All right. It is 10:46. We're going to go ahead and get started with the budget workshop for community corrections. Before I pass it over to Director Thomas, after last week's workshop, there was a question about the process. And so I'm just going to reread the portion from August 4th's meeting when I laid out how I was hopefully going to run these meetings. And I shared that in my role of leading these budget workshops, I will do my best to allow all the commissioners time to get their questions asked and answered. If one of us has a lot of questions, after a couple of questions, I will move on to others and then come back after everyone has had a chance to participate. I will try not to cut anyone off while also trying to keep us on schedule as best I can. So I will reaffirm that those are my goals with running these workshops, and I will pass it over to Director Thomas to get us started. All right. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. My name is Terry Thomas. I'm the Community Corrections Director here for Washington County. I want to start our budget presentation by reminding the board that our mission is to improve community safety by providing opportunities for positive change. How do we do that? We protect the community. With people on probation or parole services, we make sure they hold them accountable if they're out in the community engaging in behaviors that could victimize others. We facilitate behavior change through research-based interventions. That's our cognitive skills. We're always working with people on their thinking. We assist clients in meeting expectations of the court. We create pathways for successful community re-entry once somebody goes to a confined incarceration. And then we collaborate with community and government partners. We have strong relationships with the county attorney's office, the sheriff, community services, public health, et cetera, and the courts. And lastly, we maximize use of technology to assist in community supervision. So our budget, we only have two revenue sources. The levy, which is going up about 5.8%, which is mostly wages and benefits. And then we have non-levy, which we are anticipating a slight increase for the CCA subsidy, which I will get into in a moment. As you can see, our department expenditures, client citizen-related support's up 2%. I will talk about that in a bit. That's the placement budget we're going to get into. Personnel services, you can see, went up 6%. That's wages and benefits for all of our 83.5 FTEs. Services and charges, just a little bit of money that was added in there. Material supplies as well. And then you'll see in a later slide that we took the money from capital, and we're going to be putting that into the placement budget. All right, revenues. So the Community Corrections Act subsidy, and we are anticipating an increase here. And I will caution the board a little bit on that. There's a workload study going on, and that could be subject to change. But as the formula is ran right now, we are looking to get a $200,000 increase per state fiscal year, which means that in '27 we will get $100,000 because the state's fiscal year starts in July 1st of 2027. So we'll only get about half of that for this budgetary year. As for expenditures, we're going to move $144,000. So that $100,000 we are anticipating for the CCA subsidy. And then the capital outlay, we're going to be moving into client-related citizen support, and we need to add monies there to the placement budget, which I'll get into in a moment. As you can see, our FTE count is steady at 83.5. There are no new positions in this budget. On the adult division side, over the last year, we had over 11,359 client services interactions with our clients. We have 66.5 FTEs that does that work. We have Sentence to Service, which I'll highlight in a little bit. We do a diversionary program for those people that are lower level, lower risk. We have pretrial services, which is our pretrial unit that does reports to the courts, pre-sentence investigations, conditional release. We also do probation supervision, and parole services, which in the state of Minnesota is referred to as supervised release. We have some community programming, which we have our offender recovery program and others. And then specialized caseloads, we have gender and domestic, and high risk. So the adult division highlights state funding changes, and I'll highlight Sentence to Service and then electronic monitoring. So our state funding impact community corrections is projected to increase over $200,000 per year in the new funding formula. It's a new state biennium, so they run it every year. This is on a three-year average for our client numbers. But again, I just want to remind the board that it could be subject to change following implementation of a workload study. So we will see. Sentence to Serve, I want to remind the board that last year our funding was cut, and one of the directions that you provided me is that we wanted to make sure that we reduce the work that we do for the state, given that they are not funding us any further. So I just wanted to put that out there. You still want us to do this level of state work because it's William O'Brien and Afton State Park, and a lot of your constituents really like those state parks. And so we'll make sure and continue to do that work, but that's about it for what we do with the state. And then you can see the majority of it we're doing for the county at 61%, nonprofits, schools, and others, and then we have the cities that we work for as well. All right. Just a couple of projects here. You can see a before and after at Lake St. Croix Beach cleanup. We're in cut and brush. We do a lot of that. Make it look nice for people and for the public to use. We do community service projects where we do snow removal. We also mow lawns to keep people in their homes. We do prairie restoration. And then also, as well, we'll do event setup. So, a couple of things we've done in the last year, we set up for the Law Enforcement Memorial in May. We'll do the Employee Appreciation event here in September. We set up for-- And then also, we do some cleanup for the local towns, the lumberjack days, stuff like that. As you can see here is one of our pride and joys. We love to remove buckthorn, invasive species here in the county. We also do a lot of park cleanup. That's a lot of what we do when we work for the parks. Just wanted to remind the board that last year we transitioned to a third-party vendor. We fully transitioned on January 1. So they have taken all of those administrative tasks that we had probation officers doing, and we've now repurposed that work to community supervision. We've also enhanced after-hours response to high-risk alerts. So we have an alert system that we are getting calls. Our supervisors are taking on those calls. We're probably averaging about two a week that we're dealing with. And then, as I said, we're increasing operational efficiency to reduce that administrative task. So about 80% of those alerts, the vendor's taking care of ahead of time, and only getting us those high-risk alerts where we need to be reactive. You can see our electronic monitoring number days are starting to stabilize a little bit. One of the things that we're working on now is to create a response grid so that we can at least-- We can't reduce the number of people on equipment, but we're going to try to reduce the number of days that they're on equipment. And so, one of the things we have proposed, and we're going to be talking to the bench about in December is, we have a response grid. So as people are in compliance, we're going to reduce that level of intervention. And so we hope to moderate the cost of electronic monitoring. In our juvenile division, last year we had over 585 client services. We have 11 full FTE. We have sentence of service for our kids, too. Our diversion program is run by the Youth Service Bureau in Lakes Area. Youth Service Bureau. We do our residential placement with our five-bed facility that we have with our joint powers with East Central Regional Juvenile Center in Anoka. We do probation supervision, and we also have community programming such as multi-systemic therapy for our high-risk juvenile clients. One thing I want to highlight is our juvenile out-of-home placements. This graph here shows a trend that's going down. So basically, this is the number of placement days that we've had from 2016 to 2025. And as you can see, there's a 43% reduction in placement days since 2016. We've also reduced the number of kids we're placing out of the home. We're only placing about 50 kids a year, out-of-home placements. But I will say, our top 10 kids take up about 55% of our placement budget. So as you can see, our staff have done a wonderful, really an amazing job of maintaining our placement budget over the years. It's been pretty static for multiple years. It went down just a little bit after COVID. We had to make an adjustment there, and then it's popped back up. Now, we're anticipating this to be going over budget this year due to inflation. The cost of care is rising. It's almost $400 a day in most out-of-home placements. And so, I just want to let the board know that we're doing great practice here. It's just the cost of care is continuing to rise. So as we're not increasing placements, we're not increasing placement days, it's the cost of care is continuing to rise. So as you can see, there's lower placement utilization. There are fewer juveniles requiring placement, which is a good thing. But the higher placement cost has offset the saving from lower use, and so we're going to be adding some of that money into the placement area of our budget. Our budget highlights, as you'll see in your budget books, I didn't make any slides for these because our client volumes are pretty steady. We're experiencing steady numbers both on the adult and juvenile side. You can see that our out-of-home placements are slightly-- The cost is increasing, but the days and number of days are down, and the number of placements. And then the other thing we're highlighting here is that the increased ops, our electronic monitoring, moving that to a third-party vendor has been great for us to enhance public safety so our probation officers can be out there doing the behavior change work that's needed. And with that, I want to thank the staff that helped me put this budget presentation together. So I want to thank Ren Clinton, Sharon Currier, Grant Butler, Lacey Gordon, Dan Pepper, Linnea Harms. I also want to thank the county board for the support and resources, and I also want to thank county administration for supporting this budget as well. And I stand for questions. Thank you, Director Thomas. Looks like Commissioner Bigham will start us off. Thank you, Director Thomas. Appreciate your presentation. Well, I do have questions, but I don't expect the answers because I think possibly, I'm just not retaining what the answer was. But in the performance measurement, you only provide juvenile restitution amounts. Do you track adult restitution amounts, or do you rely on the courts to produce that? Madam Chair, Commissioner, yes, we do track adult restitution as well. That's a metric that we track every month. And we do that. It just isn't a target- Yeah ... performance measure in our budget. But yes, we do. Okay. And same with the recidivism rate of adults, because you just have the juvenile Right? Yes. Okay. And then just my comment. It's just frustrating partnership with the state. It's like one step forward, two steps back, Director Thomas, with them. And that frustration boils over. They give us over a million dollars of CCA money, when we really should fix that, have it permanent and ongoing to receive more. But we got to be appreciative of what they've given us, Commissioner Cox, because it did help our budget a little bit, so can't be that ungrateful, but it doesn't mean we don't stop the fight. This, and I'm going to continue to say this as long as I have my name attached to an election certificate, and that is this. You want to make communities safe, you do two things. You fully fund the Minnesota BCA, hard stop. They solve crimes, they help you track it. Then you also have to fully fund community supervision funding, because you get the violators off the street, and you help people that are violating probation, their conditions, and you help restore people. So, simply put. And so to not have that full funding is frustrating, and it shows because of staffing levels and the mandates that come with this area, Director Thomas. So, it's frustrating to me, but we're going to continue to fight. And then the second one is a little bit of a combination, so I'm going to save Director Castillo's, my TED Talk on this topic, and I'll give it to you, Director Thomas. The age of delinquency is a serious concern and a serious issue. And it is because now you have 11, 12 and 13-year-olds that are potentially violent, like the incident that happened two weeks ago up in St. Cloud where an 11-year-old allegedly stabbed an 18-year-old random, didn't know. So that individual is going to get processed through child welfare instead of services, instead of juvenile detention, juvenile delinquency process. And we want those young kids to get the services they need. But we have no secure beds, and either path you take, either path you take, there's going to be a certain demographic that will need to have secure beds to receive the services they so vitally need. And so just raising the age of delinquency doesn't make that go away. It actually exasperates the problem, and this change should have happened when we had the support services in place and facilities in place to do it. So now we're playing catch up and next legislative session, we're going to have to continue to work on this. But it's a concern. It's a concern for families, it's a concern about families, about making sure the kids get the services they need. And then do we have the ability to provide those services? So, like I said, I won't repeat this during Director Castillo's presentation, but Director Thomas has been a very good resource and good listener for frustrations about it. And then I just want to highlight that Commissioner Cox is on a statewide task force, and maybe she'll talk about that, so I don't want to steal her thunder on that, about the community supervision funding, and really appreciate her dedication and leadership on that issue. But thank you, Director Thomas. I appreciate the presentation and efforts you're putting forward to keep our community safe and just appreciate you and your team. Yeah. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Director Thomas, thanks for the presentation. I have one question that's centered around the sentence, the service program that's very popular. I was looking for a figure, refresh my memory of what the state cut was for '27. Madam Chair, Commissioner- I don't know ... it was roughly $100,000. I think it was 101. Okay. 101. And then refresh my memory, what's the entire cost of the sentence service program? I think it was in one of your slides. Yeah. That's a great question, Commissioner. It's okay. I would have to take a look. I'd have to get that information to you. I don't know exactly the total cost. I'm sorry to catch you off guard. I just was wondering that it was a significant cut. Yeah. And that was an area that, as of now, the county board wants to continue to support. Sentence to service, I would imagine is, if you want to elaborate, but I see it as a important tool to rehabilitate someone. Usually, it's someone that's done nonviolent type crimes, but yet it gets them out as a good way to rehabilitate them to where they can get back into society. If you want to comment any further. Madam Chair, Commissioner, I agree with you. It's a great alternative to jail, and this is an option for people to give back to the community, as an alternative to being in a jail cell, and I think that's just a great program. It gives back to the community, it provides Work to municipalities, nonprofits in the county. And I do think it also builds skills with people. We also work with individuals who have certain skill sets. For example, if they're in the painting trade, we make sure that they're on projects that they're doing painting, and then they can help educate others do that and build skills there as well. So I think there's all sorts of added benefits to a program like STS. Thank you. Commissioner Mira. Thank you. Terry, I'm glad that you highlighted Sentencing to Serve. That, I think, has been a really important program, and it benefits every city in Washington County. So there's an investment being made in all of our cities to provide services there and countywide services. Obviously, we're seeing in your budget personnel expenses increasing, and I won't apologize for that. I think we've got good employees throughout the county workforce. Community Corrections is no exception. It's a tough job. But I notice in your budget, you're balancing that added cost with manageable reductions, at least as I see it, and then some additional funding from the state, which we're fortunate to have Commissioner Bigham on this board with her knowledge of state operations and funding and strong opinions. I think it serves us very well. I noticed in your summary that 88% of adult felony probation clients did not have an additional felony-level conviction within three years of the discharge from Community Corrections. That's a statistic in my mind that is really good because your goal is to provide opportunities for positive change, and that statistic, in my mind, identifies that positive change. So very measurable results that I think are very positive, and certainly your budget seems extremely reasonable to me, and I'm going to continue to support the work of Community Corrections. Madam Chair, Commissioner, just if I could comment, I am super proud of the work that our probation officers and our staff do. Behavior change is not easy work, and that just goes to show you through those stats that we're making an impact in the community and with our clients, and I'm very, very proud of the work they do. All right. I'll just wrap us up then and say thank you. I made a couple notes, too, the electronic monitoring improvements. Thank you for sharing that that has been a success and that your team is really glad that that's happened. And then I know there was an accounting trade, too, that happened, and you're not talking about that. So I think in the course of maybe even just the last year since you stood before us with the last draft budget, you've made some considerable changes and changes that have really worked for you and your team, and so I appreciate that, as well as that recidivism statistic is incredible. So happy to support you and your team, happy to serve on the working group for the state. I've learned a lot more about this realm. The formula makes a lot more sense than it ever used to, and we are holding strong on that one. So, thank you for your time. Thank you for a well-thought-through budget, and we will now welcome Director Castillo. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. When you're ready. Good morning, Madam Vice Chair and Commissioners. As stated, I'm Jen Castillo. I'm the Director of Community Services, and I'm just going to warn you right now, mine's not going to be as short as Director Thomas's. So you might want to get comfortable. Every year I begin this presentation by talking about our mission in community services. That mission remains the same, to provide services, to ensure basic needs are met, and to protect those who may not be able to protect themselves. But with the fiscal pressures and the scrutiny over human services this year, I decided to do something different. I wanted you to hear directly from the people doing this work every day. Their stories bring our mission to life, and they remind us that behind every budget decision, there is a person whose life will be impacted. I had a case where it was a two-parent household, two children. Parents were struggling pretty significantly with mental health. We worked really hard to keep the kids in the home. Throughout the case, I was consulting with a ton of different other professionals. It unfortunately ended in a removal of the kids. On Christmas Eve, unfortunately, a coworker and I went out, and dad had attempted suicide while we were there. So the kids ended up being placed with maternal grandparents. I sat on the curb of a parking lot and did a housing application with a family with a one-year-old living in their van in a parking lot in Forest Lake. So housing is really challenging, and the timing is not aligned or right-sized to the crisis that each individual's homelessness is. I feel like the best days for us are when somebody gets the keys to an apartment and they're getting to move in, and often, we're able to be there for them on that day, and sometimes they don't even have anything to bring with them into the apartment, but it always just feels really good, especially if people have been out for a really- Exciting to see. He left me a voicemail at 7:00 a.m., which I immediately was, this is not normal for this client. He works evenings. I only ever spoke with him in the afternoons. And he called to tell me that he came home from work that morning, and his daughter had committed suicide. This was six years ago, probably. Well, eight years ago probably. And he told me, he goes, "I don't know who else to call." He called the necessary authorities, but I was his second phone call, because that's the impact that we have for our clients. We can go from that phone call to the next phone call congratulating a client because they brought home their newborn that day. So we can go from difficult calls to happy calls to sad calls to mad calls, all in a matter of a couple hours. And I can remember one case that was over multiple months. The person lost their medical assistance. Their disability was not certified anymore, and they were not notified. We were able to get this person's medical assistance reinstated. Now, during that time period, this individual was living in their residential facility for free. The provider was providing service without being reimbursed, knowing that they would in the future, and trusting the system, and we did come through, and were able to get everyone reimbursed. Everyone was happy, stayed in the community, stayed independent. So there had been a lot of information in the news in October about the federal government shutdown. Our staff were called into an emergency meeting and informed that at the end of that day, October 14th, that would be the last time we could approve any SNAP food benefits for residents. People were setting aside their family obligations for the evening, so they could keep working until the MAXIS system shut down at 10:00 p.m. It just added a whole level of urgency to the work we do, and it was very much focused on getting any food benefit we could get issued to Washington County residents. I had a client, after a case of mine closed, she had reached out to me and asked if I would write her a letter of recommendation because she was applying for a scholarship to be a social worker as well. So again, I think that really was just impactful to see the change that I made for her. We had some struggles for a while working together, but she was able to successfully reunify with her kids. She still reaches out to me regularly for questions or resources or just to give me life updates. And she let me know if it wasn't for me, that she wouldn't still be here today. Thank you for allowing me to bring my staff into the presentation. What that video gives you a glimpse of the kind of work we do. But what it doesn't is show the volume we manage every day and the number of people who rely on CSD. In 2025 alone, we collected nearly 21 million in child support and distributed 20 million in SNAP benefits, handled more than 55,000 navigator calls, and supported more than 32,000 walk-in visits. We managed more than 22,000 medical assistance cases, responded to 11,000 coordinated response contacts, and made over 10,000 contacts with veterans. We also completed thousands of housing, MnCHOICES, stabilization, and family assessments. And the demand for our services just keeps increasing. To me, what makes those numbers even more impressive is that we delivered this level of support despite unprecedented pressure and constant disruption across human services. I've spoken to the board about many of these challenges throughout the year, but it's worth stepping back and reflecting on just how much has happened in human services over the last year. At the federal level, we experienced the longest government shutdown in history, which disrupted critical benefits like SNAP. H.R.1 was passed and set into motion sweeping reforms that we quickly had to interpret and start to prepare for. We were bombarded with threats of federal funding cuts and withholdings, which we typically heard about through social media with the general public, just adding to the angst. Washington County was directly targeted by the feds, including federal directives to participate in aggressive SNAP pilot, federal childcare audits, and multiple probes into our rental assistance programs, all requiring significant staff time and rapid response. Also, all resulting in no significant findings. At the state level, counties are faced with cost shifts and new responsibility as the state tries to reconcile a budget deficit. Program integrity efforts directly affected service capacity. As the state provider revalidation process across 14 high-risk services resulted in program terminations and service suspensions. Staff had to quickly move to protect continuity of care and prevent vulnerable clients from losing their critical supports. And now there is a push to study and perhaps overhaul Minnesota's human service delivery system and the relationship between the county and the state. Locally, pressures mounted, too. During Operation Metro Surge, our staff adapted quickly to help people who were afraid to leave their home and needed basic needs. Families are facing rising costs that make it even harder to make ends meet, and providers are struggling with the higher costs too, and workforce shortages. And here in our organization, long labor negotiations and increased public scrutiny added another layer of disruption and pressure to our workforce. CSD staff have always shown up for the community, but in the midst of this year's chaos, they showed up in ways I never could have imagined. I'm incredibly proud of them and deeply grateful for everything they've given. I also want to take a moment to recognize David Brummel of the public health team. Public health has consistently been some of our strongest partners, whether it was getting additional food to food shelves during the shutdown or lending support to help us respond to the SNAP Pilot. I know Dave may just do this because he's always dreamed of running CSD and sees this as his way in. But regardless of his motives, I've come to count on Dave almost like a brother, albeit a much older one. I'm generally grateful for the staff in community service and public health for their willingness and commitment to go above and beyond this year. We have faced all of these pressures also while managing everyday challenges in human services. The needs of the people we serve continue to be more complex, particularly where mental health and public safety intersect. Jail mental health visits increased 77%, and coordinated response referrals increased 64%. That complexity makes workforce stability critical. We've invested heavily in supporting staff, particularly new workers, and we're seeing results. Child protection turnover dropped from 30% in 2023 to 5% in 2025. And in 2026, CSD currently sits at a 4% turnover overall. At the same time, though, demand continues to grow. MnCHOICES referrals increased 41%, putting additional pressure on our capacity to respond timely and maintain quality. And we're doing all this while we're relying on aging technology. The state recently invested $90 million in modernization, but progress has been slow, and we continue to rely on manual workarounds with really little real relief in sight. All of these challenges I spoke about directly shape the numbers you're about to see. In many ways, our budget looks a lot like last year. Our major cost drivers are largely the same, and the overall makeup of our budget hasn't changed. But underneath that familiar picture, there are some significant trends and changes that are important to take note of. Our overall budget has increased to $73.3 million, up 7% from the 2026 budget. This includes a 10% increase, or $2.7 million, in levy, with the majority of that increase driven by personnel costs. About 58% of our budget is now funded through non-levy revenue from about 100 different federal and state funding allocations, grants, and reimbursements. What this means is we remain highly dependent on decisions made at other levels of government. We continue to see non-levy revenue remain flat or begin to decline, while our responsibilities and service demands only increase. Here is a quick look at how CSD is organized across the multiple divisions and the staffing and budget allocation for each. For the first time, aging and disability staffing has surpassed other divisions. I think this is an early reflection of what we've all been anticipating. As our population ages, the demand for services in this area continue to grow. Managing all of these programs and resources and challenges is a huge undertaking, and I don't want to miss the opportunity to recognize the managers who are here today. It takes a strong, highly effective team to keep all of this moving. And I have tremendous respect for their professionalism, their expertise, and their commitment. They are not only outstanding leaders, but just great people to work with every day. When looking at our revenue, as mentioned, our levy increased by 10% this year, continuing the longer-term trend of levy making up a larger share of our overall budget. Correspondingly, our other major non-levy resources are expected to stay flat or decline. State funding will remain flat at 26%. While federal funding will increase from $8.7 million in 2025 to $20.3 million in 2027, it will not keep pace with our overall budget growth. As a result, federal funding will decrease as a share of our budget from 30% to 28%, creating a growing gap that the county cannot continue to absorb. In 2027, we also anticipate a large decrease in miscellaneous revenue, largely due to changes in policies in recovery and restitution that limit the amount we can recover. The other funding sources noted here represent transfers from other counties, like public health for our community engagement team and from public works county transportation sales tax. Taken together, these shifts create growing pressure on the levy. The shift towards greater levy reliance is relatively modest, about one to two percentage points each year, but it's a long-term trend that has been building for years and is reaching its breaking point. As we continue to face these funding reductions and cost shifts, we are doing everything we can to generate new revenue and maximize the funding we already have. Since 2025, we have secured additional competitive grants, brought in new rental assistance funding, and expanded state and federal reimbursement opportunities like drawing down Family First Prevention. We also strengthened our processes around revenue recapture in our Minnesota Choices area, making sure we are billing appropriately, assigning the revenue-generating work to the right staff. We've been particularly focused on maximizing current funding. For example, we are bringing more than 4.5 million in grants to support our housing programs, allowing our housing programs to now operate approximately 85% grant-funded and reducing reliance on levy dollars. By leveraging federal matches, we've also been able to carry forward more than 300,000 in Medicaid unwinding funds into 2027, extending those dollars and supports for another year. These efforts do not eliminate the funding pressure we're facing, but we are working hard to maximize every available dollar and reduce the impact on levy. And of course, revenue is only one side of the story. Our expenses are a major part of the pressure, and importantly, many of those costs are driven by outside factors outside of our control. Personnel is by far our largest expense, increasing by about 4 million, and now accounting for 74% of the overall budget, compared to 71% in 2025. You may notice that client-related expenses appear to be declining. This does not mean demand has declined. We have deliberately held or reduced spending in these areas where we have some discretion to help manage the budget. But our options are limited. As you heard during the mandates workshop, much of what we fund is mandated or core services. That leaves relatively few areas where we can make meaningful reductions. And many of those discretionary areas are prevention or intervention services, investments that can actually help prevent more expensive interventions later on. Meanwhile, the cost of delivering services continues to rise, including technology, legal services, and materials. So while we are looking at every opportunity to manage costs, there simply aren't any easy reductions left. The areas where we have the most flexibility are often the areas that can have the greatest impact on people or in some cases, create higher costs for us down the road. This next slide shows how the pressure has built over time. The top line shows the growth in our personnel expenses, our biggest expense, while the bottom line shows our non-levy revenues. Even without focusing on the specific figures, you can see the trend that our largest expense is growing at a rate that is not keeping pace with our state and federal funding. Yet the mandates and responsibilities we are being given only keep increasing. We are left with only difficult decisions about how to address that gap. For 2027, we identified 343,000 in client spending reductions in our housing, nursing facility care, detox, and mental health supports, as well as our trusted messengers. We've also continued to control our internal costs by reducing administrative expenses, limiting conferences and training, and reducing postage and equipment. But those reductions do not eliminate the risk in our budget. We have approximately 990,000 in services that are likely underfunded, with the largest risk being in children's out-of-home placement and adult treatment and placement. Director Thomas set the stage for me this well as we have not seen these placements increase. It is a lot about the cost of these services. Our out-of-home placements are particularly difficult to budget for because they are highly variable and largely outside of our control. We have no way of predicting how many children will need placement or the level of care they will require in any given year. We currently have 3.2 million budgeted for 2027. However, our 2026 expenses are already projected to exceed 3.5 million. Adult treatment and placement carries the same budget risk. This category exceeded budget by approximately 460,000 already last year. However, we did not have any funding available to increase this budget. We currently have one person awaiting placement in a state hospital, something we have absolutely zero control over, who is costing the county approximately $61,000 per month. So just one unexpected placement can have a significant impact on the budget. The remaining 110,000 represents planned innovation and service delivery investments that we have deferred, including our AI work and client relationship management tools. These investments could have improved efficiency, but because they are not mandated, they are among the investments we needed to postpone in a constrained budget. We have found efficiencies wherever we can, but our budget already carries risk. Further expense reductions would have very significant consequences, either for staffing capacity or for the people we support. This graphic shows how our staffing has grown as a result of those increased requirements and service demands over time. With a department as large as community service, FT counts fluctuate day to day as we add, convert. So these numbers might not perfectly match the documents you have in front of you. But just as we've worked to maximize revenue and reduce expenses, we've also been very intentional about how we manage our staff. In early years, we relied more on temporary and special projects positions when we had one-time funding like ARPA available. This has allowed us to meet temporary needs without carrying positions forward without sustainable funding. As the funding or work ended, these positions were eliminated or converted to regular positions if we secured ongoing funding. We have since moved away from relying heavily on special project positions. We have found that they create additional administrative burden and an unnecessary churn. Most recently, we've relied more on over complements or over-hiring, which gives new staff time to train and be proficient while creating a pipeline to fill vacancies more quickly to avoid gaps in service and revenue generation. We strategically maximize our staffing complement to ensure we maintain the right capacity, remain responsive to demand, and avoid over-utilizing our available funding. Although this chart is kind of hard to read, I think it gives a really good perspective of the breadth of community services. And not only have we grown in staff, but we've evolved in how we deliver our services. We've built specialized team to respond to the increasing complex needs. Some of these new specialized teams you likely have heard before and are familiar with, like the co-response and the MnCHOICES teams. The MnCHOICES float team we added last year as part of the budget, and we're already seeing results. They've helped us reduce our wait list down to around 600, which is the lowest it has been in nearly two years. Of course, this is not a level that we still want to have this wait list, but at least we are starting to move in the right direction, and this is pretty incredible, especially considering the increase in referrals we are also experiencing. We have also added less visible teams that address important barriers, including our transportation supports and our navigators, which help people navigate complex systems. One of our most significant recent expansions is something I know you all have heard about, is our emergency housing service building, which added important capacity to address a growing community need. The EHSB is a 30-bed facility providing shelter and wraparound services. You heard more about this program last week when it received the NACo award, so I'm not going to repeat those details. But I want to highlight how it is funded and the early results. Using American Rescue Plan funds and housing grants in partnership with the CDA, we were able to build and open the EHSB with no ongoing levy support. The program opened at the end of 2025 and has already served more than 103 people and is currently operating at capacity. We've also used these grants to strengthen our broader housing response, including family overflow shelter when community partners have reached capacity and providing extreme weather sheltering during periods of severe cold or heat. This is a great example of the balance we try to achieve leveraging funds to make targeted investments where the need is the greatest. This is like the seventh and each stretch. You're almost there. So I'm going to tell you. What we've reviewed so far are the challenges we've come to expect in our budget. What I'd like to discuss next are the threats that go well beyond business as usual. Unprecedented policy and funding changes that could significantly reshape both our budget and the services we provide. Administration already highlighted the major cost shifts to counties, SNAP being one of the largest. Beginning October 1st, 2026, federal reimbursement for SNAP administration dropped from 50% to 25%, shifting significantly more of the cost to state and counties while we continue administering the same level of service. Beginning in October 2027, Minnesota may also become responsible for a share of the SNAP benefits based on payment error rates. Minnesota's current error rate is 8.6%, which would put the state at a 10% cost share. Even though many of the external factors that drive error rates are out of our control, we would still be penalized. Child welfare is facing increased responsibility and reduced funding. The Minnesota African American Family Preservation Act takes effect January 1st, 2027, bringing new requirements for training, documentation, and case reviews. We have been allocated one-time funding for implementation in 2027, but there are no guarantees of any ongoing resource support. We are seeing child protection state funding decrease, even though our legal responsibilities to investigate abuse and protect children remain unchanged. Behavioral health crisis response funding is also being reduced in 2027, even as demand continues to grow. One of the largest and most uncertain cost shifts is the long-term services and supports. Beginning January 1st, 2027, counties are expected to assume a new cost share of waivered services. Current estimates are approximately 800,000 in 2027 and 1.3 million in 2028. We are already beginning to see other changes take effect, too. And while each of these may seem manageable on their own, together, they compound the pressure on the budget and the services with the impact continuing to build year after year. In 2026, the state took over control of the behavioral health eligibility, yet counties continue to carry the burden of the fiscal responsibility. And policy changes went into effect for medical assistance eligibility for non-citizens and to increase the age of delinquency from 10 to 13, both of which create additional workload for staff. Looking ahead to 2027, adults without children will move to six-month medical assistance renewals instead of annual ones, creating approximately 7,500 additional renewals per year. As MA work requirements are added and add even more work around eligibility determination and tracking. We anticipate changes to MnCHOICE reimbursement, moving to a 15-minute cost-based model that will require more detailed tracking and billing and may not fully cover the full cost of the work. We continue to assess the impact of additional requirements, including case review requirements under the act and increased oversight from the new Office of Inspector General. Looking even further ahead, reduced Medicaid coverage could increase uncompensated care. While one of the most concerning changes is still to come, the Medicaid error rate penalties, which will require states and counties to pay a portion of Medicaid benefits. This would be a significant cost in the millions. And we are taking all this in as we continue to monitor pending legal challenges involving Medicaid funding, social service block grant funding, and SNAP data sharing penalties. These all could also have significant impacts on our budget. So I'm assuming you're overwhelmed. I am, too. My hope your takeaway is not that I think you need to understand or know all of these, but really understand the uncertainty that lies ahead and the impacts that could come will be significant. We are planning for what we can, closely monitoring what we can't, and preparing to respond as the impacts become clearer. Which likely includes the possibility of requesting additional resources throughout the year. With that context, I'd like to turn to what we are actually requesting for 2027. The only new ongoing position request in this budget is the family resource social worker. This converts an existing special project position into a permanent role with no additional levy requested at this time. It will be supported through existing levy and new reimbursement opportunities through Family First Prevention funds and the Integrated Mental Health Collaborative. We did add positions mid-year to meet operation and program needs, including MnCHOICES, Community First Support Services, behavioral health, and housing supports. The position deletions don't represent an overall reduction in staffing capacity. Many were temporary positions tied to short-term funding or needs, including Medicaid unwinding and covering leaves. We have converted several special project positions to permanent positions as ongoing funding became available, including navigators, our hiring and training supervisor, and our embedded 911 dispatch social worker. So overall, there is very little FTE change in the budget. But given the uncertainty around future policies, we will continue to monitor the impact and adjust staffing as needs become clear. Beyond staffing, we do have several funding requests needed to maintain our mandated and core services. These numbers may look different than previous slides because the focus is different. The prior slides highlighted the overall potential costs, while this slide focused specifically on what is needed for 2027 based on previously approved levy and one-time state funding. For 2027, the SNAP administrative request builds on the 300,000 already included in the 2026 budget, so this request recovers the remainder needed for the 2027 total cost. The SNAP penalty request reflects our obligation for only the fourth quarter of 2027 when the penalty becomes effective and takes into account one-time state money that was approved in 2026. We are requesting 180,000 in partial funding to help offset the 299,000 we lost in DHS grant funding in order to maintain our 24/7 crisis response services and critical intervention training. For child protection, we are requesting a one-for-one replacement of funding to offset the loss of state aid and maintain these critical services. As I stated, some of the only areas where we can reduce spending are our non-mandated services, but those reductions can directly affect people currently relying on us. Essential employment and community supports is a non-mandated service that provides job coaching, day supports, and transportation for about 50 individuals who do not qualify for waiver services. In the 2027 budget, we were only able to fund the bare minimum. We are requesting 250 to restore to the current funding level with a portion of the levy impact offset by using CTST transportation tax funds for the transportation component. But what I don't want you to lose sight of is what's not on this slide, which is probably the most critical request. As I said, several major legislative changes will continue into 2028, and we will also see one-time funding end. Together, these changes are projected to add approximately 2.5 million in additional costs in 2028. In partnership with administration, we recommend starting to prepare now rather than trying to absorb the full impact in a single year. Planning ahead for these unknown emerging costs is also what we see other counties doing. So to help address these cost shifts and remaining uncertainties, the overall county budget recommendation includes an additional one million in levy. This funding is reflected in the overall county operating budget and not currently included in the CSD budget. In closing, I wanted to end on a very positive note. Despite everything happening around us in CSD, we remain committed to the communities we serve. These are just a few examples of how we've showed up and haven't stopped looking for ways to improve how we serve people even though we are managing significant fiscal and operation pressures. Whether it's bringing services closer to families, reducing gap in access, strengthening partnerships, or responding to our community when they need us, CSD staff continue to adapt and find ways to meet emerging needs. And much of this work has been done by leveraging our current resources and the commitment of our staff rather than adding any new resources. With that, we have made it to the end. I want to end with my sincere appreciation and thanks to the administration and the board for their support and their flexibility during these unprecedented times. And with that, I am happy to stand for any questions. Well, thank you for your presentation, Director Castillo. Commissioner Bigham. Thank you. Appreciate that. You always have a lengthy presentation because you have most of the budget. We do have a chair over here that's open if you needed to take a seat. But I do think that it's important to highlight just the incredible amount of mandates that come through your department and how you navigate the, I'm going to just say chaos, if you will, of an uncertainty, and it's coming at you from the state or the feds. So to you and your staff, just thank you for having to deal with that. And I hope that you know and your staff know that we have your back, and to fight with everything we have to make sure that these cuts are either stopped or mitigated. And we'll continue to be a powerful and loud voice for you. And we need you, like you did in your presentation, to keep telling those stories. Because this work is deeply personal, and everybody that works in your department deserves the grace and respect, and that's everybody, whether you're Director Castillo or whether you're an emergency support intake person, right? We are all in this together. And we have strength in numbers to be able to provide these amazing services for our residents. A couple things. One thing that keeps popping into my head is the ACT and SNAP, those types of things that really have that uncertainty that we have to budget for. And I agree with that strategy. We need to start preparing, right? And so my question, more for transparency, is what happens if in September when the Senate goes back, there's an agreement to pay for some of the SNAP stuff to reduce our cut? Because that's a realistic certainty if that farm bill gets-- That is the hang-up. And so if that farm bill gets passed, what happens to the money that we've set aside? I think as a taxpayer, people may want to know that, whether that's Administrator Corbid or you. It's not just your department that we have some of these for, and it is the reason we suggested as a board before the budget process started to do the core and mandated programming to learn the issues that are really going to be impacted by this. But I don't know, just for the public, it might be good transparency to have them know what would happen if some of these gaps or unfunded mandates or cuts- I believe Administrator Corbid would like to answer this one. Madam Chair and commissioners, I'm not sure I would like to, but here's a couple thoughts. One, if the federal government or the state government does make some changes that lessen the cost shifts to the county, we certainly would not spend that money on something else unless we got board approval. So it wouldn't be spent on just absorbed into the budget and other things. It would just be savings in the '27 budget. But saying that, I'd say that the likelihood that they would make changes to our benefit in all these different areas that Director Castillo mentioned is very unlikely. And so what may happen is if we only get half of what the bad news is or the bad changes are, we may have more of that issue handled for '28 than we expect. Right now, we only have a small portion of the worst-case scenario for '28 starting to be built into the '27 budget. So if some good things happen, we'd have a little bit more of a start on '28 than we currently do. If everything goes great, then we certainly wouldn't spend that money, and it would probably have a significant impact on what your 2028 levy would need to be. I appreciate that context. A couple other things. It's pretty shocking, and I know the board's well aware of this, but the one person awaiting placement in the state hospital at $61,000 a month. That's because the state requires us to pay for it. Mm-hmm. And there's been legislation pending and discussed about trying to get us some relief on that, but this isn't a question. I'm just letting the public know that it's a problem. And as Director Castillo pointed out, it's one person now, but at any point, it might be two to three, and think of how that cost would add up very quickly and unanticipated, unexpected. So these are the types of things that our directors, our administration, our government relations teams, and this board deal with with every legislative session. And with this 2027 legislative session being a budget year, this will be a front-and-center discussion again on that. The other thing I just want to bring up, because you have so many departments within your department, I just want to highlight another area that has had significant downsizing by staffing on the federal level, and that's the Department of Veterans Affairs. Your department houses the veteran service officers who are absolutely amazing and incredible. And Ryan Carefoot, director, is here. Manager Carefoot is here and just representing his team. Certainly appreciate that, but the uncertainty of the federal funding for veteran services and the state uncertainty, too, on how long that will last, plus the added pressure of the number of veterans that are needing these services all have to be within our mind and making sure we're planning for it. In fact, yesterday, I was at the salon. You look great. It takes a lot more time and money to look young. I'm not that young anymore. But a person there came over to me to talk about her son is getting discharged and wanted to know about the services, and proudly was able to give her Ryan Carefoot's email to help the transition back and the services that that young man is afforded. And so this is day in and day out that we work on these issues, and they're, again, deeply personal. And just very much appreciate how you, Director Castillo, have handled everything with the shutdowns, the delays, the Operation Metro Surge, all of these issues. You and your team have just displayed such leadership and compassion for our communities, and just with so much gratitude, thank you. Commissioner Miron. Commissioner Bigham said that very, very well. You've been under a lot of uncertainty, a lot of pressure, a lot of significant changes that you've had to pivot during the past year, and I don't see the coming year being any different. I really think you've laid out that. I think one of the real assets you have are the collaboration you talked about earlier with other departments and joining hands and working together to provide these services, thinking through these issues. These cost shifts and impacts on levies were the bulk of the discussion that we had at our Minnesota Inter-County Association meeting that Commissioner Karwoski and I attended last week. Again, the bulk of the discussion about what's going on is the impact here and the uncertainty. Commissioner Bigham talked about what if, and we hope that there is some relief provided here. But I think our earlier discussion about facility needs and that type of thing comes into play here, because we have to be very cautious and responsible on that side so that we can potentially address these uncertainties that come before us. But these cost shifts to counties are significant. You provided some budget highlights on revenues and expenditures in your budget document, and boy, I'll tell you, there's a lot of negative numbers there that we have to account for. And it's very, very difficult. But I'll end on a positive note, too, in just the investment that your department has made in the Crisis Response Unit. Again, the collaboration that's going on with a different department, but important collaboration that's providing positive results and additional services that certainly are necessary. The expansion of some of the mental health services that have been going on within your department. I just think the focus has been in the right place. And as I pointed out, you're pivoting in a very positive way. But as we look at the 10% levy increase that we're talking about, and the largest area of our budget, it really explains where we're at from a levy standpoint with the county, and how difficult that is to manage with the shifts that have occurred. And I think it's good that this workshop is being televised, because the public needs to know and understand that, and I hope there are people that are listening. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Thank you, Director Castillo, for the presentation. I couldn't agree more with the comments made by Commissioner Miron and Commissioner Bigham. And I do think the public, it's good to see the county board seeing your presentations. These presentations are important, so it's important that the board hear them in person. I really like the video you did of your employees. It really does put a personal touch to it. And obviously, the benefits you provide our citizens in need is just critical. And as Commissioner Miron pointed out, when you think of the 10% increase in levy that you're asking for, and at least what's been publicly announced, we're at like 7.9 for our total budget. That was publicly announced. And your department being really the most significant budget area, it really puts a lot of pressure on the other departments to hold the line, and I think they are. Yours has so much publicity around it. All you got to do is watch your different information news about federal and state cuts. It's been really basically a cruel year, if not beyond. And I do think if the cuts get restored, whether it's this coming year or a future year, we owe it to return those cuts in these specific areas to the taxpayers. That's my opinion. I wanted to refer to one slide in particular that's particularly cruel here. Slide 16. I don't have the page numbers. I think that's the one. Up in that upper right corner, the 2027 cost shifts for SNAP. It's rounded out at a million dollars. And then these penalties, I believe the penalties are federally driven, basically almost can be like digit errors. I mean, like letter errors. If you could elaborate, the penalties you're being inflicted on, they're really inappropriate, unfair, but if you could mention those again. Sure. Vice Chair, Commissioner Karwoski. The penalties are really complicated. They're not straightforward at all. Like you said, there are federal requirements on timeliness and eligibility, and everything's set by the federal. Then the state operates the IT system that we must do the work in. Oftentimes, the IT system does not have the capabilities to incorporate these policies, and so workers must do manual workarounds. So that is some portion of it. But it also takes into account client errors. And when clients either erroneously estimate or give us different information, or even on purpose that they give us different information, we can be dinged with the same error. It carries the same weight. And even to complicate things further, the state actually assesses this, and they do it through a random sampling, so at very different intervals. So we could be assessed on as much as seven cases in a quarter, out of thousands. So it is also just luck of the draw, too, as to what cases get selected. And just to compound it one more time, is it's not actually the number of cases we do wrong. It is actually the amount of money that is distributed in error. So we could have one case that has a very large amount, and that would also impact our error rates. So as you can see, that what we have control of at the county level is very limited. I will say that right now we just got an error report for Washington County, and we sit at 1.9%. So we are well under, but I really hesitate to toot our own horn about that for all the reasons I just told you, because there are many factors that could change that overnight that are outside of our control. Thank you. Well, anyhow, this top row, the SNAP row in the upper right corner for 2027, about a million-dollar shortfall, and then the penalty is almost half a million dollars. And then those cost shifts continue into '28, and it's just very cruel, and that's just one of many challenges you've been faced. And as mentioned, if these cuts ever do get restored, I think we have to, even though there might be shortfalls in other areas, I think we have to deal with those. If we get money returned in the area of your social service for SNAP, I think we've got to return that money because it would have a significant impact on the levy that each homeowner is paying. Anyhow, appreciate the work you're doing and the work your staff is doing, and it's critical work. And as an example with SNAP, one, they're mandated programs, and I think they're rightfully so mandated. We can't let people go hungry. I think protecting public health is a high priority of an elected official, and so I'm supportive of us picking up these cost shifts. But I just want to point out slide 16 is really one of the more- Mm-hmm ... difficult slides in your presentation. Thank you. Right. Director Castillo, I'll keep it as quick as I can. I've just got a couple things to say. Thank you for bringing forward a very responsible budget. I'm sure it was not fun to go through and to make things less money than last year. But I really feel that you've balanced a lot of things that are still changing. Mm-hmm. And so I just appreciate you and for doing that. I also want to highlight, first of all, thanks for not making me talk right after that video. Cindy and Wendy got me teared up. This work is really personal, and I think I want to highlight this decrease in the turnover. So a double-digit decrease in turnover. I think you said 30% to 4%. Mm-hmm. I just want to say that's the importance of this work, but it's also your leadership at the top of this department that is taking care of the employees that are doing this important work. So I don't want that to go unnoticed. You probably have a few extra gray hairs in this process. Everything is changing. You're juggling, and they're throwing more balls at you every day, it feels like. And so, I just want to appreciate you and the work that you're doing here. I do want to also lift up this comment you made that the levy reliance at the Community Services Department is reaching a breaking point. And I am hopeful that as the legislative session picks up again, that we can support you at the state level and the federal level in the ways that you need it. So I don't want you to hesitate to ask for support. I think a lot of us are already kind of saying that this is important and we need to do this, but please continue to ask. And then I'm glad that you brought up the Medicaid error rate- Mm-hmm ... penalty. We've been talking a lot locally about this SNAP rate. And when I was at NACo just a month ago, I guess, the primary focus of the health committee, so the full day that we sat there together was talking about this Medicaid error rate. This is the lurking thing that could crush a lot of communities and a lot of people when they lose their coverage and all of those different pieces. So thank you for bringing some light to that, and know that I'm following along through the health committee, and if there's other things that the board needs to know about that, again, just make sure to let us know. So thank you for this. Thank you for the work. Yes, Administrator Corban. Madam Chair and Commissioners, I just want to point out one item. I know we talked about it when Deputy Administrators Wagenius and Lucke were up, and I know Director Castillo has talked about it. Just to be transparent about this, there are two pots of one-time money that we're receiving, the 401,000 related to the act and the 291,000 that relates to the SNAP. Well, the state gave us one-time money to help manage some of those costs. Now, neither one of those funding streams continues into calendar year 2027. So in Community Services' budget, we've put the one-time funding from both those pots, so the roughly 700,000 is in Director Castillo's budget. We have also levied an equal amount and placed it in the general operations budget. Because if you don't do that, and those one-time costs don't continue, you are starting out your 2028 budget needing $700,000 just to replace that one-time money that's gone away to cover '27 costs, not '28 costs. And so I just want to be clear with the board of what we're doing on that. When we come in front of you a couple weeks from now to talk about the county operations, the GOP budget, and the commissioner's budget, you'll see that more directly. But again, these are important decisions that you'll need to make about how you handle these costs going forward, and we want to make sure that we're very clear about the direction we're taking so that when you make a decision, you're very well-informed on that. So thank you for your time. Thanks for that. Commissioner Bigham. One thing that I've neglected to bring up was the modernization, Director Castillo. I know that the decision, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the decision about whether or not actual individual counties receive a pot of that 90 million has not been determined yet, like to upgrade our software on our end. That hasn't been determined how that money is going to be distributed, right? Correct. That adds to my pessimism about actually seeing real results with this modernization money is we really have heard nothing since this money was approved at the end of the session. Yeah, and just to follow up on that, there may be discussions, and this may be better directed at Director Larson from IT, but there really hasn't, as far as I know, been conversations on that IT county level about what that would look like for us. It's all MNIT, which is a state IT, and I think that's going to be problematic and could lead to some delays, and that concerns me as well. So I don't know if pivoting to our legislative requests, we really cleared a lot of items off of that list. There may be an opportunity to have a discussion about it's not a bonding year coming up, and so maybe we do want to lean more heavily into lobbying for the modernization to now get completed and trickle down. I'm just spitballing here, but I do think we maybe want to look at a set of these capital projects. We may want to look at how we can impact our levy and making sure that these things stay funded on top of MICCA and AMC. But just food for thought there, because that's going to keep a lot of people up at night if all the act and the error rates and the Medicaid error rates and all that are going to be really determined on that modernization and those softwares. The timing doesn't match as to when that IT technology will be ready for when we're flipping on where it's our responsibility. And the only other thing I forgot to mention too, related to the act, is I firmly believe this next session that the Department of Children, Family, Youth, will end up taking over case review. At least that's going to be my push and the task force that I'm on, that is kind of their expectation. It got hung up literally over a million-dollar disagreement. And so I think there was a reason, and it was intentional to not have case review start until July. But wrapping this back into technology, if that modernization isn't completed for SSIS, all of that information that Director Castillo's team is entering will be into an archaic, unworkable software that can't be exported. So it's like everything's being done for naught because we're not going to be able to export any of that information into a modern system. Anyway, sorry I ended not on a positive note. That's okay. Thank you for your time. Thank you. We are scheduled for a bit of a break. Does the board want to-- Yes, let's take a bit of a break. Let's come back at 12:30. Does that work for everyone? Fabulous. Thank you. All right. We will go ahead and get started with the Public Health and Environment 2027 proposed budget workshop with Director Brummel. Thank you very much, Vice Chair. As stated, my name's Dave Brummel, Director of Public Health and Environment. I feel fortunate this morning to be presenting the department's budget for Public Health and Environment. I know that we've switched over into the afternoon now. It's been a very busy morning, and I think we're fortunate because the proposed budget for 2027 for Public Health and Environment is not as complex as what you just saw for our community services departments. Public health and environment as a profession, luckily, knock on wood, we have not seen some of the funding uncertainties that we're seeing from community services. And so Commissioner Karwoski, I appreciate the frame that you said many of the other departments, really it's a hold the line budget. And what is before you today from Public Health and Environment is very much a hold the line budget. And it's also a budget that helps support departments like Community Services Department in tough times. What we see our biggest challenge in public health is not attack against us financially. It's an attack on misinformation. And if you turn on the news and if you participate in our society, definitely, there is a lot of misinformation out there that we see on a daily basis about the true conversation about what maintains and builds health. And that's really at the root of public health and environment. So to start off, I'll start a little bit with a little bit of a brief history of Minnesota public health. So just to speak to the importance, and I think public health, I get it, I'm biased. Public health and environmental health is as important, maybe more important now than it ever was. But that was recognized. Governmental public health has been around since Minnesota first became a state. It was so important to the Minnesota's first legislators that they addressed public health in their very first session in 1858, providing towns and cities with the authority to control communicable diseases and other public health functions. And the picture before you on the right there is actually the first public health lab in Minnesota, and it's still standing in Red Wing. So it also, 2026 marks an anniversary, the 50th anniversary of Minnesota's current public health system, and it's rooted in what was called then the Community Health Services Act of 1976, and it's now known as the Local Public Health Act. So this legislation was approved by Governor Anderson on April 20th, 1976. And this created the foundation for the state local public health partnership that exists today. And so the Local Public Health Act, it provided many of the mandates that I presented to this board on June 23rd at the Mandates and Core Functions workshop. So to say that that Local Public Health Act is the cornerstone of public health in Minnesota is not an understatement. The State Community Health Services Advisory Committee, that's the mouthful that's known as SCHSAC, convened the very following year on April 7th, 1977. And that formalized a new, unique structure for the collaborative and local input that has guided the Minnesota Commissioner of Health since 1977, and that continues today. I want to thank Commissioner Clasen and Commissioner Cox, who currently serve and represent Washington County on SCHSAC, and all of those very important conversations that we talk about at SCHSAC that affect local public health, but also the statewide system that we have in Minnesota. As an aside, part of my role over the years, we're an accredited health department by the Public Health Board of Accreditation. Throughout my career, I have sat as a site visitor. So it means that I have seen a lot, or I've visited and done site visits across the nation, many different states, many jurisdictions. Yes, I'm a little bit biased to Minnesota, but I think that we have something really special in SCHSAC and the way that that functions, in the state of Minnesota. And as Commissioner Bingham said, pointed out in an earlier board meeting, really looking at that model and to see and encourage if the Minnesota Pollution Control could do something similar, is really high up on our bucket list. I think that could be a very interesting model to help lead and collaborate on local environmental health issues. So bringing that down a level, at the local level, public health and environment is guided by our department-level strategic plan. The Minnesota Department of Health and our status as an accredited health department require that we have a current department strategic plan. So shown here, our vision is a healthy and thriving community, environment, and workplace. And our mission is to protect, promote, and improve the community's health and environment. And this really upholds the language that's outlined in state statute in the Local Public Health Act Statute 145A. So our strategic plan contains four strategic directions shown on the slide in front of you that support our department workplace culture and environment. And unlike many other agencies ... or departments that have department-level strategic plan. We have a host of other department plans, which I'll show in the next slide, that guide the work of what we will be doing. And so we decided, and we have our strategic plan that really guides how we do the work. And our strategic priorities, a culture of connectedness and belonging. And a picture there really, I think, encapsulates that. And that's a picture of department staff coming together to help clean up the shores of the St. Croix River. A second one is a culture of engagement and partnership. We often say that public health works at the speed of trust, and many of our activities are in and with communities. And so that's a picture of a lot of the work that we do, supporting community gardens. And we do that to be in community. Community gardens do bring a benefit to those communities, but it also helps us get out of the office, build those trusting relationships with the communities that we serve. Third is a culture of continuous quality improvement. We are very proud of our reputation of being an innovative department of public health and environments. And we use formal QI tools and techniques to always be improving and measuring what we have. And this is something, and you see our staff together laughing and working together to improve future operations. And then last but not least, a culture of resilience and sustainability. Really looking for those environmental aspects. How do we have resilient and strong communities within Washington County? And that's a picture of a tour that we had at the North Environmental Center, where we're engaging a lot of residents there about the upstream solid waste prevention work that we do at that facility. So the core considerations impacting the budget. We had many considerations in developing this budget. Probably the highest, again, to reiterate, Commissioner Karwoski, what you said, is really to hold the line. We really wanted to make sure that we lived within our levy allocations, that we are being good stewards of county taxpayer dollars. But we also were able to maintain all of the very important functions that our department does. And so we want to maintain a strong local public health department that can protect and promote the health of our community environment while ensuring that we implement the Local Public Health Act, all of those mandates that I talked about in the mandates and core services workshop that we had last month. And then, as I mentioned in the previous slide, continued implementation of all of our plans, shown here, highlighting the groundwater plan, the solid waste management plan, and our community health improvement plans. And these are plans that are really developed with and in community, a lot of community feedback, and they help drive the work that the Department of Public Health and Environment does each year. And then another key core consideration was managing an increased number of infectious disease reports and cases. So on a daily basis, we see and we hear on the news disease issues happening in our country, our state, and our county. Think about measles, Ebola, cyclosporiasis, salmonella, norovirus, TB. It just goes on and on and on. And so we are fortunate. We have a unit, our Disease Prevention and Control unit, works in partnership with our nursing services, where we address a lot of these infectious diseases. And as was pointed out a couple of board meetings ago by, I believe, Commissioner Bingham, we are a local health department that employs an epidemiologist that helps to do this work. And it is so important that we do this work at a local level, and a lot of times this involves actually interviewing individuals that have gotten sick, and again, working at the speed of trust. So having staff that are out in the community, having an epidemiologist that has these conversations with individuals and kind of works with our schools and our businesses to build that trust, is very beneficial. So this slide is a small, I have to emphasize, a small slice of the work that the Department of Public Health and Environment does. If I were to show all of the metrics, we'd be here till maybe early evening. But I just wanted to demonstrate the variety of work that we do, from distributing car seats, our clinical visits conducted for clients requiring follow-up for active or latent TB, our community partners that are funded through our Statewide Health Improvement Partnership grant. This is an area Director Castillo talked about, our partnership between Community Services and Public Health. We partner in many areas, and very importantly, we kind of share the community engagement team, which they've reached over 4,000 individuals in the community. And I think it's important to note that these are individuals that might not have the ability or the privilege to connect with local units of government through the traditional pathways. There are barriers about communications, language, transportation, work hours, et cetera. And this team is a great partnership between our two departments that gets out of the office and really meets people where they're at. And then on the environmental side of the house, almost a million pounds of household products saved and reused at the environmental center through the free product rooms, which is quite amazing when you think about almost a million pounds. Over 1,200 pounds of household goods repaired by residents and volunteers at county Fix-It Clinics, and we're just looking to continue to ramp those up. We're also very proud that we have 30 new volunteers trained as recycling ambassadors, and those are volunteers that are able to go out in the community, talk to their friends, talk to their communities, talk to their networks, and talk about the importance of reducing solid waste. They've done a lot of work promoting the food scrap pickup program in partnership with the Recycling and Energy Board. And then I opened up and said, really about that misinformation, that we're under attack in public health. And this is something that we have intentionally, in previous years, built up our communication capacity and our communications teams. They're together with our public health emergency preparedness unit, and they form emergency preparedness and communications unit. And they've completed over 157 projects. And again, working at the speed of trust, trying to really combat that misinformation that's out there. So now we'll start digging into our budgets. Shown here is a comparison between the department's 2026 adopted budget and the 2027 proposed budget. And between the two years, our total revenue is increasing by 12%, and total expenditures match this at 12%. And again, by design at that hold the line budget. So in the next couple slides, I'll further break down. First, we'll start down with department revenues. So our levy allocation is just under 3.8 million, and that makes up 11% of our total revenue. So we are a department that is relatively small in our levy dependency from the county. Other taxes is revenue from our county environmental charge, and that's estimated to bring a little bit more than $15.5 million in 2027. License and permits revenue represents fees charged to support our food pools and lodging, septic and hazardous waste program units. What we're recommending is a 5% increase or proposed increase, which we'll bring before you, I believe, in October or November, with the county fee schedule changes. Our intergovernmental revenue is all of our state and federal grant revenue sources. Too many to list here, but think of our grants like Strong Foundation, Statewide Health Improvement Partnership, WIC, Public Health Emergency Preparedness, TANF, Maternal Child and Health, our SCORE grant, our NRGP block grant, et cetera. And that is really a core function of a lot of our revenue that we receive as a department. Fees and service includes insurance billing. So when we're able to bill private insurance, we do so. Fees from our commercial wood waste operations in 2027. We're offering operations at the Tops facility in Hugo. And so we will bring in revenue that matches expenditures to operationalize that wood waste collection facility. This also includes environmental center reciprocal use agreements, so the surrounding counties' residents can use their environmental centers, and we can use theirs. And so we get some reimbursement for that. And we also get reimbursement when we sell recycled materials, when we turn over mercury bulbs or a big revenue generator is paint care. If you go to the hardware store and if you look on your receipt, you'll see that there is a charge for paint care. And so we turn that paint into that fund, and we get reimbursed for handling all of that paint care. And then we get reimbursed for the sheriff's office. We provide jail medical services on behalf of the sheriff's office, and I'll detail that out in a little bit. And then next is interest earnings. Public health and environment, we have two main funds. In my somewhat simple brain, I think about those as their savings accounts, right? If the operational budget is more operating like our checking account, these are our savings account for our CEC or our county environmental charge, and our opioid settlement funds. And so they're put into those savings accounts for when we need to use those, and those generate interest that we're able to spend. And then other financing sources, this includes an operating transfer in for the University of Minnesota extension programming, so the MOU that Tammy will be presenting after I finish. It is septic loan, and it also includes the planned use of fund balance. So we're drawing down from the opioid settlement to implement opioid settlement activities. And that's 956,000. And then we have a planned use of fund balance, which is $2 million from the CEC fund. And that really is directed for the capital improvement plan costs associated with the proposed South environmental expansion and yard waste sites. So in 2027, in partnership with Public Works Department, they're asking for costs in '27, mainly for architectural design. The schematics of both the South yard waste and the expansion of the South Environmental Center are about $2 million. And then in 2028, the lion's share. Right now, we have a very rough estimate of about $10 million for actual construction costs. But in 2027, really our focus is to get better or more accurate construction costs for 2028. So significant budget changes. I just wanted to point out other taxes, that is that county environmental charge. So the trend over the last decade shows an approximate 8% increase year over year in CEC revenue. So we've worked with county administration, county and finance department to do that trend analysis. So we feel pretty confident in budgeting an 8% increase in our CEC revenue. Like I said before in the previous slide, $80,000, that represents that 5% proposed fee increase for our regulated program, food pools and lodging, hazardous waste and septic fees. And then our intergovernmental revenue. This shows a decrease, and that largest decrease represents, we got a one-time revenue allocation in '25 and 2026 from a Clean Watershed Partnership loan, and this loan allowed Public Health and Environment to increase the amount of loans provided under our septic loan program and grow back our other revolving fund sources, so we can get that money out into the community. We will not be getting that Clean Water Partnership loan in 2027, so it looks like we have a decrease in revenue. But that allowed us to build back up that revolving fund source, so we'll still be able to offer septic loans to replace septic systems. And then fees for service. This increase represents the jail medical costs, and we see an increase in revenue from the sheriff to cover costs estimated for staffing salaries, hospital, and pharmacy costs. So when individuals are in the jail, if they need to be transferred to the hospital or to get external medical costs or pharmacies, that is something that the sheriff pays for and reimburses Public Health and Environments. And last but not least, that's that other financing source of the $2 million of planned CEC fund balance for the capital improvement plan. So department expenditures. A little foreshadowing here. These match revenue. So personnel services, that's really our salaries and benefits. Services and charges, that represents all of our consultant services. We subcontract with providers and nonprofits in the community. Our subrecipient grants, like from our Statewide Health Improvement Partnership, our recycling grants to cities. Included in services and charges is also our payment to the R&E joint activities, which I do have a separate slide on county environmental charge expenditures. And then our yard waste operations. We do, in 2027, have fully budgeted the Afton or Central Yard Waste site, which we expect to be operational in 2027. Hopefully sooner than 2027, but it is definitely budgeted in 2027. And then capital outlay. We've identified some new equipment purchases for that Central Yard Waste site and our wood waste utilization program. And this also includes a transfer to community services for the community health worker. We talked about that partnership between Public Health and Environment. We are in a position over the last couple of years from an infrastructure grant, in '24, '25 and '26. And then some of our funding where we will transfer money over to the community services departments, to pay for the community health worker unit. That's housed and budgeted in community services, but since we really share that unit, and this is a budget where we can help offset some of those costs and also decrease the need for a supplemental request from community services to sustain the community health worker program. Significant budget changes. We see one for the client-related support. Again, this is the specifics about increased jail medical, hospital, and pharmacy costs. Services and charges, I'll detail more in a minute, but it's that increased cost mainly from the R&E joint activities payment, and Central Yard Waste operations. And then other financing units includes that operating transfers to community services for the community health worker and CEC to public works department. So I wanted to highlight a little bit about very important work that we do and one of the areas that has fluctuated over the years. But on behalf of the sheriff's office, PHE provides medical and dental services within the Washington County Jail. This is critical work and includes activities like medication preparation, distribution, triaging, new medical requests, sick calls, documentation, case coordination, and medical discharge planning. And this work is done in coordination with three Washington County social workers from the community services department, providers from Health Partners, and obviously the Washington County correctional officers. And so before you are on that slide, what we're representing or what we're estimating in 2027, is just north of $1.7 million total cost to provide jail medical services in the Washington County Jail. Broken down that client citizen related support Those are those costs for the pharmacy, hospital medical costs that we're on the hook for, the line. The biggest budget expenditure is for personnel services, really paying the salary and benefits of our staff, pictured to the right, that provide those services in the jail. Services and charges, when we contract with providers like Health Partners, we do that through a subcontract that shows up in our services and charges line. And then last but not least, our supply line is all supplies that we use in the jail medical unit that aren't medical, and that's there in 64,000. And I just want to give a big shout-out and thank you. I know he's not here today, so hopefully you'll pass the word along to Sheriff Starry, as this is his last budget with us, and just for all the years of support within jail medical. Yeah, we do this on behalf of the sheriff's department, but we couldn't do it to the level and in a sophisticated manner that we do without that solid partnership we have between public health and environment and the sheriff's office, and that leadership starts really at the top with Sheriff Starry. When I'm at the SHAC work group and I talk to other peers across the state of Minnesota, and we're talking about partnerships with our sheriff's office, there are a lot of directors across the state that have never spoken to their sheriffs. Which I think is a sad state of affairs, but it also reminds me that we have something special here in Washington County, and so I just wanted to say I really appreciate all of that support that he's provided over the years. And then I promised a breakdown. One of our biggest budget areas is the county environmental charge. I understand, commissioners, this is probably an area that you get many questions about our county environmental charge, and this is the breakdown of how we spend that roughly $15.5 million. We have CEC budgeted for our planning work, so putting together our groundwater plan, our solid waste management plan. Our community health improvement plan also has a focus on environmental health, so that helps offset some of those costs. All of our performance measurements, plus our administration. You think about all the goods and materials needed to be purchased to run those two facilities, and then the call volume that we have at all of our front desks are all paid for by that first line item. We do have some CEC budgeted within our food pools and lodging and hazardous waste programs. And if you think about it, we've had a lot of focus about food waste, decreasing food waste, and organics capturing, so that's a natural partnership with our food pools and lodging inspectors because they work with restaurants and hotels that produce food and have food waste. And then our hazardous waste generators. When they're out there working with hazardous generators, and if something comes up around handling solid waste that would be beneficial, we want those inspectors also to have that lens and really maximize our time with those regulated entities. Our community and environmental resources team, that helps implement strategies such as our food scrap pickup program, the Fix-it clinics, our reuse swaps, our school and municipal recycling waste and reduction grants, and all of the internal Washington County waste reduction programs. So when you go into any of our facilities or outside in the back corner of our boardroom, that is that internal waste handling. That's building services partners with public health and environment. Our largest single expenditure is the line item for the recycling and energy center joint activities. So this matches the amount that the recycling and energy board approved for their 2027 budget. So that represents the 31% joint activities payment from Washington County. And then our second-largest expenditure is operations of the environmental center and our yard waste collection site. And then last but not least is the CEC savings for capital improvement plan. Each year, we know that we have plans in our capital improvement plan to use the county environmental charge. We want to do things like we did with the North Environmental Center, where there was no levy funding involved in the building of that facility. It was all funded by the CEC, County Environmental Charge. And that doesn't happen without intentional savings of our county environmental charge, and that totals that 15.5 million. So for our FTE budget summary, as I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, we do not have any supplemental requests. In 2026, we made two small interim changes, where we took part-time employees and made those 1.0 FTEs, and that brought us up to the nice number of 100 proposed FTE count. I think that's the first time in my career that we've had a number that's spot on 100, so we're going to just keep it there for proposed 2026. And so with that, commissioners, I just want to say a big thank you, a thank you to this board, for your continued support of public health and environmental health. You are each advocates for the work that we do, and we appreciate that. We appreciate all the work that we get from county administration. Cy is with us. We meet with our two accountants, Amy, Tori, Amy Sunderman, wave your hands. We feel that we have one of the more complicated budgets in the department or in the county because there are so many different funding sources, so it really takes a team, Cy, Amy, Sandy. Plus myself, Jill Timm as the deputy director. Also our senior management team here, that's all in these front two rows. We could not do this work without their strong leadership. I think you know each one of those managers, senior program managers, for good reason because they bring so much to the county. And then last but not least, what's depicted is a whole host of our teams that work for public health and environments. And I think we have some of the most dedicated, focused, amazing staff in the state of Minnesota. And so for all of those that are listening, maybe live or recording, I just want to provide my heartfelt thank you for all the work that they do day in and day out. And with that, I'll stand for any questions or comments. Thank you, Director Brummel, for the presentation. Commissioner Bigham. Thank you. Thank you, Director Brummel. First off, the sheriff says thank you for the kind comments. He is listening. So, and I reminded him that you got through that without crying. I would not. But anywho, your budget is really consistent, and you said it yourself, a lot of fees. It's not heavy on levy. And pocketbooks don't know the difference, and I say that too also about the R&E. People pay the fee on their garbage bill, but it's really an environmental tax, if you will. Mm-hmm. And it pays for the investments of what we need to have a safe and healthy community. And I just want to thank you for your communication and your team. They are so hardworking and diligent and passionate about what they do. I say this time and time again, you and your department will never get credit for the lives that you save. That's not how our society works, right? You just don't get credit for that kind of stuff. But, I like to give a lot of gratitude to the public health nurse group, the home visiting nurse groups, because I see the outcomes that you're working towards, whether that's the breastfeeding rate or the vaccine rate, and all of that really is intertwined. Being able to get those young families off to a good start and being able to have a resource. And thank goodness there's still some federal funding for that, but the cost-benefit analysis of that program is just amazing. And then I just think the amount of work that goes into lifting up what you all do, whether it's the opioid settlement money, and making sure that we're having results as a result of that investment is important and the work they do. But, I really don't have particular questions about your budget because it's honestly pretty self-explanatory, but complex because of all the different fees and funds, as you already stated. But, just keep up the good work, protecting the water, protecting the land and air, and our people. Thank you. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. Director Brummel, thanks for presenting, and you've got much of your staff here. Well, actually, 10 of your 100. The top 10. No, I'm just joking. No, thanks for being here. Appreciate all that you do and imagine many of your managers, supervisors of others. So appreciate the effort. Stay the course of good health practices. It's like, I don't even like to call it news, these information channels. There's really only one way to do good health. There's not two sets of facts. So stay the course. And I was wondering, regarding, in looking at your presentation, you list a lot of revenues and then expenses. Mm-hmm. Do you have... I don't think I missed it, but is there, for your department for the year 2027, a levy percent increase- Um- ... that you're recommending or... I couldn't find it. Commissioner Karwoski, let me look there. I did talk about the percent, that it's 11% of our overall budget. I'll have to get back to you about- Okay ... the levy percent. Then, uh- Oh, wait. I'll look first. Call for help. Madam Chair, the levy increase is at 13%. And my only other comment was appreciate this set here working with Public Works here. We got Director Sandberg and, uh, Sheriff's Department partner Central Yard Waste site. And I know it's really keyed up to be fully operational in 2027. Is there enough budget in '26 just to have some level of being open? The example would be, come November, a lot of people are really making those before the snow flies. They're trying to clean up their yard. So if there's some ability to use it, that'd be great. Any comment? Any project update? Madam Vice Chair, Commissioner Karwoski, great question. Yes, we are very hopeful. Right now, Public Works is working with the street design, adding a turn lane, making sure that we get all of the conditional use permits, the use agreement there is the Xcel power lines that run through there. We're hoping to get that in place as soon as possible. If we're able to open in 2026, there is budget in 2026 to support operations. So once everything's built, the turn lane is there, we have all of the conditional use permits, budget will support, we're ready to go. Yeah. Thank you. And I apologize not seeing, as Director Castillo pointed out, my old eyes weren't able to see the- ... the 13% levy increase. Commissioner Miron. Yeah, I did the same look. 13%. I had to take my glasses off. Mm-hmm. I'm still trying to figure out what you do now that you're not part of the joint leadership team with Recycling and Energy Center. But apparently, you do seem to remain busy. Mm-hmm. Over the weekend, I had a number of people come up to me and just talk about the environmental center, and the value that that brings to them in their quality of life here in Washington County. The product reuse room, just the drop-off for hazardous waste and that type of thing. And in all those instances, I heard positive comments about the people that are manning the facility and serving them. Polite, really providing good guidance and that type of thing. And of course, we contract with Safe Harbors, right, for the management of the facility. And so kudos to them, kudos to your department that manages that contract. And when we have contract workers like that, you may not always get the same result that we're getting, and certainly that requires leadership on the part of your staff. Thank you, sir. Important work that you're doing, certainly supported. One of the things I'm noticing at the Clean Water Council, which obviously is much broader statewide, but a lot of talk, at least, about providing funding for well testing and that type of thing. You didn't talk about that, but certainly Washington County is largely based on significant number of private wells and that type of thing. Can you just talk a little bit about what the department is doing in the way of well testing? And I know in the past year at least, you had a number of clinics that you offered free testing and that type of thing. Thank you for that question, Commissioner Miron. Yes, and I will pass along your thanks to the teams that run the two environmental centers in Clean Harbors. They love hearing that feedback. As far as our well testing, yes, we do provide well testing. We offer times where individuals fee for service can drop off well test results, and we do a lot of promotion about appropriate timing and how to collect those tests. As you mentioned, we partner with local municipalities to offer in their, whether it's the city hall, other areas that are accessible throughout the county, and offer well testing days where individuals can bring their well tests. And I'm going to look to Stephanie Suter because I believe on... I don't think you have to come up unless... But we did put in for a grant application to actually expand some of our well testing as well. Can you remind me, Stephanie, when did we submit that? Mid-July, and we will find out this week. Okay. If you hear that, we submitted a grant application for additional fundings in mid-July and hoping to find out this week to expand our testing services for well testing. Well, and obviously we have contaminants we're aware of, right? PFAS and others. And so those well tests really help provide, I think, the security people feel they need and understanding what they're consuming in the way of groundwater and that type of thing. I will also point out that with that groundwater contamination, certainly in Washington County that looms large is the 3M settlement agreement for the PFAS lawsuit there. Cities and townships are represented on those settlement activities, so is Washington County. Our leaders and staff participate in all of those. And a lot of work that we do is representing all those property homeowners, individuals that own private wells that aren't part of a city system or a municipal system, and really making sure that as these big funding decisions are being made, a lot of that infrastructure is providing filtration services to city-supplied water systems. But we want to make sure that all of those individuals are not left behind. And there's ways through, whether that's water connections or whole house filtration systems that would be paid for out of that settlement funds, that they're being represented at these conversations of the settlement agreements. So that's a key book of business that we do within Public Health and Environment. And I'll just make one last comment. The Water Consortium, we continue to have good topics of discussion. I know quite a number of us attend those meetings virtually, and we had a recent tour. It was well done of some of the work that's being done. And then certainly the effort public health puts into helping us monitor the work that our watersheds are doing, and helping to oversee that work and their budgets, and some of the other work that ultimately, we try to be somewhat accountable for because we appoint those managers. But appreciate the partnership that the board has with public health on those issues as well. Thank you, Commissioner. And that's a good partnership with the Office of Administration staff as well in their process. Appreciate that. Thank you, Director Brummel, for the presentation. Again, I'll use the terms responsible budget. You found the fees to do the work that needs to be done. And while I kind of agree, I don't always want it to be a fee, and I just actually, before you even started, I said to Commissioner Bigham, "Is there a way that I can get my trash to just get picked up once every other week, not once a week?" Our family could make a change and- Yeah ... I don't think that that's an option. But I think everyone's looking at their budget and thinking of ways to maybe make changes and just another example of one of us doing it right here as we go. So thank you so much. Thank you. We have one more presentation. I don't know if you, Director, are going to introduce Ms. Tammy McCullough. Yes, I can introduce Tammy McCullough. Tammy McCullough is the director for our Extension Services. And she is here to present the costs associated with the 2027 MOU agreement between Washington County and Extension. Thank you. And Administrator Corrid has one thing, too. Sorry. Okay. Madam Chair and commissioners- Oh ... while Tammy's getting ready. I probably shouldn't have just added that 13% levy increase number and left it hanging, because you're probably recognizing that that's a little higher than other departments from a levy. And I wanted to explain why. Because Director Brummel didn't talk about any supplemental requests they had or any new positions we're adding with levy. And a lot of the places, they're making reductions to their operating and their service accounts. When we create the budget, we increase rent. So we charge rent to each of the departments, and then that pays for our building services for upkeep and maintenance. And when we do that, that increase, we give that in levy each year. So PHE got a portion of new levy to pay for rent. They also got a portion of new levy to pay for technology costs, which how we spread that to the departments. And then they also received a, this year, as I mentioned, when the budget was first presented by the deputy administrators, that we shared a million and a half dollars in this year's budget between the departments based on FTE for operating costs. We haven't done that recently. And so what's happening in the PHE budget here is those things are showing up as a fairly large levy increase because Director Brummel mentioned that his whole department only has about 11% is levy funded. So his levy number is pretty small for the big department he is. So when you add those formula-driven levy increases, it's leading to that large levy percentage increase. So it just probably wasn't fair to me to say 13 and leave it hanging without explaining it a little bit. So and next time I meet with Director Brummel, I didn't want him to remind me that when we get together. So there you go. Thank you. All right, Ms. McCullough. All right. Madam Vice Chair and commissioners, my name is Tammy McCullough, and it is my utmost pleasure to be here today as your University of Minnesota Extension regional director. We are appreciative of this collaborative relationship we have with Washington County so that your Extension office can serve as the front door to the University of Minnesota. So today I'm going to share some highlights on the impact of programming partnerships between Washington County and the U of M for your local Extension portfolio. And so you're reminded that portfolio includes the 4-H Youth Development program and the Extension Master Gardener program. Keep in mind that Extension is much bigger than that in Washington County, but those two programs are what are particular investments through your memorandum of agreement. And we are in the midst of a three-year memorandum of agreement through 2027. More importantly, I just want to extend the sincere gratitude that I can be here and have this opportunity to provide this update on Extension so that we can provide practical education to your residents so they can build a better future. So why partner with Extension? First, local presence is already established with our county Extension offices. And in addition, we have 87 counties to draw experiences from. We provide research-based education and programs, and we have this ability to leverage other resources which allow for a diverse budget. And co-creation is just natural for Extension, as we have trusted embedded resources that are established in different systems. And one of those systems is this card that I handed out to you and have plenty more of. But this is the AnswerLine, which is accessible to any resident by phone or email. And so if there are household questions, they can be answered through the AnswerLine. If there's yard and garden questions, that is the Ask a Master Gardener line. And that is actually supported by volunteers, Master Gardener volunteers from across the state. And then lastly, the Farm Information Line. And so I gave this to you because I think as you talk to residents, please be sure that they have this information at their fingertips. They certainly can call the local Extension office, but this is also support that we provide and should be barrier-free because they can connect via phone or email. Lastly, Extension has a long history of bringing people together to learn. So first and foremost, I'm going to talk about 4-H. 4-H is your largest youth-serving organization in Minnesota. It provides a safe and supportive space to empower youth, empower young people, kindergarten through one year past high school, to learn, lead, and flourish. And I'm going to share some data on this past 4-H year, because we're still in the midst of our current 4-H year, and so numbers are still rolling in. But as of, I think July 28th is when I last looked at the dashboard, there are 668 4-H youth enrolled in Washington County. Last year, we had 714 engaged in the 12 4-H clubs that we have across the county. We also had 139 youth who participate in what we say partnership agreement programs, which would be like our partnership club at Cimarron. Youth were able to be supported by their learning by 194 screened volunteers. And then Washington County had a retention rate of 70% from the prior 4-H year to the current 4-H year, and I feel like that's a good measurement of how well are we doing. 93% of Washington County 4-H youth said that they made an impact on those around them, and we know that service learning is a key component of the 4-H experience, and we're trying to measure that through a youth outcome survey that we do annually with our young people in every county. Some of the statements from the survey I just pulled out and I thought were things that we want to look for in our future workforce, which is critical thinking, teamwork, and hard work, and I got out of my shell and became a good example. Also, potentially got out of their cellphone, right? So 4-H truly empowers young people through hands-on learning, leadership, and community engagement, and what better way to show that through some images? One way young people demonstrate a passion in 4-H is through theater arts, and this one is often, I think, forgotten about because we tend to go to the agricultural projects. And so I just wanted to make mention of the theater arts program, which is called Arts In, and is also known across the state as Wash Co. I was in Goodhue County and the Arts In program there, the director was saying, "Oh, Wash Co." So it is highly regarded across the state. Young people write, rehearse, and perform every day at the Washington County Fair, and they're engaged in creating the script, costuming, stage design, singing, and sound. In addition, young people are exposed to peer-to-peer leadership and learning as demonstrated through day camps, as well as overnight camps and other learning workshops. In Washington County, we also facilitate this program that's school enrichment. It's called Youth Teaching Youth, and those are on prevention-based topics, but also on career topics. And high school youth go to middle school and elementary school classrooms to provide mentoring that really sticks. 4-H clubs, like I said, there's 12 in the county, and county project development committees operate with the same approach of having youth lead and adults guide. And 4-H club officers are facilitating parliamentary procedure and learning how to carry forward skills that may lead to the boardroom or potentially this boardroom someday. Finding sparks. So these photos demonstrate 4-H youth taking pride in a project area, like shooting sports and wildlife photography, and culinary arts. The photo of Amelia on the far right is her sharing her most recent recipe in front of a panel at the county fair. And these recipes are shared to a panel that works with the food stand, and then they determine which ones will be on the menu at Hooley Hall during the actual county fair. And I don't know of any other county that engages young people in this way. So not only do they encourage the young people to develop their menu, but they also work alongside them to determine how to best produce this in a fast-paced kitchen environment, and then determine the inventory and the pricing and all the things that go along with that. All right. As you know, Washington County Fair allows 4-H to showcase their learning, but the journey begins far earlier. With a diverse county like Washington, we have young people exhibiting their own animals as well as those that they lease, which is evident from the large goat and llama showcase events at the county fair. And it brings me great joy because my kids are able to have this experience that I had as a young person growing up on a farm. And I'm proud that they have this ability to have a connection to agriculture and better understand our rural neighbors. I had a very hard time limiting my slides and the photos, but I put a few more up when I wanted you to see the determination in the eyes of these young people. They're showing confidence and pride in themselves as they handle animals, and again, I just want to make notice that none of them have a device in their hand. All right. The Master Gardener program. The mission of the Master Gardener program is to share research-based horticultural knowledge and practices, cultivate diverse collaborations, support project-based volunteer activities, and inspire change to promote healthy people, healthy communities, and a healthy planet. So Washington County has 231 active volunteers executing on the priorities of local food, climate responsiveness, clean water, nearby nature, pollinator health plant biodiversity and horticultural skills. And the volunteers have logged a massive amount of hours in 2025, and I know they're on target to do that again this year, 18,218 hours. And this year they welcome 33 interns, and note that the registration is open now until October 1 for the next cohort of interns to join the Master Gardener program. In addition to the programs being offered to the public, these remain highly in demand, and they provided 154 educational events in 2025. This is a community value of $725,076. One of the other things I handed out to you was the 2025 annual report for the statewide Master Gardener program, and featured in this edition is a project here in Washington County on climate responsiveness. You probably saw it at the county fairgrounds, but in 2023 the volunteers constructed a gravel bed tree nursery, and this is turning research into real-life results. So they're growing saplings to donate back to the local parks and neighborhoods, and it's just a perfect example of research, public education, and community service working together, right where Extension is rooted. Get it? Rooted. Yeah. All right. The Extension Master Gardener program is actively providing public education through community partners, like the Washington County Public Library branches, in addition to farmers markets, community gardens, food shelves. They partner with communities with their tree sales and also parks. And these are just a few things they offered over the past year. And they provide services in offering affordable and healthy plant stock through their plant sale, online classes, and of course, the Ferris Garden, which annually sees about 6,000 attendees. So this is our memorandum of agreement. Exhibit A actually looks a lot like this, of our 2025, 2026, and 2027 memorandum of agreement, and we have the 2.75 Extension educator positions in 4-H youth development, and the 1.0 FTE Master Gardener coordinator, and then 0.8 administrative support. So from 2026 to 2027, there's a 3% increase in the signed contract. In addition to the support to this MOA, the county also provides office and meeting space, computer and office equipment and supplies, and Extension committee support with per diems. All programs offered from Extension are free of fees or have scholarships so that they're available to all. And 4-H demonstrated this over the past year by removing annual dues for membership fees. Each program, 4-H and Master Gardener, also work independently to raise funds to execute their community work. So two of the flagship events that I have mentioned would be the 4-H food stand and the Master Gardener plant sale, and I just love how they have woven in education into both of those events so that it's not just about fundraising, but it's also about creating community and also educating the public and those young people as they work in that food stand or create the menu. The operating budgets for each of those programs, 4-H is about 72,000 and Master Gardener about 53,000. All right. And these are our County Extension Committee members. Much thanks to Commissioners Bigham, Clasen, and Miron for being on the Extension Committee, as well as David Brummel, who is serving as the auditor's designee to the County Extension Committee. So this is all established as part of state statute. We have six appointed community members, and we meet four to five times a year, and members have a three-year appointment. So the committee is charged with providing input to Extension programs, as well as recommending the annual budget. And on October 6th this last year, they met and asked for the continued support of the amount of $445,531, and that's for the memorandum of agreement. So deep appreciation to those members and to their goals in serving the greater county community. With that, I just want to extend my gratitude to all of you for this partnership and would welcome any questions. Thank you, Ms. McCullough. Commissioner Bigham. Thank you, Ms. McCullough, for all you do. And this program, both the 4-H and Master Gardeners are just amazing, the accomplishment and the impact that they have on our residents, and appreciate your leadership in that. The memorandum of understanding is set by AMC's board. The agriculture committee there negotiated with the University of Minnesota and then handed down to each of the counties. And so, there isn't much fluctuation within your budget. And so, the impact they're having on our youth is incredible, and the skills that they teach all residents is really amazing. So just really appreciate what the organization does for Washington County. Commissioner Miron. Yeah, I'll say it. Commissioner Bigham didn't, but she loves serving on the Extension Committee. And she's a very effective leader there. I don't think you've missed any meetings in representing the county board on the committee, and we just appreciate that. But I look at the value that was identified there by the Master Gardeners, 725,000, and then I look at the value that the youth are providing to us in Washington County. And you didn't calculate that value for the 4-H program, but those two programs return a significant value to Washington County in comparison to your budget. So, kudos to that. I ran into Tom Peterson, Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Minnesota, last week, and he was at our fair. He was just so complimentary about the quality of fair we have, and obviously the Ag Society is very involved with that, so kudos to them. But without 4-H and Master Gardeners complementing the fair, it wouldn't be what it is today. So I wanted to share that compliment, first of all, because I think Extension and 4-H were a big part of the success of the fair in each and every year. And then I appreciate you mentioning Dave Brummel and his role with the Extension committee, because he does keep minutes and do that kind of stuff. So I do know a little bit about what he does now. And he was doing that prior to his effort on the Recycling and Energy Board as part of the joint leadership team. But certainly appreciate that professional leadership to the Extension committee and the group, and just great leadership on the board. They're very dedicated people, whether it is to the Master Gardener program or to the 4-H and the youth program. Extension really does improve the quality of life here in Washington County, and so much of it is based on science and research that's being done by a land-grant college, and Extension providing that connection to our community. And then our regional director, we are very fortunate that she's also a resident of Washington County and has volunteered and served on Parks Commission and other areas here in the county as well. And as you pointed out, Tammy, your own kid's involved in the programming and stuff. And then it wasn't mentioned, but the Farm Family Recognition program- Mm-hmm ... is part of some of the Extension programming as well, and it's always nice to recognize the leadership that we have in our families in agriculture within Washington County. And eventually, I hope we recognize everyone that deserves to be recognized in that program. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. McCullough, for presenting, and your leadership, and I really want to thank... Much has been said between Commissioner Bigham and Commissioner Miron, have really hit the high points, but I'll just add a few personal points. Appreciation to the Extension committee. I know we've got Holly Johnson from District Two, so we've got representation throughout the county. And just quickly, I'm a city person, the urban part of the county, but with the 4-H program, everybody appreciates the value of the rural character, the agricultural character, the traditions. So there's no problem there. It's great. Master Gardeners, the amount of community service they produce throughout the county, and the value of the 4-H, and the actual dollar savings the Master Gardener provide to community groups and cities, more than pays for the small budget you have here that the county provides. Thank you again, Madam Chair. Yes. Commissioner Miron. Just one other thing. I really want to emphasize the work that Extension's doing in some of our communities, particularly Landfall and Cimarron. That was a direction that former Commissioner Weick really embraced and supported, and Extension moved in that direction. I really do think it's part of our equity initiative here in the county, and is just providing such a great service. And I believe that our 4-H kids are becoming better people because of the connection to those communities and the needs that those communities have, and the programming that's being provided there. So just wanted to mention that and highlight that. Administrator Corbid. Madam Chair and Commissioners. First I want to thank Ms. McCullough for the Master Gardener report. I've got a garden. It's not performing very well this year, and I'm pretty sure it's not because of the gardener. So I think I might need to make a call. But secondly, just a note for the board, there is one change that's happening behind the scenes here on the Extension budget. We mentioned that it's about a $445,000 total budget for Extension. Previous to this year, about a little under $100,000 in levy was being used in the public health department to go towards Extension, and the remainder of the funding was coming out of the general operations budget. This year, we have transitioned the full extension cost to the general operations budget. And as Director Brummel mentioned earlier, we are losing some state funding, I believe, that was going towards the community health worker program. And so we've taken that money that was levy in public health, moved it over to the community health worker team to not need new levy for that. And then the extension budget is being fully paid for out of general operations. That budget has plenty of revenue in it that's ongoing and steady. So we're not making this any more risky or changing anything really, other than just the color of money change here for that extension budget. So I just wanted to point that out. Fantastic. The question that I had actually, Ms. McCullough, was how the budget is negotiated, and my fellow commissioner here answered that. So, grateful for the work that you do, and as Commissioner Miron shared, a Washington County resident who was very active in the fair yourself, so it's great to see you there as well. I just want to thank everyone for being here. It's kind of a marathon, but we did it. So thank you, everyone, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.