Test 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, test, test. OK, we are on. Let's go.
Great. Let's see, was that somebody trying to get on in a second? Oh, yeah, Travis.
OK, all right, so hopefully you got the addendum and the agenda, so I'm going to kind of merge them both. So we want to welcome Major Travis Reese. He's Commissioner Bill Mason's designee from Public Safety.
He has joined us. His camera is off because he is on vacation and is joining us, so we appreciate him. He's excited to be with us and working as we work on future training and legislative issues that affect law enforcement.
And I put on here a welcome to Brittany Handy. Well, she is from the AG Finance. She's our finance person, and the finance people have asked Brittany to start attending council meetings just in case council members have questions about the budgets and whatnot.
But she, her husband, had a medical appointment this morning, so she may or may not be joining us, but we want to make sure and welcome her. OK, minutes from last meeting. Move to approve.
Second. OK, and Steve, all in favor? Aye.
Aye. Aye. Any opposed?
OK, hearing none. Budget. Budget, yeah, OK.
So there's two in both the agenda and the addendum. There's a lot about the budget. So we talked about this.
We talked about this the last couple of meetings. Just a reminder, we didn't have a non-lapsing carryover this year. It was previously reported on.
Two big areas where our expenses went up that we hadn't accounted for. I told the training committee last week this, is you have to be careful what you wish for, is when the AG Finance started looking at what we were paying and if we were paying for things that maybe we shouldn't have, it turns out that we were not paying enough. Rent at this building at College Drive had increased substantially, over $10,000 for us alone.
CJC, that same hit, and so we were not expecting that, so we were having to account for that. The network costs are up by about $13,000, and, again, this is just because we didn't know who to ask or weren't getting the correct information in years past. When I prepared last year's budget, we thought that it was significantly lower than what it was, and as we found out when we got to the year end, we were paying significantly more, up by $13,000.
And so those were hits that I hadn't budgeted for. As I've said in the past, it's so helpful to have Brittany assigned to us. We are having our monthly budget meetings with her.
We just had one yesterday, and I'm going to cover some of that in the addendum. And so we're doing a better job of keeping track. Talia is doing a great job.
As we incur our expenses, she's putting them into QuickBooks, which was our accounting software, whereas our previous practice was we would be waiting until we got a final report from the state's finance, and that was always, what, two to three months behind. So as I was looking at where we were spending last year, I didn't realize that we didn't have current numbers, that I was always looking at numbers two to three months behind, and so that is something that we have corrected. Right now, so with the budget, you will look at the numbers looking to be in the red by about $14,000.
Switching over to the addendum, the additional items, as we met with Brittany yesterday, she informed us that the discretionary raises from 25 had probably not been moved over to our budget. As you can see in the budget, I calculated, and it was just my educated guess on what our discretionary raises were this year and the money that we were getting from the AG. That's built into the budget that you currently have.
But the fact that we did not, more than likely did not receive the 25 discretionary raises, Brittany thinks that comparing our discretionary raises to what CJC would have received, CJC received around $20,000 from 25 in discretionary raises, and she thinks that ours will be above that. So she doesn't know for sure. I don't know for sure.
That's why I just said in here that it can be in the couple tens of thousands of dollars, and if that's the case, then that will put us into the black for the year, provided that we stay on budget, which we intend to do. Where we have cut, again, just as a review on the budget to keep us where we're at, is we canceled this year's advanced trial skills. That would have been this month, but that was canceled.
The training committee, and we'll report on this in just a second, talked about doing a modified course, and that was briefly covered in the agenda, but I'll talk about that. We did not pay for students lodging at basic this year. We have done so in the past.
There was at least one year, maybe two years, where we were also in a lean year that we did not pay for student housing, so it's not something new. Travis, I don't know why. Travis, are you still there?
All right. Travis, are you back in? Okay, for some reason, we keep kicking you out.
Okay, I'm going to assume that he's still with us, and so we won't be paying for student housing for this next year as well in 27. Trent and I will not be attending our national meetings. Trent, Tyson, and I all belong to a national organization of people that do what we do, and that meeting is in Arkansas.
Tyson, he has the option to go because his job will be to pay for grant funds, so that wouldn't affect our budget, so if he goes, he would be the only one, but Trent and I will not be going to the meetings. I'm on our executive board, but I can attend those board meetings virtually. The UPAA conference, we have decided, determined that they're going to hold that locally to try and cut down on some of those costs.
We also cut their conference by a day, so there used to be a two-and-a-half-day conference. They're back to a day-and-a-half, so that will help with our budget. I'm not going to be doing any job fairs this year unless they're local.
UPAA, there's going to be a prosecutor there next month. I think I reported this before. We scaled them back to a day-and-a-half as well.
With a day-and-a-half, we weren't able to get 12 credits, and like we have tried to do with every conference, a prosecutor, excuse me, if they attended a single conference, they could get all their credits at one conference. They're not able to there, but we will make sure that anybody that's missing their credits, that we'll make videos available to them and help them get their credits. We're probably not going to host the—oh, going back to job fairs.
We held a recruiting event, you may remember, after spring conference last year. We had a handful of students. A lot of students came.
It was a good success for those that came, but it was a little bit pricey, and I don't think that we will be doing that after spring conference this year. Those of you that came to fall conference, you know that we had no swag, so we won't be purchasing any swag this year. As I expected, we had at least one comment that somebody commented that they missed the swag at conferences, so we'll just have to make do.
We don't plan to bring in any out-of-state speakers. Maybe I'll report on this in just a minute. We talked about that with the training committee, and we've accommodated for that.
Not paying any speaker on honorariums, and as you all know, we were not able to pay for you to go to council meeting last week at Bryce, which is something that we also had been able to do in years past, is hold council meeting right before spring, fall conference, wherever that was at, and we just weren't able to do that. It's on the budget, the discretionary salary increase. Sorry, I'm a little jittery this morning.
Estimated what that would be. It's going to be issues. Yeah, it's issues.
And so that's what I'm anticipating it will be, but we'll see. As I said, we're meeting monthly with Brittany, which has been really great to help us with that. Okay, conference registration fees.
Finance has told us that we need to vote on this every year just for legislative purposes, and so we voted. It was sometime last year that we raised the registration fee for public employees from 125 to 150, and then we raised the fee for non-governmental employees up to 400. You voted on that in the past, but finance is telling me we need to do a vote every year.
So can I get a motion on that?
I'll move.
Second? I'll second. I'll just go.
Any objections to that? Hearing none, we'll say that that passes unanimously. Okay, let's see.
Training committee update. We don't have a budget for it.
Oh, yeah. Oh, sorry, sorry.
Questions about the budget?
What's the projection going forward? And I don't like the idea of we're not doing this, we're not doing that as far as training goes. Right, right.
Is there a plan moving forward? What do you anticipate?
So when I met with, when I referred to Patrick, Patrick is the assistant.
He's like the deputy director for finance.
There you go, executive deputy director. He's the one that I've worked with most regularly on this. He, when I talked about a legislative ask for additional funds, he said, one, we wait one year, see how things shake out.
I don't think he understood just exactly how much we were having to cut from our budget. I think it's where Travis is at that he keeps coming in and out. He's on a boat in Lake Powell, so.
Okay, I wasn't going to say that.
Yeah.
So with him maybe not knowing exactly what we were cutting, his suggestion was have us go for another year, see where things, you know, finally shake out, and then in 29, FY29, seek for an increase in the budget. As we sat down subsequent to that conversation and looked at this, realizing how much we could cut out, when we met with Brittany yesterday, I gave to her a budget spreadsheet and added in what we have cut out and what we would need. So, for example, we would want to do an actual advanced trial skills in 28.
We really need to do another train-the-trainer course for 28. Both of those would be fairly expensive just because of the length of time, you know, how many days they are, where they're at, and other things to the tune of about $87,000, and I don't know that Patrick was anticipating that. So I asked Brittany when, because I was expecting to be contacted about our budget for this next fiscal year, and Brittany said, oh, they've already done budget prep.
So I was a little concerned that they didn't ask me about it unless they were thinking that this prior conversation where they were saying, let's just wait a year, was our budget prep, and so Brittany is going to take my concerns to Patrick. I didn't want to jump my chain of command and start not complaining.
To be blunt, you should have. I didn't know about any of this, you know, and we were doing kind of trying to put together building blocks for the AG's office a couple weeks, you know, probably three months ago, and this would have been, this isn't on you. I'm just saying, like, this, like, I could have been like, hey, you know, this is happening, but can I jump the line for just a second?
How would network costs, how would they go up by $10,000?
Well, what it was, Stu, is that I was asking Ron for those costs, and he was giving me the costs that he was aware of. I think he just was not aware of whatever the additional costs were that we didn't know about.
But I don't think, like, we've had the contract for this building for a while, so I don't understand, were our people giving you bad information about the space?
I think it was just outdated information.
Okay.
And to Patrick and Brian's credit is they're really the first ones that have looked at it.
They are. I mean, our last finance guy was basically there's always money in the banana stand somewhere, and so we're just always moving money around. Exactly.
And so nobody knew anything. And so they are going through much more. But Tracy at CJC has found that they have been, they're like, okay, now your overhead is X, and then she's looking through it, and she's like, but we don't use this, we don't use this, we don't use this.
And so they've been like, oh, sorry, we'll change the overhead. So as long as what I want to make sure is they're giving you a good breakdown, so then you can see and be like, wait, we're not using FileVine. We're not, you know, that kind of stuff.
And that's why in the minutes I put there that we still haven't reached that final point is they are looking at this.
Lindsey, Brittany gave me a copy of the contract for the building and how the spaces is divided or how they assess the costs. Yeah. And I think what the office is doing is they're not really measuring office space, it's just per body.
I see. And so I haven't had a chance to actually look through those numbers. Okay.
Yeah.
So they're just... Feel free to go through that with a fine-toothed comb and stuff. Yeah.
And Brittany's great, so it'll be... I'm glad that you guys are working more together. Right.
And stuff. Right. I'm worried about AG's office pushing some of these costs on you that I'm not sure these are costs that should be pushed on the UPC.
I'm just... Right. It would just be good to have you go through it and make sure.
Right, right. And that's why Brittany's great, because she's helping us with that, and she has actually identified a couple of additional areas that maybe were being charged that we shouldn't, so. Okay.
I mean, I absolutely want to be responsible for the people's money. Right, right. But if the calculations haven't been accurate for a decade, where's that money coming from?
And it seems a little, you know, the banana stand. I mean, there's money there.
To be blunt, there were times... I think there were a number of... there may have been a number of times where, you know, it's like, hey, we don't have enough money over here.
And the prior finance director would just be like, well, I just moved a million dollars over. Now we do, you know. So, like, there's a lot of areas where I think there was...
we were over budget in certain things, right, and it was just like, we're just sweeping money over. I doubt that... I would be surprised if UPC was getting ripped off.
You know what I mean? Like, that would surprise me. If that is happening, I'd like to know about it.
And that's why I want you to go through everything to make sure. But I do think for a long time, it was just kind of like, oh, well, we'll just... we'll just assess them a certain rate, which is probably lower than what it should have been.
And now everybody's coming in and kind of actually looking at the facts and figures. So it... I mean, it may make a lot of sense to try to go to the legislature for some kind of ask, especially to say, hey, I mean, there is a real big push right now on accountability for prosecutors, right, Brett? And so, you know, and so if we can kind of couch that in, hey, UPC is all about training our prosecutors to be really good, you know, that's about accountability. You guys need to pony up $100,000 for advanced trial skills and training trainers and other things.
And to be blunt, $100,000 is fairy dust for the legislature. But that said, this is not in the AG's building block.
I just wasn't tracking this at all. So I don't know how to kind of approach this. I'll talk to Dan about it too.
And it's like I said, I'm not attributing any ill will. I just think that there was a miscommunication that Patrick didn't realize just how much we had cut and what the cost would be.
No, this is a big... this is a big... I mean, as you said, this is a big list of cut.
Even the swag, that's kind of a bummer, right? You know, like, so... so yeah, I mean, what do you think to get to where...
I know you're still working with Brittany on this. To get to where you need to be, what do you think you will need?
It's like I said, I gave her this year's budget, plus I think it's going to be about another $87,000, $90,000, an increase to our budget to get us back to where we were. Okay. $100,000 would certainly give us a cushion.
Sure.
Maybe I can try to find some of that in the litigation fund or something.
And at the very least, if we could get funding for... well, when I get into it fast, even some additional funds to increase just the training in a couple of these other areas. And the train-the-trainer, if we had to put it off for another, until... normally we would do that in January. We had to put it off until January 29.
It would be inconvenient for us because right now what we use train-the-trainer for us to develop trainers to be trainers at the basic prosecutor course. But then, of course, those that get trained, they've got the skills to train at our other conferences, and that's who we try to select from when we choose presenters.
Right now our, Tyson puts it, our bench of trainers for basic is right where it's at. If we lose anybody else, we're going to have to be scrambling and maybe invite previous people to come back and train for us. So that's why we feel an urgency that if we had to put it off for another year, we could make it work.
It wouldn't... it would be uncomfortable, but we could make it work. But that $33,000 is roughly what we spent the last time.
It'd be nice, but we couldn't...
So $100,000 is kind of the cushion, potentially. Okay. That's good to know.
Thank you. I didn't mean to jump ahead with that. I don't want to give you questions.
Any other questions or discussion on the budget issue? As Mary and I were talking about it, I mean, we realized what happened this last year, that normally we're really pretty fiscally... I mean, we're always fiscally responsible.
We just had some... We've had carriers, essentially, every year. Okay, training committee.
Do you want to just briefly talk about training committee? Yeah, you were there. Just planning the upcoming conferences.
Last fall conference, apparently, was outstanding, and it just seems like these things keep getting better and better. Basic, incredible course, training trainer, incredible. Those are my thoughts.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a really good training committee meeting. I'm looking at the addendum, and I'll come back to the main agenda, is I talked to them about the budget concerns, and they took that into consideration, and so we're not inviting out-of-state speakers. And not that we do that every time.
We just recognize we've got some really great in-state speakers. As I put on here, we recognize that AI... We've done AI at quite a few of our last conferences, but we're going to create a series, an AI series, moving forward.
We came up with a list of quite a few items of things that need to be trained on. We realize six months from now, that list may be obsolete, but the list can be massaged, and so we're looking forward to doing that at every conference. We've got just some really great speakers.
Spring and fall have been planned, and so we're looking forward to that. Spring, we're looking at holding it at Zermatt. I mean, excuse me, fall at Zermatt, and that the reason that we're doing that in a couple is we've got a number of confirmed speakers from along the Wasatch Front that are not prosecutors that wouldn't normally attend that conference, and so if we were to hold it like at Zermatt or some other local place, that would help us reduce travel costs. So that's... that's where we're looking, and the fact that there's a really nice golf course nearby persuaded some of our committee members to vote on that.
We're trying to get Zermatt.
Yeah, trying to get it. Yeah, let's see. So going back to the main calendar, upcoming...
we've got visual trial skills, another one next week. UMPA is in November. They've got a great agenda.
We were able to get Greg Skordas to come down and present on... it's not going to be from the bench, but it's prosecutor-defense relations, and so we're excited about that. We've had BASIC since our last council meeting.
We had 19 students, and it was a great course. I think there's a faculty... we all agreed that this is probably the best class that we've had in a really long time.
We had... I can't remember what your name was. Yeah, Paige from Orem.
Yeah, it was just a really great course. We even had Nate Rawlings, who is the new Uinta County attorney, attend, which... which we really liked.
Nate is... this is his second career, but he's been an attorney for less than two years, and so he and his chief deputy, who's also been an attorney for a number of years, but has done civil, they came, and they were just soaking it up. Sometimes in years past, we've had attorneys, maybe second career, that are a little bit older come.
Sometimes they... not that there's pushback, but you sometimes get the feeling that you can't really teach many new. They were completely open.
It was... it was great, and so we really enjoyed having them. And then Fall Conference, like Ed said, we feel like it was probably one of the best ones.
The speakers were great. The only concern I had for fall is just that our registration list was down. We had 85 people registered.
We've had a couple more that have registered since to watch the videos, but how many would you estimate, Marilyn? Just a handful?
Just a handful. Yeah. Under ten.
Okay. You know, last year we were at 121. The year before, we were 118, and so we budgeted for 102, and so we're under our projected...
registration fees are going to be a little bit down for that conference. Let me see. Training committees.
Okay, it goes back to... oh, yeah. Okay.
As I put in the agenda, and as we fleshed out here in the addendum, is Trent approached me maybe a week or two ago about a modified version of ADVANCED, and Clint Heiner was really instrumental in helping us develop the case file. It's a case that their office has prosecuted. Clint's really passionate about this, and so last year he and Trent, you know, put their heads together, and so he and Clint have been talking about this.
Here's what Trent is proposing, and what we talked to the training committee about, is doing a modified version of ADVANCED this year, and what that would look like is they're proposing doing it one day a week for three weeks for just a couple of hours a day. So Trent is actually proposing Friday, December 4th, 11th, and 18th of this year, and instead of having substantive presentations like we did in ADVANCED, we would cut those out, and this would focus exclusively just on the trial skills. There would be, you know, presentations on opening and closing, but there wouldn't be...
those exercises would be done more in class, meaning not everybody would, you know, get up and give an opening or a closing, whereas what the focus then would be was... would be the direct examination of an expert, and then the cross-examination. So week one of the course would be, you know, the opening statement stuff, introducing the concept of doing a direct exam of an expert, and then the students would have the assignment over the coming week to prepare the direct exam of the prosecution expert witness.
Then they come back week two, they do the direct, they get some feedback, get some instruction on how to cross-exam a defense expert, and then their assignment then from between week two and week three is to prepare that cross-examination, and then come back on the third week prepared to do the cross-examination of the defense expert, and so that's the proposal. We would hold it here at College Drive. Thanks, Stu.
We'd hold it here at College Drive. We would limit it to about 15 students. We would open it up to anybody, but we kind of expect that the fact that because it's, you know, over a three-week period that the majority of our students would be from along the Wasatch Front offices, you know, we could just drive up from the morning.
Oh, and when I say a couple of hours, it would be like 8 to noon, or 9 to 1, something like that, so it wouldn't be a full day on the Fridays. So people, you know, come up. We're going to use the same sexual assault fact pattern that we used last year so that we don't have to recreate any materials.
We'll pull the faculty from here along the Wasatch Front so that we're not having to incur significant costs there, and so the proposal was is to try this out the first year and see how it works, and if it's successful, then we could do the modified version on the even year, so we would do it in, or no, excuse me, yeah, even year, so we would do it in December of 26, then do it again in 28, and then in 30, and then in the odd years, go back to a more traditional advanced trial skills. It's a two-and-a-half day that includes the substantive lectures, and we would do that off the Wasatch Front, and then that would, so that would be years 27, 29, and 31, and that's, of course, you know, having the budget. I was approached after our meetings last week about the registration fee, and this is where you all need to come in and chime in, is it was suggested and argued to me that there are offices that can't afford to send people to an additional training if they're already coming to, say, fall or Oompa or spring, that another $150, even though, you know, $150 doesn't seem like a whole lot, but for a training budget that could impact, and so it would be what I consider waiving, the $150 fee.
We're not going to have major expenses. We won't feed them lunch, and then, of course, we'll have drinks and snacks and probably have to pay for mileage for some of the faculty, so it's not a significant expense, but an expense would be incurred nonetheless. The course is developed.
It's easily hosted here. Trent has volunteered to take the lead, so that will take some burden off Marilyn and Talia, but they're the ones that
If we had 15 students at $150, that would be, you know, $2250, $2,250. Oh, let me pause for just a second. Marilyn, did you write down who's in attendance?
Yes. Okay, got it. Okay, thank you.
So, you know, $2,250. In a robust year, $2,250 is, you know, not a whole lot of money. In a lean year, it's $2,250.
You know, argument was made that there are prosecutors out there that have crushing caseloads and that are not really receiving training in complex matters like this. And if theirs is an office that can't afford to send somebody, then, you know, they would be missing out on this opportunity. I raise the issue as we have gone back to charging for visual trial, which I'm getting to, and the argument was that visual trials is a nice-to-have skill.
You know, you don't have to have training in visual trial to be an effective prosecutor. Whereas what we're training in advanced really goes to critical skills, and so that might be a distinguishing factor that we consider in whether we charge for this course or not. And so those are the arguments for not charging the registration fee.
So the arguments against is we're in a lean year. Can we afford to pass up, you know, $2,000? UPC is not in the business of making money.
Our mandate is to train prosecutors, but the fact remains that we have to have money to train, and there will be some expenses incurred for this course. We have found last year we decided to not charge for visual trial, and what we found is we started having just a large number of people that didn't show up. We discovered that if you've got some skin in the game, $150, that you're more likely to show up.
Starting July 1st of this year, we went back to charging $150 for visual trial skills, and I'll get to this discussion in just a minute just because of the no-shows. Well, I'll just talk about it right now. So Marilyn and I realized we needed some clarification from the council.
As we had talked about giving credit for the course, you know, that they would pay the $150, and even if they came, we would give them credit for a future conference. So in essence, it was either you're getting, you know, a two-for-one or visual trials was going to be free, but Marilyn has run into the challenge of accounting for that. You know, what do we apply the registration fee to?
Do we apply it to visual trial? But then if they come to another conference, do we back it out, the accounting back it out of visual trials to move it over to another conference? And then...
And that's hard to track. And that's hard to track.
That's hard to track. And let me just add just a small component of the cost. Even though we don't charge for a visual trial or what Bob was saying about the modified advanced, CLE is still offered, and so there's somewhere I have to account for that or still go through the same process of making sure everybody gets their CLE, and then we pay for the CLE as well.
So that still has effort and cost associated.
That's what I said. As Tyson would say, nothing is free.
Yeah.
And then the other problem that mom and dad, mama finance, AGO finance, big finance, we call it big army, big finance has is if, let's say somebody comes to a visual trial in June, which is the end of a fiscal year, April, June, but then they don't come to a next conference until the following fiscal year, trying to transfer those funds over two different fiscal years, they hate. So what we're asking the council is for a decision on a vote. Do we just go back to charging for visual trial skills or not?
And then if we are going to charge, do we give them a credit or do we just charge it as we have in the past? So that's the question for you all. It's a two-part, a two-for-two question.
Isn't the motivation for charging to make them show up?
And Bob mentioned this, but we were having a real issue with visual trial of having four or five, as many as six people out of ten just not show up the morning of. And so we put on this big full-day course, bring in Blair, put him up in a hotel, pay his mileage, take my whole day to come and be support, which, again, I'm not working for free. And so it's not free for me to be here.
And then just have people not show up. And the last couple of classes after we started charging, we've not had that problem. I think we've had one person out of the two classes total that didn't show up.
Whereas before, it was like a minimum of four and as many as like six that weren't showing up.
Didn't we try at some point where we charged the fee and then if they showed back, they got?
Yeah, the credit. And that's what we're running into with the finance is how do we track that? Which conference do we attribute it to?
And then crossing over fiscal years. AG Finance just hates that because they want to close out the fiscal year. They don't want to reopen if we have to, accounting-wise, transfer money from FY26 into FY27.
We just see like a partial refund back. Well, giving money back, that's also hard. That's also hard.
And also getting them to do their ceiling. I mean, it's a conference. It doesn't matter what size it is.
It's still an event. So everything goes into it just like if we were doing spring conference. It's kind of the same process, whether you have 350 or you've got six.
And I mean, that's a good point, Alisa. You know, can you refund? And so I guess the question I'll just throw out, if you even want to discuss it, is do we charge a reduced fee for a visual trial since it's just a one-day?
Or a scholarship or something? If there's an office that really needs it.
Yeah, we could do that.
Would it be hard for people to pay like a no-show fee if you charge them?
We have a hard enough time collecting. So if all is done and we've only had – oh, no, BASIC. BASIC has done how many months now?
Two months? And we still have not collected from half of the students that attend BASIC.
And I sent out bills and notices.
So I guess maybe – I guess I could give you three questions. Do you want to reduce the fee for like a visual? Do you – are we still charged $150?
And are we going to give them a credit or not?
Did the numbers drop when we started charging the fee? No.
No, we still fell off. They increased. They increased.
People actually show up.
I mean, like the registration. No, the registration has always been pretty consistent, 8 to 10 people every time. We cap it at 10.
We cap it at 10.
Bob?
Yes.
I just think in the end, you know, $150 is a pretty good deal. Any time we get grants from UPC, $150 is a good deal. For me, I say charge it and don't worry about refunds or credit.
I mean, that just seems like poor work. Maybe I'm the only one with a budget that can handle $150 for a prosecutor. But I don't think you're asking for too much.
Okay.
I'll take that as a motion.
I agree.
I think we get charged. Sorry, say that again, Stuart. That was Chad.
Oh, Chad. Chad. I agree with Ray.
I think absolutely charge. I don't see that being a big deal. I think the value is there and people should pay.
Okay. That sounds like a second. All in favor?
Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Any opposed to that? Okay, so then going back to advance, I realize that I overlapped both of these.
So the argument was that I was having with, you know, tied with this person is we've gone back to charging for visual because the no shows. And my concern would be is if we're not charging for advanced trial skills that we would also have that problem. and especially when it's over three days, over three weeks, is somebody gonna say, well, the middle week, I've got something come up and I'm not going to attend or the third week or whatever.
I just am concerned about that. Let me see if there's any other arguments we can put on here. Yeah, so, oh, one last thing that I didn't put in here because I thought about this on the way home or remember this is, I think it was during COVID, when we did not hold BASIC.
Sandy Johnson, when she was at Utah County and was their training prosecutor down there, she approached us and asked if we would co-sponsor with Utah County a mini BASIC there in Utah County. Sandy did all the legwork. She got the meeting space arranged for the trainers, used some of her own materials, used some of ours with our permission.
And that one, we did not charge, but that, I don't think we, do you remember, Marilyn, did we register people for that or did they have to do their own CLE? Do you recall? I meant to ask you this morning and forgot.
I'm pretty sure Utah County handled all that. Yeah, that was just their people.
Well, they opened it up, but I don't think anybody else. Yeah, and maybe nobody else did because I called and asked Marliesa because I know Marliesa was really involved. So they did open it up, but whether or not anybody came, you may be right, Tyson, there's nobody else here.
Because I was there for at least a portion of it. I went and presented at it, and I think it was exclusively Utah County people.
Okay, then maybe this, it doesn't really apply. Maybe that's an apples and oranges, is if another office wanted to sponsor this with us. And my concern with that is COVID was unique.
We all understand that. My concern is if another office wanted to sponsor this and do all the work and co-sponsor with UTC, are we defeating our training mission? If an office wanted to do it internally on their own, I mean, that would be different.
So that's the only other thing that I had that I didn't include in the addendum. So thoughts on the fee for advanced.
And I'm just gonna throw this out there, but it just raises the more philosophical question in my mind, which is the legislature, I think everybody wants us to be as good as we can possibly be. But the state doesn't seem terribly interested in putting up a whole bunch of more money to make that happen. The offices that can afford it, can afford it.
The offices that can't, in my mind, that's the issue. So the scholarship.
Oh, Carl, sorry, Carl. Oh, you're fine. I was gonna say, and this is probably a little bit more nuanced and complicated than you can work out just in this meeting, but at fall conference, I was talking to Ryan McBride and he was explaining that no one from Utah County is going to be able to attend UPC conferences for right now because they've eaten up all their training budget on the Tyler Robinson prosecution.
And as you talked about people with crushing case loads, I know that's a thing in most of the Wasatch Front counties and probably beyond that as well. One thing that maybe as you're looking at how to better accommodate things and how to get training out there would be looking at, Ryan McBride has already invited me to come and present what I did at fall conference to his prosecutors at a staff meeting and he's going to arrange all the CLE and all of that. But it might be an interesting conversation to have with some of these counties.
Are there ways where you can break some of these things up into a little bit more bite-sized chunks and then the cost is gonna be lower because you guys can travel out to those offices and present the trainings and then your attendance is going to be better because those are meetings that are already gonna be at. I don't think that really answers your question in advance but that is a model that you might wanna start exploring a little bit where we've got some budget crunches going on around the state.
And that's what I was saying is if offices wanted to do their own training, they certainly can do that. But then as you're suggesting, Carl, how much does UPC, how much do we help with that? Do we let those offices use our materials or is it, do we say this is a UPC conference but it's in Utah County for example and so they're gonna get first crack at filling it up but it may, because it's a UPC conference, they have to open it up or reserve X number of slots for other attorneys or I mean.
Or another model would be Utah County has, they have a CLE training every once a month on a Friday during staff meeting and you just say, hey, Trent has some really good materials on recent changes to protective orders and then Trent goes down and does the training. It's gonna reduce the cost to them because they're probably only gonna have to pay for a little bit of mileage for Trent and instead of hitting eight to 10 prosecutors, you're gonna hit 30 that are in that meeting anyways.
Right, and for substantive training, I agree with you, Carl, that's one way to do it but for this, for what we're trying to accomplish with this. For big block trainings, it probably doesn't work. Well, and even with this modified version of advanced skills, which would be hard to do, you know, on a, on a once a month, single hour lunch. So, there, it's apples and, and Fuji apple, I mean, it's, it's kind of an apples to apples, but it's also an apples to oranges, that trying to do a skills-based course, um, is going to require more than probably just a once a month, an hour a month.
I would, I would also suggest, I am, I am not keen on the idea of putting more work on you guys, so if we have the schedule that we have, that is more than enough, that we can handle, rather than adding X amount of days on top of that, I, I think we would need somebody else on UPC, UPC staff. Yeah. So, uh...
And I can say, to Carl's point, um, I've been to offices and done training, like, I've come to Salt Lake City and done DUI training in one of these in, in-house COEs. I've gone to, actually, Utah County and met with their, their, uh, major crimes team on DUI stuff, uh, at a staff meeting, and did the training for that, and so I think, like, those have already been happening over time.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but it's, it's this debate we've had internally and even with the training committee on, do we want this to be a skills-based class, or just an informational class? Because those trainings are just informational, they're not helping people build skills. Right.
And so, um, we've decided that this needs to be a skill-building class, and so it has to be held in a certain format to be able to do that. Um, and so, it, it, it is unfortunate that people are having these, these budget constraints, um, and I mean, Utah County is where it is, right? I mean, no one's gonna fix that problem for them, um, unless a plea deal happens tomorrow and that case goes away, which probably isn't happening, right?
No. And so, um, but, I mean, another factor of this is, is that they're not planning on coming to UPC conferences over the next couple years, you just lost now our two biggest offices, because Salt Lake doesn't send people, and Utah County won't be sending people. And so you wonder why, you wonder why registration is down.
Yeah. That's your two biggest offices in the state. Right.
So, scholarshipping, I think, you know, like, um, Allie was bringing up is, is what we consider scholarshipping, um, you know, holding it here. Um, I think in, in the broader picture is going to the legislature and saying, you know, our mission is to train, but look, our two big offices, they can't afford, and so we need more money so that we can either pay for them or we can absorb those costs. I mean, those are arguments down the road, but, um, what else?
Is there other discussion we need to have, or are you guys ready to make a decision?
I mean, I, if we're talking about advanced, um, if an office, if an office can send somebody, wants to send somebody, and can afford it, fantastic. If they're very small jurisdictions, um, I, for me, that's a case-by-case where we can make a decision about whether or not we want to leave the meeting. So, scholarship, in other words.
Yeah.
Okay. Is that a motion? That's my motion.
Okay. So, charge would be, um, that it come up with a, an avenue for a scholarship. Okay.
Is there a second? Second. Uh, Allie?
All in favor? Aye. Aye.
Any, any opposed? So, let me, let me get now some clarification. is you know and you talked about a small office but let's say Utah County wanted to send somebody and the response is all of our training budget has gone into this huge case.
They're obviously a big office but their training budget has been allocated. Is that something that we could take into consideration or should take into consideration.
I mean we want to reach as many prosecutors around the state as possible and a lot of those smaller offices they don't have the resources that Utah County or Salt Lake County has to do in-house training and there are one or two prosecutors right so you they don't they also don't have the scope of experience to rely on as a resource. I think the priority should be on if it's a jurisdiction that traditionally doesn't send prosecutors to our trainer trainings we should prioritize those over a larger county that has more internal resources.
Okay so you're thinking that they could work on that internally. Would that be a consideration? So size of office is a consideration.
Or just the number of prosecutors that we've had traditionally attend training events. Like if it's a city that's never sent a prosecutor to training. Yeah okay.
I agree with that. We do our own in-house information-based and skills-based trainings and we have like there's some of these prosecutors in Utah County as well that have been to so many cases that they can probably train a lot of their own. I know that we have that kind of resource in our own office.
In my mind there's a difference between we would rather put the money somewhere else versus we flat out don't have the money. And some of these smaller counties, I mean they literally just don't have the money. Right, right, okay.
Okay so I guess and maybe I haven't put the cart before the horse. Are you, are we uncomfortable with this modified version in December just coming up doing that three days and seeing how that works out? The training committee was seemed like you know really positive about it and Karen I keep that chime in because you were a training committee as well.
So if I, I don't want you to feel ignored.
No, it had great feedback and I think it'd be, at least try it once just to see how it goes.
Yeah and I think I skipped over just everybody this is Karen's last council meeting is we're sad about that is if you didn't know her position is filled the UPA board it's filled by the board president and it's a four-year term it's hard to believe that Karen's been with us for four years so this is her last council meeting in January we'll be joined by Stephanie. Thank you I can see her Stephanie Quintero from Boxholder County. So thank you Karen for your service and representing UPA.
All right so yes.
So just, I would appreciate it. In this case, so you know the modified version of the advanced trial skills. So the modified version catered more towards attorneys on the boss's front because it's not feasible for me to send somebody every Friday for three weeks in a row right from you know 150, 200 miles away.
Right. What I would suggest is with that we're going to go to that guy and do that. That's fine.
I think it's still a good thing. We're still offering it to people. But I think on the years where you're going to have a three day or two and a half day presentation that there should be a preference for people coming from farther away.
Because they're not going to be able to be involved in those that are the spread out three week versions.
Right. I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. We talked about that training committee.
So thanks for bringing that up Steve. Any objection to that?
No I think that makes sense.
Yeah. Oh and then along those same lines then is holding it here. You know we're going to limit it to 15 is thinking so that one office.
Let's just say Salt Lake. I'll send them a ton of money. They want to send 15 students.
We need to I think is it alright if we say we need to I don't want to say cap it per office but just monitor so that one office isn't having you know dominant in their attendance and then if nobody else signs up and you know we have 15 slots for Salt Lake and that would be fine. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Do something like I don't know first two returns from each office or something.
Yeah and then we do a waiting list.
And then the additional get put on a waiting list or something.
Okay I like that. Did you get that Marilyn? You guys get that?
Okay. Okay I think then that's everything that I needed to ask you about. Will you vote on the registration?
Okay. Will you vote on personal trial skills? Okay.
Okay let's see. Then going back to the main agenda the IT report. Ron is on vacation himself so he's excused.
He's got his report there that you can read you know about the prosecutor. The one thing that needed to bring up and probably need a vote on. Let me see if I put this vote.
Is we are consistently having jurisdictions that are failing to pay their e-prosecutor user fees or are extremely late. Remember it's 206 per person per year. It's been that way for ever since we well from the very beginning.
We've never raised that. I'm not saying that we need to raise it. And remember what that pays for is all of Ron's technical support.
You know if you've got an issue you contact Ron. Ron's really good. I mean he's on vacation right now and has his phone with him and his email and will respond and I told him that you got him on vacation you know.
But so we haven't got charged for that. What we're suggesting for your discussion is that starting January 1st our invoices state that maybe this is just an invalid threat a hollow threat that if the fee is not paid within 60 days that we will turn off your access to e-prosecutor. Now whether or not we really turn that off I mean that would be the first person who gets turned off that's going to be really painful because as we know you know when it goes down on a normal day there's a glitch that it's incredibly painful.
We're also suggesting that we do away with the option of allowing people to pay in installments. Usually some will pay the entire year up front. Others will pay every six months.
Do we charge late fees?
Well we haven't been charging late fees no.
I think that might be because I mean it could be crippling and that would impair. A court might not be able to.
I guess that's a hollow threat to turn it off.
Yeah which also I think they might sense that it's a hollow threat and it won't be effective. I think late fees.
Okay I should have been smarter to think about that. That's just my thought.
Well if they're not paying anyway it might.
Well.
And then we're going to assess a late fee. They're not going to pay that either. I guess start with late fees then move to a shut off at a certain point.
That's not like my HOA thing right? You don't pay and you get late fees. You don't pay your late fees.
Yeah. Okay.
So what would be a reasonable late fee?
They're paying $206.
$206 per person.
Do you want it to stay?
Well that's what I'm saying. Is it $50 per person? I mean that's a lot.
That's like a quarter. You know 25% of your total cost per person. Or is it $25 per person?
I mean we want it to be an incentive so they're like oh my gosh I can't.
I just haven't heard enough that they are motivated to do it. I think $25 per person would do it for a larger office, a smaller office. I don't know.
Yeah. I'd have to send it to the Office of State Declaration.
And just so you know is who we're sending those notices to is it goes out to the attorney of record but we're also sending it to the support. Because I think initially we were just sending it to the attorney that signed the agreement and I realized once I realized we were doing that I'm like oh no we can't send it to the attorneys. If it came to me I would set it aside and forget to go back to it.
So we are sending it to the admin support people as well. So I'm going to take Lisa's suggestion as a motion that we charge a $25 late fee after what 60 days, 90 days? Yeah.
60?
60 days. 60 days? After 60 days?
60 days. What would happen if you called them up? I mean somebody who has never paid.
Yeah. I mean if it gets really bad. Call them up and say let's start talking about transitioning you guys away from the prosecutor.
And we could probably do that and I'll take more responsibility for that. I really left it up to Ron and then Talia's been helping me with the bills. I'll take that on as well for everybody.
We just send them a letter with the bill. Is it email maybe?
Well it was an email but I think we should probably start sending hard copies.
Yeah. Well I mean I think every prosecution agency in the state has a problem where with the court notices we get so many emails.
You just set them aside.
It can be easy to overlook just email. Yeah. If there are letters in the hard copies.
Yeah. I'll start doing that. In fact the ones that are delinquent I will call them and tell them about this week.
You may not be aware of it.
And I think that's a good point by Ed because again I'm going to go back to my famous statement that I have conversations with my children about all the time. Ain't nothing for free. And while we've attained a grant that helps with this there is a cost to you as a user.
Yeah. And if somebody is a few months late that's different but if they've gone one or two years without paying then we probably ought to kick them off your prosecutor and say go do your own thing. Yeah.
How delinquent are these?
Maryland. Yeah.
Ron gave me a list and he said these are the same ones. But how delinquent?
I think it merits a conversation of do these people need to be on e-prosecutors anymore?
If you want to call Bob, I have the list.
Yeah, I'll call him. I'll take that on. Within the last few months we've got e-filing through the prosecutor up and running.
The amount of time that alone saves makes up for those fees easily. That's good to know.
Easily. That's good to know. Thank you for that feedback.
So if they get a notice of cutoff date, then...
Yeah. Let's see. Sorry, who...
Carl, yes. Yeah. What about...
I mean, I think that thinking about this in terms of graduated sanctions might make sense. I think that it was a good point that you went straight to we'll cut off your access. People might not take it seriously.
Right. So starting with a late fee makes sense. But what about an intermediate sanction of if you're six months late, we'll let you still come to UPC events, but we will not submit it for CLE?
Because that gets a lot of people's evaluations turned in, right? The threat of you'll have to pay extra, you won't get your CLE. That's a real good incentive.
I don't know if any of these offices are relying on UPC for CLE, but that would be a huge incentive for them to get square with you on their e-prosecutor fees as well.
I don't know how I could...
Yeah, Carl, I don't know how because the bar... I don't know that the bar would let us do that because they'd come, they'd fill out their evaluation. They'd pay their registration.
And they'd pay their registration fee.
Yeah.
I mean, I appreciate the...
That's a good thought.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I can't think of the word.
Step up in threats, but I don't know that we could actually do that one. We'd probably get in trouble with the bar.
Yeah.
So we'll do this. We'll send out a letter. We'll send out a letter now that says starting January 1st, you have to pay the whole year up front.
Can I make... Can we agree on that? And that if it's 60 days late, it's a $25 per person fee.
If it's six months late, we'll just leave it at that. And then I will call those that are right now that are late and have a conversation with them. And then if they're 60 days late, do we want to threaten them with anything?
Or just that their fees will... Or after 60 days, it becomes a $50 per person. Yeah.
It'll increase the late fee.
So I have another wrinkle in this. Okay. What if we cut them off?
Just hypothetically, what if we cut them off and we say, well, it'll be a $100 fee to reinstate you or something? Reconnection?
Yeah. Reconnection fee or something. If they're cut off, how quickly can they be reinstated?
Oh, instantly. So they can call, and it's something that could be shut. Yeah.
So, you know, they pay.
But, like, if Ron's out of town right now, if he's out of town and somebody wants to be reinstated...
He's got a backup person that can do that, and he can even do it remotely. The problem is we can't accept credit card payments. We just...
The state says we're just too small. So they won't let us do credit card. That's why you still have to pay by check.
I wish we could do credit card because, you know, if somebody were late and they called us for a credit card that day, you know, we'd tell Ron. Well, it's like with the late fees that we're charging for the evaluations. After spring, we had about a half a dozen that failed to submit their CLE on time.
And because they were trying to get their bar registration renewal in, you know, it had a deadline. And we said, well, until we get a check in hand, we're not going to, you know, let you complete your evaluation. And so that would have that same problem if people were trying to pay by credit card for their prosecutor.
And finance does not accept e-checks.
Yeah, they don't accept e-checks. I know we're really antiquated.
I think the challenge with just cutting off access without having the conversation that you've talked about, right, and saying, you know, as of this date, you're going to lose your access because you're clearly not here. I think that's a different conversation. But just saying we've sent you letters.
We're just cutting you off. The problem is, is now you have a prosecutor who's in court and doesn't have their file. Or a prosecutor who needs to screen a domestic violence case or a stalking case.
Or who gave all the time for it to migrate away.
I don't know.
I mean, we were in that position with Utah County on justice. And now all of a sudden we have domestic violence offenders getting out and other things getting out because we cut them off from their access. And while the money's important, it's not that important.
And I realize, even when I was writing that, that that really was untenable. It was more just to spark this conversation that we've had, which has been helpful.
Yeah, I think before you hit a shutoff, there needs to be an actual person-to-person conversation with the decision maker. Because, I mean, if they're going to a prosecutor, prosecutors are a lot of prosecutors.
Yeah, the line isn't going to go. It'll be the boss. It'll be the county attorney, the city attorney, or the decision maker.
I would imagine that if we were to cut somebody off, if in the crazy world it got to that point, it would just be a discussion like, OK, this system isn't working for you. Let's figure out how we're going to transition you away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, you know, in six months, it's going to, you know, what do you need? But in six months, this service is going to be cut off.
All right. So, here's what I'm saying, and you've received it from you all. In 60 days, it begins a $25 fee.
I mean, we'll send a letter. In 60 days, it's a $25 fee. If they don't pay up for that, it's a phone call having a discussion about whether or not they're going to continue to be e-prosecutor users and just go to that point for now.
OK. Someone made that last one.
Bob, can I ask one other question? Yeah, please.
Probably not in the system. Is there a way for the system to say they can access it but not add new information?
Oh, that's a Ron question. So, it becomes a read-only. Yeah, so it becomes a read-only.
That's a great question. Can I borrow your pen? It's yours.
Oh, it's my pen. OK. Yeah, read-only.
I'll find out from Ron.
From Ron.
Oh, I mean Ron. Excuse me. Yeah, tell me, Radl.
Can it be read-only? OK. I'll take it as a compliment if it makes you think of Ron.
Yeah. OK. OK, so will someone make that motion?
I'll make the motion. Ed? I'll second.
Ali, second. All in favor? Aye.
Any opposed? Aye. OK.
OK. Oh, and the grant funding is the 2026 NARIP. I can't remember what the acronym stands for.
That's what funds this grant. The application opened. I submitted the grant.
And what I have applied for in this next round is to cover Ron's costs of travel to conferences. I didn't put it in the addendum, and I can't remember if I mentioned it at the last council meeting, is what we're going to start doing is giving Ron, we've given him a 30-minute time block at every conference. He won't take that much.
As, you know, the e-prosecutor coroner, he'll be sitting there at his table recording anyway, but we'll announce that he's there to answer questions. And by doing that, that will meet the requirements for the grant that I can, instead of having to absorb Ron's travel costs as part of the expense of the conference, I can attribute it to the grant. And so that new grant is going to have those additional funds.
So I think that's it on IT. UVAA, Karen?
We have three new board members. I haven't met them yet. We have a meeting in a couple weeks.
But Cheyenne Bentley with Iron County, Janelle Daly with the Attorney General's Office, and Kristin Turing with Davis County. So we'll have our first meeting. We'll meet each other and start discussing location for our conference.
That's kind of our hang-up, I think, right now. Yeah. Trying to figure that out.
Do we have any updates on location at all, Marilyn?
Logan seems to be the most promising. Although you sent me...
I did suggest Provo Library. They have a ballroom.
That's nice.
Because I said I know that we're kind of in a financial chokehold. Yeah. So, I mean, the only downside is that people would have to travel from a hotel.
But there is underground parking. There is outside parking.
It's in terms of... So I looked at the website. The cost for the meeting space is the same as it is for Logan, $24 a day.
And they might... I don't know. If I tell them it's with me, I don't know if they'll give me a little something.
I know that they've given me priority to reserve other spaces there, but...
But you still have to bring in a caterer in this facility. Hotel is not the closest, but it's doable, I guess.
It would be like an app. You have to travel from the hotel to the conference center.
Yeah, it would be like an app, but in a bigger city. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know.
Logan, everything is right there for about the same price. Mileage would be a bit different. So I haven't run the numbers, but I'm going to do some comparison.
Okay. But it is a beautiful facility. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Tyson, resource.
Outside of my report, that's in the packet that you can look at. We've got DUI boot camp coming up in January. Oh, yeah, I forgot.
Putting the finishing touches on that. We're going to do it here at College Drive to save money with that. So we don't have to pay for meeting space.
And more details will be coming out probably in the next two weeks on that for registration and other things. I'm trying to have a hiccup with my agenda because one of my presenters was inconsiderate and scheduled a murder trial for the same dates. So I told him that his judge needs to be more considerate of UPC schedule when he does things like that.
So until I get that worked out, the agenda is not going to go out. One thing that I'm working on and I'm starting to work on is a lot of people have probably heard from their police departments or others that an oral fluid testing company is hitting them up very, very hard to try and use their oral fluid testing kit. And they have a very, very compelling marketing pitch going on.
They have their attorneys have written briefs as to why it's admissible under Utah law. I miss that and the other. It's kind of all bogus.
So I'm trying to work with the state. I actually have looped in criminal appeals because obviously this is going to go to them eventually. And I'm going to be meeting with Michael Gadd on that soon to discuss if we were going to implement oral fluid testing, what is it going to take to make these bulletproof in court?
And then pick a jurisdiction that is going to commit to following those rules and then let's roll it out and let the court process play out.
Are they going to send an expert to testify at every trial?
Well, their assertion is that they won't need to send their expert. And that's where they're stupid. I would put it more kindly if I could, but it's just stupid.
They don't understand what we're talking about. Basically, we're just going to try and get the system set up to if a jurisdiction does want to pursue this, we can do it in a defensible way that doesn't put our DUIs in jeopardy. So that's kind of a major project that I've begun working on now and will continue to work on probably for the foreseeable future.
This isn't something that's going to resolve itself in the next few weeks. This is over the next months and years probably that we'll be consulting and working on this. So you may have to ping people around to figure out what's going on in your jurisdictions and what would be useful to you as well.
But stay tuned. There will be more on that later down the road.
And then Trent's information is in the packet. I don't know why I'm enticing speaking. That reminded me of one thing that I forgot to put in on the IT.
If several of you, Stephen Foote, I know for sure, our e-prosecutor users are starting to get – I don't know if it's a true grammar request from Alexander or somebody. If I found this guy, he's from Ukraine, but he is asking for copies of your e-prosecutor contract, joiner agreement, memorandum of understanding. He's asking for a whole ton of stuff.
Elise from – where's Elise?
Also, the digital evidence provided – whatever company used the digital evidence security in your sheriff's office and everything else.
Yeah, and the one that Elise from Fillmore got is now asking for billing statements, which, of course, you guys are not going to have. So I'm just putting this out. If you get one, we have notified Journal Technology.
Signed with them in the joint agreements that we have created if they have any concerns, you know, privacy concerns, and they do not. So if you get that, respond. One, if it complies with GRAMA, because the one the police got was not GRAMA compliant, but if it's compliant, you can release whatever documents are in your control.
His email says if you don't have this, please forward this request to the right person. Now, that's not how the AG will accept a GRAMA request. They'll need to file that with the office.
So just be aware if you guys haven't received it yet. Several jurisdictions have. Okay.
Then, like I said, Trent has his report. Just an update on the DV Resource Prosecutor and the attendance or accompanying legislation. As we previously reported, we have been working with Representative Romero's office on sponsoring a bill requiring domestic violence training for law enforcement, similar to what we did with the trauma training.
I just reached out this week to Representative Romero's Chief of Staff and it's still on the radar. I didn't realize this. They draft bills in order of number, and this bill's number hasn't come up yet.
So I think they began to draft it, but they're not actually working on it. So Carl, if you see something before I do, before they let me know, let Major Reese, Travis, and I know because it's going to be a bill that requires POST or DPC and DPS to come up with the training. What I'm hoping and what I've asked for, the fiscal note that I attached to it would give me enough funds to hire a prosecutor with a significant number of years, like 25 years experience.
And so if that passes, that would give us some cushion because, anyway, and be asking for training funds and dollars. So we'll just keep an eye on that. We'll keep you posted.
Hopefully in January, certainly we should know more about that. As I reported the last meeting, UBC is subject to the sunset provision, and I testified on this back in June. I thought that maybe we would have heard something by now.
I talked to Dan Burden two weeks ago, and he hasn't heard anything. He thinks that it's really going to be just a formality. They're going to pass us and say that we survived, and he says we probably actually won't know until the next session.
So I know you're all worrying about that. So I'm not too worried about that. Okay, going back, let's see, back to my addendum.
SLCC, I sent out an email last night, and it reported to me is they are looking for attorneys to teach at their, they now have funding for a new full-time academy. This is in addition to traditional post. And so if you are interested in signing up for any of that, look at my email, and the contact information is in that.
Let any attorneys that you know, especially retired, if you're looking for retired, I don't maintain a retired list. So if anybody has retired attorneys that you are in touch with, please forward them on. The new Paul Wake, John Art Justice, Paul Wake was one of the two prosecutors on our John Art Justice Loan Review Committee, the grant.
He is retiring, and so I have to replace him. And so if there's anybody on the council that would like to be on that committee, I would love it. Or if you know of anybody that you would suggest, what it entails is you review all the applications, and we get anywhere from 15 to 30 applications a year.
You review them ahead of time, but the beautiful thing is, if you're not a numbers person like me, is our representative from the State Board of Education. She puts everything into a spreadsheet with, and it's just, it's a thing of beauty. And really what we do is we meet once, we meet for probably an hour and a half, and go through the applications, but really it's looking at the spreadsheet and just voting whether or not we want to adopt the recommendations on the spreadsheet.
Because the way she's got the numbers worked out, you know, it takes her adjusted gross income, it takes how much money we have for the prosecutors and the public defenders, and it spits out a recommended amount. So in the early days before me, when Mark Nash was doing it, they would slog through for hours and hours, whereas now it's become a very easy process. So if, like I said, if there's any council members that would like to do that, that would be great.
Or if you've got anybody that you would suggest that I invite, let me know. If not, I'll probably just send out an email seeing if there's anybody that would be interested. The only qualification is, is they can't currently be in the program.
So it can't be somebody that has, you know, is still within a service contract period. Congratulations to Allie. She's been selected to interview for the Orem City Justice Court position.
So good luck for her, bad for us if she gets selected. So the interview is in a month? It's, yeah, it's the first day of UPA.
Yeah, so Allie won't be able to come to UPA, but we wish her, wish her well. So is there any, any last minute, any last minute things we need to go back and talk about that I've forgotten? Okay.
We, SWAP met last week. They are meeting on Tuesday, January 5th. So we're proposing that we meet the same day.
That would be Tuesday, January 5th, 2027 here. We would meet from 10 to 11 30. 11 30 to 12 would be lunch, and then SWAP is going to meet from 12 to 2.
Any, any objections to that? Hearing none, we'll, we'll schedule next council meeting for Tuesday, January 5th. So I, again, any alibis?
Hearing none, do you want to motion for adjournment? Ed made a motion to adjourn. Second?
Allie? Any objections to adjourning? No.
Thank you, everybody. Please know how much we really appreciate all that you guys do, the support that you give us as your staff. So y'all have a great day.