Quorum Court - Regular Meeting

Will the Washington County Services Committee please come to order? Good evening ladies and gentlemen to all and good evening to those in the public gallery. Tonight, I'm sorry, one moment please. I see. Tonight Justice Rivera is going to, Lopez is going to lead us in the prayer and the pledge. Justice Lopez.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to be here, and I hope that you give us the clarity to do our best and the will to do right by the people in our community. We're not hearing anything too specific today, but even still, I hope that we carry righteousness and the best foot forward that we can for our fellow man today. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. Next is the adoption of the agenda of Justice Pond.

Yes, thank you. I'd like to add a CRI and CAP report to the agenda if I could. I'd make that item number seven.

Can you put that into a motion?

I move that we add those to the agenda.

Second.

I have a motion by Justice Pond, a second by Justice Lemming to add that report to the agenda. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

No.

We have one no. The motion carries.

All right.

Thank you. Now, do I have a motion to adopt the agenda?

So moved. Second.

I have a motion by Justice Lemming and a second by Justice Dennis. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed? No. The ayes have it. Thank you. Next is the Chairman's Report. As you all know, colleagues, Justice Lyons and I had the privilege of representing Washington County and Arkansas at the National Association of Counties meeting convention in New Orleans. And I will say I was very thankful that Christopher Lyons, president of the association, sponsored me, and they approved me to be on the National Criminal Justice and Public Safety Steering Committee. Those steering committee meetings last all day, from 9 to 4.30, and they're jam-packed with information specifically for criminal justice and public safety. And I will say, listening to all the issues across this country, I want our citizens to realize that we are being proactive and moving forward in a positive direction as far as criminal justice. What I hear from the other counties, and I'm going, we need them to implement the CRI or the CAP programs because they have proved to be successful. not only in reducing recidivism, but in changing people's lives for the better. And how we get other nonprofit organizations to work alongside and being united in one purpose, creating a better society. And other counties don't have that. And I'm very proud of Washington County that we do. Now, on another note, We had a whole list of proposed policy resolutions and platform changes that was submitted to Congress. And one of them, which to me was pretty much the most alarming, was, let me find it right here, because I had never heard of it. and neither did my colleague, Justice Lyons, and the proposed resolution on transparency and respect for county values regarding federal immigration detention facilities. Apparently, across the country, the issue is a federal immigration detention capacity extends meaningful local government, am I have the right glasses on? Yes, I do. Meaningful local government involvement is essential to determine whether such facilities are appropriate for their area and ensure transparency regarding cost, impacts, and other factors affecting public welfare and local planning. What is happening is Homeland Security is going in and buying these huge warehouses. And they want to use those for immigration processing and even detention facilities because of the jail overcrowding that everybody across this country is experiencing. That's alarming because most of these facilities do not have proper ventilation facilities, plumbing, rooms. It's just an open warehouse space. When they brought this proposal up, I said, have you engaged your governors? Have you engaged your county judges? It was the first I had ever heard of it. I asked Justice Lyons, have you heard of Homeland Security doing this? He goes, no, I have not. I asked Christopher Lyons, president of the AAC, have you heard that this is going on? No, I have not. Debbie Weiss, President of the Executive Board, have you heard that Homeland Security is doing this? No, I have not. So there was a lot of discussion. I felt very much out of the loop that we here in Arkansas aren't aware of what's going on in other states. But it's there, and it's alarming. From Oregon to El Paso, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, all across different areas, Homeland Security is buying these large warehouses for detention processing facilities. And the issue is, The proposed policy was the National Association of Counties supports meaningful local government involvement in decisions regarding federal immigration detention facilities to ensure communities have a voice in whether such facilities are appropriate for the area. We support full transparency regarding cost impacts and other factors affecting public trust, health, welfare, and local planning. This lack of communication and coordination between federal authorities and local governments regarding potential detention centers have been a cause of concern, as has taking properties off of the tax rolls, the strain on the first responders and hospital resources near or surrounding the facilities, and enormous expenditures with little oversight or accountability. So after much discussion, The resolution is passed and this will be passed on to Congress and what we're asking for is a resolution on transparency and respect for our county values. Don't just come into our county and purchase these large warehouses and then take that property off the tax roll and we don't receive any taxes on that property. It passed, and we'll see where it goes from there. But nobody in Arkansas has heard of this, and that kind of took me off guard. So there was others in here regarding public safety announcements, the alert system. But we, again, here at Washington County just changed over. The first responders and the EEOC have changed that. And so all those gaps that were in between the systems are not here. And I want the public to know how diligent they are protecting and getting out that first response of this is happening now. So I'm gonna also just ask Justice Lines if he would share what he learned while he was there because he has a different perspective than I did. Mine was all criminal justice and public safety. Justice Lines.

Thank you, Chair. Yeah, we kind of split up so we could cover as much as possible. I tend to lean mostly to the technology side because that's what I do for a living. I've had a lot of discussions with Director Dozer on a lot of these items and going forward. A lot of good information down there. Going through a lot of technology, their steering committee that NACO has, the standing steering committee, reviewing cyber security, different things, a lot of AI discussion going on, what other counties are doing with AI, how they're doing it, where it's going, and then also a lot of discussion around data centers and what different counties are doing to maintain, as we want, we wanna maintain that decision whether the data center goes into Washington County or not on this board. That's our decision, we wanna maintain that, we wanna make sure that we're doing things to protect the county and we have the right items in the ordinances to protect the county and it becomes a decision that we make based on what's good for the county, feedback from constituents and those types of things. So I spent most of my time in technology and data center sessions and bringing a lot of that back to have discussions with the different groups. Groups that have done it like the Circuit Court in Georgia has done a huge project, helps them out tremendously in providing the service. As I see it, it helps where reduce their need to hire more people. They're not getting rid of anybody. It's not the tent. It's going forward with that. I mean, we talked with Circuit Court Controller Sylvester the other day when he brought in some new positions recently, and just the amount of work that continues to increase in his department. And the point is try to level off the hiring there to help them out so they don't have to continue to go out and hire and those types of things. So there's several things I'm gonna pull out and pass out to different people and have discussions where it makes sense to pass on that knowledge so then they can decide within their areas what makes sense. But a lot of good information from that point of view.

Very, very productive and we're pleased to see our treasurer Bobby Hill was there and assessor Russell Hill and his chief of staff, Dan Seifert, were there learning as much as they can from what's going on and I'm sure they'll be sharing that as well. Also in our next month's meeting, Russell Hill will be doing a presentation on property tax because that seems to be a very hot topic right now at NACO. It's like everybody wouldn't stop talking about it. Across the country, people are almost trying to do away with property taxes completely, 100%, no property taxes, which that would be nice, but, you know, look at, The alternative, how do we fund schools? How do we fund our libraries and our volunteer fire associations also? But he'll be giving that report and what he learned in all those updates from NACO. So moving on the agenda, we have number five, juvenile detention by Director Tinsley will give us his monthly report. Good evening, Director Tinsley.

Good evening, Madam Chair, and good evening to the County Service Committee members. I'd like to share our juvenile detention monthly report for July, 2026. This report covers 28 days of data. In July, we had 19 intakes. The average length of stay was about 14.43 days. Our average daily population came out to just over 10.32 residents. The most common charge for intakes was aggravated assault felony at three cases. Of the 19 intakes from Washington and Madison counties, eight intakes were from Division III, 11 intakes were from Division VIII. We had eight transports during the month of July. And, excuse me, I believe six were done by the Washington County Sheriff's Office and two were done by the Juvenile Detention Center. Are there any questions that I may answer at this time about the report from July, 2026?

Justice Coker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Director Tinsley, I don't really have a question. I just wanted, if I'm reading this correctly, under the number of days of detention total for a period, that's the period of July, we're up 21.9% from the same period last year. or we're up from, I should say, in 2025, there was 343, and in 2026, 418. And that comes out to 2.9%. I just wanted to make that clear. That was very concerning.

Yes, ma'am. Justice Colwell, a lot of times, we have to look at the outside mitigating factors. Sometimes kids are not allowed to come back to the home or where they're seeking placement or the judge may order some kind of hold with DHS. And so sometimes DHS can't find placement. And so now the days this kid is gonna sit and remain in detention until we find somewhere for that resident to be somewhere safe, whether that's finding placement, a lot of times all these kids have to qualify. And they fall into different categories, so funding has to be in place. So a lot of times there's more to the picture than just them staying there. And it is concerning as well. It's heartbreaking sometimes when parents or a guardian have washed their hands with a kid. I don't know the answer in the long run, but yes, ma'am, that's the main reason why now that we've seen a lot of kids that have been staying in detention longer is because of placement or they can't go back home at this point.

One more thing. What's an update on your staffing at the JDC?

Good question. We are finally fully, I may jinx myself, so it's kind of one of those words we don't like to say, but every position has been filled.

Really?

That's great. Praise the Lord. Amen.

Sounds like you're doing good on that then.

Again, we have you all to thank. When the STAIL program came along, JDC became very competitive. And so we've got a lot of great candidates that have been applying and that we've hired. Even the people that still work for me, we're We're thriving. We're trying to push them to, you know, to stay with us, but we want to see everyone do better and keep striving in life. So I'm very happy. I'm very optimistic about what the future holds for JDC. And, you know, today we had our two new hires start, and it's been a long time since we've had every position filled. It is a tough job, and we do. I try my best to be transparent with people up front and tell them, like, hey, These are the things that you could be exposed to. So if you're willing to give it a try, it's not for everybody. It's not for the weak at heart sometimes. But we'll give anybody a chance. But we just want to let you know this is not This is not McDonald's playground either.

Well, it must be taking or has taken a lot of pressure off of the people already there who were having to work double shifts and all. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for that.

Yes, ma'am.

I do have a question. What kind of summer programs have you had for the

We have, so our social work department, they will have trainings with the kids. So we've had workshops where we're working on resumes. I've even taught kids how to, you know, tie a necktie and, you know, it's a lost trade.

It's a long start.

Yes, ma'am. So, and even with my staff, I'm like, hey, if you got something that's positive that you want to, Pour the kids into the classroom and teach them. Let's do it. So we've had different entities come in and do art classes. We've had poetry classes. So we don't want these kids sitting around and watching movies all day during the summertime. So we play pickleball with them in our school gym area. Some of my staff would like for them to go lift weights. So we just try to keep them moving. But It's been, we've had a lot of hot days in July, just as Eckie, so we've been trying to keep them hydrated and, you know, let's go out early in the morning or kind of around six or seven for about an hour just to make sure that they, you know, get some sunlight and getting some exercise as well.

That's great.

Yes, ma'am.

Now, y'all have had a fishing trip, haven't you?

Yes, ma'am, back in May. Yes, ma'am. Now, the... Division III, they do the 885 crew, so they've been busy doing community service, going fishing, going kayaking, and JDC, we will help fund some of those events, you know, and a lot of times the kids that have been in detention will come back and hit the buzzer and ask me to come out and bring them snacks, so I just try to Make sure they have something to help the alternative in the morning. A lot of times they don't eat breakfast because they have to get started. So we just want to make sure those kids have enough fuel being out in the sun or whatnot.

I applaud the work that you're doing down there.

Yes, ma'am.

I really do. It's not, like you said, it's a very difficult and it's a calling.

Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

It's a calling. And you're doing a great job. And are there any other questions for Director Tinsley? Good job, thank you, sir. Thank you. We appreciate it very much.

You all have a wonderful evening.

You too, thank you. Next on the agenda is our sheriff, Jay Cantrell. Good evening, sir, how are you?

thank you madam chairman i'm doing well tonight well you have your report there in your packet and you can kind of look at the numbers for the reporting period june 16th through July 16th of 2026. Calls for service has been running about 10% above a year ago. We've seen that trend is continuing. But our enforcement guys, we're full on enforcement except for a couple of slots. We're able to keep up with those. You can see our detention intakes are up a little bit over the same period last year. Fortunately, our pretrial numbers are staying down, but our ADC numbers are making up that difference, so we're still running with a lot of people in jail. I will tell you that JP Bruns can probably says to this too because he spent 25 years at the University PD. We'll see an influx in our jail numbers from about starting about now up through probably the middle of September. 30,000 more people moving in to this city and so not all the people that come to jail are students but we'll see our jail numbers increase and this will hopefully be able to move into some of our new space, get some of our old space back by the end of the month and have that available to us to help work through that but i'd be happy to answer any questions anybody might have how is that renovation going um they've moved all their construction trailers out all the equipment's out just walking through the punch list right now so uh we're expecting to get it turned over to us uh anytime so yeah we're excited to we've got booking we've got medical we're already utilizing that we've got the kitchen So all that's done, we're just waiting on those new beds. And then we had to close down those 96 beds in our work release building so they could do their construction work. And we'll get those back probably by the end of the month. So that'll be very helpful to get those beds back.

Yes. Right ahead. Justice Lopez. Yes.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here, Sheriff. Quick question. Of those sent to prison, are those all federal prisoners? Because it looks like our state prison numbers are rising considerably from last year. Is there not space at the state level? I know that that's an ongoing issue, but is that holding true this year?

The ones we're sending to prison are all state prisoners. All state, okay. Federal prisoners, we don't differentiate between convicted and pretrial on those because it's a, kind of a different housing classification with the federal prisoners, but all the ones that we've sent to prison have gone down to the Department of Corrections. Malvern. Thank you, Sheriff.

Also, one more thing, Sheriff. A couple of weeks ago, I went down to Little Rock. It was a legislative... meeting of all the legislative elected officials, talking about what do we want to see happen at the state capitol. And of course, the number one thing that the three of us from the quorum court were asking was, when are you going to increase the amount of money that the state owes for holding their prisoners? And it's something that everybody wants to do, but have you had conversations with people, or representatives or whatever, on getting this done? Because right now I'm just trying to get a feel for their attitude. I mean, they're sitting on a war chest of a lot of money, and it would be nice if they'd pay us back for what they owe us. But I didn't know if they're engaging you.

Yes, I visited with some of our local legislators about the reimbursement. at the state level and trying to get that number closer to what the actual costs are and i think you know they're receptive but uh we'll just have to see what happens when we get down in the into the legislative session sure there's a there's a lot of people pushing for pieces of that pie so

Boy, are they ever. I know that when I engage them, they say, yeah, but we're just nine. It's everybody else that you need to convince. You know, we're all on board to supporting y'all. But it's the others as well. So just want to know if there's conversation with the attitude was.

Yeah, I think the area up here in Northwest Arkansas, I think they're very receptive to that. So in my conversations with them, they want to take a look at that and see what they can do to try to Bump that up some.

Now, there are some counties that are not experiencing jail overcrowding, and they're making money off of, yeah.

There are some counties, that's correct. I don't know if they're making money, but it's not, you know, they've got room and they've got space and they don't mind housing them.

Yeah, but those of us in the larger counties that are at a deficit in having from county general to feed into the jail because of the gap, we're all like, that's just not right. And it did upset a few that why are y'all making money and they will say no to us so we need to look at the the formula i guess or the percentage of how much they're getting as opposed to what the larger counties that have the issues going on and of course everybody there at the aac say yeah but northwest arkansas y'all are different y'all are experiencing things that nobody else is experiencing, or we're experiencing something and you all have no idea what's going on. So I'm thankful that we're prosperous and we're growing, but at the same time, pay your bills, state.

I'll keep parenting that information to our local legislators every chance I get.

Alrighty. Are there any other questions? There are. One moment, please. Justice cover.

Thank you madam chair, I share if I have just my usual questions and a little bit more.

Let's start off with the covid numbers for today and no covid have had covid since June the 10th, I believe was our last okay diagnosed case.

And how many did we have sleeping on the floor last night.

Last night was a 167 where they all mills all mail.

And how about what about the number of 3, 0, 9,

This morning we had 16 males, 17 females.

Okay. And when you're talking about the prisoners in the jail, the detainees, how many of those are eyes held or held by eyes right now?

Immigration currently has, well, at noon they had 14.

14, and how often do they come? Do they send a bus to come and pick people up?

Yeah, two or three times a week. They've got typically a 72-hour limit, so we're kind of a short-term holding facility for them, so we try to get here within their 72-hour allotment of time.

And back to the COVID mitigation project, I heard what you said, but when you say turned over, that's when that certificate of completion for the COVID unit, like the one that I sent you, that I found on the remodeling, is that when that will be done?

I don't know what, you know, they don't send that to me. That's the first time I've seen that document you sent. I think they must send that up to the county judge, maybe Buildings and Grounds, They're over all the county buildings. But they will give us the certificate of occupancy or tell us that we can utilize that building. And then we'll go in and we'll have to do our stuff. There wasn't enough money allotted to pay for installing the cameras, getting the phones up and running, all those things. So we'll have to do all that. with our in-house staff, and so that'll take a little time to get that done, but we'll be able to go in there and actually work and do our stuff once they turn it over to us.

Okay, I guess what I meant to ask was who makes that decision then, the county judge and the architect or the contractor?

Yes, I'm assuming so, yes.

Okay. And with the high number of state prisoners that we have, what are you hearing from the state? Because I know I haven't talked to you about this, but Sheriff Helter used to call down there and try to, you know, to try to get updates and everything. I just wonder what you're hearing since we've got so many. Nothing.

Just to tell you that they don't have, you know, they might have some beds available. They just don't have staff to operate them. And so they're, if they don't have the staff, they would just close those beds. and not utilize them until they can get the staff hired. So we don't necessarily get that luxury at the county level. So that's what I'm hearing. It takes about six months from the time someone is convicted until they can get down to start their sentence down at the Department of Corrections. So we're working to try to implement some programs that they can maybe start here and carry on when they get to prison. That's the problem with a lot of these programs longer term and you know if they're only here six months and they're here and they're going to be involved in a year-long program to for whatever that might be you know they can't complete it here but the state has reached out to see if maybe we can partner with some mutually beneficial programs to help those detainees get started with whatever they've got to complete because the new Protect Arkansas Act requires them to get an education while they're in prison, to learn a job skill while they're there before they can be released. So if we can get that started quicker, then they may not have to stay down there as long and take up those jail beds that we're holding somebody else for.

Okay. Well, we don't have any control over that.

Not very much, no.

Not very much. So I want to make a request. If you could include in your monthly reports the total number of bed days year to date, would that be a lot for you to do?

I don't think so. I think I'll check with our IT guy. We used to have that number. Okay. I suspect it would be pretty easy, but I can do that.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.

Are there any other questions?

Madam Sheriff, if I may just indulge the committee briefly. We talk an awful lot about the jail because that's our big resource drain, and I realize that. But we've got guys out working the street, our patrol guys, our detectives that are doing a lot of work out there that don't get recognized very often. So I just wanted tonight to bring you a little information from our local drug task force, of which we've got a deputy that's a member of that, The small town agencies come together and provide a police officer. Fayetteville has three. Springdale has two. So they do a great work in northwest Arkansas combating these large drug trafficking organizations. So their calendar year runs July through June. And so we've got our end of the month report. I just wanted to point out a couple of things. Last year, they seized over 83 pounds of methamphetamine from Washington Madison County that's particularly Washington County. That's where they do most of their work 83 pounds of methamphetamine they made 150 arrests and seized 87 firearms, so we're seeing more and more firearms associated with these drug trafficking operations Fortunately, no one no one was hurt or they didn't have a shootout, but but that's just something we're seeing and I talked to JP Ecke after she returned from her trip to New Orleans. She was talking about a little item called a Glock switch, which is a little small. It's about the size of that right there, just the very end of that deal. It affixes to the back of a Glock pistol and makes it a fully automatic firearm. And these switches can be manufactured if you've got a CNC machine out of metal, or you can print them on a 3D printer at home if you get the right filament. And so we've actually seized some of those in Northwest Arkansas, found some on a gun, found some by their self. So that's a federal offense, just having that piece a little piece is the same as having a machine gun. So we're seeing that. That's coming into northwest Arkansas. But, you know, we've got folks out there working hard to try to combat that. So, you know, I just wanted to do a little shout out for some of our enforcement guys that are out working hard every day to try to make our streets a little safer. The one thing that I did note And JP Washington can probably help me out with this better than I can, but on fentanyl, so you look at the fentanyl seizures for the last year, it was only 194 grams, which is not all that much, 194 grams. But whenever you talk about fentanyl, they measure it out in milligrams, so that's 194,000 milligrams. And so they say if somebody's not used to it, to fentanyl, a two milligram dose can be fatal. And two milligrams is like 10 or 15 grains of salt. 10 or 15 grains of salt out on the table, that's about two milligrams. So that's how much, if you're not a regular user of fentanyl, that's about how much it takes to be a fatal dose. So 194,000 grams, so if it takes two milligrams, then that's, That's nearly 100,000 fatal doses that they were able to seize last year. So anyway, kudos to our folks that are out working the drug cases and the big cases. They're not looking for people with pocket dope. They're targeting these drug trafficking operations, and we see an awful lot of it coming from Tulsa, a lot of it coming up from Dallas. And so that's the kind of cases that they're working in. trying to put a dent in that trade.

They're putting their lives at risk every single day to keep everybody else safe. The ATF spoke to us at length about the ghost guns and the Glock guns, and within, they said, 15 seconds, that handgun that gets off five shots, right? One, two, three, four, five, can be turned into a machine gun With 30 bullets, just boom, there you go, in 15 seconds. And how they're getting them, a lot of them also, is China is the biggest export of that little clip to the United States. And they are hiding them in children's toys. And one of them, the most popular one, is like this little plastic dune buggy. And inside is that clock switch. So somebody orders it. It's just a dune buggy, right? No, it's not. And that's how the theory is. I guess this plot is China wants to just wipe out as many Americans as they possibly can, so put this in the hands of young teenagers. And where they're really seeing this almost at an alarming rate is in the Chicago area. They said it's almost out of control with the young, Teenagers and they're getting younger and younger and that's a sad part is how young these children are That are using these clock switches, but I broached the subject with the sheriff and I wanted him to be the one to inform the court on The excellent work that his staff and law enforcement is doing out there to keep us safe It's a it's a region-wide effort.

You know, we're blessed in Northwest Arkansas of it and that we can all work together, that we're trying to come together, and nobody's got this big huge ego that it's gotta be me. Nobody cares who gets the credit. We're just trying to make this place a little safer. It's a vibrant area of the state, and the people in Little Rock have it right. We do have something special up here, but we gotta work hard to keep it.

And we're thankful you're the sheriff and for your team. So is there any other questions? Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Have a great evening. With that, we're moving on to the next, number seven, the CRI and CAP report by Nick Robbins that was added to the agenda. I'm sure you all received an email from Mr. Robbins for the July report, but I asked him to go ahead and just explain some of the numbers.

I have a point of order by Justice Koger. Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought this was going to come after the Washington Regional. Is that not correct?

No, that's not correct. Okay. It was number seven before Washington Regional.

No problem.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you.

All right.

Good evening.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for the opportunity being passed around that report that was sent out. So just kind of want to high level touch on on those. We'll start with the community rebuilding initiative. That's page one. We'll go through the first top numbers. To date, we served 216 individuals in the program. New participants in the last 30 days was 16 men. We have 30 current participants, so we're full. And 87 individuals successfully completed the program. And then our recidivism rate. This is actually kind of wrong. So it's 29.89% instead of 8% that have been reincarcerated in Washington County Jail. It's a pretty big jump. It's still under our target of 40%, but it's a big jump. We had six guys go back recently. So that's the main thing. One thing I do want to point out is within the sheriff's office with... some individuals retiring, people moving in different positions. We have different staff that are kind of looking over the program and we were able to recently, probably about three weeks ago, sit down with them at the sheriff's office and have a discussion to make sure we can get some beds full. So it's not about not having enough people in the main jail to fill the beds, it's the process in which we were getting them. So they're really great to alleviate that and so not only are all 30 of our beds full, we actually have a waiting list of 10 individuals that have already been approved and they're just waiting for a bed to open up. So we're expecting moving forward to always be at 30. Any questions or any aspects of that you want me to look into a little deeper before we jump to the program?

Oh, I knocked you off instead, I'm sorry. I have Justice Stafford.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So the successful completions, is that successful completions this year during this reporting period since January 1st or is that successful completion since the program started?

Yeah, since the program started. So you've got like the 87 people that have completed successfully plus the 30 individuals that are currently there. So it's like 117 of like the 216 that we have worked with. So a number, let's see if it's in here.

Okay, so that total number, 216, is since the start. Correct. Since the start, okay.

So that goes back to, remind me, like what date? April of last year, yeah.

Okay.

Okay. And so in the program outcomes section right there, so we had 22 individuals that had bonded out and 14 OR'd out. So we actually, we have, just because the individual comes to us doesn't mean they're still not trying to get out before they go to their court case. So they still have the same abilities to bond out and so we have a number of the individuals of the 216 that we serve bonded out so they haven't went to court and they haven't got everything finished. so to be able to successfully complete the program you have to be adjudicated that's what gives them that designation okay all right thank you okay moving on any other questions oh sorry i do have justice koger thank you madam chair

Actually, one of my questions was what JP Stafford asked about the 87 number. I wonder, and I'm not sure, maybe you're going to get into this, but under services provided, in the future, could we have numbers for those? Like how many received direct housing? Or is that here somewhere? And I don't know. I don't see it.

So I've been getting some feedback recently that reports we're sending are very long and complicated, and so we just kind of tried to maximize with these bigger numbers so I could send you the full report that we do every month. Absolutely.

I think that would be very helpful. And also if the monthly reports could include expenses, income and expenses for the program for both the CAP and the CRI, that would be very helpful too. Thank you. Oh, and I'm sorry, one more thing. The reason I voted no to get it on the agenda was because I couldn't see this until this afternoon when you sent me the PDLs because I couldn't read the photographs that you had. So that's why I voted no, thank you.

But for transparency's sake, it was sent out on last week. I think it was Sunday.

I was working on the weekend. I was trying to get it out because the month just ended. And so we were grinding over the weekend to get everything done. So I'll go over the community alternative program numbers. So for the month, we had nine referrals. We served in the month 39 individuals and we've had nine new intakes. We've had four graduates in the last month and our current participants are at 34 individuals in the program. So just to remind you, the county's paying for 32 beds but we're housing extra Washington County guys. pretty regularly so for the accountability and court obligations is something that we think is really important it means a lot to our staff because they work really hard the caseworkers so we had 480 community service hours so it really depends on which district court you get misdemeanor charges in many of them will take community service certain ones Well, definitely not. And so what the men are able to do is we actually send those reports to the county clerks and they will reduce their fines based on the number of hours that they've completed. And again, in each district is different depending on how much they'll take off, but it's a great way for the guys during their free time when they're not at work to be able to get some hours in and get those things knocked off. Total fines paid in cash last month from the clients, $6,505. So that is money going back to the cities and getting things, alleviating that. Currently all the cities are owed a significant amount of money. I think it was either a million or maybe two million Springdale has in unpaid fines. If you give us X amount of community service hours, a third of what you owe us, we'll go ahead and knock that off. We'll take a third off just because we're proud of you.

If you have any say-so to the judge, not really say-so, I guess, but I mean influence to the judge.

And we begin that campus with almost 350,000 square feet. As we shared today, that campus has over 720,000 square feet.

I don't know when you implemented that word, code stroke, when somebody was coming in.

2015, I'll give you a real life example. I got a text message from a community member and said, hey, my wife is on her way to the ER. He texted me, and three minutes later, she was in the CT scanner getting imaging to rule out a stroke. So code stroke means, when you hear those terms at Washington Regional, it means a big deal.

It does, and they go into action.

Yes, ma'am, absolutely.

I do have a question for you from Justice Lemming.

I didn't know if you wanted to take questions or you want to go through this and then come back to it. Your simulator center, do you just allow employees, Washington Regional, in that facility?

No, sir, we're figuring out how to bring our members from the community into that space.

Because you've got 18 volunteer fire departments in Washington County that's got a lot of people that's trained in all the medical fields, and you talk about saving lives and cardiac stuff. The golden hour is very important, and us volunteer firemen out here in this world, they're our neighbors, and we're doing CPR on them way before they get to you. And the simulation center would really be helpful for all the volunteers out here in the rural areas.

Absolutely. And I think our trauma medical director, Dr. Peter Fisher, is working on how we get our first responders and EMS folks to be a part of that team training that we were talking about.

They're a key player in recovery.

Absolutely. 100%.

Another question I thought about a while ago I just wanted to ask. Your trauma center, I know you're talking and bragging on it big time, but we hear a lot on the radio status that Washington Regional is on divert constantly. We're getting diverted elsewhere on traumas when we bring a patient in out of a car wreck. ambulances and stuff. How often does that happen? I mean, why does that happen as often as it does?

I'd love to talk more specifically about that if we need to offline, but it's my understanding when we're on divert, we're not on divert for trauma, strokes, or cardiovascular disease. If you and your folks are hearing something different out on the airwaves or what's being communicated, then we need to know that because that's being, we can't be now level two working towards being a level one trauma center if we're not open 24-7, 365 for trauma. So I'd really like to hear more about what your experience is there.

Okay, I'll keep listening, taking notes.

Okay, thank you. Again, our cardiovascular care continues to lead the way in the area with our innovative care around atrial fib. We all probably know a handful of people that have afib, and our cardiologists are intent on keeping us at the forefront there. arguably are not one of the most, one of our centers of excellence that we are so very proud of is our women and infants tower and center. Not just with the care we give to mothers, but our level three NICU. Very few neonates have to leave our NICU. It's generally when they need a neonatal surgery or a couple of very rare conditions, but being able to keep those babies and their parents Here in the area, our Ronald McDonald House is adjacent to our NICU, and so those families also have a place to stay. I won't read all these, but again, five straight years being the best hospital in Arkansas per U.S. News & World Report, and four years running being recognized for high-performing maternal care. just a few more badges excelling in our patient safety and a lot of joint commission accreditations. Briefly, 2026, again, we're just continuing to progress in all the areas that we feel like we do well and navigating the best we can in a tough environment and happy to take any further questions.

I have Justice Coker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I've been reading about all the hospitals who are cutting out their labor and delivery and the last I heard, last week it was like only 51 counties in the state still have labor and delivery departments. I just wonder how that's affecting Washington Regional and if you're having to employ new or more OBGYNs for that or have you felt that yet?

When Baptist shut down its L&D unit in Fort Smith a couple months ago, we felt a little bit of a bump. But we have not felt anything significant from other labor and delivery units closing.

Okay, but you have, I guess I'm saying, do you have a plan like if that happened? I mean, because more hospitals are expected to close their labor and delivery down a lot.

Yeah, we still have some capacity within our labor and delivery unit, and we have two groups practicing at Washington Regional. So we have capacity to do more.

Okay, okay, thank you.

I have Justice Lopez.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here. The last time that we got this report, there was a brief mention of telehealth and increasing access to people in more rural parts of the county. Have those efforts expanded? Are you seeing great success with those? If you could just talk about that.

In our patient population, we've actually found that patients like coming to the doctor, and so when we utilize telehealth, it's when patients can't make it to the clinic, whether it's a primary care clinic or a specialty clinic, or what we've experienced earlier this year in January and February when we had a lot of bad weather. We don't want people having to go days without seeing the doctor, especially when they've already had an appointment. So those are where we primarily utilize telehealth.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions? I have Justice Bruns.

Well, sir, I'm going to publicly thank you, and I wish you would fasten on a WRMC. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for you all. And I deeply appreciate it. I've been in that hospital 18 times in the last three years. And it's been a pleasure every time I got out. Of course, it helped me when I ran out. But it helped me. I had a great stay. Y'all gave me great care. And I really appreciate you. So I want to publicly thank you.

I appreciate that, JP Bruns. It's stories like yours that really bring it home for why we come to work every day, so thank you for sharing that.

Are there any other questions for Dr. Campbell? Seeing none, thank you for your report, and it was nice meeting you, and congratulations on celebrating 75 years.

Thank you so much. Appreciate the time. Good night.

Good night. Next on the agenda we have human resources presentation by Director Jessica Bennett. Now she will be sitting over here so that way she can see the screen on what they're doing, but we don't have to worry about, so if you don't see her, if the public doesn't see anybody talking from the podium, she's back over here. She's not a ghost. It's not prerecorded. So good evening, Director Bennett.

Oh, where'd you go?

Turn it back on. There we go.

There we go. Can you hear me now? Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you for letting me sit back here. I typically do trainings, and I'm walking around the room, so hopefully this will help me stay put. And also, I wish we had a TV on the side of the wall so that whenever you're presenting, you can see. So forgive me while I present. And then when you have questions, or at the end if you have questions, I can go to the podium and that way you guys aren't having to turn around and things like that. So tonight is really, truly, hopefully fun, and the intent behind this is not for you all to be job evaluation experts. It's more around transparency on how the process works. So I have quite a few slides, but I'm gonna go as quickly as possible. but still cover the content. I think this is such an area where people have a lot of questions and because how we evaluate a job determines how that job is paid and so this is kind of step one. Next week in the budget and finance committee meeting, we will be bringing you some items that we wanna talk through in terms of we will need decisions on and I'll cover that at the end. So job evaluation actually falls under kind of what we would call talent architecture, which means training and talent development, it's career pathways, of course job evaluation, and then the skill competencies and proficiencies. Also, some companies call them functional competencies, so you'll hear that terminology used interchangeably. Done well, talent architecture is truly the center of a employee's career experience. Whenever you have skills that identify the perfect candidate and you have an interview process that the interview questions are based truly on the skills needed to complete the job, it makes the interview process more objective. Performance management becomes easier because there are clear expectations for the employees. There's nothing I hate worse as your HR director or any position in HR to walk into a conversation and employee's like, I have no idea what's expected of me. So whenever it's done well, employees understand not only what is expected of me, but to go to the next kind of section is what do I need to do to be able to promote? So I'm gonna pause on the career growth transparency because I'm gonna cover that towards the end in terms of kind of where we're headed. So tonight we're gonna focus mainly on job evaluation. So whenever we are looking at job grades or job evaluation, HR will sit with the business leader and we're going to get information in terms of what kind of work is performed, what do they need to know to do the job. We typically research to see kind of what issues they're facing. So tonight one of the examples we're gonna use is IT group. There's a lot of discussion around cyber security issues and things like that. So I'm just gonna kind of call that out. You'll see that through the slides as we continue to move forward. After we evaluate the job, the job is assigned a point value and that point value correlates to a grade which correlates of course to the pay structure. Here's some kind of goals and what job evaluation is not. The whole goal of job evaluation is pay parity. And we want to ensure that we are comparing similar roles across Washington County. Whenever I came to Washington County, we used a system called GRADAR that we were paying I think around six to $10,000, don't quote me on that, I have to go back and look at the budget. It was seven questions and it was easily manipulated to determine whatever job level or grade the leader wanted and it has created some issues. Again, we'll cover some of, the issues that it's created next week in terms of specifically like Division III. Division III intake officers are a grade lower than Division VIII intake officers and they do the exact same job and exact same job description. So whenever I came in, just for a little bit of context in my background, whenever you are going through a job evaluation training, typically it's about eight hours for HR professionals to go through. I typically, and then beyond that, whenever you are learning how to evaluate a job, It's about 100 jobs until you really start to feel comfortable with sitting in a meeting and being able to understand this is probably this grade. To give you some context, I have evaluated over 30,000 jobs within my time in my previous company. So this is really an area I'm passionate about. When done well, it sets us up nicely for compensation to be accurate. people become more, the morale increases, they become more engaged in their work because they know exactly what is expected of them and they also know what they need to do to be able to promote. Again, I'll cover that kind of in a couple more slides. It is not, what I've heard recently is well I've got somebody that's a step 10 and I need to give them a raise. So you need to give me a different grade. That's a no for me, and that's a hard conversation, but that is not what job evaluation is. My favorite example, this was probably 10, 15 years ago, I told someone they wanted a particular grade level and I said, you know, really the grade level that you're looking for, that role is more strategic. So they took the job description and they added strategy in about every sentence in the job description and sent it back to me. They didn't get their way then either. So I get really passionate about kind of keeping this job evaluation pure and as objective as humanly possible. Whenever we're having conversations with leaders, we really wanna keep the conversation away from salary expectations. I can't tell you how many times someone has come in and said, well, I need this job to be at 15. Well, we're gonna go through the exercise and we're gonna see where it lands, because we're gonna compare it against other jobs across Washington County. So I'm very diligent in terms of looking across the organization, looking at different skill sets, and really getting into what the job does. We focus on the future, so I'll use AI as an example. We have our county attorney uses AI to help draft contracts or whatever. We have coders in IT who are using AI to go in and start the code. That's amazing to be able to use that technology. However, you still need an expert at the end of the day to customize the code so that it'll work, to make sure that cybersecurity elements are there. We kind of covered this a little bit, but I'll just kind of hit on it again. We keep it really focused on the requirements of the job and not the current incumbent. And I've heard the conversation go both ways. We have a amazing employee who is going above and beyond. that's great, but do we need them to do that job and is that really a permanent change? Once they do these things that are kind of above and beyond, do we really need them to continue to do that work? And so having those conversations and really diving into what do we need the job to do going forward and thinking about it in a future sense. The most common questions, and I think this will hopefully help our leaders to kind of understand what we're looking at whenever we go into a conversation with them. Probably my favorite question is the second one, which is what is the big stressor for the incumbent? I'm not gonna go through each one of these questions, but I am gonna touch on this one a little bit. This question really helps us understand not only what is kind of top of mind. Are they thinking about what's out in the industry or are they thinking this task that I need to do tomorrow? Also it helps me understand what decision rights they may have and how they're approaching a problem. So this is a great question that I ask just about every conversation that I have whenever I'm leveling jobs. So as I mentioned before, in terms of determining the grade, we go in, we look at the job description, we do research to understand what's going on in industry. Any time you go to evaluate a job, you always start with a leader. So the way you can kind of think about that is I'm never going to solve problems bigger than my boss is having to solve. I'm never going to have to know more and have more accountability than my boss has. So you always want to start with the leader and then the next layer down. Mapping skills and proficiencies, I'm gonna get in that to another slide, but that has been a real, IBM started this probably, I don't know, six or seven years ago, and the industry has really picked up on it. It's a fantastic way to really paint a picture for employees to understand what skillsets they need to be able to promote within an organization. So again, I mentioned I'm gonna pick on IT. This is not obviously their entire org chart. I just took a snapshot of it just to be able to talk through some examples. So again, we start with the leader, you evaluate their direct reports, and then you evaluate the next level. Here's some kind of mandatory information that we have to have before we can go into the evaluation. We need to understand, of course, the work that they're responsible for. What kind of issue resolution will the role be responsible for? What kind of training and experience does the incumbent need to successfully perform the work? What are the supervisory expectations? So I'm gonna take just a second on this one. This can be more than just directly supervising someone. There are times when operationally you are providing guidance, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you are their supervisor in your writing evaluations. So we kinda wanna give points and credit for that as well. What kind of responsibility do I have in terms of decision rights, and then does the role manage a budget? so what i did was i took several different methodologies and combined them into one that is custom for public service and more specifically to washington county so in each of these factors so this is our factor one and each of these factors if you look at the bottom right hand corner that is our highest point for the chart so it becomes um whenever you're looking at the chart and you're determining where a job sits on this chart, as you go to the right, it becomes more difficult and complex, and as you go to the bottom, it becomes more difficult and complex. This is true for all of the charts. As you can see, they're color coded. So your foundational level is that blue. The green is your advanced. I'm sorry, the green is intermediate and then the gray is advanced. And then that next kind of peach color is our experts. So each factor has at least two questions or two criteria, and then each factor will have a number. That number value actually goes into a formula, and then that formula totals the evaluation that gets placed into the actual grade on the step plan. So whenever you think about point values, the easiest way to think about it is, The larger your job is in a company, the more you can absorb within your capacity. When you are at the foundational level, it doesn't take very much extra work before you've bounced that job to a higher grade. Does that make sense? Skills and proficiency mapping, this is kind of what I was talking about. IBM went to this several years back and a lot of large companies are moving towards this. I'm a big fan of the proficiency mapping. I think it's created an incredible transparency for employees that used to be kind of confused on what they needed to do next to be able to move up. I will say the assessor's office actually already has a really robust plan and clear plan on how people can move within their organization that's clearly defined. The biggest thing is clearly defined. So I know this is really hard to read. You're not expected to read this. It's really just for illustration. This is how we map out our proficiencies. So if you look at the column on the left that I have the box around, that is the level that we assigned those particular proficiencies. and then each of the skill sets, and then as you move to the right, the proficiencies become more difficult. So proficiency one, two, and three, and four. This will all make sense in a second, I promise. So whenever we map them out, now you can compare, okay, today I am the senior network analyst. If I wanna move to an engineer, now I can understand this is the skills and proficiency levels that I'm at today, and then going to the left, this is where I want to go. So now I can go to the skills map that's laid out for me, and I can see what I need to be able to do to move into that world. The proficiencies actually tie in as kind of a dual factor authentication, if you will, to kind of play on words for IT. If you look at the bottom right hand corner, so as we build out the proficiencies and skills for each job, that total actually matches the knowledge that is required for that job in terms of point value. then the skills and proficiencies become the work activity behaviors on the job description. This is an example of a interview rubric that we created so that whenever they were interviewing, on the left you have the competency, in the middle you kind of have the question, and then based on where they answer, you can use an objective rubric to determine where they fall in terms of their knowledge and skill set and experience. This is an example of a rubric that we put together in terms of minimum qualifications and educational requirements. And this is really exciting. This is where I want to go in 2027. FYI, I didn't know when I took this role that I needed to be a web designer, so bear with me because the website has said under construction for a minute. But we are, I am getting better and I actually posted some links today, so I'm getting there. But where I would like to head, that these skill sets these job descriptions and the proficiency mapping are all on the website so that people understand where their jobs are currently mapped and then they can search the entire website to look and see this is the job I want to go into and these are the skills that I need to be able to go into it so ideally let's say today I am a senior network analyst and I have sat in on Rob's meetings and I'm fascinated by application and data. So now, but I know I'm probably not gonna promote inter-rural, I need a lateral in. Now I can look at the skill sets and on the very top, I can see, okay, these are all matching, right? Like these are all things that I do today. And then on the bottom, I need to understand application and development at a advanced Proficiency 3, I can go to that skill set and understand what does that look like and what certifications or what skills are required to be able to be successful. So again, they could reference this library and be able to understand, I need to understand one, two, three and four for this skill set, one, two and three for that. So it creates a clear understanding of the expectations moving into the role and what they need to be able to do to be successful. As promised, kind of a looking ahead for the August finance and budget. We will be discussing the new FTE requests and regrades for 2027. That deck is done. I am just trying to put it on the website. I did go ahead and get the justification letters on my website, so you can go and look at that. So see, progress. And then discussing step 10 increases and the costs. So Comptroller is actually running some numbers for us right now to see what it would cost us to give everybody that's at the step 10 an increase you know do we kind of extend right now it's steps one through ten do we extend to steps one through fifteen what would that look like so we're running some numbers to kind of see the feasibility in terms of cost um so we'll be presenting that to you next week um discussing the step increase effective date moving from kind of this position anniversary date um to a january 2027. I will tell you the most complaints we get about compensation beyond everybody just wants more money is around the position anniversary dates. People get very frustrated about it, how it's implemented. And it's a nightmare for Comptroller's Office, it's a nightmare for our office, it's a nightmare for IT. They're constantly having to help with creating the letters and things like that. Although, again, have to give a shout out to IT. they did create an automation for part of that process which has helped so um we we do have a lot that we probably need to decide on i'm going to get that information to you as quickly as possible hopefully we have it by wednesday um it just depends on comptroller and it's budget season so they're doing a lot but hopefully we'll have that by wednesday and we'll get that out to you so you can start to kind of digest the information and come with a perspective on Do we have the money, number one, and can we move forward with it? We did do some prioritization of regrades and full-time employee requests. Probably top of mind for me is, as I mentioned, Division III and Division VIII. So those Division III intake officers, regrading those to match Division VIII, I'm pretty passionate about. I think from a compliance perspective, we need to make that correction. Of course, we've had some turnover and then change in strategic direction. The IT department, we are investing in systems and cybersecurity. Director Dozier's team has been working around the clock and they really just need some support. So we are asking for two new full-time employees on his team. We're definitely marching towards some changes there in terms of just really helping to get them some more talent and get some help. I mean, again, I'm picking on Rob, but he's kind of top of mind. I don't know that he's been able to actually take a full vacation because Central Square goes down and everybody calls him. and it'd be nice for Rob to be able to take vacation, just be able to enjoy that time. And then any permanent changes to the job, that's 20%, again, we kind of covered already the collector's office and circuit clerk office, but those, they needed to change for multiple reasons that we already covered, but that's the reason we kind of prioritize the regrays that you're gonna see next week. So that's it. I made that as quick and painless as possible. And I can go to the front if you have any questions. I will add this to the website tomorrow, fingers crossed. But if you want it before then, just let me know. I can email it to you.

I think this is fantastic. And it takes a lot of, guesswork and out of it, et cetera, et cetera. I can go on and on. But you did an outstanding job, Director Bennett. And I applaud you for that. And other people want to talk. So we'll start off with Justice Lemming. JUSTICE LEMMING.

Thank you. And yes, this is very helpful, very understandable. And before you come here, do you think the gratings was done fair or non-fair?

Frankly, no.

Frankly, no.

No, it was not fair.

It was 100 percent not fair.

Yeah, it was very much like I like you're elected. And so I'm going to give them the grade that I that you want. And it was.

Do you see a lot of nepotism in Washington County?

Um, I think it's...

I'll say this. I don't mind family members working in Washington County, but I don't believe a family member needs to work underneath another family member. Maybe one in an assessor's office, maybe one in the road department, maybe one over here.

Yeah.

But I do not believe they need to work in the same building, same office together.

Just to clarify that. was it four years ago, six years ago, we made sure in our employee handbook, the nepotism policy.

Did they throw that out the window? Because it's still going on today. It needs to stop.

You can't have a direct. I think we did remove it.

Yeah, and voted out the window. We did remove it. That needs to.

There's a couple things, like if we're just, if we're talking hypothetical, like there's a couple things I would like to change about our handbook. One, I would love for us to consider paid maternity leave.

I know. It ought to be here.

I agree. It's two weeks. I would really love for us to consider that. Number two, I despise the fact that employees have to share that FMLA 12 weeks. When you've got somebody who's going on maternity leave, let them take, first of all, let's pay them at least six weeks, at least. And then don't make them share that, I know that it's a practice that's done, it is technically compliant, but I despise, I would love to get rid of that.

We are gonna have to have a conversation because when I try to increase the, what is it, the maternal leave, to extend it. I think right now it's two weeks and that was it. There was so much pushback from the elected officials. Who else was on the court when we tried to, Justice Pond, I guess, and they were like, no, you're not gonna do that. They need a plan, they've got vacations. So we will have to revisit that with each of the elected officials. So I've been talking.

Well, because I didn't want to, you know, bring something up. But I've talked to quite a few of them, and they're pretty supportive of especially the paid maternity leave. Go ahead.

We'll move that. I want to stay on this real quick. Oh, yeah, sorry. Because the handbook is like a can of worms. Thank you, Justice.

So where's the handbook and what handbook we're working on? I've got a blue one. You're right. We don't have a handbook.

We don't have one.

And that's not good.

And I haven't seen one in the last, what, four years.

Since his new judge come in.

Anyway.

Go ahead.

We have a handbook. It's on the website. That is one thing I accomplished to get it on the website.

We do have one.

So anyway, we revised it. Let's just stay on this, okay?

Well, that's where I was headed. I'm talking about what she's talking about, HR. HR. She's talking about hardening people and evaluating people. And that's what I'm talking about.

OK, so you asked the question. Are you going to let me talk, or are you going to talk all night?

Make up my mind.

I'm going to push you and prod you forward.

Okay. I just won't say no more, and I'll visit with everybody by myself somewhere else while we're having lunch or something.

You just go on. All I heard was he's buying me lunch. Is that what? I'm just kidding.

This is daddy money bucks. He can pay me lunch anyway. Seriously, was there another question other than nepotism and fairness? Turn on your mic, please. And Justice Lopez will be next.

I'm just curious why everybody comes in as equipment operators. When I went to work for the State Highway Department, I come in as a general laborer. And that's where I started. Yeah, I could run a grader. Yeah, I could run a backhoe. I had a lot of... I had a list as long I could do, but why would they bring me in and throw me in and pay me $100,000 just because I had all this stuff that I could do over somebody that's been there 10 years? It's not fair. It's not fair to the employees, and we just went through that last year with the county employees. Those greater guys have been down there 16 years, and they hire a kid off the street, don't even know how to start one of the darn things, and he's making $20 more.

Yeah.

That's what the step plan done. That's what all this bull crap done. And we can't do that because you've peed a lot of people off.

Yeah. I think we've made some steps towards fixing some of that. Part of the problem is.

Leadership.

Anytime. Okay. Well, I was trying to find a diplomatic way to say that, but I think part of the problem is anytime you put anyone on a step plan, any kind of pay structure, there's gonna be compression. It doesn't matter, you could have a perfect implementation and someone is going to complain that they are not getting paid enough. The other flip side to that is you could have moved everybody that's been here a long time to step eight or nine, and then we're going to have the same conversation that we're going to have next week is once they hit step 10, are we holding to that or are we going to give them an increase? Because we've got to make a decision one way or the other.

Well, that's what they wanted, the step plan, and they knew how that step plan worked. So when they got to a 10, they knew the brakes was on. But now they're crying water. They want money because of that. That's their fault.

that's the way i see it but you know there's 15 of us yeah and i i think um hindsight is always 20 20. whenever we put everyone on to the step plan the the first thing that i would have wanted to do is grade all the jobs correct Because what we did was we took everyone's salary, what they were making before the step plan, and we put them in whatever is the closest step that's according to that grade. But the grades necessarily not always were wrong, but there's a lot of them that need to be corrected, quite frankly, right? So we're making steps towards that. We also created some flex PCN for roads. Have you heard about this?

Go ahead, tell me.

So we kind of modeled, I'm shamelessly stealing after the assessor's office, but we kind of modeled after the assessor's office.

He's a good one to model after.

He did a great job laying out, here's the criteria for these promotions, and once you hit that, then we will promote you into, and they plan it all out, they've got it all budgeted, it's clear and concise in terms of what the employees know they need to do, kind of the same thing that we're creating with the roads department. So we're working towards fixing some of that, Right now, we don't really have, we HR, we don't have a mechanism to go in and say, this person has been in with the county for X amount of years, and they're in this grade and this step, because quite frankly, first, I need to figure out if the grades are right. And then let's evaluate the comp on top of that. So we're working towards it, but as you can see, this is a very complex process because I did not want seven questions and something easily manipulated. I wanted it complicated. I want you to come in and defend why we're gonna have this level and map out the skill sets.

I've had this conversation before, and I was told by one of the people before that an employee that drives a county vehicle home all the time does not add no value to their pay. How can that be true? Because they don't have to buy cars anymore. They don't have to buy cars. They don't have to buy gas. That employee ought to be benefited from the fact they're driving a car home every night. And I just want to know, you know, when you're evaluating, is any of that evaluation in anybody's sheet that that car is worth maybe $1,000 a month for that?

That wouldn't come into, I think that would be more on the, I think there's like a payroll code or something that, because I think they do have to have it somewhere coded. I don't get into payroll. That's kind of comptroller's area, so I can't really speak to that. But you're evaluating their job. But it's not, to me that's not, driving home is not a skill set. You know what I mean? So I'm not gonna give somebody points because they get to drive a vehicle home. I'm not gonna take away points. What I'm interested in when I come to a point value is what do they need to know to do the job? What kind of problems are they solving? What's their accountability? Are they accountable for a budget? Do they supervise people? Those kinds of things that make up the job. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I get your job. But there again, it's us 15 that's setting the values. We've got to buy cars. We've got to buy pickups. We've got to buy tires. That car is valued at a lot of money.

Would that be more of a Paul Sherman question?

Well, and I think it's more of a new administration question, because the new administration, whomever that may be, will probably have a perspective on how many vehicles there are and maybe navigating when does it really make sense for the county to have that liability, that asset, that, right? So that's really more for the administration to kind of decide.

The new administration may handle that a little bit. That'd be perfect. Okay, thank you.

I try to stay in my wheelhouse.

I get it, I get it.

Thank you, Justice Lemming. Justice Lopez.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Director Bennett. As a former HR professional myself, this is like a trip down memory lane. But what I wanted to get into was So having those priorities set out for an employee that gives them a succession plan, what does it look like to get to the next role? Who is evaluating whether or not they've met proficiencies in those skills? Is that a self-assessment or is that an assessment that comes from their direct report?

That's such a great question. Actually, I would love for it to be twofold. One, I would love the employee to assess themselves, and then the leader to assess. So then it becomes a conversation, right? Like, I think I can code because I, posted a link on our website and Director Dozier's laughing at me because he knows I can't. But I think it would be good to be able to see where the employee is ranking themself and then where is the leader ranking themselves. or ranking the employee. And so that way it becomes a conversation of, can you do this? You're starting to be able to do it, but here's some projects that I want you to work on so we can kind of further develop that skill set before I really feel like you're proficient enough to go to the next level. Great question.

Right, so it's like benchmarking. You'd be like, hey, we can benchmark that you've been able to do this, and that is like evidence of proficiency. Yeah. Okay, I like that. That sounds good. Thank you. You're welcome.

This will be hard work.

Is it going to take an hour?

Well, if I want it to, it might take all night.

Well, then, no, you may not. Justice Lemming.

I know you've got a boss.

No, let's just ask the question.

This question is going to be, and when you put this plan together, I hope you stay by this plan. And I hope the boss that's over the county don't come in and twist your arm and want you to, I guess, to say, do special things for different people. I want a program for all, and I don't want the leaders to come in. And I know you've got a boss, and I know you've got to do what they say, but I don't want them to come in and be able to come in and say, we're going to do this, and we're going to do that. But they can, I understand that, but...

I will say I agree with you. I am very passionate about this work because I understand the downstream effects of it. You probably won't find another person who is more passionate about this work stream than I am. And I care about the employee experience. I care about inclusive experiences. I want to make sure their journey is everything that they came to the county for it to be. I want that experience to be incredible for them. And we can't get there if our grades are wrong. We can't get there if they don't know what's expected of them. I've talked with both camps. And both have been very receptive to my ideas, kind of where I think I would like to take us. They love the transparency of this. Because for so long, this has kind of been the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Don't look over here. We can't really tell you how we got the grade, but here's your grade. I don't play that game. You all have already figured out. Several of you will call me like, hey, I'm hearing this. Can you explain? And I have the context and I loop you in and I can explain it, right? I am very transparent. I want our employees to be able to find everything in three clicks or less. So that is the level of transparency I would like to get to. They go to the website. They want to figure out the job descriptions. How do I get to this job? What are the skills? That's how transparent I want to be. And both camps are very supportive, excited. I feel good about where the county is heading. We've got some things that we need to clean up. We do. But we'll get there.

Justice Lemming.

They do come for a career.

A lot of employees come here for a career, but they have to fight and wade some deep water. This county does not have to be the way it is for employees to be happy here.

I agree. And I think that the step plan was a huge step in the right direction. Before that, the horror stories that I heard of, this team is getting 18% and we're getting 1%. Or this team is going and asking HR to regrade the job and this team isn't. Now you have somebody who's looking at all the jobs regardless of who's advocating for what, because I care about the fairness and consistency of the approach. And both camps are very supportive of that. So I feel good about where we're headed. Like I said, we have some things to clean up, but we'll get there.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I think this is a great, big, giant step in the right direction. And truthfully, I feel that this system is fair and equitable to everybody. It doesn't matter who the incoming administration is because it takes the pressure off of them and any elected official of playing favoritism. And a lot of times all the grades were just kind of just give it to them because I want everybody to like me in the office. That factor is now taken out with this system. And that's what we need. This is a fair and equitable system for everybody and that's what we need regardless of who the administration or the elected officials are. It's based on job skill and talent, period.

And I've walked through kind of this with the electeds and they are all very supportive. And so I think that speaks, they also want something fair and consistent, but because they didn't have the transparency, they didn't know what was kind of happening behind and it created this mistrust. And so because we've kind of had these conversations, they've seen kind of how this plays out. Now it's, it's not really, I don't have to be like the bad guy and say that's not how the process works. It's an education of this is a clear and consistent process in how we approach job evaluation and here are all the benefits for doing that. Because if you go and you tell somebody that they're a grade 15 and you create this job for them, that doesn't really meet the expectations of everybody else that's in a grade 15, it creates issues across Washington County and it doesn't set that person up for success, it actually sets them up for failure because they think that they are performing at a 15 and they're maybe at a 13, right? And so then they try to go to a 16 or 17 and they're not successful because they weren't performing a 15 to begin with, right? So it all kind of, I'm gonna stop talking now, but it all kind of works together, so.

I think, like I said, it's a giant step forward in the right direction, and that's what needs to be in place, irregardless of whoever is in leadership. Thank you so much for your presentation. Justice, if y'all have any other questions, like she said, it's gonna be on the website soon, or give her a call, she's always willing to talk to you. I try. We have good elected officials, we really do. Is there any citizen comment time? Please.

Good to go? Good evening.

My name is Bryson Austin with the Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition. I am a resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas. My JP is Chandra Washington. Again, as the number of charges filed in Washington County continue to plummet, and not for lack of trying, we see unhoused individuals being constantly detained by law enforcement and out of control failures to appear. Even still, as the county and state The length of stay for those detained continues to increase. We are holding people far longer than necessary, with most detentions being arbitrary. True criminal justice begins with rooting out the causes of so-called criminogenic behavior and providing our community with the support it needs. That means robust pretrial services outside of alternative courts and opportunities for those without opportunities since the CRI's recidivism rates are already starting to show cracks. It's also interesting that Mr. Robbins, who's not here anymore, readily admits that the CRI's lack of ubiquity in the jail nullifies whatever rehabilitation those within the program deserve to be able to use in their cases. On the point of ICE purchasing warehouses, that strategy was such a failure that DHS paused purchases in April. Washington County still participates in various programs and activities that support ICE, an organization that did not exist before 2001 and has no place in just law enforcement. Our county could stop selling federal jail beds tomorrow, any day, but the continued expulsion of undocumented individuals without due process is a continued moral and constitutional failure. On the Drug Task Force, I would encourage you all as elected officials and residents of Washington County to attend a Drug Task Force meeting. What you will see is an operation that goes after the little guy. They're not bringing in drug kingpins or disrupting notable drug rings. We continue to ask the 4th Judicial District to knock off failed drug war tactics and start tackling the kitchen table issues that drive drug use and sales. And on the point of ghost guns, it's interesting. The United States continues to fuel the Mexican cartel gun trade. So we must be like China. We also prop up China's economy with our endless consumption. So I doubt they want us dead any more than we want the Mexican people dead. And lastly, on the point of the next administration to come, I tell you guys all the time, you are the legislative body. You can take as much power away from the executive of the county as you want to, and I encourage you to, because executives will not change. This is the nature of being at the top of any company or any organization. They get out of control. It's your job to check them. These out-of-control HR problems, anything, I'm not saying it's your fault, but I'm saying you can rein them in, When he comes in here and he berates people and he acts the way he does and the way he behaves in his job, you can check him before the election. We shouldn't have to bail out the county every four years as citizens. We don't have time. I can't be a part-time legislator and a full-time professional. Thank you.

Thank you. Any public comment? Seeing there's none, this meeting's adjourned.