Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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

Tyson, you have a few words.

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

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

Heather, are you there?

I am. Can you hear me?

Sure can.

I have a few more things, but I'm just going to mention two things today. They're both pretty big things, but might sound short in time. The first is I've been working with the Department of Commerce Office of Rural Prosperity on an emergency HEAL grant for the renovations of the old Woodies building. They're now at a place where they can have a contractor identified and enough progress to be able to qualify for the emergency HEAL grant. They typically open in September, though in my conversations with the state, it sounds like the Emergency HEAL is essentially a way to get administrative approval. And as soon as that is open, I will assist that business in applying for the HEAL grant, which will help sort of an infusion of capital to get that project moving. It is a matching grant. It's a dollar-for-dollar match up to $150,000. The second thing is I also talked to the Workforce Division of Department of Commerce. Commissioner Schreiber can tell you all more about that later. But suffice it to say, we are doing what we need to do to make sure we're ready for whatever eventuality might happen related to workforce and making sure that we're taking advantage of any workforce placement services that might be available. With that, I'm happy to stand for questions.

i don't have any heather i don't have any thank you thank you thank you heather nikki's not here yet so we'll make a motion we approve the minutes from july 20th 2026 i'll second they've moved in second we approve the minutes from july 20th 2026 all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carried Something real quick. Sounds good.

I heard from Isaac from... INA? Kirkham and Michael. Oh, okay. On the lagoon pond out there. I just told him in time. I don't know the correct time.

Who knows?

I haven't heard anything back yet, so

Oh, sounds good. You got anything short or when the LC team comes anyhow?

We have that, the INA, the new quote for that. And then that draft budget approval for that will be either one of those things.

You got some questions on that?

I haven't had a chance to dig into it because I think we got it.

uh late friday and i could be wrong where's my brain working today you know that to use the appropriations page there's no page numbers audible 50?

60?

Oh, yeah. There is. 60. How much do we give the historical society? The 45's one. Is that what we give them? For some reason, I had 12 in my mind. Maybe that's because that's what we give quarterly or something.

We can go back and look real quick.

The prior year actual is accurate, so when you see the 25, whatever it is in 25 is what we give.

Well, sometimes they're accurate, sometimes they're not. I just, that's the only thing.

Let me go look real quick.

I'm sure that's because the firefighting has this. Other than that, do you see him?

11 to 15 quarterly. So last year was here today was 45. Okay.

Yeah. Well, that's where I get my foil from. Yep.

Yep.

Anybody else have any problems with the budget?

I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it.

Just so the public's clear, this isn't approving the budget. It's approving the draft that Scott has sent and telling him that we don't need any more consultation until the budget hearing.

Well, I make a motion we approve the budget approval.

I'll second it. I move and second we approve the budget approval. From the Lloyd group, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. I'll just mark that. Will you approve and then sign it?

Yep.

This is the clean INA one, right?

Yep.

And these are both the same. I had two.

Oh, I was wondering where that other one went. Oh, there you go. I had another one and I knew I had it right. No, they're the same. Okay. Yeah, it's probably, yeah, with the missing file folder, isn't it?

I'm glad I'm not the only one that eats a cookie.

So, no, I even went back through and couldn't find it.

Okay.

That's a long-sleeved shirt.

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's heat exhaustion. I probably ought to go home.

In today's world, I do think we're going to need this. I do, too. I'm not going to get into the details of everything, but for the safety of our employees and the public, the way this crazy world's acting, I'm OK with it.

I'm OK with it. I am, too.

right here yeah I'll make a motion to spend eight thousand seven hundred and thirty dollars and eleven cents to they gave us a discount oh there's the discount sorry eight thousand four hundred and twenty six dollars and ten cents for a security package for the courthouse from INA alert a second

been moved and seconded we approve a panic or security system for the for my in a alert for 84 26 10. all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carry and that come out of that one you guys okay with that i think it probably should yeah put that in my motion also i forgot I'll go ahead and sign my copy.

Or one of my copies. Well, if you screw up your own name.

I think it's a long-sleeve shirt. That's true.

64 in there.

Yeah, he has to say 9th and Cole because of the... I might even run the heaters.

The servers are in there.

Those guys that work out on the highway and stuff, they say wearing a long-sleeved shirt keeps you cool.

It's a sunburn, I guess.

They feel constrained.

And what kind of shirt is it?

Well, yeah.

I ride with a long-sleeved shirt even because I'm running. I'll go back to school.

Hopefully, she's still coming.

She's usually pretty good about it. And I send out reminders to everyone on the agenda. I understand.

We're a little early today, so. Yep. You guys got any questions?

And I can think of, I'm sure I do. Not right off. I try to space them out for you guys.

Oh, okay.

Don't overwhelm you.

Tomorrow is the last day that you can apply for an advanced ballot. So if you want one, get your application in and we'll get one out same day.

I think we've had 140 some early voters come into our office and vote, which is great.

And we have sent out, I think, like 130 advanced. And we're getting them in every day. How many of those are the kids advanced? And so it's, it's actually, we have, I don't know, probably about 10 kids ballot so far. So, and they're, they're always excited to vote.

What are the questions this year?

What's that?

What are the questions this year?

Favorite candy. And then, and we're picking having them choose three so we can move the top three onto the primary. So they can. Yep, yep. Yes, favorite toy, like Fidget is on there and like Squishies. And so, you know, all of those are on there.

Pet rock sticks.

I'd have to go on there and look, I haven't, I didn't get to vote that ballot. So, but it's been popular so far.

Is there a favorite cookie down there too?

I was going to go.

I remember you posted it.

Yeah, we posted it. OK, so we have favorite toy, favorite candy, favorite cookie, favorite fruit, favorite mascot, and favorite drink. People always get a kick out of that. You guys did the tiebreaker, a canvas.

Really?

Just like a normal . always write down my answers what i think the kids will do yeah yeah whoever the queso guy wins or the queso person was last year told me what's your favorite snack queso not wrong no no come on you're we're just early i'm a couple minutes early

Two minutes early is feels like late to me.

So right.

It's miserable out there. All right. Okay. I have numbers for the quarter for you guys.

You might state your name.

Oh, sorry. Uh, Vicki Mader, Verizon's mental health center.

Thank you. Uh,

So we have a quarterly report. You'll see that our trend line is more and more people. We're up to, we served 516 in the last quarter, which is up a little bit from the previous one. A year ago, we served a little under 400. So we're up 115 people. and then services go up we're down a little bit in fourth quarter we see a little bit of a shift in the summer things go down a little bit because everybody's on vacation in school and it's sometimes transportation is hard and just different things like that but any questions about those numbers all right i added something on the back I have the page for you. Just wanted to share a little bit of updates and how we're staying engaged in the community. And so we did have one of our team members participate in the Leadership League. And That's great to help build those relationships. She's our community health worker and she helps people with social needs. Like it could be anything, finding food to home, to a ride to the doctor, whatever they might need. So she works really hard at that in this county and our other counties. We continue to use our feedback from our clients to determine what do we need to continue to work on. And so we separate that out by county and listen to what they have to say. Access continues to be it's better. Still, people would like to get it even quicker. That's pretty normal. When you want to get into your doctor, you want to get into your doctor that day. But we continue to work on that. And 90% of clients say that the services we provide are helping them. So yeah, overall, very positive feedback. And some of the things that we can't change insurance, you know, having behavioral health paid for by insurance is something we hear a lot, but not a whole lot we can do other than help with sliding fee scales and fee reductions in that capacity. All right, any questions about those? All right, so then I also included for you our financial statements as of the end of May. We, at the end of May, For the month of May, we had a positive EBITDA of $399,400 that gave us a year to date operating loss of $153,000. So we had anticipated a $3.5 million loss at the end of this year due to some billing things, issues with accounts, we had bills, but they went out the door, we weren't going to get paid, but they didn't get written off the books is kind of how we'll explain it. And so we did put into effective financial plan. And we predicted that we would end in a year with a million dollar loss. And so once we figure how June goes, we'll know where we stand on that. But we saw steady improvement. We're monitoring care delivery metrics and making sure that no-shows and cancels and how do we navigate that. That's a big thing so that we can make sure that our staff are providing efficient and effective care too.

What year is it? It's a fiscal year, yep.

July 1 to June 30. So we'll continue that. It's important that we're sustainable. And so we have to adjust. If client behaviors change in the summer, we have to adjust to that. And sometimes that's harder than you think because you don't get the data until after the fact. But being able to plan for the next year, if that's what we're seeing. We've seen a little bit of a behavior change in June this year. And I think it has to do with raising gas prices and just some things that are outside of our control. And so how do we mitigate that to make it easier for our families?

Yeah. More stress.

Yep. More stress. We do tend to see in June, we tend to see some service delivery fall off because of vacations and we're out of school, we don't really need this. And then it ramps back up and now we're starting to see that the ones that didn't come in and keep their routine services. Now we're going into more of a crisis mode and now we're getting back engaged in the service. It's not a great cycle. We'll continue to work on it, but sometimes it's outside of our control. But we're there to help when they're ready for it.

Yeah.

Any other questions about the, you can see on the trend, I did give you guys the trend. You can see on the trend for the EBITDA, we started that financial performance improvement plan in January. So January through May, we're all positive. So we worked really hard on that.

Do mental health services get any of that beautiful bill money?

Rural health transformation funding. There's a few community mental health centers that got a little bit of the funding. We weren't picked. We didn't win any of the grants, but in a roundabout way, We try to partner. So we're partnering with KU. They got some of that money. And so we're going to partner with them. They're going to hire some community health workers. They're going to be integrated into our team and eventually out in these in like in Pratt. and they're going to pay for all the salaries, but we help navigate the services. And so we'll get some benefit from it. It may not be money, but we'll get some benefit for the community. All right. The final thing that I have for you guys is for our contract with the county, You have a representative on our board for Pratt to represent Pratt. And it says you're supposed to give nominations, one to three suggestions, nominations to us, and then our board will vote on that. I don't know. What I found is it's not always been done that way. So we'll do it.

Imagine that. Not even aware of this document.

Okay, um, and so some counties say if you can try to find someone and then I send it to you guys for approval versus you submitting us names but Luana lackey is the current representative for Pratt county her term her second term expires the end of January, and so we need someone to replace her so. Yeah. The bylaws, you can only serve two, three year terms and she served both terms. And so she'd have to sit out a full year and then she could come back, but.

Do you have anybody in mind?

No. So we are open to suggestions and help. It's been a little harder finding we're short quite a few board members right now. So, um, I know like Reno County will have someone from the health department sometime is on our board. I was thinking maybe somebody from there, you know, law enforcement that I just know law enforcement can be really hard with their schedules and that, but yeah, I mean, we just want to make sure that we have a voice on the board for frat County. We have an at-large position. pratt county that's open as well that i think i have a candidate for okay so yeah i just want to bring that to your attention yeah i appreciate that yes we'll work on it okay yes i will work on it as well okay anything else for me oh i did bring these i don't know it's kind of a little one pager about what it means to be on the board and when we meet and then a board candidate packet Let me give that to you. Sure. You guys want to, if somebody's, yeah, if somebody's interested or you want to hand it out or you just want to look at it, I thought that that would be helpful. It tells when we meet and how long and those type of things.

Sounds good.

Okay.

All right. Steak and shrimp and baked potato.

No, but we have what we call is board mix. We have board mix and water. So we make a special board mix that we do great every meeting and you get a bottle of water.

That's fair enough.

Okay.

chocolate's getting expensive so all right thank you thank you yes if anybody in the public can hear us or is interested let us know somehow if you're interested in being on horizons board start that way Carson, you got anything to add? I do.

I'd request a 10-minute executive session for attorney-client to discuss the upcoming tax foreclosure.

I'll make that motion.

I'll second it.

We're moving in second. We go into executive session for 10 minutes for attorney-client to discuss upcoming tax foreclosure. All in favor say aye.

Aye. Opposed say so. Motion carries.

i think the motion we come out of executive session with no action taken second it's been moved in second and we come out of executive session with no action taken all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign we're back in open session would make a motion to give tyson authority to file the uh tax foreclosure i'll second that motion it's been moved in second again bison authority to follow the tax foreclosure papers all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carried the questions on here

Yeah, I thought I knew the vouchers.

I'll make a motion we pay the vouchers.

I'll second it.

We've moved and seconded. We pay the vouchers. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. We'll pay the vouchers.

Susan and I do take the kids ballot pretty seriously. There's no write-in lines. If someone, you know, if there's candidates to choose from or choices to choose from, there's no write-in lines. And one little boy would not like any of our choices. And he said, I'm just going to write one in. And we were like, nope, don't count it. It was on the snack one. are no right in line so you have to wait wait for the job i tell you he got a hold of jock's bg somewhere to take it out of yes but he was up in my office when he oh was he yeah he said well i'm going to talk to sisters yeah yeah i said find out and then let me know he's pretty good about taking care of business

You know, Bridges didn't move over to his law office, did they? Tyson's law office? He'll know what to do. That's the key, you know?

I mean, if they would go over there beyond the bigger building, which is still one of the students.

You haven't heard of the seniors? I'm in the smaller building.

I think they're done over there. I haven't seen them over there. Yeah, they were there for several days though.

Yeah.

I've got to get rid of them.

We'll blame the checks.

They're hot.

Yeah. Yeah, they're still closed.

Oh, they are?

Yeah. Wow.

Not good.

Because our driver's license goes to Kiowa on Mondays, and she's here today because they are not open. I feel bad. I feel bad for her. DJ said he is like, you can't do anything. You have to get permission. He has it locked down. So I guess it came in through the HVAC.

We're good, though.

Yeah, we're not that sophisticated.

I somehow deleted something off of my computer and called Mark SOS.

Like this?

Yeah.

And you're going to get it back?

Yeah, because he backs up. So it was backed up 19 hours ago. So he was able to restore it. It was a pretty important folder that somehow just went missing. Pretty important. And he saved it for me.

Probably elements we back up every day, every day, twice a day, the internet. Good man. Then it moves it somewhere else. Yeah.

Yep. Very thankful.

But still, even if you do get hacked, it's still a pain in the butt.

That's why he sends us all that training.

Okay. Actually, I got the last one. I did really good on it. First one, not so much. I had to retake it because I didn't get a score.

On Zoom, we're waiting until 3 o'clock. We've got an executive session with an attorney, and that's why we're just stalling right now.

I did get an update from Ryan Lunt that I sent on to you guys.

Oh, I read that. An update from Ryan Lunt?

sounds like they're going to start some type of construction in august they're having permanent issues right now okay well maybe they gotta wait for that performance yes we're wanting to start in august yeah

Pulling out of that screen. Will there be any PRNC updates today? Probably not. We're trying to get everybody together and get in here so we can discuss this. I know a lot of people are frustrated with the lack of transparency as we are too. Uh, things are moving at a pretty quick pace. Uh, I'm hoping to get them in here next week. And that's what we're going to meet with our attorney about. I know everybody's wanting to know, and so are we, so there won't be any updates today. That was part of their contract, was they were supposed to come in here and talk to us on camera and give us the whole rundown.

Yep.

So I know a lot of people are wondering, and we are too. So hang in there. We'll get there.

Yep. Did they have a good turnout at the fair for your concert Friday, Saturday night? Anybody here? It was pretty packed. Okay. Even though the weather was melting. Oh, that would have been terrible.

Let me say the ticks were really bad out there. Oh, really? During the Derby, yeah. I can't imagine as dry as it is.

True.

Oh, I did see that. Check for ticks. The ticks were really bad at the Demo Derby.

I heard that.

I kind of forgot about that. I probably have some heads I need to check.

They'd probably be showing up pretty good by now.

Hey, there's Jack. Jack, no.

Jack?

Yeah.

Come on up, because we're going to try to get him early.

OK.

I request a motion to go into executive session for one hour. Returning client privilege to discuss PRMC. Presidents of and David will be on the phone. Oh, my God.

second they're moving in second we're doing the executive session for an hour or attorney client privilege for prmc leases with jack galley and david enron our attorney all in favor say aye aye aye opposed same sign motion carries

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

I'll second it. Been moved and seconded. We come out of executive session with no action taken. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. We're back in open session.

I have a request of a 15-minute executive session for attorney client privilege to discuss PRMC with Jack Colley, present, and David Prelier, on, present.

I'll make that motion. Second. Been moved and seconded. We go back into executive session for 15 minutes. attorney client privileges for prmc with jack galley and david enron pirelli really here pirelli you're on excuse me david i forgive you this time the pressure is good now okay all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign we'll be back in executive session we can actually come out of the executive session no action taken one second they move in a second we come out of executive session no action taken all in favor say aye aye opposed same sign we're back in open session i'm not all stuff that's what you're having me right here for that thanks

so well nothing else i'll make a motion we adjourn i'll second it we moved in second we adjourned all in favor say aye aye aye opposed same sign