Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll start the meeting with a pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second. The motion made and seconded to approve the consent agenda, which is the agenda minutes from the June 9th, 2026 board supervisors meeting and fireworks permit for 25616 Irish Avenue on July 4th.

Any questions, concerns? All those in favor. All right. We have no liquor license. Public comment.

Bonnie first.

Once again, the sirens didn't go off. Aren't you guys over him?

Management. There's technically an emergency management Commission. He doesn't answer directly to the Board of Supervisors. He has his own Commission made up of mayors.

Not doing a job. We can't turn the sides on. That was all over TV about tornado warnings. We had a lot where I even had a lot of damage. I will check it out. Also, I heard that the governor declared. Disaster. Emergency disaster for Mills County. Does that mean that people can qualify for any extra funds or just go to the county or is there any funds at all involved?

I don't know exactly. I do know that the city's qualified. I don't know what, maybe Jake can elaborate a little bit on some of it, but the cities and stuff will be allowed to file for help on like taking care of the big tree pile and stuff. We'll get aid on that. And any large damage or anything that's done, they can qualify underneath some aid programs.

So is it just for Sydney and County, not residential?

People can apply individually too. So I don't know if you go to the governor's website and get the information there or not. Okay. But Travis should know. He usually gets that information directly. Okay, thank you. Travis.

I JUST WANT TO COMMEND THE BOARD FOR HEARING CHRIS THIS MORNING, THE TOPIC OF THREE DEPARTMENT SUPERVISORS.

SO I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO RESPECTFUL DIALOGUE BACK AND FORWARD. so that the voters and people in the county can hear both sides of what the issue is and how we can best address it as quickly.

Anyone else? All right, we're moving on to Jacob Farrell, Mills County Interior.

Consideration, formal action, reference, accepting the 2027 secondary road department salaries.

This is a letter to submit to you guys every year before July 1st. Salaries to take effect for fiscal year 27, July 1st, 2026. She got ahead in front of you guys. As my salary, my engineer's contract to Take the 3%, the percentage that you guys vote on for all county employees. Minus the 3% of the rest represented as to the step-based system that you guys approved earlier this year. That's why they're all different. It's not just a straight process of work. It depends on the experience level where these people fall into that system. This we do every year. It's just for our non-PD staff to signate with. The union has their own pay schedule. So this is just basically our four minute.

29.171. You see that needs changed or is that going to go to that needs to change?

Just every one. So seven. So prove it with that. And then I'll get you guys to update it for us.

Is Kevin based on that? Step pay system that we put in place to receive the percentage of your overall salary. It's not tied to my salary at all.

It's not tied to your salary. It is in the step pay, but we hired an assistant engineer. It's not tied to my salary. We just picked what we thought was a fair salary for a position. So I know other positions in the county, the deputy of the year, their system is tied. 80 to 85%. But that's not tied at all. He wishes it was.

It's just a little bit.

I MAKE THE MOTION TO APPROVE THE ACCEPTANCE OF FY27 SECONDARY ROAD TO DEPARTMENT SALARIES SECOND THE MOTION WE HAVE A MOTION MADE AND SECONDED TO ACCEPT MY 2027 SECONDARY ROAD TO DEPARTMENT SALARIES ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION?

ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? ALL ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION?

ALL THOSE ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? ALL THOSE IN ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR?

ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? ALL THOSE Those bumps. Have you guys driven that road since then? It looks really good. In the end, it turned out very well.

That's completed. L63 down to Malvern. They're rocking and rolling.

They should be done with asphalt tomorrow when they're dependent. There's a slight chance of rain. And then they will be putting on shoulders Thursday and Friday. Coming in next week, Wednesday or Thursday, to do rumble strips. So, This has highway safety grant funding in this project. We're going to do rumbles in the center line and on the edges where we widen it. And then I believe there's some rumbled panels coming up to the T intersection. So those will be completed. Once those are done, then we'll put the final permanent pavement markings on top. They are going to be six inches wide, so they're wider than the rest of the county. That is a requirement to get those safety buttons So there's going to be about a week where there's no center line or edge line out there. We do have signs out there telling people. But that's why we don't want to put that paint down and then know those rumbles and we're just ripping them back.

There will be a lot of happy people in the housing.

One more week.

Constant truck traffic to the center of town. rock hauling and let the blacktop fly. If they take the blacktop back to the plant.

They took it, yeah. A lot of people asked if we were getting it. It wasn't our option. It was the contractor's option. We got lucky the first time they milled to the project who did keep those millings. And that was just lucky because they said this almost never happens, but we are taken to U1. So we looked out there. Apparently they made room.

Yeah, no one's in or where, so it's high.

Next week, I'd like to bring you guys to purchase a new cat breeder. We won't be paying for it quite yet, but to get it on board, we They did have some in stock and they had a company come in and buy them all up. So I'm not exactly sure when we would get this.

It's like total price including, and it's going to be $438,131. What that doesn't include is our trade-in value.

25,000, I believe. This will year 27. Yeah, 265,000. Typically we get 60 to 80,000 for trading, so we're still pretty close. So if you want, I can bring that back when I know the final number after they look at our trade in. But this would just be to get it on order so that our name is locked in. So it can't come in if I am.

They've only doubled in the last 20 years. Not bad. Yeah, they were a couple of years. Even just when I started, they weren't in the fours yet. Yeah. No. 60, 80. Yeah. 70 grand in 45 years.

I can remember when we could have traded three at this price. You know, tree damage, water damage to the roads and stuff pretty well straightened up.

What was that?

Oh, from the storm? Yeah. Yeah, we still have some washouts.

The trees have pretty much cleared back away. We've got some washouts, but I don't know the difference.

So right now we've got guys down on Adigua. There's that out of them today. That's on the base stabilization.

Then they'll be back in their territory. We just get washouts from that. When we have tree debris in the road, we just put it in right away.

It depends. If it's small enough where we can cut it up, and we cut it up, push it off, we'll get it in our water brush, see if we can come through and make piles, and then we'll pull those out of the right way, or we'll burn them. But typically right now, this time of year, we're just getting them off. Sometimes we can't cut it up, so we'll have heavy equipment come in. quick, bring in the excavators or something like that. A lot of stuff the graders can push off, so we'll just send them off their territories and they'll see something they can just push it off with their blade. We don't have to be able to chainsaw it. But yeah, that's our main focus. Get the road open. We'll deal with it later.

One point that I was going to say at the end, but since you're here, I'll say it now. I spoke with Ryan Mitchell at the Les Hills Landfill this morning and he called me on my way at And him and I both agreed that the landfill could be a great spot for a community drop off for any sort of tree debris. And so effective today, any tree debris from whether it be the county or whether it be the any city within Mills County, or whether it be a resident is able to drop off any storm related debris to landfill for free. So just.

your information, so keep that in the back of your head and share it with others, please.

Is that ongoing event?

I can get a date, but I think it's specifically just within the short future. Two storms that we've had recently. Okay. I'll pass that up. And then we also have eight items that we'd like to put up, an option.

Some older equipment, things that we've, like our great old, some blades, not blades, but shoulder discs that we put behind the tractor. We'd like to put that up for auction and get one that goes up a greater, basically a lot more. So I'll bring that list to you guys. Like I said, Deacon, we're going to finish that up. We're pretty happy with the product, the way it's turning out. I talked to Stable. They're going to come in and seal coat. He said it'd be a miracle to hear a second look at July, so probably August. Still shooting for July, but realistically.

Will it just be that hard pack? You're slash rock surfacing until then? Yeah. It's basically rock surfacing, yeah.

but it's already firmed up hardly any more loads. Heavy rains at first section didn't get washed out, so then usually we always get potholes right by that bridge. I didn't notice any in there, so we've already seen an improvement, and that's good for us because we intend to use the product on gravel roads where we don't intend to put them too sealed up, but to stabilize them and keep the washboards potholes, things like that out. So it's good. So far, it's been a success. We're just trying to squeeze it in before the rain. That compaction testing out there. Yeah, so far nothing's happened. That is all I have. Thank you. Anything else? Thank you, Jacob.

Good morning. We did hit the fight there. Okay. All right.

You guys should ask me to come back with some other.

They gave us a clear.

Everything we're going to look at. I got Tristan and Merlin here again. They brought you some water samples that you guys would like to drink this morning. This is kind of what we're dealing with out there. Just kind of give your eyes and help to visualize. what's coming out of their system and why we're doing this project.

This one is the big show, you guys look.

We believe this is mainly due to the existing lines that we do have are corroded so bad that we have about three-quarter inch opening because there's so much corrode inside. So obviously as you flush, you get more of the contaminants. So yeah, based on our discussion last time, the map that I put together kind of shows or helped visualize kind of the part we're dealing with. If you look at the, you get the point of your gauge over there at the left of the page, that's kind of the, layout we're going with to get the whole system back to everybody. The solid line to the north there is the proposed connection to GMU up onto . That would tie in and that would access that high pressure zone that we talked about. We'll actually have to neck the pressure down somewhere along that line. I'm waiting to see if anything happens with this other loop before we decide where that needs to be talking with Dave Malcolm, we could actually feed off of the low pressure zone down here. There's just not enough capacity. So if we have the potential to loop the system, we could feed off the zone we want and select the backup feed that would release water when we need to. But we can't serve just off the south line. It's a long dead end. If you guys recall, Jeff asked before you were on, but we've sent a native sign up to the 23 cabins. Fortunately, it's a niche from there down to connection junction and there's a six inch line that feeds it. So we're now sliding. And the constraint back there is how much oversize to take for the company in hopes of eventually moving it. That will be full flow throughout. So. Yeah, there's kind of the student org pieces. I think we're going to go regardless, which is how do we set up for all connects. I mentioned before the example BG and BWL and BDARP line. Tony Greengate showed it on the dash line. like their VAA, both vault and live thumb. Pony Creek was able to maintain their line, their system, as part of the USDA requirements. That takes a lot of the maintenance, testing, those on GMP, who does it every day, has the capability of doing it, provides them the funds. The last piece there, we kind of discussed last time, would be extending that 8-inch line up on Pony Creek, happens up to this intersection.

The rough number that I could read that, kind of based on the bidding right now is you're about $700,000 to $750,000.

That includes all of the construction and contingency without looking at this in detail. Soft cost permitting, if you're involved, have a number of that as well. So that would be the line heading. So bigger picture, you know, I don't know what all could be served out here. I know there's been some potential, you know, whether there's another point of great issue out there, or if you get that up And now the intent is to get water to these guys. I like it. We talked about the use of some of the LMI funds last time. Researching as you guys. We have done the survey already for the community residents that would like to 41 of the 44. We had to have USDA signed off on that so it was certified it so it would qualify as LMI insurance for this type of system. what that is or how much is going to get to you guys. I just don't think the residents are very willing to do whatever we have to do this project off the ground. So I think you guys should be able to have a split in 1.8 or wherever the number is across 44 users. USDA is on board to fund it. It's just what is, we have to get the full funding package together before we apply for CDHG. Our hopes is we can get up to $500,000 CDHG to help offset costs as well, bring the total number down.

What's your estimated total cost for the whole project?

I believe I was at that 1.5, not 1.8. Some of that is where we haven't finished designing it due to kind of the potential for this other piece to come in. That may be where we want that ball. That may also bring costs down as you add more quantity to the scale of your equipment. Two miles of pipe rather than one, I'm not sure. Really just wanted to get this in front of you guys to balance you side. It is something that you could help them out with. We're here to help on the engineering side regardless, trying to make it all work. So we're just trying to get this cost-effective.

How much are all my funds? We have right around $580,000. I need to do a little bit more looking, but that's what I was able to come up with. But As part of the memo that I sent out yesterday is with the new tax laws, they kind of changed and removed the LMI from TIP developments, TIP development agreements. So that's, we're going to have to look into that and kind of maybe look into our development agreements and then see how that changes it. So there's really not, I mean, we can use the LMI funds for this. I talked to Dorsey and Whitney and they were on the work with, saying that this would be a project that would qualify, especially if we had the LMI numbers to back it up. So it does directly benefit LMI homeowners.

Do you guys still be charging hookup fees for the residents?

So there aren't hookup fees that Jamie would charge. I believe it's a $3,000 hookup. The intent of that, at least what's been discussed, I have it on the agenda for the future model, would be to reinvest those cost back into the first sizing line. USDA will only fund six inch lines in the community. I know this has been used in some of the locations since 10 years ago. I think it's an investment for DMU, as well as not just, you know, popping the money for a facility fee. What that final agreement looks like, it's also behind. happens with the gm with the usda is essentially all of the costs for this line those facilities all of that becomes a connection fee that you go stand with pay as part of the project rather than the gnu paper this gpu paper that it's all under one project instructed at the same time to say it's a connection one time bigger connection thing it's everything and that's how you would say it's a fun construction particular

would the next step in this process be to get a final number for what the overall project's going to cost and then come back to the county and see how much- The hard part with that is the only way you're going to get the final cost is by paying it.

Yeah.

Part of that is, I mean, if we are going to do a bigger project, I would like to bid all of it in part A and part B, even in part C. But without, you can't do that until you have, say, you have to, unfortunately, spend some money up front for the engineering side to get everything approved to be able to go off of this. The project design has to be published regardless. It's just how does it? How do you package it? You know, we've already been a year, year and a half into this. We know it's probably nothing's going to be online until end of 2017. So it's not like we have to go outdoor now, but I've had to do this over this fall, spring construction. And there's still the issue of being independent. DNR is way behind that. I mean, it's even getting a report conceptual number. We can say, you know, it comes in under this, here's how much we can provide, or here's the numbers. But no, we can't really get a hard number. Everything is based on our estimates that we put together as best we can based on fair fitting, talking with contractors. You know, a project like this where you have 10,000 foot, I'll call one of my contractors and say, hey, what do you see in these days for six inch water main, roughly this number, and they'll give me kind of a range. And then talking with the contractors who work with part of it, you can get At least narrow enough height. Now the oddball items, they're in bigger valve vaults. Well, you're not going to supplier to try to guess. Any project we do grow at the very initial concept stage, a 20% contingency, as we get more of a design done, we go to the next procedure ops. So the goal would be that initial contingency eats up anything that is unknown. We don't know about a design change. We had to go 100 foot out of the way. Extra boring that we didn't build that procedure use out.

All of those pieces and we still have another potential. These properties are not linked up to the water system. No, right now they're on their own. Yeah, they have their own small well system. They do. They are interested for. They just want you to get it there first. So yeah, hoping to let you guys digest that.

We don't really have to make a decision now. I think the thing would be, if this is something that has a higher percentage or higher chance, we will go into the design of how this intersection looks with the option to add that right now rather than later on. That may be the bulk meter left or right at the corner of the feed to try to figure out how that looks. I don't think that's going to cause change by any means, such as how do we prepare our plants and specs So I'd like to permit it all at once, but is it a real possibility? If not, we'll move forward with part A and part B. A year from now, if we want to extend it, it would just be a separate project, separate bid, separate all that stuff. So we're kind of at that point where we're trying to hone in on that final cost for USDA to send it to CBG.

So if we know we have

It's a total of 1.8 for round numbers. If we have to take out a full loan, that's how U of C will run it. That's how we'll submit things to CDBG. CDBG will just keep up that total loan amount. They just adjust it based on actual bids.

How many houses would approximately, when we can go to the place there is?

That's a tough one. I mean, I believe every house along that road has a loan. It's just a matter of facts. matter of when are their wells getting done, what kind of water they're getting. You know, we're having kind of the same issue down on our 95th year. We've had to buy the interest of our wells from just disappearing. You know, water we can't get in. The problem is there's not a really big user down there to extend a long line for two or three years. So if you're looking at one, two, three, four, five, six, you may have six or seven along there. YOU MAY ALSO GET MORE DOWN THE LINE WHEN THEY SEE CONSTRUCTION GOING IN FOR THE SOUTH END. WHEN WE PUT THAT LINE IN, THERE WAS LOTS OF QUESTIONS ABOUT IT, BUT NO ONE'S REALLY COME AND SAID, HEY, I'M GETTING DOWN. SO I DON'T KNOW HOW THAT LOOKS. THERE MAY BE SOME ALONG ELLINGTON AS WELL. I THINK THE BIGGER PICTURE WOULD BE THESE OTHER SMALL HOAs, THEY HAVE TO BE IN THE SAME SITUATION. THEY JUST MIGHT BE SMALL ENOUGH THAT THEY'RE NOT REGULATED BY THE SAME REGULATION OF ALL

at some point everybody loves this area that's just unfortunately the reality of physiology and how things are laid out there it's not ideal for anybody but we're kind of ahead of these guys i can't say i'd want to fight a fire for that

The other one we kind of talked about last time and I just for the discussion was we talked about the Silver City connection. This is one of the figures I threw together for the preliminary work that we had to submit to the state to start their whole process. So kind of rotated north there. You kind of see the rough route we took for our numbers. Yeah, this one's still much, much bigger than you're sure, but I did look at numbers I was seeing it kind of missing out. So just more than FYI. We're going over to Silver City. Would we not try that? I think we definitely would. Right now, this is just for Silver City's connection. Now, if we get everybody to come to the table and want to do this, we reroute it. We run a spurt off of it. This is just the shortest route we took to Silver City. Obviously, we drove a 20% industry in there. And so you got to find one to sign that.

Sorry, 4.5.

That's within 25%, which is obviously very large for that. About 36,000. It's not a short way.

Perfect with that one.

I think right now we ran an inch. I think we would ever want to obsess.

That's an inch. I think we have enough money in there. The work does change. Thank you.

So yeah, lots of moving pieces. At any time, if you guys have questions, please let me know. We're going to kind of continue on the proposed free side. I think it's something that you guys can participate in. I think it would be a huge benefit to everybody.

Absolutely. I'd be willing to look into LMI funds from my personal standpoint. I'd be interested in maybe 10 or 20% of the overall project using the LMI funds. Anything over that, we can make some sort of agreement that how it gets reimbursed in some way or future, you know, whether we can 20 years down the line, cast that 20%. I think that's something that I'd be interested in.

Yeah, I think I won't speak for these guys, but I think they'd be open to whatever help we can get. Obviously, everybody knows the sewer rates down there, the water rates down there. It's all money out of everybody's pockets. Whatever we can do to help or to limit it, it's kind of our job. Appreciate the time and any questions, like I said before,

Amber's got my email or you can call him to be back to answer it. Thank you. Gentlemen, did you have anything to add?

No, it's right there on the table.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. County Chamber. How are you? Hello, how are you?

I'm well. Okay. Let me get my paperwork all out for you. This is just kind of what I'm going to talk about. And then I have your initial packet. I don't know if you want it. It's what Amber had sent over probably before just today. If I did, it's been a while ago. Okay, so the first is my request to be on the board. Then I have the quote, what I'm asking for today, and then some examples of what we've What we would be doing. All the points. Okay, so I'm here today on behalf of the chamber. So I've been in this position about a year and a half, and the realization is, you know, with a lot of the empty businesses from Pacific Junction to Emerson, how do we fill these spaces, right? So you come around any main street and kind of get a feeling for that. So in that realization, I can go to anybody and be like, hey, put your business here. And it can be fluff. Like, it can feel good, right? Because we have very cute Walmart towns. But there's nothing to back it up. There's no stats as to why somebody should move their business here. So why would they invest in a storefront? Why would anybody have a satellite office here? Why would somebody relocate their family here? Why would anybody recruit employees here? We don't have that professional resource. So in January, we had the banquet and Dr. Vogel from UNO, she's at the Public Affairs Research Center. They've already compiled the data from the census from 2024 as to why Mills County is a great place to live or to be. So she kind of went over all those things. I've been sending those slides to people as they request them, so I can definitely get those to you. It has a lot of those statistics. Now it's just putting that on one of these data sheets so that I can start prospecting. I reached out to all of these to try to see if we could build this grocery store, and they weren't in a place to do that, but it was a request with no data. And I know others in the city have, cities have been trying to fill their spaces, but this is just another piece. So what you have in front of you is, Some examples that she had given me, Dr. Goble from UNO had given me that they've already done these things for other organizations. One for Avenue Scholars, and then the other one that you'll see is for Nebraska's workforce, which has a whole bunch of statistics. So what she would do is basically compile the information that she gave us on Mills County and how we're doing better than some of the other counties in Southwest Iowa. So that when you go to prospect people, We have some data to back it up. My sales background, I know people buy from Emotion and they back it up with Logic. So great looking towns. Now why? You know, we'll get excited about it, but why are they moving here? So we need to have those stats in one place. My goal is not that this is the chambers. This is not about the chamber. It's just to make it easier so that when we are talking to people across the board, it's clean and put together so that anybody can use this. County can use this. The city can use this. Any of the cities can use this. So you have that in front of you as far as realtors, employers recruiting talent, community organizations, entrepreneurs, investors. So there's a lot of backing as to why this would benefit the region. So what I'm asking for is $600. That's the exact quote from the UNO Office for Public Affairs Research so that they can put this data all together and make a little marketing piece so that we can

in our, you know, for everybody. So, that's an asset.

What box of sales tax do we have in the area? For this year or next year? This year.

When you need this?

It's, I've been sitting on it for a while. So, really, whenever you guys say.

It could be now, it could be up here until I want it. Correct. Okay.

No urgency.

It's just a tool that we can have pointed over. So really at any point.

You have 4600 remaining for this year in betterment funds. But I'm also curious that this would. Possibly you could use lodging.

Service. Maybe.

or I don't know, on that. But you do have 46 hours this year.

I'd like to, if you guys are okay with it. Thank you.

And talk it out, see if we want to provide funds.

I brought these. Also, it's the Emily McLean Community Artwork. Just so you guys have it. So she made artwork for every town, and so you can go on. Yeah. And if you're going to check them all out. Created one for Tabor now too, so they have. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want me to bring anything else? Any other information or data?

Just a couple of questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

of increasing board membership from three to five.

I'm here on behalf of the Mills County Madness Working Group, and we have a request to ask you guys to consider drafting a resolution

for allowing us to put forth the resolution for the November primary general election ballot to increase our board membership from three to five. We recognize that this is a very difficult and sensitive issue. In fact, not everybody on our own working group feels it will actually solve the problems. But the majority of our members would like this to be on the ballot. There's two ways to get there, and one is a rather onerous process which requires the citizens to collect, in this case, about 850 signatures, which I think we're prepared to do. And then I've asked Katie to Determine what she thought the cost of the county to process those. I mean, obviously there's a validation piece. You have to determine that all the signatures are valid, that there are no standing residents, that there's no duplication, etc.

So I haven't seen your number. Yeah, so the. We only take signatures on their face, so we're only going to be looking for whether they meet the requirements on the petition. We're not going to be going through and looking for eligibility residents. That's not our role. that would be anybody who would lend to come and put an objection to any signatures. So we're just looking that you have the correct number and that they need all the required elements on the sheet to be an eligible signature. The actual cost for the election wouldn't be anything more than what we would already be paying for the election. The only actual difference would probably be depending on what else is on the ballot, what size of ballot we're going to be needing to get, but that is minuscule. Minuscule, okay.

In any case, there's an onerous process for us to collect the signatures. And you guys can, under Home Rule 331.203, actually put the vote of two out of three and put the resolution on the ballot without going through any of this process. So what I'd like to do is just have a brief discussion about why we think it's important. Right now, this seems to mimic the public sentiment majority of our citizens want five. I'm not sure they fully understand what that means, and some of the pros and cons go with that, but we would like to make that clear. We are going to draft a list of pros and cons, which I have a very rough bullet point outline pros and cons. We are not going to candy coat this with just the pros. And in fact, I intend to meet with each of you individually and ask you your personal feelings, both pro and con. And then we will be drafting up on Melody Ragland here is running a Facebook page called Spilts County Matters. And there's going to be a new column in the OT starting next month called Spilts County Matters. we will present in a detailed and fact-based way the pros and cons of a lot of different issues. This being one of the first ones that we attempt to tackle. So some of the things on the list, we think this allows more voices. Obviously, if there's five people, we will generate more ideas, more alternatives, more discussion, and hopefully a higher quality outcome and decision-making. five people. We think it also decreases the chances of a bias in any of the decisions. It also creates a minimum of three required votes to pass anything, as opposed to two, which is current right now. And depending on the plan that we choose, and we haven't polled the county people for this part yet, whether we're recommending districts to not have separate question. There's been a lot of sentiment in the past that the people on certain parts of the county, mostly the eastern side, don't feel that they're equally represented. So plans two and three allow for districts to be created. You know, that's another somewhat onerous process to do. And we're not Our Mills County Matters group is not prepared to say which plan is better at this time. We just need to know whether you'll even support the increase to five. Moving to five would spread the workload that you guys have on all these committees, and potentially we would get more supervisors that have additional skills and talents in the assignment to the various committees to better match the skills and talents of each of the five members of the board. Now, we know that this is going to add cost, and that's almost slicing the face of the objective of the Vales County Matters Group, which is to monitor spending and control property taxes. So this is a really tough one. And there's pro and con of this, increasing the cost for salaries and benefits, which Lucy provided this morning with the information that Amber gave. it looks like your fully allocated costs is about $80,000 per supervisor. I know a little bit of that is not linear because some of the things that are office supplies and things, but on the average, I think that's a good rough number, $75,000 to $80,000 per person. We think that the benefit that $75,000 per person is outweighed with the Benefits we'll see. But again, we need to write these things up in a detailed way and hopefully let the people make the choice at the ballot box. Another potential negative is the more people you have on any organization, whether it's a governing body or a committee, it tends to slow down the decision-making process. It can increase friction and all that sort of thing. So we know that's another negative. We do not know at this time which plan we would go with, but we know plans two and three would require districting, and that is yet another challenge that we're going to have to face. How to do that. Another con that I thought of here on the way down, and it's not even on the sheet, is will we even have any qualified candidates that desire to run?

Can I break that in? When this first came about, there was a lot of counties around here that went from three to five. And the biggest problem was just what you said, was qualified people. They went to districts. A lot of them went to districts because they thought that was a fair way of doing it. But generally, three out of the five districts you will pick up your major cities and stuff, and people educated things, they're here. You get out into the rural area and stuff. This happened in Montgomery County, for instance. They had two people get on the first time and they knew nothing, absolutely nothing about government. And it was a total mess. I mean, they have changed some things, but Still trying to find five people. The extra two people you would think, you know, you have this time around, you had three candidates, very good candidates. But when you get started into working with the five, you run into the problem of getting qualifications.

And we recognize that that could be a real challenge, especially with the district concept where the person has to be residing in that district. You might not even get anybody wants to run, a person that wants to run may not.

You can go right across the border to Montgomery County. They have a five-person bullet. They have one gentleman that meets with them twice a year. He meets none of the other times. Comes to none of the meetings and stuff. Can't force him. You can't do anything to him. Here you are. You've had this person got elected. Yeah, I want to be a supervisor. Okay, he got elected, but he does nothing for that district. So is that district just blackened out? I mean, he has, hopefully the other people step in and take over, but that's one of the things, like you say, I've talked to many people about this, pay, you know, what we draw on pay, that some people said, well, maybe they should take a reduction. Well, there's another point that gets you down, lowers your people more yet.

Well, that's on item number eight. One of the things that we've discussed is with the reduced duties, it's going to cost more people. Would it be appropriate to reduce the salaries commensurate with the reduced duties? On the flip side of that, people in our own group say that's going to really lower the chances of getting qualified people that desire to run. So we know that there's a pro and con of that. I tend to try to address each of these in a factual way and just put it before the public. I don't know the answer, but I would like all of these challenges to be laid out to people in a thoughtful, detailed way, and then let the people make the decision, because right now the perception of the county population is the majority want to do it. written this up and potentially people reading it, they may change their minds and point out pitfalls. But at this point, we would like the people to be able to make that choice. The Mills County Matters Working Group really has multiple charters, but the two biggest issues that are in our mission are to educate people in detail on these issues. Because right now, all kinds of stuff on Woodward Buzz and Andy Buzz and floating around. People think they understand things. They don't. And they don't. The second challenge is to motivate people to be engaged. Instead of just one or two of us showing up to ask questions, we would like more intelligent people to come in here and challenge you guys to make the best decisions that represent what the people of interest in it. So, Education and motivation is what we're going to try to do. And I'm going to try to do that in a very detailed way, working with you guys as a partnership. If Lonnie and I meet with you and you give me six more negative reasons, we're going to write that up. These are considerations that have to be made. So having said all of that, we still would like this to be the choice of the people. worst case scenario and a county here not too long ago went to five and now i think they're requesting to go back to three if this turned out to be a dismal failure it's not something we're stuck with forever and i looked at the stats of the 19 counties in southwest iowa basically from whole county west south we had 19 counties We have 13 counties that have three supervisors out of 19. So that is the majority. We have one that shows four. And that's Montgomery. They must not be counting their fifth guy. Because on their website, they declare four. And he still draws us out. That's what irritates me. I mean, that's a county issue. They should cut that off. But they're showing four county supervisors. There's five. Five counties that have four, and there's one that has six. That's eight in our county. I don't know how that works with an even number and why they think they need six, because that county's not extraordinarily large, both in population or area.

I mean, there isn't, what, 3,500, 3,800 people in that county, something like that.

You know, very sparse. Right, so why they have six, I do not know. We're going to go, myself and Lucy here have signed up to go to that Concerned Taxpayers Forum in July. And one of the things we're going to be trying to network with people from other counties and find out how three versus five is working for them. Come back with facts, how things are working other places. Having said all that, though, we still request that you consider drafting the resolution so that we don't have to do signatures because we're prepared to go forth with the signatures anyway and we'll probably i don't have any doubt we will get it on the ballot you can save us the effort of doing that and just let the people make this decision after we educate them taking out a lot of my views when it comes to three versus five i'm not dwelling too much on that but i've when i've always been in support of five

Not only because last time I checked, there are 39 committees that we sit on individually. 39, like I said, that's a lot of committees. In addition to that, just with how quorum requirements are, two of us equal a quorum. And so we get an agenda on Friday afternoon at 4 o'clock. And then the weekend comes, I can't talk to Richard or Lonnie and say, what questions do you have for this proposal on Tuesday? What do you know that I may not know? Monday comes around and still can't talk to them. And then Tuesday, we're supposed to come in and make an informed choice without being able to talk to each other. I think that's impossible in a lot of ways. I had one person reach out to me yesterday that said, why would we support five supervisors? I understand why Pottawatomie has it. They're a population of 93,000. I said, That's true. They're one of the largest counties in the state of Iowa. But Adams County is the smallest. They have a population of 3,700, and they have five supervisors. One thing that's always stuck with me is the first time that I went to an ISAC conference, I had lunch with a group of Montgomery County supervisors and talking to them. to them about three supervisors versus five supervisors. They were just astonished that we didn't have five supervisors. Their population, almost 5,000 people less, right? Almost a third less than Mills County. And they were just astonished that we only had three supervisors versus five. Because how are we able to spend that much time actually doing the work of the people? Regardless of all that, Sandy Witten, when she was running for supervisor, did a poll of several hundred people And the poll showed that she did, and that's the best way that we can base off our opinions. Poll showed that 77% of people supported moving from three supervisors to five supervisors, 77%. It's an overwhelming majority. We only need 60% to get it done. Now, I think it's important that we separate the two ideas of districts and five supervisors because five supervisors doesn't equate districts and districts don't equate five supervisors.

That's why we're only here to ask about the three versus five.

They're two separate votes, right? So I think it's important to just talk about the pros and cons of the five and kind of leave out the districts for another day. But regardless of that, if we were to draft a resolution and put it on the ballot, that's not saying that we, the three of us, support five supervisors. That's saying that we, the three of us, believe that the people should have a voice and they should be able to decide it. We should put it to bed once and for all. We should be able to vote, decide it, put it to bed, and give the people a choice whether they want three or five. And since we're already having the election, it's coming at very minimal cost to the county, if anything, unless we have to increase the ballot size.

Well, one thing our committee working group is committed to is we will not ask for anything on a special election ever. We can't get it done in the normal primary or general election process. The districts would have to be a special election. They would be. Okay. Well, that's good to know, but right now we're only addressing the three versus five question. Well, that's good. I'm pointing that out. Even if we wanted to wait two more years to address it, it has to be

special because of the potentiality of having to re-elect people, depending on what plans.

Okay.

Well, at this point, I still ask you to consider the resolution. That consideration has to be done fairly rapidly because if you say, well, we're not going to do it, then we need to get busy and get signatures. So don't come back in August 1st. They know we're not going to do it. We would like to know something in the next couple of weeks. So we know what we have to do to rally the forces to start to collect signatures. In any case, our real objective is to let the people choose. And again, I think if we do some detailed education, some people that think they're for it now, when we start talking about over that $160,000 cost, more supervisors or thinking about the question that Richard brings up, which is, are we even going to get somebody from the Eastern District, if we did district, if we did district, to even run? Or will we even get five at large here in the county that want to run or qualify to go? That's the question. Again, though, we feel that the people should make this choice. I had a long talk with Pete Finker last night. He probably told me it was closer to 80% of the doors he knocked on. This is one of the people's biggest grievances is they want to move to five. I'm sure they understand why they think that. That supports Sandy Winton's survey. I'm sure the people want it. I say let the people make the decision. We're here to ask you to that consideration. Thank you.

The other thing I would like to add is just the technicality on it. So if it were to go on the ballot, this isn't going to be something that is going to take place January 1, because you would have to elect new members. So it wouldn't be until after the November election in 2028 that the new people would be taking office.

My understanding is in 2028, then Five seats would be up for election to the board. So three of them would be two-year terms, two of them would be four-year terms for flip-flops.

Correct. So if you were to get on the ballot in November, and let's say it passes in November, you would have to go through a primary and a general election process, which would be in 2028. And that's when your new people would be elected, and they would take office in January of 29. Yeah.

That makes sense to me. You explained that to me the other day. Yeah, I just understand that, but we have to get started somewhere sometime.

I just wanted that to be clear to everybody what that process would look like.

And again, that would all have to be articulated in any of this education that we're doing with people. The last thing we want people to do is say, oh, I voted for this. Come January, we have five.

And that's why I wanted to make it clear, because it kind of is a little confusing.

We will make sure that the people understand the details of this. and they can make their own informed decisions if you allow it to go to the ballot box.

I'm trying to understand. I talked to Page County yesterday. They have districts, but they're voted on at large. That's plan number two. The problem with that is, the lady I talked to, she says we had two people by the name Mike Anderson. when you're voting at large, a lot of people voted for one Mike Anderson. And like somebody said, you know, he was running by a district, and the people in that district didn't realize, you know, they had to still vote for the right person, and he got beat out. I mean, he was, it's,

There's crazy things that that's a unique situation and I certainly wouldn't let that hopefully interfere with what we decide having two people with the same name or the confusing thing.

But we have visuals of what, you know, obviously this is only for five, but we have visuals of how districts work because Mills County is all that large. Montgomery County is plan three. So we're in plan one. Montgomery County is plan three. You live within the district. You can only vote for the supervisor in that district. and Page County has moved in the last election, they voted to go to districts for Plan 2, which means there's residence requirements, there's districts for the basis of residence requirements, but the whole county still gets to vote for all their supervisors. So all it's saying in Page County is we want to make sure that all the supervisors don't live in the same road and the same subdivision, but we want to be able to vote for everybody. So those are the district plans. Obviously, that's, once again, separate from the five supervisors, but I make a request, Amber, if we can put this on the agenda for next week as a discussion or decision. I will work to do a resolution with Katie, and that way we can figure out if this is something that the Board of Supervisors will support, having the people have a voice come November. And if it's not, then those in the community who would like to see this move forward, then we can work on petition process. But it's important to remember that us voting yes isn't saying that we're in support of it. And it's not saying that it's done. It's us saying we want people to have a voice. So I think we need to figure it out. We're going to support this sooner rather than later.

Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. You're up there. I'm sorry. I didn't have the...

How's everybody doing? Good. How are you doing?

Good. Well, we actually have our invoice and everything in early this year, so. That's good. And so we're at $363,956, and I wish I could tell you what it was last year, but that's on my desk. So any questions you have on that, I can send it to Amber. You can see We have $46,797,000 in property insured and $4,680,938 in total BLC. So I was at a meeting for the school districts earlier this year, and they got to talk to me about liability limits. and claims that have happened to school districts and it made me start thinking about the county. We haven't, we've been seven million for years. We got two million GL with five million excess liability on that. So that gives you seven total. I, it's a way, Everything is now, everybody's soon happy. One major claim could eat up, one major claim with fatalities could eat up that $7 million pretty fast. So right now, with your $5 million, excess liability is costing you at $26,000.16 a year. If we were to bump that to where you had a total of $10 million, that excess would be $29,878. So you'd be looking at about $3,800 more a year to increase your viability by $3 million and get it up to $10.

$38,000 just a year?

Yeah.

And if you want to do this, maybe you got keys into it, and maybe over the next three years, just go seven to eight, nine to 10. You know, we're looking at just over $1,000 per million is what we're looking at.

Annually? Annually.

Good.

Yeah, it's about $1,300 per million dollars if you wanted to go from the 7 million.

But other than that, I will picture and send over what the premium was last year to Amber, as you guys know. They didn't take a big rate increase. I think we might be past that for a little while. Yeah. And they didn't have a 2% increase of liability and then any other increase is just where we have inflation guard. We have anywhere from 4% to 5%, depending on the year, where they automatically increase the values of the adult, because it's the universal property, just for inflation. And so that is one thing to see that causes the premium to go a little bit higher each year, is that you do have that at 4% inflation guard in there.

So I will leave this here, if you guys look over.

And if you have any questions, let me know. And then, you know, you guys decide to go with it. I mean, when he changes, let me know, or, you know, I can get with Amber and get it, get it rolling.

So we're ready to go July 1st. This is a formal action item. What do we need to do, Amber? Do we need to approve it?

You can approve it as is, or you can approve it with the increase, or you guys can table it for next week.

been the increase in costs for i guess the our seven million dollar liability part like versus if we went up to a 10 million dollar liability year after year because obviously it's only 3 800 for us to increase from seven to ten yeah but would it get as hard in the future would it the rate increase overall it is hard more than just 3800 no it would just be the 3800 result you'd have if you decided to go for the 10

But if you wanted to go just, you know, maybe just bump it up a million, instead of being a $5 million excess you have right now and just go to six, you're looking at about $1,300 a year.

And it'd just be the $3,800 per year increase from seven to ten.

Yeah, you're right.

I'd say you can leave that stuff with us and come back.

Yep, I actually should do it. It's OK. If it ever works for you, I can be here next week or whatever works for you guys. So I will leave this here and just put it on the agenda next week and I'll get all those other figures over and we'll be together next week. Thank you. Yep.

All right. Appreciate it. Those are shelters. I had another exciting for you today.

I'll give something. We lost his chair. That's the main thing. We're out of the corner now.

We don't want to talk about that. No, I don't have any cases. We're still in the process of trying to tie the two female jailers. For clearance on the medical. Good advice. We're just following along.

Facility and stuff as far as getting our resolutions. We don't know what we have. In a state trouble with it.

Don't have them work. The. Jester is in. Tomorrow I believe there tomorrow I'd be right now.

along with somebody, a contractor, help us through the process, figure out what might be needed, necessary for the repairs of the building, the water. We really don't know where it came from. It was when that wind was out of the southwest, that's when we get the water. But we had it two times over the last week during storms. As far as the building itself, it doesn't appear to be anything. Above us, the city right-of-way and the railroad right-of-way a few months ahead, I blow out. And now they're in the city and saw the mud that has settled in both of our driveways that came back behind us.

A railroad property sits on a railroad track. What was that?

That could have been maybe a little. You want to or you could drive up the road into the rebuilding. We had a big washout come across yet. into the railroad right away, which could have come through to you. Very well.

Yeah, very well. Take a look at that. It didn't. Well, it blew up.

There's a big change this year.

Yep. Yep. And that's where, you know, like you said, you drive through there. There's on the first Friday night storm Saturday morning.

The city came through with a front loader, put it all up.

We got the rain again on Thursday morning and go right back. We had medium to GRC and that was one of the things that was discussed. They were trying to get road up to where the water would stay on the east side of it and come down to the 34.

Whatever they got it done. Otherwise, I have nothing else to report. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I didn't hear from Rachel and she, I mean, it's next week. I forgot she called me after the week. That's on me. Can you tell Melissa we're ready for her? What's up?

Escort in here, please. Bring your cups.

I can go ahead and go. I really don't have anything to report on this week. We should still clean up the pre-damage.

Do you want to set a date?

Oh, no. Let's jump over to that. All right.

Well, let's...

There you go.

Today I have a list of wage increasements and treatments that fit for my office. The first one is for Kate McNutt. She has a six-year probationary period. She has been a great expectation for her office, a lot of vehicle departments so far. Her willingness to learn. Attitude with our customers. So with that, I request effective as of June 15th, a wage increase of $52,554. She currently at that.

UM, SHE IS AT. 49. SOMEWHERE AROUND THERE.

AND THIS IS JUST A NORMAL PROVISIONARY. I THINK MOST OF THE RELATIONS INCREASE AFTER COMPLETION OF RELATIONARY PERIODS.

A MOTION MADE AND SECONDED TO APPROVE.

IF NOT, OUR SIX-MONTH PROBATIONARY PERIOD HAS COME TO AN END. TO WITHDRAWN A SALARY OF $52,554.

ANY OTHER DISCUSSIONS? NOT ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? AYE. OPPOSED?

OKAY.

NEXT WE HAVE CONSIDERATION FORMAL ACTION POINT OF DEPUTY.

YES. THIS IS FOR MICHELLE POWELL. REQUEST TO APPOINT HER TO OUR MOVER VEHICLE DEPUTY. With Diane leaving at the end of December, Michelle has stepped into that role. She has been doing . Since then, she was a motor vehicle, was not universal. When we actually hired her first, she's been strictly motor vehicle with property taxes. But she has, she said this, that role has to be on a daily basis. So that would be effective as of June 29th. For a period of one year ending June 30th, 2007. Make a motion to appoint Michelle Powell.

as the Motor Vehicles Deputy in the Treasurer's Office from June 29th, 2026 to June 30th, 2027, and tie her salary to 80% of the Treasurer's salary.

Second.

The motion made and seconded. To advance the question.

Yes, sir. Michelle Howell to the Motor Vehicle Deputy for a one-year period as stated at 80% salary.

Any further discussion? Questions? All those in favor? Aye.

Opposed? Carry. Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you.

June 30th, I think, would be the date that would allow us to get the public hearing it. I noticed in the paper that I would get it submitted this week to next week. So it would be in the paper. On the 24th for the OT and the 25th, the leader.

And do you want 815?

Hold on just a second. I might have to move back to July 7th. I don't think the leader gives me enough time. I need between 4 and 20, and that cuts it real close. So let's do July 7th. Sorry.

Is that okay with you, John?

Yeah, I think that would work better.

I will make a motion to set the date for public hearing on proposed ordinance 26-06, providing for the creation of Chapter 20 of the House Paying Ordinance titled Residential Care Facilities for July 7th, 2026 at 8.15 a.m.

A MOTION MADE SECONDED TO APPROVE JULY 7TH FOR A PUBLIC HEARING CONSIDERING PROPOSED ORDINANCE 2606 PROVIDING FOR THE CREATION OF CHAPTER 20 OF THE MILLS COUNTY ORDINANCE ENTITLED RESIDENTIAL CARE FACILITY.

ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? AYE.

I was able to reach out to, I believe his name is Brian A, who runs the program for the state, his Iowa community program.

He said that any signs that are on state right-of-way, we cannot put them up ourselves. We have to use the state fork.

I would assume where we would put our signs would probably be on state right-of-way, probably on highway 34 out of 59. I think there's only two on 34.

One over at east of Emerson on the county line coming into and the other one is down here somewhere on 34 where you come across the river or where you make the loop going into coming towards Glenville. And then If there's any to be put on county right-of-way, we should talk to the engineer. They will have to send them off.

Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't been able to get a dollar figure.

They're about $85 a sauce.

Yeah. I'm wondering what the cost to install them is, the state sauce.

I don't think it costs that. I wouldn't say they should do that for nothing, but that's just my opinion. State doesn't do anything for nothing.

It would be very necessary. What we want to.

We're saying that there. I stayed last week, 8387 somewhere around there.

We say if up to 500. Local option sales tax. bridges and other signs on the east entrance to the county on 34 as well as the west entrance south entrance if you're coming out either 59 positive exceptions we're on 34 on the west end wherever else county is signed with the treaty is that right after the bridge right there stick it out there same way

I think we discussed this at the VA meeting the other day. I'm trying to think where they thought they should put it on 34 coming in from the west. I thought they said somewhere around Love down there, you know, where it's pretty old. They didn't say anything about 59 south. There are They said three county roads. They want to post.

Yeah, but I don't get a list of them before we move forward. You could talk to the end.

Yeah, and maybe maybe VA could pay part of them because they have that excess money. They don't are not using. Building and stuff down. And I have guy asked me that they were going to do with it. Make us a bid.

to get a list for us i think everybody's sports is where we're going to put them so yeah yeah get a list together all of us whether you get somebody get together next weekend i thought i'll see a problem with my recommendations well see anything we should vote on yeah we'll just We can see what we can come up with.

Committee meeting updates.

Solar.

Sorry.

And a battery, electric battery, electric car mainly. It was kind of a safety meeting that was approximately 65 to 80 fire departments, rescue units, medical people and stuff there that police departments, sheriff's departments, very well covered. But they have come to find out with the battery cars and things. It's a recommendation of this company to put a barrier around it for anywhere from four to eight hours. They generally burn out and you can move them and stuff. Otherwise, you can't touch them. There were some people there that. Or on rescue. They also are on. They have their own records and stuff. You know that can move things and they says we won't even back up to it. We won't get close to him until they burn out. They had some. Some pretty graphic pictures of people that had touched the cards. What had happened to him? One guy's hand. These two fingers were fried together and these two fingers were fried and the thumb was gone down to here and it burned up to here. And the only reason he could let go of it was it burned so bad that it just fell off. How's that? I mean, no. And, you know, the next topic is you take an ax and you cut your friend's hand off because you can't touch him. And, you know, somebody brought up in the audience This ought to go back to the manufacturer. These people should be held responsible for what they have done. And another one was they showed us they have these big containers in California where they have all these, I call them vaults of electronics inside these metal containers. They're made of 3H steel, folks. That's pretty thick. That's pretty heavy. Reinforced. When it blows up, It can go up to a quarter of a mile. And they've come to the conclusion you can spray all the water you want on it. Foam does nothing but put a cage around it. Actually, foam will just form around it like this, and it still burns. So foam is out. These containers, they just let them burn. You don't want to be walking up to them because if there's a second explosion, it's probably worse than the first. It was showing vehicles that had hit. California is great. You can imagine California, they have all types of problems, but they're building right next to the interstate. Walking distance of the interstate, they're building all these storage plants and stuff. And it was showing trucks and cars being hit by shrapnel, you know, going through the fence. And It was very interesting meeting solar. They said the same thing. The best thing is to try to contain the fire. No sense of trying to put it out. You're spraying water on a hot skillet, what it amounts to. Hopefully it doesn't happen. But they are making a lot of these solar farms and stuff so that they can actually drive between the panels and things. I found out that that's probably one of the best safety issues they put up. And the best thing that happened last week, we planted a tree out here in the yard of the courthouse. So, gave it a little shade. You dug that hole? That's all I have. You didn't call me.

Last week, well, excuse me, last night, I was asked to join the Emerson volunteer fire department to a pipeline training in Shenandoah put on by the local utilities.

Emerson had the largest showing of any group in Southwest Iowa.

There's one gentleman from Farragut, one from Randolph, a few from Page County, but Emerson had a really good showing. So that was a really good training. And like I said, spoke to Ryan Mitchell at the landfill this morning. Sharp blades don't gather and also reached out to me. I'll let you guys know that gentlemen will be putting up the lights Thursday and Friday. That's all I have.

I should come up with Mark Norman and a couple other economic development members to discuss some ongoing projects. Any new business? Anyone? I will make the motion to adjourn at 9.44. Second.

We have a motion made and seconded to adjourn at 9.44. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Very interesting. Thank you.