Board of County Commissioners - Special Meeting

All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Thurston County Board of County Commissioners Board Work Session for Wednesday, June 24th, 2026. It's 103 p.m. My name is Ty Mentor, Chair of the Board. To my left, Vice Chair Commissioner Lee Fournier, Commissioner Carolina Mejia, Commissioner Rachel Grant, Commissioner Emily Klaus, County Manager Leonard Hernandez, Assistant County Manager Jennifer Walker, and we do have Clerk of the Board Amy Davis present. Our first item up this afternoon, oh, just other advisements. We're live streaming to the YouTube channel and public comment can be received in writing up to two hours in advance and distributed to the board. Action may be taken at this meeting. Internal service rates is our first item up. I see staff here to talk about that. County Manager. Thanks so much, Chair.

I want to give a special thanks to all our staff. Many of them are here in the audience. Internal service rates represents a huge component of what the county does in its interaction with offices and departments. So there's a lot of work that went into putting this together. And understanding the timeframe where we are making progress with our financial management system, TC Connect, there are still things that we're working through. In addition, with layoffs and other things that have affected staff and availability of resources, really appreciate the two directors at the table as well as their teams and the other directors in the audience. So I'll hand over to Kim Burnett, Director of Central Services and Sherry Ail, Director of Information Technology to take us through those rates.

Yes, I'll start it off. So these are the proposed 2027 internal service rates. You will hear from IT, HR, Central Services and Financial Services. And then at the end of the presentation, there will be a request of the board to direct staff to develop the proposed rates as presented. Understanding that our offices and departments need these rates to build their budgets. Call for budget was just yesterday. So with that, we're going to start with the why. So there is a cost for providing shared facilities and support services, and we need to ensure that the cost is equitably allocated and shared. Our internal service supports every office and department across the county, and the costs for these internal services are recovered through rates charged to customers. You'll hear of three different types of service funds. Maintenance and operations funds, which are our day-to-day services, janitorial, utilities, computer support. There are reserve funds. These are basically our savings accounts. There where we deposit money every month so that when we need to replace a vehicle or a large software replacement or do work on a building, we have the money in there to do that. And then the third type are risk funds or our insurance type of funds, such as unemployment insurance, the risk pool. So these are funds where we have the money set aside as insurance just in case something happens. And all of the services, funds are based on rates that are paid by every office and department out of every fund in the county. As a reminder, when the 2026 and 2027 budget was developed and then adopted by the board, there was a 3% inflationary adjustment that was used as a placeholder for budgetary planning for the 2027 budget. rates and at that time 2024 fiscal year was not closed and that has since closed and now we're waiting for 2025 fiscal year to close um and so with that i will turn it over to the central services director thank you Kim Burnett.

Kim Burnett, central services director. To reiterate what the county manager said, I wanted to start by giving a huge thank you to the central services fiscal team, division managers, and admin staff for all the hard work they put into updating our internal service rates. A lot of time was spent reviewing and updating inventories with all of the departments and offices, calculating all of the updates to facilities rates, including all the new buildings or spaces within the buildings, updating lease and utility rates, and calculating operating costs for fleet maintenance. We've also been diligent about looking for ways to reduce costs as we went through the process. Central Services made several large reductions in our 2026 budget, including the elimination of five positions, which was a 9% reduction in staffing. reductions in both our custodial and landscaping contracts, a large decrease in the surcharge for fleet maintenance and operations, and several other reductions. And you'll see these reflected in our updated 2027 rates. So the first slide, our overall increase, and this is excluding fleet, is 0.5% increase. In the general fund, there was a 1.8% increase. The majority of our internal service costs are allocated to the general fund. It's about 73%. The majority of the increase for general fund had to do with including increased space for several offices, so for the sheriff's department, and then also district court. We also had increase in lease rates for the atrium, which affects several general fund departments and offices. And that's just a typical increase year by year. So for our Fund 5210, this one includes our administrative services. So that includes things like records management, our mail and postage services, surplus, our county badge and key administration, staffing the county information desk, as well as commute trip reduction services. We also include countywide services, which includes administration. We have countywide policies and procedures, county proclamations, budget, and procurement and contracts. And then it also includes facilities, which is maintenance and operations, custodial leases, utilities, and landscaping. And for 5210, the overall was a decrease of 2.3%. So to break this down a little further, In the admin services, we have records management. This is allocated basically by the storage space for physical boxes as well as laser fish storage. And we had a decrease there of 1.3%. And this was mostly attributed to the reduction in the physical storage of some boxes. Mail services, we had a decrease there of 4.1%. This is allocated by the deliveries per day. And this reduction was mostly in the salary and benefits area. We had a vacant position for quite some time and were able to reduce some of the salary and benefits in that area. And then postage, it was a 5.2% decrease. And this was a reduction in the percentage of estimated, the original estimated increase we thought would come in postage costs. But after looking at it, we were able to decrease that amount. So that ended up being a 5.2% reduction. County-wide services. This includes things like administration, budget, procurement, like I just talked about. This was a 3.5% increase. This is allocated out to the departments and offices based on their percentage of county budget. And the majority of this increase came from salary and benefits. In the facilities area, so we have maintenance and operations. You'll see that there was a 2.1% decrease there that had to do with the reduction in landscaping, the landscaping contract. We also reduced some of our professional services and supplies. This one is allocated based on the square footage of county owned buildings. And then we take any common spaces and allocate those out based on their footprint within those buildings.

And just for clarity, the reduction in landscaping was not having the same service and the cost went down. It was decreasing the level of.

Yeah, we were able to cut the contract by about $75,000, I believe, in 2026, which then rolls over into 2027 as well. In custodial, it was a 2.9% decrease. There was reduction in the custodial costs. Again, we reduced the contract. I think the main point there was that instead of picking up garbage five days a week, they're now doing it three days a week. But we also had... Offsetting that a little bit was increase in building square footage. So again, we had the Israel Road building, which is larger than what they had the footprint at building three. And again, that is also allocated by square footage of county-owned buildings. And we don't include anything like electrical rooms or IT closets or any data centers or vacant spaces. Leases went down 11.4%. And this was mainly due to the elimination of the new market lease from the 2027 rates. This is, again, allocated by tenant square feet. And then utilities, we did have an 8.8% increase. And again, this is allocated by square footage of county-owned buildings. We receive a percentage markup from each of the utility companies, and that's the amount that they're estimating that our rates will go up next year. And this includes recycling, electricity, gas, water, sewer. And this one on the facilities building reserves, we initially had done a 3% increase when we had the rates adopted. During the process of reviewing those rates, we discovered that we had not included indirect costs from things like emergency management, HR. It was inadvertently excluded from the original adopted 2027 rates, so that's the $363,000 increase. Otherwise, there would be no change. And this is used for infrastructure repairs and replacement. And just to give you a little context, we now own 31 buildings with a total square footage of about 859,000 square feet. The overall portfolio that they're maintaining is about $211.5 million.

Can I ask a question? Sure. So can you repeat kind of the square footage on the total square footage? And then out of those 31 buildings owned, how many are we leasing out?

We are leasing the only, well, we're leasing out a part of the building on Pacific Ave where TECOM, we lease out the triage building to Thurston Mason. And then we have, five or six tenants downtown that are leasing portions of those buildings.

Thank you.

And the square footage was 858,763. And you gave a dollar number. Yeah, it's 211.5 million is the current.

It's like the valuation of the 31 buildings. Kim does have a draft presentation. I think she's planning on coming and briefing the board. on the county's portfolio.

Thank you. Okay, fleet. So we have two categories here. We have the maintenance and operations, and here's where you're gonna see some large decreases. We had 19.1% decrease, and this was mostly due to a reduction in our surcharge. So the surcharge is calculated to ensure that we have a fund balance that will cover two months worth of expenses. And because we had a healthy fund balance, we were able to reduce that pretty drastically. This covers operating costs like staff, fuel, parts, professional services. It's retrospectively calculated. So 2027 rates would reflect 2025 actuals if we had 25 actuals. So we're doing an estimate on what we believe the 2025 actuals will look like. And then in fleet reserves, we have a 9.5% decrease. There's two reasons for this. One was our fleet group worked with the departments and offices to extend the life cycles of vehicles where possible. So going from maybe 10 years or 100,000 miles, we've been able to extend some vehicles to 12 years and 120,000 miles. So that's really helped. And then the second part to that is that we eliminated some high cost assets. One of those in particular was the Public Works Crambo Shredder. I don't know if I'm saying that right. And that was to the tune of about $800,000. So those were the big reductions there.

Any questions I can answer? I have a couple. I'll start with this slide that we just finished up. So the fleet management one. So we just had that presentation the other day from the sheriff's office who was really proud to say that it's a much smoother operation with their fleet having vehicles ready when they need them if damage occurs to one of their vehicles. I'm curious, that seems like it would be an increased cost if they're able to have, because they have increased amount of deputies because of the public safety tax. And so when I hear that they have the vehicles ready and I know they have more deputies, I'm like, okay, good. Things are flowing smoothly, but it seems like that would come with an increased cost. So can you help me understand?

I'm going to look to Bruce, our fleet manager. Come up and he'll know the specifics on this much better. Yes.

Bruce Robert, fleet services manager. To answer the question, first of all, fleet's gotten a very efficient process for putting the new vehicles in service, which has helped a lot with meeting our customer needs. The second thing is the fleet, in support of the sheriff's office, retained some older vehicles to support their hires. So what we're seeing is both greater efficiency and a younger fleet as far as the cost reductions.

Okay, that I think helps because my next question was going to be about the mileage and how we were able to extend the life cycles of some vehicles. But my recollection of the briefing the other day was that one of the things the sheriff's excited about is that they don't have to run their vehicles all the way up to like, I think they said 180,000 miles, which seems like a lot. That would be an outlier.

Okay. Yeah, we're definitely trying to cycle our sheriff's vehicles, patrol vehicles to get the hard use out at the 120 to 140,000 mile mark. Okay.

One of the items that really helped with the backlog of the vehicles was when the board authorized fleet to go ahead and look at how many vehicles were needed and to make those purchases in real time, rather than waiting for the annual cycle to go up because they were constantly having to get in line with all the dealers. If you recall, coming out of the pandemic, there was a huge backlog because of certain equipment for vehicles. The board took action to do that. And then Bruce and his team have been very nimble in looking at dealers that have the spec vehicles on lot so they can go out and make those purchases. And so with the combination of working those two, I think they effectively stopped that backlog cycle. Anything you want to add to that, Bruce? Oh, thank you.

And it's an aggregate. The sheriff's office is a large, it's a good chunk of ER and ARB, and so is public works and public health. there's other departments that have equipment as well.

Right, yeah. I just know, like you said, they do have a large chunk, so I thought if they were having significant improvements that did come with an increased cost, then maybe we wouldn't see such a large decrease in the rates. So that helps clear things up a bit. I have other questions throughout the presentation, but I don't want to take too much time if there's other questions.

Go for it. Okay.

Okay, so.

It's about central services, Pete. Yeah. Okay, thanks. We're going to go to IT next.

So let's see, the landscaping one. So I'm just curious, like as you were talking through, we decreased the level of service due to budget cuts. And so then reducing the rates seems like it might come out as like a net neutral or close to it. Can you kind of walk me through like why decrease the level of service to save on like the number of cuts that we have to make, and then we reduce what, this is revenue, right? Like, I mean, the internal service rates is technically revenue that comes in from the offices and apartments. So does that come out to close to a net neutral on the landscaping services piece? Does that make sense?

No, I'm not sure I'm following on the net neutral part.

I think what I will say is the internal service departments, they take their costs and then they break those out. So it goes out to Austin departments as a charge. But I can see what you're saying about it like being a net neutral. What they're doing is they're decreasing some of the expenses that then go out and hit the general fund departments. And that's what the internal service departments worked with Summer on calculating what that reduction would look like. It's also part of the reason why when we show some of the departments and offices cuts, they're not always readily shown because it calculates a little bit different, but at the end of the day, it is a positive savings to the general fund when we can reduce those costs.

Okay, so it's a positive savings to the general fund. but then we get less in through rates, which is not part of general funds. So does it still hit somewhere, just not in the general fund where we can easily see it?

So the rates do come back in to support the ultimate development of the county's budget, which is a portion of that is not necessarily general fund, but it does calculate. So when they reduce their expenses, And that then is charged out to departments and offices that receive general fund for the increase of expenses. The lack of need to increase those expenses is what helps the overall general fund because the board covers those expenses in offices and departments.

Okay. Thank you. And then I wrote this down, but I want to make sure my question is not already answered for me on the first page where you put the total. One of the questions I had was that it'd be good to see the totals at the bottom of each chart. But the first page is that cumulative total of all the rest of the pages in this central services section, right? So the overall increase, given all the information you just said, is half a percent increase overall. That paper.

Yeah, that page actually excludes fleet, and it excludes building reserves, because those are in two separate funds. That overall, I believe, was for 5210.

You did say that. I wrote that down. Okay. Do we have information that could show us what the overall total is for all of the sections? I can get that for you, definitely. Okay. For me, that would be really helpful.

Anybody else on central services? Okay, keep it going, guys.

All right, Sherry Yield, IT Director. So we are also 100% cost recovery. All of our money comes from what we charge. And we have three funds. Operations is our 5250 fund, and that includes your day-to-day IT services. It also includes licensing and maintenance for software and hardware. That's one area that tends to be affected by increases to overall costs, especially software as a service. Staff support, it includes our geodata team and our telecom team, as well as security, project management. That's all in there. And then the two reserve funds we have are for infrastructure reserves, which is replacement of things like our servers, our firewalls. We have 31 buildings now. That's a lot of equipment in those buildings. The PCs are now on a six-year replacement plan. We did that last year. I'm sorry, I forgot to update that, to help decrease costs. Our backup system, all the court video, everything that we have to replace at some point is we save for in this infrastructure reserve. And then the application reserve was created to collect money to replace large applications because the cost was very prohibitive. You tried to do it the year you needed it. So total, and this is my total impact, the general fund went down by 1.4%. All the other funds, 2.3%. Total, a decrease of 1.4%. So our 5250, again, is our services that we provide. The costs are allocated by a number of different factors depending on what it is. It could be by user, how much each office or department uses it, the number of endpoints that we have. Sometimes it's percentage of county budget. It's kind of, each item has kind of its own calculation. Geo data is based on usage, and telecom is allocated by desk phone, and there's a pass-through cost included that for mobile phones. So we put it in here so that offices and departments can account for it in their budget. But we pay the bill every month and then we just collect the money back from them every month. So this is a guess on what their telephone service, cell phones will cost them each year so they can budget. So drivers of our cost differences, of course last year we did those cost cutting measures that we did to reduce annual maintenance spending. It went down from 6.9 million to 6.7 million for the maintenance and licensing costs that we paid. Our cell phone costs are, we put an increase in there every year because we just don't know. So it went up by 1.6%, but that is a guess. That's the pass-through cost. If people aren't using their phones or not getting new phones, then that cost will go down. We moved some of the costs to the public safety sales tax. And this includes adding that Baker-Curley contract, the Oracle funding that was approved at the end of last year. This includes adding that into our costs. So we eliminated Amanda. We won't be paying for that in 2027. And there's other little things that we've eliminated along the way, looking to find efficiencies where we can. Our infrastructure reserve fund is allocated by endpoint. So if it's a laptop, a desktop, a tablet, the number of those endpoints that are in each office and department is how this cost is allocated. Our external cost of purchasing and replacing hardware is increasing. There's a shortage of computer chips that you probably have all heard about. It's causing a 30% to 40% increase in hardware costs. Estimating, this is an estimate of what we will spend, it's a 5.4% increase. We've extended the life of some of our replacement, everything we added at least a year or two, so every server, every firewall, we've added a year to the life to try and help with cost savings. And our IT application reserve fund, We collect money, like I said, to replace the large applications, and we extended the reimbursement rate for collection of the replacements in order to cut down the annual cost for this fund.

And Sheri, can you explain what Amanda is? It's not a person.

It's Permit Tracking System. It's our Permit Tracking System. It's named Amanda, or they call it Asics. But because we will no longer be able to use that, in after October of this year, I didn't include it in 2027 rates.

So ready to go set the new ones ready to go.

It will be getting there.

It's getting there. I was gonna say it's foreshadowing that the Acela project is moving forward and their departments are engaged in getting it ready.

They are. They're very engaged. Yes. Any other questions?

for the slides, the way you have the allocation, because that was always a big source of questions in previous briefings, you know, and Robin would have to explain. I mean, this is very succinct way to let us know how these different, because they're all different, right?

They're all different.

All these different rates have a different way of calculating who pays what, and that's, it creates this incredibly complex tapestry that you've captured pretty succinctly in the slides, I think.

Go slow, gonna go fast.

Well, good afternoon. Tara Wickline, Compensation and Benefits Manager. Here with me is Brian Bishop, our Risk and Safety Manager. Here to talk about the HR restricted funds and our internal service rate. So, HR is also obviously a department that provides services throughout the county to all the other offices and departments. We provide services for employee relations, payroll, benefits, unemployment workers' comp, risk and safety. And the cost for those internal services are recovered through these rates that are charged to the customers. So how are rates developed in HR? There's a few different ways depending on the fund. So we have our benefits fund. This fund pays for the benefits staff that handle all of the compensation, benefits, payroll, all personnel actions that affect employees and their pay. Basically anything that is going to affect someone's paycheck is handled by the staff that is supported by the benefits fund. The rates for the benefits fund are just billed out by FTE, because essentially more employees means more work for that staff. So it's by FTE by department. The lead buyout fund is a fairly new fund that's been around for maybe three or four years now. That was established to assist offices and departments with leave cash outs when employees leave to help mitigate. Sometimes they're pretty large amounts when someone has a maximum lead balance. It currently pays for 25% of the cash outs when an employee retires. So we're not assisting if someone just leaves, but when they retire, those are, they tend to be larger cash outs because there's an additional cash out of sick pay or an extra cash out of alternative leave when someone retires versus separating. That fund is billed out also by, it's a percentage of salaries with that one. So it's currently 0.35% of salaries. And we essentially take what's budgeted for salaries for each office and department, 0.35% of that, and then that's the rate that gets billed out to them.

Has that been covering the number of?

Yes, actually it's getting pretty healthy. And I think we've had a couple super quick conversations in the past about potentially raising the amount that is paid out of it. We're finding that, especially for longer term employees, we're seeing a lot of people actually using their leave before they truly retire and they'll be on leave for three or four months, which means this fund isn't paying for that cash out. So that's something that maybe we need to bring to the board at some point and either increase what we're paying for retirements or open it up to pay a portion of leave for all separations.

This one was created back in, was it 2022 or 2023?

It was one of those, I think maybe 22.

And it was because of after COVID, we had an increase in retirements where office and departments were struggling to kind of cover that piece. And so the commissioner is kind of in an effort to help out created this fund. So that way offices would have to leave vacancies. Is that correct? Commissioner answer? It was, it was, I'm remembering the treasurer's office is a really good example where you would have to leave a vacancy for a long period of time before, you know, in order to pay that kind of buyout. And then,

Filled that position and so it was really it was really focused on the small offices Because they were the ones that just I mean everybody but they were the ones that especially couldn't Couldn't handle some of the long-term retirements that they were facing Two employees leave balances could For a small officer department could create the dynamic or they're over budget if they don't have any They don't have enough time in the rest of the year to make that those dollars up through keeping the position vacant.

I

So it was a great idea that the board put this in place.

Very popular fund. And now I'll hand it over to Brian for the risk.

All right. Brian Bishop, Risk and Safety Manager. The risk fund rates are developed using really four key units or inputs. One is the historical premiums we've paid in the past and then putting an anticipated increase over the next year. that on the next slide. We look at previous claim costs, current claims anticipated for payments in 2027. As you know, claims take a long time to go through closure. There's lawsuits and jury trials. Those can extend out over multiple years. So we anticipate claim payments for 2027 based on current claims that we know of today. On the flip side, we have incurred but not reported claims. So these IBNR claims are really, the incident has occurred, but we just don't know about it yet. So you could have an incident that occurred at the jail, but the lawsuit or the claim doesn't come in for a year or two because the attorneys are building up their case. So we have the IBNR reported claims. A good example of that is probably the juvenile detention claims that are coming in. that's how the rates are developed for the risk fund. They are allocated out to each office and department, primarily based on number of FTEs and those offices and departments. And then we have a split 80-20 where the general liability portion of risk is a portion out based on 80% of FTEs and then how many claim payouts or lawsuits you have. That's going to be a 20% surcharge, so we If there's a department or office that has more claims or lawsuits than another, they're getting hit with a kind of a 20% surcharge on that. So kind of just like the car insurance, if you wreck your car a lot, your rates are gonna go up.

Can I ask a follow up on that? So like when we settle out for a case, right, is that charge, you know, to an individual officer or is it kind of just rated out through for all the offices and departments?

That full amount of settlement is paid out of the risk fund, and then we're capturing whatever year that that was paid out or fell in here.

And those rates are the ones that increase, and then that's kind of what's like charged out to you. Right, that's in the surcharge. Okay.

So the surcharge is like, it's just like a trigger point. You either get the 20% or you don't. Like it's not prorated by, you know, okay, share probably has the most claims because it's the kind of work they do, and then it's like a gradation. You're saying that like, you go across the line and you get the 20%?

I think I'm understanding your question.

Does somebody get 15%? Somebody get 10%?

Because they have more than the lowest amount. Do you get it or you don't get it? Correct. If you have no claims, you do not have to search. If you have any claims, you get 20%. or claims per FTE or something like that? I don't know, you're just. The FTE is gonna be captured in the FTE base rate, which is 80% of this. So the other 20% is gonna be based on your surcharge amount of claims. So no, not prorated. I don't. We could look into that. We are looking in deeply into the cost allocation of our risk fund service rates right now and doing a study on that to make sure that we're being as equitable as we can. I know you probably, yeah, I'm sure it can't get super granular

If you wanted to, but I mean, it would be... There's a level of effort associated with that granularity. It would make sense to me that there might be more than one category, right? Like high and low and... Maybe. I mean, I think that that'll be, you know, we're having it assessed based off the best practices. So we've got kind of the top of the game category. consultant in in-house looking at our rates looking at central service rates IT rates risk so is there a naughty list I guess there's a naughtier

Yeah, just like workers' comp and just like all claims, you have a higher risk based on the work you do. All of us here in the office pay a very low workers' comp rate because Labor and Industries doesn't expect us to have many claims. Whereas in the Sheriff and Public Works and others who are out in the field, Labor and Industries expects you to have a certain level of claim costs, so your rates are set here.

Yeah, I would suspect it has to be a baseline. A typical sheriff's office will have, you know, 10 claims per, but we've got 20.

That would be where you'd catch this tension. And the liability landscape can change, as it did recently with juvenile detention claims. Before, you had a certain statute of limitations, which has now expanded greatly. So in the past, juvenile detention liability was very low, almost insignificant. Over the past two years, you'll see on the next slide, we've actually put in reserved for the juvenile detention claims anticipated. Because they expanded the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations. It's essentially expanded to your lifetime.

And our insurance went up because of that.

And there are many counties that are being. We're not alone. Actually, we're. Well, I won't. Yeah. I would. We're one.

It's affecting a lot of counties in the state, big time. Some to greater degrees.

I just got pulled into the tort reform subcommittee for WSAC, so I'm excited.

We're excited you are doing that. All right, so for 2027, our proposal for the benefits fund is an increase of roughly 4%, $15,000. Again, that's billed out by FTE countywide. And then for the lead buyout fund, we're proposing to leave that at status quo of what was adopted for 2027 and have no increase.

I'm back?

Yep.

Okay, mine's again gonna be more convoluted than the rest. As you can see, the adopted 2027 rates and other rates, our total change is 546,005% increase. I do want to back up. As we're here in June of 2026, the adopted 2027 rates were essentially calculated by risk in June of 25. And then maybe reassessed or we recalculated in October of 25 once we got the premiums. Because we're here in June, we do not get our actual premiums from our risk pool until October of 2026. So I'm giving you rates here. I don't even know what the insurance costs will be. So we anticipate a increase each year based on our knowledge of claim payments, based on our knowledge of historical premiums. What we don't know is claim payments or lawsuits, jury verdicts that will occur from now to October, which could be greatly inflated more than what I showed here. Since we're in a pool, our pool pays out claims. I don't know what our pool will pay out with the other 23 counties from now to October. from now till then, which then puts us on notice with the Office of Risk Management because we could be insolvent with our reserve fund. So from now to October, the pool could have claim payments that I don't know about, and then we are assessed an increase from the risk pool because the reserve fund was depleted too low. That happened actually last year, so I just want to put that kind of caveat out here now. We do our best, we talk with our brokers to get the lay of the land, and what are they hearing from our reinsurers, and then also ultimately what is our broker's ability to negotiate with our reinsurers in October to give us our final rates. We too have kind of a surcharge based on the amount of claims we have, so I don't know how we will fit within the pool with that. I can't say our juvenile detention claims are I guess pro-rated, per capita, our size of county, we're lower on the juvenile detention claims than other counties. So we're fortunate there. I know, I don't know. Some of the drivers in the cost difference for the 5% change, other than what I just told you, were an increased number of FTEs, which kind of drive that 80% function. And as I said, I put in an established reserve for the juvenile detention claims.

Since we've had a briefing to the board on tort status stuff, you're referencing some new claims. Is that something we'll be hearing about in due course?

If we are coming to you for settlement authority, yes, we'll be in an executive session and need to brief you on some claims. those claims you might be in question about right now a few weeks ago we got a full list of current pending that was in our that's probably fairly it's accurate from what i gave you just a few weeks ago there i can tell you there have been no new large lawsuits that have hit our desk since then so kind of what you have is where we're at right now there was a

It's kind of off topic, but that one case that we've got that's up on Fish Report, I think it's called, or whatever, the lawyer, who I see in other contexts, was saying that there was some kind of argument or decision or something happened in that case recently.

Or maybe a decision's pending or something. There are some things in motion. I could come to you in executive session. I'll talk about that in a different session.

brought up i think commissioner klaus and i were talking and there was a question about all of these these settlements they have to come before the board for a final settlement there's no there's never going to be any settlement agreements that the board doesn't know about or hasn't authorized is that correct we have a deductible up to 250 000

if we have paid costs at 250,000, there would be no request of authority from the board because we're not asking for any additional funds. So we wouldn't be asking for any authority over what we've already paid. Does that make sense? So to answer your question, yes, there could be a settlement that did not come before the board because paid costs were already over 250,000. Okay. If we need to talk offline or change that process, we can't count before the board on every.

Maybe we should talk offline with Maria because I believe that Maria's perspective was a little bit different, but maybe there's something we can just reconcile and get that information over. Okay.

I don't know of any settlements in my tenure here that we haven't come to you that you don't know about.

Okay. So you wouldn't, you would say that there have been none that we wouldn't know about, but you're saying that you're also saying that maybe there could be in the future and we can suss out what that.

I would say there are settlements, um, you don't know about because we have authority up to 50,000, which is a board resolution. give the risk management committee authority up to 50,000. So those would definitely be settled without coming to the board.

And those are matters in which like that, you know, it's staff time and it's like prosecutor time, like all those, like that's the 50,000 layout of like, okay. And then with the other matters, I think where the question is kind of phrased incorrectly, right? When the authority is kind of already given because we have that 250,000 limit. But I think kind of what Commissioner Fournier is getting at is, you know, you usually come to the board and fill the board in on like, this is kind of where we're going to proceed. And whether we're going to go either in one direction or, you know, the settlement route. And so that's, Brian is usually not here saying like, can you give me authority for this? It's just more of an update of this is kind of the path that we've laid out and we can do this or we can, if the Board does not want to do that, we can follow in this direction. So the authority's already there. Usually when Brian is asking for that authority is for the larger amount of 250,000.

I could say we haven't settled anything over 50,000 without the Board knowing.

Yeah.

Is that clear or better?

I think it may be good if the board has more detailed questions that we could work with Marie and Brian to have an executive or closed session just to answer those questions so that we're not unintentionally revealing any information that could be considered confidential.

Ron, you have your choice. You can manage the clicker or you can have me do it for you. Either way. Oh, okay. Do you have a preference? Oh, you can do it. All right.

Sounds the easiest thing to do.

All right, I'll do my best.

Yeah. Good afternoon, Board of County Commissioners, CAO, Assistant CAOs, and everyone else. Brandon said that if you're going to present to the Board of County Commissioners, the least you can do is show up for the presentations. So I am just not a disembodied head. Good to hear, right? Yeah, I'm the one presenting the cosplay because nobody likes to get too close to that. And it's a little difficult to understand. But we'll try our best here. So we're going to look at just two slides primarily and use that to kind of go through most of that. Again, 2027. for the budget, the cost plan that we'll be building, $8.6 million. So that's 2% more than what it was in the prior year. So that $8.6 million, that is, it's not a gargantuan amount of money. But it's not peanuts either. It is still something. So if you took property taxes, that's your primary source of funding for the general fund. And then it's sales taxes. And then you have grants. This should be your fourth largest source of funds, that $8.6 million. When it comes to reliable funding, I would say property taxes is the most reliable. And then I'd say this is number two, because this stays pretty much the same. It kind of increases a little, decreases a little, but you can pretty much rely on that number. It's real money coming into the general fund. It's what we bill other funds for services that are provided to them through the general fund. That's an increase of $161,000. 722, and like I said, it's 2%. Now, it's just a COLA increase. So it's not an updated plan. We didn't want to do this. We wanted to update the plan. Update the plan in what it required conversion to our new financial system. Because a lot of the allocation factors, how we build this stuff out, comes from the financial system. So we're unable to do that. I mean, it came down to, we just didn't have time. So it came down to like an adverse opinion on our financials or doing a COLA increase. So we decided to do a COLA increase and then do a true up. later on once we were able to complete the plan later this year. So the good news is we were able to get our 2024 statements done. We got a clean opinion. I don't know if you know that. So 2024 statements, 340 days late, where we weren't able to close the system, had to prepare it partially outside the system for capital assets where we lose our primary person that's led this effort every year darren bennett we're still able to get a clean opinion so i mean what are the odds uh so uh kind of the good news is there's still good news and bad news the good news is is that even though it's 340 days late it's not a finding I thought it would be. So we have no findings on the statements. There was a management letter, and there's three things in the management letter. So now kind of the bad news is we still are way behind for timely financial statements. So the reason why I'm just bringing all this up is it involves the process. So we'll be starting our 2025 statements. Normally we're done with those by this time. We'll be starting them, or just all our year-end processes, closing out, trying to get that done now, and then we'll also be trying to update the cost plan for later on this year, and then doing a true-up, and I'll say a couple other things about that later on. So, yeah, so, did I do this slide before? That one, yeah. And so we're gonna look at this just a little. So, It's the one thing in there is really not a rate plan. I kind of need to change that. It's a reimbursement plan. So to explain the cost plan, you spend money out of the general fund. And then you have stuff you should be reimbursed for, like financial services. So you can either do a cost reimbursement, not pay it, or not bill it. You can do a cost reimbursement. or you can put it in an internal service. And one of the problems with a cost plan is a cost plan is difficult to understand. I mean, so it includes all these services. We just bill them after the year's all over. And so it's, if I mention equipment rental, we kind of know what that is. Okay, we got cars you rent. You've got to replace risk management. You know what that is. You've got liabilities, litigation. You kind of know what that is. What are the reserves? If I mention the general fund cost plan, What is that? It's a big black box. And you don't know what's in that big black box unless I tell you what's in that big black box. So that's one of the disadvantages of a cost plan. You can get around that by putting it in an internal service fund. So you can have a financial services, internal service fund that pays for financial services where we bill our stuff out. You know what that is. You can have an HR internal service fund. You can have one for PAO civil funds. But then that's more expensive. You need more accountants. You've got to set up rates. You've got to set up funds. You have to fund the cash balance. So this is administratively cheap. That's why it's usually done this way. And then you're left with the problem of trying to explain what's going on in the cost plan. Another difference is we're not managing anything in the auditor's office. Well, we manage stuff. we're not managing the cost plan. So when it comes to your risk management, HR actually manages that risk management function. When it comes to equipment rental, you have central services managing that. We just are coming up with a way to actually bill those costs out for the Board of County Commissioners. And the other thing I'd like to point out is like, It used to be managed by Public Works. Now it's in Central Services. Okay, so I thought it was fairly well managed in Public Works, and I think it's pretty well managed in Central Services. What's my point? My point is you can't do that with the cost plan. The cost plan is a uniquely board function, and it has to stay with the board. You're dealing with how you spend and get reimbursed for your costs and your general funding. That can't be delegated. And then I'll say a little bit more about that. So when it comes to these services, I divide them into kind of three areas. One is kind of standard HR accounting. Could put PAO civil in there too. You know, stuff that's really internal. Then you get into your non-standard, which would be like BOCC. You guys, we charge you out the cost plan. And then the assessor to some funds, okay? And they're kind of non-standard. They're still, you see that done in a lot of cost plans, but they can be left out too because they can consider those to be statutory duties outside a service reimbursement process. And then you have the strange ones. We have in our plan planning and emergency services. And they were added about, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago. WHEN THOSE, THEY USED TO BE OUTSIDE THE GENERAL FUND, AND WHEN THEY WERE MOVED TO THE GENERAL FUND, ROBIN CAMPBELL WORKED WITH US TO COME UP WITH A PLAN TO ALLOCATE THOSE SERVICES OUT. PROCESS FOR DOING THAT WORKED WITH THE BOARD. THE BOARD, YOU KNOW, FIRST OF ALL, YOU HAVE TO DETERMINE WHETHER IT'S INTERNAL OR AN EXTERNAL SERVICE. OKAY, SO THAT DECISION WAS MADE. But that was all done with Robin. So one of the things we needed is Robin's replacement. And that's Jennifer. So she's...

I didn't sign on for that one, Ron.

You didn't? Well, we need a knowledgeable person because it's your plan. So there has to be a... And you are doing that. I mean, you are a... We need someone within the... IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE AN EXPERT, BUT IT HAS TO BE KNOWLEDGEABLE. SO IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION ON, YOU KNOW, WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. ARE THERE ANY OTHER THINGS THAT CAN BE ALLOCATED OUT IN THAT PLAN? WHAT FUNDS ARE WE CHARGING FOR THE ASSESSOR'S OFFICE? I MEAN, WHERE DOES THAT MONEY COME FROM? SO THE WAY YOU EXERT YOUR over this plan is through someone like that, because you're not really going to be able to do it in a 20-minute presentation. And by the way, I've done this a few years. We used to have fairly difficult, sometimes we would have difficult meetings with the board. We would discuss this and we'd get done. And it seemed like they knew less than when we started.

could have been me. So, you know, every year, like third, like my third year, I was like, I finally, like, it's like, it's like I had an epiphany and I was, I remember you were on zoom and I was like, I got it, Ron. I got it. It was literally like my third time through that. I could tell by your questions. I could forget, but I could figure out exactly what this was about. I can tell by your questions. You got it.

So, uh, so, uh, but that kind of changed with Robin. She was kind of difficult to work with sometimes, but, uh, I mean, she made a world of difference. I mean, because You have to be, it's your plan. So and then when I show up, the other problem is is when I show up for this, like when you work with ER&R, you most probably have a couple board briefings with them. You rent their equipment.

Same with risk management.

Yeah.

Thank you. I think you're bringing up some good points. And I think our assistant county manager Jennifer I didn't know that honor was bestowed upon you But it is a conversation that we've been having about just like we're doing the service rates with a consultant yeah, I think there's an opportunity for us to Take a look at an additional contract potentially with consultants and it's always an opportunity as we're learning, even in the context of RHC with fresh eyes, remember those conversations, to take a look at how this comes together and what's the best practices and melding the history of some of this to our current practice and see what a path forward looks like.

Yeah, I'd love to see that. I'd really be curious. I don't think there's anything else we can build out with a couple of exceptions, but which I'll talk about.

Okay.

So, so, but I think we've covered everything. I would love to have somebody come in, do a review of the general fund and see if we've missed anything. That'd be worth some money, I think. So now there's a lot more than that in terms of, I think, their study, but I would actually look forward to that. Yeah. And, you know, we got to have, so I think it's Jennifer. I mean, I've worked with, it could be somebody else, but. Don't point at me, Ron. It's not Jennifer in some way.

So, yeah. Fair.

I got it. You got it? Okay, cool. So. Yeah, so that is... Are we good on this one?

Or did you need to go through... Are we on to the next slide?

We can go through the rest pretty quick because I think I've said most of what I... Oh, the other thing, though, is like when you do... I can't say that. When you do ER and R, you must probably have a couple of briefings, you know, that kind of thing. Same thing with risk management. The only time you hear about the cost plan now and then you don't hear about it for another year yes seriously how well can you understand something in a 20-minute presentation so again that's why if you have a knowledge expert inside your office where you can follow up with questions You can resolve issues you're thinking about. You can have things explained you don't understand. Where we can get direction from the board on what you're, if you have any particular objectives or things you want us to look at, that's how you do that. That's my point, so. Yeah, okay. Next slide. OCAS. Okay, just the last one. So the cost plan is full cost. So we've identified everything in the general fund that we think we can bill out, and we're billing all the funds that we can legally bill. So if there's a fund that can't pay, what they're supposed to do is they're supposed to go in front of the board. Okay. And, and say, we, can we get a subsidy? And, uh, that's kind of how, what it states the policy, but it's not really how it works. I mean, how it works is like, uh, with Robin, Robin would come in and say, don't build this fund anymore. Uh, and the board doesn't want it. So, okay. So we, we kind of, again, from that key, not least person in your office, we kind of get direction. So instead of, Them actually coming to you and asking for money, we frequently get that indirectly is how it's, I think it's how it's happened with the funds that we have not billed. So, yeah, let's see. Okay, next slide. So the only thing I'd like to emphasize on this one is those detailed statements. So with a cost plan, it's hard to understand. It's hard for you to understand. You only hear about once a year. Well, we build funds. It's hard for them to understand too. So the statements that we send out are really key because they have questions. I mean, the money's coming out of their fund. So they want to know what's this for? Why did it change? What's going on? So we got to be able to explain that. So in these statements, we kind of list all that out and try to reduce the phone calls. It's concern that naturally arises. If there's any kind of major change, we note the reason at the bottom of the statement. So that seems to pretty well have, The standard process, this cost plan's been done for 30 years, a long time, well established. One thing I like about Thurston County is the departments work well together. They always have. They communicate well, they work well. So once we're able to explain it to them, they understand it, they're willing to pay it. So that's always a plus. Okay, next slide. Okay, so before we go to the next table, at this point I usually just point out that it's a full cost. It's been dialed up to full cost. So again, all these decisions have been made by your predecessors on billing out a full cost plan. So it usually ends like that and then What we do is we present a couple tables, just one table this time, and then it's over for questions and answers. The thing that's changed here are a couple things. Number one is the true-up, the COLA increase. So I never thought about this until, I don't know, a day or two ago. So you have a general fund budget crisis right now. We've had two years of 2% increases in the cost plan. So on the average, over the last 16 years, it's been five. So I'm willing to bet that when we do a true-up, it's more money. So there's going to be a question of how you want to handle that and how you want to treat that. On the average, I'm not predicting anything, but if you just assume 5% versus 2%, it's about half a million. So we will work with Jennifer. We'll present that to her, and she will coordinate that with you when we get that done later this year. And then one other thing that I need to bring up now, because of the general fund budget crisis, is it's a billing change, a change I made a few years ago. so because i was getting a lot of heat uh it deal with with public health uh doing uh billing them certain costs uh but uh and the catch would be you could get another annual close to half million dollars in the general fund but it would come from public health but uh so that's another thing i will we'll go over with jennifer And then she can coordinate that issue. We'll know how much once we've Updated the cost plan the true up will be a one-time increase But that change with public health would be annual So it'd be an annual increase of up to about half million. So I will we will yeah run both those by her and she will coordinate that with you as required. So the last table, you can see the total there, eight point, normally I have two tables. I have one on cost centers. We haven't updated the cost. So we just increased the billing. So you can see Public Works pays, whatever that says, what does that say in there, two million? the next one is 1.2 it's behind you behind you if you turn around it's on the wall it's clearer back here clear back here 2.8 oh it is yeah yeah see 2027 cost they don't make this make a lot of sense it's 26 27 26 and change and again all we're doing is Oh, thank you. Increasing the amounts by 2%. So the point of the table is just to show you the relative share of who's paying. Primarily Public Works. Central Services pays a lot. Congratulations. Public Health pays quite a bit too. CPED. By the way, another reason why we need a key person from the board is they're complaining about what they're paying. So I say it's the board's plan. So if it comes to, we come under a lot of heat, we want to have somebody we can go back to and run that through you and so forth and so on. Apparently they're feeling the heat too, CPED. So, solid waste. I wish I could charge them everything, but I can't do it. So it's, I mean, you can only charge them so much. So stormwater, many go in. Throw on, so that's 8.6. Bottom line.

So what's the $15 million represent down here in the very bottom quarter? Is that a mistake?

Which one?

Under general and agency funds?

This. So good question. This is, we built this out of the general fund. So we, the general fund pays. Got it? So this is, these are costs charged through the general fund. So, and we can't bill that because we'd just be billing ourselves because we're paying it out of the general fund. And agency funds, primarily assessor. Thank you for asking that, Commissioner. We can't bill agency funds. You can only bill agency funds through interlocal agreement. So that's what that is. We have $15 million that is, you really can't, wouldn't make any sense of billing out. Part of the cost pool, the service cost pool, is just whatever services, cost of services we provide, to the general fund and to agency funds, it's just.

So it's 20, so the amount of stuff that's billable is 24.4, but 8.6 is coming from other funds, so it's a net add to the general fund. And that's why we don't. That's just like a wash, because it would just be circling in the same fund.

Right, but how, why the placeholder, why the zero in 2027 and, Oh, because it's an actual right now in 2026. I get it.

Oh, the reason for that is because, no, I mean, so when we, oh, yeah, good question.

Some questions are good for me, you know.

Because we've had three agencies that we provide services to through the auditor's office. Regional planning, Area Agency on Aging, and the Air Pollution Control Agency. We don't do it anymore. The last one is, I think, regional planning. And so, I mean, that's the, we provide them payroll, some, I think, information system stuff, and that's all ending. They're all going to their own systems. So that is going away. It's now zero.

So my takeaway from this presentation is... Yeah, that's my takeaway, too.

It's good to know. I've been enlightened, so it's awesome.

All right, any other questions for Rob? Any other questions, yeah.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

This is where we do a motion. I'm asking.

There's one item that our... Is there more? Maria was not free during the presentation. Okay. Maybe she could clarify the question that was asked by Commissioner Fournier.

I'm going to join online. Okay. We need the motion. I'll wait. That won't change the motion at all.

I move to direct staff to develop proposed midterm budget with the rates as presented.

Second. Motion and second to direct staff to develop proposed budget with rates presented. Discussion on the motion. Call the roll on it. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So that's that piece, but let's circle back to Maria. Welcome, Maria.

Good afternoon, commissioners. I wasn't able to be here during our presentation, but I understand there was procedural question around settlements, and so I wanted to provide the context of, you know, a claim has to come in, and up to $50,000 we can settle without board approval, but that involves HR risk, it involves a representative from the civil division of the prosecutor's office, as well as a representative of the risk, the risk pool. So anything above 50,000, we do come before the board to ask authority for that. And I think the way that I understood it, it implied that we are able to settle cases up to $250,000, but that's not correct. The board always has to be informed. We go into executive session, and then we get authority from you all. So with that, are there any additional procedural questions? And the board is aware of claims filed. You've asked for reports on that, and we do get those to you on a routine basis.

So any settlement above 50,000, I'm going to repeat, Commissioner Grant, because it's pretty important. Any settlement above 50,000 would come before the board for knowledge. And then people who owe 50,000, there is authority, but it involves a multi-stakeholder with a prosecuting attorney involved, risk pool, and HR.

Absolutely, yeah. So I just wanted to clarify procedure.

I appreciate that, because that sounded more in line with what my understanding was.

And that's delegated in a resolution that was referenced by?

There's a, it's like a contract that we have with the risk pool. So it's all laid out in there. So if anyone's interested, we'd be able to get that for you. And if you have any further questions, I would be glad to meet and discuss with you any additional details. Thanks for explaining that. Okay. Thank you, Maria.

All right, that's good.

Yeah. Before we move on from the internal service rates conversation, something I've been bringing up for kind of the last couple of years and something that I will bring up again. You know, especially now that we are kind of working with a consultant, you know, one of the things that I know Department of Commerce or the state does, and I know other agencies across the state do, is kind of this any time that a position is approved in other places, making sure that there is kind of that equity with IT, HR, central services and financial services. Because what we've seen, right, and our HR and central services and IT and financial services have been great in trying to keep up, but as our employees have grown, we haven't kept up with the growth in those departments. And sometimes as we're asking for different items or why are they not doing this or doing that, right? THINKING BACK TO THOSE POSITIONS JUST HAVEN'T BEEN ADDED. AND SO I BELIEVE THAT, YOU KNOW, THAT IS ALSO SOMETHING THAT, YOU KNOW, IF WE CAN HAVE SOMEONE LOOK AT, I WOULD AGAIN JUST ADVOCATE FOR THAT, MAKING SURE THERE IS THAT PARITY AND MAKING SURE THAT THOSE SERVICES ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH OUR INTERNAL SERVICE OFFICES.

Next up is item three, executive session, RCW 4231-10-1B, to consider the selection of a site or acquisition of real estate by lease or purchase when public knowledge regarding such consideration would cause a likelihood of increased price. 30 minutes, is that the estimation? I think maybe we can start with 15. Let's start with 15 and we can extend if needed. Board action may follow. It's 2-22, will be an executive session until 2-37. Okay, it's 2.37. We've completed the executive session. No legislative action is formal, is following. And thank you to Central Services team for that update. We're gonna move on to commissioner items. We have reports on external committees, and then we'll go to anything else that we, I know we have a couple things teed up. Anyone have an external committee report they'd like to share?

Just got back from the EDC board meeting. It was a great meeting. We had a presentation from the president of Uline, which is a, I mean, I'm sure everybody's familiar with Uline. They're in Lacey. They've got like a million square foot warehouse where they employ a lot of people. He shared with us that their starting salary is $27 an hour, which is pretty good for a for jobs like that, and I was asked what are some of the things that he is struggling with as an employer in Thurston County. and what attracted them to Thurston County, because they're a big company that started in Chicago something like 30 years ago. He said that they were attracted to Thurston County around, I wanna say like 10 years ago, because it's located equal distance between Portland and Seattle, which is their major hubs. So they were initially looking at either Marysville or Lacey, because Marysville is right in between Seattle and Vancouver. And they landed on Lacey because of housing costs and livability. And he said that's not really the case anymore. They would probably still choose Lacey if they were evaluating that. Now, because marysville is even more expensive, but 1 of their major difficulties is his housing for employees. So, even though they pay 27 dollars an hour, that's still a difficult. It's still a difficult proposition for young people to get into a house out of an apartment. So he said that a lot of their younger employees are moving further away. And then it's a strain for them to be able to drive like from Shelton to get to work. And then that's kind of pulling employees away. So they came here because of low housing costs. They said the low housing costs don't exist anymore. The difficulties that they're having now are finding employees and retaining employees. And yeah. Other than that, it was a good presentation. He talked a lot about bullfrogs, which is kind of funny. He said that this is just a silly story. And I guess I'm just taking up everybody's time. But he had a really cool story about one of the retention ponds that became invaded with invasive bullfrogs. So then to get rid of the bullfrogs, they had to put fish. And they put in a bunch of catfish. And they put in a bunch of bass to manage the bullfrog population. And then came the otters to eat all the fish. Yeah, so I don't know, fun story.

Anyone else, the external committee?

Nope, okay. So commissioner items, commissioner Klaus, you brought forward the TRL related statement or letter. I don't know if you want to say more about it. I gave you, so you were, I appreciate you were wanting to be kind of respectful of the work that I'm trying to do with the other counties while we're kind of obviously out of alignment with at least one of them on this particular issue. So my suggestion, I really liked the content of the letter that you provided, Mike. was to put it in the form of a statement rather than kind of removing the language that was directing the other county commissioners to do X, Y, or Z, but just sort of a statement of our position. And I made a set of changes, an additional one that I thought was good. I shared that with you earlier. So I think, sounds like, I don't know, I don't know where Commissioner Grant and Commissioner Forney are. Sounds like three of us might be close to something that we are in agreement on, but Commissioner Grant's thumbs is up.

Again, I defer to you as the person we appointed as the delegate to work with TRL. So however, I wouldn't want to do anything that interfered with the work that you're already doing.

So, and it may you want to do I'm not going to say it's not, but I think I feel strongly about about it. And I know commissioner class does because she brought this forward and I. I'm willing to take that risk of interfering as long as, I don't need to tell the other commissioners what to do, but I think our community, as I said earlier, there's been so many aspects of this TRL crisis, if we call it that, that we haven't been able to speak to the community about because we're working through our trustee or we're working through labor issue, we're working through, you know, things that we're not actually in direct control over or don't have direct knowledge of. So this is something where I think we could sort of let the community know that we're working on this issue and we have a strong opinion about this particular sub-issue. not to say that we're not gonna work with the other counties because it's a five-county system and we have a lot of things that I think we can accomplish collectively where we are in alignment, and I'll keep working on that, but I don't see any problem. I talked to our trustee, for example, yesterday. Her intent is to make a statement very much in line with this at tonight's meeting. So I think whether we did this or not, people are gonna hear it from Thurston County tonight through our trustee.

appropriate yeah so i mean i don't have any i don't have any problem backfilling that with commissioner support i think this issue highlights the some of the bigger issues that we have with how t it's it's the issue is how trl is set And I think when it was set up 60 years ago, 70 years ago, whatever, it might have been a system that made more sense, but as our counties have grown, and I think that there's issues with the structure and how it's built, and you've got different visions and different values in the various counties, but on the regional well, now we only have one voice, but we have two sitting at the table, that's still a minority, of the board, and so our values aren't necessarily gonna be reflected because you've got other counties that are making decisions on what TRL's policies are gonna be, and meanwhile, Thurston County funds the majority of the library system, so I think that there's systemic issues that are a problem when we are funding the majority of the library, but our values aren't being reflected in the organization.

And it creates a delicacy specifically right now that I think we've all been mindful of because in a fully staffed Board of Trustees, we're still minority of what we contribute financially and population-wise for the reason you said. We don't even have that voice. One of the at-large seats is Lewis County has two seats. They seem to be the most strongly in favour of this policy that we don't agree with, and they've got two seats. And the other three members, my understanding is, would not support this kind of policy. But we're on very precarious and that's why I think framing this as a statement rather than a directive can, because we don't, we really don't want to, we lack the leverage we should have.

Yeah, we have no, we're contributing the most financially, but we have no leverage over how that's done. There should be some kind of weighted voting or something to, you know, I don't know.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Messer, for kind of, talking with me through kind of like my concerns and I had the similar concerns to what you did in terms of sending a letter to commissioners and to different counties. I'm more comfortable with a statement. And, you know, if my additional changes is accepted, I would be on board with signing it. And just because, you know, for me, the letter knowing that It's been conversations between all the commissioners or all the chairs from the different counties have been going well and you're finally starting to get somewhere. I just wouldn't want, especially because the Lewis Board of County Commissioners has come out in support of their trustees and that statement, but there are other, major issues with our library system too, right? Whether, you know, there's different items. And I think, you know, I've sent letters to the Board of Trustees before kind of with my thoughts on kind of the process. And that letter was for me individually. And, you know, different items. And I think that that was the letter that you brought forward to all the individual commissioners. And, you know, there's been a lot of discussions about the different items. But, you know, I think those in conversations are important too. And so if they feel, I think just things can just go sideways very easily. And like you mentioned, we are in the minority on the trustee level and, and And so as a statement and kind of with those changes that you have included, I would be comfortable.

So the first four paragraphs are pretty much Commissioner Klaus's verbatim. And then the only difference was on the last paragraph, Commissioner Mejia's was basically just more simple. We affirm the Timberland Regional Library System exists to serve all members of our community without exception. Commissioner Claus had had one that said, Thurston County Board of County Commissioners calls upon TRL's Board of Trustees and leadership to formally reaffirm the ALA Library Bill of Rights as binding policy, explicitly reject the proposals contained in Mr. Mickey's document, and affirm that the library system exists to serve all members. So if the simpler version can get five signatures on it, you know, I think that would be powerful. And I mean, that would be my preference if that's kind of a sticking point for you, Commissioner Mejia, but Who's your class?

Yeah, I was just curious. And I brought clean copies since the one we received was the one that had your notes on it. Should I give this to Amy or is it okay if I pass these around? Okay. And then this has that paragraph you just read on the bottom. You have one, Ty, right? I have it, yeah. The two of you. And then I was just curious about kind of Carolina's, Commissioner Mejia's thoughts on the last paragraph.

This would be your version versus the one Commissioner Claus just passed out.

Yeah, no, I just, I feel for me it's just better to, if it's a statement, just leaving it clean. That's basically it, and that's kind of where my comfortability level is.

Okay, when you say clean, what do you mean by that?

I just think it's just more direct on a statement. So, I mean, that's what I'm comfortable with signing.

Okay, so... Which part is it that you aren't comfortable with? Is it like the calls upon?

I think it just, I said we affirmed that the Timberland Regional Library System exists to serve members of our communities without exception. That's it.

Okay, I'm just, I guess, I'm interested in understanding like the reason for the change. Just because, yeah. I like the one that is here in this copy that I passed around.

I think it's important for us to take a, you know, a lot of, I'm happy to abstain from this and I can just write my own statement. That's fine.

I'd like everybody to sign it. So I would prefer going with the, I mean, substantively, I think they're very similar. So if I'm,

takes to get commissioner when he had to sign it that's what i would i mean to me the fact that it we're keeping the key sentence which is that we write the condemn this document in the clearest possible yeah that's okay strong right that's what i was wondering is if it was the word condemned then i'm fine with removing i just don't like the idea so we're already getting so let me give a little context so the two meetings i've had three-fourths of the time was spent about this idea of does thurston county have a right to interfere in mason counties thing about and and and so many issues that we're trying to resolve with the library is is a log jam of this two vacancies on the board yeah so i really don't i want to steer away from where we're trying to tell like i don't want to be like oh there goes thurston county again trying to tell other people what they what their values are what their counties feel I want a strong statement of what we think. And then that speaks for itself. And I think this does that. So I think where maybe Commissioner Mejia and I agree is like, I'm just, I would like to steer away from we calling on anyone to do anything, you know, like trying to tell them outside our lane. We can tell our trustee what we want her to do. I think that's in our lane. But I would rather just be really clear. And I think the language that you've done here is beautiful. And I didn't change a word of, the substance. I like the way you characterized the problem, and then the way you talked about the policies that are out of alignment. And then the fact that there's a contextual issue that even makes this even less well-timed. Those three are just perfect. So I mean, I would just like to say, we want the libraries. I just don't want to ask telling people what to do, because I'm already dealing with that in those meetings.

Thank you, that was exactly what I was asking Commissioner Mejia to explain, so that helps a lot, because I was like, if it's the wording, you know, I just wanted to have a better understanding. It's just the framing. Yeah, so I think that sounds great. I appreciate the suggestions to change this from a letter to a statement. I'm glad that I mentioned wanting to respect your process, because for those who don't know, whether it's public or commissioners, the timing of this was like, I brought the letter in when I presented it to Commissioner Minster, that's when I learned that you just had this conversation with the other counties. And so I'm more than happy to, I want to fully respect that you're even doing that for us, I think is great. So I'm glad to hear it seems to be productive too. So one thing that I feel should be in the final paragraph is the reaffirming the ALA Library Bill of Rights and whether it's calling upon or encouraging or whatever we want to say. I think it's important for us to say, please reaffirm that you have this policy. We're not asking them to do anything different. We're just asking them to say, by the way, this is our policy because the thing, the document that Mickey provided to staff is very out of alignment with their existing policy. And I think that reaffirming that as their binding policy is, kind of takes away from the potential. I know TRL has a meeting tonight, and a lot of people are really angry about this, rightfully so. And one way to kind of pull back from the distraction of fuel on the fire that Mickey's list has created is to just say, hey, let's recenter. You already have this policy. Let's just remind everyone that you have a policy that would negate everything in this list of desired outcomes. So I think that in the last paragraph, if we could keep the part that says, like we don't have to say call upon, but like encourage or something like the Thurston County Board of County Commissioners strongly encourages TRL's Board of Trustees and leadership to formally reaffirm the ALA Library Bill of Rights. if we don't want to tell them to explicitly reject the proposals in the document. I think that, I do think it weakens the statement, but I'm fine with taking that out if the comfortability level, I do agree with you, Commissioner Minter, and everyone else, that it would be more powerful for this to have all of our signatures on it. So if we don't want to say explicitly reject the proposals,

What about if it says, we believe the ALA Library Bill of Rights should be reaffirmed as binding policy, comma, and affirm that the library exists to serve all members.

Yeah, do you like that?

That's a more passive.

It's a bit more passive, but it says the thing I think is most important, which is you already have this policy.

we believe.

I also, one thought I had when you were talking earlier about our trustees, based on the fact that our trustee is going to show Thurston County's values, you know, is there a consideration that we might want to think about with, like, if we do say we encourage them or call upon them to reaffirm it, that gives our trustee more to work with when she goes in saying she could use that voice that we're providing in the letter to help back up what she's planning on, how she's planning on approaching the issue. So I thought a potentially slightly stronger wording would maybe help our trustee as she goes in and is the minority in the conversation.

I wrote this out, is that acceptable? If the final paragraph says, we believe the ALA Library Bill of Rights should be reaffirmed as binding policy and affirm that the Timberland Regional Library System exists to serve all members of our communities without exception.

Can you read that one more time? Sorry.

We believe the ALA Library Bill of Rights should be reaffirmed as binding policy and affirm that the Timberland Regional Library System exists to serve all members of our communities without exception. So it's not talking about rejecting, it's just, it's again, capturing your point about it's already a policy and it should be followed. And it's phrased in a way that's not directive. It's a statement of what we believe should happen. I think that's kind of as far as I'm hearing you guys may be willing to go.

I mean, I'm willing to sign it. I think realistically, like, like there is no leverage we have to demand anything like in the, in just practically speaking in the, you know, in that, on that board, we have one vote. Uh, I think that, you know, the statement's important to make, but I don't think it'll change the, the, you know, the, the director's position. I just realistically, Oh, that's not what it's for.

I know. I know.

I'm just saying. And then, so to what end, like what happens next? If they reject this, then do we say, all right, we're pulling out of the, you know, I'm just asking, like, if they reject this, do we say, all right, we want to pull out of the library system?

We're just talking about the letter.

I know, but I'm just asking.

The director is also, well, I don't know if I can answer your question. Okay.

I'm not sure I have to stay on it, and I have to go, so I kind of have been at my edits already, so.

Okay, well, let's make a draft the way you've, the one, the final one, and let's make it, if you're okay, Commissioner Klaus, we can add the piece and circulate them both to the commissioners, and I think we should go with the one where you can get five signatures on, you can have the most impact.

Yeah, I was hoping that we could send it or put it out before the meeting tonight, before the TRL meeting. And if not, I can, I was, I'll just, I have a memo from my own perspective. It's much, much strongly worded compared to this. And I, I think that this would be great for us to have something that all the board can sign on to.

Why don't we just, why don't we all sign what Commissioner Mejia has proposed and you send your more strongly worded one. There's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. As long as it's clear that yours is, because if you feel, I mean, if you want to express that you want to go further in that, you know, you're not, I mean, again, I'm not, it's not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to discourage you from that based on the work that I'm doing with the board. I would give you free hand.

I mean, I sent a letter and that's what I'm doing too. Like I'm sending my own individual thoughts to the Timberland regional library board of trustees. When, but then it's difference when it's like a board statement, knowing that there is the other dynamics. We believe is what you're.

I said, rather than just saying, we affirm that the library exists to serve all members. I added, we believe that the bill of, that the ALA library bill of rights should be reaffirmed. And. and the second part that we had before. I just added that, rather than, that's a compromise between how Commissioner Claus voted it and what, and not having it at all. Since it is, I don't think it's, I don't think it's very inflammatory to say, keep doing, keep following the policy that you've got in place and don't change, don't make this inflammatory change at this very inopportune moment.

Yeah.

So I'm okay with it. I like that. But I would rather do what all five of us can sign today. I agree that the sooner the better if we're doing it. To me, the tiny differences of words are not as important as us putting something like this out. To me, the crux of it's in the earlier paragraphs.

I really like that compromise.

I would like to have five signatures if we can get there. or what you have before.

Okay, I'll be fine.

Okay, I'll move that with the agreed upon changes that I just handed to Commissioner Klaus, we have that unhanded to the county manager, we will authorize that each of our electronic signatures to be applied for distribution in

Second.

Okay, second. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, the motion carries. You gotta go. I just wanted to ask County Manager about the

the chutes estuary thing and then commissioner fournier had his the community workforce piece and i had shared that law and had some suggestions where does that all stand visa v the county it's with uh the department of ecology with the state they are taking those comments in uh commissioner um he and i have a meeting with department of ecology to talk about the community work plan uh to see if they're open to it they know that We are interested in having something added to the whereases that would call that out. So we hope to get that meeting done. And they have not given me a timeframe of when they're going to get that back to us, but I know that they're compiling the comments.

And me and the County Manager did have a meeting with the City of Olympia and Swanson Tribe just to be sure that they would be on board as some of the major stakeholders and they were fully supportive.

Thank you. Okay. If there's nothing else, we're adjourned.