Commission - Regular Meeting

I missed part of the 18 yesterday.

Okay.

Good morning, all. I will call the Wednesday, August 26th, Board of County Commissioners meeting to order. Chris, will you do roll call, please?

Commissioner Holtz?

Here.

Commissioner Chilcott? Here. Commissioner Burroughs is excused.

Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Sorry. There we go.

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

Thank you all. Public comment for those participating by Granicus, you may call 406-375-6513 in order to provide your public comment. And... The first item on our agenda has been canceled. It was a public review of a possible decision on a subdivision exemption agreement. And the next item on our agenda is BCC and department head meeting and the BCC meeting room. And so we will pause for a few minutes till everyone arrives. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our department head meeting. We've got several topics that we'll discuss today. We'll talk about insurance and maintenance and CPI increases and insurance values. And so we'll go on. First thing I'd like to do is invite any department heads to give us an update on things that are going on in their department that we may not be aware of. And so welcome. I think we'll start with GIS. Start with GIS? I don't see GIS. So does anybody have anything for us? Very good. Thank you. OK. insurance coverage and contributions. Yeah, if you would go with that.

Okay, so our renewal with MACO this year, our utilization was still high, but it was still a good renewal. Our increase was 5% from MACO, which was really good. Unfortunately, in this day and time, you can expect double-digit increases So the fact that we had a 5% increase was not a bad increase for us at all. So we were happy with that. We want to just continue to, as HR, we keep trying to push out information for people on alternatives like telemedicine and doing their regular checkups and those kinds of things to keep people healthy. That's what keeps our rates down. The County commissioners, um, very graciously, um, increase the County contribution from, um, $1,300 a year for 2026 to $1,400 a month, sorry, to $1,400 a month for 2027. That is more than that 5% increase. Um, and so that will, that will definitely help that keeps the increase for our family coverages to a very minimum, like a very few cents. I mean, I'm literally two or three cents on the dollar for the majority of anybody that's going to see an increase, and most people are not going to see any increase in their insurance costs at all. So we're very grateful to the commissioners for continuing to maintain that level of coverage for our employees where they're not taking the hit on those increases like that. So does anybody have any questions about the insurance renewal, I guess, for our open enrollment? And Denise will be pushing that out starting with our newsletter for next month. It's going to be a little early this year. So it'll be October 5th, 6th, and 7th. And I will start pushing stuff out to all the employees for that. If you will help by encouraging your employees to come and giving them you know, bits of time to where they can come and do that so we can keep that 100% re-enrollment rate that we've been doing for the last several years. That's very helpful because we do have to go track them down if they don't come. So it's very helpful when you make sure that you make time for them and send them there. The only difference with this open enrollment will be that all three days are going to be in the basement of the courthouse because due to the election timing and ballots and that type of stuff, we don't have access to the room down in the basement here. And the BCC conference room is occupied during that time. So we're just going to do all three days over at the courthouse. We might be able to have the blood draw come over here for a little while if it's super difficult for people that are over here to have their employees come and do that. If you've got employees here and you really feel like you're not going to be able to get them over to the courthouse for some reason, let me know and we'll see what we can do to try to make that work for them. Um, but for the most part, it's, it's at this point we're planning on everything being at the courthouse, um, down in the basement for the open enrollment. So does anybody have questions about any of that with the insurance?

Yeah, that's, that's just too bad. Any questions on, on that, on the insurance or any of that stuff?

we don't have to come yes yes we do send out the form or the information on how you can go in and do the enrollment yourself through the website in that and there are no major changes to insurance to where I would say oh come in there might be a different option for you or whatever but we do try to get people to come in because people make changes and don't think about it and then I have to call them and tell them that that was a bad choice and they need to go back to what they had But, like I said, there is, you can just log in and do it yourself. So.

Okay. One of the other things that we need to think about and talk about is succession planning. As you know, Commissioner Chilcott is just about done with his term, 100 and some odd days left. 127, right, Scott? I said 123.

I didn't have my glasses on. Okay.

And we're aware that there may be several department heads that are on a timeframe within the next few years that will be stepping down. I will be done at the end of my term, and I will not be running again. So there's going to be some turnover. And succession planning is an important thing that we need to all be thinking about in our departments and how we might continue this operation going with the least amount of disruption. So the potential for a large turnover in a few short years is real. And it's something that we need to think about. Elizabeth, did you have something for us?

Yeah, so in just a real brief looking at our department heads when I went through, my best guesstimate without talking to a good majority of you is that as many as 13 department heads or elected officials may be retiring within the next 10 years. And that's not talking about people in their department. What I would like to do is I'm going to start reaching out to each one of you and asking you, know kind of what you have in mind as far as what your thoughts are you know are you thinking next year are you thinking 10 years you know what are you thinking but then i also want to talk to you about your department itself and because the overall what mako keeps telling us when they come into our insurance is that the majority of our staff are in their 50s and they've been telling us that since i started so that probably means the majority of them are in our upper 50s So I want us to start talking about where we're at with our staff. I want our staff to be comfortable. It's human nature. Most staff will not come and say, hey, I'm thinking about retiring two years from now or three years from now because people are afraid that they're going to get shut out of their job. And they're not here. We are very good about that. And I want that to start becoming a conversation with staff that are considering it so that we can plan for it. The longer notice we have on somebody planning on leaving, hey, I think I'm gonna retire in the next two years or three years, the better we can plan for it. And some of you have positions that there's gonna need to be overlap for somebody to learn that job. And if that's the case, then that's gonna have to be a discussion with Jana and then the commissioners and all of that. So it's just something I want us to start thinking about so that we can have an idea of of what we're gonna do. Some of your departments don't have this issue at all and some of them it's a lot larger issue. So I'm just gonna start reaching out to each one of you and I kinda wanted to give, since I had everybody in the room, I wanted to give everybody a heads up as to why I was gonna be reaching out to them and seeing whether or not this was something we needed to discuss for your office or not. So.

Anybody have anything to contribute?

I mean it's the situation is going to be different for each one of the each person there's some basic principles of it that I can certainly get together and push out but you know the That type of planning for, say, your department is gonna be, one, you've got more people, and two, the job is very different, is gonna be very different than, say, one of the judge's offices or the sheriff's office, and the number of people, the types of positions and all of that are definitely gonna impact how we do it. But there should be some specifics that I can try to put together to give everybody when I talk to them as far as how do you plan this out and when should you start planning this out. So I will put that together.

Thank you. Any further questions or statements? OK. The next item is making a maintenance department request. So what I would prefer is if there's an issue that needs to go to maintenance that the director of the department make that request of Nick And if there are any complaints about that, then that comes to us, of course. And let Nick know that you're going to complain about this or that, please. So they need to follow... Follow up on that with whoever made the complaint. If you're an employee that you are supervising comes to you with a complaint, then I want you as a department head to go to Nick with that complaint or request for certain things. If there's complaints, they need to come to us. as a commission, so that's how I would like to handle that from this point forward. Commissioner Chilcott.

It's just a matter of priorities. We all have our own little kingdom that we look at myopic plate, and I'm thankful for that, but sometimes we're not aware of all of the priorities Nick has in front of him on his plate, so sometimes it's helpful. Ken, can you sit down, please?

Are you saying if there's a light bulb out and we need to advise them that it has to come through me, my staff can't send them a notice that says we have a light bulb out? Is that what you, I'm just trying to verify.

Any maintenance requests, we would like to come from department heads. Okay.

Do you prefer email or phone or text?

Email's fine. Anybody else have anything?

Yes. It might help, Nick, if you explain how your maintenance, because there used to be the maintenance email and it would put it kind of into a queue to

One of the issues is we're not fully staffed in that department. And especially with events that are going on, like the fair, that takes him away and whatnot. So we need to be cognizant of those facts, that he's understaffed. We're trying to get it filled, all those positions. But we're woefully understaffed in that. And so... Short-handed. So that's one of the reasons I want the department heads to kind of filter those requests. If that would work, please do it that way. Anybody else have anything? Any comments, questions?

It might be a good time to say.

And then the other the other thing that I would say if there's an immediate safety hazard of any kind then that needs to be reported directly to Nick

as quickly as possible. So we and our employees have to use our judgment on that. And safety is the number one issue. So we wanna be sure and deal with anything like that. Okay, CPI increases.

so um chris sent out something i don't remember how long ago it was for all of you to send you her your list of fees that you have in your department um and i compiled that list and applied the um cpi rate to that which is 2.69 percent and then um i send it back to chris she um bumped up those to an even, I think, $5? Yes, it was an even $5. And then I don't know where it is after that. I don't know what happens after that.

Well, the commissioners, this was just to meet with you. Certain departments do not have internal fees at a county level. They have it per statute, like Page. And probably Regina is probably a 50-50, right? You have some fees that you charge per mca and then some that you charge as a clerk and recorder at a planning or at a county level okay yeah so anyway this uh when we met and we started this thought process um just wanted to get your fees give you an idea what the what they may go up to the commissioners will still have to hold a public meeting to adopt those by resolution whether you do it all in one or individuals we haven't crossed that bridge but The fact is that we can, and because we have not, done a CPI increase for county fees.

We have meetings every year, oftentimes multiple meetings a year, for planning, sheriff's office, environmental health community. We need to update our fees. And what we're contemplating is putting in just they will be increased on, say, January 1 or June 30, whatever day we pick, but by the CPI to the nearest round number of $5 increments, I think. And that way, we don't have to keep coming and having these public meetings and advertising and doing all that stuff to keep up with inflation and those costs. So that's the theory behind it, just to keep level.

Okay, any questions on that? Comments?

You all will be notified via email. You'll be invited to if and when this moves forward.

Okay, we'll move on to insurance coverage and values for our county vehicles. We ended up with kind of a bad experience. A Weed Department vehicle got hit by another driver. The vehicle was covered under our insurance coverage, but the stuff that was on the vehicles, it was a spray truck, the tank, all that equipment was not covered necessarily. So we want to make sure that any vehicles or any equipment that you guys have attached to a vehicle that's on the road is listed and we have that down. So road department would be one. We department, of course, we learned the hard way. Yeah, so that's something that we need to get a handle on, on our specialty equipment vehicles, anything that's specialized. That all has to be listed on our insurance list. Otherwise, they can dispute John.

To a point of clarification, if a Sander unit is separately insured, and then it's on there, like the truck's insured and the sander unit's insured, then they're covered?

We're good.

Okay, so you don't have to have a compiled price for that whole unit.

Right, the components.

But we don't have the sanders listed, though. We can talk about that later.

I think it's a good time to talk about it. You were implying that you had them already on the list. Now it sounds so different, John.

What I'm saying is that, Jan, I $3,000, $2,000. So we're not insuring them because they're not worth insuring because the duct holes hardly meets it. So there's other pieces of equipment that fall under that threshold. You know, a jackhammer or something that isn't insured but it may end up in a truck. So are those...

I'm just... Yeah, I think you guys were talking about doing a threshold on that. Or like you have a compressor or something on there that's really... We have a $15 jackhammer that goes back around on our sign truck.

Do we want that insured separately?

I mean, our deductible is probably...

There could be a number of things. You have a jackhammer, you could have a compressor.

Probably need to contact our carrier to find out, because some of the contents may be covered, and some are definitely not, like we found with the spray tank and the spray unit. Those weren't covered, and those were fairly high dollar, high ticket items. So I don't know. That's a question I'd have to ask the carrier. Yes, Chris.

Could this possibly be when the commissioners meet with department heads? We could bring up their vehicle lists?

Absolutely, yeah. It's something that we can discuss at those meetings, without a doubt.

And Chris, you sent out lists, right? Yeah. So she's, I think, sent out what we have on the insurance list, but I've sent you over... Over time, I've sent you various lists, but I can send out lists again that you can compare and say, I have this equipment. I don't see it on the insurance list, so we can discuss whether we need to do it.

Too many lists.

You'll live. It'll be okay. Like share of the equipment. So share vehicles, we automatically include the upfitting on those. But like we found out with, we were, I guess we made an assumption that if something was on it, that it would be covered by it. But that wasn't the case. So we just need to make sure that if it's a piece of equipment that could possibly be carried around in a vehicle or something.

Kellyanne, you had your hand up.

That was my question. Like that's what we had.

Right. We learned the hard way that that wasn't the case.

So Greg, does that mean if the department doesn't have a vehicle, we should request one so we can have that?

You and Ken can request all the vehicles you want. Go ahead.

All of the Kens. Yeah, all the Kens. I think the...

The sheriff's office with their cars and the equipment that's in there is probably covered with the vehicle, I think.

We include the L39 sheriff. Right. So we automatically add on $20,000.

Add on, exactly. So anything, just something to keep our eyes on, please. Anything else? Do you have anything more? Elizabeth, anything else?

No.

Commissioner Chilcott?

No, I don't think so.

All right.

Very good. We're going to adopt final budget.

Next Thursday?

Next Thursday. Right now that has a 3% COLA in it for employees.

And what I would say with that is... When your employees start asking you, Brooke gets that process. Once the budget is adopted in September, then she knows she can start processing. First of October is pretty normal. Brooke is good about trying to get that out as soon as possible. And that if you have jobs posted, once the final budget has been adopted, I will update the posting numbers for what the job is posted at and then we would hire people at that rate. So what happens every year is I have a job posted at a grade nine wage in September and I post that at 25 cents or whatever higher than the people that are working and they start getting upset. Why are they getting hired at more? And it's because as soon as we can, we put it at that rate that all the employees will be getting. You know, we try to get the new people as they're coming in on it immediately rather than give them a retro check. So just remember that when people start asking about it, they're very able to get those questions and we'll get those retro checks and that just, it's done. you know, first half of October. She's good about getting those out as quickly as she possibly can.

Another thing we were going through in the final run through on the budget were stipends. And there are not a lot of them around the county, but there are stipends out there that have put in for employees that have assumed extra duties outside their job description. And because of a vacancy or something, And unfortunately, we don't necessarily track those very well. So we're asking our department heads and elected officials to review the stipends in their, if they have staff that have stipends, that they are, in fact, doing that. Or if we've hired somebody to assume those duties and have assumed them, that the stipend will go away. So it's just a matter of housekeeping and being fair to everybody.

Also along those lines, some of the handful of you have requested some wage increases for yourselves or employees. So I will send out emails individually to you to let you know what the board decided on this.

And we were trying to get to keep the 3% COLA. So admittedly, salary adjustments were really, really thin. We didn't do a lot of Maybe, yeah. So there's not gonna be much success on the salary increase request. And that was so everybody could get a 3% COLA.

Okay. All right, we've covered our county insurance. We've covered our maintenance requests. We've covered our CPI increases. and our insurance coverage on our vehicles with extracurricular or extra stuff.

Did you want an update from Ken on safety? Ken? There's a safety meeting.

You have an update on safety? Just on our work comp rate. Just our work comp rate.

Oh, it's dropping. We're doing good on that. I mean, this last quarter...

I believe that's correct.

Well, safety needs to be at the top of our list on everything we do.

Is that like for succession planning? Is that where you go? That's right.

All right.

Has everybody met Austin, our forester?

I'm not sure. Has everybody met Austin, our new county forester? Not that new anymore, but Austin signed up.

Well, he's not here very often.

He spends a lot of time at the Forest Service office and not as much time here as a normal regular employee or department head. He's seen less.

So do any of our elected officials or departments have anything they want to talk about that we haven't talked about today? Melissa, anything with the fair?

If you didn't know it was coming, it is. Anybody who's been out helping us get ready, we appreciate it. It's definitely a large bus to careen down the road on fire. And we hope that everybody comes out and has a good time next week.

And how's the parade organization coming along? Canceled. Canceled? That's a good answer.

It's good. We have 90 entries.

Good.

Thanks for doing that.

Thanks for taking that on. So anybody have anything else? Requests or comments? All right. Very good. Okay, we are adjourned.

We'll recess. We're back on.

Okay. We will reconvene after our department head meeting. The next item on our agenda is canceled, and it was a meeting with a review and a possible decision on a subdivision exemption application. And with that, is there any public comment on items not otherwise on our agenda? Sure.

You got anything?

We'll do adjourn. We are adjourned.