Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[16:19] County Administrator: is out on leave at this time and our the person that does the custodial cleaning has given her notice and so we're in process of we have the job posted for a part-time custodian janitor that serves this building the comm center and emergency management and we're also interviewing custodial services as well that may be able to provide that service this. In the meantime, when it comes to building maintenance here, I'm your guy. And so, for example, I came in at 6.30 this morning and walked through the building with Medet Man as they did their test on our fire panel and all of our fire alarms. So just making sure they had access to all the rooms. So I don't plan on doing that for the long term. However,, we cannot fill that position while this person's out on leave. So we'll just have to see how that goes. Two things that you'll probably keep in mind as we get closer to budget season for this building. One is we're getting quotes right now on the concrete ramp out front. If you notice it when you come up, there's a lot of deterioration there, and we've noticed a lot just fall apart underneath it. it the second big-ticket item will probably be the elevator not to be replaced but to have all the inner parts because of the elevator of course it would be hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace the replacement quote we read that elevator so the replacement parts can be more readily
[18:05] Commissioner: available I was working here when they put that thing in it's a very noisy
[18:11] County Administrator: operation so that's just a flat stage it does 1983 or something goes back
[18:24] Commissioner: quite a ways very old so you said disability in the cop center what about extension we do offer
[18:32] County Administrator: that maintenance is done over at the extension office i will say the sheriff's office at the jail have been very helpful in nelson's absence by taking care of some of the mowing and trimming with their folks there and some of the inmates that are eligible to do that they also helped us take out all of the air conditioners in this building so we'll continue to work well together, I'm sure, as needed.
[18:56] Commissioner: That's great. I was going to ask about if there's a trustees program for that.
[19:02] County Administrator: There is. There are limited trustees, but there is. I was busy over the last couple of weeks. I was at the Maine County Convention in Sunday River. KB COG had their general assembly meeting. there was an update from the main department of economic and community development on our region and economic strategies they had that in scout hegan this week i attended that and i went up to valley high school in bingham yesterday and taught a class of civics and current events to the students up there on the role of municipal government and yes it is as fascinating as it sounds especially to 16 year olds but they're good class they ask good questions so i was up in jackman last week the town manager there, Rick Petrie, he holds a local stakeholders meeting every two weeks, and I'm trying to support him because he's probably one of the better town manager candidates they've had up there in a long time. He will be at the next meeting to present to you an idea to revamp the wilderness search and rescue EMT program for that area up there. Right now, if someone gets stuck and nobody out to reach them, the nearest trained search and rescue is two hours away. So Rick would like to see if there are stakeholders in the unorganized territories and around the Jackman area that would like to be trained in that. So that's a program that he'll be talking to you about next week. And yes, if you're wondering, he's seeking some financial support for that from the county and for the UT as well. Let's see, Somerset Public Health located just catty corner down here in the old Carpenter building, they will be having their annual meeting tonight from four to six. It's an open house, you'd like to walk in see what they do, that's going on this evening. And don't forget after the next meeting on the 21st is our Spirit of America recognition night right here. We're holding a little bit earlier, 5 30 instead of six. So what's the date on that then? That's the 21st. So I think that's all I have unless there are any questions.
[21:29] Commissioner: Pardon me? We do in the period of emergency. Looks like no questions. Finance.
[21:40] Treasurer: As of the end of September,
[21:48] Commissioner: we're running 15 times around the table, but our labor is running through by a string of 50,000 already. About 150,000 of that is associated with the jail. And $235,000 is for the general fund. And the majority of that, including ESSO and the Comm Center, the Comm Center is down to $2,000. We've got the auditors coming in next week to start or finalize the FY2026 year. I haven't received any questions from them, so I think that we'll explain all the information. I don't know if you see much coming out of that next week other than just some vitals and just work. Did the court from PCB for the jail make that boiler able to actually use natural gas? It was $140,000 to convert that, make that a dual. How do we assess whether that's a good idea? Financial sense but is there a way of actually coming out with some hard numbers on well how much money we'd say by being able to switch back and forth or switch to the other I would have to probably look at that's history in the sense of gas prices and oil prices to show certain part of the year that the gas prices are lower than oil and the rain during that time I would have to look at our usage to do that because you can't really tell in the future is there any consulting firm or experts in this area that can actually show you how the numbers average year or something or based on past years because I mean if we could if we if it looked like we could save 140,000 and you know three months we'd say yeah no brainer let's do it but if this is something that's kind of iffy then I could do this study. I don't think there's a historical price. It'd be helpful. Approximately, what's our annual oil usage? [Treasurer: It's about... We're] talking gas. We're referring to natural gas or propane? Natural gas. We did have a summit a couple years ago, two or three years ago, about running a line out to the jail and what pricing they would do. We would have to just restart that discussion to see what it would cost. Now that the line is, you know, Walmart right now. I understand they were very interested in coming up this way. They were hoping to capture us. Yes, they wanted to use the jail as one of the hubs. And I was thinking that maybe they would have some incentive for us.
[25:52] County Administrator: I think from my conversation with their incentives would be maybe helping to defray some of the costs of conversion they're not going to lock into any crisis no I don't think it's hard actually
[26:06] Commissioner: but that's what I meant was helping us with the conversion yes yeah you may look maybe it'll do a little bit of a look back and just sort of break it down and be used because natural gas But I think we're all interested in pursuing this. On the jail, the numbers are favorable because we have empty positions for less time or the news. Not that we have empty positions. We have positions that are not, let's say, they may be out on the main field, I believe, or something like that, There are headcounts there, but we're not incurring the cost.
[27:05] County Administrator: You'll notice on one of the resolutions later that we're approving higher five corrections officers. Part of the reason for that is we've lost four in the last two or three weeks. Resignations, two are going to work for the state prison system. One wants to work for animal welfare, and one's joining the military full-time. So there's really not much we could do about those decisions. However the two that are going to the state are staying on as reserves for us so it's just the constant flow of people. In addition to that we have had, I think it's coming down, we have had five corrections officers out on payment I believe for one reason where
[27:50] Commissioner: we stand on our oil pricing still waiting down as far as four to five today, like [Sheriff: other] questions,
[28:21] Sheriff: Sheriff, we patrol service last week. The correctioners are attending their basic training at the academy. They're still in the long-distance academy. We have, we have started the FTO training program this week. That are doing that and we were successful the heavy lift by Dr O'Connor and the grant we were supported the three million for our mat contract is a cancer breath we will start discussions tomorrow we'll meet tomorrow talk about what that looks like
[29:13] Commissioner: Okay we secured a three million dollar grant for our druggist our medic
[29:20] County Administrator: snap program right so they're out that's that's big their details coming up in the workshop. Okay so the chair won't be able to stay for the whole meeting but we'll cover more of that in the workshop
[29:31] Sheriff: Shop. It's important to do this again. We have meetings tomorrow to talk about what that looks like, what the implementation of that looks like. Congratulations. Thank you. Yes? Yeah, I thank you for that. I mean, Dr. O'Connor gets a lot of accolades for that. It was a huge grant-ready exercise on her part. We were very fortunate but how we break this out is really going to be the discussion moving forward but we are going to be able to at least keep our VAT program going funded without going to the taxpayer and the 1115 waiver the state approved for that and once the federal government approved that you have or the state has 120 days to start working on about that implementation that looks for that so there's a lot going on going on clearly
[30:46] Commissioner: To throw a jack in there and such we 're looking to try to get this in our main care through the federal government that's that waiver so you're saying that was approved by the federal government so now if they go on the main care what's the three
[31:05] Sheriff: Million dollars, three million is something different. That's a Samsung grant that we apply to separate, right? So we, the company, yep, have, I guess my question is, if the
[31:20] Commissioner: federal government agrees to pay those costs because you were saying if you get that waiver,
[31:24] Sheriff: the 1115 waiver is not the magic dust that's going to solve all the problems. There's a, there's, there is, there's a lot of things that are attached to that. It will help in the big picture, and it's still a long ways away, okay? But it was approved, the three million for the Samson grant that we went after, that goes into effect, we can start using it in October. The meetings tomorrow are
[31:54] County Administrator: about what that looks like, so we can report that back out to you. There's, there's a gap with that 1150 waiver that Medicare and we don't anticipate it being eligible for county inmates until 2029. Okay, so this is the grants, this grant is the bridge for that. Yeah, that's three years, so I
[32:16] Sheriff: was looking, so I was looking for money to bridge tell it came through, but even doing that, there's a lot of things attached without a little bit the waiver may or may not that have to be worked for.
[32:34] Commissioner: I appreciate that. I just wasn't getting a little involved up there. [County Administrator: Thank you. Any] other questions for the sheriff, deeds? Oh, there I am. Hi everyone.
[32:54] Register of Deeds: Kind of as a baseline for the updates we'll be doing moving forward, I thought I'd talk about the staff just to remind everyone of who we have on board and kind of where we are, what we do, all down at the far east end of the building. If you haven't come down to see us, we welcome you to pop in anytime and give you a short tour. If I'm not there, one of the girls can show you around. Of course, we deal in land records, and we have a staff of four, myself, the registrar slash office manager. We have Arlene Demo, who is our Deputy Registrar. She's been with us for 32 years. We all do every part of the work down there, but some of us are more skilled in certain departments, so Arlene is our verifier. At the end of the day, she makes sure we did everything correctly. She's got the eye for that, the experience for that, and she just... Then we've got Rita Jakowski. She's our part-time clerk. She works 25 hours a week and her strength is indexing with the county for about four years. She's kind of in the back, so if you pop in you might not always see Vida, and we've got Victoria Dorian, she goes by Tori, and she's at that front desk and she's our full-time clerk, and excuse me, her strength is e-reporting. That's the four of us. As far as new hot topics and deeds, two things I'm kind of focusing on right now, the introduction of AI into the work we do, kind of following IQS's new model that they're rolling out. It's called AI Assist. So it's not replacing a person, it's assisting a person. And the way it looks, and I'm very interested in it, is when you're indexing, we have to look at the document key in the information. That's a lot of stress on hands and lower arms, a lot of stress on the eyes. The AI assist option is a button that you hit if you want it. You hit it, pops up, it will offer you what it thinks the indexing should be. Who the mentor is, the grantee, the town, the date of the document. If you like those items, you can simply click them, and they'll auto-fill into our software, our fields that we fill in. So I just think it's a great idea. So we'll see they're doing kind of a rollout in two municipalities in the state of New York. So I'm watching that, and they're hoping to offer it to the register spring of next year. Happens. And then the other thing I'm looking into is options for being able to accept credit cards as a payment type or accepted credit cards. And of course, this is 21st century. People are expecting to be able to use their cards as a payment type. So right now, I'm looking into, I have like five different options that other registrars are using and are as successful, seeing if it's an option for us, what the cost would be, and how it just would work with logistics. But besides that, no news is good news. We're rolling along. Everyone's happy. Customer's happy. Staff's happy. On
[36:23] Commissioner: the credit cards that you look at, we're allowed to charge a service fee for those, taking those cards.
[36:29] Register of Deeds: So the registry of deeds cannot accept a service fee. It would go directly to the customer. It would be a pass-through fee. It would be like a 2% to 3% charge if they choose to use a credit card. But it would not show up on our reporting, because all of our reporting is by statute. It's recording fees, transfer of the tax, and copy fees. Those are all set in stone by legislation. We can't mess with those. And there's no room for us to collect any sort of fees that we retain. It all goes directly to whoever we choose to offer for their credit card.
[37:10] Commissioner: The vendor wouldn't charge us a fee. It would just be front-loaded to the customer. Any other questions or concerns? UT.
[37:32] Treasurer: Right now, fall of the year is budget time, and this week I finally put numbers in all the different cells in the formula. They are not final numbers. A lot of times I have to hear from the towns. Jackman has five lines and UT budget Bingham has a couple Kingfield does so I've contacted them all and wait for their responses but I put in the numbers just like it formula working and see what it looks like we are fairly high this year and it has an increase as we are but it's early just preliminary and questions on the bridges and the roads, we'll be discussing bridges here in a little bit. But I have 600,000, the capital roads, 600,000 in bridges. Those will not stay, those numbers, depending on what we decide, what the commissioners decide, how to replace the bridge, if we replace the bridge. that will vary on how much money i put in roads versus bridges so that's all the air another reason it's high right now is last year we did use some tiff funds to bring it down to a 2.96 percent increase we have 1.3 million in tiff value right now between the two different tiffs so the numbers we have right now in the ut budget can be changed drastically depending on decisions from a commission so right now I think we're in decent shape actually you've got a contract signed with New Portland budget no we've always we've had that line for years okay yeah we actually were using Highland authentication for quite a while until we were doing nine percent of the funding of their fire department but it turns out their ten percent was not always applied they would go through our 90 percent first so we eventually found a different provider so that's why we're with new portland but yeah i mean there's very little change i think they wanted another thousand or something per year so the contract will be signed here. So we're all set. Everything else, we'll discuss it at the next meeting. We'll review the primary budget then. I actually have Skip Jones, the state auditor, is coming in tomorrow just to get together and kind of chat about how things are going in the UT's. We're also going to discuss speaking of highland plantation, the idea of organizing. So we'll kind of discuss how that's going on in the state's end too. other than that it's going pretty good if
[40:46] County Administrator: you're you're going to be ready to do your preliminary budget next meeting or the first meeting in november no let's do it next week okay if it
[40:53] Treasurer: Works for you, that works for you folks. I'll have it working. Okay, good. Is there anyone I've missed?
[41:01] Sheriff: Is it VA office? Yes, sir. Good afternoon from the district attorney's office.
[41:07] Office Manager, District Attorney's Office: Operations are making, we the last commissioners meeting you approved the resignation of one of the associates here. I'm happy to report that she has accepted a VWA or victimless advocacy position in Kennebec County, so still staying within district four, so her services are still available should they be needed, if there are conflicts and things of that nature as well too. She's a valuable and we'll ask that to the office. Also happy to report that since opening up the position that she had vacated, out-of-the-inflow has been fairly decent. In the week and a half or week that it's been really posted, we've got 12 applicants. Of those 12, I would consider, I'm going to conservatively say five of them viable candidates. We interviewed one who was just a great candidate, it, and we've decided to forward an offer on that, which will be filled quite shortly, pending background checks and what have you. She's slated to potentially start for the 22nd of this month, so wonderful. It's also the first time that we've had an opening in quite a while in the Dean's office, and longevity is the first thing. From the prosecutor's standpoint here, I don't want to speak for the state, of course, but I will say that on, not next week, but the week after that, they are going to the prosecutor's conference, so they won't be in-house, so they're doing their continuing education credits that they do for all of the prosecutors throughout the state. We've been working collaboratively as having one of the prosecutors out on paternity leave, collaboratively with Canabac County, and some of the district boards who help maintain that workload and make sure that operations stay as they are. At this point, I really don't have any unexpected concerns or issues with the office. Everything is maintaining well. We've got good contingencies in place for these expected vacancies and whatnot. I'm
[43:16] Commissioner: really happy with where things are going. Before you go on, your name, please?
[43:20] Office Manager, District Attorney's Office: Chris Dostey. I'm the office manager. Thank you. Don?
[43:24] Commissioner: Just following up on a story, Jake, what happens What happens to the money in the forfeiture of bail of the person that pulled it back to China? Yes,
[43:38] Office Manager, District Attorney's Office: how does that happen? Yeah, I can't really speak to what happens specifically
[43:44] Commissioner: with that there, but with the bail,
[43:46] Office Manager, District Attorney's Office: I know that it has been forfeited, then it'll go through the court system to determine a number of obligations that may exist or may not exist. At the end of the day, if there are no other obligations, it'll go into the extradition fund for the state or into the general funds, please.
[44:06] Commissioner: I know every year this time of year we all do a collective gag on the cost of a prosecutor's annual get-together at the San Jose. No, it's not that it's down in Bar Harbor. Is that going on again? Is that the same thing? Did we ever, I know we talked about somehow reducing our costs.
[44:27] County Administrator: Title 30 requires that you, the commissioners, provide training for the district attorneys that are employed by the state, house them, provide them staff, and provide them training. This is the
[44:40] Commissioner: training. Does it say housing? I don't think it says housing. Well, this is part
[44:45] County Administrator: of the training in the lodging. That's the way we, I talked to the district
[44:49] Commissioner: attorney about this. Can we do online training? No, this is the, it's the way the
[44:55] County Administrator: state prosecutors have set this up. This is how they do their ongoing education, and it does with the, with the cost of a week or maybe a week or at least several days at a resort. It's about four thousand dollars at the county per person. No, the total. But is that per county?
[45:18] Commissioner: Oh yeah, there we have it. No, but is there, does everybody, every county pay the same amount of
[45:23] County Administrator: money? No, because Canada has twice as many district attorneys says we have four, and I think our victims witness advocate guns, that's right. Yeah, she's like, she's a county employee, so we paid for our county employee before a DA's.
[45:44] Commissioner: What it would take is the county's getting together and saying we don't want to pay for this anymore. You will no longer be able to have week-long vacation and a resort to that, and I plead guilty because I used to do it as a prosecutor. Is very nice time, but it seems like it's pretty pricey. It's a, it's a tradition. Yeah, well, traditions are...
[46:10] Office Manager, District Attorney's Office: I can't speak to how the vote was. It is up for renewal.
[46:18] Commissioner: Yeah, who votes?
[46:20] County Administrator: The people going? Yes,.
[46:22] Commissioner: What resort do you want to go to, though?
[46:25] Office Manager, District Attorney's Office: I mean, they're mindful of the financial obligations that are on there, too. And I know that our DA, Megan Maloney, has repeatedly said that she would not mind to do something not as
[46:37] Commissioner: expensive. I hate to say it, I do continuing ed for my insurance license and my financial planning license, and Kaplan University online is a very good job and is very economical. I'm not sure why I understand they're going for a week long hiatus to do this. When the state may have made we all do this. It's not a week, but I mean, I used to go to these things 40 years ago and then later more recently, and it's been a it's a time-honored tradition for main prosecutors to get together usually at a nice place and have a lot of fun and do a little some course training as well and maybe it is time at some point to for the counties to circulate that question do we want to keep paying for this or should we
[47:33] County Administrator: well the state's paying for them and we're paying for our county employee that how does the county pay five four thousand dollars it's cost a lot per night to stay at this place no the state is paying their wages i was looking at their wage
[47:55] Commissioner: they feed you pretty good thing though is only some of it is coming out of property taxes the other part is coming out of income taxes we put it in the UT budget any other questions or for the VA thank you thank you I have not missed anybody else thank you very much we will move on to the workshop update on bridge repair and maintenance in Lexington and it's part of townships
[48:42] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: so recently we received a brick and board from DOT just standard regular inspections from them and I was asked to go around and take a look at those and kind of weigh in give my two cents on things and you know overall we have old bridges and all the infrastructure and so does everybody else so i took a look in no particular order we can just go down through and kind of tell you what i think and you go from there. So I just kind of devised a rating system and it's strictly Bob's rating system based on experience and looking at old bridges and stuff like this in the past. So don't look at it as being like structural, the soundness of the structures necessarily, but just kind of some common sense visual inspection stuff. So we'll start at Bob Brook bridge, which is up on Long Falls Dam Road and the Bed River Township. I'd say that bridge, it was one of the older bridges that we have, constructed in 1949. I should say one of the older bridges, honestly, was the five that I saw. So it's a single span steel bridge, constructed in 1949. The DOT listed that it's been monitored. I can't speak to a whole lot of what's been done for monitoring in the past, but I believe from the reports that there's some wing walls that are moving, and they've just been keeping track of the movement of those wing walls over a number of, several years now. I think we have a bridge that gets a lot of heavy traffic. The wing walls have settled a little bit over time, and if you look, one of the other things I do is weapon stuff. If you look where it's built, three of the wing walls are built right to wetlands. And the one that isn't settling is built on an upland. So to me it seems like, back to its age, it gets a lot of traffic with truck traffic. In its age, in the amount the wing walls moved, I think it's doing what normal bridge stuff in Maine with three stall cycles does. And the wing walls aren't, I don't know if you've seen them before, but they've moved out an inch or two in some cases. I don't think it's concerning for what it is at this point. That one I didn't get a real good chance to get underneath and look at it. That had more of a stream flowing at the time. Most of the bridges that I looked at had very little water flowing in them, and I was able to actually get underneath and look at them pretty well. So that was helpful. So, ball broke. The biggest thing with that one is it's got some guardrails that are just hanging off the bridge. And this is the case with most of the bridges in terms of guardrail. That's the big issue that was identified. And I agree completely with the DOT's recommendation. And basically, that recommendation is to replace all the guardrail. Certainly on this bridge, there's approach guardrails, there's bridge guardrails. And you'll see in some of the pictures that it's hanging off the bridge deck. It's been hit, I assume, by plows and things of that nature. So it's just time to have those replaced. Other than that, on log work bridge, normal wear and tear. It's been paved along Hall's Dam Road recently, so it's all new surface across the deck. And reasonably good shape. I called that a two out of five, strictly based on age, give or take on the cost and progress for that bridge. I had a discussion trying to get a sense of that earlier. I would say $3,000, $5,000.
[52:42] Commissioner: That might be really low.
[52:43] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: Again, I had a discussion with Superior,
[52:47] Commissioner: and I have to give them some more information to get better pricing.
[52:51] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: Because when I say that, I want to qualify that, because they were very clear. They're very different pricing on approach guard rail, terminal end, regular road guard rail, bridge guard rail. Rail. So I know that we're going to have several thousand dollars wrapped into guard rail. And we're talking on Block Rose Bridge, you're probably talking in total, probably on the border, like 100 feet of guard rail for both sides, 50 feet each side, something like that,
[53:19] Commissioner: Or several posts, bridge posts. Yes. I'm just trying to figure out where this is. I was just there two days ago on the Long Falls Dam Road, so it's on which end of, on the upper end, do you know where the, I know where Lexington, the flat, the straightaway is where the red barn
[53:38] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: Road is, all the roads, the East Flagstaff Road. Yeah, okay, so just before the East Flagstaff
[53:46] Commissioner: Road, just beyond. Am I talking, is that the road into up into the Big Wall? Oh, so it's up on the
[53:54] Treasurer: The hill there, it's up on the highway. Once you get up the big hill, it's on the
[54:06] Commissioner: Other side of Carabasas Valley, but it's south of the Bigelow Road East Lexington? Just north. Just north. Okay. A hundred yards. Got it. There's a map behind you. Oh, okay, yeah. I know where it is now. Thank you. I thought it was down in the Lexington Flat area. No, I was waiting for that. Okay, good. Thank you. So you're saying Worst case scenario, 10,000 foot guardrails, or is that a foot to $3,000?
[54:37] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: No,, no. The price of your guardrail is just straight up regular old guardrails around $80 my own
[54:45] Commissioner: Business, that's no money at all. No, it's
[54:49] Treasurer: Just, it's just organizing it and getting it done. Once you're on the bridge itself, you're no longer putting them into the ground. Now they have to be attached to the bridge itself, so as he said, depending on what part of the guardrail length you're working on, the prices change. This is, this is, I know you're
[55:10] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: This is fall ticket stuff. This is not boilers. This does not even approach anything. I mean, this is per bridge. I don't want to talk out of turn, but I can't believe we'd be spending more than $5,000 to $8,000 a bridge, some a little bit more, some a little bit less. No, these aren't, in my opinion, these aren't big ticket items by any stretch
[55:37] County Administrator: But there is one
[55:38] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: Well, I'm going to kind of separate that out.
[55:43] Treasurer: Say that at the end. That's a big thing.
[55:45] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: That's number five. The second bridge listed is Cool Road Bridge. That's off the Cool Road in Concord. That's a relatively new bridge, constructed in 2004. There was a question from the DOT about the guardrail, saying essentially the guardrail's use is so low. My understanding is that's intentional. The county is formal. agreed to keep that or stick with that and if that's the case if the Somerset County is fine with that then I don't really have any recommendations just normal inspections again the water was quite low so I was able to get underneath and it's all concrete so it's all that wasn't really good for you third one Clark I think I call that crossing that's a couple of culvers that have recently slip line yes okay so the DOT inspection report is basically null and void that means nothing at this point because the inspection days from May 2025 is, would the slip lining would have been done after? Yeah. Okay, the
[56:55] Treasurer: major problem with that is there are any barriers and it's a long way down to of the road. So we do have to put something there.
[57:05] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: And that was kind of the comment that I would have is it needs, whether we do some curving in guardrail, it needs something because it's just a dirt road that drops off on both sides to larger haulers. It's probably a, I don't know, 10 foot drop off, something of that nature. But it requires, it's necessary. So I would definitely recommend that. Again, that's going to be, that might cost a little bit more than, say, another respective guardrail, depending if they have to do curving. They'll have to do something to retain those. But again, we're talking thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands. But otherwise, that's brand new. Two slip line culverts, so everything looked good there. Low, super duper low flow. The water's just literally trickling right through one of them. Michael Stream, that's the one. Okay, so Michael Stream Bridge, that's on the back road in Lexington, that's the northern most bridge on the back road in Lexington, that was constructed in 1982, another concrete, that's pretty much all concrete deck and abundance, again guardrail posts, they just get nailed with plows so you can crumple up. Yeah, so pretty common. Okay, the DOT mentioned some concrete cracking, to me it's all surficial concrete cracks. I don't know how familiar you are with it. It's all surface cracks. Some of the cracks are exactly where you'd expect them to be because it's concrete. I take no exception with that. Keep an eye on it over time. Again, guardrail on that one. That's respectively relatively recent. I mean, it's 40 years old, but it's a concrete bridge and it hasn't had a lot of salt exposure. So keep an eye on it, and it seems very well suited for its application. And where it's at right now. So finally, the Upper Sandy Stream Bridge. That's the one that's in discussion about being replaced or not.
[59:25] Commissioner: That could use guardrail.
[59:27] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: That's built in 1954. Steel girder. A lot of metal on that bridge. It's aged with time, a lot of paint missing, some of the beam ends on the abovements are rusting. It's typical, but it's aged and I think it's a case where you have pretty extensive maintenance costs to maintain it. It's already been, I believe it's posted at 25 tons and that's reduced from what it was originally.
[1:00:01] Treasurer: Yeah, it was it. Yeah, that's the it was the first time that they put a weight limit on it. They look at 25 times
[1:00:08] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: So typically without extensive maintenance and things those get reduced further over time. You know, I think having some experience With Franklin County recently and some bridge replacements over there some of the maintenance that's needed with painting just for instance It becomes very cost prohibitive when you're looking at maintenance painting that you have to do every 30 years versus replacing structure, which are very expensive, but you get some of that up front and better coatings and things of that nature, which extend the lifespans nowadays versus some of these traditional bridges. So, you know, it's not here again, this is one of my taxpayer hats, too. It's not, it's just an older aging bridge. I don't think we want to run tractor trailers over it all day long but again for the traffic it seems it's okay but it's not it's not going to last forever and again he you know David mentioned that it does you know see a fair bit of truck traffic from time to time so of course it has to be maintained so I think that if there's this discussion of replacing it And I guess I would, I don't think it's a bad idea. It's a lot of money. But it's not going to last forever. And, you know, it's not, like I said, the postings, it's going to require further and further maintenance all the time. And I believe that the, you know, the DOT report is probably a little bit more critical of it than I am. And that's probably appropriate. So, I don't know if they, I don't know if they, the DOT report, they have some fairly specific language about what the bridge is.
[1:02:10] County Administrator: Bob, while you're looking at that, did you have an opportunity to look at the report from Calderwood Engineering on that particular bridge?
[1:02:18] Sheriff: No. Okay. No. So, I, well,
[1:02:23] County Administrator: I'll just, that's a copy. You're welcome to have that. And that's where they provide the original estimate of if we were to replace it, would run $750,000, $780,000. In your experience in the engineering world, and experience in Franklin, is that a safe number, or do you think it will come in higher than that when it actually goes out to business?
[1:02:46] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: I think that will come in. I
[1:02:52] Treasurer: think when we get it done, it's going to affect the expense.
[1:02:55] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: The longer we put it off, the more expensive it's going to be. I think we just did one similar to this, Overton Stream in Franklin County in Madrid. And that was 1.1 and 1.2, which I would say is similar to this bridge. I think $765,000 is a conservative engineer's estimate. And I think that you're going to see – I would be really, surprised if that came in under a million dollars.
[1:03:34] Commissioner: I have two questions. One, if this bridge is taken out tomorrow, what does that do to traffic flow in that area?
[1:03:41] Treasurer: We don't have it. There will be some minor delays for a few people, but we're talking minutes.
[1:03:47] Commissioner: Just to drive around?
[1:03:48] Treasurer: Yeah, you're just going to drive out.
[1:03:59] Commissioner: I said two questions I really have three we'll call this question one point one point a I want to go look at this thing I go up there all the time how do I get
[1:04:18] Treasurer: there where am I by the happy horseshoe this is this is before having a horseshoe there's a gravel road that goes to the right off the back road okay there's like the historical society yes okay I know that okay down there yeah just follow that and it's a big bridge biggest bridges we is a county bridge and beautiful patient to be honest okay so question two oh so let's say we
[1:04:52] Commissioner: approve a million dollar bridge replacement on this that's in the UT yes it goes in our budget the state has to approve it yes and it goes into the UT tax assessment yes well tax whatever we are leading dollars to the state they It comes back to the UT taxpayers. I'm always confused by how this works, but
[1:05:19] Treasurer: there's no tax associated with it because it becomes kind of property.
[1:05:23] Commissioner: We're tax-free, so we're not the landowners. It goes to all. So if I, if our budget was $20 million and we keep it, now we're going to $21 million. They're being taxed on $21 million.
[1:05:36] Treasurer: Yes, that's our property tax.
[1:05:38] Commissioner: And what does that do to the tax rate? I mean, how does that, the burden of this bridge is going to fall, let me just get this straight. Very minor. So the burden of replacing the bridge falls primarily on the UT taxpayers. Yes. And you characterized it as minor because,
[1:06:01] Treasurer: a million dollars to our budget, which is three million, you're not talking about a huge increase.
[1:06:08] Commissioner: All right, that doesn't, 25, yeah, oh, I'm sorry, that's huge. Yeah, my next question. So my next question is on the, I'm trying to understand this question like John's question three is the UT budget, Somerset County, we have a $3 million UT budget, and we've got a $4 million because we're replacing this bridge, just hypothetically. That money is just divided by Somerset County UT, not by all UTs in the state. So they're not picking up, we're not picking up a benefit of doing the million-dollar project and Penobscot UT. [Treasurer: No, that's off.] So it's just our people who are affected.
[1:06:55] Treasurer: Yes, our property tax value. And as I mentioned, and we'll discuss at the next meeting, right now our taxes are budget for FY 28 is set for about three million dollars, plus or minus a bit. That's including 600,000 that I've already put down with riches. So that three million that I was quoting, I only need 50,000 for garter as, give or take, that we've got that covered. We've got two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in bridges, creating another 400.
[1:07:31] Commissioner: It wouldn't be going to four million, it'd be going
[1:07:33] Treasurer: to 3.4 million. No, it wouldn't go up beyond what it is now unless we want to switch a little bit more. It could go up more if we want to fund it all straight through the budget because we have
[1:07:44] Commissioner: alternatives, you mean the like the TIFF? Yes. So I think what we're saying is right now we have
[1:07:53] County Administrator: money in the bank to do the guardrails probably next spring or summer before the end of the fiscal week. Yeah, guard rails should be all set. Right, and then what you're preparing right now, you're probably going to put a little less in road capital and put more in rich capital to raise 600,000 in the coming budget with the plans maybe to raise the rest of the next budget to do this.
[1:08:18] Treasurer: bridge two years that's a discussion that we can have at the next meeting if we want to get it done next year right now i'm at 600 for roads 600 000 for bridges and that can certainly be varied because we do have 200 plus thousand in roads right now so that will be spent until next year so we do have a phase to start funding with so if we can certainly change how much we want to put under bridges we can raise that a couple hundred thousand if we want put it up to 800,000 we could actually lower our capital roads to 500,000 or even 400,000 if we wanted to
[1:09:03] Commissioner: would we have to take the bridge out if we decided not to do anything to it i mean is that
[1:09:08] Treasurer: the responsible I believe I don't know that for a fact my next question was
[1:09:14] Commissioner: going to be how long can we exist if we choose not to fix this bridge how long can we reasonably expect to exist where our home owners are affected maybe our commercial people are because you can't tell me how many truck over it but our homeowners are and we can you know is this utilized as a recreational trail at all do snow wheels go over it do ATVs go over it ATVs go over it okay so how long could they maintain i mean if we get 20 more years out of this bridge for homeowners and atvs then we don't need to do this tomorrow if the log trucks are the only things that are affected or brown trucks or trash trucks that's whatever yeah if our residents are affected looking at where this bridge is you know it doesn't look like there's a ton of harvest traffic. And if any heavy traffic, it looks like they can easily divert without a long distance. I mean, they just come over the Long Falls Dam Road. So it looks like it's not heavily used by log and harvesting. Just looking at the road itself, there's other alternatives.
[1:10:19] Treasurer: yeah there's no charities and the roads that they use to harvest the mountains between conference lexington which is to the east of this road one road they come out both south and the other one they probably go north so the people that are that weigh the most that are crossing this bridge are our contractors when they're plowing snow or falling gravel
[1:10:47] Commissioner: level yeah probably the most important thing that you've got to keep in mind is a fire truck a tanker truck yeah i know that's in our area that's when it comes to bridges when it gets to that it gets to that level where the weight has to be reduced enough where a tanker truck can't get over there then it becomes dangerous yeah but it does look like i don't know i mean is it going to divert five minutes of course five minutes is important yes it would if it
[1:11:17] Treasurer: was an ambulance or well because ambulance be a process fire engines the tankers
[1:11:24] Commissioner: it could affect them can they still use it 25 000 pounds what's the height of the waves i
[1:11:29] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: got they gotta be pretty handy that loaded i don't know they would probably want to show
[1:11:38] Commissioner: well i don't know if they're not many houses there the statistical likelihood of fire that it's not an impossibility but i mean it seems to be a little if you if you did close
[1:11:53] County Administrator: that bridge having traffic obviously communication would have to be done at the tom center yeah Go this way
[1:12:00] Treasurer: Yeah, we need to talk to the DLT I think and tell them that we're thinking about not Replacing it anytime soon, but asking what's the lifespan for general use? We can post it to Limit the weight of the vehicles going across that does not stop people from driving across it outweigh it but legally, I think, then it would be on XAMPP if anything happened. But we should definitely talk with folks at DOT and get their input on things. Yeah, good idea.
[1:12:41] County Administrator: I would agree with that. I agree. So, Bob, I have one more question. And again, I don't want to put you on the spot, but the county paid $32,000 for that engineering report prior to your arrival as an employee of the county. is that if you have to take a look at it is that something you could have done for the county either at a reduced cost or as part of your construction I'm gonna say no I'm not I'm not
[1:13:07] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: a structural okay that's not my I've known enough to be dangerous but this would make me like really dangerous okay so you know I'm very comfortable walking and talking with them and everything like that and doing all these reviews visual stuff but I know enough that they have that cracks a little I'm not comfortable with that in a call something like this thank you that's 8 000 a page
[1:13:31] Treasurer: that's not including all of the design work that we have
[1:13:35] Commissioner: they did they did all this that's a grand page well it's on both sides
[1:13:45] Treasurer: That's there's four of them. Well, if you really want to get to the point, that was printed by us. What we got from that money does seem a little bit like, yeah, but we'll pay them until now. There was a mix-up between their address. They move five years ago. We weren't kept up with it, so we sent a payment. They called me a couple weeks later going, yeah, you're gonna pay us a lot. And I said, yeah, we did two weeks ago. And that's when we found out they moved. So all right, now they're in this budget today or This one maybe we'll get a couple more sheets from your fourth.
[1:14:40] Road Commissioner / Public Works Director: Can I just answer anything else or would you like any other information?
[1:14:44] Commissioner: I think I would like a quote to get the gardeners for the next spring so we can get that through.
[1:14:51] Treasurer: The tricky thing here, and I talked with Bob about this earlier, is when we write out RFPs, we want to be as specific as possible. Like when IT does it, they have exactly what equipment they're looking for, what service they're looking for. In our case, Bob says he can probably do it, but it's very hard if you don't live with guardrails, work with guardrails all the time, to know all the different types, the different but things we've got to do, so it's a little tricky to put up to an RFP.
[1:15:25] Commissioner: Well, we need to get a page from these people. We'll figure it out. All right. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Bob. New agenda items, commissioners only.
[1:15:55] County Administrator: Do we have a grant? Yeah, we have another workshop. Oh, that's right.
[1:16:01] Commissioner: Update on grant funding for XRB treatment at Somerset County Jail.
[1:16:06] County Administrator: So I want to direct you to this handout in your packets. It should be in there. This is just a little breakdown on what we're talking about in regards to what the sheriff mentioned earlier. So they were awarded a federal grant for $3.1 million, and that money is to be dispersed over five years. XRB is Extended Release Buprenorphine. Which is the technical term for what we often refer to as sublocate. We shouldn't really refer to it as sublocate anymore because we've switched brands and we're using brick Saudi now because it has some benefits and a little bit of cost savings. We don't, you know, you didn't get this. I don't see it. I thought I had Rochelle put it in your back. It's maybe I intended to pass it on. So here's, here's the nutshell. The money is dispersed partly to pay for some labor costs associated with a project. Manager a medical oversight director and community care part of that community care process we're already paying for with some of our opioid funds and state money for Betsy rip her name is Betsy Bacon that's her maiden name but anyways Betsy she's been working for us for two years in the agreement with Somerset Public Health so she's an employee of Somerset Public Health she works in the jail four days a week and she interacts with inmates as they get ready to transition and so she's excellent. At her job so this grant would help come recover part of her costs which would free up some of our opioid settlement funds the other thing that we want to factor in, and this is what the sheriff was alluding to yesterday, this is a federal grant that would probably benefit from having someone manage the grant that doesn't work for the county right now, rather than putting that all on Patrick or putting it all on Evan or on Kristen. A federal grant's a pretty heavy lift. I've done a few in Madison, and it does require a lot of patience and following moving targets as far as reporting goes and so forth so it's gonna get more exciting did so of the money that we're going to receive we've split it out so that about a hundred and sixty thousand goes towards covering some of the labor costs and about five hundred thousand goes towards the cost of the medication I'm talking with Patrick right now every Waldo County inmate that takes this treatment, Waldo pays for the. Medication. So what used to cost the county about $900,000 just in medication now costs the county about $500,000 in medication. So we're confident that this grant will pay the county's portion of the treatment for opioid disorder. Order. And again, that number tapers down over the five years, but the hope is that it transitions us to the Medicare coverage coming up in 2028, 2029. As I've been saying for a while, the Medicare, the waiver, it's not a silver bullet. There's still a lot of things to figure. Out. It'll be implemented in the state prison system first because the waiver only impacts people at the last 60 days of their sentence so that's the that basically is a transition back to Medicaid rather than someone automatically being on Medicaid while they're incarcerated so at the state prison level they know when those inmates are getting out so they could easily start billing Medicaid in the last 60 days we don't know if an inmate's going to be there for two weeks or two years and so part of. This process that the sheriff alluded to was the implementation, and that's why it's going to take so long to trickle down to the jails. So Dr. O'Connor has been very good at writing grants, and for simplicity's sake, if this works, are you saying
[1:20:38] Commissioner: that if we have an inmate that needs this service and they have 60 days left on their sentence, that we can recover that cost? Medicaid will pay that cost?
[1:20:51] County Administrator: We can ask for a reimbursement for Medicaid.
[1:20:57] Commissioner: So Joe Schmo gets a 120 day jail sentence and he doesn't have any insurance at all when he walks into the jail.
[1:21:06] County Administrator: Sure he does. He has the insurance that's paid for by you with the property tax payer because we have a medical coverage.
[1:21:12] Commissioner: No, but before he goes to jail, he has no insurance. Oh, he has no insurance. So once he goes into the jail, he has insurance paid for by the taxpayers. Right. And in the last 60 days, if all this comes to pass, that will be billed to MaineCare or Medicaid. Right.
[1:21:28] County Administrator: And the person like Betsy, I mentioned, if that person is not enrolled in MaineCare, but they're eligible for MaineCare, she would make sure that person is enrolled in MaineCare prior to those 60 days so that the county could get reimbursed for those 60 days.
[1:21:42] Commissioner: No, wait a second, that changes. So you're saying, I'm trying again, this is the concluded part of it. It is. You're saying that this waiver would then put them on MaineCare for the whole 160 days with only the last 60 being recovered federally.
[1:21:56] County Administrator: No, the waiver would only kick in for the last 60 days, but as part of the process, part of the program for this grant, not MaineCare, although MaineCare probably would require this as well, there would be efforts to make sure people that qualify for MaineCare that aren't enrolled get enrolled while they're incarcerated.
[1:22:18] Commissioner: So if they lost MaineCare, they might have to go into incarceration.
[1:22:22] County Administrator: it's it's suspended their main care is suspended so if they have main care they get incarcerated that main care is suspended this waiver allows facilities to start billing back to main care
[1:22:34] Commissioner: before they're released it's not crucial but i'd be interested to know how many inmates actually have main care it's a pretty high number i don't know that number as opposed to having nothing
[1:22:48] County Administrator: Right, and it's a significantly high number.
[1:22:53] Commissioner: No further research required.
[1:22:56] County Administrator: The other thing to keep in mind with this is, and again, I wish I had this in front of you. I'll get it to you. Yeah, if you want one, just give me five copies. Opioid settlement funds, right now we have $830,000 in the bank. The state has paid for our MAT funding with small increments over the last couple of years. We have $600,000 in the bank. So as we move forward with this money from this grant, we will really not be drawing down much of our opioid money or much of the state MAT funding. Hanging out there is a CVS grant that we've requested from Senator Connell's office to pay just for this treatment for 1.2 million dollars, and that's on the appropriations table moving with all the other cbs, so we know it's gone at least that far. It's possible that may come to the county as well sometime in the next year or two. However, if the federal government is efficient and talks to each other, they may realize that they've already got this federal grant award. Why would they get this federal grant award on top of it? So one of the things I just wanted to run by you as commissioners is, with this influx of money from this grant, should we consider options for opioid recovery or opioid settlement funds? Because opiate, opioid settlement funds will continue to come to the county between 100 and $150,000 a year until 2039. So there's a steady flow of that coming in. If you're asking me my recommendation, I'd say we keep the money that we have in the bank just in case something falls apart in this particular program for the jail, and then maybe allocate the money that comes in every year into a matching grant program or some small distribution of grants, much like scouting and fire brought you a recommendation a couple of meetings ago to pay for some equipment. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that moving forward. The grant is very specific opioid settlement funds is a little wider. And the money from the state is...
[1:25:37] Commissioner: I guess that leads to my question would be that wider margin of things that can be spent on. Are we... Are there some needs that we're not using that money for now that could get used in the future?
[1:25:58] County Administrator: So we're heading down one path, and that's why Tammy and Sarah from comm center and EMA are going to report next meeting. We're moving down the path of getting those stakeholders together in emergency services, and they're going to help us identify the needs in the county for emergency services. And if funding is necessary, perhaps that's where some of this opioid money is steered. Your other requests generally come from your behavioral health type folks, kind of like behavioral health, some public health. They all have programs that deal with this specifically. We're using Betsy's services because that's what she's trained in, and that's what we've been funding that out about now. We have some additional funds to use for that. Yeah, I was
[1:26:46] Commissioner: just thinking, you know what we're dealing with, article problems, right? Are these two grants the one that we got and the one that's sitting on the appropriations desk for the same thing in other words if we get them both we only use it to buy the medicine right that 's that's what
[1:27:11] County Administrator: both of them were written for. This one about 70 was written just for the medication. My understanding of the Collins CDC or CDS grant that was written a hundred percent for the medication, so that would be 1.2 million dollars, which would again probably be used over a three-year period, but still
[1:27:30] Commissioner: If I recall correctly, I think with maybe just some minor exceptions, we have always said no to anybody applying for opioid funds because we said we have to keep this jail program going. What you're suggesting is that we're now in a position where we can actually, [Sheriff: good idea] to me, you know, be interested to see what people propose. I know we had one a while ago, which was kind of pricey and involved
[1:28:03] County Administrator: Maybe a little too much. That's why I'd probably want to stop and look them over carefully and see what's there. I'm just kind of like seeing what the applications look like, and it may be best if the commissioners wanted to kind of steer this into a Maybe we can buy chairs for this, we can say that's safe, but maybe we could steer this to a more restricted matching fund type rather than just people saying give us three hundred thousand dollars. Yes, I agree. Okay, more ponder so
[1:28:49] Commissioner: Now, new agenda items, commissioners. Yes sir, I would like to propose that we give a directive to our administrator that we find a solution to the non-911 calls coming into our call center before January 1st of 2027. That we had a report last time that stated that there were roughly 500 non-911 calls into that center in a month to be answering and we shouldn't be doing like to I don't know how you want to do it, if it needs to be a proposal or if we can just give direction to our administrator to say we need to find a solution to stop the non-911 calls from coming and that would be putting out to new styles. I don't know how you wish to do it. We shouldn't have people in Pittsfield going to the police station picking up a phone and calling. I hear what you're saying John. I don't, I don't think it's black and white answer because one of the things we can do as a county and we've done in the past is somehow lighten the burdens on the towns. We've tried to do it in other areas and if we go to all of our towns and say you have to hire another person to man a phone because our nine, we don't want to take your calls anymore, I'd rather hire maybe one person here than have the towns hire 15 people to take their calls. I know the numbers are wrong there but the idea is that I'd like to know the extent of the burden of taking these calls, what's the manageable level, how much are they interfering with the 9-1-1 process and what's the best thing to do going forward. That's what I'm trying to do. A discussion is worth having. That's part of what Don was saying. You have a directive that we're going to have a solution made today. We have a concrete directive for our administrator to come back with us so that we may have an answer prior to that when it gets addressed. Well let's have a motion on that so that we can make it a, you got that Tim?
[1:31:33] County Administrator: Do you want to add it to the end of the agenda?
New Business
[1:31:35] Commissioner: We're going to add it to the end of the agenda. It's going to be 26-172. Yeah. So if we're all in favor, it might be 1-4-3 again. Hearing no objection. So is there any discussion? Turn to the discussion. All in favor? So we're adding it to the agenda. Haven't done that in a while. Okay. We've got a new agenda item at the end of our illustrious program. Any other new agenda items? I'm seeing none. New business, resolution 26.167, to approve the payment of community benefit awards to the following applicants for completion of their matching grant projects. Projects hospice volunteers or Somerset County volunteer training program fifteen thousand dollars. The only
[1:32:43] County Administrator: thing I'll add to this is with this final payout four of our six grant rounds are closed and completed. So at the end of each one I do a little summary sheet with pictures that I posted up on the websites to show what projects were funded and where. So great.
[1:33:08] Commissioner: Great. Any further discussion? All favor resolution 26168 to approve commissioner's mileage reimbursement for the first quarter of the fiscal year. So hello chamber thank you. Resolution 26169 to approve the hiring of Francis Hayden Ashton Paul Liam Savary Jayden Bornstein and Justice Lupton as corrections officers at the summer county jail. Hello. Discussion? All favor. Organized territories revolution 26 170 to authorize the contract with the town of New Portland for fire protection in the unorganized territory. So move second discussion all in favor no warrants. Resolution 26 171 to approve the treasurer's award for general funds or county jail unorganized territories and fifth community benefit for a total of one million two hundred fifty nine thousand and three hundred dollars and thirty three cents. Second. Okay second. Now discussion I haven't looked at these a lot but I don't recollect the UT being
[1:34:37] Treasurer: we are paying for the paving of the damn road that took place several months ago. So we're just finally getting them paid. Good. Appreciate it. That was $507,000. You're welcome.
[1:34:55] County Administrator: Hey, what's going on? Pop's up. I was going to say, that's a big number. I saw it. I saw it. I took a double take, too. Yeah. Yeah, that's a big number. All right.
[1:35:05] Commissioner: Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor? There we go. And then we have a new item 26-172 to direct the administrator to find a solution on 911 calls. Non-911 calls. Non-191 calls before January 1st, 2027.
[1:35:32] Treasurer: Just need an unlisted number.
[1:35:34] Commissioner: Yeah, right. A discussion or fucking out of that.
[1:35:41] County Administrator: But I will start work on this right away. But I would suggest strongly that as we go down this road, I mean, January 1st will be here before you know it. But as you go down this road, we either ought to have representatives from Pittsfield, Scouting, and Fairfield, and the Sheriff's Office together with us, or have one commissioner that would be willing to meet with those representatives to kind of flesh out what we're talking about, to Commissioner Elsop's point. It's like the immediate a pushback will be, well, now we're going to hire somebody. Well, maybe you don't have to hire somebody. Maybe we just establish parameters on when to call, what to call for that sort of thing, right? But I definitely would want to engage with the communities before we send them
[1:36:21] Commissioner: an ultimatum. Oh yeah, that's that's part of the director is to have you develop this and Then you can draft Don. The note for the discussion, all in favor? Great. Miscellaneous discussion items, commissioners only? One for me. Okay. Very good. We've got a very good Bain County Commissioners of the Horseshoe Convention. Good lessons and conversation and camaraderie amongst the other counties. It was very worthwhile to attend.
[1:37:19] County Administrator: Are you the man in charge
[1:37:21] Commissioner: yet, or when does that occur? Unless there's a coup. It could be a coup. Well, not January 1st, but that's a January and somebody sponsored wine so I was helpful much better well you know you need a red wine to go through butter jelly but a white wine to go through No further miscellaneous discussions and we may recess to execute documents. John? Yes, thank you. I'll send my son a text here. I will be there in 20 minutes.
[1:38:23] Treasurer: Do they have your contract up there so make sure you get it yeah
[1:38:26] Sheriff: I think I signed on the wrong line
[1:39:00] County Administrator: Yeah, but with our Waldo contract, and of the 40 Waldo debates that we've had, sometimes 15 to 20 times, even though we're paying out for their products, their Waldo's pretty good.
[1:39:16] Commissioner: Who hasn't? Who's up? Joe. Joe. Dave. Can you pass this for me? Thank you. Dave, I've been having fun in the UT. Yeah, we went a little Bigelow. That was fun. Checked out the paint job on the road. That looked good.