OK, it's 5 o'clock. We call the May 21, 2025 special meeting of the Berley County Commission to order. First item is roll call members. commissioner Bakke. Uh, Commissioner Schwab, Commissioner Woodcock, Commissioner Munson and Chairman Benner. Here. Uh, next, there's only 2 items on the agenda. There's a special meeting. First is consideration of submitting a petition to the governor to remove auditorer responses cos. You have in front of you the packets, um, information relative to that at the back of the packet. Yeah. Any questions or comments? In regards G's attorney lawyer, did you want um weigh in on any items that work? Um, just for everyone's information, the things provided in the packet regarding this item, I did include the century code that applies to um filing a petition for removal by the governor. I would point out that it says that it's a petition by the public or a petition filed by the state's attorney. It doesn't say that it has to be independent state's attorney's decision. I don't go. Around checking to make sure all elected officials are doing their jobs and then trying to dig up evidence to show that they're not to remove them from the governor, just like any other report that comes in our office, um, report comes in, information comes in, it's reviewed by our office and if we believe there's enough there to move it forward in the process to the next step, that's what happens. And so in this case. It was brought to my attention that there were multiple items, um, going on that showed that the auditor treasurer was engaging in, um, misconduct and or, um, gross incompetence and or, um, malfeasance. And so with the information that I reviewed, I did prepare a petition because there is criteria that meets that. And um the petition that I prepared is the one that was in the packet for your review to ensure that um there wasn't anything else that needed to be included or that I had overlooked from the information that had been provided, um. That's the information that I have and so it did come from commissioners and from other department heads and so that is why I prepared that. So I'm open to uh what we do from here, but a petition is prepared and um I did include the entry code so that you could see what the next steps are. This isn't a one and done process. Once a petition is filed, it has to be filed to the attorney General's office, who then will investigate the matter to determine if they believe there is an. There to move it up and through the process. If they do believe there is enough information through their investigation that there is support to believe that there's been misconduct or malfeasance or gross incompetence, then there's a recommendation to the governor to Appoint a special commissioner and then have a hearing. If the attorney General doesn't believe there's enough there to warrant that hearing, then the Attorney General will make a recommendation that the governor deny the petition, and it's done there. If the governor does appoint a special commissioner, then a hearing is held where evidence, testimony is presented, and that special commission. would break a recommendation to the governor. The governor can then um go based on the summary of evidence presented by the special commissioner with their recommendation or have a transcript prepared and review the entire hearing and evidence himself before he makes that decision. This is a multi-step process, and this would just be the first step in that process. Sure. B. Um, Julia, is there a scenario where It moves through the investigation and the commission has a point where they could stop the proceedings or once it's in motion, it's in motion. So once a position's filed to the attorney General, then it's out of our hands. It's up to the attorney general then. I mean you could provide input if you want, but it's not your decision anymore. Thank Uh, can we make adjustments to this? They're minor. Yes, that's what it's for is for you to review it and see if I've missed anything or if there's. On page 3, number 9 at the top it says Bokowski is responsible investment in Bertie County funds is delayed investing incoming funds and has or has not properly invested in Bertie County funds only in a loss of investment revenue to Bernie County and other government area. I want. I want to discuss whether we should add a a a Amount in there. I, I would consider when I thought it was over a million dollars that has been lost. Should we add that in in over for discussion? Should we add that in or just leave it the way it is? To me that's one of the most important things that we've been dealing with in the last whatever is lots of taxpayer dollars. Mr. Chair, if I can, Commissioner, state's attorney lawyer, is there a way to Prove the dollars in what Commissioner Woodcox is is saying. So that may be difficult because it is speculative as to, you know, looking back in hindsight, if we had gone this way, it would have done this. We kind of have to look at what the options were at the time, um, and so. Any dollar specific dollar amount would be speculative and so that's why I did not include a dollar amount. Um, the other reason for that is there isn't anything in century code that says it doesn't count until there's a certain dollar amount and um. Putting in that dollar amount kind of paints you into a corner as to you have to prove that amount, um, and so that's why it was left open like that. Yeah, that's what I thought, and I, I, I do believe that the investigation then would include all those conversations with the finance department that has all those records and, and has compiled all that information for. That was that was my next question. If they do the investigation like it should be done according to what I'm thinking, uh, this doesn't make any difference other than it's in there, but no dollar amounts on it. I, I think that will leave it in there, be part of me that they will do a pretty. Extensive investigation, I assume. Um, well, the intent is if this gets filed with the attorney General's office, then all the supporting documentation from which the petition was generated would also go to the Attorney General's office, and the plan also is to make sure that that's scanned in and sent to um the IT department so they can post that online as well. So anything filed with the attorney General's office would be available through the county website as well. I without changing. Any other questions or comments, missions. So I guess my question would be for the state's attorney, what action do you actually need from us? This is your your call to move forward um. Is that a consensus or a motion in order or? Well, the, as I indicated, the initial um information was brought forward by the commission. The commission was the one that um requested looking into pursuing this avenue, so the question is, does the commission still want to pursue this avenue? You're asking for. motion to proceed or not proceed, right? Yes, to the. Second, the motion is second to proceed in further discussion. Anybody have any timeline on how much long does this take? So once it's filed with the attorney General, the attorney General has 30 days within which to conduct that investigation and make a recommendation to the governor, so that that second step would take 30 days from the date of filing. Personally, I have faith in the state's attorney lawyer. If she has done the research and feels is appropriate, then I would support them. Any other comments or questions? I see no follow. Commissioner, what? This is a special meeting of the Burley County Commission. Where does it give the authority, lawyer, for them to do this? This is not a public hearing. This is not a. Commissioner Wilcox. Yes, Commissioner Munson, Yes, Commissioner Bakin, Commissioner Schwab, yes, and Chairman Bitner. Yes, motion carries. Next item on the agenda. Discussion on preliminary resolution for the redesignation of a product or treasurer. For the benefit of us taxpayers, when you folks mind speaking up a little bit, please? Sure, thank you, thank you. The next item is discussion on preliminary resolution for the redesignation of auditor treasurer. You have information in your packets. We've had a lot of conversations about that. what are your thoughts, unless state's attorney wants to weigh in right away? Um, well, I did have to correct something from the last meeting, so I did include in your packet regarding this issue. Um, I did include the century code for home rule counties which is Chapter 11-09.1, and also the county officer combination separation and redesignation, which is Chapter 11-10.2. Um, I would point out that under the Home Rule Counties statute under Section 1109.105, subsection 6, the Home Rule Charter has to provide for county elected and appointed officers and employees. Um, it can provide for selection, powers, duties, qualifications, compensation, and then it says, um. After adoption of a home rule charter, a county elected office may not be eliminated or combined with another office except um upon approval of a majority of the electors of the county voting upon a question at a primary or general election or pursuant to the county officer combination separation or redesignation procedures in Chapter 11-10.2, which is what we're operating under Chapter 11-10.2. Um, under 11-10.2, it does allow the um county commission by adopting a resolution and then holding public hearings or disseminating information in another manner to combine or separate offices and in this, um, I was asked um to draft a different preliminary resolution separating the elective office of County Auditor and treasurer to the elective office of auditor and appointed office of treasurer and uh Office of County Administrator and Office of Tax Equalization. Under that, This plan, um, you can redesignate the offices and restructure the offices during the term. I had said you couldn't, um, at the last meeting I said you couldn't change the duties during the term. You can, so long as the changing of the duties doesn't shorten the term or reduce the salary of the sitting. Officers. So, um, this preliminary resolution that I did draft, I left in the effective date of April 1, 2027 because that was the effective date of the last one. I didn't change that, but that can be changed because the redesignation can occur at any time, again, so long as you're not shortening the term or reducing the salary. Um, I know there was talk at the, uh, it's not just salaries for compensation, um, I believe so, yeah. So, um, I did take into account the comments that were made the last time we discussed this preliminary resolution. There was some concern about having that county administrator in. I know the commission has been talking about adding an office of county administrator for quite some time, so it's in as an option. Um, it does, it's there if you want to use it right away. It's there if you want to use it at a later date so that it's built into this plan so that it's available if the county ever does decide to adopt a county administrator. Um, and what I did to change that is under the um resolved issues. It is the um the first result says that effective April 1st, 2027, which again can be changed and in accordance with the with the details of the following plan, the office of the Burley County Auditor Treasurer be separated into officers of auditor and treasurer, and the county commission may, if deemed necessary. Very inappropriate at the Office of County Administrator at any time thereafter and then resolved that effective April 1, 2027, the positions of treasurer and county administrator, if authorized, shall be hired physicians with minimum qualifications as recommended by Human resources director and approved by the county commission and resolved that effective April 1, 2027, the Office of Tax Equalization shall have separate staff from the auditor, treasurer, and county administrator offices. Um, included with that preliminary resolution, I did draft a preliminary plan, um, to discuss how the, the jobs would be or the offices would be separated as to job duties. It is, um, pretty generic in what the duties are. It just says that the non-financial statutory duties of the county auditor shall be retained by the auditor. And then the office of the treasurer shall be assigned all statutory duties of the treasurer and all remaining financial duties of the auditor, including primary management for all banking and cash management operations, investments collecting, receiving, and dispersing of county funds, and then the and then the office of County administrator may be created and filled by the county commission if and when deemed necessary by the county commission. um, the county or the Office of County Tax equalization shall be separated from that of the county auditor and treasurer. And then it goes on to say what they're directly responsible for, um, that's available to the public to look at the whole thing, and then if the preliminary resolution and plan is adopted, it would be published, um, like the last one was published. I also, um, after I had kind of adopted or I'm sorry, drafted the preliminary resolution, the draft one from the last meeting that we had, I did send out an email to all of the affected departments asking them for input as to um how they had their organization set up, what employees they would need, and if this plan were adopted, what employees would they need going forward, and the information they provided is what I included in the packet as well. Um, the first one that I had was from the, um, auditor's office, and that was the only one that indicated there would be, there would need to be a change in their office structure obviously because that's the primary one that's being separated. Um, the main concern it seemed from the auditor's office was that during election season they would likely have to hire more election workers as it stands now during election season since the auditor treasurer offices are combined and the Office of Tax Equalization is under um kind of combined with that, they are a separate office, but they share staff and so during election process, all of that staff is utilized to handle like the incoming mail-in ballots, um. And the questions that come in and so they rely heavily on all of the staff from all three of those offices to handle elections. And so with the split of that office and the estimated retention of 3 employees in the auditor's office, they have to hire significantly more election staff to assist with the elections every other year. Um, one of the things that I know the auditor's office does is when they are When they are kind of um feeling the pressure from a lot more ballots coming in and needing to process um some of those things, they have sent out requests to the other departments if people have time to come over and assist, and I know our office has sent people over to help assist, and so I imagine that would continue and then as departments um have availability. could be utilized from other departments to help with that, but I agree that they would have to hire um more temporary election workers during that time to cover that loss. So that information is included under the um auditor's packet which goes through all the um job descriptions. He included copies of all the job descriptions of all the employees that he said. Right now, um, the next one was from the, uh, the finance director's office, um, where he kind of broke down what their duties are and how he foresees things going with that. And then, um, we also got information from the tax equalization office where they don't foresee any change in any of their staff. And so what I did put in that plan was that um The county commission would continue to provide necessary staff, office space, equipment necessary to perform the functions as required by each of the offices. And I did put down the staff needed for daily operations for each department is, and then I based that on the information provided by each of the departments. So when the auditor sent in auditor sent in his information regarding what the auditor's office would need, he indicated that he would need, um. An executive assistant elections coordinator, which is slash, so that's one person, an administrative assistant and an accountant along with the auditor, so he believed that there would be the auditor and 3 supporting staff. But since the plan calls for all non-financial duties to be at a separate office, I didn't believe that there would be a need for an. in the auditor's office since they're not handling any of the financials anymore. So in the plan, I just put the um county auditor executive assistant elections coordinator and then the administrative assistant because for the plan, I, I didn't believe they'd need an accountant so that may need to be changed depending on what the commission believes as well um and then for the county treasurer office I used the information from the auditor treasurer. At this time too, based on who they've got employed because their office is doing those duties and so he indicated that the treasurer's office would require an administrative assistant, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and at least an accountant one or two along with the treasurer. So I did indicate for the office of the county treasurer that there would be the treasurer, a deputy treasurer, and I Accountant 1 or 2, an accounting technician, and an administrative assistant, and that would be um 3 people for the county auditor's office and 5 people for the county treasurer's office. Right now, the combined auditor treasurer's office has 7 employees and with the addition of a county treasurer to divide those duties, it would be 8 employees between those two offices. Um, the Office of Tax Equalization I put exactly as what they have now, which was the 4 employees, the tax equalization director, senior appraiser, and appraiser 1 or 2, and then for the Office of County Administrator, I just put down the county administrator. Um, I'm not sure what um staffing would look like for that office in the future, but again, I did indicate that the county administrator will be directly responsible for coordinating and overseeing day to day activities of the county pursuant to the direction of. The county commission and the county commission will provide necessary staff office space and equipment necessary because it is anticipated that as the county continues to grow, staffing needs may need to grow as well. So this is just what the plan is now. Obviously as the need arises, more staff need to be added if the county grows and more duties need to be um done by each of the offices, um, as it has continued in the past. This allows for that expansion as well. So that's the explanation regarding the preliminary resolution and plan that's in the packets. Um, one thing we learned from the, the public hearings was a lot of people were concerned about whether we were going to keep the auditor elected or or appointed, and under this program, the auditor will remain elected. Is that am I correct in that? That is correct. Is that the duties will be changed. Correct. OK, thank you. So the changing of the duties basically would just happen with this effective date. So if we change the effective date instead of April 1st, 2027, you said, June 1st. 2025. So there isn't any time frame within which you have to operate other than the notices that have to go out, so the, the plan and the preliminary resolution have to be um published for two consecutive weeks in the newspaper, and then um it requires that there be public hearings or meetings to disseminate information and discuss the plan with the public, and then an adoption of a final resolution. So it just depends on how many of those um public hearings I know we've had extensive ones before, but those were focused that you want to have. on whether to redesignate that office as an appointed office instead of elective. And so um I would, even if you want to do it at your regular commission meetings, I would um suggest that you have some of those um public hearings so that you can disseminate information and take information from the public regarding this new plan, um, but yes, um. June 1st is not realistic because that's only 2 weeks, right? And so I would suggest that you send it out um a couple months, um, just so that you have time to do that. Um, again, during this time frame, you can always adjust and amend and um modify your preliminary resolution before you adopt it as a final resolution. So as you're moving forward, that date could also change depending on how long or how short it's taking. Mr. Chair, and you know, the original, um. You know, through the public hearing process on the original resolution. Um, spent a lot of time thinking about the this plan as an option. My concern is, what does, if we adopt the new resolution. What does the candidate look like for the auditor? Who will be willing to go through the election process and Take the auditor's job at, call it 60 or $55,000 a year. Because we're not paying the auditor, the same that we pay the auditor treasurer, that'll change. So my concern for our citizens, even though the citizens want this to stay elected, my concern for the citizens are, what is that? Individual look like? What is that individual who is going to want that job for that pay? And will we hurt our community by Keeping it elected. I, I'm, I'm on the fence both ways. I just wanna make sure we really, and I want the residents to think about this, that if we get nobody, uh, if, if we get nobody to, to apply for this job, to run for the election, we're gonna appoint anyway. Yeah, If, if nobody runs for the election, we have to make sure somebody who's qualified. We'll find somebody. Don't you worry. And, and honestly, I appreciate that because that as a commissioner that is my biggest concern that if, if, if we create this new position that stays elected, what, what are we what are we getting for that candidate? And uh Charles, I've got enough. I have the floor, and I'd appreciate to keep the floor. OK. So that's my concern. I'm, I, I am definitely afraid of the type of candidate that we would get or not get at all. Because I, I think some of our staff has paid that in that office, and they don't have to run for an election. Well, if I may, um, answer that question, maybe I can. Um, what I would suggest to is after, um, if you do decide to adopt this plan, then obviously we'll have to write up a job description and then HR will have to run it through their whatever they run it through to determine what the appropriate salary is. But I will tell you that um people don't generally run for public office for the fee or for the money because a lot of us could be making a lot more money in the private sector and having a lot less stress than Dealing with a public position, so we do it for other reasons than the salary. OK. I appreciate it, Mr. Julie, with all these descriptions you went through, these were all vetted through HR as well, correct? Um, the job description, so, so what I did, yes, what I, what I did is I did send that also the email that I had sent asking for input. I also sent that to the HR department and they did send me the job description that had been developed for a county administrator and for the treasurer when they were when we were going through this before, um, they kind of adopted a a preliminary, um. Job description for each of those positions, and I did utilize that when putting this together as well. So she hasn't given me input on the exact verbiage of the plan, but I did use the information she provided putting it together. This is the basis for that was the basis for this. Correct. So in the simple function of just transferring like the financial duties to the finance department. That can't happen today under her anytime soon under this. The only way to change the statutory duties of an elected position is to go through this process. So there is no way you can take away any duties today and delegate them to someone else. Now again, as um as the department head, um, we do that I have a lot of staff that I delegate some of my work to a lot. because there's no way I can do it all myself. That's why we have a staff. So the um. The officer themselves can delegate some of those duties to other staff, um, but you can't force that delegation. At this point, you can redesignate the offices through this procedure that we're talking about now under Chapter 10-09.1, but um you can't. Modify any statutory duties outside of this. Procedure. We can certainly uh go through it and decide what we're going to do and make that public that we're on July 4th, whatever that might be, we're going to change this and move things when we. After our research, find out what we wanna do, so we would have to vote on this primary resolution resolution push that or push that forward, have it the published hearings again. So So it'd be a new, a new preliminary resolution. Yeah. I don't have any problem with them. Hey, commissioners, any additional comments or discussion. What your wishes. Mr. Sham, we've approved the preliminary resolution on separating the elective office of Bertie County Auditor, treasurer of auditor and appointed Office of Treasurer, Office of County Administrator, and Office of Tax Equalization as presented. Second time. I have a motion to second any further discussion. Seeing no Commissioner Woodcox. Yes, Commissioner Munson, Commissioner Bakin, Yes, Commissioner Schwab, yes, and Chairman Bittner. Yes, motion carries. There being no further items on the agenda, um, we are adjourned. Thank you, folks. I gave you guys