Page 9 - Demo

9expensive, unreliable, and unavailable. Other topics of importance are the Three-mile ring around Cities and increasing awareness that KPERS III is not a solvent retirement system for our employees. Plus, a whole host of issues that your Professional Organizations are pursing and have asked us to partner with you on.It%u2019s going to be another busy Legislative session no doubt, and to help you track what%u2019s happening Jay and I will once again host a weekly Friday afternoon Zoom we call Legislative Liaisons. Just like the past three sessions, this weekly zoom will be open to any county employee who wishes to attend. We will review what happened that week in the Legislature and what we can expect the following week. We%u2019ll discuss what we need help with and how you can get plugged in. If you did not join us this past session, I invite you to join us next year. Kim will be pushing out connection information in the various communications that she sends out.Another item of importance - And to help us tell the county story, Amy has already sent out a survey asking for your budgeted expenses. Jay has identified eighteen mandated services in State Statutes that you must provide. Unfortunately, most of these do not come with state funding. That leaves us generating income to pay for these services through taxes and fees. To help us tell the county story, we need to collect financial information from you all. We%u2019d like to know how much your county spends providing these eighteen core services. As I said, Amy has sent out a survey and we ask that you take a few minutes to complete it. We can%u2019t tell your story if we don%u2019t have the data to back it up. Speaking of advocacy, thank you to those who spent the day in Topeka earlier this year participating in the third annual County Day at the Capitol event. We had representatives from each of our Affiliate and Associate organizations as well as many counties! I look forward to welcoming you again to Topeka to an even bigger event on Thursday, February 6, 2025. And advocacy is not just happening here in Kansas, but in Washington, D.C. as well. Through our partners at the National Association of Counties, the Kansas story is being shared with our federal representatives as well. Plus, we benefit from a variety of NACo sponsored programs called NACo EDGE. NACo EDGE establishes sustainable, cost-saving and value-added solutions that can be applied to counties nationwide. By providing quality solutions, they strive to develop and maintain healthy, vibrant and safe counties across the US.Many of you have benefitted from these programs but so do we! For many of these partnerships, we, as the Association, receive a few dollars to add to our operating budget every time you use them. So, I encourage you to head over to the NACo website to check out these offerings. And for those of you who are not currently NACo member counties, I invite you to join. NACo has so much to offer. It has been another great year despite all the issues we battled and obstacles we overcame. The KAC staff of six is small but mighty. Keith, Dornella, Jay, Kim, Amy, and I work hard to ensure that we are providing you with the utmost timely, accurate and meaningful information, programs, and services. We recognize that this is your organization and that our role is to ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible and provides you with the best programs and information that you deserve.And as I close out my message, I strongly encourage all of you to attend the exposition later this afternoon as there will be great food, interactive games, and plenty of time to visit one-on-one with our 110 vendors in a more relaxed and informal setting. Please thank them for their financial support and participation in this year%u2019s event.If there is ever anything that you need; If there is an issue that you need assistance with; If you have a thought or an idea for something we can do to make it better or stronger. Please let me know!So, with that, I thank you again for attending the conference. I do hope that it has been a worth wile use of your time and precious resources. And I hope to see you all again on February 6th for County Day at the Capitol, if not before.Have a great rest of the conference everyone! n