Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

All right, we're finally online. So, we're going to call this meeting to order. First item is the agenda. I'll move to accept the agenda as provided. I'll second. All those in favor. I minutes of the January 27th 26 board meeting. Move to approve as provided. All second. All those in favor? Hi, Greater Tumblr Convention and Visitors Bureau. Laura, you want to come up sit there by Chad and there's a little button there and push turn your mic on. Just kind of tap it. There you go. I might bend it down a little bit. So,

there you are. Thank you.

Perfect. Good morning, everyone. My name is Laura Carroll. For those of you who don't know me, um I'm the executive director of Midatama, the Greater Atama Convention and Visitors Bureau. Um just a minute about me. Um I'm a third generation Atwin. I am one of those statistics. I graduated from the high school and said, "I'm never coming back to this town. Here I am. Uh my husband retired from the army and we had choices of anywhere in the world that we wanted to go and we came home. So, ATMwa is my heart. It is what we do in our office every single day. Um, we have a partnership with Wablo County. We request um $5,000 every year that we put towards marketing and promotion for anything that we're doing outside of the Atom area. So, I have a few pages there for you of some of the things that we're working on right now. Um, the Greater Atoma Convention and Visitors Bureau has three things that we do. Um, if you picture it like Grant Wood's pitchfork prongs, we have three prongs that we do. Um, they all go to our number one goal, which is to increase the number of overnight visitors who are staying in Wablo County. Above and beyond everything else we do, we want to bring people in from outside the community. We're attracting visitors to Wapo County, strengthening the local economy, having them spend their money here, and enhancing the community's appeal through the programs and projects that we're doing. So, we balance three things. We interact with leisure travelers. We bring in meetings and group travel. And we are look local first in absolutely everything that we do. So, as you can

see, um, in the pamphlet that I gave you, um, we do this in a hundred and a half different ways. Um, anyone who tells you there's nothing going on in this community has never job shadowed us for a day to see what all we're working on. Um, first and foremost, we interact with leisure travelers. So, anybody who's coming through on vacation, they're coming to visit family or they're just passing through on their way to somewhere else. In those cases, we are giving them our visitor guides that are completely produced in house. We have a digital marketing specialist who does all of our layout, design, and printing here in town. Uh we send out email blasts. We're on social media. We have a marketing co-op with Travel Iowa where anybody who puts in their mailing information to receive information about Iowa and travel within the state, we get those mailing addresses. Those visitor guides that we create go into a business envelope and have gone to all 50 states. We have a map in our office of where all the people are coming from around the country and around the world to the visitor center. We have pins in that map and it's growing exponentially every year. A little bit of proof of what we're doing and the impact that we're making. Um our website midatamwa.org is the events calendar for Atamwa and Walo County. That is our most viewed page on the entire website. Um we invite any organization who is hosting an event to submit it. It takes exactly two minutes to type in your information and upload a picture. Then anything that is on our website under our events calendar is automatically included in all of our social media, our email blasts which go out across the country. Um we

specifically target Chicago, Kansas City, and Omaha. So those major metropolitan areas are getting all the information about ATMA and Walo County. We also have um the new visitor center at 115 East Main Street. It's the old Stitch Doctor building. We have renovated that completely to make it a stop, a destination for visitors who are coming into town. They can get not only visitor guides and maps of the community, but they're also able to see our mini museum that is a sneak peek of all of the attractions in town and across the county, as well as a local art gallery for photographers and artists. Um, we have our Radar O'Reilly MASH exhibit where you can dig through Radar's drawers and see what all he's working on today. Um, we also have a renovated space upstairs that we're about to unveil that we've worked super hard on to make um, a part of our community. Um, just a note at the bottom there of the more than 100,000 visits that we had from um, 2024 to 2025 from people outside of Wablo County. 61.6% of those stayed for at least one night. Midatama is 90% funded by the hotel motel tax. We receive 40% of that 7% hotel motel tax. That goes to our marketing and promotion for the community. So the more people who stay overnight, the more money I make, the more money I make, the more money I have to put back into marketing and promotion. It's a vicious circle and it's gorgeous and I love it. Um, the rest of those were day trippers and usually come from central Iowa and northern Missouri. The second biggest component of what we

do and maybe our favorite is bringing in large groups. The more people that we can bring in at a time, the better. And the longer we keep them here, the better. So, for example, next week we are bringing in travel and hospitality professionals from all over the state of Iowa. They're coming in for three days. They'll be here for two nights. And they will be learning leadership and wellness in the workplace. They will be featuring a different local restaurant at every single meal. They're staying in our hotels. They are going to the Gothic House for um a escape room on the first night that they're here. Then they're going to the speak easy on Thursday night after they have dinner at Amore. So, we're bringing in groups to spend time here to learn more about the community, to see our venues and our accommodations. So, then we can partner with them later to do other things, bigger things. Um, we are in charge of bringing in um RFPs from across the country. Right now we have um through a grant from the Legacy Foundation, we have the Play Easy RFP program which helps us get in touch with sporting events that are looking for new venues. So, because of all of the growth that we've had right there along the river over the past two years, we are now able to bring in sporting tournaments and competitions to those venues that we weren't able to get before. So, we have now a threeon-ree basketball tournament this summer that's coming in and a soccer clinic for women in the hopes of starting a women's soccer league. those things we're able to connect personto person and get those

connections made so that that communication then is open for the future. So once we get them here, we'll be able to keep them here. We work um one-on-one with Bridge View Center to fill their building. We work with Southeast Iowa JBS Sports Center to fill their building. And now we've our new soccer clinic will be at Legacy Fields. So we are spreading the love to as many venues as we possibly can to bring in those groups. Um we also have a sponsorship program for any group, any organization that is bringing in an event that's has people from outside Wapo County and is staying overnight. we are able to put some money towards either the venue cost or their marketing and promotion. So, we have that available that any group who's doing anything to bring people into the community, we love to help them out with that. And then first and foremost, we are look local first. Um, if you look at our website, you look at our visitor guides, everything is about local business, local hotels, local restaurants, local attractions. All of those are featured in our visitor guides, on our website, in our emails, our social media because of the support of the city and Wapo County. Everything that Mita Tamwa does is free of charge. We don't ask anybody to pay to be in a visitor guide. We don't ask them to pay us to be on our social media or in an email. We consider that giving back to the community. We have this responsibility to promote them and we want to do it as free as humanly possible so that they can get the most benefit out of it. Um the notes at the bottom there, we mailed out almost 4,000 visitor guides to outofstate interested

people who wanted to come travel through uh last year and we hosted more than a dozen events that brought in people from outside the community. Um on that last page there next to the beautiful eagle um you can see our revenue streams. They're not a lot. We have the hotel motel tax and our Wapo County support from you. We also do our own grant writing so that that's all kept in house as well. We do host two events ourselves during the year. the pages for pennies book sale that we partner with Bridge View Center and Friends of the Atama Public Library. All of the money that we make from that, Midatama puts back into printing our visitor guides. So, we sell books to make books and it just goes right back into that marketing and promotion. And then inside of our visitor center, we have a gift shop that is all Atumbama themed things that you're not going to find anywhere else. we've designed and printed inhouse. Um, we also are the replacement location for O'Hare when they carried the history books and the t-shirts and all those things. We have all of those now. So, that's all in our visitor center at 115 East Main Street. And now the good stuff, visitor spending for 2023 24. Um we've had four years in a row where visitor spending for Walo County has increased and it is increasing at a rapid rate. Um the year before this it was 9.6% from the year before. This past year it was another 4.9% increase to 64.1 million coming in from outside the community. You can see the breakdown there. Food and beverage is number one. People are coming to Atway to eat. Our restaurant guide is the most popular

brochure in the entire building. And then transportation and accommodations, retail sales and recreation and entertainment. But what's most important to us in our office are those next two numbers. Wapo County Tourism directly supports 456 jobs. This is why we do what we do because we're supporting the people who work here, the people who live here. We're bringing in people to spend money so that our people benefit. 5.2% of the Wapo County workforce is somehow in the tourism industry. So those people are the ones that we're working for every single day.

Well, you're definitely into this. I can tell. Which is good. I can tell with Chad's in into the courier all the time too. So, and you do reach out to any community event. Doesn't have to just be a tunnel. Correct. Correct. Because Autumn's sitting back there and she's one of our new directors of our new WO County Facebook page. So, we put links to your page and vice versa. So, and we appreciate it so much. We're gonna have a calendar on ours that cover all community events every in every city. So,

yep. Just like ours and four. All right. So, she's requesting 5,000 which appears we give every year. Yeah. I have a couple questions before we go for that. Um the Do you feel that there's more need in our community for bed and breakfast type operations? I will never say no to a lodging. Okay. Um, there are so many different kinds of people who want different things that you may not want to stay at a big hotel. You may want to stay at a bed and breakfast. There there's always people who will use them and we're happy to market absolutely anything. And you have a list of those that are in existence in a tumble throughout Wablo County. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know off hand how many are on that list? Um, believe hotels plus bed and breakfast plus cabins. There's probably 18. Okay. So, there's several. Yeah. Okay. And then also, um, egg tourism, do you have any any ability is there any ability to to provide that for visitors at this point? Absolutely. Okay. And do you have specific farm families that do that or We have a couple. Okay. Um, it's something that we branched out into very recently. Okay. So, as in the fall. So, we have a couple of things that we're going to do in the spring. Okay. Um throughout the county.

Okay. But anybody who wants to reach out to us about absolutely anything, we are open to whatever people think is going to bring people into the community. Okay. Thank you. That was all I had. Oh, so you could have gave speech. You could have. I think we take this our loss to Yes, I think so. Ready for a motion? I'll make the motion to go ahead with the request of 5,000. I'll second. All those in favor? I. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Next is a H Heartland Humane Society.

Spokesman.

Yes, Darren. Thanks uh for having us. My name is Don Darland. I'm a board member out at H Heartland Humane Society. I just like to give you a little bit of report about us and kind of let you know what's going on out there. So this past year we had uh 714 adoptions out of that shelter. We took in 451 animals. The majority of our animals do come through animal control in the city. Uh the county we get roughly three animals a month through there. Right now there's just under 200 animals at the shelder and it cost us $1,000 a day to operate. So, last I looked, there's $365 days in a year. Between the county and their thousand dollar and the city and their 445, our local governments pay for about 46 days of operation. You know, I'm just here basically asking that you could help us a little bit more. Uh, our reserve fund, we had to tap into it the last couple months because we went in the red two months. uh the memorials we received which we are very gracious and happy to get when people pass. That's our reserve fund and we've had to tap into that to uh keep operations going. No, we not we are not in danger of closing but an animal shelter is a kind of an an expensive endeavor. Uh public law 160.20 20 requires animal shelters and rescues. All animals have to be spayed, neutered, and fully vaccinated for adopted. Currently, and we get a discount from all the vets, I always see people complain about vet prices. The average student loan debt of a veterinarian is $155,000. A medium-sized female dog with our discount cost us $150

and will probably adopt it out between $100 and $200. Every cat adoption we pretty much lose some money on. We have roughly $90 in a cat. Well, nobody in this room will probably give us $90 for a cat. And I'm talking the veterary cost. Uh we have paid employees. We have roughly a staff of 12. Uh our salaries, our wages are not high. A kennel worker starts out at $9 and may get up to $13. So we're not a highpaying institution. We we can't afford to. We're we're a nonprofit. We have local businesses that support us. Don Karen Person, uh Jeff Boy, uh there's several others that I right now their name escapes me right off hand that support us a lot. the American Legion BFW, they they help support us. So, we do have a lot of community support, fellas. Most the board members give about the same amount that the county does. So, I'm basically here to ask if you guys could maybe up it a little bit. It would be greatly appreciated. Uh, our hours at the shelter are Tuesday through Saturday, 12 to 5. We're a no kill shelter. Uh, we get the controversial mixed breed pit bulls come in town, you're looking at the guy that when once Pam makes arrangements, I trans I drive them to other nokill shelters in Iowa. So, you know, I feel we're a very big asset to Tumbla County and the community. Like I said, there's roughly 200 animals out there right now. So, you know, we have a lot of animals in our care. About two weeks ago, we had someone dump six mixed breed puppies out on Whiskey Ridge. We have those now. They're recovering from Parvo, which is a deadly disease. So, we get a lot of things come in. Uh in

December, the city graciously brought us 45 cats. So, you know, we had to spay and neuter and vaccinate all those cats before we can adopt them out. That's the law. Uh Morgan, who is the USDA inspector, we just passed our our federal inspection with flying colors. Uh when they inspect an animal shelter, they can just show up. Say you raise German shepherds and you sell shepherds. I'm not picking on you, Darren, but anyway, they normally call make an appointment is what I've been told, but an animal shelter, they just show up. Uh and other people that benefit us a lot is Jared Pierce, Dusty Wear. Those are all people that really support us a lot. In fact, Jared's putting in new gates in our oldest building right now. So, again, I'm just basically here telling our story. I'm willing to answer any questions and if you guys could possibly throw a few more bones our way, that'd be great. But, but I understand money's tight. So, does the supervisors have any questions? Have you checked with the vets about buying your vaccines bulk?

Well, now Darren, that's what we do. We do. We can do we can do all the vaccinations except rabies. A veterinarian has to do that. So, yeah, Pam and and Courtney. I mean, even the rabies I think you can buy in bulk and store it there. So, well, that's something we could look into. You're quite right. I agree. We can't give the rabies shot though. It's got to be a veterinarian that gives the rabies shot. So like the flea and tick. Yeah, we get that in bulk. In fact, yeah, buy in bulk, too, and saves us $600. A lot of veterinarian practices actually give us a lot of flee and tick. Yeah, they're sampled.

They do help us a lot. I mean, people don't necessarily believe that when I say a larger female dog cost 150 to spay, but if you think about it, a lot of vets have over $155,000 student loan. You can't expect them to do it for free. At least that's my my opinion. No, the anesthesia is what cost you just because when we go for surgery, anesthesia Yeah, the anesthesia is expensive. I totally agree, sir. Um, you have a grading system, too, right? That you take all the animals through to see where they stand. Yes. As far as their veterary care. You bet. You bet. And

would you like to know our adoption process, which surprises some people? No offense. I think we're better than the DHS. We do Iowa courts online and then we call your veterinarian. Then we call your personal reference, then we call your landlord. We actually do home visits. You know, I don't know how the ladies find the time for that, but we're very thorough in our adoption process. We during COVID, we had a couple come from Boston, Massachusetts to adopt a great Pyrenees lab mix. They were baseball fans, so they went to Debuke, spent the night up there. It's called Field of Dreams. Come down, adopted this big Pyrenees, and then sent us a video of him. Probably the wildest adoption I've seen though, we had a a woman fly up from Dest, Florida to get a Jack Russell Terrier. She did the paperwork online. You can apply online. She passed flying colors, flew into De Moine, got a rental, come down, got her Jack Russell that went back to De Moine, flew back to Dest, Florida. So people come from kind of all around the country as far as adopting but we primarily as far as animals we get are primarily Waplo County which I'm talking a tumbla Eddieville agency you know we do get a few animals in other count from other counties but not not a huge number to be honest.

What what do you do with the unadoptable? Well right now we we just brought in a trainer. We actually paid a trainer to come down from a canine school in De Moines and we've got four four dogs we're working on right now. And basically, now this is just me. I feel every animal's adoptable provided the person has patience. I have a a commodore who's was never really socialized, so he doesn't like anything small, which includes kids. And then I have a German Shepherd that probably should have been a police dog. Yeah, that's why I presented the question to you guys. I know you're a client plus a member. So,

yeah, exactly. And that's and that's fine. I appreciate your questions, Darren. But no, we try to get it to where we can get every dog where they're adoptable. The interesting thing to me about the uh rescue world and animal shelters. So, I took some dogs we didn't have room to Fort Madison. So, when you do that, you generally bring a dog back. So I take our dog down there, it gets adopted less than a month. Their dog gets adopted less than a month because I suppose it's just different eyes on the animal. And yesterday I took two black primarily black lab puppies up to Knoxville and they probably won't be at the Marian County shelter very long. Uh and I don't not trying to sound funny, but the dogs that don't get adopted are typically large and black. You know, most people don't want to deal with a large dog. I prefer large dogs. My thought is if I trip and fall on Buck, my one shepherd, he's probably gonna bite me, but I probably won't break a hip. You know, I might have a vet bill. Probably not going to get injured other than a dog bite. So, and I've been bit before, so I'm not worried about that.

I understand talking with Pam, you guys are looking at trying to start your own thrift store.

Yes. Yes. Marian County starting that up. We'd kind of like to do that, but you know, then we you can't totally rely on volunteers. We're going to have to have pay somebody to run it. Like the Marian County, I was up there yesterday and Leslie's telling me their store is going to be somewhere downtown. And then things that people donate that we don't necessarily use or we have an abundance of, that's what they're selling at Marian County. Not our stuff, but things that she gets in that say they have a hundred medium-sized collars, you know, they're going to probably try to sell a few of them, make a few dollars, you know, and we do have volunteers. I thank the volunteers. We have dog walkers and people come play with the cats. But as far as animal care, it's all paid staff. Like I said, it's not high wages. $9 to start up to about 13.

She was saying all you guys are looking for is a building. Pardon me. All you're needing is a building, a location. So, yes, for the for the thrift store. Told her to contact Mark Row. And there's actually a couple guys in here. Yeah. Past Mary might know building sitting somewhere. Yeah. And John Scholes might John Scholes. He might know. He might know too. Might be able to incorporate it there with John. Sorry, John. So, I think a thrift store is a good idea. I thought that was a great idea. Yeah, I think it is too. I'm curious to see how Marian counties go up at Knoxville because we're just getting started.

And unfortunately, the animals being dumped has increased. We had to increase our budget to that. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. You know, whatever you all can do is great, you know, but I just kind of want to let you know our situation so people know some shelters and it won't happen in my lifetime. I don't think. But up north, some shelters are going to Strictly Dog because you always lose money on a cat. I didn't know you guys even digs. And Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think we got about 85 cats right now. Unfortunately, you're probably gonna have to go that route because

I I hope not in my lifetime, but but yeah, I could see something like that. I hope it doesn't happen, but you know, realistically, you know, people need to understand the veterinarians can't give it away. And if we have $90 in the cat and we charge you 50, there's, you know, you're losing money. We're losing money every every adoption, which we really are, you know, so it's Exactly. Well, and one thing, we've had a lot of cat adoptions, but like I say, we're still in the 80s with cats, you know, because we're just under 200 total animals right there. Adopted out at 200, cost 150 to spay it and then give a rabies shot for another 30 or 40 bucks. plus the other vaccines you're every every adoption is a lost money. So,

yep. And then you don't count like electricity, the insurance, the wages, you know, all those things factor into it. And we're a nonprofit, but we need to pay our bills. All Energy wants their money. You know, the city water department wants their money, you know, and we use a lot of water, you know, from spring till fall. But I but I definitely do. I told Pam, I said, "That's a great idea. thrift stores. Yeah. Oh, I agree. I think it's a good idea. I think you could do well enough. There's plenty enough stuff donated. Oh, yes. Goodwill makes that we don't necessarily use or we get an overabundance of a particular item.

You know, that's what I could see because we really out at the shelter, we don't have that much storage space. I see Chad's taking notes, so he's gonna write up something good. Yeah, a little money. Boy, Chad, thanks. I guess a question. Um, would you be willing to share your financial statements with us? I'd like to take the position if we're spending public money that we should be accountable to look at your financial statements and just to ask Carly Shoemaker who's with the law firm downtown with that law firm. That'd be the person to talk to. I I'm in favor of it because she's our treasurer and one of the attorneys on the board. So,

okay. I could follow up with that directly too. Yeah. To do so. Yeah. Okay. Yep. I'll let Carly know. You'll reach out to her, Brian. Okay. I'll send her a text message. So, and I I'm looking at that standpoint. It may be after seeing that there's some other things that we could do to help you based upon Oh, yes. So, there's a there's a good motive behind it. Yeah. Well, we we could be all the help we can get, you know. Sure. We we provide a good public service. Gonna add you to the W County Facebook page. Pardon me. Oh, is she? That'd be good. That'd be good. I'm glad Autumn's here. Been making notes for her. Yeah, we have our own Facebook page, but that'd be great. Be on the She's gonna put a link a link to it to get

that'd be good. Our adoption uh form is online. You can actually apply online like the lady in Dest Florida and the couple out in Boston. You know, you don't have to necessarily come out and get a paper application. We're somewhat high somewhat. it. We're pretty stringent on what animals we take in. We actually investigate. Oh, I I knew that. Yeah. I think about half of them located the owners. That's good. Send law enforcement to collect. Yeah. That's that's perfect. See, what's interesting to me

like the PD, the local police department, they do an excellent job. Say Randy or Jeff in the past brings in a dog, less than 50% of the people come and claim their dog. you know, so we hold it for seven days and it becomes H Heartland's and then we put it up for adoption. Then they get upset that we adopt out their dog even though they've been contacted. There's a seven-day hold that's required. So, do you know a fan how many years we've been at the thousand dollar contract? Oh, I would venture to say probably since co. Okay.

That's when it seemed like everything went up, Brian. And that's just a somewhat educated guess. I'm going by what I've been told by the treasurer and other board members. So, but I think the biggest thing is the sheer number of animals. Yeah. You know, we've only been that big since probably shortly after co It's just

Yeah, we Yeah, we have a donation the last two years. Pardon me. Oh, really? I I wasn't aware of that. Really? I don't come every year usually. I guess if we don't get it turned into us for your budget. Yeah. Yeah. Because that gets has to go to the state. So same thing almost happened to 4 year. But they don't send in a letter requesting it.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like I should put on my calendar in every case. would be the smart thing. Me or someone from the board should if we could dollar just a second before we decide anything. Um my thought is since it's been at that price, we should should increase it. However, your timing is terrible because yesterday we were at a budget meeting all afternoon and we don't have a lot of money to spend on anything. Oh, I understand.

And so I' I'd like to do more, but on the other hand, I'd like to increase it over the thousand. I guess I'm thinking just generally in the category of 2,000. That's double what we were doing when we were doing it. And I don't think that's going to impact our budget. So my my thought this one coming out lost we can we can we can do that plus we haven't given the last two years. So yeah I'll second it. Well we appreciate it. I mean every everything helps. That's the thing people need to realize. You know we get a lot of donations of food and other things we use but what we really need is cash. You know we have to pay our insurance company. We have to pay a line energy. have pay cash.

Pardon me. Want cash? No, not necessarily. Whatever. Write a check. Yeah. Send us a check, Darren. Think you're pulling my tail, buddy. I was just going to tell you. We'll give you a piece of paper. It's not really funny, but Yeah. No, no, a check is fine, but we appreciate your support and listening to our story. Are there any other questions? I'd encourage people to come out and check out the new building, too, at some point, you know. And Pam also, she's there probably 70 hours a week. She'll do adoptions on Sunday and Monday when we're closed. Yeah, she calls me about seven times every week probably. I'm not surprised either. Don first and second.

I had a I had a question. I had a quick question. Fire away. Big article. Don, how much does like, you know, you you kind of touched on it earlier about, you know, you get a lot of funeral memorial donations that go into your your reserves, right? You get those and then you get like the fundraisers that various organizations, the schools do. Yes.

You know, a lot Humane is very popular when it comes to donations and memorial funding. How how much of that that you get from those kinds of things helps you do things that you couldn't do without them? Oh, it's immensely, Chad. Like the funeral memorials that keeps us afloat when we go in the red and then like we just had the our fundraising committee just had the soup supper, you know, that soup supper paid for a couple days of operation. So, it all it all counts, you know, it doesn't matter to the denomination of money. It all counts, you know. It all counts.

But what does it mean though that that the the animal shelter is probably I don't have any way of proving it, but seems to be the most popular place that people want to donate money to or food or some other items for animals that I mean I just Harwin Humane just seems to be welld.

Well, around I feel like they do a great job out there. We're a nonprofit, so they know we're, you know, I it I won't say it the way I'd like to, but it upsets me when people think we make money on adoption because we don't. We hope to break even. You know, cat adoptions, we lose money. Some dogs we break even, but you know, a nonprofit has to pay its bills. So when people donate financially, it's a big deal for us because you're not going to get a volunteer to come out and scoop dog poop, empty cat litter pans of 80some cats, you know, so you know, we need to pay our employees, you know, and then we have insurance and we have all those other things I've mentioned, Chad. So, you know, financial support is great. In fact, we had a plea out on the 45 cats. We had that all taken care of at Southside. people really want to help, they could go over to Southside and ask to pay whatever amount they wanted on our bill to the cat hoarding case. You know, the young officers that were there told me when they stepped out of the spot, you could smell it before you even got really on the property. I can't imagine 45 cats in the house. So, no.

Try 98. 98. That'd be scary. 98. Three dogs is what I had. Wow. That's a bunch. Two two room house. Wow. And the heat was set at 90. Oh my. That would have been a horrible situation. Did you Did that Thank you. Well, thank you. Is there any other questions the board has or any other questions? No, I appreciate you letting us speak today. Oh, you're welcome. I I'll put you on my calendar for next year then, provided they don't kick me off the board or something. You never know. Thanks, folks.

You're welcome. All right. So, we have a first and a second motion to spend 2,000 out of loss donation to humane. All those in favor? I post. Next is uh resolution one 2026 dispersements outstanding. This is checks has been wrote and not cashed for over a year. I'll second.

All those in favor last year there was only like three or four this year. Next is a second resolution 2-2026 comp and assigned county tax held sales certificates for the city of Atamwa. Could I comment on that? Yes. I said at a previous meeting that I checked with Cole at city finance and I did that. He gave me a a plat of the properties that were included in that and they're all kind of up here on towards Grant Street. They're they're all properties that have no houses on them. Uh looks like they're pretty well timber and rough ground. I asked him if he had any potential to make money on it after we released the the taxes and he said that that is not their goal at all. He verbally said that. I didn't get that in writing, but I think that's their intent. So based on that, I'm okay with going ahead with the uh release of taxes. I think we could do something in it.

Yeah, I was looking it up.

Unfortunately, Iowa code require if they refuse to pay Iowa code says we shall text the all questions out of it when it shall be this property taxes. The city has two, six, eight, nine properties. Looks like the delinquent taxes is well over $30,000. Motion to approve the payment. I'll make that motion then.

Those in favor I uh next on is a repayment agreement with the attorney for the county and an employee overpayment of wages on work comp. office sign and agreed to or be repaid on partial payments out of his check until paid up. Approve. I'll second. All those in favor? I.

Next is wellness program blood draw package. Karen, since you're on the Wells Committee, is this something you want to talk about or I don't think you're on the wrong thing here. You're not talking about the right thing. No, this is the the the packages, the wellness packages.

Okay. Last year we did package E, I believe. That's fine. Yeah. Last year we did package E. Um yeah, we did do package in with the option that employee could up it to A, B, C or D and we'd still cover the initial 40. Yes. So, but I did hear from several employees last year. I believe it was the additional cost PSA.

It's $38. Yeah, I'm thinking just do the package E without the PSA at this point. Yeah,

actually they could just do package F, not even do that'll cost in 40. They could just do 38. They have the option to do F instead of you agree that's way it's written. I believe they can always go down or they can go up with cost. motion package.

I I would stay with E and they could just do have they could go down the cost will still be covered. So I'll do I'll make a motion to do like the option that if they choose to pay the difference. I'll second a motion. All those in favor I

Southeast Iowa Agra Business Summit. Brian, I think this is you, right?

Yes. This takes no action on our part, but just for your information um through Mark Rose's office. We are doing a egg summit on February 25th at Bridge View 9:30 to3. I have a brochure here of it. Um, I'm kind of excited about the concept because I think it's a a way for us to reach out to the the egg producers and the egg businesses in our community and and hopefully encourage growth in that sector. So, it's just for your information. I already appreciate the courier for having it in the courier as a news item. Thank you, Chad. Appreciate that. Questions? Chad. Next up is any other business. We've got the recorder second quarter report. Fees collected and dispersed. Order. Anything special? Lisa,

I'll move. Any special announcements you want to make? Not yet. I'll move to accept the report. Second. All those in favor? I I This is the treasur's investment report. I'll second. All those in favor?

I just along with the treasures. We're in the process of county credit cards. Uh we're consolidating down so every department will have the same credit card and individualized to their department which will allow us to better track and bill. We will actually be able to make money on the credit card because they're going to give us interest back 2% if you make your payments within 45 days. Well, within 45 days we will have made three payments because we pay bi-weekly. So, we will actually get that up percentage wise. We could earn anywhere from 20 to $150,000 rebates from that money back. So, and it's through US Bank. Currently, we're all over the place with credit cards. So, and Carrie is about ready to finalize the credit card policy. cards.

The cards are cards are ready. Actually, the bank accidentally sent cars to a few departments. So, we told them not to do anything. We'll get it on the next agenda and then we part of that is they must sign a waiver on the credit card agreement and shows liability to them if misused. Any other news?

I ask Willie, but she never has good news.

I got a couple things I wanted to ask about just kind of as as housekeeping things haven't really talked about lately. Um, where where are things at with mediation for the wind ordinance? We didn't get a meeting date set for the first part of February. So now we're looking at the last couple weeks. And I actually just emailed him again this morning to see what dates he has. He has trials all next week. So we'll probably look last week of February, I think. I'm gone on Monday and Tuesday that week. So I sent Yeah. Okay. So hopefully we get something square away that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Okay. The other thing, um, what's the status on the Third Street building that you guys bought? Where, um, where are you at as far as renovating that or doing, um, some inspections on that? Where's that at? They will actually be in there Thursday, engineers, the architect. We only had two companies apply for the construction manager. So, we'll have that official. It'll be on the next agenda also to select one of those two. Okay. And then I can't tell you exactly by code how many days. Everything goes by a code, which I'm glad I don't have to worry about those numbers. So, is that going to be days to do it?

Is that going to be a pretty extensive renovation in that building for for the county, do you think, or it's I mean, if you've been in there, it's just basically wide open. So, yeah, there's going to be a lot of renovation, especially on the first floor to give multiple. We got to get everybody from here down to there on the first floor. So, and the top floor is basically going to be HHS, DHS. Okay. Whatever you commonly call them, right? And I guess the last thing I had um what have kind of been the discussions around jail expansion. Haven't talked about that since maybe last fall.

Yeah, the company hasn't got contact with me for several weeks. This doing basically the research on it. So I will tell you we're still looking at 100 thousand or more storing our inmates out of county. So by the end of July by July 1. So right,

what is killing us? So it's the apple or the egg. I was just having this conversation county attorney yesterday. So there are ways we could probably get inmates out of jail quicker. However, we're number one the crime rate have been for four years in a row and it's for repeat offenders. So, if the offenders aren't in jail, they're out offending. And it's our, you know, it's a 8020 number. 80% of the population is great. 20% commits 80% of the crime. And that's that number we can't keep in. So, we need to keep them in do a full term. I mean, if you get 20 years and they're out two, you know, the way I was going, murder in Iowa was life. Now, murder in Iowa is six years. Could be six years.

So, I I guess like what's the next steps in that process? Because the last I really heard about it is when they came and presented it was a Samuels group, I think.

Yes, Samuel's group. So when they put together their complete package, they actually go back 10 to 20 years, look at all of our stats, and they go forward predicting where we're going to be based on past and where we're at currently. So when we get those numbers, then they're going to the jail isn't as easy as I thought where you just throw them all in, General Pop, and there you are. They all have individual stats basically classifications and you can't mix classifications. So not only do we have male and female but they have multiple classifications within that. So they all have to have multiple individualized areas. So that's where we're running into problems now. Like we might have beds but we have somebody that's classified that can't have anybody with him

that takes vacates that area of course. So So when would you kind of expect to see some sort of movement or at least more of the conversation progressing regarding the jail?

Quickly. We was hoping to have it all before March because if it's going to be something we have to put on the ballot in November, we need to get it rolling. So because it would have definitely have to go up for a public vote and they're looking at 100 beds. the addition. The footing is already there and then it' be a whole new parking lot behind the jail, but that is that's the next level. We're not going to make any money housing anybody else's inmates because we're the top dog. We'll have it full. And one of the questions we keep coming up with is 80 to 90% of the jail is full of a ton of prisoners, a ton of charges, but we're paying them prescription costs out of the county. We're paying our medical bills out of the county. We're paying their food out of the county. We're housed all pay out of the county and nothing comes from it. When we charge them with the state charge, we get 9% of those fees.

So, we get something back. So, are you are you are are you still basically having to spend about a million bucks a year on getting inmates out of here or is it Well, it's the year we're going to be over 700,000. Okay. By July. So, I thought Don had said it was about a million a year. So, well, it's once again, we're guessing, we're estimating we probably going to peak. We're going to be between 700,000 and I don't think we'll make the million mark, but

it's going to get warmer. Crime go crime goes up when it gets warmer. So that's where it's going to come in. People start roaming the streets at dark after dark and can sneak around. That's when crime rate goes up and the rest go up. So unless you have a big belt, which now I have a below. Yeah. Got a German Shepherd cross with an alligator on steroids and ADHD medication. I got all the bite marks on my arms to show. Well, he he's he's definitely wild.

Anything else? I appreciate everybody attending. Appreciate your patience and getting us online. Motion to make it. I'll second. All those in favor I