DAUPHIN COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
WORKSHOP MEETING
JUNE 6, 2007 10:00 A.M.

MEMBERS PRESENT

Jeff Haste, Chairman
Dominic D. DiFrancesco, II, Vice Chairman

ABSENT - George P. Hartwick, III, Secretary

STAFF PRESENT

Chad Saylor, Chief Clerk; Marie E. Rebuck, Controller; William Tully, Esq., Solicitor; Fred Lighty, Esq., Human Services Director's Office; Steve Howe, Director of Tax Assessment; Faye Fisher, Director of Personnel; Dave Schreiber, Personnel; Kay Sinner, Personnel; Leila McAdoo, Solicitor's Office; Randy Baratucci, Director of Purchasing; Mike Yohe, Director of Budget & Finance; Dan Eisenhauer, Administrator of MH/MR; Shirley Keith-Knox, Deputy MR Administrator; Brenda Hoffer, Commissioners' Office; Lena Martinez-Fure, Commissioners' Office; Diane McNaughton, Commissioners' Office; Scott Burford, Deputy Chief Clerk; Edgar Cohen, Director of Facilities Maintenance; Greg Schneider, Budget & Finance; and Richie-Ann Martz, Assistant Chief Clerk

GUESTS PRESENT

Reggie Sheffield

MINUTES

CALL TO ORDER

Mr. Haste, Chairman of the Board, called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m.

MOMENT OF SILENCE

Everyone observed a moment of silence.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Everyone stood for the Pledge of Allegiance.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Mr. Haste: We have two sets of Meeting Minutes that we will take up at next week's meeting.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Mr. Haste: We are at the point in time in the meeting for public participation. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to address the Board at this time? (There was none.)

DEPARTMENT DIRECTORS/GUESTS

1. Dan Eisenhauer, Director of MH/MR
   1. MR Plan

Mr. Eisenhauer: With me today is Shirley Keith-Knox, who has recently been hired as our Deputy Mental Retardation Administrator, replacing Ellie Myers. We are here to present a summary of the 2008/2009 Mental Retardation Annual Plan. We are always in a planning cycle that is one full fiscal year ahead of where we are in our budget process so that the department can get their planning numbers to the Governor's Office in advance of budget preparation. We are here to present just the summary of the Plan. You should have a full copy of the Plan with you. I wanted to run through a Power Point that we provided for you. The background for the planning that is important for us in the County office is that we are probably in the period of time of the most significant change in our Mental Retardation service deliveries systems since the Act of 1955. We are under increasing pressure from the Federal government, the Department of Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services who is putting direct pressure on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to fundamentally change the structure of Mental Retardation Waiver Funded Services. That directly impacts the relationship with the County. So, Page 2 is just a bunch of bullet points about the significant changes that CMS is requiring Pennsylvania to do, which those changes are now being down-streamed to the County level. First of all, the State Office of Mental Retardation changed their name this past February to the Office of Developmental Programs. You will hear us from now on refer to them as ODP. ODP established a standardized provider rate setting process. Basically counties across the Commonwealth had various approaches to how they would set rates with providers. CMS said that is no good and so the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania standardized the tool that all counties must use when we work with our providers. That was not necessarily a problem for us, but it was just a change. They also standardized training for support coordinators, service definition, etc. The County, as you know, has been asked to sign an actual waiver agreement, an Administrative Entity Agreement where we are actually on a contractual basis now with the Department for the administration and waiver funds. Before it was just an allocation, now it is a contract and an allocation. What we are experiencing now is a migration of duties under the Administrative Entity Agreement where the Commonwealth's position is to move towards them managing finances and budgets and contracts with providers and where counties are evolving into a monitoring role. The most significant issue about that is the last bullet, which is the plan that effective July 1, 2009, DPW will no longer be providing an allocation of funds to the counties in the Commonwealth for waiver funds and providers will directly bill the Department of Public Welfare and receive payment through the Treasury. That is a significant concern to us counties. We believe it fundamentally changes the nature of our relationship with providers and our ability to solve things on a local level. That is the background for the Plan document that we are presenting.

Mr. Haste: What positions are the providers taking?

Mr. Eisenhauer: At this point, most providers have valued the relationship that they had with Dauphin County. I can't speak for all the counties, but our providers have valued the relationship with Dauphin County. They are not looking forward to having to develop a financial relationship with the Commonwealth.

Mr. Haste: If all we are going to do is monitor or do quality assurance, which is another phrase I've used, why even sign that contract?

Mr. Eisenhauer: That is a decision that we will debating with your input over the next year or two.

Mr. Haste: They want it, why don't they just take it?

Mr. Eisenhauer: Again, as I said that is a question at this point. We believe there is a value in County involvement, but we can discuss that.

Mr. Haste: We should be in total control.

Mr. Eisenhauer: Correct.

Mr. Haste: On the other hand if it appears all they are going to do is muck it up a little bit more, I'm not sure why we would even want to be part of that.

Mr. DiFrancesco: I have really mixed emotions about this, because on one hand I really believe that centralizing the services and doing it at the State level with the right organizational structure that includes people who are actually providing the services and therefore knowing what happens when you start to move money, cut money, change the way we spend money. You can get a good service centralized, cheaper administrative costs and so forth, but what we have seen time again in most State run programs when funds are coming from the Federal and State governments decisions are made based on budget solely and really no interest is even shown to how those cuts will affect services on the street. More often than not the people suffer, the services suffer and in fact the services become more inefficient because bad decisions are being made at the administrative level. So, it would be great to sit here and say what a great idea this is, go Commonwealth, but the Commonwealth has not shown us any examples of where them taking something over has worked better. I have to agree if they are going to do it.

Mr. Haste: My most recent experience was at HATS, where they chose to take the maintenance funds for the Interstates and remove them from the local MPO's and put them into a Statewide pot that they could manage and mysteriously $80 million got loaned to SEPTA and Central Pennsylvania was left out.

Mr. Eisenhauer: I was part of a Committee that had to decide what we do with what little we have left among various competing interests.

Mr. DiFrancesco: I would really love to know where the Statewide Advocacy Groups stand, because again the providers that we work with might like us, but their counterparts in other counties might not like the counties that they are operating in. I would really like to hear from a Statewide Advocacy Group that sort of gets all the feedback from all the counties and see whether or not it is a good solution. Quite honestly, it is the people that they represent that are going to feel the brunt of this. We can look to see if services are being provided well, but once the State takes it over, we can write letters and we can argue, but that doesn't mean they are going to listen to us. Now we have full authority to basically make sure that the quality is there and make the appropriate changes if the quality is not.

Mr. Haste: Clearly there should be more dollars left if you centralize administration.

Mr. Eisenhauer: I'm not sure that is their intent at this point.

Mr. Haste: And it may not be. I'm just saying that there should be. If you think about it there should be. My only other concern would be is how those priorities are set, because as I said we just saw an example of transportation where because of who the Governor is monies got moved to a particular part of the Commonwealth at our expense. I would hate to see that same type of thing occur where we would actually lose dollars and services for our people, because of whoever may be calling the ultimate shot.

Mr. Eisenhauer: There are some legal issues. For one thing I wouldn't necessarily be sitting in front of you presenting an MR Plan two years from now, except that there is an Act that requires some level of County involvement. For us this is not a trivial issue. It challenges the MH/MR Act of 1966. It challenges and no one has yet rendered a legal opinion one way or the other about whether or not this Plan is a violation of the Act. Some people don't think so, but some people believe that it would even if it is not a violation of the Act it would fundamentally change certain structural parts and requirements of the County that remain in the Act that have not been able to sort through. From a business perspective, I agree that it would in some way make sense to regionalize or streamline administration as opposed to having 48 administrative entities, which is what there are right now in the Commonwealth; 48 different administrative entities to match services. On the other hand that is the trade off for local control and local decision making, is there are 48 entities that are managing funds. From an advocacy point of view, I can tell you that it is mixed. There are advocates that believe that counties have been an interference in procurement of services. And then there are other advocates that believe that counties play a valuable role. I guess my perspective is that it is easy at this point for counties to be the scapegoat for lack of funding. When we go through the Power Point you will see the waiting list and what that impact is and if I'm a family member who's currently going to a County and not getting my needs met then yes I'm unhappy with the county. But, there is nothing to say that when the State is holding the waiting list, my prediction is the advocates would then be unhappy with the Commonwealth.

Mr. DiFrancesco: But again, your point is that it brings me back to the whole waiver discussion that we had I guess last year where Dauphin County was using a little bit more flexibility than the Federal Government would care for us to use, but we were providing services in a much more efficient manner. Since that time what has been the jump in our waiting list for services.

Mr. Eisenhauer: Well, we have had an increase of 100 individuals in the emergency category.

Mr. DiFrancesco: What this Board has argued all along is that give us the same money, lock it down and say you are not going to get any more for whatever number of years, but give it to us in a block grant where we can use it to best serve our community. People with honestly true emergency needs go waiting until we can meet everybody else's needs that may be critical or not critical. It is really a foolish way for government to operate. In their efforts to make sure that the money is being spent appropriately once again they are hurting the people in need of services. It is very frustrating. It continues to shock me after three and a half years that levels of government do not communicate, do not interact, do not want to hear from another level of government.

Mr. Saylor: Commissioners, might I suggest that perhaps I work with Dan and maybe we can identify some folks to come in to a workshop meeting, maybe some Statewide advocates or maybe even someone from the Department of whatever it is called now to explain the thoughts behind this in advance of making a decision on the contract document.

Mr. Haste: I think it would be good. If you remember a couple years ago we chose not to follow their plan recommendation. They wanted a letter of support and I believe we did just the opposite. This is only for the MR side of your operation. Mental Health will stay as is. They are only carving out Mental Retardation.

Mr. Eisenhauer: We only learned of the Department's plan for the change in reimbursement in December. It is now June so approximately six months later the Department has produced no additional information about what that transition would look like and what the mechanics are behind that pronouncement other than providers will bill through the PA Treasury. There are many business practice issues that are just unanswered from the Department level. So, we as counties are not able yet to be in a position to predict the outcome. There is some belief that the Department, even though they are not providing an allocation to counties, they still want counties to participate in managing a theoretic allocation if you will. If you go to Page 3 of the Power Point you can see the three main, what we call categories of funding. We got State Allocated Base, Consolidated Waiver and Person/Family Directed Service Waiver (P/FDS). You can see the largest amount is Consolidated Waiver, $32 million of our $38 million. P/FDS Waiver is another $2 million. Those are the funds that are subject to this conversation. The base funds would theoretically still continue to go to the County. The Department at this point believes that it still needs the County's assistance to figure out how to distribute the waiver funds by contractual mechanism to providers somehow. Again, it is just not clear. It is two years away. They haven't given us much information. They haven't told us how this will work. They just said two years from now you're not getting an allocation. I'm just not in a position to be able to fully answer your questions about the impact yet, because we don't know.

Ms. Keith-Knox: I think that is also the issue with the advocacy organizations that there are so many changes that are occurring so very rapidly that we're pretty connected to what their feeling in those list serves and gathering that information. They are not saying yet so I think that there are so many changes that are occurring that perhaps they are not even at a point where they can make a determination as to whether or not they agree or disagree.

Mr. Haste: Or is this really just a change on who pays the check?

Mr. Eisenhauer: That's partly it.

Mr. Haste: If that is all it really is, it is not a big deal.

Mr. Eisenhauer: We are trying to have a balanced approach at this point to try to determine how upset we should be. I'm upset no matter what, because if we lose the direct ability to control $34 million of our $38 million I'm not sure how that is a good thing for us. At the end of the day.

Mr. Haste: If you still control it though and it is just a matter of who writes the check, maybe it's not a big deal.

Mr. Eisenhauer: I might be less concerned.

Mr. DiFrancesco: That would be a lot less concern if that were the case.

Mr. Eisenhauer: But, they haven't told us that. That is just a rumor that is out there. Again, they produced nothing in writing yet that says this is how it is going to work.

Mr. DiFrancesco: When does this decision have to be made?

Mr. Eisenhauer: I will be coming to you. You have already assigned the Administrative Entity Agreement for 2007/08, which this impact is not felt yet. But next year we will have to consider before next May whether or not the Commissioners will agree to sign.

Mr. Haste: This is to kick in when there will be a new administration too. It may kick in for six months and change in six months.

Mr. Eisenhauer: Correct. It would not surprise me at all if the Department announced a delay, because the Department has announced a delay in every single step of their basically 30-page Correction Action Plan that they submitted to CMS. They have experienced a delay in almost every single item on that list. It is possible that the administration can't pull off the mechanics that they need to do sort of behind the scenes to make this change effective July 1, 2009.

Mr. DiFrancesco: What are you hearing from your fellow directors across the Commonwealth?

Mr. Eisenhauer: At least half of them, what one County, Delaware County has already announced that they are more than willing to enjoin the Commonwealth in a lawsuit and they would take the lead. They would be interested in other counties joining their effort to prevent this change from occurring. Other administrators, that I have talked to, have said that they are interested in forming a coalition to not sign the administrative entity agreement if this change were to take place. Pretty much everybody is signing it for FY year 2007/08 because there is no change yet in funding. My advice to my peers was sign it now, but that is a different conversation next year. Next March, April and May we will have to think about whether or not we agree to administer a waiver if we don't get an allocation.

Mr. DiFrancesco: Who is taking the lead right now in communicating with the Department?

Mr. Eisenhauer: There is a group of MH/MR Administrators and CCAP. There is a leadership group of MH/MR Administrators that meet bi-monthly with the Department and CCAP representation.

Mr. DiFrancesco: Are they getting no feedback?

Mr. Eisenhauer: They are given the same feedback that I am.

Mr. DiFrancesco: What I'm saying are they getting nothing back from the Department in terms of what this is going to look like?

Mr. Eisenhauer: Correct. They get evasive or no answers or we'll have to look into that or yeah that is something that we have to work through.

Mr. DiFrancesco: That is a good thing if they are in fact opening people's eyes at this state and they are communicating real issues. That is good if they are going back and doing their homework. That is a wonderful thing, because that is what I continually criticize the State for is because I don't think they are listening. The policies that come down generally tend to be really bad in terms of practical application. Great in philosophy, we can save a lot of money with this, but if you apply it you get inefficiency and more spending.

Mr. Eisenhauer: There is a disconnect between their vision of what should happen and their operational capabilities at this point.

Mr. DiFrancesco: I'll give them a lot of credit if they are in fact listening to these directors in taking their input and then going back and adapting policies.

Mr. Eisenhauer: I wouldn't give them much credit.

Mr. DiFrancesco: I'm not going to criticize without a foundation to criticize so again as Jeff said this could be a whole lot of something or it could be a whole lot of nothing.

Mr. Eisenhauer: We don't know yet.

Mr. DiFrancesco: We need to identify that.

Mr. Eisenhauer: I think we covered what I have on Page 4 as to why this is happening. It is CMS pressure. Again, the disclaimer for Page 5, is we are asked to plan today for two fiscal years from now to the best of our ability. We believe that our requirements will increase under the Administrative Entity Agreement and therefore I am planning to have another staff person, because assuming that this will happen we will have an increased role and responsibility in the County compared to now. One of the problems with CMS is they said that Pennsylvania does not adequately monitor the provision of services and the State at this point would downstream that responsibility to the County office and it is a function that we don't currently provide. So, our plan includes one additional staff and then additional staff at our case management unit. They are currently operating with a too high in our opinion of a ratio between supervisors and case managers or supports coordinators and then everything that we do these days is data driven. The State defines MIS (Management Information System) and our data integrity needs to be essentially perfect and so that is the other request at the CMU is that they have a quality assurance specialist because our data has to be good. Page 6 is where our waiting list is as of April 2007.

Mr. Saylor: Can I just ask on Page 5, under CMU, staff ratio from 1:10 to 1:7?

Mr. Eisenhauer: Correct. The one supervisor is supervising 10 supports coordinators and if we hire one more we can reduce the ratio to a more manageable 1:7. Our waiting list data, as you can see, is not good. There are 171 individuals in emergency status, 305 in critical and 191 in planning. The only positive is the last bullet, which the Governor's Budget proposal for fiscal year 2007/08 included funds that would allow us to serve 93 people on the waiting list.

Mr. Haste: Wasn't that part of the closure deal?

Mr. Eisenhauer: No, that was just mental health. This is a new request in fiscal year 2007/08 for mental retardation expansion funds. It is in negotiation. I don't know what will happen.

Mr. DiFrancesco: The emergency number, the 171, what would have that been the way we were conducting business prior to?

Mr. Eisenhauer: I believe it would be half of that or less. The emergency number is 100 persons higher this year than last. In affect, what we have been able to do prior to the restriction to fully serve each individual is we could serve a lot of people and meet important needs even if we didn't give everybody everything that they asked for. We could really mitigate life circumstances for numerous individuals and families. Now, we have to fully serve everybody in the waiver of all of their needs. For instance, if they have a residential need and a day program need, we might have met their residential need, but felt like someone else, a recent graduate has an important need for a day program and we might have used the funds. Again, we're kind of looking across the board meeting the most peoples' needs as possible. Since we have been unable to do that our emergency waiting list has just skyrocketed. There has not been an increase in funds. So, our waiting list has just grown for the last three years. This 07/08 is the first real opportunity in three years to knock the waiting list down to something resembling what it was prior to the restrictions.

Mr. DiFrancesco: Again because of the strict nature of the Federal government's rules, emergency needs go unmet so we can meet the optional needs of people.

Mr. Eisenhauer: They are identified needs. They are not optional.

Mr. DiFrancesco: We don't know how to qualify it.

Mr. Haste: You either get all your needs met or you get nothing as opposed to getting 75% of you basic needs.

Ms. Keith-Knox: If you look at the 93 people those are not 93 people that will come off that will be new people for us. Some of that is people who are already receiving some services who have some unmet needs.

Mr. DiFrancesco: I'm just trying to clarify the difference between I don't know which categories, but the emergency needs tend to be very important issues. Persons going on the street, persons going wherever it might be as opposed to okay you have a safe comfortable place to live, but you want a day program. Both are important, but one is obviously much more extreme when someone is going to be out on the street and our hands are tied. Whereas before, maybe we were in violation of Federal rules, but we were serving our population much better and the money was being spent much more wisely.

Mr. Eisenhauer: That would be our opinion. This is where we are. Again, Page 7 is just a description of who we are asked to plan for in this plan budget. In the consolidated waiver, we are looking at students graduating who need residential supports. We are looking at an individual who is currently at a State center that we would like to return to Dauphin County. Then, we are looking at and again this is what Shirley just referenced the people that are in the waiver who are currently unserved or underserved. Then in the Person/Family Directed Support Waiver, we are looking at persons in emergency and critical categories, new graduates from high school and with an increased focus on employment. Our EPSDT Age Out is a person who is a teenager now who needs to return to Dauphin County. We have to make a specialized plan for that individual. Page 8, the summary of funding is $6,990,000, which is what we estimated it would cost to meet those needs. Besides that we have some additional challenges and that is reflected on the last Page. As evidenced by the waiting list, just the demand for service just continues to far exceed service availability. We do have issues with our infrastructure. We have recruitment and retention issues. Again, while this $7 million is not a small amount of funding by any means, but we still are lagging in our ability to pay what I call "competitive wages" to our line staff. The other concern is that if all of the changes that ODP announced carry forward, providers will have an increased risk. Right now Dauphin County is able to pay providers real expenses. If we move to a pure fee for service system there is an increased risk to providers that not all of their expenses will be met under the Commonwealth's plan for payment. Again, it is just too early to know what that means. Are there any questions?

Mr. DiFrancesco: How is our community in terms of options for mentally retarded children of family members who are much older that when the parents are either unfortunately going to pass or can no longer handle, what are the options for that parent to make sure that sibling or spouse has adequate housing to protect them when nobody else is around from the family to protect them?

Mr. Eisenhauer: The first answer that I know is that we do have some base funds. We have what we call a respite home. That is our primary option, but I'll let Shirley talk about more how we try to meet people's needs.

Ms. Keith-Knox: That is a growing concern for us, because we have people that are identified on the emergency waiting list who need services because their parents are older. The other concern for us is that parents who perhaps haven't planned and we learn of the person the day that the parent either is no longer able to provide support to them or that they might move to a nursing home or perhaps one of the parents has died and the other parent is unable. So, we have really two concerns. One is that there are people on the list who we need to plan for. Secondly, we have people who come to our office who previous to that we did not know. We do have to look at base and then try to serve them in as quick a way as possible.

Mr. DiFrancesco: Are there any residential communities around here that literally serve sort of in an assisted living kind of way any of your clients?

Mr. Eisenhauer: We have personal care homes that provide services. What we try to do is provide supportive services to help the person fit in essentially and be supportive in that environment. That is another restriction in the waiver that CMS requires that you essentially if you are assessed as needing an assisted living or personal care home level of care you are ineligible for the MR waiver. It has to do with Federal definition of which waiver a person is eligible for. The problem is that having been assessed as needing assisted living or personal care, you are not eligible for a consolidated waiver. It is a disconnect about eligibility. We are able to serve people with person/family directed waiver in personal care homes that are less than ten individuals. We do. We are grandfathering ineligibility for like Paxton Ministries, which is a large personal care home. We can grandfather those people in with P/FDS waiver eligibility and we do. Again, it is harder to serve people in those environments, because of the waiver definitions of eligibility.

Mr. Haste: And the home must be less than 10?

Mr. Eisenhauer: Going forward. Up to June 30, anybody who is in is okay, but new admissions after July 1st has to be personal care homes of ten or less to be eligible for P/FDS waiver.

Mr. Haste: New admissions meaning new homes coming on line not. If I was a home and I had 12 and I dropped to nine that wouldn't be grandfathered in?

Mr. Eisenhauer: As long as you officially changed your license capacity with the Commonwealth you would be okay. You could downsize your facility and then remain eligible.

Mr. Haste: So, if there was a future need and I wanted to go back up I could?

Mr. Eisenhauer: Yes.

1. Mike Yohe, Director of Budget & Finance
   1. Presentation of 2007/2008 Fiscal Budget

Mr. Yohe: As you are aware today is the day we advertised to make the 2007/2008 Proposed Dauphin County Fiscal Budget available for the 20-day public inspection period. A week ago, we met with most of the folks responsible for this portion of Dauphin County's budget in a public hearing. All those funds, I didn't change any numbers on any of those just for your information going into today. What we looked at in detail last Wednesday is included in this document. What I did do was added several additional departments within some funds, particularly the 107 Fund. The 107 Fund has a bunch of grants in it. We have nine Funds that run on a July to June fiscal year. They correspond with State and Federal funding. They have to report on that basis, therefore we have to go through this exercise every year to officially approve a budget from our end. Again this is more of a guide as to what we are going to be looking at in the next calendar year when we actually set our tax rates and everything else.

What we are looking at today, the current 06/07 budget, which expires on June 30, 2007 is $148 million. We are looking at $150 to almost $153 million with all nine Funds combined. This represents a 3.12% increase. As you can see most of that is found within Children and Youth. As explained at the public hearing last week, for the most part the departments are able to manage the County portion of their budget, however, they are getting strapped as Dan just went through. The outside Funding is remaining pretty level and the County funding they are not asking for increases so therefore in some cases the waiting lists get longer. Children and Youth on the other hand is mandated. We have to provide those services, therefore you are going to see some increases, both on the County level and on the State level in their overall budget request. Page 2 summarizes the County Funds requirements. All the County Funds requirements again look very good on paper with the exception of Children and Youth. They are asking for a $1.7 million increase in their budget or 21%. That is a direct result of the end or lack of some of the Federal funding streams that they have had in the past; and I think in a certain extent an increase in some of the juvenile crime we have been seeing. The only other one that has an increase is the State Fiscal Year Grant and that Fund, for your benefit, the bulk of that Fund is child care program, which is almost $20 million. This also includes CDBG, the Home Program, which is a pass through. It includes EMA's counter terrorism grant, which we did go over last week. The County piece of the State Fiscal Year Grant is found mostly within a large juvenile probation grant. Again, we are seeing some results there, because ten years ago when that grant started it completely covered the cost of eight or nine juvenile probation positions. It no longer does that. Throughout all these Funds, there is only one new position requested and that would be in Children and Youth. I listed there the total cost of the position would be about $44,000, of which $6,600 would come from Dauphin County funds. Page 3 shows where the money comes from for these programs. Most of it comes from the Federal and State level. The County again has $11 million, which represents about 7% of the total. Page 4 shows where the money goes. You can see 83% of this, I have client care provider services, it is mostly providers, I'm talking about payments that we don't provide the service directly, we reimburse the agencies for that service. There are some services scattered throughout that we provide directly, but most of it comes through on the outside. The last thing I did, I went back ten years with the actual County funds that were required for these nine Funds. You can see it is up and down from year-to-year. Some years it is pretty bad and then we come out with a new source of revenue we have a couple good years. Unfortunately, it looks like we are on a trend now where it is going back up. The interesting thing you can look back at the fourth highest total of these ten years was actually the oldest one in 1998 and 1999, we were almost at $9 million. Then we dropped off and then went back up. That is common. Hopefully we will see that trend maybe, I didn't hear any good news on the horizon to bring that down. This is not unusual to see an increase in County funds, followed hopefully by a decrease.

Mr. DiFrancesco: I haven't read anything coming out of Washington that anybody acknowledges a domestic agenda at all. I would assume that it is going to get worse before it gets any better.

Mr. Yohe: I remember back in 1998 and 1999, we were screaming pretty bad then too that there was no end in sight and then something did come up.

Mr. Haste: There were huge over matches in the 1990s.

Mr. Yohe: I think if we go back even further.

Mr. Haste: Children and Youth killed us there for a while in the 1990s.

Mr. Yohe: I don't have any questions. If you don't have any questions I would ask that we have a vote to make this available for the 20-day inspection period. I will be back on the 27th of June for an approval vote.

It was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Haste that the Board lay the 2007/2008 Proposed Fiscal Year Budget on the table; motion carried.

PERSONNEL

Ms. Sinner: I have three Salary Board requests. Are there any questions on any of them? (There was none.)

Are there any questions on the Personnel Packet? (There was none.)

PURCHASE ORDERS

Mr. Baratucci: The Purchase Order Packet is relatively small as well. There are a few budget items that will be worked on between now and next week. If you have any questions on it, I can answer them.

Bid Award - Dauphin County Multi-Bridge Rehabilitation

Otherwise, the other item that was tabled from last week was the Bridge Deck Rehabilitation Project. There was only one bid and as noted in the letter, our Engineers, HRG, is recommending the acceptance of that bid from Doug Lamb Construction, Inc.

It was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Haste that the Board approve the recommendation from the County Engineer, HRG, Inc., to award the bid for Dauphin County Multi-Bridge Deck Rehabilitation to Doug Lamb Construction, Inc. in the amount of $451,579.10; motion carried.

TRAINING PACKET

Mr. Saylor: There are two items that we need to approve. They are Items #1 and #5. Item #1 is an EMA event that is mandated at a cost of $22. Item #5 is an Aging event that is scheduled for June 13th.

It was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Haste that the Board approve Items #1 and #5 of the Training Packet; motion carried.

ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Appointment of Jessica Wigley, of the American Red Cross, to the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Ms. Wigley replaces Matt Hollis who resigned his position with the Red Cross. (***A VOTE IS REQUESTED 6/6/07***)
2. Janitorial Service Agreement between Dauphin County Facilities Maintenance Department and Foreman & Foreman, 112 Market Street. (***A VOTE IS REQUESTED 6/6/07***)
3. Application for Intergovernmental Cooperation Grant Program/Memorandum of Understanding for participating municipalities for continuation of growth of the Regional Economic Development District Initiatives (REDDI) of South-Central PA.
4. Authorization to strike-off $1,753.90 of delinquent taxes for the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ.

Mr. Haste: We have Items for Discussion. We have Items A through D. I see Items A and B need a vote.

It was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Haste that the Board approve Items A and B of Items for Discussion (listed above); motion carried.

SOLICITOR'S REPORT - WILLIAM TULLY, ESQ.

Mr. Tully: Nothing to add to the report, but happy to answer any questions you might have. (There was none.)

CHIEF CLERK'S REPORT - CHAD SAYLOR

Mr. Saylor: Commissioners, I have nothing unless there are any questions of me. (There was none.)

COMMISSIONERS' COMMENTS

(There was none.)

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Mr. Haste: We are again at the point in time for public participation. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to address the Board? (There was none.)

ADJOURNMENT

There being no further business, it was moved by Mr. DiFrancesco and seconded by Mr. Haste that the Board adjourn.