Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Okay, we are back from a short recess. It's 1.15 p.m. We're picking up with the Emergency Services Department and their 20-minute presentation regarding budget impacts, and Ben Miller-Todd is with us, and you've got supporting staff here in the room, so take it away, Ben.

Perfect Thank you very much commissioners and I just want to do a quick check chair. Are you able to hear and see me?

Okay, pretty well. It's a little echoey, but we're hearing it.

Okay, there's not too much I can do in a really big room. So I'll speak up as if I'm lecturing to a whole of you all. With that, I'll answer. I'd like to open it up for any questions as we go through this presentation. With anything you may have, please feel free to jump in, ask me any questions as we go through this. Again, I'm allotted 20 minutes for five slides. You know I can be somewhat chatty, but I think I might. Take you a little bit of time in the long run. I am going to specifically talk about emergency management and proportion of the general fund that was asked to be reduced. And so, in terms of the emergency services department, as just a quick reminder, it is divided into 2 divisions. 1 is the medic 1 division and 1 is the emergency management division. And so we'll be talking about those funds at this point in time. And I'm sorry, I was remiss in introducing myself and Ben Miller, Todd, the director of emergency services. Uh, as the, as the 1st, kind of overview of what we're going to talk through, I just wanted to highlight that we have a total budget appropriation of roughly 2Million dollars. The general fund appropriation in 2027 is estimated to be about 1.85Million dollars. And really we're target we were asked in 2 different scenarios to present a target reduction based on more of a proportional distribution.

From my understanding, there are 2 separate scenarios.

1 request was for a 64,000 dollar reduction from the emergency management budget and the secondary request. I do want to highlight that even though it is a no reduction scenario. It is identified that we did have a 1.34% reduction in general fund asked from the general fund and had a reduction last year of $176,000. That translated to about 1.45 FTEs plus an additional $15,000 Operating costs that were reduced going into this fiscal year. And so those are acknowledged in scenario 3, and I just want to highlight that the 0 is actually associated with the original reduction. What we're proposing is just overall an equipment and software reduction of roughly $46,000 and professional services reduction, $18,000. I'm gonna run down how our budget is broken down, just so you have an awareness. I know that presentation helped to kind of resonate with a couple of you. This last session, just to talk through the grants, the revenue sources that make EM a little bit unique in terms of our funding sources. Our grant proportion, and again, this is 2026, just a reflection of how we're currently made up. We're made up of about 30% grants. Virtually all of those grants are associated with a match. And so we have to be able to match salaries and benefits or programs that we're doing with the grant funds that we're receiving. Most of those funds are a 50-50 match or they're appropriated funds to the region. Additionally, we just highlight that about 21% of our budget is associated with internal service costs. And 15% of our budget is associated with operational and discretionary spending. 1 thing that I like to highlight here is that our operational discretionary spending does have a larger proportion than it did last year, which is where we're proposing the 64,000 dollar reduction in scenario 2. and so the dark green is the slice that we're looking to reduce. Some of the impacts associated with that $64,000 are listed in the slide. There's quite a few details here that you can read through. But on the surface, the things that would be impacted by not being funded the $64,000 would be shelter generators. We know that we're constantly looking to bolster our sheltering needs. We've done a concerted effort to identify locations and build those resources. We would not be able to do generator backups for shelters, which is something that we would need in terms of prolonged power outage power outages associated with significant natural disasters. Additionally, web is a software component and overall what we just want to highlight is that we're looking to switch to a software that is more feasible. to be able to use and has higher documentation capabilities when it comes to the documentation of emergencies. WebEOC is a software that helps from anything from finance to operational documentation and memorialization of what we did for disasters. What I do like to highlight is that good documentation brings in more public funds for public assistance, public assistance associated with FEMA dollars. So this is something that we're looking to bolster those systems that help us to get better reimbursement. As I'll note, fiscal financial services, excuse me, financial services and the treasurer are currently in the process of redistributing 1.2M dollars in FEMA COVID funds that just reentered the counties. Those COVID funds came back as a direct result of many, many departments and offices throughout the county, making sure that they were documenting appropriately. And part of that documentation comes back to making sure we have good centralized software. associated with this documentation. So that would be an impact there. And then delayed ECC updates for IT. One thing I like to highlight here is that the building was the ECC or the Emergency Coordination Center was built in the Tilly campus in 2011. It's been 15 years since we've updated a lot of the IT infrastructure and we all know exactly how much IT and overall AV infrastructure has changed and grown. This is something that's been deferred and delayed a significant amount of time in terms of those upgrades. But this is something that's coming to a greater point, if you will, to make sure that our, our programming, our software, our hardware up to date to meet the current needs of the current environment. And this would again be delayed down the road. With that, I'm gonna stop. My last slide is the zero impact for scenario three. I'll talk about that very briefly, but I wanted to stop here and see if you had any questions.

So Ben, on the pie chart slide? Yes. Yeah, so like the 29% grants under general fund, I don't usually think of like grant funding as part of the general fund budget because usually it's restricted money and has to be done. So why does that get included here?

So, when we and again, I don't want to step on summer's toes and so if she's there, she wants to give an explanation. I'll start with mine and she can clarify mine. But ultimately, we have to be appropriate. You have to authorize us to be able to spend and that appropriation is what we were asked to reduce. And so, based on the parameters set for this conversation. We're looking at the total appropriation or total of what is allocated to be able to spend regardless of if it is revenue backed. And so of the 2M dollars that we were appropriated this year, 579,000 of that is revenue backed, but we had to be authorized by the board to be able to spend that.

So, then those, those reductions that you propose that the generators and things like that, those are grant funded.

The reduction is actually associated with our operational discretionary expenditure. I'll remind this board that we did approve interlocal agreements back earlier this year with the city of Olympia and the city of Tom water.

Sorry. Good job on that.

Yeah, no, this was a group effort. And with that, we have been able to generate a little bit of a backstop associated with the funding. And so that's why we're not proposing additional FTE cuts at this point in time. And that's why the operational and discretionary spending looks a little bit bigger than it did last year. The one thing I'm remiss in highlighting is that you see me less animated as much this year. With the last year 1.45 FTE cut, this proposal does not cut into FTEs or operational, I would say our personnel. And so it maintains the level of responsiveness that we need for this county.

I want to ask Summer on my question just so I can understand like in making sure. Like I know, like their cut percentage is based on your what?

The total general fund budget for revenue and expenditures, regardless of what the originating source is. So if you want to see the figures minus the grant funding, that would take a level of effort.

I just want to make sure I'm seeing it on a consistent basis. So you're saying I am, so.

You are, yes. All of the presentations have some... Well, so far, I believe every presentation has had some level of grant funding included.

It's just bigger for emergency management, which has always been true. Yes, that's correct. Okay, any other questions? Yeah, Commissioner McHugh.

Thank you. Ben, I have two questions. The first one is, and I've been asking this question out of the presentation so far, how many employees are currently under EMS?

I'm going to answer that for emergency management. Yeah, sorry.

Emergency management. Yes. Nope.

You're good. I just wanted to clarify. So 6.75 FTEs are currently associated with emergency management. That includes five emergency management coordinators, one manager, Kyle Bustad. And then we reduced in the reductions last year and shifted over to the medical levy. The fiscal support for EM is down to point to an administrative support support is down to point 5. With me as a director support at 0.05. And that makes up the 6.75.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. on the cuts of these programs with web EOC, you mentioned this is kind of a area just to collect information. Would it affect maybe if there was a natural disaster where we would qualify for FEMA funds and not just us, but maybe residents, like would it impact their ability to go out for it or just lessen it? Can you talk about that a little bit more?

Yeah, absolutely. So you hear me say this repeatedly. You've heard me say this in a multitude of conversations that honestly, the most prepared communities are the most resilient. And if we're asking our residents to be prepared, we need to be prepared to be able to support them. This does not impact the immediate response, I will say, for a natural disaster. but it does impact the longer-term needs of sheltering and the resiliency that we have in redundant systems. We're currently able to work with sheltering partners for the first item that you asked for to be able to make sure that we can identify those locations, make sure we have beds, make sure we have support, coordinate with agencies. But if we did have widespread power outages, which is for this region can happen very quickly in a significant ice storm or an earthquake or flooding instances. And that's something that we want to bolster and make sure that we're more resilient to be able to support and provide the care and support that our residents both deserve and need. Additionally, when it comes, oh, sorry, Commissioner Fournier.

I like that you're talking about redundancy means resiliency, because in emergency management, redundancy doesn't mean extra. It means you're prepared.

Yes, and that's something that we want to make sure that we have backups that are available to make sure those places that we have sheltering identified, that we can provide that in the event of a disaster. That that infrastructure is just as vulnerable as any other infrastructure in the event that if we as an individual lost power, there's a good chance that those public infrastructure locations also lost power. So this was increased resiliency for the community to make sure that they're supported. Additionally, the web component is software and that's where it's making sure that we're using taxpayer dollars to the best of our ability. We want to be in all of us here and everybody on this meeting want to make sure that we're good stewards of the taxpayer dollar in anywhere that we can make sure that we're. if there's a simple documentation path that can be made better to be able to gain more money back from public assistance at FEMA, that's something that we want to make sure we're capturing. It also allows us to better support our community in the event that we have a significant disaster that opens up more individualized assistance or individuals within the community. So the difference between public assistance is more the public infrastructure, that FEMA can release, but when in major disasters, what they can do is also release funding for our population. Making sure that we're helping to keep all that documentation seamlessly available is also a support to our community when they're asking for, well, FEMA's gonna ask, was your property even flooded? And if we have better databases to indicate where the inundation maps were, where all those photographs were that EM took and support our residents in that process, that's important. So, having more robust infrastructure around software is helpful. That doesn't mean our current software is inferior. It just means we would like to be better in terms of supporting our community and having the software. That's that's most up to date. Does that answer your question commissioner?

Any other questions for. Oh, you have one more slide you wanted to cover, Ben?

The one slide that I have left is fairly straightforward. There was an ask in terms of a scenario three presentation. EM was allocated or the reduction target was set at zero. And I just wanted to highlight that was a reflection of the reductions that we, the significant reductions that we took in 2026.

Got it. Thank you. If there's no other questions, we'll move forward. Appreciate you. Thanks, Ben. Thank you, Ben. Perfect, thank you very much. Thank you, Ben. Next up is Information Technology and Central Services. And I'll mark you down. It's giving me a heavy clock there. Commissioner Hieb will be right back, but go ahead.

All right, hi, Sherry Ilg, Director of IT. Kim Burnett, Director of Central Services. So we are here to talk about areas in which we are trying to Reduce costs. Am I clicking this? Sorry.

Sometimes just goes to sleep for a second.

I'm glad it wasn't the IT director that didn't know how to use it. I've got it going now.

Okay.

Thank you. All right. So in looking back on our 2026 budget reductions, we cut a total of $1.4 million. An estimated $1.13 million came from general fund. And although we did not implement any direct staffing cuts in IT, two of the positions cut by central services were partially paid for by IT. And the services they provided to IT has been absorbed by IT. So I want to talk a little bit about our current environment, which has evolved into what it is over many, many years. We still continue to have a lot of technical debt and unwinding legacy systems and outdated tools is taking time. We spend a lot of money and time keeping old systems running. Modernizing takes time, but every step we take reduces the long-term costs and keeps us moving in the right direction. We've really leaned into cost avoidance strategies that help us prevent expenses before they land. One of the biggest is simply staying on top of upgrades. When we update servers and applications on time, we avoid extended support fees that come along with aging systems. We're also making sure we replace end-of-life software and hardware before they become costly to maintain or secure. Another area that we're looking at is how we handle new software requests. We're standardizing the intake process so when someone needs a tool, we first look at what we have And that helps us reduce redundant applications. It helps cut our maintenance costs and simplifies training and keeps everything in line with our architecture. Some of the direct cost saving opportunities, we're reviewing software licensing to make sure we're not paying for more than we need. We found $3,000 here, $1,500 there. $7,000 to $9,000 for over-licensed Adobe products, those types of things. They're small, but they tend to add up. And on top of that, we have some future savings already in motion. We're migrating to RingCentral Teams Phone, which will get rid of legacy PBX maintenance and bring all of our communications into a single platform. We're also exploring whether Microsoft authentication can replace Duo We pay $75,000 a year for Duo, but now Microsoft authentication is included in our Microsoft enterprise licensing. So we're working through to make sure Microsoft authentication can work for us. And if it can, then we'll replace that. Overall, our focus is straightforward. Keep services stable, modernize where we can, and make sure every dollar we spend delivers real value.

Okay, so for central services budget, our budget. Oh, I did. Oh, I first got here, but I can do it again. Kim Burnett, director of central services. So central services 2026 budget reductions. Our total overall budget reductions were about 990,000. General fund was about 617. Part of that or most of that was five positions that were eliminated. That five positions represented about 10% of our department. Some of the reductions that we were able to take were reducing our contracts with landscaping and custodial. We also were able to cut out or reduce the surcharge that is in our maintenance and operations once we compared actuals to estimates. and we also reduced our equipment rentals. That's just to name a couple of things. So our cost saving strategies, one of the things that we have enacted is we're dedicated to reviewing every process, contract, lease, purchase within central services. We've been spending a lot of time going through all of these things to see where we can reduce costs or gain efficiencies, while at the same time ensuring that we still provide excellent customer service. It's now become sort of a key principle and strategy of central services. In fact, two of our core values that we just put forward this year are innovation and continuous improvement and commitment to excellence. So some of the potential reductions that we are looking at The first one is reviewing the possibility of establishing minimum vehicle utilization standards. So each office and department has the responsibility for determining the number and nature of vehicles that they need, but they also have the responsibility for managing the effective use of those vehicles. We're looking into an opportunity to review underutilized vehicles and possibly set standards to either reassign those vehicles or dispose of them as surplus. For example, if we set a 2,500 mile or less per year threshold or a 40% utilization of working days for a vehicle, it could save the county about 200,000 per year. Currently, we have 24 vehicles that would fall into that area. And these are all light duty vehicles. These are not the big road operations equipment. So that is something we're looking at. We've actually reviewed Some standards from other counties, we've seen some as high as 70% utilization, and they will reassign or surplus those vehicles. Obviously, we would still look at business needs. There are times when maybe it's not being used, but they have to have it available for a business need. But that could be a cost saving. So we're just starting to look at that.

So cars that don't drive more than 2,500 miles per year would be surplus.

It could be surplus, yes, potentially. You're saying 40% is what you're looking at, even though some counties have 70.

They're as high as 70. We're starting lower right now just to take a look at it. It's interesting.

Whatever we have is less than 40. Yes.

Oh, yes, yes. Right now, the way that we're doing any kind of surplusing of vehicles, we don't. We're looking at the utilization and I'll go into the whole replacement cycle, which is the next topic. But with utilization, we're just depending on the offices and departments to tell us that they need these vehicles. We haven't been looking at how many miles are they being driven? How often are they being used? Some sit in a parking lot for a month at a time. And so we're now gonna be looking at all the utilization and we may bring that forward as a standard. And we've got examples from several other jurisdictions who are doing this. Is there a best practice, or is it just varies? It varies. We're thinking probably that 40% to 50%. I think 70% is a little bit high.

It looks different for law enforcement than it does for officers.

100%. Um, we would have to really look at like the sheriff's office. Um, we're not really, uh, including any of the large vehicle, uh, public works type equipment. Um, but we have a lot of County vehicles that are driven by offices and departments that we could include in this.

And can you, we also have pool vehicles. Correct. So it is not as if good point that, um, if the decision is made that vehicle's not being used, the standards are set, there are still pool cars available. Because one of the things that people, some people use their own vehicles, and we're doing mileage reimbursement. County's self-insured, and so just thinking about what might be a best practice. I mean, there are some times that that makes sense to do, depending on the logistics, but We really want and encourage people to use county vehicles when they're doing county business. Yeah, thank you.

That's a good point because we have currently, I believe, six county pool vehicles that are under fleet. Two of them are here. It might be eight, actually. Two of them are here at the atrium. The other six are located at the Tilly campus. And they are being used more so now since we set up a new process for that. But that could be an option for someone who has a full county vehicle and they're only using it 2,000 miles a year. They could opt to use one of the pool cars. And we do deliver those pool cars to the location.

Thank you for thinking about efficiencies in this environment. Very exciting that you are looking through the processes. And I know that there's already been several process changes. So well done. Thank you.

The next one, we actually just increased the replacement cycle of vehicles. It was 10 years. We've upped it to 12 years. We're looking at whether we could increase that a little bit further. The problem becomes that the older the vehicles are, the more maintenance they need. So we've got to be real careful on how we do that. But we are taking a look at that. And the other one that just came up is we're updating our vehicle surplus contract. We have been using a contract through the Department of Enterprise Services, and it includes a 9% processing fee for every vehicle that we surplus. There are other contracts that do not include that 9% processing fee. And in 2025, the cost of that processing fee was about $30,000. So we will be looking at other contracts and changing those over so we can save that processing fee. We are, our landscaping contract is expiring by the end of the year, so we are going through that contract with a fine-tooth comb, looking at where we can save money.

I had questions about this one. How much do we spend on these contracts?

On just the landscaping? If you don't, we can follow up. Yeah, I can follow up with you. Yeah, I don't want to guess.

Yeah, I was hoping we'd dig into this one. I had some questions.

We can follow up on that. Absolutely. And I just went through the contract. I was more looking at what are those services they provide and noticed that one of the things that we're going to be looking at when we go out to bid for a new contract is in some cases we're cleaning up parking lots for debris and leaves and that kind of thing twice a week and at other parking lots only once a week. we're going to make that consistent and do it once a week. I think it was a grandfathered in thing that we were doing.

I understand that like in some cases we use our employees to do some of the landscaping and some of our different, like, you know, out of Tamashan, we may pay public works overtime to go out and take care of that. And so like, there's some cases where we use our employees to manage our landscape. And then there's some scenarios where we're using a private contractor to do these things.

Yeah, I think with public works. The difference is, the county facilities under central services and parks and trails facilities. And we have specific classifications of folks that are doing that body of work for parks and trails and those facilities. There is a difference between the two. Okay.

Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah.

Good job on the fine tooth coat. Thank you. I've still got a few more things that we need to cut back on. Did you have a question?

I'll let you finish.

I'm almost done.

The other thing that we've been really focusing on is our leases. We are the landlord on some of these leases. We inherited some from the downtown buildings when we purchased those. As any of our leases where we're the landlord come up for renewal, we will be looking at including an escalation clause. So there's an automatic increase each year on those contracts. And then also including triple net costs, which would be things like maintenance, insurance, utilities. And so that would be as part of the contract as well, which will get us closer to full cost recovery because some of these contracts were not quite there yet. So we're looking at all of those. And then on a positive note, on New Market, we just closed on that property on Friday. So it is now owned by the county. This is the vehicle storage impound. And that's going to save us about $200,000 a year by getting rid of that lease. And lastly, we've been talking about gas prices, which are very high. And Bruce and I, the fleet manager, have been looking at how much we actually pay from the fuel island at Tilly compared to what we're paying at the pump.

We're tax exempt from some of the fuel costs, right?

Well, yes, and we get breaks on the fuel that is at the fuel island. But unfortunately, 67% of our fuel is done at the gas pumps. So we are looking at how do we encourage more people to use the fuel island? I understand it's in a location that's not always conducive to, I know the sheriffs are all over. They can't take time to drive out there. But my IT friend here brought up something today because there is a fuel island on Phones Road. And I wasn't aware of this. It is managed and owned by commercial fueling network, which there's a possibility we could become a member of. And it is a 10 to 30 cent per gallon savings if you become a member of that. So while we were looking at that, I started looking at DES and WSDOT also have fueling stations around the state. And there is the possibility that we could piggyback off of those as well. So I just started looking at this today. I mentioned it to Bruce. I have him doing some research, and we'll get back to you on if we could get some savings there, because that is one of our largest costs. In fact, I was asking him what our total fuel bill was, and it's a lot. And again, we are going to continue looking at efficiencies, cost savings, wherever possible. We're making process improvements constantly. That's kind of the mantra of our department now. So do you have any questions?

I'm really curious about our total real estate portfolio. And I know that we've done some value assessments of various buildings. I haven't heard the entirety of what we've assessed. And I'm really curious of like what, like everything that we own and what the plans are. There are lots of things that we own that are kind of legacy items that don't necessarily fit into our programming or vision or like where are those things.

That's something we can, I know that when I first got here, there was a request we put some information together, but we can refresh that. There's some that will come from Central Services, there are some that come from Public Works as well, so we can put something and maybe schedule a board work session so we can go over that with the board and spend some time in a session just looking at the different holdings the county has.

I was gonna say we have a plan for that.

We do have a plan for that, yes.

Yes, we do.

I would just say, Sherry and Kim, you two are some of the unsung heroes of last year's budget situation because you volunteered and came forward and said, here's how we can reduce. Because of the way your departments are funded, it's not just a straight general fund. It comes through internal rates, but you reducing lowers that water line for everybody. And Kim, I just want to call you out, especially because coming in as a new director, having several huge projects, you didn't flinch by coming forward and saying, here's how I think. You may have had second thoughts, but five positions at which would say 10% of your department as a new director still. CONTRIBUTING HIGH LEVEL OF SERVICE TO THE SHERIFF'S BUILDING THAT WE JUST RECENTLY CELEBRATED, A RIBBON CUTTING, ALL THE WORK THAT'S TAKING PLACE WITH A SIGNIFICANT DOWNTOWN CAMPUS, THE NEW MARKET PURCHASE, AND HAVING TIME TO LOOK AT EFFICIENCIES, JUST A HUGE KUDOS TO YOU COMING IN AND BEING PART OF THE TEAM AND MAKING A DIFFERENCE. THANK YOU.

I'M GIVING THIS PRESENTATION A GOLD STAR. THANK YOU.

Thank you. Asking kind of the same questions that I've been asking. For IT, how many FDEs do you have? 51, including me.

51.

And I have 54, including me.

And then, Kim, I wanted to ask you a question, right? Because part of the positions that got cut last year that I was concerned, I mean, I'm still concerned about were the procurement positions. And I kind of want to know what have been the impacts that you've seen of those positions being gone and kind of the impact on the rest of the county, right? Those contracts and procurement are a big part of what the county does. And so just wanted to hear, you know, just... Your take on it and how has it impacted your department? How has it impacted maybe other departments?

Well, and I think Sherry can speak to that part of it, how it impacts the other departments because we take care of her contracts as well. Even at the point that we had those positions, only two of them were filled. One was vacant. We cut two of those positions. We hadn't centralized contracts necessarily. We were answering questions. We were potentially reviewing purchasing against the procurement policy. We're still doing that. But we were not really handling all of the contracts across the different departments and offices, except for with the exception of IT, and we're still doing those. I would say maybe the timing has not been as good as we would hope. We're working on that though. The other thing that I've had our procurement person doing, we're updating the procurement policy right now, but we're also creating templates for our leases, for our contracts, those standard contracts. And so they could be shared across the departments and offices so they could use those templates as well. So it has standard clauses in them. That was one of the things I noticed in our contracts is that some will have a clause here, but it won't have one here. And I want to make those consistent. We're also working with the prosecuting attorney's office to get those clauses that need to be in these contracts, whether it has to do with a lease with month-to-month rental terms or a cancellation clause. They're just not consistent. So we've been working on that. But I don't know you want to speak to... To be a resource.

Yes, we are a resource. Even with those positions, the idea of centralizing all of procurement and contracting for the county... that could not be done with just that small team. So it's more of, I think where Kim's going with this is the tools and being a resource. So they're not having to reinvent the wheel. We've got some standards that are approved.

Which will also help with our PAO review. If they know that they are actively working with a centralized point to put in new language, then We can distribute that out as templates. It saves on things getting through. Then we find out, well, that provision wasn't looked at or that new language that should protect the county isn't in there. And there's a lot of things that we're moving forward on.

So for us, the impact has been that we have to manage our contracts a lot more. I have to rely on the supervisors and Lindsay to track those and let us know when they're up for renewal and those types of things. It's a little bit more work, but we're making it happen.

And speaking of that, the whole renewal thing, we're actually working on a project with IT to get all of our contracts and leases into Laserfish, and it'll have an automatic notification that will notify us when they're due to expire within six months. Or, yeah, I think it's six months and three months. And so that we can renew those or re-

review those on a regular basis so i think that'll help not after the fact yes well and that's the important like yeah i think that's what you're to be commended like the cost of the work that you're doing whether it's like servers or chips the percent it's increasing every year like that like let's right it is increasing the cost of doing businesses is increasing every year but you are working on controlling your controllables and where can you be proactive versus reactive and looking at how you do the work. And so thank you both for that very much.

Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Moving on to HR.

IT WAKES IT UP.

I'M HERE TODAY TO PRESENT ON HUMAN RESOURCES GENERAL FUND REDUCTION. I'D LIKE TO START BY ACTUALLY RECAPPING OUR STEs. 13, general fund. So human resources has a total of 20 FTEs. That includes risk and benefits programs, but I won't be talking about those today. As you can see illustrated, we've got administration, that covers me, that's four FTEs. Compensation and benefits administration, that's one FTE. You get to work with Tara a lot. Labor relations is, One FTE, and that's Cameron. On our employee relations team, it's pretty lean. That's two FTEs, and this is the group that does discrimination complaints and handles ADA, FMLA, things like that. We have one training position, one person doing recruitment, classification, compensation, and then we have a unique program that HR Overseas, that's Board of Equalization. Those are two FTEs. In this presentation, when I'm talking about reductions, it does not impact the BOE program. And please stop me at any point if you have any questions. I also wanted to recap HR's reductions from last year. General fund reduction was 153,000. Because we are such a lean team, I really went through an exercise of not cutting FTEs. Instead I did some restructuring. And there was an impact to services because basically had to stop all in-person training. And then there was reduced support for onboarding, skill development, and no specialized training.

And I know that's a big loss, and I've gotten that feedback.

I also had to reduce another position. It was an HR manager role. That work did not go away. I just redistributed that. Primarily, I took on the day-to-day supervision and management of that group, and then that has other impacts because that does not allow me to do things like policy development, workforce planning, organizational improvement, and I already mentioned the personal policies. This slide just shows you what our 2026 HR general fund budget is. It's $2.4 million. Like most other groups, three-quarters of that is personnel. Then 20% is our inner funds, and 8% is discretionary. $5 million. I want to point out that discretionary funding goes to things like civil service testing. We've actually, over the last several years, seen an increase in hiring in the sheriff's office. Our training platforms are like the harassment prevention, the things that we do online.

Civil service testing, is that like contracts for public safety testing? Correct.

Correct. like when they come in and do all those oral boards, there's a cost to that. Okay.

Yeah, so that's a contract we have with a third-party agency, and they handle all the...

Correct. But we also have a civil service examiner. It's in here, unfortunately. I skipped it, but we do have a full-time civil service examiner that is dedicated to the sheriff's office recruitment and promotional testing. Let's see here. So some of that discretionary funding also is to get specialized labor advice if we go to arbitration, things that are really outside of our current skill set, external investigations, as well as by state statute, the BOE receives per diem. And the reason I wanted to point some of those things out is gonna relate to our reduction planning because last year what I did was I focused on eliminating or reducing as much of that discretionary funding and then that restructure and that got me to my 153,000. So in looking at the HR reduction, as you can see that our target reduction under scenario two is 91,000. That's a full-time FTE. FULL-TIME FTE AND PROBABLY SOME DISCRETIONARY SAVINGS. AND THEN UNDER SCENARIO THREE, IT'S 63,000. THAT'S STILL AN FTE BECAUSE I'M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO COBBLE UP ENOUGH DISCRETIONARY MONEY FOR THAT.

I'LL GO INTO MARIA. HOW MANY EMPLOYEES FOR THE COUNTY?

So currently as the beginning of the year, we have 1,367 employees. Thank you. And because you asked that question, I kind of went back and I did some research. In 2006, when I first started at the county, this general fund FTEs were at 13, and we're still at 13, so we've not really seen growth, but countywide FTEs have increased by, let's see here, I think in 2006 we had 1,200 FTEs. So just in terms of our cuts, I would be looking at a full-time FTE, and I've already mentioned this to the commissioners, I have a vacancy coming here in the near future. That vacant, it does come with impacts, and you're already seeing that. I would also have to figure out where I can reduce a little bit under those professional services. Scenario three is 60,000. Again, that's a full-time FTE. I try to be because right now HR is we're more in a reactive mode because we don't have that capacity to be proactive especially when it comes to employment employee engagement and development over the last year several years you know that we've been trying to plus up our supervisor and manager training When we don't do that, then there's issues that flow out from that. There's inconsistent application across the county, creates morale issues, leads to more complaints, and we've seen a rise of those in our department. Our staff is heavily into those investigations. So I understand that the commissioners have a really tough task, but I did BE IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS DOESN'T JUST IMPACT THE HR DEPARTMENT. IT HAS A COUNTYWIDE IMPACT, ESPECIALLY HEARING THAT OTHER OFFICES AND DEPARTMENTS MIGHT BE CUTTING POSITIONS. THAT ACTUALLY INCREASES HR BECAUSE WE COORDINATE ALL OF THE LAYOFF AND ALL THE MEETINGS WITH THE UNIONS. SO WITH THAT, BE GLAD TO ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU HAVE.

ARE THERE, LIKE, THINGS THAT YOU Like, I know we have some stuff, but there's probably a lot more we could do, but like some organizations have like wellness programs that, I remember when I was on the insurance fund, they were like, and we're not part of, we only do certain programs with them, but the ones that were like doing all their insurance, they were getting like, you know, you get a 4% premium discount if you had certain things in place. I don't remember what all those things were. Board member there's you know, they always present on all their different pieces of their wellness program incentives and things is that the kind of stuff you're talking about or I'm For me, it's a lot of like employee training leadership development those things that mitigate risk through our

benefits, our medical benefits, they do have a wellness incentive component, and I know if you participate in certain things, I think you get a reduced, I think it's deductible reduction, I can't remember what it is. So it's still there, it's just embedded.

Like there's a premium reduction.

For individuals as well, yeah.

And do we participate in that? Yes. Okay, that's what you were just saying.

Chair, I think that When we look at the size of HR and we look at the size of departments and the different things that are taking place, there's absolutely a need for HR to be proactive instead of just reactionary. I think Maria and the team are doing a fantastic job in working with departments and the difference between HR That's over all of our ops and departments from an employment standpoint. And then some of our ops and departments that have HR liaisons. But there is a need for training. There's a need for engagement. There's a need for leadership development within the different divisions and units. And that's just something that with the size of 13, we're just not able to get to that body of work, which is really important.

Thank you, I wanted to dig in up more on that and rate of Because how many employees are in Thurston County?

total countywide countywide thirteen hundred sixty seven So for thirteen hundred and sixty seven employees we have So we have 20 FTEs all FTEs, so we've got risk team benefits and so those are restricted funds and In terms of that core HR work that I described, that employee relations, labor relations, the training, civil service, recruitment, classification, compensation, that's 11. So there's 13 general fund, but those are BOE and that's completely not related to human resources.

If I could pause in fact. prior to the realization of the cuts we had to make in 20, well, last year, 2026, we were discussing moving the BOE function into central services with support, but that just could not happen once we lost that many positions in central services. It just became a non-reality. So there's still work and support that even the BOE function needs, and I think you as commissioners are aware of that because you received emails and concerns about time frames and time delays. With the current stance that we're in of tightening the belt. We just haven't been able to look at augmenting or supporting that in a different way.

Can we talk about that impact, right, with BOE? Because that's a big one where it's impacting community members, and I'm not sure about other commissioners, but I've received quite a few emails about the delay with the BOE cases, and I know we hired a hearings examiner to kind of try to get through that caseload, but that support of trying to find the right fit has kind of gone to the back burner just because of, you know, staffing cuts.

It's an administratively heavy role. There is a lot of information that flows through. And when we think about how many appeals and requests that we receive and the fact that we have two staffers, and you know, those staffers at times, there have been times when they've had to go out for leave for personal reasons, et cetera. It is effectively an area in the county that has a bottleneck. Commissioners have worked at times to take a couple different approaches. And then the odd thing for me is how did it end up in HR? That just is not a real nexus that I've ever seen before. But I appreciate Maria's leadership. Ruth is the main staffer.

She's the program manager. And I think we have to remember that the BOE or... volunteers, they're part-time individuals. And even if they were willing to work 40 hours a week, we still have the program staff that is limited in their capacity because the appeals come in, they have to get set up. There's a lot of that back and forth. It's a very labor-intensive process. And I think over the years, more and more people are appealing their tax assessments. We certainly recognize the frustration to our residents because we don't have a system that even acknowledges when an appeal is received. So it's kind of you submit it and you wait. So we understand that and we tried to explore ways to remedy that, but everything costs money, right? If you have a system to help us with these things, then there's a cost to that.

but it is an impact to the public because they can wait long periods of time on the request to have their property tax or their assessment be examined, and there's a lot of frustration that comes with that. I think what we're saying is that there's really no relief in sight, and that level of service will pretty much stay the same for the foreseeable future, and it's just a challenge because we would hope that if we had more resources, we could make a significant change there and turn things around quicker and have a higher level of touch points for customers and engagement that's required.

The Commissioner is going to start doing them. I would not recommend that. One, you're going to need specific training And I'm not sure when you would fit it in.

He is reminding me of when I read a book that said commissioners have a legal authority to do them.

You have delegated that.

I think like 100 years ago, that was something that was done.

I do want to highlight another area of the reductions from last year and the elimination of the HR manager role. Because I think it's really important to highlight just how this impacts the updates on our internal policies, internal HR policies, because now you as a director are having to kind of do more of the day-to-day and filling in for that role instead of setting that direction in terms of updating our HR policies, which I know some of them are very outdated. it's been a goal of yours to update them and it just.

And I am the bottleneck, right? Like some of that work can get done and I do the final review and I do the vetting process and that there's only so much time in the day. I do certain investigations when there's not capacity to do them. So like many of our other directors, I am a working director because these are things that have to get done. I really can't think of anything in HR that is not essential or not mandated. And that's what we do on the day to day. I have staff that works a lot of extra hours. Our labor negotiator works many extra hours. Our contracts have increased from 20 years ago. We had one labor negotiator then, we have one now. We had one trainer then, we don't really have one now. So in certain ways over the 20 years, things have regressed for us.

Didn't we have two labor negotiators at one point?

There was a document that was time sensitive that HR needed my signature on. And they sent over a draft this week. And I looked at it and went over. Maria was busy. And I told the staffer, hey, this is great. Great job turning this around so quick. And they looked at me and said, I didn't write that. Maria did, because I'm so backed up. She jumped in and took care of it. So I knew it was a wonderful piece of work.

A little elf in the back room.

But that just kind of goes to speak to where our team is at, is they are very much engaged in augmenting the work of their team themselves and doing sometimes very technical level work to move things through. It's commendable, but it's not necessarily advisable because of everything that gets shifted and the place that the HR director needs to be over the entire organization. So I'm glad you're highlighting that, Commissioner McGee, because it is a reality.

Yeah, I mean, during one of the things that the board prioritized when we were... Kind of at the beginning where we had kind of like a flush from Marco was the training piece, right? And then seeing that be reduced over the years to kind of lower levels even, it's hard.

And we're trying to work on it. And the way we're doing that is by tapping into other people with that specialty. But that's a huge hole because that, you know, having... well-trained employees and supervisors and managers. It mitigates a lot of the morale issues that we see, like I mentioned, inconsistent practices. I think part of the increase in complaints is it's really that. Sometimes we promote really great technical people. They don't have those leadership and supervisory skills, and by not stepping in immediately to help them, it creates other issues. So it's not ideal, but we're trying to work within the resources that we do have. But it's noted.

But it creates the gaps, right? And unfortunately, we're seeing that within our organization when we're not, unfortunately, investing in this.

It creates a different workload, right? Because then we're dealing with the complaints and the turnover.

So then we spin our wheels differently. I'd rather we were doing it at the front end.

But like I said, I've been here 20 years, and we've really struggled to do that, but there was a point in time when we had a pretty good, well-developed program. But when we suffered different cuts, right, we got cut in 2008, and then we get those positions, and I think it was in 2018, 19, there was a cut, and then we get that position back. So that also leads to a lot of inconsistency because you're not pushing these things forward, right? Anytime you have to stop and restart, it takes a whole lot of time and waste of resources.

The topic I'd bring up, it is something that HR would be very much involved in, but it isn't something that comes from their budget per se, is our growing awareness as an organization that position for position, Thurston County's falling behind and pay. And when we look at some of our competitors, whether it's the state, other jurisdictions, other counties, there's a growing gap taking place that we just need to be mindful of that in order to have a organization that's attracting the right talent, especially I think we're in a more competitive environment because we have the large employer of the state being the capital county, we really do need to think about, and I've been talking with our budget and finance manager, Summer, about what does that look like as a holistic plan to bring some of those adjustments. We can't have a situation where folks come, work a year or two, and then they go to a neighboring county and are making $30,000 more. We can't have a situation where division managers can go to another municipality and make more than their directors are making. It just creates a situation where it creates problems, and not to mention other things that are out of our control, like the situation where for the exempt, that threshold moving up. So we have to look at how are we adjusting some of those salaries to keep folks in the exempt situation. I know that the county did several years back, classification compensation study. And while that may not have been, and there never is a perfect study, we would need to look at what does that look like, but also what are the dollars associated because they have to come hand in hand. And so I'm just flagging that for the Board because those in addition to the cost of living increases that right now Cameron is doing a fantastic job of talking those through. It's just a challenging place to be, but we need to plan for the future. We need to plan for what does it look like so that we don't fall behind to the point where we are the employer of last choice. We definitely don't want to be there. And I understand that the County, that is pendulum swings, but we were at one point very, very competitive you know, years ago, and that has slowly changed, but it's just an opportunity for us to think that through.

Well, and we also don't want to grow that gap to the point where when future boards all of a sudden have to close that gap, it's, you know, going to do a huge impact, right? And so I think definitely have to have that conversation on how we're going to still be competitive and, you know, pay our workforce what they need to be paid I was going to also bring up another point. And again, I know with our budget situation, it's almost like a non-starter. But I know Department of Commerce has kind of this alignment, especially with their internal services departments, where any time there is an increase in workforce, right, it's kind of tied in on like there's like a number that they have.

Like if it's like a ratio.

Yeah, a ratio of like, OK, five employees. And, you know, they know that. It's planned for that, you know, at that point, okay, if the board were to approve five different positions from different areas that, you know, we would know that there is the EHR impact to that.

Because I feel like this is how we fall behind and then we end up paying it in other ways. Yes.

you know, when our policies, personnel policies aren't updated, when our, you know, just different ways are when our director is operating on a day-to-day rather than setting kind of the long-term strategy of the county. Like, I feel like there's impacts that we end up paying more heavily for in the long term. And so I know it's kind of difficult to talk about that right now, but it's something that I would like to flag.

I'll put that policy on my list.

No, it's a great consideration. I think the other consideration when we think about what does it cost to run this county when we're thinking about the presentation we heard before from Central Services, it is what does it cost to maintain our buildings? What's our ability to bring in enough revenue to have the dollars so that when an HVAC needs to be done or we need to resurface a parking lot, we need to repaint a building, We need to do some major internal renovations for efficiencies. We just are not set right now to do that. And I know that Kim and Jennifer are talking about that. So we hope to bring that forward because that is something that we think needs to be built in. And it may not be something we start off at the highest level that we need to be setting aside, but we do want to set aside some recommendations for the board for your consideration at policies that should be implemented that then we start modestly and then grow that because it would be our desire that we are really looking after all our facilities and keeping them in working order so we don't have situations where we have to either exit buildings prematurely or there's major issues that then just create unworkable situations for our employees. Jennifer, if you have anything you want to add to that.

Just, yes. It's the things that get me excited coming from a more capital background. It's whatever you build, you need to be thinking about before you build it, how you're going to maintain it. And so Sherry's taking that same philosophy as it comes to IT software. So ideas that, you know, we need to do upgrades, And we think about efficiencies with software, but sometimes it also adds more capabilities. But can that software be run with the same number of staff or do you need more? Like asking that question instead of just the assumption that we're going to gain efficiencies and we can do either the same or more work. with that software and the same number of people. And that's not the case for every software, and especially when we move to enterprise and software as a service. So just that philosophy.

Thank you. Thank you, Maria. We have one more category. Good afternoon, Countywide Services.

Thank you, Chair. I'll be handling this one since this item falls under the Commissioner's umbrella. Countywide Services, previously known as non-departmental. I'm gonna talk about the general introduction. And we can go to the next slide, please. Wait for it, there we go. Thank you. All right. The Countywide Services Non-Department Budget and Reduction Plan's total budget is $13.2 million. We'll talk a little bit about what's built into that budget. I want to start by thanking Summer, our Budget and Fiscal Manager, for really creating a lot of transparency around this fund. I know that when I first got here, I heard a lot of comments about, what's in that fund? And why can't we see it? And so she's really brought it forward and made it pretty clear. The target reduction for scenario two is $271,330. The target reduction for scenario three is $279,564. Go to the next slide, please. We can see the pie chart breakout as... So just at a high level, we have the different percentages, county dues, membership programs and contracts, operating transfers and bond payments. That's the big blue part that really is obligated and there's not any flexibility within that category. And then we have the different other items that make up smaller percentages, as you can see. Go to the next slide. Here's just a high-level overview of the different categories, annual membership fees and service contracts. This is not comprehensive, but it's just a rather high-level overview of some of the major buckets, the two of the programs, and then discretionary. Go to the next slide. So what we've done is we've taken a look at how do we tackle that reduction, and this really is a starting point for discussion. What we did is we went ahead and looked at how do we distribute the reduction in a way, I think we might have jumped forward a slide.

Is it?

Yeah, there we go. Back one.

Now we're competing.

Olivia, can you just advance the slide one forward?

Yes, we're both working on it. I'm hands off now.

So for the 171, and it's really only under an $8,000 difference, taking majority out of the miscellaneous supplies, 180, looking at reducing some from countywide project consultants, looking at reducing the lake management district stand-up costs. Those have been in there for a while. I understand that they were there when... That was being started, and I don't know that they've been drawn down in the last while, so we believe that there's some flexibility there. Franchise agreement, legal fees, visitor convention bureau. Now we're getting into some of the contracts that we have. I think some of those amounts, what we would need to do once the board gives us direction is do a deep dive into the interlocal agreements that we have. We believe that there's flexibility others There's funding cycles that we'd have to make sure we understand when those are and when we would have to jump in and advise We're gonna be reducing a bit This isn't something that we are excited about But in this fund, we don't have a lot of other places to go to and then it's the Reduction number one all those various

groups that are, you know, the five that are listed, it's not, you know, I'm curious where the numbers, the red number comes from. It's not proportionate. It's, you know, like, why is it, where did you come up with 10,000 for TRPC? Those are just starting points, Commissioners.

There was not a, a, um, scientific rationale behind it. We're just trying to break up the costs and not, but knowing that the commissioners are going to have comments and perspectives about maybe shifting some of that one way or another.

Under discretionary miscellaneous supplies, $209,000. That's a huge reduction. What would that look like? Does that mean people are having to go out and buy their own pens and pencils? Is it? Yeah, we can't bring your paper clips to work.

It's a great question. That bucket there is pretty broad. And they're cutting it down. We would not necessarily advise to cut it all the way down. We need to have some in there so that when different things pop up, that the county and the commissioners have flexibility to pay for certain items.

And I'll just clarify that this is not the... It's not the miscellaneous supply budget for the entire county. This is for the countywide services fund, which used to be non-departmental, which its sole purpose is for the benefit of the entire county. So it's kind of like the catch-all fund of things that we can't assign to departments.

And then the top one, under one, we had all the departments, we said, hey, propose a reduction. You know, I don't... I know we can't force any of these organizations to propose cuts, but we can't to offices either. Has there been any outreach to them and communication to any of them to say the position that we're in, what we would need them to give us info on?

No, not at this point, because we wanted to come and talk to the board about what the exercise looked like to get a sense, and then the next step would be for me to reach out to those groups and to talk that through.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. I feel like if we're going to have a conversation, I would think with all the items in number one, right? And see like where there is OPTIONS, I WOULDN'T JUST PUT KIND OF TO THOSE PROPOSALS. I WOULD KIND OF WANT THAT WHOLE CONVERSATION TO HAPPEN WITH EVERYONE. FOR EXAMPLE, THE TRPC BOUNDARY REVIEW BOARD. WHAT ABOUT IT? YOU KNOW, I WOULD WANT TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION WITH TRPC. I WOULD WANT TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION WITH LAW SAC AND NACO AND, YOU KNOW, ORCA, EDC, CRPC, JASCOM, I just think that we, I'm not setting these figures.

I don't think as you know, I think we have to have conversations with them first Those are all reach their regional collaborations that are funded based on an agreement that we're gonna all all jurisdictions are gonna contribute some basic level and we don't Unfortunately have you know, I mean the county manager recognized that we said yeah We have to look at the ILAs and the funding cycles. We may get nothing out of a two of them, but one of them is might be up for renegotiation. I mean, so you're just kind of showing kind of in a broad stroke, but the reality of each one is that there may not be an ability to cut $10,000 out of TRPC because we have a partnership with, and I don't want to get into that, we're going to lose in the long run if we start trying to unilaterally flex our muscles in these regional organizations that have been successful based on our commitment to collaboration with those jurisdictions. So you know, I'm happy to explore all those different things because we're backs to the wall, but the reality is it may or may not be.

Yeah.

Right.

And that's kind of what I wanted to highlight in terms of like, I didn't want anyone to take kind of the descriptions as like, this is what we're doing.

No, this is a simple exercise.

It's just simply, I think I would agree that, you know, there are ILAs and there's all these, AGREEMENTS, YOU KNOW, FOR KIND OF THESE THINGS, AND SO I WOULD WANT TO SEE, LIKE, I WOULD WANT TO EXPLORE, MAYBE THERE IS A WAY WE CAN RENEGOTIATE SOME OF THESE, LIKE, GIVEN OUR SITUATION, OR LIKE COMMISSIONER MENSER MENTIONED, OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL, AND SO MAYBE THERE IS SOME FLEXIBILITY IN SOME PLACES, MAYBE THERE IS NOT, BUT I THINK HAVING THE CONVERSATION WITH ALL THE ITEMS, ALL THE Membership fees under page four, number one. I was going to ask on that franchise agreement legal fees.

Yeah, so those costs kind of ebb and flow. Summer, can you speak to them?

Those are the fees associated with the legal team that is under contract to review franchise agreements with, say, Comcast.

Those contracts bring us money.

They do bring us money. And I will say that historically, when I took a look back, we have not spent the entirety of the amount that's budgeted.

Yeah, this approach is trying to trying to trim the edges rather than just deleting. We did a lot of cutting last year. We removed quite a bit out of this fund. It had a major impact on public health to the tune of like $700,000.

We almost cut a million dollars out of this.

Which effort do we put into reviewing these franchise agreements? Because sometimes like they'll sit stagnant for years, and then you take a look at them, and there's all kinds of money that's left on the table that isn't.

Yeah, we have to have a bucket for this because, like you said, there may not be any for six months, and then one pops up, and then we have to have a place to go to to pay for the legal fees to review it.

Do you not ask for legal fees back from some negotiations? I don't.

It's, I don't know, I don't know. So like there's a contract with Comcast for having some like easement through the area. On the right of way, yeah.

So I'm just wondering.

And then it comes up, we review the contract and get more money.

With the board's authority, I'm happy to reach out to our regional partners. I think what is important is often these membership fees are going up every year. Yeah. And we need to signal that we are in a place where that's, as Assistant County Manager Jennifer Walker mentioned, this is year one of a three-year process. So.

I think maybe even, I think it would be productive because even mentioning like we can't approve any increase. Like I mean just letting them know like even if there are increases, we're just not, we're not there. Like we don't have. Yep. the ability to do it.

Well, don't we have commissioners that sit as representatives on each of these two?

Yep, it'd be important to carry the message. It's not that we want to. It's that there's a dynamic that we are in a really tough budget time.

I know for, you know, me and Commissioner Grant do sit under the umbrella of TRPC You know, and we can have that conversation, but I, you know, I think it would be better just having the, I think, you know, with our votes, right. We can, but maybe just having the County manager reach out to the directors, like, and just initiating these conversations. Right. And then, us as commissioners having that awareness that unfortunately we just cannot vote to increase the fees.

It's like with the control, like in a weird way they have control, like if we're their funders. and they can just turn the dial. And if we don't ever question or push back on that, it's like they get complete control over their funding, and we don't have it the same. So it's a disconnect. Like a law, we have the rates that we set. We control that. It's a nice place to be, in a way.

measured so that the public understands that you're being you know responsible but ultimately if you hit some kind of weird wrinkle or bubble you can you have that tool and we don't we don't and we don't have any other sources that we can go to right now I mean this is a situation where after a full days of presentation you're hearing that this is all reductions into operations key operations this is not a Well, we just have this fund, and so it's nice to have. I think that the organization is doing a great job, as we've heard previously, from IT and central services, looking for efficiencies, looking for better ways to do business. So in this fund, most of it, if we go back to the pie chart, a couple slides back, most of it is that bond component. So it is a large fund. but it's heavily weighted on those operating transfer and bond payments, which is just obligations of the county.

Okay, any other questions here? This is our last piece of the opinion.

I would like to give that direction to the county manager, that he begin conversations with the different agencies and at least I mean, I understand if we can't reduce, but at least having those conversations that we just can't increase. Motion.

Would you require a motion?

That'd be good.

Okay. So I would move that the county manager have a conversation with... the agencies under annual dues membership fees and service contracts and report back to the board on how those conversations went to talk about whether we could do a fee reduction or let them know that at this time we cannot do fee increases.

Second. Motion second. Discussion?

I have some. I stepped away for a while, and I've been listening online, so I know I missed some of the conversations. I'm not sure. Have other motions been made to take direction on anything? Okay, so this would be the first direction all day. I would want to just, yeah, I mean, I think the direction is good. I would want to make sure that those conversations... I think that the intention of not raising membership fees, I think that's probably fine to have those conversations. I'm nervous about directing the county manager to have conversations about reductions in fees because some of these are governed by ILAs and some of these have, of course everything we're talking about has real impacts, but some of these fees have specific authorities that make them that make the rates the amount that they are. And we've entered into these agreements and signed additional agreements. Like I know with Jazz, this was brought up last year, and one of the things, one of the concerns I had was that we have an ILA, and so if we reduce anything for Jazz, then the jurisdictions are gonna have to make that up. So Lacey, Olympia, and Tumwater have to make up that, if we hypothetically did the 40,000, our partners would have to increase what they pay. And so that's a consideration I think we need to keep in mind. the impact we would have on our partner jurisdictions, and the agreements that, I know Commissioner Minster, when you served on Jazz, they had that conversation about the reserves and trying to reduce reliance on the reserves, and that was part of our conversation last year. So there's the ILA, but there's also other signed agreements that have been executed along the way, and there's just a lot of layers to each of these, so I think that the conversations need to be very measured, and we need to just kind of tread lightly THERE'S BACKGROUND THAT THE COUNTY MANAGER MIGHT NEED WHEN HE GOES INTO THIS CONVERSATION, THEN THAT WOULD BE REALLY IMPORTANT TO CONSIDER SO THAT WE'RE NOT JUST SENDING LEONARD INTO THESE CONVERSATIONS AND BEING LIKE, OKAY, GOOD LUCK, LET HIM KNOW WE'RE IN A TOUGH SPOT, BUT THERE'S HISTORY THERE. I KNOW YOU KNOW A LOT OF THAT HISTORY. You're definitely the best one to enter into these conversations. But yeah, I just think my concern is that we're in the motion. We're talking about these conversations as two parts. We can't increase and we might have to reduce. And I think that that's a lot to enter into a conversation with.

Well, I think you missed, like, my comments were very much along the line of yours about these four agreements that are regional collaborations and have commitments that have been made. And so I think that the two parts are kind of sending a message that we can't look at increases and making... gentle inquiries about what it would look like, what would be the parameters of any sort of individual contribution reduction, which is for our benefit to understand those complexities, because you're 100% right, there's history to each one of these organizations, and there's commitments, and there's overlapping, there's different jurisdictions involved, and all that, so we can't just go ahead and go Well, okay, write a $40,000 less check to JASCOM. That's going to impact our partnerships that we've built and why these organizations are so successful because of those partnerships.

And the motion is not just with this one's in page five, it's the ones in page four that has more of a highlighted area. I think that those conversations... do need to take place. All the ones with dues.

Okay.

Yeah. And just because, yeah, well, I completely agree. A lot of it is guided by an ILA, but maybe as these organizations are, you know, also looking at their budget, there might be potentials.

They should be going through what we're sitting here trying to do, right? Yeah. If all the organizations are having budget, you know, then they should be trying to, reduce software services, and all the things we heard our departments working to do to help us all make the organization continue to operate collaboratively. It's good partners. They don't know that. They can turn the dial and go, oh, everybody just pays 5% more. We're good. I mean, nothing wrong with that, but if they don't hear from us that we don't have 5% more.

Yeah, and maybe there might be potentials. I mean, there might be a point where we're like, okay, maybe we just don't pay for WSAC next year, right? Like, and we go into kind of that, a different status, right? That might be an option, but like, we can't have, we can't know unless we have these conversations with the different groups. And so that's kind of where my motion is coming from of, it doesn't hurt to ask and to let all of the different agencies know where we're at. Like Commissioner Menser mentioned before, our wall is against the wall. Our, Back is against the wall. We're all against the wall. Our back is against the wall. And so knowing that there is importance to all of these different partnerships and agencies and there are ILAs with it, but I think that at least we just, the questioning of it doesn't, wouldn't hurt.

It should always be okay to ask questions and I think we owe it to the community and we owe it to our staff to ensure that we're leaving no stone unturned. So this is just going and doing the job.

I'll also review all the ILAs. We've already started that process and we can work to figure out how do we summarize some of that for the board so that we're not, if it's like if it's wired to where there's not a lot of flexibility, then we know where we're starting from.

Another piece, I'm not sure if you heard it, but one of the things that was also mentioned was us as members and all these different boards, we have to start raising the alarm that we also, during the meetings, cannot afford to increase the budget on on us because we just don't have it. So I know we all serve in a variety of these commissions, so we're just gonna have to have that responsibility of not voting against any increase, unfortunately.

Yeah, I think that this is a good conversation to have early. So I agree with the motion. the earlier we can do this, the earlier that these agencies can incorporate what we're thinking about into their own budgets. And I think that's important. I'm curious, and I know each individual commissioner can do this on their own, but I'm kind of just curious and throwing it out there, if the county manager could meet with the representative commissioners on these different boards before entering into those conversations. And I'd be happy to do that for the ones I serve on, because there's a number of committees I serve on up here. and I have thoughts about each of them. I think some of them, yeah. I mean, I have opinions on reductions that could be made, but I think that might be a good idea to sit down with the county manager and kind of just talk through my thoughts, and I don't know if.

I do it every week already. I do that every week already.

Okay, yeah, I guess I'll do that on my own. I'll set up a meeting with you, and we can chat about those.

Absolutely, great to get your feedback.

Awesome, okay.

ANY OTHER DISCUSSION ON THIS MOTION? OKAY. CALL FOR THE VOTE. ALL IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. AYE. AYE. OKAY. AYE. NONE OPPOSED TO THAT MOTION. IS THAT THE END, THEN? YES, SIR. ALL RIGHT. THANKS, EVERYBODY. WE'VE GOT ANOTHER SLATE OF VOTES COMING TOMORROW, MOST OF THE ELECTED OFFICIALS. 10 O'CLOCK. YOU WANT TO HANG OUT WITH COMMISSIONER ADAMS FOR AN HOUR? OH, MAN. I HAD SO MANY ITEMS. Let's save it for tomorrow. Okay. I'm sure we'll be well rested after the presentation.

Recording stopped.