Cache County Council Regular Meeting – 09-16-2025

Okay. And polar.

Alright. We're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you, Andrew, for taking care of our YouTube channel. I'm gonna call this meeting to order. Is everybody ready? Oh, it scared me. Okay. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight for our county council meeting. We appreciate you being here. We're gonna go ahead and start with an opening by councilman Nolan Gunnell.

Well, September is a neat month. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the signing of the constitution, something that we all benefit greatly from and hope to preserve it. I'd just like to read a little bit about Ben Franklin. He was one of the only founding fathers to sign all three of America's most important documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris that ended the revolution, and the US Constitution. He also had a gift for humor in serious moments. During one tense debate, Franklin warned his fellow delegates, we must all hang together or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. At the constitutional convention, he was the oldest delegate, 81 years of age at that time that he signed it. He was weak and in pain, but he kept everyone working together. When the constitution was signed, a woman asked, doctor Franklin, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy? He famously answered, a republic if you can keep it. So Franklin wasn't just a scientist or an inventor. He was a master diplomat, a peacekeeper, and a voice of wisdom who gave The United States both allies and a constitution. And I hope we all cherish that. Franklin really only had two years of schooling, but he was a man that read and wrote a lot of things and was very skillful in his part of this freedom for United States, and I hope we think a lot of that. I will now like to form my words in a prayer. Our father in heaven, we come before thee at this time as we give thanks for the opportunity of assembling on this in this county of Cache in the state of Utah and for the government which we are able to participate in and benefit from. We give thanks for the constitution. We're grateful for this document and that it is preserved so long, and we pray that it will continue to do so and that we as a people will honor it and cherish it. We give thanks for those men and women who serve and protect us this day in this land and in distant lands and for those who have gone before us. We give thanks for the peace and freedom which we enjoy. We may all cherish it. We give thanks for these things and ask that we will be safe in the deliberations which we do now, and we do this in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. We now join me with the pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

K. Does anyone want to make a motion about the review and approval of the agenda? So moved. Madam chair, if I may no. You may. Yeah. If I may, I would move to approve the agenda with the following amendment, that we move item five to come after item 6A. That's great with me. So I wanna second that.

Second. Second. Madam chair, we also need to make an amendment on the public hearing portion. Okay. I believe we need to remove item seven seven. Okay. Just seven. So we're not yet ready for that. Okay.

So with those amendments, do I have a second?

Second.

Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. The review and approval of the minutes, does it I had an amendment to the minutes. Does anyone else have something about minutes? KK, you can go ahead. Just a small one. Time stamp 02:12 o four. It says Adito instead of auditor. Okay. I don't know if that's the correct pronunciation, but that's how it was spelled. It's just The r was dropped a r. So just a small thing. K. And then on in b, at the very bottom of b, the timestamp 01:01 fifty four, it says that I asked for an update on the it says AG report. What I want is an update on the AGRA port that the AGRA port, like a g r I. That was it I'm sure it sounded like the AGRA port when I said it, but, okay. With those amendments, does anyone have else have any other changes? Okay. Does someone wanna make a motion about that? So moved. Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the agenda with those amendments or the minutes with those amendments. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? K. Alright. So we are going to do six a right now. And I so I have a statement to read. It says following the proper provisions for selecting an interim replacement county executive for Cache County, chair Natalie Levi of the Cache County Republican Party notified me seven calendar days ago that the Cache County Republican Party has selected in George Danes. Now per the provisions of Utah code two twenty a dash one dash five zero eight, we are now to vote on and appoint n George Danes as an interim replacement Cache County executive to serve for the remainder of the the term that David Inzook was elected to serve. Can I get someone to make a motion on that? I move that we approve

that from Natalie Levi and appoint and vote on mister Dean's as being the executive. I'll second it. K. It's been moved and seconded that we

accept and approve George Daines as the interim county Cache County executive. Those in favor, say aye. Aye. Are there any posts? K. George, we'd like to invite you to come forward for your swearing in. Bryson's going to take care of that for us.

Arms to square and repeat after me. I, state your name. I, m, George Danes. Having been appointed to the office. Having been appointed to the office. Of Cache County Executive Surveyor. To the office of the Cache County Executive Executor, excuse me, Executive Surveyor. Duties of my office with fidelity. With fidelity. Awesome. Congratulations.

I'm gonna invite you to take your spot right over there, and we already have a name plate for you, so you can be official. Alright, so the next item on the agenda is report of the county executive. So we'll move right to that if you're ready.

I'm ready. I do want to thank all of you, council and those here for the opportunity to serve this county again. I left this, office of county attorney some seventeen years ago. I served for six years. I greatly enjoyed my service here. I enjoyed the friends that I made, and I enjoyed doing the work of Cache County. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve again, and I hope to do so in the best that I can possibly provide, this county. I think we all love Cache County. I'm in the business of reorganizing the office of the county executive. We have much reorganization to do in that office. We're working through it. This afternoon, I received the resignation of Eric Anderson, and I told mister Anderson I appreciated his service, and I appreciated his cooperation with me, and that I wished him well. His resignation is effective upon my appointment. So that's part of my report. The other part of my report is to just simply say that we're enmeshed in the budget process. We have much to do with the budget, and we're going to try and catch up with that, and we'll be working as hard as we can on that during the next few weeks. Thank you.

Dirk, would you come up for just a minute, please? On behalf of the Cache County Council, I would like to express our appreciation for the time and tireless dedication that Dirk has given to the count to Cache County over the last three and a half years. We acknowledge his service and his capacity and thank him for his many efforts on behalf of the county and we really wish you well in your future, Dirk. Thank you. And we have, we have something for you. Bryson's gonna pull it out. Or you can you would you like to say something?

Thank you, madam chair. Three and a half years ago, it was a very you know, it's a memorable night to get sworn in, and then I was allowed to say some words back then. And so I just wanted, everyone to know that we are in good hands with George coming at the helm. This guy means business, and he's gonna take care of it. And I'm really excited to see where we go from here. It I just want the whole county to know that any Cache County employee or elected official, it's an honor to serve in that position. And especially, Nolan, thanks for reminding me about one of my favorite days, tomorrow. I actually wish I would have done a typo now and put my resignation just as a typo, George, as tomorrow's date because that would be really cool. But maybe instead tomorrow's date, Constitution Day, can be my new start instead. And we are just so honored to live in the best county in the nation. And all of the leaders we have going right now, we've got a lot of good going for our county. So I really appreciate the honor. I want the whole county to know that on that night, I went around and I shook hands with every council member and I said it and I meant it. And I said, thank you for serving. Thank you for running and winning your election because the service is sincere and heartfelt, but not always appreciated. The job that the council and that the county executive have is a hard one. And but it's a good one. So George, thank you so much for being so kind to me and for listening. He we're still meeting. We met yesterday and we're probably meeting tomorrow just to try to get the list of him to, you know, things that the long list of to dos. And there there is a long list and it's great. So thank you, Cache County. Thank you, County Council. And thanks for letting me say something because it is an honor to serve and I've really appreciated my time here. So good luck, George. You're gonna do great. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, George. This is so exciting.

Thank you to all of George's family for joining us. Okay. The next thing on our item is the external the annual external audit. We'll turn some time over to Jason Slate from Joan Simpkins.

Thank you. I don't know why in these meetings, but the audit presentation always comes after something really exciting. And so, my name is, Jason Slide. I'm an audit partner with Jones Simpkins. We are a CPA firm just a mile west of here, and we had the opportunity to work with, primarily your finance department this year on your, and with with your county auditor, mister Funk, on, your audit. And I would just like to go over, how that process works, the reports that we issue, and the conclusions that we came to or that we arrived at as a result of our audit. I won't really speak to the numbers in the financial statements. You should have all received a PDF copy, and then we we decided to bring you a hard copy as well. I'll just say the county I think if you look at the bottom line, just the the the bottom line number, the county had a good year. I'll I'll say that. But our audit isn't meant to be how well the county did. It's it's based on we we give an opinion based on whether or not the information in the financial statements is materially correct. So we issue four reports in these financial statements. The first is found on page one. It's an independent auditors report, and we discuss, the opinions that we've issued, how we arrived at those opinions, what our responsibilities are as auditors, what management's responsibility is, as far as providing us with the information, that we need to perform our audit. But, really, we just have two objectives. Our first is is to obtain reasonable assurance that the financial statements are materially correct and that they're being presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. And then our second objective is to issue an opinion. We arrive at that opinion by performing audit procedures, and those are based on professional judgment. We're required to maintain professional skepticism. We don't just take your word for it. We obtain support for all the information that we ask for. We perform risk assessments. We focus most of our procedures on riskier areas areas, high dollar areas, and we look at your policies and procedures to see if there's any reason why there might be an issue there that would prevent the financial statements from from being presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. And then we we perform our procedures. And if we identify anything that we consider to be a material misstatement, we'll bring that to management and decide if an adjustment needs to be made. Materiality is an interesting term. I think a good example of that would be we issued some bonds this last year. If something were omitted from the financial statements that a bonding agency used to determine your bond rating or the interest rate that you were able to receive in relation to those bonds, that would be considered material. So that's that's kind of what we arrive at. A reasonable user of the financial statements, what would affect their decision making? So based on auditor judgment, we we develop a level of materiality, and then we perform our procedures. I can say as right at the top of the page one, you'll see that we issue an opinion that these financial statements are materially correct, that the information is presented in in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles based on an audit that we performed in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. The next report is a long ways. These are long financial statements, but they're a long ways in the back, page one zero four. In governmental audits, we're also required to issue a report on internal controls and compliance. We don't test the operating effectiveness of internal controls and tell you whether or not your controls are functioning or or that they're effective, that they're operating effectively. But in in our audit process, we're required to obtain an understanding of the design and and functionality of your controls. And if we if we identify weaknesses or deficiencies in those controls, we'll let you know. And so that's what that report says. And there are two areas that we've identified that I'll I'll speak to in a little bit when it comes to controls, and it's mostly related to the material misstatements that we identified, as a result of our audit. But we can I'll I'll speak to that in just a minute. Page one zero six, when the county spends more than $750,000 in federal funds, you're required to have what's called a single audit, which is a federal compliance audit. They call it a single audit because you take the financial statement audit and this federal compliance audit, and we pull it together into one single audit. The county spent, well above 750,000 this last year. The county and its component units combined spent 14,500,000.0. And so based on certain coverage requirements and different things that are issued by the federal government, we we select certain federal grants. Most of it is gonna be your larger grants. Smaller grants aren't looked at as often. We're required to obtain 40% coverage. We tested 8,800,000.0 of the 14,500,000.0 this year. Most of that was your, the the those ARPA funds that are continuing to be spent. I'm happy to report we have we have no findings there. Your your federal awards are in in good shape as far as the processes and the and the the reporting that goes along with those. And then finally, on page it's at the end, page, I think, 116, we're required in the state of Utah to perform some additional compliance procedures related to the state auditor's compliance guide. Not every state does that. We work in a number of states, and Utah is unique in that the state auditor's office issues its own compliance guide. And there's 10 to 15 compliance requirements, depending on the type of government agency you are, whether you're a county, municipality, special district. Some of those we test every year. Some we test on a we we have a rotation every three years. This year, if you look on page, I believe it is one sixteen, we we were required to test budgetary compliance, compliance with fund balance in your general fund, information related to restricted tax taxes, the fraud risk assessment, which you guys do each year, government fees, whether or not those are in excess of costs associated with the services you're providing, and then your tax levies. Again, no findings in that area. So those are the four reports that we issue. If we'll now jump back to page one zero nine, this is a summary. Basically, it's a summary of what I just went over of our findings and if we had any question costs associated with federal awards. We did identify, and what we feel like there's a material weakness in internal controls, a material weakness is is a weakness that if it's not if if it exists, there's a good chance, a really high chance, that you'll have a material misstatement. And then we identified a significant deficiency, which is not quite to the level of material weakness, but I and we explained those on one ten and one eleven. But I what I wanna emphasize is I believe that those are mostly related to the significant amount of turnover that has happened at the county, specifically in the finance department over the last few years. You had a member that did a lot of reconciling and things like that in Phil Noble, who left the county last year. So I I I really think it's attributed mostly to that turnover. And we've we've received a corrective action plan from, the auditor, auditor Funk, and that's on page, one third