County Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I'll call the uh meeting of the executive committee together. First item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Would move for approval. Second. Motion's been made and seconded. All in favor say I. If Wendy, if Christensen could call the role. Uh, we have a quorum in the chambers with supervisors Meyer, Miller, Spencer, Shakur, Chairman Kramer, and Supervisor Capellian is on virtually. Supervisors Troutier and Rkowski are excused, and we will watch for Supervisor Hopkins.

All right. Item number two, update on the state of Rine Countyy's own parcel at 32 Main Street. Rine Corp Council.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good evening. So, the purpose of of this discussion, and it will be brief, is really just to provide a status update of uh the 4.1 acre parcel in the city of Rine at 32 Main Street. This is commonly known as the Bell Harbor Marina site. Um and unfortunately it is not the the positive news that we would hope to share uh for you but but feel it necessary to give this body and an update nevertheless. So first by way of background uh in May of 1990 Rine County purchased this parcel for $1.39 million. Uh the purpose, as I understand it, was to serve as boat boat maintenance and offseason dry stock storage and a marina for the Rine Harbor Marina. Uh that property has remained vacant since Skipper Marine vacated it in May of 2012. Uh there was a dredging project at the Persing Park uh boat launch with sediments from that site filling in Bell Harbor uh to bring the basin back to its original state. that occurred and was completed in 2015. Um, and now more recently, this site was um authorized by resolution of this body um and by the county board to uh enter into a purchase or a purchase and sale agreement to a developer uh Campbell Capital Group out of Atlanta. Uh Michael Cbell is the principal uh developer for that company. Their plan was to develop the site uh for approximately 200 or so multifamily residential apartment units plus amenities. Uh Mr. Campbell and his company's a highly uh regarded nationally rec recognized boutique developer with multifamily developments in select markets across the United States including in Wisconsin uh Madison

uh Brookfield St. Francis uh and and perhaps others. So, the unfortunate news is is that we heard recently from Mr. Campbell that he just can't make the financing work uh for his proposed development. uh that his numbers assumed uh a certain rent uh being charged for the apartments and he just couldn't find investors uh willing to go further into the project based on with not there now being some comparables uh not too far from that site in the city of Rine that are charging significantly lower in rent. Um they just were having a difficult time in making the financing work. So uh this had been extended out several times over the years. We provided updates to this body periodically uh as we've we've we've pushed this out most recently. Um it's actually been somewhat to the county's advantage that it has uh remained unused because we were able to use it for staging as part of the U Marina project. So we've been able to put it to some productive use uh but of course not the productive use that this body and that the the county had hoped for. So with that news uh we wanted to share that update. I see Jenny Trick is is in the audience. Um but Jenny, if you have any additional, you know, facts that you want to provide uh in terms of steps forward, what I would anticipate is that working closely with the county executive's office, uh RCDC, the city of Rine will want to regroup. Um there has been periodic interest in this site over the years. Um but of course given its its uh location um really central to downtown rine there's a tremendous amount of development opportunity. Um and so I think there's a shared desire for the city and the county to have this developed the right way. Um so those discussions will continue and we'll keep this body reasonably apprised as we go forward.

Any questions? Supervisor Cole um if was there any earnest money put forth on this and what happens to that then? Yeah. So there was money placed in escrow and as there were various extensions pushing this further out we asked for additional monies to be placed in escrow and so uh the closing date under the existing contract I believe it's April 30th. So my understanding is that once we reach that date uh that that money that has been placed in escrow would be uh returned to the county um pursuant to the terms of the contract. Any other questions?

Seeing none, we'll move on to item number three. Close close session approximately 20 minutes. Is anticipated that the executive committee will meet in close session pursuant to section 19.85 subsection one subsection E of the Wisconsin statutes to deliberate and or negotiate the sale of public lands and investment of public funds for development at 209 North Main Street in the city of Burlington. I would so move. Motion's been made and seconded. Roll call vote. Supervisor Meyer, yes. Supervisor Miller, yes.

Supervisor Spencer, Supervisor Hopkins, Supervisor Shakur, Supervisor Capellian. Should I just get this information at a later date or can I still be in close session virtually? Uh, that would be a question for our corporation council. I I'm looking at IT supervisor Capernellian. I don't know that we can effectively accommodate that. You could try just calling my phone. Um or I could reach out to you and we can try and have you listen in for that. Failing that, um I can certainly have a follow-up discussion.

All right, let's um yeah, Michael, could you just give me a call and I'm happy to then um join by those means. And so my my uh vote is I Okay. and Chairman Kramer. Hi. So, we are in close session. If somebody could close the door and and some the people who aren't involved in this would need to leave the

Good evening. We have a scheduled finance and human resources committee. Chairman Troutier is not with us tonight. So I the vice chair will um call us to order. Um don't think we have views and governance from our committee here. So, uh, we will go on to see if there are any public comments for the committee. I do not see any in the chamber. Next item on the agenda would be the approval of the minutes from March 18th. Okay, we have a motion from Supervisor Wish and a second from Supervisor Shakur. Is there any discussion on approval of the minutes? Okay. um for the committee. All in favor?

I. Any opposed? That is approved. This next item we did discuss at our regular meeting uh but we needed to um change the protocol. So this will be an action of the full county board and I think uh corp council can give us a brief synopsis. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I believe I see our treasur just above the the microphone. So Jeff, I didn't see him over the podium. Jeff, do you want to address it and I can address any legal issues that that come from that? Yes. So we'll introduce our county treasurer, Jeff Leus.

Thank you very much. Thank you for convening this meeting to address these items. I appreciate it. So item number five on the agenda is the sale of two properties. uh their landlocked vacant vacant land parcels in the village of Mount Pleasant. Village of Mount Pleasant has submitted an offer to us for $12,000 for the parcels and uh I'm recommending that those are move forward for consideration by the full county board by way of resolution. All right. What is the pleasure of the committee?

Okay. This time, Supervisor Shakur is moving and Supervisor Wish is seconding. Are there is there any discussion or questions from the committee or there are other county board members here? You're welcome to ask if you have a question. U Jeff, do you want to just tell us where these are and and why the village wants them?

Absolutely. So, they are um they're on Meadow Lane Avenue. Uh it runs between Highway 20 and 16th Street and uh they're again they're landlock parcels. So, they're behind the parcels that are directly on Medane and the village is interested in them because the village is working with a developer that controls a large parcel behind there. these two adjacent parcels will afford them the opportunity to move forward with a single family development in that area.

Thank you so much. So, uh any other questions, comments from the committee or other board members? Hearing none, we will vote on the motion which is to send this to the county board for first reading tonight. Uh committee, all in favor? Any opposed? That is approved and we will move on to item six and we will let the county treasurer explain that one.

Thank you very much. Item number six on the agenda this evening is the sale uh proposed sale of the two parcels to the city of Rine uh comm community development authority. They're 1230 and 1229 6th Street. These are two parcels that sit directly west of Marquette Avenue or Marquette uh right on Sixth Street at the bridge. Many of you may have seen a large three-story brick building that's been an eyesore to the area for a number of years. The building is located on 1220, I'm sorry, 12:30 6th Street and then the adjacent vacant lot parcel directly next to it is at 1229 Sixth Street. Uh the city or community development authority has submitted an offer to us for $55,000 for both of those parcels and uh I am recommending that that be put forward for resolution as well.

What is the pleasure of the committee? We have a motion from Supervisor Shakur and a second from Supervisor Wish and this action would be sent to send it to the fir to the full county board for first reading this evening. discussion. Supervisor Miller. Yes, Supervisor Capellian, please proceed. Thank you kindly. I remember Supervisor Spencer asked during the finance committee, but I couldn't recall what was answered. Can these two be divided up?

They could in theory be divided up. our our historical practice through the sale of uh vacant lot or adjacent parcels is that we've always historically sold them as a combined uh sale item versus individual sale items. The logic behind that is uh we want to protect the county from a purchaser coming in and potentially cherrypicking the parcel that has value and then leaving the county with the parcel that doesn't have as much value and maintaining continuing to do the maintenance on it and carrying costs on it. So, um, and typically if we're selling a vacant lot parcel, uh, and it's sold to an adjacent parcel owner, we do have a requirement that that adjacent parcel owner combine those parcels at a point in the future. So, when we have two parcels that are directly adjacent to each other through that foreclosure process, we do always provide or present those as one item, one sale item.

Thank you, Director Lattis. from my understanding. And so when you say adjacent, uh they are actually across the street from each other. They are across the street from each other. The U property lines do tie into each other underneath that underpass, however. So they do they are directly adjacent. You do have access to one parcel from the other directly across the underneath the underpass.

Thank you. Uh so this question may have to go to corporation council possibly unless uh supervisor Miller you have the answer for this is how would that work if if I would like to have a separate motion for each of these partials or vote separately. I understand there's a motion on the floor, but sure. Um, I would think by an a proposed amendment to this action if you so desire to propose an amendment. How would that work with a finance though? Because what we have received from the CDA is $55,000 for both of those properties.

Yeah. So my immediate thoughts to this, but I I'd be interested in the treasures as well, is from a logistics standpoint, just from, you know, an action standpoint being contemplated by the body, um there could certainly be a motion um to um take some sort of alternative action. But if that action is to break these in or to treat the the parcels separately where one would be conveyed to the city um the other potentially put to a sealed bid um I don't know that you could do that in the single action and there's probably some other logistics discussions with the city um that would ensue. So I don't know that we could or that I would necessarily recommend trying to do that in a single action. um more likely that would be at least two different actions. Um but a motion could certainly be made stating that overall direction um in lie of action on the uh motion that's presently before the board before the committee.

So I'll ask Oh go ahead supervisor. Uh, so what I'm thinking, and maybe this makes sense and maybe not, uh, being that this is only going to first reading, I think, uh, what I could do, I ultimately I would vote this down, but possibly be prepared to bring up by second reading, uh, some form of amendment that's worked on, uh, by the help of maybe corporation council or some guidance understanding what my intentions are here, or is it best to do it Now, before going to first reading,

I I'll I'll weigh in first. Um, from a legal standpoint, I I think that that would be an effective course of action. You're right. It's only would be going for a first reading this evening. Um, our office, and I can't speak for the treasur's office, but um, our office would be happy to have uh, discussions with you, get a better understanding of what uh, the end goal is there, and then we can present some options for affecting that. That again would be in lie of an affirmative vote at second reading for this resolution as presently drafted. Okay. Thank you so kindly. I'm not sure if the supervisors had the opportunity to listen to the finance meeting or not or I know some were present at it but ultimately I am opposed to these both the properties ultimately not going to sealed bid being that there is some outside interest in that the value of both of these properties I think one the fair market value is in the $300,000 range the other one's in the hundred some thousand range but yet uh we are going to be receiving $55,000 roughly. Um there is uh a private uh homeowner that it's basically her backyard is 1229 who was a transplant into the area has already invested over a million couple million plus in her property where she now resides which uh again 1229 is her backyard. She wanted to turn that into a public use space. That's exactly a bit about what uh Jeff Hints, who I just saw in the audience, is here too, talked about the city's intentions as well. Um, but this way it gets it back on our tax role. You hand it over to the city, we lose that. And so, I mean, there's some arguments around that, but this individual when moved here has been waiting for this process to come up and it never came up until all of a sudden

it was seen that it went uh to into the city's hand. And I questioned then if the county has uh or if they need, I'm sorry, a process in place to handle when municipalities ask for uh properties like this because currently right now um we do not. So I just wanted to give a little bit of background why I'm questioning uh 1229 and 1236 street. So, as of this moment right now, I will be voting no.

Thank you, uh, Supervisor Capellian. Um, and I fully support and, uh, appreciate your advocacy for a citizen who may be interested. I guess my question to you is, did that citizen has that citizen written anything that would indicate to the full county board or this committee uh, their interest?

Yeah, thank you. I will be honest. So this is somebody who uh uh director Lattis has referenced at the finance committee because uh they know of it and I I think uh Jeff Hints as well has references. So they reached out to the channels reached out to the city as well. Um but I want to tell you that just like I said at the finance committee committee that they receive threats from the city. So, uh, now they're in a position where they are scared and not knowing how to proceed. And so, I had let them be aware of the finance committee meeting that took place at the county level, try to reinsure safety. But, however, when you have such a major investment in the city, uh, they are are feeling intimidated by what they believe are the powers that can destroy uh, how they would like to proceed. All right. Thank you. I guess I would recommend uh reach out to corp counsel to make sure that person's um opinion, thought, proposal would get to this body.

Thank you. Yes. Uh Supervisor Spencer. Thank you. Uh can you explain please again why you didn't why we didn't take the sealed red route sealed bid route with this with these two parcels?

Absolutely. So the CDA or city of Rine did express interest in these parcels a number of years ago in that they are directly adjacent to 27 acres that the city city already controls and this would become part of a larger development area for them. They had expressed that this is a key piece of real estate to kind of complete that uh parcel along the riverfront and make it appealing to outside developers to come in and uh you know do future developments.

Okay. So, I'm very familiar with these properties as well. I can see why the city would want 12 um 1230 as it's on this side of uh Sixth Street. Um, I don't quite understand why they weren't separated because 1229 abuts private property and across the street from that is a apartment complex or condos. I'm not sure which, but it seems easily with the street in the middle 1230 could easily be part of the city's development program where 1229 may be could be left to a separate bid. I mean, I'm I'm not sure how I'm going to vote on this because I've been looking at 12:30 for way too long and I, you know, I want to see the city have it and be uh hopefully tear it down. But um I just wanted to express that like these two parcels seem very different to me.

Absolutely. And I'm receptive to having those conversations is potentially splitting those individually. Um you know the interested party has never approached my office. I've never had any direct dialogue with them. uh when supervisor Capriillion res references my knowledge of them having interest, it's simply through conversations with the CDA and Supervisor Capillian. So, um and I've also I've had a number of experiences in the past where people have stepped forward and said, "Hey, I'm interested in that parcel. Can you move forward with it with foreclosure against it?" I do. And then once it's presented for sealed bid sale, that interest dries up and the county again is left holding kind of that responsibility of maintaining that parcel because there's no firm commitment on the front end of that type of a situation. So again, I'm absolutely receptive to uh entertaining the idea of these being split. When we do foreclose on a property, our first step is to have appraisals done on those parcels. I did have individual appraisals done on these parcels. So the appraisal for 1230 came back at $50,000. The appraisal for 1229 came back at $5,000. Uh so if they were to if they were to be considered split, then we already have a mechanism in place for establishing what those values are for future sale for minimum bid.

So I saw higher appraisals. You probably saw higher assessments. The city assessed values of them are significantly higher, but that is simply the assessed value of the property that sets the tax levy for the parcel. The appraisal, we actually hire a third party independent appraiser to do an appraisal of the property in ASIS condition. And you know, to speak to the value of these properties being significantly below what's represented on the tax bill is fair market value. uh any future development in these properties is going to require a significant investment of at least $100,000 to take that building down in site prep. So um you know the value has to be adjusted for that future expense to site prep for that and that's what the appraisal does.

So I have one more question. Yeah. Um and that is the two separate properties had separate owners, separate foreclosure times, separate They had the same owner. Uh oh, the same owner. They had the same owner. They were both taken through the same foreclosure action as well. Okay. All right. Thank you,

Mr. Chairman. Could I just offer a pers just in addressing the two prior comments from Supervisor Spencer and Supervisor Capellian? came up at the prior committee meeting and and again this evening uh regarding the the process or or or lack of process uh relative to these types of parcels. So, state law uh and also local ordinance sets forth a specific process. Um, and state law allows for counties to delegate from its county board to its standing committee. In this instance, locally, the finance and human resources committee, the ability to convey or transfer land um in parcel properties um through a sealed bid process. That's the the process that's allowed for and set forth by local ordinance. It's in line with with state law. Um and again, that authority is delegated from the full county board to the committee. So, it only requires action of the committee in order to um accept an offer to purchase that was received through that sealed bid process. um state law and local ordinance specifically exempts the similar uh conveyances or transfers or sales that are from the county to a municipality or from the county to the state. In those instances, um it's not enough in other words to rest on action of the committee only. Rather, the process is what's playing out here this evening. And if it were to move forward, what would be required at the the second reading is that a resolution is needed. Um, and it needs to go to a vote of the full county board of supervisors rather than delegating it to a standing committee of that parent body. Um, so I just wanted to address that's the process. That's the procedure. It's

played out in numerous instances over the years. Most recently that I can recall with the village of Calonia. We've done similar uh conveyances with the city of Rine, city of Burlington, a host of municipalities um through the county have followed that same process that again requires full board authorization via resolution. I would just add that um frequently that um involves Habitat for Humanity and the conveyances to the municipality and then Habitat uh does the work. Uh Supervisor Shakur.

Thank you, Mr. chairman. Uh first off, I support this uh situation, but I do have a problem with threats. I mean, if someone's being threatened from any government governing body, be it city, county, whomever, uh I would like to know more about that as far as what happened, who's who, what's what. I mean we can make accusations or and I'm not saying that this not true but I would really like to know where is that coming from about threats but as far as the other thing go um again I support this from treasurer lattis and the reason being is that he has done a great job throughout Christine county in in functioning and working with in collaboration with the local municipality to get the job done and and he's doing it in a professional manner where it's got the biggest bang for the buck. So, um I think that uh the committee and the county board should go along with this as presented. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Wish. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh I echo what uh Mr. Shakur, Supervisor Shakur just mentioned. Um, I am going to vote in favor of, but if there's a second resolution coming, uh, or an addendum or an adjustment or whatever we're calling it, uh, before we vote, I would like to have more detail specifically exactly what the threats were, who they're coming from, and the dollar amounts that are being thrown around are radically different. So, I guess I got to go with because I know you can't go on assessed value. I mean, if you're a homeowner, you know that you you get what the property is worth based on an appraisal uh or whatever that person's willing to bid on it. So, I guess I'm I'm more convinced of going along with uh Mr. Lattis's numbers than I am with the other numbers that were thrown out. So, I'm going to vote in favor of this current resolution.

Thank you. Anyone else? Supervisor Miller. Yes, Supervisor Capellian.

Thank you kindly. I uh thank you all for the discussion and I just wanted to acknowledge Director Lattis's correction uh that the property owner that the 1229 abuts um did not reach out. Uh that's a mistake and a misspeak on my part. So, thank you uh Director Lattis. That was just me. I believe that they had only communicated with the city of Rine. So, I just wanted to put that out there um and spoke to uh a couple different players at the at the city level. So, uh thank you. And I think by moving forward, I will be voting the uh no this evening for the finance committee and then uh I will be reaching out to uh corporation council to work on an amendment before the second reading. And I do believe we have a finance committee meeting before that. Is that correct?

April 1st. Yes. April 1st. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments? All right. So, this motion is to send this um there actually two resolutions. Well, we we already did the first one, but we would send this resolution to the county board for first reading tonight. And since there is no other lights that I'm aware of, I'm going to have a roll call vote. Um, Supervisor Spencer. Supervisor Caprellian. No. Supervisor Wish,

Supervisor Shakur. And the chair will vote I. So that's 4 to one. It will go to the county board for um first reading tonight with the understanding that supervisor Capellian is going to reach out to corp council for possible amendments. Chairman uh supervisor Nielsen is online and I vote I as well. Thank you. I I wasn't sorry supervisor. I wasn't aware you were online. Um no problem. I was trying to find No, I was just trying to find the uh raise your hand so I didn't want to interrupt. Okay. But no, thank you. All right. Thank you. So, we will record your vote as I with a final vote of 5 to one.

Okay. Uh item seven, there are no action items, but just the notice that our next meeting of the Finance and Human Resources Committee will be April 1st. Uh is there a motion to adjourn? All in favor? We are adjourned. I'm going to be calling the uh committee the whole meeting together tonight uh for a preliminary very preliminary discussion regarding the 2027 budget. Now when I uh when I when I present a budget to the town I we usually start with very very high level stuff and the highest level we can is getting talking about the levy. Now the levy is usually the last thing we talk about but that kind of sets the stage for the rest of it. So what I want to hear is um your ideas on the levy. Now there are some restrictions obviously. So I'm going to lay about 2 or 3 minutes out here and then we can have an open discussion. So the levy's really in two parts. The first is the the operational levy and the other part is debt service. Now the operational levy is capped with net new construction. So last year we had uh 4.83 83 net new construction. Um in the P we average about two we average over the last eight years uh 2.67

you know. So we've had two three good years and five 1.5 1.6 years. So what does that mean to the levy? So if we match last year's levy that would increase our levy to about 2.6 million. If we get 3% it'd be one one one. So about every point you go up $600,000 in in new levy. And then the the uh other part of this conversation if we get that far is the property tax relief. We used $5 million for property tax relief against the debt covering the debt service. Now, with that, every million dollars, depending upon how much your your your uh your bond cost, if it goes from 3% to 4%, you're in that $67,000 to $76,000 for every million you you bond for. That adds to that debt service. So, and and so my my thought on it is we take our that new construction and use that part of it to raise our levy because on the tax bills now it's that it's going it's going to go from district to district. But in essence, if you had everybody at the same if everybody was in one district, school district, city, you would have the same amount in theory that you had last year. And that's what taxpayers like to see. They don't like

to see large increases. Study increases they have no problem with. Uh, and last year, you know, and it depends upon where you live in this in in the county, too. If you're in a township, you you your your uh county taxes are about 20 to 25% of the tax bill at in and and the local is around 15. You go to the c, you know, you go to the the villages, you're doing more services, their their taxes on the county portion is about 20%, 15 to 20%. And they're at, you know, 25 30%. You get into the cities, it's even smaller portion. you know, the city of Burlington's 16% of their tax bill is is the county's portion and 11% in the in the in the city of Rine and that's 40 and 50% of their local min comes from the municipality. So where where your constituents are kind of makes the difference as to how important it is to have a good county tax. My recommendation would be to take the levy, take the take the new construction, add that on, you know, and try to maintain that property tax relief at the $5 million. And when we get the numbers in August, you know, that's when we start making decisions on on our capital projects. And at that point in time, we'll know what our net new construction is and what what we can sustain. Now, in now in

a in a good situation, you retire as much as you add on. Now, we've got some big projects that we bought in 2024 and we're that's going to be adding on to this debt. we just have to be finish those projects, make sure we pay for them, and that's where that little incremental portion of it comes up. You get, you know, the $70,000 for every million then. So, that's where I like to see it is kind of flat and stay with little in with little incremental increases in the debt uh service portion. Now, that's kind of my opinion. Is there anybody else that has an opinion?

Supervisor Shakur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick question. Maybe you know this, maybe you don't. Uh from the state, have they provided this year's levy limits and restrictions and not when when will they do that? Just just curious. So, so the net new construction comes out in August, you know. So, I have a I have a distinct advantage at the town government because it takes about four or five meetings with the town board versus county government. They're going to start their process very soon if they haven't already for the next budget. Mhm.

Kind of. So, we do the the levy limit calculations can be made in September. So, when we start putting our the the packages together and what we want to buy and and and look at where we're going to spend our net new construction money, that's when you got to kind of fit all the pieces together that they've been working on all summer. and then the county executive and the the cabinet sit down and and work it to put the pieces together so we fall underneath our levy limits and how we're going to you know where are we going to use some of our reserves if we have reserves available or how much we need to or where we need to cut. So that's kind of the county executives. Go ahead. Go on. As far as the levy limits go from the state,

yes, they're the ones that dictate uh to the counties.

Well, the levy limits in a simple term, the levy limits are your last year's levy acceptable levy plus net new construction and then plus your debt service. So if you you know so you can if you have less debt service actually have a lower levy than you did if you're if you if you you know uh if you're uh on in this case if we you know uh pay off bonds you know so it's actually because in the state of Wisconsin like other like un other in other states municipalities can't go bankrupt because They're backed by the taxpayers. And if you figure out how much we could bond, none of the nobody in this room would want to because it's way, way too high,

Supervisor Miller.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, I certainly would agree with you that our constituents don't like large property tax increases, but I have plenty of constituents who don't like the steady increases either. Um so while I agreed with you that um there may be times when we need to approach the levy limits um if if they are uh if the net new construction is huge I would also want to consider the rate of inflation because that's where that's what our constituents our taxpayers people who pay the bill have to live with. I always think when we're making a budget decision, could I take that tax bill to one of my constituents and say, "Here it is, and why?" And u if it's if it's too big, um then I don't think we've done our job.

Very good point. The the other thing we have to keep in effect is some things we can't control. We all know we're going to have a new governor and there's going to be a new legislature. So, I can I can tell a horror story that we had extra levy levying power and we didn't use it all at the town and we lost it, you know. So, Supervisor Cole,

uh, you kind of stole my thunder a little bit on that one part, but um, also that I mean it wasn't a good week for reseing um, United um, Natural Foods is leaving to Joliet. Um, I think we got to try carefully. I mean, we do see the new apartment buildings on Spring Street. We see growth. you know there is some growth but I think it is something we have to walk with a very soft step um I did print out a little thing I'm going to hand out here on roads um I have right now it says the average asphalt road lasts about 18 years on a county highway and I printed out the cars per day on stretches off the DOT website um right now we have 165 5 milesi of county highways. We're paving 2.7 miles per year. If we keep this pace, it's going to every highway will be replaced every 60.11 years. We blew through our sales tax money. That was the parachute very, very, very quickly. I think most of us stood here last year at the budget and went, "Whoa." Um, the only way I see out of fixing the road problems in the long term is a referendum. I mean, that's the only thing I can really come up with because there is no more res. We're already tapping into reserves after this. I don't see the $5 million in property tax relief staying very long. I mean, it's it's gone fast. We're talking about salary wages for everybody. That's, you know, the these numbers aren't sustainable for what we're doing. I mean, I I think it's I voted for the sales tax, but the idea of building all our reserves to the max and that

we're into them already is kind of a scary thought. So, I I think there needs to be some serious thought into some of this when it comes to the next budget of where we're going to be and what our plans are. And I think maybe a little bit I know it's hard to do five years, but I think there has to be a little bit more projection than just going, you know, some of this has to have a little bit further plan out than just next year because next year is getting us in trouble right now. Any further comments? Supervisor Horth.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, I probably would just have to echo what Supervisor Cole just said, but expand upon it from the standpoint that I don't sense that our only issue with respects to capital is roads. My sense is we probably have a fair amount of other topics that fall into that bucket, so to speak. And I couldn't agree more with the desire to have, let's call it a 135year plan, 135 10-year plan because those will be the decisions we're even making today. They're that are going to affect us three and five years from now, not just next year. So to me, I would hope and I'm sure we will look at this beyond no disrespect roads only because we have infrastructure issues. I know in buildings and in other parts of the county that I know are going to need attention as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Supervisor Core. Oh, wait. There's any other.

Okay. Thanks again, Mr. Chairman. What I just wanted to mention is that we know we have the bianial budget from the state. And with that being said, some way somehow and not throwing on the county executive, but uh also WCA Wisconsin's county association that we should be probably doing any and everything possible to lobby the state legislator state legislation and also the governor's office to not send us unfunded mandates because that hurts the pocketbook as well. So, we should do whatever we can to to try to address that situation. It tells you got to do this, but we ain't giving you no money from the state. That's not cool. And some of those external factors that we can't control. Um, you know, and I know, you know, some of the funding that, you know, we've got in this uh that that they're going to be discussing in the first six months of next calendar year is is going to affect future budgets. So, some of the funding they've got for their fiscal year that starts June to or July to June. So, some of the numbers we know, we don't have our share as the county, but we do know what they're going to spend on transportation and what they're spending on, you know, different items and human services and that type of stuff. We just don't know our share yet. Any further comments? So, Supervisor Rossi.

Thank you, Chairman. Um, one of the other supervisors, as I was going through my computer here, I've heard one of the other supervisors mention um, you know, we're already into reserve usage and, um, after just getting such a large revenue stream, which is the county sales tax. Um, I think these are all symptoms of just having an operation that's growing beyond what we can uh, fund. There's already um rumors and that's kind of what I'm anticipating is going to be the solution for um salary cost increases that we'll be talking about later tonight to um take more of the sales tax that's being utilized for debt relief. Um I I do have a little bit of information to give everyone tonight, but this one's quick. Um, just looking at our debt service levy, it looks pretty good when you don't take into consideration the amount of sales tax revenues that have been applied to it. And this is why I think it's so important that we maintain, you know, at least what we're doing right now for allocation of of uh sales tax revenue towards debt service relief. From 20 uh 2022 to 2026, we've pretty much been flat on debt service levy. on face value. So that's 7 million, 8 million, 9 million, then it starts to drop in 25, 8.6 million, and then 7.7 million. But what we're not considering, and this doesn't include the Foxcon debt, is that's being paid separately. So I take that out of the calculation. But the gross debt service takes into consideration the sales tax that we're applying. Remember in 2025, we applied $1 million of sales tax revenue towards debt relief. So reducing our debt service levy in 2026 we applied $5.7 million. So our gross debt service instead of being flat departs from the

subtle uptick and trend uh that peaks in 2024 goes from 9.2 million to 9.68 million to 13.45 million. um that goes from uh you know around 500 800500 change to a $3.7 million change. So from where we were in 2022 that's somewhere around you know 70% plus increase in the debt service levy. So keep in mind and I understand that there's not levy limits on debt service but it's still an overall increase. If we take funds that are helping to keep our debt service levy low and we continue to grow operations, the debt service levy will continue will still be exactly what it is. It just won't look as good as it is now. So, it's very important that we keep funds towards debt designated towards debt service so we can keep those costs under control. And um as we're talking about what we'd all like to see the levy at, you know, I think everyone's looking at inflation and that new construction and the number is going to be somewhere around, you know, between two to three%. So anything larger than that, I I wouldn't expect that we'd be going into reserve funds this year, but I if we continue on this path, then that's we're going to be headed right back towards another cliff situation. Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor Horse.

Mr. Chairman, one thing I would say right now, though, is I'm encouraged by this conversation because it's allowing everybody to weigh in early on where I don't believe this was a part of what we did last year. It'll give us the opportunity to put all of this out in front so that as the decisions are being made about direction, whether it be departmental, whether it be capital, or any others, this is what we need to be doing so we're all having the chance to weigh in on it. So, thank you again.

Yeah, I I'll defer to Supervisor Miller and and and Wish and Shakur that's been around quite a few years, but my eight years, I don't think we've ever had a discussion like this. So point yet on on this I've said it I think I said it one of the other meetings uh nothing's been so so forward or out ahead uh than it has been probably over the last couple of years and I'm not sure exactly why that is might be a duty to you chairman or to the uh I don't know who's doing it. But whoever it is, I appreciate it also. And uh I was not for the sales tax as a couple of us weren't for that. But if not for that, we'd be in deep deep trouble and I don't foresee that uh I would be anticipating myself wanting to go any further down that road of giving up that money towards property tax relief. I think you had it too. Any further comments? All right. Well, from here, usually we talk about other thing. You know, I worked with the county executive and and staff to expand out the the time we get the budget address to the time we vote. Uh that gives us a little more time and we won't be probably so crunched when we do this. Um we can probably you know nobody likes to be here for hours and hours when we bring in the departments. you know, maybe we can stretch that out and

and get a little bit more in input instead of being on a time schedule like we have to be if we expend it out. I know it puts the finance department a little bit and and the staff a little bit faster, you know, but, you know, that's uh I think I think the extra two weeks will help if you know. So, and I and and and uh they're going to be we'll be talking about more budget items as we go through the year uh with the county executive. So, Supervisor Miller,

Ju, just a historical comment. Uh I think one of the reasons there's been more intensity of county board being involved is because it's been tougher to create a budget. uh inflation has hit us over the years and each year it's been a little more difficult to do what we've been doing in the past with the the frugal nature of county government. But I think we are very fortunate in that we have a history of county executives working with the county board and county executive is here tonight. He's listening. He listens to us individually and I think together we can we can come to some good decisions. Um so but and I thank you uh chairman for you know creating a a meeting like this where as supervisor horse says we can get our ideas out. Okay. Is there any other comments? We are journed. Let's take about five minutes to stretch our legs because some of us probably have to use the restroom. Thank you.

So, I'm going to call the uh county board meeting of March 24th, 2026 to order. If the clerk could call the role. Supervisor Trudier is excused. Supervisors Rkowski, Capraian, and Neielen are attending virtually and everyone else is in the chambers. Chairman, yes. Uh could we have uh the county clerk also note I've been made aware that there are some youth and governance in the audience. If we could put them on attendance, too, please.

Yes. Actually, they um came up and already gave me their names in their uh related committee. So we will make sure that that gets included in the minutes. Perfect. Thank you. As it's customary, we have an opening prayer by one of our supervisors and tonight is Supervisor Pricer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Please join me. Oh Lord, we come before you today as a county board entrusted with the responsibility of leadership. May your spirit guide our discussions and decisions with full clarity. Help us navigate the complexities of governance with grace, always seeking to act according to your will and for the benefit of the community. Open our ears to listen carefully to each other and may our house hearts be aligned with your wisdom and love. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

And now the pledge. I aliance 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.

So item number four, public comments pursuant to section 2-71 of the Rine County Code of Ordinance, each speaker is allotted maximum of three minutes. Are there any public comments out there? Seeing none, we're going to go to item number five. Proclamation for the Wisconsin farm family of the year. Rine County is very proud to have a farm family recognized as farm family of the year. Especially especially uh makes us proud in Norway because the farm family that is recognized is my neighbor. Um, and the Gunderson farms have been farming next to the having a farm next to the Kramer farms for longer than either one of us can remember. Um, so I like to congratulate the Gunderson farm family and Monty Asterman from uh, Lancervation is going to and the county executive right button. There you go. Okay. Little rusty. Uh my name is Monty Astraman. I'm your ring county uh land and water conservation committee chairman and also have the distinct pleasure of serving as the board chairman for the Wisconsin state land and water conservation association which is a statewide organization of conservation professionals, elected officials, county board supervisors, appointed officials, land and water conservation staff and other stakeholders uh statewide who um number well over 500 members with the

goal of implementing conservation on the ground to improve water quality and quantity promote promote uh soil health and we do this primarily working with producers and farmers to implement the conservation right on the land and each year Wisconsin Land and Water hosts an annual conference where members come together to learn about conservation standards and practices and through keynotes speakers and breakout sessions and conservation awards. Uh they learn how to interact and implement and improve uh land and water conservation and land and water resource management across our state. One of those awards that's given is for the Wisconsin farm family of the year. This award promotes farm conservation, land and water resource management through recognizing the accomplishments of producers for performing outstanding work including community involvement and conservation education. And this this statewide competition has only one winner each year, only one. And that state winner is celebrated at that annual conference and they receive their very own short film uh which is made on their farm that celebrates their accomplishments and tells their unique story. Rine County nominated a farm family that checks all the boxes. a family where everyone has a place on the farm who are all dedicated to conservation and have been involved in our ring county watershed protection committee from the beginning as founding members. They promote soil health practices, no till cover crops, planting green, water conservation and and teaching other farmers and the public through on the ground practices. And we are so delighted and thrilled to

be able to announce that the Wisconsin State Farm family of the year for 2026 is the Gunderson grain farm family. And we have Brian and Cory here today with us. Congratulations. So, I knew that the Gunderson family was a special family because they sold me my property that we built our house on back in around 92 or 93. So, that was uh very important to us. So, thank you for that. Um I Ralph Maliki Rene County Executive do hereby recognize and congratulate Gunderson Grain Farms Brian Christa Kora and Ashley Gunderson on being named the 2026 Wisconsin farm family of the year and commend them for their outstanding contributions to conservation and the rine county community. Thank you. Uh Raleigh just says I should tell a quick story. I uh I really first I got to thank my father for giving me the ability to think the way I do. We we we've done no till. I think we were the largest no tiller in Wisconsin at one time. So he gave me the ability to think this way. And next, you really got to appreciate the conservationist of Ring County, Chad Samson, and his his staff. They're the ones that nominated me for this, but um like they said, I'm I'm a co-chairman

of the watershed protection committee of re ring county and thank the board for letting us use the case eagle park for research. But Chad and his staff are our collaborators for that group, a producer group. And uh just hats off to them. They they they've helped me. They have helped their group. We're trying to change our county and how they do things. And very special award. I had no idea this was coming. And I I didn't expect this. I I feel like I should have done more to earn this, but I guess what I've done was enough. So thanks everybody.

Brian, on the behalf of Rene County, I want to thank you for practicing what we what we preach and helping us preach what you practice. So thank you very much. Good job.

Item number six, reading of the minutes of the previous meeting which is automatically waved unless requested by a majority of the members present. Seeing no objections, item number seven's resolution and ordinances referred to committee. Resolution number 2025-85 by individual supervisors requesting that the entire causeway leading to Rine County's Harbor Park. Adopt the name of Kippyawi Causeway was referred to the public works parks and facilities committee. Item number eight, introduction of resolutions and ordinances for first reading and referral.

Resolution number 2025-95 by Finance and Human Resources Committee creating 10 FTEE deputy sheriff sunset positions effective April 18th, 2026 and authorizing the transfer of 1,354,473 within the sheriff's office 2026 budget and authorizing a multi-year from 2026 to 2030 police services agreement with the village of Sturdivan. Resolution number 2025-96 by public works parks and facilities committee authorizing the decommissioning of a trail in Rine County known as the 100mile bike route. Resolution number 2025-97 by public works parks and facilities committee strongly urging the governor of Wisconsin and the state legislature to enact a comprehensive sustainable transportation funding solution. Resolution number 2025-98 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing a three-year agreement from 2026 to 2029 with the Tyler Technologies for the payment of jurors. Resolution number 2025-99 by finance and human resources committee authorizing a tenative agreement between Rine County and the sheriff's office command staff for the years of 2025 through 2028 and resolution number 2025-100 by finance and human resources committee authorizing the settlement of the claim of Thomas Workis Miller you've had some meetings tonight

thank you Mr. chairman. Uh first of all, um the finance and human resources committee met earlier this evening and requested or sent to this body um for first and second reading I'm sorry for first reading only. No action tonight. Uh resolutions 2025 101 and 102. And these are conveying um properties to first of all the city of Rine and second of all the village of unpleasant. So I would ask unanimous consent that these be introduced for first reading only.

See no objections. Resolution number 2025-101 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing the sale and transfer of inrim parcels 1236 Street parcel ID number 276000000003578001 and 12296th Street parcel ID 2760000000035782 to the city of Rine in the amount of 55,000 32 and resolution number 2025-102 by finance and human resources committee authorizing the sale on transfer of inrim parcels. Glenn Eagles drive lot 2, parcel ID51032214117020 and Glenn Eagles drive lot number three parcel ID151032214117030 to the village of Mount Pleasant in the amount of $12,32.

Supervisor Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And then the uh health and human development committee met last evening and uh voted unanimously to send to this body for first reading only resolution 2025103. So I would ask unanimous consent that that be allowed. No objections. Resolution number 2025-103 by the Health and Human Development Committee in support of entering into a memorandum of understanding with the continuum of care for the city and county of Rine Homelessness and Housing Alliance of Rine County designating Rine County as the collaborative applicant to effectively plan and manage coordinated homeless assistance resources.

Item number nine, communications and claims. Number one, a public comment from Dan Given. Item number one is received and filed in the county clerk's office.

Number two, notice of public hearing on amendment of a multi-jurisdictional comprehensive plan for Walworth County 2050 from Walworth County. Number three, application of American Transmission Company LLC is an electric public utility for a certificate of public conveyance and necessity to construct and operate the Elmroad Rine transmission line project consisting of a new 345 KB transmission line located primarily in the city of Oak Creek, Milwaukee County, the city of Rine and the villages of Mount Pleasant and Calonia Rine County, Wisconsin from the public service commission of Wisconsin. Number four, resolution of the town board of the town of Waterford authorizing participation in the preparation of a cooperative cooperative boundary plan pursuant to section 66.037 Wisconsin stats from the town of Waterford. And number five, resolution of the village board of the village of Waterford authorizing participation in the preparation of a cooperative boundary plan pursuant to section 66.0307 Wisconsin stat from the village of Waterford. Items number two through five are referred to the economic development and land use planning committee.

Number six, transportation resolution urging um the governor of Wisconsin and the state legislature to to enact a comprehensive sustainable transportation funding solution from Sawyer County. Item number six is referred to public works parks and facilities committee. Number seven, resolution urging the legislative action to address county funding challenges under Wisconsin's tax levy freeze from Sawyer County. Items number seven is referred to the Finance and Human Resources Committee.

Number eight is a claim against the county. Numbers 9 through 12 are foreclosures of mortgage mortgages and items number 13 through 24 are notifications from the United States Bankruptcy Court. Items number 8 through 24 are referred to Finance and Human Resources Committee and Corporation Council Communications. Supervisor Wishaw. Thank you, Chairman. Copies of number two, four, five, six, and eight, please. Supervisor Pricer, I have items number six and seven. Mr. Chairman, Supervisor H. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I request items 2 through six. Supervisor Mcrenolds.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Copies of 2, three, and eight, please. Supervisor Spencer. Um, copies of number two, number six, and number seven, please. Supervisor Coleman. Thank you, Chairman. Just eight. I'll have seven and eight. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Can I get three, four, five, and eight? Any Supervisor Hoffman? I get copies of 2, three, seven, and eight, please. Supervisor Miller 24 and five. Supervisor Cobb 24 and five. Also, any further requests?

Item number 10, communications from the county executive. Report number 2025-64 by county executive making a reappointment to the housing authority of Rine County was referred to the health and human development committee. Supervisor Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Last evening, the Health and Human Development Committee met and unanimously recommended that Amanda Roman be uh confirmed as the county executives reappointment to this body. So, I would so move. Second.

Motion's been made and seconded. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, all in favor say I. Opposed. Motion carried. Next, we have report number 2025-65 by County Executive making an appointment and reappoint to the Commission on Aging and the Aging and Disability Resource Center board. This was referred to the Health and Human Development Committee. Supervisor Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, last evening, the Health and Human Development Committee met and unanimously recommended confirmation of Eugene Dunc and James Slarzinski of Mount Pleasant and Pamela Lero of Franksville to these bodies. And so I would move for confirmation.

Motion's been made and seconded. Any comments or questions? Seeing none, I'll call a question. All in favor say I. Opposed. Motion carried. Report number 2025-66 by county executive making reappointments to the rine county human services board. This was referred to the health and human development committee. Supervisor Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, last evening, the Health and Human Development Committee met and unanimously recommended that this body uh confirm Brenda Denulovich and Rhonda Zuck to this body. And I would so move. Okay.

Motion has been made and seconded. Any comments or questions? Seeing none, all in favor say I. Opposed. Supervisor Hopkins. Uh, report number 2020. 71 by county executive making reappointments to the golf course improvement committee was referred to the public works parks and facilities committee.

I was just excited not to call supervisor Miller. Supervisor Hopkins, Supervisor or Director Bean, could you Pardon my apologies. Those candidates were voted unanously to those respective positions.

I'd like to make a motion for another beer. Motion has been made and seconded to put supervisor QA Shakur and Frank Sturban back on the golf and golf improvement committee. Any comments or questions? All in favor say I. Opposed? Motion carried. And then we have report number 2025-72 by county executive making an appointment to the Rine County Human Services Board. Refer that to the Health and Human Development Committee.

Okay. Number 11, standing committee reports containing recommended items on referral referred. We have no reports. Second reading of resolutions and ordinances. Under majority vote, we have resolution number 2025-93 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing and adopting a debt management policy to direct the use, management, and reporting rine county's debt financings and resolution number 2025-94 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing modifications to the compensation structures and classifications for non-represented Rine County employees. Mr. here. Motion has been made and seconded. Supervisor Miller.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh 202593 uh is uh the creation of a uh county uh debt policy. Our finance director, Gwen Zimmer, has worked extensively and very hard uh creating this uh working with multiple resources on what would be an appropriate um policy. This is something that the bonding agencies like to see and uh I was uh asked that we could let her uh speak to it.

Thank you. Um so we spoke about this at the the budget meetings last year. Supervisor Pricer brought up, do we have a a policy that limits us on our debt capacity? State statutes allow us to bond 5% of our equalized value. So that total limit is $1.2 2 billion. We would never bond that much. I don't think anyone would really bond that much. Um so in working with our financial adviserss under the advisement of the GFOA, Government Finance Officers Association, the bonding authority, um S&P, our bond rating, we put together a policy. We used a lot of different examples. Portage County recently passed their own policy, but we pulled from a lot of different areas. Um, this policy does limit us in two specific areas about refunding. So, every time we go out for debt issuance, we look at all of our other debt and we see if the current interest rates are better than what the bonding was for those interest rates. And so, the limitation would be we want to see at least a 3% savings on it. And then um further limiting ourselves from 5% to 3% that was at the discussion of the finance and human resources committee. That would make our limit 757 million currently. And with the issuance that is closing tomorrow on the behavioral health building, we are at 211 million. So we'll have 500 million in change left to be able to bond. Are there any questions or comments?

Right. Great. Oh, wait a minute. Supervisor Rossy. Thank you, Chairman.

Thank you, Director Zimmer, and any other supervisor that was involved in advocating for this. I just wanted to caution everyone that this is something good to have, but we could still triple our current debt capacity and we'd be well beyond salvageable at that point. So, I just want everyone to be aware that this is great to have, but this doesn't stop us from, you know, putting ourselves in worse financial straits. Thank you. and then resolution 202594. Supervisor Miller.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, this is uh implementation of uh adjustments in compensation based on the uh our salary study and we had extensive presentation on this at an earlier county board meeting. I would let uh Director Street and possibly the county executive make any comments they wish to make about this.

County Executive.

Good evening, supervisors. I'd like to say a few words about this to begin with and a few general words. I wanted to be understood in here that the effects of property taxes are not lost on me. As I look around the room here, up until a few years ago, I might have been the largest payer of property taxes in this room, and I might still be. So, I totally understand the effects of property tax. Okay? That being said, it's my job to bring forth a reasonable budget and to live within that budget. So, when I bring something to the board, it is with those parameters in mind. Tonight, you're going to hear about the salary study. And I want everyone to understand that we cannot operate in a vacuum. Our employees are watching what we do. Our community is watching what we do. And our municipalities are watching what we do. Last night at RCIC meeting, we talked about con consortiums, buying groups, and so on and so forth. You're going to see increased opportunity for municipalities to partner up with us. Okay, this is a different subject than the salary study. That being said, when we talk about our partners with municipalities and working together, that is where true tax savings will start happening. Okay? If we can save a dollar out of taxes at Sturdivvent or Ring County, it doesn't matter. We saved our taxpayers a dollar. If we save a dollar in Burlington, it doesn't matter. We saved our taxpayers a dollar. Rishing County cannot operate in a vacuum. We need to keep in mind our municipalities that we operate with. And again, tonight we're presenting a salary study here. I

totally believe it's the right thing to do. We have it covered with the budget this year. It's my job to see to it that it'll be covered and be sustainable for next year. I've been asked by a few of you, is this sustainable? I will not bring anything forth that is not sustainable that I do not believe in my heart can't be sustained. That being said, I'm going to turn it over to Director Street for her presentation. And one more thing I'd like to add about that salary study. We haven't had a salary study done in forever. Everyone I've asked has said, "Nope. This is the start of a process probably they recommend every three to five years. That's how business does it. That's how we're going to do it. Thanks guys.

Chairman, just a quick point of order. Um yeah, let's have director street first. What What is your point of order? Just wanted to make was this um brought for special uh consideration? No. Is it too late to seek special consideration? We can we can split that off as special consideration. Thank you. Different. Yeah. So, let's have we'll have the director street.

All right. Good evening, chairman and members of the board. Um, tonight you're going to be voting on to approve the salary study framework um that's been developed for rine county by McGrath human resources group. This framework is designed to be fair, competitive, and sustainable. This process began back in July of 2024 when this board unanimously approved the study. Since then, employees and leadership have been actively involved in every step of the way. In February of 2025, employees completed position questionnaires to ensure that their duties and responsibilities were accurately captured. That information was reviewed alongside internal comparisons, external market data, and more than 22 comparable organizations. The methodology was shared at the committee of the whole meeting on February 24th, and implementation was discussed at the Finance and Human Resources Committee on March 4th. As McGrath has identified, the county's current compensation structure has become overly complex, inconsistent, and increasingly uncompetitive. This proposal addresses those challenges by transitioning the county to a simplified single range pay system with 23 payrades. Equally important, these recommendations can be implemented within the adopted 2026 budget using funds that have already been approved by this board. This is not an unbudgeted expense, but an opportunity to act on a well-vetted plan using resources that are already in place. In short, we've done the work, we have the funding, and we're ready to move forward. Thank you for your consideration tonight. I am now going to turn it over to our consultant

from McGrath, Melena Hoverson Maize to give a brief presentation and overview.

Good evening to the county board of supervisors. My name is Molina Halverson Mace. I am a senior consultant with McGrath human resources group and I uh I have been in front of many of you in previous meetings but it occurred to me that I haven't actually um really formally introduced myself and my background and so if you can just bear with me uh for for a quick moment um I've been with McGrath now for the past 12 years and I work predominantly with municipalities and counties all across the United States working on their compensation and benefit uh benefit structures. Um a lot of those projects are within the state of Wisconsin because I am a Wisconsin resident. I was born in Wisconsin and raised in Wisconsin and I have raised my family in Wisconsin and my entire professional career has also been in Wisconsin. Before I started working with Matt McGrath, I uh I was a sitting HR director and I worked in human resources for 20 years, 15 of which was at the county level um in Triple County, Wisconsin. And so I in that 15 years time, the uh I had the privilege of seeing the landscape of county government, the the complexities that that you um experience on on a daily, weekly, annual um budgetary, you know, processes. I I I understand it. Um I was an HR director through ACT 10 and we saw how that landscape changed. We have watched um you know consolidations. We have watched consortiums be developed over the course of years and I was part of that process and now I have a completely different vantage point where I as a consultant am coming in and I am helping assist and facilitate um

government entities in the state um you know with with their compensation. And so I I I want to just be able to put that out there that um that that I understand that you know what the ask is here this evening. I I had the honor of sitting in front or sitting in the back here before the meeting when you were starting to talk about your budgets and um that's a real difficult that's a real difficult conversation. I understand that because I know that that our state um internally we face a lot of challenges um coming in the next couple of years. But there's a couple of things that I do want to just mention before I get into the slides and I promise I'll be brief and you've seen all of these slides before that um as we're talking about funding because there is an ask on funding here this evening for for the adoption of this. I view this as an investment. This is an investment in your employees and investments in your employees are investments into their comm into your community because they are the ones that are providing the direct and indirect services to your constituents. So, as you are thinking about um looking ahead with your budgets and you're thinking about your infrastructures and your brick and mortar because all of that is important to be able um to provide those services to your constituents. We please do not lose sight of the internal infrastructure that you need as an organization. um you cannot provide these services to your to your constituents if you don't have the human capital to be able to do that. And what the ask is of of this particular project this evening, it's to place all of the salary ranges within your organization to get them aligned um to what the ask is is the 50th percentile. Although I would love for you to be at a higher level. Um, at this

time we are asking for you to get to that average. And what that means for some of your positions is that there's minimal or not a lot of change and for other positions it means that there is going to be more change and that does come with with somewhat of a cost to you. So with that I will thank you very much for allowing me that opportunity. Let's talk a little bit about the compensation study just to give you um just a one last refresh before before you take this to vote. if um I can have someone maybe um forward the slide. So when we do our studies uh we have a very consistent methodology. You may agree and you may disagree with that methodology. Um but this is the methodology that McGrath has and it is a very similar methodology for other compensation uh vendors that you will have in in the system. Um, we first met with your organization, your departments to understand what programs, operations, and services that are provided so that we could better understand individual positions because we know that across 72 counties, everyone does that a little bit differently and there's no such thing as an exact comparison. We then were studied your job descriptions. We studied your policies. We studied um the current systems that you have in place. We asked the employees to complete position questionnaires so that we could better understand what their um roles and responsibilities are according to them and verified by their supervisors. We went out to the market to collect data. Um we'll talk about who those comparators are in a moment. And then I came back and I uh with my recommendations and I I met with HR. I've met with all of your department directors. they've all had an opportunity to provide feedback um to be able to present those final uh recommendations to you here this evening. We do have a list of comparable

organizations. Um they are listed in your report from the questions that have been asked. I I I trust that um everyone has read that report. So this is going to be just a brief overview and you can reference the report if you have any specific questions. All right, moving on. I think your big thing here, um, is that your compensation system that you have in place today, it's not working effectively for you anymore. Um, so we know, you know, that we've got some positions that are going to need to be moved. Um, you know, more alignment with the market. Some are are doing fine, but one of your bigger challenges is that you have multiple systems and those systems seem to be band-aid. They they they're bandaided together. I don't know if that's an appropriate word or not. Um the the county has been trying to focus on making individual adjustments based upon um what they felt has been needs from from um recruitment and and from a recruitment and a retention status, but overall you don't really have a model that's talking to one another. Um and so what our goal here was was to get the county on one system that you can that you can manage effectively. Um it has a lot of administrative ease to it that um it is not only aligned to the external market but we also studied positions to make sure that we had that internal alignment with positions um that are taken care of. So, one of the big big takeaways for the county is that you will now have a singular streamlined system that is going to be well aligned to the external market. So, to recap, uh we it is a request for um or a recommendation for one singular system. We've got it broken down into four different areas, but they all talk to each other. So, as we make one move in one area, everything will um

everything will be updated at the same time. It is aligning you at least to the 50th percentile. You're not going to be the highest paid, nor are you going to be the lowest paid um amongst your competitors. It has 23 unique pay grades. And we have um made sure that you have proper separation between 7 and 10% to make sure that we are adequately trying to address the compression that you might have between your ranks. The county still retains um your your um authority with your ability to pay and um you know so the progression through that range does not change. Um all of those policies stay uh stay intact. One of the um other areas that you know as I was um kind of being kept up on the types of questions that was coming in um really was we've got the market and and you know we've got all of the you know we got all of these different factors um you know why aren't we just like the community next door and the answer to that is is that you're not going to be exactly like the community next door. We have multiple considerations when we're building models and we have four primary cornerstones. The cornerstone number one is the market, but your market is one of over 20 different comparables. And so you're not going to be exactly like the community um next door. Number two is the position analysis. All of those position questionnaires that we asked for employees to complete that then we analyzed. Number three is compression and the level of separation that we need within a department and across um rank structures. And number four is internal comparability. And a good way of ex I'm going to just got to grab a position that you don't have here. Um but I was working with another client here in the last week is groundskeepers. They had a groundskeeper out of the public works department that does um like right away mowing and then they had a groundskeeper

in a golf course. Two different markets. And we said, "All right, what are we going to do here?" because we have two different markets here but but they are doing very similar work just in two different areas and so how are we going to align them together and that would be internal comparability. So all four of those factors and all of those positions might carry a little bit different weight in all four of those factors that makes up the cornerstone of your new system. So with that uh very very quick overview um I am here to answer any questions that you might have this evening. Any questions?

I'm Go ahead, Supervisor Cole.

Um, I brought it up earlier in a different meeting. Um, because the study is older already when it was started. I mean, we lost 600 jobs in Rine County this week. Um, how does that affect when you get on a role the negative way? How does that change something of a study like this? Like I say, I brought up in the finance quit rate among employees has dropped. I think it's down over a third of what it was. Um, since this started study started, um, economy is changing. You know, people have highest credit card debt we've had in a long ever. It's off the charts actually. Um, how does that go into a salary study and things that have changed in the last three months versus 2024?

Yep. And and that's a that's a legitimate question for sure. The um you know what, there's always this um people that are working government, they're always frustrated sometimes that government's a little bit slow to react. Um and this would be a a really good reason why our sometimes our slow reactions are going to be beneficial for us. um because we are usually a little bit delayed from what's happening in go you know going on in in the private sector. So um you know number one I would say that um the 50th percentile is a real good position to be in um and the because wages don't typically go down. They may not increase as fast as they had historically but then so they may remain flat for the next couple of years but they don't necessarily go down. We don't see that very often. Not to say that we won't see that when we um we also recommend that you do a market update though once every 3 to 5 years and that should help capture if you've got anything happening with the market. So if indeed something has happened where you've slowed or stalled, we're going to we'll catch that. Um but that does not prevent you or stop you from being you know being those um you you know the consumer of the of the of the tax dollar in an appropriate manner that when you are when you are identifying how much those salary adjustments are going to be in in the next budget cycle you have control of that and if that might mean that those salary adjustments are going to slow down just simply given what your financial situation may be. Um I I don't think that because you're right. I mean the study is done and and everything about the study is it was when we took the snapshot of the data right the day after that that um that information is old and um you know we we can't necessarily scale it back because we don't have a we don't have an economic indicator which to do that by.

I I would say that um you know that you watch and and we do a study or not not quite to this magnitude, a market update is what we call them in about three years to see how you're doing against the market and you might find that you're just keeping with that 50th and that's a good thing. Do you see like though when you have a a run on job loss in a county, do people go to the county and go to the municipalities for security because they just got laid off and there's more security in a government job than there is non-government.

If you were asking me that question a decade ago, the answer to that would have been an absolute yes. Absolutely. Because um that that is where you would go for that security. You have the insurance, you have the WRS. What is really unknown at this point is the new workforce because the new workforce doesn't necessarily, and when I say the new workforce, I'm going to I'm going to broad brush stroke here, the younger generation. They don't understand the value of insurance. They don't understand the value of the Wisconsin retirement. And um when you compound that public sector is a very unglamorous area to work in, you still have some of those cards stacked against you. Will you have a better time of your recruitment? I expect that you probably will. Yes. Because you will have some folks that are going to absolutely want to um have that protection, right? that that um that you know they they're not going to be feeling the es and the flows in the private sector necess you know and they know that they're not going to be experiencing that in the public sector. So will the county will the county will we see some stronger numbers? It's very possible. I can't promise that. I certainly cannot predict that.

Supervisor Wish. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What's the cost to the county in doing a revision of this every 3 to 5 years? um in terms of how much it's going to cost for like the implementation, how much is it going to cost per me the county? Yeah. So, usually what happens is we have a an amount that we charge per um per position. And so, um what we like to do is about 25 to 30% of what the original cost of the study was. And what was the cost of the study? I don't know. That was not my that comes out of my business office. I don't ever know what the contract amount is. Uh, does the amount 200 and some thousand? Does that ring a bell?

So, we got approved up to 200,000. To date, we've paid about 120,000. So, run that by me again. How much would it be for 3 to 5 years? Yeah. 25 to 30% is usually what the cost is. Okay. And who decides on it if it's updated every 3 years or every 5 years? The county. Thank you very much, Supervisor Miller.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, should the board approve this, it would take effect in September. I should have asked this ahead of time, but do we have a number then when this takes effect, we have an annual salary amount for all county employees? Do we have uh what what I'm looking for is regarding sustainability? What would a 1% increase under this new setup cost us? It's probably a finance question. Y okay.

I don't have that number of what a 1% once this is implemented. I do know the cost that it would cost for 2027 for a full year. Um once all the grants and revenue have been applied it would be uh 1.2 million approximately once the grants are offsetting the wages it would be gross would be 1.9. Yes. Again I I apologize for not asking but Gwen might have the answer.

I'm just going to do quick math. The total uh salary cost for the entire county is about $70 million. However, that includes deputies and command which are under a different contract. So, let's say it's 60 million. 1% of that 600,000 and that's gross. That doesn't include any other grants. Supervisor wish

um Supervisor Miller is basing or asking for 1% overall straight across the board. Are we giving pay increases to everybody just straight across the board or are we doing it on a uh on a review process where people are getting increases based on what they're doing?

So there's separate increases. So employees receive an uh an evaluation and they get a merit increase based off of the score of their evaluation between a zero and a 3% and then we have typically done a general or a cola increase um which is included in the budget. So, what this does is if there are employees that are under the new minimum, it's going to bring them up to the minimum um with a minimum of 1% and for employees that are already within the new range, they would get to the 1% that they would typically get at. That's not a a re review process. You're just bringing them up to where wherever this says they should.

Correct. So, we're letting the market kind of drive where they should be through this study and then next year they would be eligible for a merit increase again. as long as it's approved in the budget. And what you're calling a merit increase is what I'm calling a raise based on on what they're doing and how good a job they're doing. Yes. And is the merit uh increase a percent just a straight percent or is it

it's a so the employees get a score. So the supervisor scores them in a in a in a number of categories and the system we have um pro provides a score one to 100 and then based on their score is how we decide whether they're getting a zero, a one or a two or a three.

Okay. and cola. Um I I already mentioned that once in one meeting about my feeling on cola, but um I have to set that aside because I I I'm in the private sector. We don't get cola um other than diet, you know. So, uh, sorry for the pun, but, uh, the cola increase is going to be a percentage based on that would be determined, I think that would be brought forward, um, in the 2027 budget that there would be a recommendation when that budget is presented to you.

Were you getting the where's the percentage of the cola increase? What is that determined by? It's federal government. No, I think it's just standard for um public sector and I do have a I do communicate with my colleagues so that I know what other counties are going to propose in their budgets as well. So there is some communication to see what other municipalities are doing for the cola and Molina might be able to speak further.

What we recommend is that you um the economic indicator that you identify just be consistent with. So you you could use CPIU um you could use the WERC CPI number because that was certainly going to be one that you use with the collective bargaining process as well. It's very specific to Wisconsin. The other one that you can do is much to what um what what director street was saying um where you contact the comparators and you um you understand what they have done to their salary ranges and then you do a calculation so that all right what the goal is is that our salary ranges should be adjusted by this x amount to make sure that we retain the 50th percentile so that we're keeping aligned to that. So a market update should not result in a significant shift per se. Um so it and then so you have one of any of three options and of course you come up with your own option as well and we simply just ask be consistent do the same economic indicator do it the same time each year so that um those market updates then shouldn't have a fluctuation because you've chosen to pick a different indicator along the way. So what external numbers are we are you using to determine that? Is it rate of inflation? Is it what is it?

Okay, I'm not following. Are are you asking what we've used in the past years for increases? Well, I don't know how you're going to base this one. I mean, I would be more interested since if we were going to approve this, what are you going to base that number on that they're going to get? Molina provided some options and I think that the county executive would we would put that into the budget. with it. What our recommendation? We don't have a recommendation for 2027 at this time. So, you you haven't determined the method that you're going to use yet to determine that number. Yes. Correct. This isn't that's not what um is being considered for tonight, but we're going to have to do it eventually because it's in the in this plan.

Corre correct. Well, and we are approving what we're approving tonight is the changes to um position titles. If there's a change with the position title and changing the grades, not everything within the report, um, we're going to have to meet, the county executive and I will meet together and prioritize the other items in the report to see what are top priorities for him that he sees top of mind and then we would be bringing those to the committee and the board um for implementation. So, not everything in the report is being approved. Before you do a cost of living increase, is that coming before the board? It would be in the budget. It would be in the 2027 budget as a line item.

Um, I believe it's normally built into the department's wages line, but it won't be separated to tell us that that's what it is. It's just a a wage increase, but it's not based on cost. That's how it's always been done historically. And I'm not sure because we haven't started the 2027 budget. I'm not sure how what the approach will be for 202. My my position on that would be I'd like to see a separate line on what that is and what how it affects the wages and that would just be my recommendation. Thank you,

Supervisor Pricer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I mean, if I understand right, we're just resetting the framework for for the the compensation program, right? studying the grades, making sure the grades are have a market value adjustment to be at the 50 50th percentile. So, we're not trying to be the highest paid county in the state. We're not trying to be last. We just want to be somewhere in the middle. We will determine as a board what raises going forward are are made to that and it hasn't been determined yet because we haven't given direction on that yet. Do I understand that right?

You are correct. Um, I mean, my hope is the board does approve this after unanimously approving to do the study and all the work that's been done in the study. It seems reasonable to me and based on all my experience with the companies I've worked for and the compensation classes I I've taken for my degrees. Um, I also am would be concerned that we don't want to start sending a message that employees feel like they need to unionize or be represented or not be treated fairly by uh by the county. So, the board did unanimously approve earlier this year raises for the deputies and investigators of 2 and a half, four, six, and 6% going into the future. Um, we did not approve that for the sheriff's position. Um, but FHR has also um proposed similar increases for the command staff, so sergeants and lieutenants, which were just for first reading tonight, but we'll be voting on for the next time. and that between those it's impacting 133 for the deputies and investigators and 22 more for uh command staff. So that's 155 of the population. So um that that's my thought. It seems fair and reasonable to me and I don't think we want to encourage um people to be represented. Thank you

Supervisor H.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. I really don't have any questions. Although you probably will respond to a few of my comments when I took a look at this when I reviewed the whole and I like to call it a compensation study which I saw the wording up there. It's not a wage survey that we're talking about in my opinion because we're addressing multiple factors in how people are being compensated whether it has to do with the pay or whether it has to do with personal benefits and so on. And when I I there were five bullets that I put down when I went through this initially. Number one, it addressed my first concern with with really was more about a philosophy. What are we trying to get to? And that's when you said we're getting to 50% and then we're going to gradually potentially move it up to 60%. That's logical. Whether I agree or disagree, at least I understand what the philosophical approach is and it makes sense to me. The next thing I looked at was the ranges. And to me, the ranges are the right way to go because everybody does fall into a different tier. Now, I will say that in looking at the ranges, there are probably a lot of questions or a lot of reasons why people could say, I'm not sure I agree with it being that much or that little, but at least I see where the plan is. I see it's logical. Then from there, it was important when I heard you say and you said this the other day in a conversation that we are going to be doing a performancebased evaluation process. This is not automatic increases. And I think that's pretty important because we want people to perform for what it is they're getting paid and not just assume end of the year I'm going to get 2%. End of the year I'm going to get 3%. I like the fact that someone could get more or may get less based on how they are performing and their responsibility to and including especially supervisors. They're the ones that are obviously responsible for the direction of the

department. The next one is that I shared a little earlier that this addressed all aspects of the compensation plan. I looked at PTO vacation. I looked at the the health benefits with the child care discussion and so on. agree, disagree, at least this was comprehensive in that regard and it made sense to me. And then the last thing that I I really on my notes was that we talked about it earlier tonight when we establish a framework for what it is we're going to look to achieve in future year's budgets. making sure that we then as a board are responsible to hold accountable the the staff to deliver on those objectives. That's the decisions we'll make going forward. And so from my perspective looking at these numbers, yeah, I can probably sit here and talk for hours. Should it be this or should it be that? But the end of the day, I still believe strongly that my responsibility to support the constituents of my district is to try to hold the staff accountable to deliver on what it is they're saying they're going to do and not try to determine exactly what that's going to look like. But having said that, um, Supervisor Rossy has been very supportive to try to give us all a bunch of information. Not a bunch, real meaningful information. And I am hoping that as you're looking at making these decisions that that is being very carefully evaluated as a part of the final decision because I there are some numbers that jump off the page at you and we don't need I don't need to get into the minutiae tonight but from my perspective I would be saying that if we're going to hold you accountable then what we need to do is be in a position to try to say you get to make that decision but going forward as we

see what how the profit and loss statements are running for the county as we see how the departments are performing that to me will tell me that we are now moving forward I heard it earlier one three fiveyear plans looking towards the future this is a great starting point to do that let's just make sure we're not starting in a way that's going to put us behind the eightball starting already in 27 by the Hey, I think we're two months from the budget starting for next year. Not even maybe. Okay. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Supervisor Wish.

I got one final comment. Um, and I brought this up before and I have to thank you. Uh, I don't want to Sometimes I come off as being kind of negative. I don't want to be negative in this case because I asked for this 15 years ago. Um, we I struggled with trying to look at pay increases for everyone working in the county and we had nothing to base it on. It was a number or it was a 1% or was a 2% and it was across the board and there was no accountability, no performance review per se. You may have done it but you know really I don't think it had anything bearing to do with compensation. This is way overdue. Way, way overdue. And we are behind. I know 50% is where you want to have us be at, which should probably be more, but this should have been done 15 years ago. And it was all about expense. Nobody wanted to bite the bullet and pay for the study to be done. And I think that cost us quite a bit of money and a number of employees. So, thank you for doing it. appreciate it.

So, so I'm going to make a comment. Um, this was thought up by Jonathan Degrave and when I was acting I had to convince a few people to do this and I said, "Let's think about this as a snowplow." Nobody in this room has a problem buying a snowplow. And you can't buy a snowplow for $120,000 anymore. And we've done this in the past. When I first got on this board, we did reclassifications on up every two weeks. And that was the shotgun approach to trying to fix this problem. And it didn't work. We'd all of a sudden have no electrician. Well, we got to raise the rate. So we got to do reclassifications. When ARPA came along, we had a problem in certain services ser certain areas that we could address with ARPA. You know, correctional officers, social workers, uh juvenile detention, public works. At that time, we spent about $3.5 million a year to bring those salaries up because we could get ARPA to pay for it. And then, you know what, Jonathan said, we'd we'd have we'd take net new construction and lay it against it. Now, best lane pans didn't happen. So, we got in a little bit of a struggle. this is a a step in the right direction to put everybody you know in a in and I you know and I've got you know a couple supervisors talking about it tonight you know that I that they agree. So I I think it's a a study it needs to be

implemented um because the human capital we have and and that's what uh the expert said from McGrath is the human capital is what we got here. We don't do anything else. We we are service industry. The government is a service industry. If we don't have the human capital that we can be competitive with, that's a problem. And yes, just like with ARPA money, when people seen us raise correctional officers salary, what happened around the state? The state raised theirs. Kenosha raised theirs. Milwaukee County raised theirs because guess what? They've seen it worked. And yeah, they're probably jumping above ours now. And it's kind of a leaprog as we go through these these uh situations where we do the reviews. they're going to find out, well, we're a little bit behind and they're going to go up or we're gonna find three to five years from now that well everything's good except this area because you know so that's it's very good plan and program so I support it. Any other questions or supervisor Rossi?

Thank you chairman. Um, one of the point, you know, one of the concerns I have with this study, and I I would like to start by saying that I do support giving uh pay increases, and I I really support giving pay increases where there's the most need. And that's one of the bigger issues I have with the study is that um turnover, existing turnover is not really a factor in uh prioritizing pay increases. Um, we hear about turnover. As a matter of fact, it was one of the presentations that was given is that turnover is one of the biggest things we're or it's the primary concern we're trying to address. We want to reduce turnover and improve retention. Um turnover was uh one of the items that uh for the report was asked of the department heads when surveys were given. But I was surprised to hear that that really didn't come into play in the uh the actual analysis here and recommendations. Um, and the reason I say that is there are certain departments that are still not getting um, what I thought would be an appropriate raise. Communications, you know, it's a department that um, is seeing 31% turnover. It's only it's, you know, it's getting 10%. I thought that there'd be more in those uh, those allocations. Public works highway. Um, it's a 19% turnover. It's getting 4.3. Um, there's some more critical ones in there. um highway maintenance workers, it's it's actually getting a reduction. Um deputy HSD director is getting a reduction and records coordinators getting a reduction. And I can't tell you if that's right or wrong, but I do know, you know, in highway and communications, those are areas that we all know we have issues with right now. So to hear the turnovers is not, you know, it's just this market analysis and that's the benchmark that we're not targeting areas that have retention issues right now is was a bit of a shock to me. Um, are there any comments on that? Otherwise, I'll go to the next.

Sure. Yes. I just want to clarify that no one is pay is being reduced. I think what supervisor Rossi is alluding to that the range might be going down, but we wouldn't be reducing any employees um wage through this study. So, no one's wage would go down. And then I would just also say that that has historically been the way that we were addressing issues is where you saw high turnover. And I just think that there's it long term it's not the best route without looking at all the positions because just because a position hasn't seen a high turnover doesn't mean next week it's going it it could start having turnover. There might just be an employee that's been sticking it out and they're fed up and they don't feel that they're being compensated appropriately. I really think it is important to look holistically at these issues and turnover can be caused by a lot more than just wages. It can be management. It can be schedules, it can be the actual job, the workload with the job. So, it's not just compensation when you're looking at turnover. You have to look at all the factors. Just a couple other thoughts here um before Supervisor Rossi continues. Um, when we ask about turnover, when we ask about positions that are difficult to fill, um, some of the messaging that we also know about is that the county has in the last couple of years tried to make adjustments because they were already feeling that and so some of the work was already accomplished um, and which resulted in some of these positions did not need to move much more. But when we I don't want to I don't want there to be a confusion of methodology of the development of the system which is the four cornerstones of market position analysis the compression separation and the internal comparability against compensation philosophy which is where you are going to position yourselves as an organization to establish your compensation amongst your market. we

established you at the 50th percentile which means you're at about the middle give or take. Okay, there's always going to be a little bit of fluctuation with that. So if you are feeling as an organization that you've got areas that you continue to need to work on, it becomes a philosophical question of is the 50th percentile. Is being average in our market strong enough for us or do we need to push that envelope up a little bit where we're talking about the 55th or the 60th. And that is when that information of the like the metrics the true metrics of the turnover and with the challenges that you have that helps you have that conversation. So there you really are talking about two different two different areas here. A follow up to that then would be um I believe in it was page 18 and 19 had the u adjustment philosophy or something along those lines but it recommended using um turnover as a metric to potentially implement extra market adjustments. Is that correct? So, one of the things in the back of the report or in a section of the report, we have policy recommendations and it will be up to the human resources department to review what those policy recommendations are and then bring forth those policies in the manner that is most appropriate for for your um your governing body. We recommend um that you have market adjustments available because we know that market like a true market study is only going to occur once every 3 to 5 years and that may not be enough. You might find um I like I will just use my personal experience. I had frack industry and literally in my backyard and they were coming in and they were stealing all of my highway operators at at the time $ 35 or $40 an hour and we needed to be responsive to that to that position without really interrupting or

disrupting the rest of the entire the entire system. So your metrics will help you see if there's something that might be happening. I call it the blip in the radar that might be happening before you can actually do a market update. I think you need to urge caution with that. I don't remember if I exactly wrote that in the report. Please use this as with caution because it is something that going that is going a little bit a little bit beyond um and we don't want there to be abuse of that situation. We want you to be able to follow the market update every 3 to 5 years as we recommend. But we know that there's going to be exceptions to the situation.

Question on that then just maybe an example will help me understand. Sure. So if there is a situation where it is identified that the primary reason that um a division um is having retention issues and so it's it's pay your recommendation is not to adjust that that division or that pay grade. It would be to adjust the entire county again.

Nope. That is not what I am saying at all. Um no no not at all. Um that that market adjustment is if there is a defined change in the market. Let's just let's talk about the golf course groundskeeper again for a moment. and all of the sudden um you have a PGA golf course and all of the sudden the PGA golf courses in your area have made a big move and and you know that you are $5 an hour off um and that is verified by either a third party or by the HR director that yes indeed the wages has been has been adjusted that you need to look at that particular classification to make a movement within number one you could either talk about a differing pay grade or you make adjustments within the range so that you are being trying to be responsive in the between doing market updates knowing that that market update will will will make the correction then. But no, we would not recommend that you make an entire change to the entire schedule. No.

So just to put this one to bed then. Sure. So I in this scenario then um we're always looking at the market data. We can't just look at one position when it's underpaid and say you know what we should probably just bump them up a few dollars. instead we need to do an analysis. Well, if I my recommendation is that you're using a very consistent methodology so that we don't start um degrading the entire system that we have spent the better part of a year developing for you.

All right, that makes sense. Um the the next question is in your RF or your proposal um one of the items that was detailed as a deliverable and uh maybe it's somewhere and it's under a different name was the it says in here on page 23 the consultants will develop a detailed fiscal impact of the compensation systems and will present implementation strategy options that fit the fiscal needs culture so on so forth. um is there a detailed fiscal impact document or portion of this uh report? So when we do compensation um studies, we have to come up with that fiscal number that you have a fiscal estimate that well that that fiscal estimate came from a detailed costing document that yes that McGrath worked with and gave to the county and um that was what resulted in that that estimated number that we re that we shared uh the last meeting that wasn't the last county board meeting but it was with with finance and we had we had talked about there were three different options that we had considered. So, um when all of this is all said and done, provided that the county board does adopt this, we will do one final costing because you have a number of people that have come and gone so that we can make sure that after the merit adjustments are done on April 1st, then we will do one final look at that to give the the total number to the county so that you can get that implemented. So, yes, that did occur. Is is that anywhere those numbers are those in the U uh study?

I don't remember seeing those. It's not part of the final report. It never is. Okay. So, we don't have that information available to us now other than what was presented in the the PowerPoint. No, that information because it's very specific employee wages. So we shared the overall fiscal impact which you see in the fiscal note and that's based on the best information that we currently have. Okay. Thank you. Um the next are just general comments. I don't necessarily need a back and forth. I didn't know if you want to end this segment and then have discussion or if I can just take it right to the next part. Go ahead. I'll leave you give you this little leeway to continue since you got the mic.

Um everyone saw there was a document that came out. Um it's an Excel document. It's basically a comparison between Kenosha and racing. And I understand the difference between um you know competitive market placement and then what uh I do because it's a very simple thing to do is just analyze where we are versus our neighbors. And I just wanted to talk about that a little bit because um I guess I was expecting something different out of this process. Um one of the things on the Excel document, you know, the current versus Kenosha comparison. So, it took the mid-range of all of our uh wages and compared them against Kenosha. So, on average, we're about $6,000 below what Kenosha pays. If you take all the positions as an aggregate, um 49 of our positions currently are paying above Kenosha and 146 of them are paying below. With this study, it almost flips perfectly inversely. Um we become 151 positions that are above the mid-range of Kenosha's pay and then 44 which are below. And that that's to the tune of 4735 on average higher pay than Kenosha. I always I always talk about Kosha because they have a lot of comparable metrics, but they one thing they have a little bit more of is cash flow. Um the I'm I I'm don't understand how we're going to pay for this. I've heard that um you know this this has been talked about on other levels and that there are decision makers watching this and um you know we are doing the right thing here. I I am concerned you know if we're looking at adding $1.2 million next year does and does that include um benefits or is that just base? Oh yeah, it was originally a million dollars plus when it I don't believe you were at the finance meeting that night, but that is the finance that's social security and Medicare and retirement I believe at 7.2 is what

we I asked for this. So it's about and I'm not sure if the uh liability insurance they added anything in there, but that's one or two points. Oh yeah, that's cuz I seen that too when when they flashed up is and I asked is that the is that got all of it in there? That and that does that.

Thank you, Chair. Um so if we're looking at 1.2 there and then the deputy sheriff's raises, the deputy command staff raises those alone. I mean, I think we're just shy of $3 million in raises for next year. And I know those won't be annualized, but the effects of those will be. Um, just uh so everyone's aware. And then the other document I passed out earlier, which is it shows our general countywide levy, which is operations on debt service. Um, the biggest operational increase that we saw since 2022 was 2.5 millions of our operational levy growth. So last year and uh the ones before that was 731, 1.3 million, and 800,000. So just on these three things that I mentioned, we'd be looking to beat next year's. I I'd like to understand exactly how that's going to happen and then moving forward, how we continue to fund that. And it really boils down to this. Two years ago, we had a very big hole that we filled with a county sales tax. And we all know that we've chewed through most of that now. We've done nothing, at least that I can see, to address an operational issue. If we continue on this path, we're doomed to run into the same situation. I'm not against the salary study, but I it's hard for me to approve it in this situation where I don't see how we can afford it moving forward. I did think that this was going to focus more on addressing the lower paid tiers and the the problem areas within the county. Um the the market approach is is interesting to me especially since we are going to be you know leaping over Kenosha's pay and not that may not necessarily be a bad thing but I'd like to see how we are going to afford it. So again that $3 million that doesn't even include the other oper other um

operational items. So, at this point, I it's very hard for me to accept this and I'd really prefer that this be part of the budget process and then address retroactively to cover the three or four months that we're looking at doing this year. Okay. Tony Executive,

I got to say, I'm I'm more than a little bit perplexed. As I said earlier, it's my job to present a balanced budget to get there. If we need to make adjustments, I will make the appropriate adjustments. That being said, last year, one year ago, right now, we put $4.1 million of surplus back into the reserves. We outperformed our budget. This year, we'll probably come close to the same. I don't want to promise a dollar amount, but we will have a surplus again this year. The sales tax numbers are outperforming what they were projected at. Again, when we were going through the budget process, I think you said yourself, Supervisor Rossy, we can't compare to our neighbors. They drive a Cadillac. We drive a Chevy. I don't know what the message is here, but I will tell you the message is very clear from me. I will put forth a reasonable budget, pretty much what you talked about earlier, and it will be my job to hold the staff accountable to make that budget. That's all I got to say about that.

Any further comments, Supervisor Co? I just I think this would be for Sarah. Um on those seven or 12 positions that were um over the 50%, I know like the current employee isn't going to get a pay reduction, but then when you start, say one of them leaves, um do you figure then you'd lower the pay scale back to 50% when you go to hire? So, this is do leave it closer to what the position is already. And I'm not sure which 10 positions you're talking about. Maybe it was on the There was like a couple positions that were already over the 50%. So, there's the report that was

there's um 558 employees that are currently going to be in the new range and there are 328 that would be below that new range that are going to be brought up. Um to your question about when somebody leaves and somebody's hired, our current policy is that the county executive has the authority to go up to the midpoint in the range. So it would depend on a lot of factors. What are other employees in that current um scale currently making because we don't want to leaprog somebody else? Um what is the market like? So it's there's a lot that would go into that. But since we haven't had this framework before, it's kind of hard for me to say exactly how that's going to work because I think it will be different depending on the position.

I thought one of the reports had like everybody that was under there was only like a few positions that there was like one or two that really stood out that were like way over the 50% when they were broke down in the Excel spreadsheet. And that's what I was wondering if they were like way over the Oh, so you're saying ones that wouldn't their current range? Yes. And they're way over. There was like two positions that were Okay. Yeah, I'm following you. Yes. Now, if when you go to the new hire, are you anticipating going back down closer to the 50%?

Well, most of the time we would be hiring close to the minimum, but there might be exceptions where we do get the county executive's authority to go up to the midpoint. That's the highest we can go without going to the finance and human resources committee to get approval. Supervisor Wish,

we've got a commitment from the uh county executive that he's going to make his budget and we're it's up to us to approve that budget. If we don't like the budget, we don't approve it or we ask for the adjustments. This is a starting point. We need a starting point. Uh we haven't had one. Um I get it that you know the numbers in some cases may show that we're you know in we may be in trouble. The county executive already has made a commitment. Um and it's up to us to to either change that commitment if we have to or don't agree with it or whatever when the time comes. But I'm willing to to give him that now. Um I'll take him at his word and u you know we had we went through the budget process the last time. It wasn't an easy one and there were some changes that we need to made and they were made. So we need a place to start. This system I think is a necessary system if we want to be able to hold people accountable and base it on a performance review. And the the thing about the retention, a lot of that can be resolved uh in one-on-one meetings with the employee and finding out, okay, what is it? Why is there turnover? Why are you leaving? Is it a pay situation? uh you you mentioned uh emergency services or 911 whatever uh communications that's a very high stress job. There's a lot of high turnover just not in our county it's everywhere. Um that may be a you know a situation where there's uh counseling that's got to be done with those people. maybe more intensive than with anyone else to help them keep, you know, their job performance and you handle it on a one-on-one through a

review process. I think that's one way that can be done. So, it's all I got to say for now. Thank you, Supervisor Pricer.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's even confused about where the board is going with the policies that we're setting. Um just earlier this month I proposed a lot of the policies that are set forth in this study for the compensation for the sheriff. Um, granted it wasn't as comprehensive because I did it in like a week rather than the year that uh that McGrath had to do it, but I tried to use the best I could for comparables to make it a market value, you know, fair market value. And I tried to hit the media and I wasn't asking for the sheriff to be the highest of of the region or the lowest. And it was handedly rejected by the board 18 to1. Um, and now we have supervisors the very next meeting talking about using Kenosha as a compar as a comparable and we we just threw it out regarding the sheriff's salary uh earlier this month. So, I don't get what we're trying to do here. And I completely disagree that the sales taxes is not going to help and it's not going to keep up. In fact, it is. Um, it's going to adjust positively with inflation as the costs of the goods and services in the county increase with inflation. And most of the states that people are moving to that are gaining growth in population are states that are using a sales tax to pay for things and not income taxes and property taxes. It's going to keep up and it's going to do way better than net new construction will. That has nothing to do with inflation. Thank you.

Any further comments? Supervisor Shakur.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, I totally agree with the supervisor of the 15th district that's to my left. Not because you sit next to me, but I totally agree with his presentation and what he said. And the fact of the matter is, just as a a different way of saying it, when the budget time comes around, 21 supervisors can make the decision what should be and should be. So, let's just get ready for it and uh do what we need to do at that time. Thank you. But I do support it by the way. So let's move forward with it. Make this happen. And when the budget time comes, if you have an axe or if you got something you want Well, I won't get into that. If you want to if you want to grow this thing or whatever, which I doubt that happens, but uh when the supervisors do one of the most important things to the to wonderful rine county is to put together budget and uh I'm looking forward to it. Thank you. Any further questions? You're good. Last one.

Sure. Go ahead.

Thank you, chairman. Um, I I would like to say that I do respect the uh county executive's comments. Um, I would like to say that yes, it uh it is the county executive's responsibility to develop the budget, but it is our responsibility to adopt it like you all have said. And I heard too many times about things that we as supervisors have approved that made it to the budget and then we're we're called to the carp and said, "Well, you approved it. Now you have to fund it." So I do like to address issues when they come to the floor initially, not when they come the second time and then we have to pay for the decisions we've already made. Um, some discussion has been brought up about my comparisons to Kenosha. I I think it needs clarification that usually when I'm comparing to Kenosha, I'm comparing about or wanting the nice things that Kenosha has when we don't have the cash flow that Kenosha has. So I looked to Kenosha's cons, you know, fiscal conservancy on certain items as an example of where we should limit ourselves. And then I looked at Kenosha for other items that, you know, we're comparing the the wants of a of a county that, you know, is just in a better financial position in my opinion. So those and yes and much longer of a period of sales tax revenues to stabilize their operations. I don't see we have that. I think that distinction needs to be made and clearly understood. Um and uh I think that's about all there is to say on the item. So thank you chairman

vice chairman. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Um I think this salary study gives us a good footprint to move forward. I'm sorry. Is that better? It gives us a good footprint to move forward. And it just shows our employees and stuff that we're taking the time and the effort and energy to look at them because we all know without our employees, we can't provide the services, we can't provide the programs that we need for our constituents. So, this is a good step in the right direction and it should it be tweaked and and adjusted? Probably, but it's a starting point and I think we need to move forward with this. Thank you.

Okay. So, we have a motion and seconded on on two of the items here. We're going to have separate consideration. We're going to take the first one up as 202593 and that's the debt management policy. So that's a voice vote. All in favor say I. I.

Motion carried. And then we're have a separate consideration for 202594. And we'd like a roll call vote. This is This is a majority vote as we get ready to go here. Yep. We have to confirm our we're here. Need a new battery rene I think. battery. like so. Oh, there we go.

Here we go. One more. Hit confirm again. All right, now we're in.

Supervisor Rkowski, how do you vote? I vote yes. Supervisor Capellion, how do you vote? Yes. And Supervisor Nielsen, how do you vote?

Yeah, I vote yes. Thank you. All have voted and motion carries. Just a moment so we can record that because I've lost my pen. Next, we will move on to the item that is a twothirds majority vote. That is resolution number 2025-92 by Finance and Human Resources Committee authorizing a 5-year agreement from 2026 to 2030 with Uni Solutions for budget procurement software for a total of $411,31 and transfer within the 2026 budget.

Mr. Chair, motion has been made and seconded. Supervisor Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We had a began an extensive discussion on this last meeting and uh the board decided to hold it over for um further consideration. And I would uh ask the chair to invite uh finance director and budget director to uh maybe summarize some of the points of why uh this is being requested. Director Zimmer.

Okay, go ahead. County Executive got back to the office at 6:30 this morning. You guys are putting me through my paces today, but this is I promise will be the last time. I've heard uh the comments about why wasn't this done in the budget process. There are going to be things that are done outside the budget process just to bring to your attention. That's purposely that's purposeful and by design for the discussion. That being said, this was informed by the last budget, the software package. Uh, supervisor Wishu asked for a line item in the budget earlier. I believe um, Director Zimmer will pass on that the capabilities of this software package to be able to do that and be able to provide you folks with real time data and information. Again, this was informed by your commentary about information, transparency, and being able to have direct live data. So, the other part of this is, as I've said earlier tonight, I'm not going to present anything to this board that is going to put us in harm's way financially. That being said, a year ago, we signed a contract or extension of a contract with a company called Omnia, which is housed in the finance department. This software package, the the cost of it will not touch the levy. That's an important factor here. It will be paid for by that Omnia account. I believe uh Gwen, we budgeted what? 250.

How much? I've got numbers. I can she'll go through the numbers, but it's budgeted at 250. It's way outperforming that and not does not include a third contract yet because we don't have numbers for that. So, it will outperform the $250,000 budgeted. That's where I would expect the money to pay for the software package to come from. With that, I'll leave it to Director Zimmer to sum it up.

Thank you. Uh, yes, I wanted to talk more specifically about the revenue source for this um software. I think we've talked extensively about the benefits of the software and what it could provide to the county and to this body. Um it basically the finance department was presented with the opportunity from the Wisconsin counties association in 2020 to be a third party administrator for a nationwide procurement group. Uh we started with uh roofing and we own the RFP. We did all the administrative work on it. we get 2 and 12% of all the sales. The other 2 and 12% goes to the WCA. Since then, we've added um HVAC, vehicle supplies, and office supplies. We currently have four contracts with them. The first year that we had it, we got 33,000. We weren't really sure what that was going to end up like. Didn't budget for it. Um and then it started increasing, increasing, increasing. 2024, we got almost 500,000. And this year we got 531,000. We project through the end of the contracts u which will end in 2034 if we get no more contracts which I honestly don't think um is probably realistic. We'll get almost $7 million worth of revenue for it. To the county executive's point, we do put some of that revenue in the finance department's budget to help offset our levy use. This is really going to cover salary, administrative costs for this. Um, we budgeted in the 2026 budget 250,000. Another 105,000 went to the Discover Wisconsin contracts. That's a 4-year agreement. So that's 350,000. That leaves 600,000 remaining of funds that aren't going to be used. It is sitting in a napsing account which ultimately

will go into reserves. If you guys choose not to use it, it's just going to stay there until you decide to use it. This is a solution that the county executive asked me to find. He wants streamlined. He wants efficiency. He wants continuity of operations. He wants centralized purchasing. This $60,000 yearly contract will do that. it will give my staff the ability to do it and to be able to present a budget and uh financial reports to you and to the public that are easy to read and easy to navigate. So with that, I'll take any questions. Supervisor Pritsker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I don't have a question. I just have a comment. I would just say I hope the board considers approving this. I think it's very necessary. it wasn't in the budget because it's a result of the budget process last year. I think based on all the requests that we had and the 30 some pages I think of questions and answers for for data and graphs and charts that this is a tool that's intended to give all those answers in a more comprehensive way and a more timely way to help for 2027 budget planning and into the future. So, you know, we cannot approve it, but I think staff will then be less able to answer the kinds of questions that this tool would allow. Thank you, Supervisor Co.

would this be something that we could The county executive brought up like group buying and stuff with other municipalities? Absolutely. Is this something that if you would implement this that I live in Calonia, you know, Calonia could get something that would talk to this and because I I see good and bad in it is if a company comes in and gives us a deal and we put it on the website and they're charging Calonia more already or whatever. Yeah.

You know, are we not going to get that deal because we are making it public? So there there's good, you know, there's some good and bad with this, but if it would be something that everybody could in the county could eventually go to reasonably or is there can we add other municipalities to this?

Yeah, absolutely. So the current version of this software that's free is called Demandar. Many municipalities use it already and that is a way for them to digitally post their RFPs. So, say I'm going out for a snow plow truck to the chairman's point earlier and it gets sent to any business that signed up for Demand Star because they sell snow plows. So, then they put in their bid. It's a sealed bid process per our ordinance and state statute. We award on the lowest price or the lowest qualified bidder and then that goes on our website and Calonia can see who we bid, who we awarded the bid to. Um, we do currently bid salt and allow the municipalities to buy off of our contract. So that I think that there's absolutely room to expand that with other commodity purchases. Um, we're already doing it. We're doing it with Omnia. We have experience in doing it with roofing, HVAC, office supplies, and vehicle supplies. Why not do it with more than this software would allow us to do that?

Because I tried the what was the city in Florida you during the uh Yeah, Largo. Okay. When I went on that and I tried using it though, when I would click on anything, it would come up and it asks to pay a fee.

The Largo example is more about the budget software. We're looking at two different solutions right now and they're giving us a discount if we purchase both in this in this agreement. The budget portion is different than the procurement portion. But you can go on our website right now, go into demand and click on purchasing, click on RFPs. you'll see everything that we have out there right now. If you are, you know, if you're interested in being a supplier, you can sign up for it and you'll get notifications when things come through. What this expanded software does is it gives us way more metrics, way more reportability, um the ability to track contracts, track vendor performance, things that we just can't really do very efficiently right now with our department of one.

So, but are we looking at doing what? Because you guys gave us the example. I went to the example and when I started clicking on everything, everything you said we were going to release, I couldn't get without paying a $35 fee for each municipality or you spend $2,500 and you could get the municipalities in the I think it was seven county area or whatever that it it came. No, we will not be charged supplies. You had to I couldn't click like what you guys said

the example that I gave. Yeah, I understand. The example I gave to you was specifically about the budget software, not the procurement. And we have the ability right now of charging municipalities and other suppliers. We choose not to. It's a philosophy that the county executive and the county board has instilled in us. We don't charge for people who want to do business with us. It's just contrary to what we're doing here. No, I like I say, I'm just because we're comparing, you know, you gave us the example and when I used it, you know, I my my point is the example you gave us, they're offsetting their expenditure by charging the users to, you know, so it wasn't really charging the city anything because they were charging the users to see everything. So, am I understanding that you would like me to charge suppliers for signing up? I just

I'm just trying to get direction on what you'd like to see coming. I'm just saying is that, you know, in my mind, as soon as I clicked on it, I'm like, well, they're offsetting that expense by people paying, you know, where we're just going to eat this expense. You know what I mean? Yeah. We currently eat the expense. We'd continue to eat the expense unless the county executive directs me not to or this board directs me not to. And and sometimes it depends upon what you're trying to look at. Take for instance, if we've got plans for a road, you it's not uncommon for you have to pay for that road plan as a contractor.

Yes. you know, because it may have cost. We We don't want tire kickers, you know, and if you charge them$25 or $50 for that plan, you're going to weed out the guys that do roads or do driveways, you know, from coming to get that plan. Yes, that's true. Chairman, Supervisor H.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, by my nature, I originally was questioning the support for this simply because it wasn't in the budget. Um, I feel that that answer has been adequately given to me. So, I understand the process. I will say that as I said earlier tonight when we were talking about the the compensation survey that to me this is a beginning. This is an opportunity to establish some structure, some discipline, the opportunity to move this process forward because before you, I hold what we all went through this past year. And I will tell you that I will do anything possible to not have to look through something like this if it's made more streamlined for us. But I would caution us. Let's not I hope this I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. I would encourage that we ensure we don't just try to get more statistical data and we end up finding ourselves with analysis by par paralysis by analysis. What we want to do is streamline some of this this 498 pages that we all had the pleasure of becoming intimate with. And so from my standpoint, I see this as an opportunity to step that forward. It seems like the costs have been adequately established where they're going to be charged. So I I am in support of moving this one forward as well.

Any further comments, questions? I've just got one comment. Uh I I've been familiar with this programs uh in different things. You know, you have to remember tonight I heard twice 135 and and and over here too. I heard it twice from two guys. When when when you have when you have you have to have it written down someplace because if somebody leaves that three or that four or five year plan it maybe change anyways but you won't know where the direction was. You know with the budgeting you know that that's where this comes in. I want I want I want highway S done and I keep on Rolley and Rolley has to put it in. Well, somewhere it's got to be listed that that needs to be done someplace because if the director leaves and the guy the next person may not understand that Supervisor Kramer wants Highway S done. Same thing with bathrooms at parks. a lot of different things with the budget with the with the with the purchasing module. We all remember last year an IT contract that got away from us. We need to have that so the purchasing agent can do that and and f track this and if it gets loaded up, you know, we'll have a tickler file. It won't get away from us anymore. We may not like the cost of the new contract, but it'll give us a little more time to develop a plan if we want to change vendors. So, is there any other further questions? Okay, this is a roll roll call vote.

Supervisor Ratowski, how do you vote? I vote yes. Supervisor Capellian, how do you vote? Yes. Supervisor Nielsen, how do you vote? I vote yes.

Motion carries. Let us just get this recorded. All righty. Number 13, reconsiderations of resolutions and ordinances of from previous meetings and/or actions on vetos.

There are no items to reconsider. Item number 14, reconsideration of and or notice of intent to reconsider resolutions on and ordinances. There is no notice information reports. Report number 2025-73 by finance and human resources committee submitting the ring county 2025 bimonthly large capital projects report. Item number 16 miscellaneous business announcements and oral reports. Only thing I've got to say is don't forget to vote on April 7th. Chairman, yes. Go ahead, Supervisor Capellian.

Thank you. Uh we've heard a lot of discussion this evening. Uh especially a lot of work that's been done by Supervisor Rossi and I think I'd be remissed if I didn't uh take this opportunity to say that he had a birthday. So, I would hope everyone in the chambers would not only thank him for his work, but spend some time and wish him a happy birthday and we are journed. Thank you.