Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

Good morning and welcome to our August 25th, 2026, 9 a.m. board briefing session. Let the record reflect that all five commissioners are present. And so we'll go ahead and get started. That's it for it.

Morning, commissioners. Appreciate the time this morning. Just a few quick items, road vacations for you this morning. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I just didn't get it up on the screen.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Morning. It's

So the first one is a portion of Kennedy Road that you can see on the map on the left. This is out on the West Plains, not too far from the town of Medical Way. You can see on the right side from the aerial, the parcels outlined in blue are the petitioning parcels. In the section in red, it's the right-of-way proposed for vacation. And this, everybody around it, it's supporting without access we do not anticipate ever wanting a road in this private way and we support the vacation of it happy to answer any questions no it's going to come and say oh no no it's a field and it's surrounded by the property owners that are asking for the vacation so this one's pretty clean we'll see it probably just changed uh next slide please i know stacy i'm sorry So next one is very close to the previous one. It's out along Clear Lake. I think the board's familiar. There's a plat on the east side of Clear Lake dedicated to a bunch of right-of-ways that are currently unopened. People have been developing a little at a time, so we're mindful of how we vacate this area because we do want to keep access to parcels. People have been building a little at a time out in this area. This portion runs very parallel to the existing roadway. You can see just north of it there. We do not anticipate any current or future need for the right of way shown in red. The petitioners are north and south of it and have alternate access through existing roadways. And we support the vacation of this one. Happy to answer any questions. Next one. down in the very southwest portion of the county and to Martin Road, the portion of Moore's Road. You can see the two right-of-ways in the bed there. The lines shown in green are previous vacations that the board approved. And this is really just cleaning up this area. The petitioners own all the property around it, have alternate access. So it I'm happy to answer any questions on this. Thank you very much. Back in front of you for some public hearings.

Stephanie, I'm just asking on those since we have time. Have you gotten any comments on any of those?

On which ones?

On the public hearings that we're going to have this afternoon.

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for your patience yesterday. Today's item will be considerably shorter. We are back before you simply due to the length that this grant program has gone on. This was originally put forward with the letter and scope of work from this board in 2001. It was awarded about a year later at a slightly reduced number. Proceeded to go through its implementation from 23 through 2526. Within this, there was a commitment of in kind contribution by the county as well as a cash contribution. That was again when we put that together was 21 or 22. The cash contribution was 2500 dollars a year for 2 years or 5000 dollars total. At the time, building and planning was one entity and had a building and planning fund. Subsequently, the split leaves us in a position where the planning department does not have this in our budget, and we made the commitment to STA and the city according. The city's contribution, cash contribution is higher, as is their staff time contribution. uh the project has been a good one it is substantially complete in fact it's being uh well not only nominated i believe it's going to be receiving an apa award for transit planning at the overall conference so there's it has been a successful project and also just quickly to kind of piggyback on what commissioner walter passed yesterday this is the project that helps set the planning goals for the northern part of our metro core in the split in the Y area. So we're simply asking for authorization through the grants department for a $5,000 contribution to the program.

The money might just take this year. It should come in. But we're talking close to $10,000. We can pay this out of fund balance. We can pay that out of non-departmental. Well, it wasn't anticipated in the 26 budget. a long period of time and even though it is a small amount and it would take them you could put it back in jordan's budget before it started okay did we have it that we still had some contingency that we had contingency

But this was an agreement from 2000.

It started in 2021, not long after I arrived. And the STA had been working with the city, speaking with Carl at the time. We asked, how come there are no county planners on this committee? And he said, well, because nobody wanted to be. So we stuck ourselves into it and inserted planning into the process.

Oh, just a note. When you said the building and planning, you know, at some point, separated into two kind of separate budget lines. Yes. Are we sure that all those dollars should have been in the building side? I'm just wondering if there were some planning dollars that maybe should have been.

In the original system, I don't think it was. Mark Benthien, SCEC, As we split these we were careful to move any funds that were legitimately planning based fees and things into the general fund planning side so i'm i'm comfortable we we got out of it with an egg split.

Mark Benthien, SCEC, Was it friendly divorces.

Mark Benthien, SCEC, That that's.

They still talk. We do.

But I'm assuming that most of the fees on the building side, those are like coming in from building fees. So it's appropriate to have those over there. Thank you, Commissioner.

Thank you. Welcome back, Randy, to come in front of the Commissioner. It's been a while.

Yeah, hope I have. Morning commissioners. Today I'm just briefing on a resolution that you will see in next week's consent agenda. There were a couple of Scrivener errors in it that have been corrected. The title, it is county code section 7.30.040. The original title and the original therefore have the wrong reference numbers have been corrected. This resolution is to clean up County Code 7.30.040 to allow all uses of the retail car rental sales tax. That tax was put in place in 1992. When they originally set County Code, they listed all of the uses that were then allowed. The legislature has changed the allowed uses this year. And so this is just to clean up our county code so that if the legislature, number one, so that we can use it for all allowed uses, and also if legislature changes anything in the future, the new language will allow us to automatically use that use also.

Questions?

All right. Thank you. I didn't stutter right now.

Still got it.

We can make it harder on you.

You're in unzipped.

Well, you might just have to let others network right ahead.

I'm really here. I'm in the weeds again. Okay. Good morning, commissioners. I am here today to request the approval of an addendum to the PAC ULIN contract to allow us to accept credit cards at all of the admission gates during the fair this year. We have been cash only all of these years, so we are offering a credit card option. The fee will be passed back on to the attendee, and it is a 2.8% fee. Tickets West, which is PACULIN, manages all of our ticketing operations, all of our staffing, and they provide all of the equipment. So again, just asking for your approval for this addendum to the contract, which is on your two o'clock agenda today. Any questions?

We did same day this one as they need to get stuff set up for the fair. When the agreement came over early and it's not a policy thing that all the people care about. So we also today.

I think it's great. I think it gives an option. Otherwise, I think you had ATMs there and then people would have to go to the ATM and then tip back. So. I think most people are cashless these days. So I think this is a great option.

Great. Thank you.

I guess it's not really for Aaron. I guess it would be more for Jeff or Matt. The 2.8%, that is a better rate than I think some of our other credit card processors have throughout the county. I know there was discussion a while back about maybe trying to consolidate and see if we could get everybody the lowest possible fee in their departments. Yeah. Is anybody still looking at that?

She's using, Tickets West is using their credit card process. Correct. Okay.

Okay. I was going to say that's better than some of the departments here in the county. Okay.

But the other big question is it's the percentage is also the other piece of that is the per transaction fee. So a lower percentage on higher dollar transactions gets you a better deal. But if we're doing a lot of $20 transactions and they have a 50 cent processing fee or a 30 cent, that jumps that percentage up significantly because it's a higher percentage of a smaller transaction. So it's just, it's still worth looking at if we can, of the sales system, as well as that evaluation. A lower percentage with a higher per transaction charge may not be a better deal if you have a low dollar transaction. Okay.

Okay.

And just for people watching, that was Kyle Tuig. But yeah, next time we got to, it's like being on the mic. Okay. Thank you, Aaron. Good luck and hope, is everything going well for the fair?

It's going great. Yes. We're ready. We're feeling the pressure, but we're excited.

Good. We're all excited to go.

So we'll see you soon.

September 11th.

Correct. 11th through the 20th.

Very good. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm trying to.

Yeah. We'll do this one before Doug.

We can stall here for a few minutes if we need to.

We love to talk about budget timelines.

We are updating our calendar slightly. We got some copies passed around, it looks like. Shelly was way on top of it. Awesome. I'll take it back to scratch paper. We are hoping to amend our previously published budget calendar with one small change highlighted in red font down in the gray section. We are looking to change the previously scheduled October 13th expenditure roundtable that was scheduled for 5.30 p.m. to bump it back one week to October 20th at 5.30 p.m. still to discuss general fund expenditure roll-ups.

It's 5.30.

5.30 p.m. is what we previously discussed for That second budget round table.

So just 13th move to the 20th.

If that works for the majority of the schedules. Slightly selfish for my schedule.

This test is going to work day rising to get some learning.

Keep enhancing.

It seems that sounds important.

That would be best to have the whole team available for that public round table in particular. So we'll go ahead and work with Shelly on the public hearing. While I work with Jim and Maceo, there'll be public hearing notices for all of those budget round tables. There will be also public hearing notices for the property tax levy that it will be scheduled for November 16th. We look to do that at 9 a.m., the first agenda item out of the gate that Monday morning, the 16th. And then we'll look to do the same thing for the budget adoption hearing, December the 7th, Monday at 9 a.m. To be kind of the first order of business. Budget adoption. Budget adoption, correct. Work on the public hearing notices. And then Just a reminder, the budget roll-up is coming to you next Tuesday, one week from today. That is ahead of Labor Day, which feels odd for our normal cadence of things. And then we'll have Labor Day Monday, the 7th of September as a holiday. And then starting September the 14th will be kind of budget workshops every Monday for the foreseeable future. And at some point, we think you'll want to hear from some departments. So start just thinking in the back of your brain if there are specific ones you'd like to see sooner in the process versus later, ones you may already know, that we can work on getting them scheduled as timely as possible. Otherwise, we can continue that discussion after budget roll-up on the 1st.

The 1st is the statutory one, right? Correct.

We had a good catch-up with Scott Summons yesterday afternoon, going over all the different budget pieces. Good to see him. Could do some feedback on the budget, some fresh eyes. We haven't been in the bubble of these numbers the whole time. It's the whole team right now.

Got some good feedback. We're going to finish all the cleanup. topics for this week and have your budget on Tuesday. Thank you. Thank you.

First, I'll be sitting in.

We do have a calendar for a meeting there. At least I do. I spoke to Shelley about that yesterday.

I said, I don't think we're going to be meeting that day.

I will decline that invite. Not Shelley. You guys knocked yourself out. Yeah, I'm declining just the one. Oh, I was just checking.

Erin is already gone. So yeah, we're running ahead of schedule. So we can get you in and out.

Excellent.

On to your day.

Thank you.

It doesn't happen very often, but it is this morning. So there we go. You're welcome.

Thank you very much, commissioners. We have a grant opportunity that we would like to take advantage of. And Jonathan's very active as representing us with, I want to say, the Spokane County Wildfire Mitigation Coalition. And I will let him speak to the grant.

Doug. Morning, Commissioners. I'm here to brief you on a grant opportunity for wildfire mitigation in some of our properties. The source of this funding comes from Bureau of Land Management and the Conservation District will be the applicant for this grant fund. We will be assigned Qualifier Coalition and applying for grant funding as a coalition actually gives us a lot more leverage and grant reviewers really like to see that kind of coalition happening and that kind of collaboration. So we're excited about this. It's a short turnaround. A lot of the members of the coalition our Department of Natural Resources, which is a big one, City and County Fire, Conservation District, of course, and some other members. So we're going to be a separate city, and there's only about three of us on this one. The max funding for this is $1.2 million. And for this project, we've prioritized project lists. Our priority is the Dishman Hills Island Creek property. For that, we will be pursuing wildfire fuels mitigation planning. We'll be pursuing permitting because Island Creek goes through that. We'll be also pursuing a vegetation plan. And then also the mechanical thinning and chipping, things like that, mechanical. If there's room, like I said, this is a little bit fluid at this time because the turnaround is short. If there's still room in the grant funding limit, we will also pursue some wild you'll like to use the planning and that would provide us plans that we would be really ready to go for when funding comes along. We have a plan ready. We can just apply for this funding and start doing the work to mitigate a lot of this wildfire signals. The application deadline is the end of this week. So we're briefing you, asking for your approval to pursue this funding and hopefully our take care of some more of our properties.

I think we're estimating just over 400,000. It's what our current estimate is based on meetings Jonathan's had, and it could be more, but we're moving so quickly, we really didn't have an idea when we prepared the materials for you today, and he's already had a couple meetings since that time. So we're thinking it'll be maybe just over 400,000. for that phase one. And it could be more if depending upon the other applicants and what comes together.

And we do have in there, we do have in addition to that $409,000, we'll have administrative costs that would be able to be added in there. So that's worked with the grants department. They told us, you know, when it's typical. So we included that in there. And anything else? Oh, there is no grant match. So this is just you apply. There's no match. So this is a really great opportunity.

Great. Thanks for those opportunities. We'll go after it. Thank you very much.

There are three executive sessions today. So if you want to I'd say 10.05 because this other meeting goes until 10. We can't go long if we're coming back. So maybe post it until 10.05. He's zooming in. He's zooming in.

I can do a couple miscellaneous if you want. So Yesterday, Mr. Jordan and I met with the governor to talk about the coordination effort between the city, the county, and the state and preparing for not only what we hope to be the federal declaration disaster, but also coordinating some of the state programs that might be available and and the data collection necessary to put together an application to the feds once we get our 30-day notice. So they're proposing to do a request to include seven counties, all seven that have been impacted by the fires, and do it as one request as the state asks. Unfortunately, some of the fires in a couple of the other counties are still ongoing, as well as three tribal organizations that would also be part of the state request and stuff. So the request to the governor was that we make a coordinated outreach to the president to make sure that he understands the severity of the issue and the relative will of all seven counties and three tribes to get that federal designation so that it would make us eligible for individual assistance as well as community assistance. So if you remember back on the Medical League fire, it took us six months to get that declaration out of the president. We're hoping that we can do that much quicker this time with a coordinated effort and stuff. And so the request for the governor was, if you have access to the president, please send a letter, communicate that you need, and that collectively we might want to do a coordinated outreach to him as well to make sure now the Congressman Bob Garner's local aide was in the meeting and also indicated that he would be reaching out through the congressman to the president to also Gary, the message. So I think that's kind of a quick summary of the meeting yesterday. There is a meeting today at 1230 that the governor invited me to participate in with the Lieutenant Governor Heck to talk about housing. He has asked the Lieutenant Governor to lead that effort. And I've got a long, long relationship with Lieutenant Governor Heck when he was in Congress and stuff. So we'll carry forward recommendations that we got from Jordan Neal. And then I also got additional information from home builders that have already contracted with victims of the fire. And I've got updated numbers in terms of what the cost would be for a typical home and all of the other associated costs and stuff. And so we'll be giving that to Lieutenant Governor Heck today as well. And the three main asks for the Lieutenant Governor is one, roll back the building codes, to 2015, and that eliminates about $100,000 worth of cost for the fire victims in terms of energy code updates and other code provisions, but still provides for healthier, safer, stronger buildings than what existed before the fire. uh a removal of the um elements of the building code that discouraged the use of natural gas These are existing neighborhoods that already have natural gas in place. The resident should be allowed to re-hook up to that service without being penalized like the current code and the 2026 code projects. And then the other request would be to waive a sales tax. on the new construction for fire victims. The goal is to try and get closer to the alternative, which was being Post Falls and losing that housing inventory to Post Falls. None of us banked on sales tax revenue from the fires. So it shouldn't impact our revenues any more than we were already planning, but it would be a significant improvement to the homes. Those three programs will result in about $150,000 plus reduction in the cost of a new home. for the fire victims that have been been impacted so that's the nature of the the um the our summary of the meetings for yesterday and and today anything I missed Mr Jordan uh the governor talked about making I think the state is trying to put together a video to go along with the written

So they wanted to talk about, showcase the damage, they wanted to be bipartisan. So they basically invite anyone who wants to potentially participate in that to reach out to the state emergency management. They don't want it to be a super long video. So he said, don't be offended if you participate, but we've only got so much space in there. But if that's something that interests you, you can reach out to emergency management. And I was looking at my notes from the meeting and I wrote down overwhelming communication. That was something the governor talked about. Letters from both sides of the aisle. So we might think about that, you know, county commission letter at the appropriate time. I'm sure there will be a lot of that going on in the coming weeks.

Just small, we're talking fires. Senator Murray will be here Thursday. I believe Commissioner Schultz and Jordan are both attending that one. I haven't gotten an invite yet.

It's awkward when you show up and you haven't been invited. I don't have an invite yet. Yeah, I don't either.

Why don't you guys talk to Chandra and find out?

Mark Benthien, MnDOT Consultant, We live for 30 or 45 is the. Mark Benthien, MnDOT Consultant, fire training Center I see see. Mark Benthien, MnDOT Consultant, No chandra have been in this here.

Chandra Ramos, So she's been. Chandra Ramos, I think you can address that to mark the lead, can you check with chandra on on Thursdays patty Murray and and I think we're.

We can reach out to Lissette too, let me find out. Lissette called and requested two commissioners. And fire chiefs, state legislators, a lot of the same players would have been founders yesterday. She's invited Chandra kind of to

josh you mentioned this last week didn't you and we said it overlaps with health board oh well then we have health boards so we have this discussion yesterday i'm talking about commissioner waldron there should be a shorter health board yeah we shortened the health board yeah there's only two action items and so if you 12 30 right two commissioners can't be there i'm sure we'll still have four that's right yeah zoom in

I'm happy to do that.

I'm fine if you want to do it.

I'll do it. You guys say. Heck, today. If you want me there, I'll go. Either way. Yeah. Chris. Jordan. We'll be doing another sheriff. So it's at 1 or 1.30?

I believe it's 12.30 or 12.45. 12.30. I'm sorry. We'll double check with our set. 12.30 to 2 on January.

Well, if it conflicts with my Martin Hall meeting, I'm sure you'll cover it for me now.

Yeah, right. Just like how we hold the health board.

Anyway, I think the health board will be fine. We're both on the exact same. We were briefed on the items, so. We couldn't, yeah, we didn't know. You said you'll be very sad to miss. We had a post-meeting for the health district, and we didn't know when this was until a couple days ago.

Yeah.

We've got one other miscellaneous, but we can do it after.

Go ahead, Senator, if you guys are okay.

But you'll send us an email just to confirm. We look forward to the invite to that calendar as soon as we have it.

So Scott Chesney and Jordan Neal put out a FAQ for fire victims and stuff. And last Friday, Commissioner Jordan said that was not what he was expecting. And I've got to admit that, you know, it was very... It was very technical. It was very precise and very comprehensive. But for fire victims that might or might not have access to the computers, printers, yada, yada, yada, I thought, you know, we need to do something that is probably a little bit more practical. something that you can do on your phone kind of a deal. So I did meet yesterday with Martha Liu and Charissa about putting together a video that would walk people through the process so that they visually can see okay, here's where the building department is. Here's what I need to do to get a demo permit. Here's what I need to do to get an asbestos report. Here's what I need to do to get, you know, and just, you know, and Martha Lou had a great idea. You can have a menu of the different steps in the process on the left, hit the menu, and it would just have a little You know, maybe two or three minute video on what you need to do so that it would be very user friendly, especially for folks that have lost everything. You know, hopefully they still have access to a phone and they could say, oh, here's the building that I need to go to. for a demo permit, or here's the form I need to fill out kind of a deal and walk them through that instead of sending people to a bunch of websites and then expecting them to navigate through all of that. You know, I, especially for the seniors, not that I mean to call them out, but I mean, they, A lot of them that have been impacted by these fires are not going to be computer littered as much as younger people are and stuff. And so having that visual and stuff and walking through it, I think it's going to be a lot more user-friendly and stuff. So if the board is okay with them continuing to work on that, it's something we could produce in-house. It doesn't have to be a... Mark Benthien, ECA- A Spielberg production, it just has to be a user friendly kind of a thing for folks I mean it would have been a great tool in the medical league fire have we known. Mark Benthien, ECA- We now have the spokane complex fires pray to God that we don't have more, but if we do we'll have a tool in the box that we can go to and and help folks out right away so.

I love that idea. I think that's great. I think great. Little short videos about asbestos testing, the demo permit, the building permit. Yeah, I think that's great.

People have never done this before. Hopefully they never have to do it again. But for right now, how do we walk them through it so that it's more user friendly?

Who's going to start? Who's going to start?

Anything else that we'll get to, Ronnie?

I had a, sorry, while we're on the topic, I had a constituent reach out who lost their home.

They've been staying in a hotel. And obviously a lot of people have been doing that. So

and asked me to inquire about that. That's not us, but they didn't certainly know that because that's the... Because it's a cocaine group.

You know, multiple hotels were offering it, so I'll read. Yeah, just kind of read it to them, so read people and make sure they're asking for it and receiving it.

The board would like me to look into that?

Please inquire as to who.

Well, so follow.

I was asked whether a family could locate like a fifth wheel on their site while they rebuild because of housing is becoming a problem. And so you can locate a construction trailer on there, but I don't know whether the code is real clear about whether you can live on the site or not. So, I mean, they'll have access to water, they'll have access to sewer, but will we allow a temporary use like that during a rebuild and stuff? And so that would be another question that I'd like to get an answer to, because for a lot of these folks buying a, a, a, I used fifth wheel and putting on the property it's going to be a lot cheaper than renting an apartment, especially if they got a family with kids and it keeps them in the neighborhood and. in the school district and there's a lot of stability with uh being able to rebuild on your property while you're there kind of a deal so that would be another uh thing that i think we could do without that might be just a change to her there's only ordinance that allows for that during a disaster yeah i think we just have to check with planer because they probably have to ensure that all the spaces is cleaned up Yeah, obviously you'd have to have the asbestos gone. Well, and that raises another issue. You could have a report done on your property and says you don't have any asbestos, but with a good wind, you can blow asbestos from the adjacent property onto your property and now you have it kind of a deal and stuff. So, you know, a recommendation that was given to me was after you've mitigated the property for asbestos covered with visqueen so that, you know, if you've got, you know, it's just a matter of removing the visqueen kind of a deal and asbestos as opposed to having to go through that process all over again because your neighbor hasn't cleaned up the asbestos on their property yet.

I was wondering in the conversation yesterday, is there any information out there about how success I know we have, you know, we have limited stock in Spokane anyway. And I was just wondering our most, I've heard of some families finding rental places. Um, you were talking about people still staying in hotels. Is there a sense of, uh, whether we're going to be able to accommodate, uh, the survivors in our current housing stock? I mean, I think that's an interesting, uh, idea that you had about, you know, the stay on your property once you've cleaned up the property, uh, Just wondering if there's any data on that.

So I talked to a couple of my friends in the hotel industry that said immediately after the fire, there was no vacant hotels from Moscow to Moses Lake. Everything had been booked out and stuff for the victims and stuff. Now, how much of that has been moved into rental property? I don't know. But I can reach out to them and find out. Like Jeff said, a lot of the hotels discounted their rates for fire victims. But eventually, you run out of inventory. And a lot of the hotels were booked out for conferences, conventions, and stuff. There might not be the rooms available, but I'll find out.

Okay, and then Scott Chesney raised his hand to speak.

Hi, Commissioners. I just asked to get back to Commissioner French's discussion about fifth-wheeler RV living. While that remains a general prohibition in the county code, during the 23 fires, we made an explicit decision to not enforce that. and let people know that if they were using that tool within the burn scar, they would be allowed to use that as temporary lodging for as long as they saw it necessary. So that's a precedent that was established in 23 that we can certainly carry over into 26.

Do we need to do anything to reflect the current fire as opposed to the Gray and Oregon fires?

We can put together a memo. If you chose to make it a resolution, we could do that. But essentially, on our side, it would be responding to a complaint by simply saying that this is allowed in the burn scar for the foreseeable future. Okay.

I think I'd want to put a time limit on it, though, just because I want to have people there for five years.

Commissioner Brooks, I should have added that, I guess. When you changed the code in 23 for temporary uses, which this was subsumed within, It went from a very limited period of six months with a one six-month recovery or extension to an annual declaration that I'm still under construction. As long as somebody puts forward an annual letter to us, then they can stay for that subsequent year. So it does put some limit on it. But we were certainly informed by Mayor Cooper as she was leading that initial effort. that some, particularly in the elk fire, might need five or six years or more to rebuild and would need that sort of consideration on an annual basis.

As long as we're looking at it on an annual basis, yeah, I'm okay with that. Okay.

Good morning.

Good morning. Ronnie here. And so thank you for TAB, If we were doing our miscellaneous to fill in the time we didn't think you're available to do it so.

PB, Jorge Boone. : We were here on our way. PB, Jorge Boone. : And it's an over three slides impossible to bring those up it's not overly critical, it was just something to follow up by top. So if we go to the first actual slide, what we're here to brief the board on this morning is we've been researching shelter management software systems for scraps. And as our current system is really not meeting operational needs and efficiencies. So a few systemic challenges that we're currently having is that Shelter Buddy is for license, for intake, it takes five to 10 minutes minimum to process an animal intake. We have very limited customization and slow vendor response. ShelterBuddy is based out of Australia. So we actually have a time zone issue. We're trying to reach customer service. And when we make a request, say to get a new report or change something in our workflow, they have come back multiple times and told us unless enough of their customers want to make the change, they will not make any changes because they will only do that completely wide across all their platforms, not individualized by customer. which leads us into reporting and automation issues, as well as accuracy concerns, which I'll be getting into, namely with mapping and geocoding, which is a big part of what Scraps' responsibility is with regards to our activity studies, our license processing, calls for service, things of that nature. Next slide, please. So we're gonna start off with licensing, which is a huge component of what Scratch does for the county. We process all the pet licensing. This is a high priority item for all of our ILA holders as their license fees go towards their monthly bills. Unfortunately, the way that ShelterBuddy processes licensing, it will only give us a license report. It will not sort licenses by jurisdiction, even though they're entered by jurisdiction into the computer, it will not pull them that way. And the company has declined to make that a search field that we can add in so that we can automatically sort them, which as Lynette can speak to, she very easily will spend one to two full days every month just sorting licensing. which takes away from all of our other duties. What these little squares are kind of outlining is kind of how long it's taking us to process and complete these licenses because of that lack of automation. So it's costing us a lot of money and staff time when there are platforms out there that will do all of this automatically. So the other thing from our field services perspective, when we respond to calls and we get calls for service, it's important that we have them mapped properly because that affects how places are built through our ILAs. ShelterBuddy will not integrate any GIS data. We are relying solely on our call taker, looking it up basically on Google Maps or on county mapping systems to make sure that they're looking at it correctly, which as we all know, people make mistakes. It's easy for that to happen. which slows everything down. When we do have these errors and then we have to go back through and adjust our invoices and adjust billing. And again, it just snowballs down the line of inefficiency and you just go back and do the work twice. Next slide, please. Chameleon is the software function that we reviewed that is better used. We did demo and get prices for other software entities. Some of them had no field work. Some of them had very little. Some of them, cost-wise, were very attractive. However, they required us to go back to old, expensive license processing companies that we had bad experience with. They were charging us over $4.40 per license to process. So, say the license is $20. through these companies, which we obviously don't want to go back to because if we can do 30,000 licenses a year, take 30,000 times $4.20, that's an incredible amount of money that we're processing. Chameleon, on the other hand, when they do their license processing, the price that they do is, I believe it's 35 cents versus $4.20. So it's not even a comparison in terms of processing costs. These are some of the key features. In addition to that, they have automated medical behavior and workflow reporting, meaning when it gets set up, it will send automated emails to the appropriate staff sections and staff numbers saying, these animals are due to these vaccines today. These animals are due for evaluation today. And then as you're going through that workflow, it is a barcode enabled system, meaning it will print barcodes on the kennel cards and on the order sheets. So they can walk by the barcode scanner. As they're getting medications, they can be scanning the barcodes. And when they're done with their medical rounds, they can plug that barcode scanner into the system and it will automatically update all the records instead of going through one by one, which will save hours over the course of a week of staff time. Same thing with intakes. It can scan driver's licenses and auto-populate employees' information so staff isn't manually typing everything in. The real-time microchip registry, the company that owns Chameleon owns its 24 pet, which is one of the So it automatically integrates into the microchip databases. So when we have lost pets, not only will it automatically at a local level, it will search their national databases to try to find owners. And the officers are very excited to go feature where if there's a hit on the microchip, through Chameleon, it can send text messages to the phone numbers on file. These callers say, hey, we just picked up your pet. Please call us so we can get them back on faster. And it'll do that all from sitting in their computers in their trucks. We can also put out in terms of transparency to our community. I know there's always concern with what's going on in SCRAPS. People have a big interest. A lot of agencies in each community, there's what's called the daily report of car function. And so what would happen like today, it would post yesterday's basically their daily statistics. So it showed the animals that came in the strays, animals that were adopted, animals that were reclaimed. It would all, you know, we can also release, you know, a force for euthanasia that does have to take place. And you can are in terms of we have X number of kennels, here's how many are occupied every day. So it can just help be transparent with the community so they can see where scraps is in terms of its population and their need for support. Next slide, please. One function that ShelterBuddy also does not have is what's called call sequencing. So when you respond to a call for service, it may not, especially for animal things, it oftentimes is not resolved in one trip, multiple trips. ShelterBuddy basically that call just has to stay active until you're done and then you can close it out. With Chameleon, store the first response with all the data, so the result codes, the timestamps of when officers arrived and when they left, and it'll create whatever the case number is, and it'll put a two next to it for the next day for sequence two. So that'll help us show our stakeholders and ILA holders how much we're actually responding to resolve a situation, say a dog bite or animal cruelty case. It has what's called automated recheck management, meaning we go to a house and the animal, there's some minor violations, say the shelter's inadequate or we need them to do a vet check for one reason or another. Instead of that call sitting up on the queue with shelter buddy being active for however long we give them for their deadline, the officer can fill in a couple of fields that's rechecked on this date and actually go ahead and close the call out. And then that clears the queue up so you don't have all these calls sitting there. And then on the due date, it pops a call back up for recheck. can integrate with CAD. So Chris Miller and I have been talking with SREC about trying to do more with them versus our own internal call takers and our after-hours password answering service. SREC is very open to building a partnership, but they're still working on getting the new CAD system launched. So once they get that up, we're going to have further conversations. So this is something where we could actually integrate with CAD so both systems can talk to each other. And one thing, I apologize, I wasn't in there. Chameleon also can take county GIS data. They've told us that twice a year to the chameleon. So when calls and services are put into the system and stored, it will cross-reference it automatically with its current GIS data, and it will automatically assign jurisdiction. So it takes all of our guesswork out of it.

It'll look at the current map that we have uploaded, and it will encode it for us.

We've already gone through the vetting process. County IT has blessed it. We have the payment processor that it uses is already county approved. It's an approved list, so that's all ready to go. I know the next question is, what is the money cost? Annual fees are going to run $33,000 to $38,000. We are going to be on the bottom end of that right now. I put the higher one in there because when CAD integration happens, there's an additional licensing fee. So we're going to be paying that right now. So next slide, please. The current total cost to get this all up and running for the first year, the one-time fees and the one-time fee with the licensing, that first year cost is going to be $86,000, which sounds very high. I am happy to say none of this has to come out of general fund. Scraps received a very generous state donation a few months back of $124,000. And we would like to be, and it was just earmarked for Scraps use, it wasn't given anything specific. So we would like to use a piece of that donation for the first year of operating costs to set up beef, till we get this up and running. And ongoing payment, we have set up, let me go to the next slide for our funding strategy. We have already added in a $2 processing slash admin fee that actually, I apologize, I kind of discussed a typo. The admin fee is on all scratch transactions. So when people come in and do their read plan for adoption, when they buy a pet license, we've added in a $2 administration fee on top of that to help cover all the administrative side, but it's also going to keep this self-sufficient. Based on previous year's financial numbers, that fee and the number of transactions and scraps does annually should more than cover the outbreak costs of this, as well as helping to sustain the food program that we're using so that we can keep animals on a consistent diet. So the $2 fee is going to be able to cover these. Working with finance office, building our own line item for this fee on our and all the security marks associated with that. So it should be fully self-sustained. Next slide, please. I apologize, I duplicated the slides. So what my ask is today for this briefing is I'm working procurement to get the resolution to approve the contract to get the union started. And I would ask that you guys follow through with that when it comes across. We're hoping to have that pretty, hopefully in one to two weeks' time. So any questions on chameleon? And they ask.

Sorry, can you repeat? What is the current cost of the sheltered bedding?

It is less than 10. So it is going to be a cost increase. The annual cost is going to be about $33,000 a year. But the efficiencies that we're going to gain are going to ultimately help save us money as well, because we're going to be able to work with our community faster and more efficiently. One of the big things, again, going back to licensing, every single time someone gets an online license, our staff still has to touch it, whether it's a new one or they still have to be able to process it. If it is an online removal, communion will do it 100% automatically. We don't have to do anything with it. It'll just print us a report every morning showing the online licenses that were in the list that have automatically work section is scrapped. So the front desk, the customer service side, the animal care side, and the field side are all going to have greater efficient fees to be able to work with much less frustration and get things done faster.

The cost of it is just as solid as the cost of saving the patient's time to be on the field more and doing things more efficiently to get the assistance that needs to be provided. That's why we're trying to find that more locally and get it back.

to cover the initial cost but you have calculated that the two dollar fee will more than cover that in the future years okay and the reason we wanted to do it that way was so that we would have that first full year of that fee being in place to kind of build our balance and then we'll it'll be able to just maintain itself and so you're so it's not just the 18 000 that you know yeah of all this paperwork, trying to figure out which jurisdiction got which license, that goes away. And those hours, what you're saying is those hours of staff time in all these different, I think five different areas you mentioned, that can be put into other activities, it's traps.

It'll help everything run much more efficiently and save a lot of staff time on paperwork where they can focus on the animal care and the adoptions and...

That will help with their budget next year. Because they are looking at some staff reductions.

Working with those people having more efficient systems is going to help us keep up with this currently. We are back on the licenses.

Two months for mail-in and a month for online.

So the business automation is going to really help catch us up.

I do have two questions. two, now three current vacancies that would normally process those licenses. So that's one of the reasons why we are so far behind. Okay.

Yeah. I think, I mean, just use the system. We had a, we had a dog come up to the house that was injured and so we called Ronnie and we got help and it was just fascinating how they could use the chip reader, but The chip was for a previous owner. It's a little longer to track it down.

This will help with that.

This will help with that as you guys update and then it'll automatically be in the system. It was a blessing that it was the emergency. It was like 10 o'clock at night and it was the emergency pet vet at the emergency center that had adopted this.

It was such a sweet thing. I'm meeting with procurement this afternoon to start finalizing it.

I think you've used scraps, so you know.

That's where my two are from. Can I ask, this sounds like a great program. Have you talked to other entities that currently utilize Chameleon to see how it works for them? I've actually used this one before.

Most of my career has been using Chameleon. I know where I was previously at, City of Oklahoma City, that's their software system. My field manager, Chris Miller, that's what he was using with King County. This program is one of the I won't say old because it's been updated, but it's been around one of the longest. It's been in and out for a decade. I think it started in the mid to late 90s and it's still going. So we did a demo and we had prices from three other ones, Shutterlove, PetPoint, and I cannot remember the other one, but frankly, that one was absolutely terrible. That one was BGL. And this one kind of checked all of the boxes. There were other ones, like I said, shelter level is less expensive overall, but its field module is very limited and it's pet licensing. any of the savings of the actual program. PetPoint was decent, but its fuel systems were very limited. You can only upload three photographs per case file. And we all know if you've got an ammo cruelty case or even a bike case, you're gonna have more than three pictures being associated with your file. So just want to check all the boxes. Thank you. One quick thing before we're done. I just want to also let the board know, I agreed with the executive on this last week, with these staffing issues and operational challenges, We are planning on taking scraps to Tuesday through Saturday. It's being fully open to the public. We're currently only closed on Sunday. We're going to add Monday to it to make sure we have enough staffing to actually have people everywhere we need them. probably later this week to start getting that process move. Statistically, Monday is a fairly slow day for scraps anyway, in terms of adoptions and things like that. And we will still have staff in the building that can do reclaims. So if somebody comes up and rings the doorbell and says, hey, my dog's scraps, would you like to get them back? We'll still be able to do those as we are on Sundays now even. It's just we're not going to open to the public so that we can make sure we have people where we need them otherwise. The lines will be astronomically long, which will make people, I think, even more bad than that. That's everything that I have for you guys today.

You need to go by the budget office on your way out. Yes, there you go. Jason, I'll just ping to get a couple questions.

That was our plan. We knew we were going to go there after this.

Not allowed to leave the campus.

We are ready for that one.

Thank you for being creative and thinking through and figuring out this.

I appreciate that. It's going to be a much better system. It's going to make things run much more smoothly. So very much appreciate your time, Ian.

Have a good day.

Good morning. I just have a quick, we just got notice that we were accepted for a micro grant we put in for us. It's $1,000 to buy a couple printers for the traffic vehicles. They print out tickets and things like that, but they come from Boston. They had $20,000 to give out this year, and so they did $1,000 micro grants, and they bring us for one. So just looking for board approval or a blessing to accept the money and purchase the two tickets for the cars.

It's little printers that go in the cars.

Yeah, they go in the cars, and they print out. When they scan the tickets or whatever, they print them out, and so they give them to the drivers, and they can print out exchange of information and traffic accident forms and stuff like this.

Sounds good. And how far does $1,000 go for printers? Two printers. Just two.

Yeah, it'll cover the cost and the tax. That's about it. Ink and papers extra. Yeah, it is.

My car is sitting in your circle, so please don't tell it.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Thank you. With all this construction, I'm displaced. Somebody was in the other spot that they was... I'm back in the circle today and I'm told it's under the sheriff's.

Yeah, we don't go out too much.

Even that with the construction, you guys don't have as much space over there. Sorry for taking up more space.

Thank you.

It looks like you're going to have a lot more space here come six, eight months.

Oh, yeah. With both. Oh, yeah. The article that came out. Yeah. We'll see if they can find the money. going to help with space planning oh parking would be huge yeah parking would be huge and now we don't have to build new cart rooms we'll get them i wouldn't hate to try to figure out how to use that space it would be a good problem to have no yeah all right thank you thank you okay any other miscellaneous before we go to executive session sometime i'll build this up this great

Okay. Great executive session items. Today, we have pending and potential litigation, 20 minutes, no action, under RCW 423110, section 1I, Jeff McMorris, Matt Folsom, Deb Kurta, Kyle Tuig, Ben Bradabow, Jasper Coulter, and Lori. And then, Another one with Devin Kurta, Matt Folsom, Jeff McMorris, Scott Chesney, 10 minutes. And Jeff McMorris, Matt Folsom, Devin Kurta, Kyle Tilling, Ben Radom. Oh, is it? 10 minutes. And then your potential litigation, no action, no action problem.

The first thing you said was how long?

You got 20 minutes, 10 and 10.

So we are going to go into executive session for 40 minutes for the items just discussed. And no action will be taken at the end of the 40 minutes. So we will adjourn for the morning and see everybody back for the 2 o'clock. Thank you.