CACHE COUNTY COUNCIL WORKSHOP 10-10-2023

Okay. It's 03:00. We won't hit the gavel on this one yet, but we will we're glad glad glad you come by. And the people that should be here too. Good. That marks remote.

Yeah. And This is just the history of our Logan City Okay.

DAs. Kathryn, do you? Kathryn's right out there. She's right out there. So, anyway, we appreciate having this. We thought about it 04:15, but if this works out a little bit better so we're not overlapping with you guys having to get your other meetings and make sure we get everything taken care of, and then it gives us a little more time for some other budget information from them. So it'll work out great. So and we will, we'll also arrange I told Mayor Danes, we'll also arrange to make sure that, you know, if we have to, we can just leap frog you toward the end and make sure that we won't we won't deal with you until you're here. Okay? So But you better be Don't Yeah. Don't I hope you show up before Yeah. Fairly early.

But we will wait. And we should, you know, we have an answer for, like, camera mode. I mean, so this Okay.

Anyway, it'll all work out, and we'll do our best to make sure things are are happening. Now we do appreciate everyone coming out for this discussion here. We might have a few some information items that have actually come to us and how we look at this. I hope we kind of have fairly candid discussion here that we can open up and talk about what we need to talk about. I'm gonna first just open it up to what questions we as a council would have in directing those and getting the answers that we need. I'll go ahead and open that up first.

Well, I had some questions, but I've had a good conversation

with Kirk that helped me Okay. Answer those, but I don't know if you want me to if that would be something else. Then if there's nothing right off the top that we can address, then, Diana, could we

have you kinda share kind of some history of the kind of how the South End RDAs and how they've progressed and Minutes. And then your impressions of this one. We we

would like you to share that. Okay. So what I brought for you, David told me that he, so as I've discussed with council members, it seems like there were still some questions regarding the term and the percentage, which historically have all been negotiated. That's what you have in front of you are the Logan City RDAs. The first three pages are the ones that just terminated. So we've got this the South Main, which we paid out on for twenty five years. Once it triggered, that's your first page. As you can see, this one has a step, or what we call in RDA lingo, a haircut, starting at 100%, graduating to the 80. And as you can see, that terminated. Page two, that one these all terminated in 2022. This one also had a haircut. Then we have the downtown, which was a fifteen year. That's your page three. That is really the only one. We've never extended the time. This one, extended the time. This one, page three, the eight two seven and the two zero nine, we did have a parcel amendment on that where they added some additional parcels. And then your fourth page is the auto mall, CDRA. And as you can see, that the second column and the fourth column, Cache County And Cache County School District signed up for six years, where the city went for twenty, and the Logan School District went for fifteen. So as you can see, there's a lot of variation in the negotiations. And then the last page is the South Main River Project, which is the only one that we have outstanding with Logan City. And And as far as those that have terminated, that's greatly reduced the Logan agency budget and has brought back about $289,000 back into the county coffers that we will For 2024. For 2023. Yeah. Oh, three. Because so for 2022, we paid out I figure it, by, March 31, and then the treasurer pays it out to you by April 10, I believe. Yep. So I'm sent 289,000 back into the county. They're asking for around 58,000 a year for twenty years, for a total of the $1,800,000 cap, which you guys have already looked extensively at this spreadsheet. I would like to state for the record that Kurt is absolutely fabulous to work with as far as an RDA professional. He started working with I know you've been working on the deal for probably a year. He started working with me back in June to make sure that he had all of the values spot on and that they were reconciled with County values. They've gone through all of their noticing of all of the parcels and owners that are within the area with all of the, taxing entities that they want to participate. They've been really great with that, where we know that in the past, we've had a couple cities that haven't been a 100 like that, but I'd like to say, you know, I'd like to give him some recognition for that. He's a true professional.

Would you like a job? Don't we? Don't I think we're seems like we're always, you know, trading employees or something. Four for one. Give me a minute. Just go ahead.

So when I when I read over the interlocal, there were two terms that, I called Kurt and talked to him about, which he has changed in what you have in your packet. We just changed municipal entities on page three of that to taxing entities because it's also, county water district besides municipalities. And he also deleted the term contemplated in paragraph one of the agreement because we pay out on accomplishments and not contemplations. So he was real easy to work with on that. So really the only thing that remains for the council, I believe, is what do you want your term to be and what do you want your percentage to be? At the end of twenty years, Kurt has, I believe, conservatively estimated that 104,000 a year will come back to the county, in addition to the 58, which would be about 162,000. So that's 100,000 coming back in. But then, as far as a recovery, that would be at a 104 per year, conservatively, because I think it's gonna be worth a lot more than what his estimate here is. That would be, like, seventeen years to recuperate your $1,800,000 after the twenty year. So you're looking at a thirty seven year timeline to recover your 1.8. And I think that's all I I have as far as an overview. You know, I just Appreciate that. Just all to come and inform you of that history. So Do you have any idea?

I mean, the mall went in in, what, nineteen seventy seven, seventy eight?

It

was before I was in high school, so I know. To ride the bus from Wellsville to Skyview every freaking day. So

Four four. Yep.

Appeal both ways. Both ways. I'm just wondering.

On in the snow.

Nice. No. We're very quiet, don't

you? And we That's how I told my story. And and we appreciate it. So on that time of receiving taxes the county has on that mall, it would just be interesting to see how that variation has or what the consistency of taxes came in on that for that period of time. If I'm looking at thirty seven years, I think that there's probably been a reduction in the business personal property

because it is an underperforming property because it is not fully leased. So but as far as like the value, we know that Cash Realty Group, which I think owned it before Namdar, They would hit us every single year with an appeal, a value appeal. And I don't know how many of you sat in those. They were quite interesting, but they thought they could take the amount they paid for the mall proper and then deduct all of the sales of the surrounding businesses like Wells Fargo, Carousel Carpets, deduct all of those. And then they came up with like a value of $1,200,000 which they never got. They always got it. No change in to state where they lost. So the land and buildings have retained their value. Business personal property has suffered because of the underperformance.

So going back through these here, if we're estimating, okay, for twenty years, we're at 58. On the twenty first year, we go to 104,

was it? 104 plus the 58. So 162. He's estimating the increase to be a 104.

Rang true on these others as we've estimated tax and the hit and what's coming up? When you say has that rang true, has the estimate rang true?

I would have to say, so we pay out on what they've actually earned that increase in value over the base times whatever your rate is. They usually are asking a lot of times, they've been overestimated. You know, and they'll they'll say, well, we expect to receive x amount of dollars. I think I've only seen a couple of times where they're underestimated. But like I was telling Kurt on the phone, I think that he's been very conservative with his estimate of that $104,000 If you feel that it's going to be worth $288,000,000 at the end, then this is very conservative. But, again, those are all just projections. And we can only pay out on how it actually performs.

So

And I have a question on the South Main RDA project where it's paid at different percentages over time. Would that explain that to me? That

was negotiated at the beginning. It was negotiated at the beginning. And so you're looking at the South Main, which is known as the three two seven and the three two eight. And the reason that it has to be two RDAs is because when you get to the edges of town, some of it's in Logan School District, and some parcels are in Cache County School District. So we have to structure it as two, and then combine that. So those were negotiated at the beginning. So where they where they

there is that the statute used to require the haircut for five years. Oh, okay. And I think another dynamic that's different now is the RDA's is it requires a cap. The capitalism

Even yeah. Even earlier, I have one in North Logan that has a cap that was

adopted well before that. You could have negotiated a cap, Then we Then it's paid off sooner.

Yeah. But so in in explanation where you see the the 100%, so you're paying out the full increase in value for those first five years, then they step it down to 80%, which so 80% of that increment goes to the agency. But 20% then comes back to the taxing entity to to stave off. It was, it wasn't required. It was an option because we have some that are like full term, but we went for like ten years or fifteen years.

Thanks, Diane.

So I'm inquisitive. Sandy. I'd like to know the questions you've had and the answers you got. So I think you asked good questions. Yeah. The questions I have do you Mike, do you have that where you can put put this property up there?

Yeah. The the question I had was the the extra property. Like, if you just take the mall Property to the South? The property to the South, I was not clear about just because I didn't understand. And I I thought it just didn't make sense to me that those property owners, if they had an increase in value, like, where would that go? And, Kirk explained to me that it all goes into the RDA, and they use that to pay off the not to pay off the developer, but to pay the the cap on that. And so that's that's the part that made me more comfortable was the fact that there's a cap. Like, once we get to 1,800,000.0, we're not paying any more off regardless of what happens to those properties to the south. I'm still not as comfortable with adding those in. I I feel like I wish we had just done the mall property and not added in all that extra. I understand that they are properties that do better, but there's a lot of those around the the city. And so I I wasn't comfortable with that, but I after talking to Kirk, I'm okay with that. Is that South property? So I have a question for the city. So then there is a cap on the city's payout

and a cap on the school district's payout then. Correct. Correct. Which is what is

So so even though the RDA will hold the will hold that that portion of the revenue, it will still go towards our 1,800,000.0. Correct? There's no that that that's what I wanna do to make sure that it wasn't gonna be considered separately or done something differently, then that goes towards our total.

I was just gonna say, any revenue

that the agency holds that isn't spent will go back to the tax

But I think as the mayor pointed out in a prior meeting, is that it takes a lot, like they've been working on this for a year. So for them to include that part that's very underdeveloped and they have two acres that they could turn into green space for all of those dwelling units that they're they're putting in, then they don't have to go through this whole process for that smaller, less expensive. I mean, they don't have as much Yeah. Normal. But I did want to reassure you that if in the event the county has to increase taxes above the certified rate in the future, that is not written into the interlocal. The only way that an agency can take that is if they write it into the interlocal, and I can reassure you that it is not in this as it was in the Nibley agreement that got signed last year.

Thank you, Diana. No. That was my concern. Yeah. Logan City has within that those expansions down to the south, Logan City has some properties in there, don't you? Two of them. And by including them, am I wrong? Is it as things develop or like you mentioned how percentage open space or all those little well, you say even ordinances that you might have even on your books, where you have to have so much percent of this and so much percent of that or to get grants. You can actually use some of that to help the big project succeed. As as a I guess what I'm saying even can you some of that acquired acreage or some of that acreage could actually be count then towards

that percentage of open space, that percentage of You mean for the For the big project. Yes. No. They've got their own I mean, they have Okay. Their own. This would just be a totally separate thing that the city felt like there needed to be more park space given the additional residents.

K. So it's it's it's there, but it's also independent then of

acres of open space again. This was a new overlay zone, so it allowed us to be

more flexible and kind of negotiate with the developer. So they actually do have a higher percentage of open space than you'd see in commercial in, what, residential,

and

Well and this is one thing when this first came out, we kind of the focus was up there on the mall area and everything. But I remember when you then brought those others, those explanations that came with it, and you were forthwith on it and upfront and everything, I kinda think that we have experienced the shell game on some other RDAs that came in that that weren't didn't seem like they were that as far as really saying, hey. Here's the whole story. So I do appreciate your honesty there.

That.

Appreciate that. Other questions you might have? Can do. Go ahead.

On page six, I just want to get an understanding of section d. Talks about this execution date and the ending date, but it gives a hundred and eighty days after the last payment. So I like to assume that's if it goes twenty years, it's twenty years and six months. I just wanna get an understanding of the hundred and eighty days. It's on my part, it's page six. D eight d. Eight d? Yeah.

I don't need Nine d. Excuse me. Nine d? Nine d. Starting with after after approval required? Yeah.

Okay. So the hundred and eighty days, I'm like, explain that to me. That seems long.

Page six.

Yeah. To me, it added six months to that, it seems like, because you got a hundred and eighty days before you say that's it's continuing through that date for a hundred and eighty days.

Well, but it's it's It's just a reconciling period that hundred and eighty days. So the approval period will only be for the 20

k. And I always think of the worst. What if a disaster hits that area, earthquake, fire, or whatever else? What's gonna go on with this? I mean, say they've got insurance, but then what happens in these situations in RDA? Thoughts on that?

Well, it's they only get paid what they generate. So if it was all wiped out and they don't generate any incremental obligation to pay.

If it was a fire or a natural disaster, then the value would be wiped out, sort of like when let's see that residence down on the island got washed out. Natural disaster, zero value, which would take you into a negative increment and make it a zero payout.

Ouch. Yeah.

But I I guess Super common. I mean, there isn't it's impossible to structure everything a 100%

without risk. Yep. But there is very little risk in the sense that they have to generate it before it's owed to them. So there's no risk of generate it before it's owed to them. So there's no risk of pain and they're not

keeping what the party for. So Part of my question comes down to if this retail store is there and something happens, do you have to renegotiate so somebody else can come back in there? Or is it always open to whoever's there based on where that location is of that retail store or that Squarespace? I mean, if if they move in there and they're out or something happens, is and we're in the tenth year, are you able to renegotiate and bring in another retailer? How does that work? Explain that to me so that the viability of taxation still stays for both you and us.

That's probably a question for Mitch. That'd

be great. I'm gonna state your name then. It's being recorded.

Mitch Holen. I'm one of the developers on the project. We the city's kind of tied us down with making sure this is the right retailer for the project. I know that's a sensitivity for you council members as well. The retailer that we are developing for is pretty Their representative is here today. So if you have direct questions for them, you can address that. But I think we all know who that retailer is. It's the one we intend to bring. We are bound by the city in this redevelopment agreement to making sure that is the retailer that that that comes now in ten years. If that retailer something dramatic happens, their business fails. You know, we obviously can't ensure that, but we are the property owner. So it is going to be our intent to make sure that we get a replacement tenant in there. It's just what Kimber said. If the valuation isn't created and sustained, we're really the ones that lose. And we're relying on those revenues to be there to make sure the projects feasible. So I think we're bound to make sure we get the retailer in there. They're gonna make a considerable investment in this. They will be funding their store. I find it hard to believe that they're gonna come in, spend $50,000,000, and close-up. That is obviously an obligation of us. That valuation will be established once they build that building, whether they're occupied or not. So, hopefully, that's the protection that you guys are getting. But as a developer in honor of the project, I can tell you we're gonna do all we can to ensure it's open and operating.

But you still didn't answer my question. If they do leave or if something happens Mhmm. What do you do as a developer? I mean, you go in if fire comes down, destroys it, or something happens, and you've got to rebuild it, there's no renegotiating

this time or period or anything else on that. Correct? Correct. You're taking the bite, so to speak? Or Well, no. I mean, everybody will maintain insurance within the project. I mean, that's part of our lease with this national retailer. It's actually part of the requirements within the OEA that operating agreement over the shopping centers that there are minimum insurance maintained. So they would have an obligation to rebuild. Hopefully, that answers your your question.

Just so it's gonna be rebuilt rather than you go to some cities and a store closes down and it stays a vacant building. And

once you got a building vacant, it becomes blighted in that short period of time. Yeah. I think the other part of that that's somewhat compelling is we are gonna self develop and own the apartments next to it. And we don't have a lot of interest in having a vacant box next to those apartments. We've got a pretty big vested interest in making sure the area is is top of line. So we'll do all we can to make sure somebody else gets in there. Question. I talked to some real estate people today, and they tell me that,

interesting enough, there is a slowdown in apartment rentals and stuff going on, and I guess that's because of where interest rates and that are. So you feel pretty confident you can fill those apartments, and yet I'm hearing this from a real estate person I call that says in fact, this person says they're willing to trade apartments for raw ground so that this person can maybe do something different. So

I'm just going from the worst case scenarios again. Yeah. I mean, in in terms of our business model, have apartments got, along with everything, more challenging to build at these rates? Absolutely. I mean, it's it's difficult right now. Within this redevelopment agreement, we do have a time line that we need to construct those apartments by or we're gonna be in violation of the redevelopment agreement, and I believe we're gonna forfeit the TIF revenues from that point thereafter. So do we believe that we can build these apartments and fill them up? I do. We've done extensive market studies both from a national level and local level here. There's demand for them. Are we in a challenging rate environment right now? We are. But this project's gonna span over the next three or four years to build it out.

We feel pretty comfortable over that period of time that we're gonna be able to build them. Did I see something that you were considering more three bedroom that that because of the

local area that or you're still just sticking with the studio one? No. There's a mix. So we've got a some three bedroom? There will be three bedrooms. Yep. There's three bedrooms, two, one, and then studios, but there'll be a mix of all types.

K. And I had one other question about the, 10% that's gonna be affordable housing. Mhmm. There's is there there's a new law that says here in in the, in the state of Utah, if you're, if you're offering low income housing, you can sign up as a nonprofit and you don't pay any taxes. Like, it it's it's really complex. Mhmm. Is there any provision for you guys not to sell that 10% as a as a separate entity and be its own company? Like, that was that was brought up by the treasurer. I think that when I was talking to Craig McAllister, he said that was a concern he had, that those 10% might be taken out and sold as a separate entity.

No. No. I'm not even familiar with what k. Statute that is, but we have no intent. The other part that we've talked about this is it's not a set aside. You know, these 20 units here are the affordable units. They're mixed in throughout the project. They're no different than any of the other. Correct. They're no different than any of the other units. All of them built the exact same. It just comes to who we're actually gonna rent that to. But in terms of condoning them off and selling them, no. You know, we've never done that in any of our other projects,

and I don't think we do that here. K. If the city sees that as an advantage, rather than having Yes. The house, we'd like it just to be mixed in. The average person isn't gonna have any idea where those affordable units are. Right. I really like that. I'm glad. Were they all gonna be rental units, or did I hear that some of them were, like These all be purchased. All be rental units. Mhmm.

So have you found in past projects that if they're all rental, you have stability of tenants there, or how does that go? I mean, this is a twenty year time frame, and you wonder stability or

how long tenants are there. Yeah. I mean, you have natural attrition in any Of course. Rental products, as you know. I mean, most of our rentals even stabilized. We've got about 1,500 in our portfolio. I mean, on average, in two years, you don't have any of the same renters. But we've maintained these for ten years plus. So I would expect the renter pool to continue to transition over in this product over the next twenty years, but it's kinda part of owning apartments.

Who can who can answer attachment a? Who does that go to? I mean, it talks about in there on page four of attachment a, objectives. I'm like, are these objectives to start, or are these objectives during this period for the RDA? Does that make sense?

So that's the plan, the project area plan, and it's new objectives and entire So rehabilitate

buildings, achieve an environment reflecting a high level of concern for architectural landscape, that's throughout the project. Who monitors or critiques that?

Well, community development, city of Logan, as they come through, they as development happens, they get people. 18 is

So you have the ability to go to the RDA and say, this doesn't look like the thing we thought it would be, or this building isn't

up to snuff, rehabilitated, or what? I'm just So objective standards, yes. I mean, a lot of this is aspirational. This is what we want to achieve. But at the end of the day, it has to be hard standards that our owners require. So let's say they're required to have

Well, I have an answer for it. It's a bale of hay on 10 acres. That's architectural beauty. So yeah. Can I ask a question to our attorney staff? Have you gone through this? Do you have any things that we should be looking at? Or is that

So primarily, my job is to make sure that it's

High as a beholder.

I have a question.

My my concern with this has been the traffic. Has there been any discussion on how, you know, how you will take care of the traffic issue? Has there been any discussion? It does Udot need to be involved in it, or how is that coming along and how are you going to take care of that traffic issue? Whole area? We should know.

Yeah. So our design review permit, we have to implement all of those recommendations for that traffic study. You are correct. UDOT has jurisdiction over Main Street, so they'll review that as well. But so far, we're complying with all those, and we'll comply with all those.

I was always under the impression that you can only solve the problems of traffic and it lasts of one year. And then changes and, you know, and all of a sudden, oh, that's a happening place and now this you didn't expect that. I mean, everything's so volatile in that. But what I really like about this project personally is is the diversity. Mhmm. You know, where there is the living, you know, above, around, there is the big stores. Then all of a sudden there's the small stores. So then I think it it will be a draw to a lot of things happening, especially with entertainment things around it. So it might bring a little more activity, not only with everybody that's lives right there, but it'll be probably a pretty good drop. A lot of that might be the happening place, you know, for for everyone in Cache County. I don't know. But it's the diversity is to me is is huge, which I think is when one part of it may be hurting, I think other parts usually may be succeeding. Mhmm. Small stores may be doing well. Big stores may not do so well. When, you know, the real estate for lodging and homes and and apartments, that fluctuates up and down. Usually, when that usually is doing really good and sometimes commercial listen to it, so good. It's kinda balances. I think there'll be something that'll probably keep it a little more stable in the long run because there's so many different things happening. So To your stability point too, without disclosing who the retailers, part of this is gonna be used as a

distribution.

I don't know whether it's possible to actually segregate the 10% of low income housing out of an apartment complex building, you know, the way that is. I know. I didn't think so either, but Craig McAllister brought it up and said, please ask. So I know. Well, other other places you'll you'll look at, sometimes they will build a great big apartment complex, and then divide the property and then have a little road. And then just on the other side of the road, they'll do a a little piece that is for low income. Yeah. Yet they can still participate in all the amenities of everything else, but they can then, you know, create that as tax free and rather than having it just lower rent with disperse, you know. That's what can hurt some, you know, income potential coming because that whole chunk of property is in a five zero one c three and loses a taxability.

So I like the way That does happen. Yeah.

So I I feel like this this whole project has been well thought out, thoroughly vetted from every party involved. And I think there was some concern last time about a twenty year term on this. As Diana has shared with us, we've had twenty year term RDAs in the past, which have done just fine without any problems. And, in my opinion, this this is a great opportunity for our county to move forward with with a type of development that has lived out its purpose as a mall and now can be repurposed into something that will bring stability and vitality to, to that area. And, I think that, as I looked at these numbers, I thought Kirk was a little conservative as well.

Which is good.

So I think that I really as I've studied this, I don't really have any concerns at all about us moving forward with this and helping to get this thing off the ground and running. So thank you for being interested and and for looking at, Cash County? Yeah.

We've told the city this. I hate to say anything that jeopardizes. That's a good old note to end on. I should probably go sit down. But we've we've done four mall projects now. We've probably looked at 100. It's rare that you have the ability to do a redevelopment like this. You know, the main component is having a retailer like this that can kind of anchor it. The other one is having other components that make sense for the project. But without those two, we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to to do the project. It is tight. I wanna be upfront with that. It's the city's negotiated hard. They can wonderful to work with. But as nice as Kirk is, he is a very tough negotiator. I think originally we came with a thirty year TIF request. If the city wasn't participating via waiving impact fees, the other contributions, we would need a thirty year TIF. So I I wanna be very upfront with that. We're we don't have capacity to cut this further. So we hope we can get it done. I'm really excited about the project. You know, we've gotta spend about a year in Logan, and it's a special spot. So we're really excited for it. You know, I think we can get it done, and that's my 2¢ on it. So Well, thank you. Thank you.

Any questions? For Walmart,

in attachment b and the numbers in the chart on page 27, Kirk, was that all you, or was that consulting with Cache County and intercooperation on all these numbers and everything else? Does that make sense?

Hurt on that. And so with all of these fees and permit waivers, they're closer to a $5,300,000 share.

K. That helps. Thank you. K.

Well, no. I got one more question, And I don't dare ask him for this because it it's not relevant to him at all. It's the haircut approach.

Oh. Because he doesn't have any hair.

Would would would you entertain any any proposal that we might look into later today that we might look at that little down

I think Mitch's final comments really As a developer I know. They didn't wanna hear that from you, but I mean, and I don't wanna hear that from you, but I mean, and I don't wanna, You know, you're have your guys' that work. We're at a point where we don't have any

Well, and interesting, we we had this our last meeting, we had the concern of twenty years versus we thought about looking at fifteen years and, in my mind, the easiest way to to really evaluate that twenty to fifteen is I just ran these numbers and and, did a net present value calculation just using a the air. There's no and the net present value of these, tax increment payments to the RDA is only $212,000 difference between fifteen or twenty years.

So Say that number again? Our portion?

Yeah. The county portion? Yeah. Portion. Was what? 212,000.

Total

So I I I'm comfortable with twenty years, and I don't think we need to worry about haircuts or anything else. We're gonna come out far better, haircuts or anything else. We're gonna come out far better by having this development go forward than if we just

let that ground sit like it is. We might make up close to that in sales tax. Yeah. You know? Seriously.

You sure you don't wanna build outside, Logan? Oh, wait. Did I say that? Woah. We're talking cell stacks. I just know other I was gonna say there's everyone to my right. Yeah. I know. We're a little biased on that side. I had to I had to pitch in over here. Sweat tears into this. Yeah. Pitch in over here. Let's put tears into this. Yeah. I mean, it'll lower it won't, but we No. I think it's a good project. I think I've I think that, you know, we've all debated about this and and

Diane's been really helpful in throwing the numbers together and how thank you for that. And I think it's a good project. I think it's a good project. I think I've I think that, you know, we've all debated about this and and Diane's been really helpful in throwing the numbers together and

thank you for that. And I think it's a good project.

I If you have to build in Logan. One of the things that kind of pushed me over, not the edge, but just is the the mere fact of the maturity on those other projects that are now we're starting to see, basically, right now, more tax revenue coming from those to compensate lost tax tax revenue at least for the next

few years.

So, you know

Well, but in in the initial, those makeup the makeup of which your costs are going, you've still gotta make it up somehow. Even though, you know, from we're talking as of today. We've still got if you don't have the tax coming in, then you gotta make it up somewhere. And so, yeah, I know you're gonna get it down the road. We all understand that. But you still gotta make it up right now. And now we have these other dollars come back to replace the $58,000 we would not be able to use to offset, you know, ex exploding expenses that's happening for county, cities, all that. So Okay. And and when you come back, you're you got these other meetings you're going to. Again, we'll we'll work with you and push you if you're not here when we're kinda ready, we'll just go to the next thing. Don't worry about it. Just we'll we'll make sure that we won't don't talk about that without you, and I think we got a good thing with a bigger understanding here, is to be able to get a vote Yeah. For you tonight. So What time does the school district meeting start?

We'll

we'll we'll work with it. K. So k. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Diana. Good talking again. Thank you, Diana. You guys are getting funner to work with. I say you guys are getting funner to work with. Does that mean I'm getting older? I hope I didn't intend on the haircut thing. Kimber's a good man. Yeah. Well, why don't we we're a little early, but

can we jump right into Sure. Ever too early to talk budget? Never.

No, but Andy has her. As long as there's no haircut cracks, I'll be okay with that. I think I've got the right I can cut Sharon's page ready, right?

Is this the exact same as what's in here on the statements of revenue?

Yeah. These are just kind of the old notes I made so I can explain it easier when we talk about the revenues. I can Thanks. Follow along some. I don't mean to be rude. I had some dental work yesterday, and it hurts like crazy, so I gotta be sipping on something a little bit.

Did you go duck hunting? What's that? Did you go duck hunting? I didn't go duck hunting yet. And that opened up this last weekend? Last weekend. Yeah. No. We didn't go.

I end up having a bad tooth and swollen like that big all weekend and finally got the dentist yesterday and got it taken out. So it's a Did you cry? I wanted to. Okay. I want this I just want to watch the video. Pain. Oh. I took the needle nose to it Friday and Saturday. I couldn't get it out myself, so I had to go to the I had to go to the dentist. But

Correct. And the dentist says, what happened to this cow?

Sheriff, go ahead and please share with us. Okay. I think you've got the budget, in front of you. So if I can just maybe just start off with the revenue piece, and that's why I handed this out because this is just kind of how I've tracked it along, over the years. So our revenues, overall, are gonna be up about 451,000, and a lot of that's came because we've done a lot of work at the legislature and with some of our contract people to get our daily rates up for the jail housing. If I can find that one. So just to give you just a little update. So in 2019, with the Department of Corrections, our daily rate was fifty three ninety three, and we just got notified yesterday that our rate in 2024 is going to 71 a day, for the image. But that's been a lot of work the last couple years at the legislature in actually coming up with a formula, that they'll pay what the statute says they have to pay. So we've seen a lot of increases in that. There's a the $71 a day is just the base rate. If we offer some, like, cognitive programs, GEDs, some life skill type things to the inmates, that's an extra $5 a day. And we don't do a lot of the therapeutic treatment because that takes physicians and doctors and licensed therapists. But if we did have those programs, that would be an additional $13.85 a day. So we do have Franklin County inmates. We've always just charged them what the state rate is. So 2020, they were at 53. That'll be an increase to 71, and we renegotiated our contract with the US Marshals this year, and they were at 59 now, and they're going to $87 a day. So there's been a pretty substantial increase just in the in the daily rate for the inmates. But we've also, three years ago, I with the patrol contracts, we put three year increases into the patrol contracts. They've gone up every year with the number of hours, that they are providing, so we've seen a pretty substantial increase in the in the contracts with patrol as well. Those are the big things that generated the the increase in revenues. It was really just the contracting

pieces of Can I ask a question? Sure. Somebody mentioned the other day that on the sheriff and as you're patrolling and giving up tickets or citations or whatever else, that they've seen a decrease in that. Is that true or what?

Like a decrease in traffic citations? Yes. Some areas, they're up and some, they're down. And I I I've had this conversation with the cities and towns all the time is we're not we deal we write tickets to deal with public safety issues, not as a as a revenue generator. The county doesn't see any money in in citation numbers. And I think the bigger issue with what the cities and the courts are feeling is the state just keeps taking more and more of

And that's where it was coming from. It was a city rather than from where the county was. And so Yeah. That question came to me and I'm like, I don't know the answer. So Yeah. We,

we take care of public safety issue. We don't write tickets just for the sake of writing tickets. And I and I don't dictate what tickets that the that our deputies have to write. They can have their discretion, and and I hope they use their discretion well. And when it's warranted, it's warranted. Overall, with our overall numbers, our numbers of citation numbers have been pretty steady for the last five or six years. Some particular cities, they might be down just because the the public safety or the traffic problems aren't there, and some of them are up because new growth and new roads, and they have some bigger issues in their communities.

K. Thank you.

I don't know if I made this budget. Sure.

That's the contracts with the cities, is that special project service contracts? Is that what that is?

Yes. That's the city contracts. These are, like the contracting numbers are hard to look. I think I probably shoot a little bit low sometimes. I don't want the budget balanced off what I would like the contract numbers to be, but I we we've averaged about a 110 inmates. On average, we've had as much as like in the state, we've had as much as a 120, and we've bound been down to about a 105 at some points. But that 110 number is is a pretty conservative number as to what they can be. And I shot low a little bit with, the marshals too. They're just I can never guarantee what the contract numbers are gonna be, so I'd rather shoot low than than shoot high and come up with a number that that we're not going to hit.

I noticed your liquor allocation is a 110 that's pretty steady.

Oh, I thought that's what he was drinking.

If I thought that would help, I would have done that today as well. So I don't know if anybody understand what the liquor allocation is. I don't. So what it is is, that's passed through Monday from all the cities. So every city and the county's included in that, But every city gets a a portion back from the state on how many alcohol sales were made in their communities, how many alcohol arrests got made in their communities. The state figures all that out, and it goes back to all the cities and but it has to be used for alcohol enforcement. So for the cities, that's just pass through money back to us to spend on extra alcohol assignments, overtime assignments, DUI assignments. That's where most of that money comes from. The county does get some with unincorporated county, what we do. I think the attorney's office gets a piece of that for the prosecution. So they had the 110,000 is the law enforcement side. I think county attorney's office has a piece of that that they get for the prosecution side as well. So So that is a 100% just pass through money. 95% of us just pass through money. If you look at this next page that I passed out, this is where I say, I don't know if I made this easier or harder, but it's easier for me to understand it. So I've actually added more budgets to the sheriff's office than decreased budgets. The reason I did that is when Chief Deputy Bilodeau retired Matt Bilodeau retired, is I opted not to do another chief deputy. But instead, I created another lieutenant's position, but then I divided up all the divisions we had. And I'll just give you an example as to why. So, our patrol division, our criminal division lieutenant at the time, he had 35 peep 35 patrolmen, six sergeants, and all the investigations and the schools to supervise with one person. So he had 60 people and pretty high energy, high high maintenance division. So by creating another division, with not creating the chief deputy, is I broke down all the divisions. So what you'll see on the far right side of that is how the divisions got broken down. So criminal division is now, investigation, school resource, support services, stayed pretty much the same. We've made a patrol has its own, budget now, so it's just a this the Hispanic control, really, more than anything. But when we did that, what I did with the budgets and what you'll see in your packets is so we've had four budgets now. We've had patrol, support services, corrections, and an admin budget. What we did when I made these other divisions is we split those out again just so we knew exactly what what patrol was costing us. We knew what investigations and school resource was costing rather than have it all lumped into one. We also found a lot of things, like every division in my office had their own office expense line item. And some were buying ammo, and some were doing this, and some were trading back and forth. So we went through all the budgets. We took out everything that was an office wide purchase, not breaking it down between divisions, and put it all under the administration budget, which has its own lieutenant now. And that took, like, all the utilities. It took all the office expenses. It took all the housekeeping items. It took all the janitorial stuff. Because beforehand, that was all kind of parsed out between every division. And we found a lot of savings by not each division just having their own little pool of money, paying their own janitors. I mean, one crude example of it is we had five different copy machine contracts. All of them at a different rate, all of them signed at a different time. The jail had their own contract, second floor had their own contract, 3rd Floor had their own contract. So by condensing these and just getting all that office related stuff that's not division specific into one place, we actually were able to save quite a bit of money just in condensing that down and put it under put it in one spot. So when you see these line items over here, most of those are in wages, because wages are probably 85 or 90% of what our total budgets are. But those expense lines, as you go through the budget, that is specific to what it takes to have to have a patrol division, to have investigations in school resource, what it takes to operate just the jail and not all the other things that have just been jammed into everybody's budgets over the years. So with all that, twenty twenty four's budget will be about $1,200,000 less than it was in 2023. But what that number does include is it it includes the full year's worth of the impound facility, which we're not gonna get there this year because we're only gonna really truly be open half the year. But it also includes two full time employees for the contracts through patrol deputies through the contracts with the cities. Any questions on that page? And then we can Oh, IT.

That that amount there, is is that

what does BART help you out on all that stuff? No. What we did with IT is every division before had their own line item for cell phones and for computer rollovers and for Spielman stuff. It's like, why is every division just doing that? So where IT down there at our office, they've always had a little bit of a budget just because they've taken care of our computer rollovers and things like that out of our budget. I just took it out of all the divisions and put it just under IT, so not all the divisions were buying their own

stuff.

K. And we've got them all on rollovers and turnaround times with IT, so it just made sense to put take that money out of the divisions and put it into one place, so we know what's being bought, when it's being bought. They're not tripling up on things, doubling up on things, buying we should be buying the same things. I think it's just gonna be a lot more efficient having it in the place that's actually maintaining those computers and those programs.

Thank you. Okay. I I just have one question. Sorry. And it might be in the details of everything you just explained, but on the administration line, on the budget compare page, it went from 1,900,000.0 in '23 to 4,500,000.0 in '24.

Yep. That's where I pulled all those general office things out of all the divisions and put it into one place. And that picked up that picked up all the employees. It picked up all the expenses. It picked up all the janitorial. So, yeah, theirs did increase, but the rest of them decreased through the individual budgets. K.

And just for curiosity's sake, in '21, is that what you were doing in '21 also because it was 5,000,000 there for '21, and then it went down substantially?

Well, '21 is when we budgeted for the animal shelter. Oh. That was the first year we put that money into that. So Alright. That's why you saw the big decrease in '22 and moving into '23. Thanks. So that's, generally speaking, what, what we've what we're doing down there as far as budgets. I don't want it to be confusing when you open up things like, yeah, we just went from. I got a lot of budgets because I got search and rescue has their own budget. IT has their own budget. Explorers have their own budget. Emergency management has their own budget. So I just increased the total number of budgets by two.

Excuse my ignorance. What is Explorers?

Explorers the Explorers are the scout they run the posse burger down there. Oh. So it's that group of kids that are Question, Carl. It's it's your training pool. It's a training pool. So it's that group of kids who, they're between 15 and 21 who have some interest in law enforcement. We get them signed up for that group through the high schools and the law enforcement classes. They get to see what we're about. We get to see what they're about. They kind of raise their own funds. They're kind of a pass through. Whatever they raise, they keep, and that's how we fund that. What's that? They did quite well on the burgers thing this year. Yeah. They did very well. We've actually we've been able to give four or five scholarships and paid waste to the academies, and that was kind of the whole point of when, mounted posse couldn't make it. We gave that to the explorers, and we just used that money to get kids to the academy. We've actually been able to hire three or four, of those academy kids and bring them on full time, and they we've gotta they've gotta see us, and we've gotta see them for three, four, five years just to make sure it's a good fit for all of us. So it it's a great program.

I have questions on the revenue back to that, because I'm looking at inmate housing from ICE. It's been canceled before, and now it's negligible. Mhmm. Also, on ankle monitors, what just explain those two decreases to me. They seem big decreases.

Yeah. Radio.

What's that? Jason Williams talked about that, the ice.

Yeah. I know that's a big hot topic right now. Yeah. Yeah. I heard. We, we discontinued our contract with ICE, and it was a good it was a good thing for a while. But they have such a set of standards that that we're just not gonna abide by those standards. We're not building their own barbershops. We're not gonna have their own special diets. We're not gonna be their personal mail delivery people. They just make it so impossible the feds make it so impossible to house ICE detainees that it wasn't worth the county's

So we're not the only county doing that. So what are they doing? So That's a good question. Over the one month There was really no counties. We

so the only counties that I know that ever took ICE was Utah County I mean, this has probably been eight years ago, maybe. Utah County held a lot of ICE inmates, but because of the same reason I just talked about, Utah County discontinued their contract with ICE. Then we did it for a while, and then Washington County did it for a while. But no other jail in the state would ever really take them. Now we'll take a fresh arrest from ICE if their agents are out and they need to arrest somebody. We we can't take federal they are federal here's the here's the problem with them. They call them detainees because they're not we were housing people that are somewhere in the process of deportation. But because they classify them as detainees and not inmates, we really had to create two separate classes of inmates. And it's pretty hard to run a jail when you've got the inmates over here being treated one way, but you got the detainees over here being treated at a higher different level than what inmates are. All of our patrol guys do a great job if they arrest somebody for a state crime, they bring them and book them into jail. We contact ICE and say, hey. You guys might wanna check this one. And even if they come back as an illegal immigrant, ICE probably isn't gonna put a hold on them anyway, depending on what what the crime is. So we are get the sheriffs are getting beat up, about the ICE thing right now, but I think we've got that resolved with with the governor's office, the legislature, and an understanding with ICE as to to what the problems have truly been.

Other questions?

This helped make sense because I went through the building and I was lost when you said you created a new one and that's what I was thinking.

That's that's what it was, and I knew it would probably be confusing when you don't see it. But I just really wanted to break all the budgets down into specifically what does it take to run patrol, what does it take to run investigation of schools, and anything that's office related, we broke it down and just put all that consolidated into one place. You mentioned that this includes

wages, all that, everything This I don't think

Except except for what's This doesn't have wages. I think what it does include is the two is the full time employees that came through the contracts. Okay. But I don't think wages, because you guys haven't seen the wage proposal yet. So I don't know if they know what number to put in there. Yeah. These are these are current rates on wages. So any increase is not part of this today because you guys haven't eat into this million to your savings. So Yeah. It'll eat into that and eat into the

Many other things.

Things. To the revenue increases as well. Yeah.

K.

Thank you. I'm happy to go through detail line by line in each budget if you would like to, but, generally speaking, that's what

what I did with the budget this year. I had a question about the impound facility. Just Mhmm. That was on my mind. And it it looks like the total expenditures are gonna be met by the property tax and the, in town and housing fees. So is it like a net cost or a zero cost to the county taxpayers? Or, I Well It looks to me like that's a wash, but I wanted to make

sure that was true. That's the hope. And what I don't know is because it's what the revenues are gonna be every month. We've really only been in operation for three months. To be able to tell you exactly what that looks like, I don't know. Finance puts in the the property tax and all that stuff. But my goal is to have it just be neutral. And if we can keep it there, that I think that would be fantastic. K.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I like these pages. Thanks. Well, I I'm a dummy, so I have to I have to look at things. I Yeah. Do something. I'm feeling better though. It hurts less having to get that tooth pulled than it hurt all weekend

where it was. Would you like some chocolate covered cashews? Yeah. What I really want is Do you have any? No. Sunflowers. You can't have those either. Well, actually, I ate them on the way down. My wife gave me a handful as I was leaving the my house. Here to walk through.

All right, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start with our professional services line and just go through our budget and then come back to our our, personnel because Amy's gonna help me a little bit with that. So when we talk about our and I guess before I I start there, just as our our budget as a whole, this is my first year going through the budget process. And so for comparison, I looked at all of the other counties similar to our size in the state to see where we were sitting. I was actually pretty pleased. So we have a population of about 140,000 and a budget of 2,500,000.0. Washington County, which is the closest county in size to us in the state, has a $4,400,000 budget for their attorney's office. So we have 76% of their population, and we do our business on 56% of their budget. Tooele County is the next closest. They have exactly about 50 almost down to the exact 50% of our population. They have 76% of our budget. Weber County, we're 53% of their population and have 40% of their budget. Some of the other counties in the state that are much smaller than us, you have Summit County, ways very much smaller than us, and we have about four prosecutors. They have Park City, so they probably have some ritzy offices or something, but they got a $2,800,000 budget. Wasatch County, similar $1,700,000 budget. So I I think for maybe punching above our weight class, we're doing pretty good in Cache County for for what we have, Do things on a break. Has been credited very, very high on sex crimes and prosecution of that too. So Yes. And I I thank the counsel for letting us expand our special victims over the last

couple years. We've added two prosecutors to that. And if you look at what our what

our what our numbers have done and what we've been able to do with the same people we have in house, I I'm very happy with with with what we've been able to do, on less than what other counties do it with. And that's a that's a credit for the to the people we have in our building. So when we talk about professional services, some of this might seem most like why what subscriptions and memberships does Cash County have? That's the couple services. RIM and it's Rocky Mountain Information Network. It's a it's a it's a federal federally funded group. And consists of Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah. They provide law enforcement support and intelligence. So we've used them on a few cases where we've sent them a whole bunch of video and they've been able to stitch it all together, sent them GPS from ankle monitors, and they've been able to plot it on maps for us to use for trial. That's a that's one of the memberships. We have several other memberships of similar things just to give support to to our office, give us some extra resources. Travel, that is travel to and from training and conferences that we have. And you'll notice in this budget, I've requesting similar to to last year in most things. There's gonna be a few things where I'm asking for a little bit more, especially as far as training. That's that's further down the list. Professional and technical, you'll see at this in September, we've only used 38,000 of our 100 and 20. That's not counting some of the bills from Davenport Road that we are just getting. That that's professional and technical support in the form of, like like Davenport outside legal counsel assisting on complex cases. Also, our our expert witnesses, we've retained for criminal cases. One case we had this year was a a really horrible case, a child sex abuse case. We got a sentence of a hundred years to life in prison on that case, but it did cost us about $20,000 to get the DNA testing done, fly an expert out, and have that deal done. So those those can add up pretty fast. We have another case we're working on where we're probably gonna have about $30,000 in forensic accounting, on a complex financial climb crime. So those those can add up quickly. My goal is to over budget that and not use the full thing but I don't want to be in a situation where we have something terrible happen and have to hurry and come to the council and ask for money to pay an expert that we need tomorrow. Software packages. I know the council has heard from me on this before. We had $300,000 in our budget this year for those packages. A 150 of that is ARPA funds. The other 150 is gonna be our yearly cost going forward. We haven't made that work. It's a lot of work to transition. It's not just hit a button and all of a sudden you have a new program. We have a whole group of people in our office, probably about 10 people. Danny, is that about right? Working every single week, helping them through that process, doing things on our side that we have to do. And we're still probably six months out. So that 150 from ARPA is gonna need to be rolled over at some point next year. They're not billing us until the till they can give us the the product. But in the meantime, we've had to keep another system running. So that's what those costs are is our our other system we have to keep running this year. And I've accounted for that in our budget with that 170 because we're gonna have to keep those running for a time next year as well. I thought there was a program that wasn't supported. It's just it's not supported by the company. We still have to pay for support Outside. Through a third party. Third party. And we have to pay for our data storage because the county's on-site data storage is full. So we've had to transfer things to a cloud account. Part of our our funding from ARPA is to transfer all of that from that cloud account over to the integrated account with our new new system. But until then, we still have to pay for that cloud storage, unfortunately. Witness and trial costs, that's a little bit different than our expert witness costs. That's just the the money we spend subpoenaing witnesses, paying for witnesses to travel here from out of state if they've moved away, making sure that we're able to get say we have a a victim who moves away from the area that has to come back to testify, we put them up in a hotel when we're forcing them to come here. So that's what what those costs go towards. Then education and training, and that's that's one that's having a significant increase. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One, in the past, our VAWA and VOCA grants have provided funding for training. With the cuts across the board in those grants, we just aren't getting that funding for training. It's funding positions, but not all of the extra things. And then second, we've had a pretty high attrition rate in our office over the last few years. I've been here six years, and there's only three other attorneys that have been here that same time out of the thirteen that we have. We have a really young staff. Part of that is the growing pains of getting people up to speed, getting them the training they need. Another portion of that is we now have two investigators they have required post training. So I'm accounting for those two investigators as well. Going down to our any any questions on anything in our professional services?

Yeah. On that 120, you said that the Davenport wasn't in there, but yet I went through your thing and it showed 40,000. So is 40,000 reflected, or that's the anticipated cost? So so we're requesting 40,000. So in that 120,

that's broken down That's where the 40 for dev and port 10,000. Yeah. So I can let me go to this. So we have have these lines for professional and technical. And and some of them have talked to Britney. We're gonna probably gonna be making some changes for next year because I don't like I I think some of these are the same thing listed in two lines, frankly. Our conflict resolution council and our miscellaneous services, I think that all should just be one line, but we didn't get that changed this year as we were going through the process. But then you see and our consulting fees, I I think those are all really the same thing. We're using them for for similar things. So we're breaking those down a little bit too much because I'm asking, is it miscellaneous or is it consulting? Is it forensic evidence gathering? It's it's kind of hard to break those down, but 40,000 of that is for the attorney fees for Davenport Road budgeted for next year. That's the same as was budgeted for this year for Davenport. Any other questions Any other questions on that group? Our supplies and other services, the first one is Law Library, which is kind of funny. We're not actually spending $18,000 a year on books. That's our, LexisNexis and Westlaw, which is our legal research, search engines where we look at case law. We do buy a set of Utah code books every year, the updated version. Usually a full version for the public. People do come and use our library on occasion to do their own legal research that's made available if we escort them in. Usually, I don't wanna stereotype the elderly people that are looking into something on their own and wanna spend some time in there. And then we have a a set of the the current law books for the public to examine as well. And then there's a few attorneys that like having the physical copy of the book. So that's that's the books we buy, but most of that is for our our online research service descriptions. Office expenses cost for just running our running our office, the different expenses we have through the year for supplies and and things along those lines. Communications, you'll see that's going up this year. Part of that is the new cell phone policy with our office in or with the the county anticipating, at this anticipating that change. Some people were getting less than the amount in that. And then we we're getting cell phone stipends as part of our grants. Those all run away this year through those cuts. So a bunch of employees lost that cell phone stipend that was paid for through grants. And that's just from the overall cuts in the grants and having less money there, putting the money we do have towards salary and benefits. Special special department supplies, that is, a line. We use that for our drug court and mental health court graduation. When people graduate, certificates, lunch, things along those lines. Usually, that's reimbursed through the Friends of Drug Court and Mental Health Court. If they have money in their their accounts, they usually reimburse that amount. The state grant drug prevention, I'm not sure. That's not something we have budgeted. I think that might be a relic of a past

They don't want to prevent drug use anymore?

It's a that we're not using. And then you'll see the, special department supplies traffic. We last year and every year in the past, we've had a traffic school. When I took over, I realized we were running that in a not so lawful fashion, so I I did away with the traffic school. Now we we still do the have the traffic school option. We're just not paying someone to to teach the traffic school and buying the supplies. There's an online traffic school through the state of Utah. So, people can still get their traffic ticket dismissed. We just have a QR code that they scan and they bring in proof that they've completed the traffic school and and pay the fee related to that. Also, there was a a new state law where if you get a ticket, you can do that on your own without going through the typical traffic school process, that went into effect this year. And so I I anticipated even if we would have kept our traffic school, it wouldn't have been you'll see later on revenue, where there was revenue coming in from traffic school as well. That was gonna drop off substantially because of that new law. Insurance. That's insurance related to our our building space and the the vehicles assigned to our office. That that's I think the council knows that's split up amongst the departments and it's Miscellaneous services. Not sure what miscellaneous services is. We don't have that anymore.

Mhmm. Miscellaneous services zero.

Then going into our minor equipment and maintenance, this is this is another where we have substantial increase. One of the reasons for that is, our investigators' fuel had been coming out of the victim services fuel budget, which I I I'm not sure how that started. I think it was because the vehicle was coming off a grant that victim services was able to get to get our investigator a vehicle. So we are we moved that fuel budget and the fuel budget for our new investigator into this, and also included a little bit for, law enforcement equipment if there and vehicle maintenance, say, if there's a got two flat tires or something. We don't wanna be in a budget hole and not have any money set aside for that. The non capitalized equipment for our office, that is all of the our copy machines, the equipment we have, computers and things that were up in our office, the things that aren't part of our actual structure. Victor. And I believe some of I'm not sure, Britney, why our 2023 budget was such a large amount.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is there still a piece of equipment that was budgeted for that hasn't been purchased, that $50,000? And that that could be from from some ARPA funding.

Oh, yeah. That that probably is investor equipment that we've used. We've spent some of it and haven't gotten some of the others. So we've purchased a vehicle. We still have a vest and things out of that ARPA fund piece that we're working on. We also have another ARPA project, for some updates to our office that that probably will be rolled over. I don't know if we'll have all of those done during this budget year. And that's in the interdepartmental, that's between the software and the two other ARPA projects, the investigator equipment and the office updates. That's where that 299,000 comes from out of the $15,700 line. The one other thing I did want to to touch on, during the past year, we have camped we had three municipal prosecution contracts last year. We hadn't received payment on those for some time. We did receive payment during the end of last year on Providence and Nibley, but we did cancel those contracts. We still have one municipal contract with Logan City. Been in the process of reviewing that. My, cost analysis for 2023 on that p on that contract is just under $300,000 and we're currently getting a $110,000 from Logan City. And, frankly, my as we talked it through with the the office, and I I think Logan City probably should have a idea that this is coming. So I talk about, do we ask for for that money, or do we come to the council and say, we can add another legal assistant, a victim advocate, and attorney for a $110,000 a year, which takes Logan City is not something that's within our we we do that on a contract basis. That's not part of our general duties as a county attorney's office. As we've added some of these other prosecutors, we haven't added another legal assistant. So we have the same number of legal assistants handling all of this huge caseload. So my and and my fear is even if we entered into that a new contract with Logan, there's gonna be some major changes coming to the justice courts in the next five years. And if you enter into a contract for $300,000 and then the justice courts, all those criminal cases go away and they don't need a prosecutor, then I'm coming to you saying, well, we have a budget shortfall of $300,000 because they no longer need a prosecutor over there. But we still need that prosecutor because all those cases are coming to the district court. So there there is a six month window on canceling that contract. I'm going to have some conversations with Logan City going forward, but I will likely be talking to the council some more about about that. I think you get a lot of bang for your buck if you consider you get three employees for a $110,000. So so any other questions as we go through that? Yes. But you say you're inclined to can't to tell Logan that we're gonna cancel we're not gonna renew that contract. That's that's that's where I'm leaning. I think it makes more sense for our office looking forward into the future, where we're not tying up basically three employees on something that we're not required to do, especially when we have such a high workload on our district court cases, on our on our civil side that would open up an attorney, a victim advocate, and a and a legal assistant to help on other things. And it's I kind of look at it. Do we we've been subsidizing that prosecution for years. So at at the it might be a $110,000 out of our revenue. But when you look at it, we're getting a lot of bang for our buck for losing that $110,000. And that that would be my Wholeheartedly supporting you. Yeah. So I it it is tough when revenue's going down, but I and Yeah. We've talked in the office. Do we go and try to try to negotiate that to make it worthwhile? But I just I saw what happened when we thought we were gonna lose half $1,000,000 in grant funding. To me, that's that's even less stable than grant funding because we don't know. Logan could cancel it anytime. The legislature could make a move, and then I'm coming to you asking for $300,000 because we'll be used to that revenue coming in to offset our costs.

Makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah.

And and then the last thing, and I know Amy's standing here. I guess my my number one goal in our office is public safety. And one of the most important things to be able to successfully prosecute cases, hold people accountable is having good employees, in our office that are making good choices, presenting good cases, have the resources. So, employee retention is is a big deal for me. This last year, we've probably I know it's not probably. We've had the longest stretch of time since 2020 where we haven't had any attrition in our office. That ended about an hour and a half before I walked down here. I had someone resign for significantly more money. A first year attorney who's been here about a year for more money than I make as county attorney, here locally. And I know I've been working on Amy with with this as far as where pay is for our people. I know some of you on compensation are here, so I'll turn the time over over to Amy, just kind of put put forth where we're at as far as our compensation for attorneys. I know it's a everyone wants more money, but I I do hope that we can help them out a little bit this year. So if there's not any other questions, I'll turn time over to her.

Thank you, Damon.

Oh, kickball.

What are they doing upstairs? Kickballing. What's that? I texted them.

What's that? I texted him and said, hey, that's actually really loud. Yeah. Tag or something.

Rat control. You didn't increase that budget? Yes.

While he's, helping me pull that up so that you can see it, I just wanted to let you know that we have done an extensive market study and have looked at different attorneys' offices throughout the state. And also Salt Lake County, they commissioned someone to do a survey for them that we were a participant of. And so then we were able to get the results of that. And that is, the the information that we've used, to come up with these numbers. So, it's hard for me to see that. Are you able to make it bigger? If you can even just make it so we can see that, that would work

good. Yeah.

Yeah. And then if you just make it full screen. Okay. So that kind of gives us a little bit better of a view there. So what I did was compared, all of the salary information and ran it through our compensation tool to come up with a new pay range, and then compared that to where we were at with our 2023 midpoint. Here if I drive. Okay. So that's what I wanted you to see. So, that last column right there, that 2023 midpoint, that's where we're at currently. And then that midpoint, that is has the darker box around it is where we would be potentially going for 2024. So you can see the difference in in where those are at. And then, we look at this and I I took the percentage difference. And so you can see that the lower we get, the higher that percentage is of of the discrepancy we are between the midpoints and the amounts that we need to be adjusting. So overall, when we take an average of that, there's a 24% increase that needs to happen, to the pay plan for our attorney's office. Now, as we look at that, I know that that sounds like a really big number. But keep in mind that our attorney's office is one of our our departments that is a it's mid size, and so it does affect quite a few people. But overall with benefits, it's gonna be about $330,000 to make these adjustments for our attorneys. So, I think when you look at the grand scheme of things, 24% sounds like a lot. But then when you break it down by the dollar, yes, dollars 330,000 is still a lot of money. But in my mind, when I hear 24%, I think, of a way bigger number than that. So, that's kind of where we're sitting with that. I know that, retention is really important, especially in our attorney's office as we we wanna keep that knowledge and experience here. And so as we consider salaries and different things, I would just hope that the council would keep that in mind as we as we look move forward. So. Is that

24% suggested increase built into this budget that we're looking at? No. No. It's not. No.

So

In any of the compensation The compensation is not built into any of your the budget that was given to us by the executive.

Right. And Mike has been working with me. I'll be able to give a a workshop presentation to you next time to give you the full picture of where we're at with compensation. But this is just your this is your preview, your sneak peek.

Can you drink some drinks so we can

take that? What kind do you want? Mountain Dew. Okay. Catherine, did you? We're proposing that now if we're going to hire a new attorney that's a, you know, first year attorney one. I'm proposing that

you know, first year attorney one, in 2024, they have a capacity to go and offer him a 114,000.

So it wouldn't quite be a 114,000 because our policy states that we can hire up to 95% of the midpoint. So we would take 95% of the 114 based on experience. That's where we would be able to hire them. Up to if it's a brand new attorney coming right out of school that doesn't have any experience, we would more than likely be hiring them at that minimum rate. Yeah. Okay.

Would that do it? Could you find them? That do it. That would be Could you find them? Do you go and and use that as a five finger tips? No. So It would be so pretty.

So

You can't afford a house. Yeah. It it's it's tough for our our new guys. I know I saw one of them looking through the door right there trying to see what's going on. But that that is a a reality. You have last year, the council got us up to where we were about right on par with Salt Lake, and we were able to get two people from Salt Lake County up here. And then right after that, they went from Yeah. They They're hiring a new attorney. And I think I sent did I pass that one on to you too? About 112,000 a year. Yeah. So it's For brand new For brand new right out of right out of law school attorney. Are they getting them? No. Salt Lake has, I think last time I heard, something 40 to 50 openings in their prosecutor's office. And that's what I even even with these adjustments and stuff?

The the legal market in Utah has

changed a lot over the last just two or three years. There's fewer attorneys? There's I think there's fewer attorneys. There's definitely fewer people who want to be prosecutors.

Also, a couple of large regional firms opened up offices in Salt Lake, and so you have this pull up effect where these big national firms who can pay

And

Amy reminded me of another thing. COVID really changed things in the legal profession. You have the ability people realize you don't need to be in the office all the time. And so now not in Cache County, not only are we competing just with what you can work in Cache County, but you can work really anywhere up and down the Wasatch Front even as a as a prosecutor because, typically you only have court a couple days a week. So you can make that drive and work from home. So now we're competing against against those places. The world's just gotten smaller. And so it it is tough. We we haven't we do already have an opening in our office that's just kind of been open. We have a plan to fill that, but probably won't do that until next year. But now we have another opening. So I'm hoping we're able to fill it, but we really have not got candidates the last couple of times we've posted. We kind of the same few that we've already rejected applying. So so it is a really tough situation. We've been lucky not to have a lot of turnover in the last year. We've gotten the spots filled that we had, but I I know I mean, including the person we've left, I I think that's six attorneys that I know who have had a job offer or have a job offer right now in our office. And that's not including me when we're down at the AG's office. Me and the sheriff were down there. They they'd offered me a job last year, and they said that job's still open. And by the way, this is what it pays now, and it's very close to what I make as county attorney, just on a through ICAC. So it it's a it's a crazy legal market for sure. And it's a tough profession to just find someone because it's you can't just go get someone trained. You need a three year doctoral degree. And the I guess the in the prosecution fields, you have to have something different about you to want to come come and do that day in and day out. And there's not a lot of people going to law school who want to go take that on for less money than you can make in the private practice.

So I'm sure glad you guys aren't listening to that. Yeah. No. I I'm afraid none of us.

So Dane David Erickson asked, will that do it if we were to take that as your ask? Yeah. What is your if the if you had the moon

to have, what would be your ask for it? Well, I I think all I can ask for is what what our policy allows. So I'm I'm asking for for this, to for what Amy's put together

and To adopt the midpoint?

To to adopt this 24%. Just 24% overall increase to give us that that range for our our hiring. If there's a case where we're just not finding a qualified candidate or we start hemorrhaging people or I have people lined up, I'll come back to the council and state my case. But as of right now, I I I think Amy has done a fantastic job. This makes us at least competitive. It's no longer that you can live for cheaper in Cache County, unfortunately, but there still is a draw to live here. And so, I don't know if people are gonna be willing to pay that, like, Cash County tax, I guess, a little bit less money to live in a great place and work in a great place. But, this at least gets us in that that neighborhood where we're competing with some of those other counties. And there there are other reasons people don't wanna work for Salt Lake County. That's that's just the truth.

So there there's I've got a list here. I'd like to give you Yeah. It has so so I'm hope hope Uh-oh. We have Salt Lake Tribune here, so we can't

But, yeah, there's there's there's a lot of reasons people wanna live here, wanna there that there's a reason that Davis County, Weber County, Utah County are in a constant fight that they take one up. It's it's just like what's been going on in law enforcement for the last five or six years, and that that's spreading into the the legal field, and especially into prosecutors' offices because it's a unique skill set.

Okay. Thank you.

Amy, can you give us a glimpse? I mean, are there other departments that are looking at more than this in order to bring into correlation if you're talking as This is the highest

that is needed. The sheriff's office, and that's about half of our employees. We're looking at about a 13 and a half percent increase. So increasing that starting wage by a little more than $3 per hour, and that trickles and runs down through that pay plan. And that's to be competitive with not necessarily the Wasatch front, but here locally, because that's really who our competitors are. Logan, Smithfield,

Brigham City, Box Elder. So Do you have an idea when you're gonna talk about COLA as well? What

as a compensation committee, we've talked about COLA, and, that's something that I'll address next time and give you my thoughts and the Committee's thoughts on COLA and what that does to our pay plan. So, we're looking more at market and merit adjustments.

Okay.

Drew? K. We've got about five minutes here. So Thank you, Paul. Again. Take the break. Thanks, Dane. Thanks, Dane.