Commission - Regular Meeting

and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Shawnee County Board of County Commissioners. On my far left is Lisa Pitt, our county treasurer.

On my far right is Rich Eckert, our county counselor.

Immediate right is Commissioner Kevin Cooker, represents District 2. And on my left is Commissioner Aaron Mays, who represents District 3. I'm Bill Rippon. I represent District 1. So Lisa, what's first?

First item on the agenda is item three, consent agenda.

Before we make a motion on that, I'd like to pull 3L. Do we need a vote on that? Second. Second. Motion's been made by Commissioner Rippon, seconded by Commissioner Cook. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion carries 3-0. So we're striking out L. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. Motion's been made by Commissioner Cook, seconded by Commissioner Rippon. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Opposed? Motion carries.

thirty zero next item next item is item four new business a county clerk one considerable voucher payments because commissioners this morning we have vouchers that total two million eight hundred sixty five thousand four hundred let's say one hundred forty six dollars and thirty eight cents the highlights out of the voucher report We have $521,003.04 to elate the Ford sales. This is for eight SUVs for the Sheriff's Department. This is paid out of capital outlay funds. $136,622.19, that's for Aramark Service. That's August's inmate meals, and that's paid with the detention facility funds. $314,553.90. That is for the RX benefits for pharmaceutical claims paid with the health insurance fund. $229,235.36 paid to Blue Cross Blue Shield for health insurance claims, and that's paid with the health insurance fund. I don't have any questions regarding the vouchers. I would move for their approval. Second.

motion's been made by commissioner cook second by commissioner ripon all in favor say aye those opposed motion carries three zero next item two consider correction orders i move that we approve the correction orders second motion's been made by commissioner ripon second by commissioner mays all in favor say aye it's opposed motion carries three zero next item

B, land use and development. One, public hearing and consider approval of resolution R2026080, a major amendment to an existing conditional use permit to remove condition number two from resolution number 80-123 on property zoned RR1 and located at 4144 Southeast 45th Street in Tecumseh Township.

Good morning, commissioners. Joni Fedani, director of land use and development. As mentioned today, we've got a major amendment to a conditional use permit. Actually, this one's old enough that it's actually called a special use permit in which we want to remove condition number two from the requirements. This is for Paw Prince Animal Hospital out off of 45th Street in Tecumseh Township. Back in 1980, a vet wished to open up a clinic on his property. He lived on the property and ran the vet clinic out of a building in the back. It's been operating since 1980. One of the conditions that was added onto that conditional use permit was the name of the vet who was operating and it was required that if any time that vet changed that they had to come back in front of the Board of County Commissioners to get approval for that change. That has happened once since 1980. The property did sell and a new vet moved in and a new vet was operating. And since that time, that vet has passed away and the wife is selling the property at this point and so wanted to remove this condition to require a certain person to be operating that vet clinic. In this situation, the Planning Commission held a public hearing for this item on July 13. It was recommended for approval six to zero at that time. And shortly after the fact, we figured out that there was an error in the legal description of the property of the conditional use permit portion itself. And so we pulled it and took it back to the Planning Commission in August of 2026 and held a second public hearing. Staff had reviewed the case history, confirmed notices were resent to property owners within 1,000 feet. In both situations, we didn't have responses received from any of the property owners. At both public hearings, the applicant's representative spoke in support of the proposal and the staff had recommended approval. In this situation, planning commissioners recommended approval by a vote of seven to zero, which brings us where we're at today. I've already explained the history and the proposed use, so I won't go over that again. This is the site plan here. The portion marked in yellow is what is under the conditional use permit. The house is on the front portion. It does have a shared drive. And then the buildings in the back are what are used for storage and or land management. And then also the vet clinic is the building right in the middle. um notice was sent to everybody within a thousand feet of the property which included 11 letters no responses were received we have nothing further on this we believe that the the bcc should approve the conditional use permit as submitted and that it complies with golden factors and if you don't have any other questions for me then we would ask that you have a public hearing

questions. I don't have any I'm over we open the public hearing second motion has been made by commissioner a second by commissioner cook all in favor say aye those opposed motion carries 3. Okay, we are now in the public hearing. Is there anyone here who would like to speak in favor of this. This change resolution. Anybody opposed. for nothing all right commissioner I would make a motion to close the public hearing okay I'll second motions been made by commissioner cook Mr Rippon all in favor say aye those opposed motion carries 3 0 I'll make a motion that we approve the resolution. Second. Motion's been made by Commissioner Mayes, seconded by Commissioner Cook. All in favor say aye. Those opposed? Motion carries 3-0.

Thank you, Commissioners.

Thank you, Joni. Okay, next item.

Next item is item C, health department. One, consider approval of contract C2026321, a memorandum of understanding with the United Way of Kaw Valley to serve as fiscal agent for the early childhood block grant with an award of $255,384.95 for the health department. The ECBG period runs for 12 months from July 1 of 2026 through June 30th of 2027.

Good morning, Commissioners. Missy Middendorf, Family Health Division Manager at the Health Department. And as she read, this is an annual thing we've been bringing for years, approved to have United Way of Call Valley be our fiscal agent for this early childhood block grant, and this supports our Nurse-Family Partnership Program. Any questions?

Questions? I move to adopt second motions been made by commissioner cook second by commissioner upon all in favor say aye those opposed motion carries 3 0. Next item.

D, counselor's office. One, consider approval to award bid and approve contract C2026322 with CFS engineers for RFQ number 028-26, engineering services for proposed data centers.

Good morning, Commissioners. Rich Eckert, County Councilor. I feel like we've talked about this issue a lot, so I don't know what else to add. RFQs came in. We've studied them extensively. CFS was the only bidder, likely due to the fact that one of our requirements was that they can't have a current data center as a client. But in fact, they met that requirement among the other ones. We've worked with CFS for years and years and years. I'm very confident in what they can do. And we're ready to bring them on board.

Did anybody give you an idea how long this process will take?

I hope we'll start working next week.

OK.

Yeah, after we approve the contract, we'll transmit the COP application to them, which, of course, is already online. And then we'll get an engineer assigned to us, and then we'll start moving. Mr. Chairman? Yes.

Rich, for those that are here and those watching, can you please go through with us what Cook, Flatt, and Strobel is going to do?

Yeah, sure. One of the things that they're an expert at is that they're expert at site plans. So we'll begin there and they'll have a look at the site plan. It'll be our, not only our look, because we're pretty good at site plans too, but they'll bring an engineering eye to that site plan and make sure all the setbacks are met and things like that. That's pretty elementary stuff. And then as we draft the CUP, and I want to be clear about this, this is not prejudging it, right? But we still have to draft a CUP, even if you intend to vote no or you vote no in February, a CUP still has to be drafted. So as we draft the CUP, we'll be looking at protections, right? Protecting the environment, protecting noise levels, for instance, which is one thing that I do have a concern about for sure. So we'll rely upon an engineering firm to help us with all of those protections and help us draft more scientific terms in the CUP. I use noise as an example, so I'll continue to use that. We'll need to look at other data centers in the country and we'll see what is the standard of the industry for decibel levels at the property line, right? And then we'll have to do a series of studies. We'll be able to do estimates based upon their plans of what the decibel level will be at a property line. Then is that decibel level too high or is it sufficient? So we'll rely upon the engineering firm to tell us things like that.

Rich, currently Shawnee County has a park that is adjacent to a school in Montero. It's where the Velma-Paris Community Center is at. Have we considered having Cook, Flatt, and Strobel place decibel readers at the Boys and Girls Club at Velma-Paris so we can measure what the current decibel ratings are? I know that's been a concern that's been raised is how the data center might impact the children. But if we can measure what the current decibels are, We would know what the current conditions are for the children and then we would know what further impact. And by the same token, if we were measuring light pollution, what's the light pollution already? We have, again, the park that is very close to this facility. We would be able to measure what the current conditions are.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. They'll do what we tell them to do. And so I've now had a commissioner tell me to do that. So we're going to do that. The other thing is things like light pollution. Remember, this is still an industrial park. And there's no way the light pollution of this data center is going to match what Walmart does when they have semi trucks coming in at 3 in the morning. So some things are not as big concerns. Some things are big concerns. And I certainly count noise as a big concern.

Well, I think it's important to note what the conditions are as they stand today. I mean, currently you have, as you indicated, an industrial park when it was operational and may be operational in the future. You have a racetrack that produces a lot of noise and light. You have a airport with jets that are coming and refueling and coming and going. And there's just a lot of activity within that corridor.

Well, and here's the other thing. The engineering firm is with us also, let's say, again, without prejudging, that the condition permit is approved. The engineering firm will be with us during the construction period, and they'll be with us for a time after everything is complete. So let's say, just as an example, don't anybody yell at me, but let's say we set the decibels level at the property line at 65, just as an example. and the thing's built and the decibels are coming in at 70. They'll be able to tell us that and then we'll be able to work on a fix. And there are studies or case studies out there where a data center did exceed the decibel level and then they did things to bring that back in line. So this engineering firm will also act as an enforcement mechanism of the CUP if in fact it gets built.

And we're also going to be working with the watershed and the protections that are there to make sure that we're not going to contribute any sort of environmental harm to the watershed.

Yes, this is all inclusive. This is everything. Closed loop system, right? So there's an indication that the cooling will be a glycol product mixed with water or maybe just glycol. We don't know yet. But what happens to the glycol? It's not a permanent fix. At some point in time, it'll have to be disposed of. So how does it get disposed of, right? So we'll work with our engineering firm. And of course, that'll be in the permit as well as how they dispose of that product. But we'll have to read how they intend to do it and then make sure that's satisfactory. So it is an A to Z situation with this firm. All right.

Those are the questions I had.

there's no other questions I would move for approval look before we do I know that we have people that are signed up for comment on a data center so rather than having them wait to the end since this is an action item on

a data center if we could go ahead and take the public comment down all right again on data center home you know we have all over that center for one that signed up right now okay so you are perceived yeah okay Dennis Brinkman your

I really appreciate their considering another engineering firm just to verify information that was talked about. And as you know, the last time I talked about runoff curves with pre existing amount of water would run off as opposed to once the project was done. And it seemed like it was real odd that the runoff curves weren't really. Reflective of the existing. Land cover the cropland and the pasture. So the result was really then the pretty inadequate amount of protection and control once that was all done as it was in the plan. And I noticed, too, the embankment they're talking about for their storage of the water, real close to the floodplain, and it doesn't seem like there's any protection on the back toe when the floodwaters come up. You see all these houses fall in the water when a flood comes up. Well, that could wash that backside of that out. Need to be addressed. And then when they had a custom soil report made, they included maybe 400 acres of land that was not actually in that design or what was being done. So the table quantities are off by quite a bit. So that just needs to be... That and I haven't seen with the updates is in online. I haven't seen any updates on the that water quality. Now the hand I would give you because if they thought they weren't going to maybe get Santa's area sewer installed, then this was the version C300B and now it shows for sanitary control they're going to manage the effluent from that sewage from bathrooms and so forth and that then they would maybe use that treated material and apply it to the land. Well the original runoff curve was so high as though the grassland was all but bare and then you drop a water hit it. We're going to run off, but yet they're also in their plan. This is so the pink area circled. The next page is zoomed in closer to it right next to the floodplain again. Yet that was so bad earlier for a high runoff curve number. Why would you be applying that fluent to the land? And when in actuality it's a native grassland, it's being properly grazed in the court. We had some good rains this year. So the report and what they're planning to do wouldn't match if you actually went with the original calculation that they have. Of course, native grass can't handle all that extra nutrients. It's going to be real high in phosphorus. And this is the biologically available phosphorus, different from what the farmers are putting on. So any kind of a rain, that will run off and get down into the stream. And this is why when you hear of algae blooms, it's not nitrogen. Generally, there's excess phosphorus in the water. So that'd be a concern there. So I'm glad you're coming up with a firm. Maybe I did have a question about is there an escrow account going to be payable back to the county if for whatever reason, either the site goes bankrupt or whether the bubble comes up and there are no more data centers or reduced down, who's going to pay for cleaning up the site, the computers and that kind of thing? Last thing I want to invite you to, next Thursday, 17th, I know it's a county commissioner meeting also that day, Garfield Park, we have the Topeka Water Festival, there's fourth graders, there's 700 kids coming, and the whole day they just learn about water, carrying water, Floating paper clips on top of water. Why is that important? Just knowledge. Some right here in the community, they're coming from far and wide. So maybe after this meeting are people who want to learn more about water. The kids are all excited. They have it well controlled and so on. They have the whole space. And lastly, many of them, they'll come to that event. It's hard to get bus drivers and all these other people. They'll come to that event, and then they'll go down to the state capitol. So they get both environmental thing and they get a history lesson at the same time. So next Thursday, Garfield Park. I get there at 7 because I help manage the buses when they're coming in so the cars don't park where the buses are supposed to be.

Thank you, Dennis. Thanks, Dennis, and thanks for helping out on that. Yeah, it's a fun event.

Thanks much.

All right, Rick Tyler.

Commissioners, thanks for taking these public comments. Mr. Counselor, thank you. And others at the podium. My name is Rick Tyler. I live at 3210 West 109th Street. That's Wakarusa. And for reference, my house is straight south of the proposed site, about two miles. Commissioner Mays, I'm one of your constituents. I had... a long list of things I wanted to talk to you about related to electric utilities at the site. I have about 47 years in the utility industry, recently retired. But based on some of the things I heard this morning and last night at the JADO meeting, I'm going to pivot a little bit so you don't have to hear about transformers and transmission lines. First of all, I'd like to say thank you for engaging this firm. I don't know too much about them other than they've done a little survey work for me from time to time. I hope you can get all the answers that you need. just as a point of reference again my house is two miles away we have seen bald eagles on our property um i don't know where they nest um but that's i think something that needs to be considered to the effects on some of the wildlife and particularly some of those types of things um and mr eckert i heard you on a podcast about i don't know six or seven weeks ago i think it was johnny county in the know or something like that And at the end of that, you said that sometimes you like to engage people that give comments and talk to them about things. I would love for you to engage me so we could maybe have a conversation about some of these things. So when it's convenient for you, I'd love for that to happen. What I really wanted to talk to you about is, the last time before you, this is only the second time I think, but I mentioned is there some way to get all of us together to talk about some of these things that quite frankly is hard to do when you have four minutes in front of you and you can't really answer questions. So let me describe to you something that happened to me last week. I'm driving down the road. My phone rings. It's the city of Topeka. Not anybody from the county, but from the city of Topeka. And the young lady on the line said, identified who I was, make sure she knew who I was talking to. She says, Compass wants to talk to you. I said, what a coincidence. I want to talk to them. And she said, I would like to put you in charge, in touch with Janice Murphy. I don't think any of you were at the special meeting of the city council a couple of weeks ago when Compass presented, but she was one of the four panelists up there, principal of corporate communications or some kind of title like that. And after thinking, but this was on Friday before the Labor Day weekend, thinking about it over the weekend, I decided that my response to her would be something along the lines of, I'm down to a minute already, you know, talking to me, a one-off conversation isn't going to help Anything you need to figure out a way to engage? everybody a Hundred people a thousand people. I don't know what it would be I would like County officials to be on that I would like city officials to be in on that conversation. I would like the news media to be on on that conversation and And I talked to the mayor and some of the council people last night about this, and I think they're on board. I'm not sure how that will go, but unless we can have, you got a lot of really smart people here. You just heard from one. He's so smart, I don't know what he says half the time. You got a couple of ladies back here that I hope you listen to them. They are two of the smartest people I know. Listen to them while you're doing some of those engineering studies, because I think they can be helpful. But we have got to find a way to have an open and honest conversation where all of you, all of us, the city, whoever, can ask questions and get them answered. Otherwise, this is not... I just I think it's going to be more adversarial than it needs to be. So my time is up. I could talk for several more minutes, but I appreciate the fact that you listened to me today. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Colleen Kim.

Going after Rick. So I gave you a copy of this. It says conditional use permit at the top. It's packet. And this is 13 very long pages of concerns that we had about the conditional use permit. This isn't my sole writing. This is the writing of a group. of people, Rick contributed, Dennis contributed, I contributed, Amy contributed, other people contributed who know what they're talking about. I don't know all the things in this packet and understand them 100%, but the people who do contributed to their section. I'll just turn to the noise part because that's what Rich brought up and that's the part that I wrote about. So that talks about the modeling approach in that CUP that they did. That was certified by a company that they brought in. And they use something with Google Maps to do it. That's not a real elevation model. It just isn't. That's not how you do studies that have to do with anything that has to do with elevation. Study for sound, noise, light, all of those things. And so without an elevation model that's done correctly, the study isn't correct. There's no way to do that. And so I put down that because of that, all the sound information they put in there from that study has to be considered suspect. And there's a whole section in this packet that says, and this study has to be considered suspect. because of something, Dennis with his water drainage, that study that they did has to be considered suspect because the numbers aren't correct. So there's a lot of questions that we have because these studies aren't done correctly. Another consideration that we're having is that we're seeing in other places in Kansas where they're coming in and they're not using, uh, they're like, they're asking for the lowest amount of lectures, electrical usage, um, and then ending up using, uh, the gas lines that are on the property to run generators 24 seven instead of, um, of using the electric grid. And I can imagine the number of generators that are listed in this project, the amount of sound and pollution, et cetera, that could come from that. What I'm asking for you to do today is when you are looking at the CUP, Rich, when you write that up, I would like to see where they actually have contracts with you know, averaging, not just a average, you provide service in this area, um, quote, like they have in that CUP, but where it says, you know, average, you will be providing all of this. We will not be running our generators 24 seven. We will not be tapping into the propane line that's running through. this land. So I am concerned about all of those things. And I think you should be concerned about those things. Because everything that they have told us so far seems to be kind of lies and or misdirections. And I think even if this goes through, I want it to be done right. And I don't want to be lied to. And I don't think that you guys want to be lied to. Thank you.

Mike Bradley, 6707 Southwest Winsome.

Thank you, Commissioners, for considering CFS Engineers as an independent engineering service in order to review COMPAS's revised CUP, including but not limited to the examination of noise pollution levels, backup diesel generator, air pollution levels, and the applicable KDHE Bureau of Air Approval concerns regarding supply water and wastewater drainage issues and the conducting of an area health impact assessment. That said, my concerns today cover infrastructure costs for data centers, dynamics impacting Evergy's current integrated resource plan, and customer rates. I submitted yesterday by email to the county a number of documents surrounding this issue. Due to speech time limitations, I am condensing and boiling down my concerns. Evergy has previously stated that the premium rates they will charge data centers will provide the funds to cover the infrastructure buildup costs incurred for large load data centers based on Evergy cost projections. On August 31, 2026, Evergy asked the Kansas Corporation Commission regulators to approve the construction of more power plants to meet the increased needs due to a boom in demand for power from data centers and to allow regulators to predetermine rate-making principles, a process which would allow Evergy to charge higher electric rates to all customers with a construction work in progress rate adjustment to recover costs to help pay for these infrastructure costs, adding infrastructure construction costs to the energy bills paid by all Shawnee County users. Further, the difference between 2024 and 2026 Evergy IRP differ remarkably due to data center expansion according to a July 24, 2026 filing with the KCC by the Council for New Energy and Economics, a nonprofit organization on utilities. This filing is indicating that Evergy is in a crunch to update the grid quickly due in large part to the expected growth of data centers requiring Evergy to keep all their current electrical resources online and push back the retiring of old coal power plants and pay for their continuing maintenance and regulatory costs, incur added construction costs, and requiring the buying of new power generation and energy distribution hardware. This is happening at the same time other energy companies are also trying to buy the same power generation and hardware due to their energy expansion needs. With this competition by energy companies for the same materials rapidly driving up the infrastructure expansion costs. Fuel price volatility due to overseas war, tariff related material cost increases, and the possible upcoming data center regulations are also likely to play a part in quickly rising costs. These various cost increases may exceed the planned projected costs noted in the latest IRP as Averagy may be underestimating the building costs and that the rate costs charged to the data centers therefore may not cover the data center infrastructure expansion costs, which would result in customer rate increases to cover the cost shortfalls. It appears, if built, this proposed data center will add to energy costs paid by all Shawnee County users. Thank you.

Thank you. Sharon Gillette.

Good morning commissioners and counselor. My name is Sharon Gillette. I live in unincorporated Shawnee County, just outside Topeka city limits. I'm hoping my four minute talk will resonate with commissioner Rippon and with his illustrious past with Shawnee parks. We've lived here for four years now, and in that time have come to love Topeka and its surrounding area. We moved into our home in the month of May. The very next month in June, we happened to see a special segment on WIBW News about the devastating tornado that occurred in Topeka in June of 1966. Having moved here from out of state, I knew nothing about that, but learned about the path of the tornado took, the destruction, and the horrible loss of lives. The TV segment mentioned Burnett's Mound. Wow, that really hit home with me because I live on Moundview Drive, just a few short minutes from Burnett's Mound. Amy and I have hiked it many times. I delved into the legend behind Burnett's Mound and read about the tribal belief that the mound would protect Topeka from further wild winds from the southwest. by blocking that dangerous tail of the savage storm before it could get to Topeka. The mound was to be protected, respected, and revered, not to be desecrated in any way. Both my home and Burnett's Mound lie less than two and a half miles from the proposed hyperscale data center. I consider that building of the data center to be not only a desecration of the land, but also means to add more artificial intelligence into our lives. I fully realize that AI is used for meaningful, innovative ways to improve our lives. AI has been used to solve math problems that no human mind has ever solved. AI has brought huge medical breakthroughs, especially in diagnostics. AI is very good at solving complex problems much, much faster than the human brain can think. But the flip side of the good is the bad. AI is also used to gain our sensitive personal data and it's used to download malware onto our devices. The hackers, the scammers, the criminals use AI in illegal yet very convincing ways to trick us. Digital thievery is predicted to get much worse in the future. Compass's proposed hyperscale 400-plus megawatt 10 buildings of servers will surely be used to provide more energy for one of the big tech companies' thirst and greed for more AI intelligence power. Shawnee County will have no say as to how that power will be used. We're fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. Thank you. Thank you.

Amy Gillette.

Hello. My name is Amy Gillette. I live at 5500 Southwest Mountview Drive, about two and a half miles from the proposed data center. So one thing you said earlier, Rich, you guys set the standards. Whatever happens that needs to protect us can be requested directly by you. Rich just said this. Like I said last night also, you are the ones who have control. What happens is ultimately up to you. And each one of you who chooses to participate or not participate in setting these regulations stringently will be the ones held responsible by all of us, by the public. by the taxpayers who paid for that land with our half-cent countywide sales tax, the land that Juddo owns by way of Go Topeka. You are all responsible for all of this. That's good. And as we're truly starting to enter into this process for real, with the application having been declared complete, it's time for you to join us in that process. To go back to what Rick said, he got a call from Topeka's director of economic development on behalf of Compass. Why is a city employee contacting a citizen on behalf of a huge billion dollar corporation? Why are our tax dollars going to pay a person to call Rick for Compass's PR purposes? You got the principle of corporate communication. That's not someone there to answer his questions. That's someone there to smooth over whatever bad PR we might be causing. As I was saying last night, there's conflicts of interest all over this. The chair of Go Topeka's board is the CEO of Bartlett and West, an engineering firm here. Bartlett and West is the engineering firm that did the stormwater study that Dennis talked about that has serious flaws in its methodology. And they also did the traffic assessment study for Compass's application. We can see this all if we just go on the Shawnee County website. Exhibits H and I. Representative for Bartlett and West is also the person who signed off on Compass' CUP application. Does that not seem like a direct conflict of interest? A Bartlett and West employee was also there at the Rural Water District meeting last week that some of us were at. That person was there along with the Compass rep. There's a clear line of connection between these two companies, Compass and Bartlett and West, and Go Topeka's right in the middle of it. And Go Topeka's chair is the CEO of Portland West. So to recap this, our tax money went to Go Topeka to buy a plot of land that's in the planned Compass Data Center site. The engineering firm directly assisting Compass has close ties to the chair of Go Topeka. Can someone explain to all of us how this is not a situation in which an improper personal benefit is in play? We've all looked at the revised CUP. I'm not sure if all of you have. But here are two of the highlights. Highlights I'm using sarcastically. So it's no longer a 400 megawatt site, like my mom said. In fact, their critical load has gone up 50% to 600 megawatts. They were already going to have a hard time supplying the 400. Now we're up to 600. They also talked about how they're going to have 420 generators on site, 420 diesel generators. Yes, they're going to try to use hydro-treated vegetable oil if they can, if it's affordable, all of these conditions. But they're diesel generators. And those are going to operate the site until they get to that 600 megawatts. And you know what? 422 megawatt generators. If we do the math on that, that's 840 megawatts. Why do they need 840 megawatts of generators to run a 600 megawatt facility? A little strange, right? Seems like this is just going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing. You all are the ones that can stop it. Thank you.

OK, that's everyone we had signed up for. Talk about data center. So we'll go back to our our our item here on the agenda. Do we have any further discussion on this?

Mr. Chairman?

Yes.

I just would note that Exhibit A to the item today is the resolution that we passed wherein it says that the applicant has a $15,000 non-refundable filing fee which would fund this. So the taxpayer's dollars are not going to fund this Cook, Flatt & Strobel. I just want to make sure that that's clear. This is being paid for by the applicant and not by net. That is just the minimum. There can be additional fees if needed for additional services. And so I just want to make sure that that's clear.

There's also $10,000 escrow as well. So they paid $25,000 so far.

All right. Any other discussions or comments? if not i would move for approval of contract 2026 322 second motion's been made by commissioner ripon seconded by commissioner cook all in favor say aye those opposed motion carries 3-0

Next item is item E, audit finance. One, consider approval of Shawnee County 2027 budget and CIP.

Good morning, commissioners. Jennifer Sauer, financial administrator. We are here to pick up our discussion on the 2027 budget. I have pulled up where we left off. We currently... are looking at a budget of $163,742,183, which is a 5% increase over the 2026 budget of $155,930,965. Not sure where you guys would like to start on the discussion.

suggestion yes I had brought up at our last meeting last Thursday looking at overtime the sheriff office IT, Public Works, Department of Corrections, those all accounted for about $3 million, and that's budgeted over time as opposed to being able to use within the department for unfilled positions. And so if we were to remove that budgeted over time, that would be a reduction of $3 million. Brian Cole, gave a presentation to the commission that that would deeply impact the department of corrections and that they have that budgeted overtime for the operations of the mental health facility and other operations and that that would really not be feasible within his department If we were to look at the other remaining departments, those again being, I believe, the sheriff, public works, the IT. And facilities. And facilities. Have we had communication with the other remaining departments on how that would impact them? i have not well i i recognize that we've got several of them here today i don't know who wants to go first i think the the smallest impact would be i.t mark do you want to again

Might add that Brian came up with an alternative. Way of saving some money rather than using the overtime for his department so.

Mark Rice information technology. I'd be willing to forego my $22,000 in overtime for 27.

Thank you and I again that's not going to solve all of our budgetary issues, but every bit does help. So I would make a motion to reduce the IT budget by the amount of the overtime.

So the budgeted overtime with the benefits included would be $22,342.

And if we want to go to facilities next, I know that you were looking to hire a couple of the more employees. And needed within the department. You had a motion. I guess I made my motion. Is there a second on the motion? I would second.

All right. And we need to vote on that right now. So motion's been made by Commissioner Cook, seconded by Commissioner Rippon. All in favor say aye. Those opposed? Motion carries 3-0.

Okay.

Thank you, Commissioner. I got ahead of myself a little bit.

That's all right. Morning, Commissioners. Justin Landon, Director of Facilities Management. I'd be willing to give up that overall amount of $624,000.

Again, we are hiring some new employees with facilities, and I know that you need those employees with all of the duties that you have covering all the buildings. Yes. I would make a motion then to reduce the facilities by the amount so indicated.

Second. Motion's been made by Commissioner Cook. Second by Commissioner Rippon. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion carries 3-0. Next department.

Kirk? Do you want it? Again, if there are open positions, the open positions would be able to pay for overtime that we have, but this is, again, addressing budgeted overtime.

Sure. Kirtney House, Director of Public Works. Two things. We're getting close to being completely full. So we will have very few vacant positions. We have, and I don't want to get into details, but we're very close to being full, as far as overtime goes. I budget or I manage overtime pretty tightly. The vast, vast majority of our overtime is used in the field for two reasons. Number one, snow and ice removal. Obviously we have to do that at all hours of the day, seven days a week. And so that's where the vast majority is used. We also use overtime at the rest of the year when our field maintenance folks are working on a project, they need to get it done before they leave for the day, we will use overtime for that. That's the primary two uses. I noticed here that the surveyor has $8,000 worth of overtime. I don't believe that's needed, and I'm willing to obviously give that up.

I make a motion to adopt that.

I'll second. Thank you. That was $8,007. Am I right, Jennifer? It's nine.

No. That's right. A little more. $9,536. Looking at the wrong column. $9,500.

Okay. Second. Motion's been made by Commissioner Cook. Second by Commissioner Rippon. All in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion carries 3-0. Thank you, Kurt.

And just on the snow removal, you know, a lot of it depends on what kind of winter we have. And until I can get to the point where I can forecast better, I would prefer not to reduce that amount.

Well, maybe Eric with WWW can talk to Jeremy, and we can get it all figured out.

We have a connection there. All right. What do you want to do with the Sheriff's Department?

This is the amount for the civil service, and then this is the amount for the Teamsters and the CWA.

Good morning, uh, commissioners, uh, Brian Hill, Shawnee County Sheriff's office. Um, appreciate the, uh, position everybody's in, uh, trying to come up with money to run their agencies. I just want to, um, give you some facts about it. What it takes to operate the sheriff's office. Um, a lot of the overtime budget that the sheriff's office, uh, operates out of is, um, mandatory requirements every time an officer goes to court. A lot of that is on overtime hours. The sheriff's office, like a lot of police departments across country, we run our SWAT team, a lot of our special units on ancillary duties. That's in addition to what the deputies are required to do from day to day function. So every SWAT call out, we have deputies from all shifts that are activated for that. So virtually every SWAT call out or activity like that, it's somebody's on overtime when they're called out. Our dispatch center, we're getting staffing levels up. Really appreciate the help that this commission has done helping us get to where we're at. But having said that, a lot of those people are still in training programs. So although the number looks good, I got people who are training. So I can't leave them alone at the council by themselves. So we still have overtime that's going to be required because we have mandatory minimums that we have to deal with in the policing side and the dispatch side. We We're having deployment from personnel into the military. That is also a consideration because, again, in patrol we have mandatory minimums that we have to meet. There's contractual obligations in these things. It's my understanding, I have our accounting here, but we took a cut last year in our overtime budget, and we're setting out a number that that's about what we average to run the sheriff's office. Just to pull some stats up, just so you know what we're talking about here in Shawnee County, our 911 center gets over 300,000 calls into that center every year on the average. About 190,000 of those are emergency calls for service that either police or fire are responding to. There's about 2.8 million radio transmissions that come across this center in Shawnee County. I know that's a big number, but that is the number that they've been running the sheriff's office on for a lot of years. looking for ways to that we can be better with the money. But right now, when we talk about operating off of open vacancy credits that I'm left with, are we not going to feel the positions? And then we're still short and we're running the overtime kind of a conundrum. But I don't know that I have a good answer because I think that is the money that we need to run the sheriff's office. sheriff how many open positions you have I don't know if you know or the your account knows how many open positions we've got currently well I know we're down quite a few we've had that we got hit with a lot of retirements here and last number was around 1415 deputies that we were down so we Now we've got people in the hiring process. I've hired probably six of those positions, but now we have to train, send people to KLATC. So we have people in the pipeline to fill all of those positions, but we have to work through it. And again, they won't really be of any use to us on the street for at least a year by the time we get them through KLATC and train them up.

I also recognize that with the City of Topeka, and again, I don't want to cause friction between us and the city, but it is looking at their budget and reduction of force that they have within the city, I think that there's an expectation that Shawnee County is going to be picking up a lot of that work. Are you prepared for that?

Well, that is why we are pretty hesitant to try to lower this overtime money as well, because somebody got to respond to those calls and it just takes one major incident that can tie up half the cops in the city. You know, there was a barricade downtown here not too long ago last Thursday. Yeah, everybody saw that that was tied up. Well, we work very well with city of speaking and TPD and we help each other back and forth but when those incidents happen uh public safety's at risk we absolutely will cover all calls in the city and everything that we can do uh we sheriff this whole county when the city's right in the middle of it right do you have any uh new positions for next year um i don't believe we've asked for any new positions all right

I know that I can if you don't mind, I can answer a couple of questions that you guys have tossed out. Angela is not here today, but last week she sent an update. And at that time, the sheriff's office had 23 open positions and there's no new positions in the 27 budget. But there are 26 positions that are budgeted in 27 that were added throughout the year. So there's six new positions that weren't budgeted in 26, but they're not new positions being asked to be added throughout this budget cycle.

Right. Would it be? No, it was. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I should I should I should be more clear. And he'll sheriff. what what Brian did over in the jail is he really to hang on to his is the overtime money but he was able to push back some of the hiring wait six months there there's some wiggle room there where you can push some things back a little bit and and and I think it's probably going to be six months before we can get through just the process to get some of these positions feel so just that in itself will save some money yes yeah but

Just to clarify a little bit, I've brought that email up from Angela. I think there's 11 patrolmen, a corporal, a sergeant to six communication call taker positions, five communication specialists, one assistant radio network administrator, communications director, communications super shift supervisor. and three oa twos and an auto mechanic three so i mean you can see just i think what is it 11 of them are in the 911 no no 13 of them are in 911 center and i don't know how many of those you're you're close on right now but then add that and then With the patrolmen plus the officers there, I mean, that's another 13. And a lot of them have been open for quite some time. Some of them were just open last week.

Well, I wouldn't want to do anything with the communications because I know that this is an area that we're always struggling. For those that are maybe, again, present but also watching, the reason we struggle in communications is that the private sector is able to snag a lot of our more talented dispatchers and then they're working for private industries, whether it's the railroad or other. So I know that we're always struggling once we get the position filled and trained and operational.

Yes.

It's a tough job, too.

Yeah, you're dealing with everybody's worst moment of their life, generally, and not an easy job.

Of those other positions with the patrol, again, I appreciate that what you're saying is it's going to take time to even apply, interview, hire, train. uh... before that they would be out on the street but the other positions the corporal and some of the positions those are usually promotions within the department how is your command structure doing presently? I mean, are we weak on the upper command structure? Are we needing to get these individuals promoted up quickly, or do we have enough support?

Well, it's a process, and we have, you know, if you promote a major, then you promote a captain, then a lieutenant, and then a sergeant, so we have people applying for all these positions, so the openings are just us posting them to get them moved up so really what you're looking at is going to be the deficiencies of the deputies which is where we're low right now so good news is we are having several lateral candidates that are applying to the Shawnee County Sheriff's Office so Some of those people, depending on where they worked at, I think having to call Logan around to Pico, we can spin them up faster, a lot faster than going to Caylee TC. But again, we're looking for good applicants. I'd rather be short than have people who are not a good fit for Shawnee County.

And I know that in years past, often it was the case that employees would start with Department of Corrections and then after Brian got them trained and they would

come over to the sheriff's department and so and then we were back filling then position the Department of Corrections yeah that there's they're still applicants and that is kind of the progression a lot of people want to move and get up into the law enforcement ground so even from dispatch center at times people apply over into the law enforcement field so yeah

Just to also clarify on what a couple of points ago there currently, from what I can tell, are not any command staff positions open. It's just the depth or the the sergeant and corporal, I think it was. And those are there's a process that has to be followed by the Civil Service Board. Yes, sir. In order to do those promotions properly. So I think those are I imagine they're in the process of getting filled currently. Is that.

Yes, sir. They are.

All right.

So where are we at with the sheriff's department then? I don't know if we're in a number that... Because I know that you suggested maybe looking at delaying the hiring or slowing down the hiring process as a way of maybe having a budget reduction for the sheriff. But I don't know what that number would even look like.

I don't know that the complicated thing with this is that when you've got thirteen open patrolman positions I mean he can't obviously you're probably not going to hire thirteen of them tomorrow

But also by saying we're not going to fill them for six months. I mean, what does that mean? If we get three or four tomorrow, we could get the opportunity to hire applicants.

And that is the issue with that. I mean, a lot of the policing world anymore, it's almost traveling the nursing world because everybody's in competition trying to hire good quality applicants and they're in high demand across the country.

You know, it's a bigger discussion for a different day, but I think that it may be time for us to take a look at a consolidated law enforcement. If the city of Topeka is downsizing the number of their force and we're pulling officers from the county operations to handle city issues, we need to look at whether or not it would be time to have a consolidated law enforcement because that's The reality is we're now policing the city. And so, again, that's a different discussion for a different day.

Yeah, definitely is. I would like to not. You do have one position I wanted to ask about. You have an auto mechanic three that's been open for since for 541 days.

I mean obviously you've been getting by without that position right now it looks like so I mean is that one where it still needs to be there is it even posted I don't know I see the you know the that I know we've tried to get applicants in here we have had a lot of success because again private industry phase probably better than what we've been to to do but I know it's a needed position.

So what do we do for that now though? Are we just sending them down to the Dodge dealership? Well, the stuff that our people can't keep up for, we outsource.

So... I mean I hate to just give up a position that if I could feel it if if we needed to take the money from that position this year well I can keep it open but we could do that I don't see any applicants that we've had a recent to my knowledge to fill that position

All right. Well, want to move on to Parks and Rec? Yeah.

Parks and Rec does not have any budgeted overtime. Okay. But we can still, if you want to just talk to Parks and Rec, that's fine. But that is the end of the overtime list.

I love talking to Parks and Rec, but I don't know if I have anything budget-wise to discuss. I don't have anything budget-wise for the Parks and Rec. Yeah. I figured they would have some overtime for...

similar at Parks and Recreation director. We do have some overtime, but we don't budget for it. Mainly, as Kurt said, during the during the winter months, we do ice and snow removal at our facilities as well. But probably the biggest driver for us is the aquatics season. You know, we have one full time person that that manages all of our aquatic operations, which quite honestly is I don't know of another parks and recreation agency in this area, probably anywhere that has as many facilities as we have that has one full time person managing all of it. And then on the maintenance side, we have two full time maintenance positions, and they also put in quite a bit of overtime during that two and a half, three month period. So those are probably all of those are main drivers on overtime. but you just handle those out of your out of our vacant positions and and uh their budget

Jennifer when we do snow removal and say the whole counties closed down except for we're still going the people in the snow removal is that all over time and it depends on the position and sometimes it does come in as overtime sometimes it just comes in as regular hours.

That's kind of more of a HR question but I'm not sure for currently coding what all of the costs are including the people who work overtime to the winter weather whenever okay no is what I'm hearing okay

Tim, you've got, since I have this open and I'm looking at everyone's vacant positions now, you have a park police officer position that's been open for 447 days as of last week. Is that posted? Is there an effort to fill that?

Yes. We have interviewed, just guessing off the top of my head, 10 to 15 different candidates. They either don't. They either don't. They fail when they get to the background check portion. or we had what we thought was a perfect candidate to fill that. And we had a memo actually ready to come up to this commission to ask to start this person at a higher rate. And then at the last minute, he withdrew. And I think, like Sheriff Hill just mentioned, this is an incredibly hard market to fill these people. And our Park Police Department is not paid well enough to attract the uh we're fortunate to have the ones we have now i'll just say that it's hard for us to get more candidates and get them hired all right thank you kim thank you any other people you want any department you want to look at

Were you able to subtract some of those numbers out?

Yeah, we're now at a reduction of $2,027,234, which is still at a 5% increase over. Didn't move the needle much then? Nope.

Should we talk about CIP? Yeah, let's go there.

Yeah, that'd be a good idea.

Stephanie forgot to send us the slide to stand. Yeah.

All right. So this is where we left off on the CIP about a month ago when we had our discussion. We are about $454,000 over what we are suggesting we budget at $2.5 million. Again, that is not locked in. That is just what the proposed budget has been for CIP. I'm looking back through it to see if there's anything that people have suggested that we maybe could pull off. And I'm not aware of anything that anyone has reached out and said that they could remove from our CIP.

What are the highlighted ones, the yellow?

Boy, I wish I could remember what that means. I could go back and take a look at our last meeting that we had. I was thinking the same thing. I believe those were items that we specifically talked about. I know Adventure Cove parking lot mill and overlay that one we were going to do a follow up with. I think Public Works was going to check to see if they were able to do that or not able to do that, and if that would change the price of the project in any way.

And they did, and they said it was too bad a condition for us to do internally.

Perfect. Okay.

Which I guess leads me to question if $175,000 is going to be adequate. I mean, is this something I guess one of you, maybe both, let's talk about this parking lot. Is this going to need to be a complete replacement, or is this going to be we patch areas and mill and overlay the rest? Right. We do a chip seal?

I think the last conversation that we had The last conversation that we had internally after my folks spoke with Kurt was we were looking at, we have not done this yet, but actually reducing the size of that parking lot. I think it's probably a little bit bigger than it needs to be. We think we can probably get rid of about a third of it and then find out what it would cost to completely replace what's left, which I don't have a price on that as of today.

Can we sort of, I guess ball season's over, because it is used as an overflow for Bettis. I was going to say, it might be good if we just sort of audited how many cars are parked there on a regular basis anyways. But you want to look at peak demand. And I know that when Huff and Puff was being held at Lake Shawnee, it was a very busy parking spot for a few days a year. I mean, I don't know that we have any events out there that have risen to that level of demand.

No, we used to have the duck races there, and that event is not happening anymore. So our assessment, and we haven't done a study, but just laying our eyes on it, that you're right i mean there's probably a few days of year a year when you have big tournaments at bettas that gets used but by and large you know that's why i said we think we could get by with maybe two-thirds of it and probably still be in great shape and there's just if you look at it online you can kind of see as you pull in there's there's there's just an area uh that we think we need to shave right off you know and kind of square that thing up and make it a smaller project i still don't know if for complete replacement i doubt that number is good enough for complete replacement even though of a smaller lot well i'm i'm certainly not going to argue with less parking lot more park ground

But I think it's something we definitely need to figure out. What is the right size for it?

I agree.

OK. Thanks.

You're welcome.

Oh, actually, Tim, while you're up there, let me ask you about the DK Clark Park. You have $250,000 this year and then $200,000 in, is it, 29? Yeah. Explain to me a little bit more about how those numbers were arrived at.

Yeah, well, why don't I just say that we got a quote, I mean this is just a quote, to go in and do essentially a playground structure, a half court asphalt basketball court, and a small shelter. There would be some additional work required, some sidewalks and things like that. But a turnkey price on that was 360, but it didn't include Okay. $360,000. So I really think, you know, that's probably a much better estimate. And I know that we have the neighborhood association. I don't know that if I don't know if this is final or this has been I haven't gotten any word back that this is that they've actually done this, but they were under the impression that they were going to be able to get about $77,000 worth of dreams grant funds. And so honestly, this amount plus that amount, we could probably come up with the rest, you know, just out of building maintenance or three hour the neighborhood association.

And I think that also the Clark family is working on applications with some different charitable institutions to see if they can get some other charitable gifts to fund this.

Yeah, so I guess my point is, if if we could keep this money that was allotted, we probably could get by with just that and no more.

So what's the highest priority? Is it the playground? Is it the The picnic shelter?

Well, if I was going to start and pick one of those things, I'd say the playground. You're still going to have concrete work. There's some elevation changes in that lot. I'm sure you've seen it. So we'll need to figure that out. And then as part of this company that we got the quote from anyway, we'd do the surfacing. But we would need to come in and do all the curbing and all the sidewalks before that happened.

I would say the playground and also the half court basketball, just maybe again, I had envisioned maybe the shelter being the down the road. Sure.

Sure.

Again, it's not a very large park.

It is not.

But it would be a neighborhood park.

Yeah. Yeah, we really we came up with those amenities based on conversations with DJ Clark and the family. But yeah, we don't have to do all that immediately for sure.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I believe that 200,000 is just deferred and I think it was deferred until 28. Yes.

I don't have any questions regarding the CIP. We've gone through this pretty thoroughly line by line.

Yeah.

We are still $450,000 over what we are budgeted, if I'm not mistaken.

We are. We are $454,000 over the $2.5 million budget.

So we either need to modify the projects or we need to modify the budget, one or the other.

And I'm not sure, and I don't think you were here that day, Lee, to discuss the court or the cabling for the data center in the courts. I'm not sure if that's something that would all have to happen all at once or if that's a number that could be split out over a couple of years that I have no idea.

Good morning. Lee Welch, Court Administrator, 3rd Judicial District, Shawnee County District Court. This data cabling project has been on a CIP request for probably three or four, maybe five years. We simply have outdated cabling in the court supporting all of our network functions. I don't, without having the expertise of an IT manager behind me right now, I would imagine it could be split over two years. I thought you were pointing at Mark. No, no, no.

I wanted to get out from behind you.

I don't honestly know why it couldn't be split over two years, because we've been making it limp along for a number of years and patching as we can. I don't know the exact time frame, but maybe Mark, do you know when the courthouse, the county offices in the courthouse were all upgraded a number of years ago, the court areas were not. So we're still hanging back on some old Cat 5 or even maybe some prior cabling.

Mark Price, IP again. Yeah, the the cabling, the courthouse, any part of it can date probably back 20 years to, you know, when we did the remodeling, we did update some areas, but it's it is very mismatchy. We have kind of a dual system because we have the county providing phones and then courts and the courts areas have their own network. I know we've been able to just through attrition of getting projects done, we've gotten a lot of the county areas updated. I think a lot of just the nature of the courtrooms, which are a little harder to wire, have not gotten that updating. But I really would hate to speak to the specifics of the cabling and the courts areas because that's something I've never actually dealt with. But I do know that some of it would be dated. And I would think depending Again, not knowing the project, you could definitely break it up by area because it is going to be rather expansive to go in and hit the whole place at once. It's just going to be what's the weighing of the cost of mobilizing the group to come out, do one room, then come back later and do another room, as opposed to coming in as one mobilization and doing it all at once. But I would hate to give specific what the cost would be.

Are there any grants that would

be able to have we looked into grant applet opportunities either through federal state other institutions to kind of up technology upgrades for this project when i've looked at grants at least for our purposes the problem we run into a lot of it it's what's considered supplanting existing infrastructure if you're talking about redoing a new building or adding a service or something that you don't currently have you can get a grant for that but when you're you're going and trying to improve what exists. A lot of times the IT grants aren't there. A lot of it right now is being focused on cybersecurity and where our posture is pretty good, we've not been able to get those types of grants for cybersecurity because we already have those things in place and it would be supplanting existing funding we currently have set aside. Mark.

Just to clarify, for Shawnee County, it would not be considered supplanting because we obviously have nothing budgeted for it. So supplanting would be if you had budgeted for it and you're receiving federal funds for something you have budgeted. So for us, it wouldn't be supplanting. It just may not qualify for the grant, but it would not be supplanting.

Mark, you'd be doing the work in-house with your guys, be putting in this installation, or are they contracting this out?

Typically, when we've done work at the courthouse, we've done the work ourselves, but we've typically not directly done the work for the courts when it comes to their networking.

Okay. Did you come up with this estimate? That's the court's estimate.

This is an estimate that we, it's a quote we were provided a couple of years ago. It's the most recent quote we've had, and it is not a current number. We do have the unfortunate, or we're in the unfortunate position that we have such a limited IT staff.

um we've got we've got a total of six people in our i.t department um and three of them are programmers so there's really um we really don't have the manpower to do the cabling ourselves would this go out for bid or i mean like would you do an rfp i would assume so yeah okay because i i'd hate to be like sole source and we get priced too high on it so um

If it's been there for several years, if we, I guess, Lee and Mark, if you were to put this project over a couple years where you say we're going to do second floor, then we'll do third floor, then we'll do fourth floor, as opposed to having it all network cabled at once without a cabling.

guess i kind of want to throw this out there um if i could talk to george fluke and have a discussion before the next meeting and maybe see if this is an act where this would be today we've been doing a lot of work with the vendor that's on state contract that i think has very attractive pricing we we used it when we redid the um dispatch center they had had a quote that was I think like $40,000 we have this contractor we that's on state contract come in and do the same amount of work and it was less than 20 so if if I could get with George and discuss this and before the next meeting even I think even Monday I get with him tomorrow if he's if he's around we can sit down and just see what we're looking at, maybe see how accurate this is and if there's maybe places we could cut or how we could break it up. But I could work with him before the next meeting.

Thank you.

Obviously, this is a piece that we could do in sections simply because we can't take the entire court down. It's simply not feasible to disconnect the entire court for a period of time to redo the wiring.

Thank you. Thank you. Well. Jennifer, can you scroll down? Yes, please. Thank you. That's the last half? Sheriff, we approved today the expenditure buying or paying for eight new vehicles. We have down 550. That's roughly the same amount that we just approved today. And so that paid for eight vehicles today. Are we needing to replace eight vehicles next year? Or is that a number? I know that we've been trying to do annualized replacement of vehicles.

Yeah, that's the the number every year that some kind of sheriff's office needs to to keep the fleet on the road. If we cut that we're just getting into high mileage vehicles as well. We're getting into more service issues with those vehicles. Historically, that's what it's taken to keep the freight, the fleet on the road. So

Okay. Thank you. And again, that's about eight vehicles for 550,000. That's what we approved today.

It was a little, I think it was 536 or something like that. It was on the voucher report.

Yep.

Yes.

Well, I don't anticipate the cost going down. Commissioners, thoughts on the Stormont Vale Event Center? There's two items. One is having more suites added to the Stormont Vale Event Center, and the other one is to convert an unused portion of the arena into a platform. And I didn't know, I had wondered whether or not we could have some sort of a, again, charitable donation for it to be naming rights for the platform to pay for it instead of it being out of the capital improvement.

where were those sweets going to be I mean I thought we had I thought both sides were full of the South and and then the party platform will be on the North West corner.

So basically the that area in front of the prairie band. Bar would be expanded out and then they put 2 more is 2 more sweets

have they sold all the suites they have on the sides.

They're always all of those look all the lower seating and sold also so I mean I I think with the lowest boxes and suites were likely to see the return on investment there party platform probably going to see that return on investment as well, but I don't know that one might be a little tougher sell to.

I like the idea of the party platform, but I think that we need to remove from the capital improvement plan and seek to see if we can have it through other financial means was just push it back to next year.

Yeah, that's fine. You need a motion to do that.

I'll make a motion that we defer, defer the what was it called? The party platform, the party platform at Stormont Elevator Center. Push it back one year to 2028. Okay.

That brings us within 304,000.

Yeah, do it clean.

Second.

Motion's been made by Commissioner Rippon, seconded by Commissioner Cook. All in favor say aye. Those opposed? Motion carries 3-0. You say that court cabling can be done in phases.

Well, that's what they're going to come back next week.

Oh, right, right. You're right.

I believe we might have a route to get to zero. If we couple a couple of things, I don't know if everyone has an appetite for it or not. I believe Brian may have another idea for his replacement locks. And if we coupled that with reducing the court cabling for 2027 until they know more answers down to the balance, that would get us down to 2.5 million.

so you may be come back next week but Brian yeah.

Yeah for when we have to have this finalized September 23rd okay so we go to or do we do we do weeks not much time but some.

Brian Cole, Shawnee County Department of Corrections Director. Yes, I've met with our physical plant and this estimate did come from our elevator companies, but I did talk to Major Phelps. This is something that we could delay for a year with the other two priorities that we have with the locks. The locks are something that I hate to say it. I have to stand firm and request that we stand firm. I have those parts are going out, but we can delay getting some of those issues with the elevator. So I did talk to Major Phelps. I did talk to our physical plant staff and that if it's needed to be that we're willing and we're able and we can still this will not impact that I know of of any safety security or responding that we could push back to 250 to 2028. And I would be able to, we'd be okay with that.

So they're still safe though, right? Elevator's still safe? Oh yeah, yeah.

It's just a matter of replacing some of the computer parts. They're going out. They're just saying, look, we're working together. But they assured me that we could probably get by for another year. But the locks, I couldn't do.

OK. We have a couple of elevator experts over at the election office. You might contact them.

So we can table this for today, but I think we might have a couple of possible ways that we would get to the 2.5 next week.

Jennifer, can we go back to the main budget tab? Yes. Can you go down to the bottom, the total amount of increase? Yes. We're at a 5% increase.

Yes, that is a 5% increase over the 26th budget. It's actually, that isn't what the percent increase in the mill would be.

Right.

Because we used $4 million of reserves last year.

Well, but in the budget itself.

The budget itself is a 5% increase over last year.

I just might note that the producer price index currently, and that is the amount of inflation from the business' perspective as opposed to the consumer price index, which is viewed from the consumer's perspective, for August of 2026, the producer's inflation was 5.4%. This again is consistent. What we're seeing on again on national scale from a producer standpoint or businesses standpoint. I'm not justifying it, but it does. It is falling in line with what we would see on a national scale.

Alright. Any other?

I think discussion on the budget real quick.

The health insurance discussion that we had, we authorized HR to look into those things. At what point do we feel like we have enough information to make any kind of budget adjustments to accommodate those recommendations?

The budget adjustments are for what you're talking about, like the increase in the employer rate and the GLP one conversation that we had. And so those would probably affect the 2028. All right. Budget because 20, 27 large increase is really more a factor of what's taken place over the last seven years and the resulting balance of that fund, because that goes to where we were discussing the amount of claims that we have had. As you saw in today's voucher report, the claims were about half and half a million dollars, and that involves one or two weeks of claims. So we have high claims is is the main issue that we have, which is and we have not raised our rates substantially in the last seven years. We did one increase last year, but prior to that, we actually held our health insurance rates both as an employer and as employees. We held them almost flat for four or five years.

which was great but it eventually it's just like using reserves eventually that comes to roost so so we switched pharmacy benefit managers last year and at the time they promised us you know 1.6 million dollars in savings Yet our claims still continue to go up.

So yes, so that both can be true. So the savings comes in rebates. So our rebate amounts have increased. However, as we also discussed when we were having our health insurance presentation, it takes six months to get those those rebates. So the new pharmaceutical in 2025, we would have seen one year worth of claims and only six months of the new higher level rebates. And we did see those. We are seeing those rebates coming in substantially higher every quarter.

Okay. Now, the way that this industry and I don't want to get to grass too much, but the way this industry works is often kind of a shell game. And so while the rebates go up, the price of the actual medication might have actually gone up as well. Are we and I know that we paid extra to have transparent pricing so they would show us those numbers have we dug in and looked to see did they raise the price of the medications in order to give us a higher rebate and then they're just keeping the money longer right i can't rich that doesn't come to mind for me that we have seen that but we can ask for that information to make sure that that we see a year-over-year comparison in the drug cost i think it would be worthwhile looking at that versus our previous pbm yep

Jennifer did did you get any did you get some feedback from people on as far as revenue extension or improvements we have gotten some feedback from departments I haven't heard back from everyone yet just for the public what we're looking at is checking to checking each department is is digging in to see when if they have any rates that haven't been reviewed or updated in several years because some of these rates we can set ourselves most of the larger ones have been reviewed recently i know we just made some changes to some of the fees in the land use and development department there are a few of those that we're also looking at none of those are going to amount to substantial amounts My department is doing a indirect cost study so that we can see if there's any indirect cost rate adjustments that we need to make for the county and that would would affect any like our ability to charge the solid waste department and our jail fees. So we're looking at those. Those are the only two areas probably that would be a substantial impact for us. But I did already budget in our revenues and increase in our indirect fees to the solid waste department.

All right. yes so should we table this for another day yes all right we'll do that thank you no do you want to know all right you know you look at property tax and a lot of it is influenced by the How many houses are available in the county. If you have a lack of housing which we do it if it makes the price of housing go up it's a supply and demand and when the and when that market goes up how we value weight or valuations of houses goes up and it all has an effect and you know talk about reducing property tax about talking about housing is they're connected at the hip and so we're seeing some more apartments going up here in town there's quite a few units hopefully that will help and there's some development going on but it's housing has a direct effect on property tax bill. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in, some free information. Next, Lisa, what do we have next on the agenda?

Next item is item five, public comment.

I have one person signed up, Joel Clarence. Good morning.

Looking at your budget with you guys going over it. Recreation, $491,098 increased from last year. Public works, $1,192,110 increased from last year. And this is in your working budget. Administrative, $168,869. didn't hear anybody i think she spoke about public works there at the end briefly but you guys were going to table it for next week um that seems to be the largest increase i would look at that okay thank you very much all right uh anyone else in the public would like to speak

I promise not about data centers. I just had a question when you were asking about the mechanic thing. I looked at Washburn Tech has a mechanic school that they do. Is it possible for you guys to partner with Washburn Tech and have them? I think that sounds like a win win to me for the mechanic school and for for the sheriff's department helps train up mechanics, helps you guys get your stuff done. That's just a suggestion, just out there. Okay.

Thank you very much. All right. Anyone else? All right. With that, what's next, Lisa?

Next item on the agenda is item six, administrative communications.

Anyone? Tim. Tim.

Tim Laurent, Parks and Recreation Department. I just wanted to let folks know that coming up on October 2nd, that's actually the second and the third, is the Founders Fest at Gage Park, which is essentially just a celebration of Gage Park and its history. On the second, the Children's Discovery Center will have a free day that day. There'll be live music. On the third, there's also live music, touch a truck, resource fair, food trucks, and a free zoo day. Our mini train will be free both days. And I fully expect, and I hope this doesn't come back to haunt me, that the play land will be available and open by that time so you should be hearing something from us relatively soon on a ribbon cutting for that facility they're really getting close to finishing touches right now rain set us back a little bit but I know they're out there working so that's it okay thank you anyone else Mr Mayes oh I'm sorry

Hey, good morning again, Commission. I do want to just remind everybody and make sure that you gentlemen are aware that we're having our big canine game event this this weekend and everyone's invited and all the proceeds go to the Special Olympics. It's really taken off really well. We've had agencies from all over the state that have called us and we've had to limit the amount of dogs that we could put into the games this year. So, uh, you know, from one to three this weekend. If everyone comes out and I believe we even got a Kansas Special Olympian that is qualified to go to the look like the world events that's going to be present. So if you can make it, come out and join us.

Brian, where's the where are the games? The Expo Center Expo Center. Okay. Yes.

Stormont Vale Event Center.

That's right. We're old school. Yeah. All right. Mr. Mays? Nothing for me. Commissioner Cook? I just want to say that we will not have a work session next Monday, so let's get the day off. Next agenda item.

Next item on the agenda is item 7, executive session.

We do not have a need for executive session, so we are adjourned.