Dallas County Emergency Management Commission - Regular Meeting

You guys hear us online? Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Hey, it's uh 101. So, we'll call meeting order and we'll start out with uh roll call because we have some new members uh here today. So, we'll start out uh Bob Aerman, city of Adel representative. I'll just go down the list here. If you can uh list your name and then your position if there's multiple per jurisdiction um please just do both and we'll go through the list. pop out and Coral Harris fire department live Eric Fine live city council Dallas center

Dawson Dodto P Davis city council thank you Dennis Clemenson mayor Granger Grimes Lyndon. Uh, do I represent Lyndon? AJ? Uh, no. You're Redfield. Good. Thank God. I have had some movement uh talking with London City Council about having someone here. So, awesome.

That happens soon. Uh, Minor Dan Fire. Dan's here, too. Got you, Dan. Perry Evan on Mayor. Then did I see Chief Archer on also? Yeah, I'm here. Perry, thank you. Redfield, it's your turn, Mike. Yeah. Uh, Michael Short, Redfield Fire. Excellent. Thank you. Urbanddale. Derek Bingham, Urbanddale Fire. Main meter. Walke

Rob Grove City Council member Robinson fire West Mo City of West De Mo Fire EMS Woodward Steve Godwin City Council Sheriff Adam Fonte Sheriff's Office and Supervisor We have a quum.

Okay. Second item on the agenda is open forum. Is there anyone that wants to speak to anything that's not on the agenda? Hearing none. Approval of the agenda. So moved. Second. Moved and second. All in favor say I. I. I. post same sign. Next item is uh September 13th uh minutes approval. Move to second. Any discussion? All in favor say I.

I. Oppos the same sign. Motion carried. Uh the next item on the agenda is the uh 911 service board appointment. All right. So as it states 911 board asks us to reappoint our members annually. Currently that's me and then uh a member that is no longer with our agency. So I would recommend uh my reappoint and then appointing the emergency management readiness position as the alternate whenever we decide uh that position to be filled. Mot. I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor say I.

Same sign. Motion carry. Next discussion. Staff changes.

All right. Uh just a little deviation from the last time we talked about staff uh at our last commission meeting about three months ago. Uh we did anticipate hiring somebody in October. Um unfortunately that did not work out. So we're going to be reposting the position that we have open uh for emergency management specialist in January. Uh hoping to do that after the holidays then have the position filled maybe six to eight weeks after that. So we'll uh we'll certainly keep you posted as it happens. But uh as Lynn and I are managing all those duties and uh getting by with what we can at the time. Any questions for AJ? If not, next action is discussion and action on budget amendment.

All right. We will uh walk through a presentation. Can you go to like So, I've kind of broken up the budget into a few different sections here. Uh, the first one is fiscal year 2026 uh budget amendment. As we've discussed in prior commission meetings, we are anticipated or the docket to receive a hazard agent grant. We don't know if that amount of funding, that grant opportunity is going to release prior to the end of this fiscal year or after the fiscal year. Um, so since we're going through this process and gathering all the elected officials to vote on the budget, we figured it would make the most sense just to do it all at once in the event that we get awarded early, it wouldn't hold up any projects, that sort of thing. So, um, what what it looks like in here is we're going to amend budget to additional $625,000 of expenditures to cover the cost of the outdoor warning siren project. The amendment process is very easy, which the form uh is basically what you see on the bottom of the screen there. I apologize, it's kind of small. Uh, but that form basically just adds the 625,000 to our existing budget, which gives us a total of I can't quite see 1.2 uh million 1,239,248. My eyes are serving me correctly. Um again, this because it's an amendment uh we'll need votes by elected officials. So the action at this point if there's agreement in this direction is that we set the time and date for the public hearing. And I have a date picked out Thursday, January 15th, 2026 at 6:30 p.m.

There is no Okay. Question back up. You said you're expecting grant information, but you haven't received the amount back yet. We we've been told that we're in the docket to be funded. We just don't know when exactly that will release. So if they release it, let's say February, we have generally it's about 30 days, sometimes a little bit less, to sign and agree that we're going to spend the from that point of agreement, we start a period of performance that we have to basically complete the project. Um, and with recent administration changes, they're pretty strict in that period of performance. So we want to make sure that we give ourselves all of the time.

Is that the amount that we bring? Oh, I'm sorry. The uh it will be essentially straight pass through. Our agency will not be able to get any money at all. That's how we will receive 15% from each of the cities that are participating, 10% from the state, and 75% federal government. Did all the cities agree? Uh, yes. And we don't have anou in place yet. That's coming down the road. This this motion will be to only to accept the public hearing. And after the public hearing, then we'll vote on the amendment.

Where is the public here? I'll make that motion to uh uh set the public hearing at the required date and time that AJ just indicated. Second.

Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Hi. Same sign. Motion carried. That's going to be same night as Terry. He's going to have his rectify. Next item is uh budget workshop.

Right. So uh in front of you should have a draft on the fiscal year 2027 uh budget. The bottom line up front is um essentially we're requesting no additional funds from this year. So our current year budget request is 453,000. That's the request going forward to the supervisors as it is currently drafted. Uh I've broken this down and we'll go through the slides here. Obviously our budgets informed by a variety of factors, legal requirements, strategic plan, grants, all those sorts of things. Um you'll see some of the carryover from the project we discussed in 2026 again in 27 because of that uncertainty. We don't know when those funds are going to be released. So we need to be ready to pay for those out of whichever budget they come from. Next slide. So uh at first I broke down kind of our individual kind of program itself. This is the function of the agency not the grant pieces that we have moving. So, um you can see here the difference uh year-over-year the difference is about $500. Uh inside of those items, uh there was a little bit of movement just based on some of the things coming in under budget and others that have uh increased a little bit and I can certainly go through those uh here. Uh main one is personnel costs with most as with most agencies. Uh personnel costs uh we have in here these are budgeted uh by HR. So these are based on the the pay plan that we follow. These numbers are not exactly final, but HR thinks that they're consistent enough to use them in the budget process. So they might fluctuate a little bit um up or down, but I think we should be okay. Uh the next piece is education training services. Uh as we discussed in prior meeting uh one of the potential changes on the horizon with federal grants is that uh one of the ways we do training here is using funds called homeland security

grant funds. Uh there's a potential that those become a 5050 cost match. So we've done a little bit of money shuffling within our own budget to be able to pay for those and still receive the same level of training that we currently are. uh going on professional services or internal service fund. That is the amount of money that we pay essentially to Dallas County to do things like HR operations, have a facility for us. It is a big component of that. Next on the list there, office supplies is largely consistent with last year. One of the big differences is, and I'm sure most of you have experienced the same thing, but there's a transition to subscriptionbased services in a lot of places. So, we saw a little bit of that. So, the the data processing line went up about $1,700 and that's indicated in the packet um that you received as well. Uh moving on, uh really no change in our general services and consumables. Uh the other things to note, we have charted a pathway starting a few years ago and this will be the last year to increase our uh insurance liability coverage by 1 million a year. So there's a slight increase there. Uh and then just a slight increase in uh vehicle repair and maintenance to cover actual costs. So happy to take additional questions if there are any related to program expenditures before we get into the grant side of things. Anyone have any questions on the budget so far?

Your budget is only going up essentially $500, right? And last year is the same. Uh last year it went up quite a bit more because we added staff, believe it was. Oh, so with raises only going up 500 bucks.

So some of the some of this we'll we'll get to a little bit later on. So we uh we encountered quite a bit of uh unanticipated grant revenue which is a good thing. Um so because the commission has a carryover account or essentially a fund account that does not revert back to county general revenues we always buy down our ask to the county by whatever amount we're over. And I think maybe four slides ahead we'll get to that. If I can pause your question until then. You're on a July 1 July 1st June 31st fiscal year. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Same as the county fiscal year.

All right. So, this is where it get gets a little bit tricky because in the last budget we only amended by 625,000 to cover uh the costs. That's because we don't have to amend to receive additional grant revenue. Uh because we're doing this budget for the following year, uh we are anticipating essentially to receive a loan from Dallas County for $500,000, uh the board has tenatively agreed to that. And what that would do is get basically give us the money upfront so that we can make payment to the vendor before having to go to FEMA. So on a typical grant project, we work on a reimbursement basis. We don't have the cash flow in our carryover account to be able to make a $600,000 payment. So essentially they're going to float us that amount of money uh for a little while. We are going to have to pay that back to them though. So um you'll see in this specific project uh there's a total inflow and outflow of 1,25,000 and that's to facilitate the pass through in and then back on both accounts. Question go to next topic. Uh, so the next one, we do have about 56,000 in other grant funds. Um, we are anticipating starting a joint hazard mitigation plan project with PK County. Uh, I say if it's approved, um, there's kind of some uncertainty in whether or not that will be a joint project or not, but regardless, we will need a mitigation plan. Um, so we will end up needing to do that. The grant itself, uh, the project itself, excuse me, is about $60,000. will pay 75% of that or excuse me, we'll pay 15% of that. 75 will come from federal government and then 10 from the state. Uh so that makes up a good chunk of of that money. Uh otherwise, we have hazardous materials emergency preparedness grant funds where

we pass money through the LAPC and what they receive. uh a 100% match on a IAP grant that we receive fairly regularly and then a questionable amount of public health emergency preparedness expenditures based on projects that we have. Go on. So here's a overall budget uh what it looks like in terms of where the money is coming from. Uh so the grant revenue project accounts for most of it. The county revenue will amount for about a quarter 27% the 453,000 um as is currently drafted. You should have this in your packet as well. So just a quick kind of reminder and for those that are new uh to the commission. So the the way that the funding method works, the commission is the certifying authority. We have to go through the public budgeting process just like a city would providing notice in the paper. We hold a public hearing and then once that budget's certified and adopted, uh the commission essentially makes a formal request to the board of supervisors uh to fund the budget. We are fortunate we have a good relationship with the board and we have ongoing discussion um with them. I'll be giving a similar presentation to them probably in about three weeks. Um so they've uh gracious enough to support us. Uh they generally will take funds from general basic or general supplemental categories that they have available. And what that means for us is just acknowledgement that all of Dallas County essentially is being uh taxed on a valuation basis including city and and county. So terms of what is the commission look like in your jurisdiction basically funneled through the board but it applies to your your jurisdiction and your constituents.

All right. So here's the question u about capital outlays. So we currently have uh as of the start of this fiscal year 268,000 uh in our carryover. That's uh about 16,000 more than we should be for the current year. So that means extra for revenue in other ways or under spending the budget. And uh what we do is we essentially apply that towards the next year. So in the next year we'll be spending down that 16,000 and then it will also reduce the fund balance or for a total of about 25,000 to bring us back down to that uh that budgeted amount that we have in our carry. happy to take questions on that. So this is the uh total budget. Again, I broke it out earlier just because of uh visibility makes a little bit easier. You can see just the operational portions of our program. But here is the budget. We have another slide and again public hearing unless there are changes to the budget certainly open input. Uh Thursday January 15th at 6:30 we'll do the same date and time as the fiscal year 26 budget amendment.

Is there a motion to set the public hearing? Second move and second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. I. I. Post. Same sign. Motion carries.

Anything else for the good of the commission? I only have one thing to add um for the next meeting because it is the adoption of the budget. Just a friendly reminder that elected officials from the same designated entity are required to vote on the budget. So if you're an appointed official that is not elected, you won't be allowed to vote on the budget. And the commission has to have a minimum of 11 elected officials to meet the quorum to actually adopt the budget. So, if we fail to meet 11, we'll have to hold a special meeting after that time, set a new time and date for a public hearing and uh do the process over again before February 20.

We can get by without another public hearing. We can all the vote can be taken at any time. Nothing after nothing changed. So, all right. When is that? What? The meeting. The public hearing. No, the public hearing is the 15th. We'll vote on it. I'm saying worst case scenario, if nobody shows up after that, we have the public hearing. You'll be okay because you're the mayor. I have to bring my council members appointed to do that.

And uh there will be so the the meeting was recorded. So I'm happy to share the recording. Commission members, if you want to share it with your council members or whoever might be voting or if there's additional discussion to have before the meeting, certainly have them reach out to me. Anything else? Motion to adjurnn. I'll second. All in favor say I. I. I. Oppos? Same sign. We are journ. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you.