##VIDEO ID:Qn8j6ec8PyU## e e e e afternoon September 17 2024 and I call this meeting of the Bel County Board of commissioner sorder please stand for the pledge Al alance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all that booming voice you heard in the background was our own commissioner gsig who is participating via Zoom from the Crown Plaza 3131 Campus Drive Plymouth Minnesota I only bring that up because all of the votes that any vote that we take this evening will be taken via Roll Call to in order to make sure that that complies with that I'll entertain uh oh is there any sorry is there any citizens that want to approach nope seeing none then I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda Mr chair I'd make a motion that we approve the agenda as presented is there a second second we have a motion and a second move the agenda any discussion all those in favor we'll do a roll call Diane you want to call the col the rooll yes yes yes yes yes all right that passes uh at that point I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda Mr chair I make motion to approve the consent agenda is there a second second Mr chair thank you uh any discussion all those in favor we'll do a roll call again yes yes yes I can't hear oh yes yes all right moving on then to the first item on the agenda the 2025 preliminary budget and Levy I think maybe what we'll do is let's just if someone would want to make a motion we can have a discussion about it someone wants to uh move to approve the budget as presented yes is your mic on yeah oh usually they hear w w I will entertain a motion to approve the uh budget and Levy as presented Mr chair I'll make a motion that we approve the the budget as as uh presented is there a second second all right we have a motion and a second let's have discussion any discussion on the mo sorry Mr chair we also need to have a motion to approve the levy unless you're entertaining that separately did you not do that Craig you just mentioned the budget sorry sorry motion to approve the budget and Levy in one motion um I'll amend my motion to to be both the budget and a levy thank you I will do the same all right so we have a motion in a second to approve the budget and Levy as presented discussion Mr chair yeah um I'm looking at page 107 of the budget book and I'm specifically wondering about uh Library Services funding if uh if uh the kls request was met I think they were asking for a 4% increase over last year um I'm wondering if uh where that level was budgeted this year who would have an answer for that I can uh answer that the budget that was included for kls for fiscal year 2025 matches the same budget that we provided to them for fiscal year 2024 um if you want the exact number that take me just a quick second here to pull up if you could please yeah yeah the information I have here is correct I want to say it's um 437,000 is that what you have Cody I was off by 725 437 725 that's what we're funding at right now or for the budget 2025 uh that's what we're funding currently for fiscal year 2024 and was the recommendation for 2025 okay and then remind me what a 1% Levy increase amounts to is it 200,000 uh our Levy or yeah our Levy it's about 37,000 or so yeah it it keeps going up each year and largely because of valuation like the value of properties going up so uh 1% Levy increased about 307,000 or so in additional Revenue um I guess I'm not super thrilled that there's not even an inflationary increase in the krls budget I think uh you know they had a pretty reasonable request of a 4% increase over last year which um you know really would have been a drop in the overall bucket for the county um I'm wondering if there's any appetite to at least uh give them a an inflationary increase of 2% amongst anyone on the board here tonight um Tom could you remind us what our statutory minimum is uh the fiscal year 20125 State Certified statutory level of Library support is 26 $5,000 100 or two $265,600 so we're already substantially above our statutory minimum I guess I would not be in favor of any more increases well Mr chair if I could here just you know I there aren't any other counties in the state except for crowin county that does that you know I I don't think it's the the best thing that we advocate for the minimum um especially when it comes to reading and knowledge and uh you know this this is a service that benefits all of our constituents of all age groups so um you know I would really encourage folks to kind of reconsider so that we could get to that at least that 2% Point um that's super thrilled about this do we know um can we calculate what a a 2% increase would amount to uh that would take us just a couple quick minutes but we could do that while you're debating the issue on a separate Point Mr chair a kind of non-related question to this but to the budget still um I I just want to throw this out there it's not something a you know a hill I'm willing to die on or anything like that this year but um I know it's been the tradition of the county to set the preliminary Levy at what we think we want to set it for December as well um and I'm just concerned about that because you know there's three months between now and then and if we were ever hit with an unforeseen natural disaster or some kind of emergency where we would need to um where we would need additional dollars and and but we didn't budget for it you know that I don't know if that's the the wisest thing because we can always lower uh the levy at the at the December meeting um from what we set here today I'm not super concerned about it this year because we do have arpa dollars available and and uh and um the lsam money available and reserves so I just want to kind of make that point quickly that uh maybe in the in future years we want to be a little more cognizant of that uh just because there's three months of time in between now and then and and Anything could happen so um that's all I wanted to mention on that front Okay and the magic number is uh you'd be increasing the budget uh by $875 roughly rounded that would take their request to $446,500 um well obviously I would support that Amendment but is there anybody else on the board that would be willing to increase the budget by that amount give the I'm not I I guess the thing that I'm sitting here with the dilem it's not much but when I was sitting on that committee and listening to all the requests and the the dire need that that we had within the county my concern is that we don't didn't take away from what we were already giving and leave it as is and I and I think if we would gone try to go a different direction with the committee it would uh not been something that would have been positive for the library well it would have been $8,000 more positive for the library but um okay uh my only other uh thought here is uh if we could uh separate out the the budget and the levy motion um because you know I do want to thank the committee I think a lot of a lot of hard work went into this and I do appreciate all the department heads and management team and and the committee for crunching the numbers this year and really um being financially cognizant of our of our tax pairs uh and and a property tax bill um however I I do think uh we could have uh easily invested uh $8,000 more in in library services so you know know I um I understand uh the levy requests but I'm not 100% sold on the budget um so I you know I I would like to vote for the levy but but I'm not sold on the budget because of the the zero um 0% support for kls is anyone are you guys willing to separate that motion out or not at this time Craig doesn't want to be helpful okay um okay that's where I'm at right now Mr chair okay anybody else seeing none we'll call for the vote no yes yes yes no motion passes any other additional items at this time Mr chair yes so um I forgot I was going to ask the the administrator during his report about if he's going through the administrator's conference uh next next month uh there are a few different conferences for administrators I'm not scheduled to go to any of those at this time y okay thank you okay all right any legislative or lobbying issues all right then let's have commissioner reports Tim n tonight Richard uh none tonight Joel uh pass uh Craig nope not tonight thanks oh man I've got the only one I got a list a mile long I had a really busy week the last couple weeks um Richard and uh Craig and I um independently showed up at the mpca construction and demolition Landfield regulation update put on by the mpca and I'll just um I'll just say that I I thought that they it was a poor presentation um the folks that were there like Brian olssen from from Bel try County and and some other uh folks that are in Brian's position were way smarter than the presenters and that was a real disappointment to me um that we didn't have a better presentation but anyway um so they're going to go on and do what they do and and that'll go on uh Richard and I were at Prime West meetings um uh right after on Thursday after our meeting uh we had a jail design and operation committee meeting we reviewed the uh folks that were uh submitted RFQ the qualifications for the jail project um and I think there was only a couple that had submitted that uh had been rejected um and yet even though they were they still would have an opportunity to come back to cruss Anderson and provide additional information um so that was there and then across uh Tom brought up the groundbreaking on next a week from tomorrow Wednesday the 25th at noon I believe right yep okay there'll be signs if anyone wants to go to the groundbreaking there'll be signs out there by the go out by The Eagles Club it'll be signs um jasb we had our final jasb approval of the airport zoning so that is done and final um and so it means a lot of things for a lot of folks one of the things is that there's a bunch of County land that I think it's co-owned by the city and the county behind Target that is now um available to be able to use for something other than garbage um recycling I'm sorry recycling recycling um I had management team meeting um and I zoomed in for Craig to a Northwest emergency communication board um and I always appreciate Chris Muller being there um so I can go over to the EOC and zoom in with Chris because then he can kind of tell me what all these little acronyms mean and so it's helpful um and then I had the uh I was at the Minnesota rural County legislative meeting in Alexandria um and so that was that was a good time uh very interesting working through the legislative issues that the MRC has uh and then attended the airport Affairs Council um where we have folks that are interested in aviation from around the area that give suggestions to the air Court Authority about what things could make the airport better um and then uh yesterday yeah was yesterday the Autumn um job fair it was yesterday right yeah that was really nice I I didn't get there until almost 2 o'clock but uh there was a lot of vendors out there and and uh it was kind of hot um so I think some of them closed up a little early but uh was uh I had an awesome St sandwich from the uh was it Boss Hog or top dog or whatever Top Hog whatever it was anyway um it so anyway so kudos to um I think Dave did Dave Dave wall kind of headed that up uh they did a real nice job um and so I think they're looking forward to maybe doing that twice a year so good all right that's it for me anything else anyone have oh um upcoming next meeting it'll be October 1st 3 o' um work meeting 5:00 board meeting unless otherwise indicated so just and Ki I apologize I don't know if maybe we can notify some of the candidates that um we get board packets and maybe we could include candidates for office in that just so that they would know and maybe poor car sat here from three o'cl on but anyway sorry K uh and then coming up on October 1st I will have um chat about October 15th Craig's got chat about and then October 9th I believe Craig I think you have um the uh team meeting yes that's correct all right I just want to make sure we got that right um and then uh Tim you have November 13th is that still on and then Joe you've got December 11th all right with that does anyone have have anything else motion to adjourn thank you is there a second second all right we're adjourned --------- ##VIDEO ID:p_xm2bzJyEw## Tuesday afternoon September 17 2024 and I call this meeting of the Bel trammy County Board of Commissioners work session to order ah how about new employees good afternoon Janna siga 911 Communications supervisor I'm here today to uh present our new employees as um the new telecommunicators that just came on I'll start with jolen Willis hi my name is Jolan Willis um I just started two weeks ago I graduated from Minnesota State University of Morehead with a criminal justice degree and found out about this job and just got started and so far I really like it awesome welcome thanks uh next will be hanja Bram hi I'm HRA Bram and I was a teacher for 10 years and decided to go back to dispatching I did it like 20 years ago and I'm glad I did because it's a lot of fun less stress really that's awesome less stress than teaching I taught middle school so oh I get it now um I'm actually from North Carolina so all right welcome thank you Marissa cruy hello I'm Marissa um I have just graduated about a year ago um from the UK I lived over there I studied terrorism security and radical right extremism for my masters in undergraduate international relations and history and I previously worked at Buckingham Palace as a warden so um yeah I'm happy to be here with this lovely team uh working a dispatch so I'm happy to be part of this so thank you welcome and Scott long I'm Scott long um I'm a North Country first responder since 2001 Kelly your first responder since 2008 EMT with the btic ambulance had my own business for 31 years and took a different turn and joined another team to help people awesome thanks Scott and I'm not sure if we ever were able to present uh Amanda Patterson she is our new team lead for dispatch hi I'm Amanda petson I've been with Bel trammy County for 10 years now um Janice and I kind of took over at the same time I took over her spot in team lead and she took over the supervisor spot I am in charge of the whole field training program with all of our new employees um taking on kind of from all aspects it is quite extensive it's a six to n month process um depending on how fast they move through it but we gear the program towards um everybody's learning needs and and make sure that we're meeting that so thank you and that's everyone for us thank you very much thanks Janice any other new employees oh and by the way sorry that you didn't get the memo that we weren't starting until 3:30 I hope this didn't waste your afternoon too badly okay all right there you go thank you all right does anybody have uh future work topics that they want to bring up Joe thanks uh voting accessibility and election Integrity I think it would be nice to have a presentation from our um County auditor our head elections person uh if we can fit it in next month um only if we can fit it in next month you know because it is that time of year uh where I think uh uh mostly for the general public uh it would be good to be um reminded of how uh secure our elections are and uh talk about uh um how accessible our elections are um uh I've I've heard some concerns from uh constituents that um you know they maybe are going to the wrong polling place or they're not registering correctly um I think this would be a a timely presentation from our head elections person so very good thank you anybody else no okay um gee today would have been a good day for that we got a short day okay all right uh Housing Trust Fund update an good afternoon Commissioners and L director of Health and Human Services and for those listening I'm going to provide a brief background on our Housing Trust Fund we created it in 2023 through passage of County ordinance number 50 and really the impetus to creation of the Housing Trust Fund was some new funding that we received through the Department of Revenue we had two funding sources that were new to the county um local homeless prevention aid and then our Statewide affordable housing aid and this board identified that we had some real challenges around housing availability in our community um and also affordability affordability so we wanted to look at some Creative Solutions with this new funding um and I applaud the board's decision to move forward with a trust fund because that allows us to have more creative solutions for development of housing we need to develop housing along the full Continuum and this Housing Trust Fund is going to give us that opportunity moving forward so I think it's it's a new idea that um is going to benefit us considerably into the future because it's new um and because we have new funding and new processes we had to look at the significant Investments necessary for administration of the housing trust fund and so in late 2023 we opened up an RFP looking for an agency to administer the fund we did receive two responses to that RFP and the administration was awarded to the United Way of the piji area so what has happened since we awarded that RFP United Way has been busy at work um we have the first thing that was um tackled was the cabinet makeup uh the ordinance does require a cabinet that's decision-making body that represents the community and so um the process to develop the cabinet um was started through the United Way and there was a number of representation that was identified to to be part of that cabinet so I'm going to read the representation area and then I'm going to read who the person is on the cabinet so we have our County Commissioner representative commissioner ghoul we have myself as the Human Services director we have the executive director of the United Way which is Da Alano we have a United Way Board member who is Megan stoff we also then have a commercial real estate Banker Carl Johnson of Security Bank we have a construction project manager Tom Tessier from car Anderson we have an atlarge rural representative who is darl lunberg we have a commercial land owner and developer who is Mike strodman he's also a part of our Headwaters landlord associate Association we have an atlarge role um for our Beltrami County staff person currently we have mercy white who is our Managed Care program manager serving in that role and we really felt like this was a good representation um across the board from the community but also brings different perspectives especially around that development that we're hoping to achieve with this fund um it was made very easy for us when we opened up um those roles to the cabinet because we received one letter of interest for every area that we were looking for so it worked out perfectly we also have an advisory Council for the Housing Trust Fund um which is the Bel tramy County collaborative our belr County collaborative is a group of 12 agencies that play various roles Within hous housing we work together monthly we meet and we work together on housing issues and we identified from the Housing Trust Fund perspective that that already established housing collaborative would be a great place to go for ad any advisory that that cabinet needs um so there's a variety of insight from that group and it's interesting to see the level of Engagement from the cabinet we recently conducted a survey with our Bel try County collaborative to get some of that necessary feedback and it was interesting to see the results of the survey we add we had four simple questions first was when you think of housing in belamy County what word comes to mind I won't quiz you guys but it is no surprise that it is limited and expensive we also asked that advisory committee what type of housing Bel try County needs the most what type of housing Bel try County um or sorry what what the barriers are to developing that housing and then of course if money was not an issue what do you think would have the most impact on Bel try County's housing challenges so the responses to that survey were then provided to the cabinet to further educate them on decision-making into the future the cabinet met for the first time on May 14th the topics that we were going to talk about were funding and eligibility um and it soon became clear that the cabinet would need some additional education such as the feedback from the collaborative but also education about what's already occurring in the community what gaps have been identified by other agencies so our next few meetings were really taken up by some educational presentations we heard from greater buiji we heard from Northwest Minnesota Foundation Northstar neighbors we heard from hrdc we heard from Shu companies who are the owner of Red Pine Estates we heard from by County cap um an agency called One Roof housing out of duth and we also heard of y of research from the United Way on different um different programs across the country that were occurring in housing so we learned a lot it expanded the view of the cabinet I think greatly um and we really identified that the full Continuum of housing was needed in our area from rental to Workforce to home ownership the group identified Workforce housing as the largest gap um and under but there is an understanding that there's a need for all types of housing across the continuum so as we were doing this education I did have some personal takeaways one of the things that I found interesting was the idea of building senior housing we know that we have an influx of seniors coming into our community um but we also have existing seniors who have lived there their whole lives so we were looking at okay if we built a senior housing building how many single family homes would that open up to impact that Continuum of housing that we need um so just to put it into perspective a first-time home buyer 15 years ago was looking at spending approximately $150,000 on a starter home today that number is between 300 and 350,000 so the inflationary effects on home purchases are very extreme and when there isn't very much um out there for Choice it really limits those firsttime home buyers and then they remain in rental um properties which is detrimental for them as far as wealth building in our community so we really want to look at how do we impact the Continuum to serve both the seniors and say a senior housing development but also freeing up single family homes for our families to move into and stay in our community after the education the cabinet looked at what the RFP would look like um we're going to develop an agency RFP and also a developer RFP so um part of the requirement of the funding is that we support housing stability Services as well so the group identified that we would be spending um or that we would set aside $49,500 into an agency RFP to support those housing stabilization services and then we would have a separate developer RFP the developer RFP is going to have a pre-application um we want to ensure that the developers really don't waste their time in the process we want to look at those qualifications through that preap before we have the developers do the full RFP process the agency RFP opened up yesterday you can find it on the United ways page um and it will run till the end of October there is a requirement to spend some of that funding on these Supportive Services and this is how we're qual or how we're meeting that requirement that distribution of that RFP will be done through the United ways processes the cabinet will follow those scored processes to determine who the rfps are awarded to through the for the agencies um and we will look at awarding them before the end of the year there's probably also going to be more than one awarde so for example we could have an applicant who wants to do first month's rent um and they may ask for $5,000 to support people with first month's rent we could have a agency that comes forward and wants to do housing navigation Services they might ask for $155,000 to support that program so we we really don't know what we're going to get but we're anticipating we'll have more than one awarde through that agency process developer RFP is going to open in November it'll be open for approximately two months and we anticipate that we would award that in January of February of 25 and of course any awards over the $50,000 will be brought to this board for approval so our current funding um in the Housing Trust Fund is in a money market account and a CD through First National Bank the CD incurs 4.46% and the money market incurs 1. 7% we Diversified it to allow access if needed because of course if it's in a CD it has to sit in there for 91 days so right currently we've um put $250,000 into a CD the amount in the Housing Trust Fund currently is 1,761 76,1 184 and we have incurred $829 of Interest so those interest earnings are invested back into to our Housing Trust Fund um so we have these two rfps one is currently open for the agencies one will be opening in November for the developers we hope to award funds into the community before the end of the year for the agencies and early 2025 for the developers um so we're excited to be this far along in the process do you have any questions for me Commissioners any questions for an I had a question yes um how many respondents were there to that survey that was sent out any idea 50 almost 50 okay so it's more than just a handful yes you know sometimes you kind of wonder if you got four responses and 50 that's pretty good there's 12 agencies on our Bel try County Housing collaborative um but some um have more than one representative we also let the cabinet members of the trust fund do the survey so we got a perspective from agency staff but we also got the perspective from maybe the Private Industry and development as well okay I had another question okay did the did the cabinet come up with an approximate breakdown of how they want to spend the money like direct support for structures uh that sort of things that no that's very open-ended right now and it's open-ended on purpose uh we really want to see what comes in for those development RFP responses um we don't want to limit the responses okay anybody else okay thanks Sam all right thank you Tom are you heading up this discussion or is Jody good afternoon Mr chair Commissioners so once again I'm here to present to you the preliminary budget for fiscal year 2025 as well as the uh preliminary uh Levy for next year um I have a quick presentation I've gone through the majority of this information the last time we met but uh I'll do it just for those who haven't had an opportunity to view it um at home and whatnot and more importantly just to kind of jog your memory about where we are and maybe solicit some questions comments or any of those kinds of things but uh our uh budget process I'll quickly go through that here uh see if I can get this again okay there we go so uh the process is long and it starts uh probably about March time or so and culminates a number of different activities all enumerated up here on the screen um essentially we're in the end of the the process where we've developed the budget and now we're going through the approval process the review of the budget and um making sure that uh what we've presented is in alignment with what the board is uh is requesting or wanting in regard to service areas delivery that kind of thing um we have to have a approved preliminary budget in Levy by the end of this month statutorily or we revert back to uh the budget that we have right now which is the fiscal year 2024 budget so we don't want to do that of course because there's quite a few changes between this budget and the fiscal year 25 budget but you can see a lot work goes into this you can also see the budget committee members we've already gone through that as well um moving forward number of the things that are are continuing to drive our budget uh continues to be the economic climate and I'll just point out the statistic that you know the past four years alone we've had a 20% increase just in CPI the Consumer Price Index which measures um you know obviously one measure of inflation so uh we've seen this on our operation this continues to strain our budgets uh and that those are big numbers when you talk about you know buying supplies equipment materials those sorts of things uh Workforce is also continuing to be a challenge we are working on that one you're you're well aware as a board as it relates to the efforts we're making uh and trying to improve Workforce uh and keep it competitive and marketable the uh County reserves we talked a little bit about that are in good shape which is great news those uh when I first started with the accounting were around three and a half four months or so and now we' continued to inch those up which is really great uh property tax base just as a reminder will always be a challenge for belamy County we're the second poorest county um by by demographic statistics uh we are the third largest county and only onethird of our entire county is actually taxable so we have a a large service area with a very small tax base to draw on provide those Services growth continue to be stagnated as it relates to development of new uh infrastructure uh although recently we've had some increase in value um which is which has been nice uh the jail continues to be a strain on the budget we uh as you know have been uh involved in having to um house inmates out of County at extraordinary expense uh also our medical contract uh which went up considerably this past year is also straining the budget as well we had about a $450,000 increase in that just year-over-year so uh that's pretty pretty significant uh and those are things that you know we have to we have to budget for uh Hospital level of care expenses we've talked a lot about this over the past I won't go into any detail but uh obviously those are not always predictable we don't always know how much we might be spending in a in a given year with a certain um one or two or even maybe a few more of our citizens that that need that level of care the highway uh and all maintenance projects with be Bridge Replacements or roadway Improvement projects uh maintenance of existing roadways uh chip ceiling those types of things those expenses continue to go up and those of course Drive our budget as well um Health and Human Services we've talked a lot about this uh in the past and I've sent you a number of different uh correspondence uh pieces over the past to to talk through this um we did have a project projected budget deficit in Health and Human Services initially uh north of $2 million uh and through the good work of leadership uh both in finance and also at Health and Human Services we're able to bring that deficit down uh unfortunately we couldn't couldn't get it to zero so we are having to make an adjustment in regard to uh Shoring up the budget in health and human services and that adjustment is is being made both on the cost reduction uh side of things but it's also being done as well in uh Shoring up revenues to ensure that we can continue to provide the service levels that uh that are needed within our community uh I talked about the types of changes that we're uh instituting as it relates to uh the cost reduction strategies that we've pursued in Health and Human Services I won't go into great detail I've shared this with you uh in the past uh and in fact uh an linth our health and human services director will be speaking shortly about some of these uh challenges and more importantly the ways in which the department uh is pursuing uh adjustments and improve improvements to uh to keep the um to shore up the deficit and and keep us solvent in the the future years when it gets to the budget itself uh here's the highlights so you can see we have a pretty significant change in revenues and and corresponding expenses we do a balanced budget so every year we have a the revenues match expenses we're we're obligated to do that so but you can see that we have about a 133% increase uh from fiscal year 24 to fiscal year 25 in the way of revenues um and that's not all new taxes a lot of that is existing taxes uh reserves that were utilizing uh that we've set aside for projects that are coming up particularly Highway projects but some of it is new taxes one of the new taxes is the local option sales tax so we have to post that that money uh as we take it in and as as we expend it so right now we're pulling in about roughly five55 million dollar every year off the local option sales tax we're not utilizing that full amount uh in this next fiscal year because we've only taken out one Bond of $40 million remember the project is $80 million so we're only going to be taking half or we've already I should say took half of the uh funding and therefore we only be spending half of the funding and we'll be we'll be putting the rest of the revenue into the reserve and buying down the next Bond and then hopefully it'll be not another 40 million maybe it'll be 35 million um and then hopefully that'll accelerate our payments and keep our cost down by avoiding interest uh nevertheless we do have to post that revenue and that expense so that's that's additional revenue and then finally uh there is a a modest property tax increase uh you know that helps Finance the uh growth in the budget particularly related to a lot of the uncontrollable costs as I just mentioned um you know wages also uh the de Jail uh and the deficit in Health and Human Services as it relates to inter government rental funds uh there's about $55 million there that's um an increase uh and four of that is coming from state and federal aid money for Highway projects as you know money comes in uh sometimes much greater in one year than it is another uh and also we we hold back some money to make sure that we save up to do projects and so that's what's happening with the additional million dollars in the state or excuse me the um the addition $4 million uh that's going to the budget to to pay for the roadway Improvement projects we did get a one million increase in state reimbursement for Health and Human Services which was good um and helped us actually offset some of that uh deficit in the department as well uh moving forward and looking at the levy uh we are projecting uh a 7.88% levy increase for this year we were floating around four and a half 5% before uh we had to address the Health and Human Services budget uh so it is a little bit higher than we would like uh I think once we get through this hump this year and make that correction we should be able to expect uh less increases than this um and so we'll be working very hard on that in the future uh just a couple of notes here as it relates to how uh the levy gets divided up there's three primary drivers kind of already touched on this earlier in the presentation 1.7% of the 7.8 or 7.9 rounded is uh going to the Sheriff's Office for uh jail medical expenses and a couple other ancillary operating costs 2.6% is going to salaries insurance and benefits and when I say insurance it's not just like health insurance or uh benefits for the staff we're also including insurances for like uh property loss and damage liability insurance those types of things in fact we were hit with almost a $100,000 increase just in our property liability insurance this year that's a huge driver for us um so those are the kinds of things well we can't not have insurance right we have to carry insurance so what do you do you you have to pay the you have to pay the insurance premium um and then 3.6% is going to the Health and Human Services fund of the levy uh to help uh reconcile that particular uh budget and uh I didn't just wanted to point out that the new jail Debt Service is funded by sales tax not property taxes and that's why it's not part of the Levy some folks uh get that confused so the anticipated Revenue sources we continue to do quite well as it relates to spending other people money I say this often intergovernmental funding that comes from the state and federal government is the most uh significant contributor to revenues and it's extraordinarily important for us uh imagine having our budget uh which is currently uh Finance only onethird of which by property taxes imagine financing the entire budget with property taxes and we would be three times the property tax amount that uh that we currently pay of course that would be untenable so uh so again only onethird of the budget's made up by taxes the rest is in Services fees uh and then intergovernmental revenues uh when it relates to where we spend the funds not much has changed in this pie chart we continue to to see the majority of spending in our mission critical areas uh this is the reason we have counties in the state of Minnesota to provide Social Services Public Safety and Highway and streets those are the dominating uh cost centers General government is kind of all the other things in in County government that supports those types of service whether it be HR it um it's also going to be legal um finance and so on and so forth so that's that's what the uh General government uh expenditure is um I talked about the audit for staff positions I won't go back into that other than to say that when we reconcile this budget against uh what is needed in regards to Future positions uh we are we are making a couple of different modifications this next year so the net difference though bottom line is 2.38 FTE are being recommended to be added to the budget we'll be adding uh you'll see more than that but we're also taking away five so it's really the net is 2.38 uh you can see that uh where we're adding them up here uh about 0.25 or a quarter time FTE uh to round out the gis support uh technician to make a full-time position .13 FTE is going to custodial which comes with a budget uh that would be rent Revenue that we received recently um by leasing new space uh the account technician 2 and the RN or social worker two FTE between the both of them are going to Public Health and that is fun fully funded by Public Health Grants which are uh sustainable grants they're not just one-time grants so they're they're reoccurring uh we are adding four correctional officers and this is an attempt to reduce the amount of funding that we're putting towards outof count housing but right now we've got significant dollars going to out County Housing we feel like if we can just add four additional correctional officers which will eventually need anyways for the new jail um we can reduce the amount that we're spending to out of County Housing and so this has a two for one investment return if we can add these four correctional officers we should be able to save twice the cost that it will uh take to finance these correctional officer positions so we feel like that's good Financial sense uh a financial specialist is being added to the auditor Treasurer's Office uh that workload has just continued to grow uh there's a lot of processing uh certainly more elections just a lot going on in that department and they haven't grown um for a very long time so that's that's being recommended to be added and then there's the reduction of the five positions we've already talked through in Health and Human Services um those have already been achieved to date and uh our director of Health and Human Services will be talking about about that we do rely heavily on American Rescue act plan funding um and we'll have to wean ourselves off of this funding this is onetime funding we use it to essentially purchase one-time uh activities or or or um I should say equipment or those types of things but we also use it as a funding strategy to help buy ourselves some time to wean off that primarily one-time funding to something more sustainable uh and so that's what's been done we have um a request of about 1.9 million in the budget for next year that will leave us with about 1.4 million rounded uh available out of the 9.2 or 9.3 or so that were that we took in at the you know during the pandemic so we have spent I believe this money in a very regimented very methodical and thoughtful way which has allowed us to have it endure as a part of our budget for such a long period of time that's been extraordinar beneficial to us but we will be moving away from that the good news is that we have some expiring debt that will be coming off the books and we're hopeful that the the transition between uh this arpa dollars um and uh the the needs that we have for next year can be somewhat accommodated by that so uh just really quickly uh you know putting the budget together is a a Monumental activity it requires the efforts and time of a lot of people uh we just want to make sure that uh those recognized here won't go through everybody I did that last time we met but uh but certainly we appreciate the budget committee's work Finance um and others that support the work as well the department heads too are extraordinar phenomenal to work with uh in putting the budget together everybody pulls together and uh and knows what the task is and what the challenge is and they come together and they they work to achieve that so that's been really great uh the activity uh associated with the budget going forward is is we are hopeful that tonight uh particularly during the regular session uh there'll be um a motion to adopt or or modify or something uh and uh that will allow us then to set the preliminary budget and preliminary Levy and then in December we'll have the final budget and the final Levy adoption uh which has to occur before the end of the year uh and then there's some different notices that go on between now and then as well but uh what we wanted to do today in teing this conversation up in the work session is give the board sufficient time you know to ask questions um you know debate or discuss anything associated with a budget that you'd like um and uh hopefully we can get those questions answered and addressed and then uh move towards adoption in the regular session at some point that's all I have for you as it relates to formal presentation but I know that um Ann has a few things she'd like to say as well about the budget and so I'll invite her up as well and talk a little bit about Health and Human Services Ann linth again Health and Human Services director I'm going to talk about some of the same information that was shared with the full with the budget committee with the full board um but I also want to just share um some general information about the Health and Human Services budget to start out with we have three specific areas in our budget we have economic assistance we have our Public Health we have social services those coincide with the three divisions within Health and Human Services and they're funded differently um so we kind of refer to them as three separate pots of funding within one budget we have our economic assistance budget and economic assistance covers our Income Maintenance programs so the people who are processing public benefit programs such as medical assistance or snap um we have our child support programming under economic assistance Employment Services ma transportation and fraud and the way that those programs are funded is that we report our costs and then the state pays back a percentage of those costs and that percentage of reimbursement is different based on every one of those program areas so for Income Maintenance we get roughly 50% back um for a child support we get 66% back for employment services it's 100% for ma Transportation it's 100% um and for fraud it's 100% so um we have a way to look at those costs and know that we would be likely getting those percentages back from reimbursement from our state lead agency um so when we look at the economic assistance budget only 28% of that specific pot of money is funded by local Levy dollars um it is important to know that all public program benefits that are issued by Income Maintenance are issued from the state of Minnesota for example if we have an eligibility worker and they process an application and a benefit is issued in food support for example um that that's coming from the state of Minnesota those benefits never hit our budget our local budget that comes from the state of Minnesota um primarily what the costs are with the economic assistance is the administrative work to operate the programs so it's the Staffing and the Staffing related costs primarily in that budget area we then have our Public Health budget area and public health is primarily while it is totally funded by the Department of Health um we have Public Health Grants that are applied for that are legislated and ongoing and that continues to fund 100% of Public Health work Public Health preventative work has increased in scope over the last five years pretty significantly um but the Minnesota Department of Health has significantly increased the grants available to fund that programming so there is no local Levy cost for Public Health the other the final pot of funding in the Health and Human Services budget is social services and Social Services programming is things like Child Protection adult protection Social Services is serving our most vulnerable populations our seniors our vulnerable adults and our children um and the funding for social services is different it is funded through some specific allocations from the state there's some billing opportunities and there's something called Time study that also funds Social Services one of the issues that we we see is that allocations in Social Services are not increasing to match the inflationary costs that we're seeing um we also have increasing costs around mental health placements and probation placements um those placements are increasing on average well they have increased on average over 20% in the last three years we're also seeing many more of these placements necessary for our youth um our adult uh also we have mental Health placements that are quite costly in this budgetary area so when you look at this budgetary area specifically 43% of the total budget is um coming from our County local County Levy dollars so it's just kind of breaking down um how that funding goes into each of those three pots um and really where we see the biggest challenge in that social service area because we're supplementing more with local Lev Levy dollars than what is coming in through state agency dollars so that brings us to the challenges that we're looking at in 2025 so what happened um we I mentioned we're we noticed in 2023 a dramatic increase in those mental health and probation um placement costs and we brought together a group of interested individuals including probation including some County Commissioners to talk about what's happening with these placements why are we seeing them increase and there's a variety of reasons um I do think Co had something to do with it youth were not treated early on in mental health and so they got to crisis levels during covid and so we saw a huge need for very um intensive programming for youth following covid um we also saw the labor crunch happen so not only were we seeing more kids needing these placements but the costs for these placements were pretty dramatic um we also know that there's not as many of the placements available as what's necessary so there was concerns about what is going to happen if we have a youth that we can't find a placement for what does that look like for the county so we had all these conversations starting in 2023 and tried to find ways to mitigate um some of these Rising costs then in May of 2024 it was determined that our reimbursements around Federal 4E and our state out of home placement cost or our state out of home placement Aid we're going to reduce in 2025 by approximately a million dollar so we have a million dollars of lost Revenue in those two revenue streams for social services and we have an approximate increase um of $700,000 in mental health and probation placements for 25 so there we are at $1.7 million of need right there then when you throw in um we need an approximate $400,000 um to fund our our Cola for our staff for 2025 and your regular inflationary things that we're seeing go up simple things such as supplies that's what gets you to that a little bit north of $2 million budgetary deficit that Tom referenced in his presentation um so you know there are things that we can control around these costs but unfortunately some of the costs are things that we need to consider what is occurring with these youth um so if we have youth that are suicidal they need to be put into appropriate placement if we have probation kids who have create who have done a criminal act um for example maybe we have a youth sex offender they need to go to sex offender treatment that is some of the processes that we have to follow but there are also things we do can do to control those costs and those are some of the conversations we had when we started talking about cost saving measures moving into the future um we knew that a north of $2 million Levy incus ask was absolutely not um possible for our tax base and so that's when we really went to the drawing board and we said okay how do we um cut some of these costs into 2025 without having dramatic impacts on our programming and so we were very strategic we started looking at program and process changes first so what statutorily mandated programming um can maybe be reduced um what processes do we have in health and human services that we can Shore up for efficiency or cost saving and so we identified some of those and they're in that PowerPoint that um Tom had for you that says here's the programmatic changes and here's the process changes that we're implementing for actually we're implementing them immediately um but unfortunately with those program and process changes we did not see the cost saving um impact the deficit as substantially as we had hoped and so we had to look at Workforce changes at that point and we had those same considerations around statutory mandates but we also then considered the workload associated with some of the statutorily mandated programs that are operated and so um we did identify five positions that will be that have been now Sunset through attrition so three of them at the time that they were identified were open positions so they were not filled um and two of them we would sunset with the natural turnover of Staff which has already occurred since we identified that we had these budgetary challenges so we had our treny social worker um a licensing social worker a parent support Outreach social worker an adult Services case a and a community health worker as the identified positions to Sunset through attrition and we have achieved that goal already um despite that despite these many challenging changes that Health and Human Service is implementing we do continue to need an additional a little bit over a million dollar Levy support to continue our operations without having any more substantial impact on our programming um that's what makes up that 3.6% of the proposed 2025 Levy increase to support Health and Human Services operations I do want to note and highlight again Social Services is an area that is very critical for our community and it is serving a very vulnerable population um there are some things that we're going to do into the future to advocate for more appropriate funding levels for our social services budgetary area and again keeping in mind economic assistance is a separate budgetary Area Public Health is a separate budgetary area we have some limited ability to have public health support some of our programming in Social Services and we have done that to the best of our ability um to Advocate or to allocate those resources to support Social Services programming um there was an A or there is an ask for 2025 from public health um for two positions and that is based on the increase in their requirements for their programming but also comes with funding along with it so we have those positions um in your budgetary packet for approval and it is one of the reasons that I wanted to highlight the separate areas of our budget and how they're kind of different pots of money um because it doesn't it's it's a little confusing when you think about okay there's a reduction of positions in one area but an ask in another area and is very specific to the funding sources available for those programs um to highlight the request from public health uh Public Health prior to 2019 had had 12 MD Minnesota Department of Health Grants uh we now have 21 grants that require quite a bit of administrative work um so that is where some of those uh requests for those two positions are going to support the fiscal requirements of some of that ongoing Grant Management and that increase in workload so what are we going to do into the future so through this budget process there were some identified areas of focus for the future and while we're going to be implementing all the cost-saving measures that have been outlined we're also going to change the way that we budget and track moving forward um currently we're in a process um in collaboration with our County attorneys to identify our minimum mandated service levels um we are wanting to do this to establish the County's statutory requirements in Social Services and the level that Health and Human Services is Meeting those requirements ongoing we're also looking at the past three years of position additions um we want to determine the level of funding each received compared to the expected Revenue that we had thought each of those positions would receive when we requested them from this board we're also placing a large emphasis on legislative changes and advocacy um un fortunately Health and Human Services across the state um have inadequate funding and experience many unfunded statutory mandates as well as it seems some disregard for increasingly cumbersome administrative processes that are handed down from our state lead agencies um it's really important that we have a strong voice at our state capital to lobby for these changes and things that will impact our County agencies in providing strong human services without overburdening our taxpayers um we know that we have a limited tax base and so counties like ours are unique and we need to have that voice down at the capital because we can't keep absorbing some of these unfunded mandates that we receive so I have identified legislative areas of focus for 25 um we're looking at the Continuum of Care for mental health for both adults and children we want to focus on substance use disorder and that County cost share that goes along with it um we want to focus on system modernization we operate operate off State systems that are very Antiquated and not efficient we've been advocating for years for improvements there and we have not seen substantial improvements at all for counties um and we got to keep going back to the legislature to revisit bills that have already passed um where it's increasing that County workload and it doesn't come along with any funding um we're also going to be instit instituting a financial monitoring um performance monitoring program so that we can assist ourselves in projecting um some additions to the budgeting process that we're adding in outside of our monthly monitoring and uh revenue maximization is we're going to be developing budgeting dashboards for our program managers we're going to be developing um key performance indicators or kpis we're going to look at variance analysis um we're going to work to refine our resource allocation methods we're going to have continued communication and collaboration with our internal partners and we're going to focus on a long-term goal of having a healthy and appropriate Health and Human Services Reserve fund so in summary um while Health and Human Services has budgetary challenges currently the causes have been identified and this level of Revenue loss is not anticipated to occur in the future with the cost saving adjustments that we've made the current Levy request will support continued program operations through 25 without more significant reduction in program services with continued financial management and legislative action to support Health and Human Service programs more globally the agency is working towards ongoing Financial solvency it is very critical that we continue to work towards some legislative changes around the mental health Continuum of Care and those chemical dependency related placement costs because those are huge budget drivers and will continue to be budget drivers into the future we can't sustain the continued cost of those placements nor can many counties across the state this is not specific to Bel trammy County as we see those costs increase um so it's really critical that we advocate for that Continuum of Care to serve people in need but also to protect counties from these Rising costs um so with that do you what questions do you have for me questions for an Richard I don't know if it's a question and as much as a a reoccurring theme is the unfunded mandates and the legisl legislature not being tuned in to what they're passing as far as a result of our what it does to us in the years that I've been on the board the same kind of thing seems to kind of keep making it way through uh each department but uh I I agree with you that the cost is can't we just can't keep up with it if they're going to make some changes then they also need to fund it just an interesting side note I received an email I think it was yesterday um and it's from a state agency and they're requesting our assistance in identifying how much a bill that had passed in the 24 session is going to cost counties ongoing so it was already passed in the 24 session and now they're reaching out to counties at this point to see how much it's going to cost us to administer it which is also going to take administrative and staff time to respond to their request so have the uh the two social worker positions that are proposed being cut have those employees been notified are they uh are they still going to be employed through the end of the year no one is being laid off so the changes the reduction in workload is being made through attrition so um what occurred is that we had two social work staff leave the agency for other reasons and the social workers who were in The identified uh roles to be sunset were then reassigned a workload into those Social Work roles and that's already occurred so no one will be laid off from the agency okay um but there were two social worker positions that were identified to be eliminated and those two employees have received other positions is that so there's five positions in total that are being eliminated for 25 and currently um the community health worker position The Adult Services case Aid and the treny social worker position were all open so they just will not be refilled the licensing social worker and the parent support Outreach social worker have been reassigned into other social work positions thank you Jim thank you Mr chair so I'm just kind of curious what what is the the parent Outreach social worker what what is their their roles in and how might this uh affect the the position and and if parent Outreach I'm assuming that they reach out to parents and and yeah can you can you so a parent support Outreach social worker parent support Outreach is a program and it is a statutorily mandated program that we have to offer through Health and Human Services but is a voluntary program for families to participate in um so we have seen a reduction in the number of families who are choosing to work in with the parent support outreach program over the last number of years so do you know why they are choosing not to participate is is it the lack of of knowing or or how how is how are parents made aware of of we often make referrals to parents support Outreach when we have families who are coming in through our children's services intake so if we are receiving referrals in through that program and maybe they're not meeting a level to be screened in for other services then we make the referral for the parent support outreach program because I imagine that a time that we're in with with high inflation the cost of foods the the the cost of living rent you know I imagine you know there are parents that you know might be affected by this but so is there something else in place that will be taken over for so we are going to continue to operate the parent support outreach program it's just that not one specific social worker will be assigned to it we will share that workload in our child protection team so sharing a workload costs more causes more work for for the employees that are sharing the workload correct so it does how is that how is that going to affect their ability to to perform their their duties so we looked at statutorily mandated programming so we had a cultural social worker position uh halftime position that we are also going to look to distribute some of that workload so we're really working hard to minimize the negative impact of workload distribution by looking at areas where we can either be more efficient or reduce the required workload or the statutory mandates because I believe you know uh one of our greatest assets here in belamy county is our employees and I want to make sure that you know that they're they're taken care of you know that their their workload is is sufficient where where it's not causing burnout and then leaving to you know a different County that that offers more money and less workload um so it's kind of curious maybe a question for Tom Mr chair is so there's 1.3 remaining in in our uh I was kind of curious what the plans are for that and is there any way that we can expend some of that to help uh with the the burden of of Health and Human Services with their unfunded mandates and hopefully they'll figure out a way to uh address this in the coming year um Mr chair commissioner suar as I mentioned before there's about 1.36 million of available arpa dollars remaining if the board approves what's being recommended in this next fiscal year budget uh that amount being 1.9 million rounded so um each year as the board had decided years ago when we first got the arpa dollars the budget committee would make recommendations based on need based on available funding uh and a application of what was then the rules around around arpa towards the the various funding allotments um some of those rules have been loosened because of the way that we've accounted for that funding and the treasury um guidance and rules that have since gone by the wayside if you will um but uh the 1.36 million that's available should the budget get approved as it's being recommended uh for next year we'll have to go through unless the board decides some other process the budget committee process again to make recommendations my gu is that there it next year will be the last year when we do budgeting which means the fiscal year 26 budget will be the last year that we will have available arpa dollars now you could decide uh tonight or or along this process that you want to take the the remaining arpa dollars in total and apply it to some uh aspect of the operation my recommendation would be to be cautious about using one-time money for ongoing expenses unfunded mandates are an ongoing uh endeavor unfortunately and so while we may be able to buy down the impact of of a year or two depending upon what that impact is financially and and how it compares to what we have with available arpa dollars um at some point in time the arpa dollars will be expired and then you'll be back to the same challenge you have so uh this is the reason for the great emphasis um of ensuring that we develop a strong legislative platform that we work with our associations and other agencies and our our um uh our other governmental Partners particularly counties to draw attention to these unfunded mandates and try to get them corrected through the legislative process that's really our best opportunity to try to gain some ground uh as it relates to the impact of these unfunded uh mandates uh and that's also as you know why we did hire a lobbyist uh for a number of different reasons the the lobbyist we've been using for the last two years has been helping us gain significant ground uh in certain areas you might recall the issue of associated with uh the outof placement costs that ran us almost $350,000 into the whole uh were resolved with our lobbyist effort and and recup that money and getting the state to pay for that so uh so there are there are efforts and strategies that are being undertaken on a number of different fronts uh but as you as you suggested certainly one of those options is to throw additional arpa dollars at the at the issue um but I just would caution you that at some point those monies don't uh will not will not be around and essentially uh we will remain with the issue that we have pretty much today thank you Richard um just kind of a final thought about mental health and and the increase in dollars needed for that any thoughts where we're heading is this just going to keep spiraling out of control um we have some um good options that are coming out of one of my associations that Jeff Lind and I are part of um we have an adult mental health initiative fund that is funded by the state um to support mental health for mental health um Continuum of Care for adults and we are able to independently utilize that locally to support outpatient programming nothing like that exists for children um and currently we're working to push forward a children's mental health initiative to have of course funding associated with it um but it would also help to improve that Continuum of Care for mental health for youth um we're also working to um push forward legislative language through our association around um astronomical cost of care uh so what we're unfortunately experiencing with some youth is um the placement costs of2 to $3,000 a day um which no County can absorb and so we are looking to the state to put together possibly legislative language that would help counties to support those astronomical care costs for kids um so there's some things on the horizon but there's no easy answer for the mental health challenges that our community and the state and the nation are facing there needs to be substantial financial investments in that Continuum of Care um from the federal government and the state government um and we really need to look at the workforce in that area uh that's where we're really seeing a lot of challenges too because it's not necessarily um if you build it it can function at 100% capacity as we saw with the crisis center um that Sanford built you know they they have to be able to staff those facilities in order for them to serve the community and I don't have a good answer on that other than the considerations of somehow incentivizing the work that needs to be done for mental health any other questions for an diim MR chair so kind of back to the the arpa thing um to me it it would just make most sense and to me and I know most people don't think you know the way I do I get that um but the purpose of the AR was for uh to help governments respond to the recovery of Co it sounds and and if I I heard a pitch or heard a statement that you know we're still transitioning from from covid and and I'm sure that mental health is you know uh uh the increase in mental health issues is because of covid I'm I imagine so to me it would make more sense that the board whether it's now or or next year you know we really think about you know allocating some of these remaining funds to Health and Human Services you know because looking through the budget um you know uh $400,000 for for five squads um the the county jail you know cost um the risk goes on you know looking at the highway you know a grinder 60,000 you know how much you know what at what cost you know do we try to save a dollar you know to that you know really might have an impact on on the the people that we serve you know is their mental health a little bit more or less important than than what the ARA proposal ARA proposal is for for this year uh because I don't see anything here that you know has anything for Health and Human Services I I don't know I I might be off track but you know I I feel like you know we got to do something to to help healthy human services you know the administrator is this a one you know if this is a one-time money but I mean let's not waste of onetime money thank you Mr chair anybody else if I could just say one thing Co is is an exacerbating factor to many challenges but it certainly is not the only reason that we're seeing challenges around mental health for children and adults so if you said can you show me a statute that said or a some data that says that covid is the cause of this I cannot do that I can make a guess that when youth are not able to get community services which happened during covid that then the level of Crisis is going to increase if they're not treated but I certain can't say that that is the only or primary reason that we're seeing the challenges we're seeing Don go ahead Mr chair I just add because I think commissioner su su makes a really good point um and this budget did attempt in a in a great way to help health and human services out um the the 3.6% or $1.1 million of additional new funding for Health and Human Services uh that comes from a levy increase that's being recommended so 7.9% Levy uh 3.6 of that um is is intended for the long-term sustainable financing of the Health and Human Services operation uh so we felt that it as a budget committee it was more important to identify long-term sustainable funding uh that would to deal with these issues going forward than to utilize one-time money that would then um cause us to have to revisit the same issue at some point in the future when that funding uh was expired so uh I I just I I I absolutely hear the concern we are very attentive about that as we were doing our work but we just felt that we wanted to place the emphasis on Shoring up the needs in Health and Human Services with Ono funding which is why it's placed in the uh Levy at this point in time um I guess I'll just add that I was at the Min the Minnesota rural County Caucus meeting last week and I'm hearing all over all kinds of counties 8 to 12% levies and a lot of it has to do with the inflation that has happened over the last four or five years um it's just really has taken its toll if you can imagine if inflation has come down you say well that's great but it's still an inflation and those higher inflated prices are still high and then another 2% on top of that and so it's it's a and a lot of those counties are rich counties I mean they're counties that have 80% taxable land instead of 30% taxable land and so when I heard that I started to not feel quite as bad but but it was it was shocking what I was hearing for Levy numbers from other counties you have something else uh yes Mr chair so I I don't I don't know if we're done with HHS but uh if if we are can we excuse that so she does not keep is that thank an thank you very much I appreciate your that explanation you Commissioners thank you so uh back to arpa I'm just kind of curious um how you got to this point you know what was the request of of the Sheriff's Office you know that's almost a half a million dollars uh did they were they awarded all five squads or did they come in with with a request of eight or how was that negotiated uh maybe the same with um uh the highway department you know how how was all this negotiated to to utilize uh arpa uh those are excellent questions commissioner suar so I'll start with the sherff sh's office uh the sheriff and I have a good relationship that on the budget has spanned now three years or two and a half years or so um the the sheriff's office is an office that is almost entirely funded by the levy so as you as you saw on the pie chart that I provided uh earlier uh there are different types of operations that we run across the county and different funding sources for those operations when it comes to the highway department and it comes to uh the Sheriff's Office the dominant funding source for those two activities is um the property tax levy so in the Sheriff's Office uh what we were attempting to do was to buy down essentially the levy um need that would otherwise be required to finance those one-time items by Shifting the revenue uh need from the Levy to arpa Dollars uh each of the ID uh each of the items identified here the the five squad cars uh the body cameras and then the investigator squad car that that total as you say close to half a million dollars is money that was originally in the budget and drove the levy up by an additional almost 2% so had we not utilized arpit dollars our Levy request to you would be 9 uh whatever it is 9 88% uh we we as a team looked at that and said that's that's just too high um these are one-time expenses we have this funding called arpa that's where we've been utilizing as onetime funding it makes sense to just buy down uh that particular cost uh and shift that Revenue Source from property tax levy to arpa Dollar the other thing that does for us is is it preserves the savings inside the levy indefinitely because if we were to put that half a million dollars into the levy for this year and the Sheriff's Office purchased those vehicles and those body cameras the levy would need to be reduced the following year in order for it to only be a one-year hit on the levy and more often than not that doesn't happen and so that's how we get creep in the budget and this is another thing that I've been trying to guard against so that we don't ask for more than we need in any one year and then forget to lower or program other needs into that what was supposed to be a one-time funding but ended up in an ongoing funding uh formula so we're trying to be cautious of that as well um when it comes to the highway department kind of the same approach was taken we're trying to offset what would normally be Levy related impacts and shift the revenue or shift the the money source to arpa uh so that's the same thing that happened there as it relates to GFS um uh there there are some funds that can be used in GIS like the recar fund uh but we've been utilizing that pretty heavily as well so we wanted to be cautious about the reserve levels in that fund um and the PLS or plss corner remonumentation has been a project the County's been doing for a very very long time and uh we had a long conversation about whether we should you know continue at the same level that we've been doing uh or if we should scale that back uh if we should try to go after the grant that we were unsuccessful in getting at the state level last year uh and the the group decided that uh we're pretty close to the finish line and we wanted to essentially push forward as as much as we could to get the last couple remaining townships done this doesn't complete the project but it gets us that much closer uh so the the recommendation was yes let's go ahead and use arpa dollars would be doing that for the last three years uh well except for last year as I say because we tried to get the grant uh so let let's continue the momentum there um and then finally the uh storage building is is a gap funding uh um contribution from arpa again one-time money uh there's about $400,000 that uh is available already that we've saved uh both between environmental services and um The Soil and Water Conservation District and natural res Resources management uh fund so we have sort of those three funds then we're adding arpa to create a fourth Revenue fund again being creative and Innovative about all of these different sources of funding so that we can get the project done uh and then that's why we only need 300,000 or about 40% of the total cost of that uh and then finally the labor cost 2025 labor cost there is miscellaneous that is the last sort of stien or or installment if you will of the weaning off of the of the couple of uh Cola increases that we we provided the staff during the pandemic and when we had that 9% uh CPI and and all everybody around us was was getting pretty wages were just growing through the roof so we created as you might recall several years ago a a funding strategy where were're using arpa dollars in lesser and lesser amounts and feed and then I shouldn't say feeding but replacing that ARA dollars with uh Levy or or grants or other dollars other sources of more sustainable funding uh so that's how each of these sort of came to be and how the arpa dollars is is sort of been historically used it doesn't mean I mean these arpa dollars are the county board's arpa dollars and you can you can decide to use them really however you want we just operated as a budget Committee in the same way that uh we have historically which was the sort of policy direction that the board gave us you know back in 2021 or so 22 when we when we first received these funds so uh but again the rules really now around those funds are are yours to to sort of modify well Mr chair um I I think I asked um if if the the five squads was was that the the initial ask or were were there more was there a request for more squads or so or the the sheriff this got his his full full request yeah so last year we delayed uh squad car purchases uh and that was intentional we just the the levy was what we felt was at a Max and so we pushed squad cars off um they are on a rotation uh we've asked for the for the fleet analysis to see if we might be able to expand the rotation to an additional year and see what the impact is because obviously the longer you own a squad vehicle uh the more maintenance you're going to have on that vehicle and at some point you have this you know deteriorating return on investment where you know you're putting more into maintenance than you are actually you know purchasing a new vehicle over time so we were doing those analysis last year put off the vehicles felt good about that so this year is a little bit of a makeup of some of those vehicles um they would like additional vehicles I think they wanted one additional one that we delayed uh it's an investigator vehicle those don't get run as heavily as the squads do obviously the squads are doing Pursuits they're running a lot more frequently more than investig an investigator's Vehicles so um so our our chief Deputy has decided that he's going to take one of the ones that was going to get replaced keep it and give his his vehicle um you know down the line so we we are through the help of the Sheriff's Office finding ways to continue to reduce impacts and keep the operation uh going uh responsibly and so yeah I I think if you the sheriff was here he'd say yeah I could use two more um but uh you know we've kind of negotiated this you know approach that is I think diligent methodical thoughtful I think that's helpful um I was just kind of curious um you know I also want to mention that you know the sheriff and I get along really well it's not that I'm I'm I'm trying to attack him or or his office but uh um you know people have questions and concerns so uh they ask me to reach out um one one final question is uh the lcf fund um what what what is remaining and that and and is what's what's used for yeah the lcf funding that was the local area tribal consistency fund or something to that effect and you might recall that that was a two-year allocation of $200,000 each to the county uh we did receive both allocations or tranches uh and we hold uh the 400,000 you as a board did I want to say last year authorized the use of about $44,000 plus or minus couple hundred I think uh to what was going to be a National Association of counties Endeavor to create a national um program that was going to be staffed to look at Federal lands and pilt dollars that come with Federal lands um so we've been holding that money and I don't believe that uh they've requested it yet they haven't sent it I don't believe they send us an invoice maybe I'm looking at jod yeah so no there there's no invoice I mean so you know other than that encumbrance which hasn't been taken from the county coffers you still have um you know about $395,000 of that funding that was not um utilized in this next year's budget so that's that is something that's still available to you so what would we what would that be a use for um I'd have to go back and look at the stipulations on it but as I recall it was fairly flexible funding um and so we would be able to use it on quite a bit of of different types of things but again it's only one time and it was a onetime allocation uh and we haven't gotten anymore since so um so something should come up in 2025 some sort of request for a a program or something that wasn't in our budget that that would be that would maybe fall into those parameters that could be something that well we could fund it because it's out of budget correct I would I would say it's probably pretty close to you know how we consider arpa at this point in time um so you could theoretically suggest that you know if you approve the budget uh for fiscal year 25 is recommended you'll have 1.36 million of arpa plus your 395,000 of ltech money and uh and that that could go to help do exactly as you say okay any other budget questions Joe um Tom or Diane could you go back to that slide about intergovernmental funds the fight chart I'm just wondering if if you could just tell us quickly uh even an estimation of how much of that is federal dollars and how much is State dollars uh I would have to either phone a friend which is our auditor Treasurer or or I believe the majority of it is State funding and and the state funding that we do get uh or the federal I should say the federal funding that we do get often travels through the state so we get Federal funding goes through the state then the state comes back to us Jody would you say it's Pages outline all our federal dollars so you could see what the federal dollars in the makeup of those programs are to that okay thank you and then just real quickly uh I know it's not part of the levy but it's still big picture um how much revenue are we taking in with the new local option sales tax um it it varies month by month and of course we've only started taking it recently but we're projected to take in about 5.6 million I think it'll end up probably being a little bit higher than that what we're seeing is some inflation related increase to to the costs of goods and services and of course the taxes that we collect on those increased costs and Services uh end up increasing the tax as well so um I would say right now safely about $5.5 million of uh annual funding from the local option sales tax again keep in mind we only have the one Bond issuance right now so we're taking the savings and we're putting that away to buy down the second bond is significant so I want to thank the voters again for approval of that uh last year any other budget questions with that we'll move on to admin raer update uh thank you Mr chair I have just a brief update for you today I just want to remind you that we have the annual opioid settlement Funday meeting that's been scheduled for October 15th at 6 PM both well all of you are invited as well as the community it'll be here in the county boardroom after the board meeting so uh we don't typically have a lot of six o'clock meetings you know after our regularly scheduled 5:00 meeting uh but but on that particular day October 15th we will and if you're interested uh we'd certainly love to have you particip at in that uh the meeting is also going to be streamed and archived so if you're unable to make it uh or want to just view it home uh you you can do that and then uh it'll be U published on the opioid steering committee uh website as well uh we are working uh with the University of Minnesota extension office to coordinate on Snap Ed programming and Service delivery this came up as part of our conversation with the extension office during the uh budget committee meetings and so uh we we realized that budget or I mean the extension's doing some things on snaped we're doing some things on snaped I wonder if there's some synergies there uh and and certainly we want to try to reduce duplication of services but if there's some synergies and some expansion and of of services and that kind of stuff they're not duplicated those would be things we'd be interested in as well so we'll be meeting this week with the leadership from the extension office and of course Health and Human Services uh so that that's going to uh hopefully produce some great results uh the jail project we did receive full payment for the autter tail easements I reported on that last time it's about $43,000 which is great uh and that issue has been put to bed I've also on easement been talking with the city of um uh beiji and uh we are going to make some progress on uh or we have made progress on agreeing at least to the uh approach in resolving some of the easement issues on the property you might recall that in the Northwest section and along the west Edge we had utility easements uh there were some utility infrastructure Water and Sewer lines in particular that were out of easement or had no easement and so I've been working with the city to get those back into easement doesn't impact our buildable you know site it doesn't impact our building envelope or any of that kind of stuff but we just want to get the site cleaned up essentially uh and then uh we've decided that we're going to just hold on the uh Ingress egress uh to uh Railroad Avenue on the northeast East Side um that kind of presents a whole number of other issues that affect the entire Corridor and so the city would like an opportunity to kind of look at the whole Corridor and kind of figure all that stuff out later which is fine with us because uh we're compliant with the requirements and um and that's really not that big of a deal for us either so so those easements are being addressed the last remaining easements we have are with the two private property owners one to the West one to the east um the one to the east uh we seem to uh be making uh some Headway on there's an evaluation of the of the County's proposal um which seemed to be somewhat favorable which is great uh and we'll hopefully try to work through that and then on the West Side uh there's an encroachment onto our property again doesn't impact none of these impact the building envelope or or constructibility of the site they're just sort of perimeter issues that we're trying to get cleaned up but the trailer court that's on the very West Edge that has uh the turnaround that's actually on our property now that that needs to be Abad and uh there's trash and other things that need to be cleaned up there too so uh and then there's a no water easement to serve that facility which we've offered to you know provide uh so because it's essentially a prescriptive EAS minute now anyway since they've been receiving those services but so those are the kinds of the things that we're working on as it relates to uh adjustments on the on the easements uh as you know we're in the pre-qualification stage for biders the formal pre-qualification process is over but we continue to pre-qualify those that uh that Express an interest in the project uh just a reminder anybody who's going to bid on the project must be pre-qualified in order to bid uh and then we're going to hold the pre-bid meeting on October first and then bidding will begin immediately after and and remain open for several weeks so um after that we will be marching toward a November evaluation of bids and hopefully the development of the guaranteed maximum price and that's when we'll know what this uh project is really going to cost us so estimates are good at the moment so we're feeling pretty good about that um but we'll know for sure hopefully by November time uh just a reminder that the management team is going to host its team building event tomorrow uh afternoon and so uh we'll be available by phone if you have any questions or need to get in touch with us or any of that kind of stuff but I just want to let you know where we are if you're roaming the building looking for a department head uh will be out and about uh team building and then lastly uh the groundbreaking ceremony for the new jail is been ated for Wednesday September 25th at noon on the site and that site again is at the northwest corner of Railroad Avenue and Pioneer Street that's the update I have for you but I'll stand for any questions you might have any questions for Tom all right any other business uh let's take a look at the agenda is there any changes that we need to make to the upcoming agenda NOP seeing none then we'll stand aour till 5:00