a summer job. >> Good morning. We are going to convene the November 18th, 2025 Scott County Health Board meeting. [snorts] Uh we will wait reserve to do the pledge for the board meeting. No offense. Um uh item number two, we're going to look at approving the minutes from the May 20th, 2025 community health board minutes that we have had distributed before us. >> Make that motion. >> We have a motion. >> Second. >> We have a second. Any further discussion? Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. >> I. Okay, we're going to move on to item number 3.1. Receive a community health board report from the community health services administrator, public health staff, and the Scott County Medical Director. I see Lisa Brodzky coming. Good morning. >> Good morning, Commissioner Beer and Commissioners. Um, we are here for the community health board meeting and today I'm supposed to use the arrows. Right. There we go. Uh today we have a fun-filled agenda. Uh we're going to talk a list a little bit about public health nuisances. We are also going to introduce to you our new uh forward- facing uh performance measure dashboard and uh wrap up some information on our very long process of the community health assessment and our kickoff of the community health improvement plan and then um close with some infectious disease outbreak uh information about measles. And just a reminder, this meeting fulfills our statutory responsibility under 145A to meet as a community health board twice a year. It is uh one of our requirements um as a CHB. So, I thought uh since we had a little bit of time this morning, uh I would take uh a moment just to do an update on public health nuisances. We haven't talked about this for quite some time since we uh pretty much put the ordinance in place and I do have a little bit of data to share with you. Unfortunately, this data was accurate as of Tuesday and we already have another case. Mhm. >> Um and as you can see in 2025, um you know, it was a really good idea to put a public health nuisance ordinance in place back in 2016 when we had in 2017, we only had three. We had a handful of cases, three, four, five cases a year. Uh this year, we're already up to 19. One of those, however, wasn't in our county. that just included a consult um for [snorts] uh a meth house in another county uh that they asked us for some expertise but in the past 10 years we've had a hundred and as you can see we are skewing towards the higher end um I think uh there are several reasons for this um hoarding actually has been about a third of the cases uh some of the reasons for this I think COVID uh caused some trauma in our community and I think we've seen more uh cases since co um we have more boots on the ground. We have been getting more um recommendations. We've been bringing being brought in in coordinated response. Um I think that's actually an effective way of uh getting people um out there and being able to see what some of the things that we miss. Um we are getting more referrals uh from a variety of different places. Um but uh overall um we are definitely skewing towards the higher end. Uh particularly this year I would guess since we're already at 19 I think we'll hit 20. Um there are one or two that are still brewing out there that I've hearing rumblings about but they haven't made an official referral yet. We really try and work with the families or any kind of community support before it rises to the level um where I have to go in and declare a public health nuisance. This is just some of the areas that we're getting referrals from. Uh often the police department gets a call or gets they notice they bring us in where they say, you know, we went to the house. There's just a lot of clutter. We could barely get in. Um or there's a vulnerable adult in the home and they had some concerns. Building inspectors, rental housing, um family members even. Can you can we've gotten calls, can you help my mom or my senior relative? We know that they're struggling with this, particularly if they're living out of town. I've had a couple calls from relatives out of town with concerns about family members and asking if there's some support that we can get them. >> M Mr. Chair. >> Yeah. Uh Lisa, so when you get all these referrals, do you have an idea of what what percentage of referrals actually turn into a public health nuisance? Because I'm sure you get a lot of referrals that you decide. That would be interesting. Um, I would have to c I would have to go back and see what percentage I'm guessing. And Jody, I'm thinking I would swag it at about 25 to 40%. We often um we get a lot of calls about mold and we don't go out for mold anymore. We give them information um on how to get rid of it, how to address it. The only time we go out is if it's a vulnerable adult or it's a rental unit and they're not addressing it. Um, we get calls on restaurants and we don't handle restaurants, but we'll count them as a nuisance call, but we refer those to Minnesota Department of Health. Um, so [snorts] in some cases, too, the police have photos. Uh, we might not go out on there, but um, maybe it's closer to 40 to 50% honestly, but we can go back and calculate that for you. I just think it's important for folks to know that, you know, we're not zealously everybody who says there might be a public health nuisance that we march in there. You evaluate if it truly is and if it's not something that we need to deal with, we don't >> 100%. For example, I received an email the other day about a property. Um, we immediately drove by. It's a nuisance, but it's not a public health nuisance. And that's a very important distinction. um nuisances really should be addressed by the city. Um if it's clutter in the lawn, if it's um excessive garbage, uh storing materials outside, for example, that's a that's a nuisance, but it's not a public health nuisance. In order for it to reach a public health nuisance, um per our ordinance, it has to have some impact on a person's health. So, if there was a lot of standing water, that could be um where mosquitoes could hatch and and that would cause a public health nuisance. If there's a lot of food being stored outside that attracts uh mice, it you know, and raccoons, etc., because those those types of things don't just stay on the property, right? They they don't respect that property line. Um so, certain things being stored outside might rise to a public health nuisance. a fridge outside would be a public health nuisance because it would provide it would um contaminate uh the ground. But um there is a very big distinction and we've had several that have been on the cusp where they've had a lot of materials outside and I would come in and say, "Okay, you need to get rid of the paint, you need to get rid of the fridge, you need to get rid of these five things, but I really don't have any jurisdiction if they have eight bikes outside." Thank you for that question. Um let's here's just some actions taken uh in the past since he put the um order in place. I've only actually done a cleanout order where we said we need to bring in some trucks and and get rid of stuff. We've only done that twice. Um and that was both with the person the household's consent. Um we have um assisted with providing them with a trash bin. So, it could be just that an incentive for them. They had a lot of debris. We'll get you a trash bin if you clean this up. We've done that a couple of times. Uh, often we provide best practices on followup and followup. So, if there's mice, um, if there's cockroaches, we've connected them with services that will help um, eradicate those, gone in to check. We've provided information about storing materials. In a couple of cases, I provided some um food storage bins because that was the problem that was c that was attracting um vermin um etc. And we do a lot of connecting with resources. And this is just a picture to remind you. This is trigger warning. Um we're not talking about and I know where there was a concern when we put the nuisance law in place. We're not talking about someone doesn't want to pick up their laundry or it's a little bit of dirt. Typically, um it's uh extreme extreme extreme cases where there's zero egress. Uh the many of the rooms are not usable. The stove isn't working. They can't cook. Um so that's an extreme example. Here's another one. This is someone's backyard on the left. Uh where there's just a lot of debris and material. There was raccoons here. There was uh mice here, etc. a lot of moldy food and rotting food that was uh actually been out there for quite a long time. This was one of our cities that had been struggling with this property for almost 10 years before we were able to come in, declare a public health nuisance, and get it cleaned up pretty quickly. Um the one on the right is a newer one. Uh you can see that there's um mouse feces on the stove and in the pots that they're using to cook. So just a couple examples just to remind people that this is extreme. It's not that it just bothers us a little bit. We really are trying to help people. And these are just some of the lessons learned that we've uh since we put the nuisance law in place. They are very very complex. I don't just typically go in once and say this is a public health nuisance. Get it cleaned up and we're done. In that one case that you saw a photo of with the debris in the backyard that required almost 10 visits. Um, it often involves mental health issues more often than not. I could probably get a percentage of uh for you on that as [clears throat] well. And it often requires a multid-disciplinary approach. We're going out now um more than once, but we also go out with adult protection, child welfare, uh building inspectors, police. So, uh last time we went out, there was five of us on the visit. The cases are throughout the county. They are not isolated to one city. every one of your jurisdictions has had cases and uh most of the ones that we've had have involved homeowners uh versus rental properties. Quite a few rental properties, but I would say the the the bigger ones, the ones that have required uh multiple visits, multiddisciplinary approaches have been homeowners. And we have learned that the nuisance ordinance has been a very effective tool. It does tend to light a fire um under people where I I don't even have to declare one. I can say, you know, we can declare a public health nuisance and help you do the cleanup. Often it it does um at least um give the person an incentive to seek help for their issue. I am going to now turn it over to uh Yelena Tron and she's going to talk about public health performance measure dashboard. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good morning. >> Good morning. [clears throat] Oops. Lisa, does it is it the link? Do I just click this? >> It should be theoretically. >> Yes. >> All right. So, another part of our public health responsibility and accreditation is to um [clears throat] excuse me, track our programs performance um to make sure that we are doing the things that our programs are supposed to do and we're helping the people it's supposed to help. Um so, as part of this, we track um a a lot of different measures within our programs. Um, and one thing that we are now working on is making this data available to the public, transparent to the public, so that they can see the work that all of Scott County public health staff are doing. Um, so this was a dashboard that was recently built and it is intended to be visible to the public. So it will be forward- facing on our website. Um, it is our performance management public health perform program measures dashboard. Um, so this dashboard is intended to give the public a snapshot of the work that public health programs are doing and I'm just going to highlight a couple different programs for you today. Um, this dashboard is very interactive. Um, so this is the substance use prevention program. Um, and it gives uh community members, uh, local leaders, partners, whoever wants to view the dashboard a glimpse of the program and the work that it does. Um, you can view different uh program measures that we have available. For example, the community readiness to change score if you were unsure anything about the community readiness to change score. You can highlight uh a question mark help tool and learn more about it. Um, as you scroll, you can see more data. We track data over years. Um, and we have a lot of different program data. Another program I want to highlight is the family health page. Um, so this one you can actually filter if you'd like to look at the percent of children who are up to date on immunizations and you can uh select multiple measures at once. So I'll talk we'll talk a little bit more about this later when we go into the community health improvement plan. Um, but this is just a way to make our program measures very visible to the community. So, if they have questions about it or want to learn more about the work we're doing, um, this is following suit with other counties that are also doing performance measure and performance management dashboards. Um, so happy to answer questions about it at the end, but this will be available um on our website shortly. Do you know how to go back to the slideshow? >> Do you know how to go back to the slideshow? >> Okay. >> In the meantime, th this will be forward facing for the public. Is this something you would also use internally to for your measurements or you use a different tool and which populates this and or both? I guess. >> Yes. So, we use this internally as well. Each of the programs have their own um Excel spreadsheet that I review with them um annually um sometimes more than annually if we need to review program measures. Um so I'll meet with each program and we'll review the measures and decide if they're still relevant um and update the data. So this is something we use both internally and externally. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. What did you say about when that's going to be Elena? Um, about when can we expect that to be on the website for the public? >> So, I'm just reviewing the I just want to make sure that it accurately reflects each program. So, I'm going through with each coordinator to make sure it reflects the data that they want to present, the information is correct, and everything like that. So, it should be by the end of the year. It should be up there. >> That's great. And we'll we'll get some notice of that, I assume. >> Yes. Thank you. Good morning. >> Good morning, Commissioner Beer Commissioners. Uh my name is Natalie Halverson. I'm a public health supervisor and I'll be co-presenting with Elena uh again on our community health assessment and [clears throat] how we're wrapping that work up and transitioning to our community health improvement plan for the next five years. So really moving from the assessment phase to to the action phase of this work. [clears throat] So this slide really um explains the why we do this work. Um as Lisa mentioned earlier uh under the Minnesota Local Public Health Act, it requires community health boards and local public health departments to conduct a community health assessment and develop a community health improvement plan at least every 5 years. And we um do this work using a framework from the National Association for City and County Health Officials known as MAP which stands for mobilizing for action through planning and partnerships. Um just of note that this work does align with the national public health accreditation standards set by the public health accreditation board which helps improve our department's quality of services uh that we deliver to the community. This um infographic really shows um all of the the various inputs into the process and how we identified the top health issues for our community health improvement plan for the next five years. We leveraged over 90 multis- sector community partnerships in in this process. Uh we conducted a variety of assessments and surveys. We did a community health survey last summer and we had over 650 residents complete that survey. We also conducted a partner survey with nonprofits in 28 organizations across the county completed that survey which really helped inform the needs that they're seeing in their constituents. We pulled together a variety of sources of data, both local and state, and some federal sources and reviewed that data as well. And um through our context work, we hosted a series of community conversations or focus groups, if you will, with eight um different populations and communities across the county. We also held um key informant interviews with community leaders and and conducted five of those. And then we held a series of action planning uh sessions with various stakeholder groups. Um we had staff complete uh a gap analysis and reviewed community assets through that environmental scan. Um we worked in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Health to analyze the data that we uh collected and then we went through um a process of identifying various uh criteria by which to run the um all of the needs that we were seeing um to identify um how we would rate and rank those to get to our top three issues if you will. So through that process um we identified the the three main issues that you see on the screen at the bottom which are substance use and mental health, chronic disease prevention and management and then lastly access to health care, housing and transportation. [clears throat] Uh Lisa mentioned this has been a lengthy process and it has it's been almost two years in the making. We started in Q1 of last year where we developed our steering committee and began to um pull together data. We held a data walk with our community health improvement committee. Uh Commissioner Beer, you you may recall you were there. >> I recall. Um that's when we uh began to um also engage our partners through the the partner assessment um and uh held various meetings with stakeholder groups like the community health um uh resource council the this board we've presented um updates to you now this is the fourth time um in seeking feedback and again going through that process of identifying needs and then um figuring out how to prioritize them and get to our top ones for the next five years. And that leads us to where we are today, which is finalizing this work um and presenting the community health improvement plan that we're proposing for the next five years. And um moving forward, we'll work on implementation um and um assessment and refining that work as we move forward. This slide just shares with you um again what the top three health issues are along with key themes that we found through this process and who the priority populations or groups of our community that are being most um impacted by these health issues. So starting with substance [clears throat] use and mental health. Some of the key themes there are that mental health conditions are becoming more prevalent in our community. Uh drug and opioid overdoses remained high. Um, we're seeing deaths on the decline. Um, but overdoses do remain high. Stigma and lack of culturally appropriate resources and providers um are barriers to getting care in uh in our communities. The priority populations are youth um specifically around cannabis and vaping. Moving on to chronic disease prevention and management. The themes there are that chronic disease prevalence is slowly increasing especially um those linked to risk behaviors such as fewer of our students are eating fruits and vegetables are exercising daily. Priority populations in this group are older adults, our aging communities and then also individuals um in unhealthy environments or with unhealthy if you will lifestyles. [clears throat] Finally, access to health care, housing and transportation. The themes there are that the costs of health care and housing are rising considerably and there's a lack of um affordable housing [clears throat] availability. Transportation is a key driver of health outcomes and then there's differences in access which lead to health disparities in our communities. Priority populations within this health issue are rural adults, older adults, and then vulnerable and underresourced individuals. And here's where I'll we'll turn it briefly back to Elena to talk about our data dashboard. >> Okay, dashboards again. Um, so Natalie mentioned that we did our community health survey in 2024. Um, I believe I've shared this with you already, but our community health survey dashboard is live on our website. This contains the results of the community health survey. Um, and you can view the results by demographic groups. Um, this was an effort to kind of give the data back to the residents who participated in the survey. And it's also can be a helpful tool for local leaders or partners who are hoping to learn more about um, the health of their community. Um, and like I just shared, our public health performance management dashboard is complete and soon to be published. Um, I'm also working on a couple more dashboards that will kind of comprise a series of dashboards that represent uh Scott County demographics and Scott County health. Um, and these include a population level uh dashboard that track the um indicators that we collected data on through our CHIP process as well as data on our students through the Minnesota student survey. Quick question. The the the survey, how were those distributed? Like what what was that process? And >> so we did a convenience um sample survey, which means that we went out into the community to a variety of different locations and events. We went out to libraries, community resource centers, food shelves. Um we tracked uh it was during the summer, so we tracked summer events that were happening and went to those. Um and then we also distributed it online through partners. So we ask partners to distribute it to um residents that they work with. >> Great. Thanks. >> Okay. Here's where we will transition to our action planning phase. um the community health improvement plan and we've developed a vision for our CHIP which is the 2025 to 2030 community health improvement plan will guide efforts to improve the health and well-being of all Scott County residents by fostering safe, healthy and livable communities through evidence-based strategies, strong partnerships, and community focused services. We've identified a goal for each of the um health issues. Um so I will run through those briefly. Under substance use and mental health, our goal is to support mental well-being and reduce substance use through social connection action access to care, early intervention and harm reduction strategies for chronic disease prevention and management. Our goal is to promote health and longevity by preventing and managing chronic diseases through access to nutritious foods, healthy [clears throat] environments, preventative care, and supportive services that promote healthy lifestyles. And finally, access to health care, housing, and transportation has a goal of to address the root causes of health by improving access to affordable and timely health care, safe and stable housing, and reliable transportation. And here's where I'll turn it back to Elena who will walk you through our objectives in each of the areas. Um, so we developed these objectives with input from from community partners through our community health improvement committee and we also cross referenced them um to make sure that they aligned with the county strategic plan and with the Minnesota healthy partnership statewide health improvement framework um which is like kind of their version of the CHA chip. Um so for the first priority issue substance use and mental health um just a quick overview of the different levels community individual and systems. Um these are just reflecting the capacity of the objective to affect change at that level. Um and each level is interconnected and um if we set objectives at each level we can have the greatest impact across the community. Um so for the first issue, substance use and mental health, our first objective focuses on early intervention um and primary prevention efforts. And we're really focusing on youth. So um focusing on implementing strategies that prevent risky behaviors um reduce access to substance use um and expanding youthled programs. For the second objective at the individual level, we focus on increasing awareness and access to mental health and substance use services in the community. um with one of our strategies focusing on um uh working with the integrated health center. And the third objective, we want to work with partners, especially those that are schools or you serving organizations um to develop to to develop best practice substance use policies and mental health education. Our second priority issue, chronic disease prevention and management. Um the first objective at the community level, we're focusing on building and maintaining healthy community environments where people have access to nutritious foods and safe spaces for physical activity. Um and that's where our policy systems and environmental PSSE changes come in. The second objective at the individual individual level, our objective focuses on developing um educational materials that promote healthy lifestyles for all for individuals of all ages and abilities. And the third objective focuses on expanding our food access network. We have a really great food access network in place already. How can we expand on this um expand its reach and uh expand resource sharing for collective impact? And the third priority issue, healthc care, housing and transportation. Our objectives focus on addressing the barriers to accessing these services. Um at the individual level, our strategies will look more at the feasibility of expanding community- based services like mobile clinics and community health workers. And at the third level, we want to continue to bring a public health perspective to coalitions, workg groups, councils, um, where we can advocate for affordability, connectivity, and supportive policies for residents in these areas. So, that was a highle overview of our objectives and our strategies underneath these objectives. Um, we didn't include them all in here because there are a lot of them. um and our action teams that will be developed are going to focus more on selecting the strategies that [clears throat] work best for them. But at a high level, our strategies reflect at the community level. We're focusing on upstream strategies that prevent um [clears throat] adverse health health outcomes from occurring by building healthier environments. Um at the individual level, we want to make services easier to access through community- based models and resource navigation support. So bringing services to residents, meeting them where they are. Um and at the systems level, we want to strengthen our public health and our community capacity to to improve health through advocacy, trainings, partnerships, and resource sharing. And then another part is driving decisions with data. Um, we really want to focus on using health data to guide our decision-m and measure our outcomes. And at the bottom, I just want to highlight that all these strategies rely on partnership and collaboration. Um, no single organization, including public health, can achieve these goals alone. Um, so we really need to focus on engaging with local leaders, nonprofits, and residents um to achieve success. Okay. Okay. And lastly is our plan for how we provide some structure to move this plan forward within public health. Um it's only a good plan if you [clears throat] do something with it and doesn't go on a shelf and gets dusty for the next 5 years. So we've already developed an internal coordination team that's going to um lead these workg groupoups that Elena mentioned. Um but at the top of our structure we have the community health board um who holds us accountable in this work. We have our chaip steering committee which is Elena and myself and um we also engage um our community health improvement committee or CHIC and our public health leadership team in this work throughout the year. And then um as I mentioned, our new CHIP coordination team, which will be staffed by, um community health specialists and planners from um our health promotion team at public health. And that work just kicked off this week. And um they are planning to build out their work groups with community partners who are interested in moving this work forward um over the next year to five years. And um they will be kicking off their work groups in Q1 of uh next year. So that's um our presentation and we um welcome any questions and first I do want to acknowledge the work of the team. It's like it's been a heavy lift over the last couple years. many in this in in this room have been involved in various points. And um we also had Fatima Ali who who was our uh public health core member for a year and a half of this work and she did a lot of the outreach uh for the focus groups um and uh key informant interviews and then we also had Olivia Balfens who was a public health intern last summer who led the community health survey in our community. So I want to just take a moment to acknowledge their efforts in this in this work. Well, and I was going to ask what the the expression on her face uh in one of those pictures, but she's but she's not here. She >> Yes. Her term of service with us ended. >> She's very expressive in that picture. Yeah. >> This is going to sound like a fish commercial. >> Okay. Hey, let's let's let's get her rolling. >> First of all, Fish is working going to be working aggressively to energize our all that we do. But I'm thinking of the second Thursday meeting, which is a a gathering of the nonprofit, service groups, local business, the faith community, and business. And uh it does seem to me that we've got three potential topics here that could be for a second Thursday meeting if it was presented in clear u layman's terms. You know, with accessible resources, you know, the topic would be your your priority issues, substance use and mental health. That's powerful topic. Same with prevention of chronic disease and and management of chronic disease and also access to healthcare transport housing and transportation. So I'm just throwing that out there as a possibility of a series, you know, a three-part series. Okay, that's the end of my fish commercial. >> Nice. Nice. >> Mr. Chair, thank you. Thank you, Natalie and team. Um, I just want a little more context on the workg groups. Are there community members on them? some of our organizations. Can we be helpful at all in thinking of people um to be in those those work groups? >> Yes, thank you for that question. Um so our plan right now since we just identified who will be um coordinating each of those teams um will be to reach out first to our community health improvement committee members. we have about 90 people on that um distribution list and um to send them a survey to opt in to participating in any or all of of the work groups and many have already said that they would be interested. Um and from there um we have many connections already in our community because most of our staff sit on various coalitions across the community. So we'll be tapping into those relationships that we have and then also identifying where are the gaps, who else should be involved in those work groups, who has resources, who is already doing this work and then doing personal invitations to them. Um so if if there's members that you all are thinking about already that might want to be involved or you yourselves want to be involved, please reach out to me and let me know. >> Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. I think about sometimes folks we have apply to other advisory councils who have an interest or a experience in this type of thing uh through the volunteer program and then let's make sure that as appropriate because I I don't know if you know where's the line on these partners and collaborators we work with and then when they serve on a counselor are they volunteers or not and again not just to be counting the numbers but I I think let's be consistent um in in that it might be something to look that and that probably just opened a can of worms. [laughter] >> Way to way to keep the viewers coming back for more. >> Anyone else? >> Otherwise, thank you very much for the presentation. >> Turn it over to Dr. Wilcox. >> Here he comes. >> Good morning. >> Well, good morning, commissioners. Great to be back. nice opportunity for us to review some areas of concern in infectious disease and management of in particular the red measles virus the old >> well now wait a minute Lisa said this was going to be a fun presentation so now now we're getting to the measles part is that okay okay got it >> this is what I was asked to talk about commissioner >> we can get Will Cox to do it [laughter] well >> let me say it's good to be back and it's great to have an opportunity to interact with you folks relative to infectious disease and uh this issue in particular of the red measles virus that is uh a daunting challenge for us not only in our county but nationally and uh also to some degree internationally. This is what we're talking about. If you looked at a ruba virus under a micron microscope, this is what it would look like. This is the culprit that we're going to be talking about during the remainder of our presentation here this morning. Brings us to again a discussion and I believe we've talked about some of this in the past, but I think it it bears review once again. What is measles? What is red measles? I can tell you for sure it is a highly contagious viral illness. It is transmitted quickly and easily spread. It spreads through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or uh exchanges these droplets in some sort of an air transmission process. Now, this virus can hang around for a while. It can stay in the air for extended periods of time and it can end up on surfaces nearby and it can live on those surfaces for up to two hours after it drops onto these surface areas. So it is highly infectious and easily transmitted. Now the problem is once this virus gets into the human body, it moves quickly through the bloodstream and affects several different organ systems within the human body. It can cause ear infections. The really bad one is it can get in the lungs and cause pneumonia which can cause significant need for hospitalization, morbidity, and mortality. It can also get into the brain, the central nervous system and cause an inflammation of the brain which we describe as an encphylitis type of problem. [sighs] Now in a major group of especially the most vulnerable individuals who pick up this virus, it can lead to death and major disability. And what we're talking about there in particular are young children, especially those below the age of two. We're talking about pregnant females also significant problem there. We're talking about individuals who are immune compromised in some fashion getting chemotherapy for perhaps uh cancer and various other types and we're talking about uh elderly folks in particular who have immune compromise simply as they become older individuals. It also, interestingly enough, affects all of our immune systems and it kind of puts our immune systems to sleep. It's called an immune amnesia problem that can last within these patients for an extended period of time. So, it leaves us all technically who get this virus in a state where we are becoming more vulnerable to infections of various types and that is truly problematic as well. So, you know, measles isn't just a rash. Measles is not just a red rash. It can be dangerous and it is especially difficult issue to deal with in the very young, the very old and the immune compromised as I have suggested. Now, how does it present itself folks? How does it present itself? Well, for the first three to four or five days, it's kind of an immune uh it's kind of a silent culprit. Let's put it that way. Maybe a little bit of a cough, maybe a little bit of a runny nose. And then when day three to four hits, you get a high temp, 104, not uncommon, at a degree in temperature. You get a cough. The runny nose continues, can hit the eyes. You can end up with what we call a keratoc conjunctivitis problem. It causes major inflammation of the eyes. is you have tearing sometimes ulcerations of the eyes can occur and then following that you get this red rash that presents itself over 3 to 5 day period of time within the first development of these symptoms. So that's how it presents itself. Now as we are looking at this problem now let me say this years ago we thought we'd gotten rid of this virus. We thought it was gone nationally internationally. Well, it's back and as we look at it now in our country, these are the statistics as of late October that we're presently dealing with with ruba red measles in our country. There are 1648 cases documented. It has hit 42 jurisdictions within our country and it involves 33 outbreaks in the year 2025 up to this point. Now, if you look at who's getting this virus, 27% are under age five. 12% of these cases end up with a need for hospitalization. 92% of cases were unvaccinated or it was a question of when they got vaccinated. And sadly, three of them have died. Three of these vulnerable individuals have passed away because of this virus and the infection that it [clears throat] caused within their human bodies. Now, what does that mean in Minnesota? Where are we at in our state right now? Well, as of the 31st of October, we have had in this state 23 cases. it uh as of the 31st was found in five counties. Zero outbreaks in 2025, but 30% of the individuals who got this virus in Minnesota were under five. So that age group got hit harder in our state than it did nationally. 20% of these cases were hospitalized. Again, that's higher than the national average, sadly. and 95% of cases were unvaccinated or was unknown what their vaccine status was. Now, fortunately, up to this point, we haven't had any kids die. We haven't had any young people die within our state. But [clears throat] if this continues to progress, and it looks like it is spreading, we will eventually end up with death and disability in some of our younger people within our state as well. Sadly, the average age at which this virus seems to present itself is about 11 peers. The counties within our state so far that have gotten this virus, we there are four listed there. We've just added a fifth. Dakota, Henipin, Ramsey, Washington, Scott, Scott County within the last few days had its first case of uh measles uh within our county. Where did this come from? Well, the one that we got it in this county came from a travel overseas, but 30% of the time it hits in families and in household settings. So, if somebody in the household gets it or a family member's got it, it's going to transmit it to other members of that family and loved ones nearby. 20% of these cases in Minnesota have been hospitalized and 100% of these hospitalizations were in young five underage five years were the ones that ended up hospitalized uh in our state for virus type >> Mr. Dr. Wilox. >> Yes. >> So these people were mainly related and >> yes >> did not have immunization >> that is correct >> from this deal. >> That is correct. >> Huh. >> Yeah. And even the one in Scott, were they related to one of these? >> This one was ca, this occurred because of a travel overseas and they were unvaccinated, >> you know. So now it's back. Now it's in the family. Now it's spreading around within the family, within loved ones nearby, within their communities, you know, they were unaware they had this. It could spread that virus very quickly within that 3 to 5 day window. Are there are there countries in in in the world that are having big outbreaks or it's yeah >> it's more likely to be a problem? >> That's a good question to [clears throat] I would say yes. Uh we tend to see this more often in third world countries can tell you that uh we're seeing it more often for example in Africa East Africa and uh Western African countries as an example but we see it Southeast Asia too. I mean you see it in uh Philippines, those areas as well, Malaysia and so on. >> Canada actually just lost their um their vaccine or what is that called the status of of it being eliminated. Sorry. So Canada up until recently had eliminated measles, but now they've lost that status. >> Oh, that voice may have carried. It was a good It was a good >> So Canada has lost their status. So even just north of us, it's endemic and we're looking at the potential that the US will lose their status of elimination also. >> I have one more question if I could. Growing up um [snorts] >> generations if they went through the normal vaccine kind of protocol for school and all that stuff, would we have all gotten a measles vaccination at somewhere along the way. I mean, in the normal protocols of >> Yeah, I would say this. If we would have been if if we would have had the opportunity when we were growing up to be vaccinated against this virus, there would be a 97% chance we would not get measles. 97% chance we would not get >> Okay, let's just say baby boomers, have they likely gotten the vaccine somewhere along the way if they went through the normal or not? Listen, I'm I'm a baby boomer and I got measles. You know what I'm saying? I I had measles as a child when I was 10. >> Okay. >> You know what I'm saying? I had red measles because they did not have a vaccine available for me at the time. >> Okay. >> Right. >> I kind of think I did too, but I'm, you know, I can't recall, you know, [snorts] for sure. >> MS, measles, chickenpox, you know what I'm saying? >> Yeah. All those >> all those things. So, here's the re. Okay. So, we talk about, okay, why is it now endemic in Canada again? Why is it going to become endemic in our country? Again, this is the reason folks. Annual immunization status report. Now, if if we could achieve an immunization status percentage of around 95% 94.6% that would highly prevent the spread of this virus to other vulnerable individuals within our society. But as you can see, since 2019, there's been a steady decline in vaccinations for our young. And if this could, which right now here in Scott County, it's at 84.8%. We needed to get up around 94.6% or higher in order to prevent this from becoming endemic within our society, within our county. We aren't anywhere close to that, folks. We are not anywhere close to that. So we need to continue to educate our people, our citizens the importance of prevention of this illness by getting properly vaccinated when you are young. >> I do have another question if I could. >> Okay. I just recall as a little kid >> going to school there was a whole bunch of required you know shots, vaccines, whatever. >> Y >> and I know there's some of that now. Is is measles a required vaccination for school age children? >> There's a deal on that. It is. But if a parent declines their child getting vaccinated, they don't need to get vaccinated. That is the problem. That is part of the problem. Can tell you that. And we're talking right now about red measles, folks. You know, this this is how you this is what we got to do. You got to get two MMR vaccinations. This will achieve 97% immunity to this virus. You get it initially around 12 months and another hit four to five years of age. You get two do you can get two doses within a very short period of time if you want to head this off in a community where you're dealing with this thing endemically right now. >> Can I ask Dr. Wilox? >> Sure. when I was in early in school. Now, this is I whenever, but um >> a while ago, >> a couple of weeks ago, >> two nurses would come into the gym and everyone would just get into the gym and each nurse had a needle. >> You just >> with that same needle just pop everybody with some >> That's true, by the way. And everybody knows it. Or they had do they do that anymore where they get >> round everybody up and more viewers? Yeah. Sorry, but that's what they used to do. They John, you remember that? Come on. They had one >> since they did that. But they used to they used to take like a compressor and like blow something your right. That's true. They did that in the military, too. Here's the thing. >> I'm not wrong. >> Here's here's the thing, though, folks. I mean, they no longer do that. >> Okay. But, you know, I can tell you uh when [clears throat] when polio was we talked about measles here, but when polio was still around and it's still coming back uh in the 50s when we had no vaccine against polio, I can I can I I can relate to you that my my parents were so concerned I was going to get polio when August came around that we had to isolate me from parties and various other things. And when the sock vaccine came available, they couldn't get me into that gymnasium faster fast enough to get that vaccine. >> So it was a gymnasium. >> It was a gymnasium and they lined us up. >> That was one needle. >> I don't know about that, but I know we got we got the vaccine. >> Was it one? >> Can I was two versus two needles. So the other thing too is is that type of thing would happen when there is an outbreak because I remember that too that um when I was in elementary school and someone got measles then they would bring all the kids in. Um the other thing that happened um so I'm just a tish over 60. But when um when I was young I got my first MMR before I was 12 months old. What they found out as you know we later research continue research continue looking at things when you're before 12 months old you have enough circulating um immunity from your mom that the vaccine didn't have the effect that we needed. So that's why they changed the the schedule to do it 12 months or after then we got that 93% immunity with the first one and then 97 with the second. >> Huh. Okay. These are great questions, by the way. Uh, anything any questions of me that I haven't covered for you today? >> Well, well, this is certainly one of those flashback moments to, uh, the co days, that's for sure. Um, >> so trying to, you know, this is a very neutral question. I know can these things can um, rear up on feel like we're living on two sides of an aisle. This is trying to be, this is an aisle question, right? is part of the issue or and and um two open ears and an open mind. um is part of the issue well co exposed a lot of things rightly or wrongly with vaccinations for for newborns and and you know toddlers is the stack of vaccines required these or suggested slash required these days like incredibly higher than even I'll say 20 years ago not not when he was in school that might have been 21 years yeah 10 10 years >> that gives some folks pause because the number is just like so crazy >> or I shouldn't use that word but very high like what what what's your feeling on that and again this is trying to be a neutral question because it's it's not meant to be >> my thought is this I mean I think we've had more and more opportunities to develop vaccines that would head off illnesses of this type early in a patient's life and my thought is bring them on I want to prevent this ill these illnesses from occurring ing in folks as they become older. So bring them on. Now to be sure also uh the co virus the co virus vaccine was a different type of vaccine than what we're talking about with MMR. This was this MMR vaccine has been developed over many years of research and the way it has been produced is different from what the COVID vaccine was the messenger RNA type of thing. So these vac this vaccine is different than what the covid vaccine has been. >> Yeah. And I I didn't mean any uh you know comparison between that. It's just that that that really brought vaccinations to the forefront that haven't been for a while. That that's just and I know that this question you know has already made people bristle and murmur under their breath prevention and which I get. I get it. >> But living in the world we live in you talked about education. So, >> you know, you're brought up in this world. They couldn't rush in fast enough to get, you know, whatever it was. I do remember standing in a church to get a It did seem like a pneumatic >> some sort of a something um some uh I don't know if it was one, but it could have been. Who knows? So, so there's, you know, we need to figure out what's the best way to bring education for everybody. I mean, folks in this room probably have a very different view and there's folks on the outside that maybe have a different view. So, how do we >> right walk together? >> My thought is this. I think if you have a question, you you should talk to your provider of patient care to work through your concerns about the this type of vaccine or whatever. Talk to them. They are the ones who have done the research on this and they're the experts. They can help you work through that. >> Yeah, >> that's what you got to do. >> Question. >> I I Yeah, I want to describe something and then I want you to speak to this. >> Okay. Yeah, let's say you got a person that's pretty much [clears throat] gotten all the co vaccines that were available [snorts] >> when they were available and done the whole thing and >> now they're going I'm hearing more uh problems with, you know, heart issues or some outcomes that are not great as a result of the vaccine. They're maybe a little reluctant to keep getting the vaccines. What would you say to that person? Well, I think you have to work through uh where you at in your life uh related to possibly developing significant outcomes from developing a COVID viral infection. [snorts] [clears throat] Now, I am over the age of 65. I am a vulnerable adult and in my mind's eye, I need all the vaccinations I can get to prevent that kind of illness from hitting me hard. See what I'm saying? It depends upon, I think, your age. It depends upon your health status as you look at this and that's where it's important for you to achieve some counsel with your provider of patient care. Talk to your doctor or your nurse practitioner or your PA about is this a good thing for me to do now in my life or not and expect them to give you good counsel about this is something you should do. This is something that maybe you you should double check on yourself. >> Okay. Thank you, >> Jerry. >> It's a good word. Yep. Anyone else? Otherwise, thank you very much. Appreciate. Good to see you. >> All right. If there's no other questions, not seeing anyone. Otherwise, we will move to uh item number four, adjournment. >> So, move. >> We have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? Oh, we got some discussion. >> I didn't have a question. I just didn't have a question. I just wanted to give a couple shout outs. Uh Lisa brought to my attention quite a while ago about the social host ordinance and that it didn't um cover marijuana and other illicit drugs. So um to her credit, she kept on me and then we finally uh got that change and the board signed that a few meetings ago. So just want to give a shout out to Lisa and thank her for uh keeping my uh keeping that on on on my sites. Also, Emily and her people, they're uh they're great partnership with Choose Not to Use. They always show up at our events and support us and and get their uh get their information out. So, I just wanted to acknowledge that. Great. Thank you very much. All right, we have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. I. >> We are adjourned. All right. We are going to count uh call the Scott County ditch board meeting for November 18th, 2025 in session. Uh item number two, we are going to approve the minutes of the October 21st, 2025 ditch board which we had distributed. Um I think we have them actually before us. Are there any changes or additions or what is your pleasure there? >> I'll make the motion to approve the uh minutes. >> All right, we have a motion. >> Second. >> We have a second. Is there any discussion? >> Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. >> All right, minutes are approved. Moving on to item number 3.1, a continuation of the public hearing on county drainage ditch number four. And uh maybe this is the time to look down uh to my right for any introductions. >> Mr. Chair, thank you very much. Uh commissioners, uh before Chris starts, I just want to recap where we've been. So the proceedings that we're in right now started uh with a landowner request to abandon uh ditch number four, which is also Credit River. During the course of those proceedings that have been continued over multiple uh days, over multiple months now, um we did have discussions with and were approached by the city of Credit River regarding the potential to transfer ditch number four to the city of Credit River for future uh management consistent with their authorities for storm water and other water resource management within the city limits. uh as part of that request, they wanted to see certain conditions uh achieved on the drainage system. Um and so there are some conditions on the drainage system that will be discussed today um that the SWCD has identified. I think what we'll find if we have uh more uh detailed discussions about those conditions is that the majority of those conditions occur not because of the ditch um being managed as a ditch but because of activities that are occurring off of the ditch. So for example, there is a ravine area uh that is eroding that continues to erode and deliver sediments to the drainage system. that has nothing to do with the drainage system other than that the sediment is there. Um but it is the private lands that are having the problem and and there has been uh limited willingness among those land owners to cooperate with any kind of grade stabilization or others project regarding that ravine. Um there is one landowner that's further down ditch from that area um that sees impacts. the this land owner has land that's basically in the flood plane of the drainage system in the flood plane of Credit River um and gets a cutting of of meadow hay maybe once a year out of that when it dries up enough um but that condition has existed for I think a few decades at least um and likely will not change with any of the work the rehabilitation work that's been identified by the soil and water conservation district. So the the real issue that the board was struggling with last month was how do you justify the potential expenditure of maybe 150 or more thousand assessing that to a current benefits role that we know is not intact. Um and then what's the impact on those land owners and what do we get from it? And I think that's the real the bigger issue here. um is if you're going to spend that money to take sediment out that's being delivered by an eroding ravine that's not being resolved in the process, you're only putting a temporary band-aid on it. Um a lot of the other work is simply uh to try to stop the river and the and the water course from doing what it does, which is it meanders a little bit. It uh delivers it moves sediment along. it erodess banks um and those sorts of things. Again, those are conditions that have continued for a long time. The initial premise that the board went forward with when it was considering abandonment is that Credit River has basically restored itself or returned itself to a more natural condition, which are which includes all of these things that we're seeing that could potentially be remedied by the expenditure of the money um but may not be a permanent fix. And certainly either way, whether it's done by the ditch system or done by another entity, it's probably going to involve public funds. And then the question is, are we using the right public funds under the proposal from the city to make those corrections as a condition to transfer? You are under no obligation to transfer this system. Um, and you are certainly under no obligation to meet conditions of a potential transfer. Um we had initiated those discussions because we felt it was prudent to do so. This is an amenity of the cities, a newly formed city. Um the city has certain authorities uh to manage it um as you know part of a as a storm water feature even though it's still also a public water. And so we we approach the city in that with that spirit of saying, "Hey, before we abandon it and limit your ability to maybe take on some management over it um in a different way, uh we should probably have the discussion with you." So I think the real question before the board is can you justify the expenditure and it goes back to that fundamental concept in the consideration of abandonment which is is restoration practical? And so if you find that restoration is is [clears throat] not practical or you find that you can't justify this expenditure as a condition to transfer, I think you're back then considering the conditions for abandonment. Um and so I think today what Chris has prepared is a presentation that answers the questions the board had last month, which is how does this impact land owners that will be assessed for these costs in the ditch? And she's got multiple scenarios there. I know Troy is here. Um, and although he probably doesn't want to, he could answer some of the questions related to the ditch itself and the ravine and some of the things that are going on in the landscape. Um, and I would just encourage the board to to really focus on that issue, the what you're struggling with right now. And you're maybe you're not struggling, but it's the question before you is it really a policy issue of can you justify that expenditure? Does that mean that there's a is is it practical to do so? um and what are the facts that would influence that consideration. And I think if we can document all of that, we can get you to a sound decision either way. But it sounds like the city really does not want the transfer unless we um it unless we can meet those conditions. We have not talked to them about not meeting those conditions and whether they would still want it. Although we have indicated to them that the issue that the board is is is addressing is can it justify that expense. So, I can answer any questions you have right now. Um, but I I think Chris and and staff are prepared to give you the additional information you requested last month. >> Um, let's just say, let's just say if the board uh were to say um we're willing to transfer without any conditions or just transfer or abandon without any conditions. Uh is that something we need to let the the city take one more whack at to look at? I mean these are the choices. Uh you know if that if we were to arrive there um you sort of almost said that the city we haven't talked to him about that or or can you clarify? >> Commissioner, thank you. We have not uh we have not broached with the city whether they would want it if we were unable or unwilling or could not justify meeting their conditions. Um and I think it is fair to at least float that past the city before a final decision is made by the board. So I I think if we can get guidance after the close of today as to how you want us to go back and communicate with the city. If you're leaning more toward abandonment, I think we just communicate that directly to the city. I will also add for the benefit of the commissioners that even if the even if the ditch is abandoned, if if county ditch 4 is abandoned, it's does not mean that credit river cannot be maintained. It does not mean that the eroding ravine cannot be addressed in some way. It just means it's not going to be addressed by the drainage authority and paid for by the beneficiaries on a drainage system. It's going to be paid for in some other way. And whether that is you know a state grant or watershed based implementation funding or you know city assessment or something else in some way one way or another if these issues are important enough to fix um you know for other purposes um there's going to be uh activity that that does that and it's most likely going to involve public funds but it just doesn't but abandoning does not prevent any of that. >> So I want to clarify and you just I think just did there. So the legal term of abandonment, if we abandon this ditch today, that does not preclude the city from doing all the things that you just mentioned versus a transfer. >> Correct. They they don't what they don't get in a transfer is they don't get um the legal status of the channel um whatever right of way might have been established or implied by original establishment. Um but either way, there's a corridor there. It's a public water. It's got a buffer requirement on either side. There are setbacks in in land use ordinances that prevent encroachment on the public water. And so the area to do that work is available. It's available just like it would be available to us. It would be available to them even after an abandonment. >> And it doesn't preclude them from using it like some sort of a taxing jurisdiction for storm water. it depending on how they characterize the use of credit river as a water course. I don't think it prevents that >> in either terminology transfer or >> abandonment. I believe that that is a correct statement. Mr. >> No, but to clarify it seemed that I what I gathered is you were saying uh if we just abandon it that takes the tool of the benefiting property owners paying for it. That city no longer has that option. If if they don't take a transfer and it's just abandoned by a set that they lose that one tool. Is that correct? >> Well, no. Even if so that that tool that you described, commissioner, is the drainage authorities tool. >> The drainage authority has the ability to assess against that benefits role. The city has different authority. they have the authority to establish a storm water utility fee for example and charge residents within the municipal jurisdiction of the city um a certain amount monthly, annually, whatever that is to raise the revenue to address not only Credit River as a as a potentially a storm water conveyance for the city but also all of its other storm water infrastructure that it may have. So they have a different ability. So it's nothing about abandonment, >> okay, >> changes that ability either. The the real issue with transfer is you get the the right that comes along with the original establishment which is a right of way um um some some rights to enter and occupy for inspection and maintenance purposes um and then also certain exemptions to laws that I don't think are very uh they're not really exemptions anymore. So, a lot of the public waters and wetlands exemptions um have changed such that um that's no longer uh as as enticing of an incentive for transfer as it might have been at one time. >> Okay. >> It's good information because that I feel like that's um [clears throat] not what I was my understanding the last 17 times we've talked about this. >> If if I'm wishy-washy, you need to meet me after the meeting and beat me up a little bit. No, that and that wasn't my uh you know intent of of having that color that way. Just it's just maybe going through this process is becoming a little more the sentiment is being removed and it's becoming a little more clear because in my opinion I want the city to be able to feels like a useful tool for the city. I know it's a new city and and that has its growing pains. certainly don't want to preclude the city from using what really is I don't want to say it's only but it's certainly is it most significant way of dealing with runoff correct and it's just a reminder of the board your primary obligation is to the drainage system and the land owners that are assessed for its benefits today not to the city you know and so so the the real issue is here is you do have a request from a majority of the land owners on CD4 to consider abandonment I mean, that's your primary purpose here. The idea of a transfer is kind of a of a of a, you know, intervening notion that we had that we think was probably the right thing to do um with a municipal neighbor to say, "Hey, this is an option for you. What do you think? What would what would what would make you want to do this?" They've they've articulated that. Uh but now we're back to the same issue is for the for the in the interest of the land owners on the system and in the interest of the system does it make sense to spend that money to accomplish a transfer or does it make more sense to proceed with the original request which is just to consider whether it's uh the system should be abandoned or not. And one more clarification um could probably be more what you just mentioned with the transfer in order for the the for us to make a motion to transfer. They we would need to spend that money or you could do a transfer and here it is. >> You can only transfer on petition. So the city said we're willing to petition if you agree to this. >> Got it. >> And so right now we don't even have the petition for transfer in front of us. We're we're just talking through the scenario and the what if and that's you know again I think it's good governance to do that because you're having that conversation. You're being transparent about it. You're giving them the opportunity to weigh in on their wishes. Um and then the real hard policy question for you is can you justify meeting those conditions? And that's that's I think the big question that we have to we want to delve into today. Very [clears throat and cough] helpful. Very helpful. And maybe it's the 17th time we're starting to settle in a little bit. >> Sinking in. >> Speaking for myself. [snorts] >> Any other questions? Otherwise, Miss [clears throat] Loi is just patiently awaiting. She's been green. She's ready to go. Take it away. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair and commissioners. Uh, in your packet, you saw um some slides that I've put together that are mainly meant to answer some of the questions that you had last month. So, I will quickly go through that and then we can get back to the discussion that we just had as to next steps. Uh, a little bit of history on county ditch 4. Currently, there's 330 assessments on this uh ditch. 294 are individual parcels. The majority of them, 264 parcels and 920 acres are within the city of Credit River. There's 26 parcels, 91 benefit acres in the township of New Market and four parcels with three benefit acres in Spring Lake Township. [clears throat] It um consists of 252 taxpayers. In addition to that, in those 294 parcels are 10 common area parcels which belong to the territory subdivisions. You are not allowed to put a special assessment on a common area. So rather than assess those common areas, we have to break that b that assessment amount down to the people who are benefited or part of the homeowners association. So that further splits those 10 parcels down to 177 additional parcels. Um, of those 177, 17 of those people also are benefited on their own property by the ditch. 160 of them are not. Um, so the tur the total current benefit acres on this ditch are 1,14.21. The total acres in all of Credit River, which I think was one of your questions, is 23.37 square miles. So 14,956.8 acres. And I did include a map here that shows this map is showing you the yellowish parcels are the parcels that are benefited currently considered [clears throat] benefited by county ditch 4. The blue line obviously is the ditch. Um the blue parcels are the common area parcels which are then split out into those additional um I'm sorry the green parcels are that um the blue ones are the majority of them that are split out and to be assessed based on that common area amount. Um the green shaded area is the total area of the city of credit river. You'll see that there are a couple of um parcels outside of the green shaded area and those are the ones that we discussed that are in New Market Township and Spring Lake Township. >> So, go ahead. Go ahead. >> Where there's no yellow, those are the or the yellow is the benefited owners and then the rest where there's not because mine is not benefited by that my property. >> Correct. >> So, does my water evaporate and doesn't go down the river? No, it um as we've discussed previously, we know that our benefits role is um no longer correct. >> Okay. >> So, it most likely has to do with um development that's occurred since the last redetermination of benefits. And if we were to go along the path of continuing to have this as a drainage system and we did a redetermination of benefits, I would um highly guess that you would become a benefited owner. >> And Mr. Mr. Chair, just confirmation, Chris, for the record here. If we did that, it would cost all the benefited owners a lot of money to redetermine benefits. I just think we we all we know that because we've talked about it 17 times, >> but you know, as if somebody's just viewing it today, >> that that would be a big expense. Correct. Usually million dollar or something like I'm trying to remember >> 150 or 200 I thought. >> Okay. to to get to make >> to redeterminate to redetermine benefits. >> Yes. >> So >> different question than what you're referring to. Yes. So the clarification on to get to that point of a new benefits role would cost potentially how much >> um on this on this um size of a drainage system. Do you remember Mr. Cole? Approximately the per acre >> and you do about $4 an acre. I think this is about a 10,000 acre whed more or less. I don't know if Troy maybe you have a answer on that or >> 15,000 I think. >> Okay, so about somewhere between 40 and $60,000 I think. >> Thank you for clarifying that. >> But still an additional cost to understand what the updated benefits role could or would be >> plus all of what you're talking about the repairs that we are going to see. [clears throat] Um so that that was one of my questions too. Um if you go back one slide if you wouldn't mind um the the benefit. So, so the watershed aspect of this because now if you go forward back to the map, um the watershed, if we were to clarify this as a watershed, it wouldn't be everything in green because you've got the other waterways there, but it would still be a significant portion of the city. >> And I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth. I'm just trying to get an idea. And I know we're not that's not what we're talking about, watershed delineation, but in a sense kind of. >> Mr. chair Troy Kufall Scott and water um I don't have the map up exactly or here where the waterershed is but I would say you could approximate it by visualizing the greater extent of that yellow area. >> Yeah. Okay. >> So if you just kind of drew a rough boundary around all that included it, it'd probably be close to what the total drainage area is. >> Yeah. Okay. Thank you. [clears throat] The current balance in the county ditch for maintenance fund is negative12,2828. We do have some additional anticipated uh 2025 expenses. Um some of those would come in the form of inspection, maintenance or complaint response costs, uh legal fees. And then we do have the one complaint that we received um where they are in the process of uh currently trapping the beavers I believe. and then the dam would be removed after they have evidence that the beavers are gone. Now, we'll get into the costs. Um, SWCD did go out for bids on the four segments that we discussed um as possible rehabilitation on county ditch 4 um that were included in the initial agreement with Credit River. Um, so segment one, which if I can show you on a map here, um, starts probably about here and it goes up to Flag Trail. So, when we talk about the radio tower property, this is the radio tower property. This is the property that there's complaints from the person who haz that field um that it it's not draining properly. So, the bid came in for that segment at $17,250. Segment two takes us from Flag Trail to Mr. V's Driveway, which is right here. So, this segment here, came in at $62,500. Segment three takes you from V's prop from his driveway to Texas Avenue or County Road 27. So this segment right here is segment three. And that bid came in at $43,750. And then segment four is on the downstream of Texas Avenue. And that bid came in at 1700 17,625 [clears throat] for a grand total bid amount of $141,125. Um that's came in higher than what what had been previously estimated. I think on the low end of the estimates was in the 50,000s. The high end of the estimates was about 97,000. I do believe that they sent um the bid forms out to like 10 known contractors uh and they received uh one bid. They received interest from multiple people, but um somebody wanted to only do the tree portion, somebody only wanted to do the sediment portion. >> Um so they did receive one full bid to do both things. getting into the amount that it would cost the current benefits role at different um assessment amounts if we went for a $50,000 assessment. You can see the largest assessment on the single parcel broken down by classification. So just over 4,000 for commercial property, um over 3,000 for egg, and 1,600 for residential. Um some of the people on this ditch obviously own more than one parcel. So, when you look at it by a single taxpayer, that brings the egg property into the highest spot with $4,100. Um, and then the commercial and the residential are the same. That it's a one parcel, still the largest amount. Um, those 177 common area split out parcels would each get a an assessment of $5.78. So, if you did a $50,000 assessment, the average assessment on the 294 parcels is $170. And then I just break out the number in each category. If we moved on to a $75,000, it brings the commercial property up to $6,000. The egg goes to4500 and the residential goes to almost $2500. Um, again, the only one that changes for a single taxpayer is the egg and that goes up to $6,200. >> The 177 splitout parcels would be at $8.68. 68 each and the average on the full 294 is $25510. If you go up to H 100,000 it brings the commercial property up to $8,000, the egg to 6,000 and the residential to 3,300. Um the single taxpayer again, the egg property moves ahead then at 8350. The 177 splitout parcels would be at 1157 each and the average is $340.14. When the bid came in at $141,000, I did throw in a $150,000 assessment just for your information. Um, so that brings the commercial property up to 12,000, the egg to 9,000, and the residential to almost 5,000. >> It brings the combined egg property to 12,500. The 77 parcels would have a $17.35 assessment and the average would be $510.20. Um to be clear, the $150,000 amount if you were to opt to do the $141 in rehabilitation as well as bring our balance to zero and um transfer this to the city with a $10,000 balance, we would require more than 150,000. >> And who is the we on this? If we were to transfer, if we were to >> if the if the drainage authority decided that they would like to transfer we >> Right. Right. I just But it's it's it's still the drainage authority and the and the benefited owners and >> correct. >> So that was just kind of a clarification question. >> Yeah. No, I get it. Just to be clear. >> I have a question. >> Sure. Please. >> Um if there you said it was 60,000 to redetermine benefits, correct? [clears throat] about that >> roughly. >> Okay. Does redetermining benefits increase the amount of land that the city would have access to in terms of you said right away in access and it does not >> does not does not change anything about the configuration of the ditch or the rights that were established uh at its original establishment. Um, it also does not change the lands that the city might have access to in order to generate revenue because it can only generate revenue from lands within its jurisdictional boundary. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Follow up a good question, John. But Mr. Except for spreading out the costs of any final work we do, there would be no benefit to doing a redetermination of benefits if we are going to abandon or transfer. Is that correct? >> Correct. At that at that point, you're probably looking at retaining the this system and doing long-term management of the system as a public drainage system. So question would be like I I realize there's really nothing in life that's fair. Um we got a new city and I know there's growing pains that come along with that. Uh this is feels like a piece of infrastructure that is necessary for the city. I would guess um I don't live in that potential jurisdiction. Um but I feel like also it'd be incredibly again my opinion unfair because this part if you go back can you bring that map back up please? >> Sure. um for the ben current benefited owners role uh feels like it's so far out of whack and and has been for a long time. I don't know about decades but years and years and years and years. I I'm curious your opinion on how long that's been be because of so much development happening here that it would feels to me unfair like really unfair that that smaller number of folks would bear the burden of whatever upkeep needs to be done in order to transfer. That's my that's my gut feeling. And again to be clear, it's not necessarily upkeep of the ditch that we're talking about, but it's some other things that are in I mean, a lot of So, yes. Is there sediment in the ditch channel? Yes. Would that get removed? Yes. Are there parts of the bank that we would want to dress up? Sure, there are. Are there trees that we would want to remove adjacent or in the channel itself? Sure, there are. Um, but in the end that what's causing the sedimentation and everything is not something we have control over in the ditch itself. Love it. >> And the rest of it is is just the way that a water course behaves when it goes back to kind of its original native state. >> Yeah. So then on one hand with that clarification which you mentioned earlier which is good to say it again uh folks that are again not on the benefited role um or areas in the city that not on the benefited role are the at least part and partial partial but to some extent I don't know exactly the extent but to some extent greater or lesser are reason that sediment is entering the ditch which would then impact the benefited owners which we would have no control over fixing. You you'd pull it out, but there there's no fix. It's just it's just putting a band-aid on it of sorts. >> I I think that's true, but I would maybe defer to some of your technical staff to talk through the the details on that. >> One more question. This is maybe getting a little far off, but >> uh when I was a city council person in Savage, I think we city of Savage did some million-doll projects on Credit River >> um or close to that anyhow. How would they have likely paid for that? Would that you mentioned a package of stuff that a city would do to pay for projects? What kind of things are they? >> I I mean the the sort of thing that the city would have access to are some of the same outside funds that the county would have access to or the SWCD. So um they may have gotten the state grant or uh um there might have been money that flew through cost share dollars that flowed through the SWCD. um you could have partnered with another organization or you could have raised that revenue internally to the city and paid for it all yourself. My guess is that it was a combination of those things. >> Okay. Thank you. Um, any other questions or do we need to hear from, you know, it's just, you know, Troy, I feel like he just sat right in that seat where he just can't quite uh is there any and not to put you on the spot, I just, you know, I know you always have good um opinions, thoughts on this and other not just on this, but >> values opinion is what I'm trying to say. >> Yeah. >> Um I'm sorry I need to if you could rephrase the question. I mean talking about the benefited owners the sediment that is part of one of the conditions or you know the that one of these bids is looking at the different segments >> right >> some amount of that sediment is coming from outside the benefited owners role I don't know if it's the ravine or or other things [clears throat] that the benefited owners trying to be clear about you know the role that >> the role and the role um that they would be potentially charged or build to clean that up. It just removes sediment doesn't fix the problem which is outside the benefit owner's role. Um and I think it's the ravine. I don't know if it's just the ravine but it seems like like tell me your thoughts on the sediment where it's coming from and >> Sure. Uh Mr. Chair, commissioners. So the sentiment does uh derive from multiple sources. the the initial main source is um is there a way I can zoom into this? >> Oh, I don't >> or maybe not. I I'll just point to it. Right about here. You see my cursor is >> Yep. >> Credit River, the actual river enters the ditch system at that point. So, it junctions in uh at that point with the ditch system. So, that river itself carries a load of sediment. So, it's coming down from the south. it enters [clears throat] into the ditch system and it's bringing whatever sediment load it has picked up along its journey to that point. So that's the first one. A second one is within the ditch channel itself down in this area in particular. Uh segment one, it's Pey soils. So it's very loose. Um it tends to be unconsolidated. So it it naturally the banks slough and fill in over time and just through natural >> processes it it basically fills itself. It's trying to seek to fill that void until a big uh stream you know a flood event kind of washes through there. Um a third would be just the the bank itself further downstream. uh when trees cave in and the root rod, you know, pulls open and and exposes the bank or water has to go around a tree trunk and it starts chewing into a bank on one side as it tries to get past that tree. So, there's natural processes there of brank erosion. And then, of course, there's that big ravine we all we all know about. So, those are I'd say the top four main sources in any ditch system really uh except for the ravine itself. That's pretty unique to this one. uh further downstream um way beyond the area of of concern now there's another ravine system. I don't know that it's as severe as this, but it's also contributing to the system. Uh but that is further downstream and hasn't really been studied a whole lot. There was a comment made um that essentially this river slash ditch is is um meandering its way back to a natural sense of what it was what it wants to be. I don't know if that's the right way of phrasing that. >> Correct. So using this as a as a runoff piece of uh infrastructure, would you typically and this if you don't know the answer to this, I know it's would the city typically just leave it as is and it's carrying water the way that it would otherwise do for runoff. >> Uh Mr. Chair, I I would agree with that. Um I think that uh to to Mr. Cole's point is that a natural system will um occasionally uh uh um have conditions that create problems for neighboring land owners through a natural means. Um just a tree coming in or a sediment plume uh coming in and plugging the ditch and causing that river to flood outside its normal course. And those would be instances uh under any system that uh there would be human intervention to address that if if the problem was uh of a concern that warranted that action. >> Well, in talking through this I I I you'll be happy to know I have your voice in the back of my mind when we talk about Minnesota River oftentimes, but hey, it left I mean, hasn't it trend to do this for thousands of years? >> Um not that you don't try to do things when something comes up, but that's sort of what we're talking about here. It's doing what it's it's doing what it's doing. It's not. >> And Mr. Chair, to to put a finer point on that, the the segment two and three, if you were to go out there now through most of those length of those two segments, it would look like a natural stream to you. Yeah. And that's what it's doing. >> Um it it's trying to fight the influx of all that sediment on the downstream part of that downstream of uh dos. >> Uh but otherwise, that system is looking pretty natural. And in order to even uh rehabilitate that channel, uh we have to find where we want to put the channel cuz it's no longer discernable as a ditch. >> So if we abandon or transfer, it would lose the designation as ditch for and completely and wholly and totally be Credit River. >> Correct. It would revert to a public water uh body uh under jurisdiction of DNR. What would and we're obviously still having discussion and questions, but what would a motion look like if we were to say, "Hey, it's time to move this thing on. Um, we're ready to take action, but we want at least the city to have some level of weigh in." Like, how do you want this? How do you want this coming your way? Um, and in my opinion, it wouldn't be to have the smaller number of b the current role of benefited owners paying [clears throat] for some conditional upkeep as a ditch when this is going to revert back to a river or natural waterway. So, what would a motion look like to move this on but still allowing the city to have some level of say because we want to be good partners. I know sometimes it doesn't always feel that way, but um but I feel like we've talked about this. We've had really good information today and maybe it like sediment finally settled into my own brain um to move this forward. >> Can I can I answer your question with a couple questions? M >> please do. My interpreter is here. So >> thank you. So the fir the first question is as a as just a general matter is it the board's general consensus that it cannot justify the expenditure of these funds to be assessed to the land owners that are currently on the benefits role for CD4. I think that's the threshold question because if that's the case then you are looking at abandonment. looking at abandonment. Then the motion would be to uh continue the hearing for further consideration of abandonment and to direct staff to engage with the city to identify any specific issues that the city might have or concerns the city might have related to abandonment because at that time we're no at that point we're no longer talking about about transfer and the only answer I could see from the city coming back is if we communicated that with them and they said well we'll take it in a transfer without the conditions then we're in a different position. >> Um, so that I think those are that's kind of how I would would stage that in terms of consideration by the board. >> So I voice my opinion. I know it's not you're not [clears throat] asking for a vote right here because we're not taking a vote. I I voiced my opinion. >> My my opinion or my answer to that question is yes, unless council thinks we have a legal obligation to make some repair before abandoning. before I was thinking that way. After hearing more today in the natural waterway and what's happened with Credit River, I'm less sure of that and I'd like some clarification. I know that's not, you know, like a black and white thing, but I'd like just a little more comment on that because if we don't have any legal obligation, yeah, I don't think we should be assessing these folks who are on the roles who, you know, they're they're a small part of everybody who's benefiting. >> [clears throat] >> So, Commissioner Beckman, are you saying you want to change this yellow to be all yellow and >> No, I'm saying I want to abandon the ditch. >> Okay. As is >> so that everybody in credit when they when we give it back or whatever to credit river not give it back but abandon and let them take it over then they can equally distribute the funds so that >> it's more fair than it is. >> Yes, >> that's my answer. Once it once it's abandoned, it it becomes a natural feature on the landscape that is subject to regulation, but it there are uh the regulations do afford the ability to manage it in some ways. >> So, and again, that option would still remain open to the city. To answer um Commissioner White McBr's uh question though, no, you're not obligated to repair this as it sits right now. And that is and that you know ordinarily we would say you have an obligation to to inspect and keep the system in a state of efficient you know reasonable state of efficiency or repair once we get into the consideration of abandonment we have to add to that analysis is the restoration of the drainage system practical and I think that's where that tension is and that's that's kind of the basis of your question so I would say in the context that you're currently considering CD4 for abandonment Before I would say whether you have an obligation to maintain it or not, I would ask the question, do you think that restoration of the ditch system as a ditch system is practical? And if you do not, then you're leaning more toward abandonment and that obligation goes away. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I think I mentioned too last on the last meeting when we talked about this that if this were a county road that we were turning back, I mean, that baby would be smooth black. You could eat off that thing. I mean, we we get that into a condition that you're not getting a piece of junk. >> Um, it's this is different. Yes. We're the county board here acting as the ditch authority. So, when when that's why it's a question of Miss Locky, like the Wii here, if we sitting on this crazy desk um were to say, "Oh, yeah, let's spend that money." No, it's not it's not the county. It's the benefited owners on this role, whatever the number was, that small portion that we're speaking on their behalf, spending that drainage authority money to get this back into ditch shape versus runoff water infrastructure shape. And it feels like they're different. That just inc seems incredibly unfair and and a undue burden on a smaller subset when if you wanted to look at this if this was turned back to the city it would all be yellow right and not because of a not because you're spending money on a redetermination of benefits but because everyone is now a quote unquote benefited owner because runoff is even you >> yep >> commissioner wolf >> that's fine >> um that feels you know we live in a society we live in cities it's a new city that's you know part and parcel of happens. >> I just to express um you know, you want kind of to hear where people are at. I think we're in a non-negotiable position with the city. We just tell the city there's Troy, we're going to either abandon him, just straight out abandon it or transfer it, but there's no conditions and that's non-negotiable. So, you decide if you want to take a transfer or just we'll abandon it. >> Feels like it. >> And that's not being a jerk. that just cuz it's not the county, >> right? >> It's not all the county 150 some thousand that are paying a few shekels. It's a [clears throat] a couple hundred paying almost a couple hundred thousand. >> Our legal obligations are so much different than with a road like they're like opposite >> for sure. >> Okay. I talked to the mayor yesterday, Mr. And uh um he asked if there would be any value and I think there would be of you know a couple of credit river representatives, the mayor and maybe one other council member, maybe yourself and myself and our administrators and see if there's something we can hash out between all of us that they would be happy with and accept it. Is that something you'd be interested in? >> Well, I I mean I'm always always interested in meeting with people. Um I just it feels like we've kind of arrived at a spot to where it's here it is. Yeah. >> Which way do you want it? So I don't think there's a lot of because it's not the county. I know we're we're in the county building. We're at this big crazy high desk and we're the county board. We're taking looking at taking action. Again, this was the Scott County ditch board meeting. >> Um that would be a very different conversation if we were acting strictly as representation of the entire county. But in this um so that's where I'm just like I'm pretty Yes. I always I always say, look, I'll listen to anything to anybody about anything. >> I got certain convictions that they ain't changing. Bad grammar intended. >> This isn't one of those things. But um but I do feel pretty strongly. >> So, sure. >> Okay. >> But does that change what we might want to do as a board? As a >> It might not change anything. >> Yeah. >> But >> then we know where we're at and where they're at. Haven't we had those conversations? I >> We have a little bit, but yeah, >> they have not occurred at um elected representative level, commissioner. I think that's the difference between what's being discussed and what hasn't. >> I've been on a few calls, but that would be about it. Yep. >> Yeah. And I texted with the mayor, but I think he was on vacation. Then life gets busy and here we are again. I don't know if there's any representation from the city that would want to say anything. I know you're a person on a board >> not able to speak the city individual. >> Totally get that one individual. Yep. So >> totally get that. >> Are we still in the public hearing portion of this? >> Well, we we I mean >> we didn't open it. We >> Okay. >> You have you have previously closed the hearing for public comment. >> Got it. Okay. >> Um again, you always have discretion to open it up, but uh just so you know kind of procedurally what you've done thus far. So yeah, item 3.1 just says continuation, but we didn't take a vote to open. So it's a it's more of a continuation of the conversation and presentation that we had with new information with uh Miss Lo and Mr. Co is where we're at. So we have not reopened. It's just a continuation of the conversation. >> What you suggested you should move that >> if we just talked to >> if you if that's the direction. I don't know. I would make a motion that uh uh the chair and I and our administrator meet with the uh mayor and another representative of uh Credit River between now and uh when's our uh is that that Thursday? >> That's the the night one which >> December 4th. >> December 4th. Yep. >> And come back with an answer by then. If we can't get it on our schedules or whatever, then uh then we'll do what we're going to do. It is December 4th, the six o'clock, right? >> Or no, no, sorry. 1 1111. >> No, the Mr. Chairman, the meeting is scheduled for 2:30. >> Yeah, that's why my calendar say >> it's the workshop. Yeah. >> But so the December 1st would be the uh first would be the Monday when they would meet. So if we could get uh two of them at 5:00 before their council member meeting. I mean, I'm open. I'm of course I'm totally open to having that discussion. Um I mean, we've waited what how long has this river been around? Over five years. We can wait another couple. >> Yeah. I mean, if we have that meeting, I would just uh I don't know if we need to amend the motion that that we would come back with a one way or the other. And we're going to have a consent with that. Yeah. >> We're going to have a consent item on the next meeting thereafter. >> Yep. looking to our administrator that might have something to say. >> Um, Mr. Chairman, we have an Iwig meeting that afternoon at that same time. >> Oh, yeah. At five. >> Well, let's not pin it down to a date. >> Okay. >> Because um but between now and our next meeting, >> okay. >> Or between now and the time we have to uh get our agenda published, >> right? So, we got to do that pretty quick because uh Thanksgiving's in there and that week is up, right? >> Yes. >> So, >> so that would be my intent. So, there's a motion >> a motion to meet with the city with electeds. >> You've already stated your motion. >> Yep. >> Is there a second? >> I'm ready to second. I did it. Okay, I'm ready. We weren't going to let that die. So, there's a motion. There's a second to have that meeting as stated or the motion has been stated uh in time to have it on our next item agenda, which I need to get my calendar squared away. On December 4th is the meeting to have it all set up on the agenda. >> Yep. >> Consent if you want it. Yeah. Yeah. >> We need a ditch board meeting on December 4th and not regular meeting. >> True. True. Yep. So that be which [clears throat] is fine. >> Mr. Chairman, we'll have to establish a ditch board meeting which wasn't shown. So we would have to start the meeting earlier than 2:30. >> Um and we would have to have a ditch board meeting posted because you would take that action as the ditch board, not the county >> again. So these lines I know they do get blurry. >> Um does that allow us enough time looking down to Leslie for the calling that meeting and moving things around and to I would think that would be a short meeting. Well, it's either that meeting or it would be the next meeting is what? The 16th. You'd have to go at 8:00 on the morning of the 16th. >> We can get it done by then. By the by the 6 or >> think that we need to do the 16th because I'm in that Vermillion Water meeting and I'm the chair of that and it's going to be a long meeting anyhow that Thursday. >> We're going to shoot for you guys. >> We're going to try to shoot for the fourth. >> Yep. >> 16th like in in this year. This year >> we'll get it done this year. >> All right. There's a motion. Oh, looking. [laughter] [cough] >> I suppose the other option would be to go after the meeting, the financial meeting on the 4th. You could post a meeting for 7:00 or something in the evening if you're all here, which would, you know, instead of going before the meeting, you would go after it. >> Well, the intent would be to get this thing moving, right? >> Yeah. >> So, >> do it after. I don't think we need to have a date in the necessary motion, do we? >> Yeah. >> What's the do the 16th? >> Let's see. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Is the mayor texting you? I haven't got any text yet to try getting. >> All right. We have a motion. >> Got amend it. >> Well, do we if we don't have a Did you add a date in there in >> I didn't actually put a date in there on my first Tracy saying we did. So, we didn't >> Oh, did I? On the >> You did put a date in there. Yeah. >> Date to be determined. How about that? So that motion has been amended. >> I'm amending my motion to date. Second. Okay. So we have a amended motion on the floor. >> Um any further discussion on that? >> Could I just have a clarifying question for Mr. Cole? >> If we if we don't choose a date, do does that reset the um requirement to notify all the >> I turn I had turned my mic on to to offer that. Thank [laughter] you. Um yes, Mr. chair, members of the board, if we don't if we do not announce the continuation date, time, and location on the record, then we do have to renotice. So, it's fine if you want to do a date to be uh determined. Just understand that if once that date gets determined, if we're going to have to send a mailing out to all of the owners on the system, >> let's get a date on there. This like this is I'm >> okay. and my motion to the >> 16th >> to the 16th at 8 a.m. >> or sooner, right? Or no, no, no, that's we got to announce. Sorry. Sorry. >> Sorry. >> Yes. >> 16th at 8 a.m. 8 a.m. >> I second that amendment to your motion. >> Yes. So we >> we had a Yeah. >> Okay. Remember I'm a I'm a Bobby's rules of order versus Robert. So we have an amended amended that's been seconded by the seconder. >> So we had a motion. It was seconded by Commissioner Brekie. Yes. >> Commissioner Wolf amended it. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Brekie seconded it. >> Yes. >> Commissioner Wolf amended that for December 16th at 8:00 a.m. Commissioner Brekie seconded that motion. >> Yes. Okay. So now any further >> any further discussion >> ditch board meeting >> for a ditch board meeting? >> For a ditch board meeting. Yeah. >> December 16th 8 a.m. We only need one vote is my understanding on this. Looking at my county attorney. We have a motion, an amendment, and an amendment. >> You can take a vote on that. >> Yes. One. One. Any further discussion? >> Unless somebody holds one of them. >> All in favor say I. >> I. >> I. Oppose. Same sign. >> Motion carries. So to clarify then just to make sure that the the the drainage authority has continued the hearing on consideration of the abandonment of county ditch 4 to a meeting scheduled for 8:00 a.m. on December 16th in this location. And that's more for everybody out there that wants to see how the sausage gets made in the next iteration um than it is for the board because I think you all understood that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> Thank you very much. Okay, without further ado, we're going to move on to Well, I guess we have an item number 3.2 to at least uh deal with. Um, >> oh, true. Good call. Ditch 10. Adopt resolution 3.2. Adopt resolution number 2025-270 authorizing entering a contract with KA Wick Construction, Inc. for a bank slough uh erosion maintenance on C Scott County drainage ditch number 10. Chris, >> thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome back. Is it this afternoon? No, it's not. Still this morning. Thank you. Welcome. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair and commissioners. I'll make this quick. Um, this really is moreformational than anything again, but we do want to keep you informed because sometimes ditch 10 is a hot topic um with benefited owners. So, SWCD did a post construction post repair uh report and found some areas [clears throat] of concern that we are proposing uh that we enter into a contract with KA Wit Construction to clean up some of those areas um to bring CD10 back um to what is expected by the benefited owners. Some of the things that will be addressed are um erosion. Um some of the ASIs were over topped caused additional erosion on the back slope. Um there were in the buffers the majority of the ditch uh is clean in the buffers and has the adequate vegetated um material in there. There is one stretch that does not. Um [snorts] so the SWCD will continue to work with those land owners to get that up. um to how it needs to be. Um and then sediment removal along the ditch. Um KA Wit has uh put in a bid. Again, SWCD um sent this out to 10 known contractors. They received one bid. That one bid came from KA Wit for $59,750. Uh they do believe that they can um um start sometime in November. They would like to have a little bit of frost in the ground. Um so maybe a little later in November. Uh and they're anticipating that the maintenance will take about two weeks to complete. With that, I can stand for questions. Otherwise, I would look for a motion to approve entering into that contract. Thank you very much for that. >> I I have a question. Um on this contract, who will be the responsible party for making sure the um contractor met all the um I I'm just anticipating questions from from some loan land owners. So who who is it? Is it the SWCD who will make I just want to know where to send people. Thank you. >> Yes, the SWCD will take responsibility for that. Is there a question? >> So moved. >> Okay. Second. We >> have a motion. We have a second. Any further discussion? >> Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> All right. Moving on to item number. >> Four. Motion. >> Second. >> Second. Any further discussion? Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. We are adjourned. Thank you. >> Sorry. >> Good morning. We are going to convene the November 18th, 2025 Scott County Board of Commissioners meeting. Please join me in the pledge. >> Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and [clears throat] to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you so much. All right. Item number two, uh, amendments to the agenda. I did not see any. I always like to look left and right and make sure. Otherwise, it will stand as distributed. Um, item number three, approving the minutes of the November 4th, 2025 board meeting minutes, which we have had distributed before us. Are there any changes or anything you'd like to see change on those? >> Mr. Chair, so moved. >> Second. >> Motion second. Any further discussion? Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. >> I. All right. Minutes approved. Item number four, recognition of interested citizens. Always one of my favorite opportunities of the board meeting. Hopefully, somebody will take advantage of that. This isn't a great opportunity for anyone to come talk to the board about anything for any reason so long as it's not on the agenda. Am I seeing anyone making a move? I am not seeing anyone make a move. So, we will move on past that. Uh item number five, uh we're going to receive information on the Scott County delivers topic, specialty courts. So, without further ado, Kim Mica, welcome. Take it away. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair and commissioners. Yes. Today we have specialty courts which since its inception in 2016 each year has been before the board. Um this group includes of course your treatment court and your uh veterans court as well. I'll first ask my co-f facilitators to introduce themselves and their positions and then our panelist as well please. >> Adam Jessen, assistant county engineer transportation services. >> Good morning. Jen Schwarz, economic assistance director in health and human services. >> Chris Logy. I'm a senior operations analyst. uh with community services. >> Captain Jamie Pearson, Shakp police. >> Mike Hayach, County Attorney's Office. I'm the prosecutor for both courts. >> Carrie Lennon. I'm a judge here in Scott County and I handle half of the treatment court uh load. >> Good morning everyone. Lindseay Sioka. I'm the chief public defender for the first judicial district. >> Good morning everyone. Jared Linky. I'm the probation officer for the Veterans Treatment Court. I'm Samantha Hammond and I'm the probation officer for treatment court. >> Good morning. I'm Molly Bruner, Community Corrections Director, Health and Human Services. >> Robin Schultz. I'm the Trimman Court Coordinator and then I also coordinate the West for Veterans Court. >> Welcome. >> Good morning. Thank you all for introducing yourself. Board, before we begin, do you have any foundational questions that would help you with this conversation that you'd like to ask right away? Of course, you're welcome throughout the conversation and at the end. [clears throat] Not seeing anyone, >> but we will jump in. >> Appreciate it as always. >> All right, Robin, did you have something you'd like to say at the beginning? >> Yes. >> Okay, please begin. >> Um, so first off, I just wanted to thank you to the board for being able to support our program throughout the um the 10 years that you guys have supported it. And I want to talk about our program just so that people in the room are aware of what our program is. So treatment court started in 2016 and veterans court we merged with um the first judicial district in May of 2025 or May of 2024. Uh we have been doing this program sorry oh talk about who's on the team. So who's on the team? So like I mentioned myself the coordinator. Um we have a probation officer for both treatment and veterans court. We have a judge for both treatment and veterans court. We have a public defender for both courts. law enforcement for both courts and then we also have a treatment provider. On our treatment court side, we have a mental health professional who does our diagnostic evaluations and meets with participants throughout their time in the program. And then we also have a public health nurse. And then on our veterans court side, we have a veteran service officer for both Scott and Carver County. And then we have a veterans justice out specialist as well. Um the screening process for getting into treatment court and veterans court is to all get referrals. I get them from the county attorney's office, the public defender's office. I get them from the jail. Um, I get them from therapists. I will get self-referrals, family members, and I'll screen the participants to see if they're eligible. Um, we take people who are high-risisk, high needs, so their mental health and substance abuse um, needs for both programs. Some of the impacts that we've had with our referrals over the last couple years is the impact of the veterans veterans restorative justice act which basically is a new statute that would have them go through another court process instead of veterans court and also the decriminalization of marijuana um with low lower level cannabis offenses. Those are not coming into our program anymore as well. How we're increasing referrals is I've been reaching out to the public defenders office. I just met with the county attorney's office recently um to talk about different ways that we can get referrals. And then we also had some changes in March of 2025. So we used to have offenses that were not eligible. We still have mandatory disqualifiers, [snorts] but that has expanded or has changed. So then we've been able to accept more people into our program. About the program, [clears throat] so there's five phases. It takes about 14 months to complete both programs. That's obviously with no speed bumps. Um the first phase is about stabilization, just getting people stabilized, whether that's in treatment, their mental health needs, finding stable housing. The second stage is about um psychological stabilization, so more of them digging into the treatment. Phase three is about engagement and recovery and building your network. Um phase four is finding the path to recovery and then phase five is life of recovery. Once they've completed all five phases, then they would apply for graduation and we'd have a graduation ceremony once approved by the team. some of the things to note that we've been doing. Um, and so like I mentioned, there is the merger in 2024 with the first judicial district. So I oversee Scott and Carver County on the west side and then Katie Shoufeld, she oversees the east side and her and I work very closely together. So we had to have all three probation systems be able to work together and we're also working on expanding to other counties in the first judicial district. Um, we also did the national conference as well. um where some of our team members went out and we we're making sure that we're updated on best practices. Our treatment court team has applied for an operational tuneup. Um and that's just to make sure that we're following our standards and that we're getting feedback for areas or tips for areas that we can improve on. We've also had some new team members. So myself, I joined the team back in April. Jared Linky joined back in January. I think of who else is here. Oh, Mike Hayek. He just joined our team a couple weeks ago in the county attorney's office and he oversees both treatment court and veterans court. And then also, um, we did not have a off like a we have officer for, um, Scott County for treatment court, and we had a Carver County officer, but we didn't have a Scott County for veterans court. Um, so actually, Detective Fear helped recruit some people. So now we have Michael, Detective Michael Mlan, who was on our team, and he represents the Scott County side of things. We've also had a lot of collaboration with law enforcement. So, thank you for law enforcement for collaborating to help with getting people in the program as well as doing curfew checks on our participants. We've had transformation houses. So, we have the three transformation houses through the community corrections. There's the two ma male houses and then we just opened the female house in October. Um, and those transformation houses have been able to help um eight of our participants, seven from treatment court and one from Veterans Court um find housing in our community. Thank you. Jen, do you want to start with uh our first question for the panelists? >> Sure. Um let's start on page 10, the number of treatment court referrals. Um Robin, you answered a little bit of of my question, but if if you could expand on what are the parameters or requirements for kind who gets in, who who doesn't, [clears throat] and what's the process or who kind of decides what what folks make it into the treatment or or specialty court. So, if someone applies or gets referred um like through the county attorney's office or public defender's office, typically what happens is I'll meet with them. Well, first I'll check their offense and I'll make sure their offense is eligible, whether it's for veterans court or treatment court, make sure that it's eligible because we do have certain offenses that we do not take. Um after I assess that it's eligible, I check their address. Some do people do report that they're homeless. So, especially if they're in the jail, I'll go meet with them over there and see if they're established residents in our county. After I do that, I will do a screening assessment where I'll do an RANT assessment. It's the high-risisk high needs assessment. And then I also do an LSCMI, which is another assessment. And that will determine if they're high-risisk, high needs. After that, I'll gather some other information, but I'll notify law enforcement in our county attorney's office. They'll do their screening process, which I'll defer to them for how their process works, and then they'll have to observe two times in if they're in treatment court or veterans court. And then after their observation, they can decide if they want to play into the program or not. >> Okay. And so it's those pretty severe offenses that you're disqualifying off the top. Is that >> Yes. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Connected to that, if you look on page three in your narrative, it talks about the significant group statute changes in 2024 and 2025. So maybe the attorneys could speak to how this impacts referrals and participant numbers. So, we did expand criteria to let more people be eligible. Um, of course, when we do that and because we're looking at high- risk, high need only because if you're not high- risk and high need, you do not qualify. So, when we do that, we are looking at a a subset of the population of who is in for court. And so in doing that, we have to also look at are there additional public safety concerns that are too severe to have law enforcement andor the county attorney's office be comfortable with them. So it does by expanding our criteria, we're making our pool larger, but we're not really changing the character of who we have. So we're still looking to help the same folks. We're just looking to have additional eligibility so that we can when Robin is doing her first initial does this offense qualify when she's doing her screening we can get more people that would qualify for that. >> I would add additionally when the mandatory minimums were reduced by the sentencing guidelines many subsequent drug crimes prior to 2024 2025 received mandatory commits to prison. Meaning, if someone was charged with a subsequent felony level drug crime, depending on what it was and for how much, those clients of ours um or defendants were looking at going to prison on what would be mandatory minimum sentences to the Department of Corrections. Those clients, especially if they're high-risisk, high need, would then be potentially eligible for a departure to probation. And normally the only way we could facilitate that is through um a treatment court setting where they get intensive supervision from probation um from the great community corrections team that's here in Scott County that does a fantastic job. They get additional oversight from the judge. They have a dedicated attorney team um [clears throat] from my office who staffs this calendar and also from the county attorney's office. So a lot of these sentences that we saw were like but for treatment court these clients would have gone to prison. So this is really a safety valve rather than send them to prison and just kind of hope for the best. These clients got wraparound treatment services through the Scott County Treatment Court so that then they would go back into the community and more be more successful contributors to the community. Their recidivism rates were much lower. So this was really a big safety valve for many of those clients that were looking at mandatory minimum sentences. Those clients still exist. So those clients are still coming through courts. Their sentences are just slightly modified and not as many of them are presumptive go to prison cases due to some of these changes by the sentencing guidelines. But even if they're not on the track to go to prison, many of these clients would not get the services needed by Scott County Treatment Courts, um, if this program weren't in place. So, I would just acknowledge the great benefit that this treatment courts provides for these clients who are high-risisk, high need, who would be on the track to otherwise go to prison, who instead get an opportunity to get exceptional wraparound services from the entire team, um, from the community, from law enforcement that does their checks. So this program really offers an exceptional kind of support mechanism for many of these clients who are high-risisk high need and as we would kind of talk some really hightouch clients that really need exceptional services. Um Molly's team does a fantastic job with our traditional high-risisk high need high clients, but many of these treatment court clients are yet another level of kind of hands-on support and this treatment court keeps many of those people out of the streets and off um from committing new offenses. So I would just add that that when we talk about that reduced mandatory minimum sentences, this treatment court was really the only mechanism to keep many of these clients out of prison in terms of negotiating a resolution between um the county attorney's office and the defense lawyers. >> I'll just add one thing. I think when we expand the the pool from which we can choose, we're acknowledging that addiction impacts more than just drug crimes and theft crimes. We know, we always used to think, oh, people steal to support their drug habit. True. And they have drug possession cases and that's who we're really talking about. But people with serious addiction issues, they screw up all parts of their lives. It's amazing. It's not a good thing. Um, but we have found that by by expanding our our base, so to speak, that we can identify people whose addiction has impacted other areas of their lives. and that is something that we can address through the the services that we can provide um in our treatment court. So that's been really I think meaningful for some of our participants that we would normally have not or traditionally have not taken. on the page eight shows some of the impact of of that um with the life factors that that would see the change um from uh entering the program to exiting the program in regard to child contact, employment, housing, and uh having a driver's license. Um so obviously that shows the impact of those wraparound services that you're all talking about. um what goes into [clears throat] and I think uh Robin you talked about stage five um of the program but what goes into ensuring that those life factors are stable at graduation and that that's going to that trend is going to continue after the fact and are there any considerations for how they maintain contact whether you know handing off to a lower-end surface or to a nonprofit or where do they go after they leave the program? God, that's such a good question because that's the biggest worry. And then and we used to say to people, you know, we're giving you all these skills and we know that addiction is a lifelong problem, but what we want is for if there's a stumble in the future that you don't fall all the way back down the mountain. And so we've given them all kinds of tools to help themselves in the community. And the people that we see that have the best long-term success outside of when they complete our program are ones who have gotten involved in the sober support community and they're helping others. And by helping others, they are maintaining their own stability going forward. And I hate to say it, this is super sexist, but for the guys, if they get a good woman who doesn't take any crap, that's the best category. They are the people that do the best long [laughter] term. That's what they need. [clears throat] They all need somebody going, "Uh-uh." >> Truth is truth. >> It's true. The board acknowledge that >> the board approved. [snorts] >> Thank you. >> Uh I'm going to talk about on um page 13. It's been brought up a couple times about the law enforcement check-in. And I'm just curious if you can give us some information about um why is this data important? What do those checks entail? >> Yeah, so the curfew checks, anybody who's living within the county and the communities, um they're subject to the curfew checks by law enforcement. Um some agencies participate more than others. Um call load depends on how often it happens. Um but we communicate to them what the curfew is. the participants know what the expectations are that they're to be home between, you know, whatever the hours are. Um, and the officers go out there and they knock on the door and they make sure that they're home. That is our opportunity to build the relationship with the participants and that's where you see kind of the minds mind shift um with the participants and their view of law enforcement. Our hope is they can build the relationship with the officers doing the curfew checks and um it just kind of grows from there. Um you know, if they're in violation of a curfew, the judge can sanction them at their next court hearing. Um it's usually it's not jail or anything like that. Um, and yeah, it's just a really great opportunity for us to hold them accountable um, and build the relationship and be a level of support for them outside of the courtroom every week. Um, every officer approaches it a little bit different. You got to be a little bit careful that you're not getting too personal with the participants and things like that. Um, uh, but they share their work cell phone numbers with them. um they encourage them to call if they're struggling, if they need help at any moment and it's 2 o'clock in the [snorts] morning, uh call us. That's what we're here for. Um so, you know, it's evolved over time and we have the ability to be super creative with it and it really rely depends on the officers um you know, how how interested are they in it. Are they just going to knock on the door, yep, you're home, sounds good, see you later, or are they going to put the time and the effort in? Um, I of course encourage everybody to put the the time and the effort in. I recognize that not everybody has the same level of passion for this work as I do. So, um, if they're just simply doing the check and and not having those conversations, you know, how do you how do you force that upon them? You don't. But the important thing is is that they're checking on them and they're home and they're following the rules and and things like that. So, >> it's part of the accountability of the program. We're we're providing them the real experience of we are here to support you and we are going to be keeping tabs on you all the time, including at night. Um, so they they know that we are always there for them um and that we're always part of their journey so that we are providing the wraparound services. And I just want to add to that um for the six months that I've been here for the people who have graduated at graduation like everybody from the team can go around and say like things that they've seen from like start to finish and I I always hear like the most positive things of like okay this is where you were a couple years ago when you started the program compared to now with law enforcement. You can just see the the gap that it's like closed from law enforcement and the participants in our program. Uh let's see on page 12, the treatment court outcomes by year. Kind of just a broader question. You've been doing this about eight years now. What have you learned and what have you modified over time um that has worked or or kind of things that you think you might be looking to do in the future? >> I think I can start on that one. Um, I have learned that mental health is a far bigger concern than we thought initially and Dr. Schul, who is our favorite member of the team, [laughter] >> um, has done a super job of walking that in her own line of not violating the confidentiality of her clients, but still helping us be sensitive to people's mental health needs. We've started using Earth's facilities more than we ever have in the past. That's been a a huge change. The other huge change I think is the transformation houses and having that stable housing for people because that is just such a challenge and and that I give huge kudos to the um to the county for that opportunity to have that that housing available for for some of our folks because that's a big deal. So, we've certainly learned that. Um, and I think we've learned more about what the warning signs are. I was kind of naive when I started, you know, I just doing this work and all of a sudden I'm like, uh, let's see. I'm my my suspicion level comes up faster and I think we're we're more responsive being like, okay, we need to step in now. We can't wait until this is a crisis. I I will add from my perspective on the housing piece, I think the transformation houses are gigantic step in the right direction for this program because it keeps our participants in the county. They're living in the county. We're able to better supervise them when they're in the county and we can have that close contact with them where if they're in a sober house in Minneapolis, you know, Sam is traveling to Minneapolis to visit with them. how often is she able to do that with her case load? I can't go to Minneapolis and visit with them in the middle of the night, but if they're here in the county, it allows us to have that close contact with them. So, the housing is essential. And I think the more we can keep our participants in the county, obviously, the more accountable we can hold them to the program. >> And I would add, you know, judge, you mentioned the relationship piece. I think that what not only these homes provide but family resource center, destiny way program or uh destiny dad's program, we're going to start a mom's program. Um that peers, family relationships, right, are so core to building those social supports. The homes are voluntary clients as well as this program is a voluntary program. So you're surrounded by people that are trying to improve their lives, right? They're on the same kind of trajectory towards hopefully exiting the system. And the more you surround yourself with people doing that in whatever capacity, the better people are, right? Um I've heard that you're the average of the 10 people you hang out with the most, right? And so where are our folks hanging out with? Where do they have access to meet new friends, new people, um and to have that sober community as it's already mentioned? And so I just think there's a multitude of things that are going really well and that we've learned over the years. So >> on uh page seven, we have some data about treatment court recidivism. Um in looking at the data, I know there's some some blanks towards the towards the end as we don't have the data from for two and three years out. But uh looking at 2021 and 2022, I see some zeros there, which looks like good news to me. And >> it was a pandemic. >> Maybe [laughter] that's the case. I don't know what anyone was doing. >> If there were any strategies that came into play during that time frame or maybe it was just kind of what was going on in the world or um maybe we feel like the program has improved. We've learn some of those lessons learned. We've we've implemented and we're we're seeing the data says [clears throat] that we're doing a better job over time. So kind of curious about that and then also if there are any lessons or strategies that have been learned through this program that apply back to kind of the general court that can help recapture some of the investment that we we put into this program. Now we're it's helping us actually, you know, across the board. >> I'll just give an example really quick. So I was talking with my lawyers that staff this calendar. So we're talking about recidivism rates and we're talking about wraparound services. The judge mentioned mental health. Um Peg Case works with a lot of our um challenging clients. I see people here on the panel nodding with me. Um but she was working with a client of ours who not only had chemical dependency issues but again normally we have MICD clients come through mental illness and chemical dependency issues. You know this client was really challenging to deal with and I think but for PEG going above and beyond to stay in touch with this individual get them connected eventually get them into an earth they were on a waiting list this person likely would have spiraled out of control and probably committed a new offense somewhere. So, and if we're looking at how do we impact recidivism, it's how do we get that on the front end. Um, it's like anybody who's running a business, if you invest on the front end, you pay dividends in the back end. So, I think having people like Peg Case work with some of our really hightouch challenging clients is where you see these recidivism numbers come down and really have that close connection with the client. getting them into an ERS facility that where we really see these recidivism numbers really drop off because we're investing in people that need extra handholding on the front end so they're not committing new offenses and they're not committing new crimes in the community which brings public safety down, >> you know, and that's a great point that that I should have made earlier is that we also our folks establish relationships with county resources like Peg. Uh Peg Case is very very good at her job and I think people establish a relationship with her and they remember her >> and then they get into a crisis when they're all done with us and they know that they can go back there. They know they can go back to Dr. Schult. They know that they can reach out to some of these county resources. And I think it's been such a value to all of us to establish these relationships across departmental lines so that we know in a pinch that there's somebody that we can call on and and ask questions of and and that's just that's just what makes us all better at all of the work we do, not just our treatment court work. >> Yeah. to go off that me addressing the mental health things are has been so important because we can treat the CD the chemical dependency side but if the participant is also dealing with mental health issues we can only have those guard rails up so high because we're not actually addressing the real issues that are causing the CD issues. Um I mean just yesterday in in veterans court there was someone who was describing themselves saying that the alcohol isn't the problem. The problem is my mental health issues that I am using the alcohol to treat >> and he had come to that realization through his treatment that this is it looks like the problem [snorts] but it's just a symptom right and you treat the symptom sure the symptom can go away but there's going to be a different solution to the underlying problem and I think it's important to note when looking at these rec recidivism numbers these are all for high-risisk high need people who if left to their own devices would be very likely to be committing new crimes because they have they're at a high risk to commit new offenses and they are have high needs. So, we're taking folks who are in a very difficult spot and providing all of these services to help them so that we're not simply spending the money elsewhere through law enforcement and [clears throat] involvement and more unsuccessful treatment programs because the unsuccessful treatment program they're getting on probation isn't addressing every need because the person with a traditional probation case load cannot identify all of the issues the people have. With our programs and our ability to work with clients and get some more information ahead of time before they start working with our programs, we are able to maintain a much more proactive and forward focused work kind of philosophy with those clients. We're able to support them in a different way than traditional court would be able to be [clears throat] able to where it's more reactive. That proactiveness allows us to case plan and build around their successes and help them build up to find ways to be more successful in the community and to live a life that they see as more fitting and more appropriate. I'm as the probation officers on the teams, I'm wondering if you could kind of connect um what this looks like in reality for people anonymized of course, but when we talk about recidivism rates and that change happening, but then also those life factors if you guys had any that you wouldn't mind sharing today, I think that would also be helpful because talking about num numbers, but then these numbers are are people. >> Absolutely. Our we have a number of examples of clients that we could share. One specific thing I wanted to talk about. Um, we can call him John for now just because names will be a little more private. Um, when John came to us, he was homeless, using on a daily basis, and consistently struggling with mental health. It was something he wasn't willing to seek treatment for. He wasn't comfortable approaching the VA for that treatment. And he's been working with us for about nine months now. He is now housed regularly attending weekly therapy, has a number of medications for him, and is sober. to be able to provide that to a veteran, to someone who has served their country and has provided truly something I'm very thankful for. To be able to help them walk that path, to walk with them to pick them up where they're living and take them to a hotel to try and look at that hotel, to take them to a an apartment to see if that would be a good fit for them, to get the benefits in place that this person can be supportive and can be successful in the community. That's incredibly important. And to see him flourish now in a new apartment, sober, taking his medications is really an incredibly moving thing. And I wish he was here to speak to his story as well. Um, I have another example as well. I I've worked with a um a woman who was addicted to meth. Um she had all three of her kids removed from the house. Uh working with child protection. Um lost her children for many years, was bouncing in between homes. Um really didn't have any success and then she decided to participate in treatment court. Um [clears throat] fast forward, she's sober. She is working um as a CPR or she was working as a CPRS, meaning she was giving back to the sober community. Um she was working at an outpatient treatment facility helping others stay sober and she got all three of her kids back. Um it was a great success story. She's living on her own. She has her own income. She has her own place. and um she's very happy. >> Can I ask mister what happens to those kids? Do they have problems down the road then or >> we ever follow that? >> Not just those kids but from >> it's we don't collect any data on that. Um as far as I know it's just it's >> that would be a challenge. They'd have to be involved in the system in some kind of way. I'm sure there is data you can find somewhere but specifically for us we don't have that necessarily right now. I only sorry I was going to say the only data that we track was is from the start of their time in the program to the end of the time in the program. So we keep track [clears throat] like if they're involved with CPS at the beginning or if they custody or how much contact they had and at the end when they graduate or if they're terminated we would also enter that data. >> And when we have families that that are involved in CPS we do try and work really closely with CPS to make sure that the children are getting um the needs >> their needs met. So, uh, like for this family, they were attending weekly [snorts] family therapy sessions. Hopefully hoping that will help. >> Commissioner Wolf, why don't we let Suzanne maybe address that and aces and what it means. >> Sure. Good morning, uh, Mr. Chair, commissioners. So I think as um your panelists already referenced that um when there is sort of the co-involvement with treatment court to um and child protection it is really around how are we coordinating services for kids and their parents in this case um again I don't know what case or the details but kids are in foster care those are generally then um juvenile cases that are overseen by the child protection um courts and we certainly work in tandem to look at how do we uh facilitate safe reunification and then safe really post county involvement of any kind. What are the safety networks that can remain intact and in place to support the kids and families long term? Um because we know that whether it's treatment court or child protection or not a lifelong service, but how do we set them up in the community be to be as successful as possible? Uh if we look at page 11, um it's talking about the number of treatment court denials. A lot of the categories are pretty self-explanatory, but I'm curious uh if you can talk about some of the reasons for denial from some of the other areas that maybe aren't so cut and dried. >> Yes. So I'll first talk about the not a resident one. Um, so not a resident. That would basically be if someone is referred to the program and we don't know where they're at, like if they're reporting homeless. I get a lot of jail referrals where the person in jail will message me directly and they'll put homeless in there. Um, and so that would count as a referral. Um, so that would be where they're not a resident. Um, non-compliance would be something where someone is in compliant with the screening process where like you can't get a hold of them or they're not calling you back. um the criminal history section. So that typically is where if I'm just screening them and I've noticed throughout their like once I do the screening that they have maybe a like a past defense that would make them ineligible for the program. That would be the criminal history. The county attorney too if they ever see that but that would be considered a also I guess a criminal history one. And then just other one is the other one I guess depends on what it is. Like I recently just had one where the person had out of state matters that they were dealing with um that had to be taken care of for. So that one just would depend on the specific person. >> I would add as someone who tracks often where our clients live and come from. Um, I often refer to Scott County as my county as this is my Clark County or Las Vegas of the first district because so many of our so many of our I like to think positively about that um are not actually from Scott County because of all of the wonderful attractions that Scounty has that bring in a lot of wonderful revenue to the county. But many of um our clients especially come through the public defenders office if they're getting picked up at Mystic Lake Canterbury Valley Fair or wherever that new golf place is going to go. Um, many of those clients come from not Scott County and then they otherwise would be really great treatment court candidates, but they don't live here. >> Or we we just [clears throat] had a client that, oh, this person would have been a great treatment court candidate, but when we looked at the homeless factors, there weren't enough nexus or ties to Scott County to anchor them here to kind of justify investing Scott County resources, especially for um the curfew checks um that were were mentioned as well. But I would say a lot of our clients that come through that might come through the jail as referrals for treatment court might look like good candidates. But the more we dig, they're just not from Scott County specifically because they don't live here because we have so many outofcount clients that come through that get picked up doing silly things they're not supposed to be doing while they're here. as it relates to the county attorney um denials. So, the program is set up where there's effectively two tracks for screening. Um Robin, our coordinator, does screening to check eligibility criteria and then assuming someone passes that, then it goes on to the county attorney's office for review. And our review process involves law enforcement. So, in any any of those situations, I reach out to Captain Pearson and she chats with law enforcement about their feedback. Um, because our review is primarily directed around the public safety aspect of this and public safety includes the other participants in the program. So, we can get candidates who on paper look [clears throat] like they would be a good fit. They met meet high-risisk high need. they live in the county. Um, they don't have any mandatory disqualifying offenses. But then, for example, we'll check with law enforcement and law enforcement will have information that isn't formal charges or other things like that, but they have information that perhaps this person is highly connected to really high level drug distribution. Our concern is that if we put someone like that in a treatment court with a bunch of people who are struggling in recovery, we have given someone with great connections for dealing a new client base. >> Um that is not to say that every drug dis drug sale charge is vetoed. We evaluate every case on its own. Uh we take feedback from law enforcement. We then do our own internal review. I worked with the attorney who was assigned the case, if it's not me, about their thoughts, concerns about what has happened with the case so far, what they know about it. I discuss with the county attorney himself about each referral. Um there are times when public safety risk is too significant uh for us to agree and the county attorney has a veto power for referral when that public safety issue is too concerning because we do not want to set back everyone else in the program by giving someone a shot. Uh we want to be very careful and protective of our group because otherwise we'll see our estimation is that we will see that termination number go way up because then a lot of people will backslide very far because a bad apple can spoil the bunch. >> With respect to time, I want to finish up with just two questions if you don't mind. the first of which being for Judge Lennon um referring to our veterans court. If you could speak to the collaboration amongst the different counties and across the judicial district and talk about why you think you're having success in that regards. >> I think we're having success in that regard, aren't we, Jared? Okay. Um [laughter] um back at the time I was chief of the district, I was able to start talking about collaborating, working together because individually a lot of counties don't have high enough numbers to justify a standalone court. So, we combined um Dakota, Carver, and Scott into one umbrella um first districtwide veterans court and we are open to accepting other folks from Lassour, Mloud, Sibi, and Good Hugh. We have it. um we've consolidated some of the the needs for that group to hopefully make that more efficient as well as to kind of save money in the big picture. Uh that was a collaboration that well the devil was in the details and so I started I kind of came in and said we should do this. Isn't this a great idea? Let's all work together. Okay. See you. And then I walked away and made other people like follow through on the details. Poor Molly. She probably has to cover the gray hair now that was caused by that process. But um we we felt like it was the [clears throat] right thing to do at the time. We have a couple judges who are super interested in doing it and they and because of of this umbrella district, we can we can move judges around in the district to cover these um calendars without needing to have someone specialized in the particular county. And so that's been super helpful. Bryce Irman, who was a county attorney here in Scott years ago, now handles our our what we call our West End um veterans court group. And then we have Judge O'Brien who also used to be here who does our East End and we are finding that this collaboration has allowed for people. We talk about this housing issue. If you can't find housing for someone in your exact county, we have much more flexibility now because we we're crossing county lines within the district and can and can handle that can handle that supervision, can handle where we where we hear that case. So, that's been a real um plus. We've been very happy about it. We've had super cooperation between um the corrections folks, which is what was, [clears throat] you know, the real the real crux of it in getting that done. Um we got uh some accolades from the judicial council for that effort and we're encouraging that effort in other districts um to allow for both veterans courts and treatment courts to be um to work at a at a combined um function so that they can serve more folks and and do it more economically. >> Thank you. Um and then final question before we turn it back to Mr. Chair and the board. Uh Molly, could you speak to on page three of the narrative, you talk about a quality insurance review? Um what this might entail and what you're hoping to learn from that? >> Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Um so I think Robin mentioned this at the beginning. Uh but there is so Allrise is the National Organization for Specialty Courts. Um that application has been submitted. We don't know back yet, right? Okay. We're waiting to hear a response, but that would be um a real they come in and they do again that quality assurance check. So, how close are we aligning to the best practices nationally, recommendations, being able to take a a look at that? Um, in conjunction with that, we have uh been conducting an ongoing thirdparty evaluation of treatment court. So, that's a deep deep dive into some of the graphs that you see here. And so, we are prepared for January. We're going to do a board workshop with you or we'll we can bring that data to you um and again take a deeper dive into some of the things that uh were discussed today. And so, uh, stay tuned for that as well. >> Thank you. I'll I'll turn it back to Mr. Chair and >> Great. Thank you so much. >> I have one. >> Yeah, please. >> I'm I'm thinking of life factors before and after um whether it's treatment court or drug uh or veterans court. And I'll just give you a little quick little story. I used to do uh jail church services for about 20 years in the Scott County Jail. And every once in a while, there'd be somebody that says, "You're never going to see me here again. I'm never coming back. >> Well, then sometime later I'd see him. I'd go, "You're back. Why are you back?" "Well, I was with a friend and you know, Fred had drugs in the car and I was on probation and that got me back here." And then I told him a Bible verse and I think this will be the first time I reference a Bible verse as a county commissioner. A companion of fools suffers harm. >> That's what I told him. I said, "If you want to live a new life, you're going to have to have new friends." I mean they'll drag you where you don't want to go the old friends. And so I I think a life factors you know and this these are all objective easily checked that do they have are they employed? Do they have stable housing but this the subjective one of a life factor of social network I don't [snorts] know how you deal with that but that's that's a critical component I would >> oh we talk about it all the time. Who are your sober friends? Who are your people? Who are the ones you can go to? every phase, okay, >> development we talk about who [snorts] are the people that are you need to >> be be combined with now because you can't you know what happens if you go back with these old fools. They don't want to see you succeed. >> And we've had a couple people and and that's the great thing about the group is because somebody will be like, "Oh, my friend Barry, I thought it would be okay if I just went with him." And then it turns into this disaster. And we can talk about that in front of the with the whole group and say, "Wow, Barry, we should have known he would, you know, I mean, you just Yeah, it seems so obvious to us sitting here, but it isn't obvious for people that don't have a big network of friends. They that they have to cut off these folks." So, we really use a lot of teachable moments with >> the example of one person for the rest of the group. >> I just >> Okay, good. >> I just want to add to that, too. In one of the risk assessments we do with the LSTMI, they do talk about like peers and social activities and so people may come back high risk on that. And then that's also something that I track in a separate system through the state as a coordinator where I'll track at the beginning of their program and at the end of their program if they've had like how that changes throughout time. >> Yeah. Truth is truth, right? Because that sounds like a proverb that came which is a book of wisdom, right? Wisdom whether you believe or not. It's a it's a it's a book of wisdom. The judge rep truth is truth, right? whether it's uh finding a good woman or finding some truth where [clears throat] >> that's right. >> Uh no truth. >> So I mean that is a big that's that's big. So the fact that you guys focus on that because that was one of my questions, you know, where do we collectively, the collective we, not just people in this building or the connected buildings, but the collective we of Scott County or any other county individuals, is there entry points where I'm going to say common folk, you know, not professional, not trained, um, can enter in and help kind of contend and stand with some of these folks, you know, and I There's mental health issues notwithstanding but sometimes is it you know the chicken and the egg is it somebody said mentioned that well it's not the booze it's the mental health so the booze but in some there it has to be like well I always asked the question when does a series of just bad choices you know pretty soon you're in that hole and then mental health is kind of the hammer that we all carry like oh mental health oh mental health sure but if you didn't make those 17 I don't know why that's the number today bad decisions it wouldn't have been a mental health thing. So then you had, you know, booze or whatever else. Is there going back to the question, um, spots where regular folk can somehow be a part of walking alongside some of these folks? Um, or do we tend to get a little bristly and nervous like, oh, we're paid to be good, you're good for nothing, so let us do do the work. Um, just feel like, you know, as a county, we're always trying to look for those opportunities. How do we break these cycles? To John's, I think was one of your questions or maybe it was uh Commissioner Wolf talking about um Commissioner Alrich. Um, what happened to those kids? Like, did we break the cycle? because I always talk about I know I'm rambling but I thought I saw Luke in here someplace county sheriff or Pam um now Barb you know our director of HHS or you know dealing with when they were social workers or deputies or working in the jail having to go out and arrest John use that name >> John for drunken disorderly beating his wife and they had to go take care of that and now that they're in their now Barb in their role now the next generation of deputies and health and human service workers and mental health are going out and arresting Johnson Junior's family because well that's what he was raised in. So, you know, I'm always like, how do we break those cycles with everything that we do? And yes, people have to want to I like I always throw that out there. We can't make someone. But boy, we can have just that horse to water. That water is just, oh, I want to jump in. It's tasty. Like, oh, punch my thirst. like how do we make that environment so rich that people can't help but want to make that change because they have to do it internally, right? Um but we have the paid professionals, but is there also some level of opportunity for regular folk to come in and walk alongside some of these people? Not only I asked that question here and other things that we do. Um sorry that was about eight minutes. Um, >> I can add to that real quick. >> Um, so Sam mentioned a PRSS, which is something a lot of the people who go through treatment once they're recovery, >> go get them, judge. >> Sorry. >> They can >> um, support people who are in recovery. And we actually Peg Case, I know she was mentioned earlier, she introduced me to PRSS and they are coming to our next monthly meeting to meet the team and kind of see about bringing PRSS on our like not on our team officially, but like to come into the program to meet other participants to be able to help walk because they've walked through it before. None of us have walked through what they've walked through. So being able to have that I think is going to be really helpful. >> And who is that just for me? for my own >> PRSS. The person Well, it's from a company that they're >> What do we know what that stands for? Is it It's like a nonprofit, a third party. >> I think it's called a pure peer recovery specialist. Yeah. Pure recovery support specialist. >> Okay. >> But a lot of Wait, >> I was just going to say, do you want to speak about the mentor? >> And the mentors. Yeah. >> Got to come to the green, Mr. VA. Got to come to the green so we can all hear your questions. I know >> you're going to [laughter] go Tik Tok viral here. We're going to get you there. >> Oh, nice. Nice. >> And that I just want to mention is for treatment court. What he's about to talk for is Veterans Court. >> Now, you might not get on camera, so Well, no. We got Cameron someplace here. I think you might be fine. Uh the veterans treatment court has a mentor program um that is comprised of of um veterans who live in primarily Scott or Carver County, many of which are in recovery for lengths of time themselves. But when a new veteran comes into the veterans treatment court, they get assigned one of these mentors who's, you know, like I said, they're not part of the team. They're just another they're [snorts] another veteran. Veterans are just generally more comfortable with each other than we are everyone else. >> Sure. Yeah. >> Um we assign them to somebody who is just there as a >> a source of positivity and ear or a piece of advice when they need it. But it's a very effective program. >> Yeah. Kind of that 2 am buddy like, "Hey, if you get a call or text at 2 a.m., >> answer the phone." >> And they do sometimes. >> Yeah. >> I mean, it's huge, right? We're built for community and so whatever avenue we can do. So that's that's very heartening to know that we have and then foster that. >> One of the things I do out of my office is always actively looking for more. We get asked about volunteering quite frequently. So I try to direct them. This is a great way to volunteer. >> Well then then and I maybe you already are, but we have an outreach group right over on this side of the building. You're on that side of the building. They're on this side of the building like to make sure that we are >> when I had my lunch last week, the mentors had a table out there recruiting people that were coming through. So which was delicious and awesome by the way. >> And it was served with gravy. So, >> yeah, I was going to say, yeah, [laughter] you did a great job. Uh, you know, most people are rated how they carry their own water. You carried the gravy well. So, thank you for that. [laughter] and and commissioner on the treatment court side, [snorts] we as Judge Lennon described, we are always talking to the participants about making sure they have a support network, making sure they have community because often times folks in recovery sometimes their behaviors are counterintuitive. So if you have someone who hasn't struggled, they're not going to understand or recognize issues. So, there's some risk in having folks not familiar with that type of lifestyle because they don't realize all of the the pitfalls that may be out there, right? If so, we we really focus on making sure they each participant gets their own sober support network of people who are in recovery or who have strong understandings of that. Because if someone not in recovery goes to dinner with someone who is, they might order a drink not thinking anything of it. >> That might be a problem, right? So, it's making sure they have their support network of folks who understand them who aren't >> professionals, just regular everyday people who have life experiences, who are similar enough where they can form those strong connections. >> Yes. And whatever. I totally get that. Like that's the whole if you're causing someone else to sin, you ought not do that, right? Even though it might be okay for you, it's not okay for that person. Um, so even if we're looking at supplementing, augmenting, whatever, the volunteers to be able to have those types of things as a training basics. So yeah, I'm not saying that we're displacing professionals, but boy, the more just feels like there's not enough hands and feet on this side of the table. Not to say you guys aren't doing, but you get what I'm saying, right? Um, so whatever we can do to come alongside and not overlap, not stay in our lane, um, but fill the lanes. >> We've also done some work with a program called Every Third Saturday that occurs in Minneapolis. They have a lot of, uh, volunteering opportunities for people if they're looking for it. And they also have a donation center where they run their own kind of little Goodwill store for veterans to help take care of people who need them in the cities. >> Yeah. And part of the time there's so much good work happening. We just don't always know what the left and the right hand because they're not rel you know. So whatever we can do as a county as a convenor or a aggregator of sorts like we we want to do that. We have a history of doing that and I think we're doubling down on that to make those types of opportunities. You know Derek's probably full aware of that but you know how do we keep that in the forefront because we're all so busy trying to run down things and make change in people's lives. So that's that's a good I don't know how we cate categorize that but I like that. Thank you. >> Sorry monopolized. >> I want to give this board a lot of credit. I sit on the justice steering committee with your county administrator over here Leslie Vermillion. And as someone that goes to a lot of meetings not just across the district but statewide. Um, I think this board needs to just acknowledge the immense investment that it spends on its community for people who are re-entering the community or might need services. Um, we look at often our jail numbers and our clients that are in custody. And I think this board is really committed to making sure there's an investment in its people and its community to make sure that we keep recidivism rates down, that we're keeping the community safe, and it's investing in people. It's again, it's that business concept of if we invest on the front end, it pays dividends on the back end. So you're asking about like people in the community that can help and I think this county board's really invested in that in terms of getting housing for families that are in transition, making sure that people have resources to get access to employment and how this county looks and employing people that might have been out of the workforce for a while. So I think there's a lot of factors. there's individual connections that we have, but I think there having those programs available for referrals makes a huge difference in what those numbers look like in terms of the clients that are coming back and recidiv the recidivism rates and kind of your public safety in your community. So, I just wanted to acknowledge this board. I don't often get to appear in front of you, but um on behalf of our clients in our office, I just recognize the work you do and the numbers that I see that the county invests in and how well it's working out for our clients and the community you serve. So, thank you. No, it's good. It's good to hear that because we we do want to be about change and outcomes, right? We all do, right? We all want to be about real outcomes, not just kicking the can down the road so the next group of folks and professionals here and there in 10 years or three years or 20 years are talking about the same dumb stuff like [snorts] how do we really move this needle? So, but thank you for for that, >> Mr. Chair. Yes, please. >> Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that, Lindsay. That's very very nice to hear and that that really was a good segue into my question. And I I as we talked about earlier, uh the specialy courts have been in front of the board every year and we do care and and we have made some of those investments and I think it's really important I I don't think it's something to answer today, but in your your respective departments to to make sure you let us know, you know, we've tried to fill some of those gaps. We're not going to fill them all the way, but you know, the things we've done in housing, the things we've done with parenting, um hopefully getting our local s uh ready and able to take take more people. Um, but I I think it's important to think about even as we try and sustain those or spin them off so they're not fully on levy, that type of thing. What's the next thing to be working on that helps >> Yeah. helps folks not go back to jail and prison, not need the other services we need. So, that's important. I I thought you brought up jobs and I think there's maybe more we can be thinking about and doing there and convening, you know, not offering them but convening. But just something to to think about as you have ideas, please please forward to them to us. We care and we have been trying to with whatever ability we have, you know, put some resources into those big gaps knowing that um we we want to see different lives for folks and we want to work ourselves out of a job, frankly. >> Yes. Be awesome. >> Thank you. I mean, that is the rub that we're we're everyone's feeling the squeeze and and a lot of those areas that we can give on or give up or cut are the things we probably don't want to because they're they seem to be working where Suzanne was talking. Can we prove those numbers? Not not that we're not believing that there there's impacts, but it just be such a stronger position to say yes, because of A, B, and C, we're seeing elemental P like change dramatically. um we're seeing the change. We just can't 100% correlate the two, but we do believe in our hearts that that is that is working. So, it would be So, if any state reps or senators are listening, please fund things appropriately. And by the way, this guy, I can't listen to him without thinking of a certain representative like a Scooby-Doo. I want to take a mask off and see if a certain representative. So, it's great voice, great cadence, and everything. So, sorry. Sorry. Okay, I digress. Any other questions? Great topic. Keep changing people's lives. Um, let us know how we can help or get out of the way. Sometimes that's the answer, right? >> Okay. Thank you so much um for the time. It was fun to chew on that. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, so now we are going to move on to item number 6.1, recognition of Scott County retiree Rhonda, and they will make their way. >> Mr. Chairman, yeah, could we have a few minutes here while we change out? >> Sure. Let's have Let's take a couple minutes. We're going to recess just for a couple minutes. Do I need to bang this? Anyway, >> from a momentary recess, we're going to do a little uh changing of the agenda as we uh await moving of some things around for uh recognition process. >> Recording and process. Um we're going to move to the consent agenda. Uh we have 12 items that will pass in one motion, typically deemed non-controversial. So, I will go through this list. Uh item 7.1 adopt resolution number 2025-254 approving execution of a purchase agreement and purchase of property at 1732 Marshall Road in the city of Shakipi. 7.2 adopt resolution number 2025-256 authorizing entering a contract with Northwoods Consulting Partners, Inc. for Traverse. 7.3 Adopt Resolution number 2025-257 authorizing entering into the 2026 2022 Minnesota Family Investment Program Service Agreement. 7.4 4 adopt resolution number 2025-258 approving the precious metal dealer license for accidental antiquarian LLC in Savage 7 Savage 7.5 adopt resolution number 2025-261 supporting lifting the nuclear power moratorium so we can at least talk 7.6 Six. Adopt resolution number 2025-262 authorizing entering a joint powers agreement with an NOA County for secure juvenile detention. 7.7 adopt resolution number 2025-264 authorizing entering into an agreement with Kerosoft Technology Corporation for the Service Now technology platform. 7.8 adopt resolution number 2025-265 authorizing entering into an an attachment forward to the master agreement with Laughler Companies, Inc. 7.9. Adopt resolution number 2025-267 approving long-term disability and short-term disability insurance provider and plans and rescending resolution number 2017-039. 7.10 adopt resolution number 2025-268 authorizing entering an amendment to the child and teen checkup contract with the Minnesota Department of Health. 7.11 approve record of dispersements and approve claims. 7.12 approve payroll processing of personnel actions. members is the 12 items on a consent. >> Mr. Chair will approval. >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second on the consent agenda. Any discussion? >> Otherwise, all in favor say I. >> I. >> All right. Consent is approved. Now, we are going to backtrack and go to item number 6.1, recognition of Scott County retiree Ronda Lax. Is that is that possible? I feel like I was just in your office celebrating your seven year. I think it was your it was longer than that. But here we are. Leslie Vermillion, good morning. Still, >> good morning, Mr. Chairman and commissioners. Uh Rhonda clearly didn't get the memo of no more retirements this year. >> I know. I That's what I thought. We had a >> we've been up here way too often and we need to welcome her husband Lenny back who was a long-term county employee as well who's here today in the highway department. So, um I get the honor of talking a little bit about Rhonda's career. She began as a clerk typist one in the highway department. So I'm not sure what that meant. Um on 325 of 85, so over 40 years ago, she made $59 an hour and her actual salary was about $10,500. She was quickly promoted by July 10th um to a clerk typist in the personnel department. Um I think this is where she begins her direct trajectory upward in the world of employee relations. She became a clerk typist then in ' 86 and she was promoted to the payroll benefits coordinator in October of 93. She then worked out of class on the first of her three um ERPs or information systems on the Oracle project, taking us from the AS400 green screen to an official human resource information system. She was then reclassified to the employee relations representative in 2004. She was then working out of class in 2008 on the Lawson INFOR project which is where I really began to meet um Rhonda as she was working in the LEC uh with a lot of staff over there as we were converting over. She became the risk manager in 2008, the benefits and loss control manager in 2013. Um and then ultimately she is the benefits and safety manager um in 2019 and the benefits program manager now in 2024. She worked under seven HR ER directors and I think all six county administrators, >> six in the history of the county. Um, several of our like I think just like several of our past retirees when you look at that timeline, you see that Rhonda started as a clerk and learned her craft, working her way through to becoming the benefits management manager. Really on the boots, learning, curious, hard work and dedication to the county. and as the county was growing, she needed to grow and learn with it and help drive the county forward. Um, one of her co-workers said her fingerprints and literal blood, sweat, and tears are all over the county's policy, our procedure, our processes, our forms, our contracts, our agreements, the systems, and her soul is a positive bright spot in the county's culture. That's a direct quote. She is a fierce supporter of the employees and I think board members too. Well known and loved by many working tirelessly to design and maintain the best programs possible in the areas of our core benefits which include our health, dental and life which are always changing and you have to learn and be educated on >> supplemental benefits right you approved that today. our life, our HCSP savings program, which all of our pre employees appreciate. And then leading and coordinating an exceedingly successful employee insurance committee. We have a long-term history of a successful employee insurance committee and all the strategy and documentation that goes along with it, that important detail that make it successful. She was instrumental in the early stages of our risk management because she oversaw insurance claims and health and safety programs which only continued to get better and you've seen the history of that data through time. She has worked on three major employee relations system. First it was the AS400 green screen which was payroll and benefits and tracking. She loved the green screen and in talking um then she helped us convert to Oracle. Then she updated Lawson in my grade08 and online in '09 if you remember those terms. Um and finally I think we're going to see her fingerprints and architecture. It also shaped our next system workday when it goes live on 126. Now, you decided to retire before that, so I'm not quite sure, but [laughter] the [clears throat] fact that she participated in building um four separate systems and that transition, I think it just speaks to your resiliency, right? That you're willing to do that, go through these transitions, help build out that system. She has received accolades, recognition of her meritorious work and teamwork, and multiple letters expressing thanks and gratitude for her willingness to run point on resolving benefit issues and working through um vendors here as well. She survived COVID um if you folks remember that that kind of rocked our world for 2021. And I doubt anyone except the staff in ER can really appreciate the programmatic issues and changes and work policy that they had to deal with. PTO, sick leave, everything else that was coming up during that time. And it was all different and new. We hadn't experienced that before. And yet it felt very seamless in a lot of ways in the transitions that we have made due to her leadership. Having someone with a strong understanding of this large complex picture um was essential, I think, in trying to work all of those complexities. And since she knew it from the ground up, she knew how to work through it. I also know that Rhonda is trusted by the board and leadership. I don't know how many commissioners have said, "Who do I need to go talk to about this and this and this?" And who do they go talk to? Rhonda. They all wanted to speak with Rhonda. I think it just shows the respect that the entire [cough] organization [clears throat] has for her. From the ER department come a couple of the following. She is the historian. She remembers everything. She is the keeper of the document. She was always the one who could find a needed item from 10 plus years ago. Now, I'm not sure, but I think these two traits have something to do with baby boomer women. [clears throat] dedicated resource for questions on benefits, risk and policy and who is willing to problem solve which is key. Problem solve, finding ways to work through things. Willing teacher, mentor and coach to people in the organization and that department. And according to er, she is a proofreader second to none. >> Could always be heard saying, "Sorry, but these things just jump out of me." Unquote. party planner and a great hostess. She historically helped planned or played a major role in the department gettogethers. And these are all areas of expertise that they're going to be leaving us when she walks out that door. Um, and I know I'm going to miss that. And I know I'm going to be able to I'm going to miss saying I just have to go ask Rhonda. I crossed paths with her just a couple weeks ago. We were both at the end of a meeting and it I have to say it was just nice to sit and talk and reminisce a little bit about the history, the past and her future and the things that she's accomplished. Um she and Lenny are looking forward to an extended trip over the Thanksgiving holiday and then time with their kids and grandkids. And so um our loss is going to be their gain. And um I want to wish Rhonda and her family a wonderful retirement on behalf of the organization. Um and we're going to miss her. And with that though, I'm going to call Lorie Hus up to say a few words. And I think she has a plaque for her. >> Hi Rhonda. [laughter] >> Thank you Leslie. I just have a couple words I want to say too. Um, these are probably going to dovetail right into some of the things Leslie said because Rhonda's qualities are just constant and solid and I don't I don't want to be shortch changed on the words for her today. So, um, I get the honor and privilege of giving this plaque and I'll give this to her in a little bit, but this plaque um to my friend and colleague Rhonda. Uh Rhonda relished these plaques um like she relished her career that evolved over 40 years, eight months and three days when she retires next Friday. Rhonda wanted our last plaque and this is the last plaque that we have in the county because her husband Lenn um also retired from Scott County after a lifetime career here and she wanted the two of them to hang proudly in the office of their home. Now, how great is that? She's gonna have the county hanging in their office. >> The irony though is I think the plaque actually represents what Rhonda was to employee relations and to Scott County. And let me explain that. So I'm someone who likes to look for the meaning in things. And I was thinking to myself, what is a plaque? You know, why is this plaque so meaningful? And when I did some research, I found that um plaques represent the following. appreciation, respect and dedication, legacy, public ceremony, and accomplishment. Rhonda appreciates and respects the county, the employees, and the people we serve. She showed it every day. Um, and it it just is who she is. Uh Rhonda is dedicated, which is evident in 40 years, eight months, and three days of service. I sometimes think people forget that it's easy to walk away. Sometimes it's easier to walk away than it is to live through a 40-year career. And I just thought, wow. When I thought about that, as I was thinking about this day, Rhonda's legacy exists, as Leslie had said, throughout uh the programs and practices in in ER and in the many lives she touched through the benefits programming. She continually got calls on her own cell phone after hours, before hours, coming into the office, interrupting whatever she was doing, and she was always willing to stop and help someone with whatever personal situation they had going on. Public ceremony is among Rhonda's favorite things to do. She is an extrovert. She is a party planner. We are going to miss the parties that she helped put together for us over the years, and we had some fun. >> [laughter] >> Um, I also thought about the the total rewards and in that we have social and that was inspired by Rhonda. Rhonda is social and always brings fun wherever she goes. And finally, accomplishment is what today is all about. Uh, when looking through Rhonda's file, I recognize that her anniversary date is listed as 414 of 1991. Yet, she held many titles between then and now. Rhonda's rise to manager in ER happened because of the exceptional work Rhonda did and the value she added throughout her career. She continually evolved the role and the position based on talent she cultivated based on the needs of the department and the organization. How tremendous again is that? So Rhonda, I'm going to miss you. I'm going to miss you so much. Um you are my friend. You've been my confidant. I've not worked a single day here and I've been here 29 years without Rhonda as my colleague by my side and helping think through a lot of tremendously difficult things that we face in the ER department. And so with that, I just um know that my loss is Lens Yane because she is a wonderful person to be around and I know he's been patiently waiting seven years, I think it is, for her to join him in retirement and get to go do some travel and adventure. So all my best to both of you. Thank you. [applause] >> So, it's my pleasure to give [cheering] her this flag. [applause] >> Yes, absolutely. >> Nice. Oh, Buffalo's crooked. [laughter] >> [clears throat] >> day. [laughter] >> I really didn't prepare anything to say, but um I really just want to thank everybody, everybody that I've had the opportunity to work with over the years. Um I have to tell you something kind of funny when you talk about I started with the AS400. >> When I started, we tracked employees on white index cards. I'm not kidding you. was a little tiny index card, you know, that like a cooking index card and it was your hire date was on there, your salary that you made, the position you were you were in. And maybe some of you have seen those in some of our personnel files because when we finally put those into the AS400 system back then um and I worked with um Larry McMahon at the time to get that system set up so that we could actually put people in a system. Um it was really it was funny. We stapled those cards in the back of the personnel files. And so if you pull some of the older files like mine that's about this thick, you'll find that card in there. And it was just it was interesting because that's the way it all started for me. That's the way it started in Scott County. That's how I knew employees. That's how I knew who they were. And then um giving them their paychecks was done in accounting. It wasn't done in our office at that time. But we still had to manage the salaries and make all the salary changes and all the benefit changes and those types of things. And I remember many times sitting in my office Christmas and we had like three different health insurance plans and white pieces of paper um legal pad size paper with me having it all figured out what everybody's rates needed to be for single and two-party and family coverage of three different plans as well as and they were all pasted up on the walls in my cube and I would sit there and enter one person at a time going okay they took this coverage [laughter] right before Christmas. I mean, I was literally here um times right before Christmas up till midnight, 2:00 in the morning, you know, the night before um doing that because that's how we started here in Scott County, keeping track of employees. >> Obviously, things have changed like Leslie said, and thank you for pointing out all all those good things about me, both to you and to Lori. Um because moving and evolving through three different systems has been challenging. It's been fun. It's been exciting. It's finally getting to the point where we get to enroll online for benefits which I've been asking for for 25 years probably at least. Um we finally are going to get to do it and I'm not even going to get to do it. I can't even believe it but Scott County will which is a great thing. Um so anyway I just really do want to thank everybody over my years here. We have had a lot of fun. We've had a lot of challenges. Um besides you you brought up CO what about a strike? We had one of our union strike out the door in '94. I'll never forget that either. It was um our apps bargaining, you know, it went on strike and at that time >> because once someone goes on strike, you have to cobra them with their benefits. >> So, we did we had to cobra >> every one of those benefits for those employees as well with a very small staff and another challenge, you know, it was just those type of things. But, you know what? We got through it all. We loved it. >> We worked together. We've always had a great team in ER, personnel, whatever you wanted to call us, cuz back then we were personnel. Now we're at ER and we have a great staff and I'm going to miss everybody. I'm going to miss all the people I get to work with. I'm going to miss the insurance committee that I've got been able to work with all these years. I'm going to miss the commissioners. I'm going to miss the challenges, honestly. I mean, I I do I I live for challenge, too. So, now I got to go home and my new challenge is my husband, I guess. [laughter] >> All right. Nice. Truth is truth. That's the theme of the day. >> That's right. >> Nice. >> But anyway, no. Um, it's it's really bittersweet. Leaving Sky County is bittersweet. It's hard. It's it because this has been the same building I've been coming to for 40 years. >> You know, this exact same building for 40 years. Different floors. We've been a couple different places, but this has been my home away from home. And actually, a lot of times my home and that was [clears throat] my home away from home, you know. So, it's it's going to be interesting and different for us to be together all the time. But, I think we can do it. Oh, look at that face. Yeah, [laughter] I think we can do it. So >> nice. >> But again, I'm going to miss everybody here. I I'll quit talking because I could rattle on forever, but um I am going to miss everybody. I'm going to miss everything I've been doing. Um I think I'll still be contacted maybe occasionally with some questions. Um everybody tells me they have my cell phone, my email, everything. So um and the retirees even. I'm going to miss the retirees. they've been my biggest group that I've always always worked hard with and really fought for. You know, that they they get to continue on with the Scott County benefits. And so, um, I'm happy to say they've been invited to my party that we're going to have Thursday afternoon as well. And I hope a lot of them come and I've been receiving cards and emails from them as well. So, it's really nice. So, anyway, I'll quit talking. Thanks everybody. I appreciate Scott County. I'll be back. We'll come and visit. I'll come and visit. I'm not saying to work. I'll be back, but I'll come and visit. [applause] Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Yeah, we need we need a county board pick. >> Well, there's some other people that might want >> Yeah. Let's do a quick pick. >> That can help formulate some people's uh what they might want to say. And the the theme of returnship, that's what kept coming to my mind when talking about things to do. >> Return. I know. I know. >> Yeah. [laughter] Good for you. But I get it. >> Do I need to or not? I'm not sure. Good >> for you. Two crazy kids. [laughter] >> You guys be good. We've got a few more decades. >> Open mic. >> You're retired. >> Danny, good morning. >> I think I'm going to start off the hopefully parade of people to come have some uh nice words to say about Rhonda. So, um I will just say my appreciation for Rhonda started almost the day I walked in this door when I was told we have our own self- insurance pool. And I started going, "How on earth does that work? What are the different things about this? What are the different questions I have?" And then I met Rhonda and all the answers were there. Um, to anything you could imagine, to any complex question, to the terms of the contract, um, to being able to correct our consultant who was supposed to be the expert in that. Rhonda always had the answer, always knew about the stuff that even we didn't have to say, "Oh, no, that's actually this program. We don't offer that here, but this is exactly how it works." Um, that knowledge was just always there. Um, and despite having that history and knowledge, her willingness to always look at something differently. If someone said, "Hey, what about this?" She could go, "Well, we look at that 15 years ago, but things have changed. So, let's take a look at it again." Um, not just the knowledge though, but the professionalism she brought to it. Rhonda would be one of the people that say, "Let's explore this." And when the information came back and it was too expensive, it wasn't going to work right, she's like, "Oh, nope. That wasn't a good idea. We're not going to do that right now." But continually watching for that right moment. And that really played out with her concern for the employees and what they wanted, what they needed, what they kept coming back to and back to. And Rhonda going, "Not this year. We can't make it work this year." But always keeping those things and coming in our quiet meetings going, I really want to make this happen if we can. And we've made some of those things happen where Rhonda's like, "This is the year to be able to do that. This is the time we can have that additional benefit that they've been asking for for 15 years." And as it was spoken to, this was always Rhonda's concern. What is best for the employees while also making sure it was sustainable for the business? She always was available for any call. Um, she knew the details of anybody's situation and would work with them through hours to make sure that it happened. Um, and in a lot of places, and I've worked in those places, they go, "Here's the number to the company that administers these for us. You go do it." Ronda would go, "This is what it says. If they tell you this, you tell them no, that's not what our contract says, and if they have an issue with it, you can they can call me." Her concern for those employees has been without fail. Um, her help to me has been fantastic. like I'll say, "Hey, I'm looking for information for this." And she'll go, "Here's the information you asked for, and here's all the other things that might come up that you need to be aware of um to make sure it's there." So, we are really going to miss that in this organization. It's one of those things that is not replaceable. We have excellent people that she has helped train up and to give that knowledge to, but after 40 years, you just cannot replace that. And it's going to be a hole that we have in this organization. So, um Rhonda, thank you [clears throat] for your service and thank you for your help to all the employees and to me as we've come in and especially to Jeff because he needs a lot of it. Yeah, >> it's true. >> Thanks, Danny. >> I'll try to make this quick. Um, legacy, right? If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to it here, it does it make a sound? We all know the answer to that question is, of course it does. That's how sound waves work. But the broader point, right, the reason why it's famous, the consequences of what we do, the impact of our actions on others, that is our legacy. I am working in a department right now with 10 contracts which are indelibly inked with your legacy, with work you did, with things you reviewed. We have procedures. We have agreements with external entities. There are notes. There's a bunch of stuff you're worrying about getting on SharePoint. No, I don't think it'll it'll it'll all be fine. But that is a legacy, right? The things that we think about, our intentions, our hopes, our dreams are important, but ultimately we are dust and air and in the passage of time and what we do, how we impact others matters. That is our legacy. Rhonda Laxon, it is a beautiful plaque. You have been a wonderful joy to work with, but it is your legacy that knocks me down. 40 years, countless touch points uh in my department, contracts that I bargain, inked by Ronda Laxon, years, decades of work that have left a legacy. You, my friend, uh have earned this and you deserve this, and there's nothing else for me to say. I have not known you for 30 years. It feels go of me to even be talking, but I've been doing this a bit elsewhere, and you have a legacy, and I appreciate you. I will miss you. my life becomes harder now. Um, thank you for everything you've done. >> Thank you for allowing me to stand up here. >> Nice. >> Thank you. >> All right. Anyone else? Anyone? >> You can come back. >> Maybe. [laughter] >> Okay. >> All right. >> We're gonna we're going to keep moving through, right? We're norm normally we would recess. Otherwise, we only have committee reports, right? >> They take 25 minutes. >> All right. Okay. Let's do a recess. We're going to We did a little swapping of the order, so we are going to take a brief recess. Uh there's a little something something down the hall, so we'll see you. Yes. In in a few moments. We are in recess. [clears throat] >> All right. Welcome back from recess. Uh we're going to move on to we've already done the consent, so we're going to move on to item number eight, committee reports and commissioner updates. Looking down to my right, Commissioner Wetman Breck, you please. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. November 4th, we all had workshop after the board meeting. Um November 6th was the guild fundraising breakfast. Um and and just related to guild, uh I Barb has has updated us. I think I think we've seen on our weekly reports that there's more bed days being used and they're working um collaboratively with their facility in Dakota County to make sure there's a place for our folks who need crisis services. So, just wanted to give some positive uh report on that. November 10th had Scott County Fairboard annual meeting. Um I did uh you know bring the um annual treasures report back from that meeting and did provide it to Leslie if you want to have more information on the the fair board's year. Um November 11th was my monthly meeting with the county administrator. Also that evening was CAP agency board meeting. Obviously, CAP agency um throughout the federal shutdown had a lot of um yeah, things to manage and and um additional clients still um some some uncertainty about uh energy assistance and that program does serve thousands of people in Scott County. So, more on that when we figure out exactly how that's that's going to go and what those impacts will be. November 12th had a virtual meeting with Niko on SNAP and heard from some other states how they're dealing with with some of the changes in the SNAP program. November 12th was the Micah board meeting. Um, Commissioner Alrich and I were there. Again, Micah, [clears throat] all really good work, but I think my message there as we were working on our our legislative priority and platforms was to narrow down a bit. it seems like for a short legislative session um with not much money to go around really want to focus. So that was my my hope or my message at that meeting. Um November 12th was Scott County Extension Committee meeting. The 13th um the county administrator and I met we had our quarterly meeting with the mayor and city administrator of Bell Plain. Um November 13th and 14th had AMC futures committee meeting. um a lot about federal impacts, but the second day that I could only attend part of really had some research and that discussion on gun violence and it was it was quite interesting and obviously a lot of um perspectives from around the state on that and that's the idea of that group is to really kind of talk about those those harder issues and and be able to hear and understand other perspectives. Um November 14th, I did also um virtually attend the scale general medi membership meeting. Um thought people did a really good job on the legislative priorities. November 14th had a long-term services and supports committee meeting. um the 17th yesterday I think uh AMC policy coordinating committee meetings and um as as you've been alerted for some of the AMC policy committees there'll be pre-annual conference calls and um yesterday at policy coordinating committee we looked at all the amendments that were proposed by our colleagues around the state um to the AMC platform and I do think especially in general government and maybe environment there's some to be really watching ing to see if we really do agree or not agree. So, I would encourage my colleagues on those committees. Um, if you're not able to be on that call, maybe alert one of the others of us, um, bring staff, take a look at those, um, platform amendments. Uh, also yesterday I had a community supervision advisory council subcommittee meeting and then this morning we all had community health board meeting and ditch board meeting. It's the end of my report. >> Thank you very much, Commissioner Wolf. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. on the 10th, planning and zoning. Uh on the 12th, I was at Eureka Township in Dakota County. They had a Vermilion River Joint Powers uh uh deal that they were setting up and u I'm the chair on that board, so I went there. Also, Mike Slavic from Dakota County attended that too. On the 13th, Alco Market met uh also that night, Spring Lake Township. On the 14th, scale and our um agenda for the state legislature. Uh then after that, Prior Lake had a ribbon cutting for the sidewalk on the west side of uh State Highway 13. And last night, Credit River Met. That's my report. >> Thank you very much, Commissioner Brennan. Um, no, November 4th was the Veterans Day lunchon and it was good to sit and talk to people. Um, the people from Shakpi I I got to have lunch with. Um, November 5th was the solid waste working group. Um, and we had a meeting and there was a presentation by three counties about MPCA permitting challenges. Um, November 5th was the lower Minnesota River Watershed District public hearing on area 3 project in Eden Prairie. Um, I presented the resolution that we passed at the last meeting regarding our position which was against the bonding um that they were seeking um and they um voted to approve that bonding. Um November 7th um was the tour of Prairie Point Apartments in Chakpi. Um, these units are a mix of supportive housing and lowincome housing. They're anticipating receiving their cert certificate of occupancy this week um with a move in beginning in December. Um, it was really great to see that um moving along because I was part of that um decision when I was on the city council. So, I think they said it was like >> not that I was involved 10 years ago, but they they said it was 10 years that it took them to get get to that point or to this point. Um, November 10th I had a Dakota Scott workforce um board meeting. November 12th was my meeting with Leslie Vermillion. [clears throat] November 12th was the Melsa Finance Committee meeting. November 12th um was also the CDA meeting. Um this was Deian Croat's final meeting on the CDA board. Um I truly appreciate the work that she's done for housing and economic development in Scott [clears throat] County. Um this year the CDA is celebrating its 50th anniversary and Deianne has served on the board for 27 years. >> Yikes. Wow. >> So she's really been involved in um the direction of housing in economic development. Um I asked the CDA to forward um copies of the housing reports um that were presented and the hopes portage status update report to the commissioners. Um November 13th it was the AMC [clears throat] District 10 committee meeting. We had presentations by on transportation, excuse me. Um we had presentation by Met Met Met Metro Metroransit on BRTS and their planning of the future BRT lines in the metropolitan area. According to Metro Transit in their 30-year plan, there's no BRT lines planned for Scott County. Um I testified to that fact um last spring at at the legislation. [laughter] Um November 13th um was the legislative tour of DemCon. Demcon presented on the anorobic digtor and their need for additional state funding. The group then took a tour of raw molting and Kota energy. Coner energy is working on permitting and getting funding for a wood dehydration system. Um this system would have the capacity of using 114 green tons of wood waste material perom to be utilized for bofuel um at rating >> November 14th um was scale um and then I followed that up with a meeting with Leslie Vermillion um and then I went to the ribbon cutting for Prior Lake and their trail that runs along Highway 13. November 17th, I met with Mark Paul um at DemCon. Last night was the Health and Human Services Resource Council meeting. The council had presentation on opiad funds and how Scott County is using and planning to use these funds. The council also reviewed and approved the 2026 Scott County Health and Human Services budget. This morning, um I met with Barb Dan and Barbrey on health and services. >> Mr. Chair, I just want to follow up. First of all, Jody, thank you for having Julie Seager send us those documents. I I thought found that very helpful. And then second, for everybody, uh, our December 4th meeting, uh, we'll have Deian Crow come and we can recognize her for all her service. >> Great. >> And one other note I was going to mention on Beacon, I don't remember what channel it was, but I feel like Chris, uh, was on one of those channels talking about HUD funding and how that could potentially impact what they're what they're doing. I don't know if that necessarily impacts Prairie Point, but something to keep our eyes on. Uh, Commissioner Alrich, >> on the 5th, I attended a meeting, monthly meeting with Leslie Vermillion. The 10th, we had a fish meeting regarding um vibrancy. It was with the county staff and you were there as well. And there was an idea, it was an idea of um not a proposal, but more of an idea to consider of the fish coming more underneath the county with a direct reporting type with the staff and to the county and and the genie, our deputy county attorney, um gave some good and valid reasons why that wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't be a good move. And I agreed and so we moved on. That's that was thought about but and ruled not a good idea which so we're we're on same day um STA board meeting on the 12th uh meeting with Chris Meyer regarding the RTF. We we sort of know uh that some are more than sort of know we know well we know for certain that Shakip and [clears throat] Savage will be out after 2027. Um, Elco New Market will still will also be out at 2027 out of the RTF joint powers agreement and Prior Lake uh appears to be out go uh they they were in if we were going to do a much more expensive project. They were unhappy that we're proposing something in the six or seven million range to to do some bites at improving elements. They wanted to see I mean the the large project was like $41 million. They they wanted to see a more comp comprehensive larger project. They were unhappy with that. So I think they're they're not in a certain category but likely maybe not in the 2027. We'll see on that. Micah board meeting the same day. Um MBTA board meeting as well there. As you know there's been a criticism about a compensation study. We were highly concerned about that and we thought it there were some elements that were probably the market that they selected or the way they constructed the market uh didn't seem to be there was enough there are a lot of questions. Anyhow in response to all this Luther took a significant um reduction in his salary and I'll tell you offline what it is but it's substantial. Um, in the future, MBTA is going to have a lot lot of workshops. We've never had workshops basically. And so, if it's a if it's a key thing like uh salary compensation or the budget or um any big big items, we're we're going to have let's have a workshop. So, we're going to divide our time between um about 45 minutes for the board meeting and then 45 minutes for a workshop. We're going to try and keep it in the same time frame but have a more back and forth lots of questions more u informal workshop so we can get get more depth in some of these topics. 13th uh second Thursday meeting for fish uh 169 quarter collition officers meeting the the coalition is dissolving. Uh the last meeting will be in February. It's going to be a dinner meeting at the um Canterbury and um the topic is going to be the history of SC uh Highway 169, which by the way would be a great um historical society like it is >> display, you know. Um but anyhow, so >> [clears throat] >> um so we're going to have that and uh we we're we're going to have have some key people over the years that have had a real key role and three or four speakers probably for that meeting. I I would suggest you know you can make it, you know, it's going to be a great night, but it's going to be the end. We're I think I'm pushing for trying to keep preserve the records, the data, the the logo, the the website, and you know, sort of keep it in a way that sometime in the future if there's a need to push for another lane on 169 or new expansion of the ferry bridge or some other reason to get the coalition back and running, they have this stuff to that's at least background material. Okay. 14th scale uh RTF board after that 17th meeting with Adam uh Johnson regarding fish. Uh later that same morning meeting with Jake Johnson regarding fish. That's Jake is the chair of Adams the treasurer. Later that same day meeting with Jess Hansen and Brad Davis regarding the project that may damage uh the drinking water supply for Burnsville and >> Savage. I don't know if I mentioned on the 13th I was had a water quality information meeting over in Burnsville, but anyhow, this what it is is there's this big hits that they call it at the gateway. It's a golf and entertainment complex that they want to put kind of on top of the landfill. >> And this is an online landfill. And the concern is right now there's two pumps that are pumping um one pump is water to surface water >> that comes from the Kramer mine as they as they dewater there's this good water and um bunch of it goes to Savage and a bunch of it goes to Burnsville and I think Apple Valley is indicating they want some um but half of that water gets just pumped and a different pump that's right there gets pumped straight into the river because they can't use it all. Um but anyhow, when the quarry quits that what will happen is that water that's low will rise up and there'll be a lake there and the lake is going to, you know, get contaminated by the dump and they're worried that this will screw up everybody's drinking water. And so the the pollution control agency is suing um on this uh and there's a big battle here on what's going to happen with that. uh project. Um but the crazy thing is to get all that garbage out of there and then realign it, you know, haul it out would take five to eight years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. >> And so I don't know if the state's going to ever have the appetite to do that. Okay. Then later that same day, fish executive committee that's into my report. >> Can I just ask why don't they just keep taking the water out like they're taking it out instead of letting the water That was my question. I said, "Well, let's say Kramer's done. Why don't you just keep taking the water and don't let it become a lake?" >> Yeah. >> Well, apparently that's quite expensive. I don't know. I don't >> Is it 100 or 500? >> I couldn't imagine it's nearly the cost of just taking all the garbage out of there. >> Okay. >> I mean, we'll see. You know, I think I don't think Savage is sending a letter. They have a meeting. The council's going to vote on it. Uh Burnsville City Council is going to vote on it um this next week. >> And uh I don't think Savage is sending a letter. We're not going to send a letter. We'll just let them and the PCA >> duke it out. You know, we're we're monitoring the situation. >> Uh Mr. Chair, Commissioner, what what's the date on the 169 meeting again? >> I don't think we've I've heard anything about it. Yeah, I don't I don't know if the actual I don't know the date has been >> been been set. >> Okay, great. If you find it is, please let me know. Thank you. >> I'm sure you'll get a notice and invitation. >> I haven't been getting notices from them lately. >> What's that? >> I haven't been getting notices from them though. >> Well, we they only the executive committee has been meeting. There hasn't been a a general meeting. [snorts] >> So, okay. >> Did they talk about end of life on that Kramer Corey? Like is that an imminent? Is that 20 years? It seems like every so often they're saying we're going to do it 20 more years. I mean >> Yeah. >> So the question is in 20 years will they say 20 more years? You know >> Right. Right. >> Uh and then the other note on RTF and prior like you'd mentioned um because we were in a workshop I don't know a month ago where they at the city uh had support in a workshop setting to engage a lobbyist to work with the city on behalf of whatever the next RTF in their view would look like. And I know they're having preliminary and presumably deeper uh discussions at some point with the tribe. >> Well, you know, at the last RTF meeting, I said, you know, if there's an appetite to do more between the tribe and parliament, it's crazy that you would have a different effort than why wouldn't we be why wouldn't all three of us be together on that? But, you know, when early on, I mean, in the higher month that they wanted, they didn't indicate that they were going to bring a substantial amount of money to the table. They just, >> you know, their their yearly contribution was $175,000 or something like that. >> Well, $41 million is, you know, a bigger much bigger commitment. >> Yeah. >> We know you go. Go ahead. >> So, you said here's who's out. Who's in for sure? >> I think I think that's a fluctuating. Well, no, there's there's in for sure. Um, >> Jordan, >> Jordan, Bell Plane, New Prague, >> um, >> that's in or out? Is this category? Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Uh, Savage out. >> The crazy thing, even those the these ones that are out >> Yeah. >> are still going to want to come back and use the long >> 100%. Well, >> and this is probably a topic for another day of workshop because I think it makes sense. But but what you know from two different cities that are out I've heard from both of them well we're off the dance floor for now cuz I asked them I said didn't the UN take over the able facility and now make it the unable facility because there's limited time there's limited um and so you know if something gets going yeah you're right that that I think that we as a scale function it makes a lot of sense to at least be talking but it's been hurting cats now for three or four years and I also said, you know, cities are maybe at a point, especially the bigger cities in the north, um maybe at a point where you're evolving with with police and fire that um because I said, yeah, I don't have an appetite for the county to go in and get a bunch of new bonding um to lobby for it. You know, there's a lot of USDA grants I've talked others about. I don't know if we're rural enough for that that uh you know, up north in St. County, Virginia got a brand new facility in part with USDA grants and I believe Chisum and or Hibbing, maybe it's Hibbing, but up on the range. They're they broke ground on their own new facility. Um, which in the scheme of things, they're not that far apart. Um, so I just think there may be at a point where they believe something they the city needs some something needs to happen and they're going to take that bull by the horns with the tribe and maybe that's but in my heart of hearts I think many others there will be th those that are off the dance floor will be looking for their dance card to be filled if if and when the way >> the tribe has not indicated that they're out. So the tribe is still in as far as everything they've said. >> Yeah. >> So yeah. No, I just Yeah, that's just that's just where it is. But >> but here's the thing. I'll just say one more thing about this. You know, we talked about that $67 million first phase of of critical elements. I think we for the 27 session, we need to get a a formal ask. Not expecting that we're going to get anything. The next bonding year is 2028. So you ask one or two times or before you have get money and but we need to get something in there for this modest upgrade. So >> yeah. [snorts] Um yeah, more to talk about for sure. Um and find some action points. All right. On the fourth, as I mentioned, I think we're all at the vets lunch. It's I I always enjoy when that happens to line up with election day. It's just kind of a for me just kind of one of those reasons. because I vote for a lot of reasons, but people that have fought and died and bled and served for that right to do that is just it just it's important to me. Postboard workshop also on the fourth. On the 5th, uh Niagara Bottling had their official ribbon cutting. Um and ironically, I found myself being thirsty during that ribbon cutting. So, I just thought that was ironic. Um >> just kind of a fun little I mean, really beautiful new facility. Um, so we went through and and I think groups of five. Um, they are what they would call vertically vertically integrated. You know, they're they're making their own bottles. They're not hauling some some of the stuff in. Super clean, super open. Um, warehouse factory. I don't even know that's the right term. Factory sounds antiquated. Nobody touches a bottle in that facility except maybe for quality control when they're pulling pulling bottles out to check. Um, lots of forklifts that were driverless. Um, loading trucks and it sounds like even when a lot of Walmart trucks happen to be there, so I don't know who's unloading those, but very um, high-tech water bottling facility. So, thank you for that invite. I know that. And I should also mention you probably were there more often than not taking some of that heat. Um, but I've been to a couple functions where they have a Niagara has a Niagara Cares corporate giving sort of uh group and I know they've helped um some Elan Market nonprofits already not only with you know bottled water but also time and talent. So so that was [clears throat] that's always good to have that. The sixth as was mentioned Guild Breakfast. Really good to see that that's not just a Kevin Coer movie thinking we build it they'll come. We're actually filling those beds. Not that we want to have right the need, but we know the need is there. So to have that help solve some of those issues is good. That's good news. Hopefully someday we are changing that into a hotel. Who knows? Uh probably not in my lifetime. On the 10th, the fish vibrancy. Um not wanting that to be a flounder, wanting it to be a a walleye or a shark. Moving that in that direction. Later that day, we had a billboard campaign. You may have seen different billboards down 169 towards Jordan. It was uh kind of a looking to make that more of a cannabis theme and what options and what art that might look like. Talk about engaging with the Shakabe chamber um just for some design help maybe just you know building some bridges. uh 11-1ven fish program committee where he talked about commissioner all's idea unending idea about hey when we're doing these things a compelling b maybe we have some tables of different nonprofits and being that fish being we talk about the county being a convenor of different things can also be a convenor of nonprofits and partners and entities to to be more working together like we talked about today there's so many good things going on but holy cow trying to find them all >> um so I brought that up during that meeting and I brought that up four on the 12th, MEESB. Um, once again, it was talked about how chair of the Henipin County Board and myself apparently are uh a little different in our ideology, but on moving forward uh the armor system and all things MESB and 911 like, hey, this we can come together on this and find state solutions that make sense. Uh so that 911, no matter where you call, it's answered and and you get the help you need. So I'm like, I love it. people that are different can still work together and be friendly about it, which which we always have been. [gasps] Later that evening, extension um some talk there about, hey, how do we better utilize um some of the services that extension provides into other areas of the county. So, that's that's always a good conversation. I had to leave a little early to get to Parl City where thank you Pri Lake City for um um kind of recognizing a couple of our own retirees. Cindy G was there, Lisa Freeze, you remember them? they were both there uh to be recognized by the city and the the council. So, thank you for recognizing the work that they do and how that impacts all of us. Um on the 13th, Scott County Prevention Coalition 14th scale where I I talked on mandates and what that means and thank you to the delegation that showed up. Appreciate that. And then I think most many of us went to the 13 trail ribbon cutting on the 17th scale service delivery. Uh and then earlier today, health board and ditch board that concludes my report. Looking down on my left, county administrator. >> So, Mr. Chairman, um thank you. So, just a couple things. I wanted to give kudos to um Barb Dah. I've tried to been calling out staff who have gone above and beyond lately, but I think she is the voice of AMC on about three or four different radio interviews now talking about the shutdown and the impacts and just a go-to person for a lot of folks in the region and the state. And so kudos to her as as she continues just to provide leadership. Um, I think the Julie Ring editorial that AMC sent out in the reformer, um, was spot on to a lot of the things that you have been talking about. And so, one of the things I've talked to Barb about is how do we sit down now? And what are some of these short mid-l long-term things? What can that look like that we can help drive and push and and have a good discussion? So, Barb, you're not done yet. Wherever you are, >> there she is. We see her. We see you. I will say also that we did um talk about armor at the metro county administrators meeting and Jill was there and it went very well. I think there is a lot of support behind that. That is the logical type of thing for the state to be behind since the entire state of Minnesota needs it. Um on to the next one, the 124 schedule. Just to clarify it for folks, 2:30 we have a work session on the family paid leave, right? That's a big deal. You're going to have to adopt a policy at the meeting after that. And all five of you also have to sign off on that little email you got that you've read through what it means because it does cover elected officials as well. Even though you've heard it's a mic and AMC, it might it might not. Um at 3:30 then would be the board meeting which gives us till 5:15 for Scott delivers the regular board meeting and those items. you get a small break and then at 6:00 we'll do the um budget the truth and taxation discussion that night at 6 here in the boardroom. So that is the 124 calendar. And then finally um you know the tax statements went out this week and Michael Thompson another one is just excellent. You will see a dashboard from him. Um usually he'll send them out on Monday mornings but he did want me to give you an update. We've received about 54 calls so far. um 20 or 87% of them have been via phone, about 7% via email. Um 14 or no, excuse me, 26% of those calls had to do with their homestead status. Um 24% of the calls had to do with value change and then 17% had to do with the tax increase and then some miscellaneous other types of questions. But you will um see that coming up in a little dashboard that he will send out to you weekly so that you're aware of those calls as they're coming in. >> Great. >> And that is the end of what I have. >> Thank you for that. County attorney. >> We do not have to meet. >> All right. Great news. And so yes, thank you Leslie for clarifying that. So I just want to before we adjourn, um as always, this meeting our normal board meetings are always open to the public. Workshops always open to the public. So again, December 4th, uh, and and we always post this. These things are always posted. They have to be posted. December 4th, 2:30 workshop, 3:30 board meeting roughly, but 2:30 it starts. And then December 4th, uh, later that same evening is the it says budget public meeting. I mean, they're always public meetings, but so it's the a budget uh, presentation. So please public avail yourself to that. Uh, 11:27 Thanksgiving in between there. So we always in the midst of it, we always have things to be thankful for. So with that >> we have a motion. >> Second. >> We have a couple seconds. We at least have one. Uh any discussion? Otherwise, all in favor say I. I