Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

Okay, welcome everyone to our July twenty first twenty first two thousand twenty six for the county commissioner sign a clock for three p.m. Let the record reflect that all five commissioners are present. Commissioner Green, And we've got a busy agenda, so we will go ahead and just get started, so i'm.

Commissioner Green, Our CEO is probably welcome good morning, Mr Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and share an update with that modeling PDA. um first and foremost uh commissioners this is an exciting briefing because what was born in 2022 i'm going to share with you has come to be um and so really the first thing is to the commissioners and then also i'm really delighted with so many broadly members are here uh commissioner cuny i'm not sure if file is on screen okay uh kyle uh two week and then um Scott slash Jeff, depending on who's there. I really could not be more grateful. And then Council Member Ben Wick and Mayor Terry Cooper. I just thank you. I also want to just take a quick moment to say thank you to Scott Chesney. He and I have been working a lot about what does broadband access mean in the future of Spokane County as far as economic vitality. um we actually have a chapter devoted to broadband connectivity um not only from the urban core but outside what that means for infrastructure uh for households businesses and anchor institutions and um it's just been a really neat synergy uh going forward so really enjoyed um working with him especially As I segue into the $90 million of state and federal funding that has been awarded to Broadlink to do such that. So we will be looking definitely at that going forward. Ron, do you mind popping over to the website? I decided to give the update basically based off of our website because I really wanted you to know we work hard to make our website a tool for you to use. So if I share something today and you're like, hmm, what was that? Hopefully, it will be easy for you to navigate on the website to find that fact or also share it with constituents. We are going to cover first that the bead culmination, and so, if you go under about and hit the down arrow there's a page dedicated to be only because you guys don't live and breathe this. Amy Nunez, The stands for broadband equity access and deployment, it was put into effect by Congress in 2021. Amy Nunez, The national funding pot was 42 billion Washington state's allocation was 1.24 Spokane county ended up at about 120 million with broadly stewarding about 90 of that ron if you don't mind scrolling down a map there. So the first thing I want to share with you is right now, out of 27 provisional awardees, Broadlink is the only signed contract. Out of 230 project areas, we are directly awarded 13 of them. In this map, you can see the dark orange and state of total that is a what's called hybrid design of fiber and fixed wireless connecting nearly 10,000 eligible addresses that the FCC has coded as part of the grant award. There's nearly about 21,000 across Spokane County. And as you can see, the other colors in there are the other provisional awardees. No one else has signed a contract. And we're hearing rumblings that, you know, that may or may not happen overall. And the reason for that, at the direction of the board, we apply to all 22. So we're standing at the ready. If someone defaults, if they don't sign their contract, not only can we stand in the gap and make sure that's finished, but we can also come alongside as a government entity to help them with their environmental, their planning. So in that, we do have a priority of build project areas. We're right now in our refinement of designs. We've procured materials. We hope to go out for contractor bids in September. And again, ideally get some ground turning by the end of the year. And you can scroll down a little bit more, Ron. If somebody asks you when things are going to happen, there's a timeline towards the end of the bottom. And keep going until you see the next picture. This shows what we're doing, when it's going to happen, and who we're working with. So everything in orange, Broadlink's taking the lead. We're doing a lot of things on our own, permitting, environmental. In fact, the broadband offices really look to us to do the NEPA certifications to get this off the ground, partnering with engineering firms, and then ultimately construction and tower firms. Not unlike ARPA, which I know you guys are very familiar with, this has a fixed deadline. of December 2029. So all this has to be done. That's about 400 miles of fiber and over 20 towers that we will be connecting to. Yes. And the good news is those towers are in partnership with Spokane County. So we can get those up, lit and servicing which really helps not only constituents, but also Broadlink and our ISP partners. Before I go to the next part, any question about BEAD? Because we launched Broadlink because of BEAD. I can share a little bit more about what's going on at the state and federal level, but I want to make sure I've addressed anything that's come up, because that is a buzzword every now and then.

So the BEAD,

acronym, can you repeat that again? Broadband Equity Access and Deployment. And it's at the top of this page, if you ever forget. Because I yeah, it kept its naming through the administration. So it was birthed under the Biden administration, but it's kept the same name through the administration.

So what are the uses of the funds that since 2021, I think things have kind of evolved. So what are the uses that you can use the funds for?

So there were two buckets. One was called the infrastructure bucket, and that's what I'm talking about today, obviously. And the other bucket uh was original the equity bucket that has been determined to to uh need uh revised clarification um we heard last month from Secretary Ludnick that that clarification and final rule coming at in August And there's a number, I mean, Brett Baumgartner, we work with Cantwell and Murray with a lot of concepts that are being floated of what we think that will be. Not too far from the equity and access world, but just different wrappers. The first one being resiliency. How does infrastructure that you put in provide resiliency to a local community? And the second being public safety, which then trickles up to national security. So from what I'm hearing on the ground, those are the projects alongside workforce development that they're going to allow state officers to use their remaining funding pots for. In Washington, that's around $450 million.

You would talk about the 1.4 million that was allocated to Washington State. Has all of that been allocated to the different areas around the state?

So that's actually part and parcel to Commissioner Waldross. So that 1.24 was our whole pot, and it had two sides of it. The infrastructure side. the other side is waiting for the federal guidance to know what we can can use it for broadlink has a number of things that we think are uh good pieces of that that would support not only spokane's at the state but we're waiting for the secretary to give the the guidance of that and that's the 400 million change okay thank you just a quick follow-up on that

uh debate over the guidance or did Congress approve changing the use of the funds so that's the interesting thing is uh I get I just I'm just trying to figure out um I I'm course development because there's a lot of people I think that would benefit from learning how exactly to get digitally connected because that's another barrier just understanding how to use it to find a job to to get retrained right so the short answer is it doesn't need congressional approval because

because when the act was voted in, those were technically called non-deployment funds. So I guess the good news is there's a lot of elbow space and it does seem that even though uh equity is in there whether it's you know across the board states everybody understands that workforce literacy is a part of a well-educated constituent so I think you're going to see that maybe not to the extent that it's before but again that is still very uh applicable and what we're hearing today come

But what we received is for deployment of the infrastructure side.

And again, I'm grateful for the support to sign that because I am a little perplexed at why no one else is signing because of the shortages in fiber, silica, all of the workforce supply. We really wanted to get ahead of the game, especially because Washington was a little behind in getting our approval. It is a little perplexing that the rest of the awardees are focusing on things that when we did our cost benefit analysis really introduced more risk rather than less risk. So hopefully we're in conversation with almost all of the other provisional awardees telling them to ask us questions so that they can peek behind the curtain to get moving forward. um all right uh so the other thing i just wanted to talk to you about was our uh grant award of about five million dollars to um north spokane county uh ron if you don't mind going uh again under the about and clicking down to network this is another site it will be revised shortly but we have a static map now if you'll scroll down uh ron There are icons of where Broadlink has active deployments, where our six, soon to be seven, partner ISPs can extend their subscriber expansion. The one that's up north to south of Deer Park in the blue, that is that $5 million USDA area. 400 homes, Commissioner Kearns, were tagged at under 10 megs by one meg, which is barely a dial-up connection two years ago. And we are in the process of having that complete by this fall and service extended. I would say the biggest thing I would like to share with you about this is a lot of times folks don't understand what these federal funds can do during the grant window for them. In order to connect a home to fiber, we have to get a waiver or permission. And again, that's where we're really trying to focus on those 400 addresses that really free things are out there as long as you sign permission for us to bring this fiber to your home it doesn't come with the obligation to have internet and we've done a number of studies we just released a news release today property values on average increased by five percent when broadband is shown as accessible and shout out to Assessor Conus. They have a broadband section on our assessor database, again, especially in rural areas. So we're really trying to get ideally 100% of those 400 homes return the waiver, even if they just construct it and don't use it. It's really a no cost investment. So again, please get the word out on that and Ron, if you want to go to that other page, we just launched a digital way in addition to a mailer of being able to have constituents go online and put in their address. and they'll be able, they're tagged with what funding source that they are eligible to receive. So they can real time look it up. If they're eligible for fiber, they can fill out the waiver on their phone right there and get it back to us. And then when we are ready to construct, The contractor sets a time with them. They say go around this bush. We're looking out for sprinklers. So again, we really want to make sure that nobody at the end of this grant goes, I didn't know. So that's something we just really wanted to share with you. And the last thing about this particular deployment is something brand new. First in the country is the USDA grant comes with an obligation to operate a community center. and we proposed a community center in a box because I didn't want to run a building after that and so we have an interlocal agreement with fire district floor to have a extra large connex with the telecommunications room to HIPAA and see just compliant meeting rooms that our partners can actually have remote visits in that center will be funded by two they can go anywhere if needed. So we're grateful for Providence that's helping us out at the inside for behavioral health, telehealth, accessibility. And then once we get into Bede, not only that building, it has a retractable tower that will service up to a thousand remote addresses that will be added to our currently live Deer Park and Medical Lake towers. So again, we want to make sure that if constituents don't have the internet that they desire, chances are it's there or it's coming. So please reach out. We've got a few updated pieces of information. So commissioners, here's our brochure. And I was short one notepad. But if anyone wants a notepad, you're welcome to have a fraudulent notepad. So anyway, any other questions? Because I know you've got a busy schedule today. Thank you for watching.

Thank you. It's pretty amazing what, you know, thinking that there's been no other kind of government like us. And so things that, you know, you start off down in South County doing a town hall after AARP. So then to get to this point to know they needed coverage, they didn't have coverage during COVID shutdown. And so that's what really started the whole process and drove us to get here today and now $90 million later.

You've overcome a lot in a couple of years ago. They're. Scoring we got dinged on a grand thing because they didn't know what a PDA was kind of thing. I mean, so this entity has come a long way folks that this model works today.

The share of comment just recently, he was down in Fairfield Rockford. And he had the best connectivity. Yeah.

I can hear from somebody else.

I've never had that good a connectivity down here.

Yes, that's awesome. All right. Thank you. I appreciate the time to share. Reach out anytime.

Good morning.

Good morning, Tori.

Welcome.

I'm here again to brief you on another contract we have. This one is for our CASA program, our GAL program for our dependent children. It's a 291,324. And with that, we fund our, we have about 120 volunteers that advocate for the abused and neglected children throughout the dependency process. And so we have three, we call them CASA supervisors that work with those volunteers to assist in that process, provide training, et cetera. So ongoing every year. We're going to be running into some issues with staff salaries for these funds to fully cover those three staff. We seem to get by because of leaves every year. For example, one of these staff is going to have a baby, so we'll be taking 12 weeks off. And so that'll get us there. But something we'll have to deal with next year. Any questions on these funds? They're passed through AOC.

not seeing it's just a it's a great program that's um actually needed and necessary and a lot of it's volunteers correct how many volunteers do you have for the cost program 120 120 yeah we we still stay at the highest filings in the state okay thank you all right have a great day okay you too bye

So everybody's doing well. We have Jake Saxon, our design engineer, here this morning to talk about the West Plains PEA and the funding package for a project.

Yeah, so project here is a county road project 3279. It's the Guider Boulevard and SR 902 roundabout meters. Quick summary of what the project is. about major traffic signal system at the roundabout in the intersection of Geiger Boulevard and State Route 902 at the Medical Lake interchange with Interstate 90. Basically, the objective of the project is to mitigate traffic impacts from current previous future land development projects in the area. Without the project, capacity issues will continue to grow and future land development uh will will exacerbate these issues um and basically it's a washed off facilities through development impact mitigation uh constructing this project uh project funding and approval this was included on the 2026 20 to 2031 six-year transportation improvement program item number 10 in the urban construction program and was shown as partially funded. Total project costs are $584,000 after $284,000 development mitigation fees. And then the instituted funding that was shown as the Westland CDA was $50,000. That's the interlocal agreement that we're here to talk about.

Next slide, please. Yeah, I think the part from land development this is really a mitigation project for the douglas legacy development like industrial development for the change and so we're we're the surrogate for washed up projects they they the funding flows through us it's a washed up project and we have to facilitate them though for land development in order for it to be mitigated because washed up

So here, just a quick location if you're not familiar with it. Basically, the overall map is pointing to the Medical Lake interchange on I-90. And then this is the north side of the interchange where there's the multiple roundabouts. The lower roundabout is the one that's the interchange off ramps. And then the northern one is the roundabout with SR-902 and Guider Boulevard with paper just off to the east. Next slide. um basically with the 300 000 of unsecured funding um the west plains airport area public development authority doing business as s3r3 solutions has signed the interlocal agreement to reimburse up to 300 000 project costs from the transportation related revenues uh generated by activity within the boundaries of the pda that are received and held by the county this is consistent with our previous interlocal agreement for the geiger boulevard project by the by the board will fully fund this project. Next slide. Project schedule currently briefing today and then we were intending to have the interlocal agreement resolution to enter the interlocal agreement on for August 11th and then same date have the have a resolution to approve They open bids after 3 weeks, and then they back on the agenda to award all in bit opening start construction this fall, and as materials arrive for the signal signal components are long lead items, and as those arrive finished construction in the early 2,027 that's it any questions

Yeah, well, we were told at the BDA board meeting a couple weeks ago was that mitigation funds were going to be spent first, and our funds for the PDA were the backup. They would be the last fund spent. Is that consistent with your understanding as well?

Yeah, and Jake's been telling us too, but it's a timing issue. We are anticipating development mitigation funds coming in that quite likely will offset funds that are James Heiting. Yeah, but hopefully there won't be any at the end of the day to elaborate on what it is.

The two hundred and eighty-four that we have secured. Those are

elements out there yeah there's a um there's a 7-eleven uh there's also the i forget the name of it but it's like the the truck that one and then there's the i believe it's the truck wash that part that piece um fronting geiger in front of the second amazon those all have mitigation fees that are in excess anticipated mitigation fees that are in excess of about 300 000 so if they if they get um TAB, Mark McIntyre, Thank you.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, Can I know i've driven through there a number of times, but I can't remember is that a single lane roundabout or a double roundabout.

TAB, Mark McIntyre, it's a it's a double. TAB, Mark McIntyre, So what this signal is effectively it's that roundabout you've got. double right turn land for Hayford to to Geiger. And then there's two lanes coming into that roundabout. And essentially what you've got is the the westbound to southbound left turns that three quarter movement through the roundabout saturates the works much like the roundabout ramp meters, sorry, the interchange meters that we see out on I-90 that basically sends one or two at a time

Okay. Okay. Do we, I know the ramp meters that are on INA, are there, do we have any roundabout meters in Spokane County? Anywhere else? I can't think of where I, no.

This is the first.

Okay. This will be our first. Okay. Isn't that right? The goal is to not meet a roundabout, but once we start running the capacity, that's really one of the only effective measures. Okay. Bring them back.

Thank you. This is what the media sparks this.

Yeah, we already voted on board meeting last week or week for last. And it was now support.

Okay. All right next item for the board's consideration because he's meant. It's like, please, so you can see we're out in the valley here. project that prior to Valley Incorporation and we parcel in the middle there it's for a manger from when we did that project you can see outlined in red that's the proposed easement area and all we're really doing here is cleaning up giving the city of Spokane Valley formal drainage easement for that area for the drainage swales that have existed since we built really wanted to have a formal easement granted to them, understandably, so they'd have the ability to maintain those facilities. Happy to answer any questions. Any bites yet on the sale of that property? No, we're going back out again with that, with an auction very soon that the board will be hearing. And after that, we'll go to the website and then it will just be on our website and then it'll be a more traditional way of be proposed to bring the price down a little bit. It's good property. If you've been out to it, it's a fairly prime location to use. So hoping to get good money out of that one. I'd have to look. I know we saw also, but it was with the 15 or 20 other ones that wanted to speak. Okay. Next item. So this one is a small item. It's a quitclaim deed. This is up on the South Hill. I don't believe we have a vicinity map with this one. You can see the area outlined in blue up there is an old dedication to Spokane County with the Moran Court Addition. And it was always premeditated in the recording that upon future storm drainage improvements in the area that made the necessity for this go away, it would be dedicated back or put claim back to that parcel outlined in yellow. And when we built our 57th Avenue project years ago, it's our recommendation that that condition has been fulfilled. to the yellow parcel there.

Any questions?

So the next two items, I'm going to kind of do those together. I believe they're in one PowerPoint also. And this is part of our Harvard Road project. We've been working for a little better than a year with the constituents out there and the affected parties. We have got the vast majority of them signed. We're down to two properties at this point. And I'll kind of walk you through those. You can see up on the aerial, that's kind of what we're building there. That's the section. See the two lanes with the white shoulders, the separated multi-use path. Next slide, please. And that's just telling you where the project is. I think you all know where Harvard is. We're south of Trenton North by 90 city limits. Next slide. So 58 individual parcels have required acquisition. We have 55 to date. So it's been really a tremendous effort by our right-of-way group. They just do such a phenomenal job. They really are very professional. They represent us well. they close on many many parcels we just have a couple of outstanding ones map 24 um for Kelly or at an impasse best person and then a manufactured home community which is number 43 and then the railroad too but railroad's a different issue you don't give them the railroad as we know so we'll continue working with the railroad they're they're not opposed to it it's So we'll keep working with the railroad also. Next slide. the first one this is we call it map 24 that's just how they're numbered and you can see on the left the area in green is the area being acquired and you can see on the right on the aerial what that looks like to the purpose property and it's it's a taking it's not they're they're asserting a lot of things they would like a lot more than we're currently offering that's the invest so we'll we'll start through the process with them um hopefully get to resolution or at least get Necessity and use the ability to get the property for our project slide. And map 43 is the mobile home park, Bonavista mobile home park, you can see we're on map stream sideways, that would be the west side of Harvard and that's Wellesley at the south end so it's a pretty long strip. And you can see, you know, not without impact there. We have negotiated back and forth a number of times, and we're getting very close. So my hope would be we get this one settled out of court in the not too distant future. Again, we're very, very close on this one. Next slide. So any questions on those condemnations?

Jasper, do you have anything to add?

yeah for the commissioners on your afternoon agenda we are asking to have you approve the notice of a public meeting to be held on august 11 to discuss most of those combinations that we're looking at um what we are going to be spending on august 11 is a public meeting not a hearing uh so we're trying to make that distinction

So it's not a two o'clock.

It'll be at the same. It'll be at the two o'clock. It'll just be a separate category from the beginning. You'll have a open public forum like you would So no public testimony. No public testimony is in this phase other than . Written public comment is, that's a possibility.

Okay. Questions on that? Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor Mrakas, Morning Commissioners know George today so you're stuck with us and we're going to walk you through some CDBG urban county requalification.

Mayor Mrakas, Thank you so. The urban county or qualification period is a process that occurs every three fiscal year. So it's that time of year again, and we're going to be doing the recertification process with all the municipalities, cities, jurisdictions that are involved in the urban consortium. These are for federal grant allocations, so that's your CDBG, HOME, ESG for our Housing Community Development Department. The HCDA, or the Housing Community Development Act of 1974, is kind of where this derives from. This allows for participating members the opportunity to either opt out if they choose not to be part of the urban consortium or remain within. Nonparticipants, if they decide to opt out, would apply directly from the state of Washington CDBG, HOME, ESG funding rather than Skokane County. So it messes a little bit with some of the entitlement and the availability of funding, excuse me. And there's some calculations in terms of population thresholds, et cetera, that they would be a little bit less competitive with the state rather than Skokane County, I think would be a fair assumption. But the counties must meet a specific population threshold to be eligible as an urban county. As it's said at the bottom of that screen there, it's based on two factors, the county's unincorporated areas and then participating units of general local governments or UGLCs as they're referred to. Next slide, please. So I should say that for the next three fiscal years, 27, 28, and 29 is what we're concerned about here. So we had currently over the past month and a half now, I would say, reached out to all involved UGLGs or those participating members, jurisdictions, et cetera, just more or less trying to receive a formal letter of intent on whether they intend to recertify and continue and participation, or if they would like to opt out. If we did not receive any response, then we would assume that they are remaining. We did receive a letter of intent from all participating UGLGs to ensure that they are going to renew for those next three fiscal years. And the urban consortium members are included on the screen there. Airway Heights saw the way to waverly all and large participating members uh within the urban county next slide please i'm just going to confirm city of spokane valley city of spokane valley is included in this process we did have conversations with the city of spokane valley um they are reviewing their their agreement as well Great question. So the cooperation agreements after we received those letters of intent, we've worked very closely with our legal department in reviewing the language and getting us revised agreements sent out to each one of those municipalities. They are currently being reviewed, being presented from their city councils, town halls, et cetera, to be reviewed and then signed and then sending them back our way. The deadline that we gave them is by the end of the month. Once we have all of those cooperation agreements, we will present those to the board following the two-week recess that you have and presenting that, I believe I said, on August 11th during that legislative session to have countersignature on all those cooperation agreements to initiate that package. Once we have countersigned all those agreements, that'll be our official submission to HUD. unfortunately just kind of due to their deadlines their original date was August 10th but we already were in communication with HUD and informed them of the two-week recess and we're able to push that day by about two days so we have until the following Wednesday to ensure that we can meet our deadline that was provided for us so once we submit that package HUD will then review and if there are any issues with the cooperation agreements they'll inform us but likely they'll just send us a letter of notification saying that we have recertified including concluding all of our participants for the next three year period next slide please i believe it's just any questions that the commissioners may have oops an acronym uh glories uh If you, I believe it's on the second units of general local government.

Correct.

That's a memorable acronym.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Sounds like a Star Wars creature. Right.

be sure to thank your local upload even yeah

I have one miscellaneous I could use. Just a quick miscellaneous. Yesterday, the FTE number 9200 was thrown out as far as vacant seats that aren't funded. looking on yesterday and this morning we do have 92 and a half vacancies right now but the way the budgets have been managed roughly two-thirds of them there is no funding they chose to spend money differently so they were authorized but there wouldn't be funding behind them at this point in the game unless there was some significant cuts that were unexpected so really I would say 30 to 35 would be the range of positions that if they were cut or tritted out would actually have funding behind that would help next year. So I just wanted, I didn't want to add any to 100 to stick in people's heads since a lot of them don't have money. They were in the budget, but they don't have money behind them. 30 to 35. Without doing a deep dive, can't give you an exact, but We quickly went over. This is a sheet we gave you guys a while back. If you had asked us to put the global on the bottom, so you will have that sheet in your inbox and it does have 92. So I can see where the number came from, but we'll look budget by budget. sheriff's office or detention or elsewhere they're all through but for instance 24 are listed in the sheriff's office 24 out of 30 something well I'm not 24 of the 92. I'm thinking of the 30. oh of the 30 they're onesies and twosies here and there like I know like the clerk has three of them that he's already at retirements or people leave this year he's holding them over okay because he doesn't want to give out pink slips and so those three positions are the way he's worked with us on his budget presentation that's how he's solving for next year so that's roughly ones and twos just around a lot of different departments i wouldn't say there's any one large chunk probably quite honestly it would be juvenile has the biggest chunk right now and they've been trying to hire they've just not been able to So she has quite a few over there that are funded. I guess her is because I'm trying to find her. Just wanted to level set that one.

We're not here yet. Do you want to do the UPF?

Yeah, why don't you do the UPF then?

can I just ask a quick follow-up so you're saying that they weren't there's 92 but some of them don't have funding behind them they were in the budget so the authority would be there but like for instance per this sheet there's 24 open positions in the sheriff's office we know the sheriff is in the red so if these positions were filled it would go further in These aren't positions that actually have, you know, like the... If you compare this to the sheet of where they are on their budget spending, if you have a bunch of open positions that you've spent every dollar today, you don't have available to spend them. You're going to go through the budget. So it's comparing these open positions to open budget. And we didn't put... open we didn't because we didn't approve FTEs on the budget some people have hired beyond what their budget is an FTE cap in the 26 budget I'm willing to be patient in doing that in the 27. some of it is also the transfer from PeopleSoft to Workday and some of the cleanup involved with that which I think were pretty well cleaned up at this point but there were some some challenges some challenges there Like public defense shows, they get higher 16. And they do have some money in there. Salary benefits pot, but they've already spent their entire year spot for extra counsel. So we know if they, we know they have to keep hiring extra counsel. So we're going to go so far over that one. They can't spend that money twice. You have to move money from your salary. You can't hire both. You can't hire the employees here and the employees outside without going over your budget. So it's kind of putting that lens on it.

Yeah, you're kind of looking though at 2026, but in 2027, You could make adjustments.

You could, but you can't. If you've spent the money elsewhere in a way that's going to continue on, you can't call it the savings because the money is already spent. We're looking to spend it twice. I actually wouldn't say they aren't. We're making sure they aren't by looking at the numbers because of the 90 open positions we show, there's not money for 2 thirds of them. So if you cut the position, It has no budget impact, I want to say. We were actually looking at the, we were thinking we should go through and freeze a bunch of these positions. Right, right. So the next time we show this list to you after the recess in August, it will change dramatically because we need to make sure the positions aren't showing.

is there a kind of selective targeted freeze within the departments that we oversee already correct about the doctor wanting to pull that to check okay ready ron if everybody gets a hard point yeah sorry my story

in the process right now. And what that is, is trying to look at an enormous amount of sites that has been evaluated by our consultant, along with us on some criteria that we have that netted a large amount of sites. And so what we're trying to do is to whittle those sites down to a manageable number. And you guys will be next. Okay.

All right. There's some more seats at the end.

Sorry. No, I'm going to the EPF first. And so we've got some criteria that we're looking at that we're going to share with you today, but I also need your approval to add criteria to it to get it down to a manageable number, which is about 10 sites to evaluate for the EPF committee. If it 10 sites that we'd evaluate. So we're going to take the criteria that's already embedded in the UPF process, which includes functional analysis. Next slide, Ron. And I'll remind you what the criteria is for the functional analysis. And it's just generalities. It's things that you would evaluate when trying to locate a site that makes sense to have a jail or a justice center So it's one of those things that we'll be evaluating. And these are some of the criteria that we're going to be taking from the functional analysis to help us with that evaluation. We also, next slide Ron, will be taking criteria from the qualitative analysis that has a little more specificity to it to help narrow down the range of those sites. And then lastly, the next slide, please Ron, Here's the proposed screening criteria that we have right now. If we look at it, have access to public road and streets, be located in the site, which is either, can you pull this up? Cause I'm having a hard time. Leonardo, can you blow that up just a little bit?

So be located on a site

and then 30 to 40 acres if it is in fact a rural site. Be served by public water, which is a functional factor. Be served by either public or community sewer system. Be served by the fire department or within a fire district. And then not located in areas designated as a steep slope, floodplain, or shoreline jurisdictions. And then not be located in an exclusively residential zone district. These are the criteria that we're going to apply right now to the sites. We may need to apply more. And so what I'm here to do is to tell you what we're starting with and that to get your approval to apply more if necessary to run down the sites. Questions?

So have you already started looking with some of these criteria that you said you've got lots of sites? So what did you start?

An enormous amount of sites. So from that we would limit down to other criteria. There is some additional criteria that we can look at, you know, like next to schools and all those other things that we can apply, right?

So are any of these new from last time?

So Ron, if you could bring up the list of the seven criteria again. So what we initially planned was we implemented just the first five criteria. And so we had a CJR consultants make a map and using GIS for those and that's what Mike is referring to came back with hundreds of sites so then to decrease it a little further and we discussed. using the criteria to come up with two more factors and so that's number six and seven we just got the new map back from them today and that did eliminate quite a few but there are still dozens around 75 potential sites all throughout the county so we are going to need some more barriers to put in to help decrease it and then ron people pull up the other um that i sent you and so These ones we do know how many it would decrease by, and then we're exploring additional criteria that we haven't yet implemented on GIS, but we don't know.

We need the flexibility to apply more in order to get it down to a manageable level.

All right.

Right. The map is currently broken, but we were able to be in between.

So here's some additional criteria that we're looking at to apply in order to reduce the sites down. That makes sense. So we just want to be able to show you what criteria we're using and get your approval for us to apply criteria as necessary within the EPF process to reduce the sites. Any other questions? I see Mr. Amacio here, so I'm sure that he has some comments that he would like to add.

Just to remind the board, when you set up the 2026 EPF committee, we delegated to them certain responsibilities to make a recommendation to the board. We did not delegate to them the initial basic criteria that Mike and Rebecca has showed you this morning. So that's why Mike and Rebecca have brought these back to you so you can tell us to move forward. We are going to move forward with these unless you tell us the contrary. And then the next step board members will be Once we come up with the approximately 10 sites, if you will, we will come back to the board and share these sites with you. You may want to add to it or subtract. And then we will take these up to 10 sites and give them to your 2026 EPF committee for them to start the functional and qualitative and weighted analysis. So we're trying to dot the I's and cross the T's because we know This particular program is very important to the entire community. I think it's important for the board to remember that this EPF process is for a new justice center. It's not for anything less than a justice center. Let me restate that. If you wanted to expand the jail, we would have to review whether or not the expansion, and that's a term of art, would require an EPF process, or we could simply move forward with it without going through a process. So that was the only clarification I wanted to mention to the board, Madam Chair. And I apologize, Mr. Sparber. I was watching and I came over.

I saw you running over here.

I didn't run fast enough. Thank you, Madam Chair, for indulging me.

any questions that i can answer so just uh remind me i do you consider is the current site get considered in terms of the impact of changing or you know the current jail site is it considered in the process i assume commissioner waldrum that the

present Dale site, when you apply those criteria will be one of the sites that comes back in front of you to be aware of. So my response is it probably will be, but that's the whole process while we're taking these general criteria, and screening them out as commissioner, as excuse me, Mr. Sparmer has indicated. And I assume it will come back. I don't know why it wouldn't. Remember, we've got smaller sites and larger sites. So I assume it will come back.

And then will the committee be looking at, I forget, how detailed does the committee get in terms of the cost to operate different sites? You know, just generally.

Yeah. generally speaking commissioner the cost to operate the sites comes in near the end of the process near the weighted analysis after that and this board of county commissioners will hold your own public hearing and during that time frame the cost of operating the facility will be a factor which you will take into consideration

But there's no, this is just looking at sites. That is correct. And maybe narrowing it down and looking at the considerations. But at the end of the process, we don't actually, not required to make a decision. It's just information for a future decision.

Commissioner, let me restate that just a little bit. The 2026 EPF committee that you have appointed will go through the functional analysis with regard to these up 10 sites, the qualitative analysis of these 10 sites, and then the weighted analysis. At that point in time, the matter will come back to the Board of County Commissioners, and you will be sitting there with two hats on, the commissioner's hat and the applicant's hat, because we happen to be both in this case. And when you get to that point, you will ultimately, as the commissioners, rank the top three sites And then as the applicant with the other hat, you will determine which of those three sites you want to select for the new justice centers the case might be. So I hope I've answered your question, Commissioner Walder.

I just remember that in terms of Rock County, I just remember that someone said that they went through the process, but then they ended up having to choose a different site.

after the process or during the process? Because they had like three different sites they were looking at.

They just had three that they had some control over.

And Commissioner Wald, if your question is a good question, and I think Madam Chair, you're aware of this, Whatcom County had a different process than Spokane County. In Whatcom County, each entity has their own EPF process. In Spokane County, all 13 cities and the county came up with a standard process. So it's a little bit different, if you will, but it gets to the same end result. Are there any other questions, Madam Chair, that the board may have that I can answer with regard to what we're here today to ask the board to do? We're anxious to move this forward and so we can start the process because we know we want to get this done in a timely fashion. but we want to dot the I's and cross the T's so that anyone looking at the process feels very confident that we'd handle it correctly.

Just that last screen where you were looking at some additional criteria, is that in the packet? No, we can send it. Okay. I'd like to look at that further.

My only question is,

way so that's my curiosity right now they're just looking at the fema 100 year blood stones as the eliminating factor and then they're they've put in a request to golding's meeting to get more information so we can bring that up it's already predetermined it's not that consultants determine what it is great yes Yeah, there could be the case where part of a parcel is touching in and not the rest of it, or there are mitigating factors, and those we won't fully eliminate without bringing to you.

Well, thank you, Madam Chair. I think we've got some direction, and we're going to move forward with these basic criteria, and then come back with the board with hopefully up to 10 sites so we can move forward.

And the second one, we do have the resolution on the committee.

Correct, for the two counties. Yes, yes. And we also will have a public-facing website page that comes up, yeah, that we'll be publishing this week so that everybody can go and get it.

Yeah, Chris, they help us out when it's really nice. So quite a lot of compassion. Thank you. okay okay next you know it's kind of set the stage um it's been a long time since you've heard about the waiver level 15 and the progress has been made on it so i asked eric green who's the project manager along with the staff from the jail and our new medical provider to come over and give an update so as soon as they come in come on there yep and i'm going to move over here. This is. One. So we'll have them introduce themselves and who you have with you, Eric and Darren.

So Eric Green, the product manager that's been setting up the 1115 for the county. Then Darren Layman, oversight of 1115 with detention services.

Sonovia Rivas, I'm RN with Medeco Special Projects. I've been helping out with 1115 for several other facilities as well.

All the way at the back of the room.

Crystal Lucas, I'm the Health Services Administrator for Beth Coed.

Chief Don Hooper. Good morning.

Good morning.

This has kind of been a long road, so we're here to give an update today. Up there you'll see kind of how the slides are going to transition. Now, just a quick reminder of what the program encompasses. So basically, it's a Medicaid waiver, 1115, where incarcerated individuals that are eligible for Medicaid will get 90 days of pre-release services. That includes case management and then treatment for opioid and substance use disorder. Then this pilot program for the state expires end of June, 2028, as far as the grant funding. Slide. Just a reminder of the timeline. So the state split it into three cohorts, cohort one, two, and three. We've been a part of all three cohorts. And we'll get into that in a minute. Slide. All right. So where we started, Spokane County joined the 1115 efforts as part of cohort one. Early on in 2025, the state requirements were largely unknown at that point. There were several meetings with the state where they had released a policy and operation guide. Our requirements were really vague and nobody really knew the direction that the state wanted to go. At the same time that was going on, the jail was in process of an RFP for renewal of the Medicare contract, so that kind of slowed things down early on. Moving into the first part of 2025, state filing this amount, we have a series of webinars to make expectations known. The medical provider contract was eventually signed and executed, and then we began talks with NAFCARE at the time on what their participation level was going to be at 1115 and what they could do to help stand this up. In the process of all that, we had some medical provider implementation. Keep forward slide. Your direction. back thanks we had some implementation stuff going on and then um the state recommended that detention services move to a cohort two with the premise that essentially cohort one was meant for facilities that were already set up and ready to bill. They entered negotiations for RFP for a clearinghouse to funnel the claims through. It wasn't wrap up with the state bill in November when they finally stood up. And they recommended that we move to cohort two. After moving to cohort two, the 180-day notice came from NavCare that they were terminating services, at which point we entered an emergency RFP, which ultimately brought us through the rest of last year. And then that contract was executed with Medi-Cal at the beginning of this year. Slide two. With that, the contract started February 1st. There's been some transition that has occurred as well as implementing the new services. We did get our required readiness assessment submitted to the state on time. But with contract execution, we ended up deciding to move to cohort three because it just wasn't realistic to Mayor Mrakas, Try to go live in January of 2026 when medical provider transition started yet. Mayor Mrakas, Following the submission of that. Mayor Mrakas, get conditional approval to go by from the HCA which turned into full approval June. Mayor Mrakas, medical has agreed to stand up 1115 services for us with county having oversight. And then we are still working through some of the intricacies of that, but we did go by a bunch of what we want. We have an ongoing discussions with NEDICO as far as setting up services. That program was implemented in what was it, May 1st. which ties into our 1115 waiver. The program continues to grow and be refined. Some of the speed bumps were reached along the way. MCO contracts are ongoing, which is our one barrier at this point, which I'll get into in a minute. It's a barrier, but it's not a barrier. Then staffing recruitment is ongoing. There's some positions with Medico that aren't filled or positions aren't filled that current staff are being used to fill some of those gaps in the interim. We do have a county program administrator that is slotted to start in September, which has been a slow process due to background checks and some of those things. Next slide. ongoing challenges. Obviously the staffing, as I already alluded to, and then the MCO contracts. So the issue we ran into was juvenile court went by last year and they executed contracts with five MCOs. Three of the five contracts were county level contracts that didn't distinguish between the departments. And then three of those three MCOs that have those county level contracts, we're not willing to separate it into separate contracts to differentiate between juvenile court and detention services. And the remaining two are gonna be standalone contracts. Been working through the process of that, figuring out the best path forward as far as what we received for legal recommendations. Slide. Current status, we've gone live as of July 1st. Medeco will be billing on the county's behalf. Hocken County will be the program administrator and oversight. The managed care organization discussions can be ongoing. We are making progress on those. Medications are billed point of sale, so that is completely separate from the MCO contracts and could be an immediate return. Staffing continues to be advertised until filled. Program implementation requirements are ongoing. That's all I have.

Eric, on the contracts that you're working on for the MCO, is Nate McCorkle helping you with those?

Yes, it's been integral to those conversations.

So which staff have been the most challenging to fill? Is it more of the social service side or the some of the math treatment or what's the challenges?

The math treatment part of it, we got up and running and was filled in May. So that part of it, we're up and running on the positions we have in the contract with medical up to nine positions. And we determined that we didn't want to fill all of them with go live because we don't know what the capacity is. And I don't want to be in a position that we're not utilizing So we're rolling it out. I think we agreed on five positions initially. Right now, three of those five are filled. We have an enrollment coordinator, a case manager, one of the MAs, positions filled. Still working on two more, the billing component of it we don't have there yet. We're not billing at this point anyway, so that isn't contingent on being able to start the program. And we have a year that we can build back on also that gives us some some great spirit there.

So we'll get those positions filled.

But when the very speaks to the core positions, we do have those that we can be up and running. One of the things we're working on right now to be able to do provides a little service. logistics there on whether we do that at the county level, a medical level. We've got that ironed out. It's going to be at medical level. The county has access to provider one, but we weigh the pros and cons of who it'd be best with. And ultimately, we land on medical is going to get set up and provider one. So that once the data system or to enroll and to look up eligibility, which is going to be used by that and those enrollment coordinators and the case managers.

Do we have an estimate of the percentage of inmates or number that would be eligible to receive services under this paper?

We're currently evaluating that right now with that case manager. So that's one of the capacities we're using in your current right now, being that we don't have that provider one enrollment completed. So she's kind of going through that, going back through ones that have already been booked and released, and then as they come in and watching that. Conversations today, people who are in custody 90 days plus, I think a good percentage of those would be eligible, and that's 234 as of today. but not a true accurate over 90 days. And some of the, you know, requirements or timelines around 1115 is the first 30 days of incarceration services can be covered, but it's really the projected release dates, pre-release, you know, within 90 days. So that's why we focus on that 90 day.

If someone's anticipated,

And there's some requirements that the HCA mandates for everyone that comes into the facility. So there's certain assessments, SUD, health. And then if they choose to have the care coordination removal lease, that's a completely different story. That's the impact billing or the services that we provide while they're here until you get the release date. So if they're here, say, 60 days and they don't have a release date yet, you can bill for that. But then once you get the release date, you update that. And then it's the last 90. So it's kind of that gray area in the beginning until I get that helpful.

which can be challenging for us. We don't get a lot of that information. Our sentence population, you know, I looked at it a couple of weeks ago and it was in the 60s out of, you know, just under 800. So we don't know a lot of these release dates, sometimes almost till the day of. So coordinating some of that services is tough, but we're going to have to kind of triage that, look at other systems and compare them and make a best guess on those situations.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, All up so up to five new staff that we were saying, of course, that.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, Yes, five on the initiation of this, and then we have additional for built into the contract that we could, if the capacity grew to a point that dictated it, we could have it's doubling up some of those positions case managers building coordinators and.

HAB-Jacques Juilland, How do you see the work of the case management and services kind of aligning with the current mental health.

um they're kind of standalone in that aspect uh our mental health department right now is doing a more of a triage of uh you know people in crisis right now so i'm not doing a lot on a case management front um and i think the board's where we did have case management components of it uh tied to 5177 It was a little over a year ago, and we no longer have those positions. So case management is minimal, and those that are highly acute are the ones that mental health would support. But we've been in conversations on how that looks and how they refer back and forth. And the case management is an RN through Medeco. And if there's a mental health aspect of it, I see mental health kind of supporting that.

it's really the triage versus the re-entry exactly yep exactly which really re-entry is not re-entry case management not happening a lot on our end for potential services so i guess i would say for me it's you know having lobbying to get the waiver i mean we thought it was supposed to be taking care of the costs yes so it's kind of frustrating that hca has changed how they're looking at it and they're looking at the re-entry instead of Jennifer Horne, You know we're still very cost for these people as they enter into the system, which hopefully was to have those costs carried on by insurance providers that they had prior to getting into the system.

Absolutely agree with you on that part of it, and sitting in some of those meetings and talking with Sanobia, who has a lot of experience in other facilities in this place. And what facilities are seeing is the system is pretty complex. The environment does change, and we're trying to keep up on that. And some of the facilities aren't billing until, in one case, a year later. They're going back billing a year later because they're trying to keep up with all these changes and requirements of the program.

yeah it just seems like the hca is putting more barriers on it and you know it should be i mean when we're in lobby it should be as simple as you know someone going to the hospital and you provide your insurance information right you come into the jail system you should be providing your insurance information and if you have insurance it should be getting filled appropriately i mean we're still fighting for um this is just a mental health side but if honestly it's now just a re-entry side it's not even health side right um and you know we're trying to fight still to get the the medical side you know because to have to be have good mental health and re-entry you need to have good health absolutely so I mean so that's part of what we're still fighting to to get and so why our state chose to only go the mental health side is is very frustrating I think that's like TAB, We talked about yesterday and kind of unfunded mandates, I mean because they could be going for all of that and chose only to vote for a piece of it, and now, even not the piece we thought it was going to go for it's just going for the entry so. TAB, The state is not doing their job. TAB, Based on the federal law that they could be doing.

it's comforting for me to hear that from you because I I don't get exposed to that aspect of it but uh I've encountered Eric synovia us Lord we've all counted our frustrations with those those challenges you know we work through them but that you're hearing and seeing a level well and it was it was the state our state chose only to go for the mental health Yeah, so it'll be limiting for us, that aspect, until that gets changed.

So is there much that we would see of them on the prescription side? Is that really the only advantages to the people energy?

I think that's where we see our most return with the most return for the most amount of effort. If I could say you know that that's one of the easiest ones to target. It is a big cost for us, you know, and we're looking at between $80,000 and $100,000 a month on that. And you know, you can even order on that and we've targeted some of the the bigger meds too you know all through there that cost the county quite a bit um so again it is about the person and getting them the help they need but cool so you know getting them connected with the services medicaid to help support them there are a lot of medical services that are billable and so i'm finding that out i'm helping filling in another site and diving into that

So there is a great, but it's kind of a gray area. It's like, okay, well, will you cover this or will you want, they don't really provide a lot of tangible items to go like, oh, I can bill for this. You're just sort of like, is this allowed? And, you know, roll the dice and submit a bill and hope that, see what gets paid. But the Squally, I started there with cohort one and they just submitted their first bill last Friday. you'll see the biggest recuperation was in the um er visits and um the medications okay but now they're hoping to go back over a year they'll recuperate something to pay for the services that they that's the positions that they brought on thank you yeah i know you guys are doing a great job i just i'm frustrated state for for not doing anything they can to pay for these people's costs

They commonly make the statement that they're building the plane as they fly it. Yeah. So they're trying to figure out how this looks and works too.

Yeah. No, with Vlasak, we were very definitely lobbying for the hotel, you know, which is what the feds then allow for, but then the state leave.

So following up on that, What and maybe this can't be talked about if there's some legal issues, but I guess I'm confused about the MCOs. If they already have a contract with juvenile, what's that matter? They have contracts with our community services department, too.

Absolutely. In discussing it with legal representation, the preferred way was to have standalone contracts with detention services. Mainly because with a juvenile court, they entered in those contracts. Detention service has a much bigger footprint than that, where you're looking at a 20 to 30 population compared to answers. Is it meeting the needs of the jail? And if one were to separate or go a different direction, would it handcuff the other one to it? Justin Delacruz, we kind of hit a stalemate on that tax. I need things that Dbas all this was thrown out there where some were able to differentiate the two. So we're going to have to have a amendment kind of lining out any of those things that would be different with detention services. Justin Delacruz, We got it nailed down pretty well, and we will be presenting that to the board here pretty soon. We'll have three um as eric said three that are going to be amendments and then two that we stay on both contracts and it's just again allowing us to be able to build from the services so they're pretty uh boilerplate for the most part and you have to have it to be available it's a pretty standard for us to state by the way the the three contracts that require the amendments as far as those three mcos are concerned we already have contract in place so we're just talking about

And you guys work, Justin Johnson worked with you on helping with those MCS contracts.

He did. And he's a great source of information. He's been through it several times himself.

Yes, I think it was beneficial to make sure he was part of it. He's done that before. So just for our awareness that he worked with it.

Yes, yes. And he was a good gauge to make sure we were headed down the right path with him.

And Mr. Brooks, kind of brief, just really quick update, kind of related, kind of not. We were informed last week, the grant that we were awarded from DSHS for that clinical intervention specialist and all the staff related to that, we were informed last Monday, I believe, a week ago, that they were putting on hold, putting on pause. So it was about $750,000 due to the state's own budget issues. So we're just saying that just informed last monday we the board had signed the contract the week before on tuesday we sent it off to them wednesday by friday they were looking for us to put it on pause so don't know any other updates other than we put our position internal positions on pause as well but that was 750 000 as soon as they got it looks like within a day or two they put it up they're projecting maybe to have some more information back to us in the fall

still hopeful that that'll go through it's a they tell us or they relate to us that it's uh an important uh project for the state in budgets so in that case so since this is basically reimbursement because we've got to provide the service and then get reimbursed for it i guess the reimbursement is coming from the mca so we have a better feeling that we're going to get reimbursed. I mean, as we know, with all the reentry, that's a lot of work people.

Yes. So, yeah, once we get to that level to be able to, we will seek reimbursement for all those services that we'll be providing that are allowed. I wish I could give you a better idea of what that looks like. It's tough because I don't even know. It's

was even eligible we were gathering that data but then we're going to have to be paying the bills correct not sure we're going to get reimbursed on some of that or it would be quite delayed it looks like i'm sorry i'm sorry i interrupted uh no so i'm just saying that that would be part of the reason why we would need additional set of science and our mental health uh fund balance sales tax funds to account for these costs because we don't know What's going to get reversed? And there's that leg. So now we've got an initial leg that we don't have cash flow. Using the funds that we have. So now setting aside group of funds.

Was the information we got from Nisqually Jail was that the pharmacy itself, we weren't paying the bill ahead of time and they would actually bill directly from Diamond Pharmacy? Was that the, so we wouldn't have to pay? That's why we think the pharmacy costs close to $100,000 a month was probably our low hanging fruit. That's our initial recoup. Is that we'd heard maybe even up close to 80%? Yes.

What I would say to that though, to kind of qualify that is we have a cost of 1.2 million and those costs come out of that so it wouldn't necessarily come back to us again it would just never get filled against the cost so it's hard to say it is money saved but again it's going to that cost that is already kind of pre-built into the contract if we come in under that amount though it does get credited to us and it all hinges on the stay at the time they're here so that's kind of the big

in order to recoup the money from the pharmacy. So if they have a release date, 30 days after they get here, you could have received the funds for the pharmacy that was 30 days and then until last 90. So if they're here a year, that timeframe within, you're liable for that cost.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

You guys are doing a great job, so I'm not saying that.

Great. Thank you.

HAB-Jacques Juilland. : More coming. HAB-Jacques Juilland. : In. Thank you. I'm going to go over program. And that is a rough graph outline with some discussion. The summary of the current outline is that we would be making party order on all applying for more housing for building permits. Essentially that would be putting them to the front of the line in the queue when they come in. There's also a discussion on deferral waiving and or deferral waiving or reduction of permit case in general for that. John Gierkemaier, Look, on the first page I brought the summary general limitations of expedition, which is outside of the agencies. John Gierkemaier, Part of the process, such as sifa and growth. John Gierkemaier, Then, for considerations, it goes into. John Gierkemaier, The removal for reduction will create a loss or temporary loss of revenue stream, and that can be counterproductive for. John Gerstle, Our position of this. John Gerstle, And then. John Gerstle, Other consideration being abandoned projects. John Gerstle, In collections and how much that has on cost of tracking. John Gerstle, that's on the four miles from the current program process out by five minutes. John Potter, The other colorful not received affordable housing theater for all this is the checklist and will qualify for. John Potter, The beautiful entirety. John Potter, It covers in summary pretty much every program we can find my work with. John Potter, Housing and Community development and creating this. Kjell Anderson , City of Boulder OSMP, And we're kind of a rough outline of how the procedures would go is also listed on that affordable housing program process outline challenge a reference that's the building department with a few problems, please. Kjell Anderson , City of Boulder OSMP, One being the third document, you have, which is an example from self view, which is agreement, so we can get us if we do for. We have to make a modification to match our code. It's just not have an idea of someone processing somewhere else.

Thanks, Jordan. Kind of working on this question about the affordability requirements. Would a Habitat for Humanity or Community Frameworks home ownership product qualify under those it is intended to pick okay i'm pretty sure that through george's department funding goes to those types of programs right so this is coming from his what they use is kind of a basic criteria of affordability correct anything in their portfolio would qualify and then facing outside their portfolio would qualify it also would include a discretionary exception so say there's something that we didn't see

Essentially, the process is you would take in the documentation they use for all their affordable housing funding, similar or program they're in. You would forward it to Georgia's team. They would give a recommendation on if it would qualify, and then we would submit the program.

That we've received in the past year qualify for something like this.

Uh, George estimate was about to do between 2 and 5 projects, which that can be multiple buildings like, say, an apartment complex can be one project with multiple buildings.

When I was at the National Association of Counties meeting this past week, I went to a workshop where they were talking about ways to what you could do as a local government to support more housing in general, getting through your process, but also affordable housing. And the person that was on the panel was saying that giving priority or expediting is something even more important than know cutting fees or reducing because just being able to move projects through more quickly giving giving folks that sense of oh that that will be reviewed within x amount of days is really helpful you know when they're doing their financing and so anyway i think that i think that that's really something that's even uh Do you have a sense of life of a number of days? You can tell people, or I know you have all these outside agencies that also have to review.

That's the challenge. If you look at the the building permit process, that are quite a few steps. So I kind of didn't want to go too much into the details, but I'm actually happy to. We would send out like a An email with high priority listed and let everyone know this program is going and we'd like the participation, but it's mainly we can't force participation. Timeline for departments within Spokane County is easy to set like a date or a number. But ultimately, that's where the site is on how many agencies attached to send permit and then that timeline can be. There's no way to give them full time.

Thank you for that. I think this is a great idea. Um, I would like to see the at least at a minimum the priority of the different. You open to looking at reducing your weight things as well. And so I think this is a good start. I appreciate the work that. He is looking at the examples of other agencies. I was reminded of a comment Mr. French made in the previous meeting about like that. permit concierge or something that you saw in some Idaho.

Yeah, Twin Falls.

Yeah. So I really think we should look at something like that. I'd really like to see a permit dashboard. We talked about that for quite a while to kind of bring some additional light on the actual timelines. I guess it's complicated. I know every permit Christopher McConkey, Not just say we're prioritized but actually show it and get a real handle on you on the 20 frames so i'd like to see us go even further, but it's a good start.

Christopher McConkey, I also could give an update on the dashboard to I do have a block graft and this week and next week and we've actually made quite a bit of headway on. This is just an initial. I got 2025 and 2026 pretty good data data, but still confident their issued permits and their quantity per dwelling unit specific and the categories they land under. So maybe quite a bit of headwinds, things that I think in the few months we'll be seeing some really good data. So the problem is you go back to before 2025, things have been moving around so many times that it starts getting like spaghetti. John Gierkemaier, This is an initial kind of like rough draft. John Gierkemaier, Some initial stuff but I haven't working for submitted projects. John Gierkemaier, Seven fully vetted anything yet is there just two copies. John Gierkemaier, yeah I just I had a feeling we're going to talk about dashboard so it's like, well, I have, I have. John Gierkemaier, come up. John Gierkemaier, So I have some stuff that's getting close. It's good. It's accurate, but it could be better.

It'd be nice to get a

a baseline of what our timeline is for certain types of projects to get from when the presentation comes in complete or whatever the right starting point is to when it's finalized and then also look at whether are there any resources available for staffing a kind of person to help shepherd things through various agencies so i'm hoping we get everything on some of this when it's ready i guess for me i mean this is obviously

um but i want to do to just show is it gonna oh is this you know what yeah so what our current timelines are what would this do short you know what what's a normal fee so to put them on the referring pages but those fees are i'm looking at this As we set fees, we know then somebody else is paying those fees. So to weigh all of that, I thought, well, that would be for me.

Yeah.

Good question. What would we be showing that we're giving up and asking others to compensate for?

I think just in general for that topic, the data for how we can do averages for probably how fast it comes in to how long it's out to work. It's hard to say. For every project, without knowing a parcel specific because it'll vary so significantly, depending on that that limitation I have on there for the outside agencies i'll try to put something together, you know the idea is put it first in line. How much does that save. Now that may be hard to quantify but i'll try to work.

But if it kind of timeline up. The first line how. HAB-Juliette Boone, You know, agree that it's helpful to to get them to go easier, but there's other countries, so I could put comments on the time from. HAB-Juliette Boone, The friend is calling your office, the puts puts up with this term so so so that's what I just want to make sure that our current processes, let me explain to make sure that that's good.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. There's a number of folks that reach out when there's a permit that they feel is held up for one reason or another. And sometimes it's on their end, sometimes it is on our end. But, you know, I was glad to hear Commissioner Waldorf said at the conference that folks talked about time being more valuable than that. When you came in and we had a discussion about a month ago on this, that was one thing that I said. When I hear from constituents, it's not the cost of the fee they're upset about, it's how long it's taking to get what they've paid for. It's the time that means more. I've had builders, I mean, everything from developers to individuals that are building their own private residence that have said, They're like, I'll pay twice the cost if I can just get the permit in a reasonable time. So I think in many cases with construction, it's the time is more valuable. I guess it goes back to the old time is money. And when they're waiting on a permit, I mean, that costs them more money. And so it's the time that's more valuable to them, usually is what I'm here.

I just don't understand. This is only in that. the cities on our own processes that we're doing. And I guess I want to know how many cities are doing affordable housing fee waiver and permit processing in the county that are already doing that.

Did the city of Spokane do a deferment?

Yes. They probably have a project as well. Most of the major cities have a program in the city of Spokane Valley. I guess I only think the Spokane Valley.

They have the land. They do have the surplus property ordinance place, and they've used that. So they might be using other strategies.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" What can I ask you, you said deferment so is that they just they pay later. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" or a total okay so it's not a waiver of the.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" multiple options yeah you go down the. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" tactics have been production way of being different yeah to kind of.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" In reference to the cities, you said that happen there's our.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" waivers correct is spokane is doing deferral okay.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" And this is felt in here. it's doing a deferral. Or they're doing a reduction.

They're doing a reduction. Okay. I believe Kealuk's doing a waiving. The example is from Belviscus. If you're doing a deferral, this is an agreement to get your- Oh, this is a good example. Yeah, this is an example of how you could write up a deferral, sign and record it, and then that's going to get your future money into that does not pursue through all the way to the finish line. Oh, I see. Or revises outside the program boundaries.

I think we could, you know, in conjunction with this to have George give us a presentation on kind of how many affordable housing projects are coming forward and how many affordable housing units are being purchased by it. And just kind of give a little facts then see what the future could be. i can talk with george and do a presentation together for really for generally how many will likely to see and what kind of how yeah it could have been the last year time frame you know how many projects have come forward you know because it's it just has to be a certain percentage that's affordable versus um not so how how many then units have been produced in the past year um

is is the house has the housing authority come in for a permit on that senior housing up by the y area yet they got that grant through us through the county they got some grant dollars for the state to help put in some water structure i think i don't believe offhand they have okay that would be one that would potentially be coming yeah i haven't i haven't heard you use that one specifically probably still working on their portfolio of funding i can check back in on that and then make sure i don't have applications but that's where george could to your point commissioner george would know like what are the ones that we've already funded through our different grant programs that are in the queue so to speak maybe not you haven't gotten the uh Permit requests, yet, but we've already allocated funding to our different grant dollars.

And that's where I can see it in pretty streamlined because people already, a lot of times, has all this information already. So then when we refer it to them, they can already know, yeah, that's good to go. Or they can even send it with the check that's ready to go. Yeah, it's good to go.

And then things start to fill. Amy Dabbs, Projects that are not funding some of them Amy Dabbs, by government that are doing affordable housing options, so I think he would know what some of those would be too, so I'd like to know kind of the gant, you know, Amy Dabbs, the answer, if you don't mind.

James Meeker, Absolutely, now that's why we've got a special way to make sure that we're just involved in the James Meeker, Checklist, because that's, if not as much my area of expertise and information on this.

I think the checklist looks good. So would the next step be then having George provide some more info on past and future projects, just so we have a sense of how many permits we're talking about?

Right, and kind of what we think a timeline would be normally versus dividing it and what other cities are doing within Spokane County over it.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Mr. Jordan, Mr. Walter.

Okay, thank you, Madam Chair. We are here today to propose to the board for consideration a temporary pause on permits for large load data centers within the county. So I was planning to give an overview of the proposal, and then I'll turn it over to Mr. Waldorf. I may have missed, and then hopefully that way we can see if there's any feedback from the board. The key point I just wanted to make is that a temporary nine month moratorium will give us the time to really understand the impacts of these facilities before they're built and make sure that responsible rules are in place first. That's my goal. So just wanted to start off by saying this issue really came strongly to my attention, as it did for many people in the county last month. But moratorium and at the end of that moratorium they emerged with some local rules that over there a variety of conditions for such facilities built elsewhere in the county, including some rules addressing water efficiency and transparency. So that's just worth noting. That's what our neighbors are doing across the border. And then fast forward to a couple weeks ago, June of this year, it was reported 500 megawatts of energy to a single large load data center facility that was planned for construction in the region. And the scale of that kind of the equivalent of half of the entire current power load of the county as a whole. So it's a big deal for apparently a single facility. So that's another key point is that when it comes to large load or hyperscale facilities, we're not just talking about a garden variety industrial building. The resource demands for these facilities, depending on design and the specifics, could be really unprecedented. So for some additional context, I learned from a Vista that currently there's only one customer in the entirety of the county with an electrical load demand of over 25 megawatts. And again, the scale we're apparently talking about or the Vista is talking about is 500 megawatts for one facility. So over the past few weeks, as I'm sure other board members have, i've heard from hundreds and hundreds of constituents who are very concerned about what this may mean for their electricity bills in the future so energy affordability is one concern i'm hearing about as well as water efficiency as it relates to the aquifer there's concerns about noise and some other issues so a significant public outcry followed the reporting as we heard i think my office probably received over Justin Delacruz, Board of Trustees Meeting, and I think we're going to move on to the next slide. Justin Delacruz, Board of Trustees Meeting, and I think we're going to move on to the next slide. Justin Delacruz, Board of Trustees Meeting, Thank you. with local governments. So since that time, some other jurisdictions in the state have enacted temporary moratoriums. Of course, the city of Spokane most recently, the Snohomish County Council voted five to zero on a bipartisan basis to enact a six month moratorium. I just saw that yesterday, apparently the city of Pasco in Tri-Cities passed a moratorium six to zero on their city council. So I believe a temporary pause in issuing permits for these large load facilities is needed, because without it there's no way to preserve the status quo while we look at updating the rules that are in place today. So a permit application could come through the door at any time, and if the application is complete, it may be really too late at that point to do anything differently. So what are what am I proposing? An approximately 9 month moratorium that would expire 20 days after the end of the 2,027 legislative session. That is, the the 20 days after I believe is the governor's deadline to sign bills that come out of the session. So I think that time frame would give us the ability to have our own rules ready, but also to be able to adjust The moratorium I'm proposing would only apply to large load data centers of greater than 25 megawatts of electrical demand, of which there are none currently in the county at that scale. We would hold a public hearing. The moratorium resolution would direct staff to develop proposed rules for us that define data centers in our code, ensure the public's voice is heard and for such facilities and then address some of the power and water concerns as well. So I'm hopeful that we could use the time from a pause to engage in that coordinated planning effort with Vista and other local governments, study the potential impacts to the timing, I certainly personally believe the legislation That's what Avista is saying their position is. That's what data center developers seem to be saying. But I think the public needs to be able to count on that with a clear rule. So I just wanted to point out a few things going on in other places. The governor created a data center Texas put out an executive order last month that requires data centers to pay their own way. So that's just one example. So Governor Abbott in Texas said on June 10th, quote, data centers must operate in ways that reduce costs for needed for our communities and take into consideration the needs of our neighborhoods. I think that's a pretty good statement. So we'll see what the legislature does. But if they don't come through with new policy in 2027, we could be ready with our own. Last couple things I wanted to note it gives you a kind of clear indication of where the county is on this issue. Our zoning code. If you look at it, it's pretty long it's pretty detailed. It defines a lot of different types of land uses and the rules around those. It combines adult entertainment, establishments, air strips, auto junk and salvage yards, beekeepers, cemeteries, community transit centers, controlled plant growth structures, inherently dangerous reptiles. So there's a lot of things in our in our zoning code, but we don't have a definition of data center.

it i would ask us to engage in regional planning conversation and i would turn it over to mr walter for anything else as always very thorough commissioner so i uh yes since since avista put the pause on um its negotiations with apparently a large a large data center. You know, they said that it was seeking broader policy and community conversation and alignment. So since then, you know, I've heard from many community members and businesses about data centers. And I think there's a desire for Spokane County to engage with people, make sure we do our due diligence. consider infrastructure, water, energy, land use, noise, economic development impacts before any such development might occur in our county. So that's why a moratorium I think would be a good idea to allow us to have that many conversation and do our due diligence. When I was at the National Association of Counties annual meeting this last week, there was a lot of discussion and there was a big workshop on data centers. And we heard from different communities and states and counties. And many folks across many county leaders are enacting moratoriums so they can put their rules into place. This is a checklist that I just made copies of from NACO, and there's more resources out there. I just thought I'd pass it around. But it's just kind of a checklist of things you might want to consider in your county, like infrastructure, land use, zoning, water. Quite frankly, I don't think I know enough about data centers. I think we have a lot to learn, and the technology is moving really quickly. And so I wanna make sure that Spokane County has the information we need to make responsible decisions. And that's why I think a moratorium is important just to give us the time to research, learn more and have those policy conversations with the VISTA. So we understand what the VISTA is doing and make the best policy decisions for Spokane County. So I'd love to have a discussion about that

open to feedback so um this is the full document from nicole in case you wanted it uh because it's a lot more than just the spreadsheet of things that you need to uh to address but uh the uh a lot of a lot of A lot of conversation around data centers. A lot of it is inaccurate, misinformed, or outdated. The East Coast has been the lead on the data center industry. And there are clearly some mistakes that they made. They passed a lot of the cost for infrastructure onto the rate payers. And that was wrong. They did not take appropriate precautions with regard to their water. And some of the data centers were high consumers of water to cool. And that was maybe misappropriate or misguided. But we've learned a lot over the last couple of years. Just like any new industry, there are going to be hiccups along the way. And what you want to do is you want to learn from those that have gone before you and then incorporate those protections into what you do for your community. And so that's what I've been involved in for the last couple of years because I've had multiple developers of data centers approach me about doing something on the west plains and they have not been able to meet all of the metrics with regard to power or water or a variety of other things and commissioner kearns has been in the same situation i know that commissioner cooney brooks is also very familiar with data centers and the importance of them for our economy for our nation In fact, it's been suggested that to be against data centers is to be anti-American because we know and the FBI is currently engaged in investigations where China and Russia have engaged in activities to oppose data centers. because they do not want the united states to take a lead from an economic standpoint uh with regard to data center uh development uh so uh we have uh between commissioner kearns and i uh already drafted a petition particular outline for an ordinance to be uh pursued and we've talked to our legal counsel and and uh and a planning director about the timeliness of being able to implement a zoning ordinance to address some of these concerns. And we can understand that this could be something that could be addressed by the end of August. So we don't need nine months to develop regulations. we already have a good understanding about the impacts of what these data centers mean and also what we can do to protect the community and allow for this critical infrastructure to be developed here in Spokane County. I find it interesting that, I'll be specific here with regard to the Democratic Party Here you have Senator Cantwell and Senator Murray's leading an effort to support a multi-company project for developing a tech center in the West Plains. senator campbell was lead and securing 70 million dollars for that tech center which is going to include a data center then in the last legislative session we had representative warmsby present a bill uh to uh allow spokane county to enjoy the same economic incentives or benefits that other counties in the state have with regard to recruiting data centers. And then Senator Richelli sponsored that in the Senate. And so that unfortunately didn't pass, but Spokane County is one of the few counties in the state that doesn't have that incentive. Setting that aside, I find it interesting that from a leadership standpoint, and I complimented and a text to Representative Wormsby for his leadership, because this does mean that we have access to the resources provided by Adana Center, both for our medical professions, aerospace, education, advanced manufacturing, professional services. Data centers are used across the board. My seat mates use the computer and their phones, much like all of us do, to research data from Google and all of those other data providers on a regular basis. And you talk about the letters that we received. Well, I had some of those letters look particularly similar. So I had our IT people take a look at it And some of those letters were generated by AI, the same technology that they were complaining about. I hope you're starting to feel the hypocrisy that exists around this issue. What I'm hoping to do is to set all of that noise aside and let's talk about how do we protect our community and take advantage of this new industry and the benefits that it provides to the community. So we've defined data centers as large load data centers to be 200 megawatts and anything less than 200 megawatts would be considered a small load, a light load, and that the large load would only be allowed in heavy industrial zones. Light load could be either light or heavy industrial zones, but they're an industry. Let's put them in the industrial zones. We are not a water purveyor. We do not control what the water districts do with regard to water or department of ecology. So those agencies and those groups will determine whether water availability is in fact an issue or not. The benefit of my fellow commissioners new data centers that use closed loop cooling systems use less water on a daily basis than a family of four do. But the other thing is that some of the new data centers and one of them that I'm working with is talking about using wastewater. So unless you drink water from the toilet, you're not gonna be impacted by this because you're using wastewater. Infrastructure expansion, But the data center should be paid for by the developer, no question at all, should be paid for by the developer and that should not be passed on to the general public or to the rate payers. Data centers should not be located closer than 300 feet to a residential property or 100 feet from the property line. Those are the same regulations we use for marijuana. Noise generated by data centers should not be greater than 65 decibel level at the property line because that's what we use for the airport. Rate structure for electrical use is regulated by the Washington State Utility Commission, not us. There's a process where these large load data centers have to get approval from either the Utility Commission or Maybe we enter into an MOU between the county and the utility and the developer to make sure that the rates do not burden our ratepayer base, the costs are paid for by the developer, not our ratepayer base, and that we are protected from that. And then all of the other SEPA application requirements that we currently use would apply to data centers as well. find it interesting that the agencies that are created in the state to regulate development industries evidently the party that created those agencies have no confidence in those agencies doing their job which is protecting the public um so i think that is it would send a uh a motion uh to the um planning department planning director to develop uh the necessary code amendment to be adopted and brought back to the board of county commissioners for our consideration by august 31 This is what leadership looks like. It's not having the community worry more and wring their hands for nine months, waiting for a legislature on the other side of the state that doesn't have our values to dictate to us. It's us recognizing that we have an opportunity to bring this industry into the community, but on a cautious basis to make sure that our existing community and the quality of life that we cherish is not impacted, and the economic benefits that are provided for it, including a significant amount of tax base, tax revenue for the county and with balancing our budget. The city of Quincy, which is known as the city that embraced data centers more aggressively than any other part of the state, 61% of the revenue, 61% of the revenue for the city of Quincy comes from data centers. they are large very expensive buildings that pay large sums of property taxes and do not have a demand on our services they do not have a demand for schools or libraries or parks police and fires all they require but they pay for all of those other things The other thing is that the construction industry, and I really praise Representative Ormsby for his leadership in this area, recognizing that the data centers will bring, I think the estimate I've saw is 1,200 good paying jobs to this community, high paying jobs for electricians, construction workers, and others, but there's also the ancillary benefit to the community, whether it's our hospitals having access to the data center and the services it provides, our colleges, our aerospace industries. You can go through the whole board. I mean, if you have one of these, you use a data center. uh and so so to say that we're not going to somehow find a way a path to embrace this opportunity while at the same time protecting our community sticking our head in the sand and then i'll close with we used to have a policy that said that before we could consume our attorneys time developing legislation and policy that we had to have the majority of the board saying yes we want to spend those resources and yet we've got this moratorium that was developed without consensus from the majority of the board and as we entered difficult financial times for the county, we've got to be very judicious about how we use the resources, including the manpower of our legal team and stuff. So for all of those reasons, I'm not going to support a moratorium. Moratorium is, you know, I understand Seattle or Spokane City Council follows the lead of Seattle and the mothership whenever it lands. uh that's not what we do we provide leadership we provide direction policy language that protects the community and at the same time grows our economy and looking at how the county has grown and how the city has not grown over the last several years is a prime example of the kind of leadership that we provide at the county so um madam chair i'll i'll rest

the rest of my comments but i'm not in support of any moratorium yeah um i was surprised when i saw this discussion on the agenda uh commissioner french and i have been having discussions along this and um when i saw more moratorium pop up it was like okay well we're just gonna have to present this today i think we wanted to maybe polish it up a little bit more but quite frankly what commissioner french said is is correct um You know, we that the thing is moratoriums lead to regulations. I think at any of these jurisdictions that have that have adopted regulations have said it is to adopt these moratoriums. It's been to develop regulations. I think it's it's sad that. individuals think jurisdiction would need nine months to a year to develop those types of regulations. The partial sheet that Commissioner Waldriff presented, the entire packet put out by the National Association of Counties has has checkpoints of things that would be in draft legislation, if you look at the whole packet that they put out. I think the common thread that I've seen in those emails and communications that we've been seeing from the public is they do want sort of reasonable, responsible, common sense, regulations around data centers and i think what commissioner french has presented here uh meets that threshold um nine months uh again i think it's just laughable that you think a government would need that um when you look at the other jurisdictions that have put in a year's worth of a year's moratorium i mean that's We don't we should not be moving when it comes to economic development when it comes to an issue this big when it comes to what we're hearing the outcry for this community. We shouldn't be moving at the speed of government. We need to move at the speed of business. And quite frankly, getting this taken care of by the end of August, I think, shows true leadership like Commissioner French stated. This is what people are looking for. We've done a great amount of work here, and quite frankly, I think we're open to amendments. We're open to continuing the discussion. I think if we direct our planning department to take this forward, put the finishing touches on this, and have something by the end of August, we'll be leaders on this in the state, and we will find a way to um have a positive economic growth but also being able to protect our community that they have uh made it clear that they expect us to to deliver on okay well state commissioners have

One idea, two questions have another idea. I'm hearing some of these for the first time. But as the data center topics have certainly come up, I think the word moratorium is a word that we do hear as a, I think, a scary word for business, I will say. That when we say moratorium, I think it says we're closed for business and we're not closed for business, whether it's data centers or any of it. I mean, it's like, the business community outside of Spokane County when they're looking for places to to go it's like if they're willing to put a moratorium in for that or what else are they doing so so I'm not in favor of a moratorium I'm in favor of having that responsible engaged Community conversation that uh Commissioner Jordan you were talking about um because we need to engage with our utility companies with our water purveyors to see what are they seeing what are they hearing in their industry that we can Amy Nunez, A better. Amy Nunez, decision on what our ordinance or. Amy Nunez, resolution would look like because I don't know what that is, I know other counties across the nation have definitely talked about having regulations and put a closed loop system and having no tax advantage. for for businesses coming in looking at noise looking at water usage and electrical needs and so I think those are the things that we do need to station about to figure out what does that really mean I don't know what the noise level is from a data center so you know is 100 foot setback enough or is it not you know so those are the conversations I think we do need to have we need to have quickly because it is upon us um you know out of 39 counties in Washington state so the Homish I don't is there any other counties that just started June 1. they had a data center come in and is developing so they have a moratorium now so they could put rules into place okay so so I think we need to um look at what what that is when I said I don't know which the other words are but I mean that's where it's up too sorry it keeps up I think we've got to be thoughtful. And so I'm in favor of looking at what that should be and looking at it quickly. But I'm not in favor of saying we are going to put a moratorium in because the city did put their moratorium in and I haven't heard of any community conversation that's started. So I'd rather say we're going to start one, figure out what that is soon. Amy Nunez, who's going to be on it, who needs to be on it, whether. Amy Nunez, And i'm happy to have it be a public conversation site, I think the public deserves that transparency, as we look at what's happening and other places people know. Amy Nunez, I know a little bit about Texas these days, so yes, the governor did pass, you know the executive order which our governor could. Amy Nunez, The one thing I would say you know we need to be cognizant of is that we do need to do this quickly and look at it. because we have asked for wind farms in the past and solar farms for some regulations on that. And we have not gotten that finalized. I think all of it, you know, a solar farm takes up as much space as what a data center would take. It provides back into the but it also takes up all that farmland and agricultural land that as the GMA is working so hard to try to continue to keep. So I think with our comp plan going on right now and with this happening, it's the time to do it, but I'm not in favor of moratorium, but I'm in favor of quickly having conversations so we know, and we're not just rash in making regulations, but we're making good policy recommendations.

I notice we have our planning director online. If at some point in this discussion, if you can touch on sort of what processes are out there, because we do have a planning commission, this could also go through, which has the public participation process, public hearings. There are processes laid out as well for these types of decisions as well.

Yes.

Just a few comments in response to what others are saying. the maximum date that it's scheduled for but again just to remind the board that if a complete permit comes through the door tomorrow it operates maybe too late at that point to actually do any of these ideas it sounds like there is an agreement here that some responsible rules are needed but without a pause the status quo rules are what they are i just wanted to say i'm happy to have mr chesney here i asked for feedback on my happy to hear that that's not what I was told uh I think it is unfortunate that some of the comments uh try to frame this as a political issue I think that's inappropriate and frankly unprofessional in some of the comments that are made uh I don't know why it would be necessary to question uh anybody's imposed a moratorium. And unless Kootenai County is a stronghold of the Democratic Party, this is not a political issue. It is about taking the time to get it right and to make sure that basic protections are in place for our constituents. I recognize also that technology some of the issues that other communities are facing but again we can't just rely on the word of industry that they are going to be better we have to have rules in place to protect the public when it comes to water power and other issues so I hope that we can get to that better place um Mr Chesney I see you're on Zoom if you would like to talk to what the process is

Certainly commissioners. Good morning. Uh, generally speaking, you know, forgetting the subject matter, uh, this would be most notably done as a zoning text amendment. That would be something that would be initiated by the board, much like many of these are, uh, and then process through staff, through a public participation program, uh, through public hearings with the planning commission, and then a recommendation back to the board. All of that does take time, but in the six weeks that Commissioner French mentioned, that is sufficient time for us to have a draft in front of you for consideration and final direction. There are other state mandates for changing our development regulations, including commerce review and SEPA reviews that would come along with that. And to Commissioner Jordan's concern, normally, yes, nine months starting from scratch is a bit of a challenge when we do have some other work on our plate right now, trying to finish up our comprehensive plan. But that said, we can prioritize our time and have draft information to you roughly by Labor Day. So that's not an unreasonable aspect. The approval process does take time and is set by many of the statutory deadlines that we follow for other zoning text amendments. So it would follow clearly within that milieu and I think is at least doable from a perspective of getting you the information you need. And along that line, we have been tracking this for some time. There have been some inquiries. as Commissioner French has noted, and we're preparing right now what we call a best practices report based on what's happened in Washington and also around the country, taking those examples to an analysis level and being labeled to lay out for you what we feel are the best practices for data centers at this time. So some of that work has been done up front, which is why we believe we can have a draft to you in that six weeks period.

So, commissioner Jordan, I brought this forward for discussion and I appreciate that. Commissioner curves and and French were already looking at some of the regulations that potentially we could put into place. I would still strongly recommend because to even if we can. Have conversation in the next several months and go through a public process. that through applying commission and all the hearings that are necessary, I would still strongly recommend that we pursue a moratorium. And if we can get it done in three or four months by the end of the year, that would be wonderful. I think the way we wrote the proposal was just up to knowing that we have our comprehensive plan, do at the end of this year and we are working very diligently on that our planning team is working very hard to meet that deadline um and we have our budget to adopt by the end of the year and we have a lot to do on that over the next several months I just I I feel a responsibility to our community that we work as diligently as possible but in the meantime uh I would not want to see Justice Patricia Guerrero, A permit come in to build something that we haven't had the policy conversation. Justice Patricia Guerrero, About so that's that's just my concern but i'm all for doing it more quickly, if we can muster our resources to do that, Mr nation.

Madam Chair, I have no position, of course, on this issue, but Mr. Chesney is listening and I'd like to remind him the same statute that allows us to adopt a moratorium also allows us to adopt an interim zoning ordinance without going through a complex process. So in the same fashion that the board could act on the moratorium today, Once Commissioner French's and Commissioner Jordan's and this dialogue takes place, we could adopt that ordinance without going through a public hearing through the Planning Commission. We would have to adopt it in the same fashion we would the the moratorium. So I wanted to clear up the time frame issue because that may be relevant in your decision making process. And Mr. Chesney, please correct me if I have misstated what you understand.

No, not at all, Mr. Macio. We were, and I guess I should have laid out both alternatives. We laid out the more traditional approach, but yes, Mr. Macio has laid out the same track approach that could be used as the moratorium. We agree.

Does the board have any questions on what I just shared? If you did, I'm more than happy to respond to those same points.

Well, to. Uh, thank you, Mr. Maceo. And, um, you know, we have, uh, done that in the past as County and, uh, if it was the will of the board, quite frankly, you could take the work that Commissioner Kearns and I have drafted out here and adopted as an interim ordinance today. And then that way, you prevent the opportunity for somebody to come in and take advantage of this six-week period. And so there are ways to address proceed concerns from fellow commissioners and still be able to move forward. I agree with Commissioner Brooks. The word moratorium in the business community says we are closed for business. Thank you very much. And Spokane County is not closed for business. We've created thousands of jobs, billions of dollars of economic investment, and it's not because we've shied away, but it's because we've been in a leadership role to take advantage of those opportunities.

The last time we adopted an interim ordinance like this, I'll remind the board members, is when we had the water rights issue. You recall that Ecology stopped issuing any building permits because of the lack of water rights. So the county commissioners directed staff to prepare an interim ordinance which we adopted without a public hearing it took us a week to get it done and then after we adopted it as an interim basis we went through the other process and and fine-tuned it if you will but it was so critical to get it done because we wanted to ensure that individual property owners could obtain building permits for individual residences in the unincorporated areas and but for this ordinance there was a complete moratorium through the Department of Ecology on issuing any building permits. So we have, as Mr. Chesney indicated, we have used this other method from time to time when it's appropriate at the discretion of the Board of County Commissioners. I don't know, Madam Chair, and I'm looking at Commissioners, I don't know whether or not, I'm looking at Mr. Folsom, whether we can take whatever you're proposing, board members, and put it in the form of a resolution for your action this afternoon. I would leave that in Matt's hands. And because, Madam Chair, we can bring on items by leave, but that requires, as you know, the public to be able to comment on those, whether or not you bring on Commissioner Jordan's proposal or Commissioner French's proposal, both of them would be acted on in the same fashion. So I don't think I have any other statements to make unless the board has some questions of me. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. We're going to be off for two weeks. So I think that's going to give us the time. I'm not willing to make a decision today on your um item as i haven't seen it until just now and we have a new meeting that goes till the time they're two o'clock maybe so i will not have time between now and then as commissioner jordan knows we both are in a meeting uh so i will not be supporting anything today so but in two weeks i hope we can have staff take a look at it we can have conversations with others to see what um people think should be in these ordinances uh we can look at what other Lisa Chavez, provinces are at with other counties, other than just you know again moratorium just pushes it down the road, I think it's important enough that we're all saying it's important to look at it quickly and get something done so that's what I would like to do.

So you will find that this draft is very closely in line with best practices as laid out by NACO, National Association of Counties. And I think it actually hits on many things that were stated that Governor of Texas has said that was referenced in Commissioner Jordan's remarks. and hits on the main points that we've heard from constituents that have concerns with these facilities so I think it's a great balance it's very reasonable very common sense and I think it would have wide support across this community thank you all for bringing it forward any other comments on this topic before we go to the next okay it's going to take us to our safe and healthy discussion

Commissioner Jordan.

All right, another Commissioner topic. So Commissioner Brooks and I have been involved in the Safe and Healthy Task Force planning conversations for years now. So we've been working with the conveners of the task force, which includes a lot of Sheriff Knowles has been on the planning team. Preston McCollum, the prosecutor, has been joining that group more recently. I just want to thank all of the county staff who were involved and continue to be involved. Mike Spark, Justin Johnson, Judge Hazel. There have been many others as well. And, you know, we have a deadline that we've discussed here several times. I believe August 4th to make a decision about whether to send a November ballot measure to the auditors.

do so first as the chair um and then we can see what other commissioners views are yeah and and we have a meeting at noon um on the facility side of it but um I think we all feel like there's there's a lot that has happened there's a lot of momentum um hopeful to get something on the ballot in November but we also want to make sure something passes and I in in my heart right now Cora Bennett , Do not feel like if we put something on the ballot in November it's going to pass, so I feel like we've got to. Cora Bennett , show that our further commitment to this and what we're doing and that's what we're working on right now. Cora Bennett , To show what what can happen along the way, as we go to what evaluation would look like in August or November of next year. We certainly can before the end of this year, put that ballot measure on for next year and show our commitment to the community for that. But I think at this time, I don't feel like we can go and do justice to a ballot measure in November to make sure this passes and make sure the community understands what the true need is and why it's needed and what the purpose is for. so that was i think sad we've been working towards the state and we knew we could do a special meeting if we needed to but um i think it's more important for it to be supported by the community have the community really understand all the voters understand because as we know we've had a lot of public input we've had a lot of meetings a lot of community members have been part of this discussion along the way that in the end it's the voters that have to vote for it and and it's getting that information out to them so that's understandable and I don't think we have enough time to to do that we're still looking at what you know we've got our essentials public facilities committee that is working we've got an assessment that's being done Meredith Williams , The Capacity Collective, As to what the needs are those are not finished yet so just not at that time and but it doesn't mean that the work isn't going to continue, so I think we're going to show the work that's going to continue. Meredith Williams , The Capacity Collective, I will continue doing it till the end of the year. know before i retire so i think that's important for the community to know and and for the people that have put so much time and effort in to know that we are still going to work hard and put in the time to make this work and i appreciate you

both the need for right size modernized correctional facilities and as well the system and operational and programmatic needs to achieve better outcomes. I've really appreciated that it's been safe and healthy. So it's recognizing that there's an overlap of those going to continue the momentum the planning team is continuing to meet and discuss a number of potential initiatives that could begin in the near future as regional collaborations facilities work group is meeting here shortly to dive into some of the concepts we've talked about around an intake assessment Center as to what that could look like as a phase one plan ballot measure to be ready. And so I hope we will continue the work with our regional partners full steam ahead. We'll continue to gather the community input There's a lot that is in the safe and healthy report that could be really important for the community if it was able to be realized. There's expansion of code deployed teams. There's targeted staffing investments in prosecutors, public defense, judicial, law enforcement. We could do more mental health screening for youth with more resources. We can share data, better analyze that. We could have peer support and housing support. We could target some more effort towards high utilizers, aka the small group of people causing a disproportionate share of the problems and crime in our community. We could look at job training efforts, and we've talked a lot about work crew here, but we need to do some additional work to refine and prioritize those costs. ready with the right measure so if it is the two-tenths uh public safety measure as we've talked about august i believe of next year would be the next date for that although if it's a different revenue option we could have different timelines as well and then lastly i just wanted to remind everybody that while we are hopefully continuing to build on the momentum of safe and healthy we're already doing a lot as the board we've got the stars sobering beds which is saving lives right now We are funding the expansion of the City Fire Department's Behavioral Response Unit. We are building the PATH Center expansion. We're supporting the Crisis Stabilization Center. We're funding Maddie's Place. Justin's department has a whole list of behavioral health programs out there on the streets, and we could go on and on. So looking forward to the work going forward. And we welcome any other thoughts.

We really all hope that we could get to this point of me putting the resolution on, but it just seemed like the right time yet. But we'll get there. And yes, next August, for the two-tenths of 1% for public safety, it has to go on either the August or November ballots. So just so people know why we couldn't put it on sooner.

Well, there's good feedback. I think that's kind of the sense I've been getting, too, is that there's great momentum, but there's some T's we have to cross with understanding how much funding is available and then which projects could be funded. And we want to make sure we do that to put something on a ballot so folks know what they're buying. Do you feel like there's momentum, though, to get to some of those agreements? between the jurisdictions about how we might what things might be prioritized what things might make it on a ballot um inner jurisdictional agreements on how we might share money like by the end of the year so that we would have a sense of where we're going i think once we get the essential public facilities committee finalized and the assessment um

consultants I think that's going to help us then know what what leads are to then be able to get those jurisdictional agreements but I think until we have the assessment and that's one to see it when we apply okay yeah okay so I mean so that's why once we have that then we can start to think through and talk about it here before we start to go out with other um communities okay

And by, you know, we've had the city, several city leaders and valley leaders at the table throughout. They've been great participants. I'm hopeful we'll continue to see them.

Okay, so we are way over time.

I'm seeing no one else want to comment.

Any other miscellaneous items? Because we have time for an executive session or two.

John Kane, The two executive sessions, we have first or both longer amount of time, so I recommend just pushing them off in a second Okay, how long will be 45 minutes. John Kane, For all the executives that are all every 1520. John Kane, About 20 minutes 15 minutes or 10 minutes, it needs to be last. John Kane, I just said i'm unavailable. I can try. We need to be out of the room in 11 minutes. Let's try. Sure. Okay. Let's try. We've got one executive session pending and potential litigation. 11 minutes and 30 seconds.

No action.

Okay. Let me go into executive session for the reason just stated. When we adjourn, no action will be taken and we'll adjourn for the morning and see everybody back at 2 o'clock.

It's.