Board of Commissioners - workshop

Good evening, everybody.

Good evening, everybody. I'm going to go ahead and get us to order here and start the work in session. Hey, Andrew, can you hear me? Okay, folks. Folks, we're going to get going. We'll go now to roll call.

Commissioner be met President Commissioner hot. Commissioner lavar your mission or life. Commissioner much yes, your mission or Robbie. Commissioner Sanders President mission or Scott.

I am here.

Commissioner somerville. Commissioner somerville.

I was I was distracted i'm present here, thank you.

great to have you commissioner lay thank you we'll move to uh public participation at the working session you have one minute to provide comment uh either in person or online at the full board meeting directly following this meeting you will have three minutes to provide public comment is there anyone here in person tonight who wishes to provide public comment at this time okay Chair Max Fennell, Asher note, no one in person, I look to you to see if anybody is online there's not online chair break. Chair Max Fennell, move then to item three report from the county administrator.

Chair Max Fennell, Of the report at this time to break.

And back, Ashley, to you, any report from Director of Board Operations?

No report tonight, Chair.

Wonderful. We'll move into our first of two items tonight. We're fortunate to have Shannon Eifler here with us tonight to give us an update on the Senior Nutrition Program. She is our Director of Aging Services here in Washtenaw County. And Shannon, as you adjust the podium, I'll continue to talk in order to fill time. Great. I will turn it over to you. I know you have a robust presentation. Yes. So let's let Shannon get through it. If there is a burning question that has to be asked right away, I'll try and accommodate that. If not, hopefully we can save it until we get through the slide deck and then go from there. Shannon, thank you.

Sounds good. All right, Ashley, if you want to go to the very beginning, is that the beginning? Okay, no problem. All right. So thanks for having me. I'm the Director of Aging Services for Washtenaw County. I am here to talk about the Senior Nutrition Program. So the goals for today, this working session, is to update you on the strategic planning process. share a status of our senior nutrition program, and then provide context for the senior nutrition program resolution that's on the board agenda. It's also an opportunity to receive feedback and input from each of you as we continue along this transition of the senior nutrition program. So I heard loud and clear when I started in January that the BOC wanted me to do a strategic, conduct a strategic planning process of the senior nutrition program. So phase one of that has been completed. And what we did was we conducted anonymous interviews with the partners. So those that we are contracted with to provide the senior nutrition program. We did a very thorough document review, so we conducted extensive review of existing programmatic data. We did research not only regionally on best practices for senior nutrition programs, but on a national level. And then we also hosted six stakeholder meetings, including convening all of the 14 partners of senior nutrition most recently. A step that we definitely want to include in phase two of the strategic planning is gaining more feedback and input from older adults themselves. Part of this process was really hoping to define what is the vision for senior nutrition in our county and the whole team really identified a lot that we want to accomplish so in the interest of time i'll just highlight a few of these that we want to ensure that there is a daily hot meal. Sorry for each for every older adult who needs one in our county we want to make sure that meals are tailored to individual medical and dietary needs, we want to ensure that there are fair Labor practices for the people who prepare deliver and serve meals. Additionally, we want to have reliable meal delivery and Community dining options that reduce isolation and we also want to support innovative cross sector partnerships that strengthen collaboration across the county. So now i'll just remind you guys of what the structure of the program is so there are two main types of senior nutrition in our county so home delivered meals. Often called meals on wheels composes 92% of the meals that we provide and then congregate meals, known as senior cafes is 8% so much, much less than home delivered meals. We have 14 are you guys. We have 14 partners that serve roughly 300,000 meals annually to older adults throughout Washtenaw County. So you can see in this list and all of the commissioners I know are very well connected to these organization and understand how they function. So you can easily see that there's a large spectrum, right? There are organizations here that are very small and have very small budgets. And then there are organizations on here that are quite large and have very robust operations. They also provide different things. So we have partners who are only doing home delivered meals. We have partners who are doing home delivered meals and senior cafes. And then we have partners that are only doing senior cafes. Okay. Okay, the two largest programs in the county are Ipsy Meals on Wheels and Ann Arbor Meals on Wheels. And they are by far the two largest programs in the county. And then Chelsea Senior Center has the largest congregate dining program. So let's talk about some of the strengths of the SNP program. So this is hearing, these are from the anonymous interviews that we conducted. So a shared lunch is a gateway to friendship. And I think friendship means a lot. It means something different across the lifespan and especially when you are an older adult. Friendship means a reduction in mental health challenges. Friendship means connection to resources that you need. Friendship means that there's a speedy detection of change in someone's cognition. There's a lot of pride in our county that we do not have wait lists for meals for older adults. And the lunch at senior centers promotes participation and other programming, it can be a gateway both home delivered meals and senior cafes can be a gateway to getting more connected to Community resources, including the senior centers. Okay, so spending just a minute here, one great strength of our program is that our program is very hyper localized. So with that comes a lot of beauty, right? It's a better fit for local needs, there's faster response, there's greater accessibility, there's more social connection, there's stronger trust and participation, and there's early identification of problems. It also has consequences to this hyper localized model, one being it costs more to do this, right? We are funding 14 different partners to deliver the meals or create the meals. So they then have their own infrastructure that has to be supported through these funds. The administrative burden that that equates to not only on their end to us, but also on our end to each of them is great. So we are providing technical assistance and programmatic support across all those 14 organizations. The business acumen level of each of those organization varies. Some are really well versed in it, some need a lot of support. So there are consequences to this hyper localized model. And that's something that I want feedback from you all on is as we continue strategic planning, is this the direction that we want to continue to go? It is in line with the BOC's priorities of health, hunger, and housing. In line with health, the early identification of health concerns, mobility, cognitive or mental health regarding hunger. Obviously, it provides nutritious, age-appropriate meals and housing. It helps people stay in their homes for as long as possible, which is critical for older adults and their loved ones. It's also very in line with our designation as an age-friendly community, providing the ability for folks to live in their home for as long as it's safely possible is a huge component of having an age-friendly community. Okay, so now we talked about a lot of the strengths of the program. Now I'm going to just remind you of how we're structured regarding funding. So it comes from federal and state dollars. And then also the older person's millage provides additional funds for this program. I wanted to highlight that what the current allocation level to senior nutrition, when we look at the full pot of money that's available in the millage is very significant. So we are making a very significant investment in senior nutrition. We need to be mindful of that because we have other very significant areas that we also need to support and provide resources to, and those are listed there. Home-delivered meals has increased in recent years, and so there's been a need for additional dollars for that. Senior cafes, there has not been a great increase, and this is not unique to Washtenaw County. Really post-COVID, there was a drop in people accessing or finding it enjoyable to go to senior cafes but we do have a goal within the senior nutrition program to change that and see more people physically coming in to senior centers and getting their meals that way Okay, so back to a lot of the research that we did regionally and nationally that is displayed in front of you. So really what I want to say is that meal prices vary across the country and region. So we were really looking at how our partners are getting reimbursed. As you know, they are getting reimbursed from their Age Ways allocation anywhere between 75 cents a meal to $5. So they're getting, there's a big spectrum of variability there. and i felt strongly that we need to standardize that across the board so in order to identify what is the appropriate cost of the meal we need to do some research right so regionally we found that meals are being reimbursed at anywhere between six dollars and ten dollars and thirty cents per meal When I attended the National Meals on Wheels Conference, at that conference, attendees reported that meals cost between $10 and $14. A national study found that both home delivered meals and congregate meals cost over $15. So there's a lot of variability. It's very gray. And that's really because what does that meal mean? So are you including what's included in that price of providing the meal also varies greatly. so we felt strongly to lean more on the high end of regionally because we are so hyper localized and we do have fabulous caterers that are really incorporating nutritious and local food into what they're providing to older adults and deserve to be compensated in that way so I'll get into that in a second okay so now on to challenges So I shared that partners across the county have been reimbursed for meals at different rates. So the reason that this is a challenge is because it creates an inequity. We are not a super large county. And so we do need to move more towards a standardized way. So as of right now, each partner receives up to $5 per meal based on their actual expenses and then their variable reimbursement rate from ageways on top of that. Another challenge is that the county currently receives data from our partners in a lot of different ways. It could be handwritten and scanned to us or faxed to us. They could be doing, they could be logging into the county serve tracker, which is our database system and entering the data directly, which we would prefer for them to do. They could be submitting spreadsheets through emails. And so what does that equate to our team is that it's administrative. The burden of that is really high. And a big note that I'll touch on right now, it also lends itself to inaccuracies in the data that we're then submitting to our funder. And it also is very time consuming to be able to filter all this data coming in in different ways. On the flip side, what we found through our anonymous interviews were that partners felt that the administrative burden in data requirements was very high. And that is, it is probably very true, but that also is determined by the funder ageways on what data we need to collect, and that is federally identified. Okay, So what I would like to share is that the county's pro program right now is currently on probation from ageways, and that's for 2 main reasons. So it is for inaccuracy and monthly fiscal reporting. So kind of tied what I just described, and then late submission of programmatic reporting, so not meeting the deadlines that ageways has identified. A consequence of that is that there's about $1.1 million that we would have access to on an annual basis when the next round of funding starts on October 1st. And because of our probationary status, they are allowing us access to 50% of that right now, roughly. And then once we are able to get off probation, which we are working diligently to do, then we can access the roughly other 50% of it. So you'll see that outlined here. I do feel like the main, the crux of why we are on probation is really about the data. It's really about communication and making sure that from the county side and the partner side that we are moving as one in the same direction. So I am confident that we will be able to move off probation, but it will take us some time. Okay, so looking ahead, we do have many strengths with this program and incredible partners. Some of them are here tonight and we also have room to improve. So we are, the SNP operating structure is changing. This is a huge transition for all of us. OCD has operated the senior nutrition program for over 40 years. This is a long time. The office of aging services for all intensive purposes started in January. We started the strategic planning process in May, hiring an excellent food systems strategy consultant, Lily, who's here tonight as well. And then we also hired an amazing Office of Aging Services Administrator, Chloe Updegraff, who is here tonight as well. Yeah. So, and then October 1st is fastly approaching, right? And so this, I just want to acknowledge and thank OCD for all of their hard work over the decades and managing this program and acknowledge that this is going to be a transition for everyone, including the current staff of the Senior Nutrition Program. then as i mentioned we are moving towards standardization equity and transparency so for partners which are the majority of our partners that use a caterer that the county contracts with which would be jfs and the chelsea school system we will reimburse at a flat rate of five dollars per meal We pay JFS or Nourish, the caterer, $7.50. I'm showing you that because that means the total cost of that is roughly $12.50. For the two partners, which are YMAL and AMAL that use the contract with their own caterer, and they also conduct their own assessment, which is a requirement of the program to determine eligibility for home delivered meals, we are reimbursing at a flat rate of $10 per meal. So that's what we are proposing. The partners were convened. We discussed this with them. And I do believe that we have a support in moving towards or moving forward with this model. then we're addressing probation in multiple ways and i won't go into all these in the interest of time but one we're really going to be focusing on clear communication and reporting expectations with our partners including pursuing corrective action with them if they are not meeting deadlines or are not able to produce the data accurately that we need we have new staff support that i mentioned we have a new hired administrator Pending your approval, we will have a financial and reporting manager, which is going to be essential to continuing to move us off probation. And then we will, this is the first phase of the strategic planning process. So we will continue to conduct a full analysis of the program. This will be ever happening, including I would like to implement an evaluation of the program going forward. So we can really see what impact this program has on our county. And I've also made commitments to the partners that you can see in front of you. So what the county is committing to partners, promoting transparency and being highly collaborative. And then I also asked the partners to commit to the county. So to complete monthly reporting in a timely manner, ensure that they have adequate training for volunteers and remain, as they have been, remain responsive to the unique needs of their community. Investment of millage dollars is essential to continuing this program. The amount of money, again, if we have access to the full amount, is about 1.1 million. The request is 2.4 million that we'll fund on top of that. That also includes the funding of the staff, the county staff that are implementing the program. If we have all of that in one pot, that equates to roughly 3.5 million. This will allow for a roughly 9% meal increase across partners and continuing a focus on medically tailored and culturally appropriate meals that we have been able to institute with the millage dollars. Okay. So finally, I just want to thank you for your support of older adults in Washington County. Remind you that this is the first step, the first phase of strategic planning. There is more to come. I'm happy to come back and speak with you in a few months and give you an update on how the process is continuing. And then I'm also really happy to share on another note, we will be releasing the older person's millage request for proposals tomorrow. So there will be two proposals released. One is the high impact, which is a one-time ask, and then one to fund ongoing programs and services for older adults called the Home and Community Aging Impact. So we're really excited to continue to get millage dollars out into internal county operations and to external organizations. So with that, I'd love to open it up for discussion, particularly getting feedback and input on your perspective on this hyper-localized model and where we go from here.

Thank you. I know we'll have questions. We have them already. We'll move to Commissioner Maciejewski.

Thank you, Chair. Shannon, thank you very much for the presentation. I've only written down six questions so far. make him go last and cognizant of the time. Uh, I want, first off the probationary status was something you discovered. This was something that's existed for some time. This is not new. Didn't just happen. Um, so I want to make everybody aware of that, that this was something that in going through the process of coming to the County that he discovered this, um, and And so I commend you on the strategic planning process, something I would very much wanted to be a part of your office. And it is yielding great results in a vision for the future here. I want to go back to the very beginning, though, and ask, you wrote a daily hot meal for every older adult in Washington County who needs one. John Kane- So the program that's funded by age ways, the regular federal state funded program there's eligibility criteria right so when when you say needs one some of those who might not be eligible for federal or state standard. John Kane- Is your vision to go beyond what what the old Americans act requires in terms of eligibility.

Well, my original vision when I started with the county was to ensure that there was access to any for anyone who wants one. Right. But I think that we really need to spend the next year looking at what this if you approve the allocation, what where does that get us? What the what we projected thus far is it will not fully fund the current program. So meaning the bigger, robust entities like email and why now we are not fully funding what they are providing. And so I would like to explore that and see where we can go. And it's similar in vein to transportation for older adults right now. We don't have large restrictions on that. And I think that that's an amazing thing. And so I'd like to explore it, but I need more time to really see what are we hitting and are we maxing out on the money allocation.

John Kane, regarding the number of people that are on the program expressing interest in the program you noted that we list are growing across the country. John Kane, For instance, grand rapids just started a waitlist yes within the last month or two for their program and they are millage supported as well yeah and so can't county just started a waitlist. John Kane, To get to your hyper localized question. John Kane, um. John Kane, Absolutely, there are certain advantages to that I think that kind of approach is appropriate, and I hope it would lead to our ability to be dynamic and inflexible in terms of what we are doing. John Kane, Getting into medically tailored meals and potentially meal choice and things like that I think a localized model can can react to that yeah. John Kane, And what a local. Would a localized model allow you to do more hot meals versus something that isn't localized, which might be frozen?

Right.

So I support the idea of that because I think it gives us more flexibility and more options, I think, in the long run. I guess my last question is an operations question in terms of the responsibilities that your office is taking versus what you're having the local, the distribution sites do. When it comes to the assessments that are required, and this is part of the documentation that Ageways is looking for, who is actually doing the assessments at this point? County related, or is it the individual sites are having people do assessments?

We have. We have a county staff person who's half time, so she's 0.5 Fte, and she conducts the assessments except for a Mal and Y. Mal, and they employ their own folks that are doing the assessments.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Sure. Thank you for the time and the opportunity to ask multiple questions. Thank you. You bet.

Thank you. Other questions? Commissioner Beeman, then Commissioner Sanders.

Thank you, Chair. Oh, that's left, sorry. Okay.

Mine is, whoa, wait.

all right one week it was too quiet I know now I'm screaming the house down uh sorry uh mine is more just kind of thinking less of a question and more thinking about that localized model um being a commissioner with very rural districts the rural communities tend to feel left out when we start to consolidate when we start to pull things together they feel that either they won't receive the same level of service, they won't have the same seat at the table, that sort of thing, in part just based on population, right? These are very small rural communities. Their senior centers aren't nearly the size of others. And you go to Ann Arbor, it's some of these bigger spaces. So I completely understand wanting to do things at scale and efficiencies and all of that, that really, and again, to Commissioner Maciejewski's point, how we can respond in some ways, how we can engage in some ways. So just keeping that in mind, not saying there aren't ways to improve, Right. Just sort of keeping that in mind as we as we look at the model, how we can continue to engage and keep those great partnerships that we have selfishly, especially for district three.

Yeah. Heard. Thank you.

Move to Commissioner Sanders.

Shannon, thank you for the presentation. So I've got a couple of questions as well. So Up until recently, I was one of the representatives sitting on the Age Ways board and I came to learn that this is not the first time we've been put on probation for the senior nutrition program. And so I'm curious about who could help me understand how many times have we been on probation? How long, what is the timeframe that that spans? Over how many years? I actually expressed to the Age Ways Board my dissatisfaction with being a commissioner that sits on their board and was not given the courtesy notice to let us to let me know um that we've not been doing what we were supposed to be doing so i don't know that this is a question for you um but I've got some concerns about that. So I do I do want to understand how this could have been an ongoing issue and that I know of we were not made aware. I also have a question about what is the 250 per meal difference between $5 and 750? Why is it? Why is it such a difference?

the 750 is how much we pay or we pay nourish jfs the caterer to produce the meal we're paying the five dollars to the entities that are for like providing the meal if that makes sense so it's like the development of the meal versus you're providing it either in-house in a senior cafe or delivering it so our total cost of the county is 12.50. okay so

Chelsea Schools does not create the meal?

They do. I just didn't put it up on that slide how much we paid them per meal, but I can get you that information. Okay. So I...

because i know that this is transitioning to you and has is it october 1st yep has yet to transition to you um who am i asking the questions about trying to get the information regarding the enactment yeah i can ask my ellis my colleague to come up but i i would like to say that probation is like the second step in corrective action so my understanding and ellis can correct me that

we haven't been on probation in recent years, but we've been on and off that first step of corrective action.

Yeah.

And we're going to just hear from the administrator real quick too.

Sure.

So I just want to say too, we definitely have the ability commissioner to get you some detailed understanding of like what the history is, uh, what we've been doing about that history, how we come to find out about it, but also, um, what the steps are to make sure we never get back to that point. So Ellis be happy to hear your answer to the commissioner's question, but also just want to make sure, you know, commissioner, we can get you a lot more detailed information following the meeting.

Thank you.

Yep. Sorry. Can you rephrase your question or not rephrase? Can you state your question again?

Sure. Basically, I'm trying to understand where was the chink in the armor that allowed us to be on probation more than once over a sort of an ongoing time period?

Yeah. So I think broadly, as Shannon mentioned, lots of data, lots of different sources of receiving that data. The way that the programs work is the county is reimbursed based on units delivered, and those units delivered are what Ageways uses to report to the state. So they're very strict on, one, the turnaround time in monthly reporting on what those units are from sites, because that goes into what their data is in the state for their monthly and quarterly reporting. Um. So if there are errors or variances in our communication with sites, or in our transcribing the data into those reports, that creates a gap for age ways that creates problems. And so for, I think, in our the situation that we're in currently, there was a mismatch in how how ageways interprets the data that they're receiving from us versus what the data we had was being provided with our vendor so we've worked to identify what are those issues what are the reports that ageways is using translating that for them to correct the data to make sure that they get the right steps that they need and communicating to sites here is what it needs to look like or here is how we're Amending the data we're receiving so that H ways has accurate numbers, we are able to verify track it and move forward with that.

Okay, so thank you for that response. I have a bit more information that i'm not going to share at the board, but I will say. That my concern would be, and I hear. I hear Mr. Jackson's response that we should not have to go back to this situation again, but hopefully it's clear, right? That there's no excuse for ongoing inaccuracies or late submissions. That to me, that's a performance improvement issue and or leadership slash communication. Because if we have staff that are doing these jobs and they're not being given what they need in order to do them, we should be fixing that. Or we should be trying to find out if their leadership is aware and is still not making any corrective actions. So I'm putting it out there because I was livid uh to be sitting on that board um and to me actually be embarrassed to find out that this has been a problem and they never and i of course i let them know i shared with ageways that i was not okay with being a representative for this county having something be wrong with with what we were submitting or not submitting and then not being told so that there could be some additional eyes on or inquiries about how to get it fixed. So this isn't a continuing program problem. I want to say thank you, Shannon, because I think we've put a whole lot on your platter in a very short period of time. You are inheriting. I don't want to say passing the trash, but you're inheriting situations that need to be fixed that you didn't have anything to do with. And so that takes a whole lot of moxie or hair on the back of your neck, whatever you want to call it. But I appreciate you for doing what we've asked you to do and identifying for us what needs to be fixed so that we don't stay in this situation. And I have full faith that you'll be able to sort of lasso this so that this is fixed and we can be in good standing so appreciate you both for answering the question for your input there thank you thank you move to uh commissioner scott

Thank you very much, Chair. My questions may end up being somewhat similar to Commissioner Sanders, some of the questions she asked. I'm going to say, I think you know this, that I was pretty deeply concerned about learning about the probation. I want to echo what Commissioner Maciejewski said about knowing that you've taken this on and what I've heard Commissioner Sanders say, too. But I personally am frustrated that we're only learning of this now. I know that Commissioner Sanders is saying that she believes ageways should have told her something, but I feel embarrassed for the county that she didn't know that herself. So I have some questions that you probably don't know. Maybe. Maybe Tony knows the answer to these.

Yeah.

Tony. I have a question. How long has the program been on probation?

Just a month and a half approximately.

Has it been on probation before?

It's been on corrective action before. Okay. And mind you, that information was shared with administration at the time. That's what I was going to say. So who was first notified and aware of it? we receive notifications from ageways which we pass along that information to administration and was that just the former administrator or other people in administration it is when you say administration who an administration the county administrator and nobody else It is sometimes copied to the Deputy County Administrator as well. Was this copied to the Deputy Administrator?

Notification of this?

This recent probation? No.

Or corrective actions?

In the past, yes, the corrective actions.

But this recent one was not. And you said it's been a month and a half?

Which we shared with our current County Administrator.

Because a month and a half ago, the Administrator was not Administrator Dill. correct but you're telling me this probation was notified to administrator Dill former corrective actions we can have emails forwarded to you okay that's not what I heard I asked how long is this program run on probation you said a month and a half I asked who was notified of it when you said the former administrator so somehow the timeline's not quite working out for me i am have a problem with this not being brought to the board earlier being placed on probation by one of our key partners is significant and i would like to understand why we didn't know about these things or corrective actions when this board has very specifically tried to work to make things better for seniors in this county and said that addressing hunger was one of our main things so this feels like a big oversight misstep to me that i'm happy we're getting caught up with now but i'll just be looking for more answers as we go forward we share all of the information with the office of aging services as well we get that information from shannon with this process so thank you yeah and we would love the opportunity ourselves sometimes to be able to present as well thank you chair uh go to commissioner robbie then back to commissioner sanders

uh okay i have just a much lighter question i think just to cut through the tension a little bit there not not for tony necessarily uh but um shannon in your slides you had um A slide I believe that had two categories listed one was deliveries one was congregate meals and. When you listed the one for deliveries, you had in quotations meals on wheels yeah, but the reality is is meals on wheels is a designation is a name of a nonprofit but it's not just meals on wheels that provide distributed at home meal. Current right yeah yes.

yeah it's kind of um that is a separate organization a separate like designation if you are going to call yourself meals on wheels and we have two of those organizations email and why now that do that but the rest of the entities that are providing home delivered meals they don't call themselves that they don't have that strong designation but they're interchangeable. Like people use it and say, oh, that's Meals on Wheels, but it's not necessarily Meals on Wheels.

Okay. That's the slide. Thank you, Ashley, for pulling that up. And the one before it too. But this one I think just kind of shows to me kind of what, so I got a little confused with your slide before this because it said Meals on Wheels, but then Meals on Wheels, but then 92%. So that makes it seem like the two Meals on Wheels organizations do 92% of the meals. Then the next slide. shows that there's several other organizations that do home delivery um which may uh constitute which do constitute presumably part of that 92 percent they do yes i just wanted to clarify that thank you yeah um the other thing i wanted to say is around a concept that um you sort of touched on and then you touched that i really appreciate what you're doing with the reimbursement mechanism um you know setting the amount that is reimbursed per you know entity depending on whether they use the county's centralized food distributor versus not i think that um that makes a ton of sense to me i thank you for doing the work on that um It seems to me right at the beginning of your presentation, the first slide, I believe you talked about some of the disparate and varying organizational structures with contract agencies that we have. Some have better business acumen than others, etc. It seems to me that this is an area that is ripe for I don't want to say centralization, but I want to say I want to basically pull into this conversation a concept that Commissioner Sanders, I think, has talked about time and time and time again around coordination of nonprofits. if there is 14 different nonprofits that each have their own hr director that each have their own finance director that's a inefficiency in the system and if there are ways that we can create a centralized hub of services that each of the 14 or however many nonprofits can sort of use and then that potentially would impact you know uh we'd still give them a reimbursement for this actual service that they're providing but maybe we could use some of the resources to you know create a cooperative service center where some of those internal services can be streamlined so that there are less variations in the administration of the funds that we're discussing something to consider moving forward yes heard and I think that we want to explore all options while still balancing keeping the value that we do have in our county

of what I call hyperlocalization. So how can we balance those things? So I would like to look at all options.

I think balance is key. I do think that I was excited to hear that Chelsea Schools is a provider. I think that's actually awesome. I think we do have a lot of subsets in terms of our regional preferences within the county. I think seniors in Ann Arbor may have a different palette than seniors in Chelsea or Dexter or Manchester. and so having the food cooked and created in the communities I think there's a lot that makes sense that and I love the government to government partnership and the support for our schools I think there's something there's a potentially sort of beautiful relationship there especially given that we're talking about schools where our youth are being educated and seniors being fed so I think that's an incredible opportunity and I could see that as an area where we yeah that we actually allow for other school districts to potentially have that similar partnership. But then I do think that there are some areas where we don't need the regionalization, so to speak, and that there can be more of a centralization that I think is what you're going for with this. And I really commend that effort. I think it makes a ton of sense.

Thank you.

The last quick thing I wanted to say, too, is on our probation and some of the comments that were made. You know, what I heard Tony say is that the deputy or the administrator was notified a month and a half ago. It sounds like, you know, in the context of board actions, you know, things do move relatively slowly. We only meet once every, you know, twice a month. Over the summer, it's once every month. So I don't know when the notification came in. I do want to say, though, you know, I, I believe that this is a difficult transition. We're moving from one department to a new department. And despite the fact that there is this, you know, probationary period, I think that you and Tony are collaborating on this and Ellis are collaborating on this to try to bring the county to a good spot. I don't think that it's valuable to delineate anyone as having, you know, dropped the ball here. I think that we can all work together to move our organization into compliance um and i think that uh it is important that we highlight the immense task that it has been for ocd to maintain this department under tony's leadership but under other directors as well who have maintained this program for over 40 years and that now it is being passed off to you. And I think that we should be approaching this from a collaborative perspective, bringing department heads together, which I think the administrator has been doing. And I support that effort. I support our staff in their both roles and the role that they can play in helping to move our organization forward in a collaborative way under the

uh able and steady guidance of our administrator thank you thank you uh can i go back to commissioner sanders unless anybody who hasn't asked a question has one at this time sure commissioner somerville i have a question i just want to thank shannon for all the work that you're doing it's really great and i remember how difficult it was for us to fight for this office to set up this way but i'm really grateful every time you come before us i know that it was the right decision for us to make so thank you thank you

Go to Commissioner Sanders.

So I think this my questions would be for Tony. I'm interested in knowing. How many times have we been on corrective action? Under your leadership. And did you inherit where we under corrective action when you moved into the position?

um so i'm looking at old emails that were sent to administration um about grant deadlines about coming off of corrective actions there's a stream of emails which and also a chart that we prepared that we shared with the current administrator of what history we could find because and I have only been with OCD for several years and the history goes back longer than that. But I do have a stream of emails that we can certainly share to show that OCD has been communicating with administration related to age ways issues. There was no attempt to hide information.

So then my next question is.

Commissioner Sanders, I apologize.

The administrator indicated you wanted to say something. Just that I think this is why my earlier comment around getting you the details in a minimal format so that we can lay out all of this as we just review the spreadsheet that Tony was alluding to. But also there's a lot of information here. There's a long history. To answer your question specifically, some of this does predate Director Kanyomi. So there's a long history here with the program, 40 years that we've overseen this program as a county. So there's a lot of information there. So I would just ask that we take the time to get you all of the information in a factually stated memo with all the information that you need. But did we also focus on how we move forward, so I don't want to discount the question i'm not trying to do that at all, but I think. us taking the time to really get you the information is hard to do so with Tony pulling our phone and trying to read emails there's a lot of information here that I don't want to. And we could litigate operational issues here from the board table, I would just ask that we try to do that a little bit differently.

um respectfully i hear what you're saying i'm still going to ask my last question because what i'm concerned about is if this was shared administratively my question is does a director of a department not have the leeway to manage their staff so you may not want to answer it here and that's fine but I'm putting it out there because although the goal is not to like litigate this, but I will say this, we owe an explanation to our residents.

There were HR issues.

We don't have to go into detail, but if I'm director of a department and I've got things that are not being done, yes, I should share with my supervisor. But if I'm a director, I should have full opportunity to make whatever corrective actions are necessary. without having to say, can I do a pip? What can I do here? So I will allow Interim County Administrator Jackson to share that information. But I also don't want to be in a situation where, now that we know about it residents are asking questions and we are not able to answer those questions and although we'll get the information it's not going to be publicly disseminated and we're still. So. i'll let you off the hook i'll wait for that report, but, as I said before, probably more so than anybody else. i'm pissed off about so and we can correct it all day long but it's still not a good look and um i don't think it should be pushed up under the rug either and certainly appreciate your uh feelings um but not really able to talk about hr union issues in a public setting um yeah i'm asking for anybody's name or badge numbers

uh wonderful discussion any any other questions on this item John Potter, Tony and Shannon Thank you so much and Shannon just a quick note of Thank you to you because I inappropriately asked you to consider expediting slideshow and you managed to do that. John Potter, And so I appreciate it I didn't mean to truncate it, but these these things can go lots of different directions, but thank you you're doing a great job.

well thank you i i'm glad i hit that mark 15 minutes but i also just want to quickly um think we do have some of our partners in the in the audience i like for them to stand real fast and just be acknowledged and then we also have lily and chloe if you guys could stand because this is a large team effort and also want to thank um the scene the current senior nutrition program marty kara and barb so thank you everybody for being here

Paul Minehart, wonderful. Paul Minehart, we'll move on, then to our second item. Paul Minehart, colleagues, I hope you had a chance I sent an email communication earlier this week about this item trying to just alert us to it. Paul Minehart, We had talked at items for current or future discussion about some board rules changes and the potential for that. One of the things we've heard, I think, in leadership lately is a desire for process uh that that is um i guess i would say uh constructive rather than responsive and we're hopeful that this is a step towards that outcome um these are sort of leadership's first attempt to try and suggest some modifications to our board rules really to you know get uh more consistency and more uh uh expedited deliberations um would welcome feedback from colleagues now discussion uh as indicated in the memo uh based on tonight we would try and bring something back that accommodates some of the input we've heard here and tries to uh you know find a workable way forward for uh for something we can form consensus on uh Commissioner Somerville I saw your uh hand up go to you

yeah um I guess just out the gate I um would like to say I am supportive of limiting commissioner follow-up to public comment um to five minutes for a commissioner I'm not supportive of us limiting public comment to 60 minutes in the beginning of our meeting I would be supportive of limiting public comment in the beginning of our meeting to residents um and then allowing non-residents of the county to speak after we're done with business but I just want to those are my two things and I'll leave it to everyone else uh real quick any thanks because that's exactly the sort of feedback we're hoping to get so uh Commissioner Robbie

thank you chair I will um give the first half of my comments uh I'm going through this sort of an order um giving you specific feedback um and then I'll stop and let you talk you know call on other people but um I guess the first thing is I just had a question why why change the annual meeting date what's the purpose of that actually I'm gonna skip to you on that one uh

I actually believe that was from our Corporation Council. It was a comment that the annual meeting date needed to change due to an MCL, but I'm not remembering exactly correctly there.

I believe we did that to be consistent with the statutory language on the annual meeting.

Okay. If we could just get confirmation on that. Sure. That would be great. Okay. committee reports do not exceed five minutes i'm totally down for this um i think that sounds fine uh the only thing i would say though is i'm sorry to add a complicating factor is um you know some of us carry more weight than more committee assignments than others um and so uh it may be worth saying like a certain amount of time City Council Chambers, or committee that you're reporting on versus a total time because, if you know at this point, I think I only I only have like three or four committees or and some of us may have 10 and so if there's a lot more to report on giving those that have 10 more time.

Make sense, we can talk for seven minutes.

Anyway, something to think about, although I do. My point here is, I do very much support a limitation on timing, and I do think that it may be also worth adding language around like debate and dialogue during the committee report that it should be limited to, you know, clarifying question, because sometimes that doesn't happen often. But sometimes we can kind of go down rabbit holes, and I think limit, you know, Growth Team, Giving instruction to sort of like limit that to clarifying questions I think would would help. Growth Team, And if you know you can even say something like if there are more substantive issues that need to be discussed with that arise out of the oral report, they can be brought up during items for current and future discussion. Growth Team, And then.

Growth Team, yeah no issues that.

I completely agree with Commissioner Somerville. This is my red line in the sand. I will absolutely not support any changes to public participation. I don't even support the change around residents versus non-residents. I can give more of a spiel on this, but in the interest of not having a long meeting, I'm not going to do that right now. I think you guys know where I stand on this issue. But bottom line is, we get paid to listen to people, and it is important that we hold that time as sacred. and give the members of the public that wish to speak to us as much time as they obviously within the three-minute limit, but not limit the total amount of time and not limit the topic of their discussion. And the quick thing I want to say here is we had a Parks Commission meeting yesterday that Commissioner Scott and I were at, and some members of the public spoke about an issue that was completely unrelated to items on the agenda, but it provided us with extremely valuable information. um public comment like that all the time about you know tree clearing on roads etc i think it is important to not limit what people can say at the beginning of the meeting making them wait till the end i think is um is is wrong right so the front end is when we're paying attention that's the the best time and we should be focused on the public during that so um i don't know if i agree with completely eliminating commissioner follow-up which i think this is proposing um i think limiting it is totally fine i think we should limit uh commissioner follow-up to did i get that wrong i'm getting why is it crossed out uh commissioner follow-up to public participation is this proposal to eliminate it i guess i'll ask okay

yeah it it's a five minute per commissioner limit if you're talking item 13. okay and the one that you sent it looks like it's eliminated completely but that's what i'm looking at

Okay, maybe that's just an old okay so so the proposal is to limit it to five minutes okay that's i'm supportive of that, however, an addition, similar to the. Similar to the piece about reports.

Oh.

i'm sorry use it forgive me yep ashley had some useful just some context for your commissioner so it wasn't meant to be eliminated it was meant to be moved to the end of the meeting um if there were two public comment periods we would move commissioner probably to public comment to after the second public comment period that was the intention okay i guess so my feedback on that is i think it's important to have public comment at the front end and uh response at the front end um

I do support limiting it to five minutes. I would add the caveat there as well that, similar to what I was saying with the oral reports for committees, that we should not be debating during follow-up. It should be just an opportunity to follow up to the public. We get mired in debates during follow-up all the time, and so putting some limitations on that I think will help to limit the meeting i think again asking clarifying questions maybe but even that i think is unnecessary during uh commissioner follow-up so i so bottom line is i do support that um limitation uh my last question and then i'll uh actually sorry two more things and then i'll stop talking for a little while uh the piece about voting um when the clerk identifies the name of the commissioner who was present and failed to cast a vote when called is there how would the clerk interpret that in terms of how that statement would be made at the end of the vote um

John Potter, jump in on that because I don't think there's a prescribed answer at this at this time, I think it would be some sort of standard answer to indicate that the person was here but but did not go through the mechanical motion of voting and we could. you know, label that however we want present, but did not vote to that sort of thing. But that that's the intent.

Okay, maybe for the next meeting it would just be helpful to get some more clarity on, or maybe even adding it to this. What that would be noted as by the clerk would be helpful, so there's less guesswork in it. Um, I do not agree with this grants of 25,000 not coming to the board. I know it's like onerous to get grant reviews of like $7,000, but I do think it's important for the board to be able to review those. I'm okay with us. Uh, in some ways I'm more okay with us not like approving the grant application, but then not having to then approve the acceptance of it later. That would be fine, but. Um, I think it's important for us to kind of know what's being applied for here. I'll stop there and I'll have further comments later. Thank you, chair.

Thank you. Go to, uh, commissioner mushy esky and then, uh, Scott and then, uh, uh, mushy esky, Scott, uh, Sanders, and then Beeman.

All right. Thank you, chair. Um, first off, thanks for, uh, having this discussion today. Appreciate the opportunity to do that. Um, When I think about our meetings, public comment is a part of our meeting. But we are here due to the business of the county. That is the primary reason for the meeting. There are many other ways to get public comment as well. This meeting is one of them. And so for me, I support the idea that a public comment on agenda items at the beginning and then a second period for comment on non-agenda items at the end. I think that would allow us to get to the heart of the meeting in terms of agenda items earlier in our meeting process. We've definitely experienced over the last several years trying to make decisions and amendments and figure things out past midnight. That is not necessarily the clearest thinking moment in some cases, because most of us that sit at this board have regular day jobs, and we've already worked eight-ish hours before we ever walk in this door for a 5.30 start of a working session. So whether it's at the beginning of the meeting or end of the meeting, it's still an opportunity to give public comment on non-agenda items that just happen to be at the end. That's where I land on it. I've seen that work successfully elsewhere and still gives the public an opportunity to comment before we ever get into those agenda items and make sure that their voice is heard there. Another reason that I would like to see this is that I very much appreciate the fact that we have staff available to answer questions during the meeting. And again, staff and most of our probably worked all day before we come here for this meeting. And rather than have them sit here and wait for five or six hours, the opportunity to get to them a little bit sooner in the agenda. I think it's a better scenario for staff. And also respectful of their time as well. Um, so, uh, you know, I, I don't want to, uh, eliminate public comment, uh, but simply restructure, uh, how we're getting it. So, um, I, uh, on, on the rest of it, I'm, uh, the other components here, um, generally favorable. There might be, uh, some questions I have offline, potentially in writing, um, for this, but, um,

uh that's the one big thing to me is that is that change and i think it would um be an improvement for the process that we go through and the way we conduct our meetings so again appreciate um the work that's gone into this so far i look forward to continuing the discussion you bet and commissioner you may not have noticed but our deputy administrator mr delu indicated non-verbally when you indicated that yes in fact staff had been here all day and and so that there is some confirmation there thank you andrew we appreciate it We'll move to Commissioner Scott.

Thanks, Chair. Also, some commissioners have to be at work at 7 in the morning sometimes after these meetings, which is particularly because I don't know about the rest of my colleagues, but when I come home from these meetings, I'm spun off. And so even if I'm exhausted, I still can't go to sleep right away. So if we end at 1, I am awake sometimes to like 2.30. Like, we had this meeting. So it would be... would be helpful i just wanted i'm not going to belabor the point because everything commissioner macieski said ditto i will just say that some of these rules were things that even in leadership when we talked about them we weren't entirely sure about either which is why we brought them to you to have a discussion about them rather than present something fully baked at this table just to get feedback we felt like that was super important to do personally in terms of public comment i think public comment is really important i agree i we need to be here and listen to people but we are here to do business and i said this at the last meeting when this came up it also doesn't help democracy to be making resolutions that where we are spending millions of dollars at two o'clock in the morning like that in no way shape or form is effective government nor is it effective for people who want to see government in action have to wait till two in the morning to see that government in action like if you're gonna make the sausage make it in somewhat reasonable hours um so that's what i have to say about that and because of that that is one reason why i support saying at the start of the meeting public comment could be limited or should be limited to items on the agenda we can respond and at the end of the meeting public can comment to us on what color they believe the sky is and we can respond again because at this point limiting commissioner follow-up to five minutes actually probably still puts us ahead um obviously there's more things i have to say but i don't need to belabor the point thanks move to uh commissioner sanders

Um, couple of comments. One would be, um, is this, this handout that we've received, these are all of our board rules or just the items that executive board felt needed to be reviewed.

This is the, the, the first, uh, go at what we thought would be modified. So there, there are more board rules. It's not the, the, the full document.

Okay, well, I would have liked to see the whole document, so that we can see. What is being picked out to be reviewed or updated or changed and what isn't. So, then I can ask Okay, so why didn't you talk about this. i've made a couple of notes on here so. Section 10 I guess. Yeah, section 10, number 10. No commissioner shall speak until recognized by the chair. So I want to make sure that we've got language in here that ensures that the chair is not in any way positioned to be able to ignore or without correct Robert's Rules of Order restrictions, stop anyone from being able to speak. And that's not clear, this is a very sort of short it's it's it's not a two way sort of thing, and I know that the chair is is placed in a in a position of authority, but. I think that we need to to. Do a better job of communicating because I don't want to be in a position, nor would I want anybody else to where maybe you falling out with the Chair and they just decide to act like they don't see your hand up. um that's one the other is um you know i've said this before we got this monday um today is wednesday even though we're talking about it right now, that's not enough time for me. I won't speak for anybody else. I don't like feeling rushed into anything. This feels rushed to me, even though this isn't a final. And I've got a comment under that next bullet. Commissioners are expected to prepare in advance of meetings And i'm asking like are we gonna come up with some deadlines, some ways to help commissioners know like you shouldn't be. Are you? Are we pulling stuff from the floor, or just like we get our information on Friday for the next week's board meeting. There should be some sort of guidance about that as well. The last bullet in here. Commissioner shall not hold the floor. more than two times in a given question, except with three fourths of the commissioners present, vote of the commissioners present. And you cannot yield your time to other commissioners. Eh, that's seeming a little, that's kind of like, we're not being treated like adults. And I don't know why it would be a problem for us to yield our time to someone else. So i've got a problem with that and then i'm a know on the setting a dollar limit for what we the the $25 grant limit no. It's our elected responsibility to be the fiduciaries for this county. And that means I have a right to see and say, comment about every penny that we spend. And that's what my constituents expect me to do. And so I would not support that. That's it for my whining right now about these, but I want to reiterate, I am tired of getting last minute stuff and then being expected in a part-time position to do full-time work. That needs to stop. That lack of consideration for people that have jobs and have other things to do, whether I have one right now or not, you don't get to monopolize my time like that. That's what I got to say for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Move to Commissioner Beeman, then Commissioner Light.

Thank you, Chair. I also won't belabor the point, but I do like the option again. I would expand upon it. The public participation on agenda items at the beginning, and then non-agenda items at the end. The one thing that I've noticed, and you know my district is very large. I have the most townships and municipalities in my district. So I go at a lot of different meetings and I watch how people participate and I watch the different rules across these boards. Some have very similar, some have very different, some have a lot of rules, some have no rules. What I've noticed from my elected bodies in district three, where you have to stick to the agenda items, everyone comes prepared. it doesn't matter if it's a school board meeting township city it does not matter they come prepared they know what's on the agenda they have their facts they have their figures and they keep to that time period what i will also say is that it behooves us as a board to know there are people waiting out there to say something that's not on the agenda And that we do need business and revenue when we move through items so that we aren't keeping people in the room until 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock in the morning to bring up something that is very relevant. When I'm at my township boards that have this, even on very aggressive nights where they are fighting developers and that sort of thing, it's 9 o'clock when they end. and that's when the next round comes through and a lot of times that's me talking about something that the county is doing that's not on the agenda and i get to bring it up and maybe the room is full and maybe the room's not full but you're there to speak to the people at this table you're there to speak to those elected officials and so i really appreciate this I think it also in a way helps people to understand what a county board does and what a county board doesn't do. There are times we've had people come forward with items that relate to the school that we can't weigh in on or things that are happening in the city around. Moving a business and while we may pour our hearts out to that again it's not in our purview. And we're taking time away from these agenda items from these items that we need to move forward that do impact our residents that do impact our staff, they do impact these departments that are sitting right here, so I. that I wasn't belaboring and I am. So I really do appreciate option one, having the agenda items, only if we have a second time period with non-agenda items at the end. Again, it keeps us on task so that we know this is coming and we can hear from them in a timely manner. So other than that, yeah, same kind of smaller nuanced things. towards the back in terms of the conduct, that sort of thing. You know, this is a first draft. I think there's a lot we can flush out, and I appreciate having this time to be able to do that. So just say thank you.

Great. I have both Commissioner Robbie and Somerville back in the queue. I'm going to move briefly or in a moment here to Commissioner Light. If anyone who hasn't commented wants to comment, please let me know. I have a few quick thoughts, but we'll try and get everybody. Commissioner Light, turn it over to you.

On page 4, I'm looking at motions. And so I just want a little clarity. It says any motion must be made and seconded, submitted in writing, electronic or handwritten to the board clerk. um and stated by the chair before it may be debated upon so i'm just asking so is this so that no surprise motion so for example if we um are discussing something on the agenda and I decide I want to make a motion, is this stating that because I have not submitted it prior to that I cannot do that? I was just looking at Robert's rules and I'm not sure if, you know, there's some kind of local precedence that would allow for me not to do that. I just because if I want to make a motion, I mean, I can write it out and submitted, but I don't want to be told that I had to do it days in advance, because I may have not known I wanted to make that motion. days in advance until we are here in the midst of a discussion and we've been deliberating and now i'm like well you know what I need to make a motion for. or based on the discussion, so.

Commissioner Light, if I could just jump in, that's a good question. And to give you some assurance, no, it's not to essentially prevent it. It's rather to clarify it because what happens as you know is, we discuss something, somebody makes a motion, there's further discussion, and somebody says something that makes sense, and it either gets added on mechanically through an amendment to an amendment, or we sort of put staff in this gray area where we say, you got that, right? John Potter, And, and the hope here is that we write it out before so that there's clarity there and then, if there's any ambiguity what with what gets past there isn't then. John Potter, A different interpretation of what happened, and if if if that needs to be spelled out clearer. John Potter, We can certainly do that, but that is, that is the intent with that idea.

OK, so I know any time I feel like I have a motion that I'm going to bring on, I sit here and I write it. And I have no problem with doing that. I just don't want anything for it to be where it's controlled on a motion that I bring forth. after we have begun discussion. So I can I can clearly write it out, send it in an email to make sure that it is clear and even with individuals adding on, but I just want to make sure that a motion or an amendment that comes to me in the moment of our

discussions that um i'm able to do so and not being told that i can't make a motion not unless it's presented um beforehand and crystal just to give you collegial assurance yes this is this is about clarity not control and we'll try and make that uh more clear in the second draft okay because i was gonna do it anyway i'll just write it out Commissioner Hodge, any comments from you I don't I don't want to if you I don't I don't want to pry into speaking either.

Oh, I had something about I wanted Commissioner Summerville to go first. Something after she says her thing.

Great. Um, yes, and i'll i'll share just a few brief comments, and then go to Commissioner Robbie, then Somerville, and then we'll we'll go back to Commissioner Hodge just very quickly. I think Yousef and I were at this table. I want to say it was 2,013 or 14 when we had a stand your ground resolution. that was a sense of this body that we didn't agree with what the state of Michigan was trying to do to make us a stand your ground state, basically. We had individuals that came from as far as like Bay City and they provided a great deal of public comment And it was intense and so forth. The other night at our August meeting, I appreciate the women at this table because I did note that when we had an issue related to the funding of Planned Parenthood, there were a lot of what appeared to be relatively young men that were very certain of the world and how it should be regulated on reproductive health. There was great restraint at this table. And there were comments at the end of it that I thought were magnificently human, were visceral, and were impactful. And if there were any justice in the world, those folks would have left in shame. But I also know we didn't get to some of that until 1130 at night or so. And I think one thing that's been impressed on me that I'm trying my best to do is to provide some sense of predictability to staff and the public for when they can check into the meeting to see the business and the process, and when they can adjust to see candidly the content that comes from commissioners. Because all eight of you have at times spoken in eloquence that I remember and appreciate and so forth. um and trying to order that in a way that is predictable and and replicable is is really all we're trying to do here um and I I before I I turn over to Commissioner Robbie I would just note uh again um I think the importance is on looking at the order and the structure not at all on the content Uh, every one of us has a co-equal, uh, you know, claim to be here and speak on behalf of the people we represent. Uh, it, it, it really is just trying to look at how we structure the flow of that, uh, that discourse, uh, commissioner Robbie.

Thank you, Chair. Just some other thoughts that I had, and then I do want to make a follow-up comment on some of the thoughts that you all have shared about public comment. But just moving through the document, another couple of suggestions that I have and feedback. uh on the commissioner conduct of discussion and debate i appreciate and agree with all of these items other than item six first let me take items one through five and just say i agree with all of these respectful and civil manner during the meeting many of these are just codifying the current practice limiting discussion to germain items uh directing remarks through the chair all of that makes sense i will say on item one i fully agree with commissioner sanders that there should be a recognition clause in there regarding the chair's duty to recognize any member that raises their hand and seeks to be recognized I do think that's an important check and balance that should be added. I vehemently disagree with item six. I think that limiting commissioner debate to a timeframe is not what we should be doing here. I believe that there are other ways to limit the length of our meetings, such as the things that we talked about earlier regarding the five minutes for liaison reports and commissioner follow-up. I do not think that limiting debate times is appropriate. I think that severely limits our ability to have iterative dialogue around this table. And I don't think that that in the end is a substantial time suck at our meetings. So I vehemently oppose that item. I will also say, moving along to talking about the flex account, I am concerned that adding sponsorships of community events and activities can be City Council Chambers, easily abused, we need more constraints on that, in my opinion, I am not opposed generally to the idea of using flex accounts for purposes beyond travel. City Council Chambers, and using it for as is listed here memberships and also sponsored sponsorships, however. You know, I appreciate that there's a control built in that commissioners have to fill out a sponsorship form, and that the vendor must be a registered county vendor. But I do think that there should be other controls in here. Perhaps one would be that the administrator has to approve of the expenditure. I think that unfortunately I've found in in my world and perhaps Commissioner Somerville can corroborate this that there are many organizations that spring up in political spaces that are created for purposes that one may be able to argue that are uh you know related to the business of government but that are in fact related to more political purposes and I think that um even many of those are 501c3 organizations for example that may solicit sponsorships um perhaps there is a need here for a clause that limits um you know uh and again this is actually not in relation to what I was saying earlier I don't want anybody to take this personally this is not meant to be that but um perhaps there's a limitation on organizations that are uh that are not affiliated with any of us or that we don't serve on any boards or that we don't direct any of the funds. I'm thinking about some of the C3s and C4s that legislators create and then spend the money on their own pet projects. I wouldn't want county money to go into those types of organizations. And so creating some type of separation there and control so that we're not allowing commissioners to give money to organizations that support or benefit Um, their own political purposes, and I think having the administrator's approval helps to ensure that there's that there is an overarching county benefit to participation in those in those projects. And I do think that having similar to the way that we do with travel where we in where we have commissioner state. in their application for the travel why this is germane to county government or what they seek to gain out of it i think having some opportunity for commissioners to explain why the spending of their flex account money on a non-profit or sponsoring an event or becoming a member of an organization is germane to county government um So that's what I would say on that piece. I'm generally open to the idea of expanding what we can do with our flex accounts, but there need to be more controls there. Quick thoughts on time for our meetings. Two other areas that I believe consume a lot of time at our meetings are the breaks that we take. We take breaks typically between our working session and our board meeting. Perhaps it makes sense to standardize what that break looks like so that sometimes we take a five-minute break, sometimes we take a 25-minute break, sometimes a 20-minute break becomes a 30-minute break. i feel like oftentimes it's easy to blame long public comment for the length of our meetings but we are to blame as well when we do things like that if we want to be moving through these meetings quickly a five-minute bathroom break is all we need and then we can continue on with the rest of the meeting there have been meetings where we've taken multiple breaks and as a commissioner in the moment i've appreciated that but in the context of getting our meetings over on time i think we need to standardize that perhaps and make it so that there's a ten minute break, five minute break, whatever it is between our two meetings, and that we can wave that. But that otherwise it defaults to that period of time. The other one is that recognition that we do before our board meetings, where we recognize sometimes four, two, three, four individuals. I think that's important, but those can get lengthy, and I think that limiting that to some degree. Maybe it's know not reading the whole resolution maybe it's limiting our remarks that could be another way to limit the time of our meetings i do want to make a quick comment i again very much oppose changing public comment um guidelines at all i think that we need to protect public comment as a sacred time um and one of the reasons why i don't support the piece about the agenda is it actually you know that that comments have to be germane to the agenda is because that actually gives an immense amount of power to those that are setting the agenda If there are commissioners that wish to bring things from the floor, or that wish to make motions, that means that residents cannot come and speak and advocate on an item that may come up on the agenda. Maybe those that are setting the agenda have chosen to not allow an item on the agenda. and if members of the public if there's a groundswell of community members that wants to advocate for an item that a commissioner wants to bring forward but those that are setting the agenda don't want them to bring you know that item to come forward that creates a dynamic there where the public can't speak to the item and the commissioner who may make the motion you know there's no demonstration of public support so i think that gives a lot of power to the person setting the agenda and removes power from the individual commissioners Promise last thing, this is a minor change that I would recommend given Chair Scott's suggestion that a lot of the business happens after the public has left. What if we moved liaison reports, report from the administrator and the report from the chair to after resolutions so that we don't use that time and we can jump right into business?

Thank you. The queue has repopulated just a little bit, so I'm going to go to Commissioner Somerville, then Hodge, then Sanders, then Beeman.

Okay, I'm very quick, and this is not to be mean to anybody, but I think we really need to focus on ending working session on time. we are at 703 and there's more people in the queue um and then i just have an overall question this is maybe for michelle um can we have a clause in our rules that we can make a motion to suspend the rules at any time with the majority approval of the board or is that already even a thing i believe that's already in there okay great i just want to make that clear so for everybody who's concerned about some of these details we we at any time could make a motion then if we would like to ask our colleagues to suspend the rules thank you

move to uh commissioner hi thank you chair i i think commissioner somerville was also going to mention potentially having the second public comment period be for non-residents of washington county she was kicking around this idea so i wanted to go after her because as we're trying to think through how we're going to manage the public comment piece of it i think we've got if we move to two kinds of public comment uh i've just been taking notes on what people are saying there's the first one could be for residents and the second one could be for non-residents of the county or it could be divided by agenda item or it could be time based so i want to try to get a sense if we are if there is interest in moving to two public comment periods which of those options do people feel most comfortable with or is there a fourth or fifth option just throwing that out there for discussion i think commissioner robbie doesn't like the two public comment system at all though right no no okay you can do two just free reign and public

uh thank you commissioner hutch and we'll we'll move to commissioner sanders then uh beeman um i'm just wondering out loud related to the recognitions that we do if people would feel slighted or offended if we looked at maybe trying to do recognitions once per month During our normal meeting sessions, so that it was you know people know all recognitions will be the first or the second meeting of the month. So that we're not cutting them out we're not necessarily limiting what can be said, but we are. able to better structure them. Right. So that's just the thought. The other the CTA, the commissioner travel. So we talked about this in years past, whether or not, you know, commissioners should be given, quote unquote, a budget for their their district. But I do think that there's work that has to be done on the CTA. I personally have just resigned from a position because I'm not going to eat the mileage to drive 45 minutes. I'm not paying that out of my pocket. And I do think that the commissioners work hard enough that I believe that they should have the opportunity to participate in Meaningful professional development that makes sense. On behalf of the county so you know, not just like you know you just want to go on a boondoggle but you, it has to make sense, but I also don't think that. A Commissioner should have to choose between well I can't participate in this professional development, because then I won't get my mileage. and you know as as one of more than one commissioner that has been maligned for travel i take exception to it and so i'm eating mileage from april of this year through the end of this year i won't get that money back so there are positions that we all sit on some are virtual You know some rarely ever meet some of them like Simcoe I think they're all over the doggone state when they set their meetings up Commissioner should not know employee, let me be clear, no employee is ever supposed to be put in a position where they are enriching their employer. And that's what we're starting to look at right now. And, quite frankly, many of these positions historically have been only for the privileged. You had to be in a certain position to even be able to do these these elected positions and we should be very cautious about them when we're looking at our rules and our guidelines and who we think should be able to do something. So I'm, I'm testy about that type of thing. Right. So I'm going to say now that we, we need to do a better job. We haven't revisited the budget for CTA. We've got commissioners that never touch their CTA and some that do touch theirs. And so there's a better way for us to do this. The only reason that I can imagine we don't want to do better is that we want to try and keep our thumb on people. that's not our job and it's not our job for us collectively. If there's something going on in my district and I want to be able to come and ask for discretionary funds in order to help them make something happen, if I have a logical reason and I can make it make sense, we ought to be able to do it within reasonable guidelines. So I just want to say that because we've had discussion before about trying to limit and gatekeep what another commissioner can do in their district. That's not, I don't think we should be trying to do that. And I also don't want to even try and set the stage for rolling down that hill. So CTA recognition once per month, there was something commissioner Robbie said, No, I don't think I remember it. So I'm going to just stop. But thank goodness we haven't voted this in because I wouldn't be able to talk with us.

Well said and well-timed, Commissioner Sanders. Thank you. Move to Commissioner Beaman.

City Council Chambers, Thank you chair i'll be brief so two quick things looking again at the public participation couple items again I got 10 municipalities guys okay I got three townships that are three cities. City Council Chambers, School boards. City Council Chambers, One specifically in terms of timing actually does multiple public comment periods. there is a length to them, but they are throughout the meeting. So it isn't even just at the beginning and just at the end. They actually will stop at a specific time in the meeting and hear additional public comment for a set time during that time. So just it's not here, but I'm just throwing out one more idea. the other piece um to kind of respond to commissioner robbie about the agenda items the township one of the townships that does the agenda and non-agenda items during the non-agenda item as a member of the public you can request an item be put on the agenda for the next meeting and the board has to answer in that moment so it that in a more balanced way in terms of you know that that point of well they want to talk about something and everybody else at this table is like no we don't want to hear about the biodigester and freedom township so we're never going to put it on the agenda this actually allows them to come forward requests obviously could be denied by the board there but i've never actually seen this board do that they will accept it and put it onto the next agenda um so that the public can come and address it so it may not be ideal and in the moment obviously in that second period they can talk about it but a lot of times what happens is they'll speak about it then and then at the end of their few minutes to speak they will ask them to be put on a future agenda so more considerations

Thank you, Commissioner.

Commissioner Hodge, you raised your hand again. I did. Thank you. This is the question for Michelle. To Commissioner Sanders' point earlier around mileage reimbursement, does that have to be as part of the CTA, or could that be separate, or does it get into an issue related to commissioner compensation?

It should ideally be in the board rules.

Well, no, I mean, would the funding for reimbursing us for mileage, does it have to come out of a CTA like account or could that just be separate?

It could be separate.

Okay.

Well, I, so I like Commissioner Sanders suggestion of just pulling it out then and having the, we would just use the IRS reimbursement rate for mileage like we currently do and just have to be separate from the CTA.

It's possible. Yep.

That's all I got for now.

I would very quickly note on that, uh, if you look at the old Ann Arbor Chronicle coverage of the Mark Womet per diem issue. There is substantive background on this item. There are lots of ways to do it. We've tried some in the past too. So Commissioner Light.

um just on uh really quick for just uh us having a standard time in between like meetings so say for instance maybe if we like right now it's 7 15 we always set a standard recess time so it could be 10 minutes or 15 minutes and i just want to say when the ladies have to go use the potty it may take us a little longer depending on what we have on With the month, maybe, you know, I'm just speaking for us. I can't speak for anybody else, but I'm just saying, so we just set a standard time, but we might need more than five minutes, maybe, maybe seven to 10, 15, but we just have a standard time. So we always know you have this time. So if you utilize your time out there talking to people, then you passed up your time to go pee.

well yeah um great uh i i is we we we we we will uh address all logistical consideration yes yes um thank you for the discussion and debate um any any further comments at this time commissioner robbie

I was just going to quickly build off of what Commissioner LaBar said that the mile on the mileage piece, this is how we used to do it. It used to be separate. So and that's when we had per diems. But as Commissioner LaBar said, this this system that we have has been amalgamated over the years as sort of like a deck of cards. And I think it's fine to deconstruct it, but we do just have to be aware of like some of the controls that there's a reason that some of these things are in place based on some of the abuses of past colleagues. That having been said, I think mileage is one that there's pretty firm IRS guidelines around. If you're going to and from a county thing, you're going to and from a county thing i don't think we can get mileage to this building because this is our place of employment but anywhere else that you're doing you know for a county meeting that you're appointed to we used to have language in there that said specifically that you get mileage and there wasn't a limit to it so to the point i was making earlier if you're on 10 different boards and committees versus somebody that's on four Then you're not getting your travel nominee into as much so I would support going back to that with strong language that ensures that we have a common understanding of those limitations.

Commissioner Sanders, I think this is a question for Michelle so i'm wondering out loud for the public comment piece. um if if there if we can legally give precedence or give a priority to our residents because our residents should not be in a situation where they come we're overflowing and you've got half of those people in the overflow do not pay taxes in this county They don't vote for us we're not responsible for being responsive to them it's not that they can't do public comment, but they should I feel like they should have to go after. The our actual residents, because if I go to someone else i'm not expecting that that municipality, they have the right to say to me you gotta wait till you hear from. the people that are actually residents.

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I don't know that there's firm guidance on that, but you just simply must allow access for everyone who desires to comment to have an opportunity to comment on whatever topic it is. I think that's the general guidepost. So we can look into that a little bit and confirm. But it sounds like it might be all right to do that.

Okay. Yeah. I would like for us to look at that because granting access is fine. But if it's a choice between our residents and our non-residents, right? The non-resident, if they want to stay until 2.30 in the morning and give their public comment, fine. But our working taxpaying residents should not have to be at the end of the line. So however we can do that, this not breaking any rules, we should look at that.

uh commissioner hodge thank you uh all right so it seems like to the question i posed earlier around if we were going to have two different public comments uh which one would we want to go with and it sounds like there might be some interest in the resident versus non-resident one um but yeah so if there is interest or just to follow up on what commissioner sanders is saying what if it's residents and employees of the county yeah because you know i know you might come up and give public comment later and mention that you don't live in washington county but we would probably want to hear from our employees too yeah If we went in that direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Well said. Well said. Any other further comment at this time? uh great if if not thank you for the discussion we we i appreciate it we'll bring we'll bring it back uh items for current or future discussion any other items or current or construction i want to make one quick note for future discussion uh one time yusuf robbie at this board table described himself as an aggressive cat person oh and there was a dog that came into the room about a half hour ago and i felt like an aggressive dog person it was an exciting time so any other current or future discussion great commissioner robbie yeah i did have one item and this is probably going to take about 20 minutes but if you want to make a motion to adjourn is there support before we officially adjourn chair what

What I want to say is I'd like to come back in 11 minutes at 730 and I will be here at the table, but part of our sometimes going over that is people not coming back to the table to take responsibility for yourself.

With that we are adjourned.

Okay.

I like that. I like that. And it's not that I don't want to hear what people have to say, but Northville shouldn't be able to come in here and monopolize our meeting because they don't want the landfill. And then we have none of our people that are even have an issue or bring an issue to it.

Mm hmm. yeah well the lady from christmas district that doesn't live there but owns property and keeps coming every meeting to tell us about she's a taxpayer remember she said oh yeah oh yeah fair but she can't vote oh right right right i don't know that's it i didn't do that

No, I think we can do a gentleman's agreement. I don't disagree. But if we have the same person coming, coming, coming, and then we say, OK, OK, where do they live?

I'm disagreeing with that. Yeah.

You notice I didn't add that that piece to it like we should check ID user.

Okay goodness gracious six alive. No yeah I appreciate you come.

Good afternoon, evening, good evening, everyone, to the second September meeting for the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners. We begin with rising for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, my favorite thing to try to skip at the meeting is roll call. Brendan, could you please call the roll?

Commissioner Beaman.

Present.

Commissioner Hodge. Here. Commissioner LaBar. Here. Commissioner Light.

Commissioner Light. Present.

Commissioner Maciejewski. Here. Commissioner Robby.

Here.

Commissioner Sanders.

Present.

Commissioner Scott.

Here.

Commissioner Somerville.

Here. Everyone is here. This time we have public participation. You're welcome to address the Board of Commissioners. When you come to the podium, if you could please introduce yourself with your name and township city residents, you have three minutes to address the board. green means go yellow means wrap it up red means i'm going to stop you in the interest of being fair to everybody if you're in the middle of a sentence i'll try to let you finish that thought but um that's those are the rules so welcome to the meeting and come on down

good evening commissioners i'm barbara nice may and i'm the president and ceo of ypsilanti meals on wheels serving homebound older adults across eastern washington county i'm here tonight to speak in support of the senior nutrition planning that shannon effler and the office of aging services have put forward we support what shannon is proposing and just as importantly we appreciate the process behind how these decisions are being reached It has been thoughtful and deliberate and that matters. I want to specifically thank the office for acknowledging the realities and dynamics throughout the county. We are all unique. This recognition is meaningful and I can assure, at least from YMAL, I can't speak for the programs, but I believe that they adopt best practices and the highest level of care in all that we do. This kind of support is extremely helpful as we stare down delivering between 145,000 150,000 meals. Beyond 130,000 meals that we delivered last year as federal support systems are leaving our older adults behind, we have a large service area I approximated about 93 square miles. the densest population areas on the east of 23 and a service population that lives at or below poverty for the most part. I'd also like to take a moment to speak about Shannon herself. She is working diligently to move this county forward as a whole, and her professionalism is top notch. I have personally learned a great deal from her. Not all entities will agree on every outcome in the senior nutrition space, and I don't expect that we ever will. But I can say with confidence that she is leading us, all of us, honestly and courageously. From the Weimar perspective, I'll be candid. Not everything in this process feels perfectly fair to every partner at every time. But I've come to believe that if we want all those to rise together, we each have to be willing to give a little. That's what real partnership looks like. And that's the spirit Shannon is bringing to this work. Thank you for your time and thank you for your continued support of older adults in our community.

Thank you.

Start. All right, class, how are y'all doing also you think you all can do medicine, no, you can't. Bold claim, indeed. You can make bold claims in this country, bold scientific claims, but gotta prove it. Otherwise, you're a quack. Although it's worth noting a lot of scientific achievements aren't appreciated until well after they're made and The one who made them is long gone. It happens. Happens to the best of us. But nevertheless, so from a scientific standpoint, okay, how is a woman's hysterical testimony over the phone per positive of a neurochemical imbalance of the brain? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? That is your diagnostic methodology right there, Washtenaw County. I don't know how else to reduce it, and I really don't want to sound like an incel putz here, but goodness gracious, what's with the carinitis? Yeah, I don't get it. I couldn't reconcile in Roanoke City why a magistrate could opine, not diagnose, opine that I was mentally ill based on wearing... a Pickle Rick shirt like this, not this one, the boom Pickle Rick shirt where he's busting through the wall. That one, yeah, yeah. Not sure how I was mentally ill for that, but that was the claim of the Roanoke City magistrate, and that's why I was in jail in Roanoke City, puking my guts out, puking waterfalls nine days in a row until I got my public defender to get me out of there, and we eventually got case dismissed in court because for some reason I had to push forth a pile of evidence to prove my innocence with a Michael Mann, Fifth Amendment bow on top and guess what the prosecutor had a lot of nothing yeah I never seen someone so worried my life in court and that was prosecutor oh man. Michael Mann, That was delicious Oh, it must have had trans fat in it yeah because, for some reason in a conservative Republican trump voting county and. appalachia i can have a fair trial but not up here in liberal yankees liberal yankee fantasy land above the mason dixon line weird so you democrats trying to give me the full rosemary or is it mississippi burning because i remarked the latter as soon as i got up here i thought why am i smelling that above the mason dixon line because i am from the home of the confederacy i think i know i want to smell it and guess what Virginia does the same thing that you do. Tosses people in the loony bin for making gross medical errors because your health care providers are the worst. They're the worst ever. So what makes me think I'm here in Virginia? Why would I see Virginia license plates up here except for the fact that you Michiganders are Christian fundamentalist retards just like Virginians when it comes to health care. So yeah, basically neo-Nazis to the fullest extent. Or would you prefer I call you communist? Wait. hmm calm wait nazis with russian sympathies and that's why you voted for russian stooges for russian suits like trump twice you're copy nazis now there's a simpsons prophecy come true and why you're not the least bit scientific about medicine

My name is Ray Smith. I live in MC Township. This is my dog Oreo. She's a certified therapy dog and she was certified all the way in 2019 so I could bring her into my office. Washtenaw County Sheriff officers led by Marco Campagiorni thought it was appropriate to rack around while the gun was pointed at Oreo. I consistently said, please don't shoot my dog, please don't shoot my dog. Then at the top of the stairs with only my underwear, they made me hold my hands up and walk down the stairs backwards. Notice how your officers like making people move in ways that could be dangerous for them. My father had multiple knee replacements. He would have never been able to raise his hands and get on his knees. So would have officer slammed his head on the curb. At every moment possible, they created a dangerous environment for my friends, family, neighbors, and my animals, myself, and even the officers. With the timing of when they came in and how well armed and trained I am, it was a miracle I didn't grab my guns. If I would have thought they were intruders, I could have made a terrible mistake. What is someone to think when a large group of thugs breaks into your house at 1am in the morning? Also, I've had burglars break in and say that they were the police. I can achieve all my goals and deal with everybody without breaking any laws. I have no plans to break any laws. My reason for pointing this out is the Washtenaw County Sheriff's ignorance puts everyone's lives at risk, even their own. Officer Campadroni lied and stated I would get booked and be let out quickly, but that wasn't the case. Luckily, I didn't trust him. My first call was to my friend Alex, who I left a message to break into my home and get Oreo in. I'm so thankful that he did. Your officers left Oreo in a house with no food, no water, And if Alex would not have come to get Oreo, she would have died, regardless of whether you thought I was guilty or not. Why was it okay to abuse or neglect Oreo? Also, then when friends and family called to ask about me the police department act done and would not tell people where I was. Or what happened to me the washington county sheriff even denied that Oreo was there at the time. A whole neighborhood of people went out searching for a washington county sheriff creative fear and panic for a whole community, one of the saddest things about this is qualified immunity makes it hard to get any legal remedy against these people, but. Sadly for them, I possess a unique set of skills. So basically, Sheriff Alicia Dyer, Prosecutor Raymond Cook, Prosecutor Jacob Kennedy, Prosecutor Eli Shabbat, and least but not, but first for the true attitude adjustment will be Marco Campogiorno. So before any of you get defensive of these people, I have no qualms with anybody here. Um, unless you defend them. Also, if you're thinking about helping anyone that I've talked about, please wait till next meeting. I will have educational materials for all the commissioners. Um, so that you may properly make your decisions with this full disclosure.

Thank you. That's time. Thanks. Thank you to orient you.

Hi, good evening, commissioners. I'm Jose Hill. Good evening to everyone who's here. Yes, again, my name is Jose Hill. I'm a resident of Ann Arbor, and I am here tonight because I've experienced a series of situations involving housing, law enforcement, the court system, public defense, and the handling of mental health-related situations that have left me feeling overlooked, disrespected, and not taken seriously. I want to bring attention to five areas. Avalon housing, law enforcement here in Ann Arbor, mental health response, the 15th District Court, and an incident involving a public defender at the 14A District Court. With Avalon housing, I have repeatedly tried to communicate my concerns through the appropriate channels. I have made calls, submitted grievances, attended meetings, and provided documentation. My concern is that I have not felt that my complaints were being taken seriously or that they were, or that they was meaningfully accountable when I raised concerns about how I was being treated. I also have serious concerns about my interactions with law enforcement. I believe some of my experiences have raised questions about whether I was treated fairly and whether assumptions or racial stereotyping have affected how I've been perceived and responded to. Another major concern is how situations involving mental health are handled. with someone experiencing a mental health-related situation, I believe there needs to be greater understanding, appropriate communication, de-escalation, and coordination with mental health professionals and services. In my own experiences, I felt that my mental health circumstances were not always properly understood or taken into consideration. Instead of feeling that the situation was being approached with understanding and appropriate support, I felt overlooked and treated primarily as a problem or a legal issue. I am not asking this board to decide the fact of my individual experiences tonight. I am asking whether our system or our systems are adequately equipped to recognize and respond appropriately to residents experiencing mental health related situations. particularly when those situations involve law enforcement, housing, courts, and other public institutions. I also have concerns about my experiences involving the 15th District Court. I have experienced situations where I felt disrespected, misunderstood, and not given an adequate opportunity to have my concerns heard. I have documented some of these concerns and have- Thank you.

I'm sorry, that's time. Thank you.

Is there a way I can submit this to you all?

Yes, you can give it right here next to you to County Deputy Administrator DeLue. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Mary Campbell. I'm the president of AFSCME's Local 2733. I work for the IT department and I am not a county resident. One of the things that I want to talk to you about tonight is in regards to the Department of Aging Services and some of the topics that were discussed at the working session. i really wanted to address that administration and the boc has been claiming that um the senior nutritionist program would have moved to the office of aging services since the first quarter of 2025 and it is now almost the fourth quarter of 2026 and is still in the office of economic and development Due to the ongoing delays of the Office of Aging Services still not being fully operational, the Senior Nutrition Program union staff have had the additional workload of multiple senior millage SNP contracts and their extensions happening every several months versus the benefit of a strategic annual senior millage contract allocations. The millage contracts are on top of their usual Age Ways contract work. And the OAS director and admin committed several months ago that the SNP program and staff would finally transfer from OCED to the Office of Aging Services on October 1st of 2026. And they signed the Age Ways contracts to that effect. But now there are rumors that there's a chance that it still won't actually occur on that date. The office of aging services director hired in January of 2025 and directing senior nutrition program employee has been given higher grade level assignments to do for the office of aging services. Such as writing narratives for and working with the office of aging services consultant. doing Office of Aging Services strategic planning, et cetera, while the OCED Senior Nutritious Program employee is still trying to do their usual workload for the current program year and for the department. OAS also has a division administrator that was just recently hired in in the past month or two, somewhere around that time. So there's two manager salaries, but officially there's no staff in their department that they're really managing. So when the Senior Nutritious Program employee requested assistance from the Office of Aging Services Director in the second quarter for preparing and proofing the Age Ways Program narrative and budget for OAS's future October 2026 through September 2027 program year, it didn't occur. The Senior Nutrition Program employee was dealing with technical errors occurring in the CERV tracker system, which were outside of their control. The union employee was transparent and honest and communicated those data difficulties to Ageways, which contributed to their put on probation. Mary, thank you.

It's time. Thank you.

And so they were diligently working to get that result.

I'm sorry. It's time. Thank you.

It is. Okay.

It is. It's been blinking since I said it. But I just want that noted. We've got it.

Thank you.

Good evening. Jeremy Haley, Ipsy Township. People talk about affordable housing, but I want to talk about what makes housing unaffordable. What's been happening on my street. Within the last year, this house here down the street from me sold for $205,000. one of the reasons why housing becomes affordable in this sense is you can see the guy bought the house cheap then he probably put 70 80 000 into fixing up a nice fancy kitchen nice fancy bathroom and return his he turns that on to the people and the people pay for that cost yeah it's nice to have nice things in the house but when i bought this house in this area on the street i was told never put this kind of investment in the house because you'll never get it out of it But unfortunately, people are eager and willing to pay for this kind of stuff. And it drives things up. The next thing is this house, which in this one, you can see my house right next to it, my neighbor's house. So it was listed for $209,000. It sold for $214,000. They already had an offer in for $209,000. And people come in and say, hey, we'll give you more for the house. and they went and took it. What do you think that does to the whole comps in the whole area? It drives them up. So if a person wanted to get this or any house in this area, now they can't because all the comps are up because, so, hey, I can only get a loan for 190. I can't buy that area now. So it makes this whole area unavoidable for them. That's what we need to keep looking at. Not only that, this ties into property taxes. When this happens, this eager beaver buys this house for over much. And I can tell you this, people bought houses in Chelsea for 50, 60, $70,000 more than asking prices based off of escalator clauses. So what do you think that did that to the market out there and everywhere that happens, okay? And the government gets property taxes off of that. Isn't that kind of fraudulent in a way? No, they're getting privatized based off somebody's eager beaverness of owning a home. It keeps driving up the housing market and it keeps going that way. And that's why the property taxes needs to end. And there is a case in the United States Supreme Court right now is being heard this year about property taxes and intermediate school district bond fraud, property taxes in Texas. A person from the assessor's office took out 60,000 homes, manually adjusted their price and put them back into the computer so people can get bonds. So property taxes need to go, people. Thank you. And unaffordable, this kind of nonsense needs to stop.

Anyone else in the room for public comment?

Ashley, is anyone online for public comment?

Yes, chair. First, we have Abby Allman. Abby, welcome to the meeting. Go ahead.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Abby Allman. I am a resident of the city of Detroit. I am a county employee. I work for community mental health. I'm also the unit a chapter chair of AFSCME Local 2733. I represent about 440 general county members. I am here tonight to echo some of the sentiment that Mary discussed in her public comment. You know, it's my understanding on the agenda for the working session and on the agenda later this evening, there is going to be further discussion about allocating funds to the senior nutrition program. I wanted to speak in support of my union member who provides support for the program. I did want to finish one of, you know, reiterate the comment that Mary was cut off for making around some of the issues surrounding the um probation um and any concerns that might arise um this union employee was dealing with technical errors regarding the surf tracker system which was out of their control and she had a duty to report the trend she was transparent honest and communicated those difficulties to ageways which contributed to the probation um which her and ocd are diligently working on getting revoked um i think this program is um you know the amount that they have grown and supported the community under the little resources and guidance that they've had um is phenomenal and i fully support um her the program as well as um you know the office of aging services hopefully adding more uh union labor in their office um that's all thank you thank you

Ashley anyone else there's no one else online chair okay Commissioner follow up to public participation Commissioner hodge.

Thank you chair i'll be quick, since there were so few comments today, I think, for everybody that came out and a special thank you to the residents that shared troubling stories. With some of their experiences with the police that's always difficult I don't I don't think Ray and Oreo are here anymore. um at ray following your comments at the last well i'm gonna look at the camera now since ray's not here uh following your comments at the last meeting i spoke with the sheriff about many of your concerns uh her recommendation and this is for anyone else that has a a concern about the sheriff's office given that we do not govern the sheriff's office uh is to use their community feedback form which you can find at washington.org community feedback form not form let me say it again washington.org community DASH feedback and then they will investigate any of those kinds of concerns, but I do appreciate anyone that wants to share with us the information as well. And Barbara or yeah hey thanks for coming out good to see you. And then, to the gentleman that gave us the written public comment, thank you for providing that it's already been sent to all of us, so we have it and i'm sure that we would all want to look more into that and that's all I got.

Thank you very much any other Commissioner follow up. okay seeing none we'll move on to liaison reports any liaison reports this evening okay a report from the county administrator mr jackson

Just very briefly, Chair, I wanted to give a quick update from Director Bonfilio from Parks and Rec about the Eastern Washtenaw Community and Recreation Center. She is planning in the next couple of board meetings to be back and give a more detailed presentation, but there's been some pretty exciting things that have happened recently that I just wanted to make sure the board was aware of. So just today, fencing around the construction of the property has gone up, which I think sends a very clear and important signal to residents that things are just about to really take off when it comes to building the Eastern Washtenaw Community and Recreation Center. I won't steal people's thunder who may be on the Parks Commission. But yesterday, the Parks Commission took some pretty good action around some things. So maybe that can be mentioned a little bit later. But she wanted me to mention that here because that is also some RFPs were approved. And that also is committing dollars and make sure the materials can be ordered. You could just say it.

We don't do the liaison. Okay, there you go.

There were three RFPs that were really, really important for the Parks Commission. They approved it at their board meeting yesterday. That allows for the construction company to start getting some of the actual supplies to really be able to build the facility. So I know it's a behind the scenes in the weeds process, but I think it means that we are closer to actually seeing a structure go up and be built. So there's a pretty aggressive timeline for the dirt to start to really be removed and for the foundation to be laid in the next several weeks. And so again, she will be back to give a lot more detail. And by that time, we should definitely see some real work being done on that facility. That is my update.

Think we have a tentative hold the date for a groundbreaking also and that's October 14 so if it's not in your calendar no i'm got a shaking my head no. that's what they said yesterday at parks Ashley you know something different.

Sorry, Chair. I spoke to Megan briefly today, and she didn't want the date to be public yet because there weren't final contracts or dates. That was all. That's why I was shaking my head.

She did say it at a public meeting yesterday.

She did say it at a public meeting yesterday.

I'll just add some context because I talked to them before the board meeting. There was just a little bit of a conversation with some of the construction folks that they're a little worried about that timeline, but we will get all that work out.

Okay. Commissioner Robby.

It was definitely presented as a tentative date and the chair also said it was a tentative date. It's a tentative date.

Thanks.

I do also want to note that this is important and interesting for us that the three bids that we awarded, came in under what the engineer had projected they would be. So the bids are actually coming in. I think the engineers projected more conservatively the larger costs, and it looks like the bids that we're getting are well within the range, and the low bids are definitely lower than what we had budgeted for. So we don't know how it's all gonna evolve, but there was a discussion about some other things were wanted on the site that we might be able to add should the cost continue to roll in at a lower amount than anticipated.

I think part of your report is also Catherine. Director Jackson, is that correct? for a quarter two budget update?

Absolutely, Catherine. I know you were given a presentation. I should have looked at the agenda to see if you were under the administrator's update. Thank you, Chair, for reminding me. It's my own.

I thought I was getting out of it for a second. I was like, okay.

I have heard the presentation four times. I forgot we were doing the presentation. Go right ahead, Catherine.

Okay, great. Thanks. Welcome, Catherine.

Okay, one second. Let's share.

Okay, going.

Thank you. So I'm here presenting the Q2 budget update. I thank you all for your patience with all the transition and finance. It's taken me a little bit longer to get this fully presentation ready, but we are here. Given the timing, there are things reflected in here that have happened since June 30th, just in the interest of full disclosure. So the board actions taken in the August meeting, et cetera, are included in this presentation, even though it says Q2. It's kind of a weird hybrid, but that's where we're at. So general fund status. We are budgeted at about $173 million. It's a big increase over our original budget. That's due to property taxes from the equalization report and then a large fund plan use of fund balance. Currently, we are projecting about a $4.3 million shortfall. But of that $3.9 million is planned in our budget. So it's a net shortfall of about $411,000. So when we look here, we have taken a very large swing from Q1 to Q2. Most of this is expected and done with board action. When you see almost $6.5 million, it feels like a lot. I will walk through everything that has happened. But overall, we have a large shortfall of revenue. Again, most of that is that planned use of fund balance. We have almost on budget for expenditures. I'm going to give me that net projected shortfall. The next couple of slides are a little bit different. I'm talking about the difference from what was projected in Q1 to what was projected in Q2. This isn't a budget variance. It's not anything over expenditures. It's just helping to explain that big swing that has happened from that Q1 to the Q2 numbers. So when we look at expenditures, we see about $7.4 million of additional expenditures over what was projected in Q1. Almost half of that is the non-structural lump sum for employees that will be paid out at the second pay in October. And then that half of a percent increase that happened based on property tax amounts. So that's a big component that was adjusted in the Q1 technical adjustments. Also in the Q1 technical, we allocated $1.3 million to the east side rec center for operations and a construction contingency that helped us secure bond finding or getting the better bond rating showing we had that contingency dollars. It shifted a little bit because we allocated money to the CVI grant or the CVI projects. And we front loaded some of that contingency that had originally been planned to be spread out over the next four years. So I was allocated in Q1. In August, we did the additional allocation to winter sheltering. Not all of the housing dollars had been projected to be spent in Q1. This is showing everything is spent. Again, this is within budget. uh the next two um are some differences that have happened in the sheriff's office so overtime has increased um from q1 to by almost a million dollars there's a couple of caveats here that i want to walk through one is the summer is big on events and reimbursable over time in addition they do their training that is paid for by grants but we don't have the amounts to break it out and back them out of the projection numbers. We will have them by Q3. I have the commitment from the sheriff that we will have those to get that dollar. So we're hoping that that is an overly conservative number and it will come down, but we will know more for Q3. And then jail food and medical, we finalized the medical RFP late last year. The jail food RFP is in the process of being finalized. Both came in higher than previously budgeted and previously projected. So that's about $800,000 increase over last year's projections. They are within their budget though. They're within their budget. It's just, we didn't have that much anticipated in Q1. I understand. The next one that's a big swing. So Corp Council legal fees we had previously projected on budget. That's how they have been the past couple of years. The DOJ lawsuit, the IRS inquiry, and a couple of arbitrations are pushing those legal fees up above budget. So looking at about $400,000 as an increase over Q1. um the other next piece is clear collections this is just we had a conservative number on how much election expenses would be in q1 we now have better numbers this is again within the budget within that q1 technical adjustment nothing unanticipated but it is a big chunk of difference so everything was expected on that front but it is a little bit of an increase um vacancy savings we had additional vacancy savings about 200 000 and then um all of the other sheriff operations outside of those two lines came in a little bit short um a little bit better than previously projected about a quarter million dollars um on the revenue changes we have about an additional million dollars so one of the good pieces of information that we didn't have at q1 report so prosecuting attorney state of michigan grant last year because the contracts were delayed so much from the state the general fund in 2025 had to front the money to cover what had been expended by those grants because we didn't have anything that approved enough for the audit that we could get that or that we could accrue the revenue so we had to make those funds whole with the general fund with the understanding that when the grant funds came in the general fund would get that money back those contracts are in the process of being signed if they're not fully signed um so we are i think they're fully signed we are currently waiting for the reimbursements the accounting director is looking weekly and as soon as the money comes in from the state we will then refund that money back into the general fund um so it's about a little over half a million dollars district court trial court revenue is both doing better than expected there's a little bit of formula issue with the trial court ones district court year-to-date trends are just improved over q1 So we took a very conservative approach last quarter, so it's good news. Interest earnings have improved by about $200,000. Feds just raised rates, so we can expect those to improve over this projection for the rest of the year. On the revenue side, clerk revenue is coming in a little bit shorter. Again, clerk, we don't really know where the property-related revenues will land until we finish the summer. With all the home purchases that happen so love a better idea Q3 numbers where that will land and then share this is almost all contract leasing. revenues coming in about $400,000 below Q1 projections it's another number we're going to make sure we have very tight handle on for Q3 and we have all the reimbursements and. So this is a new slide. I wanted to show a lot of the action that's been taken by the board. You adopted earlier this year your health, housing, and hunger priorities, and you've made some significant allocations toward those priorities. So highlighting that Eastside Rec Center contingency and operational reserve, 500,000 to Planned Parenthood that came from the undesignated allocation. Winter sheltering, we had $1.8 million already budgeted. An additional $700,000 was added. I'm going to propose, and I'll show why a little bit later, that we use the remainder of the undesignated allocation to cover that. And that will come with our Q3 technical adjustments as we usually had you finish allocating anything that's left in the undesignated allocation. The last one, and this is a very loose proposal and really trying to demonstrate how we're trying to meet the intent behind not putting that healthcare millage on the ballot. in these budget numbers shown is what the budget looks like if we allocated this $1.5 million to the health needs of the current budget operation. So reallocating $1 million of vacancy savings and then repurposing that $535,000 from the state of Michigan over to this other purpose. It was fund balance that was already used. Our fund balance is healthy. It's just reallocating it over there. So it gives us starting basis for that conversation. We know there's more conversations to be had. But I won't be back in front of you until November. You're looking for action in October. So really wanted to show what the budget looks like if we made that $1.5 million allocation. I'm moving on to general fund expenditures, so this is more of the traditional report you're used to from me so. Q2 expenditures about $173 million all of these can all of these categories service areas are exactly where we expect them. To be public safety and justice $94.6 million outside of contract policing, which is an additional 20.8 million again, these are all the same proportions we've seen year over year. um again so tiny every time i put this up on the screen um but this is every department within each of those um service area groups so one helps provide context to the big numbers on the previous slide but this is how much where the general fund is being spent on each of these areas happy to answer any questions about that um the So on the surplus side, general fund personal services, we have about $2.9 million of vacancy savings. This does include non-general fund appropriations that primarily support personnel and how much we anticipate will be needed. We have that undesignated allocation surplus of about 744,000. Down below, you'll see a winter sheltering shortfall, 732,000. That's where we're talking about netting those two out when we're back for the Q3 adjustments. District court has about $340,000 of savings. This is entirely vacancy savings on that front. Shortfalls. Again, a lot of these are similar to ones we have talked about. The sheriff operation is about $1.1 million. This is net of everything outside of court security. Court security is about $400,000 shortfall there. And this is, again, due to a lot of the overtime, the reimbursements, we're still fine-tuning where that will all... land the jail food medical again coming in higher but it is within budget so we're really netting all of that those items out uh the winter shelter we already talked about animal control we talk about every single quarter it is still the same um admin has about 470 000 shortfall this is a lot of the board directed spending um that has been happening year over year. It's a consistent amount that we have seen. Shareport Security, we talked about, and then Corp Council with the legal fees, again, about $400,000 shortfall in Corp Council. And then banking fees, again, is the amount we pay credit card vendors to collect revenue from customers, et cetera, we do not pass along those fees to customers like other jurisdictions do. So we have about a $200,000 budget. We pay about $450,000 a year in order to let people pay for things online. Planned use of fund balance, about $7.5 million budgeted. We have about 72 million in fund balances of 1231.25. A big chunk of this is at the bottom. It is in last year's budget that we are using a million dollars a year for future winter sheltering and then We funded a three-year pilot for the Youth Assessment Center. So we have two more years of that funding to fund that piece of it. And so I want to keep that in front of you because we've already allocated it. It just doesn't show up in the current year budget. It's in future budgets. For the current year, the $2.7 million for the non-structural lump sums winter sheltering of a million dollars. The rest of it's all similar to what we talked about at Q1. Only difference is we got an invoice from My Brother's Keeper from 2024. They forgot to invoice us, so we made them pull for that money. And so that was the only difference from Q1. For attrition, we have $3.2 million budgeted. We're about $3.8 million projected, so about a half of a million dollar surplus, 116%. Every service area is hitting the targets currently. As you will see on this slide, the sheriff is beating about half of it, but it's offset by trial court and district court exceeding the current attrition targets. So that whole service area still is doing OK. um the remainder again most departments are um hitting their target um we've had a significant amount of transition in both finance and county admin which is really helping on this side of things um so christian general fund revenues again similar to what we've seen 109 almost 110 million dollars for the general operating millage about almost sorry about 19 million general government that's primarily state revenues Contract placing is about $12.4 million going down from there. Again, this is what we're used to seeing every month, but a total of $168 million. On the revenue variances, general fund interest earnings, about $2.5 million over budget. That is one of the places we have historically budgeted very conservatively because there are all these other places where we know we are budgeted more than we will likely achieve. the other sheriff revenues outside of contract policing's heavy surplus about 1.3 million district court has about a two hundred thousand dollar uh surplus this is again just based on year-to-date trends fees in general are up um water resources has about a hundred thousand dollar surplus that's generally their reimbursable work from the drain funds uh state revenues have a shortfall this is from marijuana dollars coming in below budget of close to two hundred thousand dollars um Trial court has a revenue shortfall about $250,000, similar to previous years, but a little bit better. And then we have the use of fund balance. And contract policing is about $4.3 million short. Again, this is due to the PSU positions that aren't filled and therefore aren't filled up to local units. Non-general fund. Most of our non-general funds that we're tracking are in a good status, either having a surplus or neutral. One thing we realized as we were prepping this is we don't have the Office of Aging Services on here. This is a product of them not having been really stood up and spending money. We will fix that by Q3. We will get them all set up in the normal projections and get Shannon all of the tools that we give the rest of the departments so that she can manage her operations. We're not anticipating any issues, but making sure we continue to report out to you all on that. The other piece I wanted to highlight, community corrections. They are running about $150,000 shortfall, but the sheriff is making up that difference with current year millage funds, which is what will bring them back into neutral status. So they are still having the issues, but it's being handled internally with the sheriff's office funding. So it's not being asked of additional general fund dollars. The only shortfall we see right now is in it about $300,000. This is pretty similar to previous years. It fits within the current infrastructure and it non structural resources. So the first per first use of those resources is to cover any operational shortfalls. And then if they have additional resources above that, then they can apply them to future year projects. So while it's a shortfall, we have the resources. There's no projected impact on fund balance. And so this is a similar thing. It's how things have been operationalized the past couple of years. But we're continuing to look at what we can do. budget adjustments there's nothing in admin authority so i don't have to walk through any of that uh next steps um we are continuing to monitor again um all the similar things that we've talked about before clerk revenues looking at the property transactions we try to look at those any signs of recessions ongoing state revenue declines including the marijuana revenue will need to have a solution for in the reaffirmation. Looking at that court revenues, again, it feels a little bit all over the place. Things are a little bit better this year than previous years. We've been talking about federal changes for a while and just knowing what will be coming from federal revenue impacts on all of our departments. On the expenditure side, looking at inflation, the impact of personnel cost growth. last part um so budget other budget work in 2026 uh q3 budget update will be in november i will be back in front of you all with um more numbers at that time year-end report be march april 2027 um it's kind of the soft start of budget reaffirmation season this is a budget prep year we are trying to implement priority-based budgeting software the finance transition has delayed that a little bit uh capital improvement planning but next board meeting before you hopefully working session talk about budget factors so not bringing that recommended budget but going into depth of all of the things that we're considering as we're trying to get to that balanced budget giving you all information in advance of bringing the recommended budget which we'll bring october 21st and with that i'm open for any questions commissioner sanders

um can you talk to me about the 2024 late admission we have no like so okay ages ago when i worked in the county there's a deadline you missed the deadline you missed the money so how did that happen so i

uh commissioner sanders you're referencing the my brother's keeper 2024 amount that cfo spoke to that's correct i would say this one is designated in the budget as an outside agency allocation uh it's our typical practice that we we would expect to see it inside of the fiscal year i think because of the work of that group because it's a explicitly listed by the board in the budget as an appropriation we've taken additional efforts on this i think certainly that's If that's something that needs additional discussion by the board or if that's the wrong approach, we can modify how we respond to those. So it's atypical, I will also say.

Okay. Well, I will discuss with you off mic another atypical situation where there was just a flat-out denial for reimbursement because it wasn't done in a timely fashion. So we'll talk about that offline. My other question is, Can, can we get a better breakdown for the court counsel legal overrun costs, how do we find out how much of it was related to our response. To federal lawsuits and how much of it is related to the departmental losses. i'm being nice.

We can get you something.

I'm interested in that breakdown. And then just for equity sake, we got $50,000 going to My Brother's Keeper, but only $45,000 allotted for possible female mentoring programs. Where's the other side? I'm just saying. It's been sitting there for years. Commissioner Light and I actually did a pilot where we paid out of our pocket for a girls mentoring program pilot. But if you're going to give My Brother's Keeper $50, We ought to be budgeted 50 for the girls.

Thank you. I was recently at a meeting where one of our road commissioners mentioned that there might be some issues around the marijuana tax dollars. I don't know if those are specific to the roads, but do we have any concerns?

it would depend on how much they're budgeting um but this year's came in so we've seen a large increase year over year um this year came in two hundred thousand dollars less and so it's a question of what we anticipate into the future it's a little bit expected like we know things are expanding, we know some of the dispensaries have had to shut down, we know that there's the excise tax, I don't know how much of like, this hasn't this is based on actuals through October of 2025. So the excise tax tax isn't an impact yet. It's hard to know exactly how much that will be, but it feels likely that there will be an impact.

Okay, very well. Thank you. Commissioner light.

Well, one of my most favorite things to ask if animal control and all I can put is question mark question mark question my mark what are we doing like why is. Animal control is always that i'm just not able to let go I want numbers, I want to know what what I mean I see those numbers, but. she's always a big question mark like what are we doing.

Yes, so. from a budget projection standpoint um we have a contract with the humane society and we are projecting that we fully spend the contract based on that contract amount and we have the amount budgeted that is less which is what's causing that shortfall that's

Chair, if I may. Yeah, and from a programmatic side, the contract with the Humane Society expires next year. We did have the working session earlier this year and expect necessary discussion with this board and with other jurisdictions around what's the right way and the right financial model to deliver these services to residents. So I will say nothing has changed since that working session presentation.

and we think we've got a lot to talk about before that contract comes up for renewal next year so more to come you're still going commissioner yep i would just like to say that i'm grateful that the contract is ending and we should all really put on our minds on how we can do things differently thank you commissioner robbie

At the risk of Joe DeSanto blowing a gasket, I do have also a comment, a question about the Humane Society. Mine is going to be more tame this time, but do we have a current report on what the local jurisdictions have contributed? Are there any updates from our last meeting? Because I believe, if I remember correctly, that the overrun is largely due to the fact that we budgeted for municipalities to contribute more than they are contributing.

we we did yeah and there's been nothing that substantially changed on that i have been in discussions earlier today actually uh with some of the supervisors who have contributed in the past um there there's no meaningful change to the projections for this year though and i think the figure that was in catherine's presentation is still the right figure we continue to try for that and i think the local jurisdictions are willing to talk with us and raise some challenging questions you know in terms of why should we pay when others don't pay and and the amount of work that it takes to go into this so i'm happy to speak more to it i i would just reaffirm though that the figures that were in catherine's presentation are still right um in terms of a more detailed report uh i can write something up and can send it out to the board after the meeting thanks thank you any other questions or comments for catherine commissioner sanders

So i'll i'll hire my my bodyguard immediately after these oh boy oh boy um, so I have been saying, and I have been asking for assistance in so first, let me say this, I am a pet lover have had dogs animals cats since I could talk. and still own a pet. But we are. legally responsible through state statute for dog control not for cat control not for iguana control not for any other basically species and i've not heard it said yet because people are so afraid of the animal advocates that pets are optional with the exception of um animals that are needed to help people that may have limited sight or may have other physical disabilities and or emotional disabilities that require them to have some sort of emotional support. So let's remove those from what I'm about to say about that population. Pets are optional. And that means that when you go out and get a pet, you should have thought about the cost of the goals associated with that. And I'm starting to look, I don't wanna say I had an epiphany, but I'm starting to look at the Humane Society is providing a service, but we also are not doing due diligence to make owners of the animals responsible for the costs associated with those animals so that it does not become a burden on people who have chosen not to have a pet. So when you look around at the number of the amount of money that the county spends, the number of veterinary hospitals and service providers and the exorbitant costs of toys and specialty foods and all of that that our residents pay for by choice. I think that we need to start looking at charging some sort of fee for the ownership of those animals so that it is not a burden on people who have chosen not to have animals. Dogs, we don't have a choice. State mandates that we have to provide that support. But it's the other animals that their owners are not paying their fair share. We can blame the municipalities as well. But as a county, I think that we need to look at how do we either help those municipalities or start to require or mandate that they start to pay for a portion of that care or that, you know, oversee ship that we're currently paying for because it could the amount of money that we're paying that increases every year if you had to pay 10 i would i don't i wouldn't probably about paying 10 a year to have my pet registered i don't think that's asking too much at all so i'm i'm just putting it out there because i'm sure i'm going to revisit this and um andrew i know has had this conversation and i've told him how i felt and i'm just putting it out there and being transparent so people can be mad at me if they want to but if you want a dog or if you want five cats you should be paying the fair share for those five cats i shouldn't be going to my neighbor who has none and expecting them to pay that bird so

I can see that Commissioner Robby would like to speak again. Commissioner Hodge has not. This is a reminder. This is quarter two budget impact to discussion. Watch as I love all of our opining on the Humane Society. Remember the mantra of business and brevity. So Commissioner Hodge.

Thank you. I will be brief. It's a follow-up to Commissioner Sanders' point again. I'm just going to ask directly to Michelle. Maybe you know off the top of your head. Maybe you don't. If you don't, could you look it up? Are we able to institute some of the licensing fees that Commissioner Sanders is mentioning?

Yes, we can.

All right. There you go.

Thank you. Commissioner Robbie?

I was going to ask the same question, but to clarify your response, yes, we can impose the fees, or yes, we can look it up. fair question fair question yes we can impose the fees okay and in particular the fees that i'm having trouble on well do you believe that we can impose fees in terms of licensing animals other than dogs or are you saying we can impose fees on the sale of uh you know cat toys and stuff like that not cat toys of of of animals yes but we can license cats and ferrets and stuff like that like we license dogs i i do believe we can do that yes but we will we will do our due diligence and we will check into that and verify and report back i think that would be exceedingly wise for us to explore as an additional revenue source i also think that enforcement of the current dog tag laws that we have may require broader county um enforcement mechanism above and beyond what we already have which is not on the agenda tonight The main society was mentioned in the presentation.

Also, I would be opposed to taxing only cat toys and not dog toys. Anyway, any other questions on quarter two budget for business and brevity? Okay. The thumbs up. He was psyching me out with his hand. Thank you so much, Catherine. Thank you. um the report from the chair um i don't have much to say other than noting that new boards and commissions are up on the website um check it out if you're interested members of the public and serving on a board or commission those appointments will be being completed soon so we'll be have some social media about that out there too so check it out uh no special orders of business uh no appointments this evening consent agenda moved by rodney supported by hodge all those in no no it's a voice yeah all those in favor aye aye any opposed i don't know why the consent agenda always messes me up but the consent agenda passed somebody like to move first reading commissioner lavar

First reading, Resolution A, a resolution to approve the establishment of a new 24-hour subscription fee for the online lands record from the clerk's office. B, a resolution authorizing the application and approval of the Huntington Foundation grant of 20,000 from OCED. C, a resolution authorizing the emergency management work agreement with admin signature from the Emergency Management Division of the Sheriff's Office.

and that is it for first reading chair do i have a second support moved by lavar seconded by hodge any discussion on any of these items okay all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed great all those items passed final reading uh let's just do final reading and single reading separate would anybody like to move the final reading resolutions commissioner lavar

Don Nottoli, A resolution requesting the authorization of a grant application to the help resources and services administration. B, a resolution approving the Washtenaw County Health Department's 2526 final budget. C, a resolution authorizing the Interim County Administrator's signature on the County Health Department's comprehensive agreement for the period October 1st, 26 through September 30th, 27. D, a resolution amending the FY25-26 budget from community mental health. E, a resolution approving the Washtenaw County community mental health annual operating budget. f a resolution ratifying the community corrections comprehensive plan uh and you want me to read single reading up with this shirt no we'll take single reading next thank you support moved by lavar supported by hodge would anybody like to pull anything for separate consideration

Okay. Any discussion on any of the items? Commissioner LaVar?

I just want to very briefly thank the CMH team for their creation of the budget and the work to advance that. Appreciate it.

Thank you. I'll ditto that for public health. All right, let's do a roll call vote.

Commissioner Beaman?

Yes.

Commissioner Hodge? Yes. Commissioner LaBar? Yes. Commissioner Light?

Yes.

Commissioner Maciejewski? Yes. Commissioner Robby? Commissioner Sanders?

Yes.

Commissioner Scott? Yes. Commissioner Somerville?

Yes.

Motions carried.

Fantastic. Would anybody like to move the single readings, Commissioner LaBar?

A, a resolution authorizing an exemption to the county's living wage ordinance for certain CMH service providers. B, a resolution adopting amended bylaws for the Materials Management Planning Committee. C, a resolution accepting the Michigan Recycling Coalition Leveling Up Recycling Education and Outreach Grant from Department of Public Works. D, a resolution accepting the Next Cycle Harvest Grant Award from the Department of Public Works. E, a resolution extending the term of Washtenaw County as fiduciary for Washtenaw County for Washtenaw Regional Resource Management Authority from Department of Public Works. J. Sam Hurley, Ph.D.: F a resolution allocating additional older persons millage funds to the senior nutrition program from office of aging services. J. Sam Hurley, Ph.D.: H a resolution recognizing September 15 2026 as international myotonic dystrophy awareness day and I would move claims while we're at a chair support.

moved by lavar supported by hodge just as a note we did live leave g out um we'll discuss that after we come back from a closed session would anybody like to pull anything separate here you have a comment okay let me see if anybody wants to pull anything separate and then i'll go to you commissioner sanders a commissioner robbie b b Yeah, who's doing C. business and brevity. We were on such a role. Okay, Commissioner Somerville.

Yeah, just on the whole the ones that we didn't pull. I just had a question for the administrator. The issues that were raised up around staff capacity. If we allocate more money for the senior nutrition, is the timeline different? Are we expecting the normal timeline on when the staff will be? transitioned and like what can we do to make be more supportive so that there aren't issues with the transition. I just wanted to make sure that the issues that were addressed in public comment can be worked through.

Good question. So I did reach out to Mary through email to ask for some of those comments specifically to make sure we're aware of all of the things that she raised. I will just say that October 1st is the date. And so that's the day we're proceeding with as far as the transition.

That's helpful. The one thing I one thing I wanted to just correct, and I should have done this for public comment follow up. So I apologize, but it's relevant to this issue. The Director of Aging Services started in the beginning of this year, not 2025. I just wanted to, like, I think that there, we took a long time to hire, which I, we can, like, I'll own, like, that it took us a long time to adopt the policy. But I just want to, like, just for staff, like, across the organization, part of the reason why this has all been so delayed, we took a very Jessica Keever- long time. It was our fault. We had three am meetings out in the middle of nowhere to set the policy. Sorry, middle of nowhere. Um, it was. It's our fault. It's not Shannon's fault. It is our fault that everything took as long as it did. It took a really long time to hire Shannon, and then it took longer because we deliberately made it clear that we wanted strategic planning to happen, and so I will just

um take ownership over how it was the nine of us that made this process unnecessarily long and a little chaotic thanks thank you um let's we'll go to a comments questions concerns on a commissioner sanders

I do this every year. I want it pulled because, first of all, I know that the majority of my colleagues are going to approve it. I vote no every year, and it's for the principle. It's not for the lack of support for the very committed workers that do this very laborious work. work but it is um in protest in principle to the fact that i don't agree with us paying them a pittance i know we don't have a way to change that because i've asked every time we have to vote for it but that's why i'm pulling it because i won't i will be voting no on that i know that it will pass and i want to say thank you to my fellow colleagues because they will pass it Because if they wouldn't, then that would put me in an even more difficult spot. But I vote no every time. So that's the only reason I'm asking for it to be pulled.

Commissioner Sanders, I'd like to thank you personally for acknowledging that some of us will vote yes on this, even though we share the exact same feelings. And what I really appreciate about your comments right now is that you recognize that no vote as a privilege, that there are people at this table who will vote yes, even though we're uncomfortable with it. And so I just, I admire that you recognize that that's a privilege to take that vote. So thank you. Any other questions on this? Commissioner Maciejewski?

A question that maybe the department can help with on this item.

CMH, you're asking for? Yes.

Does the direct care worker premium pay that the state puts in for Medicaid work, combined with the new minimum wage that will come into effect on January 1st,

would would not that amount surpass the requirements for this is the biggest challenge so no no our current cls uh reimbursement rate uh is just over 25 an hour sorry and living wages 1950 an hour so There's a lot of things that need to be done with that $5. That's not wages.

Okay. I guess you've answered my question.

There's just not enough money in our system to fund it. There's mandates there like minimum wage, rec care pass through, but it's still not enough to support our living wage.

Okay, thank you.

um i have beeman sanders and robbie sorry sanders oh my quick question is do we have any idea how many um workers are comprised in that number in this number of folks that are affected by the living wage um in our county

i don't have a worker count for you um i do know that uh 24 of the 74 providers that we have that would be eligible for this category um are what this is including in this waiver um so that's really some of our bigger providers are on that list some of our bigger residential providers um so i we could follow up with guesstimates for you on the number of staff that impact

That would just be helpful. I mean, I mean, if you have the opportunity, that would be nice to know. And then we can't control this, but I can still ask, do we know if those employers try and support those employees in other ways, or if they even have the bandwidth financially to do that?

I would say yes, and I think that was very clear, especially during kind of the trials and tribulations of the Covid period right, and even trying to recruit pain. Everyone was getting inventive, ourselves included, just trying to find ways to incentivize folks when without money, you know, which is obviously very difficult, which you can imagine. you know, they're they're great providers and a lot of them have been in our community for long time years in the years. Thank you.

Commissioner Robbie.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to make sure I understood your response to Commissioner Maciejewski's question. Your responses was that the current or the new minimum wage, plus the direct care worker premium that comes from the state is still lower than our mandated moving wage.

uh yes i think we are i would say between the upcoming 15 change i believe i just read that's going to put them at about 18 and some change um between those two things so yeah and then our living wage is 19 something correct so we're close but we're a dollar off basically okay thanks

Okay. Any other questions, comments, or concerns on item A? Thank you. Let's vote on A, please.

Commissioner Hodge. Yes. Commissioner LaVar. Yes. Commissioner Light.

Yes, with regret.

Commissioner Maciejewski. Yes. Commissioner Robby.

No.

Commissioner Sanders.

No.

Commissioner Scott.

Yes. Commissioner Somerville yes Commissioner beeman yes motion carries, thank you very much questions comments and concerns on item be be Commissioner Robbie Robbie Robbie good one good one, thank you, be be for be yeah.

Do we is the oh here or somebody that. is in the cloud in the universe.

No, no.

Okay, well i'm just gonna ask my questions I I guess I wish somebody was here to answer them. I don't mind most of these changes. I do have a question on one and well actually i'm just going to ask them as questions questions bleeding into concerns. Under membership. for one appointment item d which i presume is being added by the fact that it's in red in the document that i'm looking at um states that if the dpa representative which is theo for all intents purposes in this current iteration, though his name is being replaced by a more generic Director of Public Works, which I agree with in the update, is unable to secure a candidate who meets the criteria for the MMPC after actively seeking applicants for a period of at least 30 days, the position may be declared open. The CAA, which is us, may then appoint a representative with similar experience or of similar representation to serve in that capacity. This sounds to me like it's describing the exact current process that we already do and I don't understand this seems duplicative to have in the rules. Or in the bylaws and I guess the part that I don't quite understand is why it's deferring to Theo to secure candidates, when we have I thought an application process that then we appointed people to.

perhaps commissioner maciaski can address that since these are public works commissioner maciaski thank you yeah i'll do my best and i will note that at the meeting where these were reviewed by the mmpc i was not there because i was moving my son into his college dorm you're allowed to apologize for not being at this meeting this particular part of it Many of the seats on the MPC are dictated by state statute. It in the absence of applicants, because many of these are very prescriptive in terms of who the professions are that can fill them. The Theo, in essence, would go out and make contacts in the community for what may be only like one or two or three entities that could even supply somebody. So he would, in essence, end up recruiting. I think that the, and I can't be sure about this, but I think the part about bringing it to the Board of Commissioners to approve it is new. And it wasn't in the original. It wasn't a lot. in the original part. I could be wrong about that, but I think that that component of it is new.

I guess if I could respond, Chair, with a question.

Yes, Commissioner Robby, through the Chair, thank you.

Under our future rules, which should be really the practice anyways.

It's Robert's rules anyway.

Yeah, exactly. Item C says all members shall be appointed by the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners, which I will say is inconsistent with the rest of the bylaws where it essentially refers to us through our... name as the county approval agency but uh it does so but in in that section it says all members shall be appointed by the washington county board of commissioners so it seems again redundant that it would then again state that we would appoint the representative i guess i don't understand why that's necessary if the approval I don't understand why it's necessary I hear what you're saying that the that the dpa representative goes around and tries to recruit people. But I feel that that's more of an informal activity that should occur anyways behind the scenes that doesn't necessarily need to be described or prescribed in the bylaws and that if there's nobody to fill a position this doesn't really solve that problem by adding section D. But what what article, are you in.

City Council Chambers, Article four four 4.1 4.1 Thank you.

City Council Chambers, If I make sure, yes, please, I think that the 30 day thing is key here and the idea that there is a clock on it, not with this proposal, I think, would then trigger us to do something versus having an open ended. City Council Chamberson, Situation where he was out trying to recruit somebody and nobody's taking it and maybe it goes on a month 234 think what we're trying to do here say after 30 days of trying to do this, then it would come to us to do some type of appointment.

City Council Chamberson, I guess that's why i'm confused is it would come to us anyways whether there's 30 days or not, and I don't understand what happens in 30 days versus not in 30 days, because we have to make the appointment anyway.

could be somebody with similar experience wouldn't necessarily have to be the prescribed person i think if i'm trying to understand here i think what this is is there's a there's prescribed positions and if within a period of time they can't find that prescribed position it can come to us to appoint somebody who has a similar experience or a similar representation that is out of that prescribed

i guess um that raises a question and then a suggestion the question i'm that's a hypothesis by the way yeah i think that my suggestion i have another question on this but my suggestion is in the absence of theo to answer this that we should probably wait a meeting but my the question that appears that that comes then to my mind is is it legal to do that given that the positions are prescribed under state law can we appoint somebody with similar expertise or representation if the position is prescribed by state statute.

That's unclear, we'd have to review that.

And I guess then the suggestion is if that's the intent, this I feel like is pretty clunky language to accomplish that intent. Because uh sorry lost my train of thought because um if so if the intent is to allow us to do that i think if there's a simpler way of of saying that essentially i don't i don't know that this needs i agree if if that's the goal i don't disagree with that end goal i just disagree that this language accomplishes that and i think we need to look into the legal parameters in the interest of time i'm going to move to my next comment okay on this um Uh, under section or 5 remember removal. We're still section 3.

Geez, I lost the page again. Subsection 3, and I kind of pull it.

Yeah, i'm just gonna read it. It says they're adding language that says meetings that are posted online and available for public viewing do not need to be included in the packet. Any voting member who publishes or disseminates false or misleading information may be removed upon confirmation of the misconduct by the CAA, by us. Any non-voting member may be removed upon confirmation. My mic wasn't on, I apologize. I was just reading the changes on section three any non voting member may be removed upon confirmation. of misconduct by the dpa representative so there's two parts here that I have one a question and then an issue with. The first question is where it says meetings that are posted online and available for public viewing do not need to be included in the packet what does that mean.

So good news. Oh, we have we have Theo okay right.

Now.

okay do you want to take up our other items and then come back to this yeah why don't we why don't we see there's some confusion theo is here or not here uh why don't we can we just go ahead commissioner machiaski so i was going to ask about this one too because i think what

There's a word missing here. I think it's meeting minutes that are posted online.

Makes so much more sense. So that would need clarity.

Yes, but I'm not going to get into answering the other parts of that because I wasn't there to hear the discussion on it.

Not yet. Okay. Let's just suspend this discussion and come back to it and see if we can actually summon Theo. Somebody say his name three times and he'll appear.

Theo, Theo, Theo.

Almost sounds like Beetlejuice. All right. Any questions, concerns on other items on single reading? There's going to be none. Okay. Let's do the roll on everything else other than B. And of course, A, which we already voted on. And G. Yep. Alphabet soup.

Okay. Commissioner LaBarre. yes commissioner light yes commissioner macieski yes commissioner robbie yes commissioner sanders yes commissioner scott yes commissioner somerville yes commissioner beeman yes commissioner hodge yes motions carry

Okay fantastic now we're going to go back to be, and I think that our summoning of same CEOs name three times worked and he's now here so. Theo hi.

Hello sorry technical difficulties, thanks for your patience.

you're really loud in the room to um. did we need to go i'm going to just take the conversation way back to commissioner robbie's first question or concern i don't know if you heard any of that or if he should re-ask his questions can you repeat yeah yeah commissioner robbie can you go back to your first question concern okay

Absolutely. Hi, Theo. I'm looking at the bylaws for the Materials Management Planning Committee, under Article four appointments, subsection D, where it looks like you're adding new language. The issue that we were debating is what how this? Well, first of all, let me ask you what is what is your intent with this? I'll start.

Yeah, great question. So intent is to fill our committee because we've had a vacancy for a very long time since Jed Cornell resigned from city of Ann Arbor. Sarah Mason's been an ex officio member and active in the meetings and as we're getting towards the end. i have been unable to fill that vacancy from any municipality i've sent six emails i believe to every elected official in the county that would fill that position um and have not gotten anyone who's interested in filling um so looking to fill with somebody who has been active and participating in the meetings and i've cleared that with the state um and then i asked about that would that be

under the intent of the law and they said oh yeah several committees around the state do that commissioner robbie so the intent here is to fill vacant positions and you when you say you've cleared it with i'm sorry that this is like i just need to be specific about asking if you cleared it with the state

who cleared it do you have it in writing can our corporate council review it um and uh it doesn't sound like our council has reviewed it yet uh so i have not cleared the appointment uh the appointment would have to come back to you um because the board of commissioners does all the appointments but i have gotten approval from the state verbally when i inquired about it so if corp council would like that in advance of

having that appointment i'm happy to provide that at the time before i submit the appointment the issue that i'm outlining is it sounds like your intent is that we would be able to fill the position with somebody who is not directly satisfying the category in which they're being appointed to and that the state is okay with that is am i inferring correctly that that's what you're saying Yes, and so that's I think the piece that we need something more concrete from the state indicating that that is permissible and whether it's permissible under. Staff directive or if there's a bulletin that's been issued by the department, I think we need to know that before i'm comfortable supporting this, I will say that I do believe that there's. I guess I don't know that this section is necessary, since. the sections a through c grant the board of commissioners pretty broad appointment authority so i don't know that this is necessary i agree with your intent but i i feel like putting it in putting in writing that we're going to appoint somebody who's not sectioned for the position that they're supposed to be appointed to under the state mcl feels a little off to me um So, and I also don't like the process that you're describing here of you basically going around behind the scenes trying to recruit people for a position. While that may practically be what happens. It feels clunky to put it in the bylaws, because the reality is that since we're the appointing body. people apply for appointments just like with any other boarding committee and then the chair makes the recommendation to the to the body and though you as a staff are are going around trying to recruit people I don't know that that needs to be like spelled out in the bylaws I guess I don't know and just to go by we have had this posted on the the website for I believe we're probably close to eight months and we've so we've had a difficult time filling this position I understand the um

idea or the concern about having it in the bylaws that was something that the state specifically requested for um being able to do that sorry i don't have that in writing i just had that as a verbal for the process

I would feel more comfortable if court counsel had an opportunity to review the state's communications and then recommend the language that would work on language with the state. I guess it just feels like unreviewed, and I have concerns about that. But let me go to my second concern. Maybe this is easier.

4.5 member removal meetings that are posted online and available for public viewing do not need to be included in the packet did you mean meeting minutes or what does this sentence mean uh yeah so we're what we're looking for there is just that if people are people in the committee are putting out information that they're letting and they're putting it out like um knowing that there are city officials on our committee or others that may attend municipal meetings we just want to be aware of what um committee members are putting out to the public so that we can confirm that that is accurate so yeah we are looking for meeting minutes oh so that is it's supposed to say meeting minutes it doesn't currently say meeting minutes it just says meetings that are posted online and available for public viewing do not need to be included in the packet Right, so they don't need to include anything to that. They just need to let us know, hey, I went to a meeting, I spoke. If I have a concern that someone is putting out information that isn't truthful, I could review the Zoom meeting. Whereas if there is not a Zoom meeting link or something available that we could review, then we would go to the meeting minutes.

Does somebody else understand this and can explain it to me? I still don't feel like I understand what he's saying.

I have a suggestion.

I do too.

I think we should adjourn this to a time certain and do a little bit more review of this.

I would move to adjourn this to our October meeting. Support.

Okay, so I have that moved by Robbie, supported by Hodge. Any discussion on that?

Roll call.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner White.

Yes.

Commissioner Maciejewski. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders.

She's not there.

Commissioner Scott?

Yes.

Commissioner Somerville?

Yes.

Commissioner Beaman?

Yes.

Commissioner Hodge? Yes. Commissioner LaBar? Yes. Motion carries.

Okay, fantastic. That's it for almost all the single readings. So next, would anybody like to, Commissioner Hodge?

yes i want to move that we go into closed session to discuss pending litigation of talal wasim versus washington county at all with council and labor negotiation strategy two things two things i have moved by hodge supported by robbie supported by beeman even got one roll please roll call people were moving and i doubt it commissioner macieski

Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders. Commissioner Scott.

Yes.

Commissioner Summer.

Yes.

Commissioner Beaman.

Yes.

Commissioner Hodge. Yep. Commissioner LaBar. Yes. Commissioner Light. Motion carries.

Sure. See you soon, friends.

it's good good give me hope hope for the future

That's like what you do at follow one.

I know. You have. The new circle.

Hey.

yeah. And then we'll. Well, I was gonna say the other thing is. Reach out to us first. I'll talk to you Carolina. Thank you. All right. Okay. No more. Uncle John. same price. Bye. I don't agree with that because I don't My thing is, once you're a pedophile, you're not healed. You're not healed from that.

Even pedophiles have said that.

It's just an urge that they get that they can't get let off. So you want to come back in the streets?

Hi. Can you hear me, Tanya?

I don't have no more room. My game is getting filled up.

Tanya.

Yeah, every year, I think.

Oh, that's really good news because he has still been reaching out to kids.

Do you really believe really what he say or you or you guys. Oh mother yeah.

Oh. How are you. Good.

mm hmm.

I saw Kristin a while back at the beauty supply store. That's her name. Every time I see her, I never think of her name. So I just, I just like she look up, I say hi, I'm not about to walk over to her to say hello.

Yeah. I muted them. Okay.

okay we're back from closed session and i was the last one here commissioner hodge thank you chair i want to move approval item g a resolution approving the negotiated settlement in the matter of halal waseem versus washington county at all is that a support support all right so moved by hodge supported by everyone your pick brennan uh yes any discussion okay uh let's do a roll call vote

Commissioner Maciejewski. Yes. Commissioner Robby. Commissioner Sanders.

Yes.

Commissioner Scott.

Yes.

Commissioner Somerville.

Yes.

Commissioner Beaman.

Yes.

Commissioner Hodge. Yes. Commissioner LeBar. Yes. Commissioner Light.

Yes.

Motion carries.

Great. We have no pending items. Any items for current future discussion? I have Maciejewski, Beaman, Robby.

Thank you, Chair. Today or actually this week, The Michigan section of the American Water Works Association is meeting in Kalamazoo for their annual conference. And I learned late this afternoon that the city of Ann Arbor's water plant, the drinking water plant, won the award for best tasting drinking water in the state of Michigan. So congratulations to all those folks who provide the drinking water here in the city of Ann Arbor. which is run by my wife, Molly. So congratulations to her and the team over at the water plant.

I support that. That's fantastic. I really do love our water.

Commissioner Beaman? Thank you, Chair. I'll be brief. EGLE will be hosting a public session for discharge from the data center water into the Saline River. That will be on October 21 at 6pm you can attend via zoom or you can submit written comment.

That is the day before my birthday helpful for you to keep that. what what you're not hearing on the recording sorry is commissioner sanders asked for it to be sent so we could all be aware yes because we're an engaged board thank you uh commissioner robbie what do you want to go last i want to go last anybody else have items for current future discussions commissioner robbie you will be last move to adjourn all those in favor aye I knew as soon as you said it, I knew it.