0–15 Minutes
Speaker 1:
Okay, we are live. Good morning everybody. Welcome to council meeting.
If we can go around the room and take roll for Marilyn and Emma and then if we can, and then we'll acknowledge who's online. We'll go left. Ed Montgomery.
Speaker 3:
Ron Weight, UPC.
Speaker 2:
Emma Johnson, UPC. Marilyn Lawson, UPC. Karyn Walker, Provo.
Speaker 1:
Randall McKune, Cedar City. Stephen Foote, Duchesne County. Chad Dotson, Iron County.
Speaker 3:
Craig Peterson, AG for Stew.
Speaker 1:
Tyson Skeen, UPC.
Speaker 3:
Trent Dressen, UPC. Greg Robbins, Salt Lake County.
Speaker 1:
And we've got Stuart Williams from Clearfield City online and Troy Rollins from Davis County. So we have got a quorum. We appreciate y'all being here.
Did everybody get a chance to look at the packet or has a copy of the packet? Okay. Our first order of business is replacing Sam Smith.
As I indicated in the email and in the packet is Sam has taken a position with SLFDA's office, is in the West Jordan office, and so she was the UMPA representative. And so their leadership got together and have nominated Elisa Leon. She said she might try to come today but she's not here so that's fine.
But that is their their nomination and so we need to take a vote on her as to replace Sam Smith. So all in favor? Aye.
Aye. Aye. Online?
Any opposed? Aye. Aye.
Troy? Aye. Aye.
Okay. Any opposed? That looks like it's unanimous Marilyn.
Okay. All right. Sorry this is your meeting.
Speaker 3:
Previous minutes. I move to adopt. Second.
Favor?
Speaker 1:
Aye. Opposed? Okay.
Oh here is Elisa. Elisa come on in. Welcome.
Yes. Sorry I should have gone out to see if you were here. Everybody this is Elisa.
This is our newest council member. We have voted you on. Thank you.
Budget? Okay so you've got a copy of the budget. What I need to bring to your attention is the AG has, well it's not new, they've been here about a year, but a new finance director and a new, what do we call her, the new tippy.
Speaker 2:
Budget officer.
Speaker 1:
Budget officer, thank you. They met with Marilyn and I last week to talk about our budget. Oh another thing that is new that we appreciate that the AG has done for us is assign someone who works directly with our budget.
I mean they oversee, track our expenses, they help us with our grants and things like that. So we met with them last week because they had some concerns. The way that they are tracking our budget, they're saying that we are about 82%, have spent about 82% of our budget but only three quarters of the way through the year.
And so their concern is that we may be overspending. And this was news to us because when Emma gets the finance reports from Brittany, just so I've got names, Brittany is the one that's assigned to help us with our finances. When Emma gets reports from Brittany, she enters it into our into QuickBooks and as we're tracking it we didn't have the same concerns that they did.
So we met with them, talked about how they track our spending, how we track our spending. I asked about a couple of things when we got the, when the all the attorneys in the office, the agent's office last year got the discretionary salary increase, whether or not those funds were transferred from the line item on the agent's office that received the funds to our line item. They weren't sure.
And the other question I had is about office expenses and what we were paying, what we should be paying for and perhaps maybe what we shouldn't, what we should not be paying for and they weren't sure about that. So we are going to meet again in two weeks and they were going to look into that and see if that could be the discrepancy there is that somehow the discretionary funds that the legislature awarded everyone last year did not get transferred to us. The additional salary that the council graciously approved for Trent Tice and I as non-merit employees, that was scheduled to come out of our budget and so we've accounted for that but we still show that we're in the red and that we're in the black, excuse me, you know that we're going to end the end of the year with some carryover but the office feels a little bit otherwise.
They wanted to make sure that we knew that we're not in trouble, that if for some reason I have made a mistake and I'll take the responsibility if we have been accounting improperly that will be on my shoulders. If that happens the office is able to help us with that but moving forward we're going to meet with them probably on a more regular basis than we are right now. I felt it was important that you guys understand that so they don't hit you up in June and say oh you know we've overspent but I don't think, I really don't think we are.
If anybody has any questions you know I can talk a little bit of the details but as I said the office is going to do some checking and then get back with us. The reason that we think that perhaps the money didn't get transferred is at least Maryland and I know when I first started 12 years ago talked about how, let me back up, especially for Lisa, so where we get our money is we are a line item in the AG's budget. We don't get separate funds from the legislature itself so we're a line item but we've always been told that the AG can't transfer money between line items in their budget and if that's the case that might count why we didn't get the money for the raises.
If that did happen then we've got to look back and figure out where we're at. So Craig we're not concerned with the office we appreciate the office letting us know so you don't need to go back and Oh as far as just the office I am the justice director.
Speaker 3:
Yeah and maybe you've seen this.
Speaker 1:
Yeah I have. Okay so we met with them and like I said they didn't have the answers to the questions that I had about those two sources of funding and so we're going to meet in two weeks to talk about it and maybe then I can talk offline.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So any questions about the budget? What's your level of concern? Well I mean I'm.
We just don't know yet. We just don't know. I'm worst-case scenario.
I always anticipate the worst-case scenario so I'm quite nervous. My blood pressure is up these days because I don't want to go over and the 12 years I've been here we've never gone over. I've always received a very healthy carryover each year which shows that we are you know budgeting our using our resources wisely so it's like I said it's somewhere because we're so different from what the office is showing we've got to figure out where that where that is and if it's if it's on us then that's my fault and so you know I accept responsibility for that but right now I just don't know. So worst-case scenario like 40,000 over and like I said is the office said that they would be able to absorb that and the conversation I had with them as I said well does that mean then that we need to go to the legislature you know the next year and ask for additional fundings to our budget and Brian who is the finance director said no you know rather than going to the legislature for which essentially is just change to them I mean not even change you know forty thousand dollars hundred thousand dollars is nothing the tens of thousands of dollars is that in the AG budgeting might be able to help us out and you know find some funding for us to cover that as opposed to going to the legislature but again I won't know that for another couple weeks and really until the end of the year once once everything is paid for. What was our carryover last year?
80 80 plus thousand. 80 ish is clear. Yeah.
So you're talking a hundred and twenty thousand dollar difference because we're they're projecting to be 40 over? Yeah eighty eight thousand three hundred and eighty was a carryover and that's. Because I certainly didn't get to go on that nice vacation you guys went on if that's the case.
Yeah so it's like I said is is somewhere. I didn't feel bad about that just so you know.
Speaker 3:
I didn't participate in this hundred thousand dollar party yet.
Speaker 1:
And I mean and that's the other thing is at least the numbers that I was looking at is the office is projecting that we'll have a similar carryover but I think that may just be based on past history as opposed to actual numbers so this was more of a we need this to bring us to your attention and we're going to be and Marilyn and I even talked about ways that we can cut back on our budget next year one that we've already talked about brought to the council I think the last council meeting is we're not going to pay for student housing at basic they're lodging at basic anymore that's been a big chunk of change and that's primarily because just the cost of going to Logan for basic has increased quite a bit and so we're just looking at some other ways that we can that we can save some money.
Speaker 3:
But we we are doing our accounting the same way as we always have.
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
I'm just now it looks like somebody's taking a look at it with a different set of eyes.
Speaker 1:
Right and the way that the office tracks our expenses so for example is in-state travel they just lump that into one single category and that would that so that would include any rental car rental fees gas fees lodging per diem and we track that by conference so that we know how much our conferences are and I'm not saying one is right or one is wrong that's just easier for us to track it that way but that's the difference when I look at the budget I see this huge number for in-state travel and then when I realize okay that's all of our in-state conferences that we do together so it's we're speaking the same language maybe with a different dialect.
Speaker 2:
Just on our reporting and how we do the budget that you see through QuickBooks as every conference or every expense that we occur in real time we put that in so we're kind of and this doesn't go to their numbers necessarily but we're always a couple of months ahead so what you see in a report right now we're two months behind and so we we account for that I'm not worried honestly we've got like Bob said we've gone over the numbers and we're not doing anything different I think we have new you know new people in finance they're looking at things and they look at it a different way than Tippi did Tippi just had things that she knew how we ran she knew how our reports were in comparison to how the AGs and so she just kind of had a feel for what we've always done you know given we've accounted for increased expenses registration fees have you know gone up as you know and so that's that's compensated for things so I just think it's there's just something that's
Speaker 1:
showing up yeah but we're not sure what if but if we're doing it wrong it's my
Speaker 3:
fault well I don't I mean we'll get to it but I know I would think if we're doing it the exact same way and we've been off by a hundred twenty thousand dollars every year for 12 years I think they would have lost yeah so anyway
Speaker 1:
so that that's and unless there's other questions or concerns that's the budget report okay our justice yes so as I mentioned last council meeting in January John our justice had not been funded for those of you that are where that's the grant that prosecutors and public defenders can apply for to help reduce payment on their student loans I just got an email three weeks ago saying that it has been funded well I sent out an email to our recipients from last year saying wasn't gonna be funded this year sorry there's nothing available so now I'm gonna be able to send out saying it turns out it's going to be funded I don't know what the amount is but it's gonna throw us off in terms of when we normally award the grant and that's fine that's neither here nor there that's another thing that I've got to talk with the office about is when we submit our budget we include the John our justice in but if we end up getting this this award plus we get next year's award that can throw my numbers off with finance and with our budget and again that's something we're going to talk about in two weeks but good news is is that John our justice has been funded I checked to see we don't do the PSLF you know the public service loan forgiveness we don't track that and I or we don't manage that but I was looking online to see if it has been funded and I think that it has but it looks like it's under tighter regulations and again this is more just take back to the folks in your offices that are looking at PSLF that I think that's back in play how many how much money is that for John our justice it averages anywhere from sixty to ninety thousand dollars and so the reality is it's not a huge amount the maximum award that a person can receive over their lifetime
15–30 Minutes
Speaker 1:
The way I was managing the grant is the requirement was that we split it evenly between prosecutors and public defenders, meaning 50% of the pot goes to prosecutors, the other half goes to public defenders. Because we have way more eligible prosecutor offices in the state, I was getting dozens of applications, whereas we only had, at the time, two eligible public defender offices, and so we would only get four or five. So those public defenders were getting $1,000, up to $5,000 a hit, whereas our prosecutors, some were getting just a couple hundred dollars, which, in the end, isn't worth their time to apply.
That changed, oh, probably five years ago, whereas now what we do is I gather a best estimate of how many prosecutors are in the state, how many public defenders are in the state, and then, so for example, we've got about two-thirds of the eligible applicants are prosecutors, so now two-thirds of the grant is divided for them, and then the remaining third goes to the public defenders. So it's balanced out so that our prosecutors are getting several hundred dollars, up to $1,000, and sometimes even more. And it's paid on an as-needed basis, and so what we look at is adjusted gross income, we look at eligible law school debt, and most of us in this room are old enough that we haven't incurred the same kind of debt that some of these new law school graduates are incurring, but I see their numbers, and it's just staggering to me how much debt folks are going into the law school.
Speaker 3:
Wait a minute, you feel good.
Speaker 2:
You'll be fine. Don't worry about it. No, McGill, I won't.
What's a couple hundred grand? It's just your money.
Speaker 5:
We're done. Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:
Training committee? So we held our domestic violence boot camp. Trent, do you want to maybe give a summary of that?
I've got a couple of comments from attendees that are in here, but do you want to just give a summary?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think we ended up having 18 to 10. There were a pretty good mix across the state from cities and counties, both what I would consider to be a little bit more on the populated county side as well as the rural county side, so I thought we had a really, really good mix. Our faculty, I thought, had a really good spectrum of background in working both city and county cases.
I already had one kind of trial run with a DB boot camp where we did just Utah County and Salt Lake County, so I tried to incorporate what I learned from that one into this one, and I thought everything went quite well. I thought we had good feedback. The location, I thought, worked really, really well, doing it in Lehigh, which was quasi off the beaten path.
Instead of it being here, it was there, and I think people enjoyed staying there. There's lots of restaurants around there and stuff to do around there.
Speaker 1:
When do you want to do it again?
Speaker 2:
I think Tyson and I discussed alternating DUI and DB boot camp, so he'll probably be doing his in January of next year, and I'll be doing another one the year following unless there's requests otherwise.
Speaker 1:
Your faculty, did you have some new people that have taught?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, brought in a couple of Utah County prosecutors. Trish Crump, who I work with a lot, Carl Holland, he had taught at the last one, taught at this one as well, and Tyson Skeen, for the first time up and out with DB boot camp with his little, few people know, rather extensive DB prosecution background.
Speaker 1:
Okay, thank you. Visual trial skills continues to be successful. We had 10 people in the last class, which is our max, which is great.
We've got another one coming up then in July and October. Spring conference, as you all know, starts tomorrow down in Crow with the Marriott. For those that attended in person last year, the parking was terrible.
The parking garage is up and running this year, so we shouldn't have any problems with the parking. The speakers, we've got some good speakers planned. Our final speaker is Christina.
I'm just going to say Christine. I can't pronounce her last name. She does CSER.
Trent, you helped find her. CSER is trauma professional.
Speaker 2:
It's for secondary vicarious trauma. It's essentially this therapy method that was developed by a professor here in Utah, and it's become popularized across the country. I've been in other conferences in other states where they've started speaking about it.
I've been to a lot of presentations and read a lot of research on secondary trauma, and I would classify most of it as take all your vacation time and take a lot of nature walks, which is great, but this gives you practical methods on a daily basis that you can help cope with job stress.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so we're looking forward to that. She'll take 90 minutes, and we'll be the concluding speaker on Friday. Trent Tyson, we've got the legislative update.
We'll talk about the regional update here in just a second. Michael Gad and Chris Ballard are doing the case law update. We have had David Simpson do it in the past, but his wife had a baby, and I think he's back from family leave, but he asked for a year off, so Michael Gad is giving a trial run, so we'll see how he does.
Thursday evening, we're holding a student networking event. We've never done this before. Well, let me talk about it when I further in the agenda, but just realize Thursday night we're having a student networking event.
Everybody in this room is invited to come. I think Elyse is coming. I think Stephen is planning on coming.
Craig, somebody from UROC, Mike Postma is going to be there, so I'll talk about that a little bit later on. Legislative updates, guys, May 1st and 31st. Sorry, I failed to change that.
You guys are actually getting it done in the next two weeks.
Speaker 4:
We'll be done by the end of April. Yeah. Well, about an inch.
Yeah. There's one scribe right under me.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and one way that we are cutting costs is they are not traveling together, so that will ‑‑ sorry, overnight they're not traveling together, correct?
Speaker 2:
We're splitting it up. So in the past we had both tried to go to every single location together. We got really sick of each other, so we decided that we're going to do the local ones together and then the ones that were traveling we're going to split those up.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and so that's helping us with our budget, but it was mostly because I didn't realize how many nights Trent and Tyson were away from home last year, and so I told them they had to cut down the number of nights, and this was one of the areas that they were able to do that in. Just as an aside, I don't know how many got an email. I got it.
Marilyn forwarded it to me, but Matt Jansen was doing a legislative update, a case on a legislative update for ‑‑ what's her acronym? Cold Case. State ‑‑ SBI's Cold Case.
Thank you. SBI Cold Case. Because I had somebody, a lieutenant from Beaver, call me and say, is this the same thing that Trent and Tyson are doing?
And I said, well, no, it's not the same thing. What you're getting in two hours is a case law update from the U.S. Supreme, Utah Supreme, Utah Appellate Courts, as well as a legislative update in two hours, and we're devoting an entire day to that in our spring conference, so I'm not sure how great in detail that was. So we forewarned Trent and Tyson that our numbers might be down in terms of officers that are attending that, because they may have done that one and not want to show it to our legislative committee.
They did that yesterday, I think. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
And so ‑‑ I'm pretty sure they do that every year. Do they? So it's a Tuesday‑Teenth training SBI does, which is the first and only Teenth Tuesday of every month they do a training, and every year I think they've done a case law update.
It's typically Matt that does it.
Speaker 1:
Okay. I just have never been aware of it then.
Speaker 2:
I don't think this is going to impact. I'm sure it's fantastic, but obviously we've got a couple hours to just do. Right, right.
Ledge update, trying to smash all that into two hours probably took.
Speaker 1:
So if any of your officers come to you and say, hey, do we need to go to see Trent and Tyson, I would say, yeah, go see Trent and Tyson, because you're going to get some more detail that maybe Matt just didn't have time to cover. So just be aware that that's out there.
Speaker 4:
One other benefit of splitting up the way that we're doing it is we will actually finish our regional legislative updates before the laws go into effect for the first time ever. Usually we're telling half of the state, these have already been in effect for a couple weeks, so I hope you have been aware of it, but this will be the first time ever that we've been able to get it done before the effective date on the bill.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, because normally these guys are gone for almost an entire month. So, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 5:
How are your time demands? Are we overworking you? I ask you this several times a year.
It's a bad time to ask you that. I haven't worked very much. Don't ask this guy.
Speaker 2:
I was in Africa for two weeks, then got back surgery, so I have not been in the office very much. Show you some pictures with lions about his work schedule.
Speaker 4:
But I'll be paying for that over the next couple weeks.
Speaker 1:
But to Tyson's credit, I'll just shout out for Tyson. You guys have incredible people that work for you on your staff, but Tyson did a lot of this before he left and got a lot of it done, so we really appreciate that, so that he hasn't been able to rest and recuperate.
Speaker 5:
Well, you guys, we keep asking more and more for you. We keep adding more stuff on the calendar. We don't want to overwork you guys, and we appreciate that.
Speaker 1:
Okay, anything else then, guys? Okay. Marilyn and Karen, do you want to talk about new PAA?
Speaker 7:
June 10th, mid-Fall, in Cedar City. Shakespeare theme. Encourage your staff to attend.
Really great.
Speaker 3:
We have one opening now that we will wait until June, and then Edith Brown is retiring in June, so we'll have two openings by June. So if you want to recommend anyone or know anyone in your office that would like to apply for the board, that would be great.
Speaker 2:
Okay. I think these attorneys would like to know the name of my presentation. What's the name?
What's the title for my presentation that you guys want? Kill all the lawyers. Pardon?
Kill all the lawyers. Okay. I like it.
Speaker 1:
That's going to be the assistant's.
Speaker 3:
That's his name.
Speaker 1:
And I saw Chad, you're on the agenda to welcome them to Cedar City. Good.
Speaker 4:
Let's get out of here quick, though, because apparently they're going to try to kill you. That's before you start your presentation.
Speaker 3:
I didn't even know that was the name. So the theme was inspired by the Shakespearean Festival down there, and so we just kind of came up with plays that went along with the topic titles.
Speaker 1:
I'm not aware of a play called Kill the Lawyers, though. It's a lesser-known Shakespeare work. I thought it was based on one line.
It's the opera.
Speaker 3:
We were using lines from the play.
Speaker 1:
Lines from the play.
Speaker 7:
But I thought she gave, like, two or three per presenter to pick from. Okay. Maybe she didn't give Trent an option.
Trent didn't reply back.
Speaker 2:
Come up with your own or kill all the lawyers? She was like, it's Trent, this is his. Trent didn't reply back, so we selected one for him.
Speaker 3:
But it will be sent out like a play bill, just like that.
Speaker 1:
Right. Okay. Okay.
Then BASIC is in August, same week. And, Logan, this morning I was thinking, you know, again, if we, going back to the budget, is if we end up needing to cut some costs. I am for the thought of bringing BASIC here, but we could do BASIC here and it would be substantially less, but I think we would lose the magic that we have with our BASIC prosecutor course.
So I'm hoping that we would not have to do that, but for next year BASIC will be in Logan. Fall conference is September and Ruby's Inn at Bryce Canyon. Hopefully you all can join us there.
Again, another really great conference. We've got great speakers. The training committee has come up with a good one.
Advanced trial skills in St. George in October, and then UNPA in November, and that should take us through the end of the year for our training calendar. Really good conferences coming up.
Speaker 3:
Training committee meeting is October 1st and 2nd.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. I forgot to put that up here.
Speaker 3:
And Tori.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. E-prosecutor? Yeah, Ron, do you want to see?
Speaker 6:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You've got E-prosecutor webpage and ADA.
Speaker 6:
Okay, with E-prosecutor, I'm working on a major upgrade to our system. We've been testing it in a test system to a 2025 October version, which is just one of them. They're preparing one for 2026 now, but I didn't want to do that one until there's had time for other things.
30–45 Minutes
Speaker 1:
And also a few features that we're looking forward to. So, that's coming up. And other than that, e-Filing, moving forward with it.
It's got slowed down for a while because of working with the upgrade. That's taking a whole lot longer than I thought it would, but they're being more careful with upgrades so that we don't upgrade us. And we have, the last time we upgraded eProsecutor, it took two weeks.
Spending most of my time fixing little issues. It wasn't down, it could be used, but there were little visual things and some functional things that weren't working quite properly. So, we aren't going to have that this time.
At least I'm very hopeful because we're doing a lot better testing and it should be pretty smooth once we cut over to production. And so, with that, I held up e-Filing for a while thinking that I didn't want to get too many things going at once, but that's taking a while, so I'm just moving forward. So, right now we have Washington City, Provo City, Jewell County, Wasatch County, Duchesne County, and Sandy City doing e-Filing.
And I'm working on getting Kane County and South Georgia City running as quick as I can get. One of the problems we have is we have to have the courts open up their portal at every court that somebody prosecutes in. So, there may be two or three for each city or county, depending on justice courts and district courts.
So, we have to have them open it up and they can take a while to respond to that and get it done. So, once I get that, I'm going to start going a little bit further. I'm going to get more.
I've been doing two or three at a time because it's just easier not to have too many to train all at once and to have too many problems all at once. It just adds up. Because e-Filing ends up being, they have some issues the first couple of weeks with things that happen and they get rejected and wonder why.
So, we have to work through that. It's going pretty smoothly for the most part. So, anyway, I've got Kane County and South Georgia City up next.
And then, after that, it will be West Valley City, Summit County, Beaver County, Cedar City, Saratoga Springs, Saville County. I'm basically kind of going in the order of what came on board to e-prosecute as much as possible with some exceptions. And also, if they're ready to put the work in that it takes to learn.
It's not hard to learn it, but there are some nuances that it takes a little while to get used to. But it's going pretty smoothly, so I think we're going to be able to move forward with that. I'll go as quickly as we can and get everybody e-Filing because it does have some advantages.
Then, on webpage migration, that has been crazy. We were on state servers up at the capital, I think, I don't know where they're hosted, but wherever they were, they did not want to do it anymore. So they moved it to AWS, so Amazon Business Web Services Server.
And doing that has been a whole other level of... It made it more difficult for me to update it, but from your point of view, it won't make any difference. But what I wanted to say is we moved it over successfully.
It looks good. If you see any problems with the way things display, they don't work right, just send me a note. If you can get a screenshot of what went wrong, it would be helpful.
So I can immediately fix it as fast as possible if there is a problem. I've done extensive testing. It seems to be okay, but I can never test everything or do it the way that website users do it.
But that should be pretty smooth. If you have problems, let me know. Also, I found out just a couple of months ago we have to make our website ADA compliant.
It becomes... I think it's a law or a rule or something. Government in particular, well, not just government, but government agencies in particular have to be ADA compliant.
Ours was not. I didn't know how to... It wasn't really bad, but it definitely had problems.
I'm working on that, and that's taking a lot of hours. Part of it is learning how to do it. Part of it is making the changes and testing the changes.
I didn't have the tools to do it, thanks to... Who was it? It was somebody from the AG's office.
I can't remember her name now. Is it Hannah? I can't remember who it was, but Bob helped me get a hold of somebody, and she's been tremendously helpful in giving me the tools I need to help me find out where the problems are and fix them.
One of the issues was that we had to have... All the audio for council meetings has to be transcribed into a text format so screen readers can read it. I didn't know we had to do that.
But I found a way that I could just upload the audio to a site and it transcribed it for me, and then I just put it on the website. It's just going to take a lot of hours to go through all that audio and transcribe it. There's a lot of other things.
Some of our pages weren't accessible at all. You had to use the mouse to get to them, to do things on it. There's other things that were not very visual, or there were some contrast problems.
UPA, for example, their logo is not very good for contrast. That yellow is not very good for people to read, but they don't worry about logos. It's just the text that we have to worry about.
So we're just working on that. You might see some things that look a little bit differently than they did, but mostly they look about the same. But somebody that's going to it that has a screen reader or some other accessibility tools, it should work properly for them.
Now they can tab through things, their screen reader can read it. I downloaded a screen reader, so I can access our website and listen to the screen reader as it tells me where I'm at and what I'm doing. The problem is it's a whole other piece of complicated software.
You have to learn all the shortcuts to make it work properly. So it's been a lot of fun, but the bottom line is we will be ADA compliant as soon as I can get through all these changes. It won't be right away, because already we've improved probably about 40 or 50 percent better than it was just a few weeks ago.
So just be aware. If you see anything that seems off, just let me know. If you know somebody...
I've never had any reports of anybody having problems accessing the website, so I didn't even think about it until I was told by our IT folks that, yeah, you have to make it compliant. I go, okay, here I go, so I'm working on that. So just be aware that that does take a lot of time.
But going forward, any changes should be... I'll try to make them with that in mind so we won't have to go back and fix anything.
Speaker 2:
So that's about it. Okay. And as Ron said, he's spent a lot of time, and I just want to let you all know how much time he really has spent.
The migration of the web server required that he work some weekends and evening, so he would come in late. I'll make the schedule that way, but it really was a lot of work that he did, and I appreciate that. With the ADA, again, thanks.
We appreciate the AG's office, because Ron was looking at, like, a scan, a commercial scan, you know, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000. It wasn't several thousand dollars.
Speaker 1:
There's a software you can buy that scans your website, and it's a $4,000-a-year subscription. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
The AG has her own internal program ran for us, Slippin' Snot. It was really nice.
Speaker 1:
The best thing is it runs a report for me, shows me which page has what problems. I go to the page, I say, oh, it has a label missing, or it has its contrast problems, or whatever, and I go in and look at it, grab the page, fix it. Upload it, and we're done, so it's been really nice.
Speaker 2:
And as he was talking, you know, that there's people that will go out there and check websites, one thing that I didn't put on here, I just thought about, is we're also looking at the images that we have on our web page. It is our national organization that we belong to. Currently, we post, the NAPC, National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators, posted a copyrighted image several years ago of a body camera, an officer wearing a body camera, not showing his face.
And so our organization is being hit up for a huge fee for using copyrighted image without permission. So we're looking at all of the images that we've got as we're going forward, preparing our brochures. If we have any pictures of the hotels, Merlin's making sure that we have permission from the hotel to use them.
With AI, Tyson and Trent, myself included, we're using more AI-related... Are you guys using any, just copying and pasting off the Internet anymore?
Speaker 5:
No, I either use my own pictures or AI. I mean, I still have older presentations that have stuff in them, but I probably keep going to change them.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so we're trying to, you know, get away from any potential claim that could come up, just because our national group got hit up, and so that was kind of sobering.
Speaker 1:
Just a side note on that, in presentations we need to let our presenters know that if we're videotaping anything and they have copyrighted material, that video will be taken down. Yeah, and that's, I've actually... Or we might, before they just said take it down and they haven't done anything, we just take it down and fix it or whatever, take the copyrighted stuff out of it.
But they could, you could be sued for it if you haven't, so just be careful about in your presentations you don't include stuff that might be copyrighted. AI-generated stuff is probably safe as long as you create it from AI yourself, but you have to make a note that it's AI-generated too, somewhere.
Speaker 2:
And none of you presented recently for us, because I've updated the letter that I send out to presenters. It's called Conference Essentials that covers that issue about being really mindful of copyright, so we're trying to address that. Okay, I think UPA has made their report.
Okay. We're part of the training committee.
Speaker 3:
I'm sorry, can I ask you a question? For e-prosecutor and, like, the information transfer to the state directly, because we do have one of those reports coming up, but it's just for counties in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class. I'm not sure, like, where we are, because I think that they're working directly with you to get that transfer information there.
Speaker 1:
No, nobody's working with me to get it for the counties on our e-prosecutors today. I'm not even sure. I'm confused as to what we need to provide and how to provide it.
There's so much of it that is just... We met a few times with a group of people and never came to any kind of consensus about what we needed to provide and how to do it. So I'm still looking at it.
If anybody has any suggestions, can tell me. We have to have this data, this data, this data. I'll go in and do what I can to make it so that it's available to input and that we get the output to the reports.
But I just... After spring conference, I'm going to look at that a little more deeply, see if I can figure out what we need. But it was just so oddly worded that I'm not sure of what to provide.
Speaker 3:
Okay, and then just a reminder for those counties in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class, we do have a... On May 1st, we're supposed to report to the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee on our House Bill 354 stuff for the last calendar year. Is this stuff that was required a while ago?
It was last year's House Bill 354.
Speaker 1:
Okay, that one. But the one that was before that, that data, we're still collecting and providing.
Speaker 3:
That's part of House Bill 354. That's an ongoing thing. That's for all prosecutor offices.
Speaker 1:
I'm confused by the House Bill, which is which. But we are providing a lot of data from you, prosecutor, but just not that latest little thing that was from last year. Okay.
I mean, how do I report budget stuff from you, prosecutor? We can't, right? Right.
And that's part of this month's stuff. Okay. I appreciate that.
We need to spend a little time looking at that.
Speaker 3:
Anything else from you, PAA?
Speaker 4:
Yes. Well, I guess we can get to that on the nominations, but I wanted to...
Speaker 2:
Well, that's next. I didn't include it because I wasn't sure if you wanted to announce it here and tell them to keep it quiet or if you want to wait.
Speaker 4:
We'll announce it here.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 4:
But just amongst ourselves. Just to keep it quiet.
Speaker 2:
So what's your announcement?
Speaker 4:
It's Christy Kline. Okay.
Speaker 2:
And who is she?
Speaker 4:
She's from... She's Christy Kline.
Speaker 2:
I'm sorry. Where is she from? Sorry.
Where is she from? Which office?
Speaker 4:
Uintah County. Yeah. Yeah, Uintah County.
Speaker 2:
How many nominations did you guys receive?
Speaker 4:
She was nominated last year, and then she also was nominated this year. So... We had about...
Oh, we had... No, we had... No, we had more.
Oh, we had six altogether. We had six nominations altogether. Christy Kline was nominated this year and last year.
Didn't get it last year, but this year she did.
Speaker 2:
And then you're going to...
Speaker 4:
Well-deserved.
Speaker 2:
You'll announce that at UPAA, isn't it?
Speaker 4:
She'll be giving her award at UPAA.
Speaker 2:
So just tell your people not to go and look at the minutes when they're posted since these are public if you want to keep it a surprise.
Speaker 4:
Well, Emma's not here, so...
Speaker 2:
You should have a new county attorney next year, too. Yeah.
Speaker 4:
Will she? Yes.
Speaker 2:
Oh. Jamin's not... They had their convention last night.
Oh, what happened? Maybe one of the candidates got signatures, so Jamin lost the majority of the folks at the convention. So...
So my Tiffany... Oh. She's got about a year-and-a-half experience.
Oh, gosh. Oh, dear.
Speaker 6:
Wow.
Speaker 5:
I did it. As I was going to say, it sounds like somebody else I know. I'm good.
Speaker 2:
No, I mean... The jury's still out. Will is in Jewett County.
It's going to be the same thing as Perry... Perry... I was going to say Perry White, but that's Superman.
Perry...
Speaker 4:
Perry Davis.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. Perry Davis is retiring, and one of their deputies, he came to BASIC, what, two years ago? I was slated to move into that slot, so, yeah, we've got...
Speaker 5:
And I don't think he was even an attorney when he came to BASIC. I think he never passed the bar.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 5:
So he's just a little over a year-and-a-half in.
Speaker 2:
So we've got some really young county attorneys, Chad. You guys are doing a great job. I'm the old man now.
I know.
Speaker 5:
Happens to the best of us, doesn't it?
45–60 Minutes
Speaker 1:
As you can see in the notes, one was from the Attorney General's office. Really strong candidate, really. We got really good nominations this year.
We got three city prosecutors and then eight county attorneys, county deputy attorneys. So I was really pleased that we got more nominations. We sent out the request for nominations also to the victim advocates as well as law enforcement.
And is Trent, are you the only former cop in here? Has everybody else been a former cop? Okay, former cops, now they know how to write nomination letters because we've got the attorneys and even the victim advocates that were nominated by a police officer just had scurrying nomination letters so that we should probably have them give us a lesson on how to write them.
But again, really strong candidates. And then the victim advocate of the year, this is our first year with this award. We got 12 nominations.
Again, really strong contenders. Our nominees, and it was a difficult decision in choosing. We ultimately went with Shelley Candelaria from Washington City Police Department.
And so you can read again the comments there. We got a lot of support for giving an award to victim advocates and I think we'll continue to do that. As you all know, as you work with victim advocates, they really are invaluable in those cases where we've got victims and they need that help.
So we will do those awards on Friday.
Speaker 2:
Trent? I think all the information is in the packet. DB boot camp was mentioned.
I thought that was a success. A couple things coming up I wanted to let y'all be aware of. Within the next two quarters, I'm going to try and start doing ODARA training, which will be a half-day certification that would allow anyone, prosecutors, advocates, law enforcement officers that come to the half-day training to be able to do an ODARA assessment, which is a risk assessment on DB offenders.
Presented on that last fall conference. Once you do an ODARA assessment, that spits out a percentage likelihood of recidivism. So the other states that are using this, it's been very, very effective.
Instead of just saying, we think this person's going to be a danger, we have a lot of your backs, you can say, your honor, this person, according to your ODARA assessment, has a 62% likelihood of recidivism in the next five years. So I'm going to try and get dates for a couple along the Wasatch Front, one down south and one out east within the next two quarters. And then for the three-day advanced investigations course, we're doing one in Provo in August, and then at post in October, if you want to encourage your law enforcement officers to go to that.
Also, really appreciate the AG's office support. Che presents for us, and then he's also having both Pat and Caitlin, who are the new attorneys in the HB 281 unit, come to go through the training. I think it's extremely beneficial if any attorney wants to attend any of the sessions to learn more about trauma-informed victim interviewing, warrants, same exams, or trauma itself.
Caitlin Beckett? Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Right, as I was going to say, for those that have been around, if you didn't know, Pat Finlandson has come out of private practice and is here at the AG. So that's a coup for you guys. It was.
Yeah.
Speaker 6:
Tyson?
Speaker 2:
I don't have anything to add other than what's in my report.
Speaker 6:
I realized that I didn't add my student outreach to that.
Speaker 1:
So I just want to report real quickly on the student outreach that we have been doing, trying to get, encourage young law students interested in being prosecutors. I have been to BYU three times in the last eight months. I did a Lunch with Lawyers.
BYU sponsors a Lunch with Lawyers. I don't know if it's once a week, once a quarter, where BYU provides lunch, unlike the school to the north of us where I had to pay for lunch. But BYU provides lunch.
The first time in the fall, we probably had 30 plus students come. Stu Young came with me. Shehanor Graywall from Sampee.
Thank you. And now my mind's going blank. And we had one other.
So there were basically four attorneys that were there, talked about what it's like being a prosecutor. I had several that stayed after and asked us about that. We repeated it at BYU, when Emma?
Last week? Two weeks ago. Well, we did it at the U, so I'll report on the U.
We were at the U last month. We didn't have quite the turnout that we did at BYU. But the organizer apologized that the law school or the Law Review Society scheduled an event over the top of theirs.
And so they think that was why maybe we had some conflict. But provided lunch. We had seven or eight that were really interested and again, stayed after and talked.
That one, we had Greg Burdett from Ogden. We had Heather Blake-Grover from the AG's office. And I can't remember the third person.
Who was it?
Speaker 4:
And I actually, so you know, I hired one of the attendees. Did you really? She's in a very important position.
She'll start at the NGO.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So we're seeing success. Thank you for telling me that.
Because I never hear about it. So we had success there. Then we repeated it at BYU.
Again, probably had 20 plus students that were there. And then I was invited to participate with the public law event at the Y. Where myself, Ryan McBride from Utah County was there.
You guys had some folks from your civil section that were there. But again, really great turnout. Talked to a lot of students.
I started collecting a list of student emails. I've probably got 30 names that I send out whenever I hear about internships, externships. And so if your offices are looking for an intern or an extern, please let me know.
Because I've got a database or a spreadsheet that I put together that I send out to the students. I know some offices are not, they're not paid externships, internships, whatever the correct term for the unpaid is. But we'll offer for credit.
Students are looking for that as well. So anytime you have any openings, let me know. So that was great.
Again, thank you for letting me know you hired somebody. Because that's the whole point is to generate some interest in becoming a prosecutor. We talk about salarying.
So I talk about the public service loan forgiveness. Talk about general justice. Indicate that you're not going to get rich.
But the work-life balance for a prosecutor really is pretty good. And that seems to be a big interest for students these days. So just, we've had, I think we're doing some good things.
And then as I started to talk about Thursday night, we're doing this event after Thursday night's spring conference. Starting at 5.30, I'm hopeful that we'll have a handful of students come. I found out that it's the U's reading days in preparation for finals.
And so if BYU is on the same schedule, that may be conflicting with us. It's not that we have any control over that. But we'll see how it goes.
We've got, as I indicated, 12 offices that are supposed to participate. So any of you that are here, if you want to stick around for a little bit after spring conference, what food are we having?
Speaker 3:
Well, it's hors d'oeuvres.
Speaker 1:
Hors d'oeuvres. Do you remember specifically what it was? I don't.
I can't either. But it'll be good food. So stick around.
And hopefully we'll have some students from there. And so we're hoping that we can make this an annual event. Depending on when spring is next year, we may want to check with the schools.
And if it's right in the finals, then we may forgo, depending on how it goes this year.
Speaker 3:
So those two last weeks in April are open. So I think it's the 22nd, 23rd. I don't have my calendar up.
If that's preferred, we can do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So any questions on student outreach?
Speaker 4:
I do know the why isn't finals this week. Because two of my clerks are taking finals this week. They're graduating.
Speaker 3:
And I know what the finals are going to be next year for you two, if you care.
Speaker 4:
You've got to tell us now.
Speaker 1:
You've got to tell us now.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, tell us now. OK, let me find it.
Speaker 1:
And I realize once finals are over, they're graduated and gone. And so maybe, well, we can't do this at fall conference. Because fall conference is never here.
I guess we'll assess how this goes and see if we want to do it again, or if we want to do something similar. I'm just trying to get students interested in being prosecutors. So when is it next year?
Speaker 3:
Reading day is April 20th through 22nd. And then the final exam period is April 23rd through May 6th.
Speaker 5:
OK, so it's a week later next year. UIU's next year finals are the 13th to the 21st, with the graduation on the 22nd. The 22nd will be our meeting on the 23rd.
Speaker 1:
All right, well, we'll take that into consideration as we're negotiating next year's contract, or signing it. All right, so next meeting's a meeting. We're proposing June 25th here.
Does that work for the majority of people? I should have said June 25th is a Thursday.
Speaker 4:
It's good with the ages. We're expressed, too.
Speaker 1:
OK, let's see. Stuart Williams, June 25th. OK, it works good for Stuart.
OK, because I think that's what it said.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, he said that.
Speaker 1:
OK. OK, so June 25th, we'll do, again, 10 o'clock. Although we've been scheduling, well, yeah, June, we'll still do 90 minutes, because then that's when I present my proposed budget.
Plus, I'll have a report back from the AG's office. So we'll go from 10 to 1130, and then swap. We'll do lunch, and then swap can be after us.
The last thing, I know there's, what's that? Here, yeah, here in this room. Is, I introduced Elisa to everybody.
It's Elisa, right? And not Alyssa?
Speaker 4:
It's Elisa.
Speaker 1:
Elisa. We need to introduce ourselves to Elisa. So, Steven, why don't you sit next to her?
Steven Fook, Duchenne County.
Speaker 4:
Chad Dodson, Iron County. Greg Peterson, with the Attorney General's Office.
Speaker 2:
Jeff Gray, Utah County. I'm trying to address an UPC. I'm Brad Robinson, Salt Lake County.
And I'm Wayne.
Speaker 6:
Ed Montgomery, South Georgia.
Speaker 2:
I'm Wayne with UPC.
Speaker 3:
Emma Johnson, UPC. Marilyn Lawson, UPC.
Speaker 5:
Sherry Walker, Preble.
Speaker 1:
Okay, now I expect you to remember everybody's names. So, who's online is Troy Rawlings from Davis County, is the County Attorney. And then Stuart Williams with Clearfield City, is the City Attorney.
So, as I, you know, talked to you, UMPA nominates two. So you and Ed are the UMPA reps. And then Stuart and Randall are the UMAA.
Did I say that right? UMAA reps. And then Emma, as you all know, is leaving us.
She will not be here for next council meeting. So I just want to thank Emma for the great work that she has done for us. She has brought a lot of excitement to the office.
Really creative, good ideas. And we're going to miss her, especially Marilyn. Because Emma has been able to take over some of the, help Marilyn lift the load of the office.
And so we really appreciate Emma. We opened up the position. There was, anyway, Craig and I know what we're talking about.
We opened the position up. And we've already gotten probably a half a dozen applications. Really qualified.
And can I turn off the recording and say, I'm overqualified. So I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But we've already received quite a few applications.
So here's what our plan is. Is we will interview on May 11th and 12th. It's Marilyn, myself, Trent, and Tyson.
And is there anybody on the council that would like to be on that interview panel? You don't have to decide now. If you do, let us know.
So we figured we'll interview those two days. Extend an offer. And then that way, we'll give a person two to three weeks to give notice with their other employer.
And we want Emma's replacement to start on June, June 8th. And so that way, Emma will have time to train the new person. Because the biggest responsibilities that Emma does is she does all of our concur.
Concur is the system that they.
Final Minutes
Speaker 1:
And not that it's not that it's complicated, but you have to learn it. So it is complicated, okay? Okay So I was going to train them on that plus That will allow this person to come with Emma down to the UPAA conference And they'll go down for the first day so that the the new hire you can get to know the UPAA people and see what it's like to Do the administrative part for a conference and so that's that's the schedule So when we meet on the 25th, you guys will get to meet the new part-time secretary So that's our schedule But again, we wish Emma the best. She said she wanted to be a tax attorney.
I said it was one of the options Oh, I know That's not a good trade-off You need to get to know me Oh She's already thinking about student loans I know, you can start talking about student loans, don't be stressed Yeah, but PSLF you can, you know Okay, I'll get a couple hundred bucks every year I'm over here thinking about being an associate because I'm going to work for her I know right That's it That's it Okay And there's lunch over here Thanks everybody, yeah, and Costco treats will please take All right.