Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Everybody, we're going to go ahead and get started here. This is our agenda read for Wednesday, October 21st. Tom, what do we got? Okay. Morning, guys.

And I do want to say Commissioner Beatty's traveling, but he's watching the meeting online.

They're through KDOC, but KDOC audits them to see...

Commissioner Howell. Thank you, Chairman. So I'm just trying to remember, wasn't there another title for this savings from Senate Bill 367? It wasn't just the evidence-based practice account. There was another fund title. What was that previously? I think this is a subcategory of what they had actually set aside.

Maybe that's what it's called. But the balance got very high. It got 35. It was actually much higher. It was like 85. Yeah, it was big. Yeah, it was like nearly $100 million. And then the state made efforts to sweep those funds numerous times. Huge debate, put the money back and take the money out. The governor tried to take the money. Then the legislators were forced to put the money back, and on it goes. That's not this fund directly. This is a subaccount, I believe, of that larger fund.

Okay. So I guess my point would be this is a policy choice of understand 367 created a savings account. There was essentially money that had been spent that was being saved because we have a theoretically more efficient, more effective system, which was based on the genesis of 367 was to do community-based programming in place of like YRC2 beds. That was generally what it was trying to do. Yes. And there was so much money in that account. We were making arguments for more community-based programming because there's entire communities that had none. And we had a fair amount here in Sedgwick Cou

That whole category would go down to 400,000.

And the entire state's going to go down to 400,000?

I think there's a fund available for that. That's why. Yes. We argued House Bill 2329. It was based on the idea it would cap that larger fund, not this fund.

The governor has 60 days left, and this whole thing can change. We're having robust discussions about drastic changes to the state of Kansas. With 60 days left in the current administration, which is likely, I would think there's going to be significant changes potentially in who's leading and the decisions that are being made. These are radical decisions that I think should be suspended until we have a stable administration. It's not stable. And I don't know how much of this is going to stay exactly as it was presented just now, but this is a very discouraging discussion at the very end of th

These meetings on YouTube, are they available for us to watch? They should be. Some of the meetings they had, they were not. And I had trouble getting access to them. So I know there may be public meetings, but if they're not recording them for us to look at, you know, I don't even know necessarily they're going to happen until I find out later on. Yeah. Do they allow public comment at those meetings?

I would like to see the county not just – I appreciate your involvement on the board level, but I think the county should take a position, and we should be heard. We need to attend those meetings. We need to actually speak up and explain to them what they're contemplating is devastating. This is horrible. And at the end of the day – We have a challenging population. It's going to require some effective programming that's going to cost taxpayers a little bit of money. We continue to get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. These ideas were based in some part a little bit on the idea that this is ju

The people that were on that committee, I don't want to name names in this question, but the people on that committee, were they advocating for this conclusion or were they advocating for more status quo? The people that I might know here that may be on that committee.

That is, again, that's completely made up. The $13 million versus $15 million is, frankly, a policy choice. They've got way more money than that in this fund available. This portion of that fund that's been allocated is a decision that someone made that has access to the total fund. But this idea we have a financial distress, we've got to do something radical. It's just made up. That's just not real. And I think we need to be bold on our conversation here, guys. We need to speak to this as a commission. This is going to devastate our community. And by the way, there's a cost to this. Because t

Did anybody on this committee ask the question, what do you think is going to happen to these kids? What's the answer?

I don't know if this is maybe the right time to bring this up, but I implore us to do something about this. We have got to speak up.

Not to get too political here, but I would like to see these governor's candidates, if they see this, they ought to speak up and say, what's their position on this? I'd like to know. I think our community has a right to know. What do they think about this?

Tom, is it too late to add this as an agenda item rather than the way the public knows that we're – I just asked Justin if we could fast-track this.

Any other questions or comments? If not, we'll be discussing it again Wednesday. All right. Thank you, everybody, and have a great weekend.