word to order and 1.1 is discuss potential separation of Health and Human Service advisory committee and I have to ask what the last couple pages of that with had to do it was part of the history so I left it together because I
wasn't here I wasn't here back then I I just yeah I couldn't make the link but any okay I think it's a public health it planting trees yeah no seriously in urban areas oh yeah
yeah okay so a lot was said there in the research anybody have any thoughts well um you know there's pros and there's cons right it sounds
like um there are maybe concerns about the what the committee has been discussing over the last year or so sort of not having a lot of Direction but I don't know that this is the solution to
that and um I think coordination between the Committees is important and I say that because public health is not just communicable diseases it's also um a set of other things that really are related to the social determinance of health and a lot of that
work is work that Human Services does so I see a lot of value for them to be together um certainly we could have more of an emphasis and make sure that we set aside time to to talk about the public health issues but I would my preference
would be to keep them together uh first of all thank you to Maren and to Emily and to everybody else who gathered all that information including the Shak information that that was at the end um I appreciate the pros
and the cons um I've been on the committee now for two years and three months good people um there's a ton of potential in the room um and through fault of no one I think it's mostly a design problem um and some some staff
turnover that GL is nowhere near meeting its potential I would like to try and this is not going to be something that we have to do and keep for the next 100 years I would like to try to move towards um and there's different ways of doing it it can be two separate committees or it could be one big
committee that meets I'm just thinking out loud I don't have this figured out and I didn't run it by um marine or didn't run it by Emily let's say that the whole big committee meets every month and then every other month it's one month it's Human Services is and one it's public health or whatever and then people who
wanted to could join if they wanted to go to both they could go to both but to have one meeting be focused on public health and to have one be focused on uh Human Services and then maybe every twice a year have a joint meeting uh because there are definitely some issues
uh mental health is one of them and there there are other issues as well that there's a lot of overlap but I think it would help to have more of a focus um on public health and more of a focus on human services and I'd also like to meet more often than four times
a year um it's there's a ton of potential in the room and there's a lot of between both um the the populations that are served the clients and the uh Community Partners um there's a lot of things I think that we could do um that
that hasn't really happened yet so I'd like to consider moving towards trying do a trial run for one or two years um as separate committees the department still says stays as one but I think there's also a way to to work with the people in the room because there's a lot
of um I come from um the perspective of there's a lot of Community Partners and the idea isn't to add a lot of busy work to the staff it's an it's idea is hopefully to leverage more Community Partners and Community Resources all of the cons are very valid
points think there's ways to like reduce some of them um but that's that's where I'm in I I look at this um not from the perspective of what the agenda of each board
particular is I just look at it from a management aspect and very frequently when we have to come up with a clear and concise agenda as to what we're trying to accomplish but although the undertone um might be you know hey we we we both
sides are equally important we've seen it how many times we're oftentimes one side can supersede the emphasis on any given board um or any given you know structural organization whatever you're being involved with so I don't know
exactly the agendas I don't know everything I'm not part of that board and but on this long enough to understand it but um the sense I get is that typically when these types of things come up if the if it's usually because of a reason and it's
usually you know one side can start to outdo the other side just trying to make the change right like oh it's not an issue it's not an issue so I I feel that a separation just based on the management aspect of it to say hey why don't you you go here you go here you
guys Define your agendas and at some point we bring this thing back together and I think it'll also help um it'll help organize both sides if you can disembark for a while um and again it's a it's a we're holding hands just from a distance type of a deal so I would
support it moving apart for the time being just just as a roup and sometimes we just need roups and and things that we do so I think it would be good temporarily I have always I have not liked it being joint um the Human Service element always has taken over
the the local meetings and people only have you know an after at the end of the day you know a couple hour meetings is can be taxing and just like our agenda item 7.3 approve foundational Public Health responsibilities workplace and budget for 2025 that's a prime example
of where a committee should be looking at this and determining that and that the Human Service element just doesn't you know allow for that and Human Service is is always reactionary oh something happens so we got to help somebody a lot of time not always a lot
of times public health is the health of the herd it's just it's ongoing everybody should be uh benefiting from public health so they do have different approaches and different uh ways of doing business and and as the as the state people would say public health is
a decimal point in the Human Service budget and so it it does get kind of a second um uh hand approach but here at the state for many years they've had Shaq uh a community you know uh partnership with the Department of
Health you know from County boards and I think that's the model I don't see a need uh um to you know change the structure of the department at this time but this this is you know it's advisory committees and I think it's important to get more public because I've even had
well Dr de in particular served many years on the advisory he's the one that said we never talk about health and I said well you're right it's it gets to the end of the day and everybody wants to get out of there and it's you might get two minutes of help um so I would
strongly Advocate and uh as Dwayne said you know maybe a couple times a year the two uh you know have a joint meeting um to see what's working and what's not working and what can they work on together but I think um as an advisory committee it um would be beneficial to
us and want to jump back in for a second if I last week when we met it happened again and Emily is the one that pointed it out is that we had this meeting it was a good meeting it a great meeting bunch of the um the people in that room there's a ton of experience um and perspectives
but at the end again Public Health got squeezed in and Emily had to speed talk and still not cover half of you know that's just what happens Etc yeah the conversations get allowed to linger you know you're you're on the you're on the hind feet and it just doesn't You Know M
Madam chair and I know this is the committee of the board so maybe I could just yeah when I was reading this in page 12 in particular there where the recommendations are from it it struck me that and of that nature and this is
notar that look at what we're doing in cjcc which we've done very successfully I mean that focus on different areas early intervention prevention um juvenile law
um uh criminal law um and then community outreach and I just would you know throw out the idea that maybe not a task force Focus but break it into those committees Public Health and Human Services or mental health if there was a focus you know and
then mental health committee of The Advisory Board could talk to the mental health committee of cjcc because I mean we all you know we it's these are issues that that cross lines they're multidisplinary but rather
than Breaking this up into two separate advisory committees you could possibly look at the structure that cjcc has used for years so um just throwing it out in fact that's what I thought Dwayne was suggesting when we first started talking
is that the committee composition remain the same but that we would designate certain meetings that would only be for public health and certain meetings that were only for Human Services um just from a logistical point of view there is a state statute that
governs uh human service advisory committees so if we chose to separate these for two committees um I would assume that we would have to figure out a method for moving members from the current committee on to
subcommittees we would need to revise our policies and our bylaws um and then we potentially would need to change the composition position of the Human Services advisory committee to match the
statute 40 2.03 and and when the state fully funds health or Human Services I'll comply with statutes but until they give us enough money to run it I I I don't see that as a hindrance and I don't what I don't know is if there are requirements
for the uh public I don't think there's any pack in the packet I don't think there's any requirements for a public uh health advis committee maybe there's not so we would need to have um onil review the
technical parts of what we would be required to do statutorily if there's going to be any kind of separating my understanding if you're establishing the advisory committee as a joint committee
that you don't need to make changes if you're creating sub committees from that committee now again I'm not an attorney I would defer to councel but if we're officially establishing as a joint I think we everything remains as is it's
just you're breaking it out to do like sub committees so again I would defer to legal counsel on that well we used to have separate I mean and I there's some requirements to have a a community health board right but what I
was throwing out there what Marine has put on page 12 which she's kind of what you're saying I mean it's to keep it keep it as a overall committee but then break it up if people want to into two work groups into work groups or whatever you want to call it potentially what
commissioner VY said which is we meet yeah I don't think we have to change anything right yeah I just was under the assumption that's what we were doing they just simply weren't meeting at it's still an organization it's just we' got two separate meetings that shouldn't be
issue and you might have different people if you break it up you might have different people want to right um be health I think there's definely people who come with a public health perspective and those who come with the Human Services sure or you invite people to serve on the public health versus the
human servic yeah the tax force and no matter what we do I think we should review I as I read through the material I saw like different numbers of requirements and different thirds and different Etc possibility yeah we don't yeah we don't yeah we don't satisfy that this particular statute but if we
separate the Committees and change our bylaws then I to meet the requirement don't recreate the whole world it's just an advisory committee they don't have any budgetary Authority they don't have any legislative
Authority it's citizens wanting to help out I mean so the wording is what can be confusing when we're using the word to separate versus are we saying we're going to keep the Health and Human Services advisory committee and then
we're going to have sub committees or task groups so because I I'm hearing the words differently depending on which one of you are are giving thoughts here so I just want to make sure we're on the same page Marsha what do you think should we
have two separate or should we have one and just have two two half to it what's ever easier I mean it's we're not trying to make it rocket science I mean again I've had people ask that have a health perspective they they they've lost their voice with this and and so
again we need to be mindful that the same people really need to be in those meetings as far as staff it's def um yes there there's going to be an increase of workload on the staff if and another thought I'm just thinking out loud again
is um let's say of the 12 months of the the year the goal is to meet 10 of those not August not December um just to make it a little easier on stock like during August is usually a busy time for vacations and December is the holidays Etc is it still means 10 total meetings
for staff but it'd be five for one committee and five for the other maybe that's getting too complex or too fancy or whatever else but that that would lighten the load a little bit on the staff a little bit and it basically means the Committees meet five times a year not four times a yearr i i it's
hard get going or have any momentum if you meet every 3 months and the first meeting was important but we just spent the whole time listening to an overview and then if we want the normal schedule we finally get a chance to discuss ideas in June halfway through the New Year Etc
but I'm so cognizant of how much work we're going to ask staff that's already short staff to do Etc but the idea is to also work with the people in the room and hopefully share that load um so it's not all staff matter fact what I like to avoid is having the staff
talk at people that vast majority of time they can be virtual meetings I mean stuff can be sent out a you know like like I'm saying that that um the the um approve foundational Public Health
responsibilities you know something like that that's in our packet could be sent out to the committee and you can just ask for I mean again you don't have to have an official official um physical meeting I mean there can be information gathered from citizens in a you know a
number of different ways we ask staff to to go back and come back with a way to take the existing committee and have two subcommittees well you would have the same committee if you will but break it into subcommittees and how might that
look right yeah oh so we can't use the word separate but yeah that was my intention from the GetGo I wasn't for me we weren't dismembering anybody it was just I think we we have a desire for two separate discussions and we have one
group saying our voice isn't being heard and people that want to be more part of that so whatever we need to do to follow the kiss method to make that happen for a short period of time an extended period of time whatever that takes and again I'm not on these boards so I don't know but the procedural aspect just
needs to be simple defined if I agree and if possible I think it'd be good to have a clear like a chair um one chair for the human services in one chair me or it could be the same person if they're willing to go to both meetings but um I think we need to keep
that focus on public health on public health that's something that that that's something the group can discuss again our bylaws don't count for two chairs right but that's where you know let us give some thought and bring back how that might work structural aspect yeah
right um fair enough I think we're just getting into the weeds of I agree what the team really needs to kind of figure out okay all right you know what we want figure it out we want more trees right H more trees there still there's still those
Grant programs but the right kind of trees we could get free trees from the water right 10,000 walnut trees one year on a farm growing up and two of them made it El PL yeah it's what happens when you
raise peasants and deer and we had a licensed wildlife and so the deer would just come right down the row and eat them all off the next item oh that um discuss potential hiring fors and
cost cutting commission Warr I know you're interested in us following our policy our policy is this is the second meeting so we need three meeting three votes to have the conversation showed up here it's not the conversation okay so
we need three votes well uh the reason I bring it up is of course if everybody the governor is cutting what 640 million again don't know where this cutting is going and I've had conversations across
the state of Minnesota and even uh my my close Neighbors in Houston County have had some pretty serious conversations of where where this might lead us and we haven't even talked about it at all um to have some idea of the impact because we're constantly spending we're going to
be asked to spend more money tonight on different things so we have to be cognizant of what's going on so okay you want three let's I well this is number two this is two yep so this isn't the actual conversation well we the discussion is do we move it to a regular board meeting right
right I guess I did I bring this up I think I brought although commissioner Ward is taking credit for it right now yeah I guess here here was prepared the scenario I had with it it does allude to that and you know it's uh I guess the
concept I had behind it was just to can show our County constituents that we are aware and we talk so much about I mean look at the jail situation or the LEC situation this co-funding and and you know state and federal or
whatever it might be but you know a lot of times it's it's state funding and you know when that's at Jeopardy when they look at how many billions of surplus and 10 million and you know 16 billion whatever it was and 10 million in new taxes and we're still in the hole I just don't see us digging out of this
and it's it's really a a bipartisan situation now where both sides are going what do we do so I think just in good faith to the citizens is to say that hey here's a step to say where we are aware we we are saying hey until we figure a
few things out and really understand what's coming down the pipeline we're we're we're conscious of it it's a reflection of Staff our administrator it's a reflection of this board um it's a reflection it's it's a way to say to the public we're we're aware and we're just hanging out to make sure that we're
not going to put sh like don't want to go spend any more if we find out that we have to spend a lot more just to maintain these programs um that in some cases are being handed down to us whether we want them or not and not to mention our day-to-day expenses that we
have so the idea I had was this is something very simple to show the public that we're aware of it and um that we are you know taking a stance and just sit tight here and let's see what happens so I appreciate the idea of looking down
the road and trying to okay so this is not supposed to be the conversation this is supposed to get three votes to have the conversation you are the one who said we should follow our policies I'm okay okay do we have three votes to move it forward we sit here fle our thumbs I
mean it's just a conversation we're not setting policy or or anything yeah and I just wanted to State as to why I brought it up again because I did make it on the agenda can't we discuss why we're going to vote the way we are the policy says and if you want to change the policy it's fine with me two things to get
something on the agenda and then you don't just do it if three at least three Commissioners want to do it then you get three votes and then at the third meeting you do it my understanding of the policy uh was when we changed it that shortened the The Madness of what it was before so that two Commissioners can put it on a
committee of the board then you discuss whether or not then then you V to put it on the regular meeting that's how I understood it and I thought we could discuss a little bit here yeah what is agree I'm looking right now just to make sure well share your view doing well
miss H is looking um where did you find um I think um I'm going to vote against it and here's why is one I think it's also important for our constituents to know the consequences of decisions that
are being made in Washington DC when someone is asking um the department of is at Energy and Commerce to cut 880 $880 billion doll and onethird of the state budget comes from the federal budget and half of that is from Medicaid
they're going to pass the buck and lie about it from the feder to the state level and the state is going to probably pass the buck down to the counties is where we are the people of Last Resort um we're the the people who are going to have to deal with all of the passing of the buck so we need to Simply get ready
for what's going to come down the line is going to be cuts um to nursing home funding does make cuts to rural hospitals and Rural clinics and other programs that deal with the prevention to stop people from going over the cliff into hospitals and into jails so if anything I almost think that we not only
should we not do our hiring free we may need to look at what does the county have to pick up if the federal and state governments and or both um drop the ball and dump it on us so but the guy sitting in the seat right there's got to figure out a budget and the lady over here in
you you're already starting I mean and you're hot and heavy into this in June and we don't if we don't have some kind of game plan going forward we're going to be caught with double digit local I think it's cons to know that if they
make cuts at the federal level LEL that's going to mean it's dumped on County local that'll be higher County Levy I don't want to do that but that think people need to know that you're exactly right is that he and we need to come up with a budget so I'm going to vote against it because it it's pretty clear to see if you follow it down if
you if you look at what's going the Domino has to Begin to Fall it's going to be dum down right but you don't want some kind of basic plan of here here's where we can adjust and shift or anything once once the staff I would love all kinds of contingency plans if the staff has an idea of what's going on
with the Whiplash show in Washington DC but once the staff can get a sense of what's going to happen I think it'd be nice to go through different contingency plans but I don't think that we should be doing a high increase because we're already short staff in some departments um I will I will support when we get
there a request for board action for exactly what you've asked for but timing is it what when are you thinking that you're going to have this Revelation to start looking at well there's no revelation until we need to figure out what the FED is going to do or federal government's going to do or not to do we don't have to worry about the FED we got the governor telling us what he's going
to do and again everybody at the alleged conference said it's the governor's budget it's not ours Democrats and Republic It's the governor's budget but but the the states don't know if I'm wrong the states don't know what's going to happen until the federal government decides how much they have some they have some idea he's already cut things
and everything so I I don't know so much about Medicare I mean that sounds like that's untouched same with he my my wife's in that she would know for of something that's coming down espe right so we're actually we're actually GNA do this would you pass those around all
right so this is from our portal I have one for K as well finish yeah I guess that that very thing is exactly why um if if all be true um which I disagree with some of it but if
if it all is true it's another way to say hey let's not go do anything outside of what it just takes to continue government today until we have some more ideas in other words don't start funding new things don't start going after new things let's look at ways anticipating
if this is true um where that's coming from federal or state level um if you want to throw the federal side in it it just amplifies my point so that's what I was trying to do is just just build in a little bit of little bit of uh a little confidence in the in the
taxpayer out there that at a local level if everything you say holds true or just a portion of it holds true either way uh we know for sure right now what's on the agenda is the state it has been declared and a and a nonpartisan they both sides have agreed to it and said that hey our
governor is shoving 460 million of cost he he came out and said it himself and that is a real thing the rest of it could be speculative but we know that that's what's coming right now and unless something major changes so and you know that's been kind of an uproar with other counties and the feedback
we're getting from those counties and they're already doing the math on it saying hey this is going to cost us 1.1 million 1.5 million 2 million a half a million whatever it is but this is real this one's right at the door you know what happens on some of these other things may or may come to fruition we don't know yet um but this one's real so
that's what I was looking at is saying hey until we can not make this an issue here's something we could do to show our constituents that we're conscious of it we're we're sitting back we're treading water to see what this looks like this is from our portal on our
website this is the um Revenue um for Health and Human Services for the last five years these are the numbers that go behind it so what you can see is that the budget every year is between 17 and 18 million for Human
Services the biggest Revenue item is Intero governmental transfer um and that is broken down between federal and state grants so in 2024 we got
5.86 million from the feds and 3.375 from the state um if you drill one step further they have names that are not quite comprehensible to me so the first one and the biggest one is Federal grant
87.7 eight that's a million three nope but when I Googled it okay that's Medicare right so I think we have the capability to ask our
staff what what part of our federal funds that are going in HHS are Medicaid um and from that presentation that we had we know that we have 1,094 people who are getting long-term
care which probably means that they're in nursing homes and that that's being funded by Medicaid that we can ask our staff to help us understand what the scope exactly what we're saying we need a plan so I guess I I I don't understand
planning then I'm all for in terms of contingency planning if we staff information we're asking is is to start coming up with some for me to me you set a cap and say okay where we're at today is where we're at I want us understand what our liability is so that we can
also Lobby our legislators and help them have actual numbers I think it's too late for that already but could try and I think there's two ways that this happens I mean number one we have seen that in some
cases uh the federal activity doesn't go through Congress to actually change the legislation all they do is cut off the funds in which case we still have the programs and mandates that we're complying with now we just don't have
the money it's a different thing if the legis is actually able to cut 800 billion or what million whatever it is that they're going to take from Medicaid then we have to at least be able to tell our
legislators okay A a thousand people are potentially going to be out of a nursing home and what are we going to do so for me I want that kind of planning so that I know how to lobby and that I also know how we prepare for what the consequences
are I'm all for exactly I mean that's contingency planning all for that but not a higher degrees well don't know we have to we have to look seriously we have to look at any hiring because that's our biggest part of our budget we also have anticipate when they cut programs at the federal and state level that means more stuff is going to get
dumped on us yeah right we have to learn where we can say no and where we have to push back also I think we have to remember that our County Administrator is still currently doing three jobs agreed um and maybe it's too soon to do start contingency planning um with Emily or and or anybody else but yes I
would like the contingency planning just so people know the consequence of cutting $880 billion at Federal level onethird of the state budget is Medicaid and I I'm not saying I'm not saying that they're going to cut all oneir but it's going to probably be dramastic dramatically and we do know like for
example at Watkins manner 66% of the residents there depend partially or in large part on Medicaid some are it's Medicare and medic do way work for nursing home so but she's but she ask her and she probably have some data from hers I don't want to like Bas everything
on just Watkins but nationally about 62% of nursing home residents depend upon Medicaid and they're already understaffed and they're already you know um over and I'm not suggesting that we start making up that hole because that's we don't have that in there but those at the federal level will mean
larger local County uh Levy increases and people need to know that because there's things that we can cut but there's also things that are um plenty wise and pound foolish where we're going to save money in the short term and just bigger problems down the road you can't start tearing down the fences at the top of the cliff and not expect okay so
what's the timeline that that we want some of this information to start figuring things out we can't wait till hot summertime agreed I mean it needs to my intent is that we need to have staff start thinking now what and
how can we do and not do and like uh just like a very quick conversation with a Houston County Commissioner you know they figure uh some of this initial stuff is going to cost them a half a million dollars that's huge for a Houston County it is and I just got my prop big deal for us as well pardon me
it would be a big deal for us as well oh absolutely so we're probably looking at a couple extra million dollars so I I don't think you know we want to I haven't got my one on County taxes yet but everything's going up so the people have to pay it um we have to be
cognizant too Miss halty so um Commissioners just so you know we are working with the leadership team and you know at this point what we're hearing back from the state is Don't Panic don't don't assume every you know we're the
sky falling kind of thing you need to wait until we have a little more information so while I understand the desire is for information like right away we need to wait until we have a better idea so we can't make a promise as to when you will have it before you
but as soon as we get some guidance we can most certainly pull things together but it's not going to be in the next month because I highly doubt the state's going to make a decision or even get close to a decision great I know that marine and I have had some phone
conversations after I'm I'm on the some cboard and I hear how the Cuts could impact their operation a lot of their operations so I have reached out poor contingencies and and as Marine has said
we don't know what we don't know um so um I would say that if anything but as Dwayne had indicated that we're going to get dumped on and we still have people to um take care of so yeah we
can't pass it on to the townships we can't pass it on to the city councils we can't pass it on to the whoever else is were the the buck stop but I do think that we should partner in terms of lobbying I do think we should be partnering with the city yep um I am going to meet with Buffy um Friday the
4th of April I wanted to I was uh housing is such a complicated topic as you know but I I know we have 839 units of either Section 8 or lowincome um 300 of those are the city's
H and and I so I've been sort of trying to figure out what is that I'm you know the federal government isn't really talking about cutting HUD but they did cut what 7,000 people I think in staff and that's one of those things where um
I think there will be consequences both to us and to the city of wona so I'm really from her just trying to get an understanding of how much Federal money is coming in for housing subsidies how many units are there how many many people would be affected So you you're
welcome to come if you have time I'm you're you're working so I'm guessing not but we're going to meet at 8 o' could we um we ask the staff to when when they're able to have enough information to start with the state associations and
the others that start giving us updates in terms of like what when you I think you probably do it anyways but when you know let us know so and tell us how we can begin how the board can best plan start develop contingency plans absolutely is that okay so yeah um so
one point question uh because everybody else is talking about it is this africanamerican childhood protection how many children do we have I don't know how many children we have it isn't that it just applies to no no it applies but how many out of home placement children do we have in wiona County I haven't
heard that figure for a long time actually I just the send the presentation in what the presentation that which one is it uh Alysa
which's heal Services advisory committee yeah we got these presentations Alicia yep no no Al I'm sorry no that's okay my bad so that's something that you discussed just recently were you at the meet no no I'm not on the committee this
was last week yes yeah that one okay it sounds like it's something that yeah I think they should go to the whole board I had asked ifen yeah if they could send the four presentations we were getting updated ones before we sent them right because yes at that point it
has peace counts in it which I think you I think you you crunched some numbers like if this County was required to do what you just talked about it wouldn't mean X number of dollars yeah huge yes yeah because do that Rebecca Church who is the assistant County attorney that
does it juvenile says she thinks it a will apply to probably 100% of the cases and then but how many cases do we have I've heard the 100% how many cases do we have hold on I don't know hold on so there
are 25 to 30 currently um going through adoption is what your note says Chris I don't have mine with me em Don't
yours again we we can get that yes I I when I go around the you know and there's other Commissioners that have a lot more specifics than I have and I have to kind of sit there like I don't know we haven't had the conversation yet and so that's part of my angst is that
um they've really dived into it and are getting some ideas what they can and can't do we do have the numbers okay we do have them Emily you look a little distressed out there no you're okay all right just I can see the look of oh my God what these people doing to me okay
you're good so we'll ask the staff to buy updates when you get it and tell us when how is the best way to start because it is important to do contingency planning yes and for us to know and for the the community to taxpayers to know what are the yeah and
so in commissioner Meyer's little charts I think 2025 is going to be all together different than my little chart then the the pass off of our portal I mean I'm I'm sorry it is going to look a lot different yes um both the income and the expenses Y and people need to know when
you do tax cuts for Elon Musk and the other billionaires and then you have to cut Medicaid this is what it means it means a reduction in Aid to nursing homes rural hospitals rural clinics people need we need to help people see that don't worry about the billing in aors they'll take care of them oh they
are they're Fe they'll take care of them don't worry about them well then they got to start donating then true it's true who donated more to what party oh Elon must by himself no do the math more billionaires that donated to the Democratic party than the Republican
party that is a fact we'll have to Che we got five minutes we're we're gonna wrap that up so you have what we need this gonna find out I'm right okay okay thank you all right we got we did get an estimate I'm trying to think who
it came from and we sent it to Nancy zeleski um and I thought you were copy on it you mean an estimate of the number of cases uh no I don't remember staff and and staff and funding no I don't remember seeing it staff funding you got
a number I thought so from from Micah nope oh from our one staff okay no don't don't remember she you thinking Rebecca Rebecca Church Rebecca was copied on it but then thought that was related to juveniles or you thought Alyssa was
maybe because you did have a number at one point yeah that was from Candy ohigh County yeah candy Ohio they're talking Millions here we go something yeah we're lucky we don't have any tribes because that creates a
whole another we have had EA cases though yeah yeah remind me is the percentage Point 250,000 of the levy yes yeah about 50 260 so a million dollars is 4% points
right there just right there and again I haven't my Winona County taxes yet I got my Houston count and they're all going up property taxes already I mean thought yours went down last year
no it always Monona kind of stays the same I don't do any improvements so it should it should stay the same more houses being built out in the county in theory it's supposed to reduce my taxes okay um this came from Alysa P we going
to vote on this three deal oh oh okay I yes yeah okay do you want to hear this Marshall yeah what okay this is it about the that act that we're talking about yeah okay so this is from Melissa pel on our staff okay she's a staff person Y in
a conversation with region 10 counties and counties similar to our Winona it is anticipated this new legislation will cost Winona County at a minimum an additional $400,000 annually we anticipate at a minimum Winona County would need to hire an additional three FTE social workers and one case Aid to
ensure we are meeting these new mandated requirements we anticipate this will cross over at least 95% of our cases in Winona County although it is possible it would hit all of them but she doesn't say the number of cases so can you send that to Marine and Marine can send it to all of us yes Marine was copied on it
but I will send it forward it to her now and ask ask her to send it out because see we don't I mean I don't have that kind of we were at I've asked we were at the Micah board meeting Nancy zeleski who's our lobbyist for HHS asked counties that were in Micah could they
come up with an estimate estimate which is why I asked yes I I sat in on that yes I I heard that so Marine you're gonna get something forward to you that this is the uh these are the estimates that
Alissa sent us okayy zesi a vote we have all those that want to move forward with maybe is it a modified request to um for or do you want to just stick with the High free I I was under the impression
um that the point of getting it to this board was to have the discussion to determine if it should move forward um not just simply to determine then what's the point we might as well just do it from the get-go and get three if there's no discussion at all so otherwise why
two and then three to get it there you're not love to talk about it so that was the whole point that I thought we were supposed to have for this conversation so no I it it to me it was very simple it was just taking a pause to allow things to be reflected upon until we figure out some of these things
and it was my way of showing the concern uh regardless of what and where it was coming from the concern exists um to say hey we're it isn't indefinite it isn't it isn't something that couldn't be undone it was just simply that it was to
show that hey for the time being we're we're going to take a little pause and we are reflecting on what might be and but sounds like we want to spend more so I'm going to vote Yes for it okay so call the question we don't vot you don't actually no we don't vote but it just
takes three well okay so I agree with Josh we should forward with you know at least we can determine that in the meeting as to what that what what definitive if we want any definitive or anything what's the proposal to hiring
frees and cost cending or well it's kind of a general it's a generalization to figure out at the board meeting as to what we are going if if we're going to take some sort of an action it's not to lay out a definitive plan it was to have the discussion to figure out if there's
something we could do to offset offset for the time being to show that hey the county is aware of this and we're we're looking at cost-saving measures and one thing we can easily do is just sit back and take a pause I can think of many companies that put hiring freezes on in
times of turmoil or just to say okay till we get through this process right now everybody's going to have to chip in a little bit value your job and appreciate where you're at and hey things could get better and things might get worse we don't know where it's going to be so fast and all does it frequently I mean I'm just at one right out the
window there so I worked at fast when they had a high earing PRS it's nothing nothing uncommon just I guess I look at it is if it was your checkbook how would you respond my preference would be I would make a new request for board action at our board
meeting that is to um do a review of HHS spending with respect to Grants and then do contingency planning but not a hiring fore so I don't think I support this idea well it's not just HHS it's a lot of it's it's all of County government cost cutting is cost cutting regardless
of where it comes from or the potential to we work and we save something to potentially offset new expenses I agree with with Chris and to include and to your point to include other departments where it's impacted as well because don't most of our Highway
projects the larger ones also depend partially on some federal funding as well that but that's already probably in line it's going forward right might get oh you never it might get a little dicey I think the projects for this year
are I gu there are items that are in the uh budget that are not mandatory right they're niceties that the County does for Citizens but they're not mandatory yeah and we're going to we're probably going to have to look at those things
I'm just saying I'd be looking at that before looking at a hiring phrase because you still have to do the work you still have to provide the services you do but again as I said the the Personnel in our budget is the biggest line item that we've got so I mean you
always have to look at the the ramifications of hiring somebody to do what what job is it blows me way to sit here and look at very successful companies that follow the same practices and to sit and argue that there's no concern to their thought
process this is common exceptionally common to do this in times of uncertainty so there's always a case given by anybody in any company that says no we can't do it it's the hard decisions that have to be faced when you're faced with uncertainty or a hard
decision and so it there's always going to be a case to hire somebody and there's always going to be somebody to say well I need another person to do another job and and and that's where the taxpayer is saying is saying are we can you run it can you can can you just be a little a little bit cautious here till
we figure out where we're at so uh the way I look at it I guess we have a lack of a third is what I'm hearing take a two minute break or know work we I would say that we already have a hiring freeze I one of the uh good County Commissioner's approach me
because she said their administrator created an entirely new Department with several hires in the middle of the year and I said oh my God that would never happen in Winona County because the board would have to approve it and so I'd say you know we already have a
highering freeze if we create new positions it's a part of our budgeting process so should we move to health the Community Health Board yes we're behind schedule okay we call to order the the um March 25th 2025 Community Health
Board 61 I'm sorry 61 yeah 61 it starts uh item two approve the meeting minutes from March 11th I'll move second we have a motion by commissioner Meyer second by commissioner Olen to approve the meeting
minutes from March 11th any discussion all those in favor say I oose nay approved uh chairperson's report um nothing really um last year they didn't know I was on Shack so I never went to the orientation
but the orientation is you're not following policy my goodness so uh I signed up this year I think it's the 10th right and I think they do they do some of that online yeah and I did watch their videos but okay and they have a
they have a little coffee and coffee and cream um videos things the next one coming up I think is April I want to say maybe April 10th it's about um uh water drinking water and stuff and so that might be kind of interesting um and
again we continue let's see Ross is in there have we added any more reverse osmosis systems I'm waiting for an update okay all right all right and stu okay other than that um item four 4.1 approve foundational Public Health
responsibilities work plan and budget and that's on page 82 Emily hello every good evening all right I'm here today to talk to you about the foundational Public Health responsibilities Grant um I'm just going to give you a brief synopsis
of the um Grant duties and goals um the goal of these uh funds is to assure that no jurisdiction in the state of Minnesota lacks a defined package of Public Health capabilities and programs the funds are to be used to support these specific objectives Community
Health boards are directed to use these funds to grow capacity of existing programs to better meet the foundational needs of the public health work or to increase Public Health capacity by designating These funds to focus on public health work of assessment
surveillance planning evaluation policy review and development Community Partnership growth leadership and governance Workforce Development financial and contract management and overall guidance of the public health work done within the joury
jurisdiction so our 2025 uh work plan and budget focuses on the foundational capabilities of assessment and surveillance Community Partnership development Equity organizational
competencies uh policy development and support and accountability and Performance Management the specific um budgetary items um you'll see um listed on our 2025 budget document uh Focus first on
salaries and fringe benefits um which is a total of 40 just over $46,000 um of our 20 and 2,692 to total budget for 2025 um that those salary um items are
of existing staff um that are working on process and Improvement within the department um it includes 15% of my salary as the health and human Services Supervisor it also includes 10% of the Health and Human Services director
position that is currently posted uh the budget includ includes contractual work of $135,000 um focused on Community Health Improvement um planning um estimated to be approximately $50,000 it also includes uh contract
work with an uh organization called Avenue that um supports our Public Health electronic medical record called pH doc um to work with them to create some efficiencies and um streamline
workflows from that application into some of our other um financial and billing applications it also includes um about $30,000 related to a contract with bold which for cont continuity of operations
training um so those contractual um again are about $135,000 and then the final budgetary area focuses on travel and training expenses of just under $1,000 do for staff I'll move to approve item 4.1 I'll
second where's the flaws in the system uh the fact that we operate on a grant system right but you feel that you got as much covered as you possibly can cover with these funds um most counties have chosen to do the work internally
through significant increase in Staffing without that ability to do so um it's we're looking at considerable contract work um I literally while I was sitting here I did just get an email that one of our grants um their Federal funding was pulled um and the directive from the
state was that all spendings cease immediately but any spending that we've done until this date it will be reimbursed um so as we go forward with grants like this um my practice has been over the last few months to invoice for things before the service is rendered um so
that we can pay the bill before the service is rendered so that we don't get up end up getting stuck with a bill after the fact and then not have grant funding coming in to reimburse for that so I will continue to do that kind of uh lay of the land when it comes to
invoicing and reimbursement um to make sure that we are not spending funds that PO could go away and I know the county attorney's office uh reviews all contracts and finds the out Clauses and everything in any contract correct we
try yeah not just to form but I mean we seriously need yeah no it's not a rubber stamp yeah we need review for any of these contracts that we can get out of in a very you know expedient manner I know some of them right um well this one it came through
and uh we sign I appreciate M sending it okay I've seen so many of these they're very similar so I can review them pretty quickly yeah okay all right Sil all right all those in favor of approving the uh foundational Public
Health responsibilities work plan and budget say I nay okay that one's approved um 4.2 approved change request to current pH doc maintenance and support agreement with Avenue insights and analytics LLC and Minnesota County's computer
Cooperative so this is essentially just kind of a backing up of um our funds so these funds that I'm talking about now are our 2024 foundational Public Health responsibilities budget we still have $196,000 um from that grant that needs to be expended before June 30th um so a
portion of the work that I'm looking to do contracted again with Avenue who does um support our Public Health responsibilities um Public Health EMR um would coming and doing an initial assessment with us to get a better understanding of how we operate
currently using our electronic medical record um and what uh capabilities that we're currently using to give us some um guidance and advice as far as what they would say we should do going forward so there's kind of an initial assessment and then in the 2025 budget we just talked about would be kind of the the
bulk of the work that would happen over time and this this system is the state system right um yes it is owned by the state um the um owner of Avenue the um support company we're talking about actually developed pH dock um and then
sold it to the state and now she and her company support um the pH dock it side of things it's not the same horror stories that we have in the Human Service technology World um I don't know that they're quite as um old as ssis that is used in Social Services um but I
can't brag about them either it's not yeah it's not probably up to Fe and such y so this assessment um is um estimated to be approximately $3,000 I'll move to approve item 4.2 I'll second okay motion made by commissioner bagely second by commissioner Meer to approve the change
request to pH docks discussion all those in favor say I okay all right we're Jour General business I don't think that we've covered everything motion just real quickly for the next meeting can we put on the agenda to discuss the possibility of um adding Dr Haden he
asked he talked to me at last meeting about should would it be helpful for him to sometimes join us at the table as the as a medical doctor during I support that so thank you so for the next next time we okay we might want to make Community Health Board more than a 15
minute agre okay 100% all right advised um we'll adjourn commissioner eling yep and we have a second over there okay motion adjourn by commissioner eling second by commissioner Meer all those in favor say I I post nay you got a couple
minutes there go forward okay we'll take a short break here for the audience members I think you know but this is public health now Community Health now going two minute break before the normal regular business Mee right group tonight
are you comfortable item 7.6 talks about aot Grant I just comment okay sure that okay yeah just a quick comment comment on
76 I could also Pull It in I just want to not opposed to it at all Madam chair um I will be asking for 7.9 to be tabled until the April 8th meeting 79 to be tabled yeah oh darn I
had a whole long I figured you would so that's why I'm pulling it hanging around for years for Pake we're gonna get out of here sooner can you plant a park without a bathroom all the advancement all the design and everything I mean at least
put a composting bathroom up there you can't you can't get a drink but you can bring a bottle of water with you but where you supposed to go take a pee you know so I that's wrong all that planning you know okay so we're you're going to pull that
one okay all right table it okay yes okay uh we will call to order of the wona County Board please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the
flag of the United States of America and to the repic for which stands one nation under God indivisible with li good evening good evening beautiful springl likee
day we open our meetings with public comment uh each speaker has up to two minutes to address the County Board and we need you to state your name and address for our records please hello tonight my name is Jeff Mueller I'm the chief Deputy with the Sheriff's
Department live in wiona Minnesota here I just wanted to take a little bit of your time tonight real quick to recognize two officers with our department that have uh done some exceptional service and uh want to recognize them tonight uh both of them all have come up investigative Sergeant
Mark dunie and Deputy Darren brand um I'm going to read to you the letter that we wrote to each of them and kind of highlighting what we're recognizing them for but as I read you the letters you'll kind of understand this is hitting kind of both spectrums of the sheriff's department uh Deputy Brans going to be recognized for his outstanding service
that he's provided to some of the schools in rural wona County and investigative Sergeant dunie is going to be recognized for his outstanding work in a recent sexual exploitation case that resulted in a very good outcome for the our department so kind of hitting
both ends of the spectrum for this I'm going to start with Deputy brand Deputy brand the wiona county sheriff's and I will also say real quick that sheriff Gan is sick tonight and so I'm filling in for to help with this the Ron County Sheriff's Department
would like to take this opportunity to recognize Deputy Darren br's efforts related to his ongoing involvement with the school children in rural Winona County in October of 2023 the Sheriff's Office began a community policing initiative designed to increase our presence and visibility in rural K
through2 schools due to Staffing limitations and limited number of Rural schools in Winona County the concept of a full-time school resource officer was not considered feasible because children are one of our most uh vulnerable populations the Sheriff's Office aimed to overcome this issue of feasibility by
directing deputies to do school patrols on school days each Deputy was assigned to school and were instructed to increase their police presence around the schools when class was in session by running radar outside the schools dropping off and picking up writing reports in the school parking lots
playing with the kids at recess eating breakfast or lunch with the kids stopping into their classrooms and walking through buildings during the day to meet staff and find out if there were any concerns or issues that needed to be addressed Deputy brand has taken it upon himself to go above and beyond what is
expected when this effort first began Deputy bran stops at more schools than he is assigned to he makes a very intentional effort to interact with the students and staff and be a presence in those schools Deputy brand has known to
greet the kids with fist bumps in the morning playing touch football at recess sits with the kids at breakfast lunch where he's entertained with stories about how many teeth the kids have lost over the summer Deputy brandan has been invited to the classroom to read books to students and talk about his job he's
even been invited by the students to attend their Christmas recital Deputy br's efforts have positively impacted the students their parents and the school staff he interacts with he's had a major role in framing wona County Law Enforcement and a positive light Deputy brand is a
positive influence role model and a listening ear for children that may not have that at home and his regular Presence at w County schools has made them safer the success of his efforts cannot be measured but it undoubtedly is a success for that he deserves to be
commended for that Deputy brand and the next one is for sergeant investigative dunie the wona county sheriff's office would like to take this opportunity to recognize investigative Sergeant mark dunie for his outstanding work related to a valentine Quintana
sexual exploitation investigation little background on it according to court documents between April 22nd and June 23rd Quintana 30 years old used media apps including Snapchat Instagram to thre to threaten sexual manipulate and exploit more than 60 young girls
primarily between 9 and 12 years old in Oklahoma Pennsylvania Texas New Zealand and elsewhere Quintana who knew most of the girls were between 9 and 12 years used used fake identities and lied about his age in communication with the girls posing as a minor girl himself he used
images and videos of Youth of girls appearing to make the communication with the other victims more believable thanks to this case being initiated invest and investigated by investigative sergeant dunie and subsequently partnering with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal
apprehension and Homeland Security investigations quintano was recently sentenced to 324 months in prison followed by 20 years of supervised release an online sexual ex sex tation and online sex tortion scheme that
victimized more than 60 girls among the country and abroad investigative sergeant dunie and the wona county sheriff's department are dedicated to investigating sexual expectation cases and providing resources through the creation of our internet crimes against
children iak investigation position that uh currently investigator dun uh resid in with the iak possession position investigative sergeant dunie and the wona county sheriff's offic has dedicated to holding people who pray upon our children accountable thank you
investigator dunie for your efforts on this case and all the work you do to keep our children safe thank you investigator anything either you want to say I'm good question from the board read a book thank you very much unfortunately though that your case
that's not long enough I mean people like that that fedit you know on young uh victims I I'm sorry 3 what 60 months 324 months 324 months that's not long enough it should be forever yeah in my opinion but that's the maximum that they
could y that was a very large case that encompassed several countries around the world and in the United States invol it was a big case so yes so was do we have any when on count people victimized H yes we do oh okay that's
sad that's very sad yeah absolutely thank you for doing your work and for you playing with the the kids out there it's important and you know for a buck you can go to the dollar well maybe a buck and a quarter you can go to the dollar store and get a frame for those certificates apologize we didn't have them for you such but thank you very
much thank you thank you all right is there anyone else wishing to address the wiona County board at this time step forward and name and address please hi good evening Commissioners uh I'm Dan Wilson I live in rural Southern
Winona County 30841 zepher Valley Lane uh I'm here to speak in favor of the warming Center um Catholic Charities asking the County Board to provide any kind of support that they can um either with a strongly
worded letter support and or um any kind of financial help as well they are applying for a very competitive Grant from the Minnesota Department of Housing um and having money from the county board or even a a letter of support
really boost that uh Grant application so my experience from 2010 to 2013 you though I Live rur Now during that time I ran the Bethany House emergency shelter in the city of wiona um and so in my experience we had a lot of folks living
there who lived in St Charles and Louis and in in Greater Winona County uh for folks that are experiencing homelessness but don't currently live in the city live in gr wona County a lot of times they have to be in the city of Winona because they no longer have a car and they need to be able to walk to the
county building to the city building to access different public services that are available um in that way a a Shel emergency shelter in the city of wona definitely serves greater wona County in a very positive way um and also um with
my work I now do some work with affordable housing uh with Eng Gage wona and just an emergency shelter stops so so many Downstream effects of homelessness and um Winona is a small enough City where a small shelter 20 to
30 beds could effectively end homelessness in Winona County there's not a lot of other cities in the state that can make that kind of claim um but you don't have to take my word why this would be a great idea uh for the over the past couple days I've reached out to
different organizations that I have relationships with and asked for other letters of support and we have over 25 letters of supports from different um nonprofits but also churches and other um elected officials in support of Catholic Charities as they are going for this um RFP from the Department of
Housing so all these other agencies in the county think it's a great idea I think a a letter of support from the County Board would be very powerful um and help make a year around shelter in Winona possibility so I will give this big stack of
letters much all right thank you is there anyone else wishing to address the Winona County Board good evening guys good evening my name is Rachel Marquee and I live in St Charles Minnesota on Sinclair Road with my husband and my daughter and I'm
writing today um with concerns about Amish communities in St Charles um preferably Saratoga Township and St Charles Township um we have to abide by building laws rules um road laws and rules and if we are not we are told to take down
buildings we pay fines fees all that fun stuff um we can't drive when we are 16 so I'm here wondering why our neighboring communities are able to to do that on the roads um which they are crumbling with their steel wheels and I
pay Road tax um they are taking over our Farms Our Family Farms with puppy mills chicken farms um factories Larry Campbell Farm on stclair road is growing and there's also a barn on Highway 74 um
with no pen penalties fines fees but with many questions hesitations um and they changed the flood plane um County 30 5 has the biggest Factory if you ever take a road a drive down there they have details that are not
legal also on County Road 35 there is a set aside land that is supposed to be set aside only and there's a huge Barn there an Amish barn that is made for storage as they claim however it is a trust business and why is it legal for
them to be able to build on set aside land when us Englishmen cannot the roads are difficult to drive on and we're unable to drive on a lot of a lot of them and driving in the middle or half on the on the side or you know trying to
remove maneuver potholes it scares me to drive at night as they are not um a lot of the buggies do not have lights and I really do not prefer to be a statistic as they do in Filmore County and I really hope that um the the pictures I
have and things you guys would consider some changes within these townships in these counties so thank you I appreciate this and I will hand my pictures and letters off to you guys thank you this one thank you
hey come on down good evening I'm Dr Sarah Jane OA I live at 218 West Broadway here in Winona I'm a retired psychotherapist with 53 years of experience working with
with survivors of domestic abuse and with homeless citizens I'm here tonight to speak for expansion of Catholic Charities warming centers being homeless is bad enough but
being homeless and freezing cold just adds another layer of violence to homelessness our homeless Citizens need and deserve warm safe places out of the Minnesota
wind and cold in wona County currently just too many people need a place to get warm and rest in our uh unpredictable and often very cold
weather I know boards have budgets and I know the economy has many board members worried right now and for all of those of us who are here tonight we appreciate your willingness to listen to our
please for over half a century I have personally witnessed firsthand the damage that is done to homeless citizens who don't receive enough help from their communities it is
costly to them and ultimately it is costly to their communities so I thank you in advance for any help you can give to our cold homeless citizens thank you thank you thank
you is there uh we've gone past uh if we have more speakers do we want to allow them to speak absolutely okay all right please come to the podium amarissa Ruiz 522 and 1 half masan Street here in
Winona uh Commissioners I am here today to advocate for emergency shelter in honor of those that we have lost to the Winona housing crisis May their memory live on through us one thing that I've learned in my past role as a shelter coordinator is
that the work of a shelter Advocate is never over why because Winona County's response to the growing homelessness crisis is lagging about 10 years behind US cities that have adopted housing first models with support from both County and City
buyin implementing these models does take persistence and organization but it can be done and has been done just look at Catholic Charities progress in Rochester Minnesota where there are Apartments dedicated for Supportive
Housing the second thing that I learned is that a majority of the deaths of people experien experiencing homelessness in Winona occurred during the offse why when the shelter closes at the end of March all shelter guests are left
with nowhere to go regardless of demographic at season's end I have seen veterans senior citizens those with physical or cognitive disabilities pregnant people and individuals with complex medical
diagnoses turned out to the street sometimes with a tent but most of the time with nothing I asked a wiona police officer once last summer where should I direct people to Camp if they can't sleep here
while they wait for the day Center to open he said something along the lines of somewhere that's not public land and not private land I'm sure that you can do the math of what is remaining crisis is not pretty it is
also not seasonal it remains and expands until measures are taken I applaud the entities represented today that are here to vouch for emergency shelter support and the openness of the Commissioners to learn more I believe that support of the
proper channels and the strength of community working together that we can create solutions for a better future thank you for your time and remember shelter saves lives housing ends homelessness thank
you hello everyone um I'm Mary Joe clinker I live at 156 east6 um I know tonight you'll be hearing about the importance of Catholic Charities and I'm here to support their work I'm here tonight on behalf of community not cages an organization many of you are are familiar with um we've
been around for more than 5 years and we host Community dinners and conversations around safety something lesser known Is our commitment to Food Distribution during the winter months in this community as community members weekly food support is an important part of our commitment to each other and to safety many of our friends family and each
other have lived experiences with housing in security and this makes our demands for local budgets to reflect the needs of our community housing and Healthcare even more urgent and personal I'm here to share that we support housing safety and increased access to shelter funding to ensure the Comm that
community members are warm in the cold months and cool in the hot summer last fall the warming Center called for Community Partners to build a reliable network of local local folks committed to food support and as a group Community KN cages provided evening meals to the warming Center once per week the entire
season warming Center leadership had informed us that we are the first and only organization to respond to that call for Community Partners in my experience often this winter we have witnessed folks with nowhere to go um with the Gap in Services between the day and warming Center and it is unfair that
we can't as a community make sure that all of our neighbors are safe and their needs are met I ask you today to please do what you can to support further services for housing and our UNH housee neighbors thank you thank you is there anyone else wishing to
address the unona County Board hi I am online and I would like to make a comment um I I'm I apologize identify yourself please name and address yes um I Jal writer I live at
853 West 6th Street in Winona okay go ahead thank you all right um I'm Jalissa um as I said I'm also a member of community not
cages and um doing food support is something that I've helped out with um I wanted to share a story of a friend um who who asked me to share during um
comment so um they said quote when my landlord decided to convert my Third Street Apartment into a short-term rental the anxiety of securing housing nearly turned my whole world upside down sharing the same block with unhoused
neighbors um staying at the war warming Center clarified how close I am that we all are to needing emergency shelter Services we cannot aband Bandon each other we are all we have end quote there
is no shortage of experiences like these about the stresses of finding adequate housing and when this with this in mind and the other stories that are have been shared um I hope we share the same goals of supporting a year round shelter and
more sustainable access to affordable housing thank you thank you okay uh last last time is there anyone else wishing to address the Monona County Board seeing nobody thank you for for
the comments uh moving on in to our agenda uh item five approval of the County board meeting minutes a second uh motion by commissioner Elie and second by commissioner Meyer um I do have a correction um on
page um 71 the packet uh in one of the the first um uh findings of fact number one it says Winona County recognizes significant public interest and concern regarding and we we did throughout the
document replace industrial dog breeding with commercial dog breeding that is correct okay gotcha um of course I would debate the terminology findings a fact also but I guess that's what we use so with that correction um all those in
favor say I POS n okay um consent uh comments and approval of the agenda um commissioner vagley uh at the end I'd like two comments and if it's okay with the board and Miss hty
item 7.6 I don't necessarily want to pull it I just want to comment it as we as we go through it could I just make a quick comment okay all right Miss salty you have that noted okay all right um commissioner eling U just a comment at the
end commissioner olon nothing for me commissioner Meyer um did we want to pull item 7.9 table please yeah yeah table 7.9 okay so I want would like to pull 7.9 off of the consent agenda okay so we'll pull 7.9 for a future agenda
anything else commissioner May well well I think can we make it 8 n and then we'll take it procedure we just have pulled it in the past if if Administration wants to pull it we have pulled it in the past but however you want to do it is f let's
just pull it okay pull it and put it on a future uh board agenda per Administration in that case I had one request for board action board action um Miss hty nothing further okay sonoman nothing for me thank you okay um I would
like to pull 7.7 for a separate vote and um 7.11 it's a quick easy comment I hope somebody's here to answer that 7-Eleven can we make that uh 8.0 because it's not anything long and
detailed everybody okay with that and then I'll reserve the right for comment at the end of the meeting um where'd you put 7.7 7 11 I moved to 8.0 yeah but you pulled
77 yes I want a separate vote on that so I'm sorry we'll make that 8.01 okay all right yes separate vote please okay with those adjustments we have an amended agenda is there a motion to approve mve second okay we have
commissioner Meer approves commissioner olon seconded any further discussion all those in favor say I I n okay approved Miss Hy if you'd read the the uh rest of the items please thank you we'll do 7.1 approve contract with Monona post for
2025 official newspaper 7.2 approve resolution increasing Sheriff's Department change fund 7.3 approve foundational Public Health responsibilities work plan and budget for 2025 7.4 approved change request to
current pH do maintenance and support agreement agement with Avenue insights and analytics LLC in Minnesota County's computer Cooperative 7.5 approv resolution to acquire right away for cassad 12 7.6 uh comment just want to
for the for information for future reference this project which I support was roughly 10 miles and the cost is five the total cost is $5.3 million it's just for future reference what everything cost in government to
including road projects that's all thank you yeah roads roads are very expensive half a million dollars per month yeah commissioner El and we are very fortunate that we have the sales tax to help offset some of those costs that's where per of your money goes because
without that we would be in Dire Straits y I'd have more more worse roads than when on a going yeah less more ugly yeah not just we do pretty good yeah okay so 7.6 is to approve agreement 105 9239 and
resolution with menot for cassad 29 l rip Grant 7.7 was pulled 7.8 approved extension of lease agreement with court authority of Bona for 165 West Second Street parking lot 7.9 was
pulled 710 approve 2025 Solid Waste holler license 7.11 is pull 7.12 acknowledge receipt of monthly finance and budget update for February 2025 and 7.13 confirm payment of
dispersements I'll move to approve the consent items second we have a motion by commissioner vagle second commissioner Olson to approve the consent items any further discussion all those in favor say I I oppose nay okay approved all
right then moving into um uh General business 8.0 which is 7.11 and that is approve a state of Minnesota safe road Zone Grant to combat speeding offenses and um I did have is
is there somebody can address that Grant okay um a question um I know we had an existing trailer now I'm hoping we can refurbish that and add it to our Fleet or um is it just sitting in a warehouse
that needs to be sold an existing trailer I guess the speed with the speed your speed is it's been I had Sheriff Gan put it out in Ridgeway within the last year too you're not familiar no I think you you might be referring to good
viiew police department has a trailer I that may have gotten put out there that we had bowered on occasion from them when it was available which they were using it for their own needs so we don't have any other trailer though um we had an old old old speed square monitor box
that we used to put on the back uh trunk of a rundown squad car that barely ran um that's what we used to have that since out of function does not work anymore so this is uh for our own speed trailer so we can put it out more
frequently and not have to rely on good view um to use their trailers when they're using it then maybe I misunderstood because I know I asked that is what we were told is that we have a trailer that is using rechargeable batter but the batteries are very expensive let
me clarify for you on that part it's a it's not a trailer it's a if you drive through Stockton and if you ever see the speed sign that they have in Stockton we had something similar to that that was portable that you would put up on a pole um that would last usually for three or
4 days and you could recharge the batteries not a trailer I guess is what I'm saying though I remember a trailer so I guess I don't want something sitting in a shed that's not being used and if it can't be fixed or refurbished I think we need to clean house is my my
point plus then I see in the contract $2,000 Freight where are we having this come from Texas pardon me Texas we have no closer vendors than Texas Texas that's where it's coming from it's a cry and shame we're spending 7,000 and we're
spending two of that per Freight and shipping is very expensive okay yeah all right commissioner Elie me you're up here um we we all seem to have um had a conversation consent with a with a with
a well-known good constituent about Highway 14 and the hill issues and um I think something like this potentially could be a wonderful thing to help complement some of those issues if so allowed to be on a state highway
so Highway 14 is absolutely in onea County Y and is one of the roads that we do Patrol um we try to partner with the state patrol to assist us in that enforcement also um but it's not out of the question that that's
something that we would be able to potentially use this uh Speed Monitor trailer for keep them Speeders coming down that Hill it doesn't do anything with Jake breaks it only does speeding you put a little on there so but there's laws against that tooe thank you very much you everything
you do thank you I'll move to approve what have been formly items 7.11 second yes okay uh any further discussion on approving that grant for Speed reduction all those in favor say I oppose nay okay approved all right thank
you um then we have um 7.7 approve the wixie labor agreement for 2025 and 2027 um I just again um won't vote for it because I strongly believe we need some pay for performance measures in our
contracts I'll move to approve 8.0 I'm gonna I'm actually gonna I didn't second Meer andle yes commissioner Elling well um I'm actually gonna I'm actually going to support your motion just because I brought up about some hiring freezes and controlling cost
and part of that is ensuring that our current people who are here can keep a job because if you add people typically when the budget calls for reducing everybody's in Jeopardy and I do believe that there's a performance aspect to every job so I can see where you're
coming from with that so I can I can agree with that I'll go with that this time okay so all those in favor of approving the labor agreement say I I oos those oppos Nay n okay 32 all
right then 8.1 uh receive presentation from Advocacy Center of Winona AG two4 yep good evening good evening Commissioners uh I submitted a few PowerPoint slides that you should be
able to review as I um kind of explained them so if you have any questions also feel free to contact me at any time uh so just kind of started my name's Crystal I'm the executive director at the Advocacy Center of wona
I've been there almost six years now uh the first slide that you will see in the packet is really just stating that we um have been around for about 45 years now and we are a victim centered organization which means that we are uh
we listen to what the Survivor victim wants and what their needs are to make them feel safe that's the most basic way I can explain it our primary Crystal I apologize is it possible to get the presentation up on the screen for the audience and for the public ID if you're
available can you I I apologize important information I want to make sure that people here in the audience and people the people at home can see it I appreciate that there we thank you I I apologize no no worries thank you um so our primary
service focus is sexual assault domestic violence and stalking and just a quick definition of each of those I mean we've talked a lot little bit about you heard from the work that Mark dunie does with victims in Winona those are also the our service area um so sexual assault any
unwanted sexual contact and that could be digital as well um domestic Family Violence is a pattern of abusive Behavior by one person to maintain power over another person stalking is when someone follows watches or contact
someone in an unsafe way so those are our primary service f focuses uh on the next slide our next slide basically shows a few of the areas within those so um
crisis advocacy refers to the 24-hour crisis hotline as well as crisis advocacy during our office hours in 2024 the ACW served 6 89 Unique Individuals among them 84 were victims of sexual
assault including cases of child pornography child sexual abuse adult sexual and adult sexual assault 520 individuals received services for domestic and or Family Violence and 92 were survivors of stalking and
harassment many of these individuals are victims of multiple crimes and the ACW also assisted victims of human trafficking teen dating violence and elder abuse we partner with local agencies to provide all of these Services we work
with hawaa Valley family and children center the Winona County Attorneys Office law enforcement and we aim to provide comprehensive Services a lot of these services and these Partnerships do reduce costs to
counties uh reduced emergency Health Emergency and healthcare costs so we are able to provide services that are for the individual that perhaps other people can't some of these situations don't
rise to a level of a criminal case there's still terrible things that people do to one another but may not end up in um the criminal justice system we're still there to support an individual from the beginning to the end
of that situation um there's decreased law enforcement and legal expenses in improved mental health and quality of life and I think it's really important just to say that en enhance Community
stability soorting survivors helps them regain stability and Independence which reduces their need for other social services and can contribute to a more stable and productive community so if we go to the next
slide thank you um so the this this slide shows the advocacy Services over the last calendar year our calendar budget uh year budget was
$69,000 and Winona County funds a portion of our 24-hour crisis line uh this graph as I said shows expenditures by month the way that we pay for our crisis line or our Advocates they are
paid a small stien to be on call usually between $18 and $25 a night they must stay within 30 minutes of Winona health emergency room and immediately respond with mobile advocacy we usually try to have one
person as the main on call and one person and on call backup and that is mostly to handle conflicts of interest we're a small world Community um and often if somebody has a close personal relationship with a victim they will have a backup Advocate
to call this graph is the amount of mobile advocacy so this isn't just everybody on call this shows the mobile advocacy so the individual mobile responses and we also have um quite a
few volunteers who are not paid at all who take our crisis line next slide please so for the $5,760 that we receive of our $69,000
budget we uh and I apologize for that comma in the wrong spot I did not mean to do that uh majority of it does go to wages it takes people to be on call and provide that mobile
advocacy that first response uh and so wages are a big part of that um and then the crisis line phone so we have a cell phone that our crisis line is patched to and that each Advocate will take home
when that phone rings that is when they are called to their activeon call and their mobile response as I said they receive a small stien for the overnight that they work and then they will receive their hourly wage for responding in person that could be to a sexual
assault examination a domestic violence situation any number of things that um that that come up in our work next slide here is our office contact
information our 24-hour crisis line uh we do operate our office hours in our downtown location we have a dropin center and then we also have nights weekends and holidays that we are on call are there any
questions not a question just a a big thank you for what you and your staff and the volunteers that you work with do and thank you to miss Miller and the audience as well past director as well thank you for what you've been doing for a very long time thank you thank you for the acknowledgement just a quick question are you a
5013c yes 50133 correct and you do file there is a state form that you have to we have lots yes we have lots of State forms we file well I just like to be consistent because I like to see those forms sent to us because they're all in the same order and we can do some uh you
know know quick research yep and you should have all of our forms our office manager did submit those um we typically do not meet the threshold for a full audit so then we would we always send our 990 uh in the previous fiscal year
we did end up getting an audit so um we submitted that as well so you should have all those documents okay I'm getting the the nod yes and that just helps consistency in in all these different organizations so thank you he's not picking on you yeah no I I understand C quick question
I see your linear line yep going elevated yep so what do you seeing the increase to be um caused do we do we know so one of the things that we've seen over the last
calendar year both in our services to the community services to students at University um is an increase in stalking and and cyber abuse um and that that is been a huge challenge I think for a lot
of agencies because we're navigating technology that is constantly changing so we had a drastic increase of stalking harassment cases um that we have been looking at how to serve our our
community members uh through the issues that they're facing with that and that um sometimes means partnering with iak sometimes that means learning technology that we didn't think we'd have to learn a year ago okay thank you thank you all right
thank you very much thank you you okay 8.2 receive presentation from Catholic Charities regarding the warming Center page 251 in our packet good evening good evening thank you very much my name is John Myers I'm the executive director of Catholic
churches of southern Minnesota so thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you tonight and before I begin I want to just say thank you to those who spoke on behalf of the warming Center and kind of the support from the community um the warming Center itself is actually birth out of the community
of Winona that it was a group of volunteers getting together in the beginning recognizing that there was a problem and volunteering their time and resources to create the Winona Community warming Center um that came about in the uh winter of 2016
um and since then um it has grown both in its capacity but also in its Staffing and and work um actually in 200 so in 2016 it started out in the um basement of the Community Bible Church um actually where it still is today only
you call it edge church um 20178 we had over 189 volunteers that provided over 3,300 hours of service to the warming Center by 2019 we expanded to paid staff through Catholic char ities um and by 2020 we actually opened up our day
Center so over that time we've seen Services grow both in our warming Center and in the overnight Center um just to give you some ideas of numbers um back in 2018 they served 48 um unduplicated individuals for a total of 600 nights of
shelter this season so far we are on track to have 70 unduplicated individuals being served for roughly 1300 nights of shelter um a warming Center serves a critical purpose in the Housing Services that are
offered by a community um I often times when I talk about it and try and explain it to individuals use the analogy of the the medical community and an emergency room that you need a place where people can go when suddenly there's an emergency you don't plan to have a
really big ER but you do need to have one when there's that emergency hit so you hope that you have resources that are helping to um keep individuals from experiencing homelessness such as experiencing a visit to the ER but you need to have a place there in case it happens the idea and the Hope though is
that it's something that is brief and hopefully not reoccurring that in setting up an emergency shelter that individuals that find themselves experiencing homelessness have a place to go out of the elements and to be safe um but the idea is that that's not where the journey ends an emergency shelter is
not housing it's a place to for people to go for safety but there are all other community partners that are a part of this process to assist individuals who are experiencing homelessness to find permanent solutions to their homelessness um and so having an emergency center is a critical element
in that that you can't provide Housing Services without having that place for that immediate emergency and that's what our services do provide that response um as mentioned it is um a seasonal warming Center so we are open from November through the end of March and that is
designed basically on our funding model that we are funded to service U emergency shelter our funding comes through the state we're not um as as far as I know we're not receiving County dollars for the emergency shelter it is funded through our um a grant through
the state which gives us about 60% of the cost of the services so we run the warming Center um obviously no November through March it's not great as people have attested in the audience um that running a seasonal means what
happens after the season is over where do individuals Winona residents go once they can no longer access that and what it does is it creates maybe um instability in the care they're receiving whether they are receiving assistance from other services maybe they're receiving Medical Services or
maybe they actually finally landed that job and they just needed that emergency shelter to be and now they find themselves without a shelter a place to go um and having to either relocate which requires them to access all new services or to foro that job that they
had just received um so it does in the long run having a a yearr round shelter not only serves it serves the the community it serves these individuals who are being disrupted also from just a pure organizational point of view it's a lot of work to rehire staff season over
season and get them trained and ready to go only to say goodbye to that well well equipped staff at the end um so providing that year round service not only builds that also builds relationships with those experiencing homelessness so that they are seeing and being cared for not just in those few
months but actually throughout the year um as mentioned earlier um we are working on submitting a proposal this proposal would ask the state funding to provide yearr round um warming Center like I said taking our seasonal and making it um yearround and then our hope
is to be able to wrap around our day Center services so that we could in the end provide nearly 247 care to those experiencing homelessness um why I'm here today is really for a few things one obviously we are it's a
challenge for funding I mean every nonprofit will get up here and say the same thing um we are it's a public private partnership with the the grants that we're receiving and so there is a 60% that we are receiving and 40% that we do need to find funding for um so
it's on ongoing challenge to fund even just the warming Center day Center when it's in its seasonal capacity um in addition to that we've had to make different different cuts even in the number of hours we can provide for our day Center Services we'd love to be able to provide up to 12 hours of day service right now we've
reduced that to about six to S hours of day service I'm here today the main big ask I'm here for is your letter of support um as we go into this very competitive um bidding to get funding for a warming
Center year round we are ing bids from all over the state and we are going to put together the best proposal we can but having the county stand behind us and say that we to recognize that this is a service that is needed for our citizens of hestad County or um wona
County that that letter would just go a longer way in our proposal I'm not going to lie I'm probably going to ask to come back at a later time to ask a bigger ask from you because even like I said if we get the yearr round funding that's still probably only going to through a form
that's probably only be about 60% of what we need and coming to you as a county we are doing what we can do the nonprofits are trying to do what they can do um but we also as they said it starts it started with a community and it needs a community and we need we need
the county support through this and again I just want to acknowledge that working in Winona and the community here has been amazing um just to kind of give you a perspective this started in 2016 places like Rochester weren't even thinking about about this till 2019 you
guys were way ahead the curve um but as mentioned we've started to fall behind the curve in what kind of the resources and ongoing support that we would offer people experiencing homelessness so I do think that if as we can turn this page on it I think Winona can become another leader again in services to those
experienc homelessness I do appreciate your time and would welcome any questions um a couple questions and actually a request um Miss hty Dan Wilson gave you a folder could I possibly could you pass that over could I get that please so we haven't seen
that until now right no okay could you pass could you pass on the table and um a comment and then a question and I might call up Jen if I have any questions absolutely okay when you said that you have been ahead um of the curve
um people in Monona count it wasn't monana County government that was ahead of the curve it was a group of volunteers I wasn't part of the original Founders I came about a year and a half later Etc but there was a small group of people who saw a need who came together um and then Catholic Charities became
involved and was a very important take them don't take them I apologize combined packets Mr Wilson are we supposed to take these took for you to have okay but but they're all different but they're all different
they're all different they're stapled together they're all the same you can have it if you look at who signed them they're different are they I don't well you can have them for I'm asking part in
part we agreed just to have you create a committee and now we're getting a presentation and having aest they are separate packets for each of the board members I did not know I misunderstood my apologies nothing you
personally the way we do things thought we gave commissioner vaguely approval to have a committee discussion and now we're getting approach formal board meeting for a request that seems to be jumping on a step the reason for this
request is there the there's a deadline for that large State Grant of April 7th yes that's correct sorry so in the we've had two meetings um with myself um commissioner Meers the president the first one and one thing that came up was that there's a de the deadline for this
large Grant correct me if I'm wrong is April 7th that's correct y so this the reason is coming before the County Board today is to um perhaps offer a letter of support I would also like to talk about funding but that that's something we can discuss later as well um but that's
that's why it's on the agenda for tonight I actually asked the staff to put it on the agenda because of the deadline to offer a letter of support so first of all the comment is that when Mr Meyers said that we were ahead it wasn't the county it was a group of community
volunteers and question for you Mr Myers or for Jan is do you happen to know what the budget would be or it maybe not had a chance to to compile those numbers what a year around shelter would cost I have not compiled the the full numbers but I can tell you roughly it would be around
200,000 I apologize it would be around around 200,000 but I again that is if it was fully staffed um if we could work towards a partnership of volunteers we could definitely push that number down so $200,000 to do a yearr round dat date
Center and no that would be sorry you're I don't want to put I don't want to go on record with numbers here that that sounded too good to be true yeah yeah Y no that would be the rough behind the napkin um math for an overnight if you're doing 12 hour I
won't ask for any more questions we we'll wait for more information later yeah but during the course of the conversations one of the things that I was excited about was um Mr Myers pointed out that in order to make this work we would need to basically work with more community volunteers that if
you were to staff it out it would become very large and very expensive but you were open to the possibility of going back to how it was originally ran where it's it's always it was always a combination of community volunteers I was present at some of those first volunteer training nights there was 60
70 80 people who wanted to help out and there definitely is a role for staff staff is very important in terms of um continu so what I'm I'm I'm especially excited about is the model that would have both um a partnership private public
partnership and also leveraging community volunteers as well so not going to ask for any dollar amount but I'm just saying that I I wanted to let people know that I'm very excited to look to look at moving towards working with more community volunteers and get the community more more engaged and I
also want to take the moment to thank amarissa amarissa it's because of you two or three meetings ago when brought forward that the Warman Center was being asked to move next season that began all this these conversations so thank you for what you did amarissa because this
is this is an important conversation to get ahead of it's also important for the County Board to be aware of it because the county really hasn't done that much um and there's a role for us possibly to do something or to do more in the future but not to take the idea is not to take
over what's being done not at all the idea is not to create a county shelter the idea is to help possibly move towards the direction of like we were way ahead Olstead County caught up now they're ahead of us and and I don't want to just do it because they're doing it
but there's just there's models that show that if you invest some money in programs like this and especially transition programs job training uh other kinds of wraparound Services if it's chemal chemical addiction or mental health that you can help people move
through those stages faster um so I'm I'm excited about this possibility so I'd like to make a motion that the County Board help me with the wording of this either Mr Myers or miss hty the County Board um um show through some kind of letter that it supports the
grant that Catholic Charities is putting forward to the state to move towards a year shelter is that an accurate description yeah that' be great I'll second at that okay so all I'm all asking for is just a general letter of support the supp the support the grant
the Catholic Charities is putting forth and we're not committing any money and what you see in the packet is Dan was it 25 29 people you said names of people you're going to see um some of these people are clergy members uh St Charles
Police Chief um some of semra um Foundation City Council Members um two business two downtown business owners members of other clergy and town so this is this is what we find in that packet Etc right um I do have a anybody
else have any questions um where's Catholic Charities these days as far as philanthropic giving and and you know the popes getting out of the hospital now so is the money going up or what where why um is Catholic Charities in a a a b
is it in a bind to support these kinds of things that you're coming to look at other resources um so Catholic Charities um as you know has been in Winona Community Winona County area for almost when did I do the math it was like 78 years yeah um
we do all kinds of services um we work with people experiencing homelessness we have programs that work with refugees We Do adoption Child and Family Services adult advocacy um active aging which works with people 55 and over um so there's a lot of services and it's spread out throughout southern Minnesota
um but Winona is our actual base location um just a few blocks from here actually on Market Street um we do use um a combination of federal funds state funds and um donations um in the last few weeks we have found that our federal
funding has been frozen or canceled um so we are making quick adjustments on some of our programming um but like I've said actually all state and if you look at Federal to for whatever reason in their formula they always give only a little bit but never enough um it's
usually 60 to 70% if you're in kind of any federal or state Grant that they're offering and really there is a demand for you to kind of find your own there's a reason for that which is what makes it that public private partnership correct um and so we we do fundraising we do all
kinds of things I apologize I didn't mean to I just want to let you know that if this moves forward it's going to take more lifting and I may have to just present back to what the lift is not asking specifically but I did want to make it known that they're they're you
know this is moving from Simply a seasonal and a day to actually 24/7 which is a a much bigger lift um I'm excited about it but it is a much bigger lift all good stuff um yeah I don't know what that is buzzing buzzing buz it's
just feedback one of one of the things that U you know the term my our fair share right uh comes into my head it's a little bit like build it and they'll come and what sort of checks and balances do we have um I'm
going to take the county out of this role I see it a little bit different I see this is a little more of a a municipal issue yes there are some I would say probably a very small amount of people outside of the city in when owner the great area wiona here but
um and really I think a lot of this should be put back on the local cities for something chances are I I know I do know several homeless people in my community um you know I'm not against the shelter side I just I get worried about two things um we look at some
well-known historical societies and things like that that have turned to um um public philanthropy which is taxpayers um and realize that their their private side drastically diminished I use the the concept of when's the last time somebody walked into our Road and Bridge committee and
rolled out a check and said put this toward is my fun we have just 100% accepted that we are going to have a community share to put a road in right and we have 100% given up on any here's my here here's my extra share because I
really want this road to be paved right um so it it's a very real thing when when the public sector as taxpayers get involved because the trend is private philanthropy goes down the more government gets involved because it's
deemed I'm paying for it twice I see and you go to the nth degree which is I use the road scenario because it's pretty hard to argue that fact right and at one time it wasn't that way it was Community the first roads were built by Community efforts so um so it's hard to argue this
and again we want to take care of people we have to argue the second thing is building it and they come right hey we here wiona County's got a great place to go all of a sudden what are we asking for taking on I'm going to say the the
the economic challenge of communities around us outside of our taxpayer base to start funding what perhaps other people aren't funding um which is where the checks of checks and balances of larger Community or larger organizations
like Catholic Charities and things like that that're much bigger than just Winona County right um whatever so we look at a lot of our schools a lot of our our you know universities it's where St mares it was you know driven through a church right a lot of that was funded
at one time through those Harvard all these schools were um so that's always the fear I have is that it sounds great at the surface level but what what could come with it that creates a new burden that you know we attract people um and
then we have the secondary side that's never talked about which is um generally some of the people that are in these and again we'd like to help them but what's our fair share how much burden can we take on because then it's all the Health and Human Services things that come with
it when they're here an issue arises and now we're funding that aspect to it too so that is the to me the caution with this and saying it's part of why the federal government I think looks at it and says hey you need some skin in the game because we can't just it's not an unlimited check to just keep doing this
we look at say San Francisco and some of the areas that have really tried this approach and just how ugly it has really gotten by continuing to give and give and give until there's zero public excuse me private input and it is all tax based hard to deny they've got a
problem on their hands so what is the checks and balance system that says hey we want to help people within our County people that have been residents of our County but we don't want to have the billboard up that says hey come here because we're all willing to take care of you that is very very difficult for a
small community and our taxpayer base is dwindling it's projected to dwindle um so we have less and less and I don't feel like we're always Pro business either in this count County um so we have less income and less people and we're building things that are going to
trct more expense and saying hey surrounding counties communities States Even in our situation saying hey we've got to be cautious so is there vetting process as to uh how we go about doing these things or is it two years from now we build it it fills up we need more
money we need more money we need more money we need more money because we're seeing is is our homeless population that bad or are we attracting outside people sure these are great questions um I that's my fear yeah no I totally hear that um in fact that's you know something that's
been asked multiple times when we talk about this um I think just the numbers right now are showing that about 70 to 80% of the people that we are serving are went own our residents um with a very small percentage that are actually Transit at the moment um I think again
if we go back to my analogy sort of how an emergency shelter should be viewed more like an ER really what we need to do is build in a stronger infrastructure when it comes to getting people housed and stable so they can become paying productive taxpayers in the community that I think if we don't
work on that process if we just do a shelter I agree that's the wrong approach it needs to be a full- end spectrum of Housing Services but but all that costs money and so if you attract a certain demographic it it's a it's a continuance
of if I was a business and all the businesses around me were absorbing all my expens ens why would I step in and be like hey let me stop that M that's the fear and so the fear I have is that this is a city Centric type problem yes there's a little bit but if I lived on
the border and looked at when owner probably said which way are you going to go probably omstead right because nobody's betting me out saying where you're from I can walk in and say I don't have any ID my name's John de and boom I got a place to go so again it's it's nothing against the people it's
just the demographic of saying how does our dwindling population continue to be careful about what we're doing to help people without other people taking advantage of that including surrounding communities saying hey thank you Winona appreciate everything you're doing yeah
you know yeah m v did you okay um those points um I the terms of tax and balances Wen and it being a city function the County Board is responsible for Health and Human Services so the city the ities do benefit from this but
the county is is in charge of um is in charge of um social services that this is our role we're going to see cuts at the federal level that will they're going to pass the buck to the states the states probably pass the buck to us we need to Clearly say that the the buck stops here you know Mr Truman um that we
can't pass the buck to the townships we can't pass the buck to the cities that we're going to take care of these people and better yet we're going to develop a program where we can help people move move out of um you know housing insecurity into situations where they can move towards back towards a balance
um I wasn't again one of the founders I served on the steering committee I led a volunteer team that had about 14 people I volunteered ships overnight um this isn't theoretical for me this is a very lived experience and I'm very excited about a partnership that's public
private and that gets individual volunteers involved I think that if people were to see that in motion they would realize what a what a wonderful because people need housing they also need Community they need people who are going to be around them and supporting them so I'm I'm excited about this I'm
very excited and if we do attract some people from the the surrounding communities I'll be proud of that it's like if you build a hospital and there's more fire you know fire um burn victims that come I'm proud of the fact that we can take care of some more people granted we can't take care of the entire
planet but I'm not going to be um one of the one of the goals of shelters is to a low bar you're not going to ask people for IDs you're not going to ask for whatever else you they come you you you serve them so um I think it I don't think we're going to attract people from
5,000 miles away I apologize so just the agenda item and the request was for the letter and I think you have a motion in a second can call a question okay I I do just I don't know if you were here for our first part of our
meeting we're getting extreme pressure from the federal and the state of things that we are mandated to do and there's only so many dollars you will soon if you live in one own County and get your property tax statement and that's our method of paying for these things and so you have to be and I totally
appreciate you know you have a lot of churches here but I know Church budgets have gone up extremely preachers aren't cheap uh benefits aren't cheap and such so I know even just any religious Church their budget has gone up extremely But there again I think it's it's a more
philanthropic giving you need than Government funding uh ministrator hty is there any reason for bias or any reason as to why we should or shouldn't endorse a particular private
entity etc etc you see I'm going to this separation of church and state well I I don't I think that's maybe not quite this that's that's probably too much but but do you see where I'm going with this are we are we creating any sort of bias well I would want to do some research I don't want to just make a statement
without looking into oh that's why I'm questioning whether we can or should I'm not trying to invalidate or anything I just the legal aspect to what we stamp our name to you know we would need to look into statutorily is giving money to
said type of organization about just a letter just a recommendation that's not an issue that's supporting the grant I'm sorry I heard he he he threatened us he's coming back but anyway the motion back the
motion is to uh provide a letter of support similar to what's in our packet is it are we clear on that well actually it's not this letter but just request but we don't we haven't seen the letter we don't know we're actually for support of the grant
letters it's support of the grant to the state for a year round shelter the funding for so it's not this this actually talks about Saha funding but we're not that's not part of the motion are we comfortable with a motion without seeing what the grant verbage is the motion is to approve a letter that's what I'm saying we're approving a letter
that we haven't seen the verbage or we and we haven't seen we don't know what the grant just making sure that we're good is that right it's a generic I know you want this vag but we're just asking questions you have to excuse us here what's that pardon me it's a generic letter it's not committing the county to
any kind of liability or or monies you're just supporting it action okay well I think it would be prudent that we see the grant they're applying for because sometimes there's leading us down a different path than
what we really are signing up for I mean we haven't seen believe it's our grant we hav but we haven't seen the Grant and we're endorsing copy of the grant afterwards I mean I I have no idea what the grant is for I mean I guess a generic letter would be fine but as as followup I think we need to see what the
grant is you're asking us to support something I have no idea maybe it's you know multi-million dollar you know I I don't know that's the problem I have so okay the motion is to write a letter of support for this particular request okay
all those in favor say I POS nay okay it's kind of a the motion passes yeah a soft a soft I mean you're I'm I apologize but you're asking me to approve things that I don't know what you're asking before
so again it get it to me personally it gets a little um problematic in my thinking I like to see things before I commit that's why I'm asking questions because we're yeah no totally we're asking to approve something we have nothing in front of us just I guess what we're saying is as a county you two
agree that this is an issue that you support services for is really what you're support Home Services yes but not I don't support home people becoming homeless correct services for I mean again the motion passes 5 correct yeah okay but when you come just the word of
warning when you come back next time and if you come back next time we need more documentation and you know um but there again maybe somebody will write you a big check and we won't see you again it'll be thank you very much thank you
so much you thank you okay moving on 8.3 receive another receive presentation and approv resolution proclaiming National Crime Victims rights week 6 April 6 through 12th and what's this one okay we not asking for money
okay I don't have any to give okay understood and this is statutorily not crime victim rights week itself but crime victim rights Minnesota statute 611a so this isce yourself oh I'm sorry
I'm going to give my lecture before I introduce myself you do it I'm Diana Miller I'm the victim services coordinator for the county I work in the county attorney's office um ensuring that Crime Victims in this County rights
are upheld and that's statute 611a if you want to look it up in our Minnesota statutes every year in April um the federal office of victims of crime um helps to lead local
communities throughout the country in their annual observances of national crime victim rights week so this is it's a national week and this year is April 6 through 12th this year's theme um chosen
by the office of victims of crime federally is connecting kinship and healing this theme underscores the importance of first honoring Crime Victims and survivors recognizing the professionals and
volunteers who provide critical services to victims and raising awareness about crime victim rights and services during crime victim rights week we will honor survivors recognize those
who provide services and raise awareness by spotlighting professionals across the county who respond to and serve victims of crime um and I hope that we're going to put some of that on the Winona County
Attorney's web page and I do hope that people will be surprised at how many you wouldn't think actually serve victims of crime do it's more than just County attorneys and law enforcement there are
lots of people throughout this County who do that um the Winona County Attorney's Office crime victim Services office that's my office is solely responsible for meeting Minnesota's statutory obligations to victims so that
includes notifying victims and and ensuring their rights during criminal cases th so this is the named victims of crime in our County we assist Crime Victims in navigating and understanding the
criminal justice system while their cases or the cases in which their victims are prosecuted by our County attorney att's office services include Court accompaniment notification of Court hearings plea
proposals um uh Andor notification of probation violations by those who committed the crimes assistance in preparing and presenting Victim Impact statements to the court and assistance with obtaining
restitution from those convicted of the crimes most of the cost of crime victim Services office is provided through a state of Minnesota office of Justice programs um prosecutorial Services Grant
and that um money ultimately comes from the victims of crime act at the federal level called VCA and funnels through the state to local um offices like ours for the 2024 Grant year which wrapped up
September 30th of 24 so we have an October 1 through September 30 year the crime victim Services office provided assistance to 388 victims with 3,244 documented service Provisions so
we deliver those service Provisions in person by mail over the phone email text um in pardon me any way that we are able to connect with the victims we will use
that method to help provide them with the services um so far in this grant year which started October 1st of 24 through today we've served 281 Crime Victims with
2,856 service Provisions so we're tracking higher than we did last year um the Winona County Attorney's crime victim Services office is dedicated to assisting the victims and survivors with back to the theme for
this year connections kinship and healing in the aftermath of crimes we ask that the Winona County Board of Commissioners reaffirm Winona County's commitment to creating a victim service and criminal justice response that
assists all crime Crime Victims by proclaiming April 6 through 12th national crime victim rights week thank you so much so thank you I'll move to approve item
8.4 uh I'm sorry 8.3 correctly to approve the resolution proclaiming National Crime Victims week April 6th through 12th oh second we have a motion by commissioner vagle second by commissioner Meyer any further discussion just want to thank Miss uh Miss Miller um County attorney sonan and
everybody else who works in that office to assist the victims of crime um that is a very delicate time in a person's life and any additional help is people it's hard to think clearly during that time so thank you for for what you do uh any other discussion questions all
those in favor say I I I pose nay okay technically read this in resolution 2025 National Crime Victims rights week April 6th through the 12th whereas crime affects individuals families and communities in profound and varied ways often leaving lasting physical emotional
and Social Challenges and whereas the term victim is more than just a label and has legal standing and protections that go along with it and whereas the Minnesota Crime Victims Rights Act guarantee victims the right to meaningful participate in the criminal
justice process and whereas victim service providers Advocates Law Enforcement Officers attorneys and other Allied professionals can help victims find their Justice by enforcing these rights and whereas victim service providers and Allied professionals can reach more victims through Innovative
trauma informed programs virtual and in-person services and multi-disciplinary approaches to providing services and whereas the National Crime victim's rights week provides an opportunity to recommit to the ensuring the accessible appropriate and Trauma informed services are offered
to all victims of crime and whereas the Winona count County crime victim Service Office of the Winona County Attorney's Office is dedicated to helping crime survivors find their Justice by enforcing victims rights under the law and whereas the concept of kinship underscores the connection that build
Bridges through support Ser support services and shared strength among survivors Advocates and communities and whereas kinship is found of Victim Advocacy inspiring trauma inform formed care that meet survivors where they are and whereas through kinship we build
peer networks and Community Alliance that Empower survivors Foster resilience and offer Pathways to healing and whereas kinship reminds us of the strength that comes from connection the importance of listening to every voice and the power we have to create lasting
change when we work together now there we the Winona County Board of Commissioners do hereby proclaim the week of April 6 through 12th 2025 as National Crime Victims rights week reforming Winona County Minnesota commitment to creating a victim service
and Criminal Justice response that assists all victims of crime during National Crime Victims rights week and throughout the year and expressing our sincere gratitude and appreciation for those community members victim service providers and criminal justice professionals who are committed to
improving our response to all victims of crime so that victims may find relevant assistance support and Justice adopted in Monona Minnesota this 25th day of March 2025 okay all right
I'm coming back to the microphone to say thank you so much for reading all that thank you for the proclamation all right we should where's the newspaper guy all right all right thank you um moving on vot yes
we yeah we voted than yeah we voted before I read it appr okay 8.4 discuss approve Winona County comprehensive plan steering committee member appointment process to
55 okay and Lou is with us tonight so tonight you just want to know how we want to do a recruitment and um application process yeah we're just looking for um good evening sorry
um um we're just looking for uh approval of the process and um the uh the late um as uh is provided in your um in your packet um we talked last time when we were here about coming back and talking about steering committee and so that's
what we're doing tonight is looking at um um um at appointing a steering committee and approving that process um there is some information in your packets about uh just background information about the roles and responsibilities of the steering committee um there's also a proposed um
staff recommended um process um in rfba and then there's a um a sheet um uh proposing membership um um and um for your consideration as well so
um yeah I have a question too commissioner Elie couple things um one you know looking at at large community connectors um I'm assuming that's a fancy way to say public um public just public people yeah
is is appreciate all these different you know things that are in there but do do we feel as though that's enough do we um I look at that and say hey if we pull one out of city of Winona and one maybe
a rural person I I I don't I don't know that that's the first question I'm not I'm not debating it I'm just simply asking the question is that enough we certainly want to keep it to a reasonable level um I think if it gets too large the meetings become unproductive and um difficult to
manage um to to loot into that loot before you get going I look at the city representation it says two members what city for you to decide and it would depend on who where the interest comes from and and we kind of probably know where that's going to lean
towards so if we look at that scenario we look at township representation well you could have two townships and two two City people and they could be all within two miles of each other and represent one population so one of the things that I look at is is really focusing more you
know saying Rural and and defining rural defining what I'm going to call Rural municipalities or rural members um so that this board doesn't become laps sited and and and even at that we look at 15 people and really outside of
elected official or or or pointed people for the most part the something in intergovernmental that we have here there's really only a few people outside of government representing this whole policy so first of all I just want to say let throw a
little Caution to that and then the second thing I want to bring up is the time frame I've had several people approach me already and say well I don't want to do this but I suppose somebody better get on this that represents us right uh because we see where it's going it's the disbelief it's the the townships all writing in say hey we
don't think we need this but we decided they were all idiots so never said that stop saying that I have the floor currently we never said that you cannot put those words in our mouths it's public perception public perception but we never said that so U I'm repeating what other people said in
the community the commissioner vagley so you have to decide how so so they said that okay thank you how about that okay that's how they felt exactly what I said if you'd like to argue with them we could bring them in too it's fine there you go so at the end of the day I'm
trying to undo that and so that's that's my point here is that you know people are saying this do we get on this or they going to listen to us anyway does it make a difference so some of my things would be giving this thing a little bit more time can we have a
little more time is there a need to do it this quick in a month could we have a little more time to maybe try to get the right people on these boards and convince some people to get on them is there a time frame that this needs to happen I I'm I'm not aware of the time frame um the time frame uh we're already starting we we'd like to have a we were
we're slated to have a meeting in in May um that's not going to happen uh we would like to have one um the first staring committee meeting in June um so um I think the time frame that we laid out would be April it's
open we could close it I mean we could give it an extra another I mean we could play with that a little bit um but the hope would be to have it back before the the County Board by your second meeting in May so we can appoint and then have you know first meetings in June
hopefully um of course we can everything can be pushed back and you know then I mean the whole process get just gets moved my bigger question was you know the organization that we hired to do this is are they on a time frame we have an allotted time frame to make that happen or is it or is it just kind of we're saying hey could we do it in this
time frame oh the longer you take the longer things tend to cost and the you know momentum that you you lose you know to get the right people on here is 30 days too much to ask to contct contract unless they do extra work they should
that contract should not be and even with that L I'm just trying to realistically say it I'd like a little bit of time to try to maybe revamp this list a little bit this is just this is just commissioner eling talking revamp this list be a little more defined as to who
putting on there so we have some definite roles and then the time frame to go out and try to recruit some people is that is that a fair request well I think recruitment um would occur over the next month um so I mean if you think the board thinks that they need
more time I mean obviously you're the decision makers um March is gone already I so you're looking at April okay commissioner Meer thank you um so you're talking about opening applications in April and that being open let's say six
weeks if then you would come to us on the 27th of May and ask us to make the appointments M what refinements do you want U similar and again I'm not looking for anything in stone I just I I'm just worried that the way it's worded I I want to be sure that there's R true
rural representation and the fact that you know again Township representation can can have the exact same people as a municipality and so are we are we truly defining you know if the first two people come and sign up and they're on
here but they represent the township it would be just like our committee appointments in that well I'm I'm very worried with the list here and we have fallen into this trap oh we get 20 people apply and we take the first 20 but I'm saying we need to definitively
fill those categories so if we get 10 people from the city wona apply we only if we're going to stick to this and I have I have heartburn about putting city of bowna people on a rural County comp plan that we wouldn't pick 10 of them we would that's what I'm alluding to yes I
realize we pick but at the same time it doesn't mean that we can't pick exactly what I'm talking about because we lose it at a three to2 vote which is the history of this board in terms of the Planning Commission the only person who's in the city is Jordan Potter that's I've got City of St Charles
represented and you have something against them I told him I was going to watch him I mean so do you want to say when you're talking about the say the Planning Commission do you want to specify further that you want two rural sitting Planning Commission
members I mean is that the kind of thing you'd like to change um yeah I guess I was looking at the township representative the atlarge community um the uh um and and and then again I appreciate you know conservation
organization TR unlimited Minnesota land you know is that one person is it two person you know I see multiple examples I'm just assuming their examples are not looking for one for each of them to come up with a 15 I guess I didn't do the math two yeah 15 10 yeah I guess it does so
it'd be one yeah I just didn't do the math commissioner Meer to figure out do they want even more than that if you took if you really did try to fill all those categories but I mean if you want to put a little bit further restrictions in terms of the planning we just need to be clear that this this could become very
governmental and City Centric very quickly yes by just simply whoever applies and then we go in and then we do the typical vote and it ends up being but I think if you want those that wording change this is your opportunity yeah that's why I'm bringing I'm well aware of that commissioner Meer and
that's what I'm saying Y and I I I totally hear where you're coming from I think this needs to be um um it's a rural comprehensive plan it needs to be represented by rural people um and um I think that's where the Slate came from was to hopefully it's I think it's um I think it's
oriented towards that um but of course I don't know that you want to limit um um limit it too much either because you don't know what kind of applications you're going to get and Jordan Potter I mean I think he's a great example that he's he is from the city but he might be
a very I mean he's got stock and roots and he works in the county and he's well known throughout the county so and there's multiple ways that people like that get yeah so you might not want to limitate yourself too much but I think an overall um idea that just agree that
we want it to be rurally um um represented um is a good thing to state to that end and to address commissioner elen's uh good points I'd like to and these are not meant to be
carved in stone requirements these are only meant to be guidelines correct like targets they're targets and if you get it all depends on what you get as a slate if you want to add a couple of um at Large members great but I mean again 15 is a
target I'd hate to go over 20 don't want to go over 20 well I might surprise you I agree with your points um I think that I'm gon to propose that we drop the two City representatives and we bump up Township
to six and we bump up the at large to five um and that still I think gets gets us to 21 if we drop the I I think we should drop the two City Representatives bump the township Folks up because 19 townships times three plus two of them
have five right there's a lot of Township officers out there so and again these are just guidelines these are not requirements I would suggest Township representative bump it to six drop the two City people and make the at large rural rural members is the Assumption
make that five and if I do my math Maybe I'm Wrong 6 8 10 11 commission that's 21 people yeah um I to commissioner Ward's point I you're by saying you're not going to specifically seek City
representation is one thing but to say that you're not going to allow anyone who's a res of the city we're not we're not saying that that's not what you're saying these are just guidelines targets right but the one thing when we get these applications I need to know personally uh maybe what category they
they they fill I want names addresses and phone numbers because too many times I I don't get phone numbers and then I want to I want to be able to talk to these going to call them I'm going to call them and this is this is what I ask their house due diligence this due
diligence is what I'm saying we've got a short amount of time to make the adjustments go out recruit talk to people ask them to be on these boards give them time to think about it come back fill out the application apply get it in I would assume there's probably a few people that have their app filled out
already but very probably few far between um and and that's why I look at the time frame and say even if we you know we did this sent this back out um I just hate to let 30 days set the bar as to if this document is so important that we're spending and we had to spend
$150,000 that we allow 30 days to dictate who's going to be on the board Is What It Is Well six weeks how about that anything I would just say give it a little bit of time to let people make some decisions because the people that I've talked to about this there's a a
sense of hesitancy because it's it's a are they going to listen to me anyway B do I really want to commit my time C I've been on it before and here we are um we struggle filling boards I mean and why because I think a lot of times the
perception is they don't listen to people don't listen to us and so that's the feeling I get is that I'm going to be part of this something that I my voice is going to be mute and um so why dedicate the time so I'm just I'm my fear is that the wrong people are going
to set up so weeks I I'm trying to be polite here um I try not to cut you off commissioner vaguely very seldom I I don't interrupt when you had the floor earlier you spoke for a very
long time I apologize you're right I sat there and did not say a word commissioner vagle I'll go back and I'll go through the meeting minutes and I'll time how long it was do that with any meeting over the last three years do have so yeah I I I would say lead towards six
weeks okay we can shoot for six that be fair well yes because we're talking about agriculture season planting season our R people are going to be I was goingon to allude I was going to allude to that too this is a very busy time of the year for a lot of people in the agricultural sector myself
included and it's going to take some convincing it's going to take some recruiting to get I've talked to a number of people who are I think are willing to serve um and apply so I I think that we'll we'll have a good slate of people bump everything back two more
weeks to turn four weeks into six weeks I think what he said was okay give us a little time no that'd be great I apologize though but what are we going to use for an application not not our employment application please oh we have
a new one okay okay because that that is asking people a lot to fill out for and I think we can release that once we get it ready we'll we'll let you know and and and get it in everybody's hands and um get it out in the public yeah okay
all right so um um any other commissioner vagle did did those suggestions that those amendments that I would that address your concerns terms of making sure that it is rural Focus the type of people I think it definitely helps and again they're guidelines they're
targets they're not 100% locked in stone y so could the board agree to drop City bump up the township to I said six it doesn't have to be six something else with all those numbers we still end up at 21 which is not 15 I think and maybe
we could reduce it and I I suggested make at large five you like you mentioned we need to make sure that there's more non government people or as many I don't than there are etc those are all a very valid point and remember there will be lots of opportunities for
public engagement other than sitting on the steering committee um so um if there are groups out there that um are interested that you're talking to I'm always willing to meet with folks um so um so yeah just point them in my direction and
um so it'll be interesting I've had a number of people say it it's they they are assuming we're doing the zoning ordinance and I said no this is just the philosophy fee and I did ask through marine and I'm asking you because this is a question people are asking what is
it in the current comp plan that causes you as a planner that you can't make decisions because I don't read it that way because it's just a a real highlevel philosophy it's not saying that you can't build a a barn 10 feet from the
road and and I think people are confused as to what we're doing here and so the the zoning will be the next step at $200,000 right I mean that's where you're going with this not really no I would I would say no that's not where
we're going with this the zoning see people are are concerned about the zoning ordinance they're not I I'm sorry they're really not concerned about the comp plan yeah I don't I don't think I think it's something that people have trouble connecting to um um what it means for them but um it is an
opportunity for the community to be heard on a number of different issues um um uh we we provided um a hot topics list that you can look at that provides a summary of a bunch of those issues I think Doug talked on them um last time
we were here um from a staff perspective um the current comprehens a plan is um is not laid out well it's hard to follow and it's hard to um um it contradicts itself so it's hard to uh it's it's super wordy um so it's a lot of uh text
to to Wade through um and it doesn't address a number of issues that the county has um that's popped up in the county that the the County's uh um trying to address um are having to address these things maybe to help recruit you can put some of those thoughts to paper so that we can tell
people this is what quote you're trying to do because there is there is a lot of confusion about what this is compared to the like I say the nuts and bolts of where you can build how you can build you know how many animals you can have where you can have them so I again I would appreciate any of those kinds of
things to help explain to people who aren't really into comp plants like you are what we're trying to accomplish it's not my life passion yeah it's not my life the the point I had to this was not necessarily to even come up with specific numbers but um and alluding
commissioner vagley I I I don't want to eliminate the city representation but at the same time I just want to make sure that we have the verbiage in there so people are clear about if they see at large Community Connection c s and this gets published they're going to say well I heard XYZ is run I heard XYZ is going
to run H they're going to do it I'm not going to do it I want to see that it's open for more people in the rural community to be part of that so I do I don't want to discriminate against the city representation I just want it to be clear that you know maybe we Define that out as in you know a rural City uh a
metropolitan or however you want to determine this scenario but just so that people can understand they just don't get turned off by this and say well I already know what's going to happen here and I know what's going to happen there please come up with your verbiage that makes sense and I'm just requesting that
this maybe is a little more so when the community reads it without explanation that's the key they're going to read this without explanation nobody's going to sit here and walk them through our intent um they it's clear and concise as to what they're looking for and they don't feel like well I have very little
opportunity to be part of that yeah that that's my point to that commissioner bagely and I apologize for interrupting my the reason I was trying to make suggestions is those are very valid I actually had some of those things circled before you started talking so I I was looking for solutions to those
problems like to make sure and again we don't need to this is not carped into stone these are targets but um I would I want to make sure that there are rural residents that are a part of this Etc um and if you and if like commissioner Ward you're concerned about a St Charles C
know resident that's something that we can decide oh no I just was yeah telling them I know where you live 100% And I also think it's important that we we approach this with I how to say it um I don't want to offend anybody make sure that people with an open mind in that it's not going to be the end of
the world this could be a good conversation this could be an important conversation um it's not going to be the end of the world we're not going to have the sky is not not going to fall during this process and but Commissioners keep on talking about it that way but people don't understand it I mean it's very
hard to explain it's not us talking it's our constituents yeah it's not um it's it's it's not abnormal to for people to feel that way it's a normal part of these processes and um um we'll work to um get that information out to them and uh educate
the public okay all right thank you very much thank you thanks for helping me out the other you bet um we don't just consent is fine um that direction we can take that I'll work with um Administration and Personnel to
get that application out and we'll share that with you and let me know as we go if you have any comments or questions and commissioner word your points about making it in plain English absolutely and turn it into a job application 100% yeah it's got make understandable yes
okay all right oh exciting stuff the Cannabis draft 8.5 review discuss provide Direction draft cannabis business registration ordinance and authoriz publication of notice of intent to Ana ordinance uh oh
something on my way up here good evening good evening so have you got it all figured out for us well uh it's it's still a moving Target isn't it because has the state really got there before you get going I just have
one quick question okay just so I understand where this is all reading this whole thing there's a lot of this adopted or adapted adopted adopted State verbage yes it's the model a lot of it is the model ordinance most of it is the model ordinance I just wanted to know
was there I was looking for things in red like we changed this you know yeah so there there are some slight variations in verbiage but uh mostly just because it was either something that didn't apply or the language was awkward um so as you know you you
approved his zoning ordinance for cannabis and the other part of that is we need to approve a registration business registration ordinance um and the actually just today the um office of can cannabis management
submitted the uh administrative rules for approval uh which means that uh those go to an administrative law judge and that judge has 14 days to either approve the
rules or say changes are needed or or uh uh whatever needs to happen uh and once that's done office of cannabis management said we will start approving doing preliminary approvals of uh of retailers cannabis retailers so uh this
could drag on for a while if those rules should we wait 14 days no uh we actually we actually what we want to avoid is having some an application come to us before we have a registration ordinance in place but what what is the so this is
not including what the city Winona any other how about like the city of St Charles or leou and who who hasn't who isn't with us in this it was um Lou it was the city of wona it was the larger municipality so
St Charles Leon Goodview and city of wona they're all doing their own thing they're all doing their own thing um we're still waiting on a couple of um townships um but um we've got almost all the townships of okay as well as the rest I know this
is I didn't ask ahead of time population wise what does that leave when you take the city of Bona good view Leon in St Charles out um about I don't know exactly but probably around 6,000 people remain so we have to allow one
15 one 1550 that that was my question by itself but get me an app yeah I think Dres back already has one right happened um so the so what you have here today is
basically uh uh the draft ordinance and uh we the idea is that you would approve this at your next meeting and that uh uh and the that we could take direction
from you on any changes that you want here and then there's also a meeting scheduled next week with planning and the county auditor and Treasurer and to to make sure everybody has input into what these look like before it comes back to you to
approve um a few key things is there going to be public hearing uh no no no there's just no a notice of intention to enact ordinance and in order to have that uh in time for you to vote on for the next public for your next meeting it
needs to be uh published by the end of this week but we don't have to publish the draft ordinance just the just the descrip of it until it's approved and the Planning Commission will consider it it doesn't go to the the Planning Commission because it's not a land it's not a zoning ordinance okay um and what
I I'm sorry but what little I know what happens if a an Indian tribe could come in here and do something and that a whole different set of rules I I I believe that would only apply if if we had a a tribe in within the countyin the location yeah I thought it was they
could go anywhere I think that has to be on their land great it was initially but then they loosened and changed some of the rules and they said they were coming into other communities and setting up shops so I don't know the only thing I I I I went through the administrative rules today as best I could it's like
130 pages the only thing the only the only thing I saw about tribal uh mention in that was that those don't count towards the number of that you have okay if they're within your county um
and so basically the way this process will work is someone will be pre-approved by the state office office of cannabis management and if they want to uh propose to open a establishment
here the state will then notify us and ask for us to certify that they have zoning approval and so we passed the zoning ordinance that they're going to need a a conditional use permit uh and as a is now if if we don't respond in 30
days the the state can just go ahead and approve them we don't really have the ability to issue a conditional use permit within 30 days so um we we uh I was hoping to also see that addressed in the rules but I did not uh but I would expect they they have to understand that
with public hearing requirements and and that sort of thing it just can't happen in 30 days um a few a few key decisions that that probably you would want to consider is do you want to regulate low potency
Edibles uh this is uh sold at you know uh uh uh uh quick markets and and bars and these are uh uh don't have THC but they just uh uh are not regulated the
same way that adult use cannabis is are we talking about like hemp uh well edibles gummies or or things like that mon the liquid phc gummies I mean like from
marijana can be any form it's just a low I mean it can be drink Beverages and it could be gummies what's considered low pocy well there is I do not know that off the top of my head but there is a definition for it yeah but uh so the state is requiring
all those to who are selling low potency end bols to get licensed so the state is going to regulate them to begin with and then the question is whether the county also wants to have a layer of you know time place manner restrictions
um and the so that's one issue the next issue is of course establishing whether you want to limit the number of uh registrations that are going to be issued or that will be available to be issued uh we are not required to go out and seek registrations if we don't fill
our minimum but uh that they do require at least one for every 12,500 residents um what what we've discussed as far as the initial applications is to have an application period of maybe two to four
weeks which people uh if the if there's more applications than there are registrations available then there would just be a uh a preliminary approval process and then those applications would sort of go into a lottery uh public drawing event where the order of
a priority would be selected in terms of who who would get a registration um fees are another issue uh there are limits uh that the that most of the fees could be a maximum I think it's $500 or half whatever the
state fee is whichever is lower so uh that would have to be established in the fee schedule and and uh the big question would be whether you want to maximize that fee or or do something lower here's an oxymoron on it the initial fee not
exceed 500 but the renewal can be not exceed a th000 who was I mean it seems like it should be the other way around yeah what's in the law that's yeah well that's what I would say is probably they're playing State fees in
the initial application but they're not paying States making more money than we are and theyve all responsibility right and and then Governor walls yeah and we have we have to do our Sheriff has to do compliance checks and and uh we have to have zoning
making sure everything is in compliance there as well um and then and then finally IT addresses temporary events which is again another one that you could choose to regulate or not to regulate uh the way it's it's written here is that it
would uh those would go to the board for approval so they would apply to the treasur auditor and um that once they were uh verified that that that application was acceptable it would come before the board for for final approval
uh and I think that's how temporary liquid licenses are done or temporary events uh and part of that is is community awareness and commissioner eling so there's two things we're focused on here one is do we adopt this
resolution in the inter term we have 14 days make sure nothing happens in between and we're okay with this verbage and second thing is do we want to regulate low potency is that the two main here so I I'm not asking you to
adopt this today but I I'm asking you to authorize the publication of a the intent to adopt a cannabis regulation ordinance business ordinance and then whatever feedback you have on this you
will get a chance then to to uh respond to or whatever the fin version is at the next meeting uh that's when you would vote and and those you'd make those final decisions uh so to follow up with my
question the intent is we need to know whether we want to regulate low dosage to be part of this document is that I'm I'm trying to figure out yeah so okay so yeah the four things I have on my list are low potency
Edibles whether you want a limit based on population uh uh whether you want to maximize the fees that you're allowed to collect yes and whether you want to have uh addressed temporary cannabis events
that's three what's the fourth low potency Edibles limitation and and registrations fees in temp events okay the two are together okay gotcha mam chair yes Meer okay so um with respect
to all of those I things the four things none of them are relevant inside of a municipality that has chosen to do its own regulation they really only all apply outside of those areas so in the rural parts of the county
okay um and so if there are low potency existing low places that sell liquor um or that that let's say there's a lot of liquor stores that sell the drinks as well so so that is what you're
talking about do we want to they're getting license to the state do we want to also have to get a County License already allowed yeah right see that's true they're going to be required to have a license okay they don't have the license currently currently no okay okay
so the second thing is um with respect to limiting all right I I thought I had this but then I confused myself so 264 limiting registrations if within the legal boundaries of the county there is one
active retail business per 12,500 including registrations issued by the city county cities or townships the county shall not register additional cannabis retail businesses so let's say the city of Winona doesn't have any limits and they get five and they have
five then no if we limit it to the 125 then no one else can put a rural shop and and yeah in the in the area that the county is is is issuing registrations for because the ones from the cities that are regulating count towards the
five fair so it's I mean right I mean it's but it's I feel like the city is not going to limit them so it's what you guys think because St Charles and Lewis blah they right it's kind of up to you guys if you want to limit it but understand that you could have
none I don't know if you think that's a good thing or not and and uh just going to jump in my take on that is if we subtract the municipalities and our population is like one to 10,000 we
still have to allow one but this is a very big County and how far you drive you disagree with what I just said that I yes you're saying that regardless if we limit it we still have to have one right yeah that's my take and that's some of the feedback
that I heard I agree with that I misunderstood your question but we would allow we would only have but we can allow as many as we want you're just saying we'd have to have a minimum one right this a very big County Geographic um okay so then you had discussed this
application period of two to four weeks and then a lottery if there's a limit so is the lottery language in here it it is not included in here that would that would uh but that is one of the things you're asking us yeah and and the idea was we you'd have an independent third
party there like a retired judge or an accountancy or somebody to observe a public event where where the anonymous registration numbers are pulled from a hat so to speak okay um and then again that anything for
temporary events if something happens on the levy inside the city of wona these regulations do not apply it's whatever the city said right right okay commissioner B thank you m so um in the interest of time can we
go through each of those you said you had four yes can we indicate what the board's so this isn't like the formal this is just yeah indicating what you would for further direction right right we'll come back next meeting with Rewritten is that okay with the with the board to go through them one at a time
just I have a question okay commissioner Elie so going back to the regulation of low potency if the county sets a standard or the municipal is required to you know can they go above it or below it you know if we decide to to say no low dosage you know can the
municipalities override that I don't think you can say no you don't can't have it yeah I think we we'd have to allow whatever the state to regulate it I'm sorry say that we there would be more like time place manner restrictions when you could sell it where you could sell it that sort of thing and it would
be the same if uh if other counties if I mean sorry if municipalities were issuing low potency uh uh uh licenses or registrations then that whatever their rules are would apply I don't know the answer to the question if they don't and
we do whether ours apply to them but we could find I could find that out that's my question yeah you know what who supersedes who I mean my concern with that was um somebody who's already in business that taking it away yeah that's exct so can we start with low potency low potency so I think that if the state
already requires it that we should not you're asking do we create another right so I would say no no I I would agree if the state already has their licensure and those are people already in business you know yeah okay M yeah I agree with
that okay ol I'm just trying to figure okay all right so that covers that one then what the fees I heard fees Li limiting the number oh limiting the number and then the whole Lottery and the lottery piece of it well there's low potency limit limit
to one only Max maximum fees temporary events is a lottery a fifth item or sorry is the lottery now a fifth item I think it's part of the limiting yeah that was just the procedure for limited choosing the applicants the idea being that you could also choose to set a
standard for uh select People based on Merit or whatever criteria you have uh it seems it seems like that would be Frau with legal danger and the uh uh SP way to do it would be to just do it randomly and they're pre-qualified by
the state they've got a background te check and all that my feeling is if they've scrutinized through the state that why would we get ourselves more involved in it we don't we aren't going to have the resources to do what we need to do anyway one are the I'm sorry go ahead commissioner ellon well I just kind of look a little bit of this is if
there's an issue we can blame the state I mean there's a little bit of that going on how do we know what to do you know till it's been proven vag um to commissioner warning commissioner El what do you think what the idea of a limit of only one because if all we have left over is 7,000 people
that only leave room for one do you want to leave it but we must allow one we must it says it limits it to one right it's a free market I think it's a free market back and if we want to limit it the question is yeah whether you want you have to allow at least one the question is whether you want to allow
more than one okay say let the free market determine if they're going to jump through the Hoops for the state and everything I this is a big County you mentioned yeah the potentially they're in dresback that's a long way from like you know no limit I think the Market's
going to determine okay so the city of Monona approach let the market decide I I would I guess you know for looking I does it set the precedent if there I guess does it set a precedent if it becomes a problem um there's a lot of unknowns
here as as you mentioned but the the the the the the the least risky way to do it is either to leave it open to unlimited or to limit it to 1 per 12,500 because somewhere in between
there you have to make a decision of how to cut off who gets a registration who doesn't and that's where the conflict would come in and can we change our mind at some point yes we're going to change the ordinance yeah and and com and I should say we might be back very quickly
amending this ordinance because we don't know what to expect in would that be a 3-2 vote attorney sonan yes working on that M all right I mean seriously would it be just the 32 uh simple ordinance
change I'm asking I don't know it's a question I know question but okay it's a policy decision so it require four I would think that if you did change your mind State mandate you would have the question of who do you un
un employ who do you put out of business we never put anybody out of business but you could stop the new anything new like commercial dog breing there's no more allowed I mean so how do you want to start it I I let the market dictate somebody really wants to
get into it I guess you know and and they pass all the state hoops and everything for the rest of you this point I'm referring to the rural Commissioners roadside STS well they're coming from Wisconsin and
Iowa what's Lou got I just wanted to to mention that um um besides the registration ordinance we're already limiting where they can put these so there aren't that many locations where they can have retail businesses anyways yeah so there's um we limitting
limitting in zoning ordinance and then we're looking at the the registration ordinance too where we could also limitate so so no roadside stand you can't have a taco truck with back door with a back door you just call it a temporary event
commissioner so then they really would be listen lied two physical establishments is that correct y that but that could be at a rural residence it could be it can't be at a residence can't be at a residence and it was only in
certain um zones correct as a conditioned yeah so we have limited it so one one more question um so let let's just say hypothetically we put a limit of 10 ju just to have a cap in case this thing goes I have no idea what's going
to come no clue how does that play into this 12,500 rule I mean it obviously would supersede that there's no reason not to do that right is that correct yes you'd be meeting the state requirements when you when you issued the first first
one and we could if we needed to if we have an influx of whatever we could we could adapt adopt to whatever we needed to if there was somebody magically figured out how to get 10 of these someplace in the county outside of municipality I could see you know like elow and different locations that might
want to open them up yeah so this would be a zoning question so if they have a retail sale established now we're going to be looking at parking lots going to be looking at handicapped accessibility restrooms yeah
yeah there is a bundle of state code um they've been very particular on everything from ventilation to electrical to water usage to waste it's yeah security is a big big deal so they really load it up on
standards just so you know I guess we are still Fielding inquiries we did permit a conditional use permit in late 2023 for a proposed cannabis retail we are getting Fields um Fielding questions on
cultivation to a grow operation and we are getting um questions on a site that involves cultivation and a retail kind of a meso business so there is people that are obviously going to probably follow suit with applications in the
township areas yeah and that's yet we haven't really determined the growing part of it so did you want to start with 10 then well it's an arbitrary number though it's an arbit number absolutely I I just don't know if it's going to be an issue or not and you open It Wide Open are you better off to start slow and
work out or you're better off to okay and let's see what comes and narrow it back down I I don't know what the better way to go about it is to be honest I have a very little feedback from yeah anybody it doesn't so I don't know if that's just a concern or No Lack of
concern or if it's nobody really knows what to do you know and that's where then you he on the caution side first thing who tells me is there on the caution side or we'll have a lot of illegal operations Bon with I'm indecisive so Mr
CR would you suggest start with no limit and then adjust down to commission alon's point or do we start with a limit um possibly I would I would suggest one of three things either you limit it to the minimum you make it unlimited or you put
a limitation based on some reason uh and it I suppose it could be arbitrary just we're going to accept 10 and then we're going to re review this issue at after a year or something and then and then U
put that in I mean I can tell you that the city of Winona started by saying we're going to apply the same sort of rules that we do to both cigarettes and alcohol to this right we don't limit the number of liquor stores so we are not going to limit the number that was their
logic well that's kind of what I free more of a free market but I could live with 10 and then if we get bombarded and we have more we can open it up I mean I just think there's going to be so if you're going to do it legally I think there's so many Hoops to jump through that I think the state of we need to put the onus on the state of Minnesota
instead of ourselves but so the question is if we put a limit does that create any more workload for ourselves than what already exists with no limit is there any pros and cons the lottery
thing oh I'm yeah I know it's an unknown we don't know yeah I mean if we had 100 you know retail establishments open that would be a lot more work than 10 but but uh more money though yeah like Emily saying more
money sales tax we need to fix our roads it is sales tax isn't it there is a tax but is it a sales tax no remember we get like 10% or 10% but I mean but additionally Is there sales tax I I don't know I don't know the answer to
that question we start with 10 edbl that's on food what do you think commissioner work I don't know I like I said I'm truly indecis because I have very little feedback that would be free market if they want to do it and they're gonna jump I'm okay with that and I guess if we need to regulate it later if
it gets out of hand we can change it I don't want to use the word regulate but if we need to step in and say recommend spine but not Mr totally arit wa there's no rational basis for that by
midnight we should have five it start just let the market determine are you comfortable with 10 I I quite honestly don't think we're going to see an influx of it anyway not out in the rural landscape I think they'll I just I think we let it ride for now and
let's we'll revisit it if we need to so un get if we get to five that'll Tri that'll be the trigger that we'll review about well that actually could be a way of doing it you could you could say we're gonna we're we're going to allow the first five and then we're going to
assess yeah I'm going to make a motion that we limit it to five um and we'll review at that point how about that we're limit to five I can go that but the flexibility to change our minds yep okay are we all in favor of that okay
fine enough how about maximize fees yes yeah Maxim maximize fees yeah whatever we can temporary events so do we the requirement isn't so much money as it is just notification uh right so whatever um uh
uh uh basically checking the credentials of the person holding the event that they're approved by the state and that whatever requirements the county wants to have in regards to what you know like fenced areas like a beer garden type of thing or uh any of
that Ty type place and manner type of things if you L and Eric when the longboarders had that one day event they had to go through all that too right the long boarders had the downhill gate boarding gate yeah yeah at
a certain point and Ross might be able to jump in too we get into that mass Gathering when it's a certain number of people that are going to congregate at a site you have to have basic sanitation and bathroom and security and first aid and stations like that um if you don't
sell it you don't have to have of that right if it's just free like I'm thinking wedding venues and stuff like that if you don't sell it Ms right there's a lot of unknown like you said you just ask for a contribution so the question is to require in a temporary
events right to to require registration for temporary events and and actually the the uh statute says that you can't give away free samples at a temporary event so limited to one or two
what do you think um a so it' be a licensure very similar to what we have for Mass Gatherings I'm looking at Eric would it be similar to what we're doing for Mass Gatherings now it just would be another yeah I
think but generally generally the people that are requesting it are people that are probably going to be comfortable with it yeah I mean we would have to amend our ordinance good of our distri we limit Mass gatherings in a lot of our zoning districts is what you're
saying so where where we would allow it it's very pretty limited um I mean I don't want to create more work for staff for you like two-day event I mean again but but on these
limited events what's the state standard for if you're just doing a event what's the state say you have to have do they still have to have a lure from the state they have to be the person hosting the event has to have approval from the state to be able to host an event I
would say let at this time let the state staff okay with that okay I mean they there it is they you could you could if you wanted to just do a minimum that they have to just show the credential that the uh uh they have
approval from the state to do it and have the information about the event so the county could be prepared the resources if they're needed and remember this is just the um this is the to determine whether we register those events so they have to come in for a registration similar to
like when Wilson has their annual get together they come in and get a liquor license so it' be very similar to that type of a process um yeah we approve all those temporary things so that's that's what this is talking about um the zoning
ordinance that's another thing that we we're going to have to go back and look at that again after we adopt the registration ordinance and make sure that that's still that the two are still in alignment well I could see this similar like we do for the the the fire and the snowmobile clubs and such that
type of application right that's what we're talking about okay with this I could see that so we have some idea what's going on okay does that address your questions Mr do we need a motion or is this good enough uh this is this is
good enough we we'll you'll get draft language to review before the next meeting okay so you got what you need I do thank you thank you all right thank you mam chair you think we could have a break yeah three minute the lights have
gone good night guys good night good night you're just going to take five minutes right what I said you're just going to take five minutes well meet in 10 minutes was 45 minutes so know I over is this water is this I
think it's coffee but you can try huh you want Cofe oh here I will hold the cup for you and water see I want I want coffee oh you want coffee um yeah that's probably water okay okay course I got a call right away
Monday morning wow great Marathon right Marathon Marathon thank you Steve water so and I'll be working at home tomorrow on THS Friday see okay thanks again good
bre getting old welcome to the club Alterna too much sitting today okay we're back we're all back let's move on to 8.6 dis discuss modify approve the
2025 strategic plan and Miss hty provided what of the chances we could just ha this until a meeting has a less full agenda how would you feel about that folks abely and you provided us something with some CH yeah some what
you modified okay everybody that's my motion table till we have a less full agenda second all right we have a motion to table 86 until a less full agenda so that might be um 2026 or something the time we get there all those in favor
table say I I close Okay table thank you okay okay um Chuck you better make it short and sweet welcome I can do that we've been here since five o'clock and it's five o'clock somewhere and it's
not so this one's on activity based budgeting and you back when we were in the midst of getting the 2025 budget done we we talked about this as a concept and really what it is to think about it real simply is just to take the
County's budget the $81 million which really just consists of line items when you think of personnel contractual Services um fees taxes you know generic terms and you tip it on its side and you turn it
into an activity budget which says what are the things that the county does um and what do they cost and when I say what do they do and like what are the activities so really what we're going to do is work with departments to have them Define what their activities are and
then to take their budget and assign them to those activities so in the end you end up with an activity budget that's equals the same $81 million that you started with but it looks at it completely different than it does with what we have now at our fingertips and
when you think about that moments in time where we really want to know when we're forced to make some tough decisions about what do we fund what do we not fund um you know when we may be entering into that it's a little it's much easier to to look at that and say
okay here's the 65 70 uh activities that the county does and then you know make make your priority decisions that way um that that in a very simplified way that's the one of the most important things that you get out of it but um you know I'll just quickly go through some
of the other ones you understand the true cost to provide a service or an activity um you're able to separate mandated from discretionary activities you can achieve full cost recovery fore all year over the counter permits and fees so right now I mean
what we charge for our permits and our fees is based upon whatever we started with 25 years ago and we've just been increasing it incrementally but we may not know what does it take from a staff standpoint to actually produce that permit or produce that fee um so we'll
be able to link those things much better um and then you really get a better understanding of what your cost drivers are for an activity uh what's going into it is it people is it uh equipment is it um you know external costs that sort of
thing um and then again better decision support um so those are the things that you're going to get from activity based costing on page 278 um is a very bottom there is just a quick example that I put together uh it's my department so I know pretty well
the finance department um if you look on the left there if you right now you're the line in of budget is busted into three pieces Personnel contractual and training for 940,000 but it doesn't tell you much uh but if you know at the end of this if you move to
the right the activity costs well here's the seven or eight things that my department does and I just guessed at the numbers educated guesses of course so that'll that's what it'll tell you and of course you'll be able to look at that the bottom for all the Departments
within the county what are the activities and what do they cost so we've already started with planning and environmental services Mr Dunmore has been helping out he's already submitted first cut of of the activities so we're going to take a look
at them my team um and then you know start moving to like assigning the costs to those activities and then voila you have an activity budget for planning and environmental services um in that part of that are you able to identify what is mandated and
what level the Mandate is yeah I believe we can okay yes yes part because it's easy to say oh it's mandated you know move on but know exactly what is mandated and are we at or above or below the Mandate and I believe that was part
of the Strategic plan in here too talking about describing you know one of the line items in here being understanding that better especially as we have transition in the board um so will we get to see let's say
your first budget um before the budgeting process yep I plan to Pro provide you with h check-ins hopefully not at 9:00 at night but you know it'll show you how it's going and you know we're going to start I mean planning Environmental
Services pretty self-contain and I'm not going to say easy but it's one of the easier ones to deal with you know probably Health and Human Services that'll be a much bigger process so we want to cut our teeth that Human Services but we'll get to see it before the actually enter the yes process yes
that's great hours left for clarification we won't get through all of them no no it's going to take it's going to take probably a good 18 months or so to get through every Department thanks okay I'll I'm I support this
makes sense okay I'm more than supported good such I like you and these are actual figures in the other pages so I'm a little concerned we still seem to be really high on it but you said you said
fund balance but you didn't break up I don't know that I saw breakout of designated fund balance and fund balance I've never seen just fund balance oh I think you've moved into uh 8.8 oh maybe I did okay yes okay okay hey wait a
minute all right so any other questions on the activity base looks like you're making good progress thank you thank you yes okay so yes uh 8.8 receive preliminary year and 2024 financial report 280 and it still is
preliminary because we have a couple of entries to make they're not material but um we're almost done uh but as of right now it's it is uh preliminary um and I again I will uh I've got a summary here written so I can move through it pretty
fast um this information is presented and I think you've seen the January report you've seen the February report and the 2024 report is similar and and the the summaries that I'm giving you and that sort of thing um so hopefully at some point you know you'll get used
to seeing it that way um and really what it is is designed to give you kind of two things here the financial health of the county and I said the the best way to look at that is obviously your cash balance B and your fund balance that tells you the fund that tells you the financial health of the county but then
the next thing is really the department level budget versus actual results which really gets to you know the accuracy of the budgeting but not only that but you know are we you know do we have Trends or swings that you know are alarming that need to be addressed um so those
are the things that should pop out as you scan the the the reports that I put together and then of course at the very end is the big 140 page age one that comes out of our financial system which gets down to the line level revenues and expenses I'll start
with revenues first um I'm kind of isolating the budgeted lines so uh not the unbudgeted lines and a lot of that is inter departmental transfers where we're just moving money from One Fund to another and there's it's you show a revenue you show expense but really
nothing happens so isolating pulling that out on the revenue side we realize 97.4% of the budget at 66.2 million um and the biggest variance from that is in Road and Bridge funds where you would probably expect to see that because a lot of that's based upon the timing of
the projects and when they're done started and completed and then reimbursed by um the state and that sort of thing so a lot of it if it didn't get um realized in 2024 it's probably going to get realized in 2025 but is that
a I want to use a maybe arbitrary number because we just assumed the year before we had some roll into this year or was this an abnormality where we just had a million dollars roughly that didn't happen to that there's a continuance roll over you know yes and I would say
you know I don't know as much about those funds as I need to and I you know of course my knowledge will continue to grow but um I would say that that's a normal process like so in 2024 I would say it was a little bit of a low spot but if you look at the 25 budget you'll
see that it's much higher so Dave's going to spend the fund balance that he built up in 24 see that rolling ball I'm talking about yes where you can't really count it because you probably had a certain portion coming in Vision Year from the year before yes you know and then there's timing things too because you do the work in one year but you
don't get reimbursed till the next so that's what I'm alluding to is you know are we seeing things coming to 24 from 23 and now you know we can't count them twice yeah um on the expense side there's you know a lot more variability there I would say
um but again excluding the unbudgeted items 99% of the budget was spent or 67.1 million uh the capital projects fund un UND spent by 400,000 now I'm going to you'll see an action probably next cycle uh to roll some of that stuff
into 25 for the projects that need to wrap up or are still um planned to be done um Health and Human Services overspent their budget by 600,000 uh primarily because of complex a of Home placement cases involving
children I I don't want to go too deep into this because of the Phi aspect of all of it but uh when you do an assessment uh and and the assessment tells you you've got to take this child and put them into say
a state run facility that it gets very very very expensive like $20,000 a month and you really don't have a lot of control over it you just need to do it and in 2024 there was a lot of these sorts of things so is the calonia facility Houston County helping us out
with that because you said yeah that that it was the you know what's the term complexity it's not because that is not a facility for individuals with that high level need for care um that's more of a holding facility okay and I don't
know what their yeah what their population is or anything eight kids or is that what they can hold or that's what they Curr well that's I think that's what they currently okay and you know we just we had a lot of those cases in 2024 and there's no way
to predict how and when they're going to happen or how long they're going to last um I I think quite a few of them were resolved in 2024 there was one particular one that was incredibly you know cost a lot of money but you have to
do those things so um it and it overshadowed uh the lot of the good work that was done because the the all these costs end up in two or three different uh programs within Health and Human Services and lines so it you didn't see the good work that was done by hiring
that case Aid uh in 2024 that that cleared out the backlog of adoptions um that were pending a a big backlog 20 some of these that were knocked down to I think there's about 10 of these going on right now at the end of 2024 and the
longer those sit and they lag and they that all costs the county because we're paying those out of home costs once the child is adopted then it moves off out of you know our responsibility and over to the state so but that was
overshadowed by all of these other um uh uh services that we had to provide in 2024 net result they overspent by $600,000 Health and Human Services is De but it was largely in that area did we learn how to make efficiency within that
system yes option yes was it part of our Pro you know I I know there's multiple factors in adoption and different agencies and everything but did we learn that we're doing the best that we can to move it along that's a work in progress but we are making Improvement they've
made tremendous strides okay um so that that that pretty much oh uh and I just want to say that the all1 fund where what we call here the revenue fund underspent by a million three and that was mainly due to salary and French
savings from um unfilled positions throughout the year fund balance decreased by 900,000 to 29.1 million um however the unrestricted fund balance policy of 17.8 million out of
that 29.1 as well within the County's policy um the Health and Human Services fund because of what I just covered uh their fund balance currently as negative and which we will have to fix um and I will be bringing a board action probably
next cycle to fix that we just it's something we do every year um any fund that ends up upside down gets covered by the by the 01 fund um so that that pretty much uh covers uh what I was
planning to present to you and then you do have a couple dozen or not a couple dozen but about another 10 or so pages and of various summaries to look at revenues and expenses question you're probably lucky you this
late at night few questions all right no it's good thank you okay thank you we're making great progress apprciate thank you okay um committee communication on a committee Communications Comm vag um two
things I I just want to add to the many comments that were made um express my condolences to the fire chief from Goodview Jason gruit sat next to him at many uh Goodview City Council meetings had all three of his kids as students so
um um my um my heart goes out to his entire family and all three of his kids and they've been in the paper Christian Carissa and Carly so um and I also want to mention um yesterday commissioner Elon and I attended the first veterans
advisory committee meeting um Miss FY was there as well we had 10 total people meeting went well I appreciate everyone's time um and we set we set the next meeting for September I believe Etc so just two meetings per year so there were a ton of us there and it's
interesting before the meeting started um I was talking with Mr marcelik and one thing that was I'm going to connect um fire chief grit and one thing that is person said was he had worked on a project um one year to raise money for it was called the 22 project that every
day in America roughly 22 veterans commit suicide um that's a number that I had heard before but I hadn't heard it in a while that that just that that to me is is a jarring number every day on average 22 veterans commit suicide I do know that more veterans have passed um
as a result of suicide then then were killed during the the the the war in Afghanistan so um that's it thank you right commissioner eling uh kind of a combination commissioner vagley you touched a little bit on what I want to talk about with u veterans board um it
was interesting to sit on that uh just uh learning some facts about Winona County um that you know roughly 5% of our population are our veterans and statistically that is a little bit on the Lower Side um but the concerns I kept you know bringing up is what
percentage of people don't aren't aware of some of these Services out there um you know in our County and and uh I also alluded to the the suicide aspect of you know some of the things going on with that so um I'm glad you brought up uh
the fire chief I I won't reiterate but uh I have this exent feelings um next one was uh National lag day was last week so it was good to be able to let uh our people that provide us food uh what an amazing thing for that we can eat so
freely in this country compared to other countries that uh are starving um the uh last thing was uh the season is ramping up we're going to start to see agriculture really taking off here
we're coming into we should have a lot more moisture than what we do so I have a fear that people are going to be jumping the gun and getting in fields early we're already getting requests our crews down in Missouri or going pretty nuts I'll be down there I'll take off tomorrow night actually after the meeting and drive down and get down
there 1:00 in the morning I suppose but heading down there to see a bunch of farms and they're going strong and that's just going to progress up this way so just reminding everybody to be safe uh you can see a lot of tractors and planners and Diggers on the road here coming up so just be mindful and pay attention to the people that get out
there and allow us to eat every day commissioner Meer uh I have a request actually I'm going to make two requests for board action the first uh relates to our initial conversation tonight um that we consider what is happening at the federal level with cuts
to Grant um and ask staff to give us some advice in terms of recommendations uh how to be prepared what we might expect and some points as far as lobbying I would be looking for a second I'll second that uh the second one is
that um we have like 20 letters asking us to commit our our state affordable housing funds um to the warming Center I think what would be more prudent would be start by saying could our staff uh
give us some potential ideas um or how we might make that available to the community to help us meet some of our goals I second that so A word of caution on that a lot
of that was one time money and it's greatly reduce the second year so you have to be careful abely and I'm only talking about this year's 2025 some 7,000 or whatever in the heck it is yeah the 2025 um just lastly um you know we had a
little snowstorm last week and the noine um Hill on I90 made national news really um it was terrible it we had I don't know how many semis off and cars off and uh really a shout out to our First Responders our volunteer First Responders that worked I don't think
there was any loss of any any a lot of property damage but I don't think there was any um accidents or it was just a narrow band and it's the famous snow dine Hill um I also attended um an AI convention and I know that you have to be careful I know a lot what I don't
know about um but there is a lot of AI applications for government and I would recommend that people look at chat gp. goov um and there is a lot of and I learned you probably won't lose your job to AI but if you don't know how to use
AI you may lose is your job even Commissioners even commissioner they can replace us and there's and one of the even personally um and in in government is don't make any long-term commitments to any kind of software because it is so rapidly changing so you don't want to
sign any long-term contracts with any vendor or anything was a thing it's amazing what you can do with it it is um yeah there any pictures of you at this pardon me are there any pictures of you at this event I love the fact that you went there but I can't picture you at oh
this was uh mcit and we had sessions all day long and really trying to work our scholing group and and uh St Paul because there was so many cars on no no no I was much much further away um just if people want to use something that I
found uh very interesting is the app perplexia it g it you know how I do say I Google and then you get all those websites and you have to do all this perplexia kind of makes you I would refer to it as a uh summary conclusion of a major research project and you can
get very specific we've had examples of even putting State statutes in for writing policy or writing U procedures or things even putting State statutes in it that you want your article to reflect these two particular State statutes and
now a real whipper snapper from Canada he said he said very young person he said um somebody in the audience asked didn't perplexia get sued by some newspaper he says yeah I'm not a lawyer but he says just use it and but again you have to verify you really have to
verify and and make sure you're resources and everything but it it the world has changed so much leave you with that go check out see it's fun it's just fun you ask it a question and bang where already use it yeah it's but it's right there you know
versus Google you have to you start looking at all these articles Google has AI some yeah there's everybody has AI in it yeah but this is one that he the team recommended I accepted your motion you're good okay all in favor say
I you're welcome thank you yeah