you'd like. Uh, I think we're going to do the pledge now for this one ahead of the next meeting. So, let's do the pledge. Pledge allegiance flag of the United States of America with liberty and justice for all. We have a packed next meeting, so we'll get that pledge covered. So, we are now convened. So, item number two, approving the minutes of from the November 19th, 2024 ditch board meeting. Uh, we've all seen those. Are there any changes, amendments you would like to make to those particular amendments? And I should also mention we have our commissioner Tom Wolf, I believe, is on via Zoom. I just want to confirm that. Yes, he is on via Zoom. So, all uh votes will be roll call. Mr. Chair, I'll move to approve the November 19th, 2024 ditch board meeting minutes. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Otherwise, Michelle, if you could please take the role. Commissioner Wegman Brekie. Hi. Commissioner Beer. Hi. Commissioner Brennan. I. Commissioner Alrich. I. Commissioner Wolf. Hi. Thank you. All right. That is approved. Now move to item number three of the consent agenda. Adopt resolution number 2025-91 setting a public hearing for April 15, 2025 at 8 a.m. to allow comment on the abandonment of county drainage ditch 5. 3.2. to adopt resolution number 2025-92 setting a public hearing for April 15, 2025 at 8:00 a.m. to allow comment on the abandonment of county drainage ditch 7. 3.3 adopt resolution number 2025-93 setting a public hearing for April 15th, 2025 at 8 a.m. to allow comment on the abandonment of county drainage ditch 8 3.4 4. Adopt resolution number 2025-94 setting a public hearing for April 15th, 2025 at 8 a.m. to allow comment on the abandonment of county drainage ditch 12. Those are the four items on consent. Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second motion and second. Any further discussion? Otherwise, I will look to Michelle for a role, please. Commissioner Wecman Brekie, I. Commissioner Beer, I. Commissioner Brennan. Hi. Commissioner Olrich. Hi. Commissioner Wolf. Hi. All right. Consent agenda is approved. Moving to item number four to adjourn the Scott County ditch board meeting of March 18th, 2025. Make a motion to adjourn. Second. Motion and a second. Any further discussion on that item? Otherwise, again, I'll look to my left. Michelle. Commissioner Wackman Brekie. I. Commissioner Beer. Hi. Commissioner Brennan. Hi. Commissioner Olrich. I Commissioner Wolf. Hi. All right. Ditch board meeting is adjourned. We cannot meet or start this until 9:00. So, great. Good night. The consumer. Yeah, exactly. And I missed it. All right. All right. Okay, we are going to convene the March 18th, 2025 Scott County Board of Commissioners. And it feels a little weird because we had a meeting before this, which we already did the pledge. So, uh, we will move on to, uh, item number two, amendments to the agenda. Any amendments? I did not see any, but I want to make sure I did not miss something. Okay, we're going to move on to item number three. Approve the minutes from the February 18th, 2025 meeting. Are there any changes or any additions? Mr. Mr. Chair, I'll move approval of the minutes. All right. Motion and a second. Any discussion? And before we vote, I want to mention again in this meeting that Commissioner Tom Wolf is here via Zoom. And just a Yes, we are confirming that. So, all right. We have a motion in second on approving the minutes. Every vote will be roll call. So, Michelle, please take it away. Commissioner Wcman Brekie, I. Commissioner Wolf, I. Commissioner Beer, I. Commissioner Brennan, I. Commissioner Olrich, hi. All right, that is approved. We're going to move to item number four, recognition of interested citizens. This is a great opportunity to address the board for whatever may be on your mind as long as it's not on the agenda. So, I'm looking that we may have an interested citizen. We have a mayor in the house. Good morning, Mayor Briggs. Uh, uh, board chair beer. uh commissioners um Mayor Kurt Briggs, Prairie Lake. The reason I come before you today is really for for two things. One is a thank you, but the other is to share with you a little bit of the experience that uh you enabled uh for me. Um so, first the thank you. Uh I was able to join the Scott County delegation at the recent National Association of Committees meeting uh that was at the same time of year when we had the state of the union address taking place in Washington DC. I went for two reasons. One was to do all that I could to be along with it was Commissioner Beer, directors uh Dah and Director Gruen to advance a couple of the key legislative priorities that had come through not only Scott County Board but also were priorities amongst your peers of the Association of Minnesota Counties. The other reason I attended was to see what the opportunities might be for intrajurisdictional collaboration. The challenges that we're faced with today cannot be solved solely inside the domains of uh our organizations as a city, as a county, as a state, but we need to find ways to come together. So, what was my experience? Well, the two priorities, one really was born in this Scott County, and that priority was to change an administrative law that could maintain highquality care for uh providing med medicaid services in homes um but reducing the necessitation of annual evaluation of those patients. uh but to do so every 3 years. That's a change that not only would maintain the quality of care for those patients, but more importantly provide the state of Minnesota with approximately $260 some odd million dollars in savings. Doing that at a time where right now every taxpayer dollar that uh is is submitted up to be at the state or federal level um needs to find a good home for that precious resource. Well, it was in this board chamber that as I understand it that was born in July of last year. It was advanced by this county board uh up to the state level and your peers in the counties across the state of Minnesota picked up the guard and it was one of the key priorities for all of the counties in Minnesota. Not only was it a priority for the Minnesota counties, it became a priority for the National Association uh of county organizations. one of the key priorities. So, boom. What I've seen is the ability for something to start here, germinate, make its way up to the federal level. Well, and then I had the uh distinct honor of being part of that legislative delegation along with uh Commissioner uh Brekie along with uh directors D and Gruing where we met with our legislators, the seven legislators representing us in Washington DC on the Tuesday before the president's address. Skipping quickly to the punchline, the following morning, we the delegation along with our other Minnesota County uh colleagues had breakfast and the items that we had brought to their attention uh were actually fed right on back to us, letting us know that again what started here, what grew here, which made its way into Washington DC has a really good shot at affecting change that's going to impact not only all of the citizens in Minnesota, but across the country. So I want to thank uh well administrator Vermillion who initially uh brought forward the potential for me to join but I also want to thank the board for allowing me. I was uh well one of I don't think there were any other mayors there uh but but to be there with my colleagues to see uh the tight collaboration between your staff and the elected which is something else you don't often have the opportunity to see as an elected position but there truly is a strong uh well expertise but also recognition and collaboration with the staff that uh as a taxpayer I return home uh well pleased is to say uh you're doing a great job. Staff here is doing a fantastic job and I had a ton of fun. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much. Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh Mr. Mayor, just thank you for um accompanying us, for joining in so enthusiastically. And yes, um to my colleagues, just know that uh the rest of our Minnesota delegation uh just says the mayor right now. And the mayor means the mayor of Prior Lake, Kurt Briggs. You were indeed the only mayor there and you're well known now as the mayor. So, thank you for joining us and for taking the time to learn about this issue that from a city perspective, you may not have even thought of before, but it really does impact people in Scott County and impacts our budget, the quality of life for our most vulnerable. Yes. Uh, Commissioner Brekie, I'm just wondering, you know, you, as I understand, put forward the resolution at NAO that got passed unanimously. Do you want to say some words about that experience, Mr. Chair? If that's okay. I know this isn't on the agenda, but but yes, I I think and and I just have to give the credit to our staff to um Barb and Britney Lane and the folks who put together that resolution for Niko when it was presented at the health committee. um so that that all of the counties support the um change to have uh annual assessments which we call min choices here in Minnesota to only every three years instead of every one year and we we talked through that. There was there was no no hesitation in supporting that resolution. So it's now also part of the NGO platform. Thank you. Great opportunity. Thank you for spearheading that. Any other interested citizens that may want to talk about anything that is not on the agenda? Now is your opportunity? Seeing none, we are going to move on to um item number five, customer service. Uh recognition of Scott County retiree Kevin Young. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having us here today to recognize Kevin Young's retirement who Kevin is sitting right over there. Um, I am Michelle Helm and I have been Kevin's supervisor for the last seven years. Kevin's career, Hi, Kevin. Kevin's career with the county began back in 2006 as a principal business analyst. He quickly became an integral part of the IT team, navigating both that old building with the low six-foot doorways as well as the significant projects that were planned. One of his first major undertakings was the implementation of INF for which was a complex uh project and required a dedicated team. That team included Kevin and they were relocated over to the LEC to give the project their complete focus and to work on it full-time, which uh may sound a bit familiar to those working on workday right now. Throughout his 19 years of service, Ke Kevin demonstrated a strong ability to adapt, embrace, and help lead technology advancements within the county. As a BA, Kevin's natural curiosity and pension for details came in handy. He played a crucial role in the transition from depart from department shared files over to SharePoint as he meticulously organized metadata for over 1.1 million documents for the past decade. His expertise as a service now administrator was instrumental in assisting with processes and he quickly became known as the onboarding and offboarding ZAR given all the complexities for the different positions and systems system needs at the county. Additionally, Kevin created significant efficiencies for our Service Now platform upgrades by standing up the platform's test management application, which was very painfully tedious and required a lot of caffeine to power through it to the end. Kevin, we are very grateful that you finished that test management standup prior to retiring. Kevin's commitment to his IT team and to the larger organization has been unwavering. Even as a steadfast Green Bay Packers fan in a potentially rival environment, when I first started at the county, I was told that I would know who Kevin was by looking for the staff member who always wore the big green jersey during football season. And sure enough, that was correct. Beyond his professional accomplishments, Kevin's home life is filled with some interesting hobbies and his family. His wife Kay, who is here today, recently retired after more than 30 years in as an elementary special education teacher. And their daughter daughter Bonnie, who is also here today, has recently embarked on a career in digital marketing at the Guthrie Theater. and their son Aaron is a junior at the University of Minnesota and currently studying in London. Kevin's hobbies reflect his passion for technology and sports. He's been using Microsoft Flight Simulator since 1982 and building his own computers to support that flying interest. And more recently, he revived his love for broadcasting high school sports on NSP TV, NPN TV, a hobby he had enjoyed during his college years and has now resumed after a 35-year hiatus. As Kevin prepares to retire at the end of March, his departure marks the end of a chapter in his life and the start of another exciting one. It also marks a change in our team's daily work experience. For myself, I will miss the graciousness and respectful kindness towards everyone that Kevin has always displayed. There are some people in life that we call a kind soul. Kevin is one of those people and I am very thankful to him for his service to the county and to its citizens. His contributions have left a lasting impact on this organization and those who had the privilege of working with him. Kevin, I want to thank you for your dedication and commitment to excellence, but also for your kindness, your Treky humor, and your unwavering support. Congratulations. Thank you. [Applause] Okay. Okay. All right. And do we adjourn now? Kevin, do you want to say anything? Well, I want to appreciate the work life balance that's provided by Scott County. Because of it, prior to this, I had to drive down to the Twin Cities every day. But um working here at Scott County and in Shakipi, it enabled me to do a lot of things with my kids. I coached soccer, baseball, softball. No, no, softball, h not hockey. I got to coach a lot of sports and also got to see a lot of Bonnie show choir competitions. So very appreciative of the career that I've made here at Scott County and the commissioners and all my co-workers and all the other county staff. I'm appreciative and I'm grateful for it. Thank you. [Applause] You do any others have any words they want to say or offer? Kevin, I I do want to also thank you. Um, you know, I was part of the big IT transition with you back in that 1415 era and it was a difficult time and a lot of change going on, but I always found you to be a very positive person, very thoughtful, asking good questions and comments and a team player as we went through that. And I just want to thank you for your service and your diligence and continuing to move us forward. So, thank you. A kind soul was a perfect word for Kevin. Thank you. Thank you, Leslie. We will get a picture with the board then. Mr. Chair, thanks. Uh Kevin, I just want to thank you for coming to the board for your retirement. We offer that to all retirees. Not everybody takes us up on it. And I'm glad we're able to celebrate you. And I think that sometimes this is just a great opportunity for us to remember, for everybody to remember all the folks that support the county operations behind the scenes. and what tremendous public servants you are that you are and you all are. So you're not necessarily always the face of Scott County and the public, but you're so necessary, so valued for efficiency, for productivity, for using our tax dollars well, and for also following the law. People don't understand um just the immense amount of of um duty you you all have to the to the residents of Scott County, protecting data, um keeping things secure. And so I thank you. I thank you. I wish you best on your retirement and thank you for the opportunity to also uh thank all your colleagues for the work that that all of you do every day. Thank you, Commissioner. All right, little brief recess for pictures. I think I saw thumbs up. So, we are going to be back from recess and we're going to jump into item number 6.1. Receive information on Scott County delivers topic, children's mental health. And Chris Harter, take it away. Oh, I mean, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait. She Chris, you looking for an IM here and I don't have IM. Katie Mcca, welcome. Take it away. Nice to see you this morning. Same for you. Good morning, commissioners. Mr. chair. Today we're going to spend a little bit of time speaking with you about children's mental health. For more than a decade, this has been a priority of the board, specifically preventive work to avoid the need for deep end services. Progress continues to be made in this regard. Today, you're going to hear about the buildout of a continuum of care provided by the community and by the board by the county. We have a distinguished panel here to speak with you today to speak to the specifics to children. This expansion in the continuum of care includes increased services provided within the mental health center, including the mental health center as a certified community behavioral health clinic, coordinated response, and school-based services. While the continuum of care continues to be built out and gaps are filled, we are aware that some gaps continue to be present. We look to the future as a new behavioral health clinic is being built. With that, I will ask our facilitators to introduce themselves and then I'll ask the presenters to introduce them. Please state who you are and what department you work for. Good morning, commissioners. Jen Schultz, um, Sky County Library Director. Adam Jessen, uh, transportation services. Jake Greing, transformation enterprise services. Good morning. I'm Steve Brown, uh, with social services. I supervise children's mental health, chemical dependency, and our truency program. Morning. Christina Skelezo, children's mental health case manager. Ryan Logger, superintendent, Belplane Public Schools. Good morning. I'm James Holden. I'm a supervisor at the mental health center here. Good morning. I'm Jen Peterson. I'm with the coordinated response program. Hi there. I'm Tanya War. I'm director of behavioral health and housing here. And this is the panel that worked on um this packet here. But I also want to thank Muhammad behind us, Katie and Evan who helped with data behind the scenes. Thank you all for being here today. And with that, we'll have Jen with her first question. Thank you. Well, first of all, I just want to start this by thanking you all for being here. Um I have actually been here for over a decade and seen the um buildout of mental health services in general and um the the packet was impressive. So, thank you for all the work that you do every day um for kids and families. Um with that I wanted to start with um our community indicator on page eight um which really talks about the proportion of the population per the one mental health professional. And so I have a couple of questions here and I'm not sure who wants to take this. So whoever wants to take this maybe this is yours Dr. Ward. Um I I suspect that the data is telling us the mental health like for for kids and adults. So my first question was do we have any information related to um the proportion of practitioners related to children's mental health um or working with kids or do we not have that data and then the second question that I have relates around what appears to be an increase in practitioners which of course is good um but then going back to page six of the data where it talks about your gaps clearly there's still some needs there and so I'm just wondering if you can kind of align that for us um about Yep. we're we're increasing practitioners but we still have some of these needs which are likely maybe in some of those specialized area but wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that and um the rest of the panel feel free to jump in. Uh yes you you are seeing that there are more individuals entering the field of mental health to become professionals which is a great thing. I think the need has skyrocketed as well which have not kept up with the pace which is probably why you see we still have a gap in shortage but we're also seeing an increase and um similar to what we said in the adult services um presentation that this is the amount of professionals but it doesn't uh separate out folks who are involved in crisis work or maybe that more intensive work which that's where we're really seeing quite a bit of a shortage. Um, and that's for both adults and children. So, I just want to point that out that while it is going up, we will still continue to see that those higher DRN services. Um, that that that's a need. Um, I think folks just, you know, they really like their outpatient work where they meet once a week with a client. It's steady. It's stable. You know, the more intensive work is it's it's a little tougher. It's more coordination. You see more significant symptomology. James can probably talk about day treatment and in that regard. Um, and then your other question was about can this separate be separated out between those who serve children and adults. Um, at this point there's no way to um tally that. I I think folks are drawn and maybe the folks who work with kids can speak why they work with kids. Um, I know they enjoy systems work. So when you work with a child, you work with their family, you work with their teachers, you work with and we'll speak about more of that today. So I think just folks are drawn to that differently in terms of how they conceptualize the mental health of a person um in terms of if they want to work with adults or children. Anyone want to speak to that? And it's not uncommon for a mental health professional to work with both. So I think that data would be really difficult to pull out. So if you're working with children, you might also do marriage therapy, you might do family therapy, you might do adults as well. So, um, and I would say the vast I'm sorry, the vast majority of the, uh, the children that we worked with were also doing family work, um, parental kind of work, those sorts of things. So, so in terms of like somebody specifying their case load to adults only, um, that's going to be a difficult number to identify because there's just so much integration, especially when you're working with youth, you really can't treat the the youth without treating the family system, uh, and the adults that are working with that person, too. in here. So, I'm looking at page 14. Uh, it shows data uh about school-based clients and and their improvement. Um, just looking at that chart, obviously looks like a lot of success there in the last 10 years. Um, the percent that are showing improvement is over 80%. Um, so I'm wondering if there are uh best practices or learnings from the school setting that potentially could be applied to other other settings. I guess I'll probably take this one. Um, you know, one thing I often say is I I think mental health is become the biggest challenge that we face in schools right now. We have a lot of kids who need mental health support and we often talk about you know or try to discover why that is. Uh and one of the things at least in Bell Plane that we made a movement towards about six or seven years ago now is um we have a daily component. Um it started at a 712 level with a program called Move This World where kids for five minutes at the start of the day watched kind of a video. Um they practiced breathing techniques, but they also shared with kids what it was like to feel anxiety, what it was like to feel or depression. Um what it's like to feel loss. And I think that by introducing those concepts and because I think sometimes kids are struggling and they don't know what it is. They don't know that I'm depressed. They don't know that I'm anxious. they don't know that I'm I'm dealing with grief. Um and and sometimes we think of grief and loss just as if somebody were to pass away or things like that, but there's grief and loss in a lot of other ways that kids struggle with. It could be loss of a friend or a friendship that they think that they had that that dissolved or for whatever reason fell apart. Um and we learned a lot of that through that. But what we learned is the more we taught kids these things, then they realized they had something that they wanted that they needed help with. I'm depressed. I have anxiety. So now they went they would go somewhere and we didn't necessarily have what I would call a systemic solution in place. So out of that we've really built a strong systemic response and what that started is okay well now we need to have you know a counselor social worker in each of our buildings. So when now we've told the kids here's um what you're feeling here's where you go to get help. But then what we found from our guidance counselor, social workers is, you know, we're trained at a certain level to do this, but school counseling isn't therapy level counseling. And they were like, now where do we go? So a few years ago then to add to that systemic approach, we went from doing something every day to providing that counseling service, but then to freeing up our counselors by adding a full-time mental health therapist. And I think we're at about 1.75 right now. I'm trying to get an additional because we need an additional 1.0. We have my my fear is we can't have kids on a waiting list. We've done this work to help them identify that they're depressed, they have anxiety, they they're struggling with these things. We have to get them the support. in that. So the next step of that systemic process was to give them mental health therapy at school because a lot of these kids they can't drive to Shakipi, they can't drive to New Prague, they can't get to Waconia to get to places because we don't have therapy level services in Bell Plane. Um but then from there what we realized is even in maybe three days a week of meeting with a mental health therapist, some of these kids needed day treatment and that's when Reflections um at Southwest Metro became a part of that. So we have a very systemic process where we every day and this is part of what we've come to is maybe we're doing a better job of helping educate kids about mental health challenges and when they feel certain things it's okay and here's what they are and then here's the process that you walk through. I would say I think the piece that and I think you said building a clinic. The thing we've talked about that we need more of is that residential treatment because we have kids who get to reflections and are getting day treatment and they're there and then eventually they come back to school but they need another level of care. They're not even ready to come back um at that point. So I think that residential treatment piece is going to be huge because unfortunately we also have a need for that. This is another question I I'll direct it right at you Dr. Longer. Um, I've already tal I try not to talk too much in these things. Good. Um, so and you talked a little bit about this the systems of support for students and where our therapists, school-based therapists fit into that. How from the the district standpoint do you integrate those school-based therapists into the rest of the systems of support? Are they working just with the students or do they have interactions with teachers with administration? Just give us a picture of that please. right now they from a service standpoint they only work with our students. Um but they work very closely. I will say that the thing that I think has been powerful is you know as adults especially who are attracted working in schools we want to help and fix all kids' problems and our guidance counselors or social workers went to school for that training and I think they were struggling with I really need to help this kid and then they would look at a kid and say I I need to find a way to get them therapy but they can't get him to the appointment. So, having that mental health therapist in school on site, I just had this conversation with a district in the metro last night. Um, on how we need to change how we staff, like we've always had positions in schools. Um, maybe instead of having as many guidance counselors, we need to add a mental health therapist in the school setting because parents and families aren't always willing to go to a clinic to get the help. But if they can go somewhere on site where someone's there, they're much more willing to access it. And personally, I think we're seeing a lot more success because they're there each day. But administrators and teachers would make that or counselors make the recommendation um to to get them there, but they aren't servicing adults in terms of with their own mental health challenges. James, you want to Oh, if I can add just a little bit if that's okay. you know, the the therapists really aim to do a lot of collaboration with the social workers and guidance counselors and teachers as well. Um, we also provide uh trainings to a lot of districts throughout the county. I know we've done some out there in the past. I don't know if we've done recently or not necessarily, but today I'm going out to New Pride to do two of them um after we're done here. So, there's there's there's other ways that we really try and integrate, but I think you're exactly right. The need uh and the demand is so high right now that we try and prioritize those case loads as much as we can. Um, I think one of the challenges with serving uh in serving students in school districts in in addition to kind of that need is um finding uh finding qualified therapists to work in those settings. Um that's been a challenge for us over the past year. We've had open positions and we've filled them with as the best people that we possibly can obviously. Um but making sure that we're picking the right people for the right districts that are going to be a good match for them as a priority as well and that there's consistency. the the ones we have now are phenomenal and they're they're valued like our staff love that like they're integrated in with our staff. We had a period of time there where there's a lot of turnover and that can be hard when people don't stay in the role for a while but the people we have now are absolutely phenomenal. So that's that's the district side, right? From a a county side, flip that question on its head. How are those school-based mental health workers integrated into our side of things? into the the county, you mean? Or into the Okay. Yeah, into the county. So, as their employer, you know, they're out there. I think I've heard they're sort of a a satellite clinic on their own, the folks we have embedded in the buildings across the county, but how are they integrated into our systems here? Yeah. So, on on a really basic level, I mean, they're still a part of our staff. Obviously, we have our our weekly meetings. Uh we do supervision with them weekly. Um but we really try and focus on collaborating. We have opportunities within the um the group consults on Wednesday mornings that we do. Uh we have a full consult uh the first Wednesday of every month and then we have uh separated ones. So people who are satellite or people who want to join virtually do that. That's been a change since probably co I would guess that that range and our team has gotten so big that it's really hard to do good collaboration with too big of a group. Um and so they so that's that's one of the ways that we we bring them in. Um, and I think the like the the folks who are the therapists who are in the schools will say they have two teams. They have their school team that Dr. Logger spoke about that integration and then they have their county team. And I think by nature when in when they're in the schools, they're used to collaboration um because they really can't do their job unless they have that lens of um if I don't get everyone on the same page, how are we going to, you know, make help this this child uh life better? And so I think by nature they are actually really good at the collaborating piece. And I think the case managers could speak to that. That doesn't matter if they're at the school, if they're primarily located at the clinic, if they're out at the Jaff. That's the first thing I think any um person who specializes in working with children looks at or who are the people they need to know who's involved in this child's life. And that's part of the assessment process. And if they have a case manager and the client um permits us to you know signs a release of information that that case manager is definitely part of the team and part of um the treatment if you guys wanted to add anything from what you're seeing. I was just going to say another way like we often get referrals from the schoolbased therapists saying this kid needs more support than this outpatient you know schoolbased therapy. So then we'll get those referrals from the connect therapists and get involved that way. Just sticking on kids for what for short more time on the schoolbased stuff. Uh looking at 14 obviously speaks to the gaff scores. Um and it looks like so if if if you look back to how many kids you're serving then how many kids are getting GAF scores. Obviously, I'm assuming not everybody's getting a GAF score because those numbers don't don't match. Um, and it speaks to the longer term services. Can you just speak a little bit about um the different services that are happening in the school um in terms of the longer based services um and again a little bit about which kids are getting this gaff score that we can measure and then those other kids that maybe aren't necessarily um going through that. Yes. So, so the in terms of the model that we provide in the school system, it is it is a more um it's a longer model because we want to make sure we're providing the same treatment that they would get in the school that they're going to get in an outpatient clinic. Um, other models do exist. We find that this works really really well with kids in the long run. One of the I would say it's a challenge, but one of the one of the things with that, I guess, is how I would say it is it's going to be longer term for some of those kids that really really need it. So the number of GAS scores might fluctuate depending upon uh how symptomatic kids are um how long and because the the level of their symptoms. So how severe their symptoms are is going to be correlated with usually how long they're in uh treatment. Uh so the number of gaffs that we we run on a year are based on when somebody starts and when somebody finishes. And so if we have some kids that happen to be there or a group of kids that happen to be there significantly longer just because of how symptomatic they are from when they start. It's going to decrease our total number of gaff scores on any given time fe time time period. So do some of those kids go year after year? They stay year after year. And then what happens in the summertime for those kids? They continue. Yep. We continue to provide services throughout the summer. Uh sometimes depending upon the age and developmental stage they're in. Uh sometimes they transition into virtual appointments, we continue to see them within the school buildings. If that's an issue for some places, then we we we offer opportunities to see them here in the mental health center if they can get transportation. Um transportation, uh a lot of our case managers do a great job of helping kids continue to to uh access services throughout the summer as well. If they need a ride, you know, like for Reflections, for example, our day treatment program, uh we've had uh many case managers pick up that gap or close that gap and say, "Let's let's get the kid there. They need the service. Let's figure this out. We'll work together as a team and figure out how we can continue to serve uh through our whole continuum of services." And the schools are great partners in the summer. They allow us into their buildings. And so, you know, if a kiddo um you know, typically attends a high school, but during the summer, let's say they physically are closer to one of the elementary schools, the schools allow our staff to rotate in those buildings and build the case load and see kids in like whatever location is most convenient for them. All right, I'm looking at page 11. Uh, and we're looking at uh a graph that shows the children in out of home placement over time. Um, and just visually looking at this graph, you see kind of a roller coaster going on. Um, you know, high number of children in out of home placement in the 0708 time frame and then dropping down 1314 and then back up in 1718 and and currently more down on the on the downswing. So um how what kind of uh knowledge do we have about the cause for that and how that may we look to the future to try to prevent another upswing um in in that data so that we don't repeat that same trend. Uh this graph will represent all children in placement um the uh shelter placement short-term placement uh as well as children's meal health placements. So um the number of children's mental health placements is very very slow or low. So I can't speak to the larger numbers but I can speak to children's mental health. Those numbers are pretty consistently low over the course of time year after year um which were probably so we should have actually had a individual graph just for our resident res residential treatment placements. Sure. Currently, I think we probably have three in placement for uh treatment purposes. I think a lot of the reasoning for that is is clinically based, right? That we know kids do better if we can work with the system that they live in to help improve the system that they that they come from. Uh that's where the outcomes really come from. Uh and that the services, the mental health services provided in a residential setting are really not any more than the intervention that's provided like in a day treatment setting or something like that. you're adding the safety component is what you're really doing when you when you look at a residential placement. Correct. And I'll just speak from the coordinated response lens. Um I feel like that's a really big part of what our you know purpose and mission is. Um and um we we really try to get involved. you know, we're getting referrals from law enforcement and a lot of these families are just really pushed to the max and um the things that they have tried or the strategies that they have used are not really effective anymore and maybe they just don't have the resources in place and we're really bridging and linking people to those resources. So, I think we're really coming in at a crucial time um during that crisis stabilization and kind of getting them back in a um direction. Um and I feel like that early um intervention can be a big part of that, too. I think we're really grateful for that opportunity. Um you know, it might be the first time it is stressful and scary for the family, of course, to have law enforcement and then be referred to coordinated response, but it might be the first time anyone anything about mental health to them. And I think the coordinated responders do such a great job of explaining it, normalizing it. And so that may be the first time we see the child and we find out that the child has suffered from PTSD for five years. And then when we can explain to the parent maybe this is why you're seeing um you know his grades go down or maybe this is what we're seeing the it's actually really helpful and we see that as just a door into service. I'm going to try to ask this question in a way that will land as fair to to folks on that side of the table. Um, so what do what I hear from Jen with coordinated response is that we we think and correct me if I'm wrong that some of the coordinated response work may be preventing some of those out of home placements that those numbers may be going down because of the work you're doing. So I just two questions. one, what do we what do we think with it if it's children's mental health case management or it's the coordinated response, what do we think about the impact of those programs from a prevention standpoint when we look at the out of home placement and then what do we what do we know if there's something we know that we can say definitively we're preventing those? Um, please speak to that too. Well, that's a big question. Um, I think it's it's pretty impressive. Scott County consistently over I can say the decades has a strong um placement philosophy that family preservation kids are best served in their own home um if they can get the services and the treatment in the community uh and so then if we get a recommendation for residential treatment which we get a lot of recommendations for residential treatment we don't say okay let's put the kid in residential treatment we ask a lot of questions in terms of what's going well. I mean, I think the one thing that we do really well in children's mental health and across the county is like how is the the child functional? What are their abilities? What's their connection to family? Do they have other connections? How they doing in school? Is school going well? And if we place it in residential treatment, what what's the experience that is going to be on that child? What we do know about long term or the long-term outcomes of residential treatment is they don't last. And so if we're going to invest that highly into something, um, we would want to see some evidence that it's going to be a positive experience. What we found is we let Christina speak to this. We've had some extremely challenging, difficult um, high-end children in the home that we serve. And that is a I mean, when you look at across the panel, that's I think where that collaboration is extremely important. um working with the family, supporting the family so they have the resources, they have the needs. Uh we're we're good assessments in terms of are there other more intensive services that they can receive in the home? Um can we coordinate with the school? Do they need more school support? Um are they short of um just material needs? Are they have food insecurity, housing? Do they have multiple contacts with law enforcement? A lot of these families have toxic stress and so supporting the family if families don't if the family's not well. You're going to have a difficult time getting the child well. Sending a child to residential treatment isn't going to support the family in that way. Um so I can say we we focus very intently on that. Um that is our goal. Um that's our philosophy. Those are expectations. Um and and there are times that we'd make that but it I think um James referred to that it's typically for safety purposes. So if you need containment if the child is a danger to himself or others and the family cannot manage them in their own home. There's a place for that. Um and we've done that before. But it's it's we will answer the qu the hard questions. We'll have the hard conversations with the hospitals and those making those recommendations. Um and we do a lot of education and support to the families to help them understand their um their diagnosis um how they can make improvements in the home. Um you do you want to add to that? I mean it's hard work. It's really hard work. I mean there's lots of push back from lots of different ways. Um I think a big piece is educating parents and the community. Sending a kid to residential treatment doesn't fix the kid. like we talked about at the beginning, like we are part kids are part of a family system, part of a community. And so, um, oftentimes when we get those recommendations or those asks from a family, my kid needs residential treatment. Like, it's really digging into what's your best hope with residential treatment, really, what are the concerns and is there a better way to address those? Because we don't have enough information to say residential treatment is a solution in these cases. Residential treatment is really used for containment, for stability, for safety short term. We still have to do all the other hard work in this residential program as well as outside of the program to have this kid successfully transition back to their family and community. I think anecdotally at day treatment, I would say is a big um diversion from many referrals come to date treatment that literally say it's this or residential. So, we're we're trying treatment first and they don't end up going to residential. Um because like James said, it's the same amount of clinical service, 14 to 17 hours per week of therapy these kids are getting in a school environment. So, we're able to help them with um group and individual therapy and lots of family therapy. They learn the skills. They're able to then practice them in the school setting with teachers. um you know find what works doesn't work for them and then they can go back to their home district school like in Bell Plane and then they can practice those skills that they learned at day treatment and then they feel success one of the first moments in their life they feel successful. One of the things and I I say this a lot too I've worked in three metro counties and the one thing and you said it earlier that Scott County has a rich history of this. The other thing is I'll just say that you do it right because I feel like there's great partnerships in this county. And what I mean by that is we had mental health support for kids when I was in a county on the east side of the metro and we had mental health support when I was in a county on the north side of the metro. But the problem is their support services all were in buildings that were offsite. And just a simple partnership of being able to put mental health therapists in a school setting is seems like a small decision that is an absolute gamecher. I think for what you're talking about because I think if kids can get that support each day at school or three days a week at school or two days a week in many cases that's the help they need. But if it's dependent on them getting eight miles over to another building where all the therapists are, they don't go and then they spiral and they spiral and they spiral and it gets worse and now they end up in a situation like this because it is for containment and that but the situation gets so bad because they don't get the skills and feel the success in that. So it's just a credit to the county. This is just one area where I feel like there's a lot of you we talk about partnership but you don't see it come to life. I've seen it really come to life not only in mental health but in other areas that we're able to partner with the county. The other piece is how we pay for it. Like the way that we've partnered with the county and and I'm the first to say I don't know who to hire as a mental health therapist. So I came to Terry Radits at the time and said I need a mental health therapist but I you guys interview and hire because she knew what we needed. I have no idea what I would be looking for. And that's why we also have great people. So it's little decisions like that that are made because there truly is a desire to partner. It's not just one entity trying to do to the other entity which often help often happens. So I also think a part of the answer to your question both kind of sides of it is just how much across the continuum of care that we provide um how many service are services are truly available within one institution. Um, so it's really easy for us to be able to uh collaborate internally um as well as then reach out to our community partners and I think that creates a safety net for kids. That's really really important and and I think adults as well, not just kids, but I know we're focusing on that right now. So that creates a safety net that we can really catch people in and try and prevent them from and help guide them really to what is the appropriate service, what is the appropriate intervention. What do we have for you right here already built? And how can we rely on other other kind of I don't know other other um what's the word other strings in that net or whatever you want to call it uh to be able to provide some some safety, comfort, support uh across the whole continuing continuum of mental health services in our area. Going back to Dr. Ward's comment about every door. Um, if we look at page 16, this refers to our coordinated response referrals. Jen, if you could talk to us a little bit if we have any thought or ideas or information about how many are first time versus repeat referrals and then what does that tell us about the work that you do? Um so we have let's see um we have about average 100 referrals that are um in in 2023 and 2024 that are um just one-time referrals. So that is not repeat referrals. Um I believe when I looked at this graph it was about 177 total in 2023. Um so yes we do get repeat referrals. Um and um but there was a lot of need. Um I quite frankly I don't think we realized that we would be getting um referrals on kids when we started and um we really um had to adapt and adjust and um so I I was put on responding to those referrals. Um, in terms of the work, um, I think it shows that there's a lot of need, um, for, um, families to, um, have the support and they really don't know what to do when we, um, show up. They're in crisis. Um, and we're giving them that direction. Um, so yeah, in 2024, children 99 children and families were served. Um, and I that again, I think it speaks to the need, but I it also I think we're grateful for that because again, I don't know how many of those 99 are have never interfaced with a mental health professional. Um, but it it could be a fair amount and for them to now for them to have we're on we have them on our um our clinical radar and um being able to you know the things listed on page three deescalate what brought them to coordinated response in the beginning and Jen goes out there multiple times. This isn't a one-time thing. She may be working with a family for months getting them to a place to see maybe the clinical issues and then bringing them to long-term services, bridging that gap. I think that's really important work because that's that's you talked about gatekeeping. That's also the initial phase of treatment for a family, right? Is being able to connect with them, being able to go into the home, being able to be there with them, and really you're starting the intervention then. And hopefully through that experience for them, they can start to reach out um for what else might be helpful as you as you start to explore what services could be beneficial to them. They've had a great first encounter, great first experience. Maybe a little bit scary at first, but look at how it turned out and now I have some trust that I'm going to be able to find some uh find some services elsewhere as And if you turn back time, um, back in the day, uh, when law enforcement would get involved, um, we used to hear the only way we could figure out how to get them the support they need is to put them on a 72-hour hold and put them in Jaff in a placement and then the county would have to respond. So, we've come a long ways from from then. Um just a kind of a clarifying question Jen is some of the data the adult and child data is that ever like um a situation where you have end up giving services to the adult and to the child and it's really a family situation. Is that some of the data here or are these really um they don't overlap at all? Correct. Um it's based on who law enforcement puts on the referral um as the identifying client. Um so if it was um the child that was the focus um that's that's how it gets counted. Um if it was So it it's really based on how the law enforcement referred that. Um sometimes we say let's make a referral for for both because um the parent might need some support. Um so we if that's the case then that's an that's a adult referral. It's clinical judgment because you never know until you get into the system. Do you see that happening frequently or sorry frequently or is that kind of the exception? Um, I would maybe the exception. I think I get the referral and then I run with it, right? I look at when I see that it's a child referral, it it's the family as my lens um that I'm working with. On page 13, we have the topic of men choice assessments. Um, obviously there's a very lofty target goal there. Uh do we feel that there are um impacts to mental health outcomes of not achieving this goal and maybe some impacts on our other um KPIs that are part of this packet? We we went through with men choices and we somewhere in the narrative I have to find it. Um we wrote about oh here we go in 2023 83 of it's on page six 83 of the men choice assessments were completed on persons 0 to 17 and then 248 were completed um on children. Someone in the audience knows more about in choices want to share about the impact. I'm phoning a friend. So, Mint Choices becomes um the wayin for families or children to access specialized services uh to help meet identified mental health needs. Um what I can say is there's been lots of men choices discussions in terms of um being able to move people through annual assessments. Um you heard in the beginning with uh Mayor Briggs and the work being done at the federal uh level as well as um legislative uh work here at the state. What I can say in terms of impact when we this is I think the beauty of Scott County in terms of the collaboration. So there's certainly wait lists for people to get in um and access a min choices assessment which then opens up the gate to additional services, but if and when we have a young person who's really demonstrating um high need or really complex behavioral challenges and there's a need for um intensity of resources because we see placement as sort of the potential the next step, this team of people and our min choices staff really work together to prioritize an assessment to be able then to see what additional services are needed so we can avoid either the placement altogether or we have different funding resources to help identify specialized treatment. I think one other piece to add to this is um some of us have heard about a bill that is in relation to um with men choices and kids that are needing hospital level of care in counties that could potentially get charged $250 a day for every day past the 20 days waiting on this. And because of the prioritization and the working together that Suzanne just talked about, we actually our average weight time is only eight days because we try to prioritize those kids. So, it's just an example of like the urgency that we feel when working with kids with mental health issues and wanting to support that. Thank you everybody. With respect to time, I want to ensure that our commissioners have time for questions. So, thank you for for everything and I'll turn it over to Mr. Chair and the board. Thank you very much. Members, any questions you want to start out with? I figured I went to my right. I figured probably maybe Yeah, maybe. Well, thanks everybody. um for the panel for the discussion I just want to level set for a minute about because we have so many guests in the room and and hopefully many more online um of course children's mental health and addressing it is a a mandated one of our mandated roles now counties do that differently we figure out what that program looks like um but it but it is mandated so some people are like what what what are we talking about this for um one thing I want to ask and and maybe Steve you're the right person for this, but I think in the past few years, we've made some additional investment into children's mental health, maybe with some ARPA dollars. Um, how has that impacted our our whole initiative in this area? Is it is it case management, weight times, weight list? How how have those additional resources made a difference? Uh Suzanne can help me out with that as well, but the we've been able to um prior to that our case I mean it's related to case load size and so having uh a large number of referrals and those open to case management spread between let's say five case managers their c the standard case load size um requirement is 15 for DHS um and that's and nowadays 15 is is you can say pretty active um our case loads were probably pushing 18, 20, and over 20. Um, and so we've been able to allocate um another case manager to them um and reduce our case load size and now it's it's much more manageable. So, you know, it's just simple math. The more more time you have to spend with families, the more you can uh get to know them, understand their needs, and then employ resources needed to help them. Wonderful. Thank you. I just thought that was good for us to know. Um, second question, Dr. Logger, thanks for being here. Thanks for your partnership as always, and I think you fully answered this question already, but I want to give you the opportunity to say any more about it. Um, I think for my colleagues, our colleagues around the state, sometimes counties collaborate and invest in in mental health um, professionals in the schools. Sometimes they just say, "Schools, you apply for that funding, those grants, do it on your own." I think you spoke to why you think this is the right plan. Um, I just wanted to give you a chance to add anything to that because I think that's that's sometimes a decision we have to make. You know, should should the county be involved in getting getting these these uh professionals to the schools? Um, is is that the right way to do it? Any more you'd like to say about that? Well, I think just in speaking from, you know, Scott Family Net, which we meet scale, many of the my colleagues and superintendents go to as well. Um, I think if the rest of the superintendents in the county were sitting here, they would tell you that mental health of our kids is something we're all extremely concerned about. And I think they all would also tell you that the ability to have therapy level support the connect therapists in our buildings is the best approach. And I know many of them have been superintendent even out of the state of Minnesota or in different again counties. And I've had conversations with them individually about just how well this system works. And I think the thing I constantly reflect on is it's such an easy thing to do. But in other places I've been, it's just not that easy to do it kind of because what what you've said is either we don't want to do anything with it or we have the money so we want to run the program. We want the employees instead of really looking at how does it best work for the kids in the school. So just thank you and the people here. However that all got organized um and continues. It's every time we call and ask for additional support or help. It's a problem solving approach. It's not a oh, we can't do that. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other questions? So, I've got a couple questions. Um, you know, on page two, it's kind of our continuum of care of sorts. uh and sounds like and certainly feels like and again these are overgeneralizations but we have a pretty robust continuum of care also some gaps right also some gaps I mean you so you look at the continuum of care on two and then you um you know so we always fashion these like what's going well what's not going well and um so under the challenges um school partners for one question item number two under challenges school partners indicate the meal needs are more significant and are starting earlier in a child's life. So, so one question is who are those school partners? Like what who who who fits into that category? Is that third party folks? Is that us? Is it you? Is it? Well, one one of the things I haven't talked about specifically today is we also saw a significant need in the earlier part. We actually just opened uh a I'm going to say K5 elementary um program um through Southwest Metro, which is in Scott County, but we bought a building in a neighboring county. Um and because it was the facility was available, but we started a full-time uh day treatment program for kids K5. And I will tell you that that's something that people go, "Are you serious?" you know, really like we're sending and and I personally have from Bell Plane have had kids that have had to go to that program um because they need that level of care for I mean we say containment in that and some of it is is already at that level of containment and I should know this um but I know when we were looking at doing this one of the hang-ups was it was so easy working with Scott County to get the mental health therapists in um but this was in another county and but I I wonder if we didn't solve that. I was going to say I think we actually have Scott County people working in a building that's located in Carver County because that's where Southwest Metro was able to purchase the facility. So again, that's just another example of the biggest hangup was we didn't have a partner over there that was going to put the therapist there, but again, people here found a way to make it work. And that's a expansion of reflection. Yeah. It's an expansion. Yeah. To to elementary kids. And were we in year two? Year one. Two. One. Year one. We're in year one. April 1st of last year. We've been talking about it for a few years. So I don't know how long it's been up, but yes, it's starting earlier. And again, that next step in that systemic approach is we need day treatment for those elementary kids. Well, and I mean, our perspective has always been, and it's been mentioned here, too, is sure, we I I do feel like we've got a very robust continuum of care, but there's gaps, but also we're not looking to recreate the wheel. If there's a I mean these are regional these are statewide issues right so whatever we can do that Carver County doesn't need their own we don't need their own Dakota county like kind of in the soup together we can pull things together and do it more efficiently with the hope with less money and better outcomes that's what I'm always about is the better outcomes um so you don't need to whisper Carver County we I don't want to call out the other counties team team well that was part of the question school partners parters. I mean, we're all, you know, we're all involved in that. And so, um, going back to that again, page two, continue of care and then also going back to the challenges, you know, the schooling services in high demand, you know, we need we need more this and that. So, so how do we and again I don't I don't mean to uh make this sound undermining because it is not in the least, but how what do we do? The need is there, right? We have the need. Um, need's probably going to be there for the foreseeable future, right? does doesn't mean we aren't about better outcomes because we are. How do you triage some of these things where it may be, you know, deep in services? I get that's probably a completely different category versus, oh, um, this is just a series of bad choices that led to a down day and it's not like this. I got this mental health hammer so everything looks like a nail versus like hey maybe make a different choice or and again I don't mean to oversimplify but when the need is so great the resources are less than that how do we do that and that's where I was going back with the partners are there partners that we work with on some of those touch points um or even not deeper in that can help a better outcomes more efficient um and not just government. I think the school is probably our biggest partner when we have these conversations. Um, when we think about triaging kids, it's and I agree, it's really important to look at what they need and to meet the level of service. It's a risk to over pathize anyone. I think it's a bigger risk to over pathize children. Those labels stay with them. Um, and it can it can impact them if it's not done appropriately. So, a diagnostic assessment is really, really, really important. And that's part of the reason why James will say we do hundreds of interviews to find somebody who really understands children and understands through that lens. That's why Jen is really good at what she does because she knows that what is normative behavior for a 12-year-old versus what is mental illness in a 12-year-old. And, you know, not everyone can do that. Um, and so when we are assessing kids in the schools, that's one of the things we look Does this kid need that top tier, you know, that top one five% of kids service? Do they need u maybe a group once a week where we can serve more kids? Um or do they not need service? Is this more of a school um can we partner with our school to do some training? Maybe we're seeing an increase in um kids who are um you because they've seen us stuff on social media, so they're acting out a certain way in school. Well, maybe that's not mental illness, but maybe we can do some training and some partnership with the school staff on how they can do environmental scans or changes to address that behavior and everyone gets better. So, that would be more of like the bottom tier of the triangle of service. Y um and then we also our school social workers, they know all the resources in their community. So, they they really leverage and help us then funnel kids to those community partners because every community different resources versus playing Jordan, it's very different. So, we really look to that ual social worker as our um conduit to make those connections. And I figured you may pick up on the whole community partners aspect of this line of questioning. Um not questions, but we have uh programs. I mean, I I I agree with you. I mean, we we don't want to over pathize and and my staff have heard me say it many times. It doesn't have to be therapy to be therapeutic. And just because it's therapy isn't doesn't mean it's therapeutic. In other words, got to be an individualized approach. Uh and we do have partners at Treehouse. I mean, they they work with youth and and kids need a sense of belonging. they need validation, they need uh normal, healthy, fun experiences. And so the more we have that in our community, the more the support they have. Um and our our workers, and Christine can speak to that, we work very hard to create informal supports like um research shows us, I mean, if a child has some another adult that connects with them, makes them feel important and other than their parent um they do better in life. And so how do we get them connected to grandparents or uncles or who in church those type of things? So there's a lot of effort put in that direction. Seems like a great opportunity for community engagement, right? Community engagement which I know we're we're super open to and and all those fun things which is great. Um I think that was let me just look quick my little chicken scratch of those particular questions. I mean this definitely feels like one of those areas that's calling versus a job versus an assignment. finding that round packed around uh to bring about better outcomes and hopefully uh in efficient ways. So yes, this is more a curiosity and I don't it's probably off off a little off to the side on the topic, but I'm wondering about threat analysis to health. You know, you would say some health is probably obviously related to bi biology and biological health issues and then there's behavioral health issues that caused by the environment or threats to to health. And so I'm wondering why we do a threat analysis of what is what are the threats to children and youth health? Um and are those changing? You know, I I would say they are changing. Um I I don't want to get political here, but the attitude towards drugs, you know, and legalization of drugs that a threat to mental health. Um, and so how how would we monitor that? How would we see if it really is or not or and how it's impacting um youth and I know that this is not legal for youth typically, but there's probably a trickle down effect what's happening in all of society. Um, so threat analysis to health, I'm I'm curious how we will track that and respond to that. So, as a part of all our comprehensive evaluations at the mental health center, we do an evaluation of all of those different things. What's the what safety concern do they have? Um, are there safety concerns in the home in terms of like abuse, those sorts of things? Um, you know, suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, all of those things are are explored as a part of the comprehensive evaluation. And I would imagine and with the case managers as well, there's some conversations around that. Um so on that level it's it's a it's a part of everything we do um is is assessing what are the potential threats to this child and then how can we match how can we meet those threats. Um so in terms of answering when when are we doing it uh with pretty much every level of intervention that we provide I can't imagine that it's not happening uh to assess that. Yeah. And I can appreciate that and understand on an individualized basis how that might be happening. But how is it happening globally like in a school? How is a school addressing threat health threat kind of to all the kids or you know so for does that does that come up? various. Oh, I was gonna say it's interesting in an environment like this because I I feel like sometimes we have these conversations in isolation and I've heard, you know, technology and there's a lot of concern about, you know, is technology leading to the the change in kids mental health? Is it chemicals? Is it drugs? Um, the one part that never gets talked about that I think if we go back to because this isn't a problem that arose overnight. I I don't think it happened during COVID. I think co maybe um exasperated it a little bit more because of isolation and things but uh you know every year I have to have a conversation even at the preschool level about just let kids play like we have become so driven in schools or there was a period of time I feel like there is a change now because these are conversations we're having in school but that a lot of people outside of our school conversations aren't privy to. You know, from the early 2000s to the mid 2000s, we were pushing every kid to college. Everybody's got to get a four-year college degree. Every kid. And if I could put my finger on one thing that really has caused a lot of this rise in mental health challenges of of our kids is there's kind of this equilibrium. You're going to have your ups and downs with your friends. You're going to have your ups and downs with your academics. You're going to have your ups and downs with chemical use, with techn. There's all these equilibriums. And when they become out of balance and I I will say from a school educator perspective, we were guilty of that. You know, the whole testing push uh from the early late 90s, early 2000s, I would say now it's we still do it, but there's probably less pressure, but there's still pressure. Like a kid doesn't do well academically because they're not reading at the level their friend is that affects their mental health. public and we have pushed so much on the academic side when what I've seen firsthand with people I work with whose kid they were pushing their kids and now their kid has found a career they build cars they make great money at it they love what they're doing it doesn't matter at what level they're reading at it doesn't matter at what level they're doing math at you know and so I think when you're I think what you're kind of getting at is how is this like we do threat assessments how is this assessment. I think it's this equilibrium of sometimes it's easy for us to blame technology. Sometimes it's easy for us to blame chemicals. Sometimes we have to look in the mirror and say all the testing requirements, all of these curricular requirements where we just keep I mean we're putting curriculum in preschool so kids can't go outside and play. To me, it's ridiculous. Like at some point it's even developmentally appropriate. So, I think that's kind of what you're getting at is my best because what I'm not hearing come up here is our push towards academic curriculum, you know, and it's coming back to the trades a little bit more, but we don't need every single person to get a four-year college degree. And that was the kick we were on for 15 years. Yeah, for sure. I know that was uh impressive. Any last questions? I have one last question. Sorry. Um uh page 11. I just wanted to clarify on the out of home placement. Um, our numbers do seem seem to keep going down which is which is great and we do are committed to trying to preserve that family first. Um and again again just as a as a indicator only do we know how we in here in in our partnership because I I don't want to say here in Scott County but here in our partnership how do we rate or compare to other counties or partnerships in some of these um because you know we always talk about the family resource center and and some of the prevention and diversion things that we are doing that do seem to be working and again not in an undermining way but just to kind of strengthen even maybe perhaps what we're doing. Um, how does that compare? Do we know how that compares with other groups? I don't even want to say a jurisdiction or a county, but other because I do feel like this is a partnership. It's not just a county. It's not just a school district. It's not just a um Do we have an idea what And again, as an indicator knowing that everyone does it a little bit differently? Because you know I'm bullish, Suzanne. You know I'm bullish on this. I do. Uh I I think there's a number of different indicators that we can look at. So we we can um look at a measure that's called the rate of entry. So per 10,00 kids, what's our rate of entry into into out of home placement? Scott County through really probably the last 10 to 20 years has always been in the well, you can look at it the top three or the bottom three. So we have one of the lowest. We are either the lowest, second, maybe the third lowest across the state. So I think that speaks to Steve talked about placement philosophy. We hold that really strong about how do we engage partnerships both internally and community to help meet family need. I think you've heard all the panel members speak about when you work with a child, right? You are working with a family system and the family system is really even beyond mom and dad. It is aunties and uncles and godparents and neighbors. Who is it that we can create create a village around to help support a kid and family? So I think it is that I think we have other sort of anecdotal uh indicators of many of our county uh colleagues across the state have had challenges about um kids you know housing in county buildings um or sending kids out of state because of placement need. Um knock on wood we've had certainly challenges but we've not had those experiences because I think we have a really tight collaboration of partnerships internally and in community to help meet need. Well, and and where I'm coming from, I think we're all everyone is coming from is is not doubting that, but finding a way to like really and I know some of this is newer programs, but really finding ways to strengthen that. So, boy, it's galvanized that yes, we we are getting better outcomes. Guess what I mean, which in and of itself is a huge win, right? a better outcome, breaking some generational sin, generational trauma, things that are big things, little things, all of that stuff that's more efficient, and it's lowering the cost of doing government. I mean, so it's all of these win-win-wins. Well, and I I would even say and it's better for kids and families, of course. That's I want to go back that was the number one win is that the better outcomes is is the win, right? All of the other stuff you get it for free, so so to speak. So all right that is pretty sure now my last question. Yeah. All right. Okay. Moving on. Um we are going to Yes. Thank you so much for this panel. Thank thank you for this time. It's a very good discussion. So um can perhaps seem a little emotional which is awesome. Going to move on to item number uh seven which is our consent agenda. These are all items that will pass in one motion. There's a few pages uh this meeting because we sent a group to Niko for our over the time period of our first meeting. So this is the only meeting of the board for this particular month. So uh item number 7.1 adopt resolution number 2025-19 approving estimates of just compensation for right of way for the county highway 23 and county highway 68 roundabout project. 7.2 Two, adopt resolution number 2025-35 authorizing direct sale of one vacant remnant parcel along Trunk Highway 169 in Jackson Township. 7.3 adopt resolution number 2025-40 authorizing a contract increase for the Bluff Drive trunk highway 169 overpass project. 7.4 Four, adopt resolution number 2025-43 approving the termination and release of an interim use permit and development agreement for Shakabby Sands Riverbend Industrial LLC as successor in interest to Quinn Kunix Mining LLC and Great Plains Sand LLC property owners. 7.5 Adopt Resolution number 2025-45 authorizing a third contract increase for the Spring Lake Regional Park Lakefront Development Construction Project. 7.6 Six. Adopt resolution number 2025-47 approving grant application for the Minnesota Department of Transportation 5310 vehicle purchase in the year 2027. 7.7 adopt resolution number 2025-49 authorizing entering amendment number one to the Minnesota Department of Human Services Emergency Services Program Contract 7.8. Adopt resolution number 2025-50 authorizing entering an amendment to the agreement with the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority for the operation and maintenance of the Marshall Road Transit Station. 7.9 adopt resolution number 2025-52 authorizing entering into an agreement with the Shakabe Metawakaden Sue community for operation and maintenance of the event traffic management system. 7.10 10 adopt resolution number 2025-53 authorizing entering into a statement of understanding with the state of Minnesota first judicial district for audio and visual system upgrades in the justice center. 7.11 adopt resolution number 2025-54 authorizing entering into an agreement with Microsoft for enterprise licensing. 7.12 adopt resolution number 2025-59 authorizing entering into an agreement with core mechanical services for HVAC upgrade at the central shop. 7.13 adopt resolution number 2025-61 authorizing entering into a cooperative agreement with Three Rivers Park District for trail preventive maintenance at Clear Lake Regional Park. That will be ready for your rollerblading that that right there. 7.14 adopt resolution number uh 2025-62 authorizing entering into a contract with Valley Paving Inc. for the 2025 pavement preservation program bid package A 7.15 adopt resolution number 2025-65 authorizing an amendment to the consultant agreement with Bolton and Mink Inc. for the county highway 78 and 79 roundabout project 7.16. Adopt resolution number 2025-67 authorizing a budget amendment and entering into a contract with McNamera Contracting, Inc. for the 2025 pavement preservation program bid package B 7.17 adopt resolution number 2025-68 approving an interim use permit amendment to expand sand and gravel mining operations Pentagon Materials Inc. applicant and Schultz Gravel Pit LLC property owner 7.18 adopt resolution number 2025-69 authorizing final payment to SM Henches and Sons Inc. for the Marine Edition Housing Trust Project. 7.19 adopt resolution number 2025-70 authorizing a budget amendment to move $400,000 of 2024 local affordable housing act or LAA funds into community development agency CDA Invest programming 7.20 220 adopt resolution number 2025-71 authorizing entering into a temporary grading and construction easement agreement with Fourstar Real Estate Group, Inc. for County Property at 13751 Zumbro Avenue in Jackson Township. 7.21 adopt resolution number 2025-73 approving an interim use permit for a detached accessory dwelling unit, an ADU of Victoria Wer and Lawrence Charles applicants and property owners. 7.22 adopt resolution number 2025-74 approving the reszone of 120 acres from A1 agricultural preservation district to A3 agricultural preservation density district Patrick G. Sullivan applicant and Harland and Leon Labs property owners 7.23 adopt resolution number 2025-75 approving an interim use permit to operate a temporary asphalt plant for the 2025 construction season Paving Inc. applicant and Ted G and Mary R. Corander property owners 7.2524 adopt resolution number 2025-77 approving a conditional use permit for a billboard advertising sign Lamar Advertising applicant and Ducet Family Holdings LLC property owners at 14331 Louisville Road Louisville Township 7.25 25 adopt resolution number 2025-78 approving a conditional use permit for a billboard advertising sign Lamar Advertising applicant and Bluffside Properties LLC property owners at 14355 Louisville Road Louisville Township 7.26 adopt resolution number 2025-80 approving additional expenditures under the Axon Enterprise Inc. Agreement 7.27 27 adopt resolution number 2025-81 approving amendment to Verizon wireless tower lease agreement 7.28 approve the lawful gambling premise permit application for the Ducks Unlimited frozen north chapter Minnesota 0271 at Country Prime Time Bar and Grill in Spring Lake Township for 2025 7.29 Approve the renewal application for 32% malt liquor license for JCI Shakabe in Louisville Township and the Church of St. Patrick and Cedar Lake Townships for 2025. 7.30 approve appointment and reappointment of citizen to advisory committees. 7.31 Approve uh record of dispersements and approved claims. 7.32 approve payroll processing of personnel actions. Those are the 32 items on consent. Are there any questions, clarifications, comments? Otherwise, I'll make I have a comment. Sure. Yes. Well, first of all, Tom Wolf said his volume was very good. Could you repeat that? Oh, could I repeat that? Yes. Yes, I can repeat that. But anyhow, um 7.19, I would just like to make a comment. That's the transfer of LAA funds to community development agency. Just as we said when we received ARPA funds that we would like to see those dollars used in a way that has legs so that you know we could point to that 10 years from now and say that's where the money was used that was what was built that is continuing to serve the residents of Scott County that's continuing to meet a need. That's what we said in regard to ARPA funds. I'm in there's some copy in here that there's categories that this money can be spent uh in ways that would be spended and it's gone forever. And and um I'm not I'm not liking that very much. But at the very end it does say that this money will be used for housing and workforce affordable and workforce housing projects. I like that. So, I'm just hoping that we can give in the future maybe a little more clear guidance on how we specifically want this to be for projects that increase capacity rather than one time spending and it's gone forever categories. Yeah, but just that's a general comment. Well, the good news is we have a good relationship with CDA to have these kind of open conversations and ongoing communications. Yeah, I think Mr. chairman, it was consistent with kind of the housing um strategic plan that we've put together and this will then become revolving, right? And be able to be invested over and over again uh with time to help with capital projects. So, this is very consistent with the direction you provided for capital investment. All right. Great. All right. So, I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Motion and a second. Any discussion? Otherwise, as mentioned, Commissioner Wolf, just we said it in the beginning, but he is present via Zoom. Um, but I will not be repeating those 32 items. Michelle, take it away. Roll call, please. Commissioner Wcman Brekie, I. Commissioner Wolf, I. Commissioner Beer, I. Commissioner Brennan, I. Commissioner Olrich. Hi. All right. Consent is approved. We are now we're going to move to this 8.1 before we do a room rearrangement. Number eight, we're going to look at 8.1 presentation by CAPS interns on the early childhood screening public service announcement announcements. Good morning. It's still morning, isn't it? Yes. Good morning, Lisa. Good morning, Mr. Chair and commissioners. I am thrilled that today's theme apparently is partnerships across the board because um I'm here to prod uh to announce another partnership that we have with Shakape High School. As you know, we are co-chion of the human services academy there. We have staff and officials on every industry council and the steering committees as well. We have hosted high school students on this campus. Mr. Stone is here. Um we have had classroom tours, we've had industry tours, we've had projects, we've had externships, but I think that the most visible um presence that we've had are internships uh with our Shakabe CAPS uh students. Um, so Erica and Devon, who are seniors this year, graduating in June, started working with us in late January, and they're wrapping up this week. They were charged with a very broad idea to create one or two public service announcements advocating for early childhood screening. With very little supervision and guidance, they researched, they spoke with experts, they created two concepts, scripted the narratives, produced the PSAs that they're going to be introducing today. So, but before we jump to the videos, I'd like Devon and Erica to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about their internship experiences. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair and commissioners. Um, as Lisa said, we are the CAPS interns. My name is Devon Ageon. My name is Erica Sanders. And as she said, we were tasked with creating an early childhood screening PSA to advertise early childhood screenings to parents. So, we decided to land on two different types of PSAs. for one to be the anecdote PSA for social media and um our other PSA graduation to be more emotional and more towards local television or the website to kind of pull at those heartstrings. Nice. Our first video is an anecdotal video. We got a parent and a child um and we took them through the screening process and we interviewed the parent afterwards to break the stigma of what screening is for parents. What is it? A cube. A cube? I don't know if that's a cube. It's got more sides. Can we guess again? My name is Stephanie. I am TJ's mom. He is three and a half. He is our first child, our only child right now, and he's getting ready to enter preschool. Great job. Three. You did three. There's three blocks. Yes. Good job. Like me. Three like you. Yes. It was a very easy process. The examiner was very nice and TJ had a lot of fun. It was less like a screening and more like little games that he got to play with her. It was great. It didn't feel like a test. And I don't think he felt that way either, I think it was easier than I thought it was going to be. He is a stay-at-home kid. And while we do a lot of similar activities to the games and activities that he played today, you never really know how kids are going to react when doing those things with other people. Being able to see him interact in that way with somebody that wasn't me was really reassuring. Three is a great age. I think by the time you get to four, I almost think that some of the testing that's done, they're probably aged out. And three is such an important age cuz it's when they start preschool and it's when they start getting ready for kindergarten. By the time you hit four, it might be a little late to be gathering information to make some of those decisions. It was so easy and it was easy on him and it was easy on me. It's just a process of benchmarking and information gathering so that you can make the best decisions possible for them. It's not as if they're passing or failing or doing anything wrong. It's just making sure that you have enough information to make good decisions for your kid. For more information or to find out where your nearest location is, call 651-5828412. Okay, before we go on to the next one, I will be leaving to go see my grandkids now. That's good. It's good. All right. And for our next one, we are focusing in on a student at graduation. And right before they walk the stage, they are reflecting on some childhood memories and experiences. And we are trying to get across how impactful an early childhood screening can be all the way up to graduation. Oops. One second. Tiffany [Applause] Priyago, Alina Miranda. Ready? [Applause] [Music] Graduation is one of the most important milestones in a child's life. The feeling of accomplishment coursing through their veins. To a child, all that's on their mind is what's after. To a parent, it truly brings them back to the beginning. It all starts with screening. An early childhood screening is not a test or a diagnosis, but a way to assess a child's development and interaction with others. Screenings take about an hour and are designed to be comfortable and fun for your child. For more information or to find out where your nearest location is, call 651-5828412. [Music] Advocate for your child's future with an early childhood screening. Nice. And the Oscar goes to Nice. So, we um are opening the floor for any questions you may have uh for us. Great. Thank you so much, members. Certainly. Thank you. Yeah, I teared up during both of those. Um, and th this is just so on point. I was talking to my daughter just this week, my granddaughter is three, and I'm like, "Oh, you should get her sign up for early childhood screening." And I live this. I talk about all the time. She's like, "Really? What is that?" And this perfect. I think I can't wait to show these to her to explain the process. I I think you guys did did a great job. I hope it was fun. Looks like especially filming that second one was a lot of fun. Yeah. I I uh thank you for the presentation. I believe that this is an area that is greatly needed to be presented to the um community and so that people are educated on on the importance of um early childhood screening. So I remember the days that I took my kids to to early child screening and I looked at the mom in the background and that's how I felt. I was like, whoa, what are they doing? You know, but um I appreciate the work that you've done. Yeah, I love the partnership that we have with, you know, here on our agenda, it says CAPS, which I probably most people in shock me understand, but high school interns for Scott County. So, um, it's just a fun opportunity that we have, at least kind of talk about some of the other partnerships we have with high school students coming to help out and be part of the community. So, thank you for that. And yeah, those I I got to wait for like six, seven hours before I see my grandkids. But, thank you so much. Are there any other questions? Any comments? I just wanted to echo what Commissioner Brennan said. This has been a high priority for Scott County for years. The superintendent continue to reiterate the importance of screening by three and getting kids that need services on time to get them kindergarten ready and to that graduation point. So, thank you for doing this and allowing us to get this out into the community. Nice job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Okay, are we taking a five minute just a little break to just be in recess for five minutes just to move the tables and we will get to the elections presentation. Good. All right. Thank you so much for a little room re arrangement. We are back from recess. We are moving to item number 9.1. I can't tell you how excited I am to finally be here and we have this presentation on the 2024 elections. Thank you so much, Cindy and Julie. Take it away, please. Good morning to the board. There we go. Oh, good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is Cindy G. I'm the community services director. And good morning as well. My name is Julie Hansen. I'm the property and customer service manager here for Scott County. Thank you for having us here today. Thank you. So, today we're going to talk about the 2024 elections. This is our agenda. It's quite vague, but we really wanted to make sure that we addressed the various issues that were out there. We want to look at what what are some of the proposed changes we could make such as for our processes, state changes, and what's out there today. I mean, there's tons of legislation that's being proposed, and a lot of it is good. So, we're going to go through some of those elements as well. Just to recap, the 2024 elections, we had a 100,318 registered voters. So that is a huge number. And of that, 90,668 people actually voted. That's a combination of both absentee and election day. When we look at absentee ballots accepted, there was a little bit of a contest going on saying how many people are going to really vote absentee. Uh Julie lost. I did. But anyway, we had 38,437 absentee. That means people who voted by envelope as well as those who voted by direct balloting. And since the primary, we had 7,514 people register to vote during the general election of this year or last year. I wanted to talk a little bit about the ballots, the absentee ballots that were rejected. You hear various things about what do you really look for on an absentee and how do we know that it's that the people that we have trained in our election judges that come uh from two different parties that they're really looking for the things that matter. So, of the absentee ballots that rejected now, those these are the ones that come in by envelope when they're looking at the envelopes because when they come in during direct balloting, we will fix have them fix the things that are wrong before they put cast their ballot. But for those that were rejected, the rejected these the rejected ballots always are given a second opportunity to vote. So when we look at okay they sent them in by mail or they sent them in various other ways we we always look at it and say okay there's these factors that we really look at you know did they come in on time and if they did come in on time we still give them voter history they they were received late so they let's just say the ballot came in um five days before the election. People can track their ballot online. So with that, it's like if if they're watching their ballot and they sent send it by mail, we all know that our mail is a little bit of snail mail, but they may get a little anxious and then they go and they vote at the polls already. So with that, we have to take that ballot and we just have to reject it because they've already voted and and you're seeing that in the poll books. That's where you're ti tying that knot. No, we are seeing that in the SBRS, the state voter registration system that they that the wherever they went to vote, whether it was at their city or whether it was at the county, that those people say this person voted on this day. So, anything that comes in where they've already voted, we just reject it. Can I pop in? Since you asked about poll books, uh poll books are used for election day only. Okay. Um the information that we populate into the poll book is all of our voter roles. So all of our registered voters, right? And all of those registered voters who have absentee voted through this process get marked that they've absentee voted. So that's how the absentee kind of mixes into the election day. So someone comes in, they voted absentee, but for who knows whatever reason, they show up on election day. Remember when that was? any that's a whole another story. Um, and they go to the poll book, the poll book will show that they've already voted absentee at that point. It will, and it will only show if their absentee voted has been accepted. So, if for some reason someone's ballot, as Cindy is explaining, was rejected. Something was missing. And I have some samples to show you today. I know that absentee is sort of mysterious, and it shouldn't be, right? We don't want it to be. So, I've got some examples to show you today. But if for some reason their ballot was rejected, um they would not be marked with an absentee vote in the poll pad and they would have the opportunity then to vote on election day as well. So Julia to ask a question to that then. So I'm looking at 131 like voter name or signatures did not match. If that happened right before election, how would you handle that? Sure. So up until 5 days before the election, um we receive their ballot. So in this scenario, and I can certainly show it on the camera so everyone at home can see it. Um on this scenario, this envelope, you'll see that this is highlighted. Uh we send these out. It's a painstaking process and only because we is because that's not this is what's showing up on the screen right what we're seeing on the so push the camera I can uh show you that or or this camera whatever at least just so we can see that be helpful so this is a a typical example of an absentee envelope and I want to put out a disclaimer to everyone this is absolutely fake data um I took some real labels and I was able to change some items so these are not real voters. These are probably not even real addresses. Thank you. Anything like that. This is fake data. So, just so you're aware. Um, but in this example, um, Jane Doe is the voter and that has her information. We print the label off of the statewide voter registration system. We pre-h highlight these envelopes that we send out to all of our voters because we want to give everyone the chance to be as successful as possible, which is a lot of work, right? It really is. but it's very much worth it. Um, they also do get instructions as well and I have a sample of that to show you. But in this example, um, the ID number is missing. So Leslie, on your question, um, if we receive this the Thursday before the election or later, so up until the Monday before the election, odds are that folks are not going to get a chance to revote. It's just the time is too tight. Revote via absentee, correct? or decide to go vote on election day. At that point, it's their choice. So, yes, they can go on election day to the to the polls. Um, we reach out to these folks via phone number, email, whatever it is we happen to have. Um, if we have no contact information for these folks, we will send them a new ballot. If it's prior to the 5 days before the election, we actually send out a notice of ballot rejection letter. This is another example that is not real. Um, but this is the letter that would go with this ballot. So, this letter says, um, we have multiple checkboxes we can choose that the voter did not provide an ID number. And what we would do is we would send it with a photocopy of this envelope. So, we try to be as absolutely transparent as we can um, and give folks the opportunity to get their vote counted. So if this was within the five days though, you would note this had gone out. It would be rejected and they would be able to vote then on election day. Right. Absolutely. Or they could go to go in person to the absentee poll. Correct. I don't know how to get it back. There we go. Okay. So anyway, I I I won't go through each of these, but as you can see, there are quite a few variations of why a ballot could be rejected. Now, I want to also put out a disclaimer. If they're rejected, they have the option of voting again either in person, by mail, if it's longer than 5 days, or they can go to the poll. This is different than a spoiled ballot. A spoiled ballot is when they go vote either generally in person either at an absentee location or at a polling location. In that case, they got a ballot, they went to the the um voting booth and they made an error. Those come back to us. Then they the voter goes, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to cast this because once it's put into that tabulator, there's no getting it back. They can take that ballot, they can take it back to the election judges and say, "I made a mistake. We we spoil that ballot and then we just give them a new one. We reissue a new one. They don't need to fill out another application. We just need to put that in the spoiled ballot envelope." Well, can you go back to that? Yeah. Two voters died. How does that work? I'm curious what the voters died means. So, in this case, the v the voters um they applied for an absentee ballot. They were alive at the time. They were mailed a ballot. The ballot was received, but in the interim, they passed away. We get that from the Minnesota Department of Health, Department of Health that we get a notice that someone's passed away when we get their ballot back or if it's before the time where they direct ballot, we reject it at that time. But if it was cast, so if it was within that 19 days before the election, then we can't retract it. That vote counts. And so the voter system is the one that notifies you someone's died that comes directly into the system. Correct. We have cues that we get um in the statewide voter registration system which we call SPS because this is government, right? We have acronyms for everything. Uh but we get cues from the Department of Health that tell us that folks have passed away if they pass away in the state of Minnesota. If someone's located in another state, um we may also get that via EQ or we may get it actually through the mail. Um some states, for example, will actually get a a list of voters and they'll highlight because they know the address is in Scott County and notify us that someone has passed away. So there's multiple ways that we get that information. So, just to clarify, so two voters um did the application for the absentee. They were sent the proper paperwork with the envelopes. Those two, do we know they did return those ballots? Those were those came back. And so either we saw that they died and they came back in the interim and we rejected them off the bat or if it was that prior to the 19 days they were accepted they were stored down in the secret secret room. Yep. Yep. And then we found out that they died and we went down and so then we go back down there and we retract those and and reject those. So those so those again the 19-day piece and I don't want to major in the minors but um the vote would count. When would the vote count? If once we open the ballots and run them then then that vote counts because you can't identify whose ballot is it anymore. Yeah. So then it it counts. And you guys came up with that system or the state did? The state came up with that system. There's rules around the various things. And even you know when people come in and they make an application and you know they're not supposed to vote in this location but they just moved here. Those are things that we all there's all rules around those types of situations. The other thing is, you know, on the ones that there's a signature, either a lot of times there's no they're missing a witness signature or if that signature are high school kids who maybe going to school out of state, they have to have a witness that's a Minnesota resident or they have to do it by notary. And so that notary stamp has to be on there. So, all of these little bullet boxes or whatever underneath the 357 are the 357 that were just flat out rejected, right? And the 18 that have no proof of residency, those are ones that are um that are just registering to vote, they're supposed to fill out a voter registration application or a VRA. And when they do that, whoever witnesses witnesses their signature has to check a box saying, "How did you validate that that person is who they are?" And I feel like this is coming up because there was there one voter that was there was still an investigation going on. So that would not be rejected because it's still an investigation that those have been transferred to the attorney's office. And is there more than there's just one? We thought that there may be two, but a lot of time, you know, uh we merge a voter with a different county or the other county merges a voter with us and they think that it's the same person, but it's not. And we know that by the voter signature. So before we move on to this one, since we're on this subject and we're talking about this, let's talk about um the reason that some of these are rejected. So I've got my samples. And again, that's an envelope. It's just hard to see. Correct. It's an absentee envelope. Um and this has someone's name. You want to zoom in a little bit more? Here we go. Perfect. Thank you. Uh Jeremy Voter, obviously a very genuine name, um that lives on Riverview Lane, was the voter for this scenario. Um we sent it out highlighted. This is what it would look like when it comes back to us through the mail. So Jeremy has signed where the voter signature signs. Steve Smith is his witness and Steve Smith is signed down here at the bottom. But what Steve Smith failed to do is tell us what type of proof of residence Jeremy showed him in order to register to vote. So presumably in this envelope is a completed voter registration application or VRA like Cindy referred to. Um but in this case it nothing's even checked. So this would be a case that this would need to be rejected and either remailed or the voter contacted to vote uh a different method. We have um this one is very similar. This is John Voter. I'm sure they're related. Uh Betty Voter is the witness. And this one is completed completely appropriately. But in this scenario, this envelope would get opened, not with fingers, but with the letter opener, cuz we're much more efficient than that. Our absentee ballot board would pull out the voter registration application. And this has been filled out. And really what I want you to focus on is this center piece where I have made the star. This is not completed in full. They did not put in their Minnesota driver's license or their last four of their social. So, this is incomplete. So, this would be another scenario where this would have to be rejected because we don't have the complete information for the voter. And this was opened by the absentee ballot board. Correct. The absentee ballot board is made up of two party affiliated judges. Never two people of the same party working together. We talk a little bit more about that later. Um, but the process for a non-registered voter, meaning they are new to Scott County for some reason or they are new to this address, um, they would be sent this packet in the mail with instructions, but sometimes it's, you know, not completed. So, the absentee ballot board would open this envelope much more cleanly than I did. They would reseal this. They would tape this shut. And then they would both place their initials on the tape to show that they had opened it at the bottom of the envelope. Then all of these get marked accepted or rejected initialed by the two absentee ballot board judges. And then if it is rejected the reason. So V missing in this case would be V incomplete. Those types of things. And you would have two initials or two signatures. I think you just said. Yeah. Yes, we would. And in this case, you would think, why didn't you just call the voter and tell them to come in and fill out this application? But the way the the the law reads is this entire ballot is rejected, and you just rem all of the same information back out again. This example is a uh a voter that forgot to sign. So, the witness signed. I'm not sure what they witnessed, but the voter didn't sign. So, this would be another reason for an envelope to be rejected. This one, the witness didn't sign, so Anne Smith filled it out, um, but she forgot to sign it. And then my last example for you is, um, this one's a little tougher, and we'll talk a little bit more a little bit more about why in the presentation later, but this one looks great, right? John Smith, he gave us his driver's license number. He signed. Anne Smith filled that all out and Anne Smith signed. But when the absentee ballot board goes and reviews this information, they are comparing it to the information that was entered either by the voter or by the staff that entered it in the SPS system. Well, in this scenario, John Smith when he applied for his absentee back in June for the general election because maybe he applied for both um put his last four of his social. He applied online. He put his last four of his social and when he filled this out, he put his driver's license number. We don't have the last four of his social to compare back to. And if he applied online, we don't have a signature to match it back to. So in this case, the absentee ballot board would also reject this. They would again be sent a letter or contacted. And again, this envelope at this point contains the ballot. It does. But on this face value or any of these examples, if if if it doesn't pass this there, this is reject. We're not even opening this thing. Correct. Follow this first. Exactly. Right. But if if they did apply by mail where there's a signature, then they could go back and they could compare John Smith's signature to that application. You know, our our preference is always for people to apply a line because things are typed rather than handwritten. And every time you see something handwritten, it's a little questionable sometimes. Some of the figures that are on there, it's like, is that a six or is that a one or is that a four or whatever the situation is. So, it's much cleaner when we get them online, but it does come with its fallbacks as well because then you can't you don't have a signature to compare to. We have the ability to upload those SVS uh or those absentee applications into SPS into the voters's absentee record so that the absentee ballot board can actually view that application while they are in ballot board. um we did used to have to store those applications in folders. Um so that's a great improvement that we've been able to make that we can um actually have give them access instantly and not have to waste a bunch of time looking through paperwork. So okay. Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about training. Um, I was asked what type of training we give um to our partners, our city, township, school districts, um, those that do absentee, those that do not, election judges, um, all of that. So, we wanted to talk a little bit about that. uh the city, township, and school district clerks come in to meet with us and to actually have training events. Um in the period running up to the general election in 2024, we did two separate trainings for all of the city, township, and school district clerks um in our county. And um as a part of that and of course there's much more but just a brief summary of what we talk about uh we talk about legislative updates. We know that a lot is changing in the legislature very quickly right um and translating that and understanding that and being able to train others on that is really important. We talked about the differences in elections. Um it was a presidential election year right? So, we had a presidential nomination primary and in 2024, that was only the second PNP, as we call it, that we've had since the 80s. So, most folks involved in the PNP in the last couple of cycles, have never done one before. I will admit I was not administering elections in the 80s. So, um, and then we talked a lot about absentee, you know, what are folks options, what are the new rules? Um, and then we did spend a lot of time this last year doing balancing and summary statement training. At the end of the night, election judges and for absentee uh, fill out what we call a summary statement. It is where you balance your number of ballots to your number of voters in the box and how many people checked in and that kind of thing. Um, we'd like to think that math is easy, but math is really hard when you've worked a 20our day. It's very hard. So, we broke it down as much as we could. Um, provided examples, provided samples, all those kinds of things. So, we spent a lot of time going over all of that. Then, we did further an absentee training for city clerks and our own absentee staff. This was a train the trainer methodology. We trained all of our own absentee. We trained the city clerks and the folks that they knew that they were bringing on board for absentee. Um but then of course if they were bringing more folks in then they would do a train the trainer sort of um onboarding experience. We would go through legislative updates again. Um maybe there were new legislative updates or just things we needed to reiterate. We talk about the systems, SVRS, how you use SPSS, the different scenarios, um how you assist all your different types of voters that may come in. We talk about the methods of voting. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. Uh but what is envelope versus direct balloting? How do you assist someone in a health care facility that needs to vote? We talk about processes, as I said, that stepbystep assistance. um how you balance how you run your ballot boards, what your ballot boards should be doing, what your judges are responsible for. We provided guides. Um I'm going to switch this for a moment back over to show you some examples. One of the items that's been a popular uh topic of discussion, thank you Cindy over the last few months, is our absentee handbook. When we do our absentee training for the city staff that come in as well as our own staff, we arm them with everything we possibly can think of to make them successful. One of those things um is this absentee handbook which I will show you in a little more detail. One of the other things is this very large absentee voting administration guide and this is what's put out by the secretary of state's office. We provide them a paper copy. Everybody learns differently, right? Um I am not a paper copy person. I want to have my electronic copy that I can keyword search and do all of that. Other people are. So, we want to make people as successful as possible. So, we provide them with a paper copy of this um and of course all of the links to the Secretary of State's website. This is our absentee handbook. This absentee handbook goes into a lot of detail about how you perform things like direct balloting, what your screens in the state system will look like, how you scan your absentee ballot applications into the system. We do require our cities to do that as well so that we have access to those signatures and that data from here. how we enter absentee information, ballot board best practices. But what I really want to highlight for you here, because we're going to spend a lot of time talking about that today, right, is the the 20 ballots. Um, I want to point out, and I can certainly zoom in a little bit more, this does indicate that those that perform absentee are supposed to store ballot secrecy envelopes. This is not in statute. And again, we'll talk about that a little bit more later. Uh, but this is what we have asked our cities to do, our own staff to do is to store those and they get returned with all of our absentee returns. So, all of this training actually go back if you can go back to that screen that was Yeah, absolutely. Um just just clarification, city, township, school district, and then the secondary uh absentee for city clerks as a county, all of our elections is done by well certainly we run our elections and then other government entities run elections or as in conjunction. We don't use any third party I don't even know what to ask. Uh commercial um entity that will run elections. I mean it's all government and government. Absolutely. Together running these elections. Correct. Everything is done in partnership with the county, the cities, the townships, the school districts, um as well as of course the state. Yes. Everything is done by local government. Just clarification because I just wanted to make sure we weren't missing something. Absolutely. Can I ask a question? Um I had been Oh, I guess it's not a question. I had went through um I was an election judge prior to the poll pads, electronic polls. So I went through training and then as a city council person for shockping when they brought the um electronic pole pads in just to see what was going on. Is that something that is available for people to attend training just to see how it's going and is it um you know how people are being trained and they don't want to be an election judge? Absolutely. Um our election judge training is actually available on our website and it's still up. Uh we haven't taken anything down. Um, if folks wanted to actually just attend an election judge training, I'd be more than happy to have people come. Um, I would need that communication. I think that they're not actually intending to be an election judge just so I can fit everybody in the room appropriately, right? And then schedule more trainings if that's something that I needed to do. But absolutely uh we have folks that have attended election judge training or viewed our training training on the website. Uh like I said it's available all the time. Um at some point we will take that down because we will need to update it for 2026 just looking forward. But yes it is absolutely available out there anytime. And you're always looking for good election judges. Is that right? because that absolutely that's another area that's what the right term is but more people in need for sure. Um and then the last item on this slide is the communications plans and I'll be honest with you I really think this is absolutely one of the most important things that we do. Um we provide them the tools, we give them the training. um we we do everything we possibly feel like we can do, but at the end of the day, they're the ones administering the in-person voting to people. So, we provide them with our contact information. I spoke with city clerks, um township clerks, and school district a little bit less because that's more election day, right? But through the absentee period, I spoke with the seven cities that were doing absentee every day. I'm available all the time. They have my phone number. They have my email. Um folks can reach out to me at any time that they have a question. And they did. And we would get phone calls saying, "I'm so sorry I'm bothering you." No, you're never bothering me. That's what I am here for. So, we give them the communication plans. We have emergency management plans in place. Those kinds of things. So we provide that information as well. Then we talk about in reference a little bit more Commissioner Brandon to your question about election judge training. So uh when I call it election judge training I'm referring to election day. Um Shaki and Prior Lake did train their own judges. Uh folks would attend our training and then they would do a train the trainer sort of thing. Um and that is because there is just such a a great volume of folks to train, right? Um and I should have put in here as well, Bellplane also did their own training. They would come to our training and then they would do their own. Um what we decided to do in 2024 was train everyone as a head election judge. Technically, by statute, election judges need to have um at least two hours of training. had election judges need another hour of training. But I think knowledge is power, right? So we asked everyone who was going to come to our training to do it hybrid style. Um they were required to take the office of the secretary of state election judge training online which was about 90 minutes. They did some fabulous videos for us this year in cooperation with local governments and then we asked them to come in and attend a two-hour in-person class. So, they took a lot more training, I think, than maybe timewise what we've done in the past. Um, but we've had a lot of changes. We've had a lot of um different things coming through elections that I wanted to make sure people were aware of and that we emphasized for them. Um so everyone did that and of course we did provide an online option. Not everybody can be here in July when we're doing that training and I understand that. So there was an online option provided as a backup which is still available on our website as well. The thing we the thing Oh please. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you, Julie. About what percentage of folks did the online training versus in person and you might not have exact but estimate? That's a great question. Um 5%. Okay. So, a small portion. Very small portion. Um we try to schedule everything far enough in advance. We do over multiple days. We do morning, we do evening, um, whatever we can do to try and make it possible for folks to be here in person because I do believe you're going to get more out of it than if you're doing it online. Um, but we also didn't want to exclude anyone who maybe was traveling. Thank you. That context helps. And just for clarification, election judges, you know, they're they're volunteers. We thank them. But we they do get a nominal pay for when they work also for training for the hours they spend training. They do um we pay the folks that come to like our absentee ballot board judges, those kinds of things. Um we have an arrangement with the cities and townships that they hire their own judges. So they do pay them for training and then they pay them for the time they work on election day. The only other thing that I would show you, um, my last reference here is the election judge training guide that we provide. This one's my copy, so it has my name on it. I don't put my name on everyone's copy because they don't care. Thank you. in this book um is the all-important name tent. I am not the best rememberer of names. So, we ask everyone to fill out a name tent and place it on the table. We give them a copy of the PowerPoint that I go through so that they can make notes. We provide them with a form to fill out uh with their contact information, the location that they'll be working at, and their party affiliation so that we can um put that in our records and then we provide them with their election judge training card at the same time. The Secretary of State doesn't print many things for us anymore, but one of the things that they do print is the election judge guide. So we provide them with the election judge guide as well. Uh we go through that a little bit sparingly in training. And then on election day, I did not bring the sample today because I think that's a little bit less of the focus, but on election day um we provide one of my wonderful team actually provides what we've termed the red folder. So, the red folder has inside of it all the tools and information that they need, including a copy of an election judge guide to be successful on election day. How to balance um samples of summary statements, interpreter lines that they can use for that day, all the forms that they need, all the other forms that they might need but might not. Um and again the most important thing in there I think is our contact information. So they have at least four people at the county that they can reach on election day. Um so that we are standing by to assist them that day. So everything that we can think of to make it successful. So like Julie uh iterated before, there's multiple ways to vote. There's vote by mail which again comes through the mail. Um the vote in person which is the envelope process that she showed you just as far as the rejections are concerned. The vote in person which is direct balloting and then election day voting. Now she's going to show you uh for each one of those what does it entail? And remind me again because this is it 47 days is that are we going to that is it 47 days before election day that you can vote. It is 46 days plus election day. Plus election day. Correct. Yes. And are we is that other states are that long or are we longer than most? Varies. Um I personally don't know of any states that are longer. I know that some that match up to that um I've seen 30 days in other places, I've seen shorter in other states. Correct. Okay. So, let's talk about these ways to vote. Um voting in person was handled and I'm when you Okay, let's start with mail. I apologize. Let's start at the top. So, voting by mail is handled by the county only. when we decentralized a little bit back in 2020 um and asked the cities to participate in the in-person voting simply because of the sheer volume that we were seeing um we agreed that we would not ask them to take on any mail voting. So if um applications come in online, if they come in through the mail, uh anything like that, uava, the uniform overseas citizens act. So, uh, our military and folks that live out of the country, we handle all of that as well. Um, they assist us, the cities in this scenario, assist us with the envelope processing and direct balloting. We also stand up um an absentee location at our central shop, the highway shop. Um it's centrally located as much as we can find in our county and we handle uh 54 precincts in 48 locations. So on election day there's 48 locations. There's 54 precincts across the county. When folks come in um to vote in person, Cindy's talked a lot, you know, about the envelope versus direct balloting. really the beginning of the process is the same. Um, someone comes in and they either complete an absentee application or they have already got one and they bring it in. They are assisted by a staff member who enters their information into SPSS, prints them out, the labels that apply, like I've shown you, puts it on the envelope, um, verifies with another person that they're working with that they're giving the person the right ballot, and then that person is allowed to vote. Um, so whether they vote envelope or direct balloting if they vote envelope, they complete their ballot, they put it inside the envelope, inside the envelope, inside the envelope, which I'm happy to show you. Um, or if they do direct balloting, then as Cindy said, they walk up and they put it into the tabulator. And if for some reason they make an error on their ballot, which happens, right? Um, they are given the opportunity to revote. It is their choice. Um, if they voted for two people in a race for one, they are told that it is an over vote. And if they would like to just cast that ballot, that's fine. If they'd like a new ballot, then whatever location they're at provides them with a new ballot to vote at that time. What's really nice is the direct balloting actually gives them the error that if they voted twi like for two people and only they should only voted for one it brings up that race and says you overvoted for this race do you wish to continue or something like that. So the tabulator the tabulator tabulator so then they can retract their ballot because it hasn't been cast yet it's in it and it's reading it and if they say reject then they reject it and they can spoil that ballot and get a new one. I have a question um how many polling locations do we have that uh have multiple precincts? um and is the process how is that process taken care of um when you determine what pallet that person should be getting? Sure. Um so we have six combined precincts, 54 precincts, 48 locations. So six of those would be combined. Um and it really depends on how that jurisdiction has decided. Uh Jordan, for example, has three precincts now. one precinct has no voters. Uh but traditionally we've had Jordan 1 and Jordan 2. They have chosen to keep those precincts separate, but they vote in the same location. They have a nice large open location. So if you are Jordan 1 and you are looked up, then you can go to the left. And I'm just saying this. Um Jordan 2, you go to the right, right? I assume that's the scenario. um other locations have decided to do combined precincts. So shock B9A9B um shock B 12A 12B um are usually divided because of a legislating line, right? Um and when we redistricted, we couldn't get them into one precinct. Um they are provided both ballot styles. So they are given the 12A 12B. So when they figure out which location the voter is in, which the poll pad tells them, then they are able to give the correct ballot. So election day voting, I believe we've all voted election day, right? I think that we have. Most of us probably have. So, election day voting is you go in um you give the election judge your information. They verify you on the poll pad. You verify your own data as well. They check you in. They send you through the process of getting the correct ballot so that you can fill out your ballot and walk in and put it in the tabulator. I leave vote by mail a little bit to the end because it'll it's a little more complex and it's a little uh more mysterious, right? I use that word again. We don't want it to be, but it is. So, I want to talk about the process of what happens when a ballot lands here. So, when we send someone a ballot in the mail, whether they've requested it online, they've dropped off an application, whatever it happens to be, they've sent it through the mail, we send them a ballot packet. And I do have a ballot packet if you'd like to see it. But the envelope has their information on it. Inside the ballot packet is the signature envelope, which is what we call the number two. That's what I've shown you today. It's a secrecy or a ballot envelope. It's the ballot itself and it's the instructions. And we have everything all folded perfectly, all tucked in exactly the same way on all of them. So, it goes to the voter and we can give them every chance to be successful. They complete that, they send it back to us through the mail or maybe during a general election, maybe they drop it at one of our drop sites. But in the end, that ballot comes back here. If it comes back through the mail, it of course goes to our mail room and it comes back in an envelope that is addressed to Scott County. Um, we open, everything is done now in teams of two. This can be done by staff and it is done by staff but everything is done in teams of two. So we retrieve the envelopes from our mail room. We bring them to a secure conference room where things are opened and they are sorted by precinct and then they are placed in a lockable cabinet. Everything in elections is behind a locked door behind a locked door. And the more locked doors we can get in front of that, the better. They are stored in a locked cabinet with a log on it. Only two staff. You cannot go into anything like that on your own. Have to sign the log. Those are then prepped for ballot board. So we put these in all 54 ballot styles that we have. We put them in order from Bellplane Township all the way to Shakpi. Sorry, Spring Lake Township is last. So, what does it look like when I get it at home? You said, "Can you show us what it looks like?" Absolutely. I will. Thank you, Cindy. So, when you get this at home, it's all bundled. I have everything labeled. It's all bundled in an envelope. If you're Ann Smith in this scenario, this is your ballot. It's all bundled in an envelope that comes to your home. Would it look like this if I'm in Shakipi or if I'm serving in the military in Europe or something? Do they look the same? Very, very similar. the military ones are a little bit different. Um, but as far as everyone else, whether you're registered to vote or not, um, if you're here or we're sending this to your child in college, anything like that, all of these envelopes are the same. Inside this envelope then is a packet. You'll notice um, multiple postmarks. We've been trying to play catch-up. In 2020, we of course had no idea that absentee was going to explode the way it was. So, we postmarked as many envelopes as we possibly could and then we've had to play catch-up and put like 16 cents and 9 cents and those kinds of things. So, um they just look a little funny, but this is the envelope that ends up coming back to Scott County within this packet. then are a bunch of things, like I said, all folded up the same way. We all learn to do this the same way, so they go out the same way every time. What you've got is your set of instructions. This scenario, this is a registered voter. If it was a non-registered voter, so someone new, as I spoke about, this would be a different instruction sheet because it would have just different information. We need a witness, you know, those types of things. So they get an instruction sheet tells them step by step how to vote. They get their ballot. Ballots in real life are not blue, right? This is our sample ballot scenario. This is a ballot from the primary. Also smaller, so it was easier for me to work with. But they get their correct ballot. We know it's correct. In my scenario, this voter lives in Credit River 2. So, this is the ballot that they've received. This is what we call their ballot envelope or their secrecy ballot or I'm sorry, their secrecy envelope. Um, use this envelope first to keep your ballot secret. Put it only your ballot in this envelope and seal it. Then, this is the um signature envelope that we've talked about, the number two, as we like to call them. These are all numbered at the bottom. That's how we keep things straight. But so you Leslie is the voter. This has come to Leslie in the mail. Leslie will go and vote for whomever she'd like to vote for. She will take that ballot per the instructions, put it in the secrecy envelope, seal this. She will then put this in the signature envelope. I tease that elections is very 1985, but it's done that way for a reason. And then she would seal this envelope. This would then be placed in the Scott County elections envelope and sent back to us. Okay. If there's a voter registration application because you're a non-registered voter, that would also be put inside of this white envelope like I showed you previously. So that is the time that these would be allowed to be opened and examined for that voter registration application. Once they come here, as I said, they go to our mail room. Our staff goes down and picks up those very many thousands, depends on the day, trays, right? Singular envelopes inside those trays. They go to a secure storage room where they are opened, the outside envelope is opened to prep them for the signature for the absentee ballot board. They are stored by precinct just for efficiency sake. Um, and they are stored there until we have ballot board. We're required to do ballot board um once every five days in the beginning of an election and then once every three days. We have a great um amount of volume of absentee voting depending on the election, right? Um and yes, I lost the bet for uh I was so low in my guess. I'll admit it. Um but we had thousands as Cindy showed. We had, you know, 38,000 voters, not all by mail, but um so we prepped those for the absentee ballot board. absentee ballot board and I want to make sure everyone knows is done in a public forum. Um the rest of the Scott County staff don't like us very much during an election because we reserve all of the conference rooms downstairs, all of the large ones. Um but we do that so that folks can be invited in and come see what the process is, right? We want to be transparent. We want to remove the mystery. Um, so we do our absentee ballot board in one of our conference rooms downstairs and then as we get closer to the election, like the 19 days as Cindy spoke about, um, and we're ready to be able to open envelopes, we do that in a public forum as well. In this election cycle, we could open those envelopes earlier than in the last cycle. It changed via legislation. Correct. Right. in preparation for early voting. So, it used to be seven days that we could start opening envelopes, it is now 19 days. So, in the close of business on the 19th day, which is a Thursday, we have the ability to start opening and that's what signals direct balloting for early voting. They go together. Yeah. Correct. Okay. Exactly. The next day would be the start of direct balloting. So that's our scenario for kind of how things uh flow through our offices when they come back here. Okay. So let's talk about one of the issues that happened uh was partial results display on election night. Right. So we're pivoting a little bit. We're on election night. This is after 8:00 p.m. Polls close at 8. Anyone who's in line is allowed to vote. Precincts start to close down um and send us results. We did not want partial results to display. Um, this is an option now because we can, um, over the last legislative session, the deadline for returning your absentee envelope used to be 300 p.m. Now it's 8:00 p.m. on election day. So, at 8:00 when the I'll be honest, chaos starts to hit. Um, we are still taking in envelopes from voters. Uh, most of this is through the post office, but envelopes are still coming in and those still need to go through all of those processes that I talked about. They need to be opened. They need to be ballot boarded. Um, then the ballot envelopes need to be opened. We need to examine those like we do with everything else. Um, so that's a lot to do after 8:00m on election day when we're trying to focus on so many other things as well. Um, but that was given to us as an option. We could display partial results. We could say as of 300 p.m. on election day, this is what we had for absentee and we could upload those to the state's website. When I talked to the vendor about it, I said, "Ho ho ho, no. I do not want that. That's only going to cause confusion. Um, I want to know when I upload that it is programmed so that if we have um precinct still open, meaning folks are still sending results, still closing or still processing absentee, it won't show anything for those precincts. That's what I asked for and it wasn't programmed correctly. I did my testing all the way through to the election night reporting system. None of that ever showed to me. And then on election night, um, it showed under election day precincts reporting, it showed 100% were reported. I uploaded my first set of results and we have a timeline on the next, so we'll go through that a little bit. um without absentee reporting. We did not have absentee results from Savage at that time. We did not have absentee results from Shockby at that time. And of course, Shockby also serves voters in Jackson and Louisville. So, we should not have had any results showing for any of those precincts. We did hear during um another board meeting that someone had mentioned that a box of ballots had been found. This was not true. there was no box of missing ballots that had been found later. So, I just want to be clear that that is the case. So, once I saw that it showed 100% reporting, because I was the one that realized, I contacted Dominion, who was our elections vendor, and was immediately told how to correct this programming. It literally is a checkbox in the programming that I didn't know existed because we don't normally do our own programming. I re-uploaded the results to the state site. So now it showed zero votes tallied for those races, including 54A, but it can't undo the reporting of 100%. So this issue happened in multiple counties across the state. Um, someone had reported test results by accident. They had forgot to clear a card. I mean, this is a hu this is still a human process, right? um multiple counties. I can't tell you how many. I don't know for sure, but that happened in multiple counties across the state, but that 100% can't be rewound. The city of Shakipi did issue a statement calling out that the absentee ballots were not yet complete. I think it's a couple slides ahead if you want to show them. Sure. So, this is the statement that the city of Shaki put out um with a link to viewing the municipal races stating that the results were not complete as of 10:50 on November 5th. There were still 6,300 absentee votes still being counted and those are at the city of Shakpi. So, let's look at the timeline a little bit. Um again, we don't want any mystery. We want to be as transparent as clear as possible. So at 10:36, this says Scott County uploaded partial results. I uploaded those partial results from the election day precincts and it takes about 10 minutes for that site to refresh. At 10:36 as well, I reached out to the Shaki staff asking how absentee ballot rerunning was going to get a status update. And before we move on from that, yes. So the 1036 to shako checking about how the rerunning was going. So that what does that mean? So So obviously you were asking you knew something was needing to be rerun. Correct. We remain aware that their um number of absentee ballots per precinct was not balancing um which is not unheard of. We're going to talk about that from the Scott County side as well. Um, we were made aware that they needed to rerun their ballots. There is a statutory correction process if you issue an incorrect ballot to a voter. It's all laid out and exactly how that needs to be handled. Um, so that is what they were handling. But what we weren't aware of is that those weren't being run until five six o'clock on election night and they had 6300 ballots to run. So at this point I was aware of that. So I contacted them and I said, "How's that going?" They were running two tabulators, which is fine, to rerun these ballots. At 10:37, someone from the DFL called the Scott County elections line. We have a phone in our elections room, and I'm try to be very purposeful about not saying where that elections room is, right? That is behind as many locked doors as we can do. Um to check in on the status of the 54A results because no results had been posted yet. Um to summarize the conversation, I spoke to a woman and I remember saying we just did our first upload, but that 54A was not complete. So those results would not show yet. I wanted them to be aware that that was still being run. So at 10:45 about that 9 10 minutes later, I realized that the 100% of precincts were reporting and knew that was incorrect. Um, we already talked about what should not have been included. So, these were in fact partial results. They should not have been posted to the website or at least not have said 100%. Right. Or or those partials would have been held back in some sort of a cash or whatever before. Correct. Um, a little bit farther down it says 35 of 54 precincts reporting the second to the last bullet. That's what should have showed. It should have showed zero results for the 54A race as well as anything in Shakipi, Jackson, Louisville Township. Any of those races at that point should have shown nothing. So at also 10:45 because someone had called that elections line, I called that line back. I didn't know who I was calling. I just knew that someone had called and asked to speak with the elections manager. So I called that line back and I said, "Hey, I want you to be aware this is showing and this is not correct." So I did return that phone call at about 10:45. At 10:50, of course, we're in communication with the city of Shakipi. That statement from the city of Shaki went out. Also at 10:50, um, as I mentioned before, I had called the vendor to ask where these what we call partial result suppression settings were. I checked that box and created a new upload that rewound the 54 of 54 precincts reporting, but it cannot rewind the 100%. So yeah, before we go to this then maybe it'll show here but at the 10:36 about the calling Shako about the rerun and then uh well I guess and then 1050 I know that was a Facebook post from Shako. At that point we were just looking for the rerun to be done of those 60. At that point we weren't aware of the 20 that we're eventually getting to. Correct. It was just oh you have to rerun these or whatever. Um, and they were only using tabulators, which are pretty slow. They are. Um, okay. So, at this point, we're like, ah, let's get the scan. Everything will be okay. Yep. So, at 11:01, Representative Tabkey did call Scott County to ask what the upload issue was and what the status is. A couple of minutes later, I called the Secretary of State to ask about the issue or to inform them of the issue and ask about those percentage of precincts reporting, how we got that rolled back from 100%. They didn't answer, which is understandable. It's election night. Everybody's crazy, right? Two minutes later, they called me back and informed me there was no way to unring the bell to show less than 100% reporting. So, at this point, you see a gap in time from 11:07 to 11:24. We're still waiting. Um, Savage has reported their results at this point. Um, they also had to rerun their absentee, but we knew that they had started much earlier in the day. It happens. Um, so we were waiting for the city of Shockby to report their results. At 11:24, uh, someone from the Secretary of State's office reached out to me and advised that the media was starting to inquire about this upload issue. Um, and I crafted a statement to the Secretary of State that talked about exactly what had happened that we apologized for any confusion that had caused and we would report once we were complete. Just a few minutes later, I emailed the board um Cindy, the public information officer, to update on what the issue was, what the statement was that I had given to the secretary of state's office. They were going to share that then with their media contacts that were inquiring. At 12:08, uh Shakipi sent partial absentee results from the two tabulators. At that point, um, I had contacted the city and I said, "We're done. We're not doing this to very slow tabulators anymore. I want those ballots to be brought here and we are going to run them through our high-speed scanner." I sent two of my staff to city hall to pick up the remainder of ballots that had yet to be counted. They got back here at about 12:23. I apologize. They got back here before that. uh Shakby staff that were coming to help arrived here at 12:23 to assist with the completion of rerunning and at 1:56 a.m. everything was done. Um it had been scanned, everything had been completed. It had been up uploaded to the Secretary of State's website. So you can see how much faster that high-speed scanner is versus the election day tabulator with the as large of a ballot as we had um this last election. It was about nine seconds a ballot and doesn't sound like much, but when you have 6,000 ballots, that takes a really long time. Yeah, I'm gonna call that medium speed scanner. Medium. No, that's that's the slow one. The other one is very fast. So, we've talked about that. Any before we move on to the to the 20 ballots, are there any questions about that? at this point. May maybe just you talked about how Savage you knew Savage was rerunning some ballots and you knew they were rerunning like what was the why to that? Why were they because they infers they had run them but they were now rerunning them. Like what's the why? Uh the why and all of the time really the why is because they issued an incorrect ballot. So, the absentee room has um all of the ballots that they would need. And if someone accidentally issued a Savage one instead of a Savage 7, uh for a general election, usually the issue is between school districts because we do have precincts that have school district splits. So, instead of getting a 719 ballot, they got a 720. And when they go to balance that, they realize that an incorrect ballot was done. Well, the remedy for that is taking the information, two judges take the information, copy it over to the correct ballot and rerun. But in order to do that, you have to zero out your results and rerun all your ballots. So, the word you used that Friday, which we're going to get to, is for Savage that resolved their issue. Correct. Shaki and Shakape's um issue as well when everything was rescanned that resolved the issue. We believed at that time. Yeah. At that time we were under the belief that that everything was complete. Okay. So let's talk about the post-election audit. What we call the post-election audit are the few days following the election. Um so on election day everything is done everything is closed preliminary results are sent to us meaning results are not final till after canvasing board correct but everyone depends very heavily on that reporting website. We go through in those days after the election and we compare every single tape from every single tabulator to all of the results that were sent via cellular modem to our location. So we are verifying every vote total for every race. As you can imagine with as large of a ballot as we had that takes a good amount of time. We did that with staff with election judges um all again in a public forum. So those tapes were all gone through and I will vouch that I mean cuz I stopped in those rooms multiple times. I was near every minute of every day but we had those two big conference rooms most of that season call it election season. There's no election day anymore. Um and there was always rows of seats available. Yes. In addition, um, as we go through all the election day results, we are also going through the absentee results as well to ensure that that the absentee results are correct through um what what we're doing in this is we're comparing tapes to reports from our election system to reports through SPSS. So, for the absentee piece, we're comparing how many voters voted versus how many ballots we received results for. It doesn't always have to match. It is possible that someone could check in for absentee, and it happens more on election day that they check in and then they decide not to vote for whatever reason. So the issue was 20 ballots in precinct 10 and one in precinct 12A. So when we were comparing the reports from SVRS to the results that we received in our election system for Shakabe 10, it said that we received results for 309 ballots, but yet we assisted we the city of Shaki in this case assisted 329 voters. In Shaki 12A there was one as well. um that was less the focus because one happens, right? It does happen. So, our first step was to recount these ballots. At this point, we have all the ballots here. All the ballots are in the possession of Scott County. We would ordinarily not open ballot boxes. Those boxes are sealed. They're signed by judges or staff. Um we would not open those, but in this case, we did. So we opened the boxes for Shakaby 10 and 12A. We recounted the ballots no less than four times, counted and recounted and counted and recounted. Our next step was, okay, we're 20 21 ballots short. Where do we look next? We looked in the secrecy envelopes. That gold envelope that I showed you, also referred to as a ballot envelope. We looked in the elections returns. So per our absentee handbook, everything that comes back to us after the election should have secrecy envelopes. And we received secrecy envelopes back from all of the cities except for Shaki. So we did not have those here. We contacted the city. The city tells us that they threw those away. And I can't tell you, I honestly I get a little bit emotional about it because my face, the color just drained out of my face. I was horrified. But that's where we were at. They told us they went in the trash. So in essence, the statewide voter registration system had more ballots accepted than were tabulated. Um the deputy city administrator, the staff at the city of Shakipi searched for the ballots at city hall. And that's a mild statement. They tore everything apart. Everything that they could possibly think of that could have been affiliated with ballots they tore apart. So then I communicate to the state, to the candidates, and to you folks, to Cindy, to Leslie, to everyone involved that this issue exists. This is the phone calls that I don't ever want to make. I don't want to call people and say, "We have ballots missing." But that's what I did. The county attorney advises us to start an investigation into the missing ballots, which we did, but that the canvasing board should be held as planned on November 13th. It's okay. So, talking about the investigation and the things that we did, uh, the things that we found, and I do want to be very clear that this investigation is still residing with the attorney's office, um, but these are the things that I and others testified to at court. Um, we found that the head election judge kept a spreadsheet of daily totals. Great. But it showed a discrepancy between October 17th, so the day before direct balloting started, and October 21st, which is the Monday after. This was provided to the county um after the election by the deputy city administrator. She showed us the discrepancy. There were different column, different sheets I should say. One of the sheets showed all of the envelope voting totals. The next sheet started with direct balloting and that discrepancy was between the last day of envelope and the first day of direct balloting was off 21. Mr. Chair, yes, Julie, I just want to clarify, you know, on this page we're looking at when it says head election judge, that's the city of Shakabe head election judge. Just Yes. Thank you. We clarify that. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So throughout our investigation um we interviewed three city staff regarding their roles um and determined that they had minimal roles in opening and the running of ballots. We also interviewed five city temporary election judges, ballot board judges and the city clerk. They we have this separated out because they were much more heavily involved in the ballot board opening process. The head judge told us that the final ballot board, so this would be the morning of October 18th, was conducted by the city clerk alone. That should have been done by two election judges of different parties. We never put ourselves in the situation where we're alone with voted ballots for this very reason. The head judge reported the 21 ballot discrepancy to the city clerk on October 21st and no action was taken. We were not made aware. Um this head election judge through the city was told it'll come out in the wash. um we were not informed. We we have arrived at the assumption that the ballots in the secrecy envelopes were erroneously discarded. So they were accepted in the state voter registration system, but they were never tabulated. So Julie, how would that have happened? That's one of the questions I've been asked is how would that happen? So they get it, people go in to vote, they fill out the white envelope, they put it in the orange envelope, right? Correct. They put it in the orange, they put it in the white, they put it in a box, a locked ballot box. Those ballots are cleaned out of that ballot box every night, locked into a cabinet behind a locked door, behind a locked door, right? Um until they go to ballot board. When they go to ballot board, they are accepted or rejected throughout the process. They are then relocked up until it's time to open. So on October 17th, the city of Shakipi began to open envelopes. They had their absentee ballot board opening. They conducted an absentee ballot board in the morning. Then they started opening at about 11:00 a.m. opening all of the envelopes for everything that had been received through October 14th. The morning of October 18th when a ballot board should have been convened, um the city clerk opened them on her own. So she did the ballot board by herself, opened them on her own. The opening process, just to provide some clarity, is when you have the white signature envelope and the yellow one inside, you have your teams of two. So, your two election judges sitting next to each other opening. So, they slice all these envelopes open. They pull the ballot secrecy envelope out. They set it to the side. They set the signature envelope to another side. We never want to know whose ballot that is. So, we separate that. Everything's kept together but separate. Um, before they begin opening, they are given a total of what they should have. They count all the envelopes. They make sure they have the right amount because if they don't, we need to figure out why. When do they enter it into the SVRS? Is that when they open the white envelope or they enter it during ballot board? either during ballot board or we have a staff member that will the envelopes are marked accepted or rejected by the ballot board judges. They are either marked in SPSS by that same set of judges or our staff in the same room before anyone leaves. It just got to be so much volume that it made more sense to have a staff member scanning the barcodes on the label and then everything gets balanced before anything leaves that room and again in a public forum. So when they're opened and they're separated, then we have a stack of signature envelopes that are set to the side. We have a stack of ballot envelopes and then those two judges take those and they slice those open. There's a process for reviewing the ballot, making sure that if we are doing credit river two, we didn't accidentally give someone credit one because it happens. We are human, right? It is a human process. Um, so they go through and make sure that they got all the right ballots. As long as they did, both of the election judges initial the ballots. One has one stack, one has another. They trade. They go back through and they initial. So, all of those envelopes or all of those ballots are now initialed. Then they count them again to make sure that they have the right amount of ballots as to what they had for envelopes. Um, it is possible that someone returned an envelope and they never put their ballot in there, right? It is very possible. It happens every election. Someone just forgot to put it in. So, we make a note of that. So, if they expect they have 18 and they only have 17 ballots, that's okay. So, opening process, two people, ballot board opening done by one person in a room by themselves. Yeah. I'm I'm confused about and maybe I'm jumping ahead here, but I'm confused on the envelopes and opening and setting one here and one there, one one type of envelope. At at court it appeared that um people could they knew that their vote was not counted and they testified how they voted. How was it possible to know the 20 the names of people that their votes didn't count? we were able to go back and reconstruct I apologize reconstruct what happened based on the timelines of when things were accepted. So, I can run lists out of the statewide voter registration system that tell me when someone was issued a ballot, when they're or envelope, um when it was accepted, if it was rejected, um after something is taken in the same day it gets marked received. So, you go in, you go to the city of Shakabe. You shouldn't, you don't live there. um vote your envelope, put it in the ballot box. As I said, that night those ballot boxes are cleaned out. Things are put in order. They're also marked received in the statewide voter registration system. I can see when that was done and who that was done by. Um I can see when it was accepted, rejected, all of those steps through the process. We were able to run reports on only Shakip 10 and reconstruct based on applications, timestamps, all of that when people had been there, which envelopes were included in their initial opening process done by staff on the 17th and which ones were held off till the 18th and opened by the city clerk. So that wouldn't be something that like We would never know which ballots were there were theirs, but we knew which we had all of those white signature envelopes. All of those had been turned in. So, we got all of the other stuff, but we didn't get the secrecy envelope. And the con not the conclusion but the assumption is shock B1 was done right not entirely right because you never do this alone but process-wise shock B1 was okay shock B2 was okay all the way up through shock P9B and at that point something happened so these were being separated we got all the signature envelopes no secrecies I can't say if she got interrupted, someone came in to ask a question, something happened, but those got swept in the trash. And again, this would should have been a two person, correct? That point. Yes. Uh, thank you. I just I want to say this so we don't lose it and and I I think we've all seen all of this, but we haven't seen it all together. And so getting this packet last week was helpful. Um, one thing in in the processes we're going to get to soon of like process changes and recommendations for those. I I didn't see it in there. I I wonder if there should be some kind of protocol when when any election judge involved has a concern that it doesn't just that it has to be elevated to the county like that. That should be in our training books. make it I mean if they if they want to be anonymous it can be I think again looking at how we didn't know about this for some time but somebody felt somebody felt like something's not quite right and if only we would have known we might have been able to do something so just wanted to add that to the processes that we talk about in a bit I appreciate that very much um and it's a great great idea we communicate that to the election judges uh for election day and they are constantly communicating with us if something is not quite right. Um, we do provide our information of course to the city. But to reiterate the fact that we want to know and yes, I I think that's a great idea. Thank you. So before we move off the screen too, um, because we've been so hyperfocused on the 20 plus one, but certainly the 20 in precinct 10. So, we know for a fact that the clerk was a singular person opening on that particular day. I forget what was it 10:18. Um, but in my mind, I was like, "Okay, it's the 20. It's the 20." Okay. Everyone went to the dump looking for the 20. Everyone tossed city hall looking for the 20. But do we know how many ballots were opened by the singular clerk that day? 99. Okay. So, it was a bigger pool than just the 20. Correct. But but the 20 is the ones that weren't complete with all of the 47 envelopes. Correct. So, one of the other questions is what would we have done? Right. Um, this was reported um to the city clerk and to Commissioner Wackman Brekie's point, if it had been reported to us on October 21st or shortly thereafter, what would we have done? Um, we certainly would have gone to the city of Shaki to help them, right? Um, we don't want anyone ever to flounder. So, we would have gone, we would have helped them look, we would have tried to figure out what the error was. Um, knowing that those ballots, ballot envelopes were thrown in the trash. Um, when we figured out that that's what happened, Leslie contacted our environmental services team and said, "I need you to track this garbage." It was picked up at the city of Shakabi. Garbage and recycling because we were told trash, but could be recycling, right? So, both of those were tracked. Um, the trash was along at the Burnsville dump. And this was three weeks later. Um, the recycling was on a barge, I believe, to New Orleans. Um, if we had known, we would have been able to go and we would have been able to solve the issue. Now, I can't say that would have solved any chain of custody problems, right? It it may not have if they were in the trash and the trash was gone, but we would have been able to contact those voters at that point and explain. I'm sorry, this was horrible, but this happened. We'd like you to come and revote. And those folks would have gotten the opportunity to do so before election day. And so part of the court action, which of course I was a part of, um to Commissioner Alwick's point, you could sort of um well, I don't want because you testified as well, so I want your words, not my words, whatever. But the idea was you could kind of get back to and reconstruct what some of those voter intentions, I don't know if that's the right phrase, were but you couldn't necessarily pin this person with this particular ballot, which was because of the chain of custody issue. But the judge in that case, that's where they kind of made a ruling that, oh, okay, these six were for A, these six were for B. We don't necessarily know whose ballot was whose, but is that a fair summarization of what happened between ballot custody and the court ruling and testimony? Well, what I can say is that we know who the 20 people were. Um, to a high degree of to a very high degree of certainty. Um, I can't say 100%. I didn't throw them away. I didn't help the voter. I did not throw those away. Is there any other plausible scenario? Absolutely not. This is I believe this is what happened. Um we did not provide anyone with this information. This conclusion was also reached by the attorneys involved in the case. Both sets of attorneys. So, three sets of people arrived at the same conclusion and they were the ones that contacted those voters. We did not provide that information. Um, and they were the ones that chose to or not to testify the 12 out of the 20 folks that came in. I would encourage just my last uh bullet point. I would encourage anyone interested in this if you haven't yet to go read the decision issued by the judge. Um it was between the testimony of all of us that were involved and the way it was written. Um it's very informative. So I'm gonna with my I'll make it to that. But yeah. Okay. Um, all right. Now, week of election, right? This is the week of election. We've discovered this problem. Um, we're working on trying to figure out where this problem occurred. Now, we're going to talk about rerunning absentee ballots. For those folks that were here um, Friday night, November 12th to the we hours of the morning, we were rerunning ballots. And this is that scenario. So, one ballot from our absentee room that was issued on Monday. This was our error um was issued between New Market Township and Elco New Market. So, an Elco New I I don't honestly remember which was which, but in my scenario, an Elco New Market voter came in, asked for a ballot, they were given a New Market township ballot. So at the end of the day, our tally of our ballot styles, each ballot is given a number and a ballot style. We did not balance. We had one too high in New Market Township and one too low in Elco, New Market City. So the process for that, as we've touched on briefly, is a duplication process that's done with two people. Ballots are rerun. So, we followed the statutory correction process, reran those ballots after it was fixed. Um, and during the post-election audit, looking at SPSS versus our election reporting system numbers, we were off by 38 ballots. And it wasn't 38 in one place. It was scattered throughout our 54 ballot styles. So, I caught this issue going through all of this audit and we determined that the imbalance was caused by a ballot jam in the high-speed scanner. So, we were rerunning our thousands of ballots and there were jams and it didn't go appropriately. We were 38 short the cards in the high-speed scanner. So, when they were rerun, they were rerun on our high-speed scanner, right? because those election day tabulators are very pokey. Um, it had multiple absentee locations on those cards. I could have gone in and determined batch numbers and deleted. Not delete, it's not delete, it's suppress batches so that we could correct only the ballots from our absentee room and where we have the problem. But what I thought was going to give me 100% confidence in knowing exactly where we were at was to rescan all the ballots that were scanned through our high-speed scanners on election day. And that was 21,000 ballots between Savage Shakape, our own absentee room. It was 21,000 and some change. And just a point of clarification too, what wasn't that those 38 I don't know what the right word is, but like out of sequence that was contained within a smaller group. Yes. Um but the decision was made to like let's cast a wider net just to be like double triple E. Yes. The conversation that we had, it was the morning of Friday, November 12th, was I had to think to myself what was going to give me 100% certainty that everything was perfect. And that was it. Rescanning those absentee ballots. Um, from about 4:00 on Friday, would you say, until about 12:30 that night, we all sat in a room together in a public forum, rescanned all those ballots, boxes and boxes and boxes and everything came out perfect. And the word you used was it was resolved. Resolved those 38 issues. And and I sat in that room from beginning to end. other electeds were there. Both parties had different representatives that kind of came and went but were there uh public I mean not a lot but came in that was again in the conference room um because we wanted to find that resolution and that's the scanner that is the medium speed scanner. Medium speed. Yes, I can agree with that. So, okay. So, now we're going to talk about the duplicate voter list, the history, because there were issues uh that were brought to our attention about, hey, you have all these ballots that or all these voters that have duplicate history. So what we know is this the voter history from like the electronic poll pad files those need to be updated to the state by the 17th of November or December and the election day registrations have to be updated by December 17th. Neither one of these by itself will give um the history to everything. So we we didn't know is that you know the how you process these makes a difference. We didn't know that. So it was something we found out. We uploaded our files the last of our files on December 5th. So after we looked at this we said it was brought to our attention that hey you have all these duplicate voters. Was that was that like the somebody from the house or or state senate? There was there was some announcement of something something. Is that what I'm Yeah. It's actually a process that we go through every every election, right? But there was a claim of some or maybe you're getting to that. I know I went through this final. There was you're correct. Yeah. Okay. So, what we need to do is we always once we upload everything and we're not the only ones. It's like when we upload our files and then Carper uploads our files and Henipin uploads our files, there's all different voters that can be some re for some reason give us errors. So collectively we need to say how do we fix I mean how do we fix all these errors but we have until January 9th I think to actually get that done. It's not anything that we have a deadline to do. But I will tell you generally generally we do that shortly after the elections done after we got everything tidied up canvasing board is done we start doing that. Let's look at all the these lists and let's start looking at these because that's where we found our one voter that we turned over to the the attorney's office from that where there was 119 that were on that list and you can see that there was 30 in 54A 105 of those voters it's because their voter registration was entered wrong in SPS when you upload um the registrations from for that come in with the absentee ballots. There's a little drop-own box by voter that says this is an absentee ed and this is an election day edr. Those were done incorrectly. So, all of those voters that had their voter registration updated, which needed to happen, caused a duplication. When we uploaded our poll pad files and when we uploaded the EDRS, the the poll pad files said absentee vote. So, we knew that that was a duplicate of what this this was, too. There were five voters that were already registered and in error, they were sent a voter registration app. Again, if they're already registered, they don't need a voter registration app because it gives them duplicate history. Eight voters were merged with another voter when they shouldn't have been. So, voter A goes to the polls and they vote and voter B votes by absentee. And there was an assumption by staff that says, "These are the same voters, so we're going to merge them." And it's like, "No, those aren't the same staff. They have all different identification. Those had to be unmmerged. And then one voter like we stated earlier is that we have one that think we think that they voted twice. We don't know that for sure. It's in the attorney's office and they will continue to investigate to see whether or not that's something that needs to be resolved. So the the point I'm making is that on every election there is most counties do it a little earlier but our staff was inundated with this investigation. They spent all their time trying to figure out what happened in Shakipi going through testimony and then going to court and by the time they could first get to it was well into December. And these this these lists were presented uh publicly. They are public lists before we had a chance to get to those those cleanup. So Cindy or Julie, we met all our statutory requirements though for uploading and for cleaning them up, right? We absolutely did. Um something I wanted to add as well and Cindy alluded to that December 17th is our deadline to upload and to enter. um December 5th, everything was uploaded. Everyone in the state, all 87 counties are given the same deadline. So, you can't even begin to look at these duplicate voters until everyone has their history done. So, looking at all of these comparison reports that need to be run basically every day um can't all be done. It's not possible for that to be done by December 17th. So just being clear that yes, the statuto deadline is the 17th for the uploads to be complete, but there is just no possible way for that cleanup to be complete by that date. And this is what all the counties across the state are doing. Good, bad, or indifferent. Not a perfect system, but this is how the system works. So everyone's doing that. The annual list maintenance that's mentioned here on January 9th is where the Secretary of State actually inactivates voter records for folks who haven't voted in four years. So that is our deadline to get everything complete and cleaned up and all of that before um and unfortunately this list that was obtained that was put out there was done before that deadline. So now on to now we're going to stop with what happened the the various things that happened throughout this election. Uh we'll talk a little bit about what do we know that we could do better. So as much as Julie does an immense amount of training to to election judges and they do their best their best effort. I think that from the absentee when we have absentee we need to have them once they can start putting them through the tabulator on a daily basis because everybody keeps a tally sheet even us we keep a tally sheet every single day this is how many came in this is how many are accepted and then we until we open then we do that again how to all be accepted to the ballot count but for every day as we're going through once they hit the tabulator and it shows a number, that's when we want to stop. And at the end of each day, we could we can run like an an interrupt tape or something. And it says based on your ballot style, not votes, not how many. It just gives this ballot style has this many votes, this one has this many votes, and this one has this many votes. And we can compare that with SVRS so that we know that our totals are correct. So because maybe somebody doesn't follow a process both like us and the cities, we will require the city to send us a copy of that tape and we can balance it with our with the report because we both use the same system. But what we want to make sure is does the ballots and the BA by ballot style match um SVRs. It's critically important that those go on in a dayto-day basis. We would have caught this error if we would have done that. The election programming ensure the box the mysterious box that showed partial results. Make sure that that is fixed. So Julie said, you know, she didn't know that this box existed because we don't program our election. We have somebody else program it. But now that she knows where that is, she can make sure that that step is done. our vendor that we have that does our programming. Let's hold they I mean they don't go unscathed either. But what we want to do is make sure that our checklist we have a checklist that this is how Scott County wants this program is followed. They went to uh a a different county and whatever process they used, they kind of duplicated it for us and we don't want that. We want to make sure that what we want is what we get. And then there there was a another way that school district splits could uh show as well. So that's something that wasn't brought to light, but we want to make sure our absentee ballots have those school district splits programmed. And then Julie talked about, she goes, you know, our we need to have a discussion with our cities as well, our big cities for their absentee process. Should they buy a high-speed scanner? That way, if they have to rerun their ballots, they're not sitting there for hours on end trying to run their ballots, that they can put them through the high-speed scanner rather than bring them to us or take hours and hours to run them. Now, our cities have determined that they pay capital costs and then we pay like all the maintenance and support and all the programming and all of the everything else that goes with it. But they buy their capital. They bought their tabulators. They bought their pole pads and this would be another cost to them. But it may be worth worth it because in the long run it'll dramatically reduce the amount of time that they have to spend rerunning those post-election cleanup. We know Julie and her staff were inundated with this investigation and what happened, but there are probably other people that could have taken on some of some of this other postelection cleanup. So rather than hopefully God will this doesn't happen again but if it does if if something happens that their attention is diverted you're there are other trained people that can step in utilize them have them continuing to go through the day after day report because it's going to change every time counties upload their results or excuse me not their results but their poll pads and their abs and do their absentee that these things are cleaned up timely. assign different trained staff to oversee specific functions. They're a small group. You know, there's a handful of them that work elections and it's a lot of administration. Our absentee room is we hire election judges of different parties and all of that. So, that's okay. But our all the administrative functions have people focus on okay I'm going to do this and this and this and whatever trained staff are hired through that election judge process they are assigned to do this task and this task and this task and that's it and other people will handle other various functions. I it got to the end of the last two weeks and these guys they they were they were running wild because they there was a lot of activity going on and then make sure that we have a public information officer on site on election night because when Shakipi put out that statement we should have put something out but we didn't and you know it's an oversight so we want to make sure that we're communicating with the public and even things that aren't so critical like Hey, this is uploaded or that's uploaded. Maybe it's stuff as the election's going on. Get out there and vote. We have this many absentee process today. You can get out there and vote until this day. So, those types of things as well. Now, if I could ask a couple of questions here. Okay, I'm going to go back to the city of Shakipia for a second. Um, it seems to me there's three gigantic mistakes that were made there. They threw stuff away, they opened stuff alone, and they didn't immediately report. Right. Right. So, is this I I wonder what made a person think they could do this? And I'm wondering if you did is the train the trainer a good approach or I mean would somebody else have said wait a minute you're doing what you can't do or or wait a minute we got to report this if if we didn't do train the trainer if we trained all the shock abuse people involved wouldn't they have caught and said wait a minute city clerk you you can't do this I go back to commissioner brekiey's statement about making sure that these staff understand that they can reach out to us. Um the train the trainer methodology maybe it's not uh we brought all of the city staff in to the absentee training um and trained those folks before the primary election. Um, we could have done another training when everyone because of course you're going to hire more staff for the general than you are for the primary. We absolutely could have done another training before the general election. Um, and next time that that's a great idea. We certainly can. Um, we're as Cindy said, we're a small group. Um it's very tight timelines, but it's absolutely worth spending the time to do that. So absolutely we could. But I would also comment that seven out of the eight cities, you still had several others training the trainer and they followed the process. Yes, they did. And for clarity, and again, you know, it is what it is, but there was the city clerk that did the opening on the 18th or whatever alone, and that's when the 20 were thrown away, not a new employee or a temporary employee or a part-time employee. Correct. Veteran of sorts. Correct. I don't want to overcharacterize, under characterize. Correct. A veteran of elections. Um, and not only the communication to the county, but the communication, you know, let's be honest, within the city as well, that election judge should have been able to go to the city administrator or the deputy administrator and say, I don't think this is right. Something needs to be done here. Um, and for I can't speak for that person. For whatever reason, they didn't feel like they could. So, okay, but they knew enough. Come back to I'm going to come back to this. What I was trying to get at, I think, is how do you prevent one person from screwing a whole election? In other words, this person did what is kind of inconceivable? I mean, how do you what what failsafe or check could is there any possibility of of you the city clerk went off the rails in this scenario? As Cindy described, the balancing process reporting back to us would have caught this. Okay. Um, sorry, our monitor went to sleep. But I think Julie, the other thing to the commissioner's point was the election judge knew no one should be alone. Correct. The city administrator when he came to talk to us, what was his first comment? you never throw anything out or do it alone. So again, that ability to feel they can bring it up to the right people, I think, is one that needs to be reiterated because they clearly told you, if I'm reading your notes right, that they acknowledged on the 21st, we have an issue here and nothing was done. Correct. So maybe that's part of the training, just making sure that these election judges know if any of this happens. I mean, you you need to contact the county regardless of who's doing it. If it's if it's the city clerk and and you you uh report to that city clerk, they may feel a little uneasy, but it has to be done. So to reiterate to them when in their training saying this is has to be followed in this order. And and to go back to your point, Leslie, seven out of the eight cities did contact us. I mean, there are issues through every election, right? This is a human process. Um, there are issues throughout. How do we fix it? How do we solve it? All of that. Seven of the eight cities did communicate with us when they had a problem immediately. We were able to fix anything that came up. There were no other 20 ballots, but um any other questions, anything that anyone had, everyone felt very comfortable reaching out to us. Um so it's it's disappointing for sure. Okay, so we're going to talk a little bit about some recommended state systems changes. Uh we've talked about SPS, that kind of thing. Um, and Cindy referred to closing the rosters. So, when we're closing the rosters and we're closing election day registrations today, it has to be done in a very particular order or issues exist. And I'll be 100% honest with you. We've done it in the order that has been recommended and issues have existed. We've done it in the order we thought it should be done in and issues have existed. So, we want to work with the Secretary of State's office to find a different process to make improvements to the system. Um, we think we should be able to also soft close an election that nothing is public until all issues are investigated or disclaimer or put on results that are generated out of SPS. No one's trying to this is nothing secret. Once someone votes and their and their ballot of ca is cast, their information is public. But then we also need some sort of disclaimer that says this is not complete. Um the absentee record with voter registration uh shouldn't require duplicate entry. So, if you go to vote absentee and you are registering for the first time in that precinct, not only do does your absentee information have to be entered, but then we also have to go back and enter your voter registration application later, which is what Cindy had talked about with the drop-own box. That shouldn't be. The system knows that you voted. Why does it not create a voter record for you? We talked about that drop down absentee ballot versus election day. Uh we would like to see a drop down that holds that you do not have to change for every single record that gets entered. They have that capability in other types of entries. Um so why not for this? We also would like the system uh the online Secretary of State's website to prevent a voter from requesting a ballot online for the last seven days before an election. We're going to talk a little bit more about that later. So, I'm going to leave that to the legislative piece. Um we are requesting the Secretary of State allow ballot history to be displayed on the website beyond election day. We got call on call on call. I bet you guys got calls that said, "I voted absentee. It shows I didn't vote." What happens is that up until election day, an absentee voter can track their ballot and it will show that they're we were accepted, they were rejected, it was received, whatever the status is. But the day after the election, the system looks like looks at those as a past election and it no longer shows ballot history. Can I speak to that? I I I was probably one of those people that called because I voted absentee early and I looked at the website and I was supposed to be able to track my ballot and when this issue came up, I looked at the website and my ballot didn't show that it was received. So, I automatically assumed since I was a voter that I was one of the missing 20 people. So, I'm I'm sure that you got a lot of calls, but and I was fortunate enough that you were able to say yes, your ballot was received. So, yeah. So, yeah, that's Thank you. I would also like to see that the system have a development, a dev or test environment, something to proof information before it becomes public and displays um out to the website. If I had been able to see that it said 100% reported and be able to and 54 of pre 54 of 54 precincts reported and be able to update that information before that 10 minutes before it was live, we would have been able to prevent any of those miscommunication issues from happening. And we want to be able to a roll back the 100%. There's no reason that that shouldn't be able to be corrected. And I want to be able to say, "I am done. I am the one who uploads the results to the state's website currently. Um, I want to check a box to be able to say, "Yep, I'm done. Display these." But that's not how it works. You just upload 100% reported. So, some proposed legislative changes. Now, because we know that at the legislature things change on a dime, right? Things are introduced all the time. Um, we're going to talk about proposed legis legislative changes first. And these are the things coming out of the election that we wanted to ask for. And then we're going to go and talk about a few of the items that have already been introduced. But in statute, it says the signature envelope from accepted ballots must be preserved and returned to the county auditor. It does not say the secrecy envelope or ballot envelope. So, we want that to be specific in that it must be preserved and returned to us back with our returns. Even though that's how we trained, we would like it in statute. the time of the elections. One of the biggest issues we have during the general, excuse me, the primary and the general is a compressed timeline. As you all know, the day of the primary, you're having filings for the general coming through. And it's just you you don't even have time to process one before you're jumping into the other. So, we we talked and we said, "What if what if that primary is moved up? What if it's moved up to the second Tuesday of June? What if it's moved up earlier than that? And then there are a bunch of provisions here that they'd have to change. Some of the conversation is, you know, you have um you have the day where that they actually pick their candidate. Like who are we going to pick? And that is that's what's stopping this from happen happening any sooner. So if we shift this to this that the primary is earlier, excuse me, yeah, the primary is earlier, then that process, the endorsement process would have to occur earlier as well. And I know that there's there's kind of a a lack of support for that. But for elections administrators, it is critically important that that is considered. Another thing is change the timeline for absentee voting. Now, we have 46 days to vote and we're assuming that it's it's just too long. It's it's a period of time where in the first couple of weeks, not very many people vote. Now, I would say for you Okavas, those people who are overseas, yeah, they can have their 46 days. They're out of the country there. It's a process. who knows, you know, by the time their mail gets there in the process. Um, but only 3% of our voters voted in that first couple of weeks. Um, our testing of tabulators and conducting public accuracy testing. um if our primary got moved up, that process could be moved up and then they could maybe maybe they they did a great job with public accuracy, don't get me wrong, and they had people that they invited the public to come in and watch. I don't know if any of them participated, but they they watched anyway to make sure that everything tied up, you know, these ballots and this is what the results were expecting. Yes, those came through. But right now, they're saying that public accuracy testing needs to be done before direct balloting. And I'm like, it should be done way earlier so that when Julie uploads results and it shows on the website, she knows that there's an issue. Well, and there is no like I'm trying to just wait, but um there's no chitchat that I've heard. I know Minnesota's bit of an anomaly of sorts. Um 47 days like golly. I mean, talk about a human process. That's just so many days for opportunities for all kinds of stuff. But there's no talk about shortening that at all, which would help some of these timelines as well because then just from a staffing perspective, you 3% in the first, what' you say? Well, look at the data on the next page. That's where it shows you only 3% had voted by that date. So when you look at this now this what this shows is it says how many absentees did we have by 102 and then again how many duplicate voters did we have I just put that in context so that they could see it's it's kind of comparative to the the vote totals you know the higher the number of voters you have the higher number of people that were on the duplicate voter list but 3001 since September 19th, September 20th. September 20th that vote that went out and voted. And I would make I know that some of the some of the um issues that the Secretary of State has with a more of a compressed timeline is well, you're not let you're not you're disenfranchising all those voters. But I'm like, if this is the timeline 28 days, I think that they'll come out and vote that 28 days. I mean, I really do. And then this is the direct balloting numbers. So 24,000 of our voters voted by direct balloting. So if we moved up the timeline to say direct balloting starts at the onset of absentee 28 days before, I'm going to assume most voters would want to see their vote tabulated at that point. They don't want to put it in an envelope. They go, "Well, what happens? you take them back into this smart this dark room and they just mysteriously get done. How do we know? And so there's there's misconceptions. Now, we we hold the fort down here to say we hire people in, right? We we train those election judges. But if we had the ability for direct ballots to start at the onset, that way people know is my ballot even accepted, they could reject it right at that point and then ask for a new ballot. So that has it has multiple things that are benefit as you as we move forward. We've talked about this one. Um this is where we either need to add a disclaimer about duplicates that the process isn't closed or a soft close until the auditor's offices is the chance to fix all of the issues. Um we've talked about this with timelines and all of that. So I think we got this one covered. This is um I referred to a little bit earlier seven days. So um I am the legislative co-chair of the Minnesota Association of County Officers. Um I work with Mako on legislation quite a bit this time of year. And one of the things um that we had come up with and now you'll see later has been proposed is that if someone is going to apply for an absentee ballot online or by mail, there is a 7-day cutoff. The reason that we're asking for this is because the mail time that it takes to get that application or that packet processed to get that out to someone to give them time to vote it for them to get it back to us by 8:00 p.m. on election day um is really really tight. I really like the seven days. Um there is a process called agent delivery. Agent delivery is where if someone is um in the hospital or incapacitated for some reason, they can pick someone to retrieve a ballot for them. Everything's done via application process. Um that would line up really really well. So, um, if we if it goes the way that we would like, the online system would be turned off except for ballot updates, but no one would be able to apply for a ballot at that time. um if we did get a ballot or if we did get a request. So Thursday before the election, this would extend that to the like the Tuesday before the election where we would be contacting all of those voters that we really did receive an application for by mail dropped off all of those things and say, "Hey, you know, you're not going to get this in time and in enough time to get it back to us. Here's your other options for voting. You can go in person um and absentee vote. you can vote on election day. Um if you're in a situation where you need assistance, maybe you can use that agent delivery process. So, the application for absentee ballots, here's something that Julie had alluded to earlier, and that is we at times will get an absentee ballot u material back and they have their driver's license and here they applied online and it was their social security number, the last for their social. We would like that if you're going to apply by uh by electronically or by mail that you include both. You have to include your Minnesota uh either state ID or driver's license and you have to include your last four social because it's a way for us to validate your ballot without rejecting it. Now, if if they don't have one or the other, that's where they have to do this possess like or they have to affirmatively certify that the they don't have both of those and provide other proofs of identification. It just it it makes the process run a little bit easier. If they're in person, we're fine. But when they're remote like this, when you're getting this ballot from anywhere or this ballot application from anywhere, it's just it's a good business process to follow in order to make sure that that ballot gets processed. Commissioner Beer, you mentioned um how overwhelmed people are, how busy people are during the election cycle. In the last legislative session, there were a lot of hours for absentee voted added. Um, we would like the Monday before the election, absentee voting to close by three. Um, if you are in line, election day or absentee, at the time that the polls closed that day, you are allowed to vote. Rightfully so, right? Um but at 5:00 between our office, Savage, Shakipi, Prior Lake, those large cities, we could have hundreds of people is still in line at 5:00. So we could be still absentee voting with folks until 7:00 just to pick a number. Um, we still have a great deal of work to do on that night, specifically making sure that everyone's absentee record is updated so that we can get that information into the poll pads so that folks aren't allowed to vote twice. So, we would like to see this earlier. Um, this isn't a real popular idea among some groups. Um but I do really believe as Cindy talked about um we as humans I myself too um are procrastinators, right? If your deadline is five, five is your deadline. If your deadline is three, three is your deadline. If your deadline is the Saturday before whatever it happens to be, that's when you're going to be slammed, right? Um but uh just a couple extra of hours the day before would really provide us some relief. Those are ones that as we sat there and we looked at this process and saying how could we make sure this doesn't happen again. Again, human error um or not following the rules is one thing, but these are things items that we came up with really early on. And it's funny how now we're going to show you legislation that's already proposed and how many of them are included in some fashion with where what we were thinking. Legislative changes already proposed. These are House file and Senate file duty of the canvasing board making sure that they're not to certify its report on the results of an election until all duties of the ballot reconciliation are required or required by section 204 C and the post-election review as required by 20689 are complete. Now, what it fails to do is it it doesn't really say and if there's an issue, what do you do? I don't think anybody wants to go down that creek. I mean, I haven't seen anything that it says, and if there's an issue with the ballot count, what do you do? But at least this says you need to do these processes before you certify your election. I would like to say um a lot of the terms in elections sound very similar, right? So, the post-election review is where the random precincts that have been selected, Commissioner Beer's favorite activity, pulling things out of a hat, right? And the random precincts that are selected, that's the hand count that's done. So, that hand count then under that should be done before the canvasing board meets. So, well, and that would clear up and make it easier for our county attorney under the current statute, which we, you know, I had put a little extra asterisk in there when I signed because I just I didn't feel right about it. But, um, that would then because we were following that statute, right? The the the votes that were run through the tabulator and then everyone's like, "Well, but what about the 20?" Well, no, no, no, statute, you know, just the 20. But that's the first thing that gets thrown back in your face when you when you go to court. So, it's like that's got to change. It's got to change. The next one, um, Senate File 2232, um, actually is what we call the Mako bill. So, this is a county elections bill. This is what has been come up with the county election administrators, been introduced at the Senate, and to my understanding should be introduced in the House this week. Um, this is the seven days that we've talked about. Um, the website would be updated after 5:00 p.m., 7 days before the election, what someone's options are. It would require them to provide both identification numbers on their absentee envelope. Um, and if an applicant does not possess both types, they must include the number of one type of document and must certify. I can tell you in my years of elections, I personally have never seen an absentee envelope that has come in without a social security or driver's license number, just to put that in context. But um then this section D is that contact, the reach out that we would make to the voter, email, phone call, those kinds of things to let them know what their options are. There are other there's actually 12 items in that bill. Um but all really good things that we would like to see happen that would be great for the voters as well as the election administration side. So here's another one. This is the OSS bill. Um the Senate file and House file numbers are listed. This is a process that we are already following. This is the as I tried to talk about and it's it's hard to picture it in the abstract. Um but this is accepted absentee signature envelopes must be segregated by precinct, processed in accordance on a precinct by precinct basis. We're doing this uh before opening. Two members of the ballot board must count and record the number of envelopes. We are doing this after they've been removed from the signature envelopes. As I talked about, they have to count the envelopes. We count everything within an nth degree of its life. And then they must count and record the number of ballots uh which are included. So counts through your whole um and everything gets recorded through the process as well. Um ballot envelopes in this scenario are what I call a secrecy envelope. So we have signature envelopes counted, ballot envelopes counted, and ballots counted before those are run through a tabulator. Also in this OSS bill, um the storage and counting of absentee ballots. So, as I talked about at the end of the night, um on absentee, those ballots are removed from the ballot box. Um those would need to be counted, tallied. Again, I'm doing this. Um but here it is in statute. And um at the end of the day when early voting occurs, so early voting is future state of what direct balloting will be um the ballots need to be removed uh secured that very day noting the date, the voting location, number of ballots cast. Um make sure that that balances and then of course seal and secure all voted and unvoted ballots present. We treat unvoted ballots with the same respect and consideration that we do voted. Um, so House File 1800, appointment list and duties of political parties in the Secretary of State. We have a huge issue trying to recruit election judges for 46 days. It's just a count fact. I I think that when you say that you want to be an election judge, they're thinking they're going to go to the polls and they're going to be this election judge on election day and everything is going to be just great. But when we get them to trying to get them to commit to 46 days, they're like, h I I just can't or they don't want to or I can do two days a week. And for us, we need trained consistent election judges so that you know every time you bring in multiple parties, errors can occur, right? So the secretary of state and the duties of the political parties is to pro to provide this list and we get a list today. We do. It's just when we go through that list and try to recruit for our purpose, it's difficult. Really, what this says is it says if we if we can't get these election judges, the secretary of state must maybe provide a form to the political party, somebody to say Scott County needs absentee judges. Who wants to serve? this is the kind of the duties and this is the timelines and all this kind of happy stuff so that we have those people intact. And then it says that again with the with the uh election materials just stating that all election materials are to be returned to the county not just some. Also in this house file is the release of unofficial results. Um so if we were to make unofficial results available on a public website which we do um the website would identify any precinct in which the vote totals are changed. So in our scenario we up uploaded we rewounded back to zero and then we updated. This would require us to create a notation as to how many were affected, why this happened, um initials of the elections official, those kinds of things. And then the second part is the chain of custody procedure. Um this would require every city and county to adopt a chain of custody procedure. Um which we have a chain of custody procedure, right? But this is formalizing that we would need to provide this to the secretary of state's office. Um, and if the city chooses to not write their own, they can adopt ours. So much like a lot of the other things that we do. So this one um does reduce down to 28 days. So, this has been introduced in the House by Representative Davis, I believe, um to reduce the 46 days down to 28. Um this doesn't address doing direct balloting or early voting for the whole time, but it does reduce that period. And it rewinds that 8:00 PM return on election day to 3:00. Then this one different from House File 1800 doesn't allow us to release any results at all until we're done. So, you know, we'll we'll see how things go. Um, as we know when things are introduced um things change, get combined, those kinds of things. So, and this one, Senate File 651, talks about the primary being moved up to March. So, it would be at the same time that the presidential nomination primary is. And it it talks about the presidential nomination primary, you have to say your designation. That would be a separate process. And then you would get your ballot for other types of races that would be on that primary. And so just note that if if it's not um a presidential nomination primary year that you would still have it in March, you just wouldn't have that ballot as well. So they would be issued two ballots, presidential nomination primary and the primary. And then in a in an um midyear election, it would just be your state primary. House File 1664 uh requires live streaming for ballot board. This IBF has been batted around for a couple of legislative sessions. Um during absentee period on election day, if we were to process any absentee on election day, all of these activities would be live streamed and recorded. Now section B um talks about positioning one or more cameras and to the extent possible while complying the cameras must be positioned so as to avoid recording private data. I I have a lot of um just concerns, right? How do we be sure that we are protecting private data for voters? Um that is why we opened up our absentee process to the public in a public forum to allow people to come in. Um in our investigation, we went back through. We have cameras in our building, right? We have cameras in our rooms. Um, it's not live streamed. It's accessible to us, to the attorney's office, to the sheriff's office, whoever's actually authorized. It's not open to the public. Um, we were able to go back and see, just referring back to the 20 ballots, some of the camera activity that happened at the city of Shockby. They have cameras, too, right? um we didn't get everything that we would have wanted to have because we didn't know until later. Um but so again, it was introduced. We uh we will see where this goes. So, the last piece that I really wanted to talk about um is I went back through I know we had a group of folks here um at a prior meeting and I was here too and um I wanted to go back and listen to that meeting and kind of address what I could for concerns that seem to be still outstanding. Maybe we didn't talk about it in this presentation. So I think we hit this clarity on us meeting the statutoily require statutory requirement right we've talked about this we met that deadline that post election cleanup occurs after the deadline so we got that a third party audit was requested um to my understanding this has been looked into through many different forums and no one can be found who knows enough about elections to be able to come in and do a third party audit audit for us. Um, Sterns and Sherburn counties were mentioned that they were going to do third-party audits. They declined to do that as well. They did internal audits just like we did. Um, but there aren't people out there that know how to do this work. If we were going to hire an auditing firm, um, we would have to teach them how we do the election so that they could audit our work. As I said, the process audit, this occurs after every election. Changes and improvements are made. Um, and then there were some mentions, and I want to just be really careful around this because, as I said, this investigation is still ongoing, but there was a mention of a violation of federal code um, of two different statutes. Those reside in the attorney's office right now. I can't speak to what any conclusions are. Um but that information obviously um has been given to the attorney's office. They are certainly um doing their due diligence and looking into that. And then there was a lot of conversation about restoring trust and accountability. Um I understand that. I understand that completely. What I can tell you is we have been 100% transparent with everyone involved throughout the entire process. As I said, as soon as I w was aware of the problem, I informed everyone here. I informed the candidates. Um I did not have um Mr. Paul's phone number. I got the phone number. I called him. I had never met him in person. Uh we had a conversation about these missing 20 ballots and the things that were going on. Um we open absentee ballot board opening to the you know ballot opening to the public for every election and as you uh referred to chair bearer no one comes. Uh we did have a couple of folks attend absentee ballot board this year because they were here for the public tabulator testing. Right. So when they heard of the things that we were doing in another room, they went and they watched for a few minutes. But those are the only folks we've ever had and we've been doing it this way um since 2020. And that was that the group that came to the county board and spoke as under the interested citizens? Yes, it was just in in kind of separate from this but happened to Yeah. Got it. Absolutely. So um we do want to restore trust. We do want to, you know, show that we are being accountable. Um, all of these things that happened, a lot of those things I had very little control over, if any, but the buck stops with us. It does. I understand that. And no one's ever denied that. Um, when folks have come and called me and said, "Hey, Julie, can we sit down and can we talk about um elections and specifically absentee, right? the mystery of absentee that shouldn't be a mystery. Um, every single time we have sat down, we've talked about it. Um, I've talked with folks from cities, I've talked with private people, private groups, uh, residents, people from other counties, whatever it happens to be. I'm always happy to do that. Um, but and bottom line, we know that there's there's always ways that people can improve. We have some takeaways for us. We have some takeaways that we hope the state systems can change. We have some legislative things that are being proposed and being acted upon. A lot of them are the same things that we identified. It's it's you know all all we can say is we're trying the our best and we will continue to forge head and um implement some of these new changes and we'll see where the legislation goes. But um all we can do is try to convince our legislators on the things that we feel are critically important to support them. Contact your legislators, tell them that you know hopefully they can support all or some of these bills. And the one little well not little big asterisk is the person most directly involved is no longer with the city. I don't know the right terminology. You'd have to consult with the city on what that looks like, but I think that's also part of the equation. Um, you were going to reach for your mic. So, do you have a Yeah. Um, I am wondering if we need to have a conversation about changing the structure of our elections department and having a person um dedicated full-time as an election person, then build around that person, what happens on on elections, election years in the process um to support that person. Um, and I'm also wondering if we need to have a different relationship with the cities that's more solid. Um, more and maybe that's covered in the legislation that's coming up, but more I mean, we we have to take responsibility for the actions of the of the cities that are out of, you know, maybe we need to have a better structure around that. Um, so I would like to put that out there. um and maybe have um us talk about this in a couple months after the legislation's done and see exactly what that is. Sounds good. Okay. Any immediate questions before we attorneys region? Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Chair and commissioners. I almost want to I just want to commend Cindy and Julie and their team. They've done an exceptional job. Many of their team are here. did an exceptional job since this first came to light in investigating and getting getting this done correctly. Um, as indicated before, the report um is in my office um to be reviewed. There are some data privacy issues that need to be addressed and we need to try to figure out how to get around that so we can be as transparent as possible. But they've done an exceptional job and it's a great it's a it's from day one they've done everything correctly and I can tell the board and tell the tell the public you can have absolute confidence in Scott County elections which you can realize that by the the 20 duplicate supposedly duplicate ballots that were out there. The the system worked. they were able to look back and and figure out that that didn't happen. The um the three groups of people that determined these 20 ballots, how they got missing, how they who these people were, the fact that the three groups of people came to the same exact conclusion shows you that the tracking system works. Human error is human error. And that's what happened in this in this situation. one person didn't do their job correctly regardless of how they were trained. Um, and again, the final report is in my office will hopefully be done with that with that soon. That will be public at at some point. But, um, the fact that how this was worked out from day one when these discrepancies were were were discovered. The fact that everything was tracked back shows that the system worked. It's unfortunate or maybe fortunate that this happened in such a close election. um that some of these issues did come to light and hopefully can be addressed through legislation, but it also showed that it works correctly and things were done correctly other than one person not doing their job correctly. So, I think the the public can take confidence in the fact that Scott County does do it right. Human error unfortunately came into effect and that's what happened here. So again, to Cindy and Julie and their team, thank you very much for all your hard work that you did on this. Thank you. Yes. Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, county attorney. I I think it's nice to have your view from from your duties and what you're looking at. Um I thank you for saying the buck stops with you, but really the buck stops here and and we've tried to make that clear all along. And that being said, uh, Commissioner Brennan, good point. I do think we need to look internally after all this to make sure, um, we're resourcing this appropriately that, you know, it it was a change 8, nine, 10 years ago, whatever, where we've really consolidated staff with elections and and customer service and really realized some efficiency and cost savings. And I think we have to look at that again. We have to look at what what's what's needed. So, I support talking about that. I don't have a preconceived answer there because I do think there was a lot of good out of the the way things were done too. So, but I think it's worth talking about worth seeing what can be done with these changes. Um, just wanted to ask I know I know that Leslie and Julie met with Representative Bberg extensively and and overviewed things, but um I just hope that our election staff since Senator Pratt has asked many times how he can help with these things that now that we have some some things put together that that a meeting can be had with him about about how to further things and then us figuring out how to help. Absolutely. Yes. Well, I just want to state what to me is obvious is that nobody feels worse about this than you do, Julie. And that you you your your heart is in this. You want to see properly run election and with no hiccups and it's obviously that you pour yourself into your job and that's appreciated and and we know that you're really sad about what's happened, you know. So, thank you. I appreciate that. I uh I told Cindy in a conversation that we had um I don't think I slept for weeks. Oh, really? Um even now thinking about it, of course I get because it's it's horrible and it never should have happened. Um we had a moment of levity. I was walking in with someone one day and someone asked how I was and I said, "Well, if I won the lottery today and I said I couldn't leave. There's no way." This was in the midst of the court case and testifying and I'd never been in that situation before. I've testified at the House and the Senate, you know, those kinds of things. I'd not been in a in a court case. Um, and I was proud to do it and I would never have let anyone else try to deal with that situation. Um, I could have won $20 million. I wouldn't have left. There's no way. Sleepless nights and all, I never could have lived with myself. So, and I'll double down on that because in the fog of the war when we're still collecting data back back seems like a year ago, um, you know, I would ask questions, any of us would ask questions, um, and we always got answers when appropriate and usually that was pretty quick because I I've never gotten the hint or whiff of like somehow we were like sweeping something under the rug, you know. Unfortunately, I mean, things were running really well in one individual. um you know here we are so it's so a system that was working and running a department that was working and running um a government entity here we are so thank you this is super helpful having this all in not peace meal but like one section um this is an important important topic you know oftent times we do these presentations it's to the board and we ask our questions and we've got our packets in advance and we move on to item number whatever is next but today is a different today. Um, we're going to open it up to questions because I think it's something that makes sense for folks that are here um that if they have any questions, they can ask those questions. But would you like a 3 to four minute little break? I think we're okay. Unless you need a break. Let's roll. But okay. Thank you though. Appreciate that. Come up. Yes. Yes. So, if anyone has questions, come on up to the microphone. The microphone may appear short. It'll catch you. So you don't need to bend down. Yeah. Um and it looks green now. So maybe just state your name and address for the record. And welcome to Scott County Board. Thank you, Commissioner Beer and Commissioners. Uh Joseph Ditto, 4354th Avenue West. I walked here today. Um I chair the Republican Party for CD2. Um I thank you for putting this uh forum together. I came in here with a lot of questions, most of which were answered during the presentation. Um, I just want to say I also did serve as an election judge in Shakpi Precinct 3. So, I was trained by the city clerk uh who made it really clear to us that we have to follow the instructions specifically so that we don't end up on the news. Yes. Um, yes. Um, so Julie and Cindy, I want to thank you so much for everything you did. Um, you know, when these things happen in Pittsburgh, it's easy to say those dirty rotten scoundrels, but when you actually know the people and you you believe them to be honest and truthful, um, you know, I don't like hearing the conspiracy theories and I was trying to do my best in my role as a party chair to back down these conspiracy theories, but I called the city clerk who wouldn't return my call. And so, when you can't get your questions answered, these things proliferate. And next time, Julie, I'll call you. Um, okay. So, I noticed a lot of these um problems and worries come up due to lack of communication. Um, I wanted to tell the story about how we found out about the 6,300 missing ballots. Okay. Um, we were at um Aaron Paul's results watching party. All right. And so, first of all, we don't like this report everything at one time thing. Like the other counties seem to be able to trickle it in. And so, we can say, "Oh, we're winning, we're losing. And it speaks to transparency because you think as soon as they got the results, they posted it. When you wait hours and hours and hours to post and all the other counties are posting, people start to wonder what are they doing down there? Why why haven't they reported the results? Are they having problems counting the ballots? It's just if you can make it come in as you get the results. It really appears to be more transparent and makes people feel better about what's going on. So, they all appeared at once and Aaron Paul had won by 300 some odd votes. So, you know, we're doing the high fives and the toasts and after that we're waiting for the Tab Key concession call, right? And sure enough, Tab Key did call and said, "Don't get too confident there's still 6,300 ballots out there." That is how we found out, okay, from the opponent. Um, and so, thank you for explaining your slides how he came aware of that because for all we know, he had a mole inside the organization, right? And that's the kind of perception we want to avoid. Um I don't know if in the future we can have some sort of communication mechanism where both candidates know at the same time. Um that would have solved that whole problem, right? Um let's see. Um during this investigation, um there was a lot of talk about the city clerk having made a lot of partisan posts on social media. Did your investigation look into that at all? So, as far as we know, we don't know the motivations of the city clerk. Do we believe it to be some sort of honest mistake? Okay. Mr. T, Mr. D, we again tell you that as far as the investigation stands right now, we don't believe that there was any intentional or maliciousness intent involved in the mistake that was made. Okay. Thank you, Ron. Um, as far as election judges go, this is kind of a sticking point and and maybe we can go into more detail afterwards, but you know, as as a party officer, like we do everything we can to get as many election judges as possible and we route those, of course, through the Secretary of State. That should then go to you. Um, and a lot of our people that we believe to be fully qualified election judges are not selected to work as election judges. Um, so I'm surprised to hear you're having trouble finding them. We've heard reports that in some cases you've had to bring in Republican election judges from outside of Scott County. Is that true? Not I'm sorry I want to be on the mic. Not that I am aware of. No. Um since I'm up here, if I could speak to that in the uh party list that we get after the um events in February and and that's sent to the Secretary of State, then sent to us um in 2022. I can't remember how many in 2024, but in 2022, it really jumped out at me. There were 283 names of election judges on that list, two that were not from the Republican party. So, it's not necessarily saying that we have a very difficult time in Scott County finding election judges. We have a hard time providing balance. So yes, it's not really working with your party that we have the have the need for. It's being able to provide. So the only case that I'm aware of is in 2020, we actually traded information with Henipin County. So we provided our Republican list to Henipin and they provided their Democrat list to us so that we could provide that on to the cities and the townships so that they could get that balance met. So, so we're doing our job, right? We are. Then the Republican party is providing you with enough names. Absolutely. Excellent. Glad to hear that. Um, am I understanding correctly that the cities are involved in election activity at the pleasure of the county that you folks are responsible and that they authorize that? Is it the the legal the reason the city of Shakipi is allowed to conduct election activity is because you all bless it. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So, speaking a little bit to uh Commissioner Brennan's point earlier, then we should probably exercise more oversight. I think that's one of the points that uh Julie made during the presentation was that and it goes to the training also. So, I'm sure that will happen in the future. Okay. Terrific. That's all I have. Thank you everybody. Thank you very much. Before you go, can I go? Thank you. I just Mr. Dr. Ditto, I want to address just one point also that you made. Um the presentation of the election results on election night, right? Um the way that the system is supposed to work is that with us being a little bit more decentralized, it doesn't report partial absentee results. That's what we asked for, right? We've talked about that. Um, so it doesn't display results until precincts are complete, meaning election day from all of the different precincts across the county as well as absentee at those city halls. So absentee results can't be reported, those polls can't be closed until 8:00 PM on election night, just like election day. So, we are getting election day results in hot and heavy. And I would say the first set of results we got that night was probably 8:20ish. It sounds right. Um, so those were all coming in from the precincts, but until we have the absentee results, it's going to show zero. So that's why it always looks like it's later. like we are getting those election day results in um but it won't show because we chose to suppress right and had I known that things were done that way we could have put that out there and communicated that we were going to only provide what we had. Um, but the way the system is programmed, it will only report zero or all, not an in between. So that's why it honestly looks like it takes a really long time because to be honest, we're waiting for absentee. So So how do the other counties do it then that they're coming more in real time? Just repeat the question just so it's on the Thank you. Uh, Mr. Ditto's question was how do the other counties do it so that they're coming in like earlier? Um, it honestly all depends on how their county is structured and what software they use. Um, we are one of eight counties in Minnesota that use Dominion voting software. Um, and that is the way it is programmed into the system. Dakota County for example is also a Dominion County which is public information. I don't have any worry about sharing that. Um but they have centralized again rather than decentralizing anything. They do all of the absentee and that again is part of the recap conversation. Do we change the way we do things? We very deliberately changed things. um right before I stepped into this role things were changed and is you know that's always part of the conversation should we be decentralized like that um but I think the other piece of that is that folks need to know those are unofficial right and I understand the whole world is depending on what those results show on the website um but it is unofficial it is not complete until after the canvasing board is complete complet. So if that is confusing, I apologize. I'm always happy to sit down and talk more in detail about that. But that's why things are a little bit later. Um that is also why partially the reason um in 2020 we saw a race flip, right? Partial results had been reported on election night. Absentees were processed after and the results flipped in a race. Not in our county. We were done. Um but in another county ballots were processed. They were given a um little bit of an extension. We were all given because of COVID. Um but those ballots were processed after election day per allowance, but no one knew that. So, it looked like the results flipped when in fact it was just now complete. So, thank you for letting me pop back up. You welcome. I was this morning, but now it's this afternoon. It is this afternoon. I'm supposed to be hiking in the Eden Prairie Hills to start getting conditioned for a scout uh outing this summer. Love it. Anyway, um name an address for the record. Sharon Sakora uh 670 Han Drive, Shakabe. Um, so I have a few questions that one, some were brought on by today's presentation, which thank you. It was very informative. I appreciate the extent to what you went to. Um, so at one point you said that you sent some staff out to get the ballots and then scan them here. Was there parody in the chain of custody for doing that? Absolutely. There was Yes. Okay. Um I would also suggest that every precinct have very specific chain of custodies like I think was suggested because I know in a princ I don't want to I don't want to call anybody out but I know some people take the ballots and the machines and everything that's signed by the election judges and put it in their trunk for the night until they bring it up to the county. So that doesn't seem like it has chain of custody of two parties or multiple parties, mult custody parody, whatever um overnight. So that that raises some concerns. I don't distrust this person, but it's just a loophole that we could look to address. Why not just bring it in that night and have two people driving it in? So um that's a concern. Um, let's see. So, you mentioned about that things have to be in by 1217. My understanding of the statute is you may ask for an extension, but nobody does, but that's what the statute is. So, we need to ask for the extension to change the data history, the voter history. Um, so I I would think we need to make that into the process change that we filed the data on December 6th and then things were just changed even though it said it was completed data then the data changed multiple times uh without asking for any extensions. So that's something that we we should tighten up. Um, and then I had been notified that we had 90 voters that were ballots that were not assigned to a voter. I do I learned other things that we have about across the state 800 people that are in protected I don't know the exact language but they protect their identity from abusers and things like that. I understand that. How is it that 54A had 90 of those? That's like 11% of all those 800 just in 54A. That seems a bit high on the scale of 54A being a protected location. Um it should be five or six people, not 90. So my question is how do we have such a high count of unidentified voters? Can I pop? Sure. I don't know anything about 90 voters. Okay. That's never been reported to me. I don't have any of that information. The program you're referring to is safe at home. Um so we do have safe at home voters in Scott County. Um I am unaware of 90 ballots that don't have voter records. So if someone can provide me with that information, that would be great. Um and as far as the December 17th, I I think maybe some proposed legislation process changes at the state level need to happen. Um because we didn't need the extension. The extension is not to clean up the voter history. The extension is to actually upload your voter history and have it hit the state system. It's not perfect, but um so some process change improvements for sure. Um but knowing that that all occurs after that deadline. Okay. So, so with that, um, going on with the voter history, um, we have duplicate voters. We had some that didn't have ballots assigned to voters. We had, um, uh, how do you know? That's that's fine if you clean up the voter history, but those ballots, those votes are already counted in the totals, right? The duplicate voter history is that it's not duplicate ballots. So the duplicate voter history was indicating that there's a possibility that someone voted twice. They did not. There's the one remaining person that is being investigated through the attorney's office that very possibly could have voted twice. We don't know yet. Um, but the duplicate voter history is people, not ballots. So, there were never any ballots like duplicate ballots affiliated with those folks. It was just that they appeared on the list twice, if that makes any kind of sense. So, Cindy was alluding to how these um absentee election day registrations got entered. when they were physically typed in by staff, they were entered as election day voters, not absentee. So, they appeared on that list because when we did our uploads and all of that, it said, "Oh, hey, I voted at the precinct at Louisville Township." And now we entered that data and it said, "Oh, wait, that person voted at the precinct again." Well, no, they did not. um there were no duplicate ballots. There were people showing on the report that they voted twice and that wasn't the case once the research was done. Um and as we talked about other counties when you're entering an application there's a like a wildcard search that's done right and it's looking for your name Sharon Sequoa and maybe we can't did I say that right? Sakora I apologize. Um maybe we can't find you. So, we do a wildcard search of the first three and the first three like your first name, last name. Um, someone made an error, whether it be here or or to be honest, it happens all across everywhere. Someone made a human error and merged your record with someone else's. Um, my name is Julie Hansen. If you can guess how many Julie Hansen's there are in the state of Minnesota. Two. Yes, there's only two. um those things are merged sometimes in error. So it shows that someone voted twice but it's not the same person. So that is all unfortunately part of the cleanup that happens after an election. Um so that was that report and Julie because we talked a lot about this when this came out. Is this the situation where there's these two or three databases and maybe that's not the right word but in my software couple databases that okay this was input this collected data but until those two are merged and create this final document you can kind of read and misread the two raw ones is that that situation like the the end of December um the maintenance and then there's data that comes out of the pole pad of course which is fantastic and it's write a text upload. Um, if that absent or if that record was erroneously created again, that would show duplicate history. Um, it really is only one database, but it is multiple styles of uploading your data or multiple methods of uploading your data into the one database. And it's all 87 counties uploading their data for election day and absentee. And I mean we had 100,000 voters just in Scott County. Look at what we had across the state. So um yeah, just one database. Got it. Okay. All right. And for the record, there is more than one Sharon Sakura also too. Yes. Um, I think she lives she might even be in Scott County. I'm not certain. Um, I got that question answered. Sorry. I'm looking Well, no. And while you're looking for your other questions, I can you two get together and exchange info for this 90 vote thing. Yeah, I'm going to have to go back and find where I got that. Um, just just to just to like Yep. Um, so the last question I had was, um, how come there were 6,300 absentee ballots that were not processed? I'm just trying to understand, did they all come in that day on election day or like that seems like a lot of ballots that were not processed. I appreciate your question very much. Um, they were all processed. They were all processed. They were all scanned. They were all holding their data in a tabulator. But then they realized that they were up ballots. As Cindy talked a little bit about an interrupt tape and what that does on the tabulator is you can run a tape that does not show you results, does not show you anything about candidates in the race or anything like that. What it gives us is the ballot style number and how many are in that machine. So, ballot styles, um, we have 78 ballot styles in Scott County for the general election with school district splits. So, it starts at 4,01 for Bell Plane Township and goes all the way to 4078 for Spring Lake 2. Um, that interrupt tape simply tells you how many of each number you got. Well, when Shakipi went to balance their absentee for their final time, which should have been done every day, um they were up in some and down in others. So, they had the they had the right amount of ballots. They did not. Um, but right if you're supposed to have 6,300 ballots, the report should show 6,300 ballots, but you might have too many Shakip nines and not enough shaky eights. So, there's a statutory process to correct that. They elected to do that on election day at like six o'clock, five o'clock. I honestly don't remember the time, but so all of those had already been run, but now they realized, oh, we don't have the right amount for each split. So they had to fix that, which is normal. All part of the process, and they had to rescan those ballots. So it wasn't that they were found or that they were missing or anything like that. They were present throughout the whole time. Some of those voters did vote on Monday before the election. So up through that, I think they had 6331 ballots. So up through that time through Monday, um that's the total that they had and that's how many they had to rescan because like I had said before, you have to rezero. You got to go back to nothing. You can't selectively pick out one result, right, and roll it back. You have to go back to zero and start over. And um it is a very long arduous process, but it's the right way to do it. Um if they had a high-speed scanner, a mid-speed scanner, they're they're not the fastest thing in the world, but they're a lot faster than an election day tabulator. Um you could see from our timeline, we ran about 4,000 of their ballots and it took us less than an hour and a half. So, it's that much faster than a than an election day tabulator. Does that answer your question? Sort of another question. Okay. Well, I'll be here. Sure. Good afternoon. It is afternoon. It is. I thought it was going to be a short day. Yes. Uh Pete Larson. I'm at 1452 Windsor Lane in Shakipi precinct 4. Um I've been serving as a head election judge since 2020 which puts me at about seven elections I want to say. Um and I I will comment a pretty tight process and and and thank you commissioners for letting me be here. Uh one question I had was in regards to voter registration. If somebody moves out of the state of Minnesota, they is there any way that they state of Minnesota knows that and takes them out the registration or not? Do they have to actually register in the state they're in or how do they know that? We're not supposed to say this, but great question. Um, we get multiple uh cues, if you will, through the statewide voter registration system. One of those is uh NCOA, the National Change of Address, Postal Service, that kind of thing. So once you change your address with the postal service, if you're not temporarily away, like you go on vacation, hold my mail kind of thing. Um we get that information in a queue and we update the voter registration. I've gotten that question many times is how often do you update your voter roles? Every day. Okay. Every single day. Here's what I'm asking. Um when I uh you know got the big list this time at the beginning of the u um election and I was looking up my family. I have four children all of voting age. Uh one is a marine in California. Uh one of them has moved to Florida. Uh one is moved to Eden Prairie and the other one's a college student. So I had all kinds of your voting options with my family. But what I noticed was that um my son who moved to Eden Prairie was off of our precinct. was no longer there. My daughter at college was still there, which he should be. My two sons, though, who had both moved uh and uh the older son, Simon, I don't know if he's changed his permanent address, but know he does have a California driver's license, I believe, and so does my son in Florida. He has a Florida driver's license. Their names are still on there as registered voters in this precinct. So, um I'm not sure how that happened or why that happened, but what would be preventing my third son who lives in Eden Prairie to show up that day and just say, "Hi, my name is Simon Larson." and vote as Simon, come back later, "Hi, my name is Jacob." and vote as Jacob and then vote as himself if their names are still on the roster. How would that be prevented? He would have to know, of course. Um the Florida one in particular, not all states participate in this online uh voter registration updates and we wish that they did. So Florida, for example, sends us updates on paper. So we get a packet in the mail that says these are all the folks that have registered to vote. Um maybe they didn't change their address with the post office. Somehow we weren't notified. those registrations are locked 20 days before the election. We can't update it because that would be um registering there, registering in Henipin, going all of that. So, we create our um voter list for your poll pad um a couple of weeks before the election, but registration cutoff is 20 days before the election in Minnesota. So at that point we have to have a solid static list and anyone who registers to vote after that time their registration isn't entered until after the election. So um you got to have a solid list. I'll be completely transparent with you. What's what's stopping someone from going in and voting is three different people. There's nothing um other than maybe a felony conviction and they get caught. Uh exactly. That's that's the back end. Their vote is cast and I understand that. Um I am here we are here to administer the laws as they are written. Um that doesn't mean we don't think we all don't think that there are some changes that should be made. And I urge you to contact your legislator. um they are the ones that can make the changes to close any loopholes that that we can see in the system. Okay. So, and just just one last comment to reassure you as head election judge, I am every half an hour looking at my poll pads, my tabulator and people in line and making sure that those numbers all match. So, thank you. Thank you, Natalie Barnes. Uh, address 15630 Fish Point Road, Prior Lake. Um, thanks for having this. I I kind of wish it was a little bit more interactive throughout so we could go back and ask our questions at the appropriate time. Um, one of the things that I actually just want to bring to attention is that I've been an election judge actually in Minneapolis and we have our election absentee ballot totals before the the polls close. So obviously there's and I think that you mentioned Julie that there was, you know, it was the choice and there was a change and perhaps that's something that can help rectify some of these situations sooner than after the election. Um just just a comment um because I think that's very important for us to get that information out to the people as soon as possible. Obviously there was recounting this this particular time. However, it does actually make it much easier for us as election judges as well because we're able to give the appropriate information. And if you see how fast Minneapolis gets their information out, they're probably one of the fastest and they're one of the largest um largest uh cities in well, I think they are the largest city in the entire state. Um, secondly, I was just going to mention that it would be really great, and I don't know if this is something just as um an aside from all of this, but I would love to see our voter roles actually um audited or or um reviewed just to ensure that we have all the appropriate information. I know sometimes that is that is something that comes up during times like this where you know as the gentleman before me was mentioning that there are several people that could be voting even from one household that no longer live live in that household. So if there's a way for us as citizens to be able to help and facilitate any of that happening in Scott County, I'm sure that we would have some volunteers to do so. Thank you. Thank you very much. And if there's any questions, because I get it was a long presentation, very thorough, which was awesome. We're all very reachable and I think you all have our phone numbers. Uh Sharon Sakura, uh follow up to my questions about the voter history, so do the number of when the voter histories are all polished up and finished and final, does that match up to the total vote counts? And when would they? Yes, it does. When would they no longer match up? Like right as you have new registrations or how do you know that? I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. So the total amount of voters who voted through either absentee or election day would match the total amount of ballots if everyone cast their ballot. Right. Right. Well, and and whether or not they voted one one race or all of them or no races and they put an empty ballot in the tabulator, that would still be counted as one. Um, we do, like I said, it does happen and I know of two examples on election day here in Scott County that folks checked in to vote and didn't vote. So, they still have voter history. They still show up on the poll pad as they voted, but they did not cast a ballot. So, it is okay in the law to have more voters than you have ballots. It is not okay to have more ballots than you have voters. And there's not. So, thank you again. Thank you again. Thank you very much. Um, this has been super helpful having this all boiled down into one nice document. Uh any other questions? Otherwise, we are going to move on. Where did that agenda go? Um to um Wow, we still have another presentation. Yes. Little recess. Michael T. Little recess. I'll be here. Little recess. We need to go. So when you get to We are back from recess. We're doing a little bit of a working lunch here presentation. We had some really good thorough late elections uh presentations and questions and now we even get to some is taxation. I don't it's you're good. So, let's go. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, board members. Uh and good afternoon. Appreciate the time to uh share with you and the public the changes that we made for the 2015 property assessment. The timing really couldn't be better. We uh mailed out notices last Friday and the calls are rolling in uh starting a little bit yesterday and today. Uh so for that for our uh citizens and taxpayers uh I'm going to give a quick market update, talk about some of the changes that we made and had to make for the assessment this year and then just uh quickly go over some of the appeal and relief options that may be available to some of our taxpayers. Got a lot of information. So I'm going to dig right in here. And where better place to start than the interest rates? Um although they've been somewhat steady the last year uh or two kind of fluctuating between 6 and 7%. If we just go back to you know 2021 there's been a substantial change in rates and that is um impacting the residential market still substantially. So over the last 52 weeks we've fluctuated between about 6 and 7%. If we look back a little bit further, um, going back to 1971, we've averaged 7.7. So, it's still, uh, if you look at the last year, it's still would be well under that average, but uh, it's not what people are used to. So, most of that, uh, average is being brought up by the time frame prior to 20 prior to 2000 and then after has been basically below for the last 25 years. So, um, we we got close, but we didn't quite hit that average about a year ago. And I think now over the last 2 or 3 months, um, we came down from 6.9. I think we're at like 66 now or something last time I checked. The reason this is, uh, really kind of important and impactful to talk about, I've identified three points in time on this chart, which is now a trend line for the average valued home in Scott County. Uh back in 2013, we kind of bottomed out on the value. That was post uh bubble burst and some of those things that were happening in the market uh at 237,400 being the average value at that time in 2013. The rate was at about three and a half, which is still very very attractive compared to the long-term average and what we have today. And that monthly payment with about 5% down in typical credit would have been about $1352. If we go move forward to 2021 when the rate had bottom out now. So values are up quite a bit since 2013. Average home value 3394. The rates down about a point from that prior mark and the payment is up somewhat significantly but about $400. to 1,746 a month. And if we now fast forward to today where values are at an all-time high, uh the average for the county is 473,200. But we also have the much much higher rates over double from where it was just four years ago. It's at 6.9 and that monthly payment is now 3,555. So about double of what you would have had uh four years ago for the average value home. And so this makes a substantial difference on what properties enter the marketplace uh which is the supply side of course. So this chart kind of tells you the impact of these rate movements over the last um four or five years. If you look at the the white line, that's uh showing you that 83% of outstanding mortgages currently have a rate under 6%. Which just three years ago was at um you know closer to like 93%. So they are slowly uh removing themselves from existence. But if you look at the bottom light blue kind of category that is not moving as fast nearly as fast as the other categories because who wants to give up a rate under 3% or in some cases who can. So uh I think that there's reasons people have to move sometimes with with job changes and you know changing family situations and things like that. Um and so those will eventually work themselves out unless rates come back down, of course. So this is just a slow process though and and it causes um a delay of when we're going to potentially see some of those homes come back on the market where they otherwise would have. Quickly look at our foreclosure filings. This is always a a question that we're asked or a hot topic ever since the big spike we had back when the bubble did burst. Um, and we can see from this chart we're we're very low on that uh historically and it's basically flat from last year at about 43 and I think 38 of those are in the cities. So very very small amount um in the township areas. And then just another quick look at this. uh we did have at one point back in the early 2000s and uh where foreclosures or lender mediated sales actually were more prominent than traditional sales. So lender mediated would be foreclosures and short sales combined and although we don't put those in our uh assessment study due to some state standards they do compete with all of the traditional sales. So they sub substantially do impact the overall overall values for property. Looking at our closed sales, we're way down. Um we're we're actually up a little bit from last year, but if you look at kind of the last 10 15 years, we're way down as far as the volume of sales within the county. And of course, as assessors, we like this number as high as we it possibly can be because it gives us more data to work with to dial in our our assessed values. More information to look at is always better. No, we don't necessarily I mean we like to see the market values increasing for all kinds of reasons, but as far as for our job doesn't really matter if it's going up or down, but the number of sales that we have can can impact uh you our abilities just just based on having less observations. If we dig into the different price points that's in the box. Uh so the the blue line is actually countywide. And then if you look into the box the um the the price points that are lower. Uh we're having less sales and some of that's because it's moving into a higher price bracket of course, but there's also um just less sales occurring in that segment. And where we see a a large growth, which is kind of uh propping that line up a little bit year-over-year, is that uh 12.2% increase in the 500 to a million category, which I think is also a lot of where our new homes are being built kind of in that range. uh if you're looking at single family residential as well as just homes moving into that category due to uh price increases. The month supply of homes for sale traditionally we've heard four to six months most real estate agents would say would be like a healthy market uh not a buyers or a sellers uh skewed market. We were for a very long time in in kind of the under the average or healthy market. Ever since about 2015, it dipped below that range. And for a short period of time, we were in just a really uh heavy sellers market that favored the sellers, of course. And we're just kind of coming back out of that as a countywide um stat. But if we dig into this by price point, probably like you would expect, the um the 300,000 and less is still in that sellers p uh sellers market because there's just not a lot of stuff in that range. And then the other categories are slowly have been kind of creeping up over the last two years to almost being in balance. uh with the exception of the million plus that is now almost kind of creeping up to nine months of inventory or month month supply of homes for sale uh which is just flirting with that line uh of actually becoming a buyer market. Median days on market went up again a little bit, but it's still under a month uh for the countywide median days on market to sell a house. I used to say, you know, three to four months was kind of typical, but I don't even know if that's true anymore because it's been so long since we've been in that um range. And that was way back went after that bubble burst as well. So, houses were sitting on the market for longer, but we've come so long with technology since 20 years ago with with people finding their homes on Zillow and, you know, real estate agents used to have books mailed to them every month with the housing the listings that they'd have to go through and it the whole process just took longer. So, um I don't know exactly I can't tell you what the real new normal might actually be, but we're just upticking a little bit. So, moving into some of the changes that we made this year, we're going to start with new construction. So, these are the figures from last year to this year. And new construction dollars added to the uh tax base. We increased about 8%. From the year before and then I've got some of those uh different segments uh isolated out, commercial up quite a bit um compared to the year before. And we've had some things with the amphitheater in Shakipi and um the the uh clinic that was built over by St. Francis kind of helping with those numbers. Uh industrial is pretty flat but still comprises a big chunk of the new construction and residential up about 4%. This chart I found kind of interesting. This is as far back as the data that we have um that I can give you this information for. And what what I think is somewhat notable is we're still not uh back to the 700 million plus per year and it isn't adjusted for inflation either. So that number today would be a bit higher yet. Uh but what we are seeing is some of these segments increase as a share of the new construction. you know, really going back to about 2014, you can kind of start to see the industrial share widen and and most prominently in the last handful of years is the apartments. Uh the the amount of uh new units that have come online through apartments has been just substantial compared to anything we've seen since 97. Shifting into our median ratios, um the state looks at every city or township and then segments out the property types within the jurisdiction and then they look at every sale. They compare what our assessed value was to what the sale price was and that so you have an individual ratio for every sale. But through the jurisdiction for the property type, you put them all together and you look at the middle ratio. That's the median. So this is how we get the level of assessment measure that the department of revenue looks at every year to just to make sure we're doing our job. At the county, we can't decide we just want to put residential at 80% and we want to put commercial at 100% or something like that. we have to have all of these um levels of assessment within this 90 to 105% range. So, we're starting by looking at where we ended last year after we made all of our changes. And you can kind of see we we hover around that 95% median uh with with pretty good accuracy there. Moving into this here, those blue diamonds are the exact same as what you saw in the last one where we left off. And I'll walk you through the other two. The the yellow squares are after the sales came in after we finalize that assessment. Where is the new median before we made any changes? So, the market changes are occurring. Different sales occur every year. Obviously, it's not the same properties. and they put them all together and they look at what was the median ratio for the sales in that jurisdiction and as you can see Cedar Lake Louisville kind of stand out very low even though last year as an example Cedar Lake ended at 96% which is actually a little higher than what you know the 95 um the new sales that came in over those 12 months the median was 82%. So in those cases, we have to bring values up pretty substantially to get it back up into that green area. And so in this case, the the gray triangles represent what we believe is going to be our final ratio. We won't have that um from the Department of Revenue, but we don't have that yet. So it's not finalized, but our estimated final ratios. Uh, and you can see we did leave those a little bit below 92 because of the substantial increases that that those areas were seeing. And then just a quick look at um the overall equalization over time for the cities. We don't have the townships on here just because a lot of times they don't have six sales and so then they just don't show up and the chart looks really weird, but they're also all in this in this similar situation. for the studies that we do have qualified number of sales, uh they're they're similarly tighter on that countywide median uh every year. So, this is important because this is what we consider like a having a fair level of assessment between jurisdictions. We don't want one city to be at 108 or 102% even though it's in the range and then have another uh city be at 92% because they're they're being assessed at different levels. What happens if we don't uh comply with the state standard of 90 205%. So after we send out our values and after the appeals process has run their course and you you have the chance to call us and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a in a later slide, but you have the chance to call us, go to a board meeting, and then if if you don't appeal your value, that's your final value. After all that happens, the state does this ratio study. If it's not between 90 and 105%, they will make across the board increases. And so I selected this particular study uh for Fairbull County for this 2023 assessment year because it really shows the impact this could have. the the top line item there is countywide the state increased agricultural land values 15% across the board for the entire county and then even in like the city of Elmore they had 115% increase on non-commercial land so these are substantial changes that the people received after the appeals process and this is another example from a different county last year it's a news article actually Um, uh, it was mentioned earlier today, we don't like to be in the newspaper for particularly these types of reasons. I highlighted, uh, the part that I want you to focus on here right now is the state stepped in after the assessor did failed to meet that 90 to 105% uh, level and these are now non-negotiable for the 24 tax assessments. What that means is you had all your appeals. Now, the state did their board in June, and they're just going to uh change the values. And I'm sure the counties when this happens do send out some kind of new notification. I know we would um before you get your estimate in November, but it's not telling you about your new appeal rights. It's just saying this is your new number. Um you accepted something else previously. Maybe you chose not to appeal it or you did. Um, but now you have a new number that you have to live with unless you want to appeal in tax court, which can be expensive of course. And then quickly before leaving this topic, the history back to 2006, just showing the number of counties. This happens every year to multiple counties and in most cases those counties experience numerous uh changes within their county. The ranges they they do decrease values as well. Also, if you're over that 105, just the same way if you're under the 90, uh I highlighted the minus 40% plus 115% the largest or smallest uh changes that we've seen. And we haven't had a a state board ordered increase or decrease since 2006. So, with all that, here's kind of the overview of the residential value changes by jurisdiction. You'll notice that uh the the two largest increases coincide and directly correlate with uh where those ratios started at after we uh saw the sales come through. For the most part, 3.7% is the countywide average. the cities were were more aligned with that and the townships overall fared a little bit better in in those ratio studies and what we had to do with the value increases. Uh but generally speaking, all the values are coming up partially due to the lack of uh of this inventory coming on the market with people holding on to those low interest rates. A word of caution with those numbers. We further stratify properties in a number of different ways, but we might have neighborhoods within a city or a township that maybe receive different uh percentage changes uh from each other within those jurisdictions. And then we also just look at different price points, home styles, uh the age of the properties, and we stratify by these different characteristics to see, you know, countywide or within jurisdictions. Um do we need to make any other types of changes, agricultural values, um we we went up about 11% and that was pretty consistent depend wherever you were in the county. Uh these prices per acre that are listed on the map are kind of your typical if if there's such a thing for that area. Um we definitely have spreads within the townships. If you're along 169 and you're zoned for commercial or industrial, uh that number could be a lot higher. Uh and then the two different numbers within the cities are if if you're say in Shakipi and you have city services ready to go and and you could tap into them and develop for residential, you're going to be more closer to that 100,000 per acre. Uh if if maybe there's some stuff that has to happen for your property to be developable, you're you're going to be lower on that towards the 60,000. And then you might have an industrial development that's just way higher. Uh, so this is more for egg. They call them egg properties because that's how they're being used and they're classified. Uh, but we might have the highest and best use for residential development or or any other types of development. Although that is the case for the actual market values, we have a lot of people that are in one of our land programs. And this map kind of illustrates that where you don't see the green acres or the egg preserve um or the real preserve properties mostly in the cities uh or in some of the townships that have more executive developments that have already been uh platted out and developed. So a lot pretty much everybody who I think is eligible takes advantage of these programs. We've done a lot of work to to try and let people know if they might qualify for these programs over the years. Uh and I think there that we've got most the people enrolled. And what that does is it lowers the taxable value on the price per acre. So this 9900 per acre is our new number. I think that's from 93 last year, which is uh up maybe 7% roughly. Uh it's it's less than the 11% you saw on the previous screen and it applies countywide. So if you're in commissioner well I I obviously there's an outlier here and I'm curious. I was curious when I saw this when you presented the scale. Why is an NOA county's um oh it's green acres value per acre. I Okay. So what why what's the difference there? I don't understand. So they must have really bad soils up there. Um do they really So the the intention of the green acre value is is the state does provide it to us and they do that. They used to look at the bottom like southwest four counties within the state and they'd see what egg land selling for and in those counties they determine that there's no development pressures and then they would just spread that out based on soil ratings throughout the state. Now they they actually do look at the individual sales within the county but an's always been on that lower range. So I'm I'm assuming their aand is just not as desirable as these other counties. And then the 9900 as I mentioned does apply throughout the entire county. So that this example would be in shock bey um to kind of show you the biggest spread here. Uh although this this market value applies to Prior Lake and Savage as well. If you had a 100 acre farm, we're going to say it's maybe valued at $10 million, and that's going to be what you could probably sell to uh one of the local developers um for residential development. But if you're enrolled in the Green Acres program and you're still farming, you're going to have a taxable value of $990,000. And so the difference on that tax bill could be about $100,000 probably annually. you do pay back the most recent three years when you sell. Uh so if you're in the program for 20 years, you're still never going to pay back those 17. But this is designed by the state legislature to try and preserve some of the farmlands from having being forced essentially to sell to due to development pressures. Um obviously with that higher tax bill, it would make it somewhat just un you wouldn't be able to do it. you wouldn't be able to operate a farm at those taxes. Uh, another change that happened this year, well, I'll start at the top. So, just above the red box that I have outlined, it's the agricultural homestead. That's the house, garage, and first acre of uh land on the farm. And that's actually taxed at the same rate as a residential. So, that one and one and a quarter tier. Uh, that class rate is the same. it's the remainder of the farm which could be your farm your farmland uh that's that receives that half a percent lower class rate and then up to three and a half million um and that was for last year. So uh at the bottom one I'm showing you that they did increase that to 3.8 million. Not quite as substantial of an increase that we saw the last couple years. Uh but there's for a larger farm that you you have maybe multiple parcels, you can connect those together uh to to link them together to get up to that amount. So this is not on an individual parcel basis. Commercial, industrial, and apartments. First thing I would say is we uh we have a lot less sales than we used to uh in all pretty much all these categories. Commercial two or three years ago would have would have had 30 plus sales and apartments. I know we had like 15 sales three years ago. So, we don't have as much data to work with. Just kind of a different way to look at the ending ratio. Last year is on the left side in your blue chart. We left off at 95 96%. Those were the changes we made last year. This year, um not a whole lot of movement. We we came in at about 100% on commercial and you'll see a 0% change there, but the median went down 3% and that's because of those 15 sales, I think six or seven of them were in like the same development that was uh office condominiums. And so we did take those values down a little bit because they were higher. They were coming in higher. So the whole not just the sales but those whole developments we reduced values on but it wasn't enough value countywide to make a dent in the percent change if that makes sense of the overall commercial value and then just uh an overview of looking at all the different breakouts by category and and giving you kind of a three-year history. Residential three-year cumulative is uh the lowest or apartments is the lowest but is low at 7%. Uh industrial is at 38% by far the the biggest amount of increases. And um you know if I went back one more year, residential would kind of even out because that was the year that we uh we went up 23% in one year. So uh we we could make this a longer look, but I just wanted to give you some of that context. And then how do those value changes impact the overall share of value countywide? That's the bottom chart. So you can see even with a 38% increase in industrial and a 7% increase in residential on the lower end, the overall makeup and did not shift hardly at all. It was one percentage point. Residential was 75%. It's now 74. And then industrial ticked up that 1%. So of the share of all the the value in taxable value in the county I should say it's estimated market value but without the exempt properties here is where I've added the exempt properties and it's just to show that countywide our total value is up to about 34 billion now. So it's a big number. quickly gonna walk through some appeal and relief options starting with the the timeline because I think people need to understand the sales we were looking at were from October of 23 to September of 24. The X is where we are today. You're getting your notice of your new value based on those sales. And uh your appeals start now and kind of run through June depending where you live. We'll touch on that in a second. And that all is going to impact your taxes next year in 2026. So from start to finish, it's a long three-year process with overlaps of different processes within any given period of time. So what you just received in your mailbox, uh or you could go out today and get it probably um you're going to get two statements within that envelope. One is your tax statement for this year. That's based on last year's value. Only option with that one is tax court. All of your appeal options on that have passed. It's really the purple one we want you to pay close attention to because this is the time where if you disagree with your new value that your taxes are going to be based on next year, give a call to the appraiser. We've we've tailored these notices so that the person's name and number on that notice is the appraiser for your area and property type. Um, so that's always the first and best option and 99% of questions, concerns, or appeals get resolved informally just by talking with our staff. Quick plug in the bottom left, you can uh sign up and there will be instructions in your notice if you want to receive your notice electronically through email. You can sign up for that. It saves some some money administratively and you also will get your notice before everybody else. So, one new thing that we added this year is if if you want to review your property information, you can do that online now. And the easiest way to get there is to go into our GIS and then in the bottom left kind of under where your house picture is, it says, is this your property? You can submit corrections here. And if you click on that link, it'll bring you through a process of entering your address, verifying who you are, of course, and then reviewing your information and submitting proposed changes. That doesn't mean you can just go in there and say your basement isn't finished and and we update our records. If you make any kind of changes that could impact value, we're going to have an appraiser is going to contact you and if it's something substantial, we're going to probably schedule an inspection to verify it. But uh the point being is, you know, we want to have our information as accurate as possible and we want to give people an easy way to review that. Uh a lot of times we hear, you know, that they don't know if the value is right. They just, you know, we don't like the increase or the taxes, but we're really not sure. We're not a real estate agent or appraiser. We have tools for people to go in and and if they're um curious, they can look around at the sales in their neighborhood by going through our GIS, turning on the recent sales layer on the left and uh and seeing what's going on in their area over the last few years. The most recent sales right now are going to be shaded green and then the purple ones are for the most part the ones that we looked at in the sales study from 2024. If you find a sale and you want more information, you can go on the public ECRV search. Uh you can look for sales with you can look one up individually or you can look for sales in your area and property type. And once you get that list up, you can click on the uh hyperlink to the left of the sale record and you can get all pages of information on each sale. And then just a couple of quick the these are some options that are out there, but I'm going to just highlight a couple of them uh that that are probably the most important. First is the appeals process. I won't go through it in detail, but just so that people know, there's more than one route or path that you would have to take to go through your appeals process to know which one it is, you you will have that on your notice. It'll tell you if you have a local board or an open book what day and time that is and and if you want to appeal at the county board when that is. This board of commissioners has appointed a special appeal board and it's comprised of real estate agents and appraisers. So they they know values uh and and it's usually what their their profession and specialty. So it's a unbiased uh board that people can go to. if they've talked to us, they've maybe gone to their local board and they still disagree. And then of course tax court, you can skip all the steps and go to um to that option by April 30th of the year the taxes are due. Uh one important note is if you do have a local board of appeal, you have to go there to be eligible to go to the county board. So keep that in mind. Your notice will say if it's a local board or an open book. And then the uh the last thing I wanted to highlight is the special property tax refund. So if we go back to those two notices you received um that gold one, the tax statement that you can appeal the value on, you may still be able to look at that and get some relief through a refund. And uh it's important to note that there's two different kinds. There's the regular and the special. The special does not have a household income requirement. So, it's essentially if you owned it on both assessment dates, uh, your tax went up at at least 12%. And it was at least $100 and it wasn't because you made improvements to the property, you may be eligible to. So, looking at that, there's millions of dollars that goes unclaimed of eligible eligible u refund that that never gets claimed every year. So, with that, I'll open it up for any questions. Thank you very much. Questions? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Michael. Really not questions, just two comments for um anybody who's listening. Number one, I think we've seen already as people are getting these um notices, some of the common misconception that we raise values so we can get more taxes. So, just wanted to confirm to everybody that we set our budget. We don't if your valuation goes up, it doesn't mean that the county, the school, the city gets more in tax dollars. We get the same amount. It's just the valuation determines how it's spread. And then second, um just saw a post where it said my valuation went down and my taxes went up. Super. Um and and just wanted to remind people to look at even though it comes from Scott County, the tax notice, it it of course um covers all the all the jurisdictions. So to be as as you are concerned about spending or government spending or taxes, look at the various jurisdictions, come talk to us for the county part, go to your city, go to your school board for the other parts or encourage them to do more if you think it's too low. Indeed. Anyone else? It's a beautiful thing about going to 243. Thank you very much. So what you're saying is Anyone that calls, call Michael T. Check with Michael T. Goaler, go to that neighbor. Instead of me directly, you're probably going to be better off with the the person who's on the nose. But if you do want to talk to me, by all means, give me a call. Happy to happy to have a discussion. Thank you for that. Thanks. One more comment. And Michael, I I think we've offered this before, but you're willing to go to cities or townships to talk about this information if they want to hear it more specific to their jurisdiction. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. Makes uh the subject taxation um enjoyable. Something like that. That's an exaggeration. Yeah, it is. But he's he's good at it. Good. Thank you. All right. Watershed, how are you? I am good, Mr. Chair. How are you? I'm great, thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair and Commissioners. Um, I appreciate your time. I know you've had a long day. I will try to move through this as quickly as possible. As you're well aware, we've spent all of 2024 and our public engagement process to get input into this next 10-year watershed management plan. This is a list summarized list of all the different engagement methods that we used. Um kicked it off in April getting comments from those state agencies and other stakeholders and then had that joint meeting with the board and our wershed planning commission and then we did a lot of other um engagement methods um to get the amount of input that we did get. I just wanted to quickly show you the number of responses we got from each type of um audience. Um, this is the most responses we've ever gotten in any cycle. This is my third plan update here at Scott County. So, this has been a really good um process to get this much input. I just have two questions I wanted to um show you really quickly about um some of the input that we received from our residents. So this first question is directly to our residents that um I just wanted to point out that you know we expected responses about protecting surface water, protecting groundwater quality and quantity. Um the the the blue bar is what's very important to them when it comes to water. What I didn't expect is this round people are really focused on improving wetlands and reducing drainage. And the other um the third point there increasing adoption of practices that is something that's been a theme in our current plan is to build that capacity among residents to do conservation on their own. So that was kind of a surprise to see that people were really um supportive of continuing to do that. Uh the second question I just want to show you what are their concerns, what are their major concerns and and um this one turned out a little bit differently than I thought, but I just want to point out wildlife habitat and wetland loss and invasive species are really been the theme with this input round from our residents. Um pollutants we expected because with development and other land uses, residents have always been concerned about pollutants entering our water system. uh the same with wetland and habitat loss and invasive species you'll see in the next few slides. I think it was worth mentioning so in the public survey we left room for additional comments um and there was frequent mentions of certain things and I thought it was important for the board to see this that this is what our residents are most concerned about that you know we had lots of residents concerned about our groundwater being taken and sold. Um, wakeboard boats are becoming more and more of a concern for people. I do have two new uh, studies that I was given and a video that are showing that wakeboard boats are really impacting um, that downward propeller wash is really impacting 26 to 33 feet down. And we have shallow lakes. Our lakes are not even that deep, our shallow lakes. So, um, more residents are very concerned about what's happening on their lakes with wakeboard boats. And the other one I just wanted to point out is, um, mining impacts. A lot of a lot of, uh, comments on mining impacts and the impacts to groundwater, especially in the northern area of the county. I did do a smaller survey to the four lakes that we've been working with over this last um, comprehensive plan. They were priority lakes in this plan. um cedar man odow and thol and I just wanted to point out that the kind of their major issues here the severe algae blooms and poor water quality are symptoms of the impairment because cedar is listed for on the federal impaired waters list for excessive nutrients. What is standing out with the lakes is that aquatic invasive aquatic plants is their priority that we continue to help them manage in invasive aquatic plants. McMahon was a little bit different. Kind of the same issues in that second major uh bar there. But was what was a surprise with McMahon is their perceptions are that there's a decline in fish populations. Now McMahon is not on the federal impaired waters list for being impaired for fish species. So we will look a little bit further into that and why their perception is that fish populations are in decline. Odow and Thol. Um they are a joint association. It was no surprise to see kind of what their major issues are aquatic invasive plants. Um they would like help with the lake vegetation management plan, but ODO is listed on the federal impaired waters list for not having the fish species that they should have. So that that really didn't um come up with many residents on on their survey responses. So, I did put a handout in your packet kind of the key themes that we heard from all of this different input. Um, and I listed it here for you, but I'm not going to go through it because it is in a handout in your packet for you. But we did kind of put together some key themes that we heard. Uh, what was surprising to me is a lot of people in the individual comments did say they would like more regulations or enforcement for certain things. So that's that's was another surprise in this cycle that h we haven't really seen in the past. Did did the was there any specific mostly shoreland enforcement on what's happening in shoreland areas? Yeah. Um and then so now we've come to our list of issues. So, we took all of that input, we looked at it with our issues that are stated in our current plan. Um, and we so we paired that local input um to make some adjustments to these issue statements that are in our current plan. So, we we feel that a lot of the issues in our current plan haven't really changed. They're still the same issues, but some of them have changed a little bit. So, we uh amended the issue statement itself to kind of fit that input. But this list is not in any particular order of priority. These are all what staff feels should be our priority issues in the next generation plan. Um I wasn't planning on going through these individually because they are listed in the RBA unless you have a question about a particular one, but I will speak a little bit more on some two new issues that we feel should go on the plan. So I'm just going to page through those two and get to the new issues. So, we're creating a new issue 11 that there's limited understanding of the local aquatic life and biodiversity and the impact this has on ecosystem health. The reason why we think this is uh a new issue is because right before we adopted our current plan um Scott County 20 stream reaches in Scott County were added to the 2018 federal impaired waters list. So we have 20 sections of stream throughout the WMO that don't have the appropriate fish species or macro invertebrate species in them that the state thinks they should have. So we have many listings that aren't meeting fish and macro invertebrates. So that's why we feel this new issue should go in here so we can start to address that. Issue number 12 deals with our changing climate. It's it's affected so many things over the last seven years for sure. Actually going back to 2014 when we had that uh emergency declaration, those major storms that took out County Road 60 in Blakeley Township and did a lot of other millions of damage to the landscape. We what we feel that we'd like to do with this is that you know changes in climate really affect all the other issues. So, we're we're going to describe how that is in each of the other issues, but we felt that it was um worthy of stating it by itself, but um adaptation measures would be worked into um goals and implementation. Next steps are we have on March 24th a joint meeting with our waterway planning commission and the SWCD board. We will go over some goal statement um exercise with them. We are not going to do the needs assessment like I have listed here. We changed our mind recently. Um then we'll meet again with the TAG and the WPC sometime in April or May to do go over like a gaps analysis. Uh you know what are we missing in our current plan to address these issues and to meet the goals that we're going to develop. And we're hoping to come to you sometime in July with goals and how we're going to prioritize things in next plan. And just really quickly to show you an updated timeline in June of this year. We're going to do a phase two engagement. We're not quite sure what we're going to ask people, but we are kind of targeting the audience of our underheard or underrepresented um residents in the county. uh because the state did ask us to consider environmental justice in our plan and so we feel that that would be a good way to do that is to try to engage them in um some input and that's all I have. I'll stand for any questions. What we are asking is that the board approve these issue statements so that we can continue to move forward um onto goals and priorities. So, these would be the issue statements for the plan. All right. Thank you very much. Any questions? I see a green microphone. I don't have any questions. Um, we've had a really good conversation at the WC PC regarding um the plan. So, um, with that, if anybody doesn't object, I'll make a motion to adopt resolution number 2025-76, approving the priority issue statements for the 2027- 20 through 20 37 Scott wershed manage management organization wershed management plan. That's a big one. Second. Um, motion and second. Any discussion? I've got a question. Um but anybody any other discussion? I would who are we who do we get most of our funding from beyond levied like state grants federal grants? Um state and federal. Yep. Um we've gotten millions of dollars from the state and now they've developed a program to which called watershed based implementation funding which we will continue to get every year until they discontinue it. But um it is a little bit competitive. it's competitive locally that we meet with other local organizations. Well, where I'm going with that is issue number 12, like is there another phrase for climate change that doesn't give everyone heartburn and still gets your point across? Sure, we can work on that, Mr. Chair. Yep, we can work on that. Climate roller coaster, climate whatever shift, cl what? I don't know. Yeah, extreme weather events. Like, I can live with that. I I just feel like that could be massaged a bit. And if that was the case, then I I would I'm good. So, there's a Yeah, you've got the motion. You're agreeable to amend that or however that uh Sorry. Yeah. as motion maker. I agree with that. Agree to that. So, we have a motion, a second, an amended motion and second. So, we're good. Any discussion on that? Is there a question? Okay. So, with that, unless there's anything else, we can do a roll call. Commissioner Wcman Brekie. Hi. Commissioner Wolf. Hi. Commissioner Beer. I. Commissioner Brennan. Hi. Commissioner Alrich. Hi. All right. Motion passes. And look at this. I've got my agenda all the way over here. Let me get my agenda back. Thank you so much for that. Appreciate that. Uh, all right. Number 11. We are going to submit those uh directly. And I still owe you that, Michelle. Um uh number 12, county administrator update. So we are going to move the following workshop, the parks improvement plan, um to the first meeting in April. But I do just quickly um I'm going to keep this solid waste initiative in front of you monthly. Um Scott and Dakota County, our staffs met with Demcon. Oh yeah. To actually discuss um potential of Scott and Dakota filling the existing gap in feed stock for the anorobic digtor. Um neither Dakota or Scott right delegates how this waste flows which is different than Ramsey in Washington but we are meeting and talking and are there some potential ways to look at the cost analysis of this to be a partner in that for our our organics and that waste flow. Um, the other thing is is that Kate and Nick presented at scale last Friday, I think, which was very well received from what I understood at services yesterday and then Commissioner Brennan and staff. Um, the AMC workg group kicked off. So, I'm hoping that um they'll go in a direction of wanting to make a large state and regional impact and not just do small things, but actually figure out how do we move forward and we're ready when there's opportunities. So, that concludes my update. We're moving. All right. Thank you very much. And county attorney had to leave, but he mentioned to me that there wasn't a reason to for him to stay around to talk about this. So, moving to item number 14 since we're not having a workshop. I'll make a motion to adjurnn. Have a motion. Second and a second. Any discussion on that? Do I need to make the uh just the clarification on this particular agenda that the ditch board meeting was earlier today at 8:45 um not 11:00 a.m.? Other than that, roll call, please. Commissioner WCNK. I. Commissioner Wolf. Hi. Commissioner Beer. Hi. Commissioner Brennan. Hi. Commissioner Olrich. Hi. Thank you very much. We are adjourned.