Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

with the spray fire um as I remember DNR and a Vista and a couple other companies came in and dropped trees that had burned but had not fallen and then chipped it and used it as hot fuel uh but as anybody indicated either DNR or Vista or any of the other We're going to end up trying to find somebody to do on the old trails fire.

So yes and no. What part of that? So you're correct that a lot of the work that was done in the Gray Fire was actually donated. We also had donated funding for the chipper as well. So a good portion of that work was donated. To this point, we've had several meetings with DNR about post-fire remediation, the subject of the hazard trees and the management of the hazard trees. That's not fully addressed yet. I yeah and that and that didn't have anything to do with you know personal property debris I think something right yeah no there's a lot of trees in the common area and then Riverside State Park and and well I mean fortunate fortunately unfortunately Riverside State Park is the is State Parks responsibility and and so I I would assume um probably D and R is going to be managing the lift on that. Anything else I can add one for me?

What would be the length of time of the contract? Must be a year.

Right, right now it's yeah, right now, right now we anticipate it being a year, but it'll And it took six months for us to get the declaration and the great Oregon fires. Hopefully it doesn't take that long this time. It would be until we have. And the good news, at least from my perspective, is if we receive the presidential declaration, it's the state's intent to do a single state contract. So they will do one contract with DRC, which means we will only have one vendor to work with. So we will be responsible for managing the work that happens here on the ground. But instead of trying to keep track of four or five different contractors like we did last time, we'll only have

Do they have any experience with all of their?

Oh, yes, yes, their DRC is they're a they're a nationwide company. They do. Oh, they've done, you know, a massive number of hurricane cleanups. They've done, you know, the the cleanups in and other large wildfires. They have a lot of. They were actually in my office yesterday. They stopped by to say hi, so.

I drove around a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that there was quite a bit of bird trees in our right of way. And so I'm assuming that our road department is going to take care of those or not.

I have not had that conversation with Kyle, but that does fall as its county property. That does fall in their purview. Kyle. Oh, good.

Kyle's on. Hey, good morning. Yeah, we will be handling a lot of the trees that are in the right of way. We may have to bring in some external resources to assist us with that. We're talking well north of a thousand trees we're probably going to have to remove, so it's a pretty big body of work.

So, Chandra, if we get the federal declaration, that brings in funds to do this debris removal. You were talking it would be potentially one company that would do all of it. If we don't get that declaration, it's then just up to each individual property owner to clear the trees? It is. Okay.

And relative to this contract position that we're talking about, if we don't get the federal declaration, there's no work for that entity to do on our behalf.

And we think the work that we have right now is covered under FMAC, but we're waiting to see if we're going to confirm that we can use FMAC funds to pay.

Because what she's doing right now is she's managing the coordination with EPA to get the household hazardous materials. all of that.

So what what all debris removal are we talking about where this discussion today? I mean, there's been a lot about trees. Anything else that would be included in that?

It would be it would be anything related to the provision of debris removal on private property. So depending on how the declaration is worded and what they choose to include in that, it would be the management of all debris related activities.

Okay, so could it be as broad as like what's left of the house, burned cars? Okay, so everything could potentially be there. We know there are families that are already starting debris cleanup. Do we encourage them to save their receipts? And could they get reimbursed for this down the road if the declaration came through?

It depends on how the declaration is written. But absolutely, they should save their receipts. We have quite a bit more private funding on this incident than we had on our previous incident. So folks have the ability for quite a bit of uh financial assistance and so they absolutely should have be tracking their costs uh because there's there's many many streams of assistance that that are coming in it's really pretty remarkable

Is EPA still on site with hazardous materials?

Yes, they're moving. They're moving well. I have not seen the numbers yet today, but I believe they're about 42% done. They might even be higher than that.

I heard last week they were at 30%, so that makes sense.

They are being slowed down a little bit by the number of basements because that requires them to build scaffolding and to get down into the basement area, and then they have to remove the scaffold to move it. So it's slowed their pace a little bit, but they have 17 teams on the ground working, so they're making really good funds.

So for the last pilot,

came what was the uh the debris removal piece of that was it for an underinsured yes okay yes so that one um and also on the great oregon we also had state funding that was applied and uh that was income limited to uh underinsured and uninsured folks so that one that had a very clear income limitation

So when Commissioner Jordan and I met with the governor, he had made the request that we all send letters to the president to encourage quick response. And of course, we're still dealing with some of the other buyers in some of the other counties. So that 30 day window hasn't started. But could we could legal draft the letter for the board for us to review and sign and send on behalf. But the other thing it would be helpful for is not only a letter from the board, but a letter from each one of us as individuals. I mean, it could be one letter, but each one of us sign it because I think what the governor was trying to push for was a large um influx of letters to try and persuade control or whatever and so um you know I wouldn't be opposed to sending an individual letter as opposed in addition to uh yeah that'd be good work on the drafts thank you I think anything that uh

Marguerite McLaughlin, helps to narrate the challenges that we have because you know i've said this in the meeting with with the governor with Senator Murray and others. Marguerite McLaughlin, Unfortunately, after fire season here comes winter and and it's really very, very important for us to get that degree off the ground before it ends up in our our water system.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you. All right. Next up is George Dahl and Chris. Housing.

We got some friends with us today. Good morning, everyone.

We're over here.

Well, introduce us to your friends, George. So today we're here to talk first about the grant of the Washington State Department of Congress for wildfire recovery. And so it's a half million dollar grant that we're looking for you all to accept. um to work with folks and um and we wanted to bring with you a potential um partner solution for how we can utilize that half million dollars to help out folks in need so we've got uh pam and lori with the slovenian housing authority with us we've been in communication with them about some some ways that they might be able to use those funds to help folks out and so i'll just turn it over to pam and lori to talk about that

Sure. I think Spokane Housing Authority is pretty uniquely prepared to administer a fund like this. Our existing capacity and program experience and operations lend itself pretty directly to the work that needs to be done to help the victims of the complex fires. We could hit the ground running on day one. We have systems and staff in place. um to do outreach and screening and make payments we run some very large um rental assistance programs for the state including the department of health and this is the health care authority is what they actually call it and uh dshs aging long-term care we do that statewide We also run a very large rental assistance program in six counties in eastern Washington. Each of those programs is about $60 million a year that we put out the door. We have five grant coordinator positions and five service coordinator positions that are existing, experienced staff that can take on this type of program. We're ready to go. We have software. software called Core Relief, which was designed during COVID that is specifically for this work that we can use to do both case management and make payments. And we also have in our regular rental assistance program, we have been able to hit the ground running for folks that have lost their residences. in that if they are at or below 50% area median income, we have a local priority preference for admission to that rental assistance program for victims of natural disaster. We have about 85 people through the Disaster Assistance Center, which we staffed every day, that we're working with now to get that rental assistance to them. And that's long-term rental assistance. It's a permanent solution for those folks who are income eligible. And looking at this particular opportunity, we think there's an opportunity to kind of pair these type of operations together because this is a lot more flexible for those people that lost their homes or were displaced for any period of time that are over that 50% income limit, but maybe up to 140, and you guys will have to set that limit. We could target this assistance specifically to them on the rental assistance side, and then on the operations side, some of the things that our program couldn't pay for, for those 50% and below folks could use the grant to supplement those folks. And that flexible funding in this grant could pair nicely with what we're already doing for both of those populations. One of the things the grant requires is the prioritization of the most vulnerable households. And I think we've already started doing that by helping those really low income folks. And I think we're just in a great spot to do this work immediately. It's what we do. And I'm hoping that the county will just think of us as an extension of your own operations. In some respects, we should be and you think of what needs to be done with housing, you should be thinking about us, because we are uniquely positioned to do that and looking at the budget. When we looked at this last night, we assume that the county would be taking the administrative part of this to help pay for your overhead costs and taking that off the top, we want to split the rest of it, which is about $450,000. Amy Nunez, Between rental assistance, we want to put 65% of the grant to rental assistance and 35% towards operations and what the operations cover are many things, but it's not our administrative costs will eat those. Amy Nunez, we're not asking for administrative fee. Amy Nunez, What we want to cover is just staff salaries for. information technology, case management, outreach, placement services. And then we want to use the rest of the operations. You can use it for flexible expenses. And some of those things include things like transportation, household goods, cleaning products. You can buy somebody boots if they need boots for a job to go to or You can do vet services. There's a whole, yeah, birth certificates, driver's licenses, so that kind of flexible funding. And then transportation for any outreach that needs to be done. And then there's also a line item that says other costs approved by Commerce. And I think as we go through and we start doing the intakes and the screening, some themes will come out of that that we may need to go back to Commerce and say, hey, is this an acceptable cost? But we won't know that until we start doing all of that screening. which, by the way, we're already working on those 85 families, so we're starting to see some of that. That's pretty much it. I think we're just ready to go to New York.

Well, besides our infrastructure, our software systems, our staff that we already have in place, we also have partnerships in place with most of the providers within the community, Catholic Charities, Volunteers for America, Goodwill, SNAP. So we'll be providing a good referral service as well to partners for things that this grant doesn't cover, but they can cover. And so it's taking them from the short term recovery response for these immediate dollars to a long term recovery as well and making sure that we are bringing in that warm referral, that handoff, whatever their future needs are going to be as well.

I think it's really important to note that that when the Disaster Assistance Center opened up, that group of partners has been working together since August 1st. We were on the phone Sunday morning, August 2nd, ready to go. um and so those partners have all been working together one of the things we did at the disaster assistance center that was really helpful for us is that we created a one-page intake with qr code so people coming in can scan the qr code of your phone give us some basic information and and so we've been we've been keeping a list of folks that were affected by the fires and we're coordinating that list with the other partners that were also the disaster assistance center so we have one master list and we're working our way through that now with those partners

One thing that's really important here and with the Housing Authority, their existing infrastructure, resources, tools are used to complex federal funds federal state funds and this grant must be spent out by the end of January of 27 so we have a really short timeline to get these funds out into the community so having a partner like the spoken housing authority helps us to expedite make sure that we maintain uh compliance while we go really fast so um so that's where really appreciate the housing authority being willing to step

We work with the Department of Commerce a lot, so we're pretty experienced in the compliance and reporting pieces of things, and our software allows us to do that pretty easily.

The compliance is a good part of it, and that would be as an authority along as a HUD, and they are one of the A-teams around.

According to HUD, we are the AP.

But Laurie gets loaned all over the country by HUD. Trainer, teacher, we utilize her a lot. If you guys are good with, we'll work on a contract.

We're welcome to answer any questions you may have as well.

Commissioner Brooks?

making sure i unmute here um no i think it's great i i because i think you guys can get it out in a timely manner i guess a couple questions i have is is what i don't want to have is this duplication of efforts on identifying the people in need because that's what the long-term recovery group is doing as well and they're trying to do it quickly too because of the worthy um you know, funds that are coming through. And so so I just want to make sure that we're coordinating with them to reduce the administrative costs and burden. So, again, more money is going out to the people that need it and less money since we already have everyone already has staff. You just said you already have staff that are doing some of these things that and which I know is different than overhead costs and all of that. So I just want to make sure we're being effective with working with the long-term recovery group because that is who we're you know the county has chosen to work with um to make sure that we're identifying those families uh properly and and not duplicating those efforts yeah and and when i think i think where the where the

lines kind of come together is that we can get this emergency assistance out the door and the long-term recovery center can start working on the intermediate and long-term solutions. I think we are well suited to get the dollars immediately out the door for emergency assistance and try to deal with that. And then the long-term recovery center can start dealing with interim and long-term solutions for people who are gonna need more. And I think there's warm handoffs to be made for sure.

Right. No, and I think you guys are really the right people for this. But I just want to make sure that that coordination is happening because otherwise we start to get, well, I've got this list and I've got that list. And it's like, you know, it's the auditor and me coming out that it's like we all need to be working off the same list and making sure that if you find out something different than what they have, that, you know, you're working with them to make sure everybody's list is complete.

Absolutely agree. There's too many lists out there already.

And the long-term recovery group and a lot of the providers and Inovia are now meeting, started meeting last week. We're not going to meet this week, but we're going to meet every week. And so we'll continue to create what that handoff looks like as we move forward together, but we're going to start meeting weekly.

Okay, great. And then I just wanted to reiterate or just make sure I got the understanding that the 500 we got $500,000 the city got a million dollars. There's goes to their residents and ours goes to our unincorporated county residents. Is that correct?

Yes, that's our understanding.

Okay.

And we'll work hand in hand with the city's contractor to make sure that that we're, you know, if we get somebody screened, and they're in And we'll use a lot of the same methods. So we'll work together with them to make sure that funding scores.

Great. Thank you. Like I said, I just want to make sure we're all working together and not duplicating efforts and all of that. So I really do appreciate you guys because I do think you are the right people at the right time to get this immediate funds out. I think the long-term recovery groups, you know, working very diligently hard on the worthy projects. donations to get those you know determined and out so um so i i think it is going to take a village to to make this all happen um to the best of our abilities so thank you mr waldrick good morning thanks uh great to see you pam and lori congrats last week on

the grand opening of the new affordable housing units in the Spokane Valley. That was really exciting day. I'm excited. I think some of my questions, Commissioner Brooks already got answered. So I guess just two things, the 85 households that you're talking about that you connected with at the disaster recovery center, can you just speak a little bit more about those households and then What would you recommend as the range of household income that we should be setting for these funds? I think we've talked about 120 or 140 AMI.

Sure, so that 85 households that we're already connecting with were ones that we identified at the Disaster Center Assistance Center who filled out our intake form there. We identified them as having incomes below 50% of AMI. Therefore, they would be eligible for our Housing Choice Voucher Program. So we are beginning to reach out. We've already sent them all correspondence to say we want to begin this process, determine your actual eligibility so we can get them on a long-term rental assistance and also help them with housing location services. our Housing Choice Voucher Program operations. So those households may have additional needs, security deposit needs, application fee needs, especially if they have come from their primary residence being destroyed, that they may need some household goods. And if they're in the county or located within the county, we see this grant can actually assist with those pieces that our funding could not. And so that's the first piece for that 85 households. We've already begun those conversations. In fact, we pulled that list late last week and started the eligibility process with them.

And so some of those might be city residents, though, too, and you'll refer them to.

OK, yeah, yeah.

But what your point your point is, though, that those folks can be helped through other funds as well that you already have.

Yeah, we see these are our federal funds. That we have great.

Question. Does the Commerce rules have any limitations on the outer bounds of what the income thresholds could be, or is that totally up to the county? They leave that up to the grantees. So we've got flexibility there that we wouldn't normally see in grants.

Yeah, I think so, Pam.

I think my recommendation is that you set it at 140, and that allows, partly because you only have until January to spend this money, and partly because a lot of the people that we saw at the Disaster Assistance Center were over income for our programs, and so we know there's going to be that window of folks there that really need the help. And we can prioritize people with the lowest incomes, but I think give yourself that flexibility to go to 140.

So the rules require a prioritization of the most vulnerable, but still have a wider range. You can. Okay.

And we'll get to the ones under the 50, but that 50 to 140, I think it's going to be a big group of folks.

Right. Thank you very much for having us here. All right, Eden.

I'll be very quick, because this is kind of a yearly action plan that we go through. So the CAPER is the Consolidated Annual Performance Evaluation Report. You have a slide presentation in there. I'm not going to go through it, but those slides are available to you. um effectively i want to be as quick as i can recognizing your your agenda here today so this is concerning our yearly entitlement programs at the federal level so your cwg home and esg grants i want to be very clear this does not involve disaster recovery because that's not a yearly award it was a one-time um allocation amount uh but effectively these are the the capers kind of a cumulative report of all the activities that we've done during the year and how those activities accomplishments go to our five-year consolidated plan goals. You'll notice that in that CR05 on the presentation that while we had a lot of expectations for this year, we were woefully under for our actuals, mostly due to the fact that we contracted very late this year. Our period of performance for the 2025 program year was 7-1 of 25 last year to 6-30 of 26 this year. So a lot of our contracts were executed in March of this year, which left a very small window for them to complete a lot of their projects to be included in this report. So a lot of the accomplishments will likely be reported in next year's CAPER to kind of make up for that as a lot of those projects are still ongoing. and I would just mention that we did have one public comment the public comment period was a 15-day period it closed yesterday and it was more or less just looking for more information about our our taper for for this year but nothing about the overall program in particular more or less just clarification so if there are any questions from the commissioners happy to answer them at this time any questions

John Gerstle PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, All right. John Gerstle PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB,

Thank you for having me. My name is Judge Sapone and I am currently the judge handling our domestic violence docket here for the county for the misdemeanor and the most misdemeanor level. I applied for last January a grant for post-conviction alternatives funding, which you did ratify and allow me to go forward with. This is a renewal of that, asking for additional funds And we were awarded that from the grant process. It's not a lot of money, but it is money that will go towards hopefully funding a couple of probation officers to get trained in providing moral, it's called DVMRT. So it's classes to assist people in changing behavior. And so we can potentially have a lot of that in-house training instead of outsourcing it out to and paying more funds to students. I'm sorry outside resources currently work. The response, but it is the responsibility of the defendant to pay for. Domestic violence, more recognition training and domestic violence intervention. Treatment, and it is cost prohibitive for. 90% of the people that come before me and. This is a. Not a lot about a lot of money, but it is important for the people that come before me and it's assisting them so i'm hoping to get right by any questions. Any questions.

Thank you.

Next up, are you standing in for Preston? I'm coming to you this morning with a grant opportunity. It is from WAPA, Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. There's a renewal of a grant we received last year, and there are no changes to the grant. It's $95,624 that would go to fund a majority of salary benefits for a prosecuting attorney in our appellates. We do have another one, the DVHRT grant, which we brought to you earlier this summer. That one is the $200,000 grant to help implement the DVHRT field assessment. That'll be utilized by the city police. And that one we brought to you guys before. We're just looking for that one.

So the briefing before was just conceptual, and now we're asking to sign a contract. Is that what's going on? Yes, we're good.

Wonderful.

No, you guys are gentle. I appreciate it. Let's have a wonderful day.

That was two.

Yes, that was seven.

Ricks, Each. Ricks, sheriff Kevin Ritchie.

Your quick miscellaneous, if you like, before I need to announce that the shrills meeting on September eighteenth has been cancelled. So there's no agenda to look over. And I was asked to let you all know that that was cancelled.

Okay. I'm sure Richie is not here yet. So it's Kyle. So hey, Kyle, do you want to handle Yours, the receiving the no further action designation?

Sure. I was going to pop down there right now. But yeah, we can hit this real quick. Oh, better. I've got my subject matter expert just walking into the room right now. Krista Riley, she's a project manager in our stormwater group and did the management of our public works ops building project. So if you recall, that site was under a covenant from Ecology before we began work out there due to the existing contamination. And we've done some remediation. We capped some stuff. We have new parcel lines. So Kristen can walk you through the current one, which is another, basically a revision of the covenants on the property out there for the ops building, the old Wilbert vault site.

We have the presentation.

Perfect. Thank you. Okay. So yeah, like Kyle said, we're just looking to get from ecology on our public works office building site, which is just north of Boone and Sharp there. So the existing covenant that from the early 2000s, you can see it's outlined in that red area. The new subject site is the blue area. That will be where the new covenant is. Basically what the existing covenant says is we cannot damage the pavement without notifying a college. So currently we inspect the site every year and then do maintenance on it for if there's any cracks in the pavement, we'll fill those. So what's nice about this is we can just extend our normal operations onto the new site and just do that inspection and maintenance at the same time. Next slide, please. So on the map there, you can see the exact area that will be subject to the covenant. So it's the black hatched area. The green areas show the exceptions to that. So those are basically where we put swales. They ended up digging down to clean soil. So we didn't have contamination in those areas. um you'll notice on the right side where the old building footprint was that's cut out there wasn't any contamination under there and then the whole south portion of the site where the new buildings are that is also not subject to the covenant so um assuming there's no concerns we'll move forward with finalizing that environmental covenant with ecology any questions

I think we're good.

Okay, great.

Thank you. Thank you. Right. I'm scared. Oh, I was way down. Yeah, sure.

Someone wants to get going.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I didn't see Dr. Singh. Okay. Dr. Singh, take it away.

oh hello all i'm sorry i'm trying to get my once more my video going oh here we go um good morning Sorry, it's being slow. Anyway, I'll start talking and hopefully, here we go, the video. Good morning, all. Just a quick one today. I'm asking for your permission to renew our teaching affiliation agreement with Washington State University College of Medicine. This is the agreement set up so that we can have medical students here in the office and tell them all about how great pathology is.

All right. Any questions from anyone? How many students have you had come through?

Gosh. So this year we had seven, I believe, first and second year students and four upper level. So mostly fourth year students kind of in their final year of training.

Okay. All right. All right. Well, I think it looks like we're good with it. So thank you very much.

Great. Thank you.

Okay, Doug, you're up.

Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. You can have a very brief presentation. I am here to speak on the Freeman Valley School District Agreement. There it is. Quick. Thank you. We have actually had an agreement in place for the last 37 years with the Freeman School District, where we have been able to provide a community park John Potter, The land is owned by the district, and we have helped to find in the very beginning fund some minimal improvements. John Potter, And over the last couple decades, we have funded effectively maintenance of the property by covering the cost of a dumpster and paying the equivalent of minimum wage for. 20 hours a week for the park season. And essentially this right now, today, we spend about 10,000 a year to honor this agreement. Now, recognizing demand and budget challenges. Next slide, please. We have visited with the school district and renegotiated the terms where we feel we can very efficiently provide the annual blowout of the irrigation system and a small stipend of up to $2,000 annually that we would reimburse them for any repairs they might have to complete to their irrigation and water system out there. And so we are looking to renew this for another 10 years, but we would effectively reduce the cost to the county by 60 to 80% over what we're doing now. So that would allow us to continue this partnership to enjoy offering the community a community park in the southern part of the county for anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 a year. Next slide, please. So we would discontinue providing that maintenance of the employee. And again, the services we would provide would be the annual blowout and if needed funds to help with repairs. So if the board is supportive of this, then I would look to bring this back before you. The school district is supportive, obviously in the negotiations, they are comfortable with this next term. And I'm happy to answer any questions. And looking ahead, we believe our budget can sustain this level going forward, of course.

Any questions? We will work to bring this before you next week. Thank you very much. Is any of our next presenters out there?

I think it started on Lewis's if you'd like he's walking over right now.

Okay, Well, you also do, of course, parking miscellaneous. Oh, yeah, what was that course of the miscellaneous?

Oh, yeah, I see you down there. Yeah, go for it. Okay, commissioners. The valley and spoken sports have been in communication with us in public works. to try to figure out a solution for event parking for the course, the new cross-country complex. They have events scheduled this fall. The first one, I believe, is September 22nd. Pretty large event. They need up upwards they're thinking I can't remember if it's a thousand people or a thousand cars but it's a lot of parking and they have not had any success making uh an arrangement with any of the other paved surfaces out there and available so we have walked a portion of our Eden pit which is off a it's just south of that Amazon that's over there by Trent um we have one of our large that's our district for office out there. The western third of that site, we don't see, it'll be a long time before we're crushing rock out there for that. We have plenty of available. So it's future use, but it's way out into the future. So we think it would be reasonable to be a good team player with the valley that's gonna require them to do a bunch of work, and maybe this rain will help. But there's a lot of fire danger there's grasses up high there's 12 to 18 inch boulders kind of all over the place. we would need to have quite a bit of work out there that the valley is willing to do um whatever the reimbursement with spokane sports is the point is we're not doing anything we would just be allowing the use of our site for a nominal fee because they're basically just renting some acreage for those event days in particular um so the valley is crafting an agreement that we would be bringing in front of the board for that so they'll have to mow or string trim the entire site. Risk management's been out there. It's got to be at three inches. We got to assume everybody comes in in a Jetta or a Camry that's low to the ground. They have to fence the site permanently from our side, but also there will be areas that are just going to be not reasonable to improve to what a sedan can drive through. So we'll have to fence that off and also install a secondary egress gate because right now there's only one gate. it's all doable. We actually have some old, um, asphalt grindings from Bigelow that are out there that we could put a price on and sell to them so that they can use that. Cause not only do you pull a boulder, but now you got a six inch hole in the ground. They're gonna have to fix up. It's a lot of labor, but if they, they do it and prep it now, it'll make next year a lot easier so you know it because of the amount of work we would anticipate I don't know a three or five year agreement you know if if they're not good stewards we could revoke that um but it would be, you know, what they want to do is have everybody parked there and then shuttle bus them to the course for these, you know, large events. So if the board's comfortable with that, I'm a little worried about the timing of getting that agreement to you. It'll probably be at the 11th hour. But if I'm getting head nods, I'll probably preempt with like a temporary access agreement so they can start the prep work.

As long as you're sure it won't conflict with any of County's uses for the property.

Our district managers are very protective and they were actually nodding. So if Mike and Paul are okay with it, I trust them. Commissioner Brooks.

So, yeah, it just makes me think, though, that we still have work to do on Plants Ferry where they don't want to help with the road there. So it's one of those Makes me think it's like, yeah, we're trying to help them out. I mean, obviously we put all this money and effort into Plants Ferry and they're trying to just finish the little bit of road that they, you know, for people to access. So I don't know. I'm just putting that out there that it's like we should be thinking about both of those things then.

Maybe remind them of that, Kyle. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I don't know, I mean, Doug's already left, you know, if the grindings that you have from Bigelow would be good to just put on that road right now as temporary instead of using it there. So, I mean, that's where I just don't want to use up some of our resources if we could use it, you know, at Plants Fair to make sure that that road is in a little bit better shape because I know it's just a dirt road at this point in time.

John Gerstle, yeah I if matt's in here as well, but I don't think we have a shortage of grindings that if we were to do a project yeah they're.

John Gerstle, grindings for us, they have some value, but moving them is worth cost more than generic so having them use them in place and compensated set whatever an appropriate level is probably good furthermore, the location on the pit.

agreement obviously good no and i agree i mean that's not in my district and i i've been there and seen it so i mean i know that i'm just you know we have other needs that uh the valley doesn't want to help us with but they want us to help them so just thinking through it but i you know love the valley okay

I didn't see any, no shake head, no head.

I will remind my counterpart about clients. Okay. You know, he's, he's new there.

Maybe he can shake something. Maybe. Okay. All right, Louis, throw it down your way. Morning.

I have just two easement, uh, items on the agenda here. You bring up the slides. Yeah. Okay, so this first one is on Pines Road in the Valley, 511 South Pines. So they have a finding site plan. They were originally going to put in kind of like an L-shaped apartment building. As you can see on the left there, they had a layout that worked. um for our sewer uh access um and now they want to do like two different buildings and so they just wanted to revise our our uh public sewer access through their site and so this is uh just the easement and paperwork to It actually makes our access better. This new layout, we're able to drive through and out different way, kind of a U shape. So it works better for our access. So just to accommodate their new site plan layout. HAB-Jacques Juilland, And so we're working through the paperwork with Jasper I don't know that they'll have signatures ready to be on the next legislative meeting, but in one shortly after we should should have the paperwork for the board to basically extinguish or release the old easement and grant a new easement for our sewer access. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Any questions or. John Gerstle, That one getting pretty good. John Gerstle, On to the next one. John Gerstle, Do you have another is that I do have to be. John Gerstle, him. John Gerstle, items. So this is a parcel or parcels up near Arbor Crest. So just down the hill from Arbor Crest. There's a hillside there, the parcel that ends in the .9080. They are looking at a preliminary plat. and they needed off-site sewer to get to their plan and so this project goes next slide this project is um it's a collaboration between three different property owners um to get sewer from that lacrosse avenue up crossing upriver drive and then the north side of the road so It will serve future developments. Probably the most likely one is that parcel that ends in the .9080. I think it's the Keynes who own that property. That's one where we've actually seen a preliminary plan for, but the rest of those properties would then also have sewer available to develop whenever they develop. Next slide, please. I do have a very preliminary layout of what it might look like. I think this is pretty schematic, but that property is very steep and definitely would be challenging to try to build driveways and houses up there. But there's been various proposals over the years of people that have thought that they could develop that hillside. So this place would get sewer to it to be available if it happens. And again, we're working through the paperwork on this, and we're very close to being able to have them sign the agreement. And I don't know if it'll be ready for the eighth, but in a future legislative meeting, it would be ready for acceptance of support agrees. Any questions on that one?

They're good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Under share. Richie.

All right. Good morning. So this week I have of the 2026 2027 srd contracts uh for all the districts if you remember a few years ago there was a desire to have the districts cover uh half of the benefits um now we think that just don't do a tiered approach and this next school year we'll it will be at half so they'll be covering half the benefits and half the salary uniform and then 100 especially being an srd uh all the contracts were set to renew um without any there's been a couple additional uh uh sr or srds added one of them is a shared asset in the valley um and then the other one is central valley yeah in the valley of the last two months that's it any questions any questions All right, and then the next is an MOU that we would like to enter into with the US Capitol Police. There's a new program this year, I believe, that they started that anytime local police are used to guard members of Congress, the capitol police will reimburse those funds we don't work directly for them and we're not under their guidance or anything like that but we if if the um the member of congress reaches out for help or wanting us to cover an event that we will and we need a waiver it's been reviewed by legal and risk and it's pretty straightforward it's pretty um basic agreement actually

Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. Good morning, good morning.

I'm here to update you on a revenue sharing plan that we are an advisor to. Kyle signs the contract on our behalf, but it's a plan or an agreement between WM and Utilities and Transportation Commission. And then because it's happening in Spokane County, we are advised. So this is a plan that's allowable for state law. Basically, it's funded TAB, Through through revenue that's generated by curbside recycling. TAB, But I think the part where I appreciate this plan, because it has to be in alignment with our comprehensive solid waste. TAB, So this plan that wm has with the utc helps us achieve some of our education outreach goals that we have in our our call. TAB, Next slide. So the budget for this plan is dependent on recycling revenue. And I will reemphasize that we don't touch any of the money. We are an advisor. So we get a say in how money is spent and what it is spent on. But money does not flow into Fund 435. WM retains that right to spend the money. And we just coordinate with them closely on what it's spent on. So the budget really follows the commodity values for recycling. So some years we have seen a big dip that was in COVID and post China soared. And then the last biennium that stretched over 2024, we saw pretty healthy recycling commodity values. it's dipped since then and we're seeing probably a likely trend of continued slight falling revenues so well the budget's a little bit less this year but it's also based on household counts so when we expand the curbside recycling boundary that we'll be in a public hearing about today we could see a slight bump in this revenue based on the number of households next slide So we break the plan up into five different buckets. I'll go over these pretty quickly, but this first one is knowledge sharing. So this helps us reach out to households in uncorporated Spokane County with information about how to do recycling right. We always support cart tagging. It's a really valuable way to get the attention of homeowners. One of the last campaigns we did was on household hazardous waste, and please don't include it in your recycling bins. Take sharps and batteries to our transfer stations where they can be safely handled, not where it's in curbside bins and ends up on a sorting line where you have people in pink gloves. We don't want to take that risk for county employees or any of our residents working at WM Smart Center. They also do a lot of social media advertisements, commercials, and then they also have an app if you have questions about where a type of material should go. Should it go in recycling? Should it go in organics? Should it go in garbage or a transfer station? So that's the first bucket. Next slide, please. Second bucket is around equitable outreach. And this has two prongs to it. The first one is translation services. So trying to translate all the WM outreach materials into Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, in addition to English. And the second prong is helping to promote waste reduction work by local nonprofits that have more of a niche focus for minority-led waste reduction efforts or showcasing an event by Spokane Zero Waste for clothing reuse. So trying to get out into the not traditional ways of reaching our diverse populations. Next slide. This is one way we work pretty closely with WM. So we have education outreach staff within Solid Waste and we coordinate pretty closely with WM. So if they're going to be at a farmers market, we don't send our staff to the same farmers market. That way we can cover more events, provide more outreach across a broad swath of community events just to get the word out to people. Next slide. this is probably my favorite uh task of the whole plan and it's engaging younger minds and again we work pretty closely with wm they focus on the unincorporated schools and so if they are already providing workshops we tend to focus on the schools where they can't so that way we can stretch our dollars our resources farther in collaboration with wm um i've been to a couple of these assemblies they're very engaging they're very fun Most of the assemblies target the elementary school population, and then some of our workshops, most of them are focused on elementary education, but we do have some that are focused on middle school and high school as well. Next slide. And the last prong of this plan is on multifamily assistance. And again, this is kind of a two-phase thing. We have technical assistance for multifamily buildings, and that's going around and seeing, do they actually have access? Do residents in those multifamily apartment buildings Do they have access to recycling and garbage? And if they don't, can we right size their bins? So that way, if we reduce the amount of garbage dumpster capacity, we have actual ability for those residents to recycle. And then with that comes education and outreach. It's a recycling tote on a door with some flyers about what can and cannot be recycled. And this is a continual effort just due to the in and out nature of apartment complexes. We see a lot more turnover than in like a suburban neighborhood. So it's almost an annual effort to reach out to property owners to try and re-engage that education cycle for multifamilies. And the last slide is just a summary slide of each of the five categories within this plan. The actual budget this year is around $375,000 that WOM spends in our neighborhoods to help with recycling, education, outreach, and just general awareness. So without them, our goals wouldn't be as far along as they are. So it's a great partnership to have. that i'm done kept it short and sweet but do you have any questions about that question i don't have any questions about the plan but i

I can't remember whether I forwarded to you or not, but if I didn't, I will. She was complaining that waste management used to provide not only waste disposal, but also clean grain and recycles. And now she's not getting that service. Did I send that to you?

Yes, you did.

Okay, good. Fine. Thank you. Well, then it's in trusted hands. Thank you.

Amy Nunez, issue the amendment passes in a public hearing, she will have her services stored sure starting April one of next year Okay, thank you yeah Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thomas Greene, jumping all over Jamie Jamie over there.

Amy Nunez, Sorry.

Kyle's excited. Let's be good. Yeah.

Well, it's been a lot of work.

I'm happy to do it though. It's good work. So I'm here to brief on the Thorpe Road reconstruction funded through the Defense Community Infrastructure Program, otherwise known as the DCIP. Next slide, please. This is our new funding source for Spokane County, essentially through the Department of Defense. We applied for a preliminary application in this string, and a couple of weeks ago we were contacted by DCIP project management to submit a final application with the caveat that things are going to move pretty quickly upon submit all that final application. We were advised to start the approval process with you now so we can secure this funding. The project total is just under $3.2 million. We requested and expect to receive just over $2.2 million. This program requires a 30% match, so $922,000 will be contributed through S3R3, which is the local economic development group on the West Plains, and that leaves $36,000 for Smokin County to contribute. Next slide, please. This is a one-mile road reconstruction project starting from Crave Road and terminating at Fairchild Air Force Base East Gates. This road's in pretty poor condition. It's old, has lots of edge failure. There's very steep slopes. It lacks shoulders. And what this project will do is it'll reconstruct the road to a 30-foot width, include two levels of drive lanes with four-foot shoulders with an additional two foot of gravel shoulders on each side of the road. And not only does this project improve the deteriorated county road, but improves access to Fairchild Air Force Base. It facilitates a fine $25 million gate and the funding that they secured to open this gate. It removes, we're estimating approximately maybe up to 20% of traffic from what has been designated as a corridor. If you go to the next slide. Thank you. You can see the transverse longitudinal cracking, the edge failure, and the very steep slopes. It's really getting on the road. If you move on to the next slide, there's a map. And it's a little bit busy, but on the lower left inset is project limits. On the top left inset in the orange is that high injury corridor basically just starting at Craig Road and terminating at their private FAFB's primary access gate on US 2. This project will complicate the compliments, the realignment and the roundabouts at Craig and Fort Road, which will be constructed in 2012. If you go to the next slide, preliminary engineering is scheduled for 2027 and 28 construction defeated in 2020.

I just want to let the commissioners know this is, I think, our third swing at this funding source, as well as two swings at other defense programs. This is a little bit weird for us because we applied this spring, and then they came back and said, you're selected to apply again, basically. But it seems... nothing's a guarantee it seems very likely that that will result in the funding for this project um uh working closely with Jeff at Fairchild got us a lot of good information on this um and they're moving on their end we're moving on ours we might beat 29 but we're not going to promise that in a funding application um and uh hey The straight realignment and roundabout is on ad or going to add this week. And we do intend to be working on that through the winter. That roundabout is offline, perfect for make some visible progress out there this year and then finish that thing up next year. Well, a lot of these pieces all coming together, that's about 12 million right in that area.

James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, A lot of work went into getting these dollars. James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, awesome thanks for everybody so.

Any questions. Well, thank you for your time and have a great day.

James Forrest, Norcal PTACC, was interesting in funding program ever been successful in sport.

Okay, I guess I'll ask Jeff. Do you want to finish with the preliminary budget role? Should we take it? Should we? Should we have Heather and Martha Lou kind of do their miscellaneous?

And then do you want to finish out the meeting with yours or Heather coming home?

Okay, let's let's take care of the miscellaneous. That way we can finish the whole meeting with the budget wrap up. So

um you want to go well mark yeah so um my miscellaneous uh deals with the planning commission and uh last thursday uh they were subjected to uh three hours of uh uh rancorous testimony, personal attacks, a variety of things. And Planning Commission, these are volunteers that give of their time and energies and expertise to serve the county. And on Friday morning, I got a call from the chair saying he'll never do that again and ready to resign. This is... they can engage in these kind of activities with the board and the board can decide how they want to deal with that. But when we're dealing with volunteers on some of these commissions, we've got to be able to protect them. And so I would like to suggest that for the next Planning Commission hearing, which is supposed to be a workshop on the data center legislation that we provide a facilitator to facilitate the meeting because the chair has said he will not do it again. And I would also like to encourage that we have security present at the meetings to be able to deal with those disruptive forces that don't have any respect for the legislative process and want to hijack it i'm very concerned that if we do not support our commissions our volunteers it will lead to us having difficulty filling some of these positions with volunteers and subjecting themselves to personal attacks to um Now, these are professionals and they didn't volunteer for this kind of nonsense. So that's my request to the board is to provide some support to the Planning Commission so that they can finish their work and deliver that product back to us. Commissioner Brooks?

Yeah, I completely agree. I know Brenda watched on my behalf and some people spoke more than once. So I think I would ask that, I don't know how it works on the planning commission, but my thought is it should be the same rules that we follow. Those people are all up on the dais. So I don't know, Devin, if you can look into if we can, just have it be the same rules for us and any other public hearings that are being offered by any of our volunteer boards, you know, whether it's the hearing exam, you know, with the Board of Equalization or any of those that they're adhering to the same standards that that we do. And I think, you know, it is hard because these are volunteers and they're not used to having these kind of meetings. I mean, and so and don't know all the rules. And so I would ask that, yeah, we have somebody there who can help manage that. And I think because of the nature of the data centers, probably security is not a bad thing. The other thing is, I would, you know, say to all of our commissioners, we need to make sure that our people are there. I mean, that we have chosen to put on, because I'm hearing that some people have been absent. And so we just want to make sure that, you know, what's going on right now, whether it's the data centers or the Gross Management Act, I mean, our comp plan, it's really important. And I know, We have one at-large member that I think did resign. I think Wayne Brokaw did officially announce that he's resigned. So I would like to try to open it up and get somebody in as quickly as possible. I know there's talk about trying to wait till we're through the process, but I think we're still far enough away that I think we need to get those positions filled if people are willing to put their names in. I would ask that we look at that, encourage people, but make sure that the people that we've put in for our positions are attending. Because that was one of the comments is like, there's, I don't know, there's supposed to be how many people on the planning commission, and there was only a few of them that were there. So, you know, I just, you know, from that meeting, there was a lot that came out of it. And I think we need to do a better job as the elected officials to help them.

So Scott Scott just joined us.

Okay. And I just say, thanks commissioner French. Cause I do appreciate all that.

Scott, did you have something to add?

Well, uh, no, I think what, uh, commissioner Brooks said from, you know, observations is accurate. Uh, the chair, uh, who has traditionally been really pretty good at, at handling the public. uh, felt uncomfortable, uh, at this meeting. And that's, that is what ended up letting people speak multiple times. Uh, we didn't, you know, he makes the announcement up front. You can have one three minute or one two minute period. Uh, but, uh, it was uncomfortable as those commenters became more and more vociferous, I would say. Uh, and so it's, uh, We anticipate that that's going to be the same for the two remaining hearings, September 17th and potentially October 15th. The last meeting, it was three hours, and that pushed the rest of their agenda, which is the comprehensive plan and talking about preferred alternative and urban growth area. They agreed to continue that to this Thursday, the 3rd, Where the data centers will not be on the agenda, but will also then be subject to the open forum at the front of the agenda and our suggestion to, or was is going to be to the chair or perhaps a facilitator to do what you, the commission has done from time to time and say, we're going to have an open forum, but it's going to be limited to 15 minutes or 30 minutes. uh, as these people, and then, then we're done and have to get onto the rest of our agenda. So we've, we've got a couple of structural things we can do. Uh, but yes, if the chair, uh, and presumably the vice chair, uh, would be uncomfortable presiding in that situation, that that's a different kind of dilemma.

Okay.

Do you have a suggestion for a facilitator or anything specific on that?

I don't. But there are plenty here in the market. And I think it's got to be somebody that's very strong and can control the meeting. And quite frankly, because some of the folks are becoming much more aggressive. I mean, even your representative was trying to get control of the meeting and and uh ended up on the four o'clock news that's not mine it's not yours then it's Amber's yeah so I apologize then I thought I was told it was yours uh but um yeah we just we we need to get control of this uh uh before it becomes uh really um hostile for I mean we're elected we can take the the abuse to the extent that we want to uh but volunteers shouldn't be subjected to this would you like us to reach out and try to find the facility please yeah at least yes somebody that has experience running meetings yeah

yeah i i honestly wonder if it couldn't be someone from the sheriff's office you know doesn't have to have their full gear on but just a sheriff's shirt um be be one i mean they know how to facilitate meetings i think um you know if john suggests somebody because i think it's got to be somebody who's got some authority that people will respect yeah i mean i think it's just to that point um and i don't you know otherwise it's like devon someone from civil you know that could manage and you know she might have fallen told yeah yeah and we're in touch with scott chesney on this so we're working with scott uh already to talk about how the tools the commission could use okay i mean i mean i'm happy that we could pass a resolution saying that all other commissions follow the same you know proto you know um public protocol i don't know i don't know how to say it you know that we follow

They have the commission has their own bylaws that also default to Robert's rules. So I think it's just making sure the chair and the folks, the tenants are aware that they do understand exactly that they do follow essentially the same rules that you all follow.

the challenge is not having the rules the challenge is enforcing the rules and that's that's where the things start to fall apart is there's no enforcement element to be able to say you know what you've exceeded and that's enough there's got to be something to hold them accountable commissioner waldriff yeah i i just i i agree with commissioner french that

I think I observed the first two hours. I listened in on the first two hours of that meeting. And I think that normally the chair allows for random questions and clarifications. And he does an excellent job. My suggestion is not to allow for that. That's where it kind of got off course. during Scott's presentation, there was a lot of questions and comments, and I think, you know, limiting that, not having, allowing for the presentation to occur and the plan commission to have their discussion, and then having public comment after that would have been, you know, but you know, it's, you learn that normally in a normal plan commission meeting that works, in this meeting, it didn't work. And so I think, We just have to enforce that the public comment is at a certain time in the meeting. And if people don't want to respect that, they have, you know, they need to be removed from the meeting. If a facilitator can be helpful to the chair, I would be open to that. But I think it's really someone that's just firmly enforcing that you will get your chance to comment and it will be after, you know, for instance, Scott was done with his presentation. So normally the chair allows for people to kind of ask questions, I think, during the meeting, but that didn't really work in this meeting.

Okay. Okay. We're done with that topic. Throw it down to Heather.

So we have a request from Habitat for Humanity. They have completed their general fund portion of their housing project that was originally funded under ARP that we shifted to general fund. They built their 36 homes. They have about $375,000 left remaining that's unspent at this point. and they're requesting to use those funds to continue to build. So just bringing that forward for consideration if the desire is to let them continue or to stop the project where it is as complete.

And just one more time. What was the original award?

The original word was 1.7 million, so they've spent about 1.325. Okay. Okay.

Commissioner Brooks.

So the request that was basically they came under budget. And so they're requesting to continue to do what they're doing and use it for the same intended purpose. Correct. I'm okay with that.

I agree. I have no problem with that.

Okay. Short and sweet. Okay. Martha Lou.

Good morning. Well, last week we went from fire follow-up, including with scraps, to data centers and PFAS. And so the media had a lot of questions about those things. This week, it's going to be a Labor Day closure announcement. And I'm also going to be helping to promote the Adopt a Drain campaign, which is coming out of Public Works.

Questions?

What did you say? Adopt a what?

Adopt a drain.

Drain. Yeah. I thought you said a tree. Oh, I forgot. Like a body of water? Like a tree? Like on a golf course? Okay. Drain. Okay. All right.

Yeah, it's a national campaign.

Have we done this previous years? Yeah.

Spokane Valley and City of Spokane are also participating in this. And it's basically an outreach campaign to get people in neighborhoods where there's a storm drain on the corner, adopt that drain, make sure it stays clear, especially with fall leaves and winter debris and all of that. So it's not going into the water system. And then it's also kind of tracking how much you cleared out. So it's a campaign just to make sure that our storm drains are working effectively, especially as winter approaches. If they're blocked, then you have winter runoff that freezes in the middle of an intersection. becomes the skating rink okay so i know there's always a push in the middle of winter of please shovel out the drains in case you know especially if a plow has come by but okay all right all right well we'll look forward to that one um also smraps has been getting some inquiries uh about pence and in the follow-up of the fire and they're not doing any more like fire related response with regards to animals but they always have great information on how to prepare if you have to evacuate so all right okay thank you mr brooks

Yeah, just miscellaneous again. Council governments is coming up on the agenda. I just want to make sure that everyone's aware doors open at 830 is the welcome and opening comments. And then we've got the Spokane complex fire updates, you know, talking about nonprofits, FEMA, and if there's any other questions. And then this update on the safe and healthy task force. So are there any other items that any of the commissioners want on the agenda?

just so folks that that is next friday september 11th yep opening the fair and then we will open the fair at 10 40 do the ribbon cutting and the fair will start okay okay thank you thank you okay that's all for miscellaneous we'll move into uh preliminary budget roll budget rule

Two quick things before Tess and Randy take over. One, just a big thank you to Randy for coming back this month to help out. It's been great having him. And the second, I just wanted to define our terms. When we say we have a $30 million deficit, that means it would take $30 million more next year to provide the same services. That's just the cost of inflation. Most of it is salary and benefit related. Medical benefits are going up 12%. Liability is going up 49%. and wages and benefits, we are heavily unionized. So those are in the contracts and set. That's not something that we can shift around without renegotiating contracts. I know for some, sometimes we'll hear, well, why are you in the hole? We are not in the hole. We have a very balanced budget in 2026. It's more, we need to change our spending or increase our revenue in 27. it's balanced. We're always looking into the future in the budget office to make sure we don't go in the hole. So we want to make sure For the record, we are not in any sort of deficit. We have a rainy day fund. We have a fund balance, which is great because we'll be spending millions of our fund balance probably related to fire recovery. So we do need to keep it for those one-off items, because we'll be footing the bill for about 25% of the fire recovery. The feds reimburse about 75%. So with that, Randy and Tessa are going to go through our preliminary budget rollout.

um good morning commissioners uh this is the mandatory by statute roll up of the budget on the first tuesday but i want to be here also yes um so if we thought before we get into the budget uh pages that are in the packet that tessa sent each of you a link to uh i believe that was friday yesterday yesterday afternoon and that will also be on our website later today We wanted to kind of go back to June of this year. So in June, Jeff and Tessa came to you and they talked about a structural gap. At that time, they were projecting $274 million in revenue and $304 million in operating expenses. Now that's without capital. So at that time for 27, we were looking at about a $30 million gap. And so when you did the budget process for this year, you asked agencies or departments to go back and budget based on the adjusted 2026 budget, which was about $270 million. With that, you also asked them to come back with what do you have to cut to stay there and or what would you like back? knowing that you would have at that time we estimated about $3.6 million that you could then go and get some of those items back if you wished. So that's where we started. If we go to the next slide, This is kind of that 3.6 number. Right now our budgeted revenue is 284.7 million. Our adjusted target budget is 275.1. So instead of $3.6 million to buy certain things back, right now we have about 9.6 million. That increase is primarily due to sales tax, which has been running strong in 26, and we expect it to continue to remain strong going into 27. Next slide. Here you can see the requests that the departments have that would exceed their target budgets so for operating expenses they are requesting 32.6 million capital 7.8 for a total of 40.4 million now as we said on the preceding slide you have about 9.6 million that you can use towards these items. So for example, if you used a million towards capital, you would have 8.6 to use towards operating. So we still have a deficit for 27, as Jeff said, that could either be solved with cutting costs or raising revenues. So on the next slide, and it's kind of How are you as commissioners going to address the structural gap we have? You can from the cost side, you can cut costs, you could cut services, you could delay funding certain capital items, you can vote to increase taxes, or you can do a combination of both to get the budget in balance for 2027. So really, it's all math. When I worked the law firm, you know you to balance your budget. Either expenses go down or revenues go up. It's just math. So with that in mind, the next 3 slides that we have are paragraphs from an article written by Commissioner Rob Kaufman from Lincoln County, published this year in the star. And the first paragraph that we'd like to quote is, math doesn't care about politics, good intentions, or how badly we want something to work. It doesn't adjust itself to feelings or make exceptions when the numbers stop adding up. Pretty poignant. Next slide. Another paragraph in his article, the Washington State Association of Counties survey confirmed what many of us already know counties are under increasing pressure from rising costs state mandates and limited revenue options the gap between what we are required to do and the revenue we collect continues to widen so as when you went over that five-year forecast earlier this year lines kept getting further and further apart the further out you go, which is what that paragraph is talking about. And then the last paragraph from that article that we'll read here today is, although counties across Washington are still providing essential services and balancing their budgets, most are only doing so by reducing services, delaying maintenance and leaving critical physicians unfilled. That approach does not and cannot maintain a consistent level of service. So of those 32 million in ask, this is what everybody would like to do to service the citizens of Spokane County. But as those gaps, as those lines begin to widen, it may not be possible for us to do that. Any comments, questions before I go on to the next slide? Okay. So then, really, it's just reiterating what we said before. So what choices does the VOCC have to balance the general fund budget? You can decide which services to reduce, combine, or eliminate. You can decide which capital projects to delay. You can decide which positions to eliminate, and those could be empty positions. It doesn't have to be a position with a person in it. or you can decide which taxes to rate. And so the expense side will hold off on that for right now, but let's talk about what your options are on the revenue side. This year, oops, I'm going to one, we'll talk about FTEs first, sorry. Go to the next slide. So for the people, for the departments or the agencies to meet their target budget, they estimated that they would need to reduce staffing by about 230 FTEs in order to meet that budget of 32.6. Now, some of it could have been operating expenses or like supplies or services, but to get to that 32.6 million, about 230 employees would be affected.

With a department. gave it him a no cut, we accepted it. But if they came in over budget, we divided the overage by the average FTE cost in that department. Some departments are more expensive than others, and that's where the 230 comes from. So if you are to accept the cuts that were given and balance that exclusively on FTEs, that's the math.

And where are we at with regard to Ftes today?

You will see that here in just a moment, Commissioner French, right there.

Thank you. So we have, as we said earlier, we have currently 9.6 million of revenue over the target budgets. If you used a million of that for capital, for example, IT, I think was a million dollars. You usually have to buy new servers and things like that. That would give you about 8.6 million for operations. If you use that 8.6 only to buy back people positions and not for any other supplies or maintenance, That would save you in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 employees. So we would still have a budget gap of about 24 million, which would affect 160 to 170 authorized positions. Now, currently, we have about, I use the word about because it changes every day, but about 75 vacant positions in the general fund. Now, some of those vacant positions, you may be part of the buyback. So we can't say how many of those would cover the 160 to 170. But without additional revenue, you don't have enough vacant positions like you did last year to cover all of the FTDs you would need to reduce to balance the budget.

Question. yeah we don't really have any authorized but unfunded positions anymore correct that is correct okay it does not allow for that so when we talk about fte or positions we're really talking about a funding and we did have quite a few departments that they have been leaving positions intentionally vacant

the last few months and going into the rest of the year to allow for attrition. I think everybody prefers attrition versus a pink slip in those situations. So I'd say some of these 75 funded vacant positions are intentional until they see what the board's priorities come through. Others are just a normal churn of people leaving and being rehired.

So now that's if the classic without additional revenue. So now if we go to the revenue options, there are a number of new options the legislature gave the commissioners this year. The first two relate to sales tax. The first one is the retail car rent tax. So this is an existing tax on rental cars that we currently collect. The legislature this year expanded the uses of that to include the criminal justice system. In the past, that was used for things such as maintenance operating supplies for Vista Stadium, for Plants Ferry, for improvements to Plants Ferry, the hub, things like that. But now it can be used for the criminal justice system. The legislature also allows counties to enact a new one-tenth of 1% sales tax as the local law enforcement programs, and that is only for the criminal justice system. Next slide. There are some new property tax options that the commissioners could vote for. The first one is the Veterans Assistance Levy. Now, currently, we pay the one and one-eighth cents out of our general fund levy. So today, and what's projected for next year, we will levy about 68 million or 70 cents per thousand for our general fund. Today, one and an eighth of that 70 cents goes to Veterans Assistance. The legislature now would let you put a new levy on the tax statements so that the general fund could keep its full 70 cents. Same thing with mental health and developmental disabilities. Currently, two and a half cents per thousand comes out of our 70 cent levy and goes to mental health and developmental disabilities. The legislature this year changed those statutes so that you could and then keep that two and a half cents general fund. The third new one is a little different. It doesn't really replace anything coming out of our current levy other than today we give approximately in 26, you'll give approximately $2 million to the public health district. This new levy can be used for hospital services, so clinic services. So to the extent that if you still gave the health district $2 million and if you could say it is only for clinical services, this would allow you to add an additional tax onto the property tax bill and then not use general fund dollars to pay the health district. So those are the three new property tax points.

And then, yes. Just so I'm clear on that. So right now, I believe the roughly $2 million that we give to the health district, excluding the TB funding, just the... What's that? Oh, yes. No, TB is... So the roughly 1.5, that I believe is...

extremely flexible they can do whatever they want but these dollars you're saying would have they would have a narrow scope so they could use them for their general admin or anything okay okay thank you um next slide uh and then of course we have our three property tax options that we talk about every november there is the one percent increase TAB, Mark McIntyre, Which is the increase over last year's assessment, we have the general fund bank capacity, these are the amount of one percents you haven't taken in preceding years. TAB, Mark McIntyre, And then we have a road levy shift that you could do, which is the one percents not taken in the county road levy that you could move over to the general fund. So those are your revenue options that as commissioners, if you chose, you could enact to help fill the $24 million gap.

Currently, none of those are built into this budget.

So that's kind of where we're at before we start talking about budgets. Any other questions or comments before we get into the budget package?

Do you have a slide in here that says what each of those options is roughly valued? I do not have a slide in there, but if you want to know, I do have roughly those numbers. Okay. I was just going to say, I know generally kind of ballpark where each of them are at. I think we've discussed in previous meetings.

Our estimated tax assessed value from a property tax standpoint is almost $100 billion. hundred billion makes math easier as you're looking at these taxes thank you yeah uh so with that let's start talking about the 27th budget uh you can go to the next slide some Here, there's an eye test. Here's the roll up of the budget. This is where we have the $284.7 million in revenue. As you'll see, sales tax has a big increase. We're estimating right now about $90 million in sales tax. It's up from the original $85 million that we were estimating in June when they put together that first slide. And expenses are, the adjusted expenses are 275 million. This is the adjusted target. On top of that, we would add the 32.8. So that gets you to about 308 million. That is, if you look at that, if you think back to the first slide when they projected 304 million of expenses, They did not include the 4 million for debt. So actually they were within a million dollars right on in their projection way back when, before everybody went through the budget process. Next slide. Here is the property tax calculation. So right now, and these numbers will change. These aren't final. This is based upon estimated new construction of $1.4 billion. Tom and his crew are finishing that up. With that, if you look at, if we assess the prior year's tax levy plus new construction, the general fund would assess currently a property tax levy of around $69.2 million. Out of that, today, we have to give a little over 1.1 to the veteran services. We have almost 2.5 to mental health and developmental disabilities. We give just short of 1.5 to the TIFs. And we never collect 100% of the taxes in any year. In discussions with the treasurer's office, we collect This slide here assumes a 99% collection rate. So that gets us down to our 63.5 million of property taxes that we have in the budget to collect for our general fund. Next slide is our sales tax. So here originally we were looking at about 83.2 million for 26. Right now we think we're gonna be 5% higher than last year. So we think we will end the year closer to 87 million. And we are budgeting a 4% increase percent which would take us to 90 million that four percent is our 20-year historical average so some years are higher some years are lower but the overall trend is four percent this year is running strong again we will get more numbers uh in October November um TAB, Mark McIntyre, So excuse me, September and October, and we can look at our run rates and we may need to adjust these numbers up or down, but this is where we're starting at right now. TAB, Mark McIntyre, And then you can see going out we're going back closer to cost of living three to. TAB, Mark McIntyre, But we never know we don't know how the fires will impact things like that so but that's where we're starting with right now. TAB, Mark McIntyre, Next slide. So here's a sheet. You've seen this when you do your budget adoption. This is just the revenue and expenses by agency. Again, this is at the target budget rate. a lot on that slide. The next slide, however, this is kind of where we start talking about what the asks are. So here, the first column is your assigned target, and the second column is target adjustments. So for example, You've added a 400,000 for building and code enforcement to mitigate nuisance problems. So that is a new since last year and since the target budgets were set. um the next couple are just some transfers but we have four million dollars uh that was added to the target for debt that's the new debt we issued in 2025 that the money for that will come out of reed so that will not affect no this time yes so that won't really affect the pluses and minuses The other one is non-departmental. Yes, that is the non-department. The other 200,000 asked that wasn't in the target is the 200,000 that you gave the prosecuting attorney out of mental health sales tax. So that's added in here. Now, those are all revenue supported. The $400,000 potentially could be revenue supported also. To the extent that that department is totally for nuisance property mitigation, that can now come out of REIT too. And when we see the CIP roll up, you will see I've added that line in there as a placeholder. Because to use REIT, we have to have it online.

And we are recommending on this sheet cooperative extension historically has had its own line. We have had county aid staff at Cooperative Extension. Just by way of reminder, last year some of the staff was laid off. Some of the staff moved over to WSU. They are now WSU staff and we only have a contractual relationship with them giving them funding. So that's why we're taking the negative 318 out of cooperative extension. So this is just a contractual relationship now with no staff. And we're recommending putting it in outside agencies because that would be more consistent with that new relationship we have with them.

It would be just like the health district. And then you can see the asks or the requested add backs by the department. for the $6 million for operating expenses. This next slide is really just a summary of all the asks broken down. You can see which ones relate to people. The top section there is just the things that we adjusted the target budgets for. Again, it was mainly non-departmental over the debt service costs, which is funded by REIT of $400,000. building and code compliance for the property nuisance mitigation, which can be funded by REIT, and then the $200,000 for the prosecutor's office, which is to be funded by mental health sales tax. And then you have all the other asks kind of summarized going down.

Just alphabetical by agency and then in the department preference order within the agency listing.

And then, of course, this is a summary. When you get to the detail sheets for each department or agency, you will see their write-up on that. But this is just the summary of those requests. In preference of agency orders. By the for each agency, it's in their preference order. Yes. So if the agency has more than one request, otherwise it's alphabetical by agencies are alphabetical within the same agency.

Although I love the assessor.

When we look a couple of slides back, each of the agencies, the revenue and expenses for each of our departments, I don't know where we are so far. This far into the year, I remember several months back There were a couple of departments that were really lagging on their projections of revenue for their department. Are we confident these estimates for revenue for 2027 are realistic?

That was one of the big focuses we took into this budget cycle, and we spent a number of days reviewing the revenue submissions um in a number of different ways by agency um in total by line and yes we do feel confident that these are much more accurate revenue projections in total some lines there might be some semantics between lines and some agencies but in total we do feel it's in line with current collections and trends all right thank you next slide this is where we get back to the ftes

One more one more run. Sorry about that. So here's historical FTEs from 21 through current. This is by each department. It shows their fill and vacant positions. And then an average salary. And then the far two columns on the right are either the employees that the agencies identified that they would have to eliminate, or the numbers, excuse me, that they would have to eliminate to meet the target budget. Or if they didn't identify specific positions, it was a mathematical calculation on the second to right column, as Jeff talked about earlier.

To your question earlier, Commissioner French is here at the bottom of the top section is public safety, they are up six ft roughly. of those were grant backed, which is why they were approved throughout the year. The bottom section, which is the other, the rest of the general fund, so to speak, actually down a half a percent. So we're, FTE management this year has been a lot more closely held and watched. And also I think just a new work pay system where we don't have the unfunded FDU's floating around has been helpful. You will notice last year we had about 58 vacant. Well, now we're at 83. So I think that difference there would roughly correlate to what departments are holding for attrition purposes to meet part of their this year, except for grant back.

Just a question on looking back in, I see that the current status shows a particular date, snapshot time, right? So how is it measured looking at past years on annual basis? 1231. Okay, at the end of the year.

No way we have the same snapshot every year. Okay, good, thank you.

The next slide, again, is just resummarizing what we showed on three slides earlier in the presentation, just the revenue options. The first one, again, is a no tax increase option that is just using the rental retail car sales tax. to the citizens of the county uh one nice thing about a sales tax people that come visit also pay it uh or property taxes which would affect both homeowners and renters because I'm sure

the renter as well so those affect all the citizens and really don't impact visitors that much the one-tenth sales tax which has had conversation the last few months to do a public meeting which requires 10 days posting which in our world translates to two weeks when I'm Sorry, the public hearing would need to be posted in September. To be held no later than October 13th, which gives us time to get to the state. 75 days before the 1st of the year. So 1 thing you will find us. Bringing up at the budget meetings this month. Is do you want us to work on. Posting the public hearing. And any Mr. Macio, I believe, has the paperwork ready so we can post it on any of our 2 PM consents for two weeks after that date. I don't know if that's something you guys want to talk about today or not, but it is what we'll be bringing up until it's put the rest one way or the other because of the the timeline.

And that timeline is just to have the tax

the timeline but chose to do it later in the season that would push it back to April 1st and then you would get seven months of revenue for the year instead of 10.

Because we don't start getting, so if it went into January 1st, we don't start receiving revenue until the end of March. So that's worth 10 months and seven months of references.

Budget office, knowing the world of revenue to work with would be helpful. So that is definitely the call of the month.

Just got a couple more pages left and we'll be done with this presentation. These are just the roll up of all the other funds. You will notice that there are some zeros in here. One on this page and more on the back of the second page. We just haven't received any initial submissions from Public Works.

And if there are any special revenue or other funds, as we call these two pages that the board would like highlighted, please let us know and we can help coordinate additional details and information and presentation.

And we'll keep updating this as we get those submissions. And then the very last page. Just kind of the budget calendar, just reminding everybody again. We will come back on September fourteenth will be the first budget roundtable workshop. Excuse me around the workshop. Right. The workshop is till the yep, the roundtable will be the twenty second. What we'd really like to know is between now and maybe next Tuesday, if you could, if you can identify certain departments you would like to have make presentations. And if you have specific questions you would like them to answer, we would like to, if possible, start having departments present on the 21st just so that you have time with all the decisions you have to make. so um i'd like to also you know and that also allows the departments to have some time to put it together also and be thoughtful about what they're presenting and not just throw something together because they you found out the last minute so so as much time as we can give them uh as much many questions as you would like them to address that would be helpful for departments uh if you have some questions you can always ask them specifically um two key dates on here are November 16th that is when we do the property tax levies so those are all those property tax decisions that is a 9 a.m meeting on Monday the 16th uh and then also December 7th is a 9 a.m meeting for budget adoption those are the two uh key uh public meetings

the questions.

I'll swipe.

Any departments anybody has right now?

Yeah, because if you want to take some time, I mean, like I said, all the department's submission is in the detail behind these slides in your shared folder. And it will also, as Tessa said, be posted on our website later today for anyone else to see.

You will see this year we added an FTE sheet with each agency when you scroll you'll recognize it as soon as you scroll through it again the formatting will look familiar to you but at the end of each department is an FTE sheet that shows exactly where they are in that department something we want to keep a close eye on

I would suggest if there, of the operating requests over target, that was the 32.6, maybe the top three departments from that category, the ones that were the furthest over sort of the target budget, maybe have those come in, whoever those end up being, and maybe have them come present as to why they're asked. are one of the top three, I guess.

Anything else anyone else wants to? Well, I would agree with Commissioner Kearns. And the other thing I'm curious about, so what is the total assessed valuation for property in Spokane County?

Just after Right now we're projecting after the roughly 600,000 comes off for the fire, we'll be at about 99 billion, 600 billion.

Thank you. I think we hear from sheriff prosecutor and detention. So large and also important public safety.

I think those are two of the three overlap for sure. I think it's all when you rambled above, I thought, oh, you're asking for what I'm asking a different way of getting them.

I knew at least two or I don't know what the third is going to be, but I believe you have yet coalesced on the same three plus or minus. Nope.

Yeah, you did.

The other one drops right below that number four is really close. It's real close.

No budget next week, because you have the Labor Day holiday on Monday. Tuesday will be a regular business day. The following week, starting Monday, the fourteenth, we will have budget every Monday through the season. we are not unless directed otherwise not planning on bringing every single agency through like we did last year but focusing more just the direction of the board what you what you wanted to hear from um as CS as things come together play it more by here I think John Potter, hearing from everyone last year was good I gave everybody kind of a level set on where things are, but I don't know I have not heard that request again this year i've been hearing more a target.

TAB, And I do believe that the information that's provided in the packets the departments, they did a good job of writing the impacts of the service levels reductions to meet their target budget. TAB, So that should help the board understand and potentially decide on some of the. um requests independently without the need for additional presentation time anything online nope commissioner waldron sales tax uh

decision for public safety sorry you can you start over you you kind of you cut out there we only caught the tail end of what you were saying sorry i just was wondering if she's asking for the deadline on the one percent.

For the one percent, the deadline, it has to be to the Department of Revenue by October 16 in order to be effective on January 1. Your last legislative meeting prior to that is Tuesday, October 13. to give a 10-day notice, which you typically do a two-week notice on, would be September 29th.

Okay, thank you.

Yep. Okay. Anything else?

John Kane, Great overview yeah this was great and the share folder is that you and you had sent out yesterday, and then we compile more information and additional details come available will continue to add it there so save that link. John Kane, Is it off but.

John Kane, Under pages in there.

asked for it but it didn't uh you did a summary that said each potential tax would raise x number of dollars we'll send that around yeah update that and send it around certainly thank you all right okay that's it thank you thank you very much

i believe we have some executive sessions we do okay uh because we we did we took care of miscellaneous but i'll just ask one final time any any miscellaneous items before we head to executive session no this this special i have to jump off so i guess i'll miss that i will catch up later okay

All right, Vice Chair Kernsley, we have four executive sessions. Each are about 10 minutes. The first is pending potential litigation, no action, 10 minutes. Jeff McMorris, Devin Kurta, Jasper Coulter, Matt Zierachor, Kyle Tuig. The second is 10 minutes pending a potential litigation, no action. Jeff McMorris, Devin Kurta, Kyle Tuig, Brent Badabo. TAB, Mark McIntyre. : Third, is penny litigation no action Jeff Morris and McCurdy out to a bike sparber desperate culture and, finally, any potential location five to 10 minutes no action Jeff Morris Dan gad Ben Harris at Scott chesney Jacob allenton well numbers.

Okay. All right. Well, it is 1121. We will be going into executive session for the four pending and potential litigations for a total of 40 minutes. At the conclusion of that 40 minutes, we will adjourn for the morning. No decisions will be made while in executive session. We will reconvene for our two o'clock legislative agenda meeting. Thank you all for joining us.

Thank you very much, I think we're going to do you guys versus because they're the biggest group sorry couch this guy's going over your phone so. This barbers not the first one is. jimmy baca, jimmy baca, jimmy baca, jimmy baca, jimmy baca, jimmy baca, Scott's coming over. Yeah. Skye, coming over.

I saw him walking. Oh, I think he's there. Okay.