Audit Committee - Regular Meeting

At this time, I'll call the budget committee meeting to order and ask for everyone to please register their presence.

Mary, you have five present.

Thank you. I'll ask now that the emergency announcement please be played. Now I'll ask, is there any public input on items on the agenda? Seeing none. Item d, approval of the minutes.

These are the December. They're in your packet. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? Motion made by commissioner Brock, seconded by miss Hannam. Is there any questions or discussion on the on the minutes? Seeing none, I ask you to register your vote, please.

Miss Hannam? Mary, you have five yeses.

Thank you very much. Item e one, resolution number 25 Dash01 dash 001, budget increase. Blount County Sheriff's Office, $17,567. This is the appropriate awarded Department of Justice Assistance Grant for the funding and purchase of a portable light tower allowing for higher visibility while working cases and incidents at night. Do I have a motion to forward this on? I do by commissioner Brock, seconded by miss Hannam. Any questions or discussion on this? Seeing none, I ask you to register your vote, please.

Mary, you have five yeses.

Thank you. Item e two. Resolution number 25Dash01Dash002. Budget increase. Elections, $55,000, and this is to appropriate funds to increase the election worker budget by the use of the fund balance to adjust the election workers' budgeted line for fiscal year 2425. Have a motion to send this on from commissioner Anderson, seconded by commissioner Brock. Any questions or discussion on this? Seeing none, I ask you to register your vote, please.

Mary, you have five yeses.

Thank you. Item e three, resolution 25 dash zero one dash zero zero three budget increase. Soil conservation, $36,199. This is the appropriate existing funds to increase the part time line for a co soil conservationist converting a current contract position to a county paid position. Do I have a motion to send this on to the commission workshop?

Mister mayor?

Yes. Oh, excuse me. Go ahead, mister.

You, mister Mayer. I I'm not ready to say a favorable recommendation, but I would move. We send it forward with a neutral without a recommendation at this point so we can get some questions answered tonight.

Okay.

So I'll I'll make that motion.

Yeah. And your motion is to send it forward?

Without a recommendation.

Without a recommendation. Got a second by commissioner Bryant. Does anyone have any questions on on this? No questions? Yeah. Can we still ask questions? And, yeah, we still ask questions. Does anyone have any questions? Okay. Go ahead, miss Hannah.

I had, mister chair, three questions. What would be the business case for moving from a contract to a permanent, position that's recurring expenses for the county? That would be question one. Question two is, we've already we're we're about to begin our winter workshops for

the next budget. So why would we put that here versus working through all the details, making sure our numbers make sense, and then presenting it at the workshop for the 2526 budget? Those are

my two questions. I may have another depending on the answers. K.

Eric, would you like to come up and answer those, please?

Thank

you, mayor Mitchell. For the record, my name is Eric Henry. I am the director of the Blount County soil and water conservation district. As stated, we are requesting a budgetary increase of 36,199 to convert an existing contractual position contracted to the soil and water conservation district to that of a part time county position. To answer your question, your first question, the business of that The business case. Yes. I'm sorry?

Yes. The business case for doing that.

The business aspect of it, it would certainly make it easier on the employee being a part time county employee as opposed to a contractual employee just in regard to the amount of time she has to spend calculating her own payroll taxes. And number two, it would make it easier on me having all the employees of the district on a central county spreadsheet so I could match, both total salary and matching funds associated with our grants. This funding will be or this position is funded by grants secured by the soil and water conservation district. In other words, this would be passed through funding with no net increase to the county budget.

So I would beg to differ with that part in that you're going from a contract, which is not costing the county anything, to making an employee of the county recurring expenses from henceforth and forevermore.

Well, no. If our funding were to dry up, I would be forced to eliminate that position.

True. And then you would have to hire somebody if approved. Right now, you don't have to do that, but I just wanted to make you aware in case that had slid past you Okay. That that would be a county expense. It may not cost you anything, but it would cost the county. Okay. Okay. And then the second question was, you know, why now when we're starting our process for 2025, 2026?

Yeah. This position began back in September 2024, and we discussed this for the first three or four months of her employment. And so that I simply submitted it at this point in time.

Okay.

Commissioner Bright?

Just got a quick question. Who will who will service the grant if we were approved this? Would you would your office continue to service it?

Correct.

Thank you.

Any other questions? Commissioner Anderson?

Thank you, mister Mayor. Mister Henry, thank you for for answering the questions, miss Hannem and mister Bright. Just a couple more. Have you, had any conversations about how this affects county liability with our, general services staff or with the county attorney?

I have not had those conversations.

Okay. Are any of the duties of the person going to change?

I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?

Are any of the duties

They are not.

Okay. We're just going to consider them to be an employee instead of an independent are they an independent contractor right now?

To the to the soil and water conservation district, not to Blount County government.

Okay.

The the district is a body politic of the state of Tennessee.

Okay. So I guess my concern is right now, if this person if there is liability associated with this person's job duties, those would fall. It sounds like on the state of Tennessee. And if we move them to a Blount County employee, it could potentially fall back on us unless we've got does anybody answer that question that's present?

Are you I I don't know. I would want to check with the appropriate county personnel and possibly someone from the attorney general's office be in the state.

Okay. If if and and if if I may, Don's here. If if they're a contract person, they are not covered by our workers' comp or any of that. Is that correct? If they are an employee, they would then fall under our workers' comp.

K.

Okay. Well, I I think I just have a lot of reservations about doing this until we know a little bit more about.

Okay.

All those things are if we do this, how many of your employees would be contract versus versus employees?

If we do this, we would not have any contractual employees at that point.

So this is the only person that is a contract? Correct.

Okay.

Alright. Any other questions? Miss Ham, yes. Go ahead.

Yeah. The questions of, of Eric, but I didn't wanna go on the record as saying, you know, my questions were, pre pointed. I don't see that there's any benefit to the county by taking this from a contract to making that a permanent position for the county. It's more increased. And so I wanted to go on record here saying that just in case somebody wants to know, why I may or may not vote the way I do.

K. Thank you. Commissioner Anderson.

Mister Merritt, the risk of confusing our procedure, and, I don't wanna make a mess of this, but but I do I do feel like we're not ready to do this. And so I would ask to amend my motion to to make it a motion with a negative recommendation.

K. So we're going we we we've got one negative, and you're a second negative on a motion that we're we're sending out forward with without a recommendation. Recommendation. So are we are you I

would I would move we amend this and make it a motion to forward with a negative recommendation.

Well, you probably need to vote on that. We're gonna do that. Okay?

Yeah.

So let's go back. Let's take that off and and and go back, and let's vote on this. Okay?

However you wanna do it as long as you know which way to vote.

Let's go ahead and just do it in standard protocol. Eric, thank you. Thank you. So the motion do I have does anyone have a problem, or do we need to vote on taking this off the floor as a motion without a recommendation? Do I have a motion to take this off the floor as a rec with to be forwarded without a recommendation?

Miss Hannah makes a motion. Do I have a second to

I'll second if that's for a negative.

Commissioner Anderson seconds. Alrighty. Any questions, discussion? And those in favor of removing the motion to forward this without a recommendation, please place your vote.

So, Mary, just to be just to be clear, if we vote yes, we're saying we're taking down the motion of neutral.

And then and we'll go back to the original resolution.

Okay.

Yes. Mary, you have five yeses.

Thank you. That is off the table. We're back to the original resolution. The original resolution is a budget increase for soil conservation, $36,199 to appropriate existing funds to increase the part time line for a soil conservationist, converting the current contract position to a county paid position. Do I have a motion to send this on?

I think someone's gonna

Yeah. We're gonna vote on it.

I'm gonna recommend it to the commission.

That's that's what we just decided not to well, I wanna I wanna give every we gotta we gotta vote on it because we're we're taking for granted. Mike hasn't had a statement. Nick hasn't had a statement. I haven't had anything. You and Jared are the only ones that said negative, so you really don't know how we're gonna vote. I hope you don't know how we're gonna vote yet. So we need to go ahead and vote on this. If we're gonna send it back with a negative, then it needs to be but still, it's gonna have to be voted on. Yes. Mote motion by commissioner Bright, seconded by help me out here, guys.

I'll second for the for procedural purposes.

Seconded by Commissioner Anderson. K. Does anybody have any questions or discussion on this before we vote? Yes. Go ahead, commission.

Right now, we're back to the original resolution, resolution twenty five zero one zero zero three budget increase. Soil conservation, $36,199 to appropriate existing funds to increase the part time line for soil conservationists converting a current contract position to a county paid position. If you are for this, vote yes. If you are again if you're if you're against converting, then vote no. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Go ahead.

No recommendation would have allowed you to have further major decision based off of what we have now. Are you satisfied with

I am against doing this right now.

Okay. That's all I needed.

The the one that's pending the making the change from a contract to a county, that's I I can't support that at this time. I feel like there are just a lot of unanswered questions about liability, so I'll be voting on

the negative.

I understand. Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Bryant?

I just wanted a point of clarification. Regardless how we vote on this, it will move forward to the commission's workshop meeting tonight. It will.

Thank you.

Any other questions or discussion? Seeing none, I ask you to register your vote, please.

Mayor, you have five numbers.

Thank you. Item f one, juvenile court grant application, a $100,000 to request state funds to support safe baby court coordinator position and a salary supplement to the juvenile court services director for oversight of the program. There's no matching funds required. Do I have a motion to send this on? Motion by commissioner Bright, seconded by commissioner Anderson. Is there any questions or discussion on this? Seeing none, I ask you to register your vote, please.

Mary, you have five yeses.

Thank you. Item g, financial reports. They're for information information only. Seeing nothing else on the agenda, did I hear a motion to adjourn?

I I have I have a a statement.

Hang on. Hang on just a second.

This may not be the proper place for this, but I wanna lay it out. I know we can't make action on it, I'm gonna do the same thing in our agenda meeting. I want to ask that we reevaluate our scheduling for budget meeting and the agenda meeting. This meeting has lasted, what, eighteen minutes, and our next meeting is not until 06:30. So I would ask that we at least, entertain the fact of maybe moving the budget committee to 05:30 or the agenda meeting to six. So I just want that to be on the record. Like I said, I know we can't make action on it. I just wanted to bring that out for consideration. Thank you.

I hope you're successful. Thank you. Seeing nothing else, do I hear a motion to adjourn?

I move.

Move to adjourn.