Board of County Commissioners - workshop

Okay, good morning. Welcome to the Thurston County Board of County Commissioners Board Work Session for this Wednesday, September 2nd, 2026. It's 10.06 a.m. My name is Ty Mentzer, Chair of the Board. To my left, Vice Chair Commissioner Wayne Fournier, Commissioner Carolina Mejia, Commissioner Rachel Grant, and Commissioner Emily Klaus. is virtual and will be joining us shortly. The meeting is live streamed to the Thurston County YouTube channel and written public comment may be received up to two hours of the meeting and distributed to the board. Action may be taken at this meeting. The plan for today are short-ish presentations from different offices and departments over the next two days, just outlining kind of a high level look at the budget to give us a sense of impacts. And County Manager, anything else you wanna say up top? Yes, thank you, Chair.

We are thankful for the Board's leadership in taking the current budget structural deficit and looking at a three-year strategy on how to address it. This year, there's a $5.5 million deficit that we're working through, and the Board gave direction to staff on two different scenarios for us to work with Austin departments. I want to start by thanking the Austin departments for their hard work. Every Austin department submitted something to the clerk in relation to their exercise. And so we are here over the next two days to go over that information. And this is a process of them explaining to the board the impacts of those two scenarios. And we've asked them with a template, and thank you to our budget and fiscal manager, Summer Miller, and our two assistant county managers, who work that through and sending that information out, that every department and office will be talking to the board about what those impacts look like. I think first on the list we have our CPED department. And again, this is as it relates to the general fund component of their budgets. And so I think we can call up our CPED director. And Josh, do you have anything you'd like to add? No decisions today. Yeah, this is information sharing. We look to have a a deliberation process next week on September 9th, I'm just checking, that's correct, where we'll take the presentation, summarize them into a layout for the board's consideration, and then we can talk through and go through the details of what they presented. So right now it's an opportunity for the board to hear from their department and office leadership, opportunity for them to ask questions based on the information they provided, but there are no, we're not requesting any decisions at this time. Director.

Good morning. I get the privilege of going first. Ashley Rye, Community Planning and Economic Development Director. Following up on your conversation yesterday about a levy lid lift, I did want to start off with just the breadth of services that our department provides. It is a long list, so bear with me. It's not on a slide, so feel free to take notes. Not all of these are covered by the general fund, as you'll hear through the rest of the presentation, but I think it's It's good to understand how the general fund contribution fits in to our larger range of services. We operate the building development center. We provide building reviews, fire life safety reviews, land use and environmental permitting, code compliance, municipal stormwater permit compliance, habitat conservation plan implementation, and land management, agriculture programming, forestry programming, land conservation program management, like open space tax program and conservation futures. FEMA compliance management, water resources, monitoring and modeling, watershed planning, streamflow restoration, natural resources planning, salmon recovery, climate resiliency planning, climate mitigation programming, fairgrounds and event center management, including our annual fair event, regional planning with our partners, land use and comprehensive planning, historic and cultural resources planning, economic development, urban growth management and annexations, education and outreach for a range of topics, our stream team, support for WSU Extension's Community Agriculture and Forage Youth Program, support for five different advisory bodies. These services are delivered by our current team of just 64 people. When I say small but mighty in other presentations, I mean it. We only have a 15% non-revenue-backed general fund contribution for that really long list. it is a significant return on investment that this community receives.

Can I see that list?

Yeah, we can email it out to the board.

It would be very, it was very helpful the way you just laid it out. Sorry, Chair, I did not raise it. Most definitely.

And I'm sure I missed some. So getting into the numbers, our total budget is about $18.2 million. We are supported by a number of funding sources, and that includes our permit fees, stormwater fund, grants that we receive. Of our $18.2 million budget, only 5.26 million of that is general funded, and only 51% isn't revenue backed. So half of our general fund contribution is revenue backed. Last year, we did take the biggest proportional cut at almost 23% to our general fund budget. We did it largely by shifting to a cost recovery model for permit review, but what happened was an elimination of our entire bucket of reserves. This has put tremendous strain on our permit enterprise fund. It's impacting the level of service. I'm sure you're hearing from constituents. The bottom line is we are out of creative options in CPED. Any additional cuts will have big community impacts. The only things left that are general funded completely discretionary and non-revenue-backed are what you see up there. We got code compliance, the annual fair event, or the long-standing support for WSU Extension's community agriculture and youth programming.

Go back. Yeah. Do I have a different, so you're saying target reduction starting in 206? Mm-hmm. In this spreadsheet I'm looking

There are two buckets of general fund. And so the 206 is the combined amount. Okay. And I'll go into why it's all combined for just this one. I just want to make sure I have the right papers. Yep. So there are two line items on that paper that apply to our department. Gotcha. Thank you. And so you'll see over there. Yeah, planning. Yeah, community planning and economic development and long range planning. Perfect.

Thank you.

So our general fund contribution is broken into two buckets. The first one is for our general CPED services that aren't backed by the cost plan. In this bucket, about 30% goes toward internal service costs, 29% goes toward state mandated services, and 9% is revenue backed, which leaves only about $937,000 to cut. And the $937,000 We really only have three discretionary programs. We've got our code compliance program, which has three FTE. Pretty much every contribution to that just covers staffing. You can't cut that program without cutting people. We have our annual fair event, and then of course we have WSU Extension's community agriculture and 4-H youth program.

So the green, the blue, and the yellow.

Green, blue, and yellow is all we have to cut from. that won't impact mandated services, or internal service cuts that just end up getting spread over all the different funds of the county. And we felt that last year. Cuts were made, but then internal service rates for our enterprise funds went up. Our other bucket is for long range planning. So this bucket is fully revenue backed, 48% by grants. and 52% by the cost plan. Cuts here won't deliver the kinds of savings that are needed for the general fund, which is why we took both line items on the sheet you have in terms of the target reductions for scenario two and combined them into one, which is that $200,000 amount. So to recap what our menu of cuts under scenario two looks like to achieve the target $206,000, We can eliminate two out of three staff from our compliance team. I would say at that point, you don't really have a program. So you could consider just elimination of the whole program, which is discretionary. If we did have one remaining staff member, we could still investigate the highest priority cases. We wouldn't be able to do any more than that. We also have the option of canceling the 2027 fair event. if that is an option you want to consider, knowing earlier rather than later, because planning is already underway. Or we can pull support for WSU Extension's Community Agriculture and 4th Youth Program support. And regardless of any of the cuts listed up there that you're considering for 2027, it is important to let you know we are still managing the ripple effects from the 2026 cuts. We eliminated our general fund reserve for permit review and moved to a cost recovery model. But at the same time, we have seen a regional 20% to 30% downturn in building activity. So even with increased permit fees, we don't have enough money coming in to cover costs. And we no longer have the general fund reserves to fill in the gaps. We will have no choice but to make staffing cuts in the coming months to our permit enterprise fund.

Part of the reductions from last year were a cut in the hours available. Can you explain kind of the impact of that that's been?

So we still have the same hours, but we shifted to appointments in the afternoon. And that was an attempt to still provide a high quality of customer service, especially to our more regular building employees. But yes, it's definitely had an impact.

And is it true, like, tell me if this is correct. In the past, you might have been able to have permits issued 10% slower or longer, but with new state timelines, like we have new mandates of timelines we don't That's not a choice we could make even if we wanted to because we have to meet statutory minimums or else refund fees and things like that. Is that?

That is true. If we do not meet those statutory minimums, it's going to undercut our bottom line. We would have to return 25% of the permit fees. So, yes, we are obligated to meet those.

Yeah, then that's kind of a change in the last couple of years.

Yes, that is a change starting in early 2022. beginning of 2025. And this, we are not unique. I know of at least two other counties in western Washington that have made significant cuts. If you operate in a full-cost recovery model, you've got to follow the booms and the busts. And so you ramp up staffing when the permits are coming in, and then you have to decrease staffing if they're not. And what we're seeing across the region is a 20% to 30% downturn.

It downturned in what? Permits coming in. Just applications for permits.

That's a trend where? Are you saying statewide, regionally, this county?

I am only familiar with more regional, like central Puget Sound. I know Snohomish County is making cuts. Jefferson County made cuts at the beginning of the year, and hearing from Pearson King that they're also down. Okay, that's up as well. I don't know the extent, like what percentage, but everyone is seeing a downturn in the amount of building activity.

Is there an explanation that the industry is giving?

Yeah, it's just the economy. The same reason why the real estate market is more stagnant right now.

that local economy, national economy?

I think when it's expensive to borrow money, it's harder for folks to take out the needed capital to build big projects. So it's not uncommon that if inflation is up and interest rates are not coming down, that you could see a stall.

So scenario three. No general fund cuts would be taken in this scenario. We would get credit for the cuts that we made in 2026. But as mentioned on the previous slide, the ripple effects from the 2026 cuts will mean that we do have to reduce staffing for permit review in the coming months. And I'll just end by saying this is what operating under financial strain with no reserve looks like, at least for CPED. Our department needs to be honest with you about what we can and cannot sustain in the coming years. If we have to do less, we need to make those choices deliberately rather than spreading cuts so thin that everything suffers, especially the level of service to our community for the programs that remain. We also need to make thoughtful decisions now that give our teams and our programs the best chance of staying resilient through continued budget uncertainty in the coming years. That's all I have. Happy to answer questions.

That was well done, I mean, in terms of the clarity. I appreciate that.

How much time do we have?

We started late, so I think it's 20 minutes per.

IS THAT OKAY? THANK YOU, CHAIR. GOING BACK TO KIND OF SLIDE THREE, RIGHT, AND YOU MENTIONED THE GREEN, BLUE, AND YELLOW AREAS WOULD BE THE ONES WHERE THAT WOULD BE FACING KIND OF CUTS, AND YOU DID KIND OF A HIGH-LEVEL OVERVIEW ON THAT, RIGHT, WITH CODE COMPLIANCE, THE FAIR, AND THE WSU EXTENSION. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of the impacts, like the correct impacts? You know, with code compliance, you mentioned like there wouldn't be a program anymore. So that means any...

So land use and building code compliance items, if we lost two thirds of our staff, would only be limited to the highest priority cases. So in that case, it would be like, active environmental damage occurring. Yep. Life safety. So someone building a home or an accessory dwelling unit without permits.

So code compliance is not mandated by the state in terms of just a high priority or not at all.

It is not, it's not required. It is discretionary.

I spent two hours yesterday on a meeting on putting together a forum, a regional forum, as to how to improve code compliance across Puget Sound for salmon recovery purposes. So, I mean, this is like going directly in the opposite direction.

I've held forums before in District 1 where it's been very specifically about code compliance and as well, and there is a lot of community. And so you might not have this information now, but can you talk about code compliance? Because we already have a huge caseload with the staff that are basically trying to do everything they can. And it's already only complaint initiated, right? So there's already been those reductions where it's not like our staff is out there looking for someone who is in violation, usually it's a complaint that starts a code compliance action. Can you talk about kind of where we're at in terms of how many complaints our staff is currently handling?

Can I add to that? I think it's connected. Can you kind of give us what would a fully staffed code complaint

Yeah, I think those can be connected. The difference is what you mentioned, the complaint-driven versus the proactive, that'll change the amount of resources that are needed. And I know that, I'm guessing you probably don't have off your fingertips those numbers, but we can get that because I know that Just a couple months back, we provided an overview of the top cases in the county. Board gave direction to prioritize. And then we also gave an overview of the number of cases. So we can resend that information out to the board.

And I will note, Environmental Health has their own compliance. So ours is focused on land use and building. And then we collaborate with our fellow department on those larger compliance cases.

Thank you. I will actually say this. And one of the reasons I'm asking these questions is because I think it's very important for the public to kind of understand the impact. And so this is actually the August 5th report that was, make sure I have the right one and not an old one. Yeah, I had an old one. But from August 5th of last year, just you know, there were 225 unassigned cases. And this was August last year. So and they had 130 active cases and 137 cases that had been cleared. And so that's just without the impacts from this year that you've been already facing.

Yes. And And as we've discussed in other forums and happy to provide additional information, it's related specifically to compliance. The money that is currently going into our code compliance program is just focused on staff. We don't have money for the tools needed to be impactful, be as impactful as possible for our compliance cases. So we can't pay for recording fees. We can't pay for hearing examiner fees. We can't pay for citation books that are only 800 bucks. Our budget is so tight, it's for the people, but compliance, if you want it to be effective, you have to have money for all the tools, you have to have money for abatement, and we don't have that.

But, Chair, to your question, we can put together a high-level overview and send that out to the Board.

The point, really, I was trying to make, and I can just make it much more high-level, is just that it's not like, it's not like the three people we have is a normal thing. And then we'd be cutting from there. It's like from the day I've gotten on this board, we've been commissioners have been trying to prioritize more resources to, to a woefully under, yes, under resource compliance department. So we'd be cutting from something that's like wholly inadequate to begin with. That's the only point I was making. Yeah.

I would say a normal caseload is probably about 30. 30 to 40 cases. And so if you look at the number of cases.

That's six or seven more people. That's the tool money for the legal tools that are needed.

Yeah, it's the reason why Ashley and the team came forward and said, board, there's all of this going on, but we want to prioritize the highest level ones. And we got your input because there's so much in the environment of waiting for folks to it being complaint driven. And those complaints coming through, they went ahead and prioritized a certain workload and that helped them focus. We did that several months back, but you're right. The three folks is not, that's an adequate staffing configuration for the workload that we have. It's already inadequate. And the board has been talking about how do we look at changing that over time?

Can I also touch on, sorry.

No, go ahead.

Oh, I was going to touch on the other two, which is the fair event and just the impact it would have on staff. The kids, 4-H, FFA, basically that wouldn't be happening. I'm imagining if the fair event were to be canceled, the kids wouldn't have that opportunity to have the cells and the add-ons and everything that comes along with the fair. As you heard from our agriculture program manager at the fair automation, we grow our future farmers at the fair.

We would not have those programs available anymore. To be eligible, to move, up to statewide competitions for 4-H and whatnot, you have to participate in a local fair. And so we would no longer have those avenues here in Thurston County. They would have to look to other counties. And then I'm not sure if we'd be able to hold on to them if we're not providing youth programming and agriculture. Those agricultural operators might not establish their farms here in Thurston County.

Thank you. And then the third option, the WSU extension, what would happen to the ILA that we have? Would we just not have a WSU extension office? What would be? So we do have a standing agreement with them.

This would cut a portion, the non-revenue-backed portion of our support. So they would still have an office. but we would no longer have that direct connection or direct funding support to 4-H. So we'd lose our 4-H program coordinator, and we would lose the portion of Stephen Bramwell's time supporting our community agriculture programs. But we would have some services remaining, the ones that are backed either by grants or WSU itself.

Like what programs?

So for the revenue-backed ones are our Master Composter, Master Gardener programs. Those are funded through Public Works. And then there is a number of agriculture programs, grazing school, native seed programs that are funded either through grants or WSU.

I can't in good conscience touch any of these. I hear you say, and it's not you, they're discretionary, but that doesn't mean that they're optional, in my opinion. These are extremely important. The code compliance department, and I know it's anemic, and we're trying to figure out ways to make it more efficient. I'm not saying this to you because you understand this any better than I do, but these are risk mitigation tools that are there for public safety purposes, and you take those out of the equation, and things don't get better. The money that you save, you lose community-wise in the long run bigger than we could

Okay, let's move on to public defense. I'll try to keep us. Thank you so much, Ashley. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

There'll be more deliberation on these different topics, so please leave us.

Okay, good morning, Commissioner Patrick O'Connor, Public Defense. Obviously, public defense is a constitutionally guaranteed service for this community. Under the U.S. and Washington State Constitution, the board's well aware of our struggles at the county level for funding, specifically with the state-only funding in our office, about 4%. So 96% of public defense funding comes from the county. So just take a moment here because if you look at the last bullet point here, the board took action on June 3rd to adopt a phased public defense caseload transfer. So the board essentially has already decided in either scenario the board chooses, scenario two or three, to phase our public defense general fund cut into public safety sales tax. So I want to stop there for a second if you want more. CONVERSATION ON THAT, BUT AS WE PREPARED FOR TODAY, CIRCLING BACK TO JUNE 3RD AND THE BOARD'S DECISION, THE BOARD HAS MADE THIS DECISION TO CUT OUR BUDGET AND PHASE THAT INTO PUBLIC SAFETY SALES TIMES. I'LL PAUSE FOR A SECOND IF WE NEED TO CIRCLE BACK AND HAVE MORE CONVERSATION ABOUT THAT. To us, we put together two reduction scenarios to get to the Dollar Mountain Scenario 2 and the Dollar Mountain Scenario 3. Again, the Board's already adopted or made a decision to take either Scenario 2 or Scenario 3 as a reduction in an approach, and that approach would be to phase that reduction in either scenario into public safety sales tax. Okay, so next slide here. Again, highlights are overall budget, and again, these budget numbers that we're presenting came from the county's budget office. You can see that general fund salaries and benefits, the lion's share of our budget, grants being, again, a small percentage of our budget, operational and discretionary. That's the yellow portion. So when we talk about discretionary budget in public defense or operational, It's discretionary in that those funds are dedicated to deliver public defense to this community in constitutionally mandated services through our professional services. So as the board's aware, we contract with attorneys in our community to provide constitutionally mandated services. We have to do that because we have legal conflict of interest cases, which we're unable to represent a assigned court-appointed defendant on. And so we have to compensate those lawyers. They don't do this work for free. nor do the professional services that accompany a full defense that's guaranteed under the Constitution to defend a client come free either. So those are professional services like experts. We have to pay for those experts. Examples would be DNA experts, forensic experts. Those costs are not imposed on the state, but they are imposed on public defense. So we need a budget for that every year. Our budget is short. It was short last year, and it's going to be short again this year. And that's in part as a result from our budget reduction, our cut from our general fund that was not shifted into public safety sales tax in 23 and 24. And I'll touch on that at the end. That's sort of a snapshot overview of our budget. Again, everything we do is constitutionally mandated. Everything we do is driven by outside factors. So our workload is beyond my control. I don't control the number of arrests. I don't control the number of filings, prosecutions, et cetera. What the county has an obligation to do is provide those constitutionally mandated services with the appointment of counsel. So this is scenario two and how we would get there. Essentially, we're looking at moving 2.6 FTE equivalent positions to get to that number and the accompanying additional APPROPRIATION OF INTERFUND AND OPERATIONAL AND DISCRETIONARY COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH EACH ONE OF THOSE 2.6 OF A PERSON FTE EXPENSES TO GET TO THE BOTTOM DOLLAR IN SCENARIO TWO. AND ESSENTIALLY THE SAME IN SCENARIO THREE. SO OBVIOUSLY SCENARIO THREE IS ABOUT TWO TIMES THE GENERAL FUND, THE ALLOCATION TO PSST. You'll see the accompanying additional FTEs it would take to get to that number. In reduction three, it would be six FTEs, or 12.8%, and the accompanying Interfund travel training supplies. Smaller dollar amounts, but to round it out to get to the scenario $3 amount. Okay, I'm going to pause for a second in case there's any questions from the morning. Okay. Okay. So our next slide here is the I've been doing this a long time and I almost said the court again. The board is well aware of 1240, the public safety sales tax. So what I want to do is highlight Commissioner Mejia, Commissioner Menser were part of that resolution and that was back, that's resolution 16352 public safety sales tax You see the asterisk there that specifically 25% of that resolution was to be proportionally divided between prosecuting attorney's office, the auditor's office, and public defense. These are the numbers to date of the fund allocation of 1240. 64% to prosecuting attorney's office, 30% to the auditor's office, 5% to public defense.

Of the 25%? Correct.

1250, this is again sort of highlighting our current budget authority under 1250, and that was approved during the budget biennium period. Highlight here, we have some midterm policy requests to address at the appropriate time. That's not today, but just to share those as information for your review. Okay, so I'm going to pause and answer any questions, but I appreciate all the board's support. Obviously, 2026 has been a tremendous year in change in public defense with the State Supreme Court decision on caseloads. We have a plan in place for the board. How much I appreciate that. We've implemented that, obviously, in compliance with the State Supreme Court's mandate. Year one has been a success. A lot of narratives out there that there's not enough public defenders to implement. That has not been a problem here in Thurston County. As we go into next year, we add three more attorneys. I have those attorneys interested and ready to onboard as soon as we get those positions to our budget. So it's been wildly successful in recruiting. It has not been an issue for us. And that'll continue, hopefully it'll continue to be the case. I can't speak for the future, but certainly the impact it's made on our staff has been tremendous in the public defense community, but it comes with challenges. So circling back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, the state needs to fund public defense. The board's well aware of that. The board's advocating for the state to kick in just as every other county in the state of Washington is. But until we get there, we're still gonna be challenged. We're still gonna have some challenges And sort of circling back again, one of our midterm policy requests is to address the four ARPA positions that we have. We have three attorneys and one legal assistant. That was all baked into the board's adoption of our caseload implementation plan that the board voted on, keeping those positions, obviously, and transferring those positions into public safety sales tax so we can continue to have those positions to implement the standards in addition to the additional implementation positions the board approved and the last bullet point there is that increase in professional services all right so our professional services budget that's funding we have to pay out of pocket for interpreters we have a lot of bilingual clients transcriptions experts experts are expensive right experts costs have gone up every year just as every other thing and seems like in america these days has gone up and we have to pay for those So we, last year, ran into a budget shortfall of that professional services budget based on doing the work, right? So I'll give you an example. I was in a homicide trial this year, about seven weeks, with a co-defendant that had to be represented by outside counsel. We finished the case. That outside counsel is expert. and their professional services hours for doing a trial is gonna be about 8% of our entire professional services budget for one case. That's just part of the work, right? Cases go to trial, they take a long time, they're complicated, et cetera. So we're gonna continue to see a need to increase those professional services in our line item and our budget to cover expenses. What we don't wanna do, and this has been a mission of mine since I've been the director, is come to the board late in the game with a budget overage, right? Getting out in front of that as fast as I can and forecasting what the expenses are so you're aware, so you can make tough decisions. And I know they're tough decisions. But in instances like this, again, just in general, in terms of workload, I don't control those things, right? We manage them efficiently, effectively. We save county dollars where we can. But ultimately, this is the cost of ensuring that each defendant that we represent has their constitutional rights protected, and that they're advocated for.

Thank you. Or you can go first. Sure.

I just have a question on this slide. Sure. Maybe it's for County Manager. Sure. My understanding, so 2015, we talked about public defense. Is that going to cover the increased implementation versus the shifting to public safety sales tax covering the kind of reduction from the general fund exercise scenario? Yeah, I'll invite Summer to the table. I just want to make sure I understand that, because no one really said much about 2015, and we had a recent discussion about that.

Yes, 2015, when the board was, when the board activated that sales tax, it is calculated to cover the growth for public defense caseload standards requirements. We do believe that there's capacity in that for there to also absorb some of the reductions for Patrick's shop in a Summers, anything else you'd like to add to that?

That's correct. So we've analyzed the potential revenue that will come in and the board's direction last year during reduction exercises and how we backfilled some of the reduction to reduction. And it can support the transfer from public defense's general fund appropriations into the new fund.

Now, 2015 is something that we're tracking. We have one month's worth of receipts, but they're very, very low when they initially start. We look to come back to the board in early 2027 after we have several months of collection to then determine if our forecast, we believe that there's going to be absolutely enough based on the decisions the board made in 2026, but it could recalibrate that there's a little bit extra. And then TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH THE BOARD ABOUT HOW DOES THAT APPLY TO THE BUILD OF THE 28-29 BUDGET.

THANK YOU, PATRICK. HOW MANY EMPLOYEES CURRENTLY DO YOU HAVE? 58 EMPLOYEES. THAT DOES NOT COUNT FOR THE CONTRACTED SERVICES, CORRECT?

THAT DOES NOT, YEAH. WE CONTRACT WITH Over a dozen attorneys and countless professionals, other professionals.

And that just depends on caseload that comes in where you have to go and contract out or there's conflict or anything like that.

Right, yeah, which we can take a look at. We know a monthly average, but it's challenging. I'm going to be candid here. I think our office is unique in a lot of ways, but one of which is that we are also running a business. So I'm running a business managing contracts with independent contracting attorneys and compensating them and having to be competitive, especially when we talk about conflict attorneys. Conflict attorneys right now can make a lot of money in the state of Washington doing public defense, and they don't have to drive far from Thurston County to do it. Grays Harbor, Lewis County, Mason County, Pierce County, I compete with all of them, and they are paying more than we are. I have not increased the compensation to our contractors In a handful of years, I'm going to have to do that. Because I need their services, right? We have to have their services and I'm competing. Unfortunately, we just lost one of our one of our main contractors passed away unexpectedly. which is devastating. But again, I'm out trying to recruit other professional services. So while we deliver our core everyday operational shop work, we are also, my team is also out working with other professionals, compensating them, paying them, invoicing. We are a high volume business. Mr. Mentzer was a former contractor of ours, he knows. that portion of our work. And I think that gets sort of lost sometimes when we talk about delivery of public defense. Obviously, there's the core functions that everybody is aware of, but this other big portion of our business is working with independent contractors and doing business in our community and staying competitive.

This is just... When I was doing it, I know we've increased it once, but when I was doing it, it was $50 an hour. My billing rate was $250 an hour. Washington State Bar Association, if you're working for 25% or less, it's considered pro bono work. So I got credit for pro bono work because I was making 20% of what I would have been making for a private client. Our payment for services are for that kind of thing. We went to 75 at one point is that right? And you know, but I mean it's still but that was a long time ago Yeah, your average overhead is a solo practitioner these days.

It's almost $60 now. That's just for overhead And it can bear in mind independent contractors doing public defense Also have to certify and comply with the state standards of engine defense. So they have to take less cases and JUST AS PUBLIC DEFENDERS DO, STAY IN COMPLIANCE AND KEEP EARNING THEIR SALARY WHERE IT'S REASONABLE FOR THEM.

DO WE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE COURT CASE THAT RELATES TO STATE FUNDING AND PUBLIC DEFENSE? I'VE KIND OF LOST TRACK.

YEAH, IT'S BACK ON THE TRIAL TRACK.

I KNOW IT'S STILL OUT THERE. THERE'S BEEN MOTIONS THAT GOT DISMISSED AND GOT REINSTATED AND IT'S KIND OF FOLLOWED A BUMPY PROCEDURAL COURSE. I THINK IT'S BACK AT THE TRIAL COURT LEVEL.

IT IS BACK AT THE TRIAL COURT. Thank you. I was just going to just say, you know, I have the honor of serving in different statewide committees, and I know so does Commissioner Menser, and one of the things I'll give you credit to, Patrick, is anytime that there has been a program that is available, I'll be like, oh, like, you know, is Thurston, and they're like, Thurston County's already, like, they're already, you know, have applied for it and are in, so I know that You know, for me, that always makes me feel like at ease, just knowing that you're ahead of the curve and a lot of these things looking for funding and being aware of the impact, especially with the budget right now. So just wanted to kind of highlight that, that, you know, in different areas, it's been highlighted that Thurston County Public Defense has been very active in trying to APPLY FOR EVERY PROGRAM AVAILABLE TO BRING GRANT FUNDING IN OR HAVING A PILOT PROGRAM WHERE IT'S GOING TO BE COVERED. SO THANK YOU FOR THAT WORK.

ABSOLUTELY. I KNOW WE'RE PROBABLY SHORT ON TIME, BUT ANY OPPORTUNITY WE SEE, WE COMPETE. BUT AT OUR CORE, WE'RE COMPETING FOR THINGS THAT BENEFIT OUR COMMUNITY AND OUR CLIENTS, BUT MAYBE GRANT OPPORTUNITIES THAT ARE OUTSIDE OUR CORE.

OKAY. MY FIRST QUESTION IS, HOW MANY EMPLOYEES ARE IN PUBLIC HEALTH TOTAL?

I would have to tease out the public health side versus the social services side. We have about 172 positions.

Budget conversation as a result of last year's budget conversations. So in the general fund funded work of our department, pretrial screening and supervision, our work is entirely driven by who is arrested and booked.

We'd like to provide the service to your residents when we're already doing it and then Do we need to cut that off?

Well, that's what the board indicated, that we wanted a fuller cost recovery and to bring kind of these services that haven't been cut. District court providing the services that we are providing currently for district court is like on the newer end of things. Before we didn't do the full, it was only offered to superior court cases.

Free trial services.

Yeah, free trial services. And so I'm trying, I don't want to be wrong, incorrect on the date, but I know it's a newer 2021 is when pretrial services expanded to provide services to district court.

We have since sort of evolved and somewhat curtailed our services to district court. We don't provide as much to district court as we do to superior court.

That's what I'm remembering. So how did municipal court get into this? We weren't even giving district court service at one point, and then we kind of pulled it back. So how is it that we're giving service to Lacey, Tumwan, and Olympia?

So when district court judicial officers hear all different types of cases and From their perspective, it was sort of an equal access to justice issue. Whether a case is charged by the county or charged by the Lacey prosecutor, they want those different defendants to have the same service array available. This is kind of, I think, a legacy issue. And I do think it's part of the conversations that the board is trying to kind of shed a light on with this full cost recovery discussion.

Go ahead. So there is an aspect, some of these contracts were built a while ago.

Grandfathered, yeah.

There is an aspect of the county receiving some funding, but we have an opportunity to take a look at is it full cost recovery and is it directly in proportion to the level of service that's being provided? That's right. How are we doing this? It's an opportunity that the board gave us in direction to say, look at reestablishing contracts with municipalities or others on that full cost recovery model. I think this topic has a couple of different dynamics. It has what we're doing with Olympia today. It has what we have put into other contracts in a per rate formula that doesn't necessarily cover the full cost. So it's not necessarily coming back into Cary's shop like dropping that way. There's a general fund component to it. We have the ability through the full cost policy that will come to the board for approval eventually to look at it very differently and to build the same approach we did for district court in Olympia to have it more of a charge for service. And as we negotiate with Tom Water and Lacey on new contracts to build that in and make it very clear.

And then that funding will essentially be passed through to the trial services. Okay. Thank you. And so just to, I guess, to back up to when I say our caseloads per person have increased 59%, these municipal discussions are important and are part of that, but that number really is actually primarily driven by our superior court caseload, by felony cases coming into the system. So both dynamics are at play, and everything is sort of piling on to drive that number of a pretty significant increase for us. So that kind of very active discussion about what does full cost recovery look like, what do the contracts look like with the municipalities is important, but does not, is only a small slice of that bigger issue.

Thank you. Can I ask, oh, you have one more slide. I can ask towards the end.

Let's get to the next slide. Okay. So the two different scenarios, as I said, the first target was this $44,000. indulge me for a moment in a little math exercise that I thought was kind of enlightening. So I mentioned before that the cost per day to hold someone in the county jail is $119. The cost per day to supervise someone in the community is $4. So 119 minus four, so the difference, the higher amount for the jail is $115 a day. If you multiply that by 365, you'll get about $42,000. So the cost to hold one additional person in the county jail is almost as much as this reduction target. So if a change, a reduction in our services resulted in one out of the 650 people that we currently supervise in the community being held in the jail instead of supervised in the community, then almost the entire savings over here at pretrial services would then be a cost to corrections. I just thought that was an interesting coincidence of the math. Just one defendant held in the jail would kind of eat up all of those savings in a different budget area. So that $44,000 is about a half an FTE. We would reduce our level of service. We really absorbed a cut from last year, and we are now spread very thin. Again, that 59% increase per person in caseload.

I don't want to gloss over, and I know you probably wouldn't call this out yourself, but when you say absorb the cut, it also required you to take on a significant amount of workload, caseload yourself in order to help the team manage the reduction. I just want to publicly commend you as a leader for doing that and stepping into the breach and really working that through with your team. So thank you, Carrie.

So we do important work. We didn't want to kind of watered down what we were doing. And so yes, I've taken on the caseload. And overall, we are the whole doing more with less. We are doing it. We are definitely doing more with less. And so any additional reduction, there is no cushion. There is no cushion to maintain current services with less staffing. So we would discontinue, which kind of relates to the previous discussion. If we had to cut staffing, we would have to discontinue our services to district court. We would likely also stop supervising the kind of lowest risk felony cases. Again, that would then mean all of those people would either have to be held in custody or would be released in the community with no monitoring at all. That could create public safety risks. would likely increase failures to appear, which leads to warrants, which leads back to more jail bookings. So there would be costs to that. Options to mitigate. You had a previous discussion when public defense was up here about House Bill 2015. We had some very preliminary look at the eligible uses of that funding and whether pretrial services might apply there, so I think there could be opportunity to further explore whether any general fund loss to pretrial services could be offset with a different fund source, and then also the conversation we just had about if there was a general fund reduction in pretrial services, could that be made up through this exploration of the contracts with the municipalities?

Can I ask a couple follow-up questions?

YES, WE DO.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU, CARRIE. I WAS WONDERING, JUST AS A COUPLE FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS TO KIND OF WHAT YOU'VE SAID, THE, YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT JUST THE HUGE CASELOAD INCREASE THAT, YOU KNOW, your offices had. And so I know pre-trial services is not just pre-trial service officers, right? There's the resource hub that's also housed under a pre-trial services umbrella. So how many actual pre-trial services are there currently under? How many for staff? Yes.

So yes. So the, yes, the hub resource hub and our pre-trial conversion team are treatment sales tax funded. When I'm talking about our screening and supervision team, that's four pretrial service officers and then a supervisor, a program manager. So basically a team of five. And then I'm also doing a lot of that work as well as the county manager.

So a team of five is supervising and monitoring?

650-ish.

650 individuals currently?

600 to 700 individuals, depending upon the flow.

So I have a question on that. So 650... And then, but you're saying if there was a 9% reduction in staffing, you would not be serving 100 district court and 200 of the low-level felonies.

So how does that work? So it's partly because of how thinly we are spread right now and that it's basically unsustainable.

Unsustainable to have the 59% increase that you've absorbed. I got you. Yes.

Yeah. And the different levels of supervision. A case is not a case is not a case. So those lowest level take.

Yes. The higher level felonies are going to take more. OK. Right.

So by keeping the higher level felonies, which I think we would all agree would be a priority public safety wise, those take more time. So not all cases take the same amount of time based on their level.

THANK YOU. SURE. I WANT TO TOUCH ON THE PUBLIC SAFETY RISK, BUT FIRST I KIND OF WANT TO GO BACK TO KIND OF THE, WHAT YOU MENTIONED IN TERMS OF KIND OF THAT CIRCLE, RIGHT? LIKE IF THERE'S NOT THAT MONITORING, PEOPLE ARE MISSING COURT, MISSING, RIGHT? AND SO THEN IT JUST WOULDN'T BE AN IMPACT ON OUR CORRECTIONS, BUT ALSO AS WELL ON THE JURISDICTIONS WHO ARE CURRENTLY BEING SERVED THROUGH DISTRICT COURT AND I BELIEVE THEY ARE CURRENTLY CONTRACTING WITH with Nisqually on their jail services. So that would also be an increase to them if they don't have those services of supervision. And it's maybe a case that can be made to the cities as we're talking to them about, you know, this is keeping people and it's, you know, I'm not sure what their contracting looks like, but, you know, it would be an increase to us and, you know, in our corrections budget. Because it definitely is more expensive to house someone in our jail than to have pretrial service monitoring. And it's something that is not often talked about. But it is very expensive to have someone in the jail. Yes. And it would be expensive to have someone in a different jail as well, correct? Yes. But I want to go back to kind of what you mentioned in terms of the public safety risk. And what the like what it actually means like for community members, right? When they're, for those who don't really understand pretrial services, don't understand what we're talking about when we're saying monitoring or screening, what that means. And so you mentioned a public safety risk. And so I was wondering if you could expand on that and kind of explain, you know, the component of that public safety risk.

Yeah. So these are, again, six to 700 people on any given day who are facing pretrial felony charges or generally serious DUI charges. The only misdemeanor cases ordered to our supervision are going to be a DUI who has had previous DUI arrests, that type of thing. And there's judges in the room who could speak to this well, but there is a presumption of release during the pretrial period. So many people will be released to the community. I think there is a reason that those judicial office that our court on the Superior Court side orders 90 to 95% of cases to be supervised by us because then there's somebody who has some contact with that person. I believe most people can be successful in the community, most people will come back to court, most people will remain arrest free, but having some sort of eyes on them, having someone who talks to them on the phone every week, having someone who will let the prosecutor and the court know if that person is, oh, they've been arrested somewhere else, and there's an allegation of something somewhere else.

If we're not doing that, nobody's doing that. The Sheriff's Department does a lot of that, don't they? If somebody gets rearrested by Sheriff's Office, they would notify our courts of that arrest.

If someone's rearrested in our community, but we're looking nationally and statewide. to say, oh, someone, this person who's pending these felonies here was just booked into Lewis County on these charges or was picked up in Grays Harbor on these other charges. The court's gonna see or the prosecutor's gonna see if someone is rearrested in our own community.

I think to the commissioner's point, yes, the sheriff's office would do this when somebody was, I would go out and arrest them.

Do your pretrial service officers go out and perform those functions, or they just phone it in and, hey?

So we notify, and it's slightly different on the Superior and the District Court side, but we notify the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the court of new arrests and other. And then generally, it's on the prosecutor to bring that back before the court to have possibly request a change in those release conditions. So no, we do not have arresting authority. But we are the eyes on people in the community who are gonna know a lot sooner and therefore alert the prosecutor or the court much more quickly.

And like you said, it's that connection. So it's the calling them and reminding them that they have a court date. What do you need to come to the court? Do you need a dog? Whatever services that these folks need to appear for their court case, these folks are helping. So it's more. Right.

Yes. And so, yes, it's the hopefully connecting to services that prevent additional criminal behavior, connecting to services that help people come back to court. So our big goals are come back to court and stay out of trouble while you're pending on this first case.

And so anything we can do.

And of course, stay out of trouble long term. Yes. Anything we can do to support that is our team's role.

Anything else for Kerry? Thank you. Very good job. Thank you, Carrie. Superior Court and Family Juvenile Court are up next. We have a half an hour slot because they're kind of a tag team in us. And Judge Skinder, Judge O'Mealyn, welcome.

So I'm Judge John Skinder. I'm our presiding judge here in Superior Court. I have the honor of speaking for the nine Superior Court judges that handle so much work in our county. 15 minutes when it turned into about the state of the courts, I thought was really helpful on trying to get to a different vision about how the court, not the court, how you can look at how to fund the courts because the work that's being done by our courts is massive. I have a few comments I'm going to go through. I also have a little bit of additional statistics that we've got to turn things over to Judge Amilo, and Ms. Jensen's here if there's questions. And so public safety and timely, meaningful access to the courts are among the most important functions that government provides. These are mandatory, critical functions that are provided in our state constitution. Taxpayers expect and deserve this. What happens if our courts continue to be underfunded? Defunding our court will create massive long-term public costs. Starving the judiciary of funds does not save money. It shifts a larger financial burden onto governmental and private entities. Exploding jail costs. We heard Ms. Hennen talk about the $119 a day. Slashed court budgets means delayed hearings, causing criminal defendants to sit in county jails that we as citizens pay for while awaiting trial. Taxpayers absorb these massive local incarceration costs. Delays in timely access to justice can cause important felony cases to be dismissed on constitutional grounds. We talked last week about vigilantism, and I think it's important to think about that. When people feel they cannot get their hearing in court, when they feel their case cannot be heard in a timely way where they have meaningful access to the courts, we see people take the law into their own hands. We can see this happening in criminal, civil, and family law areas, and it is very concerning for our community. Increased social services burden. Delays in family court cases leave child support, custody, and domestic violence protective orders in limbo. This forces vulnerable individuals, our most vulnerable community members, into sometimes needing public assistance, emergency housing, and unfortunately can cause them to lose their homes and have to live on the streets. Future litigation wave. Postponing timely access to justice creates an artificial backlog that will crash in the future. If the courts are not provided sufficient funds to do all the work that we are doing, we will not be able to handle that future wave when it hits. Courts drive economic recovery and business confidence. When our local and state budgets are strained, as they are now, commerce and contracting enforcement become even more critical to stabilize the economy. Resolving business disputes. Companies rely on courts to enforce contracts, collect debts, and resolve commercial conflicts. Delayed access to the courts freezes capital that could otherwise be reinvested in our community. Protecting property rights. Clear and timely rulings on property and foreclosure cases allow assets to return more efficiently to the market immediately, again, helping our community's economy to be able to rebound. Securing public revenue. As you all have been super involved, you know that courts handle the collection of certain state fees, fines, and assessments that directly put money back into the operation of government. This is particularly important based upon the challenges facing our local budget and highlights the challenges you all face. Now, statistically, we talked a little bit, and this was in our two-page handout, and then we have the 25-page handout, but regarding the 2025 workload, this is on page two of our materials, and this is information by the Administrative Office of the Courts. It breaks down these different case types for criminal, civil, domestic, juvenile, probate, guardianship, juvenile offender, mental illness. And we talked last week about, because we had just gone up to Pierce County, because again, I appreciate the work the county is doing to make sure that the court has a large enough space that's accessible to all of our community members that's safe, which our current building, as you all have acknowledged, made it a number one priority. It needs to be addressed. So we went up to Pierce County with a team, including the assistant county manager. It was a wonderful opportunity to see the firm that's doing this work for the county right now to see how they implemented that in Pierce County. And it was really productive. But it got me to thinking. How do we compare? And of course, Pierce County is much larger. Their population, I think, is about 940,000. We're at 310,000. They have 26 judges, Superior Court judges. We have nine. And so just if we look real ballpark at these different numbers, if you break down the work that's being done in Thurston County Superior Court and you compare it to Pierce County, Each of our judges has a number of 1,580. Pierce County has 1,136. So because I know you were all interested in this last week, I looked at some of the other counties that I thought it might be helpful being able to look at the level of work that's being done. Yakima, who also has nine judges, of course, a lot of differences. But when you do the math and you break down their work and you divide it out by their nine judges, it's 1,182. Ours, 1,582. So let's look at closer counties. Kitsap. Kitsap has eight Superior Court judges. You do the math there. It's 986 cases per judge. We have, again, 1,580. Grace Harbor, three judges. You break it down, divide it out, 980 cases. And then Mason is at 877. Now, I'm not trying to say that they're not doing great work. They are. And we work with our sister counties all the time. We all help one another. When there are cases that a particular county can't handle, those cases get transferred. But what I think it highlights, and what I know you all are aware of this, is the amazing work that's done. And it's because we have people like Ms. Hennen, and we have people like Mr. O'Connor, and we have all of you that really care about these issues. But I'm telling you, with my 30 years of experience in the court system, we have to protect the courts. That has to be something that to me is probably the, if not the, among the top things that the people expect government to do for them. Everything the court does ties back in some way to public safety. And when you look at how you're spending your dollars right now, and you look at the amount of work that's being done by this court, and just looking at it based on the AOC, the Administrative Office of the Court's numbers for 2025, we're doing nearly twice as much work as some of our neighboring counties. We cannot sustain any more cuts. And I will take a question.

This is kind of like what we already did last week. Go ahead. We all stressed how much we value the courts, and it has been our top priority legislatively. It has been our top priority across the board to support the courts. That's all understood. Everybody else is This is an exercise, right? This is no final decisions, and we're trying to go through budget exercises. And if the question is, how would you meet the cuts that we've got to face and consider, I'm not seeing your answer to that question. And I know if the answer is I can't. This is still an exercise. Let me take a stab at it, and then I'll turn things over to my colleague, and she might have a few things she wants to say, too.

But the way I'd say it is this. We are a separate branch government. We are the judiciary and the judiciary serves this incredible role in our system. We are not a county department. We do not fall under any entity that is here. We fall under the constitution.

And so, and I know you know that. I know that, but like also we serve different roles and our role is to set a budget. And that's 100% true. The courts also oversee some of the, like you'll hear, we might make a policy and you guys you know, we're subject to your influence. Sometimes. Sometimes we have to recuse on that type of a case.

I understand we're different, but we're also... The difficulty for me is you're right. Ultimately, you set that number. But then whatever number you all set, then we have to figure out how we can do the work that we can and prioritize it. And like I talked about, I am not going to come before you and say, we're going to stop doing criminal cases. We're going to stop doing civil cases. We're going to stop doing family law cases. I cannot say that. I took a constitutional oath to make sure that every case that gets filed in our county People get fair treatment. They're treated with respect. And they get a judge that is going to listen to both sides and make the best decision that we all can. I cannot tell you right now, if you say, if we cut this, what are you going to cut out? What are you going to stop doing? Because I cannot stop doing any of the work. What will happen is everything slows down. And that was the point I tried to make last week. is that when those decisions get made, what that causes, the most honest answer I can tell you all is it causes everything to slow down. And then what's the harm from that slowdown? And that's what we're trying to talk about. So I don't feel like it's an exercise that is an exercise you can really ask us to do to get a good answer. Because we cannot tell you, oh, yeah, I took an oath to enforce all the laws. But because you're cutting us $800,000, we're going to stop doing this type of work. I cannot do that. I will not do that. I don't think any of my colleagues would do that. All we can tell you is, then, Kristen and Michelle, would try to look at what needed to be cut. That amount of cut that's listed in that third option would cut us to the core. We have suffered cuts. We have asked for things that we believe are well supported, which I think a lot of you agree are well supported. We've had those turned down. We understand that. But if those cuts were to happen, the work would fundamentally change in our county. And I'll give you one other answer that I want to be fair and give my colleagues some time too. But one of the things I was thinking about when we talked about the drug court building, which is a lease, it's through TST. But again, if we look at shifting restricted dollars and find ways that give the county more flexibility to use different funds for different things, Another is Chandler Court. I mean, quite frankly, if you were to cut the Superior Court budget $800,000, you might as well get out of Chandler because there's no way we're going to be able to do the work that we would use Chandler for. But what does that mean? That means we don't get to the work in a timely way. And all these things that I've spent some time talking about. the impacts, those are the impacts we're going to feel. And I know you brought this up about long-term public safety costs. Well, this is that discussion. Because if the courts aren't protected, we are going to pay way more down the road as we go through.

Does that answer your question? Yeah. And I know you understand the position. I do. We have a finite amount of resources. We have to figure out how to divide those up. And then we have to present that to the community and say, this is what we can afford. And you can either figure out a way to help us do more if you want more, or we've got to accept less. I mean, there's only so much we can do with what we've got, and we've got a mandate to balance the budget.

Right. And again, all I can tell you is we have a certain amount, and you've all called us your subject matter experts. we are all telling you we are underfunded to be able to do the work and we're falling behind. Even with falling behind, you have an amazing bench to be really proud of for the work that's being done for the citizens, but it's not sustainable in any way, shape, or form. So I'm going to, with due respect, I'm going to switch and then we'll come back to questions.

Well, first of all, thank you for having us. And I'm going to defer to Commissioner Mejia first before I launch. Go ahead, Commissioner.

Thank you, Judge. Well, I just had just general questions in terms of like what the total budget is for the public that Superior Court and Family Juvenile Court has. What's the general fund proportion for that? What's the target two? And what's the target three? That wasn't. that wasn't here. And so I think it's just good for the public to know, especially as other, you know, presentations have kind of showed that. And so just.

So we did, and it's all, I believe it's all been posted by you all before we have a 25 page annual report that goes through all of 2026 that goes into detail on all the numbers. We also gave the other materials and those are the same materials that we presented to you all last week. That contains all of that material. So I'd much rather have a conversation personally about when we're talking about what's the priority for the work and that, cause that's the issue that you have a tough decision, but the issue is how is it going to be prioritized? How is the work going to get done?

Thank you, judge. But many people in the public haven't had the opportunity maybe to see the presentation. And so that way there's that continuity is why I'm asking for that.

Let's just start with the general fund 2026. Do you have that? Can Georgia come on and just give her that?

Are you asking for what they're?

Yeah, and I have that, but it's just good for the public to hear that.

I can say it off the sheet if you want.

So scenario two is 340.

Not that one. I think let's start with the 2026. Adopted budget. Adopted budget is what she's asking for. Okay, yeah. That's what she's asking for.

That's in my head. Okay.

Go ahead and say that. It's $8,636,775. Thank you. For Superior Court. Six what? $8,636,775 for juvenile, $7,540,371. Thank you. It's just for the public just to understand. In all of our materials, we are happy to share them with everyone, as always. All right, thank you. So that represents, just to add to, for Superior Court, it represents 5.73% of the general fund and Juvenile Court, 5%. I think that was the other information that was provided.

All right. It sounds like about 10.5% of general fund, almost 11. Approximately. Okay, all right, thank you. And then I think your second question was, WHAT IS OUR PROPOSAL FOR TARGET 2? AND WHAT IS OUR PROPOSAL FOR TARGET 3? AND THE NUMERICAL ANSWER IS, BUT JUST SKIN TO SHARE, WHICH IS WE DON'T HAVE A NUMERICAL PROPOSAL BECAUSE WE'RE ALREADY OPERATING IN A DEFICIT. AND I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT FOR THE PUBLIC TO HEAR THAT SPECIFICALLY. SO THANK YOU FOR ASKING. I JUST WANT TO ADD. I know that you were, Commissioner Raheel, were available on the Zoom platform, even though you didn't have a lot of questions then. I don't know if you carried over questions from then to now, but we're happy to answer them. Not a problem at all. I just want to talk from the Family Juvenile Court perspective. I'm now the chief as of August 1st, and so it's been like a fire hose from that beginning, but I know how important this is, so I've been paying attention and just trying to understand what information you all need and what information we have to share with you, which is we have to give you a full and accurate and honest, comprehensive presentation of what we believe we have to do under our statutory and constitutional obligations. So that's kind of where it starts. Judge Skinner did a wonderful job of talking about the whole court and how the different work that is done in different campuses. But there's a lot of shared campus work because we don't have enough judicial officers. We have studies that show that we are short judicial officers. So now judicial officers, we are sharing extra work. We need more. judicial officers, but we don't have that funding accessibility yet. And so since we don't have that, that's a cost savings that is actually built in because we're just having to continue to do the work by sharing responsibilities when we are under-resourced just in the number of judicial officers that we have. And then I think every, no one can get away with, I think it's almost like every other month we're seeing news stories about what's happening in children in foster care. And, you know, we have a huge part of that conversation also includes what happens to children who are in detention and cases. Sometimes there are lawsuits that come out of that sort of thing. So we have to always be always wondering. or balancing the financial costs plus the long-term costs to families and community fabric, the safety of our community in general. I think Commissioner Rahia's focus on community safety should extend beyond just the criminal realm. It should extend to family health, safety, and welfare. because those children are gonna, what happens to them in the dependency system, what happens to them in the juvenile system, ultimately what we do to better their family and their lives is gonna make a difference as to whether or not we're gonna see them in the adult felony system. The dependency system also, we have that judicial oversight that includes our dependency guardian ad litems. We have about 70 youth that we do not have dependency guardian ad litem staffing to support. We have two positions that were held from before, and then we had, I think, five or six vacant holds that we were holding overall in our juvenile court administration, and that just makes it more difficult for us to meet the needs of those families and to maybe put some bring some long-term solutions so that we can stop that trajectory. I mean, some of you have heard of the school-to-prison pipeline. You've heard the juvie-to-prison pipeline. You've heard all those things. And a lot of those pipelines do start in child welfare. And if you look at the statistics for the adult lives of folks who graduate up and out of the foster care system, they don't have the best, even the ones that are adopted don't have the best outcomes as adults. So there's a lot of VALUE TO THE COMMUNITY TO ENSURING THAT THE COURT RESOURCES ARE NOT FURTHER DILUTED BECAUSE WE ARE THEN FEEDING THE SYSTEM. WE'RE STARTING MUCH EARLIER THAN JUST AT THE ARREST PHASE. WE'RE STARTING AT THE CHILD WELFARE PHASE, THE JUNIOR JUSTICE PHASE AND THEN THE SUPERIOR COURT PHASE. THESE REDUCTIONS AGAIN ARE DIRECTLY IMPACT OUR ABILITY TO ALSO RUN OUR therapeutic course because we have to focus. We have to focus on the things that are supported by other strict funding bases like the TST for a therapeutic course. So we have to really focus and make sure all of that is fully staffed. And then I just want to finally wrap up there because I know I'm just making sure that I don't miss some things that that Judge Skinder said. Just wanted to say that juvenile filings also demonstrate continuing workload pressures. The juvenile court performance chart reports that we had 228 filings, 182 resolutions in 2025, with 181 filings and 147 resolutions through July 31st of 2026. So you can see that that's on track to be bigger than before. And then just to finally address sort of like the SEPARATION OF POWERS SORT OF THINGS, WE REALLY WANT TO CONVEY HOW MUCH WE RESPECT YOUR ROLE. COMMISSIONER FORNIER IS CORRECT IN THAT WE DID OUTLAY A LOT OF built-in efficiencies that we've been using with extra hires and things like that. But I'd just like to say that we respect the Board's responsibility to make difficult budget decisions. Just as we know the Board respects the Court's responsibility to fulfill the duties assigned to the judicial branch. And we are committed to identifying efficiencies wherever we lawfully can. Where we believe a function is required by the Constitution, by statute, court rule, or due process, however, We should not characterize that function as discretionary or recommend that it simply be eliminated. Our role is to provide the board with a clear and candid assessment of what the court is required to do, what resources are needed to do it, and what the practical consequences of reduced funding may be. And from there, each branch can carry out its respective responsibilities with a shared understanding of the legal and operational realities that we all face. And we will do that. We do take that very seriously. And that's why we cannot give you a number in the form of an exercise, because it would be disingenuous to do so. Commissioner Mejia, you had your hand raised for questions.

Yeah. I was going to ask. Chair, is it OK? Go ahead. Thank you. I was going to ask in terms of the Garden Net Lighting Program, right? And then I was also going to ask about the therapeutic courts. piece on it. Because I know with the GAL program, the guardian ad litem program, it is something that the courts train guardian ad litems and it's something that it is paid from the court's budget. Is that correct? Or is it something that people pay into?

No, we have the staff, the limited staff, and then they supervise hundreds of guardian ad litems. And even though we have the dependency guardian ad litems as volunteers they don't we don't have enough of them to meet the need of the kids that need that supervision. And I think even when you have volunteers there's still a cost to the county if I understand through L&I coverage and stuff like that. I don't know that I'd have to get back because that's a fault of the juvenile house. I know that in the past when I was with the public defender's office when we did have volunteers we also had to have you know, certain types of coverage for the volunteer services that those are HR related things, but not necessarily salary related things.

Additional question? Thank you. Yeah. In terms of the therapeutic courts, are those mandated?

Yes. Well, our therapeutic, our IFRC is.

It's complicated because, I mean, that is an area that I think you could, You could stop doing that work, but there would be other costs to making that decision that probably, well, I can say more than probably, it overwhelms the cost savings benefit. And so you're right. I mean, I think that that's an area with our therapeutic courts. We found that these are programs that Thurston County has been an innovator, and you know this. I mean, we started doing these programs, I think we're the second or third county in the state back in 1998. And we see that They're worthwhile of investment. You look at drug court, which is probably the most studied Department of Justice study area, and they're shown to be a really good use of dollars. The problem is if we cut those programs, one, it's not ideal, but we're in non-ideal times. So I think it's a fair question. but then we lose other funding. And that's the problem is that if we made that cut because we could, the county loses the ability to have other funding that right now, not just the courts,