Yeah. Calling the screen up too and we're ready to roll. Colin mic check. Yeah, you're good. Your hair looks fine. Yeah, Tim must not be able to get on. He can watch it recorded, too. So then if he's not on, we're not going to have him in the roll. No, no, we're not going to have what? He'd be absent. Technically absent. Yeah, we still need roll call though. Okay, appears we are on for this unique uh day here. But uh why don't we stand for the pledge. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Stand for the pledge. Was it delay? That was quite a delay. Okay. I don't know if I need to describe what's going on here this morning. We do have three members present um here physically and due to a new law passed by the legislature which took effect uh immediately um the ability to attend a meeting remotely is being taken advantage of by Commissioner Udman who I see and Commissioner Lynch who I think is maybe having some technical difficulties. Commissioner Udman, can you hear us? Yes, sir. Okay. Good to see you. And uh unless the county attorney thinks I should say something else, I'm going to move ahead. Any public comments by any member of the public? I see a pretty thin room, so we'll move ahead on that. The agenda review and adoption. Move to approve as presented. Mr. Chair second. Okay. I have a agenda review and adoption motion by Commissioner Fehee and a second by Commissioner Anderson. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say I. And we're going to do a roll call. Okay. Uh roll call. Anderson I. Fehey. Iman. Hi. workman I maybe this is going to be a long meeting pretty good good job uh Christa thank you good job uh approval of the June 3rd 2025 regular meeting minutes so moved second I have a motion by Anderson and a second by Fehee to approve the June June 3rd regular minute meeting minutes regular meeting minutes any discussion hearing none all those in favor say I will take the role roll call fehe I lutterman I workman I Anderson I the motion passes I need a motion uh commissioner makes a motion to approve the June 10th 2025 Five board of equalization minutes. Oh, wait a minute. Was he even here? It was not. Let's take that away. So, I'm going to need a motion. I'll uh So moved. Second. Okay. Got a motion by Anderson and a second by Commissioner Fehee to approve the June 10th, 2025 board of equalization minutes. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll take the role. Lutterman I Workman I Anderson I fehe I the motion passes community announcements Mr. Chair, Commissioner Fee, thank you. I had the opportunity to go to the first annual San Francisco Township Banquet Picnic, excuse me, last week. It was just a great event, great people and to see the great restored San Francisco Township Town Hall. So, big thank you to that group for the invite. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I also did some visits to the city councils of Cologne, Hamburg, and NYA. And then also visited Camden and Young America Township. And then this evening, I'm participating in the WMO tour. We're going to go see some sites by Wakonia, the Crow River, and Nor Young America. That's all I have. Okay. Commissioner Anderson, how about you? I um just a couple of notes. Um, Project Linkage is a a meeting of um many nonprofit organizations um organizations that help our community. They get together once a month and um this month in in June they asked the we talked a little bit about the needs of the community. Fever County is blessed to be one of the healthiest wealthiest counties in the state, but yet we still have 4% in and poverty and um 20% of our population is makes under 50,000. So we asked, you know, why do people not know about the needs in our community? we had that conversation and my take my answer to that is um because Carver County because our health and human services and our sheriff's department and a lot of other organizations within this um people in this county along and partnership with our nonprofits um do their job and take care of the people of of this community so that so many others um those that are in need. So, thank you for that. Um, I also had a little trip out to Jordan. Um, viewed the mosquito control district facility. Um, you know, I have two kids in in the military. And the mosquito control district approaches mosquitoes like it's combat. And um it's a great I was really impressed with the work they do and it's a great preventative program that that um we participate in and offer our community. Again, one of those things is, you know, there's fewer mosquitoes because of them and and our partnership. And then on a personal note, um I just got back from visiting my mom. She's 91 and um so I'm grateful that we didn't have a board meeting last week so I could spend a little bit of time um with my mother. So that's all I got. Very good. Thank you, Commissioner Hutterman. Mr. Sher, I just wanted to put on record I'm in Wyoming on a service trip with my daughter and sometimes there's the unintended advantages of these things. Uh Brooklyn's nine, but there's probably 200, 300 people um that are tenting and um living uh on the Native American reservation. And it's been eye opening talking to people from California, Wyoming, and Minnesota um about poverty out here. And so that's been part of the conversation. Um second, I wanted to take a minute to um acknowledge what happened about a week ago. Um, a number of people talk about their work communities. And as I talk to my kids about the work communities that we all live in and work in in the political sphere, you know, we lost somebody that's a political giant, I think, in the state of Minnesota, her husband, their dog. Um, and then the reverberations of a number of our peers, um, including that of, uh, Senator Hoffman and his his wife and their families. And I had a chance to be at a regional library board meeting. And I know that we know a number of people that were on the quote unquote list. uh a number of those people were in the room at the MESA meeting and to have law enforcement out in front of your um house uh creates uh um a a pause I think to understand that us as public servants sometimes comes with a element of risk or heightened risk. And so just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge and recognize the families that are impacted by this, the ones that are really close to that and and just outside of the peripheral. And then finally, I wanted to acknowledge that myself, Commissioner Fehee, I think a couple others might have been there as well, participated in Met Council meetings. They typically don't have those meetings in Carver County, but they did um last week. Uh former mayor of Chaza, the current mayors of Chaza and Carver were both presenters in a number of conversations in preparation for not only what's going on right now, but preparations for the 2050 comp plan. So, thank you. All right. Thank you. Um, yeah, the uh the actions uh the incredible actions last weekend. I was uh maybe it was a good time to be out of town at a wedding in Milwaukee. Um but uh still a little bit unbelievable. I'm thinking if we could take um just a moment of silence. Thank you. Okay. Consent agenda. Do I have a motion? I think Commissioner Udman moves. All right. The consent agenda. Can we get a second? Second. And a second by Anderson. Any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the consent agenda will take the role. Okay. Roll call. Uman I. Workman. I. Anderson. I. Behe. I motion passes. Thank you. All right. Item 3.1, our strategic plan update. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, commissioners. And again, thank you for your help with updating our annual strategic plan. This year, we uh put some additional significant effort into it. I'd call it a refresh, a pretty major change from our uh current plan or in plans of the past. I'd like to also thank division directors. They put a lot of additional effort into this. Ari likes it, our communications director was also extremely helpful. I think a big part of the strategic plan, the planning process and ultimately rolling it out is communications and is really helpful to have Ahri, but that that is a uh something that we will continue moving forward forward with in terms of next steps to the document because it is very high level and that was intentional. Uh starting with our vision and mission statement, we didn't talk a lot about this. I think there may be a generally a pretty good comfort level that these are in a good place. We didn't reshape these, but it does start with these items and then roll roll into then what was uh determined to be three different priorities which again uh makes this a much more concise and I think much more memorable document to use all the way from from the division directors working on these things. And by the way, they they all have their plans too that I'll be asking that they couple together and mesh together with with this planning document because ultimately of course we we want to take action and that's to me the most practical important piece of this and the action plans will be rolled out underneath us ultimately and tied back together. But these were the the top priorities that the board had talked about and of course numerous meetings uh were held. Uh and I didn't mention of course we hired a consultant this year Dave Unmock who I think did a great job not only talking to you individually but bringing together you as a group and then the division directors and and uh bringing that group together with the board ultimately. So these are the top priorities that were identified in the document and you can see here the various strategies underneath those and the goals and again the action plans are uh will be attached and brought to you in a variety of ways into the boardroom and we want to be very intentional about that underneath each goal. Uh we don't have them intentionally listed in this document but we want to roll those out moving forward. Uh I also, you know, sometimes it's the small things that make a difference. I'll also update your board agenda to adopt these three priorities as part of your agenda package. So in other words, more practically, everything that comes through the boardroom is attached ultimately to one of these priorities. As you can see, priority number one, and not necessarily in uh ranking order, but priority number one uh is talking about the taxpayer value and customer service. I don't intend on going through all these in in much detail unless you have questions about them, but these were what uh really was vetted through the the variety of meetings and discussions and ultim ultimately put into the plan the proposed plan today. Priority number two. So you have have the physical assets you have so you have people physical assets and then uh our our employees and other people. So those three strategies were really the keys to building and strengthening our organization which is ultimately what the plan is all about. As I mentioned the next step a lot of it is about communications raising that knowledge and awareness uh bringing these items in operationally to into the uh organization and some of the some of them are already in play. Of course, they're already being done, but we want to communicate what is being done and then what what intentionally will be changed as we move ahead into the future. Uh monitoring and tracking those items. And then something we're not real good at, let's celebrate a little bit. Let's let's uh recognize the work that's done. I think that's extremely important as a lot of effort goes into these various items. So that Mr. Chair, I take your questions. The recommendation is to adopt the strategic plan for 25 to 27. Okay. Anybody have any questions for Mr. Hemsy? Commissioner Anderson. Yeah, not not so much a question. Um, first of all, I think this is a great great improvement. Um, of course I hadn't been involved before. So, uh, so I I'm I'm grateful for your work. I'm grateful for the the the work of, um, Davon Mach and and Ari, I know she spent a lot of time in meetings as well. Um, when I when I look at this plan, I I don't know if it's fully baked yet, and so I'm um reluctant to um adopt the strategic plan. And I think one of the things that I I feel is missing is feedback from our people. And so I'm wondering if we can take a step back and just um kind of put draft on this and and take and get some feedback from um leaders at all levels of this organization who really understand a lot of that work. I um so that that would be one thing that I'd like to see. And I'd also really like to have um ensure that our goals are measurable to make sure that sometimes um in government we can be pretty activity and actionoriented. Um let's just make sure that those actions are getting the results we want. So having uh the goals be just a tish more measurable and I think that getting feedback from our people will help us get there. Um, so, so that's my thought. Um, I'm happy with the process and happy with how it goes. I would just like just to take a moment and and get that feedback from our employees. Um, that's my thought. So, that was not a motion to approve. No. Okay. But a motion to move forward. Mr. Chair, you got one question for M. Uh, Commissioner. Uh, I will make a motion that we pause as well to echo what Commissioner Anderson said. I feel the same way. I feel like we need to push it a little bit further. I think we have an opportunity maybe within the next month to uh see more more details and get more feedback from our community. So, I'd make a motion that we table this until July. Okay, I have a motion. Is there a second for further discussion? I'll I'll second it for further discussion. And um thank you, Commissioner Udman. We may given everything that we have going on, we may want to table it for a little longer than July um to get feedback. Um but but I but I appreciate the motion to kind of to pause and and continue to work on it. Okay. So, do do we then have a framework for how to proceed? We haven't we haven't passed the uh motion yet, but um what would that what would that look like? That was going to be my question, Mr. Chair. Uh if if we're looking for feedback, I don't think that's a good idea. I would I would say the division directors have been not doing this in isolation, but huge. So, in addition to the organization, are you thinking beyond the organization? Are we talking about uh community leaders? Are we talking about other citizens? Or what do you what are your thoughts? I I'm wondering if we can involve Ari and some of and and maybe just a couple of the division directors um in kind of further refining that. Um at minimum, uh I'd like to hear more feedback from um from our people. and and then and then maybe um then reach out to the um further to the community. But uh Commissioner Udman, do you have any thoughts on Commissioner? I think there's probably two stakeholders that have been refined is one is our internal staff um to find out their thoughts and two um our general population which I know that we're elected to do so but I think there's maybe a little little bit of disconnect for instance when I was knocking on doors in November I know that um Commissioner Anderson shares this as well the number one thing on people's mind was taxes and um they're too high and I think as the budget process plays out that will continue to prove itself Um um I also wanted to echo what Commissioner Anderson said about or more tactics. So if we get lower than the the the high level that you're presenting here, Dave, what might that look like in um objectives that are measurable that any year we can come back and said we achieved it or we didn't achieve it? I'll also take the um friendly adjustment from Commissioner Anderson if we want to push it back beyond July. That just that was just a starting point. I don't know that we need to delay it um till the end of the year. I mean, administrator Himsey, if you want to take some time and come back to us with a process to gather feedback working with ARI. Yeah, maybe that's our next step. I know working with your division directors and and Ahri, um I'm totally um comfortable with that. Okay. Well, I know priority one is taxpayer value and customer service and the strategy is ensuring our taxpayers receive the best value and optimal customer service. I couldn't agree more. So, um but I I guess we're going to have to be willing to get a little more input. Okay. Uh Commissioner Fee, any comments? really want to uh just thank Dave for the process and also the the directors and all the input that has been brought into the strategic plan. Um I'm okay with the pause. I would just really caution um as we reach out to kind of the general public or how we would do that or what the intent is to do the general public. I don't think it's the general public strategic plan. I think it's our strategic plan and we should be able to take that feedback from the general public that we as commissioners on a daily basis probably get that feedback from the general public and because if we're going to do some sort of countywide survey for county residents, I don't think that's a very good use of time or effort when this is our strategic plan and we need to work it out with the division directors etc. Commissioner Fee, I would agree with that. Um at this moment um perhaps getting more feedback from employees um is our start because because let's face it, that's where the rubber hits the road in this organization uh is is with our employees um and and then rolling it out um as well. So I so I appreciate that. Um and I also want to make sure um you know getting into the next level. We don't also want to get into kind of analysis paralysis. So asking for that feedback and and getting that that feedback and specifically really looking at um ensuring that we're measuring the right things. Um people's time is far too valuable to spend it on activities that aren't getting results. Well, and Commissioner Anderson used the word not quite baked. Um, you know, we did this this probably was a fast process. I think uh between us and Mr. Hemsy, we wanted to get it moving as quickly as possible before heavy budget and and everything else going on. So, but I think a little more time to to talk about it is in order. So, we have a motion Mr. Chair, before you move in motion, Mr. Well, well, first of all, I I I view this document, I think most do, as a sort of a living, breathing, evolving. It changes over time. Documents shouldn't be stagnant. And yet, yes, I understand the uh desire to have more measurable objective items that that to me falls underneath the goals as I commented on that I want to work with division directors on. So, I think that's all in alignment with with where I'm going and yeah, I think it's a great idea. Let's reach out to the employees. I don't think I need to come back to you and and clarify that. I think we can work with the communications team, reach reach out to the employees and if and bring that back and if it needs to be another work session, we could do it that way. So, that would be my my suggestion, Mr. Chair, board members. Okay, that works for me. Thank you. Um Mr. Chair, oh, we have Commissioner Lynch with us. Yay. My only question is do we have a time do we have a timeline? How how long are we going to kick the can down the road? Good question. I I would suggest, Mr. Chair, if you give me a couple couple months at the max uh to reach out to employees, one month, get back in in the boardroom in August sometime in mid August. That's what we'll shoot for. Commissioner Lynch, do you have a video option? I do not. I have very uh poor reception. So, every time I do that, my voice drops. So, I do not have a video option. Okay. I would suggest, Mr. Chair, and maybe Jennifer, let me know if you disagree, but the law says you have to have a video option, but if he's not voting, I don't think that would be the end of the world. Correct. Would you suggest the same thing? Mr. So, but I appreciate there's a video option, but he can't talk. So, we can either see him or talk. He can either talk. Really? I know. Can you hear us, Commissioner? Should we vote on which seeing him or talking? I think it might be your dream if you can't hear me. Well, that's what I was thinking. What was the legislature thinking where they open a can? Don't answer. Nobody answered that. Well, I can see him. I can hear him. I'm assuming he can vote. Now we can. Yeah. So, just follow the chair, Commissioner Lynch. Whatever Whatever the chair does. So noted. So noted, sir. All right. Do you have anything you want to comment about this motion to delay the strategic plan? No, I'm okay with it. I just I just want a timeline of it and uh I think administrator Hemsy mentioned that a couple months. I'm okay with a couple months. Okay. Sometime in mid August. Okay. Okay, I got a motion on the floor to to delay passage of the strategic plan update. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, let's have a roll call. Workman I. Anderson I. Behe I. Lynch I. I. Thank you. Okay. All right, county administrator report. Just reminder, today at 11 there's an open house over at the new composting site, Shakabe. If you can make it, uh I'm not sure they have anything formal over there, so you could probably just stop over there another time if you can't make it now. But great to see that that site open. And then uh Christrista, do we have we have commissioners lined up to deliver some of the uh summer baskets for employees, part of our employee recognition effort? Yay. I think a couple of you are lined up to do that. So, thank you for your help. Appreciate that. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Okay. Commissioner Lynch moves to adjourn the regular session. Do I have a second? Second. I got a second by Commissioner Fehee. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I. Let's take a roll call. Anderson I. Fehey I. Lynch I. Lutterman. I. Workman. I. The meeting is adjourned. Thank you. We're now going to head into a work session to talk about our communication department update and a 2026 budget and finance update. Does anybody need a break? Good morning. Morning, Mary. Good morning. How are you guys doing? Great. We've been better. Oh, good. So, workman's been better. It's a great way to start this. I'm so No, I'm just kidding. So, anyways, well, thanks for having me here today. I'm excited to give you all a quick communications department update. Um, so last year, Carver County highlighted communications as a strategic goal. So creating a communications department instead of having communications professionals dispersed throughout the county. So I want you guys to meet the communications team. So if you don't know me, but I hope everybody up here does. I'm Ari Lickette. I'm the chief communications officer. I cover all county communications. That includes county board requests, HHS, employee relations, property and finance, and public services. And so while this position title is new, the public services FTE was restructured from a communications manager role to a chief communications officer role to create the communications department. Uh Meline is our senior outreach and engagement specialist for planning and water management. Um she's been with the county for over 16 years and 50% of her position is funded by the uh WO. Meline's role focuses on increasing awareness of water resources while fostering stewardship and encouraging behaviors that protect water resources through key services and programming. So Mike is our senior communications specialist for public works. Um this position was created for public works back in 2020 and is funded through road projects. So Mike focuses on strategic communications for all road projects, sorry, road construction projects. it's important and public work operations. Tyler is our communications specialist for public works. This position was created to alleviate consultant dollars and 55% of his position is funded through road projects. So Tyler focuses on producing content for road projects, public work operations, and then all things parks related. And Amber is our part-time communication specialist. She produces content for HHS, employee relations, property and finance, and public services. So, why the heck is communication important for county government? Um, a strong communications team plays a vital role in building trust between us and the community. So, by sharing clear, timely, and transparent information, the team helps residents stay informed, feel heard, and understand how decisions are made. Um, open communication fosters accountability, reduces misinformation, and creates a sense of partnership, ensuring the community that we're working with them. So, a communications teams ensures that accurate, consistent, and transparent information reaches residents, helping to build trust and understanding. So, by proactively sharing updates and explaining county decisions, the team reinforces accountability and keeps the community informed and engaged. Centralized communication ensures that messaging across the county is consistent, coordinated, and aligned with our strategic priorities. It helps avoid confusion, reduces duplicated efforts, and streamlines how information is created and shared. So, with a unified approach, departments can focus on their core work while knowing that communications are clear, professional, and effectively reaching the right audience. So earlier this year, the communications team conducted a SWAT analysis after we hired everybody to identify what we need to focus on in 2025. So during our session, it was very apparent that we felt the need to create a network that residents and stakeholders trust and follow us by and we do that by enhancing our social media presence, creating content that connects with people, and providing website updates to support efficient usability. We also identified creating and updating policy and guidelines that reflect that reflect our current and future communication needs based on the current climate by conducting an internal policy audit. Creating an audience audit, collecting data, and utilizing plain language to ensure that we're having a clear and consistent communications with the public. Making database decisions to execute external communications. Sharing the county's successes and informing residents about the services that we offer. ensuring that public communications fits the county's brand and our voice and then working to create a pathway for internal communications to flow interdep departmentally. Our community is made up of residents with different ages, access levels, and preferences. So there isn't a one-sizefits-all approach on how how we communicate matters just as much as what we communicate. So traditional digital and internal platforms play a huge role in our outreach. So we utilize a wide range of tools. So traditional communications can include press releases, printed flyers, brochures, radio, signage, direct mail, and public meetings. Digital communications is centered around social media, our website, e newswsletters, videos, event photos, and things like utilizing drone footage. And then internal communications is incredibly important. and we utilize connection and internal emails. So, we customize our content and delivery method based on the audience. Some tools resonate more than others depending on the topic and the timing. And we regularly evaluate what's working and adjust our strategy accordingly. So, every resident deserves access to clear, timely, and relevant information. And that means meeting people where they are, whether that's online or offline. A well-informed public is a more engaged public. and the effectiveness of our messaging directly impacts public participation. So, what the heck have we been up to? In the first nine months, we've been focusing on creating a team of communicators who have a passion for local government. That includes creating a Carver County network of local communicators. We started working with local communications professionals to collaborate on communications countywide. We're giving them the information they need so we all have one message and push push it out to a wider audience. We have a very unique relationship with our city partners. Traditionally, county communications can feel translucent, but we don't believe in that strategy as communicators. We're doing things that the Carver County way and building a coalition with the cities and townships we represent. The communication strategy allows us to do our jobs to the best of our ability, working together, and we're only just getting started. We've also joined two associations, the Minnesota Association of Government Communicators and the Government Social Media uh members to keep up with digital communications trends, ideas, and AI integration. We've also been launching campaigns to promote underused resources for residents that the county has been paying for by strategically building a communications plan to educate the public. So, a great example of this was all of the messaging that we did for the EAB implementation at Minowasha Dog Park. That was incredibly informative to the public, but we worked with the surrounding partners, including parks and reccks departments um that neighbor the park to ensure that all parkgoers knew about the project beforehand, during, and when it was completed. We led efforts to host a native plant workshop for residents in partnership with Riley Purgatory Bluff Creek Watershed District and Carver County Soil and Water Conservation District. We created and managed marketing for workshops on social media newsletters in partnership with the cities and through different flyers. And for that event, we had over 45 attendees. And in 2024, we coordinated and managed 34 different planning and water management outreach programs and events with a quantifiable reach of almost 21,000 individuals. It's a big number. So managing our message and pulling departments together to create a synchronized voice and working in department interdep departmentally is a is a big thing that we've been working on. Unifying the voices of the county to give us one voice and a consistent message. press releases and reaching out to the press proactively instead of just reactively, taking control over the message of our construction projects. So, we're the single source of information. We've also been working hard to collect data, a big uh big strategic priority we identified in our SWAT analysis. So, I'm excited to share a new resource available on our internal connection sites. It's the communications dashboard. So this dashboard was created to streamline uh access to key communications data and updates in one central location. Uh the dashboard features monthly performing metrics for social media gov delivery which is our e newswsletter service that we use and our website. You'll also find weekly newsletters, ongoing communications updates, and relevant news items that impact or highlight Carver County. There's a postcard that went out uh and you have somebody call you about it and you don't know what we're talking about, check out the dashboard because it's going to be on there for you. This tool helps all of us stay aligned on how we're reaching and engaging with the public. It supports datadriven decisions and helps us identify trends in public engagement over time. It's live on the connection site like I mentioned and will be updated regularly. Right now it's if not daily, it's absolutely weekly. And our goal is to make communications more accessible, timely, and useful for staff and of course everybody else. Another goal of ours is to continue continue to increase our digital communications countywide. So, we've increased the amount of gov delivery e-news we send out and created a line of committed communicators for subscribers. In May alone, we saw a 76% increase in new subscribers through the Gov delivery network. That's a pretty big number. Do we even have that many people on carbon? Okay, good. Yeah, it's it I can say as as a career communicator, that's a really big number even for me. I triple check that. So, we have over 158,000 subscriptions, which means that our 51,000 subscribers find more than one of our topics interesting. So, we have 51,000 people, over 51,000 people that follow what we're doing through Gov Delivery, through different e- newswsletters. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. So, they're very interested in what we're doing and they're following along through multiple county e-news channels. So, that's pretty impressive. Um, here's my shameless plug. Subscribing is easy through our website. All you have to do is go to carvercountm.gov/subscribe. Um, but our team has identified other areas of improvement to make it easier to sign up. And we're working closely with uh, you know, our partners to make sure that that's done. So, our social media presence continues to grow. In May, our social media accounts had over 23,000 page followers. So, we netted over 190 new followers across Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X and Twitter. Over the past four months, we've had over 134,000 people who saw content that we posted this past month. We're adding photos, videos, and utilizing plain language so it's easier to digest when scrolling. And you can see the success and how we're growing. Earlier this year, we created a targeted Facebook ad to reach a larger audience for the watercraft inspector position when we had difficulty filling that role. But in 20 days, we had over 47,000 views and 790 link clicks to that job description. So, our website continues to be one of our biggest digital resources. Um, last year we had over 1.3 million website visits. The main source of traffic to our website in 2024 was visitors utilizing search engines and direct traffic, which means that we had people type in our URL into their web browser. So, they know it. They know that it's Carver County.gov. They're doing that directly instead of just googling it. Last month, our top five visited pages were active calls for service, the daily inmate roster, license and services page, our homepage, and the environmental center page. So, we continue to work inter interdep departmentally to train, update, and make website changes with its assistance as well. I'm sure you've all seen a large increase in our public works and parks communications. So, for the past year, we've been working really hard to create press releases and reaching out to press proactively ahead of a really large project schedule and season. We're creating mailers, letters, postcards in the parks program guide that now gets mailed to over 43,000 households in Carver County. We improve our social and me and digital media needs by creating more a more professional and consistent presence. So, we've been growing our audience over the past 5 months. We've gained over 419 followers just on our parks and public works social media profiles. So, consistently posting is allowing us to bring more awareness, and we're utilizing drone footage on social media, e- newswsletters, and website updates. A lot of people really like those, including myself. So, we've started publishing a weekly construction e newswsletter. The last edition had an open rate of 54% and the industry standard is 20%. So, people want to read the content that we're sending them. Uh, this new list that we just created a couple months ago has over 3,100 subscribers and continues to grow rapidly. I pulled that number last week. It's over 3,200 now. So, it's growing significantly. Um, we and of course we continue to create our weekly parks e newsletter. So, the last edition had an open rate of 28% and that list has over 12,400 subscribers. So, we're working to improve the county's website to make it easier for the audience to navigate on our project pages. So in doing so, we're creating an easier way for visitors to get to the projects page by utilizing shortcuts that are simpler to understand. Standardizing web formatting across division website for the consistency in the navigation. So all the project pages, the contents up at the top of what you need to know. It's all just consistent and easily readable. And we're creating a style guide for consistency when multiple authors are editing the website. We've had a couple successful open houses with the with greater county representation and staff spearheading and then coordinating the event. Of course, last fall we had the 212 ribbon cutting that had a little over 50 attendees. The 4110 project had 32. The 82nd Street this spring had over 35. And of course, the Minowasha playground had over 100 attendees. So, we're creating a process for departments to involve the communications department primarily for public works. Um that includes dedicated photo support of day-to-day events, managing consultants to improve messaging, meet county standards for plain language and the county brand. Communication staff is now attending and advising weekly project meetings and events in engaging with the public through social media campaigns, responding to comments and direct messages, interacting with the public at open houses and um project inboxes. messaging and engaging partner agencies in advance, including public safety, city, and township partners. So far, this year's been really great. Well, the year that I've been here, I should say, I started in June in 2024. So, we've accomplished a lot. We're just getting started. So looking into next year, our goals are to create a 2025 year in communications review, a dynamic dashboard, continue to build on to the the one that we have on connection so that we can you can track our accomplishments in real time, and then of course hosting ribbon cutings for completed road projects and celebrating our fiber successes. Here's my last shameless plug before I open it for questions. So, um, visit our website for all of our current information. That includes, you know, clicking on the news button on the front page or just kind of checking out a couple of those event sections. Sign up on Gov Delivery for all our emails by going to carvercountm.gov/subscribe and then follow us on all of our social media channels. All right. Well, thank you. I'm open for any questions. Well, very good. Um, I thought she was maybe kind of trying to pat herself on the back there cuz finally this year I I actually do believe uh and noticed that Carver County and all she does is kind of come out of the shadows uh with all these good folks. Um, we have so much going on and um certainly in Lynden's area and the the traffic uh the the Carver County traffic updates have I think taken over Facebook and and uh other social media, but it it seems like years ago, you know, counties kind of did what they did and by golly, you'll like it. Um uh and it seems like we've kind of advanced to here's what we're doing. We're not doing anything uh behind your back. we're telling you to help us participate and uh to be there for the decisions that the county makes and uh because there's a lot going on and uh but boy if you compare today to 20 years ago um I'm not sure people knew what was going on down here. Now you guys are exposing everything. So um I think it's good uh a lot of daylight and uh it's been fun having you guys uh aboard. So, you got a great attitude, Ari. So, thank you. Anybody else? Uh, Mr. Chair, if I could, I would like to say that 51,000 new subscribers, that's very impressive. No, what the heck? Um, it's all for the job, but Well, we don't publish that on delivery. I just want to make that clear. I have uh had feedback from everyone. It's very easy to find construction updates uh through our public works department and find information about our parks and uh it's very impressive. The outreach we have is uh uh going very well. This is where a lot of people get their their news and information as sorry as newspapers uh have have waned a lot of people get our information here. And just as an aside, did I hear the chair chair use the term by golly? I don't think so, Commissioner Lynch. Let's check the recording on. Could you use it in a sentence? Anyway, with that, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah. Anybody else? Commissioner Udman has Commissioner Udman. By golly, it's Commissioner By golly, Ari, great job. I mean, it's amazing to see the strides your team has made in just a year. And I'd echo what Commissioner Workman said. Um I know a number of the cities have taken proactive steps over the years. I think this puts us into that mix as well and I know it's not without bumps. Um we're in the midst of the most robust half decade of road construction projects and we're navigating, you know, all the things that go with that and I think you guys have been very responsive. Also wanted to say with budget on everybody's mind, this is a strategic investment. It's not an expense, it's an investment. I think we should continue to invest in this team. Now I have a couple questions. Um, one of them is is I know you mentioned a specific position that we were having a hard time with and you leverage social media. Um, are we partnered with ER, any of our communication specialists embedded within ER? Same question for law enforcement. Same question for HHS. Is that a question for Ari? Yes, I can answer it. Yeah. Um, we work very closely with employee relations. Um, we do work pretty closely with um, you know, the sheriff's department and absolutely with HHS. The sheriff's department does run all their own social media, but when they do need hiring help, we post that on LinkedIn and and assist in any way that we can. Did we? Uh, yes, I believe so. Just sorry to interrupt you, Commissioner. It's okay. Um, I just offer a couple comments and maybe it'll help guide the next six months or four months. Um, I get a lot of feedback of a lot of road construction projects at the state and city level seem to be enamored with the road construction project and forget the impact and why. And I know there's a lot of students, a lot of residents and a lot of businesses that are benefited by um these road construction projects. So my ask would be is to focus on how these projects come to life or the people that are paying the taxes to get them done, not just the project itself. The second thing I'd ask for is um as we're doing er related stuff is um better facing for the general why would you want to work for Carver County? Because I know we've talked about talent pipeline and I know we're sitting in a pretty good spot where you know the next generation wants to make a difference. We're making a lot of difference at the county level. Next thing is, as you said about branding and use of a style guide and and that's language that I speak from my marketing background as well. I think it's probably time for us as a board and as a community to think about a refresh with our branding as I look at some of the logos and the images that are coming up in other cities and counties. I think we're a little bit behind on that and it doesn't need to be a grandios, you know, multi-million dollar project. It can be done internally and I think you'd be great for that. I think that that parlays well into some of the muchneeded signage in our parks. As I walk by Men of Washington, see that beautiful um new 1.3 $1.2 million park. The sign does not reflect what you're about to walk into. Um I think we have an opportunity as we're doing refreshes within parks as those dollars become available in the next two to three years um to apply that refresh brand into those those signage areas. And then the last thing I'd offer is I think your department's probably the best poised to test AI related things. And so I know typically on a website um uh we go to a search engine that's fueled by Google and we find our way through the website. I think AI gives us the power once we pump all that stuff in to easily let residents find anything that they want without having to spend a whole lot of time on the back end. And so I think you guys are uniquely situated to test on our behalf in a cautious way um with the power of AI can be in serving our residents. So thank you. Thank you. Any comment? refresh. Thanks for sharing comments. Anything else? What Minashta Parkway Minashta Park needs is a way to get in and out of there off of Highway 41. This is a shameless plug. Um um if you're taking a left going north on 41, I'm looking right at Lyndon. Um, you are hanging out there to take a left into that park and even to take a right out of there onto 41 is a is a tricky deal. And so let's uh maybe post-it note that where the future the future of that road I know it's very very busy right now because Galpin is closed and uh other things. There's projects on every corner. But I I digress away from our media concerns into uh real life uh problems. But uh you know, I always think a refresh. I know I know rebranding is not a cheap deal. Um um maybe maybe with AI and everything going on today, maybe it isn't such a big deal, but um um I hope we're not going to get rid of the silo uh the barn. Is it a barn and a silo? Yeah, there it is. Um I don't know. How do you improve on that? Looks pretty nice. My house and uh out where Fee lives there. So, but um um any any comments? I I I do have a couple questions, comments. Um I do think, you know, oftentimes people say government fills in for those things that aren't don't other exist. And with the newspaper business all but going away, especially in the eastern side of Carver County and and other areas, um that's put the pressure on us, on government to communicate what what's going on. Um, and I think we're doing it better. So, thank you for that. Um, I attended the open houses. You do a a great job. Um, just one comment. When I went to the um highway 5, I think I mentioned this to Administrator Hemsey. Um, the highway the highway 5 open house, there was not one logo that said Carver County. Um, and I think our our constituents want to know who's the government agency overseeing this. So they had their own logo which was which was fine and lovely. Um but but community needs needs to know who to call. Um I think this work is upstream. Um I I'm opening the construction emails. They're very well done and it's awesome to have that. Uh knowing that I you know a couple of other things. Um, I had the pleasure of of visiting the DMV with um with Dave Freshman and they were talking about when when there's LOLs and when there's not lols and I'm like well you know connect with the communications department and help communicate that. Literally that next it was a couple days later there was something on social media about lag times and busy times. I mean, and a lot of times people will make decisions on when when to go if they have that. Um, I mean, the work you're doing is is huge. Um, uh, obviously we haven't had, uh, you know, elections will be coming up next year. Um, getting ahead and being proactive and communicating about what what's happening in in elections and what we're doing. Um, so we can prove to the public that we are transparent on our elections. That'd be great. Uh I think the one concern I have Ari is while this team has grown there is a possibility um I mean you could I'm I'm I'm assuming you already are overwhelmed quickly with needs. Um we've just put two needs on you just in this our meeting. So my question is how do you how can you determine where you're getting the most bang for your buck from? I think part of being strategic and a strategic planning is and is what do we continue to do? What do we start doing? What do we continue to do? And maybe what we stop doing. And um so as you move forward and um you know I would encourage you to kind of look at the ROI of your communications and and make decisions on where are we getting the most bang for our buck. Um clearly social media is um is working for you as is other means. So I appreciate that. Um what so so those are my comments. Quick question though, the website update. I think you had mentioned that moving forward with a website and as more and more people are visiting our website. What are your plans for updating which is another by the way thing that could take a lot of time and and resources, but what are your plans for updating our website? Yeah, we work really closely with it on that. So, I don't have an answer for you today. I can tell you that we uh like long-term plan-wise, what I can tell you is that we update our website almost every day, if not every day. So, um any little information that we can give or any small edits or changes, we do that. Um along with a lot of other uh department um administrators and then of course, you know, our IT team helps out a lot with that. So, um, we the communications team knows that there's some spots that need improvement on our website and we've been working with it to make sure that that happens. Got it. Got it. Got it. So, those a few of those have been identified um and we're working closely with it to make sure that those changes are made and a little bit easier uh for external users. Well, good job and um good job administrator Hemsey for for notice, you know, for putting this on the strategic plan, investing in this because it is our an investment in our community and it is upstream work and it's it's letting people know how their government how their taxpayer resources are being used and um that they're being used well. So, I appreciate that. appreciate how you work and also I can also see the partnerships you have with our division directors. I'm pointing to the division directors who are mostly in this room. So thank you for that. Commissioner Fay, thank you Mr. Chair. Just a great job Ari and just how reactive we are is I think very important for getting the right information out and the unified message that I've received comments about that. It's it's very unified with all the stuff when we send out for that Carver County local news those articles that are coming from the commissioners and how unified those are and kind of the direction. I think those are very important. You and I have had a lot of conversations and I enjoy those conversations and just the awareness that's taken place for Highway 212 and just the talk about the Bungard's Bridge. I know you and I have laughed about that, but out in my district, that's amazing what people want to talk about and the the various county updates that you've provided me that I've taken that message out to the various cities and also the townships and it's amazing where that information ends up then in the city newsletters and then on the various city websites also. So that's just how important and they're starving for information and the more we can continue to give them in a unified manner. Let's keep doing it. Great job. Thank you. Okay. I think we have maybe haven't heard from Commissioner Lynch if he's still around, but uh No, he meant he talked right at the beginning. He did. Oh, I may have been on Vicin last night. Last night. last night. Um, okay. Well, thank you very much, Ari. Look forward to seeing a bunch of good stuff. Agreed. Thank you. Have a nice day. County Administrator Hemsy is going to talk about our 2026 budget and finance update. Yes, sir. Man, do I have an action-packed agenda here. Yeah, we see that. Talk about some ground to cover. you know, for those of us that have been around for many, many budget cycles, this one is like no other. I think uh just what's going on, not only uh locally in the state, in the world, all those variables. Can't cover them all, but I'm going to touch on some of them. Uh the agenda includes a lot of intel here, and I know you you're going to have a lot of questions, so bear with me. But I wanted to sort of twist this a little bit from our typical process. And by the way, we started, remember a couple months ago, we kicked this thing off the 26 budget process with a discretionary service exercise. So I thought that was very helpful. I I literally go back to that document as I'm waiting through which direction is this going. So it's very helpful start. Long ways to go here. Keep that in mind as we are moving into budget hearings in July. But back to the presentation. I'm going to provide some perspective. I want to do that right up front because I think it it's probably the sort of that headline news now. What do we really need to think about as we're approaching this 26 budget process? But of course, we want to give you a snapshot and Dave's going to jump in on items two through five. Uh give you a snapshot of where we're at through Q1. uh and then we'll focus our attention on the 26 budget and then look into 27 and then uh I want to talk a little bit about just highlevel strategies that that we're thinking about moving forward. None no I wouldn't say they're all brand new there's a few items that we haven't uh done for a while but uh some pretty good strategies I'm going to lay in front of you. So that's it. Yeah, stay tuned here. uh uh as I mentioned the legislative issues are really at the forefront. Yeah. It it also brings to my mind, man, is it hard to predict things. And I'm I'm uh in almost still a state of a little bit of shock in terms of where we ended up with the 26 process at least as compared to where we started. And that wasn't that long ago that the governor came out with his budget. Tom, what was that? That three months ago. wasn't very long ago and it looked like maybe a five plus million dollar cost shift to us among many other concerns and I labeled it as good defense. Uh and Commissioner Workman and Woodman and I and a few others just got off a call with Tony Albbright, our lobbyist. I think it was money well invested in terms of having him help. It was a really a team sport. Good defense. And it wasn't just us. There was all sorts of folks playing that defense trying to trying to avoid some some significant cost shifts. And now again, it's all relative, right? It's it looks looks like, man, we got hit by a million. It looks better than five, but it's still bad, right? So So keep things relatively here. I think we came out in pretty good shape, but we still have have some issues to address. So yes, there was a cost shift in Heather's world, Health and Human Services, which was the focus of the session of around a million dollars. Uh, unbelievably, the vast majority of that is one individual that we have to house in Anoka County in a in a facility. About threequarters of that is uh made up of that one individual. Just amazing kind of expenditure for one taking care of one person. Uh really good defense on the transportation side. I know Lynon's in the audience and others helped on that. I know Lynon testified uh our our transportation advancement account was literally getting raided uh to the tune of $3 million and we avoided that. So uh again good defense. Now there are some things that the other sort of relative thing I'd offer here is well we tried to change some things but they didn't change. So, we wanted we wanted to see the paid family medical the payroll tax and that that law that policy scale back at least. It didn't get touched. I don't think maybe if it did it was very minor. So, that's a cost moving moving into the 26th session of $400,000. And then, uh speaking of unpred predictability, uh the CPA, that's county program aid. So, that's our general aid we get. we can spend it on uh any public expenditure similar to the city's aid, local government aid. Uh that actually rose for us. I was sitting in a in a room with my metro colleagues and I said, "Geez, good news on CPA." They're like, "What are you talking about? We got cut and I thought I thought there was something wrong with the spreadsheet." And when I looked at that spreadsheet of the 87 counties, we're the one that stood out. And I I shared with you the general reasons including our aging population over 65. And there there's a great article in Tribune. If you missed that, uh let me know and I can forward that to you about that population and why they're coming here and staying here. Ironically, that helped us out with our CPA. Uh and uh the other items, one one was concerning and I need to work with Dave and Mary Kay and thanks to both of them for helping on this by the way. uh our tax capacity for some reason was lower than others it sounded like in this formula. We want we want large tax capacity but for whatever reason that helped this formula and then the third variable was SNAP benefit benefits a federal a federal program for food like our tax capacity was flat and that what it was why how could that be? You'll have to come up Dave if you have comments. Yeah, I sort of scratched my head on that one too, Commissioner. Um, Dave Fishman, property and finance director. Mr. Chair, the tax capacity rate is a function of the the gross in the gross increase in the tax base uh compared to the increase in the tax levy. So, if they're if they're going up at the same uh percentage, u then our tax rate is going to be flat. And what happened is other counties uh their tax uh capacity rate went up and ours stayed flat and that caused uh um it looks like we're not growing as fast but it's just our levyy's not growing as fast as other counties. So it u we actually saw that you I'll I'll point out in my in my presentation um we had good news in um uh fiscal disparities that we we have just the preliminary number in April which is what we use to start a budget process. We get updated numbers in August. Um once all of the county's growth in tax rates and all that has all been funneled through the fiscal disparities formula uh we last year um in August we had good news and it was because of that tax rate because of how other counties are growing and how they're compared to how their levies are growing. Um and we we we made it look like we're not growing as fast which we all know we're growing fast. So it just means our levy wasn't wasn't um growing as fast as as the tax base was in rel in comparison to other counties. I mean, excuse me, other cities, uh, metro cities in the in the area, common cities. Yeah, we'll do a little more digging into that. But bottom line is great news. That's almost $800,000 in new new dollars. So, uh, huge surprises. I I would say though, keep keep perspective here. Relatively, relative term that I keep using, uh, we still have a pretty significant problem in 2026, and we'll we'll address that in a minute here. The real problem, however, now has shifted to 27 and beyond. As we sat in the legislative committee meeting this morning, the analogy I used was it feels like a hurricane. We just sort of survived. We're boarded up and we survived this first wave. Now, now we're in this eye of the hurricane. Looks pretty good relatively, but there's more coming and and it actually looks worse, quite frankly, unfortunately. hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it really really looks pretty difficult. Not only does the paid family medical leave issue most likely remain in place, although we would ask for some changes there and again that $400,000 number, keep in mind that's just the payroll tax. There are other costs that we are struggling to calculate uh because we know additional folks are going to take that t time off deservedly so but there will be then that impact of those additional people leaving the organiza leaving the organization at least uh temporarily. Uh so that's out there. Uh the Minnesota African-American Family Preservation Act. It's the longest acronym that I can that I've ever seen. Don't ask me to recite the acronym. There's additional wording on that. Uh that particular act shifted costs and that remember this is current current law shifted costs. Heather's calculating unbelievably an amount of $3.4 million in additional costs. So we have significant concerns about that. We want to continue talking to the legislature about that. But I need to put it up on on the horizon as potential at least fiscal bad news for us. regardless of what you think of the policy change. And uh in Heather's world, boy, this seems to be all about Heather. Congratulations, Heather. Uh another almost three just over threequarters of a million dollars. Other cost shifts and then the hits keep going on there. There's a watch list she has of that good defense. We need to keep playing that defense. uh there's a watch list of other items that either were taken out of out of play or they were left in play and and we were asked to work with working groups to try and come up with solutions. So there's all sorts of things in play. Tally that all up, boy, what do we at 7 million plus? I was afraid to tally it all up. That is a gigantic number uh in terms of the horizon that we're looking at. Now, will that be the number? I would predict no. I'll be right about that. It will not be I'm I'm very hopeful it's going to be significantly lower, but I need I need to put that up there because we really need to think about this as we go through a budgetary process. Uh the key one of the key strategies will be watch the base. Watch your base level budget and make sure that sets us up for long range success. Don't don't generally take onetime money to plug holes. Let's keep keep this thing on track. It's the reason we have a AAA bond rating. All those good decisions. Let's keep those on track and that preps you for a likely much more difficult 2027 and with 2026 being difficult enough and losing breath here because of the list federal the federal side. We haven't even talked about it. Medicaid, you've heard about the big beautiful bill of course. Who knows exactly where that's going. It does look like there's highly likely to be some cost shifts to us if nothing else determining the work requirements related to Medicaid. Uh the state is very concerned about potential cost shifts. Hospitals are also side note, but the state in particular is worried about having significant budgetary impacts and there's even some discussion about potentially going into close session if if and when that happens. and then back on this SNAP benefit. Uh uh likely policy changes there that that may have some fiscal impacts on us. So that's the picture. Uh hopefully you're buckled in for that because it looks pretty difficult. Uh now some higher level variables. These aren't necessarily new, but I want wanted to make sure we're reminded of them. Inflation inflation and tariff costs. Uh we think there's going to be similar property valuation trends, although that that isn't exactly predictable either. Uh likely continued expenditure pressures. We need to continue talking about the wage and benefit issues. Most of that will come to you in a close session. Uh we do know the CHAS the Chesca Library is still on the horizon. The last time I talked to city administrator Padroski, he he said it was 27. Now he said, "Well, maybe maybe that will get pushed out. We'll we'll see. But I think we need to need to think at least think about this as a potential for 207 of and of course we are uh responsible for the staffing and the oper and the uh uh the collections costs for those facilities. And then uh another item on on the top list is our facility needs. And we've talked a lot about not only the not only the government center but the other facility needs that are built into the space master plan. So that's that's my piece of it. I feel like I'm the bearer of bad news, right? Uh but again, you to someone else. Let's keep the glass half full here. I think 26 one one year at a time, one overusing sports analogies here, but uh one game at a time. Let's get 26 and let's make sure we're we're solid with 26 because uh it's certainly going to change as things evolve forward. So Dave will give you a better handle on the the numbers and then I'll at the when he's done come back with some of the strategic suggestions. Thank you Dave. Um Dave Fishman again, property and finance director. I'm going to administrator he skipped over his slides. I'm going to back up one. So a year in savings account. Um quick update on that and year in savings, you know, that's what we call it here uh locally at Carver County. Other other places call it unassigned fund balance. Unrestricted retained earnings. It's basically the the amount of uh money that has been um levied but not spent because of uh budget actual variances and and various factors. So, just give the board a an update on where we're at with that. Um beginning of 2024, we had $8 million in that urine savings account. Um and the the board approved spending those dollars. You can see in 2024 budget attachment ease onetime costs. uh we funded those projects with almost three million um various other uh uh board approved spending out of the year-end savings account. Then the uh good news from the on the finance side was uh 3.8 almost $4 million was added to the year-end savings account based on the um our 2024 year-end budget to actual numbers. Uh those are still not official yet. They're uh they're we're still counting them un audited, but they're really close. uh we don't we don't anticipate them changing much. Uh so we think that's a pretty solid number uh to begin 2025 with. The board approved uh uh in part as part of the 2025 budget uh uh onetime cost of 1.5 million. So we're estimating our year-end savings balance at this point, you know, almost 6 and a half million um as of as of today. The um to highlight that 3.89 89 million increase that I just mentioned from 2024. Uh we have a you know two-year comparison. Uh just to give you some reference point, some context. Uh overall in the operating budget, uh actual the net was a adding a 1.6. You can see that we had almost three million u from 2023. Um and then and I have another next slide we'll break that out in more detail. uh marktomarket adjustment that is a um a significant impact a significant factor in our year end savings account um for 2024 is 1.9 almost $2 million increase um I have a slide to explain that in more detail but I will point out in 2023 there was no impact on year savings uh that was it was a board policy change in our fund balance that um the board adopted where our marktomarket does not directly impact our urine savings unless um our cash flow reserve is is maxed out is at the is at is where it um needs to be and on top of it we have additional um um uh investment earnings and mark. So uh that's why it did positively impact us in 2024 which is overall good news. Um but we protected ourselves, the board's protected ourselves from um a downturn in Mark the market which will happen. Um but that um the policy change impacts our fund balance so that it won't directly impact it uh going forward. Vacancy savings um you can see our budget to actual variance uh close to two and a half million um it was over 4.67. So the significant decrease from the previous year and I have a slide to explain that in more detail but I want to point out and I put it in bold we did have that vacancy savings almost two and a half million but we needed two two over two million of that went to increase our cash flow reserve um which is a board policy that uh we have uh cash flow needs um during this time of the year because um we spend money every day at the at the county uh but we only get our big chunks of money in twice a year from the property tax uh payments. Um so we need cash flow um to to fund our our costs uh during the year and as our budget grows right increases every year that 30% of of next year's CA budget uh we need more cash on a onetime basis to fill that cash flow reserve. Um and that we needed over three million for 2023 and then we need over two million for uh 2024. So the vacancy savings is a real key to our um both balancing our operating budget as well as um providing the funds to um add to our cash flow reserve which we need to increase every year as our budget continues to grow. So you add all that up and just under 3.9 million increase in our yearing savings account. Um, and I did I did we did point out in 2023 as part of that mark the market adjustment I mentioned the uh fund balance board policy the board did uh uh approve lowering that cash flow reserve from 35% down to 30%. We felt we had sufficient uh cash flow in our other um other funds and we and we monitor we've been monitoring our cash flow uh needs so we thought 30% was a good number and we still think that's a good number today. Uh real quick on the marktomarket uh that since that had such a big impact uh for 2024 um you can see that that is it's driven by interest rate fluctuations. Um and that we obviously we can't control what interest rates are going to do. Um and it is an accounting standard and they use it both in the on the private sector as well as the public sector. updates our our investments uh based on the market value and um and it impacted um you know when when interest rates are rising uh we have a negative marktomarket because the the value of our in our current investments are less because they were purchased at a at a lower interest rate and the reverse is true when interest rates um are are lowered then we have a positive mark tomarket and going Back up on the top line there, you can see uh going across um how that significantly has impacted our um our our our cash flow reserves, our our fund balance. Um the big one obviously in 2022 6.7 was right during COVID when interest rates uh unprecedented uh increase um in rates which meant the value of our investments at year end were were you know less 6.7 million. Um obviously that was that was a huge impact. Um and the one of the main strategies um that we talked about u with the board was to shorten our average length of maturities which means we we don't get as much uh interest income on an annual basis but we protect ourselves from the large swings when interest rates uh go up or down um um based on the marketing back to our uh operating budget to actual the number I mentioned before um overall is 1.6 61 million uh 3 million last year. That's at the bottom. And you can see um generally where those um where our budget to actual variances were. And most of the negative numbers those those represent we didn't hit our revenues. Um what we what we projecting that's for various reasons. Um we could be short staffed. We could have been um uh there was uh a change in the in the law. There could have been a lot various factors that we're that we're tracking. Um some of most of them are outside of our control. Um uh the ones I'll just highlight a couple. Um in license centers the um we did have a 214,000 um decrease or imp budget variance, negative budget variance, but that's you know less than half of what it was in 2023. So we're making progress on that. um the police contract and refunds. There there was a a policy change that um impacted that and we'll see that on the um um vacancy savings slide that's coming up. Um where the where we're not filling as many of the contracted um shifts because we're overall the um we're the short-handed um with the deputies. Um and that caused an additional um refunds that were over what the budget was. Um but it was it's a it's a it's how we're managing those contracts, how we're managing managing um being short-handed. Um and you know, that's what the the sheriff um has decided um in terms of how the best way to do that for the county. Um the delayed in the big one in um state funds, the SC um that's a timing thing mainly. We just we didn't get our um our money from the state when when uh when we thought we're going to in in this year, but it should be coming in uh future years. So, that one's going to offset each other eventually. Um on the expense side, you can see um some of those uh increases the HHS keep purchase of services up significantly. That's a trend we're watching. We did make an adjustment in 2025 to reflect that. Um we may need to make that adjustment as well in 2026 as well. Overall uh we did summarize um all those factors um without the interest income because that has such a big impact um on the overall bottom line but you can see in 2023 we're right on we our budget to actual you know basically zero. Um in 2024 overall the net was over a million dollars short on our budget mainly as I mentioned in the revenue area. Um but the good news was our interest income came in above budget. Um you know pretty pretty consistent at 3 million last two years. Um that is that's based on two numbers, right? It's based on the interest rate which we we don't control. Um but but is kind of flatlined. Um been some changes but not significant changes in the interest rate from 2023 to 2024. But what did um the number that that did have that impacted that was the cash balances mainly in public works in their road construction they they did not spend that money as quick as as what we had anticipated um for various reasons. So we had more cash on hand during the year um than anticipated. We we don't expect that to continue. As we know, the the construction projects are going crazy. Um, and as they're going to spend down those dollars, and as they spend down those dollars, those um that uh interest income number is going to go down relative to our budget. It was really uh one-time um positive impact from them from hanging on to that cash a little bit longer than we thought based on getting projects started. Uh so we don't anticipate that number to continue uh in the future. We think it's going to the the cash balances are going to are going to be drawn down uh to pay for these projects. In which case, we're we're going to our uh interest income is going to be more uh or closer to our our budgeted number um in in 2025 and going forward. So, I know it's a lot. Any any questions on any of the um year end savings? So, or our budget to actual just to comment the budget to actual number. I mean, that's a really good indicator of how well we manage our money is having that be so close. Um, so, uh, you know, just a comment. So, good job you all who who do that. So, thank you. So, shifting to our overall fund balance summary. I focused on the the year in savings account because that's the one that uh the board has the most impact on and um it's your discretion in terms of uh how we use those funds and and when we use them and why we use them. Um the other reserves that we have the other fund balance that we have we do have over 100 million in in other fund balance and we um Mary Kay uh broke these out. This is this is what's in our annual report. Uh so you can see back to excuse me 123123 um we have in various categories non-spendables is basically inventory um where um that the money's been reserved for that um obviously can't spend that because it's it's uh already been spent on something but we're just hanging on to it in that reserve account. We do have grant money that's restricted uh basically uh for various reasons and various processes. We we get the money ahead of time um and then uh we have to put it in a certain account and keep it separate because it can only be spent on uh restricted uh type projects and that that accounts for 19 million. And then you can see going across um what the actual whether we've added or subtracted. Um and then you can see a projected on the far right in terms of where we think those balances are. Um we did we have committed money to the community development agency, the CDA for housing projects. Uh you can see where where that's at with 2 million. Um uh we're projecting um if if it's not used, but we it could get used uh when when those projects get started. Um we have assigned dollars in our mainly in our road and bridge um and our CIPs are our our um capital improvement plans and you can see where those are. That's those those are the dollars where um we we collected more interest income as I just mentioned those balances were higher than than what we're anticipated. We do anticipate those to uh continue going down um throughout 2025. Then uh unassigned UA unassigned uh fund balance. That's our year in savings account. You can see I just uh highlighted that. That's how the 6.4 million uh compared to all the other fund balances. Um all the other numbers. And then the other unassigned big one that that we focus on is cash flow. Um and you can see that that uh is 19. It it grew in 2024 in terms of the budget. Um and at this point it will likely we're not making a projection but we um we know it's probably it's going to go up based on uh 2026 budget um being higher than 2025. So overall those those are the countywide uh fund balances. And next uh moving into uh 2025 first quarter review. Um it is it is early every every um you know every year at this time. um pretty much the same thing. We look for things that are that are way out of whack, but it's so early to tell. It's it's really hard to see anything. Um especially in Health and Human Services where we tend to have our biggest uh budget actual variances and they their reporting process is is uh one to two months behind and so it's really hard to get a grasp on on on where they're at, but we are continuing to monitor that. What we have seen so far is um land records and vitals. the recording fees are increasing still still below budget um but they're head in the right direction that's based on um construction activity it's based on interest rates with refinancing um so we're anticipating more good news that that continues and then we're uh very aware of the jail uh medical mental health needs uh those are trending higher uh we have we have vacant positions there we still have the need there um so we're we're we're working closely with the sheriff's office to keep an eye on that in terms of Um we're going we did make uh an adjustment to the 2025 budget for those trends. Uh and we anticipate um likely to need though uh increase that again for 2026. And we'll provide an update uh this may for Commissioner Anderson so she's aware of when we do this uh second quarter. Update that in August uh when we when we uh when the county ministry makes his recommended um budget u presentation for 2026. And then uh we'll review the third quarter um in November when we do the long-term financial plan. So that's part of our quarterly review. Um and should mention that that f our finance staff uh meets with the divisions uh every quarter. Um go through their numbers. Um ask any questions. They ask us questions. We ask them questions and then I roll that up and summarize it for the board. What what did we hear from all the division directors in terms of how their budget's going? And then we use that as part of our planning process. Right? for anything we see uh now we would then um roll that into 2026 and we just kind of keep an ongoing discussion uh with all the division directors and and their teams um in terms of their budgets. All right, shift into uh 2026 taxbased trends. Um uh the we just did the the board of equalization with uh county assessor Ryan Johnson and just just a summary of of uh what uh what he presented. Uh the overall taxable market value almost 24 billion uh 6% increase from uh 2025. The value new construction uh over half a million. Um and then the 2026 levy increase from that new construction is 2.1 million. So, the new tax base, um, the board could increase your the 2026 levy by 2.1 million and it would have no impact on on the rest of the tax base because of that new construction. So, that's a that's a pretty key number. Uh, very similar to what what we saw last year. Um, but just to kind of give as a reference point in terms of the value increases, residential is up on average 4%, commercial down 2.6%, egg was up almost 6%. And just remind the board that regardless of what we do in terms of the levy, regardless what in terms of what we do in the spending, there's going to be a tax base shift from uh commercial to a residential based on those values, right? That's how the legislature set up the the Minnesota state um property tax system that the the you know, so the pie regardless of what happens to the pie, which think of that's the levy. Um there's a shift because the the commercial are going to be paying a little bit less and the uh egg and residential be paying a little bit more just because of what's happened with their values overall in general. That changes obviously that changes every year uh in terms of the 2026 budget. So now we're getting into the numbers. Um the the pattern increase um which is was which is not recommended at this point. It's just a just a placeholder. Um 6.8%. That's the levy increase that um the board approved for 2025 as well as 2024. That would generate 5.1 million um for 2026. 5.1 million of new tax levy dollars. Um and you can see how that compares to previous years. Uh the projected uh salary and benefits increase for 2026 is uh 5.7 million. And though that wage and benefit cost is increase is primarily driven by a settled union contracts uh defining compensation and benefits for the second year of two-year union agreements. Uh these contract settlements were negotiated within the authority provided by the board based on a considered analysis of what was required to maintain market competitive compensation and benefits for the county's workforce. Additional factors impacting wage and benefit projection for 2026 includes a 650,000 or six uh $620,000 decrease in salary and benefits from the transition to a third party vendor for crisis response. A 700 $700,000 decrease from dollars previously requested in the event emergent factors and data analysis pointed to urgent needs for market corrections or targeted adjustments to maintain overall competitive compensation. Uh the county has maintained overall competitive compensation in relation to market factors and believes this figure is no longer required. There's also uh the $400,000 increase that the administrator mentioned uh in terms of the our share of the statemandated Minnesota paid leave program premium and our share is the 50% which was negotiated with the unions. Um and but we're so it was permitted by law for this new leave benefit for us to um negotiate the cost sharing and we're and as a result of the union settlement union agreement we're paying 50% of those premiums and the employees are paying the other 50%. Um and then there's also included in that wage and benefit projection is a 440,000 increase in overtime rates uh due primarily to in significant increase law enforcement wages uh overtime. Um so the overall base went up and on top of that the overtime um um increases and it was also due to market pressures to maintain a competitive position in the law enforcement uh realm. So that those are the two big numbers on the sheet um the obvious always the two big numbers uh that that we're always focused on. Um then the other uh the rest of them uh countywide levy changes that's across the board you know big picture countywide um impacts and you can see 200,000 um of good news in an overall countywide levy changes you can see back in 2024 that was 2.3 million uh that was mainly uh um um changes in uh in action county program aid again uh back in 2024 um county administrator mentioned the uh 1.1 million the federal uh cuts million in health and human services. That's a number that we're that we're continuing to track. Um we got a question mark in there, you know, could could go up a little bit, could go down a little bit as as legislation comes through. Uh we're reading and understanding the impacts. Um and I have slides on on uh all all the 200,000 plus along with the 1.1 million negative. And then the division levy trends, these are specific to divisions. Um and the 200,000 as well. Um a negative uh u increase in our in in need. uh based on the trends and and for new these are requested new levy funded FTES uh 2.7 I put that in red because that obviously that's a big number um that's based on the on the division directors and and and coming to the county administrator and saying these are what we need in order to continue um providing services at the at at the current level. Um overall that puts us with a a budget gap uh at this point initial budget gap of uh over four 4.4 4 million. Um, and that's, you know, just as a starting point. Um, but that doesn't, as I, as I mentioned, that that's based on the the 6.8% uh levy increase, which is not recommended at this point. It's just just a pattern just to kind of give us a ballpark uh sense of where we're at. We'll point out number two, um, the footnote below, you can see that the county tax impact, um, was 2.4% in 2025. Um, and that that's in in the past, it's been over 4%. that same 6.8% levy increase has a has an impact on the average value of home and it's significantly different from 2026 um what was is projected versus uh 2025 and then 2024 is back more in line with what 2026 is that is that um fiscal disparities where we got the good news um from from Anoka County who handles the fiscal disparities we got that in August last year um and and that's why that that 2.4 before um even though it's the same it's been the same levy increase for the last three years um the the tax actual tax impact on the average value home the county's tax impact you know did change significantly because of that fiscal disparity um impact that I mentioned earlier Mr. Sure. If you could stay on that slide because I know it's Dave's favorite. It is. This is a really This is my favorite slide with good reason. Oh, you have to be the finance director for that. I would say first of all that in your packet the detail for I think the county levy changes uh division levy trends even as our Heather's cuts detailed in here. Yep. Take a look. A lot of information in your packet. And then uh obviously the new levy funded FDS that's a big number I think as big as I recall it ever being. I would note uh that I did not ask divisions to scale that back based on priorities or based on what's discretionary or mandated. Uh this is a starting point. Obviously some organizations have as I'm as I'm hearing from my colleagues uh have said no new FDS to start. I I felt you know there's various strategies pros and cons. I felt I wanted to start here to uh as a benchmark but just so you know that we have a list of them later as we go through the budget hearings we'll be talking about those items in the list but definitely a big over half of the budget gap at this point as part of those new FDS. Just wanted to comment on that. Okay. So, uh, now focusing in on that on the levy increase, which is the board's authority and board's responsibility to adopt what the county's levy will be for 2026. Um, the um, if if we were to close the budget request gap, right, the the 4.4 million we I was just focused on, um, in order to do that without any other changes, uh, without any other adjustments, um, that would require a 12.7% increase in the levy. Uh that would raise $9.5 million. There'd be a $9.5 million tax increase. Uh you can see the it' be a $12.60 monthly property tax increase on that average value at home, which would represent over 10% increase in their property taxes on an annual basis. I should point out the average value at home in Carver County is 495,000 and that was a 4% increase um from the previous year. If um the levy increase um continues the pattern uh what we're calling the pattern from the last two years uh which was 6.8% that would raise the 5.1 that I pointed out earlier. Um and then that would have a $5 monthly property tax increase on that average really home. So $5 increase on a monthly basis. Um and then that would represent a 4.2% increase in their county property tax impact. So just point out again the 6.8% levy, right? we'd increase our levy by by 6.8%. The tax impact on that average light home would be 4.2%. And the difference between those two is due to new the new construction, right? The the new taxpayers. Um and then we added another uh line just in terms of reduction. If we reduce the pattern to 5% increase in the levy, you can see those numbers uh generate less uh levy dollars overall for for the county uh budget. um but then obviously has less impact on the average value at home and you can see the new construction um that's that 2.1 million I mentioned before and how that would have no impact on the average value home and I did I guess I did point out the 2025 the fiscal disparities um those are the numbers uh so it's this what our all these charts are based on preliminary numbers um for fiscal disparities um the best the best we have available and then it'll be updated again in August August uh digging more into the details and as ministrator MY pointed out uh there's additional details in your packet in terms of these I just just summarized uh these at at a high level. Um included in the um in that the overall the countywide levy changes is $450,000 additional dollars for uh a our our master uh space plan um which currently is a um 80 $82 million project in 2028 issue debt for that um and then pay that off over 20 years. And right now we have um money available, levy dollars available uh that's either already been paid off uh bonds that have been paid off or that are going to be paid off in the future. Um the plan then is to increase the county tax levy by 450,000 for five years and then that would um that would that we would then have enough dollars uh levy dollars to pay the debt service uh without any additional increase um and and and be able to build the building, issue the debt and have everything paid off. So, that's in our long-term financial plan. Um, obviously the board has has the ability to change that, but we we started the 2026 budget process um based on the assumption we continue that plan. Um, that's that the board has approved in the past. Um, in addition, our long-term French bond also includes levy increases for parks and trails repairs and maintenance. That's 100,000 as well as um 100,000 additional dollars for uh our our fiveyear schedule of um facilities, vehicles, and equipment replacement. And those are attachments uh C and D in our budget. Um so just to uh remind the board about our five-year schedule. Um everything we can think of, we have a uh that we can replace, we have in that schedule uh across the county and all the divisions. and then we add $100,000 in the in in the in the year five. Um and then we allocate that. So this is um these are these are dollars that we in in projects and replacements that we've been talking about for five years. And then we'll roll the current year um uh replacement schedule into the budget operating budget process. Um there's also a shift included in this uh uh initial budget um um gap. right now is a $100,000 shift uh of of county program aid that's in our operating budget and shifting 100,000 to um our one-time projects and attachment E. That's been a a long-term um direction from the board to uh reduce our reliance on that CPA as well as provide funding for our one-time projects. So, that just continues that trend. Um and then annual IT cost increases. That just recognizes that um it u their costs are always going up, you know, as we as we add more uh FTEEs. Uh they need to supply more uh computers and uh more phones and um and then their their annual cost increases continue to rise in terms of their software and and license agreements. Um so the board um approved just starting the budget process with a with an increase for it right off the bat. Uh then we have new levy adjustments. Um as as county administrator mentioned, uh the state program, county program AD, CPA, uh increased that 800,000 up to 5.7 million. Um so that was our good news for 2026. And then our vacancy savings, we're continuing the 5.5% that's going into our operating budget. Uh but with the with the increased wage and benefit projection, um that that calculates out to 200,000 increase in vacancy savings. So, you net all those to together. That's our countywide levy changes at 200,000. And uh vacancy savings is is is something we talk a lot about. Um county commissioner suggested we um we add a slide that just talks about that at a high level just to kind of get everyone on the same page. So, we created this simple guide. I think Mary Kay used chat GPT to help uh create this and and and the and the and the uh some of the definitions and stuff. Um, so it's just illustrative example, just real simple basic math, 10 FTEES, 100,000 average salary and benefits. So it's a $1 million um wage and benefit projection, right? Wage and benefit costs. And let's just say in for example the historical spend um has been 900,000. So they got 10 bodies and 100,000 but and they look back they only they have vacancies um and for various um just watching the trends they spend only spend 900,000. So the actual vacancy savings is $100,000. So what do you do with that h 100,000 in terms of you know every year we've had that trend of that savings. Um and that's what the I highlighted in yellow there is um uh the impact on our levy and on our budget. So in our example um the 1 million projection the vacancy savings trend is 100,000. what we do at at the county. Um we would we we lower that projection by that vacancy savings and then um our recommendation to the board is that they need to levy $900,000 for a million dollars of of salaries and benefits but recognizing that we're going to have 100,000 just based on historical trend of vacancy savings. So it actually, you know, the vacancy savings number reduces the levy right up front that's approved by the board. So keep think keep that in mind when we're talking about changing our vacancy savings. If we want vacancy savings to go down um then then that's going to increase our levy. You know that that's that's the relationship between vacancy savings and and the levy on the front end and then on the back end your our actual vacancy savings obviously has an impact on on how we do compared to the overall budget and our impact on our yes. Um, so in scenario number one, actually our actual vacancy savings are higher than what the trend had had been of 100,000, if that were to happen, uh, then the impact on a year in savings account would be $150,000 increase. Um, and and we saw that happen at at at the county last year. And just remember, we use that, um, those vacancy savings then to fill up our cash flow reserve. Um, so you know, even even though there's there's a there's a um the positive variance, it still could be used in like we do with our cash flow. Um, scenario number two is is the um is Mary Kay's constant worry and concern. Mine too, but u I Mary Kay is the worrier in our in our team. Um so she worries about us not getting that budget, not hitting that trend uh in any given year. So 100,000's been the historical trend. In our scenario number two, we only have 75,000 in actual vacancy savings. What that would do would be impact our year in savings. Our year savings would go down by that 25,000 because we didn't hit our our budgeted vacancy savings. So that's why it's such an important number um that that finance and the division directors, county commissioner were all focused on throughout the year um to make sure we're we're watching that trend, making sure that uh because the we're we're lowering our levy on the front end. We don't levy everything for 100% of our of our projected wage and benefit costs. Um so you know we do that on the front end to to to decrease the levy but then we also watch on the back end to make sure because it will impact our year in savings uh how the actual uh comes in compared to um what the historical trend is. But if you understand how perhaps to a layman that seems counterintuitive. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Yeah. We I talk to layman's a lot. Well, he's talked to me a lot. So, that's how he's figured that's why we did this. Well, I'm the head layman. No, it it is uh it's kind of Yeah, it is. It's a confusing can be a confusing topic. Um makes a lot of sense to us, but I mean that's why we share that's why we talk about things because it it does get a little confusing. It is a little counterintuitive. Well, Mr. Chair, wait till he gets to the next chart. That's confusing, which is why I wanted to back up and go. This is this is our general uh policy intent. Yeah. And I would clarify the general policy intent is not to hold vacancies in an effort to save more money. I'm not trying to do that behind the scenes. Now, having said that, again, counterintuitive. What do you have a vacancy suffer for? That's going to create more vacancies. Well, yeah, it will, but the intent is not to add more money. The intent is to create potential opportunities as we look for at rep prioritiz prioritization potentially position elimination. We would obviously rather rather eliminate a vacancy versus an incumbent all those being equal. So that that's going on behind the scenes. Uh and I would finish by saying you'll see this on the next chart for probably a dozen years. I bet a beer a year today. Uh that that this we'd have more money in the end and he owes me 12 beers except for the last two years it turned around and you'll see that in the chart. So that's a sign to me we've looked at this and ratcheted this down and been more aggressive to try and capture these dollars and build it into that top line, this 900,000. try to build it to balance the budget to the point where it's actually uh has has gone negative, right? Which would segue you then into the next slide. Yep. Perfect. Thank you, county. Um so and to uh just summarize the last three years where the div where the vacancy savings has has shown up on an actual basis. Um and you can see the health and human services is the the largest contributor, which makes sense. They're the largest division. uh they have the most FTEES. Um so you can see that they're they're contributing down at the bottom Mary Kay added the number of FTEEs. So they're over 278 FTEES. Um so obviously and it's been an increasing number. Uh public public services in Nicks area you can see a big increase from 22 to 23. Um and then you know relatively flat from 23 to 24. The big change is in the sheriff's area. Um and you can see um how that that was up went up significantly from 22 to 23 and then went down significantly in 2024. Um and that that um kind of caught our eye because the sheriff will tell you there it's not because their uh number of of vacant deputies decreased significantly in 2024 which is what this chart would would u suggest. Uh but when Mary and Elvis we dug in a little deeper um there the vacancy savings was there but it was just spent on other things uh like the overtime um dollars that I mentioned before in terms of the base increases and then the overtime on top of it. There was also the the refunds to other uh other our contract communities where we were not filling those positions, those uh other other required um contracts. We weren't filling those uh like we were before. We were pulling other deputies into those. Um but that was creating um you know being short staffed on on the non-contract communities. Um so that would increase our vac our vacancy savings by um not filling those contract positions as much. Uh it increased our refunds back to the um cities which I mentioned before earlier in our budget to actual variance. Um and then that had an impact on the actual vacancy savings. So um it was it was it's not so much that the the vacancy savings weren't there is that that those dollars were then used for um other factors and and that also includes any kind of turnover. So, if we had retirees um you know that that then left and um and then replaced that you know that would be a positive thing. But there's also health insurance um where um if our employees are taking more they went from single to um family that's going to have an impact on on these vacancy savings because we're spending more than what we had thought on various areas. So there's a there's a lot of factors that go into um these vacancy savings numbers. Um, and just to point out, and they're they're Mary Kay calls them cousins to our overall turnover percentage. Um, as as an example, there could be a position that was vacant all year. Um, would have no impact on our turnover numbers that ER calculates, but would obviously have a big impact on our vacancy savings. Um, and and vice versa. Um, Health and Human Services, they could have a vacant position. That's a revenue generating position. So, when there's a body there, they're able to cover their costs or a high percentage of their costs by revenue. um th those th that uh we could we could have no turnover um those those would be ones that um that if we had turnover in those areas it would impact uh employee relations uh numbers but would have no impact on vacancy savings because we're not collecting any revenue. We're anticipating revenue when they're there. So there's just um there they're there they're there not a direct correlation between what happens with uh uh our turnover that employee relations overall turnover that they're calculating versus vacancy savings because of various factors. You follow that Mr. Chair has the next chart was the one I was saying was really confusing but before we get there I know sheriff and I have had conversations we got our accounting teams together to try and figure out that number just looked wrong to me. Uh but I think I think we're that that with that explanation. Sheriff, were you did you have anything to add? And if you do, uh come on up front. Mr. Chair, members of the board, I I think that uh Mr. Fishman did a very nice job of explaining how all of that comes together and and how uh scheduling practices have impacted and wages and so and such. I I think that there is still we were having conversation late last week still about that number uh because we we think that um at least intuitively it just feels low, right? I I know I have 20 vacancies all year long and it seems odd that we would only have 250k in that. Um and so we're still looking at that, but you know, the the math is good. The the question is is was the methodology applied correctly in this? I mean, I know the math is good, but I can say that even if we find the numbers bigger, uh it's not going to be substantially. It's not like, oh, well, there we go. We have no budget. it was next year. We're not going to have that. It'll it'll move up a nominal amount if it moves at all. I've mostly found that Mary Kay is usually right and and I am not as right as I think I am when it comes to these things. Takes a big man to admit that. I'm not admitting that I'm wrong, just not as right as I thought I was. So, I'll second that. I that that's my experience working with Mary Kay as well that I'm not not I'm never wrong but I'm not always as right as I think I am. But the message is Mary Kay is always right. Yeah. Yes. Got that. Got that Mary Kay except except once a year. I find one once a year I find something that that Could you uh let us know? Haven't found it yet. Not not this year yet. Not yet. But I'm privately let that know privately. Actually I did find it. G made a mistake but she corrected it before uh before the board presentation. Okay, so the next slide that on vacancy savings that county administrator alluded to before, you can see on the gray is our actual vacancy savings going back to 2020 and then the green um uh for the is the actual through 2022. And you can see as as county mentioned um our actual had been higher than uh what we had budgeted um and then starting in 2023 we had a 8.4% 4% actual vacancy savings overall. Um but we were looking for 8.5%. So that was the first year that we we actually didn't uh make our budget in terms of vacancy savings. Uh in 2024 um we actually were we were much lower um than than what the budget was. Um the 6.6 number represents the actual 8.5% was uh what we were hoping for. Um and and we just the slide that I just showed, you know, is part of the part of that explanation is based on the divisions and based on the sheriff's um change in their staffing uh policy and procedure. Uh so looking looking ahead, uh we we are lowering that 2026 projection for vacancy savings down to 7.8%. Uh mainly on the cash flow side. Um but we're we're constantly watching that, keeping an eye on that. Um but it it's it's not a number as Dave is alluding to. It's not a number we try finance tries to control and tries to manage towards. It really is just trying to watch that historical trend and just recognizing, you know, where that thing comes in at and how does that compare and then, you know, what are the uh the decisions that we're making um at at a manager level or at the division director level or or at the county administrator level that impacts those and finance is just trying to track those and and and keep an eye on them and then make sure everyone's aware of of what those impacts are. Mr. Mr. Chair, I would I would add uh we do try and manage it from this perspective where where we typically don't don't allow divisions to come. Well, I like divisions to manage your own budgets. Very good conceptually a good idea. Uh we generally say, you know, this is a last resort if you're looking for money because we don't have additional money blended in here to back fill a position or to add a new position. So, that's sort of the concept behind the the the math here. Uh, and and I get the frustration. It's like, geez, you know, we're down 10 vacancies and I can't use any of that money. Well, theoretically anyway, it's built into the cake as part of the whole mixture. And again, sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down. We try and trend it out. So, just again to make sure everybody's on the same page because I know this this is a real big important piece of the whole puzzle. Okay, so I shift into a county program aid CPA. Um this is uh the good news that county administrator mentioned earlier. Um you can see overall in the top how what that total amount is and then the you can see how we split it up. Um and the general fund gets the majority of it. That's the um gray I guess um the big the big number in the bottom. And then our our CIPs, our cap improvement plans get a small piece of it. Um that that really hasn't changed uh at all over the years. Um and then the number that has changed um is the one-time projects. And that's where that shift is going on where we're trying to shift our CPA out of our general fund and into our one-time projects. Um and that that is a strategic um uh uh strategy plan for us. Uh because then um you remember when the when the state cut our CPA um in in one year they did it you know at the end of the year in December they cut it. Um so we had to react quickly to that. Um but in terms of them uh if they if they cut that number it we have at least a little bit of time because we can that cut can get absorbed in our capital improvement plans. We can make adjustments to the capital projects we're planning on doing. Uh whereas it's a lot harder obviously to adjust in our operating budget. So to the extent that they would cut it to the point where we get into operating budget, you know, now now it's a that's a that's a you know, a current uh year problem uh that we got to deal with in that particular year. So um that's the philosophy behind the the shift county program aid from our general budget to our um our capital budgets. And you can see that we just we're continuing that at this point um based on our long-term financial plan. Uh going back to uh my favorite slide that 1.1 million that um we highlighted for federal state cost shifts. Uh that's our um our number as of at this point. Uh 1 million in health and human services. The the did not meet criteria. uh DN DNMC that's that big dollar amount that the county ministry re um mentioned in terms of for one person at an NOKA facility uh 750,000 of that then there's some other uh smaller impacts that that Heather's watching closely at this point we got a million dollars for her and then public services there's a rate um cost shift 100,000 um we got some question mark we put question marks in there strategically because there are there potentially are some things that we're not aware of yet that are going to impact the 2026. At this point, we landed on 1.1 million in cost shifts. Our division levy trends and requests. Uh this is by uh division and you can see um based on based on trends, based on need, based on increasing costs. Uh you can see which divisions are asking for more dollars for 2026. Um and then a a brief summary of what those are in in your packet. We have more details um that are provided and these are going to be the requests that we'll focus on during our budget hearings in July that the division directors will explain to the board you know specifically what um you know getting in a little more weeds about all of these different requests. There is some good news at the bottom uh various division we have revenue trend increases. That's just a net number. So 400,000 offsets all of those um increasing cost trends. Uh so the net at this point is a negative $200,000. Uh requested staffing changes. U county commissioner mentioned that that is obviously a a big um big driver on our on our budget gap at this point. Um and that there the total requests are almost four million in staffing, but that we've identified um over a million dollars in other funding sources. So the net new tax levy if we're going to fund all of those requested positions would be that 2.7 million. That represents almost 30 FTEEs. Um big number obviously it's it's been it's been a big number over the years. Uh two years ago we were able to add uh levy funded FTEEs. Last year we didn't add any levy funded FDES, but we did add some non levy funded FDES. Um and obviously that's a that's a big uh uh big impact on the overall budget um gap and and the future because it you know these these represent as the as the county continues to grow and as we continue to provide you know services that are getting more complex because of requirements um you know the need is there to continue to add to our workforce. Uh I should mention we do at this point we have a August uh work session um planned to focus just on these requested staffing changes. So we'll bring everyone in and we'll um because you know the when we do the budget hearings it's two commissioners uh coming to each of the division um uh meetings. So it's just two commissioners hearing the individual stories. Uh but obvious since this is such a big um big driver and has such a big impact our overall budget and our ability to deliver services uh we're g we're planning on a budget workshop focused on um the staffing requests that staffing changes request as well as an update on the budget gap where we're at and that'll be before the county administrator's recommended um u budget or levy and budget for 2026 which will be at the end of August. This will be uh this work session will be earlier in August. So, we'll spend more time specifically on these uh staffing changes. Now, uh shifting from our operating budget into our capital improvement uh plans and our facilities, vehicles, and equipment replacement. Um I mentioned this earlier, but just to provide a little more detail on it, the uh county tax levy uh is for road preservation is 2.2 million. U provide a little history on that. 10 years ago or 11 years ago now, um Lyndon looked our public works director looked at the the dollars needed for to preserve our roads that are already been built in the county um and and determined that we needed a million more dollars in levy to preserve our roads. So, we talked to the board and got direction to add $100,000 a year for 10 years to get up to that million dollars over a 10-year period. Um that that increased the levy. um to 2.2 million for road preservation. That's where that that's why that number is where it's at. Um and and that has now reached its uh plan. We we did it for 10 years and and got that up to where it needed to be. Um so now and and this is continuing from the past, but all the new construction that you're seeing all throughout the county is is all from federal, state, you know, sales tax, city um uh levy dollars. The county um levy that goes into roads and bridges are is for the preserving of them, right? So, as we build more, we got to preserve it and that's where uh that's where the levy county levy is focused on. Uh parks and trails. Uh we 2754,000 county program aid. I mentioned that before. That was that small piece that goes into um uh the park and trail cip. Um then there's also state, city, other other county dollars that are going into this. Um the two at this point it's a $200,000 county tax levy for 2026. That's a $100,000 increase from and trails and and all those things. Uh which our parks department is working on uh coming up with a schedule fee or county tax levy dollars going into those levy dollars going into those. And then our attachment D, facilities, vehicle, and equipment. I mentioned that before, the 5-year replacement schedule. Uh that's at 1.9 million coming tax levy. And that's also the $100,000 increase that I mentioned before from from 2025. And finally, our attachment E is our one-time projects that we fund with one-time dollars. And at this point, we have uh 900,000 that of county program aid that over time has been redirected out of the general fund. Uh so that's that's the number we have now. And then the 2.1 million of redirected debt service. I mentioned that before. We're saving that long-term to pay off the debt service for the uh master space plan u bond sale, but until we need it for the debt service, uh we're able on a one-time basis to to put it into our um attachment E and have it fund our onetime projects. Uh so that's $3 million that's available. That's not not taking any money out of the year in savings account. And we typically do that. If there's something that needs to be done, we'll make that recommendation. At this point, we're just saying what's available right now is the three million. And the requested projects, we have 2.2 million that came out of our long-term financial plan, similar equipment replacement fund. Um, we have we have u requested projects going out five 10 years, and we just roll those forward. Um the the 2.2 million comes out of that long-term financial plan. Um it's uh jail improvements, roof improvements for various buildings, HVAC. Um and then there's 2.4 million uh that are just new requests, new things that aren't haven't been in our long-term financial plan. Uh but the division director is saying we need these now. Things have come up. Um and you can see um those are Baylor Park and site improvements um which is part of the the uh this uh parks um study that that they're working on. So they're they started that master space plan for the parks uh Baylor Park and now they're anticipating needing some money for that. Uh so that's a request. Um and then hoist I don't even remember what that was but uh other things that have come up public works of course. Yeah. Yeah. So things that things that are needed. Um uh so that the total request at this point is that 4.6 million. And then uh finally just real quick uh long-term financial plan. uh we focus on next year's 2026 budget um and levy increases uh right now that's our focus but then uh September once the board has adopted that uh preliminary levy that that can be lowered um in December but can't be increased then uh we shift our focus to a long-term financial plan um and then we present that to the board in November uh an update on that but at this point the the highlights um just our road and bridges they're primarily uh funded by County dollars are are sales and wheelage taxes. Buildings miscellaneous mentioned that earlier. A master space plan study. Uh Jaza Library is coming. Uh parks and trails a five-year plan. They want to try and get their um uh all of their equipment, all of their um facilities, everything get no uh anything that's being rated as very poor. Trying to get um everything above that. Um so that that's our goal. We'll see. uh we're putting money towards it and they're they're working on trying to get things um uh improved to a point where we got everything is either in the good or the fair condition. And then our uh debt service, I mentioned this, but here's the numbers. Um $65 million bond sale, I guess. Um is that right, Nick? Is it 65? I'm not sure. Yeah, the bond sale. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's that's true. So there's overall costs, but we do have some money going um um setting aside now. Obviously, we're paying for things now uh with architects and and design. So there's some costs that are associated with that. Um and then there's uh again that's just that's just a middle of the range number. U but five five.3 million is what we anticipate needing. Uh we have 3.5 available. So we that 450,000 uh that we have included in the 2026 budget. Um and then we do that for three more budget cycles. We should have the debt. We should have the levy uh to pay for that debt service. That's the plan when we issue that debt uh for the new building. And then in terms of operations, uh you know, FTEES, we've been talking about that. That's that's that's a focus obviously. Um and we're trying to minimize those requests using technology, innovation, cooperation. Um Chesca Library is something we're keeping an eye on. And then our health insurance. Uh we do have a a rate cap for 2026 12%. Uh but it's a two-year contract and then that two-year contract will be up. So 2027 looking ahead uh we'll be going back out for a request for proposal RFP on our employee health insurance. Uh real uh taking a peek at our budget calendar. Um so this is where we're at today, the 624 work session. uh I highlighted all those uh items and then as I mentioned July and early part of August we'll have the uh the budget hearings and division requests and then the work session I mentioned in terms of a budget get update and focus on the full-time equipment the staffing requests and then the rest of the schedule um pretty much follows the past where the uh we ask the board to take uh adopt that preliminary levy uh at the September 2nd board meeting um and then finish out the year with the final approvals. Back to Dave. All right. Thank you, Dave. Very nice job and nice work by the division vectors. Thank you. Hurricane too. Uh Ari also a large part of this communication. I think actually ironically that was the easy part showing the numbers and describing the the problem. The harder part is okay, what do we do about it? I I really think we're going to have to implement all grab all these tools that we have in the toolbox to fix this one. And again, it's not only about 26, it's about 27. Therefore, the first bullet point. I really think we need to keep our eye this keep this in mind. This base level, where is our base at and how are we setting ourselves up for the future? If you follow the Anoka County story over the past few years, you you probably saw the headlines. where they had a huge spike in their in their property tax levy. Large part of that story was they they reduced their their base by using a one-time money. I would not recommend that. I think it's smart to have a relatively stable tax trajectory uh to keep your eye on that and ultimately uh I think that that pays off in the longer term, not only one year but beyond that. So other strategies that that I will be fine-tuning and recommending and of course we've already started this as we looked at well what are discretionary services uh pure and simple that's about prioritization and it's and it's your priorities your your priorities on behalf of the citizens uh those are the tough choices that that I should say land in your lap ultimately uh where where would those priorities lie and and ultimately what does that do to your base level budget uh We'll be walking through that exercise and it's not only the the identifiable complete service. In some cases, it might be portions of those uh providing a service above a a mandated level. And those items are again identified uh and we've identified them and we want to keep working on that and keep focused on that. And then the the third bullet point here, prioritizing uh levy saving targets. a pretty common strategy to to provide a percentage uh some cases is called across the board. I would say however that my preference would be let's prioritize those. Let's let's talk about ultimately from the board's perspective uh what are the higher versus lower percentages and and ultimately make sure the board is comfortable with their final decision. But I think it would it is important uh to some degree to share some pain just because of the amount amount of pain that I think is going to be involved in this particular process. That will be part of the discussion moving forward. And then uh finally uh some of these are not new. Some of these are actually uh occurring now. Uh we I think do a great job across the board with our service delivery models and methods. If you think back to CO, boy, what what dramatic changes that were put into place. I think there was some silver linings there obviously with the efficiencies that were created. Uh we're latching on to uh AI uh as moving forward. Uh we're not we're not jumping in uh not knowing how deep it is. We're being careful with it, but I'd say we're moving pretty darn fast trying to leverage some of the efficiencies that can be created through AI. Those kind of things. uh other revenue opportunities. I that really takes some pressure off your general levy, the tax side. And uh again, some of these efforts are in play already. Uh you saw a number, I think it was 411,000 built into your spread spreadsheets in your packet. Those give credit to your your team here. They're out they're out looking for revenue sources, right? And building it into their budget because they know very well that takes pressure off the general levy side. But there are other opportunities and some of those are pure policy choices the board has. You've already talked about one for example, park fees. Do you want to raise park fees to offset what is largely a discretionary service? Purely a policy choice and we can bring that for further discussion later. I want to take a a harder look at the life of equipment. So our our vehicles, our technology, I would say we we have had a robust method of looking at the life cycle including uh boy it was pretty recently Lyndon we purchased some software to do that uh looking at the life cycle of equipment tech or cars. Okay. And we need a refresh. Okay. Uh so that that that software is in place, but let's take let's take a closer look and maybe uh we need to take uh a different policy approach. Maybe we want to extend that vehicle a little further than we have in the past because of the situation. So So that'll be another one of those tools. Uh again, not without there there's ramifications to every one of these deci decisions, right? But they're choices. And then certainly we want to look at personnel. That's the largest part of our budget, the large larger part of uh impact on our uh ultimate gap. Uh continuing the soft hiring freeze uh with an effort to create opportunities assessing the impacts related to non levy funded positions. That's an issue that kind of sneaks up on you where where it looks, you know, when when I see new FDAs and it's 100% non- levy funded. Obviously, it's a little easier. There's less pressure on your levy to say yes to that. And you can see the justification there. So we say yes and all of a sudden you know that builds up builds up and you have a dozen more or more staff and that definitely impacts the the the uh the overhead expenses. So from employee relations to payroll and beyond. That doesn't mean we just go no no no funding no matter what the justification but I think we really want to be more cognizant about that. it is hard to grab a handle onto it and say uh there's a form for formulaic way to get at it but I think we want to try and do that to some degree to through data data analysis and look at uh you know uh what what kind of burdens does it put on our technology staff for example or or others that we may not be thinking through. So that's another piece of it. uh work workforce realignment that relates to uh looking at uh opportunities that I mentioned earlier and and trying to make sure we're we're doing the the work in the right way and maybe there's a different way to do that and relieve some pressure on the general levy. Uh similar with operational adjustments. Uh the voluntary furlow it uh that's something that Henipin County I saw just rolled out. That would be an opportunity for folks that that have a desire to take some time off and not get paid and that would result in some levy savings. Uh in speaking with Carrie and and I did speak with Dave Huff who is on his way to retirement. Good for him. Uh but he he thinks Henipin County has a significant number of folks that would grab on to that as as Carrie has thought the same thing. I guess we would find out if we rolled that out. uh you know again there's uh other sides of the coin I would say uh somebody leaves and there's still work to do so we got to be cognizant of that we need to be watchful and mindful of that but I think it's a good opportunity for for that whatever that category whatever that number of employees may be then to to result in some le uh levy savings uh the one I I think I neglected to put on here was uh a potential uh program where we offer some incentive for employees employees to leave the organization, which certainly has can have some downsides as we all know. Maybe not necessarily a early retirement program, but some sort of incentive that would again be with a main policy objective of creating some opportunities as we're looking at shifting and realigning and and ultimately trying to close that budget gap on a on a permanent base level basis. And there's maybe some other things there, not maybe there are some other uh opportunities here that I think we should continue to look at. So again, a lot of things going on here. I got a great team behind me here literally that I'll be I'll be leaning on looking looking for help. And my suggestion would be uh like I do listen uh be uh thoughtful in these approaches. There's not a rush at this point. I'm not looking for you to to commit to taxation per uh intentionally. I think you want to wait to see what how you know how how could this gap be closed before you commit to that ultimately obviously that's a key piece uh that but but wait um as Commissioner Anderson and I were talking about just yesterday differences between school districts and and count local government counties and cities that's a big difference where you have an opportunity to set that preliminary levy uh at at whatever height the board the majority desires you can bring it down but you can't go up school districts are much So, so that to me is an opportunity to think about uh but I'm not again looking for that commitment now. So, we'll look forward to the you know these next steps as Dave outlined on the schedule. Oh, I didn't think I had any more strategies. I'm like, wait a minute. Yeah. Okay. So, that's it. Lot of information. Is that drinking from a fire hose? Commissioner Henderson so much. Yeah. Uh so but but I think uh hopefully that's helpful and get gets us uh at least right in the in the right mindset as we're preparing for the next steps. Very helpful. Any any questions from the board? Uh Commissioner Mort. So many questions I have. First, I want to um thank Dave Fishman and and Mary Kay for spending so much time with me outside of the boardroom and helping me um understand county um budgets and vacancy savings. I've had a really hard time getting my head around that. So, thank you for that slide, Mary. Okay, you and Chat GPT. Um so, I I I do appreciate that. Uh, I actually want to go back and acknowledge um the work of you um Director Goodman um Commissioner Workman, Commissioner Udman on our lobbying efforts. I mean and and I think it was AMC and AMA and it was a team effort to to really get that number down from from 7 million to to 1 million. So I I appreciate um all the work that that's been done on that. Um, so I have lots of comments and so if somebody else has any other I or thoughts um kind of back to the vacancy savings I this puts it into perspective especially when you said unassigned fund balance which is the the language that I'm I'm used to. So I get that way better now. The one side that continues to worry me is um kind of that back filling a position and and that can sort of handcuff um a a director or division director and in kind of managing their staff throughout the the years. So um I don't know if there's a way to balance that to help it be a little bit more nimble. um you know so I if um because I think it puts a lot of pressure on our organization when when people leave and we need to fill that and I mean I look at that slide with HHS being the biggest contributor to our vacancy savings but that that can put a lot of pressure on one organization um I don't know the answers to that but yes please I'm assuming you're talking about delaying of filling positions uh Yes. Or or just even back feeling like if people go on leave for maternity leave or whatever, you know, and then then there really is no way uh to manage the work um in that area. But yes. Yeah. I would say it's a significant concern. Now, keep in mind the the goal is not to hold positions to save money. Correct. Uh the the goal is to hold positions to create opportunities. And with that in mind, the the soft the intentional soft freeze hasn't been on for that long, right? Pre- soft freeze that we weren't intentionally saying no. But there's an expectation that you take a look hard look for everybody. Hard look at your vacancy. Can you reshape the work? Can can you realign things? Is there a better way to do business? All those things are in play all the time. But yes, there there's a huge concern, especially with paid family medical leave, that when folks leave, there's still work to do. And what what is that elevated level? I think every organization from a public to private sector is concerned about that piece. Yeah. So, we do have some accounts to to address that and again, we we always uh try and leave the vacancy savings alone intentionally, but there there's a stock account or accounts, right? has uh Carrie has them. I I'm not sure. I think Heather, do you still have them? I think we consolidated most of them centrally. Uh but but those are in existence, right? So there's some assistance there and and in some cases, quite frankly, it's just so difficult to backfill it. That's not practical anyway. So So it just becomes this really difficult to manage concern that we think it's going to become greater and greater. No. And and and I get it. Um, in general, I appreciate um kind of all the work you've done and all the different ideas that you have on kind of managing this budget. I do think tax stabilization is is the key. Um, and people are do struggle like many people said to me, I don't mind paying taxes as long as I know what they're going for and I and I understand it and they're much more um open to more of a stable tax situation, which leads me to the um we really need to keep an eye on 2027 um throughout this budget crisis or this budget. I hate to use the word crisis, but that throughout this budget process, my concern is passing 2026 and then moving in and having the same kind of pressure on the organization through 2027, that's hard on an organization. So, trying as best we can to make decisions this year that will help us through next year, um I uh we'll just have to work together for that. And um one thing that I have learned in my almost 6 months um here because you know my password change is coming up again um is all the division directors are in this room and uh and administrator Henzy that you have an amazing team that will figure this out and um and we're here to help and and support you in in that process. So, you've shown kind of the thought you've put into this, how we're approaching it this year, and um you know, we'll get through this, but really kind of looking Yep. 2026 is our number one priority obviously, but we really need to keep an eye on 2027. Um so, so that we don't spend another year just focused mostly on the budget. We can continue to to move forward. So, good luck with that. No, I'm kidding. Thank you, Commissioner Herman. Yeah, thanks. I got a couple questions and a couple thoughts. One is, and if you don't have it now, this is more for freshmen than anything. Um, feel free to send it to me, but one question is, are we trending favorably to see relief on insurance, i.e., um, self-insured? I know we've been talking about that 12% is still a big number. um for this year we knew we're locked into that but are we trending to have our numbers better to consider self-insured I I can just generally comment on that we have a health insurance committee meeting Thursday right I wasn't able to attend the last session but uh we are not in a position to self self insure health insurance because of because of our risk and that's unfortunate right that's bottom line but we're keeping an Uh um yeah, keep an eye on we are we are selfinsuring dental much different story but learn next question I had because I oh sorry next question I had because I know it's going to come up in budget conversations if we want to kick the can on um on building upgrades etc is do we have a working number what our annual deferred maintenance cost is on the 600 building um also the building that's out in Lonia the first street center. Uh, and then also the DMVs, how much we're pumping into those buildings knowing that we have to replace them at some point. Good question. Good point. Uh, sounds like a task for Nick and company. I haven't seen those numbers. I've thought about those costs. You know, certainly we all think about why why would we stick money into this if we're going to, you know, uh, tear it down? And that's a big question. Are we going to tear it down and when? Uh, that's it. That's the 460 for this cycle. Is it 460? 450. Uh that's that's a question, right? And we need to revisit it. Uh Dick is Nick Nick is going to come back into the boardroom uh when you come back probably August. Okay. With an update. There's some some uh information he wants to share at that point. But it's a board decision. I I think eventually we're gonna have to do something. There's no question about it. Do you tear it down now or not? So, in my in my time on the board, we went from the DMVs producing about a million dollars of surplus to the last two years losing close to half a million bucks a year. And that doesn't include the fully loaded of cost of operating those buildings. They're now five, six years older. Um, and if we are looking at full capacity for this county, we'll either have to expand those or find another solution. I also think we're having conversations about if the state shifting to us. These are two of the uh services that are very popular among our residents. Uh but they're not ours to deliver necessarily if we're going to continue to take a a hit on them. And we know that a lot of the services within DMV are becoming digitized. For instance, myself, I no longer get my tabs in the at the location. I get them online. I think others are following suit. One more comment on that and then I'll I'll uh I'll talk about something else. Um, but have David in in the vein of furlow and and potential early retirement package or something of the sort, have we or any other counties um considered piloting a four week four day week? I think there would be some areas that we couldn't do that in, but there's other areas I think that would would make some potential sense and might also create an on-ramp for some of our um populations to consider working. It might not be competitive to 5 days, but maybe four days. I'm thinking people that are coming out of a, you know, full-time mom position, the kids are getting older, maybe they could come back. Have we export a 4-day work week opportunity for us to save money and staff to be to be more or less I'm not we don't have anything in the mixture intentionally right now. Carrie, do you want to comment on that? Good to differentiate us from other places that are trying to seek similar employees. I think that is one option that we could potentially explore and I would want to have conversation with management with the division directors. Um I think probably the the most significant potential drawback of that is that less work would be getting done and can a particular division or department withstand that reduction in the work or the service levels that would potentially go along with shrinking the work week. But I mean, I definitely think that that could be an option to consider and it may definitely be be attractive to some employees and candidates. Great. And then um the last thing I I have is um I think we talk about efficiency a lot. I think that we can make it efficient for our organization, our board, and particularly the budgeting process. um if the board kind of put out what the high water mark's going to be and I think I saw a slide one of the first slides was 12.7% was I don't know if that was suggested as a max levy or or whatnot. I I won't support 12.7 but I think it'd be efficient if we got a read on what the max levy for the board would be. I certainly don't think it'd be 50%. I don't think it'd be 40 or 30 or 20. But if we could hone in on that I think that our division heads would um maybe walk away with something with more tangibility. then we don't know because I think we we do know what that max will be. I think another form of efficiency I support um having a a zero net FTE increase year-over-year and possibly capture a 10 uh 10 headcount uh through natural attrition with no layoffs needed period. Um I think if we put a line in the sand on what that could be, we'd save a lot of time weeding through a list of 30 that I just don't think is even reasonable to put it on the table given our current financial situation. So, I for one I'm in favor of a net zero FTE U strategy for this year. Also, I know I've talked to a couple of other commissioners over the years. This may be the time to to maybe put some teeth into the potential of a three-year budget versus a one-year budget. I'm concerned about this year. I'm really concerned about next year. And if we had a three-year budget, look, it might take into account, we know we're going to have to go out to bid for uh health insurance. We know there's a new building that's supposedly going to be built or starting to be built. We know that there's union contracts and union negotiations. If we had a three-year look, I think it'd be efficient for us to consider. I also think it makes sense for us to consider uh zerobased budgeting this year, next year. Um I know it's a yman's task, but I think it's something that um if there's ever a time, now might be that time. And then finally, I've said this the last number of years, but I think we should wean off of vacancy savings. And I think one step in the right direction is is the division that's originating the vacancy savings should get half of whatever they originate because that does create burden and benefit for their organization. I think some people would say when somebody leaves, man, I'll take on that work. And there's other scenarios where if somebody leaves, they wouldn't take on that work. And so those are five areas I think that we could be efficient as a board if we wanted to um give direction to staff today um and not wait the two months until we see you guys next on the budget. Mr. Chair, uh, directions up to the board, but I put the, uh, levy increase chart on the screen. Again, I'm not suggesting you set any lines in the sand here, whether they're the high ones, low ones, in between ones, but these were to me pretty obvious uh, to put up on the screen, at least most of them. Closing the budget gap, pretty obvious to me. I I don't know. Well, maybe you want to go above that to prepare for 27. I doubt it, you know, g given the this is the request. Some some folks get confused by that. Remember, this is the request. This is not my recommendation, you know, for your consideration. So, uh the pattern that that's been the last two years, three years, two years, two years, two years be the third year if you want to reduce that. We sort of picked one in between the the new construction which would boy that would be nice wouldn't it but obviously you're you're reducing your levy significantly uh you know something between those two but yeah I mean that at at your uh direct uh discretion to provide direction I I think it's still wise to gather more information there's no rush on this I don't I don't see a need for you to to give that direction at this point uh but up to Well, I think we are looking ahead, but exactly what is it that we can do now to stave off a problem we don't know exists? I'm getting a little raspy for some reason. Um, what 2728 new FTE is kind of the wish list. I'm not sure I know exactly what those are. So, I'm not going to say zero to that unless I know exactly what they are. So, um we don't know again with the feds and possibly the state yet what we're in for for 26, let alone 27. And I think 27 is going to be worse. I think if we're in the eye of the storm, uh the legislature left a lot of uh un um they left a lot of business to be done on their budget. I think they showed us what it is they want to do to the counties. Uh we staved it off. I don't know if we will be able to next year. I think it'll become more of a reality next year. Um so um I think I think we are looking down that road. We know through HHS stuff that there's a lot of problems. Um so but I think I I think we need more detail. Um I I don't know if anybody on the board would disagree with me. We want a 0% levy increase. That goes without saying. That'd be great. We want to have half the employees that we currently have, etc. But so, uh, I I need a lot more detail here. We're we're just starting. I think the 12.7 is a good show or tell here on on where we're at. Um, it is it is not, I don't believe, where we're at. And so, sometime in early September, we'll know a lot more about that. So, we've got a few months to to to keep working at this. and I know we will. So that's it. I think it's definitely a process, Mr. Chair, as we continue to wait and continue to gain more information. And I think it is important for us to be prepared for these budget hearings where we can continue to hopefully ask the questions and get more detail on the additional FTDs for those departments. The the one strategy that kind of jumped out at me was that extending the life of equipment um if that included even some of the park inventory. I think we've been down that path with our park inventory and the the state of our equipment in our park system. Um so I don't think that's a good strategy. And then just looking back as my life on the school board and then city government that extending the life of equipment generally doesn't turn out very well in the long run because the resale value of that used truck at five years is a lot more valuable at five years than extending the life for another three or five more years. that whole resale value just almost disappears when it gets to be a 10-y old vehicle. So, those are just some general comments and just looking forward to the budget hearings. Commissioner Lynch, can we hear from Sure. Can we hear from Is Commissioner Lynch available? Does he have No, if he's still there. I am. Okay, good. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um um Commission or Administrator Hamley started out and he said this is the budget process is very hard to predict. I would have to agree with that wholeheartedly. I'd really like to thank um uh Dave for the uh the early 2025 early review, 2026 early review. Uh knowing that 2027 is going to be very very difficult and uh I think that we're still all the comments are basically about the same. We're gathering more information and uh it's it's really hard to fathom and I want to say this, you know, for the third time it's been mentioned twice that one individual is going to cost us a million dollars and I think we have to that came out of left field. So anyway, let's keep gathering more information and uh keep working forward and we'll uh as you said, Mr. Chair, we'll uh find out a lot more in September. So, thank you. All right, staff. Thank you very much. I think we got our work cut out for us and uh I'm looking forward to our deputies 4-day work week among others. Uh I feel like county government's a little more 247 uh than say a school district or something, but uh anyway, we all ideas are welcome. So anyway, thank you David. Thank you. Is that it? I think that's it. That's it. Free to go. All right.