Commission - Regular Meeting

procedure as written. This language arguably expands the scope of a noticed public budget meeting beyond actual budget matters while still using a budget heading as the basis for public notice. Under Tennessee transparency principles, agenda language should provide citizens with meaningful notice of the matters reasonably anticipated for discussion or action. Catchall phrases should not be used in a manner that undermines the public's ability to understand what governmental business may occur. In addition, each of the um um agendas for the three required budget meetings uh were really not meaningful at all. Citizens should not have to guess, speculate, or assume what actions may be considered under a broadly worded agenda item. The purpose is to allow the public to make informed decisions about whether to attend, participate in, or monitor government proceedings. If this agenda item is intended to address budget matters, then I respectfully suggest the language be limited to clearly identified fiscal matters directly related to the 2026 27 budget process. If additional substantive matters are anticipated, those matters should be separately identified on an agenda with sufficient specificity to provide reasonable public notice. This is not merely a technical drafting issue. I believe it to be a structural governance concern. Public trust depends upon openness, clarity, and transparency in governmental proceedings. Broad catchall language can create an appearance that unrelated matters may be considered without adequate public awareness. To that end, I respectfully request the scope of this agenda item be clarified on the record. That any

matters unrelated to the 202627 budget process not be considered under this agenda item. That the Washington County Commission rules of procedure be reviewed and possibly amended at rule one to remove the phrase quote without limitation to solely budget items. And finally, that future budget committee and other agendas be drafted with greater specificity to ensure meaningful public notice to the citizens of Washington County. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you, Miss Allen.

All right, that will conclude our speakers for this evening and we'll go back into regular session. We'll go on and move on to our budget discussion and possible action on the fiscal year 2627 budget. Um we have uh several speakers that are with us this evening uh that wanted to uh present their items. Our first speaker is u emergency medical services. Are they here this evening? I don't see. Oh, Lori, there you are. If you'll come up to the podium, Lori, and uh

good evening. Good evening.

I'm Lori Camp with Washington County, Johnson City. Um EMS Chief Wheelie is out of the country, so I'm filling in hopefully can answer all your questions that you have. um our um as you know we started the new fire program with um with the county so that's included in our budget um we've got that separate we don't have any new monies included in that there is um some new monies for um Emeryville and Limestone that flow through us now because of that program to increase each of those from 80 to 90,000 and then we're requesting an additional um funding from the county to help fund our increase in our merit raise. We've worked really hard to get our raises up for our staff. We at one point was competing with fast food restaurants to keep um good EMTs, which is not really where you want to be. And we feel like we have a great staff and offer a great service. We want to keep those folks paid well um to keep them and keep the training up, but we're requesting that the county help fund that. Um one and a half% we've made the same request to the city of Johnson City. All right. Any questions for Lori? You can see on your spreadsheet um of the proposal. Mayor, do you have any comments or questions? Questions? Um there are two lines that as Lori mentioned, um very end of the first section in your fresh appropriation sheet is your fire department section and then little bit for a million,800,33. That by the way, the original request was for $14 increase. And

all right. Thank you, mayor. Any further questions or discussion? Lori, is there anything else you would like to add? All the way. We appreciate your support. All right. We appreciate all that you all do. Thank you so much. All right. Our next uh item on our speaker agenda is our families free program.

Sorry. Lisa director. She's on her way. Okay. Well, she's almost here. That's fine. We'll move right along and we'll come back and get you. Sorry. That's okay. Uh the Northeast Tennessee Tourism Council, I know uh they're here.

Good evening. I do have some slides to accompany my presentation. Um, and if anybody would like a handout of the slides, um, I can hand those out to you. Just your hand, I guess, and I'll pass them over. Oh, thank you. An assistant. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yeah.

I don't have a clicker. Should I just um give you the cue? Okay. for you. If not, I'll

All right. Um, thank you all again. My name is Alicia. um with Northeast Tennessee Tourism and we've been working with you all um with the restricted lodging tax dollars for about two years now in partnership with Visit Johnson City and um Historic Jonesboro. So um we do have um a lot a little bit of a different presentation for you all this year. We're each going to present um do know that this is all in conjunction together. Um, but I did want to start out by um letting you know about Tennessee House Bill 2119 that was just passed in April. Um, and where it's new, I did just want to kind of give you an overview of it. Um, this legislation marks a significant shift in how we handle community investments. It now um includes information that lodging tax revenue must be released within 120 days of the municipality approving its final budget. That's Tennessee House Bill 119. Uh if you want uh the long version. Um and while this really doesn't affect the current agreements that we have with you, I did just want to make a note. It's an opportunity for the county to ensure that the tourism tax dollars are working in real time. And um you'll see with the Northeast Tennessee tourism specific request, we are requesting a h 100,000 of the lodging tax dollars um as we align with the statemandated efficiency to drive immediate measurable results for our local economy, which I will um kind of illustrate for y'all. Um the core of this proposal is to establish a brand voice that is unified for the county rather than marketing your assets in isolation. So, we're going to leverage your relationship and investment for I think you all have been with us for 49 years now. You're a founding partner of Northeast Tennessee Tourism. Um, so, uh, we appreciate that always, but we want to bridge the gap between our two primary identities, which is historic charm and modern

adventure. Um, so I just want to give some specific examples. We we are always open to fun ideas as well. This would be um during our peak Q3 and Q4 seasons of the calendar year. Um so you'll see on here summer lights and local nights, which is event driven, something that the county is known for through Jonesboro and Johnson City with specialized campaigns uh for music on the square, storytelling live and um our favorite doughboys, home team baseball games. Um, and then lifestyle integrations include Johnson City's diverse events to appeal to the younger demographic and families that they are known for. You also see on here um the storyteller circuit um and we're evolving how we market our heritage by moving beyond uh museum walls. And um with that the narrative will focus on static history into living stories that create a personal narrative and highlights not just in Jonesboro or Johnson City but throughout the county as well. The heritage branding leverages and works with um the storytelling capital of world of course to attract um the cultural aligned tourists and then interestbased targeting um those go towards our family friendly attractions uh like Brides Zoo hands-on discovery center Boon Creek Opry and of course our local railroad museums that are so popular. It's a multi-ity appeal that includes both Johnson City and Jonesboro offering a variety of family oriented activities and they all pair so well together as we've done for many years with our partnership with their tourism. The chronicled sidewalks and outdoor trails. This campaign um combines historic and modern identities into a single visitor itinerary. It's a dual experience encouraging visitors to walk

the history sidewalks of the oldest town in Tennessee and then explore secluded hiking and walking trails of Johnson City. It would highlight the Tweetsy Trail, cultural feature of our outdoor recreation brand and building on the development of the much anticipated first frontier trail that could connect both Johnson City and Jonesboro. And then the last one, we're all here. Um these dollars are created through lodging tax. So, um, luxurious stays, historic homes, you've got all of that here in the county. Um, diverse lodging opportunities from waterfront rentals, downtown living, and some of the oldest historic stays in the state. And let's turn some of these day trippers from the 150 mile drive market into overnight guests. And I won't read them out, but you can see in your handouts and on the slides the key markets that we have identified in our relationship with you all over the last two years. Bottom line, I'll be brief. Um, again, tourism is an investment. Uh, our ask is not from the general fund. Our, uh, as with Miss Brenda, Miss Cammy are coming from the lodging tax collection. Currently, you've got a 20 to1 return. Every dollar you spend, $20 comes back. You rank 13 out of 95 in Tennessee when it comes to how much visitors spend here in Washington County. That's super impressive. That's more than $348 million. And um what comes out of that directly into the county is $13 million in unrestricted sales tax dollars. That's coming right back to you all um into your general fund. Um, and you'll see on here we're how we would love to target this with a 20% increase in the overall brand awareness, 8% boost in visitor spending, which uh results in additional tax collection at a 20 to one return. Um, and with that, I just want

to note, you know, um, we have really enjoyed working with you all. It's a collaboration again with the Northeast Tennessee Tourism, Visit Johnson City, and historic Jonesboro. We've consistently been working together for many years um to make sure that this area remains a premier destination in Tennessee. And um I'm sure they'll be right after me in the presentation and they've got handouts as well. So uh if you have no other questions, I do appreciate you all's continued support and um just your investment with us in the tourism industry. All right. Is there any questions? Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Right. Our next speaker is the Jonesboro Tourism. Came, thank you for being here, too.

Yes. Good evening. Alicia is going to hand something. Not that. I need that. Alicia is going to hand something out for us. And then I do have a video in just a minute if our friend Blake can get it going. But I'm Cameo Waters. I'm the tourism and main street director for Jonesboro. and I know many of you um and I'm amazed at the amount of you all that I see at events and festivals at ribbon cutting. So, thank you so much for that support. Um and thank you for the support which began in 2025 financially to support tourism and marketing in Jonesboro. So, I have a video that will share a little bit about all the successes we have seen with these funds and then it'll also mention a little bit about what we'll do moving forward. in the bottom left corner.

Tourism. Presidents and over demonstrating not only a visit. The impact was felt throughout United States over the past year,000 generated nearly 600 most important That's what you've seen return overnight stays economic ready to through expanded market or influencer marketing effort. Thank you for your contin.

So, as you can see, uh, your financial support has made a huge impact on Jonesboro. So, thank you guys again for that and what you have in front of you. Um, list out some ideas for the future. And I'm I'm happy to share that video so you can watch it, maybe crank it up a little bit, uh, so you can hear everything that was shared and all those really impressive data numbers and figures. But for this upcoming budget cycle, we are requesting the amount of 150,000 so we can continue with this momentum, continue to grow, grow our festivals, our tourism, and of course the economic impact in Jonesboro and the county as a whole. Do you guys have any questions for me?

Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, Cavia. Right. Our next item is our convention and visitors bureau. Brenda,

good evening everybody or guess late. Good afternoon, shall we say. I too have um a video to start with. And I have two handouts for you because I think one um you need to see what the event impact was for the Big South Basketball Championship this year. Thank you. What was the name of the

budget presentation? It should say on the movie or the slide present. Thank you. This look

Yes. Yeah, sorry. Thank you. That was my what you have in front of you uh is an example and I thought it would kind of go back a little bit and show you um the lodging tax collection. And we get this number because we get a monthly report from the city of Johnson City that literally list every hotel and what the room the revenue generated and the tax collected. So, we take that and and come up with the 1%. And and Cheryl and I are uh in conversations that we're now receiving that, you know, from the county as well. and Cheryl and I are going to meet to make sure that you're getting all you're supposed to be getting, you know, from our hotels. But according to our uh records, the fiscal year 25 1% lodging tax was over 565,631. So our budget request is less than 60% of that asking for 300,000. Let me tell you a little bit about how those numbers are generated. You can see let's see from the slide like yeah.

Okay, there you go. That's good. So, premier events that we hosted in 2025. Some of the smaller events include Eagle Wings Motorcycle Association, Silent Services, motorcycles, Southern Cruis, and a variety of different motorcycle events that brought in over $460,000 and total room nights of over $1,275 room nights. We host, if you don't know this, and we've been hosting this for probably 25 plus years. three large Jehovah's Witness conventions that are held at Freedom Hall that literally take up all of our hotel rooms on three different weekends in June. So, that brings in, you know, a little more than $28,000 just in local sales tax to the county. Our Bands of America competition that happens uh at ETSU in the Ballot Health Mini Dome uh brought in over 2964 room nights and $1.4 $4 million in visitor spending. And think about this, they come in on a Friday night and that event is held on Saturday. A lot of them stay and then they go home. But be when ETSU brought football back and brought the the the turf back into Mini-dome, that allowed us to bring back that event that we had hosted for many, many years. Um, USA softball uh this past year we hosted the 14 and 18 U's and we had uh 38 teams and their visitor spending was a million and5. The big event that uh we hosted in 2025 was the Big South men's and women's basketball championship. So you see the local sales tax alone that was generated from that event was $161,352

and a visitor spending of six it was $5.8 million. Uh and we had a total visitors of 7,100 uh visitors and 11,965 room nights. But what I'm going to tell you about in just a moment is the results from 26. So, you can also see the direct visitor spending from Washington County for 2024. We won't have 25's numbers probably until uh September. Those will come out from the Tennessee Department of Tourism. You can see Alicia alluded to it. Visitors spend over $348,320 in Washington County. We had over a million visitors in 2024. We feel like that those numbers are going to increase. And keep in mind that yes, we we saw the numbers as we're looking at them from 2526. Um yes, Helen made a difference uh because we had people in here for from Helen from the fall of 24 until May of 25. But then what we've seen after that is that we continue to have that residual visitor that keeps coming back. Then we had a little baseball game MLB that's included in, you know, the upcoming numbers. So those things will be will play a variable in where we see the lodging tax and where it's going to be. But our hotelers are very confident, pretty bullish that we're still going to see a strong average daily rate and also a strong occupancy moving forward. So, also, you know, we recently added uh the Echo uh hotel, which added 124 rooms. The Marriott Town Place is scheduled to be opened somewhere in November, December time frame, and that's going to

add 104 rooms to our marketplace. There are other discussions about other locations for additional hotels. So, right now, this puts us at about 1737 quality rooms plus any of the short-term rentals and things like that. So, how would we spend the money? We feel that we need to position Johnson City and Washington County as a must visit destination. So part of how we would spend that money is that we would create a new campaign that would have a robust library of modern creative assets, including both a 15 and a 30 second broadcast and streaming social media content, strategic static display banners, flexible dis digital creative designed to connect with two key audiences. So, one would be singles and couples, friends seeking adventure, nightlife, dining, and of course, outdoor recreation. We would also uh go after those families with young children looking for memorable, affordable experiences that they can do together. So, as we all know, travelers today are making decisions faster than ever. there. The days of those long plannings, we're seeing more and more making room reservations on a Thursday night for a for long weekends and things like that. And I do feel like that if we have fresh authentic visual assets that are not only critical for our advertising performance to increase those measures each and every year but also I think it helps us to maintain a com a competitive tourism presence across all markets and across all channels. So the other part

of them the money that we're requesting would also be for big south basketball. So you have uh the the economic impact that was distributed to you at two numbers. Our visitor spending went to $6.9 million. That was an 18.3% increase. Our room nights generated increased over 16%. Local direct taxes over $365,000 and the lodging spend was 2.2 million. Big South basketball is huge for this for Washington County. It's huge for this region. And we hope that, you know, we will be able to utilize some of these dollars for our financial guarantee for the Big South. While we did not get the three-year extension, this they decided to go ahead because the bid was for 2526 with the option for 27 to go ahead and award 27. the executive group will meet again in uh midsummer and I really feel confident because of the support from this community improvements at Freedom Hall and what East Tennessee State University has done to Freedom Hall and because they make this statement, we feel wanted here. That's a huge statement to make that and they're not just any event that they would be in a in a Charlotte market or other large metro markets. So, we were asking for support for that. And we also want to improve, you know, our education day. This year, because of the crazy weather we had, some of our schools were unable to come for education day, so we only had four schools. But we'd like to see that get back up where we have Boone and Crockett back again and get more students involved. And also we would like to see dollars

spent for additional marketing efforts for uh Meet the Mountains Festival which is our premier uh outdoor festival. This would be used for a more robust broadcast and video streaming campaign that we feel will help uh to bring more visitors here. And uh we also would look at adding additional installations because you're always trying to add new things to that event as well as our southern dozen uh to do a new fall riding campaign through social med media through geo fencing around the dragon sher skyway and the wheels of time motorcycle museum. I don't know if um any of you were at the fairgrounds this past weekend, but we hosted with that group the National Street Rod Association. There were over 600 cars that were vintage cars that were at the fairgrounds and they loved the fairgrounds and loved their experience here so much that they already have signed the contract for May of 2027. So that's part of what we do, I think, because we have such a great partnership with you all. We have a great partnership with our hotels and our attractions. So in order for us to keep driving that lodging tax even greater, we have to continually go out there and look for new events, new things, and keep our marketing fresh so that we're not just, oh, that city. We want to be the city that they come back to time and time again. Thank you so much for all that you do, all the amount of time that you give to the county, the endless hours that you put into prep and especially through this time of budget. I really appreciate it.

Any questions for Brenda? Commissioner Jones,

I just want to um add to Brenda's presentation in two ways. I'm always excited to hear people are coming here and seeing this beautiful place, but when it's you that wants to invite people here, Brenda's team crushes it. My son has been in mountain biking for six years and has had to travel out of town every weekend in the fall to race in other cities. And this year they expressed an interest in maybe having the race here, bringing 500 kids, about a thousand parents, having the race out at Wing Deere. And Brenda's team pulled together all of these amazing materials and like welcome baskets and worked with the city and the people who participated in that race from all around the state said this was the best race in the series. They couldn't wait to race in Johnson City again. So having an asset like this when it's your event or something you're welcoming people to the city on is a huge deal. Um, and I also want to say thank you to Brenda to this group because her team um, brought such a huge amount of donations to the John Seir folks when they moved into the tapestry on Ran Hill and and just brought beds for every single resident, new beds, new furniture, welcome baskets with cleaning supplies and all this stuff. And it was a huge effort and it was the kind of community welcome that I wanted those folks to experience when they move to their new resident. And it just speaks to how much you all care about the people who live here

and not just who's coming in and spending money here. Thank you. Yeah. It's important to our team that we give back. We do many projects, Hotels with a Heart, where we give back. We've I can't tell you the thousands and thousands of blankets and and gloves and mittens and h all those things that we give back to those folks who are are less fortunate. So it's that's important and thank you Commissioner Jones. Commissioner Hun.

Yeah, great job on the Big S. Uh and we see the impact there. Thank you for that recap. Just to keep us sort of level set, can you give a little texture around the competitive nature of how difficult it is to get something like that? It's much easier to keep it than it is to go out and reacquire something like that.

It is, Commissioner Huffine, because when we went after this event, it was the largest event we've ever hosted and we knew that we would have to have uh things done at Freedom Hall and because of the things that ETSU was doing that um we were going to have to set ourselves apart. Um, and so we did everything from we created a video, we uh created a book that was delivered to the, you know, to each the conference office and then we put together a basket of all locallymade items. We had a staff person that was going to a conference uh in Charlotte and our video along with our bid book along with a financial guarantee and then all of the marketing efforts that we were going to put forth for this effort uh were handd delivered to the big south conference office. So you talk about setting you apart, doing making that little extra effort to do something like that. And then when they came for for site visits, we had, you know, total support from, you know, uh the folks from our hotel partners as well as the city and Freedom Hall. And you know, um Todd Fowler was the mayor at the time and and they were impressed. one that he came to lunch and second of all that he was a a physician and that he agreed to be our on call doctor during the entire time. So when you have a a school like High Point University that has so much money and it's called the Harvard of the South that had hosted the event the year before and they wanted to host it again. Um, I think that what they saw from this and and what Commissioner Montgomery will say is that they saw a partnership. It wasn't that they were just coming

here to bring this event and we were going to be one and done. Our team individually this past year, each of us worked over 90 hours that week. I'm not patting us on the back for the number of hours, but I'm just letting you know that it's the depth and breadth of putting that kind of commitment in and that makes a difference to uh an organization like Big South, but they have not committed for this coming year.

Yes, we are. We're all set for 27. Yes. Yes, we are committed. All right. Any other questions? Remember, thank you very much for being here. All you do for us, Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of questions for the mayor. These are u on our spreadsheet um with the tourism categories. May I ask those? Yes, Commissioner Carter. Mayor,

thank you. Um, so, Mayor and Mitch, on on those categories that are laborable tourism, um, I like how we have the opioid fund uh, noted for where it can be used. If there's restricted money that can be used for that tourism, I would think it would be good if we could put that over there as well. But my and I don't know if we can that but that would be that would be nice on from our first um first copy of this that was on 416 and then we got this one that's dated 511. And we've got a new column labeled mayor revision. Um, mayor on the 430 430,000 figure that's combining some of those others I'm guessing.

Is that correct? Yeah. So,

here would be my my question. We're that if this special appropriation at 4:30 is given to uh the Northeast Tennessee Tourism Association, would that limit what um Jonesboro got? Um, so would cameo like last year have had 150 to spend, but now will she not get that? And she'll have to go through the association to get that.

Mayor, she didn't she didn't get the 15 last year. You've got to go back. Oh, I see. I see. Okay. Commissioner. Well, 285. the spirit of my question. Understand the question. Okay.

All right. So, we are um for this fiscal year 27 or budgeting revenue of $550,000 incoming from the hotel motel tax. Maybe more, maybe less. You heard Brenda talk about some of the extenduating events, MBL, and you know, some of the things last year that may have driven a little higher. So, we're new in this. So, we feel like 550 is a reasonable budgeted number. We the your group, our commission has committed $120,000 of uh hotel motel revenue to um Breeze Airline um for the for two years. And so, we'll be into our one and a half years of that during 27. So you can see that on the online line down there it says bridge that's 120,000. So that's kind of precommitted and the balance um we decide my suggestion after talking to um CIA committee who managed these funds last year and I thought did a great job. um that committee wanted the flexibility to um put the the rest of that $430,000 in places where uh they felt like it was going to have the most impact. So that's what they did last year with the money. And so, um, we just pushed all of the requests, leaving them here visible so everybody can see what was requested. and you've heard the presentations of what they may do with them, but the uh allowing the the CIA committee to vet individual

opportunities throughout the year and not pre-commit it so that might lose opportunities um to invest money in something that would really you know bring in um a higher return. So that was um after talking to the um CIA committee, that was their request. So that's what we did. We pushed it up into there and um of course the full commission uh would approve their recommendation on how it's dispersed. And I think for a while they went quarterly and more recently have gone semianually dispersing money to Jonesboro and to Johnson City C uh CDB and then to um a regional tourism effort which captures the other things in Washington County like Bright Sue Hands-On Museum uh Boon Creek Opera and so forth. So that's you know how it gets moved around in here. the money. We needed to budget the expense because we're going to budget the revenue. And so the all the expense is budgeted in the two lines that I mentioned. Doesn't have to doesn't have to stay that way. It can it it has flexibility.

Is it okay chairman if I talk? Yes, Commissioner Jones. Um, so just to make sure I understand what you just said, we pre-committed 120,000 to the bridge for the airline and so the estimated remaining funds are 430,000 and CIA wants to distribute that per as needs arise over the course of the year. Is that what you said or is that they want to consider the best opportunities that come forward

as time goes by and is that different than what our um presenters were hoping for in their presentations today? I don't think they've had the opportunity. This is the first time anybody has heard. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler, how is that going to affect their ability to budget for these things at this point? Well, not going to know if they're going to get the money then until sometime later in the year.

Um, well, right. Unless unless you want to place it upfront and so that it's committed and not changeable, then yes.

But if they're looking at signing contracts or doing things, they won't be able to plan for that at this stage. If if it's if it's based on this commission's funding, they wouldn't, but they'll have the opportunity to come to CIA in July. And I mean, they may CIA may decide they want to go recommend to y'all that we fund this thing for the full year upfront with no flexibility. That's not what they told me that they thought was the best approach. Commissioner, have fun.

So, just since I'm CIA and and Commissioner Wexler's not here, I'll try to speak a little bit about this because the hotel and motel tax was new and was evolving. We took this approach that it was a quarterly basis. The neta each individual would they would come collectively present their programs to us and make their requests. We allocated dollars on a quarterly basis to them. Also, we had the accountability and I think that's a real key thing there that they came back the next quarter before they made a request. They gave us a recap of how they spent those dollars and how effective those dollars were. Then they presented their new request and that's, you know, to get an almost realtime feedback is probably a little unusual in government. We usually do that once a year versus four times a year. Now, we have some track record. we have some confidence in what they're executing so we can go out and and make that sixmonth commitment. So, as I understand this, we're putting 430 of the 550 projected into that for NETA. We'll follow the same process. They'll come to us and make their requests. As the opportunities come forward and they need that commitment, they can bring that to us and we can make that commitment. Now, anything that comes through CIA comes back in front of the full commission for the full commission's review and vote before any commitment is made to them. So, it's not that we're the commission is losing any control. It's sort of delegating a little bit of the pre-work to the CIA committee allowing us to have accountability and most importantly flexibility in that and and allows us to monitor what that fund truly is. We're projecting 550 and if it goes over then we may have more money to spend. But even more importantly, if something happens, we have an event that it drops under the 550, we're not spending money that we don't have. If that helps a little bit.

Commissioner Tucker, did I see your hand up? But I do have So the 430 after the bridge and then you take all the quests, it's $20,000 difference. But I know they didn't see that, but they're within $20,000 from the what the request was. Well, how I calculated it up. So, you know, they're so after the breather's 430. If you take the from the speakers tonight, it's 450. So, even though we're not budging it, so nobody's seen this, but it's their numbers are $20,000 more than what the 430 is. Well, we didn't correct. Yeah. But I didn't I didn't want to budget more than what we were going to budget for revenue.

Mr. Tucker, it's 520 because you have to add the 70. Okay.

But it does just like commission it does flow through CIA. I mean the big south, she come to us. It was something we had to do pretty quick, but she'd come to us, presented all of her stuff just like she did tonight, and we felt a need for it, and then we approved it and brought it back to the budget, and it went through, and she got her contract in time. So, usually they present it early enough. It ain't like they need to know tomorrow to get a contract. They know what's coming up and they always come to committee, right, and lets us know ahead of time. That's how the Vix out works. Mitch does a great job keeping us surprised real time how that budget is doing versus the projection. So we we have a lot of flexibility with that.

You may remember Alicia's presentation pointed out the new legislation requires this money to move out pretty quickly. So it's it's we don't have an opportunity to stockpile it. But doesn't that put you in a situation where you may be considering something that's going to be earlier in the year that we might that they may, you know, if they knew they weren't going to get money in the fourth quarter, they might be planning to do the fourth quarter event if it has a lot greater impact on the u the community. I just it I think somebody needs to talk to them about how is this going to impact their planning. Uh because I could see how it'd be very difficult to know what to put the money on if they don't know what they're going to get throughout the year. If you're doing this I I can't tell if y'all are talking about that they'd come in periodically to ask for money throughout the year or if they'd be doing all of this in July. If they're doing all of it in July, why don't they do it now while we're voting on the budget rather than than waiting until July to

past they don't come in in July. They've come in in different times. Is that correct, Mr. Up? every quarter. So, we're really just injecting for spec for special projects. We're not we're not we're not doing anything that's going to impact their whole year. We're just doing special projects as because they can't plan on that if they don't know if they're getting the money or not. They got it broke down in quarters is how they got it broke down just like they can't plan to do fourth quarter project if they don't know if they're going to get the money until fourth quarter. They cannot plan on that. They don't they won't come to the fourth quarter to fail. They'll come the second quarter and ask for that or a quarter or two ahead of time.

At least that's at least that's the way it worked last year.

And it's really it's not strictly performance-based, but it is performance-based. They know that when they come asking for more money, they have to be able to prove that what they've already received is being utilized effectively. I mean the the accountability in this program where we're executing is much higher than anything else. It also has some flexibility. Absolutely. There's a the one drawback may be that long range planning, but we're sort of putting that back on them in the long range praying that they have to do that if if they really want the money and they know that if they they want a commitment for that, they've got to have a really strong sales pitch to bring back to us. along with the performance and a solid foundation of execution which I will say they've done a wonderful job uh everything they brought to us they brought back the verification uh how well it worked out and and how good to spend in I think what was that 20 to one return that's I if I can get that in the stock market I'll start contesting right now

I just I just would say I I mean, I get a grant every year, and if I I can't even plan a year until I know I get the next year. Planning one year is hard. I can't imagine planning quarter by quarter, but um having that level of rigor at the beginning of a program is a great idea. I would be fine with giving them a little more leash because they're already demonstrating effective use of the funds. So that's up to the CIA committee and I'm not getting anybody's way, but I think that it would be easier for them to run with it if they had a fairly solid sense of how the annual budget would work for them. So

in in fairness, I think these funds last year uh provided provided some money to do additional things. All of these organizations are funded. none of this money um none their organizations are not dependent on any of this money. These monies u we anticipate going in on top of the great work they're already doing. So what they presented to you tonight were figures and numbers and and 20 to1 ratios and and things that are really impressive because of the really good work they do. And so the this additional half a million dollars worth of funding that's now available from the county government to tourism, we anticipate going in on top of those already really good programs to enhance what they do. And it seems to me that the requests that came to CIA and were approved by this body and went to them last year were very effective, but they were all more or less specific requests and did different things. And um you know being that we're they were just in the second year of being able to push these funds out, you know, Commissioner Jones, you may be right moving forward and we can count on um half a million dollars or three4 million dollars long term if they want to build that into their budgets to add another person or something like that and that's a different place. But that's really not where they are today.

Can I can I ask another question? Mr. Jones, I'm so sorry. Um, so it looks like the lines that we just discussed from tourism down to bridge all come out of the same source of revenue. And I know that the families free and maybe something else on here are coming out of opioid dollars. Are there other special appropriation requests that are earmarked for specific sources of revenue like well or is it all the rest of it coming out of the general fund or how do we know

there's four for the opioid fund and that was my very first question is if if you have restricted oh I accounts okay I think it would be beneficial for this commission future commissions for that to be noted over in the account category. I appreciate that. It's always a hotel motel tax way we can spend it. Very good point.

Okay. Those the tourism dollars do come out of the general fund which is the bulk of this is and that's why mentioned earlier the the amounts that are in there for tourism equal the budgeted revenue. So we're not using taxpayer dollars for tourism. Is that an expense account the number that's listed or is that a revenue account? That's an expense account. There is an offsetting revenue account in your budget. You have to have visibility.

All right. Any more questions or discussion on tourism? We'll move right on to the Chamber of Commerce. Bob, thank you for being here this evening. Good evening. I'm Bob Canler with the Chamber of Commerce serving Johnson City, Jonesboro, and Washington County. Let me pass out a handout here. Start somewhere around the screen. Back in 2023, we received uh $50,000 funding uh from the county for us to do small business development. And at that time, we were doing a co-starters class, but we were doing uh technical assistance for for a lot of our our new startup businesses. And um from that, I was able to leverage and get some grants through the Truis Foundation, uh the First Horizon Foundation, and the Regions Foundation. And what we're doing at this point is coming back for another ask of $50,000 from the county for business startup. What it is is we're here to be the resource for those those brand new businesses. Uh Cheryl gets so many business license um a month and they come ask her, Cheryl, do I need to be an LLC or a sole proprietor? And she goes, call Bob. Um, so we handle a lot of the inquiries in regards to anyone starting a business. And then we have what is called Avante and as a program we work with Founders Forge and it's a six-week business boot camp. So it builds your business plan for that startup business. And our goal is if you're going to fail, we want you to fail in the class before you go take

that $50,000 loan. Um, so it's been very effective. Um, a lot of our businesses have have thrived. Uh, one in particular does a couple of things is Terrarium which is located in downtown Johnson City. Um, she came to us, went through our class, built her business plan, and um, once she started when she got open, she goes, "Bob, I'm supposed to collect sales tax, right?" And I go, "Yeah, you're supposed to collect sales tax." She goes, "How do I do that?" And I said, "I have some funding. I'm going to get somebody from Blackburn Children's to call sit down with you and do your template for your sales tax." and it ended up costing us, I don't know, $250 for us to get BCS to sit down with her and get her her her program in place. But that is now a thriving business. It's already been open now for about four years and is just an example of of some of the businesses that we've seen that that have launched in Washington County um over the past five years. Our GDP has grown by 9% uh in Washington County. We're about $9 billion a year in GDP and we're seeing more and more requests for small businesses. Uh we're working with a lot of the developers. Uh uh you all have approved a tiff for Brush Creek and that developer is asking me, you know, what small businesses can we put into these whether child care, bakeries, retail, those types of shops uh to go in those businesses. Um, we're also been working with Horn Properties, which is the Publix that's located uh in Boone Creek to to help them navigate and find some businesses. And we've also had conversations with the developers doing John Seavir saying we need locallyowned or or local businesses uh to be a part of this development. Um, the reason we're excited about that is 68 cents of every dollar spent with a local business stays in the community. Um, so that's

why we're we promote shop local. Um, uh, uh, help your local business. Uh, make sure you're going to downtown Jonesboro and shopping down there. Make sure you're going to downtown Johnson City and shopping local. Um, again, the Mall of Johnson City is our a member of ours and we support them, too. But we've just recognized that um having a healthy local business economy has has really um projected or propelled um the Washington County um the health of our Washington County small businesses. So um our ask is again to to re uh populate that fund uh that helps us do the business startup classes. It helps us get the technical assistance. It helps us do the training for AI uh exempt non-exempt employees programming that that is helpful and beneficial to these to these smaller businesses. And um uh we're we're working with ETSU and the College of Business and Technology. They're putting in a creative agency in the Asht Street Courthouse. So, we want to work with our small businesses to go in and using the students at a lower rate for their creative services and uh uh help them uh one helping the student but also helping um that business uh get the needs they need and the marketing needs they have. And then the last thing is the technical assistance. So, we partner with uh Blackburn Children's and Stagall. We partner with Baker Donaldson, Hunter Smith and Davis. um a lot of organizations that uh we've negotiated a lower rate if if we went to them and said could you help them with their sales tax pro program could you help them do their business structure uh these organizations have said we will do that if they'll go through your programs um to support this but um our ask is for $50,000 and um I will take any questions

Bob my question would be for reference and you have on your doc document that you all serve. Johnson City, Jonesboro, and Washington County. How much does Johnson City give you and how much does Jonesboro? Uh Johnson City gives us uh $10,000 a year, but they also give us $50,000 in a in a workforce development program that we have. Does Jonesboro contribute? They have not. Thanks. Any further questions? Bob, we appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. Thank you all for all that you do.

Back up. And our family's free is here with us now. Thank you all for being here.

Thank you for having us. Um I apologize for being late. Melody is going to give Mayor Grandandy some invitations to a ribbon cutting we're doing on Monday um for a new women's residential house that is located on Princeton, the Netweek Mayor's Board that Mayor Grandy's a part of chose to purchase that property so we would be able to expand the beds for women from 12 to 18. So, um I was there trying to pull all that together and lost a little bit of track time, but I appreciate uh the opportunity to be back with you all tonight. Um I have made a presentation earlier in the year to the Hugh committee. I've also spoken with some of the other county officials at different times. So, um, I'm happy to either share a little bit about the information you've had before or if there was specific questions that you all wanted to ask, I'll be glad to try to answer those as well.

Why don't you go ahead with an overview of of because not everybody was on that committee and Okay, let's just let's just take it from the top a little bit.

Okay. Well, again, I'm Lee Tipton. This is Melody Castle. I'm the executive director of Families Free. Melody is our director of criminal justice services and Melody oversees the programming that we do here in the Washington County Jail. Families Free approached Sheriff Ston and his team several years ago with an opportunity to write for a grant with the state of Tennessee to provide some services in his jail. That was successfully awarded and that has funded the work that we do in the Washington County Detention Center for several years. Um, probably about three would be my guess. But Families Free has been providing classes in the Washington County detention center for almost 10 years. And when Johnson City had the women's work camp, we provided classes and reentry work to the women in that facility for six or seven years um before that facility closed. The main thing that I wanted to talk to you all about is a component that we do at Families Free where we are the only provider in this region of housing for women and children at no cost to the client. They receive housing. They receive transportation. We're a licensed substance abuse and mental health treatment facility. they can attend alcohol and drug classes at our facility that's located in Johnson City right here in Washington County. And we also partner very heavily with Department of Children's Services. We partner with ETSU Baby Steps Clinic, with the high-risk OB

clinic, with the health department here in Washington County, surrounding areas. And the housing that we provide here, we have had a house called Story House on West Market Street for about eight years. And that location can house up to nine women and children. Oftentimes those are women who are pregnant whose children have been put in foster care or are at risk of the children going into foster care or many of the women are involved in the Washington County Recovery Court. Families Free also provides all of the treatment for women and men who are involved in the Washington County Recovery Court and we do that with funds that we get from Department of Mental Health, Department of Children's Services, various departments of the state. We have another housing off of Indian Ridge Road that is able to house about 15 individuals. Again, same combination, women and children. We have the current net wreck, Northeast Regional Recovery Center home for women off Princeton Road that houses 12. Then we'll be opening the other house next week. They'll add another additional six women. Children are not able to come to that facility, but we do have visits at Summit Leadership where the families can come and visit with their parents. Um, we also provide intensive outpatient treatment for men and women at our Johnson City location and on average we probably serve about 150 or 60 people there. All the people who receive services there meet the poverty guidelines. Many are involved with the justice system. Many are involved with

department of children services. And the reason that we have set up families free the way that we have where we just meet them where they are, provide the services they need is because they have been exploited by so many different people, so many different situations and we want to provide all the things that they need to then be able to gain employment, to be self- sustaining, transportation, all the things. So on average, women and kids stay in our housing anywhere from 9 to 15 months. And when they're able to be self-sufficient, they can move into another housing situation. All of the um juvenile judges in Washington County as well as Judge Green and her safe baby court in Johnson City see Families Free as a vital resource. if they have families that they would like to see be able to stay together and get the help they need rather than have to go into foster care or if there are children who are in foster care. Those are a lot of the situations that the judges call upon us to help these moms and kids and families get back on track. So, we started our housing program in Johnson City. Um, Carter County allocated resources because they wanted a home like what we have in in Washington County. So, we opened a house over there, Riverhouse last year. Same general said it. Sullivan County won the same thing that Washington County had. They've allocated funds that they've given us and are going to purchase property for us to offer that. So that's why I'm coming before this body in Washington County to ask that you all support the work we're doing at Families Free for your community members.

All right. Thank you, Lisa. Uh is there any questions? I have a question. Commissioner Jones,

is that is that presentation just now is that in support of both the family's free and recovery center requests? We had submitted a separate recovery center request about 15 or 18 months ago. So I I think Mayor Grandandy could speak more to that. There there was a line for the the net wreck previously. This is for families free, but it will benefit the housing of the women in the recovery center as well as women who are in the recovery center who often need to step down into one of the other housing situations we operate. So the big answer is yes, it will benefit them. But my understanding is there was another line that would go to the net wreck, not directly to family free.

Okay. And when you when I didn't miss your presentation to Hugh, um, unfortunately that was a family health issue and it didn't make it to the meeting. So I just barely caught your presentation to budget. Those were in support of families free specifically. Yes.

And so, okay, I think that clarifies. I mean, there's two different lines here on our appropriations request. One is for families free and there's a separate request line for the recovery center. So, I'm just trying to disentangle because they're kind of mutually and I'm not sure I know how they're different. What what is the money going to in in in the case of him is free? You've just described the broad program. It's going to all these things. Yes.

In the case of the recovery center, is it supporting the same stuff, your programming within the recovery center or is it going to operation like operations cost or capital or supplies or things that are needed for the recovery center specifically?

I so appreciate that question. Thank you. Um, families free. this request it it's primarily for the housing we do and the supportive services around the housing for women and children the families free the net wreck some of you all remember when we started that but the net wreck is the board of mayors that money would go directly to the network it's held by the first judicial devel or the first develop velopment district and that money goes to operate the men's facility. There are 68 men. The biggest majority of those men come from Washington County. They come from this jail. 68 men in Rome Mountain. There are 12 women here in John City. They're in that program for a year. Then they step down to the first judicial felony recovery court, which basically means we have double the people that we have the funding for. We also have someone from the Washington County misdemeanor court who's up at Rome Mountain who will also step down to this treatment. So that goes primarily to provide, if you think about what it would cost at this very minute to house 80 adults, transport them back and forth to jobs where they pay back their fees and fines, child support, all the things. That is a very, very, very costly program.

And do you have outcomes online or somewhere where we can see how things are going? We do have outcomes. In fact, Quillin Medical School has done those those outcomes for us. I don't know that they're online, but I can um ask doc I can get you connected with Dr. Mobly with Quillin. He oversees that project. And we do have a wonderful partnership with Quillin because most of the men at Rome Mountain don't have access to medical care. They haven't for years. So Quillin comes and does a medical clinic up there one day a week and those medical students have also taken on doing a lot of our outcomes evaluations and those kind of things. But the program um has been incredibly successful according to our governor while the other representatives in the state that continue to fund it. That program has been funded in general by the governor, by other counties to the tune of of probably about $3 and a half million a year. So our ask of Washington County of $150,000 to help support your own community members is a very very proportional ask when you consider all the adults and their families that benefit.

Thank you. You're welcome. Question. Uh, as was asked a while ago, what does Jonesber and John City contribute?

Well, Washington County was the only recipient of the opioid development funds. Carter County contributed $300,000. Sullivan County contributed $500,000. So the neighboring counties have contributed, Unico contributed, Johnson County's contributed, Washington County was the only entity that got these funds and they are the only entity that has not contributed to the housing of women and children and it's located here in in your county.

I just have a question, Lisa. So I got confused there just a minute. Commissioner Jones, you confuse me for a second. So, when we're talking about the males at Ron Mountain? Yes. And they're stepping down. Yes. Do you you only house females, correct? Okay. I appreciate that question as well. Okay. The Northeast Regional Recovery Center, which comprises of the old prison up in Rome Mountain. Yes.

And a women's facility here on Princeton Road. John City that that's its own entity. The housing that we provide for women and children on Market Street and off of Indian Ridge, that's just Family's Free. But the men who step down from the program in Rome Mountain, the majority of them stepped down to the first judicial district felony recovery court. Okay,

Washington County is the biggest player in that. So they are coming back and the majority of them are coming back to live in recovery housing in Washington County and paying for it with the jobs that they are able to obtain. Many work at LPI, many work at AOS Smith, many work at Mulligan Flooring. We have a lot of those men employed here. They come back, they're able to pay for sober living, but Families Free still provides the outpatient after care treatment for those men. And most of them don't qualify for the funding sources that we have access to because they no longer meet the poverty guidelines, which is a good thing, right?

But that's where the money from Governor Lee's administration, some of the other things come in. So, it it is a lot of people um benefiting from that program. It's it's a wonderful thing for our entire region and community. So you would be the people at Princeton, the females at Princeton stepping down would be some some folks that you would really focus on.

Absolutely. Absolutely. We would focus on them, but then there's also the whole other population of the families referred to us by Department of Children's Services, mamas and kids that need a place to live. Th those are primarily the people that will be at Market Street in Princeton. It could be somebody stepping down from residential, but it it's all the system involved vulnerable women and children that need somebody to take care of them really. And that's what they can experience at Family Free until they're able to take care of themselves.

So you're not lacking referrals? We we I mean we would like to I would like people referring to you, you know. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. We we would invite anybody who would love I would love for any of y'all to come and visit us at Families Free. One thing I I don't think I mentioned, we also provide intensive outpatient for men. So we have men in the afternoon, the women come during the day. We have a child care room upstairs. So the women who have children that they don't have daycare for, they don't have all those things, they can actually bring their children with them um to to have a safe place to be while their moms get treatment.

All right. Any further questions or discussion? Commissioner Hun, just one. I know all four of these are are listed out of opioid. I think 375 total if I've added it correctly. But how does that compare to the revenue stream coming in from opioid? Any other requests? Are we within budget there?

Well, so that that's changing time. We just received our annual check $310,000. the demand and the request. So we have a little reserve.

What is the reserve? I'm looking at this page and I just can't. We're just looking at today. I think we're 14 million total after that 300,000 one what million mayor while we're on the opioid fund um and it's on tab eight of your house look okay um Lisa I'm sorry I don't have any questions for you might be done I hate to keep you up there thank you anyone else have any questions questions for Lisa? All right, Lisa, thank you so much. We appreciate you coming.

Thank you. So, mayor, on the frontier health line, it's got your revision as 50,000 whereas the request was 25. Um, where would that So, they they have a um a safe house that is requiring some additional funding this year, and that was a sort of a a laid in request.

Okay. And for um I' I've got this noted, but since we're going to be talking to the sheriff here in a little bit there, there's a transfer that I noted on 650,000 651,000 at the bottom of that account. Can you explain where where that's going? I've I've got it noted as that's the sheriff's. So, it's going to something for the sheriff. That's just to clear up the opioid. So, so the the overall the sheriff probably has a lot better handle on this, but it seems to me the request for opioid funding for for all from opioid funding for all the operations that the sheriff is doing over there in the mental health area of the um in the jail and with the university with families free with Frontier Health. Um the combination of all that which includes this deflection program which has a couple of mental health people that go out in the community with officers was I think around 680,000 total for this upcoming year was what it was going to take to operate all that.

Okay. Thank you. It's in it's actually in a couple of lines you got to pull together. So to think about this year's budget for opioid, you have to add what the sheriff is requesting to these special appropriations requests. That's right. That's correct. And I can't remember this frontier project very well. Does it meet the criteria for opioid abatement council spending? The frontier? Yeah. Safe house. It does.

Okay. So just quick math that that those two requests combined is 1055 million. So we got you'd haveund 1.2 you'd have $50,000 left in the 1.2 150,000 is that right and with the with the re with the revenue stream it would not sustain it past one year. Yeah. So, okay. So, I mean that's really our decision is do we want to spend the bulk of it this year or try to try to make it last for another year. Tough decision next year if we do that. Okay. Just keep everybody grounded on. Thank you.

All right. I see u several of our officials here this evening and uh I was going to go ahead and give you all the opportunity uh to speak or if you had anything that you would like to say or all right I know sheriff I think you were uh left the room you're back just in Huh?

Well, um, so I've, if you haven't noticed, I emailed you a copy of my budget and I sent you a copy in the certified mail. I hope you've had time to look at it and I'll answer any questions you might have. So, I don't really have any questions, but I think we're meeting back Thursday morning. Correct, mayor? With the sheriff? That's right.

As a budget member, we need some advice on going forward with everything we're talking about. Uh and then the sheriff's budget also. So, we got have, you know, that's just four of us on the budget. So, we're looking for some pass on not just the sheriff's budget, but on everything. So, um, the to hit the the highlights, the white elephant is that I'm asking for more positions and a pay raise. You've just heard from several people who have gone over the fact that this area is growing. The number of people here are growing. Our call volume is just out of this world.

Three. You agree with that?

Yes, sir. I agree. Um, we've surpassed the city as far as the number of calls. Um, we have just gotten really busy. Uh, I I've asked for 10 new positions and those positions would be four that would be inside the jail working. Um, we have a big problem with doing transports now and transports involves from county to county. Uh, it may be across the state. Um we have a lot of medical transports when inmates get uh have to go to the hospital. So that's not just a transport that's uh that officer taking an inmate and staying with them forever. How long we see uh we have a jail full of mentally ill people and addicted people who bring on their a totally set a different set of problems. Um medical bills are are very expensive. Um, the other four would be for patrol officers. Um, I've been sheriff for over four years now and I've yet to uh run into a single person who says, "Sheriff, you got too many officers out there and they get paid too much." So, I know that's not popular and I know that we we have to uh be good stewards of the of the money that we're given. Um the other two positions would go to for a drug investigator. The fentanyl problem uh is just one of many drugs that are out there that is is just wide open and the other would go to be an investigator for child sex crimes and internet crimes which is is uh just exploding. we um you know, as a sheriff, I have to

look at what I feel is needed to provide the level of law enforcement in this county uh that that will protect the citizens. And to do that, I have to present a budget to the county commission. And that's why I mailed that to you. And that's why I sent it in the email. That's that's the only reason. It has to come to the CLB, not a committee. the CLB. Um, but we have the need. You You've heard about how many you've you know I wish we the city the the thing about being a sheriff is I don't get to stop at the city limit. You say, "Well, you got John City Police and you have Jonesboro Police." Well, if Jonesboro folds up today and they go home, I'm still responsible for the safety of those citizens. If something happens in Johnson City and they can't uh do what they need to do, the sheriff is still responsible. The the city limits or the town limits are for the town or the city, not the sheriff. Um we we have made great improvements in four years. I think I've showed you results. I think I've showed you bang for the buck, so to speak. You've been very supportive and um the problem is we're getting very competitive. uh it's competitive in law enforcement and it's competitive in the uh private sector. So um if you want to go all over all the numbers are in the packet, we can. But we've lost a number of people to go to higher paying departments. Um and I've I've made it known that that I'm going to do my best to hire good people for the citizens of Washington County. Um, we do our best to create our own revenue sources that we can. Uh, we've and we have paid for a lot of things that we haven't had to come and ask for because we've created those revenue accounts. They're they're in your in your budget.

So, um I know that that it's expensive and I'm hoping that we have talks some, you know, I've yet to present to the budget committee, but I wanted you to have the correct numbers and I wanted you to know that uh I do have to present it to the county legislative body. Um if you decide not to fund it, that's up to you and I have to deal with it. But at the end of the day, you fund public safety. I just have to deal with whatever budget I get and if I don't agree with it, the only other recourse on salaries and and the number of people is to file a salary suit. I don't think we're uh in the environment that we have to do that. I pray that that never has to happen. Um but at the end of the day, it takes, you know, you've heard me say this for four years, true quality never goes on sale. You can't go to Walmart and buy a Rolex. If you want quality officers, you want quality law enforcement, it's going to cost us some money. We are growing and we got to have more people and no one works for pennies anymore. So, that's the broad overview. Any questions? Sheriff, I thought your packet was very good that you sent out to the commission. I think it was very enlightening. I think I I took a lot away from that. Answered a lot of questions for me. Well,

I thought it was very good. I wanted to to have some explanation because a lot of people don't really realize what a a sheriff does. Really, I run three budgets. You guys know that, but I don't know that people in the public know that. You have the jail, you have the patrol, which is in criminal investigations, and then you have the court security. There's three budgets there that get pretty well get run separately. Um, so that was the intent was to explain what each one does and where that money's going. It was very good. Thank you. I these this is this is the uh they make it happen. Um, just a not a question but just a comment.

Four patrol officers you say? Four. One on each shift. But that requires cruisers. Yes. And that's where the expenses and all the equipment that those and the training, not just the hourly wages that these patrol officers are going to make.

It's paid, it's paid benefits, the, you know, a patrol car. You by the time it's equipped and outfitted, you're looking around $70,000. Um, that's, you know, lights, siren, cameras. Then you're looking at body cameras, you're looking at all that camera, just and all the other emergency equipment that goes in there. And that's why it gets so expensive. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, and then you got to look at all the training. Um, training is one of the most highest liability factors in law enforcement. Um, failure to train can cost you a lot of money. Having an officer out there that doesn't make the right decision can pay for any pay for these what I've asked for this over and over and over. It's it's just where we're at today.

Commissioner Davenport. Yeah. Do you have uh any turnover information as far as in the jail and patrol? Um I'll have to find which page it's on here, but as it stands right now, we're full in the jail and I think we have as of the beginning of the week, we had around four openings. By the end of the week, based upon recent elections in the area, we will probably pick up some trained people.

But how many people have left? How many people's come in? you know what page it's on. Jennifer typed this out for us so she can go right to it. It has greatly slowed down. Um so the turnover rate is at 36% compared to 27 and 25. I'm sorry. In 2023 the turnover rate was at 36%. It's at 27% uh in 2025. So, we've had 24 deputies that separated employment. 18 of those went to other agencies citing for more pay or better hours. Um, or there's some of them that they don't like how busy we are now. Um, we had four that retired and two that were terminated. Okay.

So, it's more than I would like. Um, we lost one to go to the uh county fire department, became a full-time fireman. Um, that's the other one of the other reasons I want I'm asking for a pay raise. Um, yeah, we had one go to the ABC commission, which I'm going to take that up with Commissioner Tamita, and uh, they've just, you know, different different uh, agencies, but you have several that's staying in law enforcement. They just they stay in law enforcement. They're just jumping to other agencies. that's the case cuz I I would think that you're always going to have that well this is not for me it's not for me any longer

but that's burn out and things like that but when someone's leaving than staying in the profession

well that's that's the good thing about I I'm proud of the fact and I'm proud of our jail staff is you know we were 26 people short we had three pods shut down just four years ago when I became sheriff we've And now we are fully staffed. We've gone from being on a uh being threatened with a uh plan of action which would result in a plans to build a bigger jail to being tying for third place so to speak across the state. We are a tier 2 certified jail. Um, our inmate number is at 80 to 85% is where TCI says we should be so that we can do classifications, which classifications means you can separate those who need to be separated, that kind of thing. And you think, well, how does that save you money? Well, when you have to pile people in on top of each other, you're looking at hospital bills, drugs, filling your jail up, and all that kind of thing. And uh, very proud of what they've done. So, uh, along with that, we have, uh, stepped up, greatly stepped up the training that they receive, how much time they spend on field training before they're cut loose. And, uh, we have seen use of force incidents go down. We've seen the turnover rate slow, and we just have a better jail.

Commissioner Han. Yeah. First, I want to thank you for the meeting last week, the community. Uh great session, very very informative and found it very beneficial. My question is how and you may not know statistically but just on average the turnovers we've improved dramatically. How do we rank now as opposed to other counties our size across the state, the region, and so I would imagine there's a average turnover rate.

Well, I can tell you this. I don't know what the averages are, but when I talk to other sheriffs and other jail administrators, they're like, "Well, how many people you short?" and I'll say, "We're not short. We're full. You're full. How are you full?" And I always go into the to what I just told you. And uh um performing at a pretty high level compared That's what it That's what works. Commissioner Wheeler um chef want to ask you a couple of questions about the money we're transferring from opioid fund to um I don't know if you were in the room when we were discussing the fact that we got about a million in expenses including the transfer 690 u 650 I'm sorry over to

right

to your department. Um and our revenue is about 495,000 that we're budgeting. So we we're and but we have a balance. So we're using out of that balance and we've got additional requests this year for uh uh 25,000 that we've not allocated before to one program and a $25,000 increase um to another. Uh but with that revenue coming in like that, we're not going to that balance might last one more year. I'm concerned about the impact if if we're spending uh that much above the the actual revenue and we're going to end up then at some point

I next year after having to say no.

Um that's what impact is that going to have because obviously with yours we might have to look at are we shifting it over to the general fund because we're not going to have enough opioid revenue even if we said no to everybody else to to fund that. Well, my hope my hope is and I know that those dollars are not going to last forever, but it has taken so it's taken some time to get get everybody up on their feet and we came to the u health education welfare committee for the first time and we talked about what we were going to do. What was our plan for this program that we run inside the jail? We laid the plan out. We worked the plan. It took a little bit because not everybody, it's just like uh with detention officers, not everybody in the health care field or the mental health field wants to work in the jail and we wanted quality people. So, we we've got it up and running and it's doing what we said we would hope to do and that is to cut back on recidivism. We have numbers that show that we've seen a 20% uh decrease in recidivism of those people who go through our programs. Um and but to address the money problem, my hope is is that we um can find a revenue source. Um or you know, it seems like every time I get up here, I have to talk about EIGs, but maybe we roll some of that into covering that that difference. And there's other revenue funds that come in from the jail. uh they're not as there's not as much money than than the EIG program, but you know, I get I get aggravated from PE, you know, different entities that say, "Hey, why don't you you know, uh Tim James is always good if he's not here." Uh he's like, "Why don't you dish out some of that ecigarette money to uh to the fire?" You know, he's all about fire, but yes, we're going to

have to look for revenue sources. I I know that. But I, you know, my hope is is that, you know, we we're in the building phase, but we're also in a in a good operational phase, too. Uh, one of the things that we have done, a problem that we were having with this program was we just didn't have the space. So, we got to look and and and I tked our command staff. I said, "Find some space." Well, we have a a multi-purpose room. If if y'all been in the jail, I don't I don't know who hasn't, but it's a great big Oops. It's a great big room that used to be when when we used to have weekenders. We'd probably have 50 or 60 weekenders that would report it. So, long story short, try to make this fast. We have been able to take uh uh money from this current budget and we're building offices in that multi-purpose room. Offices, examination rooms, a dentist office where we can move medical from where medical's out inside the jail now to there. And you'll have behavioral health, you'll have medical, you'll have the dentist in there, you'll have PE it'll be in one central location. And that also frees up the medical part for uh more special handling units because you know uh with the high-profile cases that and you have the really bad people that have to be segregated uh you need to have officers there. Well, we had to take the medical holding cells and turn them into a special handling unit so that they they come out and they stay in this one spot. So now we're going to be able to transition all that to where that those those we'll have actually have supervisors right on top of those people. But that's not the answer you were looking for all in all. But yes, I know that this money is going to run out and we need to start looking at using revenue accounts to try and back it up. We're making every partnership that we can. ETSU has

been very helpful with us. We're in talks with them to even bring in fellows now to help us with the worker load. Um, you know, I I would love to see uh like the Rome Mountain facility uh that you hear about. I would love to see one here. We we've got the need for it and uh you know, maybe a partnership. I've talked I just had the uh had a big a a good prod productive meeting with the um CEO of the John City Medical Center who came in and was just blown away that with what was going on there. And my hope is that we can make some partnerships to where that maybe we just get the entire community involved. Um, but I can say this, it's Washington County opioid abatement money and in our program, every dollar stays within Washington County.

Thank you,

Mr. One of the things that um I think will be meaningful going forward, so this program that that the sheriff's put together is relatively new. the opioid money wrong. And so it's it's a couple years in and so particularly with the help of some of the folks from ETSU, they're accumulating data to support cost savings that are generated by the program. And so the hope is we have enough opioid money currently to continue the program long enough to document these results to give the commissioners the opportunity to say, "Okay, um this program is really good. Not only is it helping people, not only is it reducing citizens, but it is also saving the county x number of dollars annually in um incarceration costs and other and other costs that can be documented. So, they're putting together some evidencebased information that another year in the program, I think you'll be able to see really dramatically what it stated. So that would give a special opportunity as well.

Okay. This program is really worth keeping because it's not not just a program. It's a little cost. That's

Yes. Uh I received a email from Dr. Kelly Moore who is just she's a licensed clinical psychologist with ETSU and she has been like from the start. Um but she had u Dr. Miller with ETSU. And I'm I don't know that I've ever met Dr. Miller, but he he has boggled it down and uh some statistics are, you know, with uh 1,158 jail inmates receiving behavioral health services from August of 24 to December of 25, a 17.82 an 82 percentage point reduction in recidivism, a cost per day in jail of $131, which that would be the $80 per DM plus $51 in medical treatment. The behavioral health service program saved the county uh $2.1 million in over a 17-month period. That's pretty significant. Uh I mean, it's a uh it's a savings. medical uh within the jail is it's you see it, it's astronomical. Uh prescription drug costs are killing us. Um and I don't know if there's any relief in sight for that one, but uh I think we we have to do everything we can to to keep it low. Commissioner

sort of somewhat the same question but sort of follow up on Commissioner Tucker's request there and not an answer tonight but when you go back to budget we've got 1.2 roughly that we can allocate it this year or spread that out. Can you give the budget committee that they'll bring back to us your recommendation? Should we go ahead and allocate all of it knowing you've got a big gap the next year or should hold back some of that so you sustain that another year or something like that? Just give them some feedback and give us some guidance your opinion how we should best allocate that money not only this year but next year as well.

I can answer that question right now. Uh we need we we turned in the budget because we need the money and we need to keep it rolling. Uh that gives us another year to to work it out so to speak. Um but that would be my recommendation. That would be my ask or whatever how you want to say it. Um we're just now really getting you're you're talking about your request. Yes. Yeah. But there's a fund balance that we have other requests on. Yes. If we give that to out this year, then there's no more money next year. I get that 310 coming in.

But that's a decision that you as the county legislative body will have to make and you'll have to I mean I mean it's just the cold hard facts. Um I'm very of course I'm for my I'm I'm for what we have going on. What was that savings? 2 point what?

2,149,000 over the past 17 in that 17-month period. So 1.4. So if the program goes away, there would be another 1.4 million added back to your budget. is that based on that savings, if you were saying we saved if it's upward abatement money, you know, it it wouldn't be spent for that program if the program went away.

Okay. Anything else? Yes, sir. Sorry. Just uh how do you recruit officers? any way I can. Which ones? Detention officers or I mean,

well, I'll be honest with you. You know, it used to be back in the day you started you work the jail for a little while and then you you would try to go to patrol. But our our detention officers, we have detention officers that they no long they don't want to come out of the jail. They they like what they do. Uh we have uh it it's not, you know, the days of uh Andy Griffith are over with. Um it's it's just as uh high speed so to speak on the inside of the jail as it is out. It's there's stuff always going on. But to recruit officers from other agencies or you know it's all about paying benefits. We have some really good benefits. But younger people today seem to care about what's in their paycheck in the next two weeks. You can talk to them about uh retirement and which we have an excellent retirement I believe. uh they want to know what they're going to get in that check two weeks from now. That's that's the driving force. And uh you know, the other thing with the other departments is you'll see you'll see departments go to lateral entry. So you've got five or 10 years on the job, they're going to bring you in a higher rate. Um, occasionally we if somebody has a, you know, a lot of experience and a long resume, uh, we might be able to bring them in at a dollar or two more than starting pay, but that's very rare. Um, if you see somebody that came in and they weren't at starting pay, they had, uh, they've got, uh, a good resume, so to speak.

Yes, sir. Jos, back to your new hires. What is the deputy versus population ratio? Are we good there?

No. Um, so when I start looking at, you know, how many deputies do we need to ask for? Um, you look at the the FBI's uniform crime reporting statistics. Um, based on the most recent number that that I've been able to obtain, we're looking at about 141,000 in Washington County. That's city and county. Um, the to the number of officers should be between 2.3 and 2.4 per 10,00. We are currently at 0.9. That's not a good ratio. Now, you can say, well, what about Johnson City? What about uh Jonesboro? Well, if you you can let's cut that in half. 0.9 times two is what? 1.8. So, we're still not there. But I'm telling you,

budget since you got them numbers. What's that? I'm going to hire you on the budget since you got that number so quick.

No, you don't want me. Let me tell you something. When it comes to getting the math right, these two right here take care of that. Uh I got, you know, I tell people all the time, I'm not an accountant. I I feel like I dabble in law enforcement. I, you know, it's it's just the way it is. But I mean, look, you can look around you. It's just busy. Uh, it's so many people live out in the county now. And, uh, um, the the calls for service don't stop. And it's just where we're at. We're bringing all these people in. That's great. We got to we got to have the officers to protect them. And you know, to this day, you know, we we school resource officers are funded out. They're actually their salaries are actually deputy salaries that should be on patrol, but we're not going to leave the schools um without a school resource officer. We were fortunate enough to get a grant from the state for $75,000 a school, but that doesn't once you, you know, you've seen it once you add in benefits and it doesn't cover it. Um, and then you know the state didn't do us any favors when they raised the THP's pay to 72 something. They an officer can quit my department, go work can be a highway patrol officer and start at 72 724 a year. Uh, they raised the TDOC uh, Tennessee Department of Corrections. Their pay went up quite a bit on the state level. it it kind of put a hurting on us and um it's just we went through a phase there where where uh no one wanted to be a police officer and but I do think it's coming back. People are starting to to see but but that creates uh competitiveness and we've got to keep up. I do not want to be in the place where we were at when I first became

sheriff, you know, uh, and ask yourself, would you do the job they do for what's where's the price mark at? Would you do it for $14 an hour? That's where we were at. Um, we've compared to comparable agencies around um, you know, and we're doing well, but we need to stay there and we don't want to fall behind. And I don't because these young guys, they'll jump in a heartbeat. I probably have some enemies from I shouldn't say enemies, some people mad at me from other local agencies cuz we've hired them. I've hired a couple from Greg over there. Uh and he's c hired a couple from me. So it's very competitive.

Yes, sir. to recruiting. I mean, do you get very many men or women coming like straight out like ETSU with a criminal justice degree that want to come?

We get a few um a few and I have hired a couple people straight um off the street and sent them to the academy. But and I'm not gonna lie, it's it's better for us if we can hire an officer that's been through the academy because you're looking at around $5,000 to send them and then another three or four for their prede. So sending an officer to the academy is close to $10,000 and then you're paying them. Then they takes on if they gra you got to make sure they graduate once they get out of the academy they have to uh go through a 16week FTO program. So, if you hire them in January, they're not going to hit the street till probably that fall. And then um it's uh on the jail side, which is, you know, it's it's really hard. Um it's, you know, they have some pretty high standards, too, but working at jail is not for everybody. Uh, I told you I had the CEO of the medical center and you know, you walk in that jail and when that big door slams behind you, you're kind of like, oh, and I catch myself sometimes, as many times as I'm in there, that when you're in deep in the bowels of that place, you're like, uh, there's no one around to help. So, it takes a special kind of person to We have one pod where you have one officer for about 90 90 inmates. That takes a special person to sit there all day. So,

but based on your retention, sounds like it's going better. It is going way better. Do you experience a lot of people that you put through what you just described and then within 6 months they say, "Well, I'm going to go."

Do we have many? I wouldn't say many. We've had a few. Uh we had one officer that that she had a she just graduated college and she thought she wanted to be an officer and she was very articulate, super smart and went to the academy, did great, got in field training and things started to slide and not to not that she wasn't doing a good job but once she got out on her own she was just like this isn't for me. I don't like all this ugliness. I don't know what I don't like what goes on. Uh, I don't I don't like what I see when I go to these calls. That's the things you don't see and and and the hardships of the job. On that matter though, we were known six years ago, I'm going to say, and somebody correct me if I'm wrong, is we were doing a lot of training for other police departments. And we did have that problem and a lot of different reasons, but we were spending a lot of money according to the sheriff's before that we were spending a lot of money to train other counties and other cities police officers, send them through the academy and things like that. So, it's a problem that could come back.

Well, you're right. Um, one of the things that we're trying to get up and running now is, you know, uh, we, uh, you gave us the money to build a firing range and when we, we first drew that contract out, uh, was to get it to where it could be used for public use. And, you know, maybe we can start generating some revenue with that. Um, we're just now getting though, where we can feel like it's safe, so to speak. So, We're always looking for new ways to try to save taxpayer money.

Sheriff, there's a couple of things that popped into my head that I I don't understand. And you've been really good at thinking outside the box. Um there's so many of those costs that are fixed that we can't cut. Um you can't save in a lot of those categories. The one thing that always puzzled me was comp time. Oh, here we how much time we got. So, you know, a normal job's 8 hours. Mhm.

I don't know what percent of your officers work those 12-hour shifts or why they work a 12-hour shift. Well, and I'm sure you've thought about it, but you can explain to me.

Okay. Uh, we work currently what is known as the Eastman schedule. It's a 12-hour rotating schedule. You work 14 days a month, but you also every 28 days you get a 7-day break. Um, so, you know, we are the one part of the county offices that we work either a 40 or a 44h hour week uh versus a 37.5. if you work in any of the other don't let me say this wrong in in the other departments. So every two weeks an officer that's on a 12-h hour shift he gains 4 hours of comp time that goes on his books and that's an encumbrance uh that we have to pay if they leave. We've had people leave and they have to pay him 50 60 $70,000 in vacation or comp time. Now we've been very fortunate in the past years to be able to pay that comp time down. Uh two years ago we paid everyone's down to zero and they some of them were really aggravated about that because they like to keep a couple weeks in case they want to take it off. Uh we have we've pushed since we've hired more people we haven't had to work work them as much so to speak because just like the jail the jail has 16 positions that you have to have somebody there 24 hours a day. So you there's that's non-negotiable. You have to have people there to for safety reasons, for TCI standards, but the comp time was gained because we were so short-handed. As we brought more people on, we've been able to manage that and keep the comp time down. We don't have overtime in our budget. We we tell them new hires when they start, we don't have we don't budget overtime. We have to give you comp time. And most of the time they're fine with that. Um, if we budgeted overtime, it would be it would be a lot of money. Uh, I'm sure they

probably have the numbers and it's probably in this book, but um, the comp time occurs because at the end of the day, they may work a 12-hour shift and if they make a late arrest, they may be there another two or three more hours. We try to to get them to to work it out to where we can, you know, let them take it off before the pay cycle, but it's hard to do that. Uh it's cuz we're so busy. Did that answer the question correctly? Well, it helped a little bit, but one of the other things I have never understood was why do they all get their own vehicle?

Well, the you're talking about the only only sworn officers have a vehicle. Okay. Um, so you could say, well, you could have half your vehicles and work them and run them 24 hours a day. Well, they only work a quarter of the time, but every time one, they're uh they have they are subject to call out at all times. And every day that they drive back and forth to work, that's a patrol car that's being seen in the community. Um the average day on patrol, you're going to put between 100 150 miles on on that patrol car. Um and uh Allen does a great job with keeping them rolling, but to keep the but at the same time, they also have to drive those cars at times at high rates of speed. So most of our cars within a couple years, they'll be pushing 100,000 miles. Wouldn't you say, Alan? It doesn't take long.

Okay. So, and he said what zone they're in. Well, if you're working the southern end of the county, it's very spread out. You're probably going to put more miles on it versus the north end where it's more densely populated, but they drive them to and fro from work and they're subject to call out. The other point I would make about that visibility in law enforcement is one of the main things that you need to to make the community safe. You never know how many times somebody may be getting ready to commit a crime that a well they see a marked cruiser drive by. You know, big cities see that in well populated downtown areas. When you stop patrolling, whether it be on foot or in a car, you start having trouble.

True teaching, too. Yeah. Or if you're speeding and get stopped. Talking about patrol cars, is that uh when they're driving to and from work, is that I know when I worked for XYZ, I had a company in a car, but I was taxed on that. Were they taxed? Not because No, only that's if they're sworn. If they're a sworn officer, they're not taxed on that. Now, if if there was a nonsworn person that was driving the vehicle, yes, they could be. It's a fringe benefit. All the comp time, please. I know it rolls over. You don't pay overtime, but they get Do they get time and a half for that? They do. So, if they work over four hours, they get paid six hours. Yes.

It's same as overtime. It's just get in a different cabinet. Yes. And uh we just don't we we I've tried to budget in the past for overtime, but it just shoots the I mean it's it's just shoots your budget way up there. If you was going to guess I probably asked if you want to guess on comp time, what's the average comp time through the whole year? What what do you what do you say that number would be on that that an employee acrews? The whole budget per Oh, the whole budget now per year. Way less than it used to be. What would you think?

So, right now, total liability is over 600,000. In the past, it's been over a million, me and a half. Um, we we worked it off of them or paid it off way to I know more officers or more. Have you looked at some way to cut try to get comp time out of there?

Not without raising the budget. I mean, uh, it's just people and and we have seen as at the reason it's at 600,000 and not a million is we have those slots filled up where people can take time off. And I'll be honest with you, it it stresses me out a little bit. Um, I'll I'll give you an example. last night. Uh you you saw we had a guy run wanted down on Conklin and uh it was a big thing and when I looked at the manifest, the lieutenant had was off on comp time and three patrol officers were off on comp time. So I can do the math in my head and I'm like we've only got six or seven people for the entire county and this guy's out here running around. Um so but it's good that they can take comp time. They need it. Um but there again I the without the 12-hour shifts if we had fixed shifts I don't think it'd be any better. Um and then that is I've asked them I've actually done a survey within our department. Would you like to go away from a 12-hour shift? We've talked about the Pitman shift and this and that fixed shift. They always come back to, and sometimes it's by a small margin, but they come back to they like the 12-hour shifts. Um, I worked them for over 20 years, and I hated the nights, but the 7-day break is nice.

But you earn it. Any more questions for the sheriff? You may have just said that. I'm just curious. Do you get extra pay for night shift? No, there's no shift differential.

Yeah, we've we we talked about that too. Um when we're trying to we've talked about going to fixed shifts and would there be a shift differential, but um Bristol PD recently changed their shift and we ended up there was three of them came to us. We're like we're not doing that. So that's how easy, you know, you upset people and some they don't want to do it and they leave. And I don't want us to be in that position. And I want to say this, I'm very thankful for how the commission has worked with us. It's it's a direct uh result of why we've been able to hire people and why we are now uh the numbers are where we're at. But as I stated in the beginning, we need some more people and we've got to be able to retain them.

No other questions. I'll let somebody else have a turn.

All right. Thank you, Sheriff. Thank you. All right. Is there any other officials would like to come up and speak? Seeing none, we'll return back to the agenda. Well, since

Commissioner Tucker, so like again, we've got to meet the budget has got to meet again Thursday morning to look at the what we talked about tonight. So, I just didn't know if there's anybody had any recommendations if they anybody had anything to say. The sheriff's budget is up. Uh the special appropriation is up and as you all know, the money's not there as of now. So, school systems up, huh? the school system

and we haven't even we haven't even the budget has not even talked about any kind of raises for any of the county employees. That's something else that we'll have to bring back to you all opinions at this time.

What's the status of the school budget? sent the school budget back today and told them more or less they're going to have to fix on what funds they got available. Brought it back again today. They cut 600 700,000 off of it. They asked to spend another million dollars on top of the million they already requested for sales tax and the mayor recommend you came that it ain't it ain't there. If the sales tax would drop off, they wouldn't have to spend. So that spin was was cut out and then we sent their budget back and told them that they gonna have to fix it their own budget. Is that correct, mayor? Did I say that right?

Yeah. They um their their finishing fund balance last year was around $42 million and um they're they're asked to spend um over their 97 million. So basically the budget fee, bring it back to us, figure out reduce it as much as you can and pay for it out of your house. And so that may take them below this uh you know sort of fictitious request of um months worth of uh

I think they said their expense was 8 million. So they want to have 16 million in their fund balance, but there's no law saying that they have to have that. Three half million reserve the 22 million is that is that end of this year? last year.

And so they're they're they're projecting it finishing at 16 or something. Um their projections have consistently been about 20% below. I don't know how it's going to finish. That's but but even with even at 16 million, they have the ability to absorb that in So you may not know this exactly but the last 3 four years where did their fund balances finished?

Know exactly they had a charge reported earlier today with the their projected fund balance and their actual fund balance and it's always been more well for the last couple of years it's finished in the 20 million range.

Okay. Also, in the last four years, we've done the report and I called Brad and which I've done some my own, they've lost about 550 to 575 kids in the last four years. If you take what the state gives them, that's close to $4 million they lost because of population of the schools. and they actually hired n from 2023 to now they they've got nine more teachers in the school system now and 550 plus less students. So a recommendation that we talked to them about today is maybe go back and look at I think it comes down do you remember was it 11 kids per per teacher if you break if you take total students to total teacher I think it's average 11 in a classroom u central is 30 some% full branch is 40ome% full so

with the number of those out of county and if you and they they still don't charge tuition out of county students and if they sent those out of county students back to their counties, you'd have to close those two schools and they won't discuss it. So probably but they now I did ask the question they still get was it 50 some student. Yeah, they still get that when they come but you're correct on that. I mean if you live in if you live in Washington County and your child comes to Johnson City School, you pay tuition, right? What's their cost per student now? 12. Is that Is that

I don't think it's I don't think it's What was the question? I think uh Director Boyd said it was a little over 9 96 98. It varies greatly between schools though. I mean those schools you're talking about, it's a lot higher than than than a school that's got a reasonable population. But Jerry also made a comment that he's getting micro bench. by us. That comment was made at their last board meeting. I was I asked about it today.

Yeah. Um you know, all we've done is ask them for years to make some, you know, to look at the tough decisions. I don't ever hear them even discuss the tough decisions in a public meeting. But uh that's and we asked them to I asked them to look at our last joint meeting at some things that shouldn't be tough decisions. Some of the expenses that they have and they they they're not big expenses but there are expenses and no discussion of that either that I've seen and not at least in public if they're you know which is the only place they should be discussing. So anyway, that's the answer to the schools. We've asked them to fun themselves on balance and um so I think um it'd be really helpful for the budget committee to to have input. Um, and you know, we faced a difficult decision with the sheriff because we all really are proud of the way our public safety has changed during his term in office and with the team he's built for for a lot of different ways, but he's I think we're down now to about a a $2.2 $.2 million increase as for the things that now his his piece of the budget part of that $2.2 million is a salary change. He's asked roughly I think $2 per person. And so that's um

what's that equate to total? Just the salary. You break it up. I think we broke that out. the biggest the biggest budget is now except the four police cars in the you know

so we have we have 10 new associates uh 10 new employees requested after more or less $70,000 each and four of them patrols so there's another 70 for a vehicle to report that I mean that's what we're looking at. Do we get total salary 972 vehicles and

so the vast major vast majority would so that's you know that's going to be really the decision is how much of that you know can be absorbed without a tax increase. I mean, it's e it's easy to to match property tax revenue pennies to those dollars. You know, even my simple minded may have to do that. But that's not really the point. Point is how much, you know, can we how much of this you know what, you know, the sheriff has tried to convey is necessary public safety expense. How much can we absorb without a change in the tax rate? Um that's you know that's that's the dilemma that budget committee will be wrestling with day after tomorrow put that as you might have because ultimately it comes back here for final decision and I think budget committee certainly myself and I think I speak mission we want to support public safety to the highest degree that we can possibly we afford to do. So, um is there anything else that we need to know? Again, we've got that and we'll begin to look at um special appropriations and that all ties together. And then um the final decision will be a recommendation as to what general salary increase Ed across the county.

We will we start with the sheriff's budget first Thursday because we may not it may take that time to do that. He's very nice sitting to all his meet. I hate for him to sit there two hours and special appropriation then not be able to get him. So So we'll put him first. Yeah, we got the sheriff. I've seen him much today as as anybody or them.

Um, anything else that we need to try to touch on before we reconvene? the um the budget committee has gone through line by line virtually every other office holder's budget changes some tweaking. Um we looked at every item with the exception of salary and that's anything else mayor. All right. Any comments or statements we'd like to make before we have a motion to adjurnn.

Motion to adjurnn. There's the motion to adjurnn. Do I have a second? Second of the journey by Commissioner Jones. All in favor of journ signify by saying I. All opposed.