Meeting Details: The Board of County Commissioners met in person at 9:30 AM on February 14, 2023. The meeting was held at the Geauga County Administration Building, 12611 Ravenwood Drive, Room B303, Chardon, OH. This meeting was in person only and there was no link to a recording.
Attendance: Commissioners James Dvorak, Timothy Lennon and Ralph Spidalieri were present, as were Commissioner’s Clerk Christine Blair, County Administrator Gerard Morgan and Finance Director Adrian Gorton.
County Representatives: Shane Hajir, Engineer’s Dept., Glen Vernick, Maintenance Dept., Shawna Myers, Probation Dept., Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand, Jessica Boalt, Office on Aging, Elaine Malkamaki, Program Coordinator, Department of Community and Economic Development, Nicholas Gorris, Water Resources, Charles Walder, Auditor, Frank Antenucci, Chief Deputy Administrator for Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and in the public, Geauga Public Health Administrator Adam Litke.
The meeting began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer led by Mr. Dvorak.
Minutes: none were presented for approval. Reviewer Comment: As of February 14, 2023, minutes are posted on the BOCC website through December 20, 2022.
Report from County Administrator - Mr. Morgan reported on a resignation in the Department of Aging and approval of a service contract to supply first aid supplies up to $10,000.
Finance Report: Mr. Gorton reported the following:
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Cash transfer for the Transit Department (reimbursement for grants)
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Encumbrances for travel for Engineers office, Common Pleas and Job and Family Services (JFS)
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Then and Now for Emergency Services for fuel expenses for 2022
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Voucher for $50,011 auditor’s office to Integrity Appraisal services for 2023 re-valuation
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Revenue Certification for additional funds received for Common Pleas (federal grant) and Transit, for additional funds to be received
The Commissioners’ Office received approval from BOCC to amend the motion from January 31, 2023 to correct the dollar amount to read: approve and authorize the President of the Board to execute the Request for Partial Payment #26 for Donley’s Independence, LLC for the Geauga County Office Building for GMP Phase #1 and Phase #2 in the amount of $412,963.04. (prior amount of $421,963.04 contained a typo)
The Juvenile/Probate Court received approval to execute Resolution #23-020 Proclaiming November 2022 “National Adoption Month” and February 17, 2023 as “Geauga County Adoption Day.” It was also stated that the Commissioners were invited to attend the adoptions on February 17 to read the proclamation.
The County Engineer’s Office received approval to execute Resolution #23-021 to Order the Asphalt Resurfacing of Morgan Road (CH-0026) and Leggett Road (CH-0033, Sections D-E) in Montville Township and Asphalt Resurfacing of Old State Road (CH-0006, Section A) and Farmington Road (CH-0018, Sections A-C) in Parkman Township. For both the Bid Opening will be on Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 2:00 p.m. Notice of this Bid Opening will be advertised on February 16, 2023 and on the County website.
The Department on Aging approved the Retirement Resignation of Peggy Peters, Food and Services Aide (#1031) to be effective March 6, 2023. They also received approval for the following:
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increase to the number of positions for Full-time Recreation and Education Assistant (#1005) from five to six positions and revise the Organizational Chart to reflect this change effective February 14, 2023.
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advertise for two (2) positions of Full-time Recreation and Education Assistant (#1005) internally for a period of five days with applications accepted from February 21, 2023 through 4:30 p.m. on Monday, February 27, 2023, if no qualified candidates are found, the positions will then be advertised externally until the positions are filled.
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abolish the position of Food and Services Aide (#1031) and revise the Organizational Chart to reflect this change effective March 7, 2023.
The Department of Development (Community & Economic) received approval to award the Bid to Kangas Realty Investors, LLC for the Camp Ho Mita Koda Cabin Winterization project (Re-Bid) under Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Grant #B-F-21-1AZ-1 in the amount of $58,800.00 as they represented the lowest and best bid.
The Maintenance Department received approval for the following:
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to execute the service Contract Agreement with Fire Protection Solutions, LLC to perform Inspections, Maintenance, and Repairs on Sprinkler Systems at various Geauga County Buildings as per the Maintenance Director for a three-year period, effective February 14, 2023 in an amount not to exceed $20,000.00.
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to execute the service Contract Agreement with E Technologies to provide Inspections and Maintenance on Geauga County UPS Units for a two-year period, effective February 14, 2023 in an amount not to exceed $48,000.00 ($35,000.00 for County Offices and $13,000.00 for the Safety Center).
Mr. Lennon noted the filter on the UPS Unit appears to need to be cleaned already.
Transit Department received approval to execute the Locally Funded Services Agreement and Business Associate Agreement between Geauga County Transit, Geauga County Board of Commissioners, and the Geauga County Board of Developmental Disabilities for transportation services for the period January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023.
The Department of Water Resources received approval to execute the service Contract Agreement with Workman Industrial Services, Incorporated to perform Emergency rehabilitation and improvements as needed at various wastewater locations within the department for a one-year period, effective February 14, 2023 in an amount not to exceed $15,000.00.
The Commissioners’ Office requested that the Board acknowledge receipt and accept the resignation of Jennifer Malainy from the Board of Mental Health and Recovery Services to be effective February 8, 2023. This was approved. Clerk Blair noted that this appointment was until June 30th in case the Commissioners wanted to appoint an interim. No motion was made for an interim but Mr. Dvorak did ask that the Commissioners advertise that there was an opening. Ms. Blair stated that Boards were taken off the Commissioners’ website when the new website was implemented.
ADP Presentation - Mr. Walder and Mr. Antenucci provided details of their 2023 Budget requests that were not included by Commissioners in the 2023 permanent appropriations. They reported that these items were present during the March/April budget process and included capital equipment and in-kind services. Observer Note: As reported in the December 6, 2022 LWVG Observer Report, during his presentation of 2023 Permanent Appropriations, Mr. Gorton reported $1,162,104 of previously approved ADP expenses as “pending” department requests. Mr. Gorton indicated these items may come before the Commissioners in the new year as supplemental requests. As reported in the January 19, 2023 LWVG Observer Report, $242,000 for additional cyber, network and support staff was approved by BOCC. This presentation details the remaining unfunded ADP expenses.
Capital Expenditures:
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Items 1 thru 5 - replacing 2 existing firewalls, switches, and other equipment and cabling, as well as Cisco domain services part of this is for the County home which we didn't expect to have to do.
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Items 7 thru 19 - This is for 8 out-of-service servers (in various locations) which are out of date.
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Item 20 - Gatekeeper keys (to generate longer passwords and provide employees with simple code). Initially, 120 were bought and given to various employees to try. Now about 600 more are needed to complete the county.
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Item 21 - Voice routers in various buildings need to be replaced as they are obsolete and out of service.
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Item 22 - Cost to move to cloud-based back-ups; need to go to full cloud, which is being slowly implemented. Tape back-ups will be gradually going away.
Mr. Walder also noted that if the courthouse project goes forward, they will need more money in their budget as that is not in their budget right now.
In answer to the question of how much will be required going forward, Mr. Walder said that it would probably be about 60% of this amount for capital. Servers are the most costly. They would like to reduce the number of servers from 200 down to 120. It is unknown what the expense would be for the new courthouse project, as they haven’t seen the new plan yet.
Mr. Walder said that every year there will be capital expenditures because as servers and other equipment reach the end of their lifespan, they need to be replaced.
ADP had anticipated that 470 Center St. (prior office space) would not be utilized at this point, but it is being used on both sides of the Center street location for the Board of Elections and Office on Aging. They signed with Spectrum for that building and were grandfathered through December 2022 but are not sure how long they will get grandfathered for these offices. An additional site is coverage for the County Home, which was not supposed to be in use at this point, but is now being used by the Maintenance Dept.
Mr. Spidalieri expressed frustration that 470 Center is being used by the Board of Elections. He wanted to know why they hadn't moved. Mr. Morgan stated that they are working on a mediated agreement. (Observer Note: There has been ongoing litigation between the parties concerning the space allocated by the County in the new office building.)
Mr. Lennon thanked them for “walking through this with me.” . . . He continued that this is the big step, as a capital project to go forward.
Mr. Walder explained that Capital is different, servers are going to go and that’s the bulk of this so there will always be capital expenses, but it is the contract service work which will end up reducing the capital services because of fewer servers.
He pointed to the next page of his presentation to the Commissioners which was the request for contract services. Capital expenses were reduced from $577,00 to $517,000. The same thing happened to contract services. The ADP request was for $460,000 for contract services and they got only a small amount for this.
Walder explained that the contract services are centering around all things cyber and moving systems to cloud based. The most dominant expense is switching to cloud-based. Walder said that the county will have to invest another $150,000 to move to the cloud, but then will be able to eliminate 8 servers. He said that it won’t take servers to zero, but it will cut down significantly. He suggested that this is why you have to look at both together - capital and contract services.
He pointed to Crowdstrike, which currently resides on the end-use workstations and that looks for nefarious activity. That’s in place now. He said that the expense of this won’t go away because you have to do it every year.
Mr. Lennon said that the budget over the last two years has increased for ADP. The question asked was how much more would need to be spent in 2024-2025. Mr. Walder said, “I think we're at the summit.”
Mr. Lennon wanted to know an estimated dollar amount going forward and number of employees.
Mr. Antenucci answered that it was likely to be $3 million going forward, with potentially 14 employees.
Lennon, “I think this has been underinvested for years.” He said they are playing catch up at this point and having to put a larger investment. He asked about the possibility of using ARPA funds. Mr. Walder said it would be better to use ARPA for the safety force salaries, and then what they don’t use for salaries would go back into the general fund. To use ARPA for IT they would have to go through federal procurement procedures and that hasn’t been done and could take months. Mr. Walder said that they could use the ARPA funds, but they would have to vet everything.
Mr. Dvorak seemed to conclude the presentation by saying, “Thanks for coming in. It’s been a long time coming to update. We appreciate it.”
There was no motion to approve any of these expenses in the presentation.
Not on the Agenda - Commissioner Dvorak brought up the issue of safety in the County Building and asked the commissioners to consider allocating a safety officer from the Sheriff’s Department to the County building to monitor security. He spoke with Prosecutor Flaiz, who said they did not need a formal MOU (Memorandum of Understanding).
Mr. Lennon wanted clearly defined job descriptions. It was noted that there are 160 cameras but that no one is viewing them.
Sheriff Hildenbrand confirmed that they are ready to assign an officer and that that person could rotate from their regular Court detail. He assured the Commissioners that they would make sure the person assigned was occupied during the shift which, if extended from 8-5 pm might require a second person assigned.
It was suggested that the Deputy could monitor the camera, answer the phone (once installed) and do reviews of the building.
Mr. Spidalieri had several questions and wanted a more complete plan for all the county buildings before going forward with this one position.
The question of whether there should be a metal detector was left to another discussion, but it was agreed that Mr. Morgan should go ahead to work out the details with the Sheriff’s department and present to the Board.
Public Comment - Not on the Agenda and none offered.
More Information and Posted Minutes: Available on BOCC website
Next Meeting: Thursday (due to holiday on Monday) February 23, 2023 at 9:30 am
Observer: Gail Roussey
Editor: Anne Ondrey
Reviewer: Shelly Lewis
Submitted 2/15/2023
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