Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

The time is 4 o'clock, so I would like to convene our meeting, and we will start with the roll call for attendance, please.

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All right, we have the quorum. If you would kindly stand, and we will do the Pledge of Allegiance. States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Any agenda deletions? I don't believe so. No? All right, item number one of our agenda is our consent agenda. All items listed under the consent agenda will be enacted by one motion. We have claims in the amount of $955,057.02. We have minutes to approve from April 2nd, 2026, April 7th, 2026, and April 14th, 2026. Item C is to rescind resolution 2686F. That was to approve a new hire in Secondary Roads. Item D, approve payroll removal, Elena Peterson, legal assistant. Item E, approve new hire, Suzanne Christina Alvarez, in motor vehicle specialist. Item F, approve new hire, Spencer Simpson, equipment operator one, secondary roads. Item G, approve new hire, Jennifer Caskey, senior administrative officer in health services. Item H, approve six month increase for David Simmons, the IT help desk. Item I, approve job reclassification Andrew Apple, Motor Grader Operator II, Secondary Roads. Item J, approve job reclassification. Michael Hagen, Motor Grader Operator II, Secondary Roads. Item K, approve Class C Retail Alcohol License for the Redacre Barn LLC at 4053 Kirkwood Street in Prole. Item L, approve Class C retail alcohol license renewal for White Knoe Vineyard. I think that's White Knot, is it not? 11805 County Road. R45, parole. Item M, approve Class C retail alcohol license renewal for the retreat at Rose Farm, 7197 43rd Avenue, Norwalk. And finally, N, set a public hearing for William Bosch for a rezoning of land from Ag Agricultural District to Rural Residential District for 9.01 a.m. May 5th, 2026. Second reading hearing at 4 p.m. May 19th, 2026. And the third reading hearing at 9 a.m. June 4th, 2026.

Brian, I'm not sure if we absolutely have to, but item H, just want to make sure that that is retroactive. We read that in direct record as retroactive 11-30-25.

Yes.

Thank you.

Let the supervisor do it. I did not mention that. It is in the agenda.

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda items. Second. Roll call, please.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Item number two is going to be the second reading hearing for Dan Cruz for a rezoning of land from agricultural district to rural residential district.

Hi, good afternoon. So we're here today with applicant Dan Cruz for our second reading of the rezoning application to rezone from agricultural district to rural residential district for parcel number 058-0600600. Your board initially approved it on May 7th of this year. The applicant has also gone to the planning and zoning meeting at the city of Norwalk on April 13th, 2026, where they were, it was received unanimous recommendation for approval to the city council. The applicant will be going to the city council for a final vote on May 7th, and that is for the future land use map change, in order to process, finish doing what they're doing here. So this is the second reading, as I mentioned, for this application. You may waive the third reading as well, should you choose to.

I'll make a motion to go into public hearing.

Second.

Roll call.

McIntyre? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

We are now in public hearing. Is there anyone here to speak on the rezoning of land for Dan Cruz from agricultural to rural residential? Questions? Okay. You can come right on up. Just state your name, and this is the time. Yep. Sorry. No problem.

Brad Cooper with Cooper Crawford & Associates here with Dan Cruz tonight. Just here for any questions if you have any.

Oh, you're here for our questions. Thank you. Okay.

We had a confusion, and I missed the last meeting. Got you. Thank you very much.

I thought you said you had a question. OK. No public hearing?

I have a question for the applicant. Mr. Cruz, would you come up? I know there's been some debate, at least in Norwalk, and some questions about why you wanted to change the development. Can you touch on some of that?

What do you mean by why do I want to change it?

Oh. There's the original plan. From the original plan?

Honestly, just after looking at it, the original plan was just outdated. And me and Brad looked at it and just realized there was a lot of different things we could do that would make it substantially better from what we'd be forced into with the outdated plat. I think they can show you kind of what we have, which we could build, and then first what we have redesigned it to.

A couple items that the staff had issues with. They want us to stay out of the FPC zoning class that you have. We wanted to stay out of the floodplain area, which we've done with our new concept. There was also a connection to Dubuque Street, which is a rock road, which is no longer allowed in your ordinance without paving that connection. So we didn't want to pave that either.

And we also had the neighbors show up, and they really don't want a road in between there. two houses so just out of respect for them we kind of redesigned it to kind of get that road removed from there are there more homes or less homes than the original plat less homes i think the original plat was 49 i think we've moved it down to 42 so we're not doing this for a density reason we're just doing it because it's honestly just the right way to do it

And roughly what are the sizes? And obviously the sizes are not the same. They're all different. Two acres.

They're all two acres. That was the other thing with the existing plat had a lot of just really odd shaped lots, which kind of creates future issues with neighbors and lot lines and consistency. With our new plat, they're just really consistent straight line lots. So I think that was one of the main things that we really wanted to get around. And, I mean, this was done back in 1979 before they had the technology that we have now to maximize the views and make walkouts and really give everybody that we can good views. These were just kind of not graded the greatest with the topography that we have there.

And we're out there with the old Honda Big Reds and some string and stage. That's right.

One thing with the city that we will be required to, because we are having to get permission from the city, we do have to do dry sewer there. So if there was ever, and we've agreed to doing that. So if there was ever a sewer connection that is able to come across the river there and get up to us, the whole plaque could then be connected to sewer. So that is one thing that we've. agreed upon doing along with all the streets will be city standard streets which we were going to do nice streets anyways but they're going to require us to do to keep it up to the norwalk city standards so that was my question on this dry sewer because there were some questions about that in the last one thank you guys yeah

Don't think we've seen anyone from the public that's willing to, last call for public comment.

I'll make a motion to close the public hearing.

Second. Roll call.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. I do have a comment for board discussion and that is at our first public reading, I've done this for now, I don't know, what am I going on, like five years? I can't recall more than a handful of developments in my time on the board where adjacent neighbors to a development came to our meeting in support of a development. And I'm dead serious. You think that through, folks. Think about all the rezonings we've done in the last five or six years, how many times neighbors come out because they They don't want their view to change. Maybe they're looking at a farm field. Maybe they're looking at deer, turkey, and raccoons, or whatever it is that they like to see, or the fog coming up off the river. And they don't want that view to change. And they don't own that ground, but they get very, very upset if some change happens. And in our first reading, we had at least two people on a Tuesday morning during a work day who don't have any skin in the game, who are not affiliated with this development, who came to our meeting to come up and speak on behalf of the developer, saying this is infinitely better than what could come. We prefer this to what could come. And they were supportive of it. And that's pretty impactful to me. So that's my two cents.

just uh i was pretty critical of it in the uh the first reading and and this is one of the perfect scenarios where having three readings can be a really good beneficial thing doing a little more research on this talking to more of our county employees i guess i have more of an issue with the procedures that we used as far as how we wanted to zone it or how we directed it to go. We have new zoning that's planned residential and then rural residential. I think there's some things that we need to find in there. We've got some precedents now. But I was really happy to hear that Norwalk approved of it. Like I said, talked to Tyler with environmental health. He's absolutely fine with it. I do think it's a great thing. I just want to make sure that we are doing everything very, very consistently. So yeah, I'm for it.

Any other discussion?

I would make a motion to approve the second reading and hearing for Dan Kruse for rezoning of land from agricultural district to rural residential district and waive the third reading.

Second.

Roll call.

McIntyre? Aye. Erickson? Aye. Ducos?

Aye. DeWitt? Aye. Harmon? Aye. Motion carries. Item number three.

Consider Sheriff's Office need to hire a general personnel with possible action Okay, I could have read it wrong too, but I think no you read it, right Okay, that's not what I'm really here for All this is is we've got a jailer who's young in her lower 20s and like a lot of us when they're young They want to spread their wings and go fly to another state and test the waters That's what this person is gonna do been a great employee, but she's moving to Colorado to work in a jail there and and just test the water. So we need to replace that person, that's all we're doing. Nothing more than that. It's actually gonna be cheaper because she makes more money than a starting jailer would. It'll save us a little bit of money to start. That's it. So it's not an additional position, it's replacing.

Correct. Yes.

I'll make a motion to approve the replacement hire. Second.

Okay. McIntyre? Aye. Erickson? No.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Thank you very much. Item number four, consider giving the remaining time capsules to the Warren County Historical Society with possible action. This came about when we built the new Justice Center. There were some time capsules on the property there that had to be dug up before their time, I guess, and we've been storing them. So as it turns out, it looks like the historical society is willing to take them, and I think they would be reburied then somewhere on their property. Is that what we're doing? Yeah.

Okay. Did I hear there's a couple pounds of gold bars in there or something? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I think they'd be great stewards of it and I would go ahead and make a motion to give the remaining time capsules to the Warren County Historical Society.

Second. Roll call. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Item number five, receive and file reports from General Assistance and the Recorder.

I'll make a motion to receive and file the two reports.

Second.

OK, roll call.

McIntyre? Aye.

Erickson?

Aye.

DuPont? Aye. DeWitt? Aye. Martin? Aye. Item number six, supervisor report. Any supervisor report this evening?

I don't have anything today. OK. I'll give a quick shout out to our engineer. It's difficult folks when it rains two inches in 46 minutes. And we've had a little bit of that every other day last week. They're doing a really good job. I'm not saying all the roads are perfect, they're not. But for what we have to work with, they are doing an exceptional job in my estimation. So I want to give a shout out to Tim and the crew.

Very good. Anyone else? OK. Moving on. Item number seven is public input. Comments will be limited to three minutes per individual. The board will not take any action on the comments due to the requirements of the open meetings law, but may do so in the future. No public input will be allowed for any of today's agenda items. We got one, okay, come on up. State your name and address for the record.

Mark Blackford. Yes. DA Board. We were still ninth in the state, according to that, but we made 28,000 more this month than we did last month. And we're aggressively trying to find people for the board so we can have a bigger selection than small pools. So hopefully y'all fire me, send me home, and you won't have to see me anymore. So thank you. TODD BANDUCCI.

We appreciate you very much. TODD BANDUCCI. We appreciate you. TODD BANDUCCI.

Oh, and tell the county engineer, yeah, we live on gravel roads. They're a lot better than they used to be. Yeah, good. So that's good input. Thank you. Thank you.

So we're looking for new board members for the VA board. Yes.

Good. Not that we want to get rid of anyone, but yeah, I think the VA director was at our work session maybe last, well, a couple weeks ago, mentioned that too, that he was looking. Yeah. Okay. Any other public input?

Holly Zajcic, 2612 Lexington Drive in Norwalk. Stick to my notes so I don't go over my time. I'm here to introduce myself as a candidate for Iowa Senate for our district here, District 11. I know a lot of you from my full-time role as Economic Development Director for the City of Norwalk and Warren County Economic Development prior to that. Tonight, though, I'm just here separately representing my candidacy for State Senate. I spent the last 15 years serving Warren County, the communities within it, and our local businesses. I've loved every minute of it, and there's nothing more fulfilling than seeing physical evidence of hard work and strong relationships. During the last several years alone, our local area has seen a 420% increase in commercial and industrial values, adding almost $8 million per year to the tax base, more than 800 new jobs to the market, and 100 new businesses have opened their doors. Due to this growth, cities and schools have been able to lower their tax levies annually while still adding new public services, infrastructure, and amenities. I was asked to run for Senate because our county and our communities need direct representation at the state level by someone who has a strong background in local government, business, job creation, and strategic development. If I'm elected, I will take this experience and result-based approach to the legislature and work harder than anyone else at advocating for our communities, businesses, families, and residents. My husband is a major in the Air Force and goes to work every day just up the road at the 132nd Wing by the airport. We've lived in Norwalk for the last nine years, and I lived in Indianola for several years prior to that. I'm a strong supporter of public safety, military and veterans, education, and local control. Over the last few years, as you may know, some concerning legislation has been introduced that overreaches into local governing bodies and limits their ability to grow and provide services to their residents. This indicates that someone with hands-on experience needs to represent us, especially at one of the fastest growing areas in the state. I hope I have already earned your trust as a public servant and proven my abilities through my work here. I'd also like to earn your vote. One thing of importance to note is that I'm the only primary candidate for our district from Warren County. Warren County makes up more than 75% of the voters for the entire district, so it's really critical that who you elect knows and serves our county best. The county auditor just approved a new satellite early absentee voting location in Norwalk at the New Life Lutheran Church on May 18th from 1 to 7 p.m. Apparently, residents in northern Warren County are not great about early or absentee voting, so if they can't make it to the polls on primary day, their vote just never gets counted. This way, there's an additional option to make our voices heard in this election. Along with other satellite and absentee voting methods and of course voting on primary day, June 2nd Please feel free to reach out to me anytime with questions or to discuss your thoughts or concerns. Thank you for your time Thank you.

Thank you The satellite vote voting location one more time real quick.

It's at the new life Lutheran Church in Norwalk I Could pull up the address if you give me a minute, but it was just approved.

Yeah. No, I'm sure well known but

May 18th from 1 to 7 p.m.

Perfect. Yes.

That was the residents are in the area petitioned to have that up there in Norwalk on that day. Yes. So that was where they needed 100 signatures to bring the satellite up to Norwalk. So someone was interested because they got 100 signatures on that one.

Yep. Everybody worked hard. And anyone in Warren County can use that. Anyone, yeah. So it's not just Norwalk. Awesome.

Yeah, because I think the West Des Moines election had point four. Point six percent or something like that at four.

Yeah, we need to show up. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Holly Any other public input today this none Yeah, okay Okay moving on Item number eight is, it looks like setting the next meeting date for May 5th, 2026, 9 a.m. And then item number nine, we're gonna have budget presentation. We have Megan here, thank you.

All right. Hello. I am Megan Battani. I'm the budget director for Warren County. I'm going to do a short presentation about the budget, and then it'll be followed by the public hearing. All right. So to start off, I just wanted to begin by going over what our budget process looks like, kind of zoomed out. As you can see, this is a 10-step process that starts all the way in November. and then goes all the way to tonight where we are approving the final budget. So in November, the budgets are distributed to the department heads to fill out. Those are then due back to myself, the budget director, on December 31st. January 1st, the property valuations for the 2025 assessments are due to the Iowa Department of Management, which means that I can start to calculate our levies. And then in January, myself and the department heads will meet as needed to go over their individual budgets, make any changes before reviewing it with the board of supervisors. And then I compile all of that information. And then in late January and in the month of February, the board of supervisors sits down and meets with every single department head to review their budget. They're looking at it line item by line item. Um, and then getting the reasoning for the department head and also giving any direction. So this is when the board will start reviewing and say, we're going to need cuts and things like that. And then in late February, early March, the board will meet with any of those department heads that need follow up, um, to discuss, say if they gave them cuts to have them come in and bring them to the board. Um, And then after that, we also start discussing the levies. So by March 5th, we have to have those property tax levies set because they are submitted to the Department of Management so that they can be completed and in the system in time for that property tax hearing statement that is sent in the mail by March 15th. And then anytime after March 20th, our property tax hearing is held. Ours was held on March 31st this year. It has to be after March 20th so that everybody has time to get those mailers and be aware of when the property tax hearings are held. And then in late March or early April, The budget needs to be completed in the Department of Management so that we can publish it in time to meet a 10 to 20 day deadline. So our budget needed to be in the system by April 2. And then it was budgeted. It was published the following weeks. And then late April, obviously this is tonight, April 21st, the budget hearing is held and then the budget is decided on and finalized. So I know sometimes the budget process can seem to some like it's just happening quickly. But again, this is a process that starts all the way in November and doesn't complete until April. My next slides might look familiar if you're here at our property tax hearing. I just wanted to reiterate some of that information. So our current budget that we're working on, so fiscal year 2027, is based on the 2025 assessments. Some things to note for those assessments is that the assessments are held to a 3% reassessment or reevaluation growth. This is a statewide limit, so it's not per county, not per residence, but per the state. And then that is what is calculated, what is used to calculate the rollback percentage. What the rollback means is that your property, for this example, it's the residential property, is taxed on 44.5345% of the actual entire assessed value. So you're not taxed based on the 100% value of the property. Again, this year it's about 44.5%. the fiscal year 26 that we're currently in was 47.4316. So you're actually being taxed on less of your property value this fiscal year that we're working on, fiscal year 27, than you are for this current fiscal year. So what that kind of looks like visually is that you could see your assessed values will go and might make these bigger jumps from year to year, but your actual taxable value raises at a much more steady rate, and it's only a portion of your actual assessed value. Again, to show this in another way, looking at residential property for assessments, it's 87% of the overall assessed values in Warren County, and then when you're factoring in the rollback the residential property goes down to 80%, and things like commercial go up a little bit. So one thing that has affected our budget drastically the last couple years and this year is House File 718. What this did was impose stricter limits on the maximum levies for the general basic and rural basic, and it actually requires those levies to decrease each year. So what it used to be was the general basic levy maximum was 3.5, and the maximum for the rural basic was 3.95. Now those levies are forced down each year. The restraints are the greatest for counties like Warren, where we're experiencing the highest growth. And in the current iteration, it doesn't allow for growth caused by new builds. It limits the effective growth on the revenues regardless of the cause. There is legislation potential that will likely further limit tax levies in the future. Currently, this is set to expire in fiscal year 29. Like I said, likely we'll see some different changes by then, but looking at the current fiscal year that we are working on, fiscal year 27, it actually caused $1,083,000 less in tax revenue for the general basic, and then a little over $182,000 less for the rural basic. So we're trying to provide more services with less tax dollars. So speaking of the levies, this is where our levies are sitting. For urban, it's 5.64659. And then for rural residents, 8.38166. So both residents pay general basic, general supplemental, and debt service. And then rural residents also pay rural basic and rural supplemental. So speaking of the rollback and the levies going down, when you factor in the rollback you're being, your assessed value is being only, you're only being taxed on about 44% as opposed to 47% in the prior fiscal year. Even if you're figuring for a 10% value increase, which is this, that value is just used based on what the state is estimating valuations increased and what they're using on their forms, just to be consistent. Even, even, showing that 10% increase because of the lower rollback and because of the lower tax levies. Urban taxes are actually set to go down from a house all the way from $100,000 to $750,000. And then rural taxes, if you have a residence of $750,000, that would be a $12 increase in taxes between this fiscal year and the previous fiscal year.

And that's if it increased 10% on the assessment?

Correct.

Not everything did go up 10%, but some did, I agree.

And then just looking at the tax levy history, you can see in these past few years that the levies have gone down because of House File 718. The levy this year for fiscal year 27 is actually lower than the levies were in fiscal year 2017, 10 years ago. So looking at the county's portion of overall levies, again, the tax levy rates that I reviewed earlier, the average consolidated rate in the Warren County for fiscal year 2026, so the year we're sitting in right now, not the one we're budgeting for, is 31.20829. Warren County only makes up a portion of your property tax levies. So we're about 30.5% of rural levies, and then an average of 17% of urban levies. So the rest of your property taxes are being paid to other taxing entities, for example, schools, cities, townships, districts, et cetera. So then moving into our final budget, This is the publication notice that we use for the state. Per the Iowa code, have to prepare a DOT and certify taxes and then provide appropriations, which the appropriations will be approved later on tonight. So this publication notice that I mentioned has to be 10 to 20 days prior to the public hearing that we're holding tonight. And then the budgets are approved per these service areas that the state uses. But I'm going to go over more by department. That's kind of how the county actually thinks about the budget. So our budgeted expenses, the largest expense area for a department is the engineer. That's about 25% of all of our expenses, followed by non-departmental. Non-departmental is our ARPA funds, budget transfers, and debt payments, and then followed by sheriff at 14%, and then it kind of goes down from there. And then when we're looking at it by fund, the general basic fund is the primary fund of the department. So it makes sense that that is 36%. We have the most flexibility in this fund. Most departments hit this fund in some way. The second largest is secondary roads, which makes sense because the engineer department, this is solely for the engineering department, and they made up 25% of our budget. General supplemental, that all of the rest of the funds have very specific purposes. And then looking at our budgeted revenues, non-departmental is 62%. That makes sense because that's made up 85% by property taxes. They all go into the non-departmental area. And then the engineer, again, they were about 25% of our expenses and they're 23% of our revenues. What is funding the engineer is 54% road use taxes and then 36% a rural fund transfer. And then looking at that by fund, again, general basic is about 37% of our revenue. Secondary roads, 23%. General basic is about 66% property taxes. General supplemental is 94% property taxes. And then the rural basic is made up of 59% the local option sales tax and 39% property taxes. So looking at our overall budget, when we started on our budget, we were looking at a deficit of over $3.5 million, taking out ARPA and some of those funds that are meant to be spent down, looking at about $995,000. After our budget meetings, that got cut down to 2.7 million, looking at overall, and then taking out those funds, 240,000. So there was $754,503 that was cut from the beginning budget to the final budget. Looking at it in kind of a different way, the budget, that's the funds that would be the most important To the residents these are touched by property taxes in some way general basic general supplemental and debt service are paid by both urban and rural Taxes rural basic and rural supplemental are paid only by the rule and then the secondary roads is primary those road use taxes and then the transfer from general basic and Per county policy and just recommended accounting principles, we want to make sure that the percentage below the percent of total expenses for the year, it's at least 25% what is in the fund balance. So basically you want to make sure you've got 25% in there and we are above that on each one of our fund balances. Now the one that isn't would be debt service, but that's because it's based on the actual debt payments that are due each fiscal year. Looking at history for the last five years, you can see per fund the budgeted expense. So what you would want to see would be if your expenses are going up, your revenues are going up in each fund, and it does look for most funds that that pretty much does follow. Secondary roads is a little different just because their projects vary so much year by year. So if we look at our budgeted net effect, you can look and see that we have had fiscal years. So fiscal year 21, 22, 23. 24 and 25 so looking at the last fiscal year you can see there were funds that were budgeted to go negative but then ultimately in fiscal year 25 none of the funds did so obviously we budget for our expenses at the maximum and a lot of people kind of hold back on what they're budgeting for their revenues and ultimately at the end of the fiscal year generally it comes with a less of a hit to the fund balances. So while we budgeted for $250,000 out of the general basic, it is likely that it could actually not have a hit on the general basic account or the account could go positive. So that is my presentation. Again, as long as it's after 4.30, then we'll have the public hearing to follow. These slides will be available on our website and you go under government and then county budget.

Thank you, Megan.

Thank you. Thank you, Megan.

Great job. I've got two quick comments for you, Megan, and the public. One, I think it's real important to realize that that's with an estimated 10% increase. I mean, the county is literally the smallest bite of your tax pie. And with a 10% increase, which not everyone went up 10%, some did, some went up more, some went up less. But it's basically neutral. What was it, $3 for a $750,000 house? Or $12 if you're in the country with a $750,000 house, a dollar a month? And less than that if it was a more 200, 250 home, 300 home? Very, very neutral. And that's because our levy rates are coming down at the county. And so if valuations are going up, your assessments going up, and your city or your schools are keeping your levy rates flat and not decreasing it, and your bill's a little higher, I suggest you vote in those elections. I'm gonna say it again and again and again until it sticks. if your homeowner's insurance policy is increasing hundreds of dollars a month and you consolidate your taxes, your homeowner's insurance, your principal and interest in an escrow account and your escrow account requires more and more money every month, I would suggest that you take a look at your homeowner's policy and maybe shop that around a little bit. But I'm happy to hear people voice their concerns to the county, but just facts are facts, folks. I mean, it's net neutral. at least from our perspective. My second point is this, and this is very, very important. There's some competing legislation out there, and I certainly expect something to be done on property taxes this session. One of them involves moving the rollback to a 50% number. And that is important for the public to understand what that means. So last year the rollback was about 47% on a residential property. This year it's 44%. So just keeping math really, really simple. If you have a $100,000 home and the rollback was 47%, that means you're taxed at $47,000 of value. If the rollback moves to 44% like it did this year, you're taxed at $44,000 of value. So if the levy rates stay the same and the valuation decreases, your tax bill should go down. If the valuation goes from 44% to 50%, take a wild guess what's going to happen to your tax bill. I'm not saying that there's not some other nuances with the homestead credit, some other things, Let that soak in and give that a little bit of thought. So if you've got a couple hundred thousand dollar home, all of a sudden, 6% more of the valuation's going to be taxable. Just throwing that out there. So pay attention to what's happening around you, in your city, your school, and in the legislature, because it matters. That's all I got. Very nice job, Megan.

Great, and I'd just like to also add

First, I'd like to thank our budget director, Megan. She did a great job this year, November through April, as she explained, and also to all the department heads. They're also very, very good to work with. I wouldn't go as far as to say that they were They're very good to work with. There's a little back and forth. I'm not gonna say they make our life 100% easy, but it's very good. It's a very good relationship, and they're very much working in the same direction as the board, and they have great understanding of how the limitations and the revenues and the 3% that we're held to, and they have great understanding of that, so they do all understand exactly what we're dealing with here. and they do a good job of working with us. That doesn't always necessarily mean that we don't have to be the bad people sometimes and say no, but I think they understand that too, and it's very good working relationships. I'd like to thank all the department heads, And just to piggyback a bit on what Aaron was talking about, the reduction in the rollback is huge. Because that, to a lot of people, that just looks like 2.9% when you go from 47 to 44 or whatever. But that's, the way the percentage is calculated off of the number you're changing from, that's actually close to 6.5% reduction. in the amount of your assessment that you're gonna pay on. And likewise, like Supervisor DeCook was just explaining with the legislation, if it goes from 44 to 50, That's not 6%, that's a 14% increase in the amount that you pay on your assessment. So I think there are some other things that would counteract that, and there are some things in the bills too. So I do kinda appreciate, in some ways, the House File 718, I think the 3% cap was moving us in the right direction in a lot of ways, and I'd almost like to see that go carry on a few more years to see how that played out. But I don't think it's gonna change this year. So we'll see what rules we play under next year. But that's all I had to say. Thank you to the department heads, our budget director, and all the rest of the staff, everyone that made the budget process pretty smooth this year. Thank you.

Anyone else?

Looks like next on our item is the Yes.

The hearing, item 10, budget hearing. I'll make a motion to go into public hearing.

Second. Roll call. Second, . Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Anyone here like to comment, speak on the budget? Or online, I guess we have people online and in person, maybe. Nobody online, okay.

I'll make a motion to close public hearing.

Second.

Roll call. McIntyre? Aye. Harrison? Aye.

Cook? Aye. DeWitt? Aye. Martin? Aye. We are now out of public hearing. Item number 11 would be to approve the fiscal year 26-27 elected official salaries.

We have a, Megan, are they all 3.5? There we go.

Okay, so the Warren County Compensation Board met on December 18th and gave their proposed increases. And then the board ultimately decided to do a flat 3.5% across departments other than the supervisors, which they took a 0%.

I have a comment and then I'll make a motion. If we're just being real, like I'm a real person. I try to go from point A to point B in life, make relatively good choices. I like to think so usually. But if I'm thinking about the compensation boards, we are capped, folks. The bill caps us at 3%. So if salaries grow or are recommended to grow at 10%, how does that math work long term? Does it? I mean, that's reality. I don't think it does. So I mean, I don't know if additional legislation's coming regarding the comp board or if the comp board wants to read the legislation or understand that we're confined within doing. But since I got back on the board last year, it was my preference and the board agreed that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. And so employees, non-bargaining employees received a 3% raise last year and so did the electeds. And this year, everyone in the county is at 3.5%. And so I don't see much reason to deviate from that absent some very extenuating circumstances other than the supervisors who last year, keep in mind, decreased 2.2% and this year are flat. That's trying to lead by example, folks. I don't think there was very many supervisors, city council folks, mayors, or other locally elected officials that took a pay cut last year and then came back the next year with a flat. Your board's a little different. We're actually trying to work in your best interest but I do think that that's a bigger discussion going forward with the compensation board making recommendations of ranging from 9.95% to 10. I think the supervisors, they gave zero, because I think I talked to someone in advance, and I'm like, we're clearly not gonna take a raise this year, so do what you want to do, but they're at 10%. We can't give 10% raises. We're capped from the state, so I mean, Either that changes or the comp board comes back with whatever the cap is. I don't know what to tell you. But that's reality land, so that's where I live. With that, I'll make a motion to approve the 3.5% salary increases. Second. Roll call. McIntyre? Aye.

Gerritsen?

Aye. Cook?

Aye. DeWitt?

Aye.

Arnold? Aye. Item number 12, approve the fiscal year 2026-27 budget.

I'll make a motion to approve the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget. Second. McIntyre? Aye. Aronson? Aye.

McCook?

Aye.

DeWitt? Aye. Armand? Aye. Thank you. Item number 13, approve fiscal year 2026-2027 departmental appropriations.

So this is just a requirement by the state. It will match what I had gone over in my budget presentation, and it's just showing how much is budgeted for expenses by department.

I'll make a motion to approve the fiscal year 2026-27 departmental appropriations. Second. You went quiet. Aye.

Aye.

aye aye aye and finally item number 14 is a public hearing for a budget amendment for the fiscal year ending 2026 with possible action I'll make a motion to go into public hearing second aye aye aye aye aye aye

Switch to HDMI. No, you're fine. This one's much shorter, I promise. So we're looking at this current fiscal year that we're in right now, which is fiscal year 26. A BUDGET AMENDMENT. THIS FORM WILL LOOK VERY SIMILAR TO THE FORM I PULLED UP FOR THE BUDGET. THE PROCESS IS VERY SIMILAR. SO THIS NOTICE WAS PUBLISHED ON APRIL 7TH AND APRIL 9TH. AND IT'S BROKEN DOWN FOR THE STATE DEPARTMENTS. AND AGAIN I'LL GO OVER THE EXPENSES BY DEPARTMENT AND FUND. IT'S THE STATE ASSIGNED SERVICE AREAS AND I'LL GO BY DEPARTMENTS. So this I'm sure is pretty small up there. Looking at the largest expenses in here, So we have in the engineers department a $409,000 that is to be able to spend fund balances that they actually have set aside for equipment and capital improvements. They also have a $704,000 for various equipment that they discussed during their fiscal year 27 budget meetings. Another one, we have a A $97,000 total for the attorney's office. Some of it is staffing needs. And then another part of it is the ability to spend their fine fund. A couple of smaller ones for DBA. Conservation has the ability to spend their REAP funds. So again, that's not affecting our general basic balance. That's a fund that they have set aside. And then an insurance cost, which could be just a staff member joining insurance that wasn't on it prior or a change like that. We have for nutrition the ability to spend a donation and then also receding it in. as well as aging resources. Looking at the medical examiner and district court, these are both budgets that I just predict based on the past five years. I want to add funds just to be completely sure that we don't go over for their budgeted expenses. A big change since the last time that I had presented the amendment to you would be this Great Western Trail of $750,000. That looks like a large amount, but if we spend it in this current fiscal year, then we won't spend it. It's currently in the budget for fiscal year 27. So if they can get started earlier and we can start paying earlier, this gives us gives us the ability to pay this year. So again, it's just balancing it between the two fiscal years. And then we have the nutrition transfer of 100,000 and EMA funding to match the EMA budget. of a little over $45,000. So that's over $2.4 million in expenses, and then $154,000 in revenues, a net of $2.291 million. Looking at that by fund. Over a million of it is hitting the general basic but reminder 750,000 of that are expenses that are just moving fiscal year potentially secondary roads that will just hit their own secondary roads fund. And then again reap is just the ability for the conservation to spend that fund balance. and then you can see which by department. So again, the largest being the engineer of $1.1 million, which again was budgeted, which was discussed during the budget this year.

Megan, I think maybe it's important for the public to know, because that is a big number, but that the engineer has the funds there, the budgeted, The budget is there to buy the equipment. The engineer didn't buy the equipment over the last couple years for a variety of reasons, some of which was scheduling and timing, but the fund balance grew as he was budgeted to buy, let's say it was a $300,000 piece of equipment or a new grader or whatever, and then when he didn't buy it, it sat on his fund. Now it's being spent because he is purchasing a lot of equipment. This year and I think the long term that's probably the right move but that does account for a lot of it Yeah that plus the Great Western Trail and that's how you get to the larger number Although it's not my preference to have large budget amendments But I understand it So finally this is just showing with all of the funds the effect on the fund balance prior to the budget amendment and then after the budget amendment and

One thing to remember would be those graphs I showed during the budget time is that generally even though we might budget for this $900,000 here, generally the fund balance is not hit as hard as it is budgeted. This is just to make sure that we do not go over on our expenses as that's not allowed per code. And that's all for the amendment hearing or presentation.

All right. Anyone to speak on the budget amendment?

Seeing none, I'll make a motion to close the public hearing. Second.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

All right.

I'll make a motion to approve. So we were waiting for the chairman. All right, I will make a motion to approve the FY 26 budget amendment.

Second.

Roll call.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

I think that concludes the.

I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. We are adjourned.

Thank you.