Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Well, good morning, everybody.

This is Agenda Read for Wednesday, August 26.

Budget adoption. Single item. No, it's a lot of items, but it all leads to that. Nicole, you want to talk about anything else you're going to discuss first?

Yes, I have two county announcement good news. One, the Sheriff's Office recently received a certification for their tactical... Officer so they want to come talk about that also we were made aware this Wednesday that Moody reaffirmed our triple a bond rating so we're going to talk about that and then just a reminder for the public that we are closed on Labor Day which is September 7th and that's all I have.

Thank you on the agenda we have a single appointment. For district advisory board member and district. 1. And then on consent, we have a few items. B, C, D, and E are all easements of one sort or another. B is a construction easement for more shoulder easement up at the 69th and 85th and Ridge Road project. There's a cost to that of $2,832.50. Item C is a permanent easement for drainage on East Kellogg at 143rd and Kellogg. There's no financial consideration for that. Item D is a right-of-way easement for road replacement between 29th and 45th on 135th West, cost of $480 for that easement. And item E is a right-of-way easement for road construction project on Pawnee between 135th and 151st Street West, easement cost of $21,012.50.

Tom, if you don't mind, can I, Leonard, are we just going a little bit wider there on Pawnee? Is that why we're going after easement?

That is correct. We're adding shoulders to that road, which is pushing the ditches out in the right-of-way.

Good, good. I want to ask about Ridge Road. It's on every other week. I've got a pretty good idea. This keeps going, right? Item F. Item F is an agreement with Park City. I think we've discussed this before, too. It's a roundabout project up there, and I think Lynn's covering with 50,000 engineering plans for that, right? Lynn, pretty much. The partnership between Sedgwick County, Park City, and KDOT. And that was it on the rest of the consent items are routine. Then we get into new business. And there's three main parts to budget adoption. Item H is part one, which is the discussion of the revenue neutral rate and our intention to go in excess of that. Item I is the second component, which is the public hearing, which the chairman will open and manage to receive any comment from the public. And then the third component is the actual adoption of the budget. And it'll follow through on the fire agenda, same three items. And then I think during item J is when Lindsay and staff will talk about potential resolutions and exceptions that commission want to have considered, or maybe commission brings up however chairman chooses to handle that. But that will all happen under item J. Depending on how item J goes, then the next items are other types of work we would do to follow up on the ratification of the recommended budget. Item K is, actually it's KLNM, are going to be resolutions authorizing construction and improvement of public buildings and structures in Sedgwick County and the GO bonds that go with that. Item K specifically is the 911 radio system, which is... 14.5 million.

Yeah. 14.5. Yeah.

14.5 million. Item L is the hangar project, 8,485,000. And item M is emergency preparedness center facility, 20,654,000. So that would, if those all make it through the budget discussion, those would be the next three items for discussion. And then item N is a cleanup where, for the last few years, the commission has opted to get some of these programs started. The budget takes effect January 1st, right? The commission makes decisions to let projects get started right after budget adoption, effectively, you know, one day after you guys adopt it. And there's a number of positions there that the commission has recommended, or I think staff's recommending, and it's a total of nine positions now. Three of them are in the appraiser's office. All of the appraiser FTEs are recommended being asked to approve early so she can get those hired and get them to work. Lindsay needs an account payable analyst because of backlog. And then five of the paramedic positions so that Kevin can start hiring and getting those onboarded. I want to bring up here, Justin has, and I talked briefly late yesterday, he maybe put a pitch in for his attorney too, and I maybe let him have the microphone just a little bit here to talk about rationale for that.

Thanks Tom, uh, commissioners, uh, Justin Wagner, county counselor. If our decision package, uh, that, that is, I know in the manager's recommended budget would be approved. I would certainly appreciate a consideration of as a 10th position on here. If there'd be a willingness to do so, not saying you have to decide anything now. Um, but, uh, Having that position considered, we have a backlog of work in our office. I think it would be really helpful for us to work through that backlog if we would have another person in place. Happy to stand for any questions on that now. If you have more on Wednesday, if you'd rather talk about it then. I could.

So there is in the budget, there's a plus one. And what you're saying is just advance it like we're doing with these other positions?

Yeah, because I'm sure all nine of these positions have backlog, just like I'm talking about. But I mean, we're short a couple of attorneys now. We're changing that in September. We have two attorneys starting, but we're quite busy now. And I think we'll be quite busy the rest of this year. And I think going out and filling the position now would be more likely to be successful as opposed to around the holidays. Question, so how would this work?

Logistically? I don't know chairman. Maybe if you have an idea, but would this be, um. We'd add it. Just add it into here? Yeah. So we try to amend this? Okay. Amend the motion to add?

I mean, if I'm getting the vibe that you guys are okay with that, we'll insert that right in. And then, Lindsay, let me... The total cost of 2026, of $2026, right now is $207,120, the cost to start these positions early, if we fill them by the beginning of Q1, which is October 1st or so. Funding of that would be...

Salary savings and all of those existing budgets, or for example, with EMS, the EMTs that are being added, we can take some of the EMTs that are currently sitting in paramedic positions and move those over. And that should alleviate some of the overtime costs that we're currently spending. So EMS personnel is going to exceed their budget this year without a doubt. But we think that this would be a cheaper route to do that. because you're not paying overtime, you're paying straight pay. I also want to point out there, I think there's one other thing, and maybe we need to update the title here, but we also are asking to start the TRB project for the enterprise-wide inventory system early. And we're also then going to have motions for you on budget today. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to delve into Lorian's lengthy email that she was able to send, but there's going to be also some changes we recommend during budget adoption related to EMS vehicles. And we also want to allow them to purchase one of the very small, the 350 ambulance that would be utilized for BLS services, basic life support services. We want to allow them to start that early as well.

So these positions, these are all described in Lorian's email that she sent earlier?

Yes, sir.

Okay. And that total, if we adopt all of those to be effective this year, how much?

Lorian, can you remind me, please? I didn't print that email off.

On the salaries or? All of it. Okay. Everything. If we did everything.

Lorian, come on up to the table. Sit in Tanya's spot.

Reference, I'm talking to you. whatever that's stuff.

Morning. It's about 207,000 for fourth quarter costs just for the salaries, right?

That's the positions. Yeah. And if we had Justin that it would go up 15, 20,000 more, probably, I don't know. It hadn't done the math on that, but it'd go up slightly if we had the attorney. And that's just for the salaries she's talking about. Yeah. Well, the number Lorian put out is yes. This is salaries.

Just want to compliment Lorian. Thanks for that email. It was succinctly well-written and summarized because we had a lot going on that day and to get that in writing was helpful. Thank you.

I have another questions on positions. Can we get an update on where the tag office is and their request? I know that we had kind of worked through some of those things. I don't know if the request has been formalized yet or not. This was a conversation we talked about trying to expedite some of that too. I don't know where we're at on that.

Yes, Commissioner. We've been working on that. We've had one meeting with the treasurer and her staff. We actually, in HR, just met about that this morning, and we have a meeting set up with her. I believe it's next week.

Okay. If they have a plan and the plan is approved and staff's HR recommends the plan, is that something else we would consider? Maybe not on adoption day, but for 2026 to utilize some of...

So, let's talk about the tech fund real quick. So she, as long as a position is all exists on the staffing table, like, it's a clerk 1 or a clerk 2 or something like that. She actually doesn't have to ask you for authority to add those positions. So she has already we have already verified that there's enough cash coming in through the increased fee that started July 1. that you all didn't have to take any action on. There's already enough money there. She's already added five frontline tag clerk positions. That has already been done and she didn't have to ask you for that. But she does need to come and ask you for any changes to the actual structure of the pay plan. So she's going to reclassify positions. She had talked about adding a director position. That position doesn't exist on the pay plan today. So she'll have to come and ask for those. Also, she has to come and ask you there is an additional fee That can be started January 1st. The commission has to bless that. So at the end of September, she's going to come to you with different options for setting that fee because she has to let the state know by October 1st what her plan is. And so at that time, too, we will know how much money she will likely bring in, and then she can add additional positions. Okay. as well as figure out what that funding levels will be for the reclassification. That's good to know.

I expected the fee adjustment and that conversation was coming. I didn't know because I'd heard she had told me that they were talking about reclassifying a significant number of positions. So I just didn't know where we're at on that. But the TAG Fund is treated a lot like the Registered Needs Tech Fund. We have no authority there. Is that correct?

Well, so with the law change that went into effect July 1st, you now do have more authority than you used to. You now have authority over her pay plan. For the tag fund, you now have explicit approval of procurement and procurement policies. And then you have more control of that fee. So those are the three primary changes that happened that went into effect July 1st. Yes, up until now, it has been very much like those tech funds. But now there's some additional components that the legislature added in for the commission to have some oversight. That's helpful.

We'll stay tuned.

Thank you. Thanks, Shannon. And I think, let me go through the agendas here. And I think the intention is to come back and talk about some resolutions, right? We have a list of things to talk about today. So we're going to talk about more, but let me go through. That was it for the regular agenda. Fire agenda is simpler, but it contains the three main components of budget adoption. So we'll do the revenue neutral discussion. uh then we will have public hearing uh and then we will have adoption discussion uh amongst uh we'll go moves away from the public goes back to the bench of the commission for item c for discussion of adoption so any questions on fire or any questions on agenda technicalities and then we'll get into some other discussion on resolutions All right. So, Lindsay, how do you want to do this next part? Do you want to talk about things that you've been tasked with or...

So, um, I think the, the only thing I want to definitely talk about is that updated resolution that was discussed on Wednesday, Wednesday, everybody has a copy of that. And so since that discussion, we have learned, um, and legal has advised that the Kansas star casino revenues that we had read in statute would end July 1st, uh, 2032, but for other changes is actually, um, No, not true. We know there is a contract that was approved that incorporated that language that now extends that at least through 2041. So what we have done in this resolution, if you go back to section 5, is it basically says that, and this is in consultation with Commissioner Beatty and Commissioner Meisner had both kind of mentioned these things. 5A would be that this resolution automatically terminates if there is an alternative funding stream identified. And once we have an adopted budget that incorporates that, this resolution goes away. The other 5B is the date of adoption of the 2032 budget. So the sooner of either of those things terminates this resolution, further action would be necessary. So based on what commissioners have said, for this resolution, this is the preference, I believe?

Yeah, the other option was, You can just tie it to when that gaming funds would – that contract would expire. It should be 2041. I'm not – I'm open to anybody's suggestions, and obviously when we have a conversation on Budget Adoption Day, we'll be open to it. But I still think a limited timeframe, a short-term timeframe – I think this puts an impetus and puts priority on trying to find an alternative funding source for this a permanent funding source for this. I would also say. I would love it's not a budget conversation, Lindsay, but since you brought it up the other day, I'm going to talk about it again. How are we earmarking specifically how we utilize sales tax funding on cultural arts? It's not a budget conversation. But I want my commissioners, my colleagues and everyone to know my thought process in this is really about how do we begin to signal to the community the proper use of property tax funds and the proper use of sales tax funds. And some of it feels arbitrary. Some of it feels this is fungible money, but it signals that we believe sales tax dollars should be used for this. And we believe property tax dollars should be used for this. It's a pragmatic signal of such. And I think that helps us set up for what many of us have talked about. If we want to go out for a sales tax in the future, everybody listening, relax. At some point in the future, we talk about getting a permanent funding source for sales tax, utilizing sales tax for any cultural arts or capital projects, whatever it may be. I think it helps our case to say this is how we have always talked about sales tax here moving forward. This is what we think sales tax should be used for. This is what we think property taxes should be used for. So I think it's just consistency for me. So that's kind of the thought process. But I do like keeping it at 2032 because it keeps a tight time frame. It's a short term. And we're signaling this is a short-term plan as we work on a long-term solution. So open to suggestions and thoughts. But that's my opinion on why I think 5B should stay at 2032.

Chairman, I was just going to supplement some of what Commissioner Beatty was saying there and thinking through this more. I could also see some benefit to leaving it at 2032 just because that's set by statute and there was initially an agreement, whereas now it's just an agreement that's been extended, a renewed agreement, that is probably easier to change than changing a statute as well. So I think keeping it at 2032, there could be some rationale behind that, even though there is currently – The status quo today is that those payments will go until December 20th of 2041. But I make that comment just to kind of clarify that I think it could be a little safer to put that just because contracts can get amended more easily.

And I do want to, oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

I was going to say, to be clear, that 2032 date is adoption of the 2032 budget. So it would actually be 2031 in effect, which is good because otherwise it's July 30 or July 1. So anyway.

But it's still five years from today, five years from this. That's correct. It's a five-year extension, if you will, using this mechanism to solve the problem. You know what? I've been trying to do some study on why other states have lower property taxes on residential properties. And one of the things I'm trying to figure out right now is how many states have something like the machinery equipment property tax. tax exemption in their state. I don't know that other states necessarily do it the way Kansas does. So, you know, the legislature has shifted revenue to residential property, property taxes to residential property. And I think that's when people are at their saturation limit right now. And I think that to do this today, we are, as I described Wednesday, in my opinion, it's shuffling the deck chairs. We're not really We're not creating a new revenue stream to solve this problem. We're simply using existing revenues, which means it's ultimately going to impact property taxes. Again, not to a great degree. By the way, my estimate was wrong on Wednesday. A fourth of a mil is what this would be, and that would be around $3 roughly, a little bit less than $3 on a $100,000 home. So if you have a $300,000 home, it's $10 a year. Okay? Okay. They're paying for the interest bank arena in property taxes, essentially, an increase in taxes that, by opinion, should be handled some other way. But they'll absorb that, and they'll probably get used to it. And that's my concern. They'll get used to it. So in five years from now, it's like, well, let's just extend this out. We don't have the incentive necessarily to solve it structurally. I had a question the other day, and I haven't heard an answer yet about it. I've been thinking about this transient guest tax as a solution potentially. Do you realize a countywide 1% transient guest tax would completely offset this entirely? We wouldn't have to do this. We wouldn't have to use existing revenues. We would have a new revenue stream to solve this problem. We haven't actually answered the question legally yet. And I would tell you, since Wichita is charging 8.75% together, and if we were to charge, actually, I think I have to do my math again. I think that's still right. Yeah, it would be a 1%, 1% countywide transient gas tax would completely solve this problem with a new revenue stream. And to me, that's the creative part of this that we ought to explore. And again, I said the other day, and I'll say it again, there's no need to do this this Wednesday. We can buy some time by moving the money over. We still have all the options. We have all the cards in the deck. We didn't give up any options. But why are we forcing ourselves to make the decision now when we haven't even explored the other option? What's the hurry to do it this way versus the way I described it by giving ourselves a couple of months to figure out what our options are? I'm obviously going to be voting against this. If this is a motion on Wednesday, I'll be against it, and I expect that the public will somehow figure this out. They're going to be frustrated because we have a split opinion on this. I don't think my opinion is completely wrong here. I don't know why we're in such a hurry to solve it this way when we haven't figured out the other options yet.

if I could. I appreciate that. And I, I don't think we're totally misaligned in the opinion that we need another funding source. I would like to take a bigger swing at it though. I don't want to just address interest bank arenas reserve fund. I think that we should have a broader conversation about all of our cultural assets and funding mechanism that works jointly with the city of Wichita on some of these things. And that's not going to happen in a couple of months. And, you know, unfortunately what just took place with the sales tax, Ballot initiative city, which is all has really put a terrible stain in the mouths of people in this community and I don't have the appetite for bringing that back up anytime in the next few months. That's for sure. And I don't think the community has the appetite for it either. So what I'm asking for. is an opportunity to signal to the community that we believe property taxes is not the appropriate funding source and we're willing to utilize some of our other revenues at this point in time earmark them so that it's it's sales tax we can condition this community to understand that sales tax dollars should be paying other revenues gaming fees things of that sort should be paying for cultural assets i just think we need more time to do that to condition the community and again i i'll i'll ask two questions Are you comfortable with using $2 million to be able to fund it this way?

Yes.

You'd be comfortable doing that?

Absolutely. Knowing that we have the pressures that we do, knowing that we have the 2027 NCAA tournament coming, and we have to have some of these things done before it's here, and then they're coming in 2028, again, national eyes are on us. We have to maintain our facility if that is something that remains a priority for the commission. And I know that was part of the marketing back at the time the vote happened was to attract NCAA games. So that is what I am after. And that is why we need a mechanism now. And that's why I like 5A, which is as soon as we have a budget that has that alternative funding stream in it, this goes away immediately.

Okay. Can I ask a question? Sure. make the case for or against i'm asking your opinion but i'm asking you to guide us either way i think we're i think when i'm hearing two million dollars is what we're looking at because i think we all see the need to fund this reserve the question is to use current sources of alternative revenue or use our contingency or fund balance to do it The fund balance approach from your opinion, is that something that we should be considering more or is this something that you have heartburn over?

It would be entirely appropriate to say we want to use fund balance 1st and the resolution. We could do that again. It's at least a 5 year commitment. And so at that point, you all are committing to drawing down your fund balance by 10M dollars for purpose of the arena as opposed to excess investment income. For example. That's a part of 2B. So if you wanted to use fund balance, I wouldn't necessarily object, but the concern that I have with using fund balance is you have heard all kinds of conversation in the last few weeks about increased capital improvement projects. not just in public works, but elevators, buildings. We know we're going to have some decisions to make soon about the administrative building and a BOCC meeting room out in the parking lot there. And so I tend to like to use that ongoing fund balance as, and you have a policy that sets it for clearly capital improvement projects. In this case, we're giving a contractual amount

to asm globe or uh smg i'm just going to call them smg to do the work right so could we make a case for it yes but then you're limiting your fund balance for use on those other things i guess my concern with it is that we would have to be this problem doesn't go away next year and that would be we'd have to use fund balance again next year unless we come up with a plan within the next year which leads to the question the idea of the transient county-wide it's not that that

idea has merit we should investigate that idea what what is the mechanism for that well i actually i was planning to research and get you all information it is a very complex question i'll tell you that first of all i've researched it some and asked another attorney in our office to look at it further and try to get you an answer um to that or at least a preliminary answer the way the law is set up a lot of this causes some um inner considerations between what cities are doing and counties are doing and how that plays out under what's permissible under home rule powers for both types of jurisdictions. And these are not simple questions. So I'll do my best to break that down, recognizing that if the board would take any action on this, it would take the, you'd have to Get rid of the current charter resolution you have an act another charter resolution and none of this would go into place anytime too soon. Because when you do a charter resolution, there's a protest period that lasts for a handful of months.

So I want to acknowledge and commissioner how I want to know your plan. It's not a bad plan. I don't I'm not in disagree with your plan. My, my, my concern is that if we use debt balance, and I think we have to commit to multiple years of doing that balance, because I don't know if we're going to get a plan in place. I don't want to. I don't want a bandaid plan either. I'd love to set this thing up. So the next commissions don't have to worry about this. We get this done and get a permanent funding source. And I think we can, but I just don't think we can do that in a matter of. three months, six months, one year, and that's my concern with foot and balance, knowing what's coming down the pike. So it's not a bad plan, though. It's really not. I think your countywide transient guest tax plan has actually got a lot of merit to it. So, I mean, that's kind of where my head's at, but I want to make sure, since we're all together.

And I want to make sure I'm understanding. So currently, City of Wichita has a transient guest tax. I think Derby might, God, I don't know. I will do. And a T-BIT. City has T-BIT, yeah. And you're talking about adding a transient guest on top of an already existing. Just for the county.

Yes.

So a couple of points here. Let me make some clarifications here. I'm not suggesting, Lindsay, we let the building dilapidate or we don't take care of our building. So start with that. We have responsibility. I think that whatever solution we come up with, it has to take care of the building. So I'm not suggesting we don't fund this somehow. So please take that off the table of arguments against me. The sales tax is a great idea potentially. Again, I hope people understand I'm not advocating for a new tax. I say it every time. I'm advocating for a sales tax in place of a property tax that would otherwise end up being the responsible revenue stream. I don't want property tax to do this. If it's going to be funded through any revenue stream – Ideally, the sales tax is probably the best long-term solution. But as Commissioner Beatty just said, we're not anywhere near being able to suggest something like that, that the people are going to support that. We may be years away. To the charter resolution concern, that's a several-month process. It's not a years-long process. We could use fund balance for one year and buy ourselves some time. Out of 2026, existing year budget, we could put a A band-aid, I hate to use that word, to buy us some time out of the 2026 fund balance right now and not have to deal with this right now. We could explore the transit guest tax. We could explore the charter resolution. We could explore other ideas. To me, using the existing fund balance out of 2026 budget would be a reasonable thing to do for one year to give us some time. We've talked about this and talked about this, and we've not solved it. This might spur us to action. And I think that we haven't even had arguments. We haven't had discussions with Wichita yet. We talked about maybe negotiating with them about maybe using some of the existing revenue. Or maybe they would levy the tax on our behalf. Well, that's another idea. How about talk to them and say, we're not going to do it because it's complicated, as Justin just said, but maybe they could levy a one and a quarter percent. That's what it would be if the city did it by themselves. One and a quarter percent transient guest tax so that for the sole purpose of funding their facility, I should say our facility that is in their city, in the heart of the city, they should maybe provide a 1.25% transit guest tax, they would hand that money over to take care of this problem. We have got some opportunities to do some negotiating and figure out some options here. If all we have to do is use $2 million of our existing budget to give ourselves time to have a much better discussion, that's a much better answer. But again, using gaming revenues for five years, in my opinion, is so... We've not done our work to get to that point to find out that's the best option. I've got all these questions we've not answered. So why are we settling on that? And again, that actually, I said it yesterday or Wednesday, you slice and dice it, it's still a property tax increase. It makes us feel better. But that revenue is funding things in the budget right now. So we're just saying that revenue is going to come from this, but we have to backfill whatever it was funding with property tax. It's still the same net effect to our budget. So I don't love this solution. I think if we end up there, we can get there if all the other options dry up. Why don't we at least give ourselves some time to figure this out?

I do believe there's some opportunities. I don't know if it's in a bonbonk or where that conversation is, but I'd like to have some discussions with the city, the hoteliers, just like when we put the TBID together and tried to have a good understanding of the impact on what it'd be to hotels, and then As everyone's saying, some of these major assets that people are traveling here for are on the county's bottom line, whether it's Sedgwick County Zoo, Exploration Place, or Entrust Arena. So I think we need to have a seat at the table as to how some of these funds are being spent that bring folks to Sedgwick County.

I would add one more point to the long discussion here, that we are doing one and a half mils on the city's behalf for Wichita State University. For all these decades, we've been doing this. We didn't have to do that. And my opinion is they have an interest in this. I would love to see them step up and help with this. It's not a property tax. It's simply, there are only 8.75%. Just make it 10. That solves the problem.

I can just comment. the has been has been stated we need to do something now either fund balance which the fund balance is created with due to some property tax revenue over the years so it's not exclusive from property tax impact of the 2 million we need 2 million right now on the big picture we have challenges that the zoo, we know the zoo is there too. So 2 million fixes an immediate need right now for interest arena based on the nationwide presence of the NCAA tournament. That's a decision we're going to need to make either property tax fund balance, or I love the idea of shifting fees that most of our citizens are, are, think 90 of their customers down there in in mulvane are cedric county residents so fees from that to help support this deal just makes so much sense to me and uh versus taking it from fund balance but if fund balance is the band-aid for for the immediate uh year then so be it um But if we're trying to talk about – we haven't done the analysis on even like a 1% countywide. I like that idea, but we need to make sure it's enough. If we're going to do these kind of things, it's enough to recognize not only interest but the zoo because we own that, and that's got big challenges too. So I'm not sure we have – our hands around all that, all those numbers yet. So that's why I think this is, the urgency is, is now and the signal to the, to the community and into the nation that we're taking care of this asset now, uh, with fees from a, a different asset. That's that, that was, those are not property tax dollars. Those are, they've been coming into, to the general fund. And so, uh, that's just my feeling and and i'd be glad to be a part of of uh looking into the since we did do the t-bid when we were at the city uh i'd be glad to be part of that as well but that's where that's where i'm at so one more point i would make is that the budgets because we have good staff we have uh conservative budget

We have, in my opinion, generally had more fund balance at the end of the budget year than we typically anticipate. Our budgets perform well. And I don't know if you can specify this specifically, Lindsay, but are we ahead of what we thought we would be on paper last year?

Yes. By $2 million? Yes. And in large part, that's because of the investment income.

Right. Okay, and again, that's, so there's always good news in the budget. We get towards the end of the year, we underspend some budgets, we have things like the investment income that happen. So we're in a better financial situation than we actually expect when we pass last year's budget. So do I consider this to be property tax dollars? Yes, I do. But the reason we have a higher fund balance is because the budget performed in our favor.

I do want to point out, though, that you did have a $10.3 million settlement that year that did significantly impact your fund balance. And that part was not anticipated. But again, because we had ample fund balance in place, we were able to cover that. So I do want to be clear that that was an anomaly this year. You will have an operating deficit this year, and it's largely because of that. Otherwise, yes, we are absolutely performing better than expected.

If I subtract out that one point, though. then we're doing quite well. And typically, risk management typically has, not in every year, some years it doesn't, but usually you just got a balance that carries over or whatever. We don't always spend what the money is in risk management. And this is one of those things where we went deficit this year because of that one settlement. But overall, if you take that one thing out, the budget performed in our favor. And again, I would argue that we have money in there that not saying I really want to spend it in any particular way, but this does buy us some time. It gets us closer to what we actually would have expected at the end of the year when we passed last year's budget. Okay.

What else? So I know that there were some commissioners who had made requests for motions. And so this would be an opportunity for any commissioner who wanted to talk about that. Commissioner Hall, I don't know if you had anything else you wanted to add to any of your comments on Wednesday or if you've thought of others that we haven't had an opportunity to discuss yet. I'm happy to hear that. I know I think commissioner and commissioner might have had theirs covered this far through the arena reserve and then commissioner blue ball defer to you if you have anything you want to mention. I know commissioner wise did not have any other motions to consider. She had just wanted to have that conversation about how to enhance our quarterly reporting.

I know we're running out of time, but on Tuesday, are we going to talk about this again, potentially?

We can.

I think we probably should just plan on that, which I think would be some last-minute things we can discuss.

And I've got a couple motions that I'll just touch on today, and then I'll have more information on Wednesday. The first one is... One of them is I'm looking at trying to restore the reserve amount to the extension council budget that was slashed a couple of years ago. It'd be an increase of 119,000 and it would get them up to 825,000. And some of the facts that I want to address there is, and I'll get you guys a copy of this, but I'm just wanting to show the ROI on, you know, over $100 million worth of grain and what they're doing to help farmers out, as well as they just have tens of thousands of volunteer hours that they get from people that contribute. So I'll have several different bullet items. And then one other thing, it's a $5,000 request from the Sedgwick County Fair that I'll be asking for as well and that is just for their livestock judging and for the things that happened this year it was their budget I think was $5,000 and it was over $11,000 cost and they had to raise that money amongst volunteers and the fair board so I'll be able to discuss that stuff more in depth Wednesday and I'll send this out if you guys have any questions that'd be helpful Lindsay as we start entertaining these things just get my mind right about some of this

Tuesday, yeah. Or Tuesday. Yeah, Tuesday. It was before Wednesday. When we, you know, because there's conversations about election pay, things like that too. So we have passed a maximum levy. So if we add... What are our options of reductions? Do we have to go through the budget and find other reductions? Or do you want us to say, hey, let's use this from contingency? How do you want us to handle this?

So that will be part of the conversation. So right now when we're working on crafting motions, one of the questions is, is there somewhere else in the budget you want to take from? Or is it coming from contingency? Now, for a couple of these that we've talked about, it's specifically coming from contingency. For example, extension would come from contingency. that would increase your spending. It would be up to the commission if you want to allow that to come from that way, which would impact your bottom line, your operating surplus or deficit. And again, whether that's sustained funding. Is it a one-year adjustment or is it a recurring adjustment? In which case, that would impact all five years of your financial forecast. And then if there was an offset somewhere, so I do think it is worthy of having that conversation of finding offsets elsewhere, because we did try to present to you the most balanced budget that we could. recognizing that there is about seven and a half million dollars of other departmental requests out there that haven't been funded. So to me, in good faith, yes, I would love to help you find some offsets elsewhere in the budget if we do this. But at the end of the day, if there's not anything else that we're wanting to reduce, then yes, the option would just be to come from contingency and increase that overall.

Can you remind us our contingency policy?

So it depends on which contingency we're looking at. Your operating reserve is the loosest one, and it's also the largest contingency. So you have complete discretion to use that in any way that the commission wants to. When we get into things like the rainy day reserve, there is an actual fund balance policy that says how we will spend that for capital improvements or for settlements. That was the source of the settlement this year. You also have a BOCC contingency. Generally, that would be a source for maybe a specific initiative that the commission wants to do. Technology contingency is pretty obvious. Public safety contingency also pretty obvious. So as long as those uses are aligned with that, then we're in good shape.

Question. Sorry to belabor. I know we're on time. But operating reserve, is that also where when we need to make, if the sheriff was to come to us needing an urgent Request of some sort, or where did we fund like the budget increase for him and pay compensation? Did that come from a public safety reserve? Is that different than the operating reason?

If we have enough budget in the public safety contingency, then yes, that would be the 1st place we would go. But if we don't have enough budget there to do whatever is being supported, then yes, operating reserve would be the next place we would go. So operating reserve is the default for pretty much anything, but public safety.

What are we keeping them fund balance and operating reserve?

So operating reserve doesn't really, let me actually just find the contingency.

It's easier for you to email us this.

No.

I don't want to ask questions.

No, I just need to find a page in the book. So here it is. So for example, in 2027, we have a $20 million budgeted operating reserve. We don't plan to spend much of that. We always plan to spend some of our contingency just because we know stuff is going to come up. But we've got 20 million there, 250,000 in BOCC, 10 million in public safety, 15 million in rainy day reserve, and 1.5 million in technology. all of those would be supported with about $100 million of fund balance we have in the general fund. So you have $46.7 million worth of budget authority. If we were to spend all of that, it would put us below our minimum fund balance policy and we would have to take corrective action within the next budget cycle to try and get that restored to that minimum level. So all of that is supported with your reserves.

Last question, I promise.

You're fine.

So if we use any amount of reserve, is your intent to just try to refill the reserve back up to its current levels? Or is this just kind of using fund balance and that's the new level that we've spent down to?

So it depends. For the most part, for something like the settlement from earlier this year, we would have no intent to backfill for that purpose. If we start using it for things like ongoing costs, like if we were to implement a sheriff pay raise, then yes, we would want to come back and figure out how to try and at least restore those reserves somewhat. Because what we don't want to do is plan to use reserves for recurring costs. That is a quick way to get yourselves in a structural imbalance. So we want to use reserves for one-time costs or pilot projects or things like that. And then we want to come along and figure out if it's a recurring cost, how we're going to find a recurring revenue to offset that.

Okay, I lied. One more question. Would it make sense for us to entertain in the future policy around operating reserve? Because I do agree ongoing cost versus one time we set ourselves up for structural imbalance. I mean, is that something that we should...

You should create policy around. So we have policy around your rainy day reserve specifically for that. If you wanted to add some additional considerations to your operating reserve, we can certainly do that. I think right now when we are evaluated by our credit rating agencies, they don't have any concerns with how we've got it structured because we do have that rainy day reserve that's got some limitations. And they realize that in an organization, this large 20Million dollars relative to a 600Million dollar budget is really not going to get you very far. So we don't typically get picked on for not having really tight restrictions in that area. But if that was something that this commission wanted to do to reduce that. Potential use for recurring costs we can certainly talk about.

Well, maybe you can have your little brain trust, get together and explore some ideas and maybe give some advice on what would or wouldn't be best.

Commissioner Wise is online, so if she wants to speak, I did want to give her an opportunity.

I'm just on to listen, and I'll get caught up on where you guys are at. Okay, okay. Thank you.

Okay. Let me just summarize that again then. So if the commission chooses to use contingency to shore up something, $100,000, $200,000, I think our strategy going into the budget discussion for 2028 would be we then have to come back through the budget process and shore that up with continuing money. That's just what we do. If you want to policy that, I'm fine with that. But that's just common sense. We don't want to work ourselves toward a structurally imbalanced budget. So we'd come back in the 2028 budget, shore that up, and somewhere somebody else is going to have to probably not get something that they think is right.

I think that's the conversation is trying to understand thresholds. I know in our rainy day fund, I know on our fund balances, I know debt limits, we got some pretty strict policy. There is a difference between using one-time funding and ongoing funding and what that looks like. That's why I'm trying to process in my mind how we do some of these things because these are worthy conversations to be having. That's really helpful.

What else?

Well, based on the earlier discussion, I guess I'd like to have a draft amendment or draft motion to use ending balance in 2026 to take care of interest bank arena for the one year.

Well, speaking to that, I think that might be more appropriate as a part of, I think you would still do what you have in your current motion, which is to remove it from the 2027 budget because the scope of the conversation is about 2027. But when we get to that agenda item about potentially adding things to 2026, I think that would be the appropriate time for you then to have that motion to make that additional change to the 2026 budget, if that would be okay. That's fine. Walk me through the process, I guess. Absolutely. Okay.

get with you between now and tuesday okay i'll have some questions later thank you okay well we have on tuesday staff we're going to bring the appraiser and have some appraiser discussion we will add on another copy half hour just clean up budget stuff is that sufficient time do you think well and i think we can um have that time too to talk about the r r

Public hearing, because that can get us into some legal trouble pretty quick. So I want to make sure chairman that, you know, all of the steps we're going to take that day then getting up to budgeted option. And then, yes, we'll talk about. But Lauren had mentioned in terms of some of the cleanup to the 2027 recommended. So we had talked about, for example, that parks grant that we did not receive. So there'll be a cleanup motion that we make sure all 5 of you have. Um, I know commissioner how has it now already, but we would want to have that. We'll have some other adjustments for what Lynn had talked about related to Northwest expressway and then any other cleanup motions. We'll go through that for sure on Tuesday. Just make sure on the same page with that, and then get into those individual motions that commissioners will want to make on Wednesday.

Okay, that's what I wanted to clarify earlier whenever I said Wednesday and Commissioner Meisner said Tuesday. So just to understand the full intention of the process is for hopefully we all, I mean, I know things can change, but for the most part, we'll have all of our

motions and everything laid out and make our business cases and everything too yes and that way on tuesday if you are seeing things in your motions that you no longer want if you want us to have tweak them we have some time to do that and make sure they're perfect for you when we get into the meeting wednesday morning okay anybody got any questions on any of that okay have a good weekend everybody yes