liaison is Excuse me is Dave yard Do we have any questions regarding this transfer of $1,000 to legal fees? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve. Do we have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Motion by Bill VanWyde. Do we have a second? Second by Amy Prosser. All those in favor of the $1,000 transfer signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Transfers granted the next one comes to us from the health department and the fund name is health One number is one one five nine the amount to be transferred is $2,000 it is requested from account number three four two nine five the account title is travel training and education and Request a transfer to is account number four four four three zero the account title is equipment The amount is two thousand dollars Why is this transfer needed to cover the cost of an interpreter cart? iPad speaker software rolling cart this allows us to talk with our clients that do not use English as a first language this service is provided by Heartland translation and as a one-time purchase and Will additional appropriation be requested due to the transfer? The answer is no. Was it discussed with the liaison? The answer is yes, and the liaison name is Bill Van Wye. Does anybody have any questions for Bill? Bill, do you have any comments?

No, it's something that came available to them, and they took a chance by it because they have to, they're obligated to help any citizen of DeKalb County. And they get in trouble sometimes.

Any further discussion? Hearing none, we'll entertain a motion to approve. Do we have a motion?

I move that we approve.

I have a motion. Second. By Bill Van Wye. Do we have a second? I'll second. I have a second by Bob Kraft. Any further discussion? Hearing none, we'll call for the question. All those in favor of the $2,000 transfer within a health department signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Transfer is granted. Okay. I see Larry here if we want to back up Susan There were some questions wasn't there some questions I thought He's probably here for the jail discussion. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought we were No, okay On the Walmart piece, thank you, and I'm still working on it, okay I Next one comes to us from Central Communications. The fund name is the Public Safety Lowett County Share, fund number 1170. The amount to be transferred is $50,000. It is being transferred from account number 1170.33240.000.0034. The account title is Telecommunications. being transferred to account number 1170.11050.000.0034. The account title is overtime. Why is this transfer needed? It is to cover a shortfall in the original budget. Will additional appropriation be requested due to this transfer? The answer is no. Discuss with the liaison the answer is yes liaisons liaisons name is Rick ring Rick Do you have anything we commented on this at the last meeting?

He's got some Maternity leave issues with two employees and another retirement or transfer so This is helping to cover that Any further questions or discussion

Do we have a motion to approve the $50,000 transfer?

And this is the best thing about it. It's all within his current budget, going from one line item to another. It's not for an additional.

Do we have a motion to approve? I have a motion by Rick Ring. Do we have a second? Second by Chris Kraft. All those in favor of the $50,000 transfer within Central Communications, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Transfer is granted. The next one comes to us from the surveyor. And the fund name is Cornerstone Perpetuation, fund number 1202. The amount to be transferred is $18,000. It's being requested from fund number, account number 34330. The account title is Contractual Services. Requested a transfer to account number two two one three zero and the account title is operating supplies That amount again is eighteen thousand dollars. Why is this transfer needed? The office purchased cornerstone markers flags and hardware for the cornerstone Perpetuation project and needs to transfer money to cover the expenses Will additional appropriation be requested due to this transfer? The answer is no Was it discussed with liaison? The answer is yes. And the liaison's name is Bill Van Wye. Bill, do you have anything to add?

They have to do so many of these cornerstone markers a year. They're trying to get some of them caught up.

They have the money. They're just putting it in the account it needs to be paid from.

It's just changing accounts. It's nothing. So any further questions? We'll entertain a motion to approve the $18,000. Okay, we have a motion by Bill van why do we have a second? Second by Bob Kraft any further discussion Hearing them will call for the question all those in favor of the eighteen thousand dollars Transfer for cornerstone markers flags and hardware signify by saying aye pose transfers granted The next one comes to us from the American Heritage fund And that department is from the auditor. Fund name is American Heritage TIF, fund number 4502. The amount to be transferred is $4,500. And it is to be requested coming from account number 99500. The account title is Miscellanic Expenditure to account number 44501. And the account title is RDC approved project for $4,500. Why is this transfer needed? It is transferring to correct expenditure account. This is for train rental for the Auburn Hazmat Facility project. Will additional appropriation be requested due to the transfer? And the answer is no. Was it discussed with the liaison? And the liaison is yes. That's Bob Kraft. Bob, do you have anything you'd like to add to this transfer?

No, it's just moving it from the right account to be approved. RDC paid for that crane rental, the hazmat training area that they're building.

Money is there then?

Yeah, just going for miscellaneous.

Any further questions? Do we have a motion from the council to approve the $4,500 expenditure Motion we have a motion by Bob craft. Do we have a second? Second by Amy Prosser any further discussion Hearing them will call for the question all those in favor of the $4,500 transfer signify by saying aye aye opposed transfers granted The last one we have is from developmental services And the fund name is GIS projects and The fund number is 4930. The amount to be transferred is $3,000 and is being requested from account number 34120, account title Programming Software, to account number 44420, account title Computer Equipment. The amount is $3,000. Why is this transfer needed? It is needed to, pardon me, Purchase a new computer for the GIS department for a new specialist position created. Will additional appropriation be requested due to this transfer? And the answer is no. Was it discussed with liaison? Yes, and that was Bill Van Wye. Bill, do you have anything you'd like to add?

No, this is just we had to create a new position because they're breaking our ties with Auburn, and they're just getting him set up in his own office.

Any further discussion Hearing none. We'll cough. We'll take a entertain a motion to approve Do we have such a motion so move? Hey, we have a motion by bill van. Why do we have a second? Second by Chris Kraft any further discussion Hearing none. We'll call for the question all those in favor of approving the $3,000 signify by saying aye aye opposed Transfers granted that is the last of our transfers Okay moving on We have you have before you a list of non Non-approval transfers takes no action from the council And moving on to the salary and hourly wage ordinance and This is the 2026 salary and hourly wage ordinance amendment. It is ordinance number 2026-OCC-10. It is amending ordinance number 2025-OCC-12. And this is from the developmental services account number 11993. The job title is Butler. PLANNER CONTRACT PAY BY WEEKLY AND UP TO A MAXIMUM OF $865.38. AND DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICES 11992 BUTLER SUPPORT STAFF CONTRACT BY WEEKLY UP TO A MAXIMUM OF $384.61. SUSAN, WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD ANYTHING TO THIS?

On the development services Now you guys approved Job descriptions and commissioners approved Changing these positions, so this is just getting out on the salary ordinance correctly be our our Planning office is going to be support for Butler this

Do we have a motion to approve this on first reading on title only Don't move a motion by Rick ring to approve on first reading title only do we have a second? I'll second it second by Bill van why all those in favor of approving?

First reading Sorry, there's I have some questions

So if this is a ordinance, a wage ordinance, where are the wages going to?

It says right here. It says account 11993 Butler Planner Contract Pay and account 11992 Butler Support Staff Contract.

So just to be clear, is that increasing someone's by how much or is it just going into a fund that's paying their salaries to help us support those salaries?

You mean when we receive the money? Yes. It goes into County General because their wages are paid out of County General.

So we're not increasing anyone's salary from this?

That's what I'm asking. They get paid for doing the extra work.

So they're going to get paid extra so the There's an extra, who gets that, the Butler planner contract pay? Who's that going to? That's Chris. So Chris will make an extra $22,000 a year as doing the additional work for Butler?

Correct, and he's been making an additional $20,000 a year already.

And so then the others will make about $10,000 a year. How does that, so we're starting to play a little bit with the... tiers of pay that we have currently. I guess that was my question. I wasn't clear on that from the commissioner's meeting.

This has nothing to do with the list study or tiers or anything. It is no different than what we have been doing for years with the sheriff's department deputies working and covering for Butler, and Butler pays us, and we pay them for their hours that they work.

Think that is a little bit different because that's short-term. This is more long-term or where we've done this for Chris for the last couple years So we're adding another 20 on top another 22 on top of the current 20 that we're paying No, it is changing.

So that account is paid 865 38 mm-hmm Every pay no more you can't This is amending The prior ordinance, that would have been whatever the $20,000 divided by 26 was.

Didn't Butler increase their pay salary? That's why it's increasing this?

Yeah, his increased by $2,500 for the year. From the $20,000 he was already getting. And because he's doing more work.

Yeah, but it wasn't nothing we set. It was something that Butler set, right?

We agreed to it.

I know we agreed to it, but it wasn't us selling the pay raise. Correct.

They suggested X amount of dollars, and the county agreed to it, and we've been paying it.

They'll be paying us.

But it's an additional on top of the current salary that he is making. Very different job.

Because he's doing more work.

If he's doing more work, can we extend the amount of, That he works during the week because currently it's 35 Should then we add extra hours?

It doesn't matter So he'll work as many hours as it takes so then why would we pay him more for that because he's getting paid for an additional duties that he is added because we have contracted with the interlocal agreement through the commissioners with the city of Butler and

I guess $22,000 seems like a lot to add when he's only working 35 hours a week. $20,000 wasn't an issue.

Well, it was, but I lost that battle. Again, he is salaried. He gets the job done in 30 hours. That's good. If it takes him 70 hours in a week, that's the way it is.

It's just frustrating because other departments have increased their hours in order to additional work without additional pay their duties have expanded they have additional work and so instead of asking for additional dollars they just continue they make sure that they're working the hours that they need to work well well time clerical staff already works 40 hours a week not 35

So if you want to increase her hours more, then you're going to pay time and a half plus what she's getting paid.

We just hired an additional person for that office, so there should be additional support people there to help with all that. I just wanted, Dottie, if you, I know Dottie had some info.

Sure. And to kind of bring you up to date, the clerical staff in the Development Services Department, there's a full-time person and then there's a part-time person. And that part-time person acts as the secretary for the BZA for planning and zoning for those boards in addition to doing some work in the office. And then it also does the the mailings and the minutes and things like that for those boards during the time that that person works. With this additional funds that the clerical staff would be getting, I would propose actually that there should be two full-time, at least, individuals. If the City of Butler has that much extra work that is going to be coming into the county for that department to work. Instead of giving those individuals more money to be working exactly the same hours that they have been, they're still working their thirty five forty hours and the other one no more than twenty eight uh... perhaps that's exactly what needs to happen uh... in addition i know that uh... development services does not have an overtime budget maybe that's what they need their full-time person is currently working 40 hours per week and the City of Butler has provided this much more work for that department to do, clerically, then maybe that person needs to be compensated for those hours over 40 hours, which would be time and a half. but I still think that bringing in more hours for that part-time person or another part-time person to work, maybe the odd hours so that that full-time person isn't alone and being potentially inundated with the work from the City of Butler. Also, these individuals are hourly employees. Chris is salaried exempt. He does whatever it takes. to get the job done, just like I do. What would happen if the City of Auburn said, we're getting rid of human resources. Deer County, will you take on? our HR functions. That would mean that, okay, and we will pay you $40,000 for that. Dottie, you're going to have to go to all of these meetings with the city. Much like Chris does with Butler. There's extra work that has to be done after the usual time that he puts in with his current position. Okay, so that 20, now $22,000 helps compensate for those extra, that extra work, the extra hours. Okay, however, I have an hourly employee. We're taking on X number of employees that we need to recruit, we need to hire, we need to onboard, we need to take care of their benefits. There's all that extra work. That person would need to work more hours? Or try to fill in all that extra work within the 37 hours that she currently works? Or do we add on another full-time person in human resources? That's how I have looked at this and I just think that perhaps the department if they're going to be inundated with all this work that maybe they need to have another staff member in there to help them take care of that rather than Giving, and believe me, I am all for our employees making more money. That's not it. And that department is very, very capable. I work very closely with them, finding their GIS specialists. They're very capable. But that's what I see as a manpower compensation, fair labor standards, all of that going on.

But the issue is not Chris. It's not Chris. Chris is salaried. Whatever hours he works is what he works. The issue is actually the support staff. Whether a charity is already working 40 hours a week, and if she can get, you know, if it causes her to have to work more on a regular basis, then increasing the staff in the department is the better way to go rather than be hung up with overtime for a long, a lot of overtime over a period of a year.

Right, yeah.

That's an issue that needs to be discussed not only with the commissioners, because it's the commissioners that have entered into this agreement with Butler, but then it needs to be taken to the HR committee and discussed there.

Wouldn't it start with the department head requesting more time or more people? I mean...

That was between the department head and the, you know, he's an employee of the commissioners.

He's been to the commissioners. They've asked him if the work is going to be over what he and his staff can do, and he confirmed that no, it is doable with what they have.

He is negotiating with, or he's talking with the commissioners, but the bottom line is this is a thing that the commissioners have entered into with Butler.

That's where it needs to start. We're trying to make a decision here against what the commissioners have said and what the department head have said.

Well, and I wouldn't say against. Contrary to what he said. The questions that Amy's asking are legitimate, but it's getting an understanding of how it's to work, why it was even requested. That's the...

And I'm not sure enough questions were actually asked from the beginning. I watched the commissioner's meeting, and sure, I had lots of questions. While I was trying to listen to it, but I will say the audio feed was not that good. But I did find out from Chris that it was not his whole department that he's talking about. I had assumed that it would be extra work for the GIS, group, perhaps the building inspector, but no, it's simply the clerical staff. And again, human resources wasn't asked anything. They weren't even brought into the discussion.

So he felt like he has capacity there to handle that.

Well, doesn't he have a work support from Butler? Don't he have someone in the office over there he works with? You know, that person's leaving.

That's, I believe, why this increase has happened. And actually, the mayor and the clerk treasurer are both back there in the audience.

The question is just whether you're going to fund this or not. You're going to fund from the money paid by Butler or not. So that's the only issue.

And we're talking about an extra contract. It's a stipend. And you know how I feel about stipends. They're like Halloween candy or candy at the parade. They're being thrown here. You get one and you get one. And we're talking about an ongoing situation. If Butler decides not to take it back, this is what that department is going to be doing for long term.

Well, they can end it if it's not going to work. They could. And the council doesn't decide the contract. The contract has already been agreed to by the commissioner. So like our attorney said, the council needs to decide whether they're going to use Butler's money to pay for it or not.

Any further questions? Because we're still looking at approving this on title first reading only. Do we have a motion?

We have a motion and a second.

We have one or need one.

We have a motion and a second.

Okay. I'm going to call for the question. All those in favor of approving this ordinance on first reading title only signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Approved at 5-1. Okay. Now we need a motion to suspend the rules. Do we have a motion to suspend the rules?

I'm not sure that it's going to be. Necessary to go there. I mean we've already got one vote against it passing it I think there's needs to be more clarification on What this is what this is all about from the commissioners? So if we delay this until the September meeting, hopefully we'll get those answers. Hey what their expectation is we want to

This or do we want more information from the commissioners? No, we don't need that in a form of a motion No, we have consensus from the council to hold this. Yeah Okay, so we will hold off on this season until we get more information We're running a little behind here.

The next ordinance is can we just take those ordinance at the end of the meeting? I'm gonna get caught up a little bit

Well, we've got the innkeeper. We've got Ryan here from the innkeepers Okay, so let's go ahead and and I have the answer on the additional preparation whatever you want Okay So, let's let's take a look at the innkeepers tax We had a motion last meeting Who approved one title only And do we need a motion to suspend? No.

No. I see the motion to pass on second and third readings.

We need a motion to pass on second and third.

I'll make that motion.

OK. We have a motion to approve on second and third reading. Any further discussion?

Yes. Second. I'll second that.

Second. I'm sorry, Bill. Second. Any further discussion?

It added some additional It added additional penalties Additional penalties in the cost and a little bit of extra ability to collect. Yes That's my understanding from talking to the treasurer she requested these additional items in the ordinance and Make it easier for her to collect and more and create additional penalties if They didn't pay And we were going from 5% which is current to 8% That's I don't know what the current is, but Yes, and that is allowed because of a statue they changed the statute to increase it and for those counties, I don't want to get in the weeds, that don't have a special state statute for their innkeeper's tax.

We can set that between the five and eight.

Anything, well, yeah, you can set it from, well, if you pass this ordinance, it'd be 8%. If you don't want to pass this ordinance and have a lesser amount, then you'd have to vote no on the ordinance.

We passed the first reading, so we'd have to vote this down and then do a new ordinance. Yes.

Any further discussion from the council?

I guess I would like to see it lowered back to five. Still stick with the ordinance and its current writing, but just lower the percent.

At 5%, you know, you want the additional, I see, you want the additional collection and penalty.

The only thing that would change would be that percent Brian

How long ago was that?

The Grange County is 8% also, isn't it?

Are hotels consistently raising their prices so that you are then making more off of your, if they're raising their price, your 5% then is increased?

The Visitors Bureau promotes the tourism within DeKalb County. They're very excellent at the job that they've done over the last few years. And this county depends as a big income with our visitors coming in for ACD museums and festivals and things that we have. They do not promote just Auburn or just the ACD Museum, but they support the entire county. The railroad issues in Garrett, everything. They benefit all of us. And their board includes members from all of the different towns in DeKalb County, along with our county appointments. I think you're looking at doing grants that you can award funding for new projects.

Right.

Thank you.

And the service the services that the visitors bureau is providing is Is not being paid it's very it's very important to the business to other businesses the restaurant business and things like that But it's services that do not have to come from the County General Fund the taxpayers of DeKalb County do not have to support or pay for the services that the visitors Bureau is providing to many of our not-for-profit organizations and our in our retail businesses and So this is, I think, the best way, the most ideal way to have these services and not have our residents pay for it. And our residents are, if I go to a hotel in Indianapolis or anywhere else, I'm paying 8% and probably more because of food and beverage taxes and everything else, which we don't have here. So I think this is a fair tax.

The Visitors Bureau brings millions into the county. I mean, it's just an incredible tool here for the county, for tourism, and at no expense to the taxpayer here within the county. So anybody else have any questions?

I was just going to comment, maybe a question too. Having been on that board 25 years ago, all we did was billboards and flyers at the rest areas. That was the extent of what we were able to do back then. Now there's so much technology and Google ads and geofencing where they actually promote on people's cell phones when you come into an area. Hey, there's a museum here. I mean, there's crazy technology that you guys are using. I assume by getting more money, you'll be able to run more of that as well as give those grants. We never used to give grants. I mean, maybe $5,000 for the whole year to everybody. Now you're doing grants to all these little festivals so they can afford to print a flyer or whatever. Yeah. You know.

Do we have any more questions for Ryan? Because we do have a motion that's been properly seconded to amend the ordinance from 5% to 8%. And hearing none, we're going to call for the question. All those in favor of amending the ordinance? No.

On second and third reading.

On second and third reading, thank you. From 5% to 8%, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. Okay, motion is carried 5-1. Susan. Okay, we're running a little behind. I want to pick up here a little bit. We'll move the updated job description. We'll move that towards the end of the meeting. Randy Fox, airport update.

If I may suggest, after Randy's done, we take a short break. We can do that.

I'll try to be prompt. You don't have to do that. The T-hanger project at the airport is proceeding, but it was held up by some permitting. John Feister and I from BF&S attended the drainage board the other day. When we extended the runway, we put a big detention pond at the east end that kept the runoff. The three new hangars are going to cause more runoff, and it's going to go into that drain. We got a positive approval from the drainage board last Thursday, so I'm assuming we'll hear more about it Friday at the board meeting that the T-hanger projects can now go ahead, because I think that was the holdup, was the drainage issue.

So that's not a great standing water.

That's just a holding area until it goes Yeah, there's a big detention pond with I don't know what the little size pipe is so that it it eventually drains out but it takes it a number of days to do that so that we don't overwhelm all the drainage that the regulated drains that the county that we drain into I We had two firsts in July. We had a DC-9 jet aircraft, which basically has 22,000, almost 23,000 pounds of cargo capability that came in and used the runway. My expectation is that without the additional 2,000 feet, we never would have seen that aircraft here. Whether they're testing it out, whether they stopped into refuel, I'm not sure yet. Again, we'll probably find out Friday at the board meeting. We also had an electric aircraft land at the airport. I think, I don't know if you guys got the pictures, Russ provided those. We've discussed in the past electric infrastructure at the airport. I've got an EV. And other than my home, I know of four places in DeKalb County that I can charge my car if I needed to. And we've talked about putting vehicle chargers in at the airport. We've got 440 three-phase at the airport. So my expectation is if this is the first, it won't be the last. And so some electric infrastructure probably is going to happen here shortly. July was our busiest month ever. I was approached personally last week saying, you know, I'm kind of concerned because the taxpayers paid for the airport and they don't get to use it. There were 1,783 single-engine aircraft operations at DeKalb County Airport, DeKalb Executive Airport, in a month of July. And every one of those aircraft is likely either a club aircraft or personally owned. seventeen hundred operations just there plus there are a hundred and fifty eight business jets in or out a hundred and forty helicopter operations and a hundred and forty multi-engine aircraft operations so where our use is going up we expect that to extend uh... we will be opening bids i believe this coming friday for the board meeting on the runway extension or the uh... Repair of the initial 5,000 feet of runway again. That's going to be all milled out the surface beneath it will be Constituted with some concrete stabilized and then five and a half inches of Blacktop will be added back to the runway which is 100 feet wide and 5,000 feet long that we're going to do next summer that's likely to take two months that will be closed there'll be no aircraft in or out and will be open for a month after that for that i think the term is to cure uh... blacktop uh... and then they'll come back and it'll take almost a month to do grooving down the entire length of it for again safety and control when aircraft land in less than optimum conditions so that's all upcoming and again we'll hear about that shortly uh... our twenty twenty seven levy is pretty much unchanged In the almost nine years I've been on the board, I think our total levy is only going up by 0.3% over the 11 years I was there, and Russ tells me it's closer to 14. So we're not asking for any more. We're trying to keep everything in control and use what we can with income and expansion to fund ourselves. And then... Last month, I invited you all to come out for the fly-in lunch, and nobody came. And I mean nobody. The smoke was so heavy that day that the ceiling was 400 feet. And if you wanted to come into any airport in northeast Indiana, you had to be instrument rated to find the airport and land because of the smoke from the Canadian fire. We will have on the third Friday. We will have the fly-in lunch from 11 to 1 and then the DeKalb County Airport board meeting is then from 1 to whatever and you're all invited to attend if you choose And with that I'll take any questions

You mentioned about putting EV charging capabilities in would that include include electric aircraft capabilities or well We haven't had any electric aircraft in up until this one.

Russ says this is the first aircraft of this type We were actually in the running to have a company come in who was going to build electric aircraft and they would have been pretty much on the airport site. We didn't achieve that, but they were talking about building 5,000 fully electric aircraft a year. So I don't think this is going to go away. You know, my EV right now has one of the big heavy batteries in it. I still get about 290 miles out of a charge. But there's battery technology on the way, and some of it's being implemented now, where the battery packs weigh one-third as much and can pack twice as much energy. So that's going to make aircraft more capable. And I'm paying about $7 a week to run my car. I've had it for just about a year. I've got almost 12,000 miles on it. And I'm paying between $5 and $7 a week to drive the EV. So I expect at $5 to $7 a gallon for aircraft fuel, I anticipate for local aircraft that electric's probably going to become more pervasive over the short term and very pervasive over the long term.

Thank you. Anybody else have any questions or comments for Randy?

Just one. I think it's probably an error, but the stats for the month.

Yeah.

It jumps from June to August. Yes. I assume that's supposed to be July.

That's supposed to be July, yes. Yeah, I verified that, but it was too late.

Tell Russ he needs to correct that.

Yes, it was too late to do that, but we'll get it fixed for next month. Any other questions?

Thank you, Randy. It's always a great report.

Thank you.

We're gonna take we'll take a 10-minute recess come back at 20 after and then we'll get to Jason and and as soon as we get back we do that last additional real quick, please.

Okay, so for community Corrections they received four thousand Six hundred four thousand seven hundred sixty eight dollars from drug-free they received one thousand two hundred fifty dollars from Walmart and Walmart one dates back all the way to 2023 so There is a total of six thousand eighteen dollars that would have been Available to be spent. We only appropriated four thousand because it was estimate. So she's only requesting a The difference, and not quite the difference, there's actually $2,018 that could be appropriated, but she only needs the $1,199.89. The Walmart grant has already been paid in full. That explanation here is confusing. She knew what she was trying to say, but the Walmart grant has been paid in full. It's not the Walmart grant dollars that will end up paying for these drug screenings.

So when you say paid in full, you meant spent in full?

Yeah.

Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't associate with Walmart at all.

It doesn't associate with Walmart at all, correct? Thank you for clearing that up appreciate it.

Yep Yeah, I'm good we need a vote on it we need a motion to approve we need both motion second all of it I'll move that we we have a motion by Rick second second by Amy Rosser any further discussion All those in favor of approving the, I don't have the number.

Community corrections, $1,199.89.

Signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion is carried. We'll stand in recess until about.

Just make sure we don't miss the other piece of the updated probation job descriptions. I think we skipped over that. I just want to make sure that we either catch it now or.

I think we're trying to catch up and we'll bring that back.

Okay. Yeah, that'll be. Okay. Just want to let Dottie know. Yep.

How you doing today, Billy?

We are back in session. Jason, it's your floor.

And this is what was presented to the commissioners on August 3rd about some DeKalb County courthouse security recommendations that the committee had came up with. I'm just going to read the top three paragraphs, and then we'll go into the discussion about the one project that's remaining. So the four recommendations were decided by the Courthouse Security Committee. We had a free courthouse security assessment performed by Sheriff Dowdell from Indianapolis. These recommendations are a result of a 31-page report and Courthouse Security Committee meeting discussion since June 2025. That's when we first started meeting was a year ago, a little over a year ago. We'd like to mention that we've already completed some of these recommendations included within the security assessment. And as a committee, we went through the report, all 31 pages together and separated items by 2026 goals, which were immediate one to three year goals short term and then not doing it this time long term. The four projects listed in order by the Courthouse Security Committee with financial estimates, and again these are price estimates, they may have increased because some of these projects started in June 2025 when we started seeking some of these costs. I'm referring to these projects by numbers so we don't openly communicate our courthouse security gaps. So again, the projects two, three, and four were already approved by the commissioners that are gonna fund those. They did that on the August 3rd meeting. So what I'm coming to you today is for approval to fund project number one for $46,982. Is there any questions regarding the projects or the committee members or anything of that sort?

Can we talk briefly about the security film and what it can do? You want to just kind of give a nutshell again on the security film?

Yeah. So what we're looking at doing is enhancing the security on the exterior and the interior of the courthouse. So some of these projects, they're not only safety and security things, they're also requirements. for people to not be able to see what people are working on from their computers and things of that sort. So some of these projects are actually more than just safety and security. They're also addressing other potential funding things that would come down the line if we don't do this particular project now.

This is film around the outside and the inside too.

It's all three floors on the outside the windows no one can see in if there's a council meeting going on Yeah, it's for security purposes yep Just to address some of the questions that I was asked yesterday by a couple of citizens I This security committee has been meeting for a number of months going back into 25. June 2025. Okay. And we did have a professional come in and evaluate our needs, and we've been given that report. And so this is to address the issues that we've decided are priorities.

So Sheriff Dowdell from Indianapolis. came in and did a free assessment of the courthouse. Just the courthouse, none of the other county buildings. And that created a 31-page report. So then the committee of the eight people listed below, which consists of Terry Yard, Commissioner, Dave Yard, Council President, Patrick Jessup, Judge, Brady Thomas, Sheriff, Neil Bly, Prosecutor, Dana Hedrick, Clerk, Corey Heffelfinger, Police Chief of Auburn, and then myself. So we went through that report And we listed the recommendations with the realization that not everything can be done at once. So then we realized, OK, how can we separate these? So we looked at what's our immediate needs for safety and security to the courthouse. Those became the 2026 goals. And then we looked at one to three year things that we could look at that maybe have a little bit less time element to it. That or maybe more costly thing. So we're going to address those later. And then the ones that we're not going to address now, some of those projects weren't realistic to the type of construction the building is right now. And we're not going to be able to change that. So some of the systems and processes that we do, we have no control over because of how the courthouse is constructed and where the entrances are at. The building's already in existence. So there were some things that were recommended that we really just can't do right now just due to the lay of the land.

And why I wanted you to point that out is that the questions that I was getting were based on our historic inability to develop a written plan on where we want to be from today to five years from now to 10 years from now. And I just wanted to address the fact that we are

With our we are currently doing that that our three commissioners are moving forward with developing plans so Separate from this not to take away from this discussion, but also after this gets worked through My next objective is to during the part department meeting safety and security was brought up for all county buildings So after these projects get going, my next objective as emergency management is to send an email to all the department heads and council and commissioners and ask for at least one representative from each of the county buildings so we can do the same thing and talk about safety and security for all of our county facilities. My hope is with this, once we get kind of some ideas about where are some of our safety and security issues, we can take that report and look at the space study report and how can we blend those two together and make the most beneficial and cost-effective decisions for the council and commissioners on maybe what departments should be in what buildings or how do we address safety and security issues, not just for the employees, but also for the people that are coming in to do business. So that's some of the projects that we're working on moving forward after this.

Thank you. That's a 31 page. Are we that much efficient in safety in this place?

Not bad. Some of this stuff was, for example, I'll give you one example that we've already done, was one of the access door that has a key card system. That list had a bunch of people on it that some of them weren't even employees anymore. So the sheriff had sent an email out to all the employees, if you want card access to the courthouse, you need to submit this form. And we went through and redid that group. So now we have a good list of who has access into the courthouse with the card system. So that was one example of a change that we made that didn't cost any money. It was just a housekeeping thing. So those are kind of the projects that we're working on. So not all of them have a cost, and some of the costs are very minimal to change that.

But what started this research? Was there a threat, or is this something we're getting ahead of the ball, we're getting ahead of the game?

So this is something that the sheriff had recommended based on law. On what? Recommendation. Okay. The sheriff had formed this committee in 2025 based on recommendations from the court system. Yeah, go ahead.

Bill, to address your question, it was just Sheriff Dowdell is the sheriff of the Indiana Supreme Court. This is part of what he does as his profession is evaluations of courthouses throughout the state. So that's a free service. So basically we just, when I helped get the courthouse security committee reformed, that was one of the first steps that we did was ask him to come up and give us an evaluation. fact that it's a 31 page report that's just the length of every report that's provided within that it breaks down the different areas of the building so they're all lengthy it's just and then throughout that report it points out recommendations so it was just a proactive step that we took okay thank you appreciate that and I know that Dottie's not here anymore but if we have people that were still on the list with cards that don't aren't here anymore

Certainly that's part of the Unboarding of an employee when when they leave that we go through all these lists and make sure people are removed and added where they need to be added and removed from so that system needs to be Corrected or updated and working with HR would be a good thing I'd like to compliment Jason on his thorough

Organizational skills on putting these meetings together. I mean you were very thorough your systematic approach you Prioritize and you did an excellent job on putting this together. You really did. Thank you So thank you for your expertise on that now what you need from us. I'm gonna look at council I'm gonna look at Susan because I want this to be worded, right? We're not voting on approving the money here. We what he needs is When he leaves here, is it if we are going to support this?

He needs to know if the council is going to fund it so that the team will know whether that project is going to be completed. If the council agrees that it's important and they're going to fund the first... Then it comes back for a vote. Then it will come, yeah. Then it will come back.

So... We're not going to get very much information on what this $46,000 is going to, right?

We are discussing it by project number because we do not want the public to know what our security measures are.

That's basically the film that goes over the windows, Bill.

So projects two, three, and four, the commissioners already have decided to fund those because they have the budgetary line item to do that. What I'm coming to you for today is to seek additional $46,982 from somewhere, wherever you decide, so we could put that towards that number one project.

Can we do this by consensus, or do we need a vote from today?

Can it change?

Larry, the first year is when we got the quote.

Okay, thank you Susan is there enough funding in kum cap or would this have to come out of general?

And if you all read the paper I provided you in the red it explains why this is happening I can probably make QMCAP work.

It is.

I think we do this on a consensus or do we need a motion? Consensus, okay. Do we have consensus from the council

Support the funding so that Jason here We have consensus so we are in agreement that If it's approved, yes, we want to do all four projects this year and the other three are have started as far as we've done the contracts So those things are in motion now. We're just waiting on this or proposal To be able to move forward and start that project Correct

So Jason you have consensus from the council the next step will be to come back for a vote on this to yay or nay Okay, I'll have to submit that I'll submit the additional okay, so you don't need anything else for me right now, okay?

We're good.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks Jason and Fincham

Hello, I'm Anne Fincham, Auburn Main Street. Thank you for having me today. I am here to talk about the DeKalb County Veteran Memorial. It was installed and ribbon cutting was done last year in December and this project started as a youth project with Junior Auburn Main Street along with Post 97 and the City of Auburn because it's eventually going to be their property to handle but we erected that monument and we are at the final stages of adding the names to the memorial and if you've been by it it's a limestone memorial the engraving on it was restricted to a certain size with the being a self-standing memorial like that it's been recommended that we do a panels of granite to go on each section so that we can do smaller font, which shouldn't be an issue because you can walk up really close to the memorial pillars. But what we did find is that a cost is going to be to do that versus what we had initially hoped to do is going to be a quite a bit more. So we did propose to request that the project itself, to finish up this portion of it, which is costing about $62,108, would be split upon county and the county towns and the county government. And so we've asked, we've been to Waterloo, Butler, Garrett, Auburn, and the county commissioners so far for the portions, which have been approved and supported But we need to ask upon the County Council if they would approve the final amount for the DeKalb County portion not to exceed $14,175 to be collected in the fall once it's completed, once the project's completed.

That's not the total, right?

No, the total for the county would be $27,674. And the commissioners have approved the $14,175 for the initial. But they did request that we came to the county council for the other portion.

So that's why I'm here today.

And you also reached out to private groups for additional funding or help with the funding?

So the funding itself, we raised over $194,000, about $500,000. And that fundraising campaign and all of that had been completed in the previous year. It started in 94, 95, and then we finished the memorial in 95. And to date, even now, this year, through some private and donations and in kind we finished the parking lot next to it and a walk space along with some landscaping to go up there so from the parking lot to the memorial there's sidewalk so it's accessible. That's been completed this year. That's not in those numbers. We're probably closer to $240,000. We'll probably be very close to a $300,000 total value or total cost once it's completed. So unfortunately what we were hopeful as far as how we could engrave on the type of stone we chose due to cost, it's probably would have been better in hindsight to use a different stone right from the beginning and just fundraise for the entire thing, but it was gonna put it right to where our price point's being now, so we're hoping to keep the costs down, but that engraving portion we feel will be very meaningful to our community and to the veterans who've served our county to have the names, and it'd be continued. We have a small fund set up currently from the funding that we did raise to continue engraving names, but we'll continue asking for a donation to have names added now that we've done this fundraising initially so that we'll have some perpetuity with it. And there's a small fund that's set up with the Parks Department for maintenance and upkeep, and then post-97 plans to continue keeping the flags nice and that type of thing for the

The City of Auburn is doing a lot of support for its ongoing maintenance over the years.

Yes, absolutely.

And that initial fundraising was pretty widespread. Lots of veterans organizations, foundations, and groups gave to that initial $240,000. Yeah.

Well, I either walk by it or drive by it. Dozen times a day and it's looking very nice and very beautiful and it's made a real improvement to that That little stretch of street right here.

So Like we did with Jason me give you a consensus Where the council will support the thirteen thousand four hundred and ninety nine dollars we cannot approve that today is that will have to be advertised but if we have consensus from the council and

And where you want it paid from.

And where we want it to pay from.

Like, do you want it out of the council's budget?

Somebody else's budget? Where is the commissioner's doing theirs? Okay, so are you saying we'd have to put money into the council budget so that we could pay it, or can we just have it paid out of general?

Well, it's going to be somebody's budget. You can put in a commissioner's budget if you want.

Oh, no, they're asking us, I suppose. It should be a council budget.

It's going to be county general no matter what.

It should be council budget.

So do we have consensus from the council that this will come from the council's budget and that we give Ann this showing that we are supporting her Efforts here for thirteen thousand four hundred ninety nine dollars. Do we have consensus? Oh, yeah, and we have consensus Thank you, Ann Okay, Jeff Peters, sorry we're running late we usually don't do that We want Jeff or do we want

I was going to ask that question myself.

I was going to say, do we want to start with Jeff? I mean, we're talking the jail project. I think maybe you better get Kellen up here first.

Oh, okay. He's standing outside explaining something. He's waving his arms.

Send the sheriff. Kellen, you're up.

I'm up for it.

You know.

Jail. Jail, okay. There's not much more for me to ask except for I have a team of people here to answer any questions that you guys have about the jail.

What is it you want us to do? You better start at the beginning.

I've come up here a couple of times, had some questions about you guys, if you guys are wanting to proceed with funding the jail. The commissioners have the blueprints are 95% done. Tony Bai, he's with the Elevitas. He's the blueprints that was put together back in 2001. Those are some old blueprints, 2021. We're at the point where the jail discussion is, are you guys willing to fund it or not at this point? I mean, there's not much more prepping we can do before we start spending some real money on it. And the commissioners feel like we don't wanna spend any more money if you guys aren't comfortable with whatever process that you guys have to do to fund the project. I watched the last council meeting, you guys had a lot of questions, so I brought Envoy, who would be possibly, they do BOTs, so they can ask questions about that. Here's this here. He's your financial advisor You can ask questions about the plan of how to do it and then you have Tony Vi who is the elevator designer?

He can ask questions about the design it So outside of that I'm gonna just step back and let the experts talk about the jail so I Guess we should start with the the bot issue and and what would what would Ella vitus do and From Tony, I suppose we are from either one of you kind of what's the estimate on the cost of the jail?

We've gone from 30 something now to 50 so Hello, I'm rich Taylor vice president envoy voice and been around since 1982 building similar projects across the state of Indiana and What we're prepared to commit today, if you did move forward, is a not to exceed cost. A few things. You have some blessing and some curses. One is the curse is that in 2021, when these drawings were almost completed, the county chose not to pursue the project. Costs have significantly escalated because of that decision. Costs will typically escalate anywhere from six to possibly 10%, depending on the year, each year that a project project is delayed that's just the nature of time value of money in the escalation of materials labor etc costs so Tony by here is is a great designer with elevatus they do jails throughout the state of Indiana they took this project in 2021 to 90% drawings and provided at the time a conceptual estimate We took those drawings at no cost to the county and provided an update to those costs for which we are committed to delivering the project under a build, operate, transfer process at a not to exceed. Under the build, operate, transfer process, the benefit of the process is you receive what's called a guaranteed maximum price at the end of the scoping period. So you hire a team, a developer, design team, they will finish the drawings, they will commit to a cost for which then no change orders and the projects delivered at that cost. The only risk that you still retain on the county side is what's called the site risk. So if you go to the site, you excavate, you find contaminated soils, which you've already built at this site, so you already know most of these issues are not a risk. But those are the only risks you typically maintain on a BOT project. But there's missing on the drawings. We didn't estimate something correctly. That risk is the development's team to eat those costs. Even it means that we lose money on the project. So that's what's the benefit of the BOT project to the county. You guys have done a successful BOT project previously. So I know many of you are familiar with the process. Help answer any questions with that. once our teams work together to develop the not to exceed cost Jeff Peters your municipal advisor took the took that information and had developed a plan on how to how to fund the project that's about a 10,000 foot overview happy to get in any weeds to the cost to the process And Tony and I and Jeff and our team are here to answer any questions today.

Was there any changes that have occurred in technology or what the requirements or codes since 21? It's quite a long time. And so have we addressed any of those changes that we need to make in the plans? before we get this not to exceed cost.

Yeah, 100%, Bob. There's going to be a process to get the project going again. And that looks like so. So when we first drew this, we took it at 95%, because we intentionally knew when we were going to come back to finish it, there was going to be things like that to do. Step one will be to evaluate those sorts of things you just described are there updated codes Jail standards those sorts of things that are going to push force our hand to make some design changes So that's that's the first thing that we're going to look at Two, if you remember, the jail was designed under a different administration, and I think we really owe it to the current sheriff to be able to have he and his leadership team have a say about the final design. In fact, we kind of started that process just preemptively Getting rolling because I want to know where his head is. And we toured the Fulton County facility, which the design of this facility was based on that jail. If you remember back, we delivered the design of your jail utilizing our prototype delivery method. So there will be a process to see if there's any design changes the county would like. answer your question absolutely and we are our aim is to Do that and make any design changes at no cost no additional cost to the county but we'll have to evaluate if if we come in and We've got a lot of design changes and we just got to evaluate that at each request one of the time Especially in technology stuff.

I mean, yes six years is a long time in technology and There may be some upgrades there that we would be silly not to look at.

1,000%, yeah. Especially with the security electronic systems these days. And that'll be part of the updating the documents and finishing them up.

Tony, how many of those in that prototype started with Adams County? How many of those have you built in Indiana?

So this would be number seven. So we built six of them.

Counselor, to your point, that's why... That's why we can be so confident in this data related to cost, because it's a design that's been built over and over, so there's very, very firm data.

And you've learned from every one of those.

This is the pod system, correct?

It is, yeah. The housing pod is, for the number of beds that is in the design, it's one pod. It fits in one pod. The facility is designed to easily expand in the future, so When the sheriff needs more bed capacity, another pod can easily be added on without disturbing any of his operations.

We're hoping that doesn't happen.

Yeah, I hope it doesn't happen either.

So much of the cost, I mean, it's related directly to the size of the beds, the number of beds. Have we got a firm number on that? I know there's been a lot of discussion. There was a

Number we set back then based upon that was before community Corrections And that I don't know if it changes that number was actually predicted in a study that was done in 2016. Oh, it's ten years old.

Yeah, so I mean who's addressing that before we get this final number to know what the actual number of beds?

We should build that's that's a really good point and that would be that that's a bed population study and We can update very very easily and quickly. It's just it's a matter of crunching data We will have to ask the sheriff for some some historic data since 2016.

I'm just And you can't just say, you know 150 beds Because it's got to be so many beds of a certain type that maybe only serve a certain population like unconvicted females, unconvicted males, convicted males, convicted females, any juveniles, mental health issues, general medical issues. So there are a whole lot of numbers that you can't just total together and come up with a magic 150 or 180.

Do you do those studies, or did you say the sheriff has to do that, and where are we at in that process?

Elevatus can do that study. Back in 2016, it was a gentleman named Rod Miller, and he was actually in the process of doing the same kind of study for Marion County, and he's from Michigan, so he was actually just making a pit stop, and I believe he did that study pro bono on his way through town, so... Yeah, it's a great start, but it's something Alibaba does on the regular as well, and we have the knowledge and the expertise.

Question, and maybe address it, and I apologize if I miss it, but on the not to exceed costs, if things look like they're starting to go south at a pretty good number, is there ever a compromise on materials or a reduction or what? Meet that not exceed cost.

That's the so the not to exceed cost is based on the drawings as they are today assuming completion of the drawings as the Project is designed now there's and there's also Contingencies in there so forth for some of the components that aren't designed yet so there's definitely opportunities to what we call value engineer

The pro the project to read to reduce costs as we complete and finalize the design Another approach we can take just kind of safeguarding our budget is what we call creating some alternates that we can bid as alternates On bid day an example of that a very common one to help control budget is if you've got a Podular housing unit And in that pod, you've got eight to 10 housing units, okay? Ideally, those are all two-person cells or four-person cells. But those cells are expensive. We can, as an alternate, bid those as a dorm-style housing, which is a lot less money, but it's harder to manage, harder to operate. So it's one of those balance the budget with the operations and what the sheriff needs to operate. But we can bid that as an alternate. So on bid day, if we're real close and the alternate, say, saves $400,000, I'm just going to throw a number out there. I don't know really what it is, but $400,000 at that point in time you can say you know what it fits the budget we can do the cells or know it doesn't Oversight manager you have one is it a team how how is this overseen I

So Envoy, if selected, would be the one managing and oversight of the project as the BOT developer, working with Tony and his team to manage design, working with our trade contracting partners, making sure everything on the site is safe and operating efficiently, and controlling costs. I do believe that the commissioners intend to hire what would be called an owner's rep or a project manager to be the fiduciary agent on behalf of the county to go out and do construction inspection and so forth. Just be the eyes and ears and expert on the county side of the contract to just oversee construction, making sure everything is to what was agreed upon. That's typical for complicated projects like this. We're doing that very same thing for Howard County right now. Luckily, you're not in their situation. They were court-ordered and had to go in front of a federal judge, the county council president, the board of commissioner president. were told they were building a jail and theirs is you know significantly larger significantly more money luckily you guys aren't at that position right now so being proactive is and looking at something now is in a safe from future cost escalations and possible and possible issues with litigation

Can you just explain what the bot system is? How does that work? Like how do you guys work together? Because obviously you're standing there together so that insinuates some type of partnership that you're going to do. So instead of us trying to try to grasp at questions, can you summarize what it is exactly, how you work, what the advantages and maybe disadvantages would be to us as the county, and then just tell us what does this overall project look like and how is it run?

Build, operate, transfer is a delivery method that provides a few features and benefits. One of them is, one of the big ones is cost certainty. So the way the contract structure works is you hire a team. Typically when you design it, you bid it, you build it, the county would have multiple contracts. They would have a contract with the architect and engineer, so they're holding what's called that contract risk, and they would hire a general contractor, right? That general contractor would put a bid together and put the bid cost to those design drawings. However, since the county is holding the design contract, if they didn't include items in the bid and you missed it when evaluating those bids, it creates what's called change orders. General contractors are very good at finding what's called scope gap or admissions in the drawings So they even sometimes can bid it below or at what their cost is knowing that they see all these misses in the drawings To then change order the final contract value later in the process. I'm I'm on I actually sit in your guys's seat similarly and deal with Public projects, less designed bid-build project we did in our community was a $6.6 million project. Had 74 change orders. The final contract value after bid day was 13% higher than what it was bid at using the design-bid-build technique. In this case, you select a development partner that holds all that design risk, the contract with the designer, the contract with all the subcontractors, and goes through what's called a scoping process. So during the scoping process, we work with the county, the sheriff's department, your municipal advisor and the design team to then develop what's called a guaranteed maximum price. And then we're on the hook. to deliver that project at that price. So in the case of those scope gaps or those emissions, if we don't put a value to it as a team, then we eat those costs. They do not change that price to you, the county, the owner of this project. So it's become the delivery method of of choice because of that cost certainty none of us like having to go to the taxpayers or you issue a bond for a project and then all the sudden you're having to come up with you know ten percent more than what you originally planned for the project because of these misses uh... that's one of the major pros uh... the other thing is we can designed to a budget. When you do design, bid, build, you design the project, you think you know what the costs are, and then you take it out to bid, and then you're surprised on bid day. And then you have to go back and redesign it, and then you have to put the design drawings back on the street again, receive another bid, hope that the changes to the documents, design drawings, fit the budget for which you set. And this way, you set, just like today, if we say we're going to commit to a number today, we design exactly that number. So it gives your bond counsel, your municipal advisor, you guys as the fiscal body that's responsible to taxpayers, know that you're only committing taxpayers to a certain cost. The cons of the delivery, and there's ways to overcome them. So I do this presentation at the Commissioner's Association and City Towns and Townships Association. The cons could be transparency, if you don't demand transparency in the process. Because it's easy for somebody to commit to a number if they don't provide you the underlying details of what that number is made up of. So how do you demand transparency? You require that the team provide the scope level bids. So you know that mechanicals cost X because that's what the bids were. You just don't accept the number without the bids underneath it. So that could be a con if you don't run the process in the way philosophically we like to approach the process. At the end of the day, it's taxpayer dollars, and we need to be transparent with those taxpayer dollars. So that can be one of the cons of the delivery method. One of the other pros is you set a guaranteed maximum price at the end of the process before you begin construction. Here's the benefit to you to the county. If that project comes in a million dollars less, you can negotiate shared savings. or all the savings are returned back to the county. So if the team commits to a price, and that price comes in actually less than what they committed to, you can get that money back. And you could use it for additional scope on the project, or you could use it for furniture, fixtures, and equipment that the sheriff and his deputies and jailers need. may need for the project. And that goes back to the transparency. You don't know if you're gonna have savings unless you require transparency from your partner to show that there are those savings. So those are some of the very important features and benefits. What we call in the industry is one throat to choke. You have one contract with the developer. If their concrete person pours concrete incorrectly, You don't have to go chase a concrete person to have the concrete board fixed. The company is on the hook. Also, it creates a very collaborative situation. Usually, A lot of times what can happen in design-bid-build or what's called construction manager as constructor, since there's two different contracts between who's putting the cost to the drawings and who's creating the drawings, it creates conflict. The architect may say, well, no, I think it should cost this much because this is what it cost last time. The construction manager could say, oh, no, well, you designed this the way you shouldn't have designed and that's why it costs more. In this case, there's none of that. Because it's one contract. It's one throat to choke. It's the developers responsible for working with this team to deliver the product at the cost that they committed to.

Having gone through the community corrections construction and knowing that it took 12 months of trying to get things fixed after the fact and still things have been frustrating with the construction and the Things the way things were done. Mm-hmm. How does that change with a BOT? I'm kind of in favor of BOT, but I don't know how that is you deliver it and you give it to us, but then When those things arise and this isn't working the HVAC isn't working the way it's supposed to and these rooms are hot or whatever those things might be and there was a Bunch of them in community corrections. How do we work with you after you've delivered it to get those things done?

Yeah, we're at risk to ensure that those things are fixed versus a general contractor working with multiple subs or if you have a multiple prime, meaning you've hired multiple prime contracts with multiple contractors, you don't have to worry about the mechanical contractor chasing them down. We have to fix that for you.

But there's something in our contract that you're going to make sure that for a period of time, That's right. It functions the way it's supposed to function. Some kind of warranty, some kind of guarantee.

You'll have your like roofing and equipment warranties, right? That extend for, you know, the life of the equipment manufacturing. Under this delivery too, you can negotiate longer warranties. There's a cost for that. There's almost always a one-year warranty. on labor and general workmanship, but then you'll have those extended warranties. We've actually done a BOT where the community requested a two-year warranty on that type of, on those type of items.

But the good thing is we're only dealing with you, only you, not the architect and the contractor fighting over whose fault it was. That's right. One throat to choke. I've been there.

That's why I do design and build. And now Bob's brought it up, and this is beyond what we're talking about here, but talking about the jail design having been done previously, community corrections having been done, and when we separated the project, there were some shared services that could be used by both community corrections and the jail, like the kitchen, like the laundry, and things like that. Are the commissioners still looking at

Kind of connecting those buildings so that we can maybe get some of those shared services So so yeah when we did the community Corrections there is actually a kitchen and a laundry room in there so they don't have to be dependent on On the jail those both of those facilities would not support the jail. So right right?

I didn't think they would but I was hoping that maybe the jail would and I Because I know there's been issues with the kitchen and things like that out there.

Yeah Yeah, there's there if memory serves it was the temperature of the water temperature and I think that's been resolved but one thing that we are doing when we design the community corrections is we talked through the site design, and we talked through deliveries in the size trucks that we should plan for. And at the time, we were told that it would be a box truck of this length. And not too long after it was operational, I got a call, hey, they're using semi-trucks. Now the semi-truck can't navigate. So the way we've cited this jail is we've taken this opportunity to correct that, i.e. one service drive in that can serve as both the community corrections and the jail with semi-truck, full semi-truck deliveries and not have to drive through the community corrections parking and hop over the islands and run out there.

I was just reaching out because I know that we've got issues with the community corrections funding and that. I was looking to see if there were some shared services or some savings that we could get operationally after the jail was done.

I mean from an operational standpoint. It's probably a conversation with the sheriff and the community corrections And I know they're that community corrections was designed to house a work-release center.

I'm not sure if that's still operational I was in some of those early meetings I know we talked about shared intake and stuff, and I don't know if that's all gone I don't know that that shared intake is a part of the current plan now. It was original an early idea It was an early idea.

It was actually originally the original concept was a one facility so you you could realize a lot of a lot of operational efficiencies but then the decision was to do just do the community corrections and it just the community corrections was designed to stay at this point there is no plan to somehow use community corrections in a way that would be connected to the new jail at all it they're going to stand as completely separate and to

Okay, now we got this If we give you pride, I'm just throwing a number out there. I gotta say 40 million Or do you with these drawings? Where do you go from here? You look and say? This is all we can do for 40 million or Do you go through it and come back says this is what we can offer your 45 if you want to go to 45 million I'm just trying to decide how we The money we spend and what we have to do to raise our finances. But if I give you $40 million, if I give you $40 million, I'd be in jail for writing a bad check.

But anyway.

But if we say, okay, we'll go to $40 million, I'm just using this number. I have no clue what this is going to cost because I've heard all sorts of numbers. You'll go back, look at the drawings, and see if you can actually do it for $40, or will you make cuts so you can do it for $40, or how will you approach this? That's what I'd like to know.

We're, so in the process you hire a developer to go through the scoping, develop a GMP. Now, if we were selected, if this team was selected, we are committed to the number that Jeff Peters is gonna run through the financing with today, that we can commit to that number as a not to exceed, and then we work to, reduce that number through the remaining scoping process. The situation is though is that because this is a prototype jail, there's plenty of benefits to that and how Elevatus designed this. One is that the cost data is intimately known. So the cost data is very, very clear. That's how we could stand up today and say, yes, today's the not to exceed number. So we know that the GMP will be at that number or less. That's very important. And two, that it's an efficient process because of how much work has already been done, and the cost to get to the GMP, to a guaranteed price, there's not gonna be, as Tony had already mentioned, and from our team, there's not gonna be any cost to get to that number, which would be on top of And you know the number that Jeff will work through today. But so it's a request for proposals and qualifications. Yes, sir.

They're not technically hired yet by us. So I want to keep that in mind. So when they say they can work within these numbers, we still have to bid out for the BOT to see if they can come in. So before we go down the route of like, hey, just give us those numbers and we'll be good with it. Commissioners need to know if we're going to go forward with this jail projects to know we can send out RFPs to Constructions and everything else to put this team together put them under contract then again bring them back I just want to make sure you clarify that first commissioners have made the decision to use the BOT method Contract not a I that's what I am I want to do and that's what the consensus of the conversation the other one We're not officially put him out yet to do this. So as we have this conversation Before he gets down the weeds be like, okay, what's that number? You guys are promising I want you guys understand that he's technically not under contract. He's just here to give you guys information We're using elevators because if we didn't use his architectural plans We'd probably spend another half a million to a million just to get new blueprints, which makes no sense So commissioners are okay with using that

Want to clarify that to make sure before we start going on this path and I want to clarify something that extends what Amy was asking and when we're talking about are we talking about some type of a Payment In a monthly basis a yearly basis are we talking about bonding are those are those are all going to be issues that Jeff is going to answer is how we would I Pay for the bot services.

I just brought rich from envoy And so they guys can ask me these questions because we're at the point of commissioners if we if you guys are comfortable going forward with this whole process Then we need to get our team under contract to get the information that you need. They're doing this at risk. He's up here for free answering your questions. He's here for free answering questions. You pay, Jeff.

So I guess to answer that question, we need to start hearing from Jeff. Yes. Now we can bring Jeff up.

Yes, Tony and I are just here to provide some free advice. We provided some cost estimating and free cost estimating, but you'll have a request for proposals, qualifications process. You'll have to go through in order to select the team in order to actually move forward and get a guaranteed price. And once you even have the guaranteed price presented, the commissioner still can say, We don't accept that GMP. We want to select a different person, team to work with. So you're not even stuck until that point. Or you could just actually even take the drawings that are prepared during the scoping process and put them out on the street and hard bid them, and then go through the design bid build process. So you still have a tremendous amount of flexibility even after the BOT procurement has been completed.

You're not the only bot service out there, right? There's others.

Yep. That's right. Kellen, in relation to what Tony said earlier about not having a new administrator, a new sheriff, there's a new sheriff in town. Are we going to, if we go ahead and say, let's move, start moving on this, will we form a new committee there, a jail committee, so that we have the sheriff, a commissioner, a councilman, a couple other people, just to finish up the plans that last 5% to make sure we're all in the same thing.

That's a possibility. I don't know what the other two commissioners are. I mean, we're kind of at step three. I figure if you guys want to continue down this path, and if we're going to talk about steps afterwards, we need to know if step three, if it's something you guys are committed to. I mean, it's going to be a large expenditure for the county. It needs to be understood, thoroughly known about it. You guys are the ones that control that. That's why... We really should probably bring Jeff up at this point and have him kind of work through the finances of what you guys are capable of doing, because if they can't fit that number that you guys present, then the whole project is dead, which is perfectly acceptable, but we just need to know before we start going way down this line that we need to know what the starting number from you guys is to work with before the commissioners start signing contracts, getting people underbid, spending money, and all that kind of stuff. It's kind of at this point, what's your guys' financial... for the jail and then we'll work after we get that kind of figured out from you guys what just want to make sure we're definitely have the sheriff involved heavily and he has been he can tell I've talked to him quite a bit he's met with Tony they so he's very much involved into it but I really need to get past are you guys comfortably financially to support the process of what we're gonna be doing here where can we access like

copies of the drawings so that we can start to see exactly what are we going to build and pay for.

Well, I have them. The county has them. We've delivered hard sets and digital copies to the county, but if you'd like them, I can send them.

I don't know that any of us have seen them.

I have a set. You have a set.

I have not seen them.

Please go to set. Okay.

Great. Well, I'm missing out. I guess I need a set.

Any other questions for Rich or I?

I did have one quick follow-up question on not having a bed study. How confident are we in the number that we're working with right now? by not having a bed study yet, how confident are we in the number that we're starting with now?

And in the last two years since we've gotten community corrections working better, our jail count that we get every week has gone down about 15 or so.

So potentially it's even beyond that 30-year window that we talked about. Okay. The other thing on owner's rep, was there owner's rep included in this amount?

Conversations we had about the honors rep within the commissioners is that we're going to pay for that ourselves It would not be part of the loan or part of the bond process Okay, so I'm I know in theory we've talked about before how would we fund a jail what would it look like?

so actually put pencil to paper and the estimate that we're working off today is 51 million and for just the project. And we've talked about additional costs of issuing bonds. And I'll tell you that the things I have included and the one thing that I have excluded. We've included all the costs, including Underwriters discount bond counsel legal counsel municipal advisor Underwriters counsel a bond rating like the last time when we did the Community Corrections bond We went to Standard & Poor's and got a bond rating That helps lower your interest cost because more people are willing to bid and purchase your bonds if there's a an outstanding bond rating on that specific deal I also put in gross bond insurance and some trustee fees. So all in, it's about $51.8 million. The bond insurance premium is about $265,000 as an estimate. Last time when we did the community corrections bonds, your rating was high enough that we didn't go buy insurance because it wasn't worthwhile. We got what we felt were interest rates just as good without the insurance. So I would anticipate potentially that comes off to bring down some of the costs. One big component that is not included in here is capitalized interest. And I know we've had the conversation before about you have a general obligation bond cap that is one-third of 2% of your net assessed value. If you go above that amount for a project, which this would be far beyond that amount, you have to establish a building corporation and issue lease rental bonds, which is what all the schools do, and this is the normal mechanism for a project of this size. When you do the lease rental bond, you cannot make principal payments toward the bonds until you can actually utilize the new assets that you're building. There's that construction risk in there. So what we do to eliminate that is we assign a temporary replacement asset to the building corporation that has a value of those interest payments during construction plus a six-month cushion. So if this is two years of construction, we need basically two and a half years' worth of what would be interest payments on $51 million worth of bond. The thought of those replacement assets would be you need to own them free and clear. So one would probably be the courthouse. The other would be the existing jail. So potentially you would appraise those, pledge those as replacement assets so that we don't have to put aside millions of dollars of capitalized interest in this budget or borrow that money. We think all that's feasible. These are structures that we've used before. To touch briefly on what Rich had talked about, The BOT is a delivery method or design bid build. To us from the municipal advisor side, we don't care what delivery methods you work with. It's just in the BOT, they will get us to a guaranteed maximum price. Otherwise, on the design bid build, we wait until we have the bids in hand. And the timing of how we put all this together is we would jump off today with this $51.8 million as our starting point. And then as they do design, they will hopefully reduce down some of their costs on the construction side to get to that guaranteed maximum price. We would look at potential cash flow. coming out of your correctional facility lit fund. I have not pledged any of those amounts in here yet. And we'll kind of talk about some of those issues. But we would refine these numbers down as you have had your public discussions and past ordinances, et cetera, to go no more than this $51.8 million. That would go through a process where people would have the ability to remonstrate, et cetera. And then when we get to the guaranteed maximum price and our refined numbers, what we do is then size down that bond issue so that you only borrow the amount that you need for the project. You don't have any additional funds other than what is built into the project budget as contingency. which there are always contingencies in those budgets. Again, as Rich talked about, there could be some negotiation as to how those come back to you, how you utilize them, whether you utilize them into the building or FF&E. If none of it is ever utilized and there's an excess, there is a bond process at the end that that just goes back and applies toward debt service so that it lessens the amount that the taxpayers are repaying. So as for the payment and what we had talked about before was you had put in place your correctional facility lit fund. You have accumulated millions of dollars in there. Today, I think you're above $8 million in the fiscal plan that we delivered a few months ago. At the end of 2028, which is when the bonds pay off, I think you'll have like $11.5 million in there as an estimate. So two things can be done with that money. One, you could apply it all toward this and buy down the amount of bonds that you would actually issue by whatever you have on hand at the time we would sell the bond. However, there's another thing to consider, and I think it's probably the preferred method, is if you go forward and issue these bonds, and you get them issued here in the near term, you will need to make payments every six months. So beginning with mid-2027 and every six months. In the fiscal plan that we delivered a couple months ago and we walked through, you know during 2027 and 2028, you are anticipating to consume a good deal of cash because your expenditures right now are above your revenues. But when you get to 2029 under this new LIT structure, what we built into your fiscal plan was utilizing the 1.2% LIT exclusive to county only There is additional lit that potentially could be had for the county in the form of if you implemented fire and EMS, you could take a portion of that. If you implemented an income tax for small municipalities, all of those municipalities that opt into that would get 150% proportionate share of their population. But the remainder of what you issued would come back to the county. So what's built in your plan is just that base 1.2%. And also in your plan, we have backfilled all of your other income tax funds, your Light Ed Fund, your Public Safety Lit Fund. We have funded all those based on what we believe your anticipated expenditures are going to be going forward after 2028. So on page one, which is the general fund, of that fiscal plan, we have worked into it on that second to the last line, which is increase or decrease in funds. So it tells us whether we're adding to cash or eating cash. Again, in 27 and 28, we're expecting to eat a good bit of cash. If you impose that 1.2 and go forward, our expectation today would be you're going to be about $4.1 million above and to the good in those years. your revenues are going to exceed expenditures about $4.1 million. If you were to issue these bonds without applying any cash, we would anticipate debt service to be a little under $3.9 million. So you still could fund all the debt service on this project and have a couple hundred thousand dollars in addition to what it is we think you need to maintain your current expenditures today projected into those forward years. So it is a very conceivable plan of finance that would get you there, would get you there within the income tax structures that you are allowed. And the use of the correctional facility lit My thought would be because you're consuming cash in the years 27 and 28, it might make good sense to make your payments from these cash reserves and your income streams out of the correctional facility fund in 27 and 28. So if you eat $8 million out of that $11.5 million, you still have $3.5 million there. And then we can talk about, do we want to buy down the bond issue by $3.5 million? Do you want to save that as a reserve for something related to correctional facilities or finishing it up? I think those are possibilities. But again, I think this gives you a plan of finance today. If you say, hey, yes, let's go ahead and undertake this project, this puts you on a path to do that. You have every reasonable expectation that you can achieve that. The actual structure of the bonds, and I know we touched on this before a little bit as well, what we want to use is property tax as the true pledge of repayment, even though we're not going to use property tax. And the reason we want to use property tax is because when we go to Standard & Poor's, and this is the same thing we did with the correctional facility bond. When we go to Standard & Poor's and have them give the bond rating, property tax bond rating is better than an income tax boundary so hopefully we will get a better bond rating lower interest cost for the entire project in order for us to use property tax as the true pledge and the security for the bond knowing that we're going to pay it from another source of income tax and not have to go through the property tax bonding procedures we have to illustrate to bond council that we have a reasonable expectation to make those payments and that's what your fiscal plan lays out that service would be about three point nine million your surplus in those years of twenty nine and forward or four point one million you have every reasonable expectation that you can do that i believe and i've discussed with bond council that very strategy for your plan of finance. They're all good with that. I think all that works. Bad points and here are your risks. And I know we've talked about these before. The new income tax structure, you do not get to vote on until the middle of 28 for 2029. These are based on the rates that are here today. There are two more legislative sessions to occur. Don't know if your rate will be 1.2. I have no reason to believe at this point that it is not, but there's a risk that we run across that time period. Another risk is we have heard Representative Thompson talk before about he wants property tax rate caps for each unit of government. We know for fire and EMS, they've kind of coalesced around 40 cents, and that's to include operations, debt, and CUME funds. Last time I met with him, I could not get him to give me any idea as to a city or a town, a county, a school, a library, et cetera. He said, we'll see that in proposed legislation in January, but those rates are just going to be the first volley for them to discuss. So we don't know if you will be imposed a property tax rate cap as a county that requires you not to levy all of your maximum levy going forward. That would be a potential risk. Today, you're at about 40 cents under our model. Potentially, after all the implementations of SEA 1, you might be around 60 cents. Their conceptual model is no property tax that is not referenda approved above $3 for the entire tax rate. So that's school, county, city, town, library, special districts, et cetera. Those, to me, would be your two biggest risks for the future. Don't really know how much you would really weigh that. If you have to make a decision on the laws as they're written today, the projections that we've made, you do have a plan of finance to go forward. But those are the outlying risks I think you bear. And let's go back to that. Let's say everything goes bad. They're not going to approve the income tax. that you otherwise would get. Because these actually have an underlying security of property tax, if they change the legislation on your income tax, I think they could go on the property tax bill. That would answer and solve the first problem. If you have a specific rate imposed by the legislature that includes your CUM funds and your debt funds, then potentially you will be funding debt service with your tax rate and not operations, and you may therefore have to scale back operations.

And the delays that we've had from when we initially started looking at this as a project back in 2016, costs continue to elevate every year. And let's face it. mean the the legislature is constantly tweaking the taxes and the ability and It's at risk that they would change the whole process every year and If we keep kicking it down down the road down the road, it's just it's not going to get any better It's my thought. It's it's we need to move now as far as We're still we do have that excess in the Community Corrections Fund Is there and we should we And I know it kind of goes against what we talked about previously because but should we move that money? That excess money that's in that fund now over to a jail fund That's specific to the jail that so that it cannot be used for anything else if you choose that plan of finance

I do think you need to lock it into what it is you're going to use it for, which would potentially be the jail debt service payments in 27 and 28. Whether you can put restrictions on it in that fund or you have to move it to another fund and restrict that specifically to that, I would. Because, again, if this is the plan of finance that you undertake, you want to be able to fulfill it, and particularly in the front end. uh... legacy also i think what we would look at it is is their ability that you could also contribute some of those funds or buying down the bomb beyond what we're going to need or payment twenty seven twenty eight i think that would be a good idea in the fact that it is for the correctional facility you know i think you could potentially use it for operations or maybe you've got ff any out uh... whatever would be the proposal for the project, and then fund it out of what is going to be your remaining funds in there. But I think you want to wrap up and try and utilize all that by the end of 28 when the revenue stream goes away toward this project so that you fully utilize it.

Can we put all of this on paper numbers so that we can all see it?

Would like personally I would like to see that it's laid out in front of us You had said that built in the plan is the 1.2% lit all remaining with the county yes, okay, so Because of the whole change what does that mean for the council with the ability to? possibly give other municipalities a some of the money as well to make them whole.

The thought would be you will utilize the other available lit revenue streams, the small municipality stream, the fire and EMS stream, in order to, and you can also impose one for townships, libraries, etc.

Okay.

Imposing all those, and we haven't studied yours to see whether you would have losers and winners certainly you'll have winners and losers I think there's also an option where potentially the county can redirect some of their funds to those losers if you so choose but at this point in time I don't know what it is but again this in your plan only includes the 1.2 that's allocated specifically to the county There's another 1.2 that you can impose for small cities and towns, 0.4 for fire and EMS, 0.05 for townships, 0.05 for libraries, 0.05 for other districts. And the total of your 1.2, the 0.4, and those smaller units can't exceed 1.7. And then your total all in is 2.9. So there's a lot there to work with, and we'd have not done all the calculus of that, kind of waiting for the legislature to finish some of its different variations.

And I know we're talking about it later on, but as we bring the must committee into creation, I know that hopefully the auditor will be there to help supply us with any information we need, but Would it be possible to get you scheduled in either in person or virtually when we meet to kind of help us with some of that?

Yeah, I'm getting booked for a lot of those. I bet you are. Yeah, whenever you can get that on my calendar, yes, we can do live or in person or live or virtual.

All right. Jeff? Because we're paying these bonds that we would take from basically an income tax rather than property tax, We don't have to have a referendum then because it's much larger than the $20 million?

Correct. Because you have the reasonable expectation that you're paying it with income tax, there will be an ability for people to remonstrate against the lease between you and the building corporation, but they will not be able to file a remonstrance and make you run a referendum if you are actually going to pay it back with property tax.

Jeff, if the county today, if we were to go with a consensus where we want to pursue the $51.8 million, which includes the bonds, insurance, et cetera, I guess my question for the developers, builders, would that lock us into the not exceed cost today? If we want to get locked in, we need to take a look at the $51.8 today, some kind of consensus here.

But even with that, it has to go out to some kind of bid through the commissioners.

I understand that. This would get us to the not to exceed cost.

But we don't know what we're... I don't understand at this point. Where did the $51.8 million even come from? How many beds is that? How big is it? I just don't feel like we have enough data.

It's the same drawings from 2021.

Right. Well, there's new people here. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, there's a lot of us who haven't seen those. We'd like to look over those for sure before we move forward.

But as far as because the drawings were so much complete because of Tony's work and this being a prototype, if we were to be selected as a team to help, we would be able to commit that to that not to exceed number.

And I think that's what the commissioners are looking for us to commit to a dollar amount, not to choosing one of the developers or anybody else, just committing to how much are we willing to spend Order to get this jail project done many details will come later.

We can't move this unless we come up with a Commitment to the commissioners can the commission we want to know we can move forward with some things of going out and getting on getting underwriters Putting RFPs out there and stuff like that. So we've not selected on boy as People were used so they can't guarantee you something until we put them under contract We're gonna still put out the bed and rich know that we've had a lot of conversations. We're gonna put it out to bed and see What the best option is for the county?

I just had him come answer a lot of questions because he's very knowledgeable with the BOTS and have a conversation with you guys because you haven't have you as a commissioners have you guys selected this is the Option that you want to use is that I don't think that's up to them, right?

There's no sense in if you if you go out and redo it as they said you're gonna spend another I mean that the Bosses yeah the process we have not officially done that because we don't know if the bot process is going to be cheaper or Depending on what that number comes out to that's the option We're gonna probably go with first put it out there see what that cover comes back to because even as rich said if we don't like That number we can go do it ourselves We can also go do the bill So we're not locking into anything today. What I brought these guys for to answer any questions for you is to say, hey, as a consensus of the board, that number is something that you guys are willing to work with. You're not locked into it today. Not like, hey, we're going to spend this much money, but allows us to say, hey, you guys are fairly comfortable with it. It allows us as commissioners to keep moving forward with RFPs, getting people lined up and having more information given to you. We're at the point now where I got to put people under contracts before we really can get moving down the line any longer. If that makes sense.

With all that being said, is the 0.8 million that you're talking about included in the max number? Do we want to look at 51 million or 51.8 million? 51.8. Okay. All right.

But the commissioners aren't going to spend... additional monies getting all this in place if council is just going to be like, yeah, no. Right.

If we say, nope, we don't want to do a jail.

Precisely.

Then you can't start moving forward. If we say, yes, you guys can start down the process.

100%. Thank you, Amy. It's basically, hey, this number works within what I'm comfortable with as of right now. Obviously, there will be more information. Jeff explained multiple different ways of doing this up here. There's going to be a lot more information, but just to say to us today, as it consensus, hey, yeah, go ahead, commissioners. I think we can work with this. Let's move forward with this. we can start working through the process so then that way we can start officially hiring people and paying them for their services that they're providing us. I mean, a lot of the stuff is from free stuff. They're here free. I mean, we can't be asking them to do it for free. We like free. We love free.

But eventually free stuff. Now, Bob, don't you say that because you know what free got us before.

Yeah, community corrections. So that's kind of what we're here for today to answer any of those kind of questions and say, hey, that 51.8, That's doable for me right now. I need more information, but overall, yes, I'm okay with the commissioners continuing to go forward with this process is what we're kind of answering today.

I do believe that we probably should have a vote rather than just a consensus. I would make a motion that we authorize the commissioners to continue the jail implementation process up to $51.8 million.

I'll second that just to get a vote and I would like a roll call vote Before we go any fire we've put this 51.8 number out here any of you can answer this How many I know there's different things, but approximately how many cells or beds are we talking about? There are 46

We have 90 ish people in there the inmates now with 25 to 30 people in community corrections So we would still have but we're keeping community corrections Just want to be clear we currently have 105 beds we're gonna go to 246 beds, but we're limited to 80 where we have been 12 to 20

over our limit because we're not supposed to go above 80 because we don't want that federal judge coming in and telling us we're going to build something.

That's doubling the size?

No, go ahead.

I think that's what you're asking, right?

I want to explain this to me. You said 200. What did you say I wrote down? I said 46.

I'm looking at my paper.

It's 240 beds. Okay. I realize you've got to have... So many ladies that's convicted, non-convictions, and men, and then you have your special needs people. Is that all? That's counting all the beds where we can expand and move differently over?

That's correct. That actually includes all of your general population beds. It includes... There's a minimum security wing that's designed into it that's a flexible housing unit for programming, and there's holding cells in the intake area for the people that need constant supervision.

I looked at this, and I've looked at it a couple times. There's a lot of office areas in there.

There is. I mean, there's... There's an appropriate amount of office area.

Yeah And this is one pod just think two parts Of those 240 as she said how many are those are those specialty cells I remember looking at the print with Kellen there's there's a pretty good number of all those specialty cells that wouldn't really count against our hundred and

Right, because those are operational beds. These are beds that you don't, when you have detainees come in and process them, they're not intended to go there.

They're quarantine beds, all kinds of stuff, yeah.

Right, so they're not really operational beds. There are four, in the design right now, there's four padded cells, and there's, I believe there's six holding cells, plus two group holding cells.

So that's out of the, you take that away from the 240 then?

Correct.

That's what was really driven by the jail study. The issue, really from a fiscal standpoint and fiscal management standpoint, the worst thing you could do is issue 20-year debt, build a facility, and then while you're still paying that debt, you then have to add on to the facility because of classification issues, you've gone over the 80% capacity of the jail. That's a huge issue. The new facility will also be a lot more efficient from a mechanical, electric heating mechanical cost, so there could be some savings there. And then also for the jail staff, obviously it's safer because of the indirect supervision. and takes less jailers to oversee larger number there's some strategies that the sheriff can look at as far as taking in inmates from their counties I don't want to speak for the sheriff but there's all kinds of different strategies to produce revenue from those additional jail beds but as as myself who also sits on a fiscal body you don't want to do a project for which before you pay off the bond you have to issue more debt or more cash to then add on to the facility. So the goal is that the facility is going to last a long time so you don't have to do this again. These are one of the worst type of projects that a county has to do, right? It doesn't add to quality of life, right? They're very expensive. So I'm empathetic to your guys' position you guys are in today.

I feel like I'm hearing two different things though because I'm hearing that Community Corrections is working really well and it's taking up beds off of what we need at the jail but at the same time we're turning around and saying but we need to build a new jail that has twice as many beds.

But you can't compare beds to beds. I mean you've got all those classifications.

Are those classifications new that we're not using now? So we still have the same classifications now. There's not new ones. And we're still doing okay in the jail currently with the current classifications. Is that right?

I don't remember how many classifications or day rooms we had.

We have about eight blocks right now, and right now we are doing classification, so inmates are classified. So the inmate population is anywhere between 80 and 90 is where we're at right now, with 105 capacity jail. So, you know, that's 80 to 90 percent capacity, which is what's recommended for the operational capacity of the jail. If you think of a room being 100% full and every room's full, you can't move anything from one place to another. So in order to do those classifications and movement of inmates, that's what's recommended. I agree. I understand with what you're saying. There are approximately 30 people out at Community Corrections right now. That could change My fear would be that would change at any time as grants and funding from the state You know, we're running into issues with that already with community corrections so that could change at any time So, you know, it's feasible our jail population. I worked in the jail in 2000 as a confinement officer, and we had about up to 130 inmates in the jail at that time. So if we were having issues with community corrections or judges change and they change their policies and how they're doing things, how they're doing sentencing, I think, you know, we could very, very easily be up to 150 at that time. I think that the 240 bed number, I think, could be, you know, negotiated. I think it's something we can continue to look at, but I think what's more important is are we going to build a jail or not.

Yes.

So I think the number of beds whether it's 200 or 240 seems like something we can continue to work on Over building it for 20 years out what the capacity is going to be needed 20 years from now not today, right?

I mean yeah, and crime rate doesn't seem to be going down number of jails that were built at the same time as our current jail and Because they were proactive They have been replaced already Adams County is one Whitley County is another there are several throughout the state because They did not delay they moved ahead and they got their their stuff done and built their in and operational now Anytime any delays we're just making the cost go up more and more and more.

Please hear me I'm not trying to delay a project. However, we are responsible for the taxpayer dollars and I'm going to hear a bunch of questions from the community, and I would rather you guys be here to address those questions. I'm asking them for them on their behalf. There's a lot of chatter going on. about you know I don't know what but we need to ask these questions now because as Kellen pointed out earlier these are their professionals let's ask them and let's get make sure that the community knows why we're building a jail and that we are going to need and all of those questions need to be answered you are correct Amy but again this is a conversation that's been going on for ten years Correct and now but now we have the people here who are going to answer the questions I'll make sure that the community knows that yes, we are doing our due diligence This can be an ongoing conversation right now today.

All we're looking at is we have a motion in a second whether the council is going to basically commit towards 51.8 million Susan would you restate the motion, please? I

Yes. Richard Ring made a motion to authorize the commissioners to move forward with the jail project up to $51.8 million. William Downey, I second it.

And the chair is requesting a roll call vote. So we're ready.

All right. So you're on. Just, we're just saying up to, we're not saying up to that maximum amount.

We can lock into that not to exceed cost today.

Give the commissioners the option to move ahead with everything.

We're ready.

Okay. Chris Kraft. Amy Presser. Yes. Amy Demski. Yes. Bob Kraft.

Yes.

Bill Van Wye.

Yes.

Rickering?

Yes.

Xavier?

Yes.

Motion is carried.

Appreciate that the commission will start moving forward with that Obviously, we do not want to spend the top end of that We're going to try to negotiate through it all that but this will allow me to start putting out RFPs getting a team built so we can start going through all those questions of Getting a jail for to see how many beds we need because that's gonna cost money to do and this is as long as everybody's on board with us doing that then let's go down that process and get this figured out together and

And I want to re-emphasize I would like to see and I think Amy probably does too for I mean because we want the questions answered We want to see this on paper from Jeff.

Yes as to how this would operate The jail drawings and the numbers yes, please Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today Okay, moving on we're gonna go back to the updated Probation job descriptions show work hours change approval Okay, we'll take standard recess for five minutes Say this about the County Council today I

All this has been done. There's a lot more. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Okay.

you

Do you want me to email them to you?

My sister does.

Yep. Yep.

Last time we talked to you, they don't talk a lot to themselves. They called the other day and talked a lot to you.

Well, I was not real happy with that.

Were you out on the golf course this morning?

Were you out on the golf course swinging the club? No, it's all right. I wish I could get Jenny. Jenny's a...

Okay, if we get everybody back, we'll get started.

Okay.

The chairman was Getting ready to I told he didn't have a form We're gonna go back up on our agenda regarding the updated job description For probation and I'm going to turn it over to Susan at this point So I had provided a document