Health & Human Services - Regular Meeting

Wow. So you're all set.

Morning. Meeting to order. First order of business will be approved on May 27th. Second by Scott. All in favor? Aye. All right. First up. Lee.

Hello. Here's how many I have there. Good morning. Good morning.

I shouldn't have too many this time, but .

You have two more there, Michelle? Yes, I do. Thank you. I'm Shelley Smith. I'm executive director of LEAP.

And I come here to report to you quarterly, approximately, on a couple of the contracts that we have with Washington County. LEAF is a private, not-for-profit. And two contracts that we have with Washington County are food pantry assistance and with the Office for the Aging for Transportation. And so In those contracts, we receive money from Washington County for some of these services that we provide in collaboration with Washington County, and I'm reporting to you on the services that we provide for those. This is my first time trying to use this kind of a dashboard, so it looks much bigger on my computer screen. I apologize. I thought I got it big enough, but now that I have that paper in front of me, I'm like, well, maybe not. So I tried to run a meeting yesterday when I was reporting on workforce development. There was a request for year-over-year data, which is harder for me to get for workforce development, but it was not hard to get here. So I did run those numbers. So first I'm looking at the transportation program. And what we do here is provide, again, in cooperation with the Office for the Aging, we provide transportation to seniors to help keeping them living sustainably in their own current living situation, support them in living independently. So that might be, it's often medical appointments, but it might also be social engagements, grocery shopping, things like that. We measure by the trip. We also measure miles and all of that kind of stuff, but we report specifically on by the trip and then the individuals served. And I'm reporting today on January through May. So you can see that we are up from last year in almost everything. Total trips, total individuals served, not new individuals. That was flat from last year to this year. Average trips per month and average individuals per month. We've been seeing one thing that we don't specifically track. I'm not sure how we would, but I would be interested in having this if anyone else would, is we do track the number of new individuals and the overall number, but those don't coincide. Like the increase in overall number does not match the number of new individuals if it's just cumulative. There's got to be some that are falling off. And I would like to know why they are. possible they could no longer need our services be deceased something like that or maybe they've moved into some other living arrangement and and don't need our services for that reason i'd be interested to know because that i think that would help us determine how effective this transportation system is for them in helping to keep them independent so that's something i'm going to look into um but you can see what our average trips are our total trips for this uh This time period were 985. Total individuals served 304, 44 new individuals. And our average per month is 197 trips and 61 individuals served. Any questions on the senior transportation?

Of the 304 individuals served, are they kind of from any one particular location or are they spread throughout the county?

They're all over the county. really are. I could get a county, I'm sorry, a community breakdown if that's something you'd be interested in.

I don't know if we have to. I was just curious if it was all in one.

Yeah, our drivers actually are all over the place.

We have seen like in southern end of the county, some of them will use like RSVP. So there are some geographical differences sometimes.

There are, yep, and actually sometimes we partner with them. We get somebody that calls, actually particularly from the southern end of the county, and they're looking for transportation, and either we're booked or we can't possibly get there fast enough with our drivers. Our transportation coordinator will help them coordinate with one of those services.

Is that counted in that total?

No, if we don't transport them, we've just made the referral. That's not in this total. Any other questions?

Big increases year over year.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Okay. So my other small dashboard here is our food pantry. And again, I was able to give you a year over year breakdown here. And again, we're up from over last year in every one of these categories, total individuals served this time. And I did do the same reporting period, same exact months from 2025 to 2026. So in this time period, this year, we've got 1,553 for individuals served, 580 households. Of those individuals, 606 were children, 780 were adults, and 167 were seniors. Seniors are up by 33, 24% from last year. And I noticed that correlation between the transportation system and the increase in seniors in our food pantry. And one of the things I've been talking about specifically with our transportation coordinator is the feedback she's getting from those that we're driving. And there's a lot of conversation that happens those cars. Our drivers aren't, they're not just a taxi driver. They really do talk with the individuals. They are trained to ask open-ended and open-ended questions to try to determine not just do you have enough food, but hey, what did you have for lunch today? Stuff like that to try to determine if there are other needs that aren't being articulated. So they really do develop a relationship with folks and the kind of conversations they're hearing is that seniors are struggling to make ends meet more and more due to increased energy costs, increased cost of food, inflation in general. And so I'm seeing that as a correlation here with the increase in seniors visiting our food pantry. I don't know for sure it's a direct, I don't know if it's a person-to-person connection, but I see the increased numbers and I hear the anecdotal reports from transportation wondering about that. Let me see. Anything else here that you have questions about?

Can I ask you a question I always ask? Sure. When I look at the food pantry numbers and it says 522 households, are these the 75 that were in February, are those 75 ones that were not participating in January or part of the 75 as part of the 122 that was already served?

They are very, many of them are repeat month after month.

So it's not 522 households because some of those are actually repeaters.

That's true. That's true. I've got to figure out, I've got to figure out a way to discern.

So those aren't independent numbers.

So the total households for the, right, the total households, you're absolutely right.

Because the 75 that were served in February could be 75 of the 122 in January. Yes. Could be. Or it could be 50 of the January and 22 new, some mix thereof. Yeah. So each month we don't know. So the 522 isn't truly how many households were served? That is.

Oh, right. Yes. Yes.

Because there's repeaters.

Yes, there are probably repeaters.

If, you know, my house went to you three months in a row, each of the months we're in that number, but we're still only one household. That number would be interesting, the non-repeated number.

It would. And that's one I can get a little forward. I don't know that I can get it retroactively for the year-over-year piece.

Again, that's just how my brain functions. I'm sorry.

No, and I appreciate that. And as a matter of fact, as I was putting this together, I was thinking that I need to make sure that I do articulate that we do see a lot of the same people month after month. We really do. We see new people every month. But we do see a lot of the same folks. But that didn't translate in my brain to try and fix this number. So I'll work on doing that moving forward. We do see a lot of the same people. And we work to develop a relationship with them as well. And also, we do work with them to try to point them to other services, ours and other agencies as well. I was just talking with our food pantry manager. That's not her title, but that's what she does. Yesterday, specifically about this, asking her about how that's been going, reaching out to, you know, connecting with people and trying to get them connected with other services. And her response didn't surprise me. They try, they meet, they talk with people, they ask them what other needs they might have, try to ask those questions. open-ended questions and make sure they know what resources are available. But a very common theme in food pantries is that when people are coming for food, they're in crisis and that is their immediate need. And they're not even thinking about the other needs at that moment. So a lot of times they're not really, you know, so hearing that those other resources are available is kind of planting a seed, but it doesn't always directly result in an immediate referral or connection somewhere. but we do continue to work with them. And that's why we work on developing those relationships, especially with those repeat clients.

And Shelly, is there a WIC department, one of the people that you've partnered with? Because it seems like that would be an area that not everybody is familiar with, but can be a huge asset.

We do in both our food pantry and our Head Start program.

Yeah, I can see Head Start being a big partner there. Absolutely.

And I just had a question too, because like Al, I kind of try to understand why I see March and April took huge jumps over previous years. Do you think, and I was trying to think what was going on, do you think the super high electric bills, the jump in fuel prices, the jump in heat and oil, did that drive people to it, or is there something else?

No, I think that that was it. I noticed that too, and as a matter of fact, I re-ran those numbers because I thought I'd gotten them wrong, because I saw the big increase. I thought, well, that can't be right, but But it came back the same way a second time. And yes, that is what I understand from our staff. That's what they're seeing. Just the increase in fuel prices, increase in food prices, overall inflation are just driving people to greater and greater amounts of need. More of them are coming in and they're coming in more frequently. We typically do once a month per household. That's how we serve. If a household comes to us, it's one time per month. We just, for general information, as a regional food bank supported food pantry, we do three days of food. That's three meals and snacks per person in the household. That's what everybody receives. We're generous about that as well. If there's something we look for specials, we can get with the regional food bank and we'll hand out extra things that we can, whatever we can accumulate and just hand out as freebies, so to speak, we will. But We change that for those that are unhoused or are living in hotels. They can come more frequently and they get smaller amounts of it and different kinds of things. We do have an entire section that is specifically for people who are unhoused. It has things that don't require can openers, don't have to be heated, stuff like that. But all that to say, if someone comes in with a significant need, even if we have seen them already, the staff will usually run and find me. But if they can actually demonstrate that there is that need, usually they can. We will serve them another time in a while.

I just have a question, because I had a question last year when we did this report, too, and you just said it again, so. I see. So what, so it's three days out of, say that again?

It's three days worth of food. Okay. And a day's worth of food is counted as three meals and snacks. So what are these people that don't have food?

they have to rely on their community food pantries. And why do we limit them? Is it because we don't have enough food available? Is that why we limit them? No. It was hungry other days, right? Exactly.

So the three days, that is the requirement of regional food bank. We aren't actually limited to that. That's the minimum we have to do. We try to bolster that as much as we can. We make sure they have at least that. We bolster it as much as we can. But Honestly, in my experience with this food pantry and with others, many of these people do, they know the food pantry circuit, right? A lot of the folks that we serve and they go to various food pantries. And we do keep a list of the other food pantries at our pantry and we help connect them if they need it.

Anything else?

Thank you. Thank you.

Morning.

Morning.

First thing on my agenda is to request permission to sign a letter of intent or intent to participate form. This would be for community accessibility and inclusion funding, which is part of our children and youth special health care needs. The amount is $30,873, and it's over a two-year period starting October 1st. So just looking for permission to sign that intent to participate form.

You signed or the chairman?

I believe I've signed it in the past.

I have a motion from Scott. Is there a sign? Okay. Ms. Kerr? Any discussion on that? What do you do with the money?

So we got this money this current year as well, and we can use it for things like in the parks. We've ordered handicapped accessible picnic tables, accessible swings for children. So that's what we're planning on doing again is using it towards things that are county parks.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay.

The second request that I have, each year we are required to complete certain cost reports for Medicaid. And we use the accounting services with McCarthy and Conlon. We still use them for many, many years. It would require a waiver from the purchasing policy for the preparation of those cost reports. The cost of the services is $5,000. $500, and it is included in our 26 budget. So just looking for permission to have a waiver for the purchasing policies.

Do you have a second? I have a second, Mr. Monwood. Any questions? Go ahead.

Did you get bids from other agencies or is there nobody else out there?

Yeah, we're pretty unique as far as what we need to do to complete the cost reports because we're public health. So no, we have not received bids from other entities. It's a specialty. Yeah.

Thank you. You're welcome. We've looked a couple of times, Supervisor, and this report is, there's not a lot of people with the skillset. Right. And my concern is this gentleman has been doing it for a very long time, as long as I've been around and I'm leaving. So I have a concern about where she goes Because this is a really specialized kind of structure. For now, this is the guy. At some point, he won't be the guy.

Do these reports get our funding, our money back?

Yeah, we have to file these reports in order to meet the Medicaid requirements in order to be able to bill.

Any other questions? All in favor? Aye.

My next request is to request permission to reapply for the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Grant. The amount is $52,099, and the time period goes from 7-1-26 to 6-30-27. And again, this is reoccurring funding that we get. It's a pass-through from the federal government. So just looking for a request to reapply for that funding.

Okay, Scott. Second by Mr. Kerr. Any questions? You keep shrinking. Yeah.

Yeah.

It used to be a lot more money.

It did.

All in favor? Aye.

And then just the last thing under program updates, just a reminder, we do have our next reviews clinic coming up on June 27th. This is a new location for us. We're doing it at the Easton Town Highway Garage, and that was per request from the town. So just wanted to make you all aware of that. Registration does close today. so we can prepare for that. And again, it's on Saturday.

Oh, yeah.

We've been both. Everyone has been both so far. That's all I have, unless there's any other questions for me.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning. So a couple quick things that we talked about yesterday that I wanted to add to. Just a quick note on one thing. On June 18th, 2026, the Office of Children and Family Services released the local commissioner's memorandum 26-09, this memorandum inform local districts what each county would receive for the upcoming federal fiscal year 2026 to 27 childcare applications. Washington County will receive $2,195,130. That's a significant increase, almost double from this year, which very helpful share. So again, that's $2,195,130. The agency has already begun to process applications on the wait list that began in March 12th, 2025. And with the new allocations for the upcoming year, the agency will be able to complete the process of sending out applications. Those families still on the wait list have opened the program fully moving forward. This is good news for those who are still in need of childcare assistance in 4R County, as there will be no need to access to keep the program afloat in the upcoming year. Okay, so good news. The other thing that we had talked about was, or we had an offline conversation yesterday about talking about the AVODs, which you have in your packet. It's a little confusing, but I get it. AVODs is able-bodied adults without dependents. So there are regulations for folks that are able to work between the ages of 18 and 64. And those rules are outlined in your packet. So there's really the main discussion that I was hoping to have, or at least just to kind of begin to have this discussion is that I think our goal, and I know our goal in the Department of Social Services is not take away people's benefits that they're entitled to. these folks that are entitled to SNAP benefits may find themselves in challenging circumstances where they cannot find places to volunteer or to work to cover what they need to do to continue to reap their SNAP benefits. So where the county does have and has had in the past something similar, where work agreements, where we can have folks volunteer here at the county. I believe there is a contract with buildings and grounds, but I was just made aware of that yesterday at five o'clock, but I'll look more into that. So is there an opportunity, I guess is the question I'm putting forward here to help our folks that deserve these benefits, to be able to provide opportunities for them to work or to volunteer county level or even at some of the townships or even local municipalities people that are likely challenged with transportation things like that so we don't want to drive more people into poverty that's not the goal here but it's just simply we're trying to think outside the box a little bit with what we do downstairs and and can we provide some opportunities whether it's You know, working on the grounds or whatever, and possibly in the building. These people, they're not on parole. These aren't people that are under any criminal investigation or anything like that. These are simply people that are within that age group that are able to possibly work and want to keep their stamp benefits.

Just a couple follow-up questions. And yes, we already discussed this a couple days ago. But So is there a recording done? So if we have one of these able-bodied workers do work, provide some kind of work for the county, do we have to have some kind of form or something that we report to you or your department?

Yeah, there has to be some form of supervision. And granted, I apologize. This is something that I just started looking into internally for us. Then I'll have more information going forward. I'm not clear on how to possibly make this move forward yet, being that we just started talking about it. So you're just looking for approval from- Yeah, I think I just want to bring this to everybody's attention, that there's barriers to folks that are receiving benefits. Wayne, do you have an idea of the number of people that's involved in the county? I can get that number for you. I think it's in the hundreds. I mean, many folks are finding opportunities and some might have to go.

No, I was just curious whether we were 50 or 500. Yeah.

I would say, you know, being this is such a preliminary conversation, please email me some questions that you may have. And they could be everything from liabilities, you know, our liabilities, if we have folks that are volunteering and working here or or how I can help the other municipalities or we can send you to your way?

With the fairgrounds too. We'll say a lot of volunteer people come in and painting.

We kind of started this since we're already with the clipboard, but would a clipboard be enough? You know, where they sign in, they give their name. I think Head Start does that. I think LeapMind do that. We're able to clipboard. They sign in, they've been there three hours. Is there a acceptable language that will come through as an opera volunteer that will be acceptable through this ADA that would be?

Yeah, I mean, we have that agreement that I haven't even had a look at yet. It just came to me last night about some of the requirements that we would have to have with a partner agency on the county level. So I can get more. I mean, there has to be some kind of record in the provision that I know.

I mean, you look at like the food pantries, most of those are dormitory. I know the courthouse is a dormitory. We have a lot of not-for-profits that do not have those. So I think what we're going to need is if it's acceptable, what's the language you need to say, okay, that's acceptable?

Well, I think this also could be the entry for folks into, you know, when And looking into this, we might find folks that have certain skills that we can help find jobs or that maybe even that creates permanent jobs for folks in Washington County.

Absolutely.

We have some folks already who come for workforce development and that our staff are trying to put into those volunteer positions in our food pantry. And they have some idea. I don't personally. This might be what documentation is needed. But they're also, just for your knowledge, they are also, because they're folks that are coming, trying to meet that requirement, they're working with them in workforce development, but also placing them in the country to discover scholars.

But yeah, they're doing as far as documentation and seeing that help.

Yeah, so really it's just a preliminary conversation that is something that we want to look at and think it could benefit County, it can definitely benefit folks that we serve.

Many don't, so I have to go forward. Artford uses drug court people to provide some of the flagging and some other different stuff. Would it be kind of the same rules of?

I think it'd be pretty close to that. I mean, just the premise is a little different, right? The only concern I have is liability. Right. Are they entitled to workers' comp? That, I believe, is outlined in some of this, too. Okay.

And they're not on our payroll. We're not paying them. They're just regular.

Okay. There's anything else on that? The next thing on my list was the part of the usage reports. So, Barry O'Brien in... It was Becky's unit put this together to kind of show you when cars are checked out. And we went back, I think the car is November of last year. So the red obviously is where the car is in use on the road. The white box is where the car is not in use. And blue is if a car is out of service and repair wherever it might be. So as you can see, there are some blocks where there is car availability and there's other times that, you know, if we get caught with a car or two down, we may not have a vehicle. So hopefully this gives a good snapshot and to be able to show when the cars, and I think it's, we can go from there to determine if we should take 4,000 fleet or not. but this to me was the clearest snapshot that I can bring to everybody to show what the usage looks like. So moving forward, and I have to apologize to Al because when I asked for bids for a card for this budget year, and that crossed off my mistake. I think we were, the plan was we were gonna bid three. And three take four. Take four, right? So I made the mistake of asking, or putting a bid, asking them to bid four. So I don't know if this, you know, I would have to go back to the two bid process, could we do it for three? Or depending on, you know, how do you feel if we, you know, if the plan is still to take one more than we buy, This, the price that we got, I think there's 120,000 hours that was in budget. But four would be 95, just add over 95. And my understanding is there's a couple of cars that go for the matter that are a lot of miles on. So I don't know if we can help out there, but I want to, you guys.

I'll make your life easy. At least I think I'm going to make your life easy. It was a board decision at budget time to buy three, take four. So anything different than that would take the board's action. Normally, I would say it was buy three, take four. That's what we agreed to. However, I can't ignore how good this bid came in. There's a couple of benefits here that I see. Number one, it's a very, very good bid for four cars, right? If my math is correct, it also places them under the $25,000 threshold, which allows you to claim them in the year they were bought rather than amortize them over five years, right? For three years or whatever. So there's a side benefit to that per car bid. What I would respectfully ask is, is that we try to keep the spirit of the decision made in the budget. And if we're going to buy four, take five to continue the spirit of the one car reduction. That I think is still a legitimate, keeping with what the decision was at budget time, to reduce the fleet by one and see how that worked. So I think that because this bid is a really good bid, buying four and taking five, maybe helps the county, your agency, and DAP all at the same time. So I can get behind that as a recommendation to the board. Okay. Dave?

Just scanning through these numbers, it looks to be at least a 5% usage rate overall. In some days, you're only completely full. If you take another car out, are you going to be able to cover the strata in the fill? Or do you have a plan to reduce it? Well, if we want to go by, we've got to go to the pool.

We're going to respectfully disagree on the answer to that question because my eyes don't reflect what these sheets reflect. I can physically see no less than six cars every day all day. There's never a time I have seen, and I mean never, a time where I have seen less than six cars parking outside my office. Now, what I don't know is, are four of those six OFAs and two are VSS? I don't know that. But my stance has been, and will continue to be, if for some reason all of his cars are out, they have and can use the pool car. They were using pool car for training before when they had fleet cars available. They're not unfamiliar with using pool cars. I understand. The worst case that could happen is that all of his cars are out and he has to take one from the pool. That's the worst case scenario. Again, we're going to respectfully disagree on that process, and that's okay. It's not healthy to agree every time.

Someone put an awful lot of detail in this. I get that. And I don't know if it was ever done to go up there or not, just...

But I invite any member of the board to just stop by my office at any time of day.

I have seen. I've seen, you know, maybe it's, maybe you've heard the exercise, see a doc, see what adult agents is using. I could get a detailed lawyer person to do that.

Well, if we go forward with this and they're getting a pool car every day, then we know, well, maybe...

And the safety valve that I offered the board at budget time was what I had asked for was a one car reduction, one car per year over three years. Reduce from 14 to 11. That was my ask. The beautiful thing about that is there's a built-in safety net. If in the first year you take a car and you find that it stresses the agency, you stop. Don't reduce any further. With only taking one car each year, you have a built-in safety net. where Dwayne says, this is not working, right? So you can stop the process at any time, but we'd be remiss to not stop.

So if we go to the pool, it costs us money, right? So I think my only thing is- But you go to the pool now respectfully.

You do that now.

Yes, yes. But I think what I want to get to though, is if it costs us money to go outside of our fleet, If our fleet is dry, if we don't have any more cars that are available, being that we are passing these cars down, I question whether we should be charged to go to the pool once in a while.

Or charge the same rate that you pay for your fleet car. Maybe you don't pay the increase rate. Maybe you pay the fleet rate. You shouldn't get free usage of a fleet car because you don't get free usage of a fleet car.

I do think that the rate is different between pool and fleet.

It is. But the variance between fleet car and pool car doesn't justify buying another car. That variance doesn't pay for a car.

But there's no charge.

There could easily be an agreement with the DPW superintendent that you are still only charged a fleet rate. That's an easy internal thing that wouldn't take that much to...

Say if we're purchasing four cars, we give up five. We're giving up five cars for no compensation. That's what I'm saying is that if we have to tip over to the pool, I feel like we should get some freebies here.

Well, you're giving three cars now with no compensation.

It's no different. Yeah, but still, we're having a pet.

We went down to pay.

I'm just trying to manage our money.

My stance is that you won't. If I'm right, it's not going to cost you any more money. If I'm right. Okay. You hear that?

I can't tell you when the new is coming out again.

I don't have any numbers with me, but I can tell you that our school bill has gone down significantly since we changed the process for signing out fleet cars within our office.

And increased use of personal vehicles.

And increased use of personal vehicles, yes. And do you feel like that has been beneficial?

100%. Absolutely. You will absolutely be able to reduce your fleet if that continues. If what your agency has already started with the use of the personal vehicles and that reimbursement process, you should actually be able to maneuver this three-car reduction without any stress to the agency. I believe that to be true. Well, a one-car. But three over three years is the goal.

Would it be cheaper instead of paying people to take their cars is to use the full cars because that's a cheaper rate than paying persons?

No. The gamble that I asked the board to take, Mr. O'Brien, was if I pay 65 cents to an employee to take their car, it's cheaper than having to have more cars and maintenance. You can have a smaller fleet if you don't need as many cars. So the savings is in the purchase price and the maintenance cost.

But the cost to take a pool car is cheaper than paying someone to take the whole car. Negative. It's the same rate.

The pool car charge is exactly what we reimburse an employee for, if I remember correctly. We've increased the pool car rates to help that fund sustain itself. I believe it to be the same rate that we're paying the employees. So there's no variance there. But I think you could easily negotiate a fleet rate should you need a pool card with a super. I think that's a very easy internal conversation.

I am assuming that the use of personal cards are mostly used for conferences and trainings. Because a lot of the work you do, we wouldn't want county workers going out in their personal cars anymore, right? So it's really the training and conferences.

It's the times when they used to use pool cars to go to, like, Albany or training at the Queensberry, right? Those events now, they have the option to use their own car rather than a pool car. And I have seen that. I think it's been successful.

I'm seeing a lot of usage.

It's not for a home visit or something like that.

That wouldn't be appropriate. I'd like to go back to the rate that they're giving carpool vehicles, giving them. And have been for years. But if they need one of those vehicles because they've run out of vehicles, they still get charged to use it.

They get charged to use their own vehicle. Even the vehicles they own, they get charged for it. It's a smaller rate. So what I'm saying is he could be charged that smaller rate if he needed a pool. He gets charged to even use his own cars.

I just like to see the rate equivalent.

And that's an easy internal conversation.

So back to the beginning, the committee, I believe, would have to pass a resolution to accept bid for four cars, which was not The original budget, but we're under budget with the four that they're looking at. So it has to go to finance for approval, correct? Go from here to finance?

Well, it's budgeted.

It's budgeted. There's a resolution to award the bid. Okay.

The bigger part of the committee's motion, because it's outside of what was agreed to with the budget, would be 4N5O. If that's your decision.

Okay. Well, I think with the price here and we're 25 grand under budget. Yes, sir. So that's what I mean.

I can't ignore that. So are you making that motion, Scott? Yeah. Turn five in. Yeah. Is there a second? Second down there. Any more questions, discussion?

Just to note that it will take five of the oldest vehicles out of the carpool. making the car a little safer. So just, that's a wonderful thing.

And we're going to get all that money from that, too. A whole thousand. Yeah. Question.

We have not encouraged our own cars because we're unclear on the liability piece as far as if they lose their own car or how does that work to some extent?

You answered all that back then. I'm trying to remember. We had all those conversations.

We have a writer. I thought we found there was a writer on our policy.

Yes. We talked about all that back then. And it's the liability. I mean, yes, it's your car insurance. It's your personal car insurance. Right.

But then you also have to report to your, you get your insurance policy. I have to say, what you're using is for, you're using it for, I believe your rate is different versus using it for personal. Yeah. So I guess, even communicate to our employees, you know, what does happen if you get an accident or does your rate go up because you're using it for work versus using it?

Why don't we get something together then and disperse it, give it to all the departments that have it. Okay. That would be great. Okay.

And there's a big difference between the occasional trip to a training, right? Your staff still shouldn't be using their personal car in the execution of their duties, right? These really are meant more for when they would have taken a carpool car to go to Albany for seven or, you know. But I mean, just, I'm just trying to make a demarcation between, we're not talking about like daily job duties, right? These are one-offs for trainings and. Yeah.

Yeah. Just a quick mention. I mentioned that we need to keep in mind the three-year useful life that's been assigned to the DSS vehicles. And we're obligated to have those as our vehicles because we're in the state federal reimbursement on those. So three years would be 2022s. I just don't know, do we have five 2022s available to transfer out? That's something we'll have to look at.

And I have your list that you provided somewhere on my desk, but- Because 2022 was around the time when we did that big COVID purchase, so we might.

We might, yes.

Now you had to throw a wrinkle in this. It was good.

I'm trying to find something. Now it's a little item that we need to get into. Yes, mean check with Carpool.

We do have that report.

Yeah, I had it down in our office. Okay.

We have to watch when the purchase date compared to the year. It could be a leftover or something like that, right? This is the 0.6s, right? No, 0.7.

We're going to be able to move this motion forward without knowing this information.

I believe so. You still want to purchase it for?

Well, I purchased it for, but part of that was to turn off the buy. I would do that if we can't turn off buy because they got a hold on it.

Because the other option is we go out to bid again.

No, no, no, no. We're not going to. Okay.

And that could raise the price.

Right. We're going to buy those. Right. I mean, we could just change it, you know, that we're buying the four, but we also, we're adding in the turnoff.

You want to have a good one.

All in favor?

Aye. Okay. Just a couple, just a, the next thing. Do you want to bring something?

No, I'll save it. So, Al, I want to thank you for your words at the Finding Glass Finance Committee about DSS being mindful of the budget. We appreciate that. The staff appreciates that.

I'm trying to get popular belief.

I don't want to deliver bad news. So I think that, as you can see, as a department, we're trying to be very mindful of what we can control. But as a caveat to those kind words, HAB-Masyn Moyer- The finance committee that it doesn't something could come in and turns things around that we can't control as as we've seen in the past, I want to make sure that everybody understands that that is that you know always close covered glasses with this, but I appreciate it, thank you. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Moving on to the homeless that's I won't go through this. HAB-Masyn Moyer- familiar with this, I said that I would provide this to you often. It looks like we're kind of holding fast with our numbers. Actually, even a little bit of decrease still in the hotel beds. I am exploring an analysis of average length of stay. We've been on the, I think right now we're somewhere in the 40s or 70s nights in hotel rooms per client on average, which is frankly very good. If you think about somebody who's homeless, gets placed in a hotel, we're able to move them out. I mean, granted, there are some other circumstances why they may have to leave and they're, you know, sanctioned, whatever. But to be in the 40s, mid to high 40s is very good. So there's a decrease there. Moving on to the financials. That's about before this report that we brought up twice. I know you guys have said, hey, we only need to see this early on. I would just feel better if I just had it for you as often as I can. Becky likes this report. At least she felt that she does. So I'm going to try to continue to provide that for you. And there's no Oh, strange anomalies on there. That you can see for this, this month. But anytime you have questions, Becky's here to answer that.

I will tell you, in looking at my packet, and I don't know if it happened to the other packets, I had a printing issue this morning. And it looks to me like maybe more was included as opposed to Jews. You can send Jews out by email to the committee if that's something of interest.

Yeah.

We'll do that. I'm sorry for that error.

In fact, why do you think the day of care usage has been so low so far this year?

Because we were using the waiting list.

Okay. And we hit our limit.

Well, now that we know we're going to have new money effective the 1st of October, that allows us to open up the list. They're accepting applications already, I think, from that. We are going to have to be mindful of the amount of money that's in the county budget on the daycare line now for 2026. But we'll be, you're going to see a swan budget close to the dollar amount that could be local to us.

And the revenue is a little behind because it just says weigh everything.

go ahead yep so um the uh peggy's department does it as you can see does more than just more than just accounting right field and find these reports for us car usage report things like that so i really appreciate her and her team and everything that she does um so now uh the last on my list is the ai eva and i know this has been mentioned through various departments that IT has, is for this, as I believe all of you know. I just found out yesterday that Albany and Rensselaer counties are also gonna be getting EVA. These are some helpful tips or some explanations on what EVA does. We're trying to optimize and provide better service for the people we serve in social services. And he was going to be a tool for us to do that, to lighten the load slightly for some of our staff that are really, really taxed down there, especially in TIA and when they're in season. Just simply by reading rights and responsibilities takes minutes off of each client's or each worker's case. We feel there's going to be, this year, there's going to be 20 counties that are using EVA. I believe some of you have also spoken to folks at NYSAT about it. And some of your colleagues do, I believe. We're having some real issues and trying to find a downfall of using this. So as we kind of go through, you'll also see that I tried to offset some of our costs for this, and I applied to the Glens Falls Foundation specifically to help pay for Eva, and we were awarded $20,000, which you can see the award letter in the packet. The check has already come. I'd rather hope I don't have to give it back if we're able to move forward on this. Even when it comes to fiscal responsibility on our part, You know, it's still, Becky did a breakdown of what the county share would be in the packet. It's just down to $22,000. I'd also like to think of us being fiscally responsible with our vehicle purchases and coming in $25,000 under budget there. That gives us a little bit of a little room if need be. Any questions? So what I'm basically looking for, I'm looking for Greenlight to be able to move forward in this. Is that a one-time charge? Is it an annual charge? Well, there is a one-time setup fee that we would pay this year of $50,000.

$57,807 ongoing every year.

And we think that that would pay for itself in an hour.

And say one year return on investment.

The 57, we get reimbursed.

So out of the 67, 807, they estimate 65% that will come back in and aid. So even for the 27 budget, you're building in 25,000-ish.

I'll continue to try to find some other resources. Oh, absolutely.

I'm just acknowledging that we're building in new costs. And I don't think it will take you very long maybe to get to that $25,000, but it is on new costs. And, you know, the budget officer is not here today. He's already started beating the drum that he's looking at a $15,000 to $17,000 already. So I just don't want to... I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we're building in a new cost for 2017. Albeit... Maybe it's worth it. I don't speak to program. I speak to fiscal. Fiscally, we're building in a new cost for 2017.

First year, the cost in the county is $21,000. It's going to reduce after that because it's $15,000. Is this going to provide reduced manpower shifting to other uses? It doesn't save money. It makes it more efficient.

So our concern is if we're freezing or anything like that, this is not an employee replacement program. That's not what it's created for. It's to be able to access services. So we don't foresee in the near future that DSS is going to have less work to do. That's just not the way we're headed in this country or this county currently, state. So we need to do whatever we can to provide better services as our workers get overloaded with work. This has the option to be able to help people in non-working house. People can call, get answers. It's my understanding they can even do interviews off hours through EVA. So it's really an employee support and And on the other hand, it's also a client support to help. I mean, there's a lot of people that may not be able to make phone calls if they are working and need services, but they don't get the ability to make a phone call between 8.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., where you can do that in the evening hours or the weekends, things like that. I have talked to just about Probably about half the counties that are currently using it. I think there's 12 counties that currently use it. And they all absolutely love it. And they're seeing direct savings in regards to taxing their staff.

Wayne, if this truly gives your staff some relief, is it possible that some of the return on the investment could be in your overtime costs? It could.

I mean, it could, right? Yeah. I mean, we're gonna try to track this. The good news is that I like data and staff likes data, so we're gonna find ways to make sure that this is the right decision for the department. I'm going. Right now, we can't see how it is.

Motion. Motion and second. To finance. To finance. More discussion. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. I think that's all I have. Thank you. Does anybody have any other questions for anybody?

I would adjourn it. It is.