##VIDEO ID:hpea2-VXN0w## first item of agen of our agenda is our consent agenda which is to approve the olad County Board minutes from October 1st 2024 to approve the 2024 olad County hazardous M Hazard mitigation plan to accept the 2024 to 2025 toward zero deaths Grant award to acquire the right of way by condemnation for count uh County state aid Highway 21 to acquire the RightWay by condemnation for County state aid Highway 44 to authorize the reading Center budget to approve the gambling permit for the Stewartville Sportsman's Club do I have a motion I move to approve the consent agenda Madam chair could I pull number B just for a comment could we have a motion in a second we have a motion in a second and there is a request to REM to to pull what number uh letter B Item B 20 24 hazardous mitigation plan well uh commissioner we move now to comments or to discussion do we need to pull it or can we just open this up for discussion you can do it then either way so I I have a motion discussion do discuss I have a motion in a second to approve the consent agenda is there any discussion Madam chair I just wanted to note don't need to pull it and we all know this but I think the public needs to know it uh in particular given what's going on down in the southeast of United States with the hurricanes and and weather uh issues uh this this 275 page document this Hazard mitigation plan for roid County uh was was not at all put together uh easily or without a lot of great thought and uh there's there's obviously a lot in here and uh we would hope that we' never have to use this plan but uh if in fact we do I just wanted to note that there's a tremendous amount of effort that went into this by the sheriff's department and other people involved in Emergency Management within our within our city and our County and we just ought to be thankful for it because uh we never know when we're going to have to use this and again the people in the southeast United States will full well how important this is right now so with that uh Madam chair that's my comments to this motion thank you thank you are there any is there any other discussion or comments I know that some of you I wasn't actively involved as a participant in formulating it but I noted as I reviewed it that several of you were were um active there were a lot of focus groups there were a lot of meetings a lot of uh a lot of effort uh and and consultation went into developing that mitigation plan and of course some of us remembering it wasn't too long ago that we went through our covid epidemic and um we uh learned a lot from that that and and how we work across sectors across agencies so uh having plans in ahead of of pandemics and disasters uh leaves us better prepared to really meet the needs of our community so um stepping out of the chair's role to make that comment as well in discussion any other discussion members see none I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda all those in favor signify by saying I I those oppose same sign motion prevails we have no discussion items for today's meeting uh but we do have some information items and we're going to be starting with the opid settlement funds uh experience for Olstead County Mr [Music] Fry good evening Madam chair and to uh each and every one of uh the Commissioners who are present with us uh on this evening uh my name is Sydney fry and I am a program manager from our Community Corrections Department here in hestad county and I supervise our community outreach team uh and I'm here this evening along with my colleague Abby triger from uh Public Health to talk about um year one of our op selement investment dollars um and just to share a brief update is which is kind of a prerequisite for us to do on an annual basis as it relates to how those funds have been allocated so um I'll just be toggling through a few slides uh that Shar some information about where we're at uh as we've kind of coming up on uh a year since uh the the board has authorized kind of how that uh how those dollars should be allocated so uh just a brief uh outline for for this evening um really just want to level set again and provide some context as it relates to kind of how we got here um as far as the settlement funding process um and then to speak specifically to uh the primary ways in which those funds have been allocated uh which include um primarily our the formation of our drug and alcohol Response Team uh the credible credible mind resource platform uh and we'll also share with you a little bit about the be and the no Community campaign I'll primarily be talking about those first two items all right so I know this is a little bit granular and uh you might need some some glasses or corrective lenses to be able to see uh the details about kind of this timeline but just to kind of provide a little bit of context um um it was actually um at the back end of the the onset of the pandemic in 2020 um that we looked year over-year at the the number of opio involved deaths within the state and then also kind of at a county level um and as you can see um from 2020 to 2021 um there was a significant increase in the rates of deaths that occurred um at a state level uh and also that was uh reflected here within our local community um and so um this coincided with um a multi- billion multi-state settlement agreement um uh with uh some of the major pharmaceutical Distributors and uh manufacturers um that resulted in an influx of funding coming into uh the state um at both a County and then a state allocated level um and so um as you can see here olate County was the recipient of about $7.2 million um and that was from two separate rounds of settlements um that would be spaced out over an 18-year time span um and so um primarily that first initial um action step was the formation of a settlement core team that really was responsible for providing recommendations about how those funds would be allocated um and again Public Health was kind of uh the the kind of our primary Point person uh entity I should say within the county that kind of uh uh spearheaded that endeavor um if we fast forward to uh the second quarter of 2023 um that was uh the point in time which the the Board of Commissioners uh did approve allocating those funds to expand uh the pre-existing community outreach team um and so in addition to that um there was also an allocation earmarked for the implementation of the credible mind platform and we'll share more details and information about uh these initiatives here momentarily um at the the third and fourth quarter around this time last year uh we were in the hiring process and uh the onboarding uh process of the expansion of the community outreach team which ultimately then resulted in the formation of uh the drug and alcohol response team which is now known uh as the dart team um and so then um this year we have been been busy um actioning and operationalizing um that initiative uh and have some information to share with you all about what that has looked like since um so again just a quick level set as it relates to um abatement strategies that were kind of part of um the responsibility of um those jurisdictions that had received funding to fall um their programming and um initiatives should fall Within These uh predefined categories so um there was uh menu so to speak of different uh evidence-based strategies and the core team that we referenced um identified these as specific to our community broadening access to nxone um enriching prevention strategies um funding warm handoff programs and then expanding um harm reduction programs as well and so these were kind of what were earmarked um as um initiatives that we wanted to focus in and put attention toward which brings me to um the drug and alcohol response team which uh we really saw that uh we leveraged kind of some um benchmarking that we did um throughout the state and also even nationally um some some some initiatives um that combined a aspect of post overdose Outreach um and then also treatment coordination um and so that really led us to kind of this being a model that we felt that helped to touch a lot of those specific identified uh evidence-based abatement strategies um so just to to give a little bit of context um as it relates to what we've seen um and um I guess I should say this to I'll go back real quickly the the team um as currently constructed is consisting of a licensed alcohol and drug counselor a lead social worker and then we also hired two uh peer Recovery Specialists uh individuals that have lived experience that are in long-term recovery um and so we did that intentionally to really um leverage that lived experience to help um specifically working with uh service resistant clientele that may uh have difficulty engaging sometimes with uh public administered services and so we really uh were intentional about kind of using that as a a strategy to to to work toward increasing engagement um and so this this team um some of the um early I guess returns as we look at some of these outcome metrics uh you can see um speaking to kind of the volume of the work that has been completed by uh the team uh again it was really operationalized probably January is really when you could say we started to hit the streets in Earnest um and so um this is through the end of third quarter um this data is um and it it it indicates kind of um as a reference kind of the volume of the work that the team has done um so a client contacts um just over 2100 uh contacts with individuals um Unique Individuals served um just over 400 um Unique Individuals have been served by the drug and alcohol Response Team um in really the last nine months plus uh We've managed to uh connect with um 140 different Community programs and entities uh some of which are specific to subservices some of which have a broad range of service provision uh but we've been able to educate um those entities about um this internal resource resource to the county and how that might be leveraged to support some of their clientele as well um and then um uh a prerequisite to getting into any type of like formal treatment is having an assessment completed and so uh we recognize that sometimes that was a delay in the process to expedite folks getting to where they needed to go uh and so we've done about 40 of those in ter Jal and then we've also partnered with some of those connections where they those Community providers have completed those assessments themselves we recognized that sometimes there was time delays or barriers and so um that number of 40 is really when we kind of stepped in to expedite that process to make sure folks are able to move on to their next thing um how well it really is a reflection of kind of um with the referrals that we've been receiving um how often we're able to successfully connect with individual uals that are being Reser um referred for services um and so we've we've been doing that at about an 85% clip um and then we also uh in Partnership we have obviously pre-existing relationships with our local law enforcement agencies both on the county and City side and we have uh really used that to kind of um be a mechanism when when there is a overdose incident uh that results in our local dispatch being notified of that through 911 uh how often are we then able to subsequently follow up with those individuals and provide that post overdose wraparound Outreach um and so we we've been able to do that 93% of the time um as as it looks at as it relates to kind of the impact um and how this has um impacted community members um we are really um happy to report that one in three client uh has gained access to some type of Recovery Service based upon on their interaction with um with the team um which is really important to to note that a lot of these individuals um it's not that they haven't been offered Services before in the past in fact many of them have been offered Services before um but I think the ability and the bandwidth to have targeted um consistent um followup has has I think uh expanded our ability um to um to find those moments when people are more open to and receptive to um getting the help that they need so uh we're excited to see that continue to uh uh increase um the number of admissions to treatment um stands at just over 150 uh again year to date and so um again that's a testament to the work that this team has put in to really get folks connected to um the services and supports that they need to on their on their path toward recovery and and sobriety Mr fr before you go on to the credible mind that's next right yes I um I was trying to see if we've if we've had 400 clients and we've done 40 assessments what's the the one in three clients gaining access is that based on the 400 yes so just to clarify the unique number of clients is is is 400 um the the assessment is significantly small smaller due to the fact that many of them may have already had an assessment that was still valid or that met the time parameters to connect them to that treatment provider and so we didn't necessarily have to do do the volume of of all 400 um in order to move them along in that process but the 150 is 150 out of the 400 yes yep yep and and so actually some of those I I should qualify that too there is um some of that could be potentially some of those could be duplicates because um we have had individuals who have had multiple admissions this is relapse prone disease so yes um that's how and that's really just for the first three quarters of the Year yep that's just through the first three quarters of this year that's correct it's really significant yes any other questions I can clarify on those I'm sorry you know me I always have a lot of questions so the um the the treatment facilities I mean on many aspects of Behavioral Health there are not resources aail available so we are getting admissions to treatment I assume that can be both outpatient inpatient might be um something like Narcotics Anonymous alanon or so there's so that's correct self-guided as well so that's correct yeah it's not it's not cookie cutter as far as what that treatment it could be outpatient inpatient or um uh support and and also it's not gerine to the local area we've we've had to Outsource a lot of folks to different places that are providers throughout the state as well thank you all right it's really remarkable though so thank you all right I'm gonna uh relinquish my stand and turn it over to my colleag to share a little bit further about the [Music] work thank you Sydney and thank you Commissioners for having me here and giving me the opportunity to share some updates on the primary prevention initiative support by the opioid settlement funds so I'm going to start off with credible mind and um I know you all have already heard about credible mind on a few occasions but just as a quick run through of what it is um it's a One-Stop shop for convenient personalized well-being resources um all the resources are evidence-based and they've been reviewed by both experts and users alike it's fully confidential so folks can feel comfortable uh using the resource without concern of others knowing what they're um viewing or what kind of Assessments they're taking um in addition to the credible mind curated materials we are also able to add some customization to it by um including local Community Resources and um we also were able to translate the the uh website into Arabic Spanish and Somali making it more accessible to our community members which was very exciting for us all right so this is the homepage if you were to to go on there now um we're able to customize this first ribbon red ribbon that you can see on the slide um with specific topics that we want to highlight we can also so like here we're highlighting the community health priorities and um also the topics or the priorities that were uh focusing on this this round um and then with the Community Resources tab at the top we're also able like I said to customize that and add um links to Community Resources if you haven't gone on and checked it out you should there's tons to look through there's endless amounts of resources um to explore so if you haven't give it a give it a try all right so I wanted to share a little bit about what we're seeing for engagement so this is looking at our site report for this past quarter so that's July through September um we are seeing an increase in usage of the site which is exciting last quarter there were a little over 1,500 users which is a 64% increase in the since the previous quarter um the top topics explored included depression anxiety flourishing or languishing which is a term that uh credible mind uses um and then addiction and recovery and then there are also assessments that I referenced earlier that a user can take that are free and can be a good point in time check of like how someone is doing perhaps encourage them to go seek professional help if needed um and you can take those assessments uh more than once so if you wanted to do it on a Cadence then you could kind of track uh any Trends in one's mental health by using that and like I said it's free which is really a nice um asset all right so next steps with credible mind um we'll be adding a toolkit to the County's website that organiz that organizations can use to provote promote credible mind as a resource for their staff students or clients um we'll also be educating care providers on how they can use credible mind and find help to serve as a resource um when they're helping support clients and patients and then we're going to do some more work on promoting the site with the community there's um some new campaign materials that have been created so we'll start pushing those out and then of course we'll continue to assess the usage of the site and make any adjustments as needed all right so the next piece is actually Switching gears to that Community campaign so um from June 18th through August 31st we had a digital um opioid awareness campaign that ran called be in the know and we worked with um a media organization up in the cities called Russell herder to do this there's no way we could have pulled this off without their uh expertise so a little bit about the the um platforms that were used there were uh Google meta which is like Instagram and Facebook and then Snapchat ads and the Google ads were targeted towards parents and young adults and one specifically also targeted those who had already uh visited the B and the no website there was also a search campaign that reached those who searched terms like substance abuse uh substance treatment Etc and these ads appeared on the search results pages on Google if they if they search those different keywords um meta ads targeted parents in Olstead County uh they were placed anywhere on meta own sites like Instagram and Facebook and then we had Snapchat uh ads that reached specifically Youth and Young adults interested in partying and night life and these ads appeared between organic content from a variety of Publications that Youth and Young adults view such as Cosmo BuzzFeed um People magazine Etc okay so this just shows the reach of all the different ads and the on each platform so if we look at Google ads um there were almost 3 million views from Those ads alone and there were almost 25,000 ad clicks or they call it a click-through rate so folks that actually will click on it um that's about on par with the Benchmark for Google ads for engagement um with the meta ads there were uh over 680,000 views and um about 16.5 th000 uh ad clicks and then with Snapchat ads there were 406 plus, plus views and um about 5,500 ad click yes so a a view simply means that someone was on a page where that ad appeared correct it was on a page that they saw and then the click is they saw the ad they clicked on it and it took it took them to the be and the no and and you have under each of these performing on par with the Benchmark could you explain that a little bit yes so and I'm not a a social media expert so I will do my best but essentially it's saying that um when you look at the percentage of AD views to the how many folks clicked on it either it was onar so like the average number of folks that click on it on Google ads were the one you know about the same percentage clicked on it for these particular ads when you look at meta ads it was um two actually it was three times higher doesn't say that but it was three times higher than the Benchmark and then with Snapchat ads it was uh two times higher so they performed well now if they saw that oh you know they're performing under what the Benchmark is not myself but Russell herder would make adjustments and how those ads are getting out to people to increase viewers and our ad campaign was just from June 18th to August 31st that was correct correct and okay at what cost well the total cost for the campaign itself was 45 5,000 however that included creating the the ads it included everything creating the website so I'd have to go back and look to see what actually went towards Place ad placement but and it don't mean to interrupt the flow of your presentation but are we planning to repeat this at this point no but we do have the website still up and running so there is always that potential that we could re rerun the campaign or make a Twist on it change it up a little bit so I'm sorry if I'm this is kind of things we do in committee not the full board but why did we choose that that particular period which or was that just a test period so the reason we chose that time period was actually it aligned well with what we were doing out in the community so in addition to this digital campaign happening we were also doing community outreach events with the same materials like at safe City night and Thursdays downtown yep um on the right hand side you can just see what those top performing ads were based on each platform so with Google and Snapchat they were more focused on the Naran uh Administration how you can help someone that has overdosed and then the meta um top performing ad was were fourth in Minnesota for overdose deaths more informational uh when looking at the demographics of folks that were um viewing these ads and clicking on them um this is a different this is something different but that's okay so when you look at this um it shows how many resource clicks first were on the website so on the website we had over 24,000 folks that visited and there were 961 clicks on resources that were outside of this website so it could have been going to the County's website with dart it could be going to uh some a website through DHS Etc so whatever um resource the individual had clicked on if we look at the traffic source so this is how folks got to our website um with digital ads that's the primary we we got people there um with 23,000 plus coming from those digital ads referrals would be if it was posted um let's say uh the PB ran an article about being the no and folks clicked on the link via that um Source direct traffic was just folks typing it in um organic search again that's a pretty low number but if someone had just typed in something related to op ID use andad County it would potentially pull up and then email and organic social so organic social would be like if I decided to post it on my Facebook page and it got shared that way for top cities reached not a big surprise Rochester Stewartville Byron oronoko Pine Island all in that omad county area um what threw us off a little bit is the Dallas and Chicago but it apparently with servers there can be like a someone can be accessing the website through a server based out of Dallas and Chicago so that is our best guess of why we had so many visitors from those two locations when we look at the um demographics of folks uh 2third were female um and age brackets the the largest were from the 18 to 24 year old age range and then 65 plus and then following up would be your 25 to 34 and 55 to 64 year olds okay so this is uh the digital ad library for what the meta and Snapchat ads looked like just to give you a feel of of what was out there um and this gives you an idea of what it looked like if someone had done that Google search at um and an ad popped up based on what they were searching all right so I'm gon share this video um Russell herder also created a few videos to um showcase Dart um so this just doesn't real nice synopsis of the dart team and you can get to see some of the folks that are on there um and then I'll leave it to S to wrap up the last slide could ask a question about that that ad campaign yes do you consider it a success yes and so from a public health perspective of uh primary prevention this was a good reach and a good return on the investment in your view yes yep are we do we have any other um counties doing something swh where we can do any comparisons so um I think I had shared this originally when I brought the idea to hcom but uh up in this the DHS has done a similar campaign called know the dangers and so they've had success with that and Russell herder was the one that had created it and so we had thought well you know if they've already created this let's try to repurpose it or use it or build off it so when we contacted them they were all about it they were really excited um and that's how we got be in the no and um now I have had other counties that have reached out to us asking about the be and the no campaign and looking for ways that they could do something similar so we'll see maybe maybe there will be other counties doing uh similar similar prevention campaigns I guess what's going through my mind is there a way for counties to join a joint effort and get a get a Statewide or a better cost cost yes yes yeah I do think there's potential there if we keep uh if there continues to be folks that are asking about it I know that Russell herder I think would be all on board with doing a a Statewide campaign that can be localized to communities to make it more impactful so you yeah apologies to members if you're if I'm following a line of inquiry that you you're ready to move on we can move on okay so I'll play the video and then like I said I'll everybody wants to be contributing to society everybody wants to matter everybody has goals right and our job is to help them just be a person just like you and I are a person [Music] I describe the dart team as a group of individuals that go out and help people find a path to recovery we meet them where they're at and then try to get them connected to whatever resources they're willing to do for their recovery myself an addiction counselor and two peer Recovery Specialists we are taking that Outreach to a whole new level now there really is not a typical date take a look at the overdoses was there an overdose last night that's the first thing we look at we find the person's name we find out where the overdose occurred and we try to track them and figure out where they are offer services if we can find them offer Naran um and resources what can we do to help you we have our peer recovery specialist she kind of bounces all over the place following up with people that she's already maybe been working with in her spare time she goes and hangs out at the Landing or the Salvation Army day Center [Music] we're bringing the resources to them rather than them having to seek them out on their own we come to you and we take you places you need to go somewhere let's go you need to get to an assessment let's go you need to get to treatment we've got you we are out in the community pulling trying to pull people in instead of expecting people to come to us if you can develop a relationship or rapport with somebody that's going to go a long ways towards helping them right we find it's better if we walk beside them and guide them towards a better path we try to just relate that's the beauty of the peer recovery specialist as well because I can go out and offer services but our peer recovery specialist has been there done that and when um when she says to someone hey I've been there before I'm a woman in recovery the walls just come down because I've been there I able to have no judgment whatsoever and people feel that people see that people hear it they know when you're judging them and when you're not you know know and anyone even someone without addiction is going to close down when they're being judged that opens up a lot of doors for a conversation to start we try to help them if they aren't interested maybe in recovery right away can we help you with housing can we help you get food it's okay if you don't want to go to treatment today but what else can we help you with it's really hard to think about that when you don't know is it going to be too cold tonight and I'm not going to be able to sleep in the woods am I even going to have a meal tonight those are the worries what our team does is we're trying to KN down some of those barriers a lot of people sometimes don't even know where to go for help they have no idea where to start and we can be that stepping stone for them um and to help them and get them comfortable with helping their loved one or even themselves the services are out there it's a matter of how do we get them connected to the services so that they're not constantly causing problems in the community stealing food because they are hungry we know that substance use causes financial implications Upon Our entire Community the better job we can do at getting people's Services they need when they need them the greater likelihood of success and decrease of repeat offenses one of the major things that I have seen really change is some of those individuals that we have multiple police calls for getting the dart team involved with them and and being able to get them to get some treatment and come back and then for us to be seeing them as functioning adults like every other individual in this community is really um is really positive their reward from seeing individuals feel like they belong feel like they can connect to other people that makes it worth it I don't care if you try twice or if you try 10 times or if you try 15 times I think one of those times we're going to be able to wrap enough support around this person so that when they do come back we have them connected to services to help their mental health to help their physical health to help their substance use and their addiction that's what this team is all about [Music] about it's an impressive video yes uh and the work that they do it's a testament definitely to the team uh they're dedicated to this and it's a personal mission that they Endeavor to strive uh to carry out and their interactions um I don't want to blor the hour any longer did just want to highlight quickly um to kind of Bring It full circle um in reference to kind of are we tracking with what we initially set out to do um some of those initiatives that were evidence-based abatement strategies that have been identified included broadening access to theak Zone and we uh have started to do that through trainings um that we provided through the community we've worked in partnership with Rochester Public Library uh the U UMR students um we've trained a number of different organizations to be able to do that uh we we also have dispensed Naran um as far as enrichment strategies Community Education primary prevention being part of the the the overlining the overarching goal of some of this work um uh that has started to take form um through credible Minds being the know and also Community Education Partnerships with local school districts um has really accelerated some of that uh primary prevention work um and then warm handoff programs that's really in essence what what that's at the heart of what DART is it's really uh uh a handoff to that next uh uh help support that that individual needs on their journey and so we're really excited for the direction that um uh this team uh this initiative is going uh and believe that um the funds have been allocated in a way that have served the community uh and hopefully helped uh we we know that uh again if we look at 2020 as a peak we know that trend is actually starting to on a national level to to turn um and so uh certainly we can't attribute it to nine months of work but we we hope that that's a continued Trend that we see uh and we can track in real time and provide further updates to the board so thank you so much for your time and attention this evening members do you have questions for either M of our staff here no I don't have a question but I just want to compliment the team on first of all obviously you have a passion for this and and I think that it takes a passion to work with people that are in the depths of human misery and reach in and pull them out but I also want to talk about uh uh a little bit about the the DFO which is now the do which started this process probably I don't know four four or five years ago and we had people researching what was going on and other parts of the country and decided to establish this community outreach team in the first place and it was supported by the board at that time so and I think that we're starting to see the fruits of that risk that the board took at that time to to hire these folks it started out with I think only four people we didn't have enough coverage uh for 24 hours a day seven days a week and now we're we have that coverage and I think we're seeing the fruits of this and and it's uh a betterment for the community it it's resolving a lot of human misery it's making the community safer and cooperation with the sheriff's department as well couldn't have done it without the cooperation of the sheriff's department uh in order to to visit these things so um thank you Deputy back there in the sheriff's department so I I think uh it's one of those risks that Olstead County took that really pays off uh in benefit s for the comput for the community so when often times we talk about making an investment it's really hard for some people to see that outlay of money but here we have a return so thank you very much for all the folks I think we do have to to mention commissioner I I apologize for speaking while you were speaking but obviously from the video the Rochester Police Department is also a partner and I know that most of the calls that we are getting are really involved Rochester sites more than the balance of the county although certainly is countywide uh so they've been a good partner in in that way as well I'm wondering uh this video is pretty compelling and I I wasn't aware of it I'm wondering if you are U making it available I I'd like to have all all of our colleagues on the city council see it as but also maybe the um OC JC committee um and um I don't know is it on the County website at all I mean I think that's I think it tells a very compelling story about that just as uh my colleague is saying that the that that you came up with an idea for how to improve uh connection and I'm looking at at uh Miss Niles and and Alex and Corrections folks came up with a proposal that we were able to support you on although we questioned you remember quite a bit at the time um uh and it's successful and it's Humane and I think uh having that be known treating people with dignity and respect even though we're in when they are in a really bad place is uh is an important part of our values and I I guess I'd just like your story to be told a little more widely than just the six of us uh today and so I just encourage you to think about that uh using the opportunity to to use this with other groups perhaps the school board perhaps the city council maybe on our website because it's a it's a compelling story to tell so thank you for your presentation today other comments or questions Madam chair yes there are just so many um impressive and really moving uh aspects to this work and something that really shines through is is the optimism and perseverance that you have about the hopefulness of the human Spirit you just really don't give up on people and that's the hardest work and the most important work and I wanted to to recognize that that part of it it's it's um the deepest most transforming work that that we can do is the work of optimism and uh something that jumped out at me in the video is that the morning meeting where the team talks about what they're going to do that day and I know that we're we've been invited or encouraged to experience um departments and teams um uh to uh just observe those kinds of meetings to have a better understanding of of what a team does what a department does uh do you think it would be appropriate for a a commissioner to sit in on a meeting like that just to get a a just a deeper sense of of the work yeah I I think we would welcome that um just to get a sense of yeah the what that day-to-day process looks like um I think by all means we would be open to to having you all show up as a guest well I would members thank you very much got one commissioner uh again I think we all thank you for your work because it's important and in some cases it's life or death kind of work and that's that's that's pretty serious uh so just looking at at at the numbers which which you kind of find online and not in the report but it it looks like in in 20 and 20 2023 we we the county were allotted something like 77,000 and that apparently got us started with the community outreach teams additions and it's it's kind of hard to kind of unfold but uh and so we got that 100,000 107,000 in in uh in 203 the city got 4 I don't know if that folded into any of our money or not but uh maybe it did uh and then what what is the cycle of getting uh of the granting itself is have have we received the the 2024 grant money yet or are we are we sort of buying ahead that'd be one question have receiv could you come to the microphone please because we have we have received some it doesn't come in on a very uh predictable schedule and so that makes it a little bit challenging um but they are front loading we'll say so we are getting more funding early on and then it's you know trickling off as we go down those 18 years allowing us to do more at the beginning and hopefully make a bigger impact I think commissioner um s's question is are we receiving have we received funds this year what's the cycle of receiving the funds no yes we have you're in okay we have yes but Madam chair she's your Des it's not like it just sort of trickles in that's and maybe that's something we ought to talk about legislatively I want to be clear here the trickling in is that over the years over 17 years the money starts to decline but at this point in time and we're early into that 17-year process is the money trickling or does it come in does it come in predictable and Miss Sharon do you want to speak to that good evening commissioner so the you have to identify yourself oh yes my name is Megan Sheran I'm one of the associate directors with public health so as Abby is trying to explain it's actually up to each um settlement and they get to determine their payment schedule so you have one company who's determined to frontload it and put the money there's others that are still in litigation right now and we know we're going to be getting money but that exact number is still being determined so each of them then have to set up a payment process and then that's what gets trick trickled down to us so we know what money is coming but the timing of it is a little bit unpredictable from um from each settle each settlement with the Attorney General's office so it's not like a grant or anything like that it's as each of these settlements are getting cleaned up and they determine how much they're going to pay then they set up a payment process and many of them to aby's point are frontloading or giving the vast majority of their settlement money now and then will slowly dwindle um throughout the next 17 years Madam chair my question was really how the basis of my question is how how do how do we how do you put together a so kind of an annual budget that's we have excellent accountants and they have it's challenging but they have developed um a kind of a schedule to assume in their best of of like um how to determine how much money we have each year based on our initiatives Mr grany is going to help us with this yes Commissioners thank you I've got a spreadsheet here in front of me commissioner senum that's got all of the different um um agencies that are part of this settlement and part of this lawsuit and they all have a little bit different um payment schedule uh and many much of it was front-loaded the County isn't cash flowing any of the efforts that we're doing right now uh we have an opioid settlement fund we our finance department had to set up a special account for this then um which is in part what we're doing tonight and Reporting out to you about how those funds were used but uh commissioner send them to your I I think part of your question was do we have enough cash on hand to support the ongoing efforts or are we reliant on kind of the inconsistent natur of this money coming in to keep us going and we're not we've got enough front loaded here um there are some agencies that have decided to string this over 16 years of payments there are others that are going to have their payments completed in a much shorter period of time so uh there's a an agency within the state that's actually tracking like how all this money is Flowing um so it's we're we're in a good spot both with our efforts as you've heard here tonight And in regards to the money from these settlements just to sort of kind of get right down to the question do we have any idea so we got 107,000 for a shorten 2023 do we have any idea what our 2024 allocation will be are they are they are they good enough to be able to tell us that well we do have an idea I mean I can tell you on 31st of July we received $181,400 County and we've got a pretty good idea um but uh but we certainly don't have it all dialed in and as you know Miss sharan mentioned there are still a number of um companies here that are still in litigation so we're we're not going to have that for I don't know how long and maybe you know attorney walls has any something additional to add I probably carried it far enough but I just I just kind of the legislature in intended this to be a a Continuum and and for you know for the so-called guilty parties to to make their payments and to move forward remediation of life if that if you will and uh and it seems like it's turky jerky but you're doing a great job and thank you for that Mr W did you wish to comment oh just that there's a uh a national opioid settlement website and on that website you can find uh payment schedules for those defendants that have payment schedules and but the numbers you see there will won't be exactly what we will receive because the money comes into the state and then there are various deductions for attorney fees and other parts of the settlement and to the issue of uh there being flexibility the the defendants can choose to frontload uh monies uh and make alterations in the payment schedule they have to give us notice when they do that but that's made it a challenge for public health to to budget but I think you're trying to budget over like a three-year cycle based on the the information that's available does that help is that well come I if I can just drag the question on one more I'll stop are we are we like planning for a 17-year program or a fiveyear program given the front loading so right now we're focused on to the microphone please so right now we're focused on the first three years okay so that's where we're at this moment and commissioner but if we're paid ahead of time are we going to Escrow that money and budget it out over longer program time y I believe a good amount of it is still going to be used to fund the DART program so that is a significant amount to continue that work okay gr just maybe the last comment I mean commissioner senum to your point um I I will continue to Advocate that we don't try to make this money last us for 18 years I believe we will be on to our next drug epidemic 18 years from now and I think to focus on opioids right now when it's in our fa is in our best interest and Madam chair it's in the best interest of the lives of a lot of people out there that are addicted to this stuff I would also observe that we're learning as we go we're learning what works this the whole approach to to the dart team to the crisis response team that that's all learning within the last few years the data that they presented with what their success rate has been or what the response rate has been so this isn't um this is the board as I would call it the board approved this for three years we will learn as we go and we will modify based on what the current Community circumstances are what you see Works what you've learned from other communities so so this is uh um this is not building it as you go but it's it's learning along the way and modifying to meet need so we're not committing to this for 17 years we're committing to this for three and then modifying over time based on the real experience and Madam chair I think it's it's worth noting that um our County attorney Mark olstrom had a role in this because he brought it to the board very early on to say we ought to be involved in this settlement and brought it to the choice of either going alone or going in with the rest of the State uh the board ultimately decided to go in with the rest of the state and that's basically how we ended up with the money so thank you Mr Ostrom all right thank you for your presentation and and for the good outcomes and the learning along the way so very much appreciate it next we're going to have um an update about the Children's Mental Health targeted case management and with our Partnership of zumro Valley Health Center welcome good evening Madam chair Commissioners um I am Amy Rockwater I'm the director of Child and Family Services here with some folks from zumber Valley Health Center who will introduce themselves in a moment um we're here to give you an update on an upcoming change to our partnership around children's mental he Health targeted case management but also going to use the opportunity for them to share some information um just some updates about their organization and also some um interesting um numbers related to their growth around services for youth so we are going to start with that and then I will jump in at the end to share some more information about um the change in how we're going to provide targeted Case Management Services so I will let you to introduce yourselves hello Commissioners I um am not going to talk very much tonight so thank you for having us here um my name is Heather girtz I am the director of Clinical Services at somro Valley Health Center I apologize for my voice I um seem to have lost it somewhere along the way um and um I am here with another one of my colleagues um who will give you a few more details um and she is much easier to uh listen to um but uh so I just really want to start out by saying um over the past uh few years at zbro Valley um we've really started to shift our model of care um and it's really shifted to be a more integrated um integrated program with wraparound Services really looking at preventative Services how we help individ uals provide that um 360 degree care in addition to that we've really started to expand our focus more on providing substance use disorder treatment um community-based programs and really started expanding some of our um children family and youth programming we've always had those programs within our organization um but definitely recognizing that need um as we started providing that integrated approach that that was something that really could be expanded um upon within our organization so it's really been an exciting time um for for all of us at somro Valley and um working with our Community Partners uh as you can see there um it's been a time of growth for us um we have some two uh key new leaders within our organization uh Tracy uh is our new CEO um and started in July um at the same time we um welcomed a new CFO uh Joe arens both are from this area um and really have a background um in the nonprofit sector uh Tracy has been with Sombra Valley for 17 years um and in a multip multiple different roles within our organization ation so we're really excited about what she can offer and where she can help us take our organization uh one of the next really kind of exciting things for us some of you may be aware some of you may not um but zbra Valley is a certified community behavioral health clinic which is a ccbhc this designation is a federal program that really has allowed us to expand that integrated approach and that 360 uh preventative model of care this started as a demonstration project uh back in 2016 and zumro Valley really was um a Pioneer in providing these services and we were one of six clinics in the state that became uh one of these certifi certified clinics the exciting part of this is this has now been adopted into the state St legislator and in our state plan amendment in Minnesota and we are now moving out of that demonstration stage and it is a formalized uh license and designation that we can achieve and it will allow us to continue to provide that integrated model and approach ongoing so we're very very excited about moving from that pilot model into more of a final or more of a um long-term model of care the final exciting uh I guess adventure for us is that we just opened a new location more in the downtown heart of Rochester in the Northgate Plaza and this area really allows us this location allows us to really be able to be more accessible to the clients that we serve and really allows us to provide uh more Serv because we were able to expand our uh substance use disorder treatment our community- based programs by allowing us to move into that area we were able to open up one of our other locations at our green View Plaza to really focus and be a central location for our children and families and so we've really taken that uh location and made that the central hub for our uh our our CH the children Youth and Family Services and that's where I'm going to stop talking and I'm going to let Monica really explain um what we're doing in that sector welcome M thank you my name is Monica way I'm the Children's Community Bas services supervisor at zro Valley Health Center and I just want to walk you through some of the growth we've had as an organization at zro Valley Health Center um within our green View Drive becoming our children and family services Hub we have continued to grow our programs tremendously um out of that location we're offering our ctss which is children's therapeutic services and supports program or mental health practitioners who provide skills training to Youth and families we have youth biof feedback practitioner certified family peer support specialist uh specialized youth enhanced care coordination teams our children's mental health targeted case managers have offices there uh our individual family and group Psychotherapy teams and our school L mental health therapy teams are all housed at this location to allow a lot of that integration and coordination of care to happen um I wanted to walk you through some of our numbers uh demonstrating some of the growth that we've had and the need in our community to continue to grow our services and offer uh services to Youth and families here in Olstead County So within uh zumbro Valley we've had some tremendous growth since 20 8 to today um back in 2018 we were serving about 34 youth um or I'm sorry excuse me we had uh we currently have about 34 youth or or staff working with youth between our skills training schooling mental health case management and Outpatient Therapy uh last year we served about 1,200 unique clients uh this year so far we're seeing about 972 active youth these numbers were pulled week ago so I'm not sure how that's changed um and this demonstrates the number uh of children that we saw back in 2018 we are serving around 70 73 children each month um and this past month we served about 713 children um so just showing the significant growth there within our uh children's therapeutic services and supports program uh our agency has grown from having one skills trainer who served about 30 youth a month uh back in 2018 to having about seven skills trainer now serving 150 youth um each month we've served about 202 unique clients thus far in that program this year um we continue to grow um and I'm currently hiring for that position because we continue to have referrals coming in within our school linked mental health program uh in 2018 we had one therapist embedded in one school here at Homestead County serving about 32 clients a month um this year we have nine School link to mental health therapists embedded across five different school districts serving about 430 clients uh this past month so we've served about 470 unique clients this year and within our outpatient Psychotherapy team um we've grown from serving around 28 clients a month back in 2018 to around 250 youth each month um in 2014 14 we've served 468 unique clients this year just in Psychotherapy um we are uh looking to uh change our model where we're able to provide more wraparound services and lower level uh in case management for individuals who need some of this integrated and prevention care um so we are looking to continue to support Youth and families in Olstead County who are part of that Minnesota healthc care plan to gain access to services in timely manner we continue to have uh youth seeking services and want to continue to collaborate as Community Partners to expand our children's mental health targeted case manager Case Management Services for the Youth who qualify all right and so on to the upcoming change now in the partnership we have around the Children's Mental Health targeted case management um we have had a contract in place for years um I don't know that I even know how many years it's been more than a decade I'm sure yeah long time so good partnership longstanding relationship and that has included um right now grown to the point where there um are seven social workers or case managers as part of that contract that have been embedded um in our youth Behavioral Health health unit um and what we've been seeing when we think about the current conditions sort of prompting our discussion about having a change is that we are seeing an increasing need we're seeing it really on both ends of the spectrum we're seeing an increased need for youth that uh maybe have fewer identified needs but nonetheless um have um needs where early intervention can help prevent um more intensive services and needs later on um on the other end of the spectrum we we're seeing a lot of Youth with high needs High complexity High Acuity um youth really at risk for residential placement and and other kinds of intensive services so so seeing that and and struggling with our capacity to provide services to all of those that are seeking that out um so our our shift or the change in the contract um we think help us better meet that need um what we're looking at is for um three of the case managers to shift to be embedded within zumbro Valley Health Center in that youth Hub that Monica spoke about um where the Youth and Family can receive really wraparound comprehensive services in one location from a team who is well connected and collaborating around their care needs and on the other hand um looking at um hiring four Olstead County Employees three of those would be social workers to provide that case management service one would be a program manager position um but looking at then internally offering the services to those youth with the higher needs higher complexity um so we really see this change um as giving each agency an opportunity to really practice within their wheelhouse so to speak to really practice Within their um strengths resources and capacities to best serve um Youth and families um one of the challenges has been um recruitment to filling um all of those contracted positions which has led to some vacancies which does have an impact on our ability to provide services um we do think this change will help that there are three vacancies currently so the three positions we're talking about shifting to Homestead County employment are not currently filled um by a zumbro Valley Health Center employee um Financial impact um zumber Valley Health Center as a ccbhc has the ability to generate say that again ccbhc what is that certified community behavioral health clinic did I get that right all right that's good um so they can generate revenue for that service in the funding structure they have through Medicaid services um to pay for that and then in child and family we're looking at a levy impact of approximately $39,000 per year for those four positions um we know in 2025 we'll have a contract savings um because of this change a savings of 125 124,000 um resulting in a net Savings in 2025 of about $85,000 um so that is the the change um timing we're looking at um soon starting transition activities including um a hiring process for those vacant positions questions or anything you think I missed okay I'm sorry to be slow here I am I'm I'm not understanding the position so if we can take this middle one the shift in the contract we currently have seven of Zumo Valley staff that are under contract but are embedded within our agency now you're proposing that we would have three of our social workers embedded at zbra Valley no so thank you for the question Madam chair yes I will try to clarify so uh they have positions that are currently filled um there seven positions are filled there four of the seven are filled okay did I get that right yeah four are currently filled and so those positions with the employees in them will shift to zumber Valley Health Center so rather than being embedded in our youth behavioral health unit they will be embedded in their youth Hub okay so then those three vacancies um that are a part of that contract right now will leave that contract and shift to Alstead County employment um so that will be a hiring process for new employees for us okay and then those three employees those three new social workers will be part of the Children's Division within Olstead County that's correct they will be part of the youth Behavioral Health Unit okay yes and those positions need to be filled they do and they are not going to have a budget impact because by changing the contract with zum Valley we will have the revenue to pay for those positions and in fact um Zumo Valley will be able to generate Revenue because of being a certified community behavioral health clinic to pay for the positions that are currently under contract with us that will be moving to Z Valley I got it yes they will generate the their own revenue for those positions through Medicaid and so um we will continue to have a contract in place with them that allows information and resource sharing to best serve families but there will not be a budget line for the targeted case manager M agement service itself um so even if we think about not having that 125 or 24,000 in contract Savings in 2025 um the levy impact is about 39,000 because of the revenue um that those social worker positions are able to generate between Federal admin Aid and also the TCM Revenue through um Medicaid services okay other members have questions about this change in relationship and change in Service delivery M Madam chair just looking at this contract to provide the Children's Mental Health targeted case ma what is a children is that is that up to 21 well it depends on what service you're talking about so for children's mental health targeted case management um that covers the up to age 18 but they still may stay on a case load of a children's mental health um social worker but we would then Bill the adult rate for mental health targeted case management so CH that the program could cover a wider range than than 18 and it just depends on who you build them it does yes thank you and um I have a question that really is not to this contract but to the broader discussion that's been going on uh particularly within Thea County Justice coordinating Council about building a Continuum of Care to deal with behavioral issues for kids and and so can you comment on how this impacts our effort to build that Continuum of Care yes thank you madam chair good question um it does impact our ability to provide that Continuum of Care um it does allow um for Youth and families who are receiving um services at zumro Valley to access Services earlier at their current provider without having to a access County Services um it will also allow um for some transitioning between zumber Valley Health Center case management and olad County case management if the needs of the child change so for example if we are serving primarily youth with um greater needs as those needs change over time and um it appears as though they're appropriate for a step down in Services um we could look at making a transition and a step down to zumra Valley Health Center for that service in the community outside of County Services and then I this question may be not as appropriate to you as perhaps miss miss gerz or or miss wayy with the work that you're doing within the school districts the the five I think you said five school districts does this provide a uh an easier transition for those children to go directly into into the therapeutic care that they need and the county does not necessarily have to be involved at all so this provides a a clearer pathway into therapy yes thank you very much for your question um it does So currently right now within the school districts that we are providing ther uh schooling mental health therapy we have also built a relationship where we can provide um uh ctss or the children's therapeutic support services so many of the school districts such as Stewartville doota we not only have a therapist with Lo collocated within the school but we also have a ctss skills worker co-located in the school so we are pro we are able to provide that Continuum of Care those wraparound Services if they are needing a group that we are providing within Outpatient Therapy they can receive that service so we are able to keep those services within zumro Valley and try to provide the wraparound services so we don't need to escalate to that higher more restrictive level of care where they may need the county services and I assume then that school districts contract with you for the for having those therapist available in their schools correct we have a partnership with two other local Prov providers through a state grant that allows us to be in those districts I think one of the one of the things our board members are often interested in is are we serving our entire all the school districts in our County not just the largest one so yes we um yes currently zro Valley is within we are in Pine Island we are in doota we are in Stewartville uh and in Rochester okay thank you y members of other questions commissioner uh thank you madam chair M Madam chair this is for the zumbro valley people and you want to give us the reference of the page please uh I'm looking at page 22 and 23 the the the charts you had up there and when I'm looking at school link mental health growing in six years from 32 a month to 426 a month and and Psychotherapy growth from 28 to and six years later it's 238 a month I mean like what is what what is what is this epidemic what what is we know what it is but but why is it is is and and is it is this is this going to Contin are we at at a peak or where what's going on here I mean these numbers are astounding to me yeah commissioner I wish I could say we were at the peak um I I don't think we are um I think we see that in all the services that we are providing um one of one factor I think that plays in with our numbers uh is that we have been able to provide a broader array of services by becoming a ccbhc it's allowed and say that in English please sorry a certified community behavioral health clinic it it has allowed us to provide a greater array of services and it has allowed us to expand our youth services so back in 2017 2018 we did not have as many providers that were in our Outpatient Clinic that were that provided Outpatient Therapy to Children uh and families uh we did not have a school link mental health Grant so as we've moved through the years we've we've hired more staff and we've been able to provide more services I will also say that I think that there is more need amongst our youth uh and I do think that there are more needs amongst our families and our the the children and the families we're serving and so that is why I think there's such a need for continued collaboration and specialization in what we the type of service we could e each provide um at our expertise level Madam chair can I just so is part of the answer that a lot of this problem may have been there in 2018 and we just didn't have the the sophistication to find it or to identify it to work on it correct and and and and now we've got that we've got that sophistication plus we've got abely you know continual growth of mental health issues and so we see these numbers that are almost 10 times what they were in six years so once you embedded workers in the school districts yes using the grant funds once you had more therapists available so you have a referral process from the schools to the therapy um then you've you've created the you you're satisfying the the hidden market demand yes or closer to satisfying yes Madam chair the way to pay for it the therapists are available there's a way to identify there's a way to ease the referrals otherwise families had to kind of find it on their own yes thank you madam chair thank you um are there is there more to your presentation that you'd like to you'd like to there is not that is everything unless you have additional questions Madam chair so we're beginning this this transition now this quarter is what you're telling us we will yes and um zumra Valley's launched into a whole new array of Acron Acron namic services all right we've been you someone raised the question about partnership and I I would just say my my uh tenure with or my experience with the county goes back to the 70s and we were partners with zumbo Valley in the 70s so it's a long partnership with a with many um changes over time and personnel and service arrays so it's nice to see that the partnership continues and the quality is continues as well so thank you thank you very much thanks for being with us this evening and now County attorney Ostrom who was kind enough to um postpone this presentation is now probably regretting it although speaking for myself I'm a little fresher than I would have been two weeks ago so that may mean more questions for you you may you may regret that in many ways you may regret the delay wow be careful what I asked for I guess um Markos from M County attorney it's pleasure to be here tonight um yeah you've had another long meeting you've talked about some really interesting stuff and some of the stuff is actually going to tie together even though I I put this presentation together you know over a couple of weeks ago it's interesting that a couple of things we've talked about tonight that you've talked about tonight the dart team and and the opioid settlements and now uh mental health and and and children and uh are some of the things that you're going to hear me talk about a little bit too um so this is my opportunity to spend a few minutes with you and just share a little bit of snippet about what's going on in the the county attorney's office give you an idea about what we do um and so I want to launch through a few things um I'm mindful that about it was probably six or seven months ago we did uh some uh commissioner education Cycles through and you came up through my office many of you did and we we did a pretty broad presentation then and I thought I don't want to duplicate that so you've probably already peaked through the agenda you know what I'm going to talk about uh but I wanted to find something that we didn't talk about before something that uh is something very significant that we actually do in this community in our in our office uh but yet nobody ever really hears about so we're going to peek behind the curtain a little bit on some of that stuff but I got a couple preview things I want to talk about first we've talked in the past many times about our mission statement I created this mission statement well like 17 18 years ago and I still like it so I haven't changed it so we're going to stick with that I've talked in the past a number of times about uh strategic priorities of our office um we again we talked about these a few months months ago um I look at these every once in a while you know every few weeks or so and and just wonder are these still the things that are most important that we need to focus on in the office and I still believe in them um but we do get together every few well it's every 18 to 24 months or so and sit down and have an an actual meeting our our leadership team has a meeting and we talk about this we decide is this the really important stuff that we need to continue to focus on and and frankly our me our next meeting is scheduled for November 20th and we're going to sit down again as a team we're going to look at this list and we're going to say is this the things that we really need to focus on um and prioritize in our work uh so it'll be interesting how that that conversation comes out on November 20th some of the sub categories things that are near and dear to me are some of the things you just talked about uh we didn't talk you guys didn't really talk about guns we'll talk a little bit about guns tonight uh certainly Fentanyl and other Alcohol and Other Drugs aod uh you've heard from the dart team tonight you've heard about what they do uh it's interesting um listening to the the video clip of Terry do when she said one of the first things they do in the morning is they get up and they look to see who overdose the night before did we ever think we'd get there that one of the priorities of somebody that works for the county is to find out how many people overdosed the night before it it demonstrates the significance of the drug problem in our community and that's why it's really important to me because what we do in our office is try and support all the work of of all the other departments and try and attack things like fentanyl uh you just heard from the zombra valley team and child family services and talking about uh some of the things that they do working with kids truancy is a huge issue for me uh it's really important for me that kids get an education that they have an opportunity to get an education part of the role that we play is to help support child family services in assisting them to help kids stay in school help help them get that education if they don't an education they're probably going to be impacting my office in other ways uh we'd rather not have to deal with them on the juvenile delinquency side of of that so uh assisting them and and supporting them and getting kids into school is really important to us uh and so it's it's one of my sub priorities uh Child Protection we also you heard a lot about child protection as well and so again protecting kids it's a lot about protecting kids uh something that's been driving me crazy for the entire time I've been in this in this role has been the impact of domestic violence in our community um we still haven't figured that out we we continue to meet OC JC meets very regularly we've got uh sub committees and we continue to talk about that uh that committee met again today I missed the meeting but uh we continue to talk uh very strategically about what it is we can do about domestic violence and how we can you know protect families again and of course you've heard again from the dart team and and Sydney's work uh around mental health and and Amy's team around mental health and the work that we do these are very important to me as well and it's interesting that I created this a couple weeks ago and here they are talking about this stuff and and so I guess it gives you an idea of the significance of these issues in our community but let's move on to something a little bit more uh interesting on our uh strategic priorities one of our strategic priorities is just outcomes and I I credit Joe Rashel one of my managing attorneys with coming up with that because it's it's not about closing files we're not about closing files we're about doing the right thing and and and getting the right results for whatever happen in this community in this par in a particular incident and so uh that's our focus when we when we approach cases on the criminal side on the on the Civil side it's getting the right result and getting the right outcome and so that's what we mean by uh by just outcomes and and doing the right thing and and and then trying to figure out how do we know and that's one of the things that's hard for us is eventually we do close these files and what you do we have a chance to track and know how people are are being successful in other ways I think there's supposed to be something that comes up there oh there is okay I wasn't sure if the transitions we're going to stay into the presentation uh we do have a couple of specialty courts everybody I think is well aware of our drug court we're now uh I think it started in 2016 so we're about eight years into it um at least at OC JC and perhaps at the County board meeting we've talked about some of the outcomes in fact I think there was a presentation just a few weeks ago about drug court and some of the numbers and and success stories it's it's one of my success stories uh about giving people that second chance these are people that are truly do have one foot in the prison system and we give them one last chance to try and get it right uh we've had some great successes and we've had a number of people that just couldn't hack it and they are probably still sitting at the Department of Corrections uh the Third District Veterans treatment Court um actually celebrated their fifth anniversary just a few weeks ago um these transitions will come uh they met over at uh so field Memorial uh at the Soldiers Field Memorial uh and talked about the work that they do specifically around veterans the veterans treatment court and our drug court while they may sometimes treat people in similar situations people usually dealing with either drug addiction mental health or both uh issues but they come from a different places and the veterans treatment court is all about people that have served our country and there's some connection to their service and their either mental health challenges or uh treatment uh addiction challenges and so we address those in different ways in the in the veterans treatment Court another uh good success story that we modeled after the fifth district we're in the Third District but we modeled that uh uh because it's a smaller uh participant group uh it was better to do it as a district and I think many of you have probably heard from Ross loning judge loing over in Freeborn County who handles half the district judge Klein Fel felter now down in Filmore county is handling the other half of the district those sessions are here every other Friday I believe so if you're interested in want to see another unique Opportunity Way of of trying to help people through and help people get better do the right thing uh you're welcome to come by the the veterans treatment Court any Friday morning every other Friday morning and just see the folks that we're working with and some of the challenges that those people are struggling with too all right I'm trying to talk fast because I know you guys have had a long night uh I want to talk about just a couple emerging issues uh things that that maybe you've heard about uh we'll talk just a little bit about it and I'll get into my main topic um one is the mental health uh chemical commitment holds issue this was something that was actually fairly public Randy's still here this is the article that Randy wrote a while back uh first part of August uh this went into effect I think August 1 actually um mail Clinic published uh a letter and just said hey we can't keep holding these people forever waiting for a bed at Anoka to open up um and I've had many conversations with Folks at at Mao about that because they're assaulting staff um they're they're busting Windows Doors Furniture uh and it's just not a very nice place to be and and so Mayo finally said you know what we can't hold these people unless there's a medical need for them to be in a hospital um this policy that when Mayo came out with this policy is no different than what's happening in the rest of the state Mayo has been bent has been uh helping us out for years and years by holding these people longer one of the places one of the things I do with all my new staff is I asked them to go to the emergency department and take a tour and if you've never been deep in the emergency department at St mares I'd encourage you to do that because that's where these mental health holds are it's not a very nice place and nobody should be back there from months on end we've held juveniles back there for weeks and upwards of months back there because beds are just impossible to find I think you heard that two weeks ago um and so finally may just said you know we can't if they're not a medical reason you've got to get him out of here and so the hope is and I know I've had conversations with commissioner kiscaden about this the hope is that we can collectively get to uh the legislature and DHS and get a movement on creating the right number of beds and that's what we really need the interesting thing is on October 20 or August 27th uh because this was such a significant issue for our office and also for Mayo I invited the entire Mayo legal department over to have a meeting with my entire office office and we went across the street to the annex and we went up into the jury uh not the deliberation room but the jury assembly room up there it's that huge room over there and we had lunch and we talked for two hours about this issue and a couple other smaller issues and it was a rich rich conversation we had 24 attorneys from my office up there I think we had 15 to 20 of male legals uh attorneys up there they brought them in from all over the region and we sat down we had just a really rich conversation about this and it was so good that I applied for continuing legal education credits and I got them so we got two two continuing education credits for this discussion because it's so uh significant um and it was just a wonderful conversation Josh Murphy and and Sherry Hubert uh Josh is a head of male legal for the entire Corporation I guess it is uh was there Sher was there she's the the local here um it was just a wonderful conversation and we we actually resolve lots of issues and one of the things we continue to do is we learn how to talk together and get through issues like this Recruitment and Retention is another significant issue for our office uh and it's a it's a significant issue Across the Nation uh National district attorney Association did a survey uh a few months ago and and it's a survey Nationwide and they asked a number of questions I thought I'd share just a few of them with you tonight uh these are the same questions were asked in every state Across the Nation all 50 um and I just pulled out a couple Snippets of the the responses out of Minnesota uh do you enjoy being a prosecutor and and it's overwhelming over 80% are saying yes or at least uh they're so so about it very few people disagree that they enjoy being a prosecutor and this concept of prosecutor is broader than just criminal prosecution um they they then asked you have you ever get given serious consideration to leaving your employer and this is shocking 61% said yes some of the slides I didn't include is uh the vast majority of those have thought about leaving their current employer in the last six months um and again these answers from Minnesota are similar to this to what we saw across the state I could share the entire survey with you if you're interested um another night what was interesting to look at though was also they went further and they asked some questions about what do you like about being a prosecutor and I love this response doing Justice for my community I mean that goes right back to our strategic priorities about doing right and getting just outcomes um they of course they I like the fact that they believe in the mission of the agency and I was very proud to think that you know what I've had a mission statement for 18 years now um the opportunity to do trial work pay is good work life balance is great um so those are some of the reasons that people like working for us but for some of for those people that were there thought about leaving they asked them well why haven't you why did why do you stay and again it seems to be overwhelming that this uh doing Justice for their Community believing in the mission of the office uh the positive workplace culture passionate about about prosecution those are the things that we're looking for when we're interviewing candidates and what we're trying to keep people so even though we've got a very difficult job and we talk a lot about well-being and we talk about a lot about the stress of the work that we do there are some things that keep people home that keep them in our office and and those are some of the things that they responded to uh again I didn't share all the slides with you but if you look at the entire survey you'd see things on the people that are that are thinking about leaving um it's high case loads it's high stress it's it's well-being things like that uh it's a it's it's a high pressure job uh but but people that really truly want to do what's right for their Community that's the people that that we work with and the people that stay with us all right I got to take a quick breath I wanted to share just a few minutes with you about grand juries grand juries is one of those things we did not talk about when we had those education things and one of the reasons we really don't talk about much is because it's super secret nobody's supposed to know what happens and we'll talk about that a little bit here nobody's supposed to know about grand juries nobody's supposed to know when they happen nobody's supposed to know what goes on in there so we're going to peek behind the curtain a little bit whoops move forward peek behind the curtain a little bit and talk a little bit about grand juries because uh they've been in the news recently uh we convened two grand juries in January of this year interestingly prior to that we had not convened a grand jury in olad County since November of 2018 that's how rare it is it happens I'd say we've probably done about 10 maybe 12 grand juries in my entire career as a county attorney um we'll talk a little bit about why but but that that's actually a good thing uh it really taxed our office to be able to do two in January and we did them within two weeks um it's a it's a major undertaking um I had the opportunity to do one of them uh it's a tremendous amount of work and especially when you add on this whole um this whole umbrella of secrecy and trying to keep it quiet uh it really uh is a challenge so what what goes to a grand jury it's anything that that we're seeking a life sentence for so the statutes require that if you want to get a life sentence on a particular incident that you must present it to a grand jury by Statute those are first-degree murder treason and some criminal sexual conduct offenses so it's a very narrow scope of of what can actually be presented to a grand jury and why otherwise we charge everything by complaint interestingly if you get into larger discussions there are many states that every single crime must be presented to grand jury uh so Texas for example is one of those States Tennessee is another state I believe where every single crime must be presented to a grand jury so they have standing grand juries every single day and and they bring all the investigators in and every crime that occurred the night before they present it to a grand jury and they get some sort of an indictment that's their charging document it's not the way it works in Minnesota we only we reserve grand juries for just those very special matters those things that we want to get that life sentence um and and so I think I just talked about this the the repeat dangerous sexual conduct cases are those heinous offenses uh we did three of those I think back in the early 2010s I think it was uh where we had three really really um awful criminal sexual conduct cases um and we've got three people I believe that are still sitting in prison one uh got life without parole the other two I think do have an opportunity for parole after 20 or 30 years um but other it's mainly first-degree murder cases and to the best of my knowledge we've never treasured a treason case in in olate County so what's talk a little bit about what's the difference between a grand jury and a just a regular what we call it a pedet jury or just a district court jury a trial jury that we're all more familiar with we have a grand jury panel they're they're selected once a year and they serve for the entire year now as again we talked about uh Grand jurors we haven't called a convened a grand jury since 2018 so 2019 20 21 22 23 those grand jurors all got their their letter in the mail in November they're on the grand jury they never got another call not bad um unfortunately those grand jurors they got call got their letter in November for 2024 uh spent the good part of the month of January with us um and they did an amazing work um our other jurors are selected and they serve for a period of two weeks weeks unless a trial takes them over into another week but they only serve for two weeks so uh significant difference in how they're drawn um the qualifications are the same um but it's just a random and it's a different panel uh the district court then when we start with a grand jury the first thing we do is we bring all the grand jurors into the courtroom we sit them down we have a judge come in and the judge says commissioner cascaden Sheila cascaden you're going to be the four person now in a normal jury they go the first thing they do when they go back to deliberate is they they vote amongst themselves and pick the four person so um I'm not sure how the judge did it but the judge picks that forers and it's the same forers for the entire year interesting um Grand Jury has to be at least 16 people have to be present during the entire presentation of the evidence uh but we generally have 23 to start with you can't have more than 23 so we just bring 23 in uh in the in the case both cases that we did this past January I think in the first one we still had 21 by the time we were done presenting evidence and in the second one I think we had 22 so we're able to keep them all in there but occasionally these things go long some things happen um and somebody gets sick there's there's reasons why we might might not have all 23 we have to have at least 16 that hear all the evidence um it's it's possible for a grand juror to be there for day one miss day two come back for day three um that doesn't count for the 16 that heard all the evidence why they would come back I'm not sure but um so who may be present in a grand jury again this is a super secret proceeding prosecutors not all prosecutors but the prosecutor can be there uh the witnesses as they're being examined can be in there uh if they need an interpreter The Interpreter can be there we have to have a court reporter taking down of verbatim record if we need a peace officer in there for security sometimes we have peace officers in the courtroom for security Grand jurors generally not um unless we need them specifically for security depending on where the witnesses come from um if there's a a witness who has councel for some reason related to this uh that attorney can be in there but only during that very narrow period of time when that witness is there and the same thing with a parent guardian or support person for a particular witness so we we keep it very close it's very um very secretive uh we did these in January we did them across the street so we're away from this building which was very helpful uh when we do grand juries in this building we actually put paper on the Windows you can't even look in the windows so who can't be in the grand jury first one that cannot be in there is a judge after the judge comes in and swears to the grand jury reads them their their initial instructions the judge is no longer present um so the judge can't be there the defendant can't be there unless he chooses to be a witness uh the defendant's attorney attorney is not there friends and family can't be either general public can't be there the media can't be there uh there are even the jury attendants we have jury attendants but they sit outside uh and any prosecution support staff and let me tell you that makes it a little bit difficult for us because in our day and age when we got batter cameras and all this forensic evidence uh in a typical trial we like to have our support staff there helping us run this stuff uh we can't even have them in there so it's a very uh very like I said cloistered environment and um very few people get to uh be present timing is really interesting on on grand juries um again this is only for first-degree murders and uh those serious sex offenses so sometimes the question is why why don't you just charge a first-degree murder right away our practice in my office since I've been there at least is that we almost never charge by complaint first-degree murder and that's all about the timing because once you charge an offense by complaint with first-degree murder you got 14 days to bring that grand jury to get the indictment you still have to have the indictment but you started the clock 14 days so our policy is always to charge second deegree murder second degree intentional murder generally and um or some other whatever the rest of the offenses might might be uh and that gives us the flexibility of calling grand jury whenever we want so again we think back to these two that we did uh one of them was an incident that had occurred five months before the other one was an incident that had occurred over a year prior so by charging the second degree it gives us a chance to develop our case it gives us a chance to make sure that this is really what we need and want to do what's right um and to prepare our case appropriately so uh generally because it gives us that flexibility we we almost never charge it as first deegree uh because we just we need the time to put these cases together you can't imagine the work that goes in even from investigators trying to put together the investigation uh and get reports and all that stuff to us so what is our role the role is of the of the prosecutor is not to prosecute the case not to advocate for the case but just simply present all the evidence just you know roll in the witnesses present all the evidence and just it's it's up to the jury the grand jury to make the decision what de what they want to charge out of this um now certainly we're going to present the evidence that we think is is important that is that gives them the opportunity to charge what they want um we sometimes will even suggest that we're presenting evidence for a first-degree murder for example uh but it's up to the grand jury to decide and so we present all that evidence and then and then literally we turn turn to them and just say okay you know what what do you think uh as we do as we were going through this process and presenting these Witnesses uh again we're not advocating we're asking questions in a very narrative fashion you know just um quite different than in a regular trial where we try to be very structured about our questions keep our questions short and answers short um we really want the witnesses to get up there and just kind of spill it all just let bring it all out and we use guiding questions to just kind of keep the flow moving but it's not it's not intended to be advocacy it's really just kind of presenting um the interesting thing about being a grand jury very different from a pedit jury is the grand jurors then can ask questions so we we finish with a witness and we turn to the grant to the jurors and say jurors do you have any questions interesting how many questions they can ask and usually there's spot on sometimes they'll start to go off uh someplace where they don't need to go one of the things that's important for the prosecutor is to make sure that the only evidence they they hear and they use to make a decision is going to be admissible later so you've all heard about hearsay and things like that that's an example of if they if a grand jurist trying to get into evidence that would otherwise be hearsay if the prosecutor knows that we can't get that statement that evidence in at the pedit trial at the district court trial we can't let it get into in front of the grand jury so we sometimes have to be kind of um kind of move the the the question around a little bit or sometimes just be frank and say look that's that's hearsay evidence that's evidence that we're never going to be able to get into a regular trial and so you can't consider that as you're making your decision so uh our role is really to just guide the grand jurors and help them ask their questions but then um also be very careful that that the record is clean and that they haven't heard anything or got received any evidence that would otherwise be inadmissible uh the burden of proof is just probable cause is it more likely or not that this offense occurred and that this person uh committed that offense again very different than the district court trial where the proof is beyond a reasonable doubt uh so huge difference um generally when we're going to a grand jury we got a pretty good idea that we've got strong evidence and so getting to that probable causes is not too hard uh but as you know just from an ethic standpoint uh we don't want to present something to a grand jury get a first-degree murder charge indictment for example and then not be able to prove it Beyond A Reasonable Doubt later uh after we've presented all the information to the jurors the jurors go back into their deliberation room or sometimes we just leave them in the courtroom and we all leave um and they they deliberate again one of the differences in in a in a district court trial it's got to be unanimous 12 people all have to agree on on whatever they decided or uh it's a the hung jury uh with a grand jury we need 12 people who have heard all the evidence to agree so 12 out of 23 conceivably one more than than half um we have to I think as I said before at least 16 people have to have hurt at all to be able to vote so that's kind of where these numbers come from but again probable cause standard is much lower and and we don't have to have a unanimous uh decision uh a no bill means that they say no they say you know what you you want to charge this person with first-degree murder and and we just don't think you got it you're missing something there first deegree murder is premeditated and intentional so premeditation is a big deal trying to get to that point of did somebody actually have a plan so there might be a no bill and that means uh you can't uh the charging goes away and interestingly the underlying charging document so if we charge somebody with second degree murder and then we're going for this indictment the underlying charging document also went away so uh basically we start over at that point fortunately that's not happened to us but it can um and I've talked about this a couple times very very very secret process um we did those two in January most of the people in our office didn't know we were doing them uh they may have know known that we were doing a grand jury they didn't know what the case was they didn't know what the evidence was uh it's a very very secret process um I think I thought it said on there someplace oh the last thing up there I was wasn't reading it um it's secret until the defendant is brought back in front of the court and and told about the indictment so that's when it's kind of unsealed that's when we peel the paper off these windows so it's only at that point when the jury when the grand jury comes back and they say we've reached the decision they don't even tell us what that decision is we got to call back well in this case in January we had to call back across the street have the judge come back over she uh she in this case it was judge king um comes into the courtroom we bring the grand jury back in we're all kind of wondering what's going on and and she asks have you reached a decision and they they announce that they' they've reached this indictment and they read the indictment it stays Secret until we can get the defendant in front of the court and the court kind of unseals the indictment and advises the defendant about what the new charges are so super secret um process uh fortunately again something that we don't do a lot in olate county and that speaks to the the significant safety uh safe environment Safe Community we all live in um unfortunate that we had to do two in a row but it really taxed our office and it really frankly it put the court system to work too because we had to do this all again super secret got to bring all these people in and and know that kind of thing so it was kind of an interesting process for us um again not something that you're going to see and and most people frankly even people in my profession most people never get that opportunity to do a grand jury uh so I thought it might be something that since wasn't part of our bigger education thing before something that you're not going to hear about probably again for a long time might be a good to topic to talk about tonight so with that I'm going to take a drink do you have some questions a question commission uh Peli Smith I know so much more now about grand juries than I did before thank you my question is is once the grand jury has decided and the judge has presented really the um I guess the their conclusions or options I think you said to the um uh the the defendant is that right when does the the press or the public get to know about the case or what happened so once once we get an indictment uh and and it's revealed to the defendant he's advised of the charges we we really start our case all over again so we start with our normal hearings and so some of that public information um starts to leak out interestingly when we charge a case by complaint we write a probable cause statement in the complaint and so the media can read that and they can sometimes reprint some of that stuff and kind of you know share with the community there could be cases where um and in fact an indictment does not have any of that charging information in there the background information it just says you're charged with first-degree murder happened to H honor about this date in Ola County that's all it says and these are the the the uh Grand jurors that were present um and so conceivably um the community never knows because to this day those grand jurors are sworn to secrecy they can't tell you over coffee what evidence they heard during that that grand jury indictment process uh even though the cases are very public right now so uh it's just kind of this weird weird environment where where uh there's been some underlying information because of how we initiated the case but um what happened in that grand jury and that information that wasn't part of the grand jury's presentation uh is not public so as a case proceeds we we see you know there's a a very high-profile case going on now from wona County over in in Mano uh we're learning more and more about that of course there's been a lot of publicity about that anyway uh but conceivably you might never hear about it so sorry commiss right yeah thank you so remind me again uh are the grand jurors always secret or is that public knowledge or when it become public knowledg or ever who the grand jurors are or yeah uh the grand jurors actually because we have to um we have to publicize their names who you do have to and the indict now nobody ever looks at that uh the four-person signs their name but you know it's like they went to law school and learned how to or medical school learned how to sign without um and we can keep their names secret as well everything though that they heard and saw and in experience is a complete secret they are not allowed to talk to that to anybody about that and in fact we even caution them you know don't talk to your spouses don't talk to your best friends um and it's unfortunate because it's a heavy burden uh First homide cases generally are not uh easy things to listen to and to see you're going to see a lot of bad pictures you're going to see some bad videos you're going to hear some bad conduct um and so we talked about that in our office because we talk about Wellness for ourselves and have to deal with this stuff but these jurors they didn't know what was going on you know they got a letter in November and they got to show up in January they had no idea um so they didn't ask to be part of this um and so we we wonder about that you know what does that secrecy mean can they go to a counselor and say you know what um I went through this and I'm starting to feel some PTSD for example um I think that's okay but we caution them don't talk to anybody so it is such a super secret thing that's why I thought it'd be kind of fun to open up the curtain here a little bit but commer yes um just out of curiosity after the uh grand jury does uh an indictment uh the uh um evidence is that the grand jury used is that the only evidence they're allowed to use in a trial then uh no okay no actually um a grand jury is um a very compressed um presentation so for example uh the grand jury that I uh participated in we did it in I think two days we're going to start that trial in a couple of weeks here and it's going to take us at least two weeks to present all the evidence because we got to be much more detailed much more finite we can bring in an investigator and he can talk about the vast majority of the investigation went on because he has uh knowledge about how the investigation occurred but in a regular trial we have to have every single person come in and talk about everything single step they did we can't have somebody else say well investigators so and so did this and so and so did that each of those people need to come in and um pictures the same thing you know we can have one person present all the pictures that were taken for example but otherwise in a trial we have to have that person who took the pictures present them so um we can expand the amount of evidence uh but we got to make sure we put in enough to get our indictment other questions commissioner go ahead uh I would def mine's not no is mine go ahead uh thank you uh the a couple of years ago uh and I think you were on this task force uh the legislature dealt with competency restoration I don't know you remember that a little bit is and uh and and and and the bill was passed and I've just kind of wondered and I don't know of Competency restoration this has to do with people not not able to stand trial because of their their their their metal capacity and and so trials are deferred and life goes on for these people and uh and somewhat indefinitely and they never get into into the justice system and so this bill attempted to uh to try to deal with that a little bit uh more than a little bit to try to deal with it um is is is competency Restoration in hestad county or even as far as you know in the state of Minnesota is are we making any progress on that that's a big smile it's probably stalled in in my humble opinion it's completely broken okay it's completely broken allate County obviously we've got great people great staffs here and we do a lot of work especially with our adult protection teams to intervene with folks and to try and provide that a system but the the it's the rule 20 process the the competency to stand trial the the um and and getting people who are not competent competent is completely broken down BHS does not restore people to competency they restore them to safety and there's a big difference between somebody who is safe to be in their home as to somebody that understands what's going on in the criminal justice system and what they're facing and and and again olad County does a lot of bridge work we we we've got people that are kind of stepping in and trying to do this work but as a state it's broken um uh when we get into the whole mental health thing as a Rel to the criminal justice system um there aren't enough beds in in NOA and and nobody cares that's why we had this whole Kur fuffle with MAO because nobody really cares at at DHS now this is my personal opinion so pardon me but um you're a television DHS DHS uh in my humble opinion has not addressed the problem and I've had long conversations with commissioner cuscaden about this as well um there are not enough beds out there they created this navigator system right uh like a year and a half ago to this day we don't have a navigator for olig County for our region I don't think there's a single Navigator in the entire State um the legislature created some things but they didn't fund some things the system is broken um and that's why we have people that languish deep in the emergency department at St Mary's or or you know struggling out in our community because the beds don't exist and there's nobody putting pressure on DHS to help these people that's what we need we need beds and we need beds for juveniles and I'll get off my soap box it's so all that work seems to have stalled in there were some there were some great thoughts I love the concept of the navigator system I don't understand why we can't get it going it's been 18 months why can't we create and name these people and get this because the whole idea is when we get to that person a person is not competent we call up the Navigator and the Navigator finds the beds the Navigator gets the services right we're sitting here waiting for this to happen um and so whether it's a funding issue or or whether it's just nobody really thinks it's that big of a priority up in St Paul I don't know uh but it's it's just broken I appreciate I mean you've done tons of work up in the Senate uh over over the years um um thanks for that depressing answer we've lost a momentum on that so sorry about that but an editorial comment um is mental health services are one of AMC's Number One issues and at the AMC policy conference which you weren't able to attend a resolution was passed in the Public Safety Committee and in the Human Services committee asking AMC to take the initiative to create a multi-jurisdictional cross- sector work group to analyze what the gaps in the the mental health system AMC's nervous about this but the en vision of it is that that they don't lead it but they convene the conversation with the County attorneys Association the sheriff's Association the hospital Association the Mental Health Association you know you can kind of go through this long list now I'm really on my box because last week I was at the Juvenile Justice advisory council meeting and Matt Bower who is the um director for the Juvenile Detention Facility in Dakota County came representing Juvenile Detention facilities saying we are holding kids same thing we are holding kids with there's no treatment we need mental health professionals if you're going to leave them in the juvenile detention facilities we need mental health professionals to serve them so our mental health system in Minnesota is chronically broken and no offense to our former or current colleagues in the legislature but they can't fix it without it's a system redesign issue the system needs to be redesigned and the legislature needs needs to invest in the redesign and rather than go to another legislative task force which just ends up with with a lot of confusion and and not a lot of congruence so you come up with a navigator concept but you never fund it so it is a serious problem and I'm sorry off myself no that's okay we're we're singing the same tune I think so can I ask we put $32 million into that and it's not funded so well what can we say um the question I had for you Mr Olman do you have you know the county attorney's office has the criminal justice side you have the Civil side you have child support you have child protection you have a ray of domestic violence of concerns do you have do you have a dashboard that kind of looks at what your case loads are uh we've got a really good case management system now that um gives a lot of information and it applies to more of our cases but do we actually have a dashboard no I know where to get the information and I can find the information can I share it with you not so easily um we're actually kind of working on that because our case management system at least for the criminal cases um carpella is is the company and carpel foundations if we um if we assign certain numbers to our cases categories to our cases carpel foundation will reach in to our data and they'll put it out on a dashboard how helpful that's going to be I don't know but it's better than nothing so we're working on getting that up and running we've got now we've been on the system for two and a half years so we're finally getting some enough information that probably be worthwhile to get it up there but um but then on the whole civil side of the office um we don't really have a dashboard I can find numbers I can get your numbers but can't publish them very easily okay thank you other questions from Mr w well thank you for the update and the education about the jury about the grand jury system um the next item on our agenda actually I'm going to take uh it's going to tie a bit to Mr ostrom's report because as as we know we have these reports from members on the our assignments and I was kind of surprised when I looked and thought I have three reports to give you I'm going to sign three reports today so uh bear with me I'm going to do it I'm going to start with thead County Justice coordinating Council and the reason I'm starting there is because it really ties very much to um to Mr ostrom's report because the County Attorney uh is a a vital part of that of the OC JC reminding you that the olster county Justice coordinating Council I think it's been around for about eight or nine years now U maybe 10 13 I 13 okay well no because it wasn't when I came got elected 12 years ago it didn't exist so anyway around that time and its purpose is to get all of the actors in the criminal justice system in the justice system together to look at how service how coordination can be improved and how collaboration can be improved Mr U Ostrom and Mr Grancy have been uh involved with it forever so just to tell just the report an update right now is that there are 10 active work groups in addition to the OC JC the those work groups meet independently the ocj meets six times a year and you have the County Board chair and the city council president who serve as the as the conveners for the group with with Shelley McBride as the coordinator but I'm not going to report on all of the 10 committees but I want to call out that the data dashboard workg group has been established Mr Ostrom has really helped put that together and that comes out of our budget discussions where for the last two years we've been talking about how do we do the data analytics in our criminal justice system so they are working to create a collaborative dashboard that combines information from the police department the Sheriff's Office Corrections Court Administration City County City attorney County attorney administrative planning and um they're starting with the domestic violence crimes so that they can uh so they can learn what the strengths and gaps are in our system and look to how to make the system more effective and someone from the policy analysis and communication team is working with the group to provide that technical help that is a direct result of some of the budget discussions we've been having this year so that is advancing um they're also working with there's a juvenile justice committee is working to develop this Continuum of Care that I asked Miss um asked our staff about earlier and um there's also a new restorative justice uh funding uh established and they are working um with the new State Department of restorative justice to look at Grant possibilities for a restorative justice advisory committee locally um call out too that dosage probation we're in our third uh quarter the first year imple of implementation of dosage probation and that's a way of providing Probation Services that lets people earn their way off of of supervision by completing pertinent programming we heard about that when you had the briefing it's not just how much time it's are you are you are you actively working to get to to deal with your issues then you can earn your way off of supervision um uh by completing your your agenda your your schedule of event um so this is um we we got a grant I believe from the National Institute of Corrections to try this out and um we are we are a pilot site for this approach correct Mr grany okay so that's just I mean then there's you know a lot of other work groups for OC JC meetings are open you're welcome to come uh I was also asked to report on the uh Housing Coalition and I had independently um made Co had cop Made For You of this document from the city of Rochester which outlines their housing incentives given we've had some recent confusion um with the city about our red Haw Drive um their commitment to Red Haw drives Housing Development I thought it would be helpful for you to see how they're defining their housing incentives so this the front side of this document gives you their their six ways that they intend to help with housing incentives and the back side uh gives you information about Tiff so that's just sort of a general view but then a report from the Coalition which the you know the city is part of the Coalition for housing uh just couple quick things that the Coalition for housing has has been doing you know we've launched a update of the Maxfield study on housing needs and that's going to be Beyond it's beyond the 35 milei radius around um that that the area foundation serves uh in including a number of the other counties so that it can be it can we can really look more comprehensively at housing needs you will be pleased to hear this probably is really I don't know commissioner Mueller are do you represent Iota I think you do so you'll be pleased to hear that the Leadership Council approved a million doll uh interest free loan for construction of 36 town homes with a sales price of under 320,000 in the city of Yota they're going to be sold to households added below 115% of average Medan income and require 5 years of owner occupancy the Coalition also held a housing event for Southeast Minnesota financial institutions um trying to work with them to look at how they invest in housing uh uh the lack of our inventory and our bipac home ownership Gap there's also this new state housing tax credit that financial institutions can use to uh satisfy their Community rein investment act responsibilities and just trying to encourage that that um that investment and then finally uh the Coalition staff is meeting with the Greater Minnesota housing fund and with something called Lisk local incentive support Coalition which is another two other organizations that look at how you finance affordable housing so that that we can um kind of Leverage funding for our affordable housing projects um all of the I think you've seen through our HRA these funding things kind of get stacked you have a certain amount of money and you have to keep looking no no one place can Finance these um no one source can be used to finance affordable housing so look working with the Greater Minnesota housing fund and with the the national local initiative support Coalition where they get investors to invest in in affordable housing and kind of uh do a v a variety of financing mechanisms is to our advantage and then the final thing I was to report to you on is the inoca Detention Center center now here I have to make a confession I am the board representative to the to the enoka Detention Center remember we have a contract with them our contract is that is to pay for one bed at the enoka detention center for juveniles that need to be held in detention but fortunately Nikki Niles is also on the group and I truly have not made it to their meetings but Nikki Nils always goes and so the most recent meeting that was held and they they the good news is they have more counties than have joined and are uh Partners in financing the uh Detention Facility and so they that is help helping them make their budget and hold their cost fairly constant the bad news for us is that we are far exceeding the one one bed utilization I think we're up to um I'm looking at Mr grany I think the last one I saw was 10 or 11 beds on an average month and so our uh we pay per bed I think it's $375 a day for each bed that that we use in addition to our one bed that we've that we Finance year round and so it's an indication that our juveniles are needing detention and we are using that resource more than we anticipated and so as we look at our juvenile systems Continuum um and looking at Mr grany I don't want to get into Shaky Ground here we will that will be something that our staff will be looking at what are our Al Alternatives how do we move forward and that's an on it's another part of the ongoing discussions at the OC JC is how do we meet the needs for this continuous service for juveniles knowing that we knowing where we are um with with increased demand so those are my three report backs to you from committees I I probably should have stopped along the way to ask if you have any questions about any of them but I will stop now Mr gry do you is there anything you would want to add or correct or Mr Mr um any any of the staff Mr Ostrom or Mr Geon anything to add okay Al righty then um I'm wondering I've heard from commissioner Wright I'm wondering if any of any other Commissioners are planning to go to The District 9 AMC meeting next Monday he probably will okay well we are invited to do a report and staff are are kind of highlighting to the questions that AMC has has proposed to us so uh we can talk about about that and maybe coordinating writing all right then are we still going to close session today we are not that was an error that was an error yes I am relieved to hear it you're really yes you are truly at just number seven and uh and we're done okay so before we adjourn you know I like to close with a quote and you know that we have been working I think U commissioner Mueller and I had a really interesting day yesterday in Chatfield where we heard a lot about our smaller community's desire to have us serve them well and um we know that we've had conversations going on with uh with with with staff and others have been meeting with our small cities uh and we've been meeting with townships and so we you know in addition to our largest city and our most frequent partner uh with the city of Rochester and so as we look to how we work well with others uh with other jurisdictions I think these these quotes from Steven kovi around um around trust are really appropriate given Where We Are contrary to what most people believe trust is not some soft elusive quality that you either have or you don't rather trust is a pragmatic tangible actionable asset that you can create I would add or destroy um trust is the glue of life it's the most essential ingredient and effective communication it's the foundational principle that holds all relationships and so as we um as we adjourn this meeting and look to a meeting with our various uh jurisdictional Partners around how we provide services to our residents I hope that we will seek to create the trust that Stephen uh kovi calls on us and remember that it is the foundational principle for holding all relationships so with that I will entertain a motion to adourn Second and approval