[Music] Lakeland currents your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota closed captioning is made possible by bichi Regional Airport serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis St Paul International Airport more information available at bidi Airport .org hello again everybody I'm Ray gild welcome to Lakeland currents where tonight we're going to talk about an organization that Services Central Minnesota I think region five uh called sourcewell and we've had sourcewell on this program before but it's such a complex and important significant organization we thought we should bring it back again my first guest and we're going to have some other guests besides Paul but my first guest is Paul dra who's a regional Solutions officer for sourcewell and then when he's done giving a kind of an overview of what uh s uh this organization does we'll get into some of the specifics with some of the other people welcome aboard Paul yeah thanks for having me Ray I appreciate being here and tell us what what is sourcewell sure uh sourcewell is a uh regional service Cooperative it's one of nine regional service cooperatives in the state of Minnesota we were formed by state statute actually in the 1970s with the idea that one Central organization could do good for multiple organizations versus what they could do for themselves kind of a shared service model sort of looking at how we could uh affect schools education um resources for public agencies in a better way in a centralized way so at that time the state legislature took action to form these nine Geographic areas that would become service cooperatives so our service Cooperative that sourcewell is and the area we serve is five counties right here in the middle of the Lakeland uh viewing area Cass crowing Morrison Todd and wadina counties and the statute was adjusted in the 1980s to include local units of government and that's what we'll talk about more later with some of my colleagues that you'll meet with um so that includes uh serving those five County governments cities and nonprofits as well as the school districts within the region that the original legislation um tasked us was serving so we've been around for um it's going to be pushing uh 50 years now soon um wow I didn't realize it's been that long it yeah it's gone by like you know time goes by quick in a lot of ways but um we have almost 50 years and uh we're located in Staples um in Todd County but we serve all that whole five count area that I mentioned and we have basically three parts of our organization we've got and another important distinction for your viewers is that we are a unit of government but we cannot Levy taxes against anyone in the Five County area and we cannot borrow money so our services that we provide that are listed in our statute have to be able to create the revenue that we need to keep the lights on to pay our staff to provide services to the region so we've got that established in our organization we've got three parts to it one is our Enterprise Solutions which I can talk about a little bit that creates revenue for us through a variety of ways we've got a Central Services team our empowering smart work team that supports that think about legal Finance HR sort of services and then our team the team that I'm privileged to help run is our regional Solutions team and you'll meet some of those members here shortly and they work a lot with shared service models and supporting the the cities counties towns ship and also school districts in our region as well how many employees The Source will have do you have we've we've been growing a lot in the last couple of years um I'm not sure we're north of this number but soon we will be it's in the range of 400 employees we have and when I joined 11 years ago we had less than 60 wow so in the last 10 plus years we've grown to that level and and looking to add more to support the work that's going on in the region and those three parts of the organization that I mentioned wow that's amazing and who was your director who's in charge of the organization our executive director is Dr Chad coet um he started uh cl to 12 it'll be 12 years ago now this coming summer Chad's uh and I I'm saying this partially because he's my boss and partially BEC a big part of it is because it's true he's done a great job of leading the organization um growing and seeing opportunities for us to serve and uh being supportive when we're looking to add additional services and team members to help serve the region and Beyond I know the last number of years uh you have been ranked as one of the outstanding places to work yeah and I know your people are spread out all over the state they don't all work on the Staples right we we actually um we we do take a lot of pride in that we we Monitor and make sure we've got a good culture and good working environment um the star treb top workplace survey we do that annually and we've been recognized as a a mediumsized organization in that in that study um and Yeah we actually with adding staff we have a lot of people that work locally um a lot of people that live and work right here in the region in fact all the people that you'll meet here either live in the region or just adjacent to it uh the team that's here today but we also have people in between 25 and 30 States across the country that work for us now wow when when Co happened we realized that we needed to broaden our Workforce in a lot of the areas and um recruiting some of that Talent of course we still try to stay focused on our region but we needed broader levels of talent across the country so we have employees in close to 30 States now wow Paul we're going to take a little break we're going to come back and look at some of the team members who are working with Paul and sourcewell all right welcome back folks now we're going to meet the people that Paul was talking about who are leaders in the team that they belong to and we're going to start with Mike to my right Mike if You' introduce yourself and your title and we'll go around the table and figure it out from that thanks Ray uh Mike Willie I am a regional transition administrator on the community Solutions team hi Ray my name is Justin Burley I the associate director of Community Development at sourcewell I lead a team of six Community Development administrators that provide zoning Administration Services uh throughout the region hi Ray my name is Michelle Tes I'm the director of Licensing services so we provide services for nine counties for family child care licensing in nine counties for adult foster care team and I oversee a team of eight um Regional licensing Specialists that serve in those 18 counties I'm I'm curious how long have you folks been with sourcewell Mike how long have you been there I've been there about uh coming up on five years okay so I started with sourcewell back in 2015 so coming on 10 years I think I'm the longest standing uh soural employee on our team or SEC maybe second yeah wow yep so I've been here a while and and I started in August of 2017 so I just had my seveny year anniversary with Source ball on the community Solutions team I am amazed at where all the folks come from I mean you guys are spread out a very very large area you're not just in Staples or you're not just in wadina you're all over Mike we're going to start with you I think you're going to talk a little bit about shared service is it shared services you want to talk about first um yeah so shared services is kind of the blanket term we use uh at sourcewell for um basically all the things that we do and and things that other members of our teams uh do um shared services really start with either a request or an identified need in our region um that our partners often times uh local government or school districts um identify and say boy we could sure use some help from this and sourcewell works with those folks um to identify whether there's a regional aspect to it and whether it's something we can meet the needs of for instance my role uh I assist counties uh in the region and also Aken County uh serving folks who have mental health needs oftentimes folks who are in the state psychiatric hospitals um so I help them with transition planning and finding um their next spot when they're ready to leave those hospitals I know uh years ago I remember reading that some of the school districts didn't have Spanish teachers or you know teachers of foreign languages so Source well help them get someone into those positions to help teach those things that some of the smaller school districts just can't frankly afford yep yeah and yeah thanks Ray so our team provides zoning Administration services to 27 cities throughout the Five County area the smallest city we work with is the city of Manhattan Beach they have 65 residents that's our population the largest we work with is the city of Little Falls uh their population is about 99,100 people and so our team um full of zoning administrators does all aspects of zoning in these cities so some of the larger cities like Brainard buiji Baxter they have sort of a full staff of zoning experts there at City Hall we work primarily with the the smaller cities that don't have that level of expertise and so um a bulk of our work is um I'll say land use permitting so day-to-day permits we're not building officials we don't do plan reviews or Building Inspections but we do issue what we call land use permits we're looking at the the use of property so making sure that the proposal fits say if it's a dwelling making sure that that's an allowed use in whatever District their property is located in um we also do office hours in our city so um some cities we work up to I'll say 10 hours per week um going up and meeting with property owners and developers and contractors to assist them through the permitting process we also prepare staff reports for monthly meetings then we go to either the Planning Commission or Council meetings to present those reports and offer recommendations on those requests um so really yeah we're able to handle all aspects of zoning Administration in these smaller cities so Justin are you alone in that position or do you have people helping you that are team members yep so we have a team of six seven including me so between the six members actually I'm in I am the zoning administrator in Two Cities still I just took on this new position um so each Source employee has four or five cities that they are responsible for um so we work as a team but each member has their own zoning specific cities that they work with so if you get seven or eight requests how do you determine where you start spending your time in terms of what what say zoning uh yeah I mean so it's it's City specific so some cities um do as many as a 100 permits a year so that might be the bulk of someone's work in other city um like the man city of Manhattan Beach I mentioned I think they may have did you know two or three land use permits last year so in those smaller cities we're only billing a couple of hours maybe a year in some instances um in some of the bigger cities we have more of a a presence we're doing uh office hours and we're there on more of a routine basis how does a person get a hold of you if they need help let's say they're from managa yeah which is out of your Zone but right so we we do just only serve the cities that are located within region 5 so typically the say someone wants to build a dwelling like Michelle said so they would contact City Hall to obtain the permit application the city's application form they would submit the application form along with the site plan the permit application fee to City Hall the clerk would then send us that information in some cases we do site visits so we go out actually on site and look where they want to build their structure and then um ultimately we would be issuing the permit on behalf of the city so are the cost associated with this paid for by the cities that are doing the work uh sour we do bill for the zoning Administration Services it's a reduced rate from what the private sector rate would be we're roughly half of the rate from what the private sector rate is and that's um we're able to do that through the contract purchasing program sort of subsidizing the cost of of our department um but yeah the city does uh there's no retainer fees but they do pay an hourly rate for services Y and Michelle what what is it that you do specifically yeah so like I mentioned I'm the director of Licensing services so like Mike alluded to what a shared service is so back in 2017 this whole proposal Innovative idea of a regional licensing model was proposed to sourcewell um in the community Solutions team to kind of come up with a shared service with licensing so licensing is a de is a county delegated uh service so it's regulated by Department of Human Services also known as DHS and they um delegate the counties to carry out this licensing services for family child care and adult foster care licensing so then we have counties that partner with us to carry out the licensing duties so my team are the boots on the ground doing the licensing on behalf of the county and so again this whole idea of this Innovative shared service model came from the social services directors back in 2017 because this is more of a greater Minnesota initiative um for the fa the fact that conies um in rural Minnesota it's an unfunded mandate to carry out licensing duties at the county they don't receive any revenue from the state to carry out licensing services and so some counties had like A3 FTE some had a 0.5 so this way the counties are like hey let's pull together our resources and our staffing to leverage um our resources together to have a full FTE house at sourcewell so then they came to us and we came up with this licensing model I was actually the first one on board back in 2017 with this whole shared service model with licensing and so it has evolved over the years so we partner with nine conies for family child care licensing so we are in all of Region 5 which is C growing morina and then also we're kind of unique to everybody else we are outside of Region 5 and provide licensing services for family child care as well so we partner with Douglas Becker and Stevens County and Region 4 and then come January 1st we'll be partnering with harbard County for family childcare licensing and then also another service that we offer is adult foster care licensing which we started in 2018 family child care was our first and then adult foster care was our second license that we partner with and so we're nine counties for that service as well so we're in Olive Region 5 and then we're in Region 4 Ottertail in Douglas County and then um come January 1st we'll be partnering with Hub and Becker County for adult foster care licensing so again when I say um licensing family child care is your inhome um family based programs but we do license programs outside of their home as well outside of their residents so we call those special applications so we regulate those programs and then also we have adult foster care programs which could be a family adult foster care home where the um uh residents are living in the home with that license holder and then we have a community residential settings that we regulate as well as where it's a shift staff model so you're dealing with a very broad spectrum of people and skill levels I'm guessing yes do you ever get them all together somehow or another to do some training so that they're all uh on the same playing so to speak yes we do we are um fortunate where we get to offer an annual conference for for both adult foster care licensing providers or license providers and family childcare license providers every year so we have a conference at our studio it's a virtual conference for licensed providers to join every April and then we have our family child care conference every September for our licensed providers to join virtually through our studio interesting Healthcare Mike mental Health it used to be we used to have a state health hospital here in brainer which had a lot of patients where are we at with healthc care in in Minnesota in general and specifically what do you do in that area thank you um so you're right there used to be uh more State psychiatric hospitals in the State uh today as it stands I think for like what we would normally call psychiatric hospital beds I think there's around 200 120 uh State psychiatric hospital beds U really which for a population of 3 million isn't a lot no no there are many other psychiatric hospital beds there's private ones there's um some forensic beds at the state but but those you know have some different regulations for who they serve and uh when they can be accessed so for a lot of the folks that that I work with um it's a pretty small number of beds uh and that's part of why the Count's requested assistance from sourcewell uh so my position originated back in about 2017 uh the counties through our regional adult mental health initiative uh came to sourcewell and requested assistance because there was a legislative uh order that said that um if somebody is in a hospital and the doctors have determined that they no longer need to be in the state psychiatric hospital um the counties are charged the full cost of their care every day that they remain in the hospital hital wow and uh today that's a little bit over $2,000 a day which is significant especially for well I was going to say for some of our smaller counties but it's not insignificant even for our larger counties uh you know that can really be a a significant burden and so the counties um made a number of changes uh across our region one of those being uh having this position the regional transition administrator to uh help with communication with the Department of Human Services in those State psychiatric hospitals to help with facilitating transfers to local providers in the community uh places like group homes assisted living facilities Regional treatment centers where people would go after they were ready to be discharged from the hospital um so we've been able to make a pretty sizable impact in the number of people who have to stay in the hospital longer than they need to um in the first kind of four years that that was in effect 2016 through 20 19 uh on average counties in the region uh all together we spending about a million dollars a year W on on these costs um in the last four years so 2020 through 2023 when we've been able to decrease that to about 350,000 a year on average wow um so you know all told that's a lot of dollars about 2 and A5 million um in the region and more importantly that's a lot of dat like every one of those dollars translates to days that people don't have to spend in the hospital when they don't need to I I've had Hospital administrators on this show yeah and they've talked about the getting patients into their emergency rooms with staff at their hospitals not trained to deal with it and are you still do you see that yet or is that changing over it's probably been a few years since we've done talked about that yeah um certainly I think it's still a present problem still a challenge I I would say that you know because it's been a problem and because our region uh knows it's a problem and is trying to address it um there are really creative means that have been taken to work really hard to address it but I also know that resources are still too Limited in mental health and there's a lot in need that just is not met with the current Services we have um um so I think the hospitals and the partners in the region are all working to address it and I think things have gotten a little bit better but I'm certainly not going to say that it's addressed there there's still a heck of a lot of need that exists for for folks I can imagine Justin do you uh ever get requests to work with people at the higher levels to see if there's a way you can streamline uh zoning uh licenses and things like that um so somewhat so we do um sort of partner with Region 5 de development commission they assist cities with creating long range plans for cities so our focus with our team is on zoning ordinances which is sort of derived from compant so you set your overall Vision with your comprehensive plan and then you develop zoning ordinances to sort of implement that plan and so our team focuses primarily on those you know detailed permits that are coming through making sure the uses fit with whatever zoning District um the proposal is located in and that sort of thing so yeah sort of um at a high level but we focus more on the on the detailed portion Michelle I would guess you have nothing to do with um discipline or if somebody's not following their license requirements who comes in and checks that out so that is us we're the on the ground yes really well being this is a county delegated service um our regional licensing specialist That's What also known as licensers across the the state um we are regulating these programs and going into these programs but at the end of the day all liability still falls back on the Coney because it is a county delegated system so we have interlocal agreements in place in regards to that saying that all liability still falls back on the county so we work very closely with the county with any type of Licensing actions that you just reference or um if there's certain certain violations in the program we are um having to do those those um violations when we're out and about doing those visits so each progam you that has to do that I used sta I have staff I have Regional licensing Specialists that have a case load within certain counties that carry out the licensing duties for each adult foster care and family child care licensing Services those I think are invisible jobs to the average person don't you think I mean the average resident in Minnesota probably if they don't have anything to do with foster care or some of these areas probably have no idea what the challenges are that are going on at that level would you you think that's true to say um yeah like I think a lot of people don't understand what we all do again we do regulate these programs but we're also Advocate Advocates we advocate for these license providers and support them with technical assistance where we can and at source we're able to do that with our resources that we've been able to implement and create for our programs through this Licensing Service and how old are children involved with foster care from what age to what age so for we do not do um child foster care we only do adult foster care licensing so that's 18 and older and then we do family child care licensing so that could be from a newborn all the way up until they turn 10 um they have to um is what a license program regulates when they have children those ages you are all 2017 you started I think you said 2017 we all been about in that era in 2017 there's been a phenomenal amount of change in sourcewell uh since the beginning because I know in the early stages I remember when those units were set up in the state was almost all focused on schools you know if they didn't have enough help to like I said Spanish teachers or whatever but I'm just amazed at how you have spread your services to a such a broad broad area how do they get a hold of you folks somebody wants to work with you how do they get a hold of you so they can go to our website our our regional team we have two different websites one for kind of nationally focused that's sourcewell mn.gov our regional team's website is mn.

source.org and all of our services are listed there our contact information and sort of a a yeah more information on on our services no this maybe isn't a fair question to ask this team but I know that the U in the past I've seen where maybe like the city of Walker got a snow plow and sourcewell help them get that how how do they work through that kind of I know that's not your area but who would they talk to or how do they get that information any ideas yeah so uh most of the purchasing Folks at the the city or the county or the local government administrators know sourcewell very much so purchasing section they they work closely with sourcewell um odds are they've worked with us in the past to make purchases like the snowplow that you're referencing um or they've worked with sourcewell in developing um the needs of the region and the needs that they see in their specific local unit of government which is how sourcewell determines um you know what we're going to add in terms of uh contracts that are available for those folks to to buy from all right we're out of time thank you all for jumping on board with us it's very very interesting what you are doing very very interesting keep it up thank thank you you've been watching Lakeland currs I'm Ray gildow so long until next time