Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Thank you. so Live from El Paso County, Texas, the Veterans Capital of the USA. From inside the Alicia Chacon Commissioner's Courtroom of the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse, you are watching the El Paso County Commissioner's Court Meeting.

good morning ladies and gentlemen today is monday august 10th 2026. commissioner's court is meeting in regular open session this morning we're joined by asl interpreters dario garcia and selena solum would you please rise and join us for the pledge of allegiance allegiance to the flag of the united states of america

next we'll receive an invocation from deacon roman bustillos with the catholic diocese of el paso welcome thank you judge commissioners good morning and congratulations to you and the birth of your granddaughter thank you life is such a beautiful thing thank you In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. Good morning, Heavenly Father. We thank you for blessing us with another day today. And we thank you for all the blessings that you have granted us each and every day. We give you thanks for your endless grace that you so generously pour out upon us. Heavenly Father, we humbly ask for your continued blessings and we ask you to send the Holy Spirit to bless our judge, our commissioners, the staff and all those appearing before commissioners court today. And that all of their dealings may be fair and honest for the goodness of the health and safety and welfare of the community and that our actions further glorify your name. Please bless our judge and commissioners with the virtues of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and fortitude to inspire them to make the best decisions for our community. Heavenly Father, we ask you to continue to heal our community, our country, and the entire world from all disease and every affliction that challenge our humanity, especially those communities devastated by natural disasters. Heavenly Father, we humbly ask that you protect our military sons and daughters from harm's way, especially with the current political unrest in the Middle East and throughout the world. Please grant us peace in our day and protect us from all violence. Heavenly Father, we raise up our humble praise of thanksgiving and our faithful petition through the intercession of all our brothers and sisters, our Blessed Mother, all your holy angels and saints. And Heavenly Father, we raise up this prayer to you through the precious body and blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you, Deacon. May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Always welcome here. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Have a blessed day.

Judge, do you have some opening remarks for us this morning? Yeah, please. Thank you so much. I'd like to welcome all of you to the Commissioner's Court. We have some very important matters, budgetary matters that everyone's trying to, you know, work with us. And we have such a great team and trying to do the best that we can. But we also have a very beautiful resolution that I really look forward to presenting. And so thank you for being here. Wishing all of you a great Monday and a very blessed week. Thank you.

Item number four is the consent agenda composed of items 4A through 4W. Are there any items that members of the court or public would like to pull for individual discussion?

I'll move to approve, Cesar.

We have a motion to approve from Judge Samaniego, a second from Commissioner Butler. The voting is open. I vote aye. I vote aye. Commissioner, thank you, Judge.

I vote aye as well.

Thank you, Commissioner Holguin. Commissioner Stout? Aye. Thank you. Motion carries. Item number 5A, resolutions. approve and adopt a resolution recognizing the life and legacy of Benjamin Alire Saenz for his extraordinary contributions as a writer, educator, and poet, whose literary works and dedication to education have enriched the cultural heritage of El Paso County, Texas.

Thank you, Cesar. And I am so privileged. This is such an important resolution of someone that I know is going to be remembered for a very long time. And I'm really hoping that the young people that to see someone, what he did while he was alive and the impact that he had. So I'm very, very privileged to be able to read the resolution into the record. whereas Benjamin Alire Saenz devoted his life's work to teaching the careful art of writing and celebrating the complexity of the border and its people through award-winning novels, poetry, stories, and children's books that captured the imagination of readers around the world. whereas Benjamin, who died July 28, 2026, at the age of 71, authored almost 30 books, including Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a young adult novel so widely beloved it was translated into 25 languages and adapted into a 2023 film. The story of two Mexican-American teens finding love, the Stonewall Book Award, giving for exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQIA plus experience, and its sequel, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, is a New York Times bestseller. Horace Benjamin was the first Hispanic winner of the prestigious Penn Faulkner Award for his 2013 book of stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club. He was a recipient of the American Book Award and earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Texas Writer Award from the Texas Book Festival, and the Texas Medal of Arts for Literary Achievement. Benjamin also painted with his work exhibited in local galleries. Whereas Benjamin's work was powered by an infectious passion for equality and shaped by humble beginnings, he was born in Old Picacho, New Mexico, and grew up on a small cotton farm outside Las Cruces picking crops, painting apartments, and roofing homes. Benjamin was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1981 and worked for the Diocese of El Paso before leaving the priesthood to pursue his literary career, earning a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso. He was awarded prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University for his poetry, returned to the border and became a professor and chair of the nationally recognized bilingual creative writing program at UTEP. Whereas untold numbers of UTEP students learned the invaluable lesson from Benjamin about how to cultivate a powerful writing voice for expression, especially for people in places often overlooked, his stories about outsiders in El Paso resonated with readers across the globe. And for Benjamin, no topic was too complex for the young adults who championed his stories that often dealt with poverty, discrimination, addiction, or love. and was Benjamin's story about the borderland will carry forward despite his passing. His news novel, When the World Was Happy, which focuses on twin siblings and their friends following a fictionalized school shooting, is said to be published September the 29th and was written in the wake of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. and honors his niece, Amy, who was one of the five people killed in 1990 unsolved robbery and mass shooting at Las Cruces bowling alley. Where his love for his community and for readers always guided Benjamin's writing as he explains with an author's note in his upcoming novel and states, I want to write about things that matter. I want to move people. Writing taught me to love people, so writing this book is how I love. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the El Paso County Judge and Commissioner's Court extend its deepest appreciation to the life and work of Benjamin Aaliyah's signs for his literary contribution that have enriched and celebrated El Paso community. Signed this 10th day of August, 2026.

We have a motion to approve from Judge Samaniego, a second from Commissioner Stout. The voting is open. Motion carries. Thank you so much.

Michael, do you want to get us started and introduce some of the incredible individuals here today?

Yes, Judge, thank you. Good morning, Judge and commissioners. I'm Michael Hernandez, and it's good to be with you again. Thank you again for helping us celebrate our friend and my beloved former professor at UTEP, Benjamin Adidas Saenz. Understanding Ben's rich contribution to literature and the impact he's had on readers around the world, has helped ease some of the heartache of losing Ben, of being able to share some wild laughter with him, of hearing the excitement in his voice as he's describing a new story taking shape in his boundless imagination. I think what gives us solace is knowing that so many people around the world will continue to connect with that imagination, will hear from his voice what El Paso and El Pasoans are like. We also want to make sure that people continue to connect with him scholastically, as well as studying his work, which is at the Whitliff Collections at Texas State University alongside Cortman McCarthy and Sandra Cisneros' work. We also have a celebration of life that's coming up at 7 p.m. I hope I get that right. I'll make sure I correct that if I'm wrong. At Lincoln Park on Sunday. It's going to be a celebration of life and of course the star on the mountain will be lighted in his honor. We have some of his family members here as well as some other friends who would like to also speak on behalf of him. Okay, thank you.

Senator Rodriguez, thank you. Welcome back.

Welcome back, yes.

Thank you.

Seems like I was just here, Judge. Good morning, Buenos Dias. Judge and commissioners, thank you for doing this resolution, very important resolution, that I think all of El Paso, especially the young people, need to know about our good friend and colleague, Benjamin Aliria Saenz, noted novelist, writer, and some people don't realize he was also a good painter, canvas painter. And I think I want to start by saying in the short remarks that I have about how perhaps we do not appreciate in El Paso and in the borderlands the richness in our literary culture that we have in El Paso, Juarez, and Las Cruces. This area has produced so many, so many excellent, wonderful, some nationally recognized, some just barrio individuals from El Segundo Barrio that it kind of caught my attention, Judge, before I even moved to El Paso 43 years ago. I grew up in the lower Rio Grande Valley, but I was reading a lot of different writers in those times, especially during the Movimiento Chicano, and I asked myself, why are there so many people from El Paso represented in some of these readings that I was doing? And I don't know, I thought, well, people in El Paso, and I learned since I came here, say, well, we're, we're isolated, we're far away from Austin, far away from Washington, far away from Mexico City, and we're neglected. It's the Great Chihuahuan Desert, it's in its historical development, an area that the indigenous people, especially the Apaches, terrorized the area, and people had to become very resilient, I've always said resilient, and survivors. And to me that all of those things contributed to this creative mind, wealth of talent in this region. And so I just this morning jotted down, committed from memory, I'm sure I'm leaving somebody out, but I wanted to just give you an idea and young people so they can maybe think about these authors, writers, poets, from our region here. And I'm gonna start with Alfredo Corchado, whom you all know, Freddy Corchado, who couldn't be here today, he's in Mexico City, but he's written several books, Midnight in Mexico being one of the prominent ones Daniel Chacon, who's a professor over at UTEP and hosts the Birds in a Wire radio program. You may remember Jose Antonio Burciaga, Jose Antonio Burciaga, who wrote Drink Cultura and covers life here in the border and El Paso in particular, back in the 50s and 60s, he went to Stanford, became a very prominent author with that book and others. John Ritchie, most people have not heard of John Ritchie. He's an El Pasoan. He wrote a number of books. especially more recognized City of Light in Los Angeles. And of course, Bobby Byrd. Everybody knows Bobby Byrd in El Paso, I hope. Preeminent poet in our region. Other poets like Ricardo Sanchez from the Segundo Barrio, Judge. Lalo Delgado. during the Movimiento days. Juan Contreras, probably most people have not heard of Juan Contreras, but he was one of these poets that just on the spot would do a poem for you. Era un declamador, the old style, you know, orators that could, I don't know what that would be in English, el declamador, I don't know, you tell me. But he was just an incredible, I met him when I first got here, Dagoberto Gilb, another author and writer who's reached some renown here in this country and especially here in Texas. Estela Portillo Trambley, Born here in El Paso, went to UTEP, wrote several books and poetry, and last but not least, our good friend Willy Valdo Delgadillo. Willy, by the way, Judge, went to LAJEF. To me, he epitomizes what our borderland community is all about. He was born in LA, he grew up in El Paso, in Juarez, and right now he lives in Juarez instead of here, but he's a professor over at UTEP, and he has written several books that have gotten national recognition in Mexico. Anyway, my point is that Ben Saenz All of these people that are recognized in one way or another for their literary accomplishments, Ben Saenz stands at the top of all of them, and this is without not being disrespectful to the others that I've mentioned, but as you pointed out in your resolution, he's the first Latino, and he proudly calls himself a Chicano, the first Chicano to get the Penn Faulkner Literary Award, And for people who are not familiar with that award, that is the preeminent, the highest literary honor any author can get in the United States of America. And he was the first Chicano to get that award. And so there's many other awards, but Carmen and I, my wife, were fortunate to meet him over 30 years ago and developed a friendship with him, spent some time with him here in his last days at his apartment and over at the hospital, and always resourceful, always thinking of the next thing he needed to do, And you mentioned the new book that's coming out in September about the violence in Las Cruces that his niece experienced, was killed. And... always concerned about the border and the future of the border, particularly in today's climate, always promoting the border. He could have lived anywhere. He was out in the Bay Area in California, went to Stanford for a period of time. He spent time in New York City, traveled Europe, studied in Belgium. I mean, he was a world... citizen, but he always said to us, the border is where it's at. And I think the media has quoted some comments from him about how he appreciated El Paso because El Paso does not, essentially I'm paraphrasing, forget or deny its poverty. That was Ben Saenz for you. And another quote that he gave to the El Paso Inc. some years ago that stuck with me as a former farm worker, cotton picker, he said, I found myself, one time my mother was looking for me, I found myself in a cotton field reading a book and imagining things and places that I did not think I would ever go to. That was Ben Saenz, his imagination always from a young age, thinking about places, peoples, and he will be definitely sorely missed. I want to conclude by reading something that Carmen, my wife, wrote this morning because she wanted to, she couldn't be here. And so she says, we met Ben before his life was an open book. Of course, he charmed us with his humor, intellect, and generous spirit, but he could also be a fierce critic, especially of authority, no disrespect to you guys, but he was always questioning whether it be local, state, or national authorities. He was a rebel at heart. Our friendship cooled and then it was renewed. We celebrated his brief dream of opening a gallery named in honor of his parents. This is a gallery in the Duranguito area. He wanted to be there in Duranguito because he was familiar with the fight to preserve the most historic part of El Paso. And recently, Carmen was fortunate to share in his moments of need. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, El Paso, for recognizing his gifts. Thank you, Dutch. Thank you.

It's very special coming from you, Senator, because we have a tremendous respect for you, and this is a beautiful testimony of his life. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. Thank you. Michael?

We have some of his siblings, his brothers and sister are here.

Thank you.

I thank all of you for doing this for Ben. He was kind, loving, compassionate and he had a way of just connecting everybody to him as a friend because he had, what he saw in people was their hearts and he knew how to capture it. And I'm very proud of his work, but I said more connected because not only he was my brother, he was my friend. And that was important in our relationship. And I remember when he was nominated for the Penn Faulkner, he called me at like 8 o'clock in the morning. And he said, Gloria, guess what? I said, what? He said, I've been nominated for a Penn Faulkner Award. I said, what is that? And he said, well, I'm going to go to your terms. He said, the winner of the Kentucky Derby. And I said, oh, wow, that's big. And then he said, yes, it's big. The next morning, he called at 6.30. So I go in the guest room so I don't wake anybody in the house. And he says, Gloria? I said, what? And then he was filled with emotion and crying. And then I said, what's the matter? He said, I won. And then I started crying. And I said, Ben, how awesome is that? And he said, I picked up where my mother left off. because my mother was a scholar student in ninth grade and when she was awarded her award, it was the last day of school and they called her name and she was a little embarrassed to go up there because the day before they had stolen her shoes. She was very proud and she went up and she took her award. And my mother never returned back to school even though she wanted to. She saw the sufferings and the hard work of my grandmother and decided to go to work and help her because it was 10. And my grandfather was absent sometimes and back and absent. And my grandmother never let that. stand in her way, and my mother just didn't finish school and helped her mother, but she would have reached the top just like Ben if she didn't have this big heart of love for education, but mostly for her mother and family. That's it.

Thank you so much. Welcome.

Thank you. Well, Ms. Benjamin, my little brother, let's start from where I, from my grandma, Grandma Teresa. She was in Old Picacho. She was a midwife for the whole village. She was a church. And she was a storyteller, because no television. She still, in her adobe house that we used to live in, she would always tell stories. And we'd all sit around. And she'd tell us ghost stories and all these things. And I think a lot of that was a big contributor to Ben, because we were always just sitting there listening to the stories that grandma had. And all the family and participants that would come over, we'd always tell stories. So it was just kind of his second nature. And then, you know, I was gone most of the time. I've lived in California, so I, but I would, he would always call and talk to us about all the things that he was doing and all his nominations. and we'd meet him every time he'd go to California for readings. We'd always meet him up there or we'd come in to El Paso and we'd always come and visit mom and Ben would always be there. He was a great brother although we had our disagreements quite a bit. I remember one time when we were at the farm We were, mom went to go do laundry, and I was sitting there taking care of the kids, which was Gloria, Ben, and and so we decided that we were going to do a little painting. When mom got home, I had gotten a can of green paint and had painted all the kids. And they were all just the who was working across the field from us. He stopped and was looking at it. And this guy was rolling on the ground. He couldn't stop laughing. Mom was mad, though. So she had to come out and clean us all up. And we had a lot of fun growing up in the farm before we went to school. And there's all kinds of stories that we could tell about Ben, but he was mostly my brother. And we were very, very proud of him and his accomplishments. And we thank you for honoring him because he will be very greatly missed because his achievements were just the beginning because he will move a lot of people. Because that's what he did best. Thank you.

Thank you. Welcome.

Judging commissioners, thank you for having me. My name's Stephanie Blackwood Iwate. was one of my dearest friends. And I just want to briefly mention his kindness and his humanity were the greatest things about him. What Gloria said is so true. He saw people's hearts. When my husband and I moved here from Chile, my husband didn't know anyone. I was back home. And as soon as Ben met him, he just loved him and hosted a birthday party for him at his home and cooked for him. He just he could see who people were and he saw the best in everyone. And he understood the complexity of life and all of its difficulty and he still always chose gratitude. There were a few themes in his writing that appear again and again and in his life. I love reading his writing because it's all the things that he would say to me as a mentor and father figure and we have lots of different roles we play to each other. But it was just so consistent, this understanding how difficult and and complex life is and yet always choosing gratitude and hope and seeing the best in people and seeing the best in everything and this love of our border region and its people and the desert. He was just so consistent in the things that he loved. He is the quintessential Border poet he's the he's he's he is El Paso. He's our entire region And so I just wanted to read a poem that he wrote In his book dreaming of the end of the world excuse me dreaming of the end of war the twelfth and final poem and it's a dream I'll read it to you, but it's a poem where he describes his final days and when he passes and it's just so been and Everything he cared about At this very moment, I'm dreaming. It is still morning and I have never been more awake. I'm dreaming that my life is coming to an end. I'm an old man and my body is tired and I'm not afraid of turning into dust. I have lived a good life. I'm lying in a bed and I'm telling those who surround me that I'm leaving them, that they can do what they like with all the things I loved and leave behind. And as I die, I see the resurrection of the animals, victims of our greed and gluttonous wars. As I take my final breath, I find myself standing in front of the river, the river I love, the river of my boyhood, the river the world mocked. And the river, no longer poor, is wide and flowing with water as blue as Adam's sky. I'm looking at the other side, the side I call Mexico in life, and see that it is in full bloom, the paradise I yearned for all the days I wandered on the earth. I want to cross the river, but I know I cannot swim, will drown trying to reach that holy place. I sit and mourn. I will spend eternity in exile. But my dog, long dead, appears at my side. I whisper her name, and she looks across the river, then barks. I smile at her simple speech. I stare across the river, too, and there I see those I loved and lost and mourned. I see my niece. She is whole again and perfect, standing next to my sister and my mother and my father, all their ailments gone. They're waving at me. They're calling my name, and I know they forgive me all my sins. I wave in grief. I cannot reach them. Then the resurrected animals encircle me. There are thousands, there are millions, all the dead animals, all the animals we killed to build our kingdom. They make no move to harm me, but I'm half afraid. If they choose to tear me up and divide my flesh for food, what could I say to save myself? And then the ants begin to crawl all over me, the welts growing on my skin like weeds after a rain. My dog, with one small growl, sends the ants away. She licks my wounds, then looks into my eyes, and then she encircles me. The animals fix their eyes on the dance of this dog I loved so many years ago. And then she leads me to the water's edge. She pulls me in. I cling to her as she begins to swim across the river. She can bear my weight. This is what I'm dreaming. My dog is carrying me across the river. She can bear my weight. We are crossing to the other side. Those who have crossed before me await the arrival of this new immigrant. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Michael?

Anybody else? No, that's it. But thank you again, Judge and Commissioners, for helping us celebrate Ben. Again, the celebration of his life that's open to the public is at 7 p.m. on Sunday at Lincoln Park. And, of course, the star will be lighted in his honor at that time as well. Thank you. Well, thank you.

And once again, we feel very privileged to be able to honor such an incredible gentleman that Senator Rodriguez, you said that sometimes we don't know about these individuals, but I do hope that that we continue his legacy, that we continue to know him through his writing and really encourage that we get to understand what he wanted. I don't think there's a better way to honor somebody than to carry on things that he would like to see for our community. YOU KNOW, WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS THAT HE WOULD HAVE LOVED TO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN AND SO HOPEFULLY WE CAN DO SOME OF THOSE THINGS BY, YOU KNOW, ENSURING THAT WE DO READ HIS WRITING. SO ONCE AGAIN, THANK YOU FOR THIS PRIVILEGE. THANK YOU. IF YOU DON'T MIND, I'D LIKE TO PRESENT YOU WITH A RESOLUTION AND IF WE COULD TAKE A PICTURE WITH YOU WITH THE COMMISSIONER'S COURT. THANK YOU.

Item number six is public comment. We have three speakers for public comment this morning. I'd like to get started with Mr. Pedro Sera and I'd just like to remind all speakers that public comment is limited to five minutes. Everybody will be timed. Thank you.

Yes, good timing.

Good morning judge, good morning commissioners, good morning board members. I'm here today, it's a special day for me. Today is the 10th, August the 10th. Two years ago, I went and fought in Vegas, and I won the championship out there. But I would like to tell you my story, how I got there. So I started fighting at the age of 12, back in 82. And I fought all the way through 1993. I stopped my boxing career because I had an eye injury. I lost my eye. So the doctors told me for 34 years that I couldn't fight. So I'm always against the current, you know? So I said, I'm going to fight one last time to prove I still got it. So I trained myself for 34 years, and finally the law changed, and they gave me the opportunity to fight. So they couldn't discriminate me because of my mental health condition or my vision. So the only thing they did was you give your opponent more chance to win. So I said, I'll sign the waiver, whatever you need. So I signed it. So I went out there to Vegas and I fought on the 9th and 11th, 10th and 11th, sorry. And the first night, I took the best bout of the night. And then, that was in the 10th, and then 11th, I fought for the championship, and I beat the guy. I took the best fight of the tournament. But doing that bout, I experienced something that I had never experienced in my entire lifetime. I experienced I broke something in me. When the fight was over, I couldn't bring myself down to normal. My adrenaline was so high, I couldn't bring it down. And it took me like two hours to slow it down. And I said, no, that's it. No more fights for me. So right now, I ended my career as a boxer right there. I'm the only boxer in history to ever fight in three decades, 80s, 90s, and 2000s. So, and the oldest boxer in history, El Paso history, to fight at the age of 55. So, right now, I said, what am I going to do now? So I went back to judging. I decided to go to judging. So it's been three years, and all three years, my first year as a judge, second year, third year now, I've been, I'm the best there is. They call me number one, or Mr. 100, because all my scores are always 100, or I come number one of all the judges who are volunteering there. Right now, I'm also a judge and professional. I also do international fights as an amateur. I do professional fights in qualities also. I'm moving over to the county of El Paso with the Coliseum. I'm gonna be judging pro pretty soon. We're just waiting for my paperwork from the international. I'm gonna be an international referee, judge, I mean. So I'm breaking every record there is But at the same time, I'm also helping out my community. My community is in Socorro, so I help out the community in Socorro by opening a gym, opening a gym to, to help out the kids in my . So I'm helping out my community. So I'm not only doing it for me, I'm doing it for my community also. And I'm not here to fight with David anymore. Not today. So that's probably all I have to say for me today. And hopefully I'll be around for another couple years.

Thank you. Pedro, we're very proud of you. I hope you understand that we're very proud of your efforts and how you've handled the challenges and you've promoted the idea of mental health and how you could overcome things. So we're very proud of you. Thank you.

I just want to be, what do you call it? Somebody look up to because I have a mental health, and I'm proud to say I'm a person with a mental health. Why? Because I overcame it. There's other people who need that encouragement. See somebody, that guy did it. Why can't I do it, you know? So I want to encourage all the people with handicap, I'm blind, people who are mental, worse off than me, we can always do it. The thing is you have to want it real bad. And one thing is learn how not to... not to give up on life, because if you give up on life, I don't know, you're lost. So hopefully I'll be around for a couple years. Thank you, Judge.

Thank you, Pedro.

Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mr. Alfredo Agüero.

Good morning, Alfredo. Welcome.

Good morning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Alfredo Agüero. Before anything, I want to let you know that my comments are on my own behalf, not from any organization or support group. Regarding the phone call, I'd like to say that regarding the phone call with Ms. Priscilla Contreras, made me on August 4, 2026, at 8 AM to inform me that the sheriff's commander will not attend the school meeting with ISD superintendent. the same day, and that no officer from the Sheriff's Department would participate in the roundtable meeting on August 26th, 2026. The reason she gave me, where first that I did not reply to her email asking for the purpose of these meetings. I explained to Ms. Contreras that I was suffering from severe pain in my right eye and couldn't either read or write because the pain prevented me from seeing. He was wearing an eye patch for about a week. I also remind her about the information that she requests regarding the roundtable meeting. I remind her that I sent Ms. Contreras both the invitation and the agenda on two occasions. once via email on June 24th, and again, I gave it to her in person on June 26th, I mean 25th, in coffee with the police meeting. I have an email and photos to prove it. On July 6th, I confirmed that I had sent the agenda and invitation to which she replied, good morning. Sheriff's Guard isn't available to attend. We will representative from CIT and representative from the special needs section in our jails. Thank you, Priscilla Contreras, governmental and public affairs director. Address and all the stuff. The second reason Ms. Contreras cited was a post on my Facebook profile that allegedly made the Sheriff's Department look bad. I told her that I have not posted anything against the Sheriff's Department. She denies that it was because I liked a post made by someone else on their Facebook profile post containing negative comments about the Sheriff's Department. The post Ms. Contreras is referring was about this case. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office announced an inmate dead on the downtown jail, making the fourth in custody dead for the agency so far this year. Detention officers found an unresponsive inmate about 2.40 a.m. Saturday, August 1st on the housing floor inside the county jail, 601 East Overland Avenue in downtown El Paso. Sheriff's spokeswoman Priscilla Contreras said in a news release, The posts that I gave alike rates. Inmate found dead and downtown jail preliminary reports suggest possible overdose. No one promised zero deaths inside a jail, but better policies, better preparation, and better leadership can reduce the number of deaths and strengthen the public trust in those who run the jails. End of the post. I made it clear that neither here nor anyone else can dictate the decisions I make. what I say or what I do, and suggested that perhaps she had made decisions regarding the officer not attending or event a personal matter. I also informed her that as a United States citizen, she is violating my First Amendment rights. The first amendment is part of the US Constitution that protects five core freedoms, religion, speech, press, assembly, and petitions. Rectified on December 15, 1791, it stops the government from making laws that take away the basic human rights. From the five freedoms, I only will read three of them. One, freedom of speech. You can share your ideas and thoughts out loud without fear of government punishment. Two, freedom of press. New groups and writers can report facts and questions leaders safely. Three, freedom to petitions. Citizens can ask the government to fix problems or change unfair rules. I don't know if Ms. Contreras is trying to intimidate me or give me some kind of retaliation, for I don't know what reason. It seems the laws were written to be obeyed by us as citizens, but not by the people we put in power. I agree that people can deny to be in a place they don't want to be. But it's wrong to be against someone for being different. Let's talk loud. They want us quiet. Thank you. Thank you.

Our last public comment this morning is a read-in from Elizabeth Crawford. Good morning, Judge Salmoningo and commissioners. The book of Daniel is one of my favorites in scripture, as we can read of God's absolute sovereignty over the affairs of mankind, over both the good and the evil. Daniel 2.21 states that the Lord changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to them that they know understanding. I often joke with my friends that the Trump administration makes me bipolar. I vacillate between cringing at the ugly rhetoric that often comes out of Washington and rejoicing at some of the excellent policy decisions that have been made. I rejoiced last week to read the news that the Trump administration has disqualified over 50 organizations from the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, TPPP funds, because of their use of a sexually explicit curriculum that promotes instead of prevents sexual promiscuity among teens. The sad truth is that many who are very vocally opposed to the posting of the Ten Commandments in the Texas school classrooms are often the very same people who are in favor of all sorts of sexually explicit materials, both in school classrooms and in the children and youth sections of our public libraries. On February 14, 2024, Planned Parenthood New Jersey made a major gaffe online that reveals its more fundamental error. This statement is publicly posted online. It's not something we as pro-lifers have made up. The organization has confused two things, love and lust, and they present themselves as authorities in educating our youth. In wishing their clients a happy Valentine's Day in 2024, Planned Parenthood New Jersey posted, quote, love is beautiful and even more so when it's safe, consensual, and healthy, end quote. That is a ludicrous statement. The inference of the statement is that nonconsensual relationships are merely a lower level of love when we know that, in fact, what is nonconsensual is not love at all. It is a crime, a violation of a person, and worthy of criminal penalty. For sure, they didn't intend to say that, but it reveals the kind of crazy statements that are made by defining lust as love. One of the most difficult aspects of our day is that in Texas and in our nation, some of the most vocal public advocates for morality are not personally living it out. I watched the two Washington DC funeral services for Lindsey Graham and was very impressed by two things. One thing was the looks of fear on the faces of almost all of the attendees at the Capitol Rotunda. A look of fear, shock, and dread. No doubt many stunned at the sudden death of their fellow senator. And I rejoiced in the second memorial service at the brief and very direct message that Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, delivered directly to our president. You must repent to be ready for eternity. The simple truth of John 3.16 eternally stands. We've all seen the reference hung behind the goalpost at football games, John 3.16. Planned Parenthood doesn't appreciate it as they have swapped priceless love for cheap lust. Many who live in the southern and midwestern Bible Belt of our nation do not appreciate it because they have heard it so many times and they sadly yawn in boredom at it. But that indifference doesn't diminish the beauty and truth of John 3.16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3.16 defines true love. Planned Parenthood, this is true love. America, Texas, El Paso, this is true love. Thank you so much, and I hope that each of you have a very good day. End comment. Thank you.

This completes public comment for today, Judge.

Thank you, Cesar.

I'd like to skip ahead to item number 8A from purchasing. Approve and authorize the award recommendation of RFQ 26-009, Bond Council Services for the El Paso County, Texas, to the highest scoring vendor.

I can speak to any type of procurement you need, any questions you might have.

Karen, this is Betsy. Would you be able to also share who the representative would be to the county? Do we know that? We do. I don't have his name in front of me, but we do know that representative's name. Carmen or Barbara, do you all know who the representative would be under this proposal? I want to make sure the court's aware.

Yes, the representative would be Paul Braden, and then on the general bond council, and then Joy Ellis as the tax partner. Those are the representatives that were assigned, plus Chris Dvorak would also be the assistant as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Carmen.

We have a motion to approve from Commissioner Olguin, a second from Judge Samaniego. The voting is open. Judge, thank you. Commissioner Butler is absent. Motion carries.

Thank you, Court.

Item number 9A, auditor. Pursuant to Texas local government code section 114.023, 114.024, and 114.026. Receive the attached presentation and the interim financial report for the month ended June, 2026. Hey, Michael.

Good morning, commissioners. Michael Almas, first assistant county auditor. Today's presentation is on the June, 2026 interim financial report. This executive summary shows information about revenues and expenses for the current year. Please note that throughout the presentation, amounts have been rounded to thousands. As required by statute, the condensed financial report for the month of June 2026 was published in a local Sunday newspaper. Starting off with our first section, revenues for the county. This slide presents all revenue collected by the county by fund type. The focus throughout this presentation will emphasize the general fund, which is the main operating fund of the county. And during the month of June, the general fund collected approximately $14.7 million. Sorry, I misspoke, $14.46 million. This next slide shows total year-to-date property taxes collected as of June 2026, which showed an increase of $41.125 million compared to FY25. For general fund, the collections increased by $29.2 million in total. This next slide shows you year to date general fund revenues compared to the same period last fiscal year. Total revenue collections have increased compared to the same period in prior year. Our top areas of increasing collections are property taxes as explained beforehand. Charges for services which show an increase of $7.9 million due to an increase in federal prisoner revenue. Intergovernmental, which show an increase of $1.5 million. Again, this is mainly due to OLS reimbursements. Our top areas decreasing our interest, which show a decrease of $1.8 million, and this is due to lower investable balances and lower rates. Sales and use tax show a decrease, again, as previously explained in earlier presentations, due to a change in accounting period. Overall year-to-date collections from December to June are still up compared to last year. This next slide shows you an overview of actual revenue compared to budget. As of June 2026, we have completed three quarters of our fiscal year. So far this year, General Fund has collected approximately 91.3% of total budgeted revenues. Largest revenue collections for the budget include property taxes, which are at 99.5% of the budget. Sales and use tax, which are 65.1% of the budget. Charges for services, where we've exceeded the budget and we're at 107.6% of the budget. Intergovernmental, which again, we've exceeded the budget, we're at 123.6%. This next chart shows you year-to-date general fund revenue by source as of this month. As you can see, taxes comprise 88.6% of revenues received with 74.7% of those receipts being property taxes. On this slide, you can see trends in total revenues with the county's two largest revenue sources, which are property taxes and sales taxes. The bar groupings display actual amounts collected versus the amounts remaining to be collected in budget. As a percentage of budget, the current year's general fund total revenue collections have increased by 11.5% compared to last year. And for your information, our revenue collection percentage by budget on FY24 was 90.2%. FY25 was 89.6%. And for this year, we're at 91.3. So again, we're still on track compared to prior years. This next slide shows you the total sales and use tax received by month as well as the month to month percent changes. Please note that sales tax receipt for the current month are applicable to sales for two months ago. So for example, the payment received on June is related to April sales taxes. Year to date collections still show an increase of 11.26%. This next slide highlights the top four industry categories contributing to the county sales and tax revenues with retail trade showing the strongest dollar growth at $405,000. Accommodation and food services also show an upward momentum with an increase of 69.4%, 69.4 thousand dollars, sorry. Wholesale trade also shows an increase of 90.2 thousand dollars. And information also shows a slight growth of $1.9,000. Any questions on the revenue portion of the presentation? I will move on to expenditures now. This slide shows you all expenditures for the county by fund type. For the month of June, the general fund recorded total expenditures of $33.1 million. and year-to-date totals of $289.9 million. And you'll see a further breakdown of these expenditures in the further slides. This chart provides an overview of the county's general fund budget, breaking expenditures down by function of government, This breakdown offers a clear view of how resources are allocated across key service areas. With 63.6% of the budget being expended and of that public safety accounting for 43.6%, general government 27.3%, admin of justice 23.1%, and all other functions make up that remaining 6% of expenditures. Total general fund expenditures by function are shown on this slide. Again, as previously stated, the percentage of year expires is 75% or three quarters, and the percentage of budget expenditure expended is 63.6%. Last year we were at 63.2% as of this month. General fund expenditures as of June increased in comparison to prior year by 1.6%, with personnel and operating expenditures showing increases and capital outlays and transfers out showing decreases. For personnel, we see an increase of $4.3 million, and this is primarily due to expenses for public safety, with the bulk of it coming from salaries and overtime at both jails. Operating experiences also showed that increase of $4.6 million. And this is primarily due to elections expenses, which showed an increase of $2.6 million. And county general non-departmental expenses for settlements, CAD contracts, and travel showing increases of $1.3 million, $353,000, and $303,000 respectively. Transfers out, as previously stated, decreased by $4.2 million, and capital outlays again showed a decrease of $72.8 thousand. This next slide gives us general fund changes by government function in comparison to the previous year. The top areas of change are general government, which show an increase of $2.1 million, admin of justice, which show a decrease of $1.6 million, public safety showing that increase of $4 million, public works showing an increase of $603,000, and health and welfare showing a decrease of $587,000. Any questions on the expenditure part? Okay, now we'll move on to the last section, which is fund balance. Here you can see our fund balance chart. For FY26, the projected fund balance is based on projected revenues of $439.1 million and projected expenditures of $428.2 million. Combined with our initial fund balance from FY25, this results in a projected ending fund balance for FY26 of $116.7 million. Federal prisoner revenue projections are currently at $16 million based on actuals, with an average of 325 inmates for the remaining months. Revenue changes from last month include an increase of $885,000 for federal prisoner revenue, $561,000 for sales tax, and $284,000 for interest on investments. All these changes are driven by higher than expected actuals, leading us to adjust our trend projections upward. Expenditures are projected at $428.2 million, as previously stated, and this also reflects an increase from last month of $947,000 due to increases in operating expenses recommended by budget and finance. The operating expenses include $402,000 for contracted services, $320,000 for travel, and $223,000 for utilities. For your information, years after FY26 are based on a 2% increase in property values and an expense increase of 5%. Are there any questions on the fund balance portion of the presentation? If not, this is our table of contents for the full report that is available online. Thank you.

Questions? Just a comment.

Yeah, I'm glad to see that quite a different change from a couple years back, that our fund balance is now going up instead of going down from all the challenges we've had. And even aside from that, we've been able to kind of maintain, you know, the tax rates very reasonable. And so, appreciate.

Thank you, Commissioner. We appreciate the collaboration with the Budget and Finance Department as well.

Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.

Judge, commissioners, we're waiting for a couple other individuals for item 7A. If we could go ahead and take action, I believe on item 10A, we're going to ask for a postponement.

Item number 10A from Human Resources. Postpone July 27th, 2026. Receive a presentation, discuss and provide feedback. TO THE COUNTY STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL 7.2, FACILITY BENEFITS EQUITY ASSESSMENT. WE'D LIKE TO POSTPONE THE ITEM FOR TWO WEEKS AT THE REQUEST OF THE HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT. WE HAVE A MOTION FROM JUDGE SAN MANIEGO AND A SECOND FROM COMMISSIONER OLGUIN. THE VOTING IS OPEN. MOTION CARRIES.

And then if we could go to item 11A.

Item number 11A from Public Works. Pursuant to Texas Transportation Code 545.307. Approve and authorize the installation of no commercial motor vehicle parking signs at Stanford Ham Street and Paseo del Este Boulevard. Kilvington Street and Paseo del Este Boulevard, and Harbottle Street and Darrington Road.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioners, George Reyes, Associate Planner with El Paso County Planning and Development. Today we have another commercial parking petition request. So this is the second request that we've had this year. As you remember back in March, you all approved a similar petition. And so this one's actually across the street, or across Darrington from that previous one you all approved in March. So to refresh your memory on the statute, the Texas Transportation Code Section 545.307 allows for the county to prohibit overnight parking of commercial motor vehicles in a residential area. It defines commercial motor vehicle as road tractors, truck tractors, pole trailers, semi-trailers, and other types listed by weight under section 522.003 of the code. So the court can prohibit commercial vehicle parking on a county-maintained street that has posted signs that the street is within a residential subdivision or adjacent to a subdivision and within 1,000 feet of a resident, school, place of worship, or park. So there are a couple of exemptions to this law. The commercial parking is allowed if the vehicle delivers people or goods to or from the subdivision or performs work in the subdivision. The vehicle remains only as long as necessary to complete the work or delivery. The law does not apply to utility vehicles parked at an on-call employee's residence or commercial establishment vehicles parked adjacent to the business. So the petition process that you have to go through. Residents may petition the county to prohibit overnight commercial vehicle parking requirements. The signatures for at least 25% of residential owners or tenants, only one signature per resident and the signer must be 18 years old. If the petition meets all criteria, the county must post the signs at all entrances to the subdivision. Signs must clearly state the overnight commercial motor vehicles vehicle parking is prohibited and use letters at least two inches tall. Okay, so this request comes from the Painted Desert and Mission Ridge Unit 1 and 2. The request we have before you was forwarded to us by Commissioner Holguin's office. The petition was done by Mr. Richard Cook, who lives in the Painted Desert subdivision. Mr. Cook was able to gather 37 signatures for the signs in Unit 1 and 52 signatures for Unit 2, which is in today's backup. Planning and development staff verified the signatures by matching the information on the petition with El Paso Central Appraisal District records. After field verification of five lots that were occupied by renters, all 37 records passed verification in Unit 1. And then after field verification of four lots that were occupied by renters, all 52 records passed verification in Unit 2. There are a total of 142 properties in Unit 1 and 203 in Unit 2, which required Mr. Cook to get at least 36 signatures for Unit 1 and 51 for Unit 2, which he was able to do. Here are a couple of pictures showing field conditions of the subdivision and the issue at hand. This is Stadfram Street and Coleman Street. You can see it looks like it might be attached to that truck, but it's just a trailer that was stationed there. It's not attached to the truck or anything, so who knows how long that has been there. And then this particular one, which has When I went door to door to residents, everybody had a complaint against this particular truck. It's just been stagnant there. When you pass by the truck, you see spider webs and everything, so the truck has stayed dormant for, I know at least months, because when I went to do the field verification in March, this truck was there as well. So this has been an issue of safety for the residents in the area. This is a map of a Mission Painted Desert at Mission Ridge Unit 1 and 2. The bottom half from Hart Bottle is mainly Unit 1 and the top half is Unit 2. And the red circles indicate where we have planned to, if approved, where we have planned to put the signs. We think these are the major entrances of the other subdivision. And the truck is parked on the nearest intersection of Stamfordham and Parcel d'Esta Boulevard, that first red dot on the left. So for this particular request, we have two recommended motions, the first being pursuant to Texas Transportation Code 545.307, approve the installation of no commercial vehicle parking signs at Sanford Ham Street and Pasadena Boulevard, Kilvington Street and Pasadena Boulevard, and Hardbottle at Darrington Road. But the staff recommendation for this one is the second one due to limited funds in our public works budget for signage. This one's going to be pursuant to Texas Transportation Code 545.307, approve the installation of no commercial vehicle parking signs at Stanford Hemp Street and Pasadena Boulevard, Kilvington Street and Pasadena Boulevard, and Harbottle Street and Darrington Road, contingent on payment of the signs and installation by the residents of the subdivision. We did get a cost estimate from the infrastructure department on how much the signs would cost. And per sign, it is approximately $1,100 to install one sign at the subdivision. So please let me know if you have any questions.

You want to make it contingent on... It doesn't seem like it's that much to...

Judge, I don't know that we need to...

I mean, it's necessary contingent on the funds, but...

Judge, if I may, I actually wanted to ask the county attorney's office if this is something that my office's, the public purpose funding could help fund. I believe we can cover most of the shortfall if there is a shortfall in the public works budget, but I did want to confirm that with the county attorney's office. I would hate to approve something that the community has been asking for and really does need, but then not be able to provide the funding to make sure that it gets done or to place that burden on the residents. The residents have been out there collecting signatures and have done everything that we've asked them to. So I wouldn't want to place the financial burden on them. So I wanted to ask the county attorney's office if that were possible.

Yes, this is, I mean, allowed in statute to accept this kind of petition to approve these kinds of signs. The easiest thing logistically might be for you to, I think there's a, I don't know if there's already an existing line item for signs. I imagine so in public works. It might be commissioner to transfer, do a transfer from your line item to theirs so that it could be expended quickly. That would be my recommendation.

And based on the estimate, I'm not sure if we'd be able to cover the entire portion, but I think the large majority of that. I'm not sure, Norma, if there are some still funds needed, if the public works budget could maybe cover the remaining amount.

We can look at that, Commissioner, and work with your team to transfer whatever is needed. Great. Thank you. If we don't have enough to cover it, then we'll work with you. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

It's not a question. It's more of just a comment. how frustrating it is that we don't have budget for signs, for road signs. This is like a very tangible thing that neighborhoods and subdivisions rely on the county to provide. And thank you, Commissioner McGean for offering your public purpose fund. I'd probably do the same thing if it was in my precinct. But these are the things that our budget should cover, I think.

Thank you for that, Commissioner. I was just discussing that with Erica, that it seems like this should be something that we should be allowed to budget and fund because it is a public safety issue. And so I also think based on these estimates and the history of the types of concerns that have been brought forward, this isn't overwhelming. I mean, this is in certain specific areas. I believe that it's something that we can work to provide. Thank you, Betsy.

And I think that we should expect that we're probably going to receive at least a couple of these types of requests per year. Just, again, this specific area, this is a challenge that they face, and we hear a lot from the residents.

I do have one question. Sorry, Commissioner Guadagnale, if you want to go first.

Judge? Yeah, and it's not just these signs. We have a lot of people in the outlying areas of the community that come to us and ask us for other types of specialty signs. For example, where they see that people are speeding in some of our county roads areas. and that we have those signs that have flashing lights that said you're going over the speed or other kinds of signs in the outline areas of the subdivisions that are all public safety issues and we should be dedicating money for these types of signs. So it's not just these parking signs, but it's other public safety signs that I think we need to, and I know we have, and Fernie has had a stock of some of those signs in there, but I think we need to make sure that we look at the budget for that You know, and if we need to increase it, then so be it. You know, this is a public safety issue.

Yeah. I did have one question just out of curiosity. On one of the slides, you said what was allowed on commercial properties where the vehicles, commercial vehicles, were adjacent to the business. There. Commercial establishment vehicles parked adjacent to the business. What does adjacent mean? like within the property bounds, not along the street?

No, I believe it is along the street. Like if there's a business right here and then right outside of the business there's available room for parking, that's what the adjacent means, the parking right outside of the business. That's still on our public right-of-way.

Oh, okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner.

SO ARE WE GOING TO WAIT FOR ACTION?

SHOULD WE AMEND THE MOTION? DIRECT STAFF TO IDENTIFY FUNDING. INCLUDING POTENTIALLY MY OFFICE'S PUBLIC PURPOSE FUNDING.

I THINK THAT WAS JORGE'S OPTION ONE. IT DOESN'T INCLUDE THAT LANGUAGE. IF WE CAN MOVE FORWARD TO HIS SLIDE. RIGHT. SO YOU COULD HAVE THIS MOTION AND FURTHER DIRECT STAFF TO IDENTIFY FUNDING. Or the item. I think that's enough, Commissioner. We could work with your office. Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Well, I'd like to go ahead and make that motion.

We have a motion from Commissioner Olguin, a second from Commissioner Butler. The voting is open. Motion carries.

Thank you, Commissioner Squirt. Have a great day. Appreciate it.

Item number 11B, postpone July 27th, 2026. Receive a presentation and discuss and take appropriate action to approve the water and sewer rates for the El Paso County Water System doing business as East Montana Water System and authorize the fees to take effect on October 1st, 2026. We do have a request from the Public Works Department to delete this item.

This is going to be brought back.

During the special session, yes, ma'am.

Is that on the 20th?

Yes, ma'am.

We have a motion to delete from Judge Samaniego and a second from Commissioner Olguin. The voting is open. Motion carries. Judge, with your permission, I'd like to jump back to item number 7A, County Administration. receive a project update from the University of Texas at El Paso and City of El Paso regarding the Build Back Better Advanced Manufacturing Economic Development Initiative.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioners, Cristian Martinez with the County Administration Department. As Cesar read in with the item, this item is related to the agreement between the county and UTEP as it pertains to the Build Back Better initiative, which was to collaboratively develop and operate the aerospace and defense innovation network for manufacturers, integrating West Texas small and medium sized manufacturers into the aerospace and defense industry supply chain. through innovation, technical support, workforce development, and market access. Just as a very brief recap, the county entered into an agreement with UTEP for this effort in February of 2023 for a five-year term. It's currently set to expire May of 2027, and this presentation is part of those obligations to provide an annual update to the Commissioner's Court. And so without any further ado, I'd like to introduce Dr. Yurong Lin, professor and chair at UTEP of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, who is here to provide the commissioners with a program update on this initiative.

Thank you.

Welcome. Thank you. Good morning. Judge, commissioners, thank you for the time on the agenda this morning. So I'm Dr. Yirong Ling. I'm professor and chair of the Department of Aerospace Mechanical Engineering at UTEP. Now I currently serve as the PI for this Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant. So I'm here to give you update along with history on this advanced manufacturing program funded through EDA's Build Back Better Regional Challenge. So before I get into the numbers and history, all these details, so I want to say something plainly and outset. So this program exists because El Paso County and the city of El Paso chose to invest in it first. These federal dollars follow local commitment, not the other way around. So on behalf of UTEP and every small, medium, manufacturer this program has touched, along with all the jobs, internships, all these impact has been made so far, thank you. So this morning, I'll cover what the grant came from and what your investment has unlocked and where these regions are headed between now and the closeout of this grant. Can I have the next slide? Thank you. So, first of all, here's the background of the BBBRC grant. So, in 2022, the EDA ran the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, and more than 520 applicants, the West Texas Aerospace and Defense Coalition, led by UTEP, along with city and county, was one of the 21 applicants selected for participation in a nationally competitive challenge. So that's less than 4% of funding rate. So we are the best of the best. So this coalition was awarded $40 million to strengthen America's aerospace and defense manufacturing capabilities. So, and then why they chose El Paso, why they chose this grant? It's because we made a case to the federal government fund it compellingly. We have a deep, bi-national manufacturing base. We have a Carnegie R1 University, along with the pitching with the city and the county and the Fort Bliss and then Biggs Air Force Airfield right next door. And all the workforce that we are cultivating at UTEP. So therefore, they chose us and they believe in us. And then lastly, last bullet over here, I want to mention all the programming providing partnership with El Paso County. So El Paso County has been deeply invested in this. Thank you. Here's another slide which I want to spend quite some time on this. I want to tell you the whole history in the past five years. Back in 2021, EDA run a bill to scale grant. So UTEP, along with the city and county, we won close to $3 million with a $1.5 million city in-kind contribution. So after one year in 2022, and we gained momentum, we did a lot of great work, showed to EDA that we can deliver. So we wrote a grant to EDA with 40 million total, Build Back Better Regional Challenge. So out of this $40 million, so this $25 million is Advanced Manufacturing District, which broke a ground early this year. And then also the $15 million is innovation network for manufacturers. Bring small and medium manufacturer into the pipeline of a defense manufacturing. So out of these $15 million, I want to highlight there's $1.875 million match from city and county each. So therefore, they say every $1 that we match, we can draw down $4 from the federal dollars. So therefore, they go hand in hand. Now, later on in 2022, OPERA also invested $3 million in Innovation Factory. So we did a lot of good work at Innovation Factory right behind the airport. And also, we also secured $40 million from BOSS. And then this community project funding, we also secured a quarter million dollars back in 2026 with Congresswoman Escobar's leadership. Next slide. Thank you. So here is some of the background of existing agreement with the BBBRC grant partners. So in 2023, February 28th, the city council approved an interlocal agreement with UTEP to providing $1.875 million of match. And then one day before, El Paso County Commissioner Court also approved an interlocal agreement with UTEP providing $375,000 every year. And then in 2023, August 21st, El Paso County Commissioner Court approved a letter of support for a total of $1.875 million match for the UTEP Build Back Better Regional Challenge Grant. And then I want to reiterate, this core share allows us to draw down of the funding from federal grants, which is ETA, in one-to-four ratio. Next slide.

Can I ask a question on that really quickly? Yeah, of course. I'm sorry to interrupt. I just, on the previous slide, I noticed that with the city, UTEP established an interlocal agreement, but with the commissioner's court, it was a letter of support. Is there a material difference between those two agreements?

So, in terms of detail with interlocal, yeah, of course you might say something.

Okay, go ahead.

Hi, Commissioner.

We did later, when the agreement was solidified, it was finalized with that $1.87 million amount. And so effectively, the structure is the same. The county currently has an interlocal agreement for that total amount with UTEP.

So there is an interlocal agreement aside from a letter of support?

That's correct.

Okay, maybe that should be included on this slide.

I think he references it on the second bullet, where it shows providing a $375,000 match, but that was per year.

Okay.

So it still totals. And then we also provided the letter to help with the grant, I think, actual submission.

To the EDA.

To the EDA.

So the interlocal was for the 1.875?

Yes, ma'am. Correct. The 375 is listed in there, but as Ms. Keller indicated, it's not to exceed annual amount, totaling the total amount.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for the question. On this slide, I want to mention something about this amendment for the co-recipient awards, where it leads us to today. In summer 2025, UTEP and the city staff would review the feasibility of a joint management of $10 million of EDA grants, which is the residual of it. And in 4-20-25, the City and UTEP, we discussed a partnership with all the small-medium manufacturer partners, along with El Paso County and El Paso Mix. So extended federal shutdown delayed progress, as we all know, right? And when the federal government opened again, the City and UTEP formalized partnership in 4-20-25, and as of January 20-26, early this year, ED officially approved the partnership. Because ED are really looking to these existing partnership we have with city and the county, and they believe in us, we can co-manage all these grants for the remainder of their months. Next slide, please. Thank you. So this slide here, I want to show you there's really two pillars. On the left is where UTEP and the city partners together for this innovation network for manufacturers. This is, as I mentioned, $15 million grant for the programming, supply readiness, and technical assistance to help small to medium manufacturer qualify for aerospace and defense contract and create jobs. That includes all these certifications, so therefore they can be certified to join the defense contracts and then pipelines. On the right is where the city of El Paso invests in. As we all know, this AMD, Advanced Manufacturing District, broke ground earlier. And then this is out of a $25 million grant for the site improvements at a 250-acre district at UTEP International Airport to co-locate aerospace defense firms, supplies, and services. Next slide, please. So in terms of here, so I wanna now turn the podium to Josh, who's the program manager on this grant. He will give us some update on what we've been doing in the past half year for the Innovation Factory, along with all these new things we're doing in collaboration with city and the county.

Thanks for the introduction, Dr. Lin. Firstly, I'd like to thank the County Commissioner's Court Office for having us here today. I'd like to thank you for the support that you've had throughout this grant so far. I'd also like to thank the city as our co-recipients on the grant and all the great work Karina and her team have done with us so far. Currently, as you can see on the screen, one of the major initiatives that we're working on right now is the training lab at the Innovation Factory. This lab is going to be designed to provide students, interns, and regional manufacturers with access to the same equipment and technology in today's advanced manufacturing facilities to help hone and further their skills here in El Paso. We're currently working with facility designers and licensed electricians to prepare the space for installation of the industrial equipment. Most recently, the MESAC has been moved and leveled in the training lab, and we're hoping to have installation done soon. The project is including supporting infrastructure required for safe operations, such as dedicated three-phase electrical services, compressed air, argon gas, and network connectivity. Once completed, the training lab will provide hands-on industry-aligned training that is preparing students for the careers in advanced manufacturing that will help employers reduce onboarding time by hiring individuals with practical experience. It's also going to serve as a direct pathway for our internship program and create a stronger pipeline in our region. Next slide, please. So in addition to the training lab, one thing that UTEP has taken pride in is the internship program. As you can see on the screen, we've partnered with 11 companies thus far and supported 17 internships in engineering, advanced manufacturing, and applied sciences. Two interns that have gone through the program have already received full-time employment with some of the companies at the innovation factory. And we're continuing to see strong employer demand and additional companies joining the program. What makes this program especially valuable is that interns are contributing to meaningful technological projects. They're helping companies at the factory implement ISO 9001 and AS9100 quality systems, performing reverse engineering and 3D scanning, and then they're developing AI-enabled manufacturing technologies and supporting engineers and manufacturing operations. Next slide, please. Some of the good work that is being done by our interns at the factory, you can see here on the screen. They, I'm sorry, on top of assisting with some of the ISO 9001 and AS9100 documentations, they've continued reverse engineering, advanced inspection technologies, as well as equipment planning, technological reviews, supplier coordination, and experiences providing students with these industry-relevant skills will help local companies meet critical engineering and manufacturing needs to this point. If there's no questions, I'd like to turn it over to Karina Brizgala to go over the professional services metrics and budget of the grant.

Good morning, Judge and Commissioners. Karina Brescala, I'm the Director for Economic and International Development with the City of El Paso and also serving as the Regional Economic Competitiveness Officer for this grant. As Dr. Lin mentioned and Josh, the City and UTEP have been approved as co-recipients for the Business Support Services portion of this grant, serving the Innovation Network for Manufacturers, really leveraging some of these items you just saw from UTEP, their expertise in research, development, technical knowledge, The internship placements, of course, really critical to that workforce pipeline. And then the city's strong small business programming to provide those wraparound business support services for those small and medium sized local manufacturers and help them get defense contract ready. As part of that work, to look at the spend down of that remaining funding, really what we've seen from our partners across the area is that there are experts that have qualified expertise that can really help us perform this. And so the city released earlier this year a request for proposals, and this has been submitted to the EDA for approval as well, awarded for technical and incubation services. So ran throughout the beginning part of this year, starting from that co-recipient date. Seven firms submitted proposals, four of them were local, no purchase received, and the contract will run through May 2027. The grant is expected to close out in September, but you need that time for reconciliation and all that other good stuff. On May 26th of this year, City Council awarded the solicitation, the number is there, to the following suppliers. And so while this is six, there were awards could be done across multiple tasks. So some of these folks were awarded for multiple tasks. I'll go through what those cover on the next few slides. And then this also included a couple dozen of subcontractors, so a lot of names that you all would be familiar with that have expertise and have been working both in defense contracting, procurement in general, again, support services, access to capital, all of your kind of basics of business across the region. And many of these are also members of the city's business one-stop shop network, which is growing close to 50 members. Here are the tasks, so broken down by incubation services, so task one, advanced manufacturing aerospace defense program development, so really helping us do intake score where manufacturers are at, figure out what kind of services that they need. Also assist with network building, so hosting those kind of monthly meetings, providing marketing opportunities both internal and external to those companies in the innovation network. Talent acquisition and development, we all know when you're talking about business, workforce is number one, so that's where those internship programs lie, but also kind of helping identify workforce partners, bring people in, and get those training and skills up. And then business fundamentals and business growth, it's well and good to have incredible advanced technology. It does you no good if you can't keep your business operating past the first year. And so making sure, again, those basics of business, the things that we're always talking about when we're looking to help grow, especially as people come to take on larger defense contracts, making sure that they're prepared with investments, with their basic financials, that they know how to market, that they know how to attract qualified workforce individuals and those sort of things. And we've seen really good returns from a lot of this work already. The second kind of batch of this is these four tasks focused on certification services, so supplier development, manufacturing. These are across different categories. These are very specific. It's the kind of alphabet soup of all of it, the ISO, ITAR, CMMC, AS9100. Very specific requirements that the Department of War requires if you're going to go into contracting with them. And those are changing. There was a recent rule change actually for the benefit of in the past couple of weeks, but making sure that we're staying on top of that, providing businesses the most relevant guidance and helping them get those necessary certifications both in their kind of physical space and in just their business operations. I'll also One, obviously all of these are available to the entire Build Back Better Regional Challenge Coalition, so that extends far outside of the city of El Paso. It includes the county, but also outlying regions. This is kind of the whole West Texas Aerospace Corridor. And then task six in particular on this one is facility and digital infrastructure support. That is for the advanced manufacturing district at the El Paso International Airport, the 250 acre campus set aside for this. That does also include support on design and facilities compliance for the county's tech one campus. Here are key metrics for the grant. So as you all just heard, the interlocals are the way that the city and the county are providing that match dollars for UTEP as the lead fiduciary and the lead grant applicant. Under the interlocal with the county of El Paso, and this is the same metrics, the same requirements in the interlocal with the city and UTEP, there are a number of metrics that were developed by the coalition to really track progress, determine local success, These are not requirements of the grant conditions, but these are ways I think that everyone can see how we're really assisting and where the focus is. So these are the key metrics. So number of small and medium-sized manufacturers participating in the Innovation Network. We are at 113 out of 200. These are all as of March, which is the last quarterly report submitted to the EDA. These numbers are a little bit higher now, but I'll go with kind of what's on the report. Tailored incubation services, so 10 out of 20, and those are specific where there are site visits, we vet this, we really work and put somebody through all of the steps that they need to get that growth wherever they're at. So some folks already have defense contracts but are looking at larger ones or a specific subset. Some people are looking just to switch to diversify their kind of customer base, going from kind of commercial applications into defense. Expanded acceleration services, 104 out of 150 businesses. And then quality certified and prepared to compete for A&D markets. It's 150 across each of those, so it's two different buckets, 150 and 150. The way this works is that there is a prepared matrix that looks at a couple of different qualifications. And so it's what kind of certifications do you have? Do you have a business plan? Do you have the basics like a SAM.gov registration? If people are prepared for the next step, that's quality certified. And then prepared to compete is what we call our readiness level six. And so that is you have everything in hand. You are already submitting bids, and we're just trying to make sure that you are extremely prepared. well prepared and prioritized for those opportunities. So we have 34 that are quality certified and 59 prepared to compete. You can double count those categories, so 94 total. Innovation Network members, the goal was really to add 500 new jobs to the region. We are at 380 some of those internship positions. And then there's also via self-reported survey metrics looking at increases in general revenue from defense-related contracting, a few other things, all of those on track for performance. Provide an update on the budget. So this is the initial budget, the award of $18.75 million. As Dr. Lin mentioned, there's that drawdown requirement. So for every dollar spent in match, there's $4 that can be brought in by the grant. And I appreciate Ms. Keller going over the terms of the interlocal agreement. So based on the provided guidance from El Paso County, that $375,000 per year, some of that was use it or lose it. And so based on where we're at today with the drawdown on the local match, this is what we anticipate the remaining grant budget to look like. The city is on track to spend their full match allocation. Because the counties interlocal with UTEP allocated the majority of their match towards contractual, that's great. That really helps with the business services putting that money directly into the hands of the businesses and the manufacturers we're trying to assist. But we are looking at some reductions in contractual just to stay on track with our budget. The one thing you, it really, the match unlocks the spend and so you can't overspend in any of these categories. So looking at probably about $4.5 million remaining on contractual expenses and looking to close out that grant at just under $12 million. The EDA has not reviewed this revised budget. We had a separate budget with the co-recipients in for their approval, which is what they're working off of, and so this may require some future action from them. And then I'll provide an update on the other part of the grant. Several of you were there, but the groundbreaking at the Advanced Manufacturing District, so that construction is well underway. That is in the Air Operations area off of George Perry. We have one 50,000 square foot building that is being fully constructed as a warm shell. I will also note that tenant applications were open and We have early stage identified some of the tenants that are in kind of negotiations on their tenant improvements, what their lease will look like. But we are excited to potentially have that filled along with some of the turnover spaces at the Innovation Factory. For anybody who's watching who might still be interested, please, please, please reach out. We have spaces opening up. If not here, then there are other locations within the region that the program can help get you in touch with. And then in addition, there are two 100,000 square foot buildings in this kind of phase one. One of those will be built as pad ready, and the other one will be built at full design. That's still really helpful for larger or mid-sized companies looking to locate or kind of build in the supplier network. Besides the fact that there are all of those wraparound services, you're working with people in a similar position, there's kind of that shared experience. It is also something that it can be very costly and expensive to do your design, to wait to get up there. So those are really beneficial for the businesses looking to locate here. And we're really excited to have some folks ready to move in when that opens in 2027. I am also providing a sort of related but separate from the grant update. City Council took action earlier this year and I want to flag because it is an opportunity that includes companies in the full El Paso County region, possibly outside because the funding source for this is the Texas Economic Development Fund, which goes all the way out to Van Horn. So anyone within the El Paso Electric West Texas service area qualifies for this and they do need to be a member of the innovation network for manufacturers as it in part of the effort to get companies certified and up we understand that part of that difficulty can be Keeping up with the certification and some of those costs that are in baseline requirements especially when you don't have a contract in hand and And so defense manufacturers can apply to receive up to $12,500 each if they are at defense readiness level six. It's for the first 150 companies who apply or up to $1.2 million. These are the eligibility requirements, so you need at least one of these certifications, your CAGE code, your SAM.gov registration, and the submission of a bid. And there's a bonus for early adoption by the end of this year. So that runs kind of perpetually until we're out of money. There are, I counted this morning, we sent out the first two payments last week and we have 24 defense manufacturers in progress. So it's kind of free money if you're already in the space. So please, anybody that's interested, let us know. And I think that concludes the presentation. If there's any questions, I would like to take the opportunity to provide a thank you to the Advanced Manufacturing Program team, Jessica Cordova, who's been with us since the beginning, Melissa Chaitis, Jonathan Salas, Andrew Almaguer, and our City Grants Division, who's overseeing a lot of the submissions to the Economic Development Administration, Elda Rodriguez-Haffner, Sonia Castanon, and Diana Robles, helping us keep that zero audit findings record. So we're really excited about this.

Thank you. Betsy, any additional comments?

No, Judge, I do think that this slide particularly is something that we need to make sure is getting out to county businesses or any businesses outside the city proper. Because it's an opportunity that we've tried to pull down this type of funding previously and it's not easily available or it's not been readily available. So it's a great opportunity for those businesses. And I do know there's some aerospace manufacturing related businesses. in those areas i don't know if they're at level six but i know they've been working with utep so we need to check to see before the program transitioned they were working with utep so we need to look at our list to see who those businesses are and see if they are at that level and we can do to help them to connect them to the program commissioner butler

Yes, thank you very much for the presentation and for the information. One question I do have is how closely does our economic development department work with UTEP and the city on these kinds of initiatives?

So, Commissioner, I would say before the city became included as part of the co-sponsor to the agreement, we worked very closely with UTEP when it was under UTEP. And we frequently were, as a matter of fact, during the transition, we frequently communicated with UTEP about some of the deliverables. We attended regular meetings, and we've continued to attend regular meetings. Christian and Roberto have attended meetings with the coalition, but we have been fairly, I would say, involved throughout the grant process.

Thank you. So you feel like there's a very open pipeline for any businesses that we engage at our economic development department level to be part of this grant?

I do believe so. I do believe too that UTEP And especially initially, and I haven't, I know Christian, I think you have the list of businesses that are being reached out to and being interacted with. But I know originally we were getting updates on what businesses were being visited. And I would frequently see businesses in the county that the team was going out to. And that was before the transition. Now, and I say before the transition, cuz then it was actually a team from UTEP that was going out. And now, because there was, I would say, some of that outreach transitioned, and correct me if I'm wrong, but during this transition period, there was nobody to go do that outreach. So that's what they were going out for bid for. And so now that they have those contracts on, I expect to see that will resume.

Yes, and El Paso County staff has full visibility, as does UTEP. I would agree with Ms. Keller that primary coordination should be through with UTEP. That is where the county has their contract, that interlocal agreement. The consultants are required to provide services to the full region, and that does include businesses in El Paso County. We have several of them in that innovation network. Anything that comes through the Economic Development Office, Roberto's very good about passing along. We share a lot of leads back and forth. It's just part of our regular operations. And we would expect with that consultant contracts as soon as those are released by the Economic Development Administration for a lot of that work to re-begin in earnest. But the on-staff team at the city and with the grant, Josh and Dr. Lin, we are available for site visits and are still conducting those just at a little bit of a slower pace.

Is there a shared dashboard or list of businesses that have been interacted with, whether they're leads or they're part of any part of the training process? some kind of dashboard that both the county, the city, and UTEP all share?

Yes, it is through Salesforce. Then we also have Connex, which is for a contractor for procurement opportunities, but that is where the Innovation Network comes from. That is a registration on Salesforce. As part of those site visits, staff does conduct outreach, do some basic intake on kind of what is their NAICS code, are they specifically, because they do need to be specifically in manufacturing, so we have all the sub-industries for that type, kind of figuring out where are they, are they early, mid-stage, or kind of a long-standing business, employee count, some of that other information. So that is available to everybody on the grants project team. Some of that information is released in our reports, some of it is proprietary business information, so we don't make that public-facing.

So our economic development staff would be able to go into those listservs and say, this is how many businesses have been impacted, this is where they reside in the county, this is how many people they employ, this is what their operating budget is, all of those details we should have access to.

Yes, I'm not sure who yours, it might be Christian that has the license right now, but yes.

Okay. And I don't know, Christian, you can answer this too, but could you also expand on, I know we have access to the database, but does it have additional details? And pre the city coming in and pre the transition at UTAP, I know some of our questions or concerns were We would get numbers that would say similar to what was presented like out of 200 we've reached out to 95. But we didn't have any details as to what level of services were provided and how is that advancing those companies. And I don't know if we still, I don't believe that is part of what is available in the database.

That information is part of what's in the database, Betsy. I did recently confirm it. But Commissioner, to answer your question directly, both county administration staff and economic development staff now have access to that database as well with that information. Okay.

I think it would be really great to not, you know, disclosing proprietary information of any of these businesses, but to have an idea of where the businesses are, how many. I would love to know where they are in Precinct 1, if any exist, what they do, how many people they employ, and how they're working through this grant to get support.

I do know that that database does have mapping services as well, and so we could definitely work with UTEP and city staff to kind of have that broken down countywide by precinct and have that shared with the court.

Okay, thank you.

Are there any other questions, Judge?

All right.

Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Very fun to be in a different chambers.

So we're asking for no action on this item today, and just thank you to UTEP and to the city for providing this annual report.

Thank you, Betsy, for that.

It does help meet one of the requirements in our local agreement.

Thank you.

Judge, I'm sorry, Cesar. Judge, it's 1138. We have the budget. We have three items for the budget hearing, which I do think will take us a couple hours. Item 12C and 12D, I do think the court could complete in the next 20 minutes, if you all would be open to that.

I was going to let Cesar know, so C and D. Yes, sir. Thank you.

Item number 12C, receive a presentation on the fiscal year 2026 Sheriff's Office budget.

Good morning, Judge Jiminego, members of the court, Carmen Arieta Candelaria, Budget and Finance Director. During our monthly presentations from my department, we've been giving you an overview of the status of the Sheriff's Office. And so today we wanted to give you a little bit more in-depth analysis as to where we're at with this specific budget in fiscal year 2026. So here is the sheriff's budget as of July 20th, 2026, which is the date that we pulled this item. So here, just looking at just an entire representation of all of the different key components of the budget, and I'm gonna break it down. Each area, I'm gonna break down each specific area. So beginning here we have an adopted budget of $136,423,000. We have a revised budget of $142,633,000. Our salaries and fringes to date we've actually spent $92,443,150. Our operating expenses that we have spent is $20,284,604. So our total, adding those columns together, we have spent $112,727,754. We've encumbered through purchase orders, we've encumbered $6,360,000 to date. So our total spent or committed to date is the $119,088,000. leaving a remaining budget of 23,545,408 to get us through the rest of the year, which ends on September 30th. Now let's first look at the budget transfers to date. So I went over those two numbers, the $136,423,000 where we started the year, the revised budget of $142,633,000. So there was an increase of $6,210,000. So on the right hand of the slide is those transfers that we've made during the year, $5,138,000. These are the transfers that we regularly make as a result of the contract. And so we made those transfers over there. And then we also, during the year, we also transferred the maintenance units related to the headquarters, the jail detention, and the jail annex, and that represents $1,440,791 that's attributable to those salaries for those divisions. Then we had just regular net transfers, increases for operating expenses, $569,175. Those are general during the year, but this year we had, again, due to the transfer of those three maintenance divisions, $512,366 of that increase was related to that transfers. And then the auditor's office does add additional money as a result of the carryover for encumbrances year over year. So that increased the budget by $503,045. So overall, you see an increase for the sheriff's office of $6,210,000. Now let's look at the expenditures to date. I went over the budget, $142 million, $633,000 in revised budget, and I went over the salaries and the expenses year to date. So one of the things that we track is what has been spent to date and some of the target spends that we look at to see where they're going to be at by the end of the year. So 79.13 of the total budget has been spent. 65.10% of that is in salaries and 14.03% is in operating expenses. One of the markers that we look at for the target spend for salaries is where we're at as of 07-20-26 and the number of pay periods that have been exhausted through that time. So that's 76.92%. What's actually been spent is 82.16%. Most of the overtime budgets there have been exceeded at 720 with the exception of two small amounts in the maintenance divisions with only a total of 6,775 remaining. This is what I've been reporting out to the court. Over the months, I think we started advising in January, February, and we projected that these particular line items in overtime would be exceeded. They've all been exceeded, those specific line item budgets. The totality of the budget has not yet been exceeded, but those specific line items for overtime. have all been exceeded. We're also looking and tracking the meal contracts. Those are expected to be exceeded as well. We currently have, we currently will bring forward, once we get that processed through our chief administrator, We will bring that before the court. Both of those contracts, both at the jail annex and at the detention office, have also been exceeded by approximately the same amount, $770,000. So that is going to require a $1.5 million contingency request that's going to come forward to the court. We don't encumber that contract. What we do is we we expended as those invoices are submitted. And so those only will hit our actuals and not our encumbrances. So to date, as I indicated, we've already spent $727,000 of our $142 million budget. Our encumbrances to date, $6,360,820 of encumbrances. The two larger ones are the medical jail detention contracts. So those there, we have encumbered $2,899,000 for the jail annex. The downtown is $2,817,000. And of that number, $5,587,000 million or 88.31% of those encumbrances make up those encumbrances, 88.31% make up the medical, jail and detention contracts. We anticipate that those contracts will be expended 100%. by the end of the year. So what we were trying to do is we're trying to estimate how much will actually be spent by the end of the year and of course one of the components is looking at the encumbrances as in we're in the last two months of the fiscal year end and so we are looking at all encumbrances to see if they will materialize as we work on our projections for the end of the year. So in totality, we think we've spent $119,088,000 and committed. And so now we look at what's our remaining budget. So right now our remaining budget, not looking at the grant matches because that is really predicated on what we spent with grant matches. So just looking at the operating budget itself for the Sheriff's Office, we think right now we have $23,434,740. And then on the right hand is what we anticipate the number of salaries plus fringes that we estimate through the end of the year, which we think we're going to spend $16,262,000. And then fringes, we've estimated those at 28%, $4,553,000 for a total of $20,815,000. We also have been tracking overtime, and while there was some reduction around May in the overtime expense, we are continuing to track that we will more than likely spend another $3,569,000 in overtime for the rest of the year. And then if you add the additional contingency request of $1,560,000 there, We think that the projected deficit for the Sheriff's Office at the end of the year is going to be $2,510,000. We've made some assumptions that there's not going to be any further spending, and that's probably not a good assumption, but that's what we used in our analysis.

So the full $6 million will be expended, barring that there are no other encumbrances. there may be other encompasses that come to fruition. That the salary expenses are projected based on the remaining annual salary amounts and the amount of payroll periods that we have to get us to the end of the year. And then the overtime, which is the one that we've really been tracking, that was based on the current projected spend. I feel confident with that number unless there's a material change. For example, no overtime that's allowed between now and the end of the year. I just want to qualify that these are based on certain key assumptions subject to change. We wanted to bring this forward to the court to advise you of where we're at. We have been tracking. I've been reporting out with regards to the public safety program that we thought, well, we're right there, but this specific budget will more than likely be exceeded by the end of the year. Okay. We will continue to report out, I believe, every week.

Going forward, we'll run the reports. We'll get this on the agenda so that you all can continue to be informed about this particular department's budget.

And I want to just touch base on that. So when we reviewed this information, I requested Carmen to get this on the agenda and for now to make it a weekly update because this is such a large operation. In one week, it can make a major impact on how much our budget projection is. And there is no... the county has not budgeted for this level of an over budget spend. We haven't ran into this type of an over budget spend previously. And while the sheriff's office has been extremely cooperative, Sheriff Ugarte has worked to reduce the overtime. We don't have a, we plan all of our contingencies. They're for specific things. This is not a planned contingency. And so this is going to be an impact to our overall end of the year budget. And so just want to keep the court aware and then want to keep bringing it forward. So if there's weeks with no major spend, it's not a significant update. But if there is something significant, or we see a larger increase in overtime, the court can be aware. Because this... And I've asked legal, too, what are the court's legal rights and responsibilities, and I think they would be prepared to discuss that with a court in executive session, but just want to keep this on your radar because we've been watching it closely. It looked at some points like we were going to make it within budget, but the more we... go along, the less we think we are going to make that within budget.

And I'm glad you said that because it's important for the public. This is not a... you know, that there's any conflict or anything like that, but I think it's important, and what you just said is that if any single department can create an impact on our budget, it would be this one, and so we're keeping very close eyes on that, but I just hope the public doesn't think that we're singling out And it's not a negative, it's actually a positive because we want to make sure that we remain within our budget. And if we don't, then there's consequences that the public has to face. So I think it's fair to them to know what we need to do to make sure that we're able to maintain the budget that doesn't impact the constituents. Yes, sir. But thank you for your work, Carmen.

Judge?

Yes, sir.

I'm sorry, if I can ask a question. Carmen, I'm sorry, did you mention the reason behind the increase in the meal contract? Is that, was there an increase in the contract itself, or where did that 1.5 million shortfall, what caused that, do we know?

I'm not sure what actually caused it. What we've been tracking is just the amount of meals that have been produced every week. So it's just that's been the trend. I'm sure the sheriff could respond to that. But we spend about 70, I think 73,000 a week. at the jail annex and about $45,000 to $48,000 a week at the detention center. That's just been the spend. I'm not aware of a price increase necessarily. We've just been tracking the amount of meals that have been served, but I can certainly get an answer for you on that.

I do think we need to go back and do some more analysis on those invoices because I do believe one of the things, you may recall recently there was an item that came through the court in the last week or two where we approved paying for some milk carts. The sheriff was, I believe, has had the vendor buy some of the equipment instead of running it through our CIP because we cut back CIP so much. But we're trying to reverse that so that we buy them directly through our CIP so they don't exceed their budget. So that's an example. We need to go back and see how much was equipment and see if any of that was part of the factor that's going to draw it over budget.

And I guess I'm worried about whether or not we need to make any adjustments to the next year's budget if these are increases in costs that we expect to see next year as well. That's why I was asking if there had been an increase in the contract or something that we have to budget for.

There is an increase in the budget for fiscal year 27. I believe the increase is $539,000. That's been in corporate, but some of that I believe is equipment. And so we'll have to do a little bit more digging into that specific line item. But there is an increase.

The other thing, and I've talked to the sheriff's office about this, and I think we're all in agreement. We used to do the kitchen. We used to run the kitchen in-house. We did not contract it out, and so we ran it ourselves in-house. We did an analysis at that time. I guess it's been five, six, maybe eight, seven or eight years ago that we contracted it out and we did an analysis at that time and it was cheaper for us to contract it out. Sometimes what happens is if we don't continue to monitor that, we might have now reversed where we broke over and it might be better for us to bring it back in house. We just need to do some more analysis on that and watch where we're at. The other thing, though, that is a factor, and I think we've all seen it, is the cost of food has just, the inflation on food has been astronomical the last several years. And so that's also a contributing factor. So we might do the analysis and find it's still cheaper to contract it out, but we need to double check where we're at on that.

I just wonder, for my sake and for the public's sake, just in summary, so what is the exact amount that we're expecting to be over from what we budgeted and what it looks like we're going to hit?

So we would be at the 2.5 million. It's the 2.5 million?

Mm-hm. And that's conservative, assuming there are no other expenditures for operational expenses. And that's not realistic.

The other thing I would say also is that we also have an opportunity to move over some grant expenses or move some of the costs over to grants. So we need to identify those. So that may have a positive impact on that number. But again, we won't know that until the end of the year to see how much money we can transfer over to grants. We may have an opportunity to shift some of these costs over to ARPA as we finalize grant as well, so that may have a positive impact on that number. Again, we just don't know where we're going to end on that specific note. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Guadagnolo?

Thank you, Judge. Carmen, with respect to the meal issue, is that, like for example on the federal inmates, is that paid out of our set $140 or so dollars per, it's paid out of that as well?

That's a component that's included in that calculation, yes.

Okay, so we're receiving income basically for those meals through the federal, right?

Yes.

And is any of the federal inmate revenue included in the budget of the Sheriff's Office?

So this is just the expenditure budget that's been allotted to that department.

Additionally, there's also some functions that the Sheriff's Office is, I guess, providing. in some kind of administrative level that it's really part of administration that should be done. Didn't we take a look at that? Is that well, Betsy?

Are you talking about on the grants, sir?

No, I'm talking about administrative stuff that they're doing. Not grant stuff, just administrative stuff at the jail that maybe should be done by other departments that they are doing. I know that was brought up to us at one of the meetings.

I do believe there are things. I'm not sure which conversation. I know there are things that could be done administratively versus by, for example, a detention officer or a peace officer, but the sheriff has not been able to make those changes because it's contractually not allowed under the collective bargaining agreement.

Okay. And the other thing is, where are we on our study, I guess, to see the proposed sheriff's needs and what our administrative team is doing to make sure that we address those issues? Because I think we need to do that as soon as possible. Yes, sir.

We've been working very closely with the Sheriff's Office. Joel Bishop has prepared the RFP. We have provided it to the Sheriff's Office. They've provided us some feedback. We've made some changes. We met with them the week before last to go over the latest round of updates and edits to that. I believe we will be ready to go out really quickly, like within the next two weeks. We should have a final draft that we'd be ready to get with Purchasing.

Yeah, I think the sooner we do that, the better, because we can get an idea of what. I'd hate to say that our team or whoever our consultant is that says, yeah, we need those. Because by hiring these permanent positions, we're saving really 50% that we'd ordinarily be spending on overtime. So I think that's critical that we address that quickly. And so to that end, I think we need to hopefully move as soon as we can.

I have a question, Judge.

Yes, Commissioner Butler.

Last month we had an issue at the downtown jail with the water pump and water services being disrupted to most levels of the jail. When that happened, where did the funding come for the repairs for that water system?

From our capital improvement emergency funds.

That is allocated to the sheriff's office or to the county in general?

No, to the county general fund.

Okay, so it didn't impact their jail budgets at all?

The repairs were paid by CIP funds, CIP emergency funds.

Do either of the downtown jail or the jail annex have CIP funds allocated to them?

No.

Okay. And I know that it was unbudgeted, but can you remind me how much we've received in federal inmate funding this year that we didn't budget for?

I believe it was anywhere from, we only budgeted $2.7 million. And then I think we're projected to receive 13 million. Maybe I'll look at Barbara. 13 million, so about 10, 10 to 11 million.

10 to 11 million unbudgeted, yeah.

That we didn't budget.

I know I've talked about it a lot before, but it would seem that the best use of that federal inmate funding would be to support some of the costs that we incur at the jails that would presumably help to support or supplement the budget, the future budgets for the sheriff's office, correct?

So those expenses, so when we have more federal detainees, it's a revenue and an expense. Right. So even though it's not budgeted, it's helping to basically offset the expense of the full jail.

But there's not a direct line in revenues and expenses there.

No, there's not a direct. It goes into the general fund, just like the allocation that's given to him to the sheriff's budget is comes from the general pot. So it doesn't say proportionately we're gonna allocate, there's no policy in place that says we're gonna allocate 50% of our budget to the show. It's just whatever the ask is and then we review it and bring that forward.

Yeah, well maybe we should explore that. I know we've talked about policy for how we use the federal inmate funding, but I would really like to see, especially because we know that costs are increasing to operate the jails, how do we balance that in the best way using the federal inmate funding?

Would the county attorney's office be ready to have that discussion in executive today? Should we move the item today, or would that be for a future meeting date?

No, Judge Commissioners Eric Rosales and Gaglione, Assistant County Attorney, the item as posted would allow the court to make a motion to go into executive session. We did brief the court in March of a high-level overview. We can do that today as well. We'd be ready to do that today as well if the court would like.

Judge, one other question. Judge, one other question, if I may. This may be either Carmen or Betsy. The refund or I guess the payment we received from the federal government, is that enough to cover exactly our costs on each of those federal inmates at the jail? Or maybe either you or somebody from the sheriff's office can tell us.

I can try to take a stab at that question. The cost that we've developed is based on a blended rate. The blended rate that we've calculated is about $151 all in. It's not recovering the full amount.

Just for the public's knowledge, what are we getting paid by the federal government for each of their inmates?

$134. Yeah, so it was originally $101, and after the negotiation, it went up to $134, but still not fully recover the blended rate. Those are the costs from the jail and the detention center combined.

Right. I mean, we want to be good partners with the federal government, but I think we really need to take a look at those issues. And I can tell you the negotiations are tough.

I mean, they're not willing to.

No, I understand that. But at the same time, it is a benefit to them that they use our jail rather than they transport their prisoners from Van Horn or New Mexico. I mean, that's where the federal prisoners are stored if they're not here, right?

Right. So the rate, and I would just add this, the rate appears to be sufficient to recover the cost of the jail annex. But the cost of the detention is a lot higher. And so we use a blended rate when we're talking about the cost of detention.

We have looked at this previously. And there's a couple issues that have come up. We have looked at, if we completely eliminated contract and no longer agreed to house federal detainees, there's a few issues with that. One, the detainees would be housed further away from local resources or resources that are housed here locally, like the Federal Public Defender's Office. That was previously a concern for a past court, that they did not want these individuals further away from resources that are housed here in El Paso. They also looked at the conditions of housing in different facilities that they might go to. They also looked at if we did not house these individuals, it would lower our operating cost. But to really truly lower your operating cost, you would also have to reduce your workforce. And at that time when we looked at it, it was a reduction of about, it was over 200 jobs that the county would be eliminating at the time that we looked at it previously. And so the court at that time chose that they did not want to do that, and they were willing to take the federal rate because it does help with economies of scale for some of our own operations that we are mandated by the state to continue. So those are some other factors about the federal detainee and the reimbursement rates.

And additionally, we provide the services of transporting them over to the federal court.

And they do pay, there is a fee that they pay us for certain other aspects of the, besides the daily rate. I don't know that it includes the walking to the court, but they do pay us for like transport from like gel annex to here and things like that.

Maybe somebody from the sheriff's office can clear that up for us.

Yeah. Good morning, Commissioner and Judge. Assistant Chief Joe Chavez with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. Just a couple of clarifications that I wanted to make. When we were negotiating the contract with the Marshal's Office, we made it clear that the cost of housing inmates was going to have to go up. As she mentioned before, the number had increased. We did take into consideration the transportation, the food, and everything else. So although we wanted to raise it even more than we did, I think we were successful in getting what we got, which is something we didn't expect we were going to get. So that was one way of generating. generating the revenue that we needed. The second thing that's important that I'd like to again reemphasize that the Sheriff's Office has made it clear that after COVID, the courts have not completely opened up and state inmates still have most of our population in our two jails. By lowering the state population to the levels that we need to, like before COVID, we would be able to increase the amount of federal inmates that we have now. in our custody, which would allow the county to have that additional funding. We have asked Joelle Bishop and the county to reach out to the Council of Judges to increase the amount of hearings. I know with the incidents between COVID, the DA, a new replacement of a DA, Mr. Montoya is working with us, but I still feel we strongly encourage that we find a way of reaching out to the Council of Judges to have inmates in our county jails that have been there five, six, seven years now. have not gone to trial yet. And again, I've been here 42 and a half years, I can tell you I've never seen that before. And until we can lower our state population, it will allow us to be able to bring in more federal inmates that will help offset the cost of running our jails. The other part, as you had mentioned in reference to capital, CIP equipment. The two county jails is an example. The kitchen equipment is reaching the end of life. The HVAC units, the end of life. The elevators, you know, which is not, they only don't work Monday through Friday from 8 to 5. It's a 24, 365-day operation. That's the lifeline at downtown jail. Our plumbing system is reaching, you know. So without criticizing anything, the fact is our county jail downtown is almost 45 years old. The jail annex is 28 years old. They're not, you know, and they're operated 24-7. They need repairs, you know, and it's going to cost, when Betsy mentioned the fact that we had negotiated having the food service provide the food carts for us because they were falling apart and we didn't have any money. So we were able to negotiate that they would charge us a little bit extra for every meal to pay for the food carts up front so we wouldn't have to pay from the county, wouldn't have to pay, we were paid long term. So when we did the same thing that we did at the annex we did downtown, Betsy was able to find some funding available to prevent us from having to do that. So those are factors that I think I just want to make sure that, on behalf of the Sheriff's Office, that we emphasize that, you know, we are looking at every possible, and you mentioned the fact there's certain positions that can be possibly done by another county entity or another department. Yes, you know, we've mentioned that before on numerous occasions. Certain things that we are doing, somebody else should be doing in the... but it requires our people to do it because if we don't do it, it doesn't expedite the inmates going through the court system. We've met with Joel Bishop. I know there's certain things that CJC does that we might be able to sit down with them and say, look, these are stuff that we used to do. You all took over and then you decided to give it back to us. It requires somebody to do it. The contract also allows that only certain positions can be converted. You can't lose an officer position to a civilian. I think I know the contract. You're limited. But those are things that I think at some point we need to reevaluate. Keep in mind, Sheriff Regate inherited this, and he's trying to fix it as much as possible. But these are factors that I think need to be clarified, you know, moving forward. We do, I can tell you right now, both kitchens at both jails, their equipment is reaching the end of life. And it's not cheap equipment. It's expensive commercial equipment, kitchen equipment that they need to... When you talk about trustees, even though we have trustees that help save in labor costs and preparing the meals and sewing the uniforms and repairing stuff, at the end of the day, I have to be able to have enough personnel to supervise over it. It's not the labor that's free. The cost of supervising over these trustees is what is expensive. And whenever there's details, whether it's you know outside of the facility or outside keeping the landscaping going or everything it does require somebody to be supervising over a large amount so all those factors if we were to sit down and look at it i can just we can justify as a department why we do it now at some point if you choose well we don't want no longer one this service that's fine then accept the fact that the service will no longer be provided to the to the county will pass over to the citizens of El Paso but it's something that we would seriously would encourage you to sit down with us and look at it, see how we can be more efficient, but at the same time decide which programs. As you know, the animal service facility, you're going to build there. It's going to require trustees to clean and maintain that area. If you don't hire a civilian, then you're going to hire trustees. But to supervise over those trustees, I require officers. I can't have civilians supervising and keeping the security of those inmates. It has to be an officer. By the state of Texas, it has to be an officer. So there's a lot of things that, ideally, if you all have time one day, We can sit down, break it down, and explain to you in more detail because I know it's limited in the time we have here. But I think we can give you some ideas, recommendations that would make better and more efficiently run the Sheriff's Office if you allow us.

Judge, commissioners, this is actually part of the special session we're working to schedule of the overall justice system evaluation. So it's bringing the sheriff's office to the table, the courts, the clerks, the DA, the public defender, everyone to the table to go over what is driving the justice system and where can we gain efficiencies.

Well, I think it's several factors that are doing it. We've kind of come to a perfect storm. I know I've seen the statistics of the inmates at the jail, and we have an increase in the more serious offenses that these inmates have that are now in our jail population. And that is a factor of not just COVID and the delay in getting these cases to trial. But it's been a delay in the issues related to our previous administrations that you know at the DA's office. And additionally, the bond now requirements that the state has put on us to try and hold more people with certain offenses. So that's causing an increase. So the people in our community need to know that some of these things are out of our control. It seems we're required by the state to do this. We end up housing more of these more serious cases in there. And to that extent, I think it requires a different type of makeup in the services that we're providing, that our sheriff's office is providing at the detention center. These are all things we need to look at. Additionally, you know, not just I, but Commissioner Stout, we've always said that, you know, we seriously need to take a look at the long-term plan for our downtown jail facility. At one point, it's going to start causing us more money in these fixes and there's Increased maintenance Then you know I know it's not a great thing and very attractive for the community to do but this is one of the main things that we're required to do by the state and You know there's some in every every session The legislature puts up bills trying to even restrict us from doing certificates of obligation to do work on these public safety facilities and So we all need to recognize that as well. So anyways, just a lot of things that we need to really.

I think one of the other key factors is that we've had a lot of, the public really wanted us to address the mental health component of it, but the mental health component is more expensive than you would have your typical inmate. When you have the additional factor of mental health, it really increases the cost. They tend to stay longer. So there's a lot of factors that I think we should consider. It's not just a matter of, you know, budget, you know, over budget, but there's a lot of factors that we need to really look into.

Thank you, Judge. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Judge. No action on that item.

Judge, Commissioner, it's if the court would like a motion to take this into executive when we get to executive, I'm happy to propose a motion for your consideration. If not, we can discuss it at a future date as well.

Well, we'll be having more discussions, I think you said at special session, right? So perhaps maybe at that point, I would think. Okay. Thank you.

Item number 12D, approve budget amendment number 38A to the El Paso County's 2025-2026 operating budget. This is to transfer appropriations within the general fund in the amount of $92,534 to cover the cost of two new inmate transfer bus engines and purchase new uniforms. This budgetary amendment will not increase or decrease the County of El Paso's 2025-2026 overall operating budget of $669,325,924.72.

Again, Judge Samaniego, members of the Corps, Carmen Arieta Candelaria, Budget and Finance Director. So these two budget transfers reflect transfers from the jail annex to law enforcement, first for to cover the cost to replace two inmate transport bus engines in the amount of $72,534. And the other one is to transfer the same from the jail annex to the law division to cover the cost to purchase uniforms. These are replacement uniforms. So this would be $92,534 that's not yet encumbered or spent. So this would, if this is a planned expense, this transfer would facilitate that expenditure. So the Sheriff's Office requests that these transfers be made.

We have a motion to approve from Judge Samaniego, a second from Commissioner Butler. Voting is open. Thank you, Judge. Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you.

Cesar? Okay. Commissioner's Court will now recess for one hour. It is 1218 p.m.

So, so Thank you. so Thank you. Bye. So, Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so so Oh. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. . . . . so Thank you. Thank you.

Go ahead. Commissioner's Court has reconvened into regular open session. It is 1.33 p.m. Judge, with your permission, I'd like to read in a block of items together. Item number 10B from Human Resources. Budget hearing... Receive and discuss a presentation regarding liability insurance, employee wages, staffing, positions, auto allowances, supplements, judicial pay, and take appropriate action. Item number 12A from budget and finance, budget hearing. Discuss and take appropriate action on the fiscal year 2026-2027 budget for El Paso County. And item number 12B, pursuant to Texas Local Government Code section 152.013, discuss and take appropriate action on the proposed annual salaries, expenses, and other allowances for elected county and precinct officers covered by Texas Local Government Code chapter 152 for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2026. Further discuss and take appropriate action regarding publication of any proposed salary or allowance increases, which will be published in the newspaper of general circulation. These salaries, expenses, or other allowances and any proposed increases would take effect as early as October 1st, 2026, and upon the adoption of a county budget.

Thank you, Cesar. Good afternoon, Judge, Commissioners, Betsy Keller, County Administrator. Today we will be presenting the recommended budget for FY2027. As we have said previously, the budget is more than a book of numbers or dollar amounts. It truly is the policy and direction of the court. This is the first of three budgets we prepare in the required process. This is the recommended budget. We will bring back a proposed budget and then the court will have a final adopted budget. This is a responsible budget that balances operational needs and community services with economic realities and future needs from the bond projects and outcomes from the court's requested studies we are planning ahead for. It is responsible and responsive to the court's priorities, these future needs, state mandates, and inflation we are living in today. Over the past several months, our teams have presented policy, financial, and budget information to prepare this budget. Today, the budget is based on what our team has recommended, based on the court's prior direction, current operational needs, and departmental request. It will continue to evolve based on additional feedback we received today and feedback we have received since this was compiled. And you did already give us some additional feedback. We'll talk about that a little bit towards the end of the presentation. But we're already working on including that into the next version of the presentations. This is an overview of our agenda today. I got a little ahead of myself. This budget has been built on the concept that the tax rate will produce the same amount of maintenance and operations funding that we had this year. It was also built on the court's goals of being able to provide pay increases for our county team. restoring capital improvement program funding, and assigning and rebuilding the economic impact fund. There are other goals that we have continued and will continue to work on for future fiscal years, including restoring department operating capital. The FY2027 budget totaled $696,772,296 across all funds, the majority of which is the general fund, which is recommended at $542,352,990. We will go over the budget and our position as of today. Over the next several weeks, the court will set a tax rate and staff will outline how that rate will impact the budget and seek your guidance before we bring the final proposed budget for your adoption in mid to late September. Right now, the goal is to bring it on September 14th. I will now turn it over to Barbara Parker, County Auditor, to get us started on our revenue.

Good afternoon, judge commissioners, Barbara Parker, County auditor. I'm going to very quickly go through the revenue projections. We'll talk about comparisons for special revenues and the general fund, looking at the actuals for FY25 compared to fiscal year 26 projected amounts, FY26 budget versus the actual projections, and FY26 projected actuals versus the FY27 revenue estimates. And then at the end we'll look at the general fund summary again. Fiscal year 25 actuals are $7.9 million lower than the fiscal year 26 projections for special revenues. The unfavorable variances total $9.8 million mainly because of lower other financing sources and intergovernmental revenue. Favorable variances total $1.9 million with the largest increase coming from charges for services. AND IF AT ANY TIME YOU WANT DETAILS, LET ME KNOW AND I'LL PROVIDE DETAILS.

COULD YOU PROVIDE US MORE DETAILS ABOUT THOSE TWO LARGE ONES, THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL AND THE OTHER FINANCING SOURCES? OKAY.

THE OTHER FINANCING SOURCES IS THE ROAD AND BRIDGE FUND. THE ANNUAL TRANSFER FOR THAT HAS NOT BEEN MADE YET, SO IT'S NOT INCLUDED IN THESE NUMBERS FOR FY26. BUT WILL THAT BE MADE?

IT WILL BE, YES. OKAY. SO THEN WE SHOULD EXPECT THAT FIGURE.

THAT WILL CHANGE, YES. And then the intergovernmental revenue, there's election related revenue which is lower in FY26. We do not budget or project the special revenue for elections. We only recognize that as it actually comes in. The FY25 actuals were 3.9 million and the FY26 actuals are currently 756,000.

But do we expect more once we finish 2026?

It depends on the type of elections they have in FY27. If it's an election that is for the county, we don't typically get a lot of revenue from that. But if it's an election that includes city elections or presidential elections, that sort of thing, the city elections are the ones that we'll get revenues from.

It can be, I think we only get revenue if there is no county election corresponding. If there's a county election, we can't charge other entities for costs we would have been incurring anyway.

Thank you. When we look at the fiscal year 26 projected special revenues to budget, we show favorable variances of $5 million and unfavorable variances of 7.4 million for a net unfavorable variance of 2.4 million. The favorable variances are primarily charges for services, intergovernmental, and interest. And unfavorable variances are primarily other financing resources. And once again, that other financing resource is tied to the Road and Bridge Fund. The comparison of projected FY26 actuals and FY27 estimates for special revenues show a net favorable variance of $1.6 million. The favorable variance is other financing sources, which is going to be the road and bridge fund. And then the unfavorable variances are due to charges for services. This has to do with the HR Blue Cross Blue Shield incentives of $4.5 million. Interest, donations are not budgeted. And we currently have a balance of $200,000 from Blue Cost Blue Shield. And so we don't budget for those donations and we don't budget for the interest on them because we don't know when they're going to be spending the funds. And then intergovernmental, due to elections not being budgeted, this one is partially offset by revenues for FY27. And also because we received a revenue projection for opioid settlement of $875,000. When we look at the general fund, the general fund FY25 actuals to projected FY26 actuals show a net favorable variance of 28.9 million. Unfavorable variances are 9.7, primarily in interest, intergovernmental, and other financing sources. Favorable variances are 38.7, primarily due to property taxes and charges for services.

And the other financing sources?

The accounting entries at the end of the year for subidas and leases, we don't budget for those. In 2025, it was $4.7 million, and excess grant match is transferred back to the general fund at the end of the year, and we don't budget for that either. Projected actuals compared to budget showed 25.5 million in favorable variances and 1.9 million in unfavorable variances. This gives us a net favorable variance of 23.6 million. The most significant favorable variance was, of course, in charges for services, intergovernmental, and sales and use taxes, while interest was the significant unfavorable variance. The charges for services, of course, was the federal prisoners. We only budgeted for the first quarter at the daily rate and then at the original daily rate. And then in the course of this year, the daily rate has changed and we've also had an increased number of beds. And then we also had higher tax collection fees of 275,000. Intergovernmental, we have unbudgeted revenue was received for OLS of 1.5 million, disabled veterans relief of 966,000, and a JPD one-time reimbursement from the state of 452,000. We also have SO salary reimbursements of 417,000, mainly due to UMC billing. The sales and use tax has been coming in higher than budgeted. We're currently projecting a 90.8 million sales tax. That's not included in here, but it's what you'll see for the final revenues. When we look at the projected 26 actuals versus the 27 revenue estimates. When we compare the projected revenues, we see a small net increase of 1.7 million. The favorable variances are 7.8 million, mainly because of higher property tax and sales tax revenues. Property taxes are assumed to grow about 2% due to higher property values, and the final FY25 certified numbers will reflect the tax rate adopted by the court. Once you all adopt a tax rate, we'll adjust the revenues. Sales tax collections are coming in higher than originally budgeted. I think this month we were at 11% increase over last year. The unfavorable variances are in three main areas, charges for services, intergovernmental and other financing sources. We're taking a conservative approach to budgeting excess grant match which results in a lower revenue projection for other financing services. For intergovernmental, FY26 revenues were not included in the FY27 projections such as the OLS amounts, the disabled veterans relief and the JPD amounts from the state reimbursement because that won't reoccur. The charges for services, currently the estimates you see on here are budgeted at 275 beds for FY26, for FY27 and then FY26 we're seeing an average of over 300 beds so we'll likely increase that one also before the final revenues are certified. So this slide just gives you a quick summary of how we're projecting the general fund balance for FY26 of $116.7 million. We start with the ending balance from fiscal year 25, add the difference between the projected revenues and the expenditures for FY26, and then calculate that for the FY26 ending fund balance. The projected revenues and expenditures include actuals through June 30th. And the expenditures are subject to change, as well as the revenue projections. If we see anything, you know, that between the time we put this together and now, which I've mentioned a few, like the federal prisoners and that sort of thing, we'll adjust for. And once you decide on a tax rate, we'll adjust those too. in october of last year we were projecting fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26 fund balances to be 97.97 million and 86 million respectively so in 25 we thought they were going to be 97 and we ended up with 105. And at the time, in October, we thought FY26 would be $86 million, and we are at $116.7 right now. The final numbers for that, of course, will also be adjusted for any end-of-year adjustments we have to make for accounting purposes for GASB, like I spoke with the subbittas and the leases. This is the fund balance graph that's been adjusted to reflect the 26 projected fund balance, which currently shows at $117 million. It's rounded. And please remember that this projection includes revenues and expenses that were shown on the previous slide, and they may change before the end of the year. Any questions? OK. Thank you. I will turn it over now to Sam Trujillo.

Thank you, Barbara. Good afternoon, Judge, Commissioners, Sam Trejo from the Human Resources Department. In preparation for these August budget hearings, the Human Resources Department conducted a series of budget presentations over the past several months. Our aim was to inform the court about various benefits, pay structures, and programs impacting both employees and the county budget. Additionally, we use those presentations to seek feedback from the commissioners court before finalizing these items for the fiscal year 27 presentation today. We have a lot of information to provide, so I'm going to jump right into it. Our first section involves the liability insurance, which will be presented by our HR manager, Joanna Fadoa.

Thank you, Sam. Good afternoon, Judge and Commissioners. Joanna Faudel with the Human Resources Department. Each year the Human Resources Department reviews existing liability insurance policies and evaluates potential new insurances. Based on our review, the county's insurance broker, USI, provides the county with a conservative estimate of liability insurance premiums for the applicable coverages. USI then obtains final proposals from insurance carriers. Before you is a list of the premium costs provided by the carriers for insurance coverages recommended for fiscal year 27. We would like to highlight that we will be experiencing a 36% decrease in property insurance premium costs. USI shared that this decrease is due to their efforts to negotiate favorable terms and explore the best available options on our behalf and the market becoming very competitive in pricing. Under the auto insurance, we currently insure a total of 888 vehicles compared to 875 vehicles last year. Due to the increase in the number of vehicles insured, along with the rise in auto accident claims across the region, we will experience a premium increase by approximately a 4%. Overall, there will be a reduction in total budget expense in the amount of $195,000 of 248. We have also provided the additional budgeted items under liability, which include the annual broker fee in the amount of $25,000 and the estimated deductible billing for fiscal year 26 in the amount of $133,000, which is budgeted through the budget department. This concludes my portion of the presentation. I will now hand it over to Valeria Fernandez. Thank you.

Thank you, Joanna. Valeria Fernandez for the Human Resources Department. As the county continues to improve services and add amenities like parks, buildings, and annexes, as well as programs, departments' personnel's needs evolve. However, due to this year's budget constraints and specific directives, departments have supported this initiative by not submitting requests for new personnel that would impact the general fund. In the following slides we will be covering other compensation and classification items, including salaries, auto allowances and supplements, and other staffing information. The final HR slides will have the action items for the court. This slide provides a five-year history of cost of living adjustments and step increases approved by the court. The most recent CPIU as of June 2026 is 3.5%. The amount for July hasn't yet come out. The proposed FY27 budget includes a 1.5% COLA and a step increase for eligible employees on a step plan effective the first pay period in January 2027. Also included is a 4% COLA for positions not on a step plan with the same effective date. For FY27, employees within the sheriff's office who are subject to the collective bargaining agreement, as well as employees on the deputy constable play plan, will receive salary increases in accordance with the respective agreements and policies. The estimated fiscal impact of these increases is approximately 9.237 million. This next section will cover judicial salaries, which we presented to you in the June special meeting. The current county funded judicial supplement for district court judges is $18,000. In accordance with the statute changes in 2025, the court directed staff to return with this item to implement a phased increase to the county supplement over three years until the supplement reaches the maximum the statutory maximum of 25,000. If the increase was equally divided over three fiscal years, the annual increase would be $2,333.33. By increasing by a flat 3,000 this first year, the pay scales remain simplified and the increase in the next two fiscal years would be 2,000. The impact associated with this increase from $18,000 to $21,000, effective the first full pay period in January, is $217,234. This impact also includes the five judges advancing to the next tier within the current judicial pay structure in FY27. These advancements are required under the existing pay plan and statute. This bar graphs represent the supplement and auto allowance recommendations for FY27. Supplement request included two increases, which are reflected in the bar graph, and 10 continuations. Supplement pays will not impact the general fund as they are funded from other sources, including types of discretionary funds. The county auto reimbursement and allowance rate has not been updated in many years, and the county administration office is recommending the county's rates be increased to match the IRS standard rate, which is currently 76 cents. HR analysis indicates 46 continuations of previously approved auto allowances. By incorporating the rate increase into the request, there will be an impact of $13,746. I will now turn it over to Cynthia De La Fuente from our comp and class section to cover this other staffing items.

Good afternoon, Judge Commissioner Cynthia de la Fuente with the Human Resources Department. This next section will cover other staffing areas. The Human Resources Department and budget and finance teams met with 15 departments to evaluate 38 positions that were originally funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, and have since transitioned to the general fund. The purpose of these meetings was to determine whether the operational need for these positions continues to exist and whether they remain aligned with the county's service priorities. Departments showed that these positions have shifted from COVID-related roles to essential ongoing functions, supporting increased workloads, public safety, core operations, infrastructure, grants, procurements, and other key services. Departments also reported efficiency gains through cross-training, technology improvements, process changes, and workload redistribution. They consistently cited benefits such as improved service delivery, reduced backlogs and overtime, better workload balance, enhanced public safety, and support for county initiatives. Departments reported that eliminating these positions would create backlogs, delays, higher overtime, reduced coverage, slowed processes, and potential revenue impacts. Overall, the review confirms these previously funded roles have become essential operational positions needed to support the county's mission. If the court requires additional information, we can work to bring a standalone presentation on the analysis and the positions. The three positions listed on this slide are dedicated to the Crisis Intervention Team, or CIT. These positions are currently funded by ARPA and are expected to, for funding to, is expected to exhaust. The court was presented with the HR department's law enforcement study earlier this year, and incorporating these three positions into the general fund is consistent with the recommendation and guidance provided. The fiscal impact of absorbing these positions is $380,181. As an informational slide, the eight positions listed on this slide are grant funded, and the funding from TxDOT will no longer be available to the county, but rather directly to the El Paso Area Transportation Services, or EPATs, local government corporation. No action will be needed by the court at this time. A separate agenda item will be brought to the court for approval of an MOU that the County and EPATS are working on to transition the positions and document the administrative functions and relationship between the County and EPATS. The four positions on this slide were requested and approved for up to three fiscal years to address a backlog in the DA's office and were scheduled to expire at the end of this fiscal year. The HR department has been notified by District Attorney Montoya that these positions may be removed from the general firm for FY27. Currently, employees will be absorbed into other vacancies and duties have been distributed to other positions within the office. The elimination of these positions will result in a budget expense reduction of $450,150 for fiscal year 27. The four positions reflected on this slide may be permanently removed from the county's staffing table and will assist the departments in meeting the 2% budget reduction requirement in FY27. The elimination of these positions will result in a budget expense reduction of $243,325 for FY27. The five positions on this slide will be held vacant for the entirety of fiscal year 27 and will assist the departments in meeting the 2% budget reduction requirement. These vacancies will result in a budget expense reduction of $430,866 for FY27. While not included in this presentation, the HR department is also in the process of analyzing other reclassification requests for departments in furtherance of the required budget reduction. These changes may be approved by the chief administrator in accordance with the managerial operations policy. Next, Valeria Fernandez will review the HR actions proposed for the FY27 budget, which are summarized in the next three slides.

Lydia Fernandez with the HR Department. The items on this slide, excuse me, the items on this slide relate to the employee salaries and increases to employees on pay scales that are not covered under the CBA and excludes certain positions. The first action item is to approve a 1.5% COLA and step increase for eligible employees on a step plan effective the pay period beginning January 3rd, 2027. This would exclude employees covered under collective bargaining agreement, pay scales, judiciary pay scales, and positions with compensation established by or governed by statute.

Before the court takes action, Valeria, I know that there was a request last week from Commissioner Coronado. You asked what a 2% COLA would look like. Budget has that information. We can share that before you decide on this item.

Yeah, and one of the questions I was going to ask Carmen, after you did, I haven't looked at the figure, after you looked at the increase in value from the projection of the 2% to the 2.1%, I don't recall, what increase was that in the revenue? Do you know?

Are you talking about, Commissioner, are you talking about the additional value for the new improvements?

Yeah, the .12 whatever it was.

It's approximately $6 million.

Quite substantial.

I think it was $5.8 million, almost $6 million. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Judge, commissioners, Erica Rosales-Nagaglu, an assistant county attorney. So for each of these motions, I would just ask the court to consider just one extra, because the court isn't adopting the budget today, just to be included in the proposed budget for the commissioner's court consideration, just preceding every action today. And I sent that language to the agenda team as well.

Thank you, Erica. So the 2%, Eric, I'm sorry, Carmen, can you, or I don't know if Valeria, you have it, but I believe Carmen has it.

Yes, thank you. So to move from a 1.5% COLA to a 2% COLA would be $633,999. Extra. Extra. $633,999 to move from 1.5% COLA to 2% COLA.

That takes up about 10% of the added revenue that we hadn't calculated on.

Yes, sir, but please keep in mind that we did incorporate those revenues in our estimates already.

On the new budget?

In the recommended budget, we did pick up the no new revenue rate, which would have incorporated that additional revenue.

So this would be an additional expense if you were to consider and approve.

And and so that would come out of our fund fund. Our reserves are fund balance. Then if we don't raise. Other type of revenue for it.

That is correct.

It would be dipping into our savings. I've got a question about our minimum wage. Where are we right now with minimum wage and what would it be with the one and a half or 2% cola?

Oh, do you have that? Go ahead. It's $15.50 right now is the current minimum wage. The one and a half COLA would take it to $15.72. So an increase of 22 cents.

I think, well, I don't know if we have the ability to do so, but just like we urge UMC to take their minimum wage up to $16.00,

IT WOULD REQUIRE A 5% COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENT TO GET TO 16. One of the reasons why we are proposing a cost of living adjustment and a step increase for eligible employees is based on feedback that we've had in the past or that we've had with the COLA adjust everybody across the board. And that does help bring up that minimum wage. However, if you don't at some point re-implement step increases, you will have people who have been here four or five years making this exact same amount as a brand new hire. And so that is some of the feedback we get from existing employees is that they're making the same amount as someone newly hired when they've been here for several years and are more experienced in the role.

And we had that happen many years ago, and we had a problem with new, specifically in the professionals where new attorneys were coming in, making more than some of the other people in the DA's office had been, and even the other departments that were attorneys, and that became a problem.

I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE WE TRY TO CONTINUE TO PUSH THE MINIMUM LAGE UP BECAUSE IT KEEPS, YOU KNOW, WE KEEP GETTING BEHIND. I MEAN, IF WE'RE ONLY DOING A 1.5% COAL AND CPI WAS UP 3.1%, WE'RE CUTTING INTO HALF OF IT. AND SO, YOU KNOW, IT'S ON, AGAIN, THE GOAL POST KEEPS MOVING FURTHER AND FURTHER AWAY. I THINK A LIVING LAGE HERE IS CLOSER TO $18 AN HOUR NOW. And I think we need to take into account every budget cycle that, you know, we need to be paying people as close to a living wage as possible just as we're expecting UMC to do so and just as we expect when we incentivize companies that are coming here to try to do that as well.

Commissioner, we do have that on our strategic goals continuously, so we will be analyzing that each year.

So, Valetti, I think you're asking the court for action on item number one, whether the court wants to consider a 1.5% COLA to be included in the proposed budget and a step, or do you want a 2% COLA and a step included in the proposed budget?

And you said it would have to be a 5% to get the minimum wage to fit to $16 an hour?

Yes, sir.

And what do you know what the budgetary impact of that would would be between the one one and a half in the 5% we can figure it out pretty quickly.

If a half a percent is 699,000, you would be doing 3.5%. So like 2.1 million. No more.

633. I'm just going to 2% would add probably another, what, 5 to 10 cents in the wage, hourly wage?

2% brings it to 1580, and then 5% is what brings it to 16. I calculate 2.21 million, but I'm sure budget will be more accurate. $16 would be what? To get to 16, you would need to do a 5% across the board increase.

The $16? $16.

I'm sorry, at 3.25%. Let me look really quick, yes. Sorry, 3.25% to get to $16 an hour. And to get there.

So not a 5%, it would be 3.25.

I'm sorry, it's just over 2 million, but I want somebody to validate, verify that. 3.25%, Carmen, to get to 3.25%? Yeah, we're showing 2,218,000. That's what I got to get to a 5%, but to get to a 3.25% increase. Oh, I got it. 1,109,000. That seems low.

That's almost.

If half a percent is 633, 1% would be 1.2 million, 2% would be 2 million. 2.4 million. I'm coming up with 2,660,000.

Betsy.

We need a little bit of time.

Can we table that just for a minute?

Yeah. We need just one minute. Increasing at half a percent was $633,000. Right. So you double that, it's $1.2 million per percent.

But it's $3.25 minus one.

Right?

I think it is the million. Yes.

Yes.

minus what we already have in for 1.5. Okay, 1,109,000.

And so just to clarify, the reason why we're talking about, I mean, if we get to the $16 an hour for the lowest paid employees is because of compression, so you have to raise everybody's by the same amount to deal with the compression issue?

It's an adjustment across our wage scale. And our wage scales are really important. They're a part of a very... intricately designed system for compensation and classification. And they're built upon each other. And so you do that across the board to avoid any types of compression, even between pay scale types. We have three different pay scale types for general employees plus the attorney scales. So to adjust across the board to hit $16 an hour minimum is approximately $1.1 million.

I think we should push for that. I think we need to continue. I mean, we're still like $2 off of what a living wage is.

But that would be a proposal for a COLA of 3.25%.

To get to $6, $16 an hour? To $16, yes, sir. Okay.

I'm not comfortable voting on any numbers that we don't know what the impact to our budget or tax rate are gonna be.

I would like to see proposals of exactly what it is at 2%, 2 1⁄2, and then 3.25, and just see where we're at. And I want to make sure that the calculations are right.

We will bring back different proposed COLAs and what those impacts would be.

And the step would remain the same at the 2.5, correct?

That is the system is built on a 2.5% step increase.

The other thing that we had talked about, is that we are having an issue in recruiting attorneys because other smaller jurisdictions around us are paying $20,000 more for entry level.

That is one of the things you're going to see in the items that we're bringing back in the next update. That is on our list of items to bring back in the next update as well. And we have set aside some funding for that.

Good, because that's preventing us from hiring. And I know eventually getting a law school here will help us, but we don't have that now. And it's really challenging for our departments, public defenders, county attorney, everybody to hire people that Other places smaller than us are paying him $20,000 more to start. And we know that some of those positions are really critical in our overall justice system to reduce our jail population.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you. If we hold on the increases for employees, should we do the last item for the supplement?

For the 4% COLA for the?

For the third bullet, the district judge salary supplement.

I think that is a set amount unless the court wants to look at changing that. The court had previously given direction. We talked about implementing it over three years. The way it's being proposed and the way it was presented previously from Human Resources, they didn't break it up evenly over three years. Their proposed plan is Bigger increases the first two years and a smaller increase the third year. So this is taking the proposed increase that we have in the proposed or in the recommended budget is a $3,000 per year increase to district judges, which also impacts other judges as well, county judges, because there's a statutory alignment. So that is in the budget for all of those increases for a $3,000 increase. So we'd be asking for a motion on that.

But this is year three of the procession?

This is year one of the three years.

We did the first one last year, right? No, sir. We didn't do it?

No, it was to remain the same, and then this was the first of three years to implement.

I think, if I recall now, we gave direction to split it up over, yeah.

Right, what you did last year is you implemented, last year you implemented the statutorily required changes.

The statutorily required.

Which were about, they were over a million dollars worth of increases.

And kept our previous supplement, but not the increase.

Correct.

Right.

Correct. And this now is the first step of three to bring them up to the maximum supplement. And what's the max, though? $25,000.

$25,000. Okay. And they were already at? $18,000. $18,000. Yeah.

So would there be a motion to approve the increase to 21,000 annually effective January 3rd and adjust the corresponding judicial pay scale to maintain alignment with the approved supplement increase to be included in the proposed budget?

I'm in agreement with that. And if we need a motion, I'll so move.

We have a motion from Judge Samaniego, a second from Commissioner Coronado. Voting is open.

I vote aye.

Commissioner?

Aye.

Thank you, Commissioner Butler. Motion carries.

Thank you. Before you leave that one, can we talk about the, for positions not on a step plan? Yes. Just so we can make sure we're at the right direction. So the middle bullet, do you want to go through that, Valeria?

Yes. So the middle bullet is a 4% COLA, which is equivalent to the 1.5% COLA and a 2.5% step. This middle one is only for those positions that are not on a step plan, meaning that they don't get a differential pay for longevity.

Like elected officials?

Correct, elected officials, as well as we have our supplements for the AgriLife Extension employees would also fall under this. And so it would exclude employees that are under collective bargaining pay scale. It would exclude the judiciary pay scales and positions with compensation established or governed by statute.

And includes the constables, even though they're not on the collective bargain agreement, but we've agreed to kind of follow that.

Correct.

Okay.

It excludes the deputy constables.

This would include. This would include us as part of the 4%? Yes, sir.

This elected officials would be included in this bullet.

I'd like to consider with the court that we exclude us from the 4% if there's an agreement in the court.

I would agree with that, Judge.

Really quickly, just to interject, excuse me, Judge Commissioners Eric Rosales and Gaglione, Assistant County Attorney. So just to clarify for the record, we do have the separate item that was read in, you have three items that were read in all together. The separate item that was read in that's specific to elected official salary that's covered under Chapter 152, which does include the judge and the members of the commissioner's court. I know our budget team has separate slides for that, and we have a specific motion for that. So that is gonna be for elected officials covered under Chapter 152, where the court has to set the salaries. And then there's deadlines that we have to meet to publish notice, to send notice to those elected officials. So I know that's a separate item. So I believe that for your proposed item on number two here, the 4% COLA, would be at least for this purpose, just for employees who are not on a step plan. anyone else who isn't covered under Chapter 152, but we do have a separate presentation and a motion for that, for what you're talking about, Judge and Commissioner O'Leary. Then my recommendation for this second bullet, if the court is ready, we could, I know Carmen has a PowerPoint that's specific to that. We have a motion that's specific to that. So if the court would like to discuss that now, I know that we have something separate for that.

Judge, I'd like to say something. You know, and this isn't going to benefit Commissioner Staudt and I, but I think, you know, having all elected officials included in these small raises regularly along with all other employees is the way to go forward. Because that takes politics out of the situation and it prevents the court as elected officials down the road from getting a really higher percentage increase because they haven't had one over five, six, seven years. I just think it's counterproductive and it becomes a problem. So if we cross the board, elected officials, treat it just like employees. We are employees. None hired by the administration, but we're hired by the people. So are all the other elected officials. Why are we excluding us as elected officials and treating other elected officials differently? That to me doesn't make sense and it invites us down the road. You know, my economics professor was a great man and he told me, he said, take things to their extreme and you'll find your answer. So we're gonna exclude elected officials, just commissioners court from ever getting a raise? What would that be like? Who would we get? Let's go back, what, 50 years, 60 years? order to attract people to run for this position that i take very very seriously so i i think it's counterproductive that we do that this isn't going to benefit me or commissioner stout but i think we need to treat elected officials all of us equally and i think that's the way forward because down the road if we say okay well commission commissioner's court needs to catch up to the other elected officials you know, it becomes a problem.

I think that happened three years ago that we had fallen so far behind. Yes. It seemed the public took it as, you know, big hit because we were trying to catch up. But I think this, in this particular budget, I think it'd be, we're trying to look at every possible opportunity OPPORTUNITY TO DO THAT, JUST SPECIFICALLY, BECAUSE I AGREE, BEING FROM AN H.R. BACKGROUND, YOU DON'T WANT TO FALL BEHIND BECAUSE, AS THE COMMISSIONER SAID, THEN IT'S REALLY DIFFICULT. I THINK THIS ONE IN PARTICULAR, AND I MEAN, I WOULD EVEN ENCOURAGE OTHER ELECTED OFFICIALS THAT UNDERSTAND WHAT WE'RE GOING THROUGH AND WHAT THE BUDGET IS, YOU KNOW, IT'S REALLY DIFFICULT WHAT WE'RE GOING TO GO THROUGH. IN TRYING TO GET THAT BUDGET ACROSS WITHOUT INCREASING AN IMPACT OR HAVING A TAXPAYER HAVE TO CARRY THE BURDEN. SO WHATEVER IT IS THAT WE COULD LOOK FOR, I KNOW IT'S NOT SIGNIFICANT, BUT I THINK IT'S A GESTURE THAT SAYS, HEY, WE'RE REALLY INTERESTED IN MAKING SURE THAT WE DON'T INCREASE OUR TAXES JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT FINDING AN OPPORTUNITY TO COVER OUR BUDGET. BUT LIKE I SAID, I MEAN, I'D WELCOME ANY OTHER ELECTED OFFICIAL THAT MIGHT WANT TO DO THE SAME, BECAUSE THEY HAVE THAT OPTION.

THEY DO HAVE THAT OPTION THAT IF THEY WANT TO NOT GET THE INCREASE, THEY COULD HAVE THAT OPTION, BUT... THEN, JUDGE, WE'D HAVE TO ASK THE ONE WE JUST APPROVED FOR ELECTED COUNTY JUDGES AND DISTRICT JUDGES TO NOT TAKE THAT $3,000 RAISE, BUDGET INCREASE THAT WE'RE GIVING THEM. THEY'RE ELECTED OFFICIALS. I MEAN, THEY'RE IN A DIFFERENT PLAN, BUT THEY'RE ELECTED OFFICIALS.

Commissioner O'Gain.

Thank you, Judge. I agree with you, Judge. I think even though the presentation that we heard this morning, the county is in a much better financial position, we are still looking to make reductions everywhere that we can. Our CIP is not up to the amount that we would like it to be. We're still making reductions, and I think Even though, you're right, it may not be a hugely significant amount, I think the court limiting its own salary and not raising its own salary goes a long way to show the public that we really are still trying to make as many reductions as we possibly can. to make sure that that burden isn't shifted to the taxpayer. So I think I agree with you completely, Judge. We're still, even though we're doing better than I think we thought we might be, it's because we've taken a lot of those steps. We still have a 16-week hiring freeze. That's something that's really difficult on a lot of our departments, but we're doing it as a necessary step to try to rein in expenses. So I feel like anything that we can do to help including not raising our own salaries, I think is a benefit to our community. And it shows them that we really are trying to reduce expenses. So I agree with you, Judge.

Yeah. I think I agree with Commissioner Coronado. Over the years, I have consistently voted to make sure that all elected officials make as close to what the market says they should make with all county employees, including elected officials. make what the market looks like. And really, I think that Commercial gain, with all due respect, your proposal is performative at best. If anybody who is really serious about doing something that's going to affect the tax rate or save taxpayer money, then make a proposal to lower it back down to $60,000 where it was back when I started. And let's stop being performative in our proposals.

It's not being performative, Commissioner. It's trying to take whatever steps that we can. I mean, this is a decision that we are able to make today. That's something that we can do today to show the residents of El Paso County that we really are serious when it comes to trying to cut everywhere that we can. This is just one more thing that we can do. in addition to all of the other things that we're trying to do to cut. So I take offense that you're claiming that it's performative. I mean, we're trying to do the best that we can for our residents, and this is one way, one very real way that we can do that today.

Commissioner Butler, any comments? Because we have a division here.

Honestly, Judge, I see both sides of this issue. I do think that it's important for us not to fall behind on elected official salaries. I think that's why As Commissioner Coronado mentioned, we've seen big, large increases in the past and every year that those are maybe skipped over just adds that burden to future courts to try to make that up. But I also agree that our residents are struggling. I HEAR IT EVERY DAY FROM MY CONSTITUENTS THAT THEY'RE HAVING TO TIGHTEN THEIR BELTS, THEIR DOLLARS DON'T GO AS FAR AS THEY USED TO. THEY'RE NOT GETTING COLAS AT THEIR WORKPLACES BECAUSE BUSINESSES ARE STRUGGLING. AND SO, I HONESTLY, I SEE BOTH SIDES TO THIS ARGUMENT. I think that, My personal opinion is I would prefer to see other things included in the budget, like if we can get COLA up and increase the minimum wage, like funding the fire marshal's office. And that's a big priority of mine that I would like to see in the budget. And if that means foregoing a COLA increase for myself, I'm okay with that.

And it's so difficult. I mean, when people tell us how difficult and what they're going through, and then we increase our own salaries, it's really difficult. I mean, I feel very disingenuous that we're the leaders, but then we're not willing to cut back. but we're allowing them to go through what they have to go through so like I said I think specifically for for this budget I think we do have to show that we're in the game and that we're willing to take the sacrifice along with everybody else I don't know if we could vote on this one specifically.

I think we want to go to the slide for elected official pay specifically, and then the carve-outs would be, if the court so chooses, it would be to not include the members of Commissioner's Court.

Erica?

Oh, Judge, Commissioner, this is Erica Rosales from Gaglino, Assistant County Attorney. We do have, right, so we have... A slide that's specific to this, it's the will of the court, but we have the elected officials that are covered under 152, which are, again, just for the record, the county judge, the members of the commissioner's court, all precincts, constable, all precincts, county attorney, county clerk, district clerk, JP, all precincts, county sheriff. and then county tax assessor collector. So we do have a specific motion depending on what the court is wanting to do because one of the proposals from budget was to have any salary increases be effective January 3rd. So that was a proposal from our budget director if the court would like to do that. The court can carve out different categories just like you're proposing if you want to. And then we would, of course, give notice to the elected officials. And then we would publish notice in the newspaper because that's required whenever you're increasing any of these elected official salaries. So the proposed motion for your consideration, I had also sent this to the agenda team. We worked on this with budget, would be, again, this doesn't include your carve out. So if you're wanting to add the carve out, I can add that. But pursuant to Texas local government code section 152.013, set and give written notice of the salary, expenses, and other allowances of the elected county and precinct officers covered by Texas Local Government Code Chapter 152 as presented on the slide that you're seeing now. This is the slide that was part of that presentation for the fiscal year beginning October 1st, 2026. Again, it just, excuse me, I'll finish the motion. The aforementioned shall take effect upon the adoption of the county budget and then further direct county staff to publish notice of the salary, expenses, and other allowances of the elected county and precinct officers covered by the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 152, and the Newspaper of General Circulation. If you're wanting to add the carve-out, we can add that into the motion if you'd like.

Judge, I'd like to ask, Carmen, what's the difference? The carve-out. What would we be saving the Commissioner's Court not take this 4%?

$27,300 approximately.

$27,000?

It would be $27,464.

Yeah, that's not going to go a long ways to helping us with our minimum wage issue or any other for that matter. I just think we need to treat everybody fairly. That includes all elected officials and I think I really think it's not because I'm sitting up here, but I think I've always been about treating every employee fairly that works in any organization. I did that when I was in Canotillo, and I didn't get paid. I got paid zero for that. But I think treating people fairly in any organization and not treating people differently is something that I think is worthy of any organization to do, including those that had it.

And for me, it's not about the amount. I realize that that may not be a significant amount, but for me, it's about showing leadership. It's showing our community that we are willing to forego additional increases to our own salary because we recognize that we're still in uncertain budgetary times and that this is how we lead. It may not be a large amount, it may not make a huge impact, but I think it is important to show our community that we're willing to make this cut. So judge, if your motion is to carve out the commissioner's court and the judge, then I would second that motion.

I think we seriously then need to take a look at all what we as commissioners do to increase the maintenance and operations in each of our precincts. The projects that we ask for, everything that we ask for, because that's way more than what we're talking about here.

Well, and that's why when we ask for projects, we're supposed to come up with the corresponding sources of funding every time that we propose anything.

Yeah, and then we need to consistently then vote for those increases if it increases the maintenance and operation budget because of the stuff that we vote for, we ask for, for our precincts, including the entire county.

And that's why it's always important every time we ask for anything to identify those funding sources.

So, Judge, your motion is to include in the proposed budget a 4% cost of living adjustment for elected officials and employees not on a step plan, carving out commissioners and the county judge.

That's correct, Betsy.

So, Judge, we would amend this public notice that's currently on your slide. So we would amend it to reflect zero increase for the county judge and all of the county commissioner, all precincts.

And we'd actually remove them because you only have to advertise the ones that are being increased.

That's correct. Yes. As soon as I said it.

Okay, so this is for item number 12B. And it's the motion that was read by the county attorney's office with the additional notation that the county judge and county commissioners will be excluded from any salary increases.

I say we're voting for the increase or just for the exclusion?

Both, 4% increase and excluding members of the court. Okay. Okay.

Okay, we have a motion from Judge Samaniego, a second from Commissioner Holguin. Voting is open. Motion carries. The vote is three to two.

Such commissioners, we have three more action items to include or proposals to include in the proposed budget from the HR team. The first is to approve the increase of the county's mileage rates to match the IRS standard rate, which is 76 cents.

This has about a $13,000 impact, a little over 13,000.

13.7 thousand.

Do you need that motion? Yes, so I'll move to approve.

Can you say what the impact again to the budget is for the three positions?

I think at this point we're just doing the first split. Oh, just the first one, I'm sorry.

So this budgetary impact for the mileage rate is not currently included in the budget. We would have to add it. It's not.

No, we would have to add it. It's $13,746.

And so you'd be approving us bringing it back in the proposed budget? Mm-hmm.

Okay, the motion is to approve the increase of the county's mileage rates to match IRS standard rate of 0.76 cents. We have a motion from Commissioner Butler, a second from Commissioner Holguin. Voting is open. Motion carries.

Thank you. The second item is to approve three positions, the CIT, to transition from ARPA to general fund upon exhaustion of the ARPA funding. This is two deputy sheriff positions and one sergeant. The impact is $380,181.

And Carmen, this impact is this already included in the proposed budget or it's not?

This is not included.

The motion is to approve three positions from CIT to transition from ARPA to general fund upon exhaustion of ARPA funding for two deputy sheriff positions, one sergeant. I have a motion from Commissioner Coronado and a second from Judge Samaniego. Voting is open. Judge, your vote. judge thank you judge motion carries there was one uh four eyes one knee

And the last item for your proposed budget is to approve staffing changes as a result of the 2% budget reduction, which includes holding five positions vacant in FY27 and reducing the staffing table by eight positions, which are listed on the slide.

I have a question about the vacant positions. Does this include the ones you showed on the slide previously, Valeria? Yes, ma'am.

So the five that would be held vacant are listed on this current slide.

I'm a little bit confused by the two in the tax office considering all the steps we took this fiscal year to staff up their office.

I believe our budget team might have additional information. I know with the 2% departments are given the ability to reduce where they saw appropriate.

Thank you. The information that we received is that this is part of their cut and they felt that they could leave them vacant. throughout the year in order to make the cut. This is what they offered forward that would not significantly impact their operations as far as I know. But certainly Mr. Gonzalez could best respond to that question as far as operations. Yes.

Sam, are these the same type of positions that were granted for the other issues?

They are not. Sam Trujillo, Human Resources Department. Commissioner, I think you're referring to when we came to the court and requested three additional positions for the tax office to handle the registration. procedures. This does not include those positions. These are positions in other sections within the tax office that the tax assessor felt that they could use to cut the 2% from the budget that other departments were doing.

Definitely there was that, but the tax assessor collector also came here and accused us of not fully staffing his office. Didn't he?

How many vacancies do we know, Sam, does the tax office have right now?

We can obtain that information. Of these, I do know since the last time we came forward and after the court approved the three positions, they have filled two of the three. I do believe, I'm sorry Sam, I do believe one of these is one of those positions. However, they have also opened up their offices. They temporarily closed the Westside office from approximately November to, I want to say it was the end of April, if I recall correctly. And so they have reopened. They're at full capacity. And as far as I know, we haven't received any additional information regarding operational concerns at this time.

And I do believe, if I recall from when you all presented earlier, the idea was if they could minimize the mistakes with training, that it would eventually reduce the demand and the workload if they could get the errors to be reduced by the dealer community.

Yes, that is correct. Thank you, Betsy.

And can we revisit that? For example, if he has salary savings throughout the year, would we be able to revisit not keeping these positions vacant if the budget allows for it, if his budget allows for it?

We will revisit that. And that was part of the discussions during the budget process. If there were salary savings significantly, then we could look to reinstating the position. It's not automatic. We would have to go through a process to ensure that they do meet the salary savings that they received. However, one of the things that we talked about is that in fiscal year 28, they will have to ask for those positions again for reinstatement. So it could it would be an increase in fiscal year 28 for those frozen positions. They don't just automatically get them back because that was part of their reduction. So it would look, it would be an increase in their fiscal year 2028 budget. Okay.

And that goes for all of the positions, correct?

That goes for all the positions that were frozen. Right. So yes ma'am, these are actually being eliminated, the ones at the bottom of the table.

We have a motion to approve from Commissioner Butler, a second from Commissioner Coronado. Voting is open. Motion carries.

Thank you, Judge Commissioners.

Again, good afternoon. Carmen Arrieta Candelaria, Budget and Finance Director. I'll be going over the budget specifics. So first and foremost, this is the budget that we're recommending. This is subject to change. So you've heard a lot about some changes that we need to incorporate. You've heard the revenues today from the auditor's office. And we'll be making some changes as we finalize

the property tax rate, for example, and then she makes her final adjustments to revenue, and then we incorporate some of the changes that you are discussing today.

But first, the recommended book that was submitted to you has a budget of all funds budget of $696,772,296. comprised of those five funds that you see on the slide. Primarily our general fund, $542,352,990. Most of the conversation will be centered around the general fund budget as it is our operating fund. I do have some details on the other funds as well as we move forward. So let's look at our year over year comparison for fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 27. Overall, we see an increase of $61,107,215. primarily comprised of an increase in the general fund of $46,866,603, and I'll be going over that in more detail. The next large increase is in our special revenue fund of $10,155,882, followed by our debt service fund, $2,584,000, Our enterprise fund does not show an increase. We just budgeted what we budgeted in 26 because we had not yet finalized the rates for the major enterprise fund that's in that fund. And then capital projects sees a small increase there of $1,500,000.

So let's first look at the general fund and the total available sources for the budget. As you know, we use our fund balance to support our budget. And so we look at our total available funding sources comprised of our fund balance and the revenues. So first, our appropriated fund balance that we're using for this budget is 101 million. and that's compared to our adopted

Fund balance for fiscal year 26 is $79,907,111. Again, this is just budgeted. So there's a variance there of $21,955,293. Looking at our revenues year over year, our current year revenues, those are the revenues that we earned during the year. Last year, we adopted a budget with $415,579,268. of revenue as compared to the estimated revenue amount of $440,490,586, or a difference of $24,911,310. Adding those two numbers together gets us the variance of $46,866,603. Comparing the estimated budget in 27 of $542,352,000, to the adopted budget in 26 of $495,486,000. Now, first, I'm going to start going over the fund balance and what we're using to support our budget. So our estimated fund balance that we used in the initial recommended budget was $114 million. You heard the auditor today that that's almost going to be about $117 million, so an improvement there. So that number will change as we move forward into the next phases of the budget development process. But what we did is we used the estimated fund balance or the unassigned fund balance that's included that we think will end up the year at 9-30-2026, and that's $95,462,000. So only utilizing the unassigned fund balance. Again, that number will change. Most likely will increase as a result of the estimated now fund balance. One of the things that we did is we set aside $6.4 million out of the 9-30-25 fund balance for economic development. So one of our policies does allow us to assign fund balance for a specific purpose, and we did that for the economic impact fund, $6,400,000. So if you add those two numbers together, you get the $101,862,000 that we're using for the budget. Now, over the years, we want to look and see how we've been using our fund balance or what our fund balance has been at the end of the years from 2019 to 2025. So you can see historically what's happened over the last few years with regards to our fund balance. So going back to 2019, we had a small improvement for the next two years to 20 and 21. And then in 2022, we had a significant improvement there, but then dropped in 2023 as we had a use of fund balance attributable to COVID related expenses and dropped down to 98,208,000. and then a small dip again in 2496, 1,229,000, but then comes back up in 2025 to 105,833,000. Again, that's the total fund balance at the end of 9-30-2025. And then you compare the orange bar there, or the orange line, where that is the unassigned fund balance. That fund balance, it's not restricted for any specific purpose. We ended the year in 2025 at $89,018,000. And again, I'm representing to you that we think the ending fund balance for 9-30-2026 will be the $95,462,000. And that really sets the groundwork for the budget that we're bringing forward to you today. So this particular slide, I know it's small, but hopefully we'll be able to glean the information that we need to from this particular slide. So here's our total available funds, which is the first line. And then we have our revenues and then our expenses. and then the appropriated fund balance that we have set aside in our budget. So if you walk with me, from 2023, we used 92,756,000 in our budget estimate. In 23, 94,024, 85,280,025, 85,131,026, and we're using 101,862,000. Again, that includes $6.4 million of our unassigned fund balance that we're now appropriating for use in 2027. The next section of this slide is our revenues. So you can see our revenues have increased over time from $353,494,000 to $415,579,026 and now $440,490,027, leaving us this available funds number that we've historically used in the budget. The bottom part is our expenditures. So we have budgeted expenditures of $420,480,000 all the way into 26 of $448,964,000. And then our recommended budget is $469,239,383. So the next item is our appropriated fund balance. So that's what we think we would end the year with. from a budgetary perspective. And what we do is we set aside, we actually appropriate that amount of money. So you've heard me in various times during the year of our appropriated fund balance of the $46,521,000. That's where it's derived from. That's the money that we set aside that we do not intend to spend. Okay? And we also don't intend to spend the undesignated portion, the $5,224,000 that's then deducted from the fund balance amount to get you to the appropriated fund balance amount of $79,907,000. So for fiscal year 27, our appropriated fund balance, the appropriated fund balance that we're going to set aside in our budget is going to be $65,802,000, leaving $7,311,000 as undesignated. So then looking at the next slide. This is historically what the budgeted revenues over expenditures has been. So beginning in fiscal year 23, we had a negative amount of 67,185,000, 64,024, $62,025,000, and then 26 was $33,385,000. For this year's recommended budget, it's $28,748,000, of which $6.4 million is the use of the unassigned fund balance. So one of the things that we brought forward in this budget is if you look at our reserves percentage, this is the highest reserve that we have recommended, again, in line with our priorities to ensure that we maintain our general fund reserves, okay? So that is the amount that's included in this budget, reserving 15.58% of our budget. The bottom portion is just those historical. I talked a little bit about what we actually ended the year with. For example, this year in 2026, we ended, excuse me, 2025, we ended the year at $105,833,000, and that's the number that's represented. here in that middle line item. For this year, we estimate that we'll end the year with 114,914,000. Again, that number will change because of the new estimates that the auditor has brought forward, and I concur with those estimates. So we're gonna be using 101,862,000, or $13,000, less than the amount that we think we're going to end the year with, and then your unassigned fund balance that you ended the year with, and the difference between the unassigned fund balance and the fund balance that's used in the budget. Again, the numbers for 26 and 27 are estimates. I'm sorry, the numbers for 27 are estimates, and those are subject to change.

Okay? Okay.

So now looking at our revenues, looking at our revenues year over year, again, $24,911,000 is our increase in revenues, or almost 6%. And I know that the auditor already went through some of the

some of the changes that she's seen in the revenues year over year from 27 that she's going to be projecting to the certified revenues for 2026. But these are the key assumptions that are included in the budget as a result of those estimates. She has estimated the federal inmate revenue to be 275, excuse me, in this particular estimate, the daily average is 275 inmates per day at the new rate that was negotiated, so there's 13,450,250. She indicated that that may change. The property taxes that were estimated in the budget were at the no new revenue rate with an estimated 2% new valuation growth. You heard on August 3rd from the CAD, and we've also calculated those new new revenue rates based on the certified values that have not come into play. That number will slightly change, but this budget was based on that no new revenue that was calculated at that time. which it's not materially different than what's included in the budget. Our general sales taxes, those are estimated at $85,350,171. reflecting the increase in prices that we've received. She also indicated we've been receiving over double digit improvement there in our sales tax. So that number is reflected, so that estimate is reflected in the budget. And then we also included some estimates for new revenue for the medical examiner fees as well as some of the public work fees that have been approved. And we'll work to refine that in conjunct, the estimates in conjunction with the auditor.

Looking at our property taxes now. So this is our property taxes. You've seen this slide before. This is the breakdown of the MNO and the debt service. So you see the fluctuation in our In our rate from 2021 through 2025, again, the gray is our INS rate and the yellow bar is the M&O rate. So in the gray bar, you see a difference in from 24 to 25. And that was due, that penny and a half or so, was attributable to the 2024 bond program. And then, of course, you see that difference in the M&O side, as that was the amount that was adopted year over year. Just to remind the court that every amount that we, per penny that's levied, generates $7,457,000 for both INS and and MNO. Okay, now let's look at the CAD values. So this is the final slide. Here, this is the actual, we now have the certified taxable values that you received that information. So the actual change from preliminary to certified was 5.61%. This is what materialized slightly above the change in 24 and 25. The new taxable value ended up being $1,513,000,000. If we just calculated the new, the 2026 no new revenue rate at 100% collection, we would generate $6.8,029,000. And again, you receive this presentation from the CAD on August 3rd. So here looking at the historical tax rates, so what we brought forward here is just in addition to the no new revenue rate and the voter approval rate, we also are showing three different options, three different models for your all consideration review. just to help explain some of the changes within from the 2025 and then to the no new revenue rate. So looking at the no new revenue rate, it decreased 1.69% from the 2025 total rate. That's going from .458889 to .451133. One of the things that we may have expected that no new revenue to drop even further was really due to the personal property exemption that was granted. If you remember back on July 3rd, I brought that forward to you all and I said that this would impact your no new revenue calculation. And so what ended up happening is it is taken into consideration in the calculation. And so what happens is that that no new revenue rate does not come down as much as you would have normally expected, that exemption was then shifted over to other taxpayers. And that was $1.1 billion worth of additional exemption. So I think that's really important to clarify here that you may have been expecting a lower exemption in an R, but that did not materialize in part because of that. Okay? All right, so then let's look at the other, let's look at the VAR, which is the voter approval rate. That is the rate that is calculated that you are not allowed to go over unless you go out to the voters to ask for their consideration and approval. So that rate is .504717 or an increase of 4.5828 cents almost 10%. The other rates that we calculated first and foremost, going back to the 2026 no new revenue M&O rate plus the new debt rate, this is similar to a calculation that we did in the prior year where we simply take the difference between the INS rate of 63597 and 62999 and subtract it from the NNR MNO rate. So moving, we take that decrease and we subtract it from the .388134 and we get .387536, resulting in a decrease of 1.82% for that particular calculation. The MNO recovery rate, plus new debt rate. In this particular calculation, and I will have a particular slide just for this, this is the M&O rate that would generate the same amount of M&O revenue year over year, taking into consideration the increase in the taxable, the new improvements in taxable value. So that is an increase from the NNR of 0.452393 or only a drop of 0.14%. And then the last example here is the 2026 current M&O rate plus the new debt rate that's simply taking the M&O rate from 2025 of 39,5292, and then adding the new debt rate of 6,2999 to generate 45,8292, or a decrease of .13. So let's look at the examples here. And all of these examples indicate what is the amount of revenue that we would receive under each one of these scenarios. Obviously, our baseline is the no new revenue rate. So in this case, we would generate $336,436,000. as compared to 2025 of $330,292,000. Again, the taxable value of the new properties of $1,513,000,000 influencing that increase in the revenues. The next column is the current MNO rate plus the debt rate. Simply, again, taking the tax rate from the MNO from 2025, And then adding the new debt rate, that would generate $341,774,000. Compare that to the $330,292,000. The no new revenue M&O rate, that is taking the difference again between the INS rates and subtracting it from the no new revenue M&O rate.

to give you .450535. So that would result in revenue 335,990,000 compared, let's compare that to the no new revenue rate. That makes sense. It would be less, slightly less than the revenue that's generated from the no new revenue. And then the voter approval rate, this is the highest rate in the models. going up to $54,717. That generates $376,396,000 as compared to the $330,292,000, more than $46 million worth of new revenue. Now, changing the no new revenue tax rate, just for your consideration, if you change it by 1%, so in other words, if you take the 451133 and you multiply that by 1%, that would generate an additional 3,364,361. If you change the no new revenue rate by a penny, go from 45, 1133 to 46, 1133, that would generate an additional $7,457,000.

Those are just your points of reference.

Now, let's look at this slide. This is the tax rate. that we've called the M&O recovery rate plus the new debt rate. So this is the rate that we would get the same amount of, the true same amount of revenue in M&O that we did in 2025. So if you just take, look at that in just isolation, if you take the taxable value of new properties of $1,513,000,000 and you multiply it by the no new revenue rate, that generates $5,875,847. And so you compare that to what the actual no new revenue rate generates for MNO of $289,454,000. And you compare that to the revenue that's generated in 2025 of $284,517,000. That actual difference is $4,936,000. So in effect, the revenue that's needed to generate the same amount of M&O revenue is $939,716. So that would increase your no new revenue rate to 452393. And that's the model that is presented here.

Are there any questions with regards to those calculations? Okay, so now let's look at the taxpayer impact. So the taxpayer impact, first there's an impact due to the rate, and then there's an impact due to the values, okay? So if you look in column number three, this is the additional revenue that's garnered from the tax rate that's in column two when you apply it to the certified values of $74.5 billion. That's the additional revenue that you would get for each one of those tax rates. In column number four, this is the tax that would be calculated based on each of those rates at last year's average taxable home value of $216,881. So if we were just looking at if we were just looking at the 216,881 and a homeowner did not have an increase in their taxable value, column number five would be the amount that they would pay less. So for example, on the no new revenue rate, if you were to adopt the new new revenue rate and there was not an increase in the taxable value, they would actually see a decrease of $16.82. Of course, if the voter approval rate was approved, they would see an increase at $99.39 simply based on the rate. Now on column number six, the taxables on the 2026 homeowner average taxable home value, our average taxable home value did go up 5.88% or 12,756. That was the increase year over year, almost 6%. So this is the taxes in column number six of what they would pay based on the rate that could be adopted. The annual difference that is only attributable to the average taxable home value is in column number seven. So for example, the rate for the no new revenue, if we were just looking at the increase related to the average taxable home value, that would be $57.55. So collectively, the total net increase is $40.73. So if someone did have an increase in their home value from 216,000 to 229, they would pay $40.73, or a monthly difference of $3.39. I'll go over the voter approval rate. So in this particular case, the amount attributable to the increase in the taxable home value is $64.38, TOTAL INCREASE WOULD BE $163.77 OR $13.65 FOR THE AVERAGE MONTHLY DIFFERENCE TO THE HOMEOWNER. AND THE OTHERS JUST CORRESPONDENTLY ARE CALCULATED TO SHOW THE TOTAL NET INCREASE FOR THOSE OTHER MODELS. ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS WITH REGARDS TO THIS? All right, so how will the levy be calculated? This is a very similar slide to what I gave you before. So the levy is calculated at 100%, and we do budget it at 100%, but in various categories. So the auditor takes the amount that's going to be generated, and then here's the general fund model. This is how it's actually budgeted. So we don't collect all of our current levy, but overall, when you take into consideration penalties and interest and delinquent taxes, it does come out to about 100% of the total levy across those three line items. And then here's a look at our surrounding entities' property tax rates. as you're considering, just something to consider as you're contemplating the property tax for the county. We are, our portion of the bill is 17.4%. In this example, we're using EPISD, which represents 40.9%. City of El Paso, 28.7. UMC, 9.1. And the community college is at 3.9%. All right, now shifting over to our sales tax. So this is the sales tax that's been incorporated, that's been used and then incorporated into our recommended budget book. So last year in 2026, our certified sales and use tax line item was $84,279,000. The amount that's projected is $90,863,239. or an improvement that we've been reporting. An improvement is $6,583,802. Ms. Parker presented her uncertified amount of $92,504,730 or an increase year over year on the certified versus the amount that's uncertified still, but projected for 27 of 8,225,000. What's in the book is slightly different. It's 92,511,356, so we'll have to take a small adjustment unless her revenue changes. But right now, what's in the budget book is 92,511,356. Now let's look at our, let's turn our attention now to expenditures. And here is the expenditure side of the budget with an equivalent amount of the $542,352,990 in expenses. That is compared to the budget for 26 of $495,486,000. Again, that is the variance of the $46,866,603 or 9.46%. change. We'll call your attention to the asterisk and the general government. We have included an appropriated undesignated fund balance in both fiscal year 26, so the $46,521,000 and the $73,113,000 in 2027. Again, these numbers are subject to change as we make our final decisions and refinements. So there's some variances that I'm going to be going over through specifically on the next few slides, but first let's look at our general fund historical by character. This is looking at salaries and fringes, our operating capital, and then those things that we transfer out for. So first of all, looking at the orange bar in the middle. So that is our salary and fringe. So 60.81% of our salaries, excuse me, of our budget is related to salary and fringe. And that's remained relatively constant over the last few budget years. And again, reflects the fact that we're not

severely impacted or not severely impacted. A majority of our budget does go to salary infringes, but it's not 80, 85% where we don't have any money to operate. So that's actually a good marker there. Our operating budgets have gone up slightly related to this. This just also reflects the increase in prices and contract obligations. So that has increased slightly there. Our CIP down at the bottom, it just reflects really our contributions to our capital that has decreased over time, whereas before you had your highest point in 2022, 7.42. It's declined to 3.49%, which we have been talking about during these budget proceedings.

The transfers out, that's really our road and bridges, and has remained about 2%, certainly less than 2% over the last few years. But that's what's included in that transfers out number. Here we're looking at our legally required value add and support functions, and this is something that we do provide notice to the public. This is something that we published in yesterday's newspaper to inform the public of what is required legally. reflecting 57% of our budget does go to legally required functions. And then some of the support, some of that $36,210,000 does lend support to those legally required functions. And our value add is $199,351,000. So talking here about our preliminary changes to the expenditures. First, our increase in the administration of justice. This is because we did not see a significant increase in the operating budgets for the administration of justice. In fact, we align most of them to have about the same amount of operating budget across the courts. But one of the things that we do is we budget the salary and fringe amounts in the general government category and then during the year we transfer it over to the specific program. And that's why you see a difference in the budgets in the administration justice category. In Public Works, you saw a decrease, and that was due to the shifting of the Sheriff's Office maintenance departments to public safety. We had the three departments that shifted over, headquarters, detention, and jail. Those shifted over from Public Works to public safety to the tune of over $4.1 million. And then you see an increase in the resource development, and that was due to an increase in the economic impact fund, going from about $3 million in this year's budget to $6.4 million in 27. In the next area is the general government. This is a large increase of 17.36, and there were a lot of things that, there were a lot of increases but also decreases. So these are spelled out here. The items in red signify a reduction, and the items in green reflect an increase. So first you had the decrease in the elections office that was submitted by that department due to the reduction in estimated election costs. So they were able to take their 2% reduction in this particular line item where we had a reduction in election costs, $595,000. The IT department took a look at all of their contracts and was able to make some reductions in there in order to meet their 2% reduction or $609,000. We did have a increase in the fleet operations department simply because of the increased collision and replacement vehicle costs. We had to increase that particular budget because of the increase in prices. $160,000 there. Increase in the ops contingency, $5.4 million. This is where we're budgeting for the 1.5% COLA, and the step is in the general government, $5.4 million. We had a reduction in the judicial salaries. that we budgeted in fiscal year 26, in 27 versus 26, a million dollars. And now you see that represented in the budget in the administration of justice budget. Overall, because of the way that we're now budgeting specifically for grants, grant matches in those departments line items, we see, and we also took a reduction in the grant match I count $1.5 million reduction there. Again, those line items for the grant matches, those still have to come back per policy.

Those have to come back to the court if there is a change in the appropriation. And then our increase in the fund balance, because of our improvement in the fund balance, $26.5 million. We did budget $5 million for CIP funding, up from $3 million, so that's a $2 million increase. Last year we also budgeted for the risk pool contribution. It was budgeted in the general government of $4.5 million. This year we moved that over into the department's specific budget. So that's why you may see an increase in some of the department's budgets because we budgeted last year, we swept that amount and we put it into the general government to save that money. but this year we moved it back into the department's budgets because we're not doing that in this year. And then we had an increase in the overall ops contingency to increase the cost, anticipated cost in the jail medical contract of $1,834,000. I would also just notify the court or just remind the court that all salaries and fringes are budgeted at 100%. of the position at the entry level amount and the estimated associated fringes. So we do budget 100% for every position that's in our budget. We do have ‑‑ we want to continue the 16‑week waiting period that would result in a savings of $4,247,000. That's not budgeted. It's in kind of contra. It's not budgeted. but it is something that we track and we work closely with human resources to ensure we're gonna meet that marker, okay?

Carmen? Yes, sir. Do you know what the actual difference is between the salary savings in the 16-week delay and what it was before we did that? I mean, we had some savings, because there's still a lapse in people getting hired from the time they leave. Do we know what that is?

I don't know what that is calculated. I do know what the amount is this year, and it's relatively the same. It's about $4 million in 26. But I don't know what that amount was in the prior years. Maybe one of my staff can help me.

Commissioner, I have an estimate on that. I believe we saved about $4.5 million on that.

But what he's asking, Sam, is how much did we save before the 16-week period?

Before we instituted the 16-week freeze. I don't have that. I can get it. Because we obviously did have some savings.

Yes, sir. And we do have an estimate. And one of the slides that when we get to the very end and we talk about the things that we are going to consider bringing back during the proposed budget, reducing based on your previous comments, Commissioner, we're going to show you if we bring back a reduction to the hiring freeze, what the difference would be. So we do have that, but we don't have the difference impact yet. Okay.

On this list, I mean, I guess the increase in fund balance appropriation due to increasing ending fund balance at FY 2025, is that mostly attributable to the difficult decision that we made last year to increase the M&O tax rate by a penny and a half, or where can we see I just want to understand how making that decision left us in a better position.

Well, it significantly also, you'll recall, it covered many of the things, and I can pull the slide from last year, of what it helped to cover, that we would have been, it would not have been covered this year. There were things that the court implemented last year that that increase helped to cover. And had we not implemented that increase, your fund balance would have been lower. So I think showing the actual expenses that it covered would be helpful. And you'll recall last year, and it's actually, I think, part of our discussion this year in our fund balance, we also don't want to spend everything that we have. every capacity we have in one year. As we mentioned last year, there were things that were going to be coming into this year, like that recovery of the $4 million, $4.5 million on the risk pool fund. Last year, we left ourselves a little bit of space to be able to bring that in. We're bringing in $4.5 million, basically an expense to the general fund this year, that we're not having to find a revenue for because last year's increase covered it. Last year's increase helped to cover that increase this year. And same this year with our fund balance. While we're over 15%, and I do think we can do some things that the court has provided us, we also have major expenses coming on in the next year or two. We have an animal welfare operation coming on that's going to need resources and expenses. We have upgraded parks. And you all heard what we were already planning for upgraded maintenance to the parks because of these improvements. But you all heard the other night how important it is that we invest in the maintenance of these parks. The other thing that we have coming on is the studies that the court has asked to be done. The sheriff's office study, the DA, the justice system. It'll impact more than just the DA's office, I imagine. So those things coming on also. So I would also caution us against getting, lowering our fund balance to a 10% because we're going to need those funds for ongoing cost heading into FY28. And I will pull, while they're continuing to talk, I'll pull what the last year's tax increase helped to cover.

Yeah, I think that would be helpful, at least for me to understand, and maybe the rest of the court. Because it's part of the long-term decision-making process. It's part of continuing to set ourselves up for not having to reduce services, being able to fund the things that everybody on this court wants to fund, even though not everybody on the court has voted to actually pay for them in the past. I want the public to understand where that money is being spent as well, because I think it's only fair for I think a deeper discussion on why it's important for us to make these tough decisions.

I would also point to your increase in property taxes. I mean, your valuation's 2%. Absolutely. So the growth is, if you just look at 2%, let's say repeated, and that's what historically it's been, about $6 million in additional revenue from that at the current rate. So our revenues may not be keeping up with the amount of inflation or contractual increases or salary increases that you may want to give.

Yeah, I think I just wanna have the conversation about why as we've made comments throughout the budgeting process. The idea of doing what's best for our constituents and doing what's best for our constituents and for the county. May not always be the most popular, the politically expedient way to do things as well. But I want to have that conversation because it's long overdue.

I had the same thought when I saw the increase in fund balance appropriation because it seems like approximately the same amount of revenues that were increased last year with the tax increase. And I thought we voted for all of that to go into the fund balance last year.

No, there were things, let me pull it, just one second.

Well, while you do that, Betsy, I had another question. For the CIP funding, the $5 million that's allocated, do we have a list of projects that will be funded that are being proposed to be funded with that $5 million?

Those are the requests that we get from departments. That's the CIP for items that departments need between $5,000 and less than $500,000. We have an existing list, but we will update that list if the court approves the funding. It basically depends on how much funding we have, what all we will be recommending be funded. So that's something that would come back in the first quarter of the year to be funded January 1, 2027. once we know how much money we have to work with. That is generally things like, part of it's our ongoing replacement capital, like radios, vests, just court reporter stenography machines, things of that nature. But then there are the big requests like the kitchen equipment at the sheriff's office. heavy equipment for departments, parks, mowers, things like that. So we get those requests, we look at how much money we have to work with and bring forward the recommendation for all of those in the first quarter of the year, each year when we have the funding. And that's also the area that instead of $5 million, I'm asking the court to consider lowering your economic impact fund allocation and increasing your CIP allocation because we have seen such a significant need in that CIP area. Some of the emergency things like the pumps at the jail, we should be funding out of that CIP fund.

It would be really, if there is an existing list, I would like to see it to see what the backlog is really, like how much actual funding is needed for CIP versus what we're able to provide. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you.

And I would say that it's even greater than the list because we haven't done a new call for request. So we can show you the list we have now, but it'll be even greater than that list because we haven't done a call yet because we don't know how much funding we have.

So in their budget process, the departments didn't?

They don't. We have a process for the CIP. It's separate from the budget operational request.

I had a follow-up, but I lost it. Okay.

Okay, so those are the differences between the categories. Now let's look specifically, one of the things that we did ask departments to do is so we asked all departments to submit a 2% target reduction. And most departments were able to make that 2% reduction. I know I reported out that there were a few that were not able to make to achieve the 2% and so we went through an appeals process with the Chief Administrator and these are the results of that process. So Constables 1 and 4, they had an appeal to restore their overtime levels that was presented and that was denied by the Chief Administrator and so we we incorporated that 2%, so what you see in the budget for Constables 1 and 4 do represent that 2% cut. For the auditor's office, the department proposed reductions and increases in revenues that will exceed their 2%, so those need to be incorporated back into the budget. And we'll be into the proposed budget book. Ms. Parker did bring this forward and the judges did approve that to be entered into the budget. So that one was resolved. The district clerk budget, so we had requested a 2% target reduction of $148,457 in the book. And then the book does have a reduction of $59,646 of cuts that were identified towards that reduction. And so at the appeals meeting, we identified another area that we could potentially reduce in the juror fees. There was some improvements that were made to the juror selection process and perhaps that those could be materialized in during the year. but we don't have that specific number.

Also during the appeal, though, the district clerk did indicate to us that no further reductions could be made to her respective budget without significantly impacting the statutory obligations of her of her department. And she also requested that we restore the $45,000 that we had originally included because she had originally offered the freezing of the position. But again, as I've reported, that does not guarantee that that position will get restored in fiscal year 28. So she asked for that back. And so we continue to work with her. Our recommendation here would be to make the cuts with regards to continue with the cut of the temporary position, look at the cuts, make the cuts in the juror fees, and then monitor throughout the year to see if we achieve the savings and potentially we could potentially restore a portion of that part-time employee. But that's where we're at with the district clerk and we'll continue to work with her to see if we could try to achieve that 2% cut. Okay.

Okay.

With the Sheriff's Office, with the Sheriff's Office there, we, I do have a specific slide that I want to go over, his particular, where we're at with his particular budget at this time. So he did request a certain budget amount, which we were able to make some cuts to the overtime and to capital, and so We did achieve those, and those are incorporated into the budget book. But in order to achieve the full 2% reduction off of last year's budget amount, we would have to decrease his budget by $10,311,000. And so we have continued to work with the sheriff to see if there are any other opportunities for us to cut, and I'll go through his particular slide so you can have some more information with regards to that particular reduction, okay?

Before we move on, I do have some questions regarding the constable's budget. I did speak to the constable of Precinct 1 to try to understand how far off we were, what his needs were for overtime to meet the 2% cut. And it was less than $5,000, I believe, that he's asking for for overtime. He would even be cutting a large percentage of his overtime from this last fiscal year, but asked if we could keep it. at a certain level, I think it was like 1.5% budget cut. To me that seemed, I understand the goal is 2% across the board, but considering a significant cut in overtime was already budgeted, I wanted to ask the court if anybody else would consider adding $5,000 to the constable's budget for overtime. And I'm not sure if the delta is close for Constable Precinct 4 as well or what that looks like, but I just looked at Precinct 1.

I can go back to the actual amounts that we needed, but that sounds about right for Constable 1. The other constables did meet their target and did reduce their budgets.

Yeah.

But I do remember that it was around $5,000 for Constable 1. Let me pull that up really quickly. Do you have that?

Well, the request is if we could reconsider that particular cut. I don't know if the court's in agreement with that, or perhaps we can discuss it next week, next week's budget meeting as well.

That would be a consideration that we could add to our additional request.

Okay.

Okay, then. All right. Then we also ask the juvenile probation department for a target reduction as well. So what's included in the fiscal year 2027 recommended book is the same amount of budget as adopted in the prior year. And that was simply because we did not receive the recommended proposal until after we had already finalized our budgets and we're in the middle of producing our book. So, but I would note that the The JPD board did approve its budget, and it is available for you all to review. They approved a total budget of $31,655,125, of which $22,533,767 was the general fund, reflecting a decrease of $58,524. The special revenue funds of $9.1 million is what comprises the remainder of that budget. I would say that the JPD, that Chief Medina, Rosa Medina has, they've been super cooperative and collaborative with us. They wanted me to communicate to you that they have been. They were very cognizant of the county's position and that they have, in the past, they have brought forward a budget that met the expectations of the county. In this particular case, that they had achieved their They're objective of 2%, but my understanding is that there was an incident that happened and that required a comprehensive needs assessment with regards to security, and there was some needs that were identified. And so subsequent to that, those cuts, The board asked that they address these needs that were in the study that was identified and evaluated by the sheriff's office. And so they incorporated $475 of additional costs, $300 which are capital, and $175,000, $300,000 which is capital, and $175,000 additional. which is staffing. So the capital requests have been submitted to the CIP department for consideration, but those costs are included in the budget. And so I will say that they, like I said, they did reduce their budget by 58,254, including those items. Okay, so they did make a cut to get to, to try to get to that 2% reduction. So the amount that's remaining to be cut is $393,322.

So the $5 million that we just discussed for CAP for CIP does not include JPD.

Well, that's part of also why we're asking that we shift that fund and build up our CIP a little bit more so that they would not need to budget it. They could go through the county CIP to receive that funding. And that would help them get closer to their 2%, but that's above and beyond what we're talking about in the county CIP.

okay but so is jpd's budget different from every other departments because you said that none of the other departments budgeted capital

that the JPD is the only one that budgeted capital and requested it this way because of this recent incident. And so they actually budgeted and requested capital. I believe the sheriff's office also requested capital in their budget, but it was like 16, I don't remember how many million it was. It was $1,367,000.

How much was the sheriff's? $1,367,000.

Was that their operating capital or they actually asked for other capital?

That was their capital request.

Okay, so we also suggested that they go through CIP for their capital. And so it's not included in their budget, but JPD did include this request in theirs because it goes to their board. And so when they included it to their board, and I also think that Chief Medina, we have not had a chance to talk to her about going this other method, but I think they're very collaborative and would be open to going that other method.

Right. That's where I think a list would help because, you know, I can imagine, well, I know for a department like JPD or even the sheriff's office, they know what their capital needs are. And I feel like if it's not budgeted, then there's a risk that it won't happen. And if it's a matter of security, then it's... It should be a priority, but it would be really helpful to know what those competing priorities are so that we know whether we're overfunding or underfunding CIP. I know we're underfunding CIP, but how far off we are and maybe give GPD some assurance that their needs will be prioritized within that request.

And I do think that's the same wavelength I think we're all on. There are some departments whose needs are so critical. Everybody's needs are critical. Just for everybody listening, everybody's needs are critical. But there are some that are dire. There are some, like the security needs or certain things that really it, like we've heard from facilities, the pumps are not going, there's still a part to the water issue that we have to replace. We go through these lists. We do ask departments to prioritize their request, but that doesn't mean the number one for my office is nearly as important as the number eight for the sheriff's office. And so that's how, when we get these CIP requests, we go through them and we look at those, what are the critical dire needs, and try to fund those. And we are, as I mentioned, if we do this shift on economic impact fund to move, I think it was about 2.4 million of that to the CIP fund, we're still only funding about 40% of our goal. And even when we were at 100% of our goal, we were not meeting all needs. So we can definitely share the list, but that's a really good example. The list, the recent request from JPD is probably not on their list that we have because they haven't had a chance to request that since they've had this issue arise.

I would also, before we leave this slide, I would also indicate that the budget does not include the raises. that any raises that we would or the court would adopt. Again, we budget for those in the general government and then we move them during the year. So this budget that's been presented here that they've submitted does not include any COLA or STEP. So we calculate those centrally and then we would add it to that budget, okay?

Yes, ma'am. Before you go on, can we go back to the issue about the tax rate last year? Sure. And what it covered and generated? So last the court asked about how fund balance grew and there was a portion of the tax rate from last year that we did plan to not expend and to build our fund balance back up because our fund balance had dropped so significantly under the 10%. But what the M&O rate that the court adopted last year, which was the, you brought us back up to the 2024 tax rate for M&O. and that generated 35.6 million more in revenue than the prior year and out of that 35.6 There was about $12 million in new expenses that the court added. It included things like collective bargaining. The P25 radio system had a major cost impact in last year's budget. I have it, just one second. Okay, here we go.

We need to publicly apologize to everyone who bought our titanium propan because we lied.

Yeah, it's true. The pan is naturally nonstick thanks to its engineered titanium.

There was $5.2 million for cleat. There was a grant match that the court approved that had not been funded of $53,000. $1.8 million for the equipment lease purchase agreement with Schneider. The Texas Department of Agriculture, Texans Feeding Texans, which is small, $35,000. There was a rural areas public transport match of $303,000. Another public transit match for federal section 5311 of 750,000. There was a ARPA, two ARPA positions that the court brought over into the general fund. And then there was the judicial salaries of 1.1 million. All of those totaled 9.5. Plus there were increases to the animal services price increase with the city, which was 367. Update to the web RMS on-call records of 350,000. CADS increase of 403,000. the Motorola agreement of a million, public defender attorney longevity pay, the estimated 25% insurance increases, and estimated 25% increase in property insurance, which totaled $2.5 million. So those were like the difference between the $35.6 million increase. You had those expenditures, and the rest was to go to help build fund balance up from, I think it was like 5% or 6% to get it up closer to 10%.

The grant match, do you remember what grant that was for?

There were different grant matches. Let's see. There were a couple of them. The BJA Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program Grant Award. the Texas Department of Agriculture Texans Feeding Texans Home Delivered Meal Grant Program, and then two Rural Area Public Transit and Federal Section 5311 Rural Area Public Transit matches that the court covered from those increases. And they were done, these were done throughout the year, but we were keeping, remember we'd show you all a running total of what our increases were for the year? And those were part of the increases for that year. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Okay, so with regards to the JPD, that's where we stand. I know that we have some folks in the audience from JPD in the event that there were questions specific to the budget. The next item is our carryover items. So there is $4,352,000 in the budget that we carried over from fiscal year 26 to fiscal year 27.

So these were items that we're not going to spend in one year in fiscal year 26 that now we're carrying over for 27. So to me, these are really a use of fund balance. because these are having to be rebudgeted in fiscal year 27. Don't anticipate that these will be recurring expenses and will not impact us in fiscal year 28. So again, that's $4,352,000. It's comprised of these five items that are listed here. The funding, what's included in the budget, again, we went through the funding for the COLA and the STEP increases. And there's 5.45 million for the one and a half COLA and the STEP, effective January 3rd, for all non-collectively bargained employees. $3.7 million for the collective bargaining contract. It's 2.5% for STEP, 2.5% COLA. For covered sheriff office employees and for constables, it's for policy. That would be effective October 1st, 2026. And I believe we have those numbers now for the COLAs if you want to have that conversation now. At this time, I do have the amounts that it would cost. And let me go through those. Are they in a way that we could show? Melissa, do you have that? Okay, we're waiting for a slide here in just a second. But while we're doing that, this is a retirement change. So we did save $789,000 in our budget because our rate went down. So it went down from $18.4 0%, 18.18, shows an improvement in our overall funding of our retirement plan with TCDRS. And so that's effective January 1, 2027. So when we look at it from a budgetary standpoint, we use the blended rate of 18.24, representing a decrease of 0.22%. And so that saved $789,000, and that's reflected in the budget. Let's see if we have that slide ready. Okay.

Let me just download it very quickly.

So what's the difference between the 5.4 and the 7.1?

It's up. Thank you.

Okay, so here we have the COLA and minimum wage impact. So looking at the cost for 1.5% COLA, that is included, and that would increase our minimum wage to $1,573. So then you're looking at a 2% COLA, two and a half, three, and 3.25, which going up to 3.25 would get us up to $16 for the minimum wage. So the impact would rise incrementally from the 2% at 633,999 up to 1,702,841. So that would, a 3.25% COLA would get us to the $16, but that would be the cost, additional cost that's not included in the budget right now.

1.7 above the 633? No, it would be 1,702,000.

Above the current amount that we've included in the budget. Including the 2%. Yes, sir.

Or the 1.5%.

So we've already included $5,450,000 in the budget already. For the 1.5%. Yes. Okay. So on top of that is the 1.7 million. Okay.

And none of these, the 2% to the 3.25 is in the budget? No, sir. Can you go back to page 66? Yes. Commissioner Stout was asking what was covered, but some of these that we're putting into this year that we paid for, right, are going to be things that are going to be absorbed by our fund balance?

Mm-hmm.

Can you go over those?

Yes, sir, of course.

So $1,165,000, that's been budgeted in the general fund contingency. Those are the amounts of savings that we had from ARPA funds that we're reprogramming back into the budget. I believe we have capital projects associated with those. Then there was an amount for Creative Place. This was an economic development initiative originally budgeted at $600,000. $431,100 remains unspent for that project.

Those are the projects, the art projects that are underway with the Commissioner's Court. Those are the ones where it was originally part of the ARPA, but we carved it out because we couldn't use ARPA funds, so we used the ARPA recovery funds, the first line item. It was part of that. It was originally like $1.7 million.

These are the arts projects?

These are the art projects that are going on in every precinct.

Okay.

The P25 project of $1 million as a joint agreement with the City of El Paso, it is an IT project and so that was budgeted in one year versus in budget in 26. It wasn't finalized now and it's not anticipated to be finalized and so that will need to be carried over, rebudgeted in 27. The Healthy food finance or the healthy food financing initiative also from economic development impact. That's 500,000 and that will carry over as well as it's not spent in 26.

So really quick on that one. We usually award that in the later part of the year, but we don't pay it out. So there's like a kind of a carryover where each year we have the budget to award and but it's not spent immediately because they have to meet certain metrics. And so that one carries over, the funding carries over where it's almost like a double every year.

And then we have a county mobility project, otherwise known as a Darrington project of $1,256,250. I'm not familiar with that, Commissioner, that specific project. I just know it requires a carryover.

That's our match on Darrington, let me tell you. But that's coming from VRF funds, no?

That's our match for what?

This is in our CMP fund. Give me one second.

I think this is the one that's funded by the CRMA or funded through the RMA. This is our contributions, our match. I think this is ours, but let me double check. This is our match.

This is our match for, again, what?

It is for a project with the CRMA.

Regional Mobility, yeah.

But I think that those are VRF funds. That's where we're getting our match from is the VRF.

It's part of the general fund.

I'm not 100% familiar with that. I don't think this is VRF, Commissioner. I think we have a separate comprehensive mobility.

The Darrington is VRF.