Washington County Board Meeting

Good morning. I'm going to call the September 15, 2026, Washington County Board of Commissioners meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Here. Commissioner Karwoski? Commissioner Cox? Here. Commissioner Bigham? Here. Commissioner Clasen? Roll call taken. Commissioner Clasen is absent. Please join us with the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. All right. Thank you. We are now at the point of comments from the public. I do have one speaker card from Diane Smith from Forest Lake. If you would please approach the speaker's rostrum, state your name and community. And then just as a brief reminder as you're walking up, we'd like to ask about three to five minutes for comments, and please don't repeat the previous speaker if there's multiple speakers. And reminder, we do not respond to comments in public forum, comments from the public, I mean, and that staff or maybe an individual commissioner would follow up with any speakers.

So with that, Ms. Smith, welcome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, commissioners, for the opportunity. We love it that we can be here and speak. I'm Diane Smith. I am from Forest Lake. So it has come to my attention, actually through my children, who are now 20 years old, that there are FLOC cameras in Stillwater, in Forest Lake. FLOC cameras, for those of you who are not familiar, are a tool to read license plates. Anyone driving by a FLOC camera, they will be read. It's disposed of within 30 days. So there are stipulations that go along with it. But it is a surveillance tool. And any state that is under any type of surveillance is not a free state. There's lots of reasons for pro and against, so I'm not going to talk about those today. All I'm going to say is that I'm not comfortable with it. I like my freedom. When freedom becomes pushed in like this- It just gets worse.

It doesn't get better. It just becomes more flock cameras. There's one right outside this center, right over on Osgood and 62nd, and it points both ways. So anyway, anytime you're driving around, you're getting looked at and for whatever reason, okay? These are also called ALPRs, Automatic License Plate Readers. The good news is, though, there are counties such as Sherburne County, St. Paul, that are disposing of these. They are not having them. They are getting rid of them. I have counties such as... Let's take a look here. Well, Anoka County, I think, has renewed their contract, but St. Paul has ended it, St. Louis Park, Anoka County, and there's a whole list of them. Columbia Heights, I think. Anyway, it's worth looking into why they're getting rid of them. There's a lot of protesters out there against ICE who are very fearful that this is just another tool to hone in on all that business. So whatever side you lean on ICE, doesn't matter.

Still a surveillance tool of all people who live here legally. So I'm just one person, but if as a county commission, you needed 200 people to show up to say, "We don't like this," I will bring them. So I am representing lots and lots of people, but I'm just coming here in peace. We all come in peace, but we really don't appreciate that this procurement is going towards the surveillance of all of us. So that's it. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you. That is the only speaker card that I have up here at the desk. Is there anybody else that would like to address the board at this time during public comment? Seeing none, we will move on to approval of the agenda. Madam Chair, I will move to approve the agenda as published. Second. Moved by Commissioner Miron, second by Commissioner Cox. Discussion? All right, seeing none, the clerk will take the roll.

Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Agenda passes four, zero. Consent calendar passes four, zero. That was the agenda? Yeah. All right. Next item is the consent calendar. Oh, we're going to note that Commissioner Clausen because we're going to be taking a vote here on the consent calendar, Commissioner Clausen at 9:08. We can note that. Any items from the consent calendar that need to be pulled for discussion? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve today's consent calendar? Madam Chair, I would move to approve the consent calendar A through K as printed. Second. Moved by Commissioner Cox, second by Commissioner Miron. The clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Consent calendar passes five, zero. All right. Thank you. The clerk will be earning her pay today because of all the roll calls, so thank you. The next item is accounting and finance with Director Piepho on the presentation of the 2025 annual financial audit results.

This is always one of the best presentations we have of the year. So Director Piepho. Well, I hope I don't disappoint. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. I'm Cat Piepho, accounting and finance director. I'm pleased to be here today to share the highlights from the 2025 audit, which we just completed in June, and to update you on several key achievements from the past year. I'm not sure. There we go. Oh, there we go. All right. So for today's presentation, I'll walk you through the key highlights from our annual financial review. I'll begin with the audit opinion from our independent auditors, then summarize a single audit finding identified this year. From there, I'll provide an overview of the current debt structure and highlight the continued strength of our general fund balance. I'll also touch on several accomplishments from last year, share some good news, explain what it means for the county to be considered a low-risk auditee, and conclude with an update on our GFOA awards.

So with that, we received an unqualified audit opinion from our independent auditors, CliftonLarsonAllen. You may also hear this referred to as a clean audit. This is the highest level of assurance we can receive. It means the auditors reviewed our financial statements and found no major errors, no misstatements, and no missing information. Essentially, it confirms that our financial statements are accurate, reliable, and fully compliant with accounting standards set by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, or what we call them as GASB. Before I address the single audit finding, I just want to briefly explain the two types of findings that can come out of an audit. The first finding is called a material weakness. This is the most serious type of finding. It means that there are significant problems in internal controls that create a reasonable possibility that a major error or misstatement in the financial statements would not have been prevented or detected in a timely manner.

The second type of finding is called a significant deficiency. This type of finding is less severe than a material weakness, but it's still important. It indicates that there may be some internal controls that aren't as critical as a material weakness but are significant enough that they should be brought to the attention of those responsible for governing the organization. CliftonLarsonAllen conducted two separate types of audits for the county this year. The first is called the financial statement audit, and the second one is called the single audit. The financial statement audit focuses on whether our financial statements are accurate, complete, and presented in accordance with GASB requirements. This audit looks at our internal controls, accounting practices, and transactions to ensure that the numbers that we report on our financial statements truly reflect the county's financial position. The single audit is required because the county receives over $750,000 in federal grant funding in a year. This audit examines how we manage and spend federal funds, ensuring that we follow all federal rules, regulations, and compliance requirements tied to those grants.

There were no financial statement findings for 2025. However, a single audit identified one significant deficiency. Although titled by the auditors as a highway project reimbursement request, the findings specifically involved the Central Greenway Regional Trail Project. The finding stems from a delayed construction reimbursement request. Staff temporarily held the submission under the good faith assumption that a new executed grant agreement was required prior to requesting the funds, given the separate agreement structure of the prior project phase. The delay was a misunderstanding regarding authorization mechanisms rather than a breakdown in internal controls. Grant startup procedures have been updated to verify reimbursement frameworks at project inception, ensuring prompt drawdowns and ongoing compliance. Continuing on the theme of responsible financial stewardship, another important piece is how the county has managed its debt over time. The blue bars in this illustration represent how much general obligation debt the county had outstanding in those respective years. It relates to the bonds that we've issued to finance long-term projects like construction of buildings, improvements, and other major infrastructure.

Back in 2016, the county had about $185 million in outstanding general obligation bonds. Over the last 10 years, the county has been very intentional about paying that down and borrowing less. At the end of 2025, we had about $104 million outstanding. So in 10 years, we've reduced our debt by almost half. Now, the green line represents how much of that debt would fall on each resident of Washington County if we divided it evenly. It's called debt per capita. You can see from the illustration that the green line drops right alongside with the blue bars, actually falling just a little faster than the blue bars because, one, we borrowed less over time, and secondly, Washington County's population has grown over the years. In summary, the county has been borrowing less, paying off debt responsibly, and burden on the taxpayers has significantly decreased. Now that you've seen how the county has steadily reduced its overall debt, this next slide addresses the question: what does that mean for the amount that we actually levy each year to make those debt payments?

This slide shows our debt service levy, essentially the dollars that we set aside each year to cover principal and interest on our existing debt. The bars at the bottom break those payments out by the two different types. The blue bars represent the CIP general obligation debt, and the small orange portion is the remaining land and water legacy debt. There are no projections included in the graph for future bond issuances. It only relates to the debt outstanding as of the end of the year 2025. As we continue paying these debts off, those bars shrink over time. Above the bars, the two lines relate to the county's debt policy limits. Those lines show the limits we've set on how much of our budget can go towards debt payments. So our policy states our annual debt service levy has to be less than 12.5% of the total general expenditures, as shown in the green dotted line, and it can't be more than 15% of the total county levy, as shown in the solid black line.

What this picture shows is that even as the county grows and the budget increases, our annual debt payments stay well within those healthy manageable thresholds. The state of Minnesota caps county debt at 3% of total market value. For Washington County, that would amount to about $1.6 billion. I couldn't even put it on the slide because it's so off the charts. Our actual total debt was around $115 million, which is far below that limit and even lower than the total debt at the end of 2024 by almost 6%. Our general obligation bonds outstanding at the end of 2025 also dropped by roughly 12% from the prior year. So overall, this slide reinforces the same message from the previous one. We're reducing our debt, and the annual payments required to service that debt remain stable, predictable, and well within established policy and state limits. Another way to measure financial stewardship is to look at the unassigned portion of the general fund balance.

This relates to the portion of reserves that is not restricted, not committed, or designated for any specific purpose. It is the most flexible category of fund balance. It serves as a key indicator of financial stability, healthy cash flow, and capacity to absorb emergencies and unexpected costs. The county's fund balance policy states that the unassigned portion of the general fund should be maintained at a level between 20% and 50% of the following year's budgeted total general fund expenditures. At the end of 2025, the county's unassigned fund balance was just over $100 million, an increase of $15 million from the prior year, which represents 34.3% of the following year's budgeted general fund expenditures. This slide shows how our unassigned fund balance compares to the policy range. The red line represents the lower limit of the policy, and the green line represents the upper limit. The bars show our actual coverage ratio for each of those years. As you can see, both in 2024 and 2025, it fell comfortably within that range, right in the middle of the policy targets.

Before I move to the next slide, I want to emphasize the importance of the things or the items that I just discussed. Our clean audit opinion, our disciplined approach to debt management, and our strong reserve levels. These are exactly the factors credit rating agencies evaluate when they determine our credit rating. In August of this year, Moody's updated Washington County's credit metrics. Moody's is an independent credit rating agency that evaluates the financial strength of governments and organizations worldwide. They review factors like audit results, debt management, reserves, and overall financial practices to determine a credit rating. The ratings influence how easily and affordably a government can borrow money. A AAA rating is their highest rating, reflecting exceptional financial stability and very low credit risk. Their updated report shows that Washington County continues to demonstrate strong financial health, steady operations, and performance well above national medians. Key highlights from the report include strong residential income, healthy fund balance, low manageable debt, and low fixed costs.

Overall, Moody's continues to view Washington County as financially strong and well-positioned for future capital planning. These results support and maintain the county's AAA credit rating. Besides reporting on the county's financial position, the ACFR also highlights several important investments and accomplishments across the county in 2025. Here are just a few. The county invested more than $120 million in capital infrastructure, including land, buildings, park improvements, and equipment. Major projects included construction of the Central Service and License Center, the emergency housing building, multiple park improvements, land acquisition for the central yard waste project, and continued work on land and water legacy initiatives. The county supported the launch of the Metro Gold Line transit project, improving fast and reliable regional transit. And the county utilized all the proceeds from the 2024 bond issuance to complete the Central Service and License Center project. In addition, the bond proceeds generated over a million dollars in interest income, providing extra funding for the project and helping preserve other county resources for future needs.

Other highlights from our general fund included the Other Post-Employment Benefit, or OPEB trust fund, grew by $10.4 million during the year while continuing to cover retiree health insurance costs. The county's investment portfolio reported an unrealized gain in 2025, reflecting a recovery from the unrealized losses that were incurred on investments that were acquired during the pandemic period. The county received an additional $3.5 million in housing-related aid, increasing available funding to support housing stability, homelessness prevention, and housing initiatives. The county continued directing ARPA funds toward key community projects, including facility upgrades, broadband expansion, sewer improvements, and the new Emergency Housing Services building. These investments reduced the remaining ARPA balance to just a little over $420,000 by the end of the year, keeping the county on track to fully use its federal allocation before the expenditure deadline in 2026. Interest and investment earnings were one of the main drivers of the fund balance increase during the year. Excluding any unrealized market value adjustments, interest earnings totaled $15.1 million, exceeding budgeted amounts by almost $10 million.

I'm pleased to share yet another win for Washington County. For the 2026 single audit, the county will be designated as a low-risk auditee. Under uniform guidance, this designation reflects timely completion of past single audits, clean financial statement opinions, no material weaknesses in internal controls or major programs, and no compliance-related audit findings. Being categorized as a low risk streamlines the audit process by reducing required federal program testing, which can lessen workload, minimize staff time, and potentially lower overall audit costs. All right. The following awards are those that Washington County has received from GFOA. These signal strong financial stewardship, transparency, and high-quality public reporting. Only a small number of governments achieve all three awards in a single year, so it's really considered a prestigious recognition. Washington County recently received its 40th consecutive Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from GFOA for the 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, or as we call it, the ACFR. This certificate represents the highest national recognition for excellence in governmental financial reporting and reflects that the county's commitment to transparency, accountability, and adherence to rigorous reporting standards.

In 2024, 15 counties in Minnesota and 507 counties nationwide received the Certificate of Achievement. Also, the county received its seventh consecutive award for the 2024 Popular Annual Financial Report, or the PAFR. This report provides a high-level, reader-friendly summary of the organization's financial performance and key accomplishments, strengthening transparency, public understanding, and trust. For 2024, there was a total of four Minnesota counties that received the PAFR award and 134 counties across the United States. The county also received its 29th Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for its work on the 2026 budget. This award recognizes a budget document that clearly communicates the organization's priorities, demonstrates transparency, and effectively explains how resources are allocated to support services and strategic goals. For the fiscal year 2025, only four counties in Minnesota and 234 counties nationwide received the Distinguished Budget Award. Earning all three GFOA awards, the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting, the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award, and the Popular Annual Financial Report Award, is known as the Triple Crown.

This distinction highlights exceptional performance in budgeting, financial reporting, and public transparency. Washington County is one of only three counties in Minnesota to earn the Triple Crown for the fiscal year 2024. Before closing, I just want to recognize the many people who made these achievements possible. First of all, I want to thank the AFD financial reporting team. This team consisted of John Walstrom, Shayna Fulkerson, Holly Pratt, which she has now resigned, and Bao Vang. Thank you for their extensive work that goes behind the ACFR and PAFR. These reports require significant coordination, detailed analysis, and careful preparation, and their dedication is essential to our financial stewardship. Thank you as well to Sai Thao, Truong Le, and administration for the substantial effort involved in developing the county's budgeted documents and for the collaboration with every department to understand priorities and services. And finally, it truly takes a collective effort to achieve the level of success that I got to present today.

Our achievements reflect the work of employees serving residents every day, accounting staff across all departments, operational support teams, department heads providing steady leadership, administration's ongoing guidance, and the thoughtful decisions made by you on the board. So the shared commitment to strong operations, responsible financial management, and high-quality public service is a reason that Washington County continues to maintain its AAA credit rating, demonstrating the county's longstanding financial strength and the dedication of everyone involved. With that, Madam Chair, that concludes my presentation. I'll stand for any questions or comments you may have for me. Oh, and by the way, sorry. I take that back. The information that you received a few minutes ago is the draft publication that we'll have to put into our newspaper to fulfill the Minnesota state statutes. Sounds good. We appreciate that. Just for process for today, I think I'm going to start with comments inside here, the boardroom, and then we will go to online.

So, Commissioners Miron or Cox, do you have any... Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. Director Piepho, just thank you. You take something that's really complex, and actually, when I was reading through the PowerPoint ahead of today, I kind of went, "Ooh, I hope she talks about that and explains that." And I have no questions. I just think I appreciate the way that you lay this out. I appreciate the time you take to walk us through this each and every year and to really highlight these incredible accomplishments. I mean, 40 years. I was six years old when the county got their first ACFR award. And so it's not just the work you're doing, it's kind of the work that has been embedded in the culture of this county, and I think that that's something to really be proud of. And I'm grateful that the work continues and the awards continue then as well. So thank you.

Commissioner Miron. Yeah. Thank you for recognizing all the people involved in this. Certainly, it's a lot of work, a lot of effort, but we are very proud of our financial situation. Certainly, our bond rating and we talk about it regularly, the desire to maintain that bond rating for the very reasons you identified here. But a lot of work. Congratulations to the team, and we're very proud of all of you. Commissioner Karwoski or Clausen, any questions? Yeah. Yep, Commissioner Clausen. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you for your presentation. I really do agree with the comments made by the board. We do have a very high financial standing. Triple bond rating is amazing. And I do believe that what Commissioner Cox, that we have a high financial standing embedded in the culture, and I think that's a really strong statement. I was able to review the audit report, and I was able to actually review the Board of Commissioners and Audit Committee packet.

And I just wanted to share this with everybody so that everybody knows where I got it. Okay. And then I'm also going to share that I got it from the financial report. So on top of what we do here as the commissioners, of course, we look at the packet, but then we also have to review other documentation. And I'm on the finance committee, and we haven't been meeting as much in comparison to other years. And I am realizing that that might be some of the issues of why we have the internal control report that we have. I'll just go over it so people can kind of be aware of some of the findings. So there was a project, 2025-001, a highway project reimbursement request. And what happened was that the-- I'm trying to make it not so complicated so that people understand what's happening. It seems as if we had misstatements, and it was more about not properly providing the revenue at the time that it needed it.

So my question is-- and so that's the first one, and then let me go over the other one so that you know that there's other ones that I want to go over. The other one is the uncorrected misstatement from the opioid settlement deferred inflows, and it looks like it was understated by 1.7 million internally. And then also the second one that was in the packet here is that we understated the 2024 sales tax by 2.53 million. The same control gap that caused the deferred inflows and the receivable misstatements, how are we making sure that that's not affecting any other revenue streams? And has there been any corrections that maybe the board hasn't been privy to that have happened without us being present? Director Piepho. Madam Chair and Commissioner Clausen, I wasn't sure what the first question was, so if you could repeat that. It was about the audit finding. Oh, I was just saying because-- Oh.

So specifically to the misstatements or the understated, I should say understated, how are we correcting that? What type of measures, policies, controls have you put in so that doesn't happen again? Director Piepho. Madam Chair, Commissioner Clausen. During these audits, there's a saying when I was in public accounting, if you asked 100 accountants the same question, how many answers are you going to get? You're going to get 100 different answers. So when they notified us about how we record that sales tax revenue as well as the opioid, it's a matter of different presentation that we hadn't done in the past. It doesn't mean that it hasn't been accounted for. It's just the way of presenting it. So once they notified of that, they told us their opinion, then we made those changes. But prior to that, they had never said anything about the way that we were recording that. So now that we're aware, we have made those changes.

And these findings are, I think they're opportunities rather than a mark against you. They're opportunities to improve your processes. We account for every dollar that comes into Washington County. We reconcile our bank accounts each month, so we know what's coming in. It's a matter of do we accrue those items that came in in 2000 or the following year to the prior year? There's some subjectivity in those numbers occasionally. Thanks. It sounds like the problem is getting fixed. Is there going to be a change to the reimbursement request process? Director Piepho. Madam Chair and Commissioner Clausen, yes. The staff have established guidelines and new procedures to make sure that everyone's on board and that reimbursements are submitted in a timely manner. When we receive these single audit findings, we have to have a corrective action plan, and that has already been implemented. Great. Thank you so much for your answers. I do think that Finance Committee should be meeting more, and I think that this is a great opportunity to address some of these issues that you've talked about today in those committee meetings.

So I look forward to our next meeting. Thank you. That does bring up something in my head that I believe we did talk about this for sure in Audit Committee, and I do believe we talked about it in Finance Committee, so we'll have staff confirm that. But Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think the points that Commissioner Clausen point out really reflects just how thorough the audit is, and really, I can only imagine throughout the county, there being thousands of these kind of transactions throughout the year, and it's amazing to find so few. So, I do think lauding the compliments of the comments by the board today, I would concur with the great comments, the triple A rating. Congratulations to everyone. Everybody in the county has to do some level of financial reporting, and it takes a team. Three awards, that's amazing. And only three counties, I believe, was mentioned throughout the state of Minnesota have gotten all three awards.

That's 87 counties with only three, and us, one of those three getting these awards. And Director Piepho, the presentation, and Commissioner Cox, I think, pointed this out when she led with her comments, was just so clear. Each and every year they're clear, but this one looked particularly not only clear and easy to follow for the taxpayer or anyone watching, but so transparent. So again, congratulations to everyone. I think the board really appreciates this kind of financial detail, especially when there's so much in the news about fraud at the state or federal level. You can clearly see with these three awards, the detail of financial oversight really makes us very transparent and very great with our processes to stay financially disciplined and really disciplined with the taxpayers' dollars. So thank you, Director Piepho Thank you, Director Piepho. This is just continued really good news year after year that we receive because of the thoroughness and transparency that is done across the board, but specifically by your department, and your leadership on your team is phenomenal and really appreciate that.

I think being able to demonstrate the triple crown of public budgeting and then also having a AAA bond rating, not only in this with Moody's, but other ones that I'm assuming we'll hear about in the future, is incredible. And just really appreciate your efforts and your team's efforts to ensure that the transparency and thoroughness is completed on the public financing because it is a big part of obviously what we do, but it's the high expectation of the taxpayers which we're responsible for. So just thank you very much. And then I didn't know if there was a photo. Did we want to do a photo? Okay. So, is there-- Administrator Corrid did you- Madam Chair, we'd recommend that there be one photo taken for all three awards since those people are oftentimes involved in multiple functions. That's good. All right. All right. The next item on the agenda is community service. We have two items today, and the first one is by Mr.

Selak, our division manager. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. My name is Ryan Selak, and I'm the division manager for Workforce Development and Strategy here in Community Services. I'm excited here today to bring forward a proclamation declaring September as Workforce Development Month and share a little glimpse into what we do and how we support residents, businesses, and employers across Washington County. At its core, workforce development is about connecting people to opportunity and connecting employers to the talent that they need. In partnership with the Department of Employment and Economic Development, or DEED, we serve job seekers and businesses throughout the county with career guidance, training, job search assistance, career connections, labor market information, workshops, career fairs, we're having one tomorrow actually, and other employment resources. Our work spans a wide range of residents and circumstances. We may work with someone who simply just needs a resume refresh or help preparing for an interview, as well as individuals who need more intensive one-on-one employment counseling, training, or other supports to overcome significant barriers to employment.

Our work is driven by federal and state statute, but we take significant direction from the Workforce Development Board. Comprised of local business leaders, trade and industry sector partners, as well as nonprofit and education sectors, the Washington County Workforce Development Board sets an overarching strategy for how to improve how we serve job seekers, connect with businesses, and create sustainable pathways for skill acquisition and hiring for the long term. After almost a year-long strategic planning process, we'll be coming back to the board later this fall to walk through the insights we gathered, show the future directions we forged, and get your feedback as we look to finalize a new structure to best meet the workforce development needs of Washington County today and tomorrow. Some of our programs focus on the needs of young people and the future workforce. Through our WIOA Youth and the Minnesota Youth program, we assist young people in developing key workplace skills and valuable work experience.

Our Dislocated Worker program helps residents navigate an unexpected job loss and move on to their next career opportunity. We also provide employment and training services for residents participating in programs within community services, such as the Minnesota Family Investment Program, or MFIP, and the SNAP Employment and Training program. I'd like to take a quick second to thank the amazing teams in Workforce Development, whether it's career counselors, career services specialists in our career labs across the county, our trainers, supervisors, office staff and everyone in between. They continue to strive to support residents with the tools and skills they need to better support themselves and their families. That is really what Workforce Development is all about. This month gives us an opportunity to recognize the staff, partners, employers, educational institutions, community organizations, and residents who collectively strengthen our local workforce and Washington County's economy. I think I'm supposed to stop, right? Okay. All right. The- Madam Chair? Yeah.

To get this before us for any discussion, I'd like to make a motion since I work assigned to the Workforce Development Board that I make the motion that we adopt September 2026 as Workforce Development Month. Second. Moved and seconded. Commissioner Karwoski. Yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ryan, thank you for the presentation. You're doing a great job. I think you're on the job less than a year. And we've got such good, reinvigorated board members. It's amazing the Workforce Development Board from the different private and public sectors that are contributing. Workforce development, I think the resolution hasn't been read, but it is a long one, and I think Ryan's presentation really highlighted what the Workforce Development Month is all about. But workforce development is so important throughout all our communities, but in the county to have a collective effort towards giving people better lives through better jobs and also as a way to recruit and retain good businesses really plays a valuable role.

So I want to thank Ryan and his team at the county and our Workforce Development Board and all our businesses and workforce out there throughout the county, especially since we just celebrated Labor Day only a week ago. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Karwoski. Just to clarify, we will have the clerk read the resolution. So it is a lengthy one. Commissioner Miron. Yeah, I just want to thank you, Mr. Selak, for the work that you do, Commissioner Karwoski for representing the board and Workforce Development Board. We certainly appreciate that, and I would yield to Stephanie reading the resolution. Okay. Clerk, if you want to read the resolution. Whereas a strong, skilled, and adaptable workforce is essential to the economic vitality, competitiveness, and quality of life of Washington County and the state of Minnesota. And whereas workforce development programs connect residents with education, training, employment opportunities, career pathways, and supportive services that help individuals achieve economic stability and access meaningful, family-sustaining employment.

And whereas Washington County Workforce Development serves residents throughout Washington County with job search assistance, resume reviews, career workshops, career exploration, connections to training opportunities, and other individualized employment services designed to help residents successfully enter, reenter, and advance in the workforce. And whereas Washington County Workforce Development supports career pathways that help residents to develop their skills, compet-... competencies, credentials, and work experience necessary to meet current and emerging labor market needs while creating opportunities for long-term economic mobility. And whereas workforce development efforts play an important role in reducing disparities in employment and expanding access to career opportunities for individuals who experience barriers to employment, including people with disabilities, individuals experiencing housing instability, and others who have historically faced barriers to family-sustaining employment. And whereas Washington County works in partnership with employers, educational and training institutions, local area chambers of commerce, community-based organizations, the Washington County Community Development Agency, the Workforce Development Board, and state and regional partners to ensure workforce programs are responsive to the needs of both job seekers and employers.

And whereas strong sector partnerships help align education and training with the needs of employers, connect qualified job seekers with employment opportunities, reduce hiring challenges, and build sustainable talent pipelines for businesses throughout Washington County and the region. And whereas Washington County employers rely on a responsive workforce development system to help recruit, develop, and retain skilled workers and address current and future workforce needs. And whereas Workforce Development Month provides an opportunity to recognize the dedicated workforce development professionals, employers, educators, community organizations, and partners who connect people with opportunity, strengthen businesses, and contribute to the economic vitality of Washington County. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Washington County Board of Commissioners hereby recognizes September 2026 as Workforce Development Month in Washington County. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Any additional comment? No comment. Commissioner Clausen and Commissioner Cox. Thank you. I just wanted to comment that the Workforce Board and also workforce in general is very important. I do feel like that is one area that has the most opportunity.

I do hear from other counties that have asked us to do what we're doing, which is look at how we can do this better. And so I really want to learn more about the programming. I know that over the course of a year, we've seen some of the programming from other departments, like the county attorneys. But I would like to hear a lot more about what the workforce programming is. We know that the job market is probably the worst that I've seen it, that I can remember. And even the information relied on to show us how we're doing in the job market, how unemployment's doing, has been complicated. And so really what we have is just us telling our constituents what these programs are and hopefully them taking advantage of it. But I have to say, over the course of 16 years in local government, many people don't know about the workforce programs. And so if we were to take the time during these meetings and talk about the programs, I enjoy resolutions, don't get me wrong.

But I really do think that it's a lot more helpful to people who are viewing to see how they can be a part or take advantage of the workforce programming. So I know I have three months left here, but I am a recruiter, so I do talk to job seekers and businesses every day. And I would say that this is the area that has the most need, but also the most opportunity. And so I look forward to seeing what the Workforce Board puts together in the future. Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Selak, thank you for the presentation, and thank you, Ms. Stephanie, for reading that. The thing that I wrote down when you were chatting earlier was that I'm looking forward to the plan that gets presented later this year. And I think I wrote that down because businesses are changing, our communities are changing, and the needs are different. And so I'm encouraged, should be the right word, to know that you're looking at this and that you have something new that you're going to present to us later this year, so thank you for that.

Thank you, Mr. Selak. I think that the flexibility and the accessibility of the programming and how our residents can take advantage of this is very important. I call it a scattered site approach, where they're throughout and then some are embedded in our libraries. I just think that approach is very helpful. And also, the technology available to assist folks is vitally important, and I appreciate that. And I, too, appreciate the report that'll be coming later this year. If there are no further comments, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Resolution passes five zero. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next item up on the agenda is an update on Children's Services Division with Ms. Sarah Amundson. Welcome. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. I'm Sarah Amundson, the Children's Services Division Manager in Community Services. Thanks for having us here this morning to give an overview of some of the work that we're doing in the Children's Division.

Internally, I'll wait for the PowerPoint for a moment, but internally, you'll see who we are. We have eight internal teams, which includes Adolescent Services, Family Assessment, Hiring, Onboarding, and Training, or our HAT team, Intake and Investigation, Licensing, Ongoing Child Protection, Permanency, Prevention, and our Children's Mental Health Unit, which is contracted to Canvas Health, but very much embedded in our division. All together, we're over 80 staff, and our children's supervisor and senior planner are in our audience today. So over the past several years, we as a child welfare system have experienced major legislative changes and pendulum swings that have created practice changes and increased service and documentation standards. In 2015, a high-profile child death led to the creation of the Governor's Task Force on the Protection of Children, which led to 93 recommended changes to the child protection system. Changes were made to our child protection screening process, safety decisions, staff training, and additional statewide legislative oversight was created.

It also brought in some additional state funding to increase our staff. In 2018, the Family First Prevention Services Act came to be, which is federal legislation aimed at strengthening families and preventing maltreatment. A large part of this legislation was to ensure that whenever possible, children were with their families or in foster care home settings rather than congregate care settings. It created federally approved services and an ability for the state to bring in more federal reimbursement. It has brought new service opportunities, albeit they've been slow, but also additional restrictions and requirements with more to come. And now we're preparing for the Minnesota African American Family Preservation Child Welfare Disproportionality Act. So the longest acronym in the world. So we now call it the Act. MAFPA CWDA is in response to the over-representation of African American and other communities of color in the child welfare system. It's been piloted in Hennepin and Ramsey County for the past two years and starts statewide now on January 1st of 2027.

Quita will be sharing more on that in just a bit. But for now, I will pass it along to Chris, who will go over our screening and intake process Welcome. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. I'm Chris Murphy. I am the supervisor for the Intake, Screening, and Investigation team in Community Services. Today, I will cover intake and screening in Washington County. I will also give an overview of the Family Assessment Unit, family investigation, and the potential outcomes of all reports that come in. It all starts in screening. I have 2.5 screeners on my team. I have one lead, one admin assistant, and 5.5 investigators. The 0.5 screener is because we do not get enough calls to have a full-time third screener, so that person covers screening two days a week, and the other three days a week they cover investigations. The other unit that reports can go to is Family Assessment. That is supervised by Nissa Knutson.

She has seven family assessment workers and two kinship workers. The kinship workers work at ensuring children can be placed with family if we are in a situation in which an out-of-home placement needs to occur. When a call comes in to our screening department, it is received, and then we have a screening team. And we have four members of that screening team. The report is then sent out to the screening team. We take a look at it. We screen it according to the statutes of Minnesota as well as the child protection guidelines of Minnesota. Two tracks, it can either be screened in, which means it meets the criteria of child maltreatment, or it can be screened out, which means it didn't meet the definition of child maltreatment. I will start with the screen out because that's a little quicker of a process. If the report is screened out, we can screen it out, but we can refer it to the Parent Support Outreach program, which the acronym is PSOP, and that will be discussed more in detail later with Megan Roy, my colleague.

We can also do things if it didn't meet the criteria of child maltreatment, we can still screen it out, but we can still refer them to the Parent Support Outreach. We can refer them to Children's Mental Health if there's some of that stuff in the report, and we want to make sure that things are followed up on. We can do that while screening it out as well. If a report is screened in, it can go two ways. If it meets the definition of investigation, then it will come to my team. Investigations are the more substantial child abuse. So you're going to see things like very egregious crimes against children. You can see sex abuse, you can see physical abuse, near mortality or mortality of children, and then my team will be assigned that report. It can also, based on the allegations, go family assessment. If it goes family assessment, that's lesser egregious. So if you're looking at family assessment, you're looking at things such as prenatal exposure cases, you're looking at cases that are alleging drug use in the home.

So it's less intense. And the whole purpose of the focus of family assessment is to engage the family's protective capacities and offer services addressing their immediate, ongoing safety threats to the children. Under both categories, both investigation and family assessment, we have 45 days to complete the full assessment. The other difference between investigation and family assessment is that when you're doing an investigation, two things are looked at towards the end of the case. One, did maltreatment occur? Which means we basically look at the entire investigation from the beginning to end, and we have to decide if a maltreatment finding, if there's a preponderance of evidence. So is it more likely than not that the alleged abuse occurred? The second thing we look at is whether or not child protection services are needed. So in comparison or right alongside of that, we will look to see if the family needs ongoing services to help address the alleged concerns that we investigated.

It is similar with family assessment regarding ongoing assistance, except in family assessment, you are not tasked with making a maltreatment finding. However, family assessment cases can still go to ongoing services. In both investigation and family assessment, ongoing services can look one of two ways. It could be a voluntary nature, which means the family has met with the worker, they're at a place of realizing some things may need to change in their home, they're asking for the help, and then we will do a voluntary case management. The other option or the other route would be court. So that's a child in need of protection and services petition. Here in Washington County, we have a strong relationship with our county attorneys. We try very hard, as hard as we can, to get the cases to go voluntary for many reasons. One of the most important being that working to get a family to realize that they could use some assistance or help generally provides better outcomes for a case than I guess forcing their hand into court.

The other things that I do on the investigation team, other cases we could take are called child welfare cases. So those are less intense. Those are services cases. So if a family is struggling with some parent-child conflict, if they need some services, if they have a child with a disability and they're really struggling to get things figured out, we can step in at that time and meet with the family. It's a very voluntary service, so we will reach out to the family, but they don't have to work with us. That is their choice. The other thing that is kind of new that we came up with is I was getting a lot of calls from local law enforcement saying that there might just be a family out there who's dealing with some poverty, some neglect concerns, lots of police calls to the home. The situation doesn't meet the criteria for child endangerment, child maltreatment, but the police were asking, "Can you guys help us?

Can you offer some service?" So now, we call those preventative child welfare cases. So we will link up with the local law enforcement and try to offer some services. An example of that would be, we had a case in which an officer was continuously going to the home of a grandparent because they had gained custody, not through us, through third-party custody of their four-year-old autistic grandson. The grandparents didn't know a lot about autism. They didn't know the services that were available out there. They didn't know about the disability services. They were just really stuck. So I dispatched a worker out there. Under preventative child welfare, she was able to get them hooked up to the services they need. Something as simple as they needed a whiteboard to keep all of the appointments, all of the things- We worked with them. That was all figured out, I think, within 10 days, and we haven't heard from them again.

So those are the kind of preventative child welfare things that we can get out there, get ahead of the ball, get ahead of what's coming down, really help, because we do have a lot of grandparents now who have custody of their grandkids. And they don't always know what services are available out there. The other thing we do under my team is what we call SEY. It's Sexually Exploited Youth. I have one of my investigators who is the expert in this area. I send her to all the training. She sits on the Sexually Exploited Youth committee. So she takes all of those reports. We do not get a significant amount of those reports in Washington County. I would say it probably averages out to maybe about seven a year, give or take. And then the other thing I do on my team is mortality reviews. Those are driven by the state. So if we have a near mortality or a mortality, we then work with the state.

We send the information to the state. If it was an egregious situation and a maltreatment finding was made, then we will sit down as a large group, and have what you call a mortality review. You're basically sitting down to look at points throughout the case where maybe some sort of prevention could have happened to stop or to push back that kind of outcome. I will tell you this because this is interesting. I don't know if everybody's heard of the Safe Place for Newborns. But if a mom gives birth and she knows that she cannot take care of the child, if the infant is seven days old or younger, she can relinquish that child to the hospital, to a fire department, to a local law enforcement, and she can do it anonymously, and there's no recourse to that. We had our first one last year. It was a very interesting case. I got the call. There was a newborn infant who was relinquished.

And so we scrambled because it was our first one, so we had to try to remember all the things we had to do. It really worked out the best that it could. We had a very loving family step up to the plate. The child was only placed with one family. We went through all the legalities of it, and she just turned one year old and is adopted into a family. So we don't get those often either, but we did get that curveball last year. So, the other thing that we do is Nissa Knudson, the family assessment supervisor, works with a few staff, and they go out into the community and do mandated reporting. We will do that to schools, clinics. We give it even internally to public health. We have found that that is a super important thing to do out in the community, basically because there are some times where very egregious reports can be missed.

A few examples for that would be, a few years ago, we had a child on life support at a local hospital. I got a phone call from the staff at the hospital that said, "There are two parents here. There's a child on life support, and they're going to disconnect, and we have some concerns." So we were immediately able to step in at that point, contact law enforcement. We responded to the hospital, only to find out that the child had skull fractures, and the parents were trying to quickly disconnect the child from life support before anybody became involved. Subsequently, we became involved, and it ended with an admittance from the father, and he ended up serving prison time. Another example was, I got a call the other day on a six-week-old infant who had an injury, and we're always paying attention if an infant has an injury. And when we took the report, we came to find out that the infant, at three weeks old, had been taken to two previous clinics with injuries, and those clinics did not report to us.

So bringing this back to mandated reporting, it's super important to get the word out, to be out there educating, to talk about when to report, how to report, why we report. And the staff and the agency have an excellent mandated reporter training. And in all the years that they've been doing it, I really think it makes a difference. The other thing I oversee is after-hours on-call. We're on 365 days a year. So we cover 8:00 to 4:30 on the weekdays. We have staff after hours who cover weekends and holidays. So if we get a call after hours that there's an egregious report, so a 24-hour response, then we call that social worker, and they go out on the case. We did provide you with some just overall front-end stats of what we take. As you can see, it's written out for 2025. It's broken down for the month and then the actual total of investigations, facility investigations, and family assessments.

I think I might have forgot that we also do facility investigations. So that would be daycares. That would be foster care. So if there's an allegation that a child was injured, then we go out on those as well. Those are called facility investigations. What I would say to all of this is that the safety of children, families, and our internal staff is paramount in our division, in community services. We talk about it a lot. We have safety measures in place for staff. We do numerous safety plans upfront for families to ensure that things remain safe while we are investigating or assessing the case. I will also say on behalf of the screening in Washington County, I feel we do it well. There are spot checks through the State of Minnesota, and you can get your screening decisions pulled, and if they don't agree with it, they will send it back to you. In the time that I've been here as supervisor, I believe we've only received two of those in the last seven years.

So I feel like we're doing it well in the screening department. And I will wrap up by just saying that we have excellent child protection workers in our division. Everybody does a very hard job. Things are getting harder out there. Society is rough right now. There's fear. There's apprehension. There's large rates of unemployment, and all of that will trickle down into the child protection arena, much like it trickles down into other things. And so We understand when we go out that we are just not liked based on what we do. And for myself, I'm working very hard to change that narrative, to change the narrative of when we arrive, to try to get people to see us as help, versus fearing us. And the other thing is our wonderful staff go into very dangerous situations only armed with their voice. So we work very hard with them on rapport, on how to address individuals, how to conflict resolution, how to bring them down, motivational interviewing, all of it that we take on in Community Services makes a huge difference, and I'm very proud of all of our staff here in Community Services.

Thank you. Hello. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. My name is Quita Kukula. I am one of the supervisors in the ongoing side of child protection, along with Becky Moskow, who supervises an ongoing team, and Leigh Yenisch, who also supervises the adolescence team. As Chris mentioned, so the ongoing side, I'm going to talk about the placement management. I think I'm just going to pull up the screen. Placement management. So, from the front end, they do everything possible to prevent children from being placed out of the care of their parents. But there are some times where kids are placed out of the care of their parents, and when that happens, about 70% of our children are with relative providers. So typically, the cases will start in Washington County, but our kids are placed all throughout the metro. And workers manage, on average, probably 10 families with some considerations, given the intensity of the family, so given how many kids are in the family and what the needs are that that worker is working with.

The other considerations would be that workers primarily focus on addressing safety concerns. So that's the primary focus. How do we decrease the safety concerns to get kids back home? What are some supports that we can put in place? Workers are connecting with our internal and external partners, collaborating with attorneys, collaborating with treatment providers, trying to figure out how do we get parents that are in treatment to still have visitation, driving kids around. So all of those things put into those placement considerations. And our workers, in addition, they don't work the traditional hours. A lot of them start before eight o'clock, depending on the needs of the family. A lot of them work after 4:30 and some on the weekends, just to make sure if that child has that birthday that weekend, that that parent gets an opportunity to take part in that party that's happening on Saturday. So lots of consideration into that. And the flexibility of our workers.

They are flexing schedules. They have their own families, but also remembering how important it is with kids being in placement and those key things that come up throughout. Challenges for workers would be-- Some of the challenges that they face would be the unpredictableness of things. Things happen all the time in our cases. There's no day that is the same in child protection. You may have plans today, and by the time you can't come in, there is something that's completely have happened that you're going to need to address that. So there's always that flexibility that workers have. There's placement with multiple competing priorities. There is engaging with many diverse partners. Like I had mentioned, a lot of our workers are collaborating with treatment providers, with therapists, with teachers, with schools, with our internal, external partners, with GAs, with-- The list goes on. So there's no day that looks the same, pretty much. And then also connecting families and children to additional supports and services.

So, whatever is coming up, whatever is the need, our workers are trying to find those resources. And right now in the line of work that we do, resources are challenging. And so they're being creative in how they bring those resources to families. Thinking critically, thinking outside of the box. In addition to thinking outside of the box, trying to remember and keeping the family at the forefront, like how are they going to meet that specific cultural need or that specific family need? Strengthening and enhancing services. Motivational interview is part of that FFPSA that came out. So all of the social workers within our division have been trained in motivational interviewing, and they embraced it. It was another change. It was another added piece to our child protection. And all of the workers just ran into it and appreciated having that extra support in supporting the families that they work with and the children that they support.

And now we're moving towards accclaiming for motivational interviewing. And we've heard nothing but good things about it. Workers have appreciated having an extra tool to put in their toolbox when working with families and children. MFAA CWDA is another legislative change. That is the Minnesota African American Family Preservation Disparities Act, and it is essentially to decrease African American children entering into our child protection system. The framework for that is really using active efforts versus reasonable efforts when we are working with families. And I've said this all the time here at Washington County, one of the things that keeps me here is that we approach that method when working within our child protection system, is that we work with an active effort. We look at what are their needs, and we meet those needs. We're not just giving bus cards. We're putting people in our vehicles. We're taking them grocery shopping. If it's a need that's coming up, we're going beyond just what the standard of practice is, and that's always been the goal of our child protection system, our workers, is that we're going to meet the individual need of a family, and that really what is MFAA, is how do we meet and address the immediate need of a family versus this overarching systems approach?

And then implementation. Implementation is January 2027. Ramsey and Hennepin have been doing the work, so we just look forward to adding on and just moving towards just continuing and strengthening families. And then finally, what I will say, with all of the legislative changes that have occurred within our child protection system with MFAA, with MI, our social workers, our supervisors, our manager have been committed to all of it. They have embraced it with enthusiasm. The key and one thing that is at the core of every single one of our workers, supervisors, and manager is child safety. How do we keep our families, our children safe in the county and the communities that we work with? And I'm so proud to be a part of this team. Thank you. Thank you, Quita. Welcome. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. I am Megan Ryan, the supervisor for the prevention team. I'm briefly going to review the great work being done within the prevention team.

Since coming together three and a half years ago, not only have we brought home a trophy, but we've also expanded our work in creative ways to strengthen the continuum of efforts that help prevent families from even entering the child welfare or deeper-end child protection systems. Truancy and Educational Neglect Diversion is one of the longest-standing diversion programs in the state of Minnesota. It is done in partnership with the county attorney's office and every school serving Washington County students from elementary through high school and including online schools. Many referred students face barriers outside of school that contribute to attendance issues. Social workers collaborate with the school, the parent, and the student to reduce those barriers. For example, this past school year, we received a referral for a high school student who was chronically truant. After meeting with the parent, the Diversion social worker learned that the youth had been couch hopping at friends' houses while her parents and siblings were staying in hotels and with other friends.

The social worker assisted the parent by making several referrals to organizations such as St. Andrew's, SMRLS, the Animal Humane Society, our housing team, the Young Employment Program through the Workforce Center. The family also received concrete supports such as food and gas cards, and a Washington County Parks pass so they would have a place to go outside of the hotel room. The family is now housed, all living together and working with solid ground. The children are enrolled in school and hopefully will be better able to prioritize their education now that they have a home to return to each night. Parent Support Outreach Program, or PSOP, is a state program that aims at supporting families with identified risk factors and has at least one child in the home 10 or younger. I'll just take a side note. So as Chris mentioned, this is a state program, and internally, we have created the prevention child welfare pathway to support families that have children that are outside of those age frames.

Anyone can make a referral to PSOP, and parents can also self-refer. Historically, most referrals come from screened-out child protection reports, as Chris mentioned. But in recent years, we have seen a significant increase in referrals from community partners and from families themselves. Due to an increase in caseloads, we have been exploring alternative pathways families can be supported through county services or community resources. For example, we're building more of a partnership with our co-response and crisis stabilization teams who may already be engaging with the same families. For families who do accept PSOP services, that support often centers on housing, childcare, and navigating formal systems such as medical assistance and MnCHOICES. Finally, Family Resource Connections is still in early stages of implementation, but there is exciting momentum. As you may recall, in April, we had a grand opening for a shared space with corrections at the Cottage Grove Service Center. We continue working together to make the space welcoming for all individuals and families we serve.

Alongside this, we built strong partnerships to support the FRC efforts. As you heard in one of last month's board workshops, our partnership with libraries continues to grow. We are collaborating closely with Public Health's Healthy Communities team, the Mental Health and Motion, and our community engagement team. The family advisory board for the FRC has been meeting for about a year and a half now, and is ensuring that community members provide input that shapes the FRC priorities and direction. FRC planning and development phases have been funded through the Sower Family Foundation, and now as we enter implementation phase, we're using the prevention funds through FFPSA and in-kind support from our county and community partners to support the work. The FRC offers two different types of opportunities to engage with families. We hold walk-in hours at the Cottage Grove site, as well as at the R. H. Stafford and Oakdale libraries. Across the entire county, we hold events that offer specific support or education for parents and kids.

For example, we're holding virtual parent cafes, which are structured, peer-led conversations intended to build relationships and resilience among parent participants. Here you can see the number of individuals or families served through the Diversion and PSOP programs. So the Diversion numbers are reported by school year, while PSOP numbers are reported by calendar year. So for 2026, the PSOP numbers reflect mid-August of this year. Also to note, in 2026, there was legislative changes that took into effect that mandated schools report 15-day drops to our Diversion program, which is why those figures only appear in 2026. Consistently, the Diversion program diverts roughly 90% of the referrals they receive from going to court or child protection systems. For PSOP, we're anticipating a record number of cases this year, even with the fact that we've started to divert referrals to other resources. The light green represents initial referrals that are signed for what are called PSOP assessments. This is a point where a social worker's trying to contact a parent and make an offer of services.

Oftentimes, the parent either declines services or the worker is able to assist them with resource information and then close the case. A significant change that has impacted workload within PSOP is the number of families that are agreeing to work with PSOP on an ongoing basis. This means the social worker is meeting more frequently with the parents, creating a case plan, and is working with the family to navigate more complex needs. Not represented in this graph, but was shared during the library board workshop, is the number of contacts made through the FRC. To date, those contacts are well over 100 individuals who received walk-up support and assistance. Also not represented are the number of community outreach and school information sessions the team has done each year. This summer alone, we attended 21 community events and visited 16 different schools or groups of schools to hold space for conversation and building partnership to better support families. We thank you for your time and allowing us to share some of the great work being done within the children's division, and now we will stand for questions and comment.

Thank you. Thank you to all of you. Really appreciate the time and the information. It's such an important part of the county's responsibility. Comments by commissioners? Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll start us off, but thank you, first of all, Sarah, Chris, Quita, Megan, I really appreciate this topic and you taking the time to walk us through it. It's important that we do this, and yet terrifying that we have to do it from where I sit. And so I'm grateful for your teams for showing up every day and doing this work, and also taking care of yourselves so that when you go home to your own families, you can be the best parent that you can be at home as well. So thank you for that. I took quite a few notes, but the fact that 70% of the out-of-home placements, I think, Chris, you shared stay with kin, and with family, or maybe that was Quita, sorry.

I think that's amazing. So to me, I know I met with Director Castillo more than a year ago, and she said, "This act is concerning, but we're doing a lot of these things." And so you're reinforcing that here today. So thank you for putting families first in everything that happens. And then, Ms. Megan, I think I saw you actually at my daughter's middle school for student orientation night. And so I just think that that's such a great place for you and your team to be. Parenting is really complicated. And if you don't have a village or those people that you can call to say, "My gosh, is this normal?" Or, "What are we going through?" You feel really alone. And so your team being there and being a resource for families as they start middle school or start high school, I think is really important. And so I'm grateful to see you there. And I've actually recommended and said that you were at my kid's school, and so other schools might be interested in that because I think that orientation time for kids moving from fifth to sixth grade or from eighth to ninth grade, there's some big developmental challenges and changes that happen, and parents sometimes just need some guidance.

And so thank you for all of this work. Additional comments? All right. I'm just- Madam Chair? Oh, Commissioner Clausen. Hey. Thank you, Chair. Actually, Commissioner Karwoski has his hand raised, but you can't see him, so he would like to talk first. Okay. Commissioner Karwoski. Yeah, I can't see if hands are raised. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Commissioner Clausen, for pointing that out. Great presentation. It's unfortunate that we have to have a presentation like that, but I think it's really good that we inform the public, and really nice work to inform all the good work you do, important work you do. Often when I'm out in the community, just talking about that roughly half our budget is social service programs that we do as mandates by the state and federal governments, but they're the right thing to do. So I don't think we argue about doing them. The financing is difficult, but I think the more we can do to show the public how we're spending their taxpayer dollars, the better off we are.

I do want to thank your team. In the last month, I've been to wellness back-to-school events in Landfall, Oakdale, and then last week there was a wellness event in my District 2 area of Woodbury, and I think you had a presence at all of those. The library that was there, Workforce Development was there, plus our partners in the private sector. So I really appreciate your getting involved in our community. Thank you. Commissioner Clausen. Yes. I just wanted to say that we're so lucky to have people in these types of jobs doing this every day. This is not an easy job, and what you're doing every day can just be draining. And so I know coming here and speaking about what you do every day, it can also feel like, man, I do a lot, and you do. And I wanted to say that. I wanted to say that today, that I see you, and I hear you.

And we never, as a society, have been able to get rid of poverty. Poverty is really the main reason why this stuff occurs. When there's no money in the house, tensions fly, kids, their needs are mounting, and money is gone. And I agree. I agree this is going to get a lot tougher. I think those numbers that you're showing are going to be bigger because the need's going to grow. I expect that that means that your budget or other things are, you're going to have to come to us and ask for those again. And I want you to feel like we listen to you here and are hearing you and are open to receiving that in the future, any type of budget needs that you have. Because what you do every day is just really tough. And I heard things that were really important. Number one was that you guys are all communicating or trying to at the best you can.

I caught that throughout each person's presentation, which I really appreciated. It shows me that we're trying to do the work, but it's tough. So thank you so much for those that do this every day. It is clear where your heart is. It is clear that you think highly of the community and the county, and we're very happy that you came today and presented on this material. It is absolutely refreshing to hear the amount of details that were presented, and it was relating. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah, Chris, Quita, Megan, I see you throughout the communities. I serve on the ACT Council with Quita. And it's more than what you do at work here and your team. It's the passion that you bring forward every day to serve the residents, and that's just very important, and the work you do is important. The Family Resource Center, I don't think you could have a stronger champion than this board to move them forward, to really get in front of entering a system.

And getting people those supports that they need is really important, and it's the right thing and the right way to do this. And so, I hope future legislatures, and state budgets, and maybe some flexibility with the Family First funding, to really allow for the additional family resource centers, not only capital, but operating side of it as well, to have some more flexibility. The Pit Stops point in time have been amazing. Every time that there is one, I get a lot of positive feedback about it, and I think there's so many departments that are represented at those, and I think those are also vitally important to be able to partner with our nonprofit organizations and having help. The last thing, two final things. There is a true service provider shortage, and we have to collectively figure out how we are going to do that through collaboration, and I think technology. However we can do that, we need to, as a state and as counties, need to continue to have that discussion.

And I think the modernization, and I brought this up in Director Castillo's budget presentation, I'm really afraid that any sort of delay in the modernization of SSIS, which is an important aspect of what you all do every day, will impact the services that are provided to our families. And so, I think that should be some sort of discussion legislatively with our board and how we can advocate for that because we have strength in numbers in that. And then finally, I really like the co-response addition. You working with the co-response team, it's like next level stuff that I think we need to have. So, if there are no further comments, then we will just, again, extend gratitude and thankfulness for what you all do, your whole teams and your leadership, leadership of Director Castillo, and your whole team. So thank you very much. All right. The next item is for human resources, and we have Ms.

Shue from Parks, who's a parks coordinator. We have Ms. Tabora, that is a financial technician on behalf of the Joint Employee Resource Group. Good morning. Sorry. I mispronounced that. I should know better. I took Spanish. My bad. It's okay. It's totally okay. Well, good morning. We're here to share the resolution proclaiming Hispanic Heritage Month. I'm Elena Shue. I work in parks as the parks coordinator. And I'm Carol Tabora. I'm a senior financial technician with community services. And the resolution reads, "Whereas Hispanic Heritage Month is observed annually from September 15th to October 15th, because September 15th is the anniversary of independence for several Latin American communities, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In addition, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence days on September 16th and September 18, respectively." And... "Whereas Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to recognize and celebrate the rich histories, vibrant cultures, and enduring contributions of Americans who come from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America."

And... "Whereas the Latino and Hispanic community has played an integral role in shaping the social, economic, cultural, and political fabric of our nation, from pioneering scientific innovation and entrepreneurship to enriching our arts, education, and public service with language, music, dance, cuisine, and traditions that have become part of the American experience." And whereas the first sizable group of Latino immigrants to Mexico came from Mexico in the-- or came to Minnesota from Mexico in the early 1900s, with many coming to Minnesota as seasonal workers to provide labor in the agricultural fields of the state, for the railroads, and for meatpacking factories. And- Whereas later, Latino immigrants became religious leaders, business professionals, and students looking for better opportunities, often challenging stereotypes of Latinos as poor migrant workers. And- Whereas Latinos and Hispanics are one of the fastest-growing minority groups and comprise an increasingly important segment of Minnesota's workforce, having the highest labor force participation rate in the state.

And- Whereas Washington County is committed to fostering an inclusive environment that values diversity and uplifts the voices and talents of our Latino and Hispanic colleagues, partners, and communities through initiatives like the 2024 Bilingual Pay Differential and the establishment of the Gente Employee Resource Group, ERG, in 2023. And- Whereas Washington County honors Hispanic Heritage Month by recognizing the resilience of our Hispanic and Latino communities, and it reaffirms its commitment to supporting these communities impacted by the adversity experienced from this past year's immigration enforcement efforts through culturally responsive programs, community partnerships, and efforts that promote safety, belonging, and equitable access to county services. And- Whereas the Gente ERG invites all employees to join in celebrating our culture and strengthening community during Hispanic Heritage Month, featuring a cuisine-focused event that embodies a local Venezuelan chef's immigrant journey to the United States. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Washington County Board of Commissioners does hereby proudly proclaim this month to be Hispanic Heritage Month.

And- Be it further resolved that the board extends its appreciation to the Hispanic and Latino community and employees and reaffirms our dedication to celebrating Hispanic and Latino heritage, amplifying Hispanic and Latino contributions, and advancing equity and opportunity for all. Let this month be not only a celebration but a call to action to learn, to honor, and to build a future that reflects the full spectrum of our shared humanity. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a motion, Commissioner Cox? Thank you, Madam Chair. I will move to adopt the resolution proclaiming September 15th, 2026, through October 15th, 2026, as Hispanic Heritage Month in Washington County. Second. Moved by Commissioner Cox, seconded by Commissioner Clausen. Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Elena and Carol, for reading the proclamation today. I always love it when the groups are able to do that. Just thank you for bringing this forward again. I think we are all better when we have more people sitting around our table, and I'm really grateful for the size of the table that Washington County has with all of its ERG groups.

And so I just appreciate you doing this and look forward to the event with the chef and hearing more about his story. Thank you. Commissioner Clausen. Yeah. Thank you so much for the presentation. I don't know what we would do without our Latino and Hispanic populations, the culture, the music, the food. I can't imagine just having hot dogs every day. I don't know about you guys, but very happy that you're here today and we get to spend some time with you in an event that you're putting on. I caught something, and it said the highest labor in Minnesota. And actually, Latinos grew over 200,000 in 20 years in Minnesota. So wow, prospering is awesome to see all different populations in Minnesota. And I think I, of course, work with Latinos and Hispanics, and I am so blessed to have their work ethic. I often recruit for construction, manufacturing, and office, and sales. And so you can imagine how many people I interview, and we are just very blessed that people from different cultures think that Minnesota is a great place to live and that they chose Woodbury and or Washington County.

But with the population being large, I imagine a lot are in Woodbury, too. And so I'm excited to see more events. I don't see a lot of events really specializing in Latinos. I know we have some in St. Paul and Minneapolis. But hopefully, as Woodbury grows, we, too, have some events where we can celebrate different cultures. One Woodbury is great. But just individual celebrations would be nice, too. So thank you for being here today. Any additional comment? All right. I just want to say thank you for being here, reading the resolution to highlight the amazing contributions in our workforce, in our business community, in our schools, and the culture that all of this brings to Washington County, and it's just so vibrant and appreciated. And so I am excited to be able to celebrate this in the events that are coming up to continue to lift up the contributions. So thank you so much. And with that, the clerk will take the roll.

Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Resolution passes 5-0. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. The next items are from Public Works, and we will start with Mr. Jalowitz from Building Services, and this is related to the seven items for Park Grove Library projects. Welcome. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. Give me a second. Looks like our presentation is up. I am Eric Jalowitz, the Capital Project Manager for Building Services, and I'm here this morning to present Change Order 1 for Park Grove Library. This morning, we will discuss the original scope of the project, the exterior wall issue that was discovered in construction, the proposed change order, and how it affects the project budget and schedule. Park Grove Library is located in Cottage Grove off of 80th Street and Hemingway Avenue. It is walking distance from Crestview Elementary and Park High School and is surrounded by hide-and-seek housing.

The original project scope for the Park Grove Library project consisted of removing the front quarter of the building, which is highlighted here in yellow, and retaining the existing foundation, steel structure, slab on grade, roof deck, and remaining exterior walls. The exterior walls that were to remain are indicated here in red. During the demolition phase of construction, Kraus-Anderson discovered evidence of water intrusion, which was previously presented to the county board at the June 23rd board workshop. Despite destructive wall testing performed during the design phase that showed no evidence of any issues, this water intrusion was found to be occurring deep within the exterior wall cavity, causing corrosion to metal studs, compromising the brick assembly, and deteriorating wall sheathing and waterproofing. At the board workshop, the decision was made to fully rebuild the exterior wall assembly with full brick. The construction manager estimated the change to cost roughly $1,340,000 at that time. We have this change order divided into two parts.

This first part is for change orders that affect the exterior wall issue only. The next slide will show contract costs that are related both to the exterior wall changes and additional changes related to other project issues. The proposed amendment to the Kraus-Anderson contract shown here is directly related to the schedule changes necessary to complete the exterior wall work. This includes longer duration for the site staff, perimeter security fencing, temporary restroom facilities, and construction dumpsters. I'll discuss the schedule adjustment in more detail in another slide. Ramsey Companies for demolition and Pinnacle Wall Systems for drywall are the other proposed change orders that include the exterior wall changes. The proposed change orders shown here include both the exterior wall changes plus other project changes. Those other project changes include revisions to the structural plans due to variances in the actual concrete foundation conditions on site, relocating the electrical transformer on site as required by Xcel Energy, and changes to the electrical metering required to provide accurate energy use data.

The contractors that have changes both to the exterior walls and additional changes are BND Associates for concrete and masonry, Bloomington Electric for electrical, Kamisch Excavating for excavating, and NobleX for structural steel. When looking at the exterior wall change that was discussed at the June 23rd workshop, the final total amount for that work came in at $1,287,817, which is just under the $1.34 million estimate. That amount includes additional change orders for the exterior wall issue that were below the 7% threshold and approved by the department head per county policy. The total amount of changes recommended for board approval today for changes over the 7% policy threshold is $1,409,559, which includes both those exterior wall changes and the additional changes discussed here. The beginning budget for the Park Road Library project started at $18.3 million. The cost incurred and cumulative open contracts to date is right at $15.5 million, leaving a project balance of roughly $2.3 million.

The change orders delegated for approval by staff is $128,729, while the pending change orders requiring board approval today is $1,409,979. That leaves a remaining project balance of $1,258,225 for the project. I would also like to take this opportunity to inform the board that we also just learned we have received an $88,000 state grant to add solar to the building as well. That amount is not currently shown here in our beginning budget, but will be tracked from here forward. Looking at the schedule, construction began in April of 2026 and was originally scheduled to complete in early 2027, with furniture, shelving, and owner move-in activities to follow. The new schedule has the exterior wall rebuild to occur through November of this year. This impacts the start of interior construction, which pushes the completion of construction of the building itself from February 1st to April of 2027. In addition to impacting the construction of the building, the completion of exterior walls in November does not allow site activities such as final grading, landscaping, and parking lot final paving to be done this fall as originally scheduled.

This work is now scheduled to begin in the spring of 2027 once weather allows, and is anticipated to be completed by the end of June. The county project team has collaborated with the construction team to allow county activities like furniture, shelving, and move-in to occur after final building completion while the exterior site work is ongoing, which helps minimize the scheduling impact, allowing a proposed library reopening date in July of 2027. With that, Public Works recommends the following seven board actions pertaining to change orders for the Park Road Library project. I will allow the board to present each action individually and will now stand for any questions you may have. Thank you, Mr. Jalitz. I will go ahead and move the first item, and then if we could do the discussion completely, and then it'd just be expedient for the clerk to have to do these on roll call. So I will move to approve amendment number three to contract number 17625 with Kraus-Anderson Construction in the amount of $420,195 for project oversight services.

Second. Moved and seconded. Thank you so much. This happens when we do construction at our homes. You start a project, and then all of a sudden you discover something. So I'm just glad it was discovered when it was discovered, when there was an ability to really remediate this. Those pictures are stunning and scary. I think two things. My first reaction was, was there any public health exposure to our employees? And I was assured no, and appreciate that. And then second, I just think if this isn't done, the overall structure of the, or the bones, if you will, of the building are in danger. And so, I just, again, appreciate how quickly it was found, and how quickly staff put together a plan, and really resolved how we're going to do this. I just really appreciate the quickness so that we can stay as true to the timeline as possible. And so, again, appreciate that, appreciate the board's support on getting this fixed.

So thank you. Commissioner Miron. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would echo just our thanks for the diligence of the team in finding this. These things do happen, right? And we approach things in Washington County very conservatively. When we can make use of existing buildings and structure that's there, we do that. We've got a history of doing that. In this particular case, I think obviously we found issues with the structure and had to remedy that. But I also compliment the team in recognizing the costs of building projects, identifying a budget early on, and then being able to remedy these situations within the existing budget. That is pretty remarkable in my mind, particularly when we're seeing overall significant increases in the cost of buildings and building reconstruction. So again, just thank you to the team for discovering these issues at the time they did and being able to remedy that, and I'm happy to support all of the recommendations here to rectify that situation.

Thank you. Any other discussion? All right. Seeing none. Oh. I thought you were trying to get my attention. The clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item one passes five zero. I'll go ahead and move to approve change order number one to contract number 17995 with Ramsey Company, companies in the amount of $32,918.05 for site work services. Second. Discussion? Seeing none, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item two passes five zero. Thank you. I'll go ahead and move to approve change order number one to contract 17987 with Pinnacle Wall Systems Incorporated in the amount of $209,120 for dry wall services. Second. Moved by Bigham, seconded by Miron. Discussion? Seeing none, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen?

Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item three passes five zero. I'll go ahead and move to approve change order number one to contract number 17992 with B&D Associates LLC in the amount of $514,939 for concrete and masonry services. Second. Seconded by Commissioner Cox. Discussion? Seeing none, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item four passes five zero. I'll go ahead and move to approve change order number one to contract number 17991 with Bloomington Electric in the amount of $141,640.66 for electrical services. I'll second that. Karwoski. Seconded by Karwoski. Discussion? Seeing none, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item five passes five zero. I'll move to approve change order number one to contract number 17988 with Camisch Excavating Incorporated in the amount of $68,808.15 for site work services. Second.

Seconded by Commissioner Cox. Discussion? Seeing none, the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item six passes five zero. And final one is, I'll move to approve change order number one to contract 17990 with Noblex Welding and Fabrication in the amount of $22,351 for structural steel services. Second. Seconded by Commissioner Miron. Discussion? Seeing none, clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Item seven passes five zero. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation. Thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioners. The next item is with Ms. Becky Hayden, engineer three, to approve three items for CSAT 18, which is Bailey Road Trail Improvement Project. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. My name is Becky Hayden, and I'm an engineer three in the Public Works Department. Today, Public Works will be recommending approval of a construction contract along with two cooperative agreements for the County Highway 18 Trail Improvement Project.

During my presentation, I will provide an overview of the project location and scope of work, discuss the bids received, and provide an overview of the financials. I will review the project agreements and close by recommending approval of three board actions. This cooperative project with the City of Woodbury is included in the county's capital improvement plan as Road and Bridge Project number 2580. It includes construction of a new trail along the south side of County State Aid Highway 18, also known as Bailey Road, from the existing trail system at the Woodlane Drive roundabout, westerly to La Lake Park. The goal of this project is to get more people to the park. This trail connection will increase access to recreational opportunities and natural resources within La Lake Park, and is consistent with the county's active transportation goals, the Washington County Bike and Pedestrian Plan, and the county's strategic plan. This slide shows the trail project location along with numerous other trails, both paved and unpaved, along with surrounding local parks and schools.

The City of Woodbury was successful in their state bonding request for improvements to La Lake Park. Therefore, the city is moving forward with their park utility and facility construction projects, currently in the design phase, planning for construction in 2027. While we are anticipating changes to the Bailey Road corridor, this is a valuable connection that not only provides a connection to La Lake Park from surrounding local users, including Gordon Bailey Elementary School and local neighborhoods, but also provides a broader connection to numerous other local parks, schools, and trails, as shown on this slide. Construction bids were opened on September 1st. Eight bids were received, with a favorable low bid coming from Valley Paving in the amount of roughly $360,000. So breaking down the financials of this project, total project costs are roughly $517,000. Expenses for this construction project are shown, which include our typical 7% construction contingency. Revenues for this project total approximately $550,000 and consist of TAA Safety and Trails funds, local contributions from the City of Woodbury, along with state aid funds.

Totaling the project revenues and subtracting the project expenses leaves a remaining fund balance of just over $30,000. Moving on to project agreements, we have two cooperative agreements with the City of Woodbury. The cost agreement defines cost responsibilities for each party. This agreement follows the county's cost participation policy. The second agreement defines long-term maintenance responsibilities of the infrastructure being constructed with this project. These agreements have been reviewed and approved by our partner at the city. Before I close with recommendations, I would like to highlight how this project directly addresses one of the four strategic priorities from the Washington County Strategic Plan, a strong and sustainable environment. The defined objective is to maintain, develop, and expand multimodal transportation options to improve ease of travel across the county. This project fulfills the performance measure to build dedicated trail miles as envisioned in the Washington County Bike and Pedestrian Plan. So with that, Public Works has three board actions that we are recommending approval on today.

This includes the construction contract with Valley Paving and two cooperative agreements with the City of Woodbury. I will now turn it over to the board chair and stand for any questions. Thank you very much. I can move the first item to get it in front of us, and then again, just like the previous one, we can do the discussion for expediency and taking the roll calls. So I will move to approve contract number 18589 in the amount of $360,600.06 with Valley Paving Incorporated. Second. All right. So, Becky, thank you so much for the presentation. The work around La Lake is very important, and collaborative partnership with the city and the state funding that was received is greatly appreciated. And so really, I just look forward to being able to connect these neighborhoods and the trails. So really appreciate that Commissioner Miron Just important work, and our constituency certainly appreciates the opportunity for the county to make those connections.

These have been well-planned, and happy to support it. Any additional comment? All right. Great. Clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron. Aye. Commissioner Karwoski. Aye. Commissioner Cox. Aye. Commissioner Clausen. Aye. Commissioner Bigham. Aye. Item one passes five zero. Okay, then we have item two. I can move to approve Cooperative Agreement 18547 between the City of Woodbury and Washington County. Second. Moved by Bigham, second by Commissioner Cox. Discussion? Seeing none. Clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron. Aye. Commissioner Karwoski. Aye. Commissioner Cox. Aye. Commissioner Clausen. Aye. Commissioner Bigham. Aye. Item two passes five zero. And then we have the third item. Probably just easier move to approve Cooperative Agreement number 18548 between the City of Woodbury and Washington County. Second. Moved by Bigham, second by Miron. Discussion? Seeing none. Clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron. Aye. Commissioner Karwoski. Aye. Commissioner Cox. Aye. Commissioner Clausen. Aye. Commissioner Bigham. Aye. Item three passes five zero. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Appreciate it. The next item on the agenda is general administration. Administrator Corbid, anything? Madam Chair, I do not. Okay. Then I will go ahead and do the next item of the summary of the county administrator's performance review. Pursuant to Minnesota Statute 13D.05, the board met with its administrator to evaluate his performance. The feedback provided in that closed session is private data on the employee. Also, by law, the board must provide a summary of the evaluation at the meeting following the review, and discussion for this purpose is not appropriate at this time. Therefore, I will provide the summary on behalf of the board, and then we will move on to the next agenda item, which is commissioner comments. The county board met with Administrator Corbid on September 1st in closed session to review his performance over the past year. While the content and discussion of performance evaluations are private data on the employee involved, Kevin authorized me to share that a majority of the board continues to be pleased with his performance providing leadership to the organization.

The board reviewed all of the materials provided by Kevin and the feedback provided by the board and department heads. The board appreciates how the organization, including Kevin, has responded to operational, financial, and board dynamic challenges we have faced and feel we are in a great position moving forward. All right. We are on to commissioner reports. Commissioner Miron, maybe you could start us off, and then we'll do the commissioners in here first in the boardroom and then go online. Thank you, Madam Chair. Had a number of staff meetings on various issues. Attended the Water Consortium meeting in person here in the government center. Attended the Metropolitan Emergency Services Board meeting. We approved some amendments to some armor participation plans. We approved an amendment to a lease agreement with Hennepin County. We had some amendments to our policy related to wireless devices, and then we did an award of an RFP for feasibility and cost-effectiveness study for some regionally shared technology.

I attended the Browns Creek Watershed, where we recognized Chuck Larue. Commissioner Cox and I both attended, recognized Chuck Larue for his service to the watershed and sat in on the meeting. They were dealing with a violation on one of their rules related to a resident within my district. Had a Clean Water Council meeting, the Budget Outcomes Committee. We made recommendations to the full Clean Water Council on the expenditure and support for programs being proposed for the biennium, 342 million. That will be recommended to the Clean Water Council and then ultimately to the governor and to the legislators for expenditures. I'm really curious today, in our consent calendar, we approved the chloride program for the South SHOP. And it's a grant program through the South Washington Watershed District, and I'm curious as to the source of those funds. I believe it was, what, close to 250,000 or right around there, and appreciate that and happy to support it.

But chloride certainly is a very emerging issue, one that we've talked about at the Clean Water Council from a policy standpoint, and I'm just curious the source of those funds. And then Commissioner Cox represented the county extremely well yesterday for the opening of County 15 B. Just good comments and got those through, and everybody released prior to the rain coming in yesterday. And very excited. It's not often that the county is involved in building brand-new roads, new alignments of roads, and this was a big effort and a big day, I think for Washington County. And certainly appreciate former Commissioner Kriesel's leadership and fortitude in helping establish that alignment and securing the right of way for that project. That's all I have, Madam Chair. Commissioner Cox. Thank you, Madam Chair. I also was able to attend the Water Consortium meeting. I really enjoyed how they did that with speakers hopping in and out, giving shorter presentations.

It was fun to listen to in that way. I was able to attend the Stillwater Downtown Steering Committee meeting to hear a little bit of the concerns about parking and some of the taxes that those downtown businesses are accepting and what those go for. I was then able to attend with some public work staff members, Andrea and Erin, the Lake Elmo City Council workshop last week. They were talking about 10 and 17, so near the new Lake Elmo Elementary School, for the more permanent improvements to that intersection. And then I also just stayed on for a couple other items that were on their agenda as they felt important to be there as well. Was happy to attend MESB and be able to listen in and vote on those important changes that are coming. The Community Supervision Working Group had another meeting and got the additional meetings scheduled for the rest of the year so that group has to wrap by the end of December and get their presentation to legislature, which will happen on time.

Browns Creek Watershed, it was great. Mr. Larue has been there for more than six years, and so great to honor him and to thank him for his time. And then today on the consent, we did approve two members to, one to be reappointed and then one new member to fill his seat, so that was great. SHAC had the executive committee meeting, and so was happy to attend that. Thank you, Commissioners Bigham and Miron, for attending that ribbon-cutting yesterday as the clouds got darker and darker. I will have to say Kwik Trip had an incredible showing. There were donuts galore and coffee, which was really just fun to have there. And then the developer in that community is really excited to see how he can bring new business to the Stillwater area right at that intersection, so that's great. I will be attending the AMC Fall Policy Conference, leaving tomorrow and returning Friday. Tomorrow is Wednesday.

And then had some constituent meetings as well, and so sometimes in those meetings, we hear all kinds of things. Some good, some bad, some indifferent. And I think yesterday or last week, I was able to meet with a gentleman, and he called out two public works employees positively for interactions that he has had with them, and he actually put them in writing, so I was happy to pass those along to Director Sandburg today to share with staff members as well. So we're continuing to do good work in the community, and it shows, so thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Clausen Thanks, Chair. Sure. I'm just going to start with some emails that we're getting from constituents. I got a couple on the hunting question that we've had with rifles, and also questions on asking us to sign and align our Sutter Hospital acquisition. I have responded to those people and continue to ask questions. In regards to what I've been working on, I've been meeting with my constituents as well as leaders on road priorities.

Just yesterday, Settlers Ridge in Bailey was supposed to be a groundbreaking also. County Road 15 went through, but ours was canceled due to the rain. So we're looking forward to that groundbreaking. We had gotten a pretty hefty amount of money from our representative, Betty McCollum, and so I'm hoping that she's invited as well to the groundbreaking. More importantly, we have a Suicide Prevention 5K on Saturday, and that is something that Washington County Mental Health LAC is a part of, as well as the Washington County Sheriff. And we do plan on having a lot of vendors there for mental health, including Canva Health. I know that was discussed today. And so there's many vendors, and it's an opportunity to talk about mental health awareness and making people feel like there's a community around them. I do remember seeing friends from the past there that had lost loved ones, and I think it's a time to heal, even if it's just for a couple of hours.

And so people really appreciate the Suicide Prevention 5K. It'll start at 8:00 a.m. and you can register. It's at Colby Lake, and so very familiar with the area, I'm sure. But if commissioners are wanting to come, that would be great. It is a really great experience to see our staff and how they partner with other vendors to help the community. And that's all I have. Thank you. Commissioner Karwoski. Thank you, Madam Chair. Hey, I wanted to mention I'm not at the board meeting in person. I'm in my hotel room, but I'm attending in Toronto the MPact, which stands as an annual transit conference. I arrived yesterday on Monday. I'll be leaving early Thursday morning. Really here to observe how we could possibly be open-minded about any opportunities, make the goal line better or any transit opportunities that could come into play in the county, and it's kind of a multimodal approach, everything from walking the trails to modes of transportation.

So, for disclosure, I'm in Toronto, Canada. But since our last board meeting, I met with new Oakdale City Administrator, Kelly Bourgeois. I think I pronounced that right. It's a name I'll be working on, but I think I'm pretty close there. Had a great meeting just kind of bringing... She has been a city administrator, and assistant administrator, but not involved with our county. So just kind of bringing her up to speed on what the county's doing, where we're partnering with Oakdale, how we can work together moving forward. So very good meeting. Attended a virtual, Commissioner Bigham was with me, and Wayne Sandberg. It was a metro county TAB, members of the TAB board in the metro county. We were discussing the greenhouse gas laws, and it kind of centered around a hopeful project to get money as 36 at 120 and how you apply credits to that. I know our board chair, Bigham, has spent a lot of time working with the legislatures on improving those laws, but it was at least a good meeting to get everybody on the same page as we work through the upcoming federal solicitation of federal funds.

Attended an Oakdale Chamber monthly luncheon. I always present there. I presented largely on our upcoming levy and budget. Attended virtual NACO RAC, which is the Rural Action Caucus. It was one of their monthly meetings, participated in that. Had a MICA, the Minnesota Inter-County Association board meeting. There, what was special about the meeting was Vice Chair of Taxes, Ways, and Means for the state legislature, Gomez, was there. It's always good to get firsthand, in-live-person discussion with tax vice chair and had a good discussion, a good opportunity for MICA to make a good, favorable impression. And then lastly, one of the highlights for me since the last board meeting was in District 2 down in Woodbury, there was a community where there was a wellness event where the county plays a large role with some of our partners. I briefly mentioned it earlier, where all sorts of our services are in the community to expose families on how to possibly use our services to better their life.

That's all I have, Madam Chair. All right. I'm going to be very brief. I attended JJEC, two or three meetings on raising the age of delinquency implementation. I attended the statewide BCA work group that I'm on that really focused on forensic navigators, which is probably another topic that will be facing us here in the near future. Attended the Great River Rail meeting. That's coming along as far as the strategic plan agreement. And then, as was mentioned, the ribbon cutting for 58th and had a meeting with MnDOT Representative Kraft in Anoka County. Also, it's a tricky thing having some remote access here, and I just want to give a shout-out to David Born and Josh Knudle for running the tech today. That's really appreciated. And finally, it is voting registration day today and early voting starts on Friday. And so Administrator Corbid, I think you maybe have a long-anticipated PSA video that we want to see.

Madam Chair and commissioners, thank you. I forgot to mention this in my administrator's report, but following a June 23rd board workshop on election security, the board had requested the creation of a short video about Washington County election security. We partnered with Tru Lens Community Media, and it's a short three-minute video. It's now available to be shared on our county website and with the community and social media. So with your permission, we'd like to show that just briefly so you can see it prior to the broader sharing of that video. Awesome. Thank you. Hi, I'm Abby Fischer with Washington County Elections. One of the questions we hear most often is: How do I know my vote is secure? This question is top of mind for many voters, and the answer is simple. Election security is built into every step of the voting process, from the people who run the elections to the equipment we use and the procedures we follow.

Election security starts with people. Washington County employs thousands of local community members to serve as bipartisan election judges. All election administration employees and election judges receive extensive training on election laws, security procedures, and emergency preparedness to ensure every election is conducted accurately and fairly. Detailed emergency plans help ensure our election officials can respond quickly to unexpected situations while maintaining essential election operations. Election judges don't work alone. Bipartisan teams handle critical tasks together, from issuing ballots and helping voters, to processing election materials, to providing checks and accountability throughout the process. We also work closely with the Minnesota Secretary of State's office, law enforcement, and other local, state, and federal partners to help ensure our elections remain safe, secure, and prepared. Before anyone can vote in Minnesota, they must register and attest under penalty of law that they meet all eligibility requirements, including US citizenship. Paper ballots are the foundation of Minnesota's secure election system. They create a permanent record of every vote.

From the time they are printed until the election is certified, ballots are carefully tracked and handled through a chain of custody. Every ballot follows a documented process. Whether a voter casts a ballot in person or by mail, the same commitment to accountability and accuracy applies. Every step is documented so there is a clear record showing how each ballot was handled and to ensure the integrity of the election process. Before any votes are counted, every tabulator undergoes both a preliminary accuracy test and a public accuracy test to verify it reads and tabulates ballots correctly. Both tests must be completed successfully before the equipment can be used. Throughout the election, security seals, documented procedures, and physical safeguards help protect our voting equipment and election materials. Washington County continues to invest in modern election equipment. New assistive voting devices improve accessibility, while additional ballot tabulators and upgraded electronic rosters increase efficiency, enhance consistency across polling places, and support future growth.

Washington County is committed to conducting elections that are secure, transparent, and accurate, which doesn't end when the polls close. After every state general election, a post-election audit is required. Election officials hand count paper ballots and compare results to the voting machine counts for a final verification of accuracy. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about how we protect your vote. We look forward to serving you this election season. Learn more at washingtoncountymn.gov. Thank you, Madam Chair and Commissioners. That is fantastic. So well done. Thank you to our partners at True Lens as well, but fantastic. And that's, I believe, everything that the board had hoped for to have reflected in that video. So thank you. So we are on to board correspondence. There are two items. The Moody's rating letter, which again is AAA for those keeping track, and then the review of Clifton Larson Allen's audit for Washington County. These documents are available to be viewed by commissioners here at the dais.

Just see the clerk, and we'll be able to get you a copy. The next item is for an executive closed session regarding public works. And I'm going to read the statement here so that we're in compliance. The next item on the agenda is listed as an executive closed session to review an appraisal and discuss potential offers to purchase real property located at PID 34.030.20.33.0114 for inclusion into the Washington County Government Center campus. Pursuant to Minnesota Statute Section 13D.05, Subdivision 3C, this meeting may be closed to the public. At this time, I would entertain a motion to move into closed session to discuss this agenda item. So moved. Second. Moved by Commissioner Miron, seconded by Commissioner Cox, and this would have to also be a roll call. So the clerk will take the roll. Commissioner Miron? Aye. Commissioner Karwoski? Aye. Commissioner Cox? Aye. Commissioner Clausen? Aye. Commissioner Bigham? Aye. Motion passes five zero. All right. So that passes. We will now take a 12-minute break here and be in closed session.