Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everybody. Today is August 18, 2026. The time is 10.07 a.m., and I'll call this regular session of Commissioner's Court to order with our pledges to the flags and a moment of silent prayer. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.

Amen. Thank you.

It's good to see everybody this morning. I hope you're all doing well. I'm going to move to item three on our agenda, which are citizens to be heard. I'd like to invite up the first individual signed up, Mr. Peter Snadden.

Good morning. Good morning. I apologize I'm just over a week late for this, but if you would, my name is Peter Snadden for the record. I am the chief appraiser of the Guadalupe Appraisal District. I appreciate your time today. Because I know questions aren't taken during this period, I have submitted a full written report to the court, and it was signed jointly by my office, myself, as well as the tax assessor collector, Mr. John. And I will use my few minutes to make the key points plainly. At your August 10th budget workshop, the recalculation of the over 65 and disabled freeze values was described as an oversight by the appraisal district. Respectfully, the record shows otherwise. And I want to explain why, because the distinction matters to this court's deliberations. Texas law draws a firm line between the two functions. Appraisal is determining what a property is worth. Assessment is determining the tax, including calculating the over 65 and disabled person freeze. LEGISLATURE ASSIGNED THOSE TWO DIFFERENT OFFICES WITH TWO DIFFERENT STATE CERTIFICATIONS. AS CHIEF APPRAISER, I DO HOLD AN APPRAISER CERTIFICATION TO DETERMINE VALUE. WHAT I DON'T HOLD IS A CERTIFICATION TO ASSESS, LEVY, TAX, OR COLLECT. THAT IS SOMETHING THAT IS HELD BY THE TAX ASSESSOR COLLECTOR'S OFFICE, AND HE HAS SAID SO IN WRITING OR AS I HAVE SAID SO IN WRITING ON OUR CERTIFIED REPORTS YEAR AFTER YEAR IN THE COVER LETTER. So what changed in 2026? In 2023, the Senate bills 2 and 12 approved by the voters required free ceilings to be recalculated back to their origin years or as far back as 2019. using these new compression rates that the state had sent down. The software that produces those figures did not keep pace on the tax assessor's office side. After the 25 certification and in coordination with the tax assessor collector and his office, we worked with our software provider to run that recalculation retroactively as a quality control tool for the tax office, and we disclosed it as we did it throughout. The reason being is because the state doesn't have oversight over the tax assessor collector's office. That is an elected position. But they do have oversight over me. So they come to get me to get their figures. And it makes it quite difficult during that period of time with the changes that took place between our two systems or the lack of compatibility. The result of the court saw was the reconciliation catching up all at once. It is not new value that you guys somehow lost an ability to tax. It was not an error by either office. The figure that was moved was a reporting figure on the certified role, not anybody's tax bill. And on the bills themselves, which the tax office is responsible, Mr. John has stated his office recognized these accounts and collected the correct amounts throughout. I'LL BE CANDID, FOR THE YEARS OUR OFFICE DELIBERATELY STEERED CLEAR OF THE ASSESSMENT SIDE, THE FREEZE, RE-FREEZE PROCESS THAT EVERYBODY'S SPEAKING OF, THAT EXISTS WITHIN OUR APPRAISAL SOFTWARE, PRIMARILY BECAUSE I DON'T HOLD THE CERTIFICATION. I VALUE MY JOB AND I'D LIKE TO MAINTAIN THAT. AND TO DO SO, WE STEER CLEAR OF ASSESSMENT FUNCTIONS WITHIN THE PROPERTY TAX SYSTEM. THEREFORE, THIS PAST YEAR, WITH THE HEADACHE THAT CAME AS OF 2023 IN TRYING TO PROVIDE OUR STATE TIMELY REPORTS AND ALL THE EXEMPTIONS THEY WERE GRANTING, I decided to go ahead and revisit that long-standing stance of ours that was held by my predecessor well before me to at least fold the freeze-refreeze into our supplemental processing as a quality control step on the clear understanding with our tax assessor partners that the verification of those results would still remain with their offices which hold the certification to perform it legally. That step is what surfaced the discrepancy for reconciliation this year, and Mr. John has reviewed and concurs with the report provided to the court. This is not a story of one office failing. It is a story of two offices on two separate, incompatible software systems reconciling a major change to the law as best we can and doing it together. Achieving that, going forward, let me just say this. Two offices will now compare figures every month, every supplement we do. The tax office is moving to a new software system next week with monthly tax ceiling reporting. And the disclaimer I've placed on our reports since 2024 Indicating the confirm the freeze is levy figures. Oh, excuse me. I apologize. Let me backtrack. I placed on the report serve as one more prompt for every taxing unit to confirm its freeze and levy figures with its assessor. Our goal is simple, that the numbers that the court relies on are accurate, reconciled, and dependable this year and every year. I'll close with a word about the work itself. When our office finally completed the retroactive process, and we weren't sure if it was going to work because we hadn't done it since we started this system back in 2002. So we went ahead and did it back in November of last year. We completed it. WE'RE HAPPY THAT WE RESOLVED A REPORTING ISSUE THAT HAD OCCUPIED A SIGNIFICANT SHARE OF OUR STAFF'S TIME FOR THE BETTER PART OF TWO YEARS. I SPENT AUDITS WITH A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT ISDs, NAVARRO AND MARIAN SPECIFICALLY, TRYING TO ASSIST THEM WITH THE ISSUES THEY HAD WITH THE REPORTING AND THE VALUES OF THE FREE CEILINGS. SO THEREFORE, YOU CAN IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN I WAS ENJOYING MY NORTHEASTERN BREAK, DROPPING MY OZ AGAIN AND SEEING THE FAM THAT I hear a member of the court seek accountability as if someone was trying to escape it through a call that heads would need to roll before the member had ever contacted myself or anyone from our office. In closing, I will make one respectful request. In the future, I would ask that the court reach out to our office before conclusions are reached about the performance of our office or its staff. Every official deserves the opportunity to explain the facts before accountability is assigned, and I am confident a brief conversation would have placed the workshop's concerns in the context this report now provides. Our door is always open. The written report before you supports the points I have made today, and my staff and I remain at the court's service. Just briefly, as I was sitting here with the time I got left, I'm not sure, but I know that we're hitting, everyone in the state is hitting some issues with revenue funding. FROM TAX PROPERTY TAXES. YOU GUYS ALONE, YOU KNOW, LOST ABOUT $422 MILLION OF TAXABLE VALUE AT LAST YEAR'S TAX RATE. THAT'S ABOUT $1.2 MILLION IN REVENUE. THAT'S A BIG AREA WHERE YOUR VALUE IS LOST, NOT IN THE REPORTING ISSUE ON THE FREE SAILINGS OF OUR MOST VULNERABLE IN THE COMMUNITY. WE GOT EVERY DOLLAR THAT WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GET, I ASSUME, BASED ON SPEAKING WITH MR. JOHN. And that's all I have. I appreciate your time, y'all. Thank you for your comments.

Mr. Stanton, since we're unable to have a conversation under Citizens to be Heard, we do have an agenda item on consent that's talking about the budget. In anticipation, if that is pulled, are you able to stick around if we do have a couple questions? Absolutely. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Nobody else signed up under Citizens to be Heard. Is there anybody else in the courtroom? I do see our... Human Resources Director, Dr. Salsedge, coming up to the podium. How are you?

I'm good. Good morning, Court Judge. I just wanted to remind everybody again about our open enrollment. You should see these posters somewhere in your office, close to where you have a break room. If you do not and you need one, please let us know. I will be emailing them out as well. I believe they're on the HR page. Remember that we have open enrollment September the 21st through the 25th. We are trying a hybrid open enrollment where if you do not want to sit with an enroller, you do not want to make any changes, you do not want to call, you do not want to go to your computer to make any changes, all you have to do is nothing. And we will roll over what you have unless you have an FSA or dependent care FSA. You will have to enroll in that, re-enroll again. You have the option. excuse me, to come Tuesday, September the 22nd to the Justice Center from 8 to 4.30 to meet with an open enroller in person. You have the option on Wednesday, September the 23rd from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Road and Bridge Loop Center to meet with someone. And then that afternoon at Juvenile Services from 2 to 5. Thursday, September the 24th, there will be individuals to meet with you from 8 a.m. to 4.30. Again, this is new. We haven't made any changes to your benefits. So if you want to keep what you have and make no changes other than your FSA or dependent care FSA, you don't have to do anything and we'll roll over what you have. If you have any questions, feel free to contact HR. Thank you.

Thank you. Nobody else signed up. Is there anybody else in the courtroom, online, or on the call that would like to speak and are citizens to be heard? Hearing none, then we'll move on to item four, presentation by representative of the City of Seguin regarding the Cordova Road Project. Commissioner Engelke.

Yes, sir. I ask the City of Seguin to come present and give an update on the Cordova Road Project, which we are partners with. with the city of Seguin. I've had several questions over the last several months in regards to the status, the cost, and what's going on. So Ms. Reynolds is here from the city of Seguin, assistant city manager and engineer.

Good morning, John. Good morning. Commissioner Engelke, you requested that I give an update on this project that's in this precinct. As he mentioned, this is a partnership with the city of Sagin and Guadalupe County that was entered in before my tenure with the city. And we're happy to say that we're coming to the end of the design phase and into construction, hopefully very soon. We've provided updates in the past, but it's been a minute since we've been, so I thought it would be a good time to provide some updates as to where we are and where the costs have landed. This is a lot going on on this slide, but it's probably the most important slide and probably the one we'll spend the most time on talking about the timeline. To take you back, it states on here that AMPO funding was awarded in 2021, but It's fair to state that the application for the funding of this was actually awarded prior to COVID in 2019. That's a fun fact, and that's something we probably should be cognizant of as we get into costs and where we stand today. The advanced funding agreement is a term you're going to hear quite a bit. That is an agreement between the owner of the project, which is the city and the county, and TxDOT. TxDOT is the one authorized to give us the funds for this project, so we have to follow their process, and we have to pay them for their services in review, and that advanced funding is something they ask for at the beginning of the project in order to provide those review services. That agreement states that owners must fund preliminary and design engineering along with the cost of acquisition, matching funds, which is our 20% match of construction, and probable funds needed to complete the project in excess of the grant. Those are important terms, because as you'll see as we proceed through the timeline here, our staff has worked really diligently, along with Judge Kutcher and our Mayor, Donner Dodgen, on the AMPO Policy Board to ensure that we've secured as much funding as possible for this project. We really wasted no time. You'll see that the funding was awarded in 21, but our first AFA, mind you, the ability for TxDOT to review this project wasn't executed until April of 23. We jumped ahead of that and awarded design services ahead of time knowing that we could execute certain portions of this project without TxDOT oversight. We can survey. We can get to a certain level of design without needing them to review anything. So we started that early, knowing that there were some processes of this project that were going to be possibly long lead times, a big portion of that being environmental clearance that had to go to the federal government. So the faster we could get on that and get that ahead of schedule, the better. So you'll see that right after we were awarded that AFA, we immediately went into public meetings and submitted that environmental document to both TxDOT and the federal government. That process did take over two years. We received environmental clearance in September of 25. So there's a big timeline between that. In that time, we were able to go from getting TxDOT on board in late or in early 23 to by the early 24, we had 90% design plans done. And we've been at that state since then. Once we got environmental clearance, that gave us the full rights for right-of-way acquisition. We didn't wait for that. We jumped ahead and tried to secure as many properties as we could, knowing we had almost 40 parcels to acquire for this project. It's a three-mile roadway. IT'S A LOT, AND THERE'S A LOT OF PROPERTIES TO ACQUIRE. SO WE'VE SECURED AS MANY AS WE COULD, AND THEN AS THAT FINAL UTILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CLEARANCE WAS GRANTED BY TEXDOT, WE FINALIZED THE LAST FEW PROPERTIES. WE ARE UNDER CONTRACT WITH ALL PARCELS ALONG CORDOVA. WE HAVE CLOSED ALL BUT TWO, AND THE TWO THAT WE HAVEN'T CLOSED, WE HAVE RIGHT TO USE. SO THAT IS ALL GREAT NEWS, AND WITH THAT, WE'VE gone into utility relocates this is the the messiest part of any construction project going especially with federal funding is we have to get utilities out of the way in order to let um and we'll get into some of that timeline in a bit but what i can tell you is we're underway with most and there are some long lead times with certain ones such as at t and we are working with tex dot to secure a letting schedule, possibly allowing us to let, since it is three miles, knowing that we can start clearing one half of the project and start construction behind utilities. So we're working on such a coordinated schedule with TxDOT to get this moving ahead of the typical. So with all of that, there's a lot on this slide, but where we stand right now is we're anticipating construction hopefully early next year, but that is dependent on TxDOT authorization and utility clearances. The original schematic for Cordova is on the screen as presented in the grant application. This is an exhibit of what Cordova currently looks like along with our schematic of what it should look like at the end of construction, which is also very similar to the first phase of brutal law that's almost completed near 46. Into the money side of things. Again, it's a joint project, 50-50 partnership, county and the city, for everything prior to construction along with our 20% match. This is the first phase of that, which is plan specifications and estimates, PSE. This was awarded, again, in August of 22 to Pape Dawson. This is all of our design fees along with all the amendments. Some of these were not the county's responsibility, and I will... CALLED THOSE OUT. THOSE WERE FOR OUR WATER AND SEWER LINES THAT NEEDED TO BE RELOCATED. SO THOSE ARE SEPARATED AND YOU'LL SEE THAT THOSE ARE NOT INCLUDED IN OUR ESTIMATE FOR THE COUNTY PORTION. OUR ORIGINAL ESTIMATE FROM PAPE-DAUSON WAS RIGHT AROUND $4 MILLION AND IT'S REALLY ONLY GONE UP ABOUT $100,000 PER SIDE OUTSIDE OF THE UTILITY PORTION.

WE'RE ALMOST DONE WITH THIS PORTION OF THE CONTRACT.

When we presented the memo last year for final estimates, we presented an estimate for what we anticipated full right-of-way acquisition to cost. That estimate was just over $6 million, 50-50, $3 million apiece. Where we are now, again, all under contract, we are just over $4 million. So that's all good news. We saved quite a bit of money on that, and our team worked very diligently to get to that point. And again, all properties are under contract. We have two left to close. With nearly 40 parcels, this is a huge win for both parties. This is an estimate as presented in last year for utility relocation. We are not through this process yet. So we still have a lot of unknowns. You'll see that on the screen. AT&T, this is not a final cost. They are in design as of now. And Exxon, we are negotiating this fee at this point. So those two, we expect to change and finalize. But as of where we sit today, those are the numbers. AGAIN, WE'RE STILL UNDER BUDGET FROM WHAT WE PRESENTED LAST YEAR, BUT WE STILL HAVE As far as the huge wins, I really want to tote on this one. So we went into this with an estimated construction cost. Mind you, the application was submitted in 2019 prior to COVID, and we've seen construction estimates more than double since. This is across the board. This is a TxDOT. Every city, everybody across the nation has seen these escalation of construction fees. We were very fortunate in order to apply for additional funding through Alamo Area MPO, and with support, we were able to get that not once but twice. You can see that our estimate when we went into this was just over $24 million. The current estimate is over $40 million, and our current AFA with TxDOT estimate Well, it shows you 47. That means that our participation has gone from $5 million split 50-50 to 9.5 split 50-50 for construction. But it could have meant that we were on the hook for almost $20 million in additional construction costs. We were very fortunate to get additional funding through TxDOT and to save that much money. I mean, we saved the city and county totally $25 million by securing additional funding for this project. As far as where we sit, this is the final summation of that. It just puts all of those numbers together. Again, we are still unknown with utility relocations, but these are the final costs with everything else included, including PS&E, right-of-way acquisitions, and all of those items together. And this is with construction included. This is the final anticipated alignment and design of the project. You can see some of the challenges we had to align with Three Oaks on 46 side. And we also had some challenges with the Big Red Barn and the GVC substation, which we realigned the road around with design. All of those added to right-of-way costs. But again, we are way under budget on right-of-way costs. So it's the final design. And with that, I'll take any questions if you have any.

Commissioners, any questions?

I have one question for you. You said that, I believe I heard you right, you said that you were waiting on TxDOT's environmental study, but you went ahead and started acquiring right away. You sure that's legal?

Yes, sir. It was approved by TxDOT. We are allowed to acquire right away. We are not allowed to go into eminent domain.

And we did not do that. Okay.

Thank you all. I appreciate it.

Thank you. I just appreciate the time. Did you have any comments? Any other questions you wanted?

Well, being involved in the project, I mean, I kind of know all of this stuff, but I think the refresher, not only to the court, but to the general public as well, because there are a lot of, you know, what's going on. And when you get a project going, Melissa, you know this, and other court members as well, when you get the approval to do a project, and like you said, this started back in 2019 before COVID. You want to see dirt moving like the following week and the reality of it is it takes a lot of Work and effort and teamwork to make it happen It sounds like a lot of money has been saved during the process Through negotiations or whatever through right away acquisition but it's even frustrating for me and for most of us as professionals that it just takes such a long time, but I With the funding through the process of the MPO, we have to follow certain guidelines. So that adds to the timeframe. And so I did a great job explaining it to everyone, and I appreciate your time.

The takeaway is free money is not free, and it takes extra time. Correct. Yes, sir.

Did you all have any other comments? I hear a lot of sighs and a lot of concerns on this end over here.

Yes, sir.

I have one other thing I wanted to ask you. When you look at, and I may have been told this before and I apologize, but you go around that substation, that GVC substation, who maintains that road in front of the Big Red Barn?

It is the city. We are keeping that as of now because of access to utilities. Okay. But there will be private driveways built that we will be granting because of the, obviously, the pullback to make them whole.

Okay. Because that's a very high traffic road.

It won't be adjacent to the Big Red Barn anymore. The high traffic will now be behind the substation.

I'm not talking about pass-through traffic. I'm talking about there are many events at that Big Red Barn. And I do not want that road to fall in disarray because the loop around the substation. All right. Yes, sir.

Well, thank you for the partnership. I know everybody here has mixed emotions and different feelings and all those things. I think, just to recap really quickly, this road was city, county, city, county, city ownership. That's how it was broke up. Just like Bolton, Dean, and Lower Sagin Road that we funded Commissioner... The difference is that was a level-up in asphalt overlay that was a $1,148,000 responsibility to Guadalupe County. This originally was planned to be a $5 million responsibility to leverage local dollars to get almost $30 million of state and federal funding to create a connection point in a highly growing area to make 123 and Highway 46 just, I mean, more safe, accessible, have free flow of traffic, knowing all these things were going to go on. Is it frustrating that COVID happened and construction costs doubled? Absolutely. I'm glad we saved funds on right-of-way acquisition, but the short answer is it's cheaper to do it today than it will be tomorrow. This always has been needed and will continue to be needed, so the sting is there. The good thing also is we took an incremental approach to funding on this project, and we've set funds aside where we have our portion If not, I believe it's fully funded now in our budget at a million dollars at a time. And if not, we're thousands of dollars away. That means that we don't have to move funds today because this was a planned project for years. I think we did it the right way. I wish construction costs were less or we could have done it sooner, but you take the winds where you can get them. But thank you for all y'all's hard work. I know the county couldn't have done it without the city.

We certainly appreciate the partnership, and I think it was great forethought on both the city and the counties looking ahead to have secured this funding when they did. Right. And it's three miles of roadway. I don't know of another MPO project that is going to be as significant as this one, especially in a more rural area. Most of them like this are text-out roads within the city and or higher traffic. It was a great win for both parties. And I will say, you mentioned mill and overlays. One of the lessons learned from Rudoloff, we went in last year with a mill and overlay level up on this roadway because the current condition is not great just to get residents through until we can get to construction. So lessons learned from Rudoloff. We decided to do that ahead of time. With that, I appreciate y'all's time.

Thank you for the time this morning. Thank you. We're going to move to item 5 on the agenda, which are consent items. Under consent, item A, the bill list. Item B, the EBA list. Item C, the PCA bill list and jury registers. Item D, auditor's monthly report for April 2026. Item E, the treasurer's monthly and investment report for April 2026. Item F, accept the donation of 10 bee hoods valued at $678.50 used by the Guadalupe County Fire and Rescue from the Brinkhater family. Item G, accept the donation of two modular buildings from CGC General Contractors Inc. used for Guadalupe County Fire and Rescue for temporary fire stations from the San Antonio Fire Department. Item H, additional service request number one with Pape Dawson Engineers in the amount of $49,000 for the North Guadalupe Street reconstruction project supporting Guadalupe County Emergency Operations Center. Item I, accept the resignation of County Commissioner Drew Engelke, Precinct 2, as Guadalupe County's primary representative on the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, or AMPO, Active Transportation Advisory Committee, ATAC, and appoint Lauren Schrum as the primary representative and continue with County Commissioner Stephen Gurman, Precinct 4, as alternate representative. Item J, agreement to furnish fire protection and related emergency services between Guadalupe County and Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department. Item K, the addendum to the service agreement with Convergent Technologies LLC to include the elections building for fire alarm monitoring. Item L, record the proposed fiscal year 2027 Guadalupe County budget. Item M, the naming of the following private lanes. 1 Boot Lane, Battery Lane, Berwick Lane, located off Darfsfield Road, Precinct 1. And Intel Lane, located off Weill Road, Precinct 4. And item N, the excavation permit applications for the following county roads. Kingsbury Road, located in Precinct 1. Union Wine Road, located in Precinct 1. Barbarossa Road, located in Precinct 2. Weill Road, located in Precinct 4. Commissioners, if it is okay, And with everybody could we remove item L for separate discussion which is the recording of the fiscal year 2027 Guadalupe County budget.

And also item J, I have some questions. Any other items? I'd like to pull item N please.

Any other items?

Okay, so that is the requests have been made to remove from the consent list item J, the fire protection service agreement with Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department, item L, the recording the proposed fiscal year 2027 county budget, and item N, the excavation permit applications for those county roads listed. Is there a motion to approve the remaining items? So moved. Second. Do we have a motion and a second to remove consent items? With an exception of item J, L, and item N. Any other comments or questions? Hearing no other discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. We will move back to item J, and that's the agreement to furnish fire protection and related emergency services between Guadalupe County and Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department. Commissioner Wolverton.

The only question I have, is this for 25, 26, or 26, 27? Because normally they're all together. Correct.

This is to get them current... Their previous contract or current contract that we have on file is the same contract we've had since 2024. So this is the current contract that is funded. It's a contract to allow them to receive the funds they are now allocated for this year. So it's just getting their paperwork in line.

Why did it take so long?

When we started the paperwork last week, we realized that we didn't have their current contract on file, so we needed to get a new updated one. So last year, they didn't receive all of their funding that was allocated in the budget. The year before, they didn't. They were still being paid less until this contract. So if you go to the page where it talks about their allocation and their funding, for the past two years, they've received the same amount of funding. This year, we have, I think, 80-something thousand is budgeted for them this year. This is just to get them up to that current allotment. That's the only thing that's changed. I guess the question is, how did it slip between the cracks? I sent it back to them, and they never responded and gave it back to me. They received the contract back in November of last year, and we just got it back. Mr. Tice is on every email I send to the volunteers with the contracts, and when we looked back in the history, they never responded. I sent it to their treasurer, their chief, and their board president, and we just got it back last week.

Apparently they don't need the money? It's not that they don't need the money. It's the contracts are current now. Well, I don't see. We'll just let it go.

Poor management.

On their part, not you. Just them.

Any other discussion on that item?

Move to approve item J.

Second.

It's a motion and a second to approve item J, removed from the consent list, and that is the agreement to furnish fire protection and related emergency services between Guadalupe County and Sandhills Volunteer Fire Department. Any other discussion? Hearing no other comments or questions, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. That motion does pass four yays and one nay. Commissioner Wolverton. Going to move to item L, which is to record the proposed fiscal year 2027 county budget. Before I invite up the sheriff and county attorney to give some additional information on the meetings that have been held. I know Mr. Staden stayed. Thank you, Peter, for staying. I just, I have a question because I know this is very complicated. I've looked at it from numerous directions. I also am not trying to find any direction to lay blame, but I also want to understand what happened. So I've had to try to explain this to numerous people and their eyes glaze over and they go, I don't get it. And I read the packet last night that you emailed out. Thank you for sending that. The only part that got my blood pressure up a little bit was that The statement was made that if the previous exemptions and the freeze ceiling was inputted using last year's numbers, there'd be minor change to the tax rate, right? Correct. And that is correct because there wouldn't have been a change. But the fact is the freeze ceiling changed by $1.4 billion. When you go back and look at that, it's almost a two to two and a half cent tax rate impact on what we're talking about. And that's where my question is going. I get the statement is not incorrect in what you sent. You and Darrell signed that. You're accurate saying if it wouldn't have changed, the tax rate wouldn't have changed. But the fact is it did change in a big way. And I also understand everybody needs to go, okay, it's not just that one thing. There's dozens of things built into this calculation. Let me pull this up. So this is one of the spreadsheets that our auditor uses to recheck some of those. And you look at that prior year ceiling amount versus what was there before, right? That's where the big difference is. And without going through all these lines and trying to explain everything, that prior year tax ceiling is a reduction off of your total taxable value. And when tax value goes down, the tax rate goes up. Right, the revenue rate's the one that was good. Yeah, that calculates that. And that was the biggest and hardest part for me to understand and took so much time is usually I preach every year during budget, the no new revenue rate, used to be called the effective rate, calculates, and it brings in the same money as the prior year, excluding new property. But this year it was $1.5 million short, right? And then you get into the...

Well, and I don't mean to interrupt, but in the calculation aspect of it, but in the collection requirement, because his system, and that's what the first thing I checked last week was, I want to see what your system indicated for each one of those years after certification, your freeze, you know, and all that, just to kind of see at least, I know it wasn't correct in the reporting aspect, but when it came time, so I think there was going to be some, I mean, when we spoke that a little bit about, there was going to be some issues, obviously, in the WORKSHEET CALCULATIONS. CORRECT. NOT SO MUCH IN THE COLLECTION ASPECT OF WHAT WAS, YOU KNOW, WHAT SHOULD BE THERE.

WHEN I WAS TRYING TO THINK HISTORICALLY ALSO THAT IF THIS ALL WOULD HAVE BEEN IN PLACE WITH THE STATE GUIDANCE AND SENATE BILLS AND ALL THAT BACK TO 23, HOW IT WOULD HAVE REFLECTED In the worksheet and the amount of collections and all those things because from a tax Assessor collector standpoint also is you've got this interesting Dynamic where they're looking at total collections when this client and I go look at revenue projections for next year 65% of the county's revenue comes from property tax and we're looking at what the tax rate generates based on the appraised value off the worksheet also knowing that there could be either delinquencies, rollback taxes, penalties and interest. I mean, all those are extra. When we start rolling that all together going, no, we're good on the projections, we know for a fact there's no way based on our spending we're going to bring extra money into fund balance. And then you carve out some other issues and then everything becomes tighter. So when we went and looked back at the accuracy of our revenue projections, we felt like we were really close. But it just made me more concerned the more I looked at the details going, Were we close because we were accurate or were we close because we were really conservative and those other numbers help cover the shortfall that weren't represented in the tax rate calculation worksheet? And all those things are swirling around. You and I can't sit here this morning and go, that's what happened and that's where it is. But I read that and I'm going, it's true, but it doesn't tell the story either of everything that happened.

Yeah. Essentially, really, the fact that there was more free ceiling, you would always back that out out of your net, but then you add in the actual tax revenue that will be generated. Correct. So technically, we were probably understating how much revenue you, I mean, and I'm just talking off here, just in my head, that you would, if there was actually more in there in your worksheets, it had to have been updated to what the tax assessor had. IT WOULD ACTUALLY INDICATE ESSENTIALLY MORE REVENUE BEING GENERATED.

BECAUSE IN THE WORKSHEET YOU PULL THE ENTIRE FREE CEILING AMOUNT OUT AND THEN YOU RE-INPUT THE AMOUNT OF TAXES PAID ON THE CEILING AMOUNT THAT YOU EXPECT.

AND OF COURSE THAT'S BEEN CHANGING EACH YEAR AS YOU KNOW FROM 23 ON YOU KNOW INITIALLY IT WAS A BIG ONE SO YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN A BIG IMPACT IN 2023 had it been properly in there, uploaded. Again, that's when I started in 24. I wasn't confident with them. I put it in there. I sent it to every CFO, every finance individual with every one of our taxing units. Check with your assessor collector if you have any questions about your free ceiling totals because We haven't been able to get them loaded up like we'd want them to. So again, that's a reason I started putting that disclaimer, is hopefully just to catch eyes and spur some conversation if that's what needed to be done.

All right. Any other questions?

I have a question. Are we still on two different computing programs? No. He was on Tyler O'Ryan, which is obviously the one that's been kind of outdated, in my opinion, compared to what we're running. But he's going to Spindle Media, which I was actually happy. The whole reason I decided this last year was the headache I was having with having to report to the state. Fine, I'm just going to go ahead and start doing this retro thing, you know, go back and actually – so my system at least is accurate in my opinion. And then, you know, it provides that QC tool because I wasn't sure if he was going to go. He hadn't indicated that he got approval to start moving around to a new system. So he's going to Spindle Media, which everything I've read about it, it's a great system. So there's going to be some better compatibility between our system. So we're still not – apples to apples. No, no. I'm on the PACS Harris Govern system. We've been on there since like 2020, 2002.

You have two separate systems. Something has to go in manually, correct?

Ideally not. We try to get it to go in as much as possible.

But yes, absolutely. There's where the trouble lies. If we were both on the same system, everything would flow back and forth without any difficulty. Ever since 2019, when I first got here, 1996, whatever, we've had two different systems, and we always have this problem. Nothing ever balances out.

Do you have any idea off the top of your head what the average just residential appraisal decrease was? For the county, I don't know.

I don't want to put you on the spot. No, I know. I mean, it wasn't an increase. I mean, I think the county as a whole was like 1.2%, 1.3%. I mean, that's one of the things, too, guys. Market changes, man. Right. you know, we're told that we never go down. We will, unfortunately, when the market's there. And I don't know what type of projections you guys do for five years. If it was based off a five-year average of this most recent five years, yeah, we're going to be off a little bit each year because, you know, we had that 33% increase one year, you know, and you average that out over. So, I mean, your forecasting has to be conservative. And I don't, you know, I'm not involved in it, but, you know, that'd be an area also that...

Yeah, we're not forecasting market trajectory based on past because it's been so volatile. I mean, you get into 2019, 2020, and 2021, it's unrealistic, right? That's what I was told. Well, we saw that for a few years, and now the decline. You can watch the reflection of our tax rate as it changes and goes down as values went up, and now there's more of a... a realigning and a softening and leveling, then everything has to readjust, right?

I mean, I was just doing it again, calculating was nearly 12% lost this past year, year over year because of state mandated exemptions, you know, so it wasn't local exemptions that you guys authorized or anything like that. It was, you know, it's what the voters approved back in November's of each one of those years. And so we're seeing, you know, obviously the voice of the voters, unfortunately, on the impacts. Unfortunately, we're going to have to raise, I mean, I'm not having to, you all are going to have to discuss whether or not to raise rates. It's not a bad thing when you need to meet the services of the county.

Any other questions?

No, but you're saying the new systems that you're on and we're going to get on will be more compatible?

Yes, from everything, because, again, we've been discussing back and forth with the tax office since 2023 on this project of ours, you know, trying to get this right. So, yeah, I believe it will be. I don't think you're going to have any issues with moving forward at all. I told you. If there is, my head can roll. No, it's computer problems. What's that?

As far as I'm concerned, it's computer problems.

Of course, it's the person that's on it, too, essentially. You can't blame everything on computers. That's one of the things. Another reason I didn't want to do assess, because it's just pushing a button for me. I'm not calculating those and checking them to be right. That's not my job. I don't have that certification, which is a big reason why the appraisal district stayed away from doing that, because you get that false sense of security. Oh, I can just push a button. This computer is going to do exactly what we intended to do.

That's not always the case. Garbage in, garbage out. Correct.

Thank you. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

So, Pete, you talk about the over 65 and that, so... Get ready for the double nickel, from what I heard.

That's what they're calling it the next month. 55?

Also, do you see the rates of the disabled exemptions going up? So that's a factor that, you know, we haven't discussed or whatever, but that probably created some shortfall.

Yeah, that's the other aspect, though, too, is that before it was like the ceiling was set. So if the market goes down, fine, it comes down. They weren't resetting. And I don't know, I know the school districts, that's what they're doing. And that's another reason why they separate the two offices because that's an assessment side. Every tax assessor collector chose to do it their personal way based off of their location. So if the chief appraiser is handling that aspect, you know,

MY OPINION MAY BE DIFFERENT THAN THE ELECTED OFFICIAL THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. I'VE TALKED TO MULTIPLE PEOPLE AND I'VE GOTTEN DIFFERENT ANSWERS ON THAT. SOME ARE RE-FREEZING THEM AND SOME ARE SAYING NO, THAT ONCE THAT CEILING IS SET, THEY CAN GO DOWN AND THEY PAY LESS, BUT THEN IT ADJUSTS WITH THE MARKET BACK UP NOT TO EXCEED THAT CEILING POINT. AND THAT'S NOT TAKING PLACE ANYMORE.

AT LEAST I'M NOT SURE HOW IT'S SET UP FOR THE COUNTIES AND CITIES AND ALL, IF THEY ACTUALLY RESET IT AT THE LOWER CEILING, BUT THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE DOING IN SPEAKING WITH DARRELL. SO THAT'S NEVER COMING BACK, WHEREAS YOU WOULD THINK, OKAY, AS THE MARKET COMES BACK, AFTER IT WENT DOWN, IT GOES DOWN, IT COMES BACK, AT LEAST IT STILL HITS THAT CEILING BENEFIT THAT THEY WERE PROVIDED. legislators put in the law and gave it to the voters, and they decided, nope, this is how we want to do it. So unfortunately, this is the world that we're going to have to deal with in these positions that we fill. Thank you. You got it. Thank you.

I know in our past discussions in budget, we talked about additional meetings. Those meetings have occurred. I do want to invite up Sheriff Ray and Mr. Wilborn to talk about the meetings that have taken place and additional information. Court, the item on the agenda today is to only record the proposed budget. Really, since it's been filed, we need to record that budget. Not like we can make changes to the budget today, but thought it would be good to have the discussions to also try to make a decision and anticipate, do we need additional meetings? What does that direction look like? Are we closer to finish than we think? Or is there still quite a bit of amount of work to do? Gentlemen, I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Judge. First off, I think we're going to need to get a PowerPoint pulled up from here or access to it. We're here today quickly and without anticipation, so we don't have any documents to put in front of you to hand out to you today. Our anticipation was to have these meetings that took place yesterday, was going to take place yesterday and today. The timeline that we're butted up against is the September 1st deadline to file the budget. Short time. Since it's such a short time, we are here just trying to get to this information. We wanted to have a budget workshop on Monday. We'd gotten with everybody on the court and we're instructed that that was not going to happen because at least one of the commissioners would not be here on Monday to make that happen. So we've rushed through everything to make it such that we can get to you our advocacy position for THE CHANGES THAT WE'RE REQUESTING TO BE TAKEN PLACE, BUT WE DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO MAKE THAT LONG, PROTRACTED DISCUSSION RIGHT BEFORE A LONG, PROTRACTED MEETING WITH THE NEXT ONE, WHICH IS THE SEPTEMBER 1ST DEADLINE. SO WE'RE HERE TODAY HOPING THAT Y'ALL WILL ORDER SOME ADDITIONAL BUDGET WORKSHOPS. OBVIOUSLY, WE'RE NOT IN CONTROL OF THAT. THE COURT IS. EITHER THREE, I BELIEVE THREE COMMISSIONERS OR THE JUDGE CAN CALL THOSE WORKSHOPS. But we need to have this information in front of you so that you know where we stand. We were here beating dead horses a week ago. I think we're here with the same whips and the same horses. But we have more people on board. We've got more. more consolation has taken place. A number of people have slashed their budgets pretty drastically. The sheriff has been working tirelessly to put these numbers together. I do want to point out that these numbers that are in front of you, number one, are not completely accurate because we didn't know until Sunday that the numbers had been posted on Friday night on the website on the secondary proposal, I guess, the judge's secondary proposed budget. and we didn't know we weren't going to have a meeting this coming Monday until last night around 4.30 or 5. So we apologize ahead of time for not having a polished presentation, but we have what we think is a pretty workable solution to be able to take care of our employees, which is what I think every elected and every appointed official that has showed up to these meetings has been there to do. We've also had an attendance at those meetings, and all of them we've had meetings Commissioner Gurman present and a number we've had Commissioner Ott as well. So we thank you all for being there to listen. Sorry you have to listen to it again, but that's what we're here for today. The sheriff's got a PowerPoint with a number of requested changes that we're going to ask you all to consider before going with the final budget on the first. So I'll turn this over to the sheriff.

Okay. So after our meeting, after the budget workshop where we decided to have these meetings I started making some requests judge you sent me a few documents on new positions reclassification request of what I used all that and I came up with a few different projections and this is proposal e so that I started with a so it's if there's been a lot of changes I will say that the projected increase from the tax rate that could be off, I don't know. So that's going to be one of the numbers that needs to be checked. But there is some wiggle room in there.

Let me interrupt you for just a second. We're having technical difficulties. So, like, if I look up there, I'm not avoiding you. We can't watch it on that screen. That's fine.

All right, so the judge's updated budget proposal on Friday already has the 3% COLA factored in. The longevity that was removed, I calculated at about $1.12 million. The new tax revenue, as I'm sure, Judge, you already know, what came in with the increased tax rate that pretty much just closed what deficit we did have. That was some of the things that you and I discussed via text. I was trying to figure out how much you had already used for unassigned fund balance. Forgive me, some aspects of this you're individually going to know of. And for those of you who have seen the presentation at some point in time, it's changed multiple times, all the way up until yesterday. After both meetings, we made changes based on recommendations from department heads and elected. So there's the projection that I came up with on the increased revenue from the 0.3493 tax rate to the The rate that was proposed of 0.3549 almost sets off the shortfall to the dollar on what we were missing in the previous recommended budget.

If I missed something, just jump in.

So we we went back and forth you had lots of discussions about the longevity, I'll tell you this this budget or this proposal proposes putting the $2000 back into the budget and for the elect is and for the employees now. I didn't come up with these arbitrarily. There was lots of conversations between electeds, department heads. I did my very best to form a consensus on what we're going to propose here. Judge, this isn't going to surprise you, but I couldn't make everybody happy. But I did my very best. So what we are proposing here is to get the $2,000 longevity base back into the budget. Again, what was pointed out in court, the $3 million that's set aside for the land purchase and the building purchase, long story short, we're going to propose that that money be used elsewhere. That is unassigned fund balance, but what we are proposing is that with the What's being used right now in the budget, the $3.4 million number approximately that you see down there at the bottom for capital and controlled assets, that $3 million can go towards that. And then that would free up operational costs for the position request and the reclassifications. So this proposal is going to propose reclassification of 25 positions. We were proposing that all the reclassifications that were requested are funded with the exception of two in the tax assessor office. And Darrell John gave that up willingly and voluntarily. So that's why that came over. And there's also four capped positions that were listed on the judge's spreadsheet, which we think we were able to fund as well. So we ended up with 14 new positions. So there was 101 requested. When I first started working on this proposal, I had like 33, I think, on one of the initial projections that I sent out. After updating the numbers with the budget that was uploaded to the website on Friday, I had to cut that back significantly. And then the final, after the department had meetings yesterday, I ended up with 14. Most offices got something out of this request with a couple of exceptions. So roughly for about $1.1 million, that's the 14 positions that were requested. That comes directly from elected and appointed department heads' requests. We cut that up with them significantly yesterday. There were some that I had entered in there initially that I had not had communication with the department head that they corrected me on, and we made some changes to. So all that request you're seeing there is a collaboration between all of us. And 11 different offices are represented in that request.

And for all the offices that showed up, and the bulk of the county offices were there, both elected and appointed, had representatives there. And from both meetings, there was no objection at the end for the presentation that we've got here today. So while nobody really liked it, everybody was on board with this as the best solution.

Yeah, I told both meetings with the department heads and the electeds, nobody's going to walk out of here going, yes, I got everything. That's definitely not going to happen. So there were some tough decisions that had to be made. That's all the positions together that include the reclassifications and the new positions that were requested. We made a priority on the reclassifications, and the determination that was come to was that if the department heads are requesting those reclassifications, a lot of times, mostly they're doing it because somebody's carrying more than their fair share. So they're trying to compensate them for the job that they're doing, whether they're wearing two, three, four, five hats.

One question. Does the number of $1,144,000 include retirement and hospitalization? Yes, sir. That was all included?

Yes, sir. That's just positions that were given up as part of the process. And that's the offices who made requests that did not get those positions. There's several listed on there. I mean, just to be frank, we just couldn't do all of it. There wasn't enough money. to get it all the way around. And initially, we had put the $500,000 in there for the volunteer fire department discussion. We took that out. We made that decision collectively as department heads. The money is still set aside. We did not spend it in this proposal. We just separated that discussion out for the court to have amongst herself. So that is not part of this proposal. So that's just further talking about the moving the money over to pay for capital and controlled assets, including 27 vehicles. That's about a $3.4 million ask. Up at the top where it says recurring cost of this package is 2.3. It just kind of depends on how you discuss what money is coming from where. I mean, in the end, that's what it's going to cost us. And I added the county budget policy on page 30. Says it is the intent of the county to use excess available fund balances above the 20% to help fund capital replacement and capital projects in order to reduce the need for future debt. And that's what we think we're proposing here. That's any questions you may have about the fund balance. We tried really hard to keep that above $40 million. I did not want to go below that. We actually, the proposed budget that's on file now, that was filed on Friday, has an ending fund balance of $40,850,000. This proposal actually raises that to $41,466,000 and some change.

So we actually saved some money.

And then this is just a request to fill all the positions that are from various discretionary funds. Now, I'll admit that I don't have a working knowledge of the other offices' funds, so there may be some aspect of this that there's some discrepancies in. The only one I can really speak to is the commissary fund. But that's nine positions altogether. That was set aside, but that would not be paid necessarily through the general fund. Or they'd be paid for through the general fund, but we'd turn around and take it out of these other funds. That's roughly your cost to restore the longevity. And then everything else is just a repeat of what is being asked. Anything else? No, I don't think so.

All right. One additional thing that wasn't mentioned in the PowerPoint. is that when it comes to the special funds, I would be requesting to be able, because I know that the court's position, at least at one time, it felt as though it was going to be, since nobody's getting anything, nobody can use any funds to get anything of the specialty funds, I will be requesting that some of the position increases for the exempt employees come out of either asset forfeiture or the prosecutor's fund. That change will be requested, obviously, at the budget time. But since nobody's getting anything, nobody gets anything, I will be making that request with the understanding that I'll be asking for, at some point, the court to assume those funds, but also the understanding that that may not be granted by future courts. So I will make those small increments that I think are necessary to retain the employees or attract new talent, not so large that I won't be able to fund them in years to come.

I will say, Dave, in the past when we've had those conversations, you've always been very upfront. and way ahead of the ball on having those conversations. Because what happens, it seems like always, whatever fund is used, it always finds its way back to the general fund. And as long as everybody knows that upfront, it's a lot easier to understand what that looks like, how to balance that, create a timing issue. But with you, we've always had those conversations. You've always done your best to hold back when you needed to, or we're not ready yet, or okay, now let's transition, let's split it up. So thank you for that partnership.

On the chaplain position for the commissary fund, I don't anticipate us having any problems. We bring in more revenue through that commissary fund than what this position is going to cost. jails throughout the state of Texas that they're paying for a chaplain position in the jail through the commissary fund. So as our jail grows, as we put more inmates in there, that commissary fund is going to go up. So we shouldn't have any problem. I mean, I never say never, right? But I can't anticipate a circumstance where we'd have to pull that from the general fund. It should be able to be paid fully through the commissary fund.

that's some of the conversations we've had in past budget years also whether it's the fire code you know depending upon inspections and fees and all those things might have a little bit of a higher expense with additional equipment as compared to say records management with the county clerk where there's big preservation projects going on the county district clerk and it may cost $200,000 to $500,000 to do a historical preservation project with water and fire safe books and stuff where you may be able to handle a position for a year but not for three or five years. So it's always just good, in my opinion, Court, to have those conversations to go, okay, if we're doing that out of a special or dedicated fund, what's the likelihood of that coming back and what's that timeline look like? And like you said, everything can be really smooth for a year or two and then it changes and then we go, uh-oh, we're not going to get rid of somebody, so we better pull that in.

So now one of the reasons why we're doing this today during the consent items is because there wasn't anything on the agenda that would otherwise fit for this. So we understand that any votes today have nothing to do with whether or not this proposal is being accepted, but we wanted to get this in front of all five of you at the same time and then make ourselves available to you for questions either as a group or individually, because I think we're both equipped to discuss these with you individually, give you our positions on the perspectives that we noticed from both the elected and the appointed officials that met with us. I still stand behind the request that we made a week ago, but since we've been whittled down to so little, I'll stand behind these requests as well, and I think we can comfortably justify all of them. So we wanted to make ourselves available to you now, or, like I said, via phone call later on.

I did want to also say, I know a couple of comments were talked about the updated budget that was done. So, I mean, historically, we're having budget workshops August, that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Those workshops are to gain feedback from court members to get a consensus to try to be able to file a budget that's as close to the finished product as possible. The only changes that were made from my initial recommended budget at the 4% tax increase were the 5.65% change because that's what the court took a record vote on Tuesday, August the 11th. the 3% COLA because the majority of the court preferred the COLA after y'all's recommendations and preferences to remove the $2,000 longevity because they weren't equal but they were close in expense and to change the Cibolo fire contract. Now, we did have to go through and we'll call it massage a few numbers trying to get things to balance and non-departmental and all those things, but the substantial changes were those things and only to file on the 14th prior to the deadline of the 15th.

Yeah, there was no implication that something nefarious was done. I was just saying that we were under the gun on numbers, and that's why these are unpolished numbers. Right. I wanted it to be clear that we're not representing to you that we have all the answers figured out to the penny because we're still trying to, you know, we had such a shortened time frame to get those things done. So it wasn't a blame. It was just an explanation. as to why there will be, because there will be discrepancies, and our hope was to have Ms. Klein go through all of this before we ever presented it to you, but time obviously isn't there. It's the worst time of the year to have to crunch extra numbers.

Right. So, I mean, Court, I know we have an agenda item on to record the proposed budget. Like Mr. Wilborn said, the intent of today is not to go through and get into the weeds, trying to make potential changes. That does have to happen either in future scheduled workshops and or will it be a discussion during workshops but really changes on September 1st. But in my individual conversations I've had with the sheriff, others, I've made the comment over and over and I think I'll make it now that I think it's going to get down to us first determining on if a majority of the court is willing to spend the fund balance because based on the tax rate that has been voted on with the raise and some of those things the money's gone. The only way to spend additional funds on items that are proposed or any changes to the proposal that's been submitted is to free up money. And the only place to do that without making substantial changes in the existing budgets and all the departments and current spending levels is to take it from fund balance. And if a majority of the court is willing to do that, I think there's more work that needs to take place. If a majority of the court is not willing to do that, then there's no extra money to spend in what we've already discussed.

Understood, but keep in mind that this proposal that we've got in front of you doesn't take anything additional away than your initial proposal out of the fund balance. It actually just takes the $3 million that were dedicated for essentially unsigned projects. potential land purchases, potential building purchases that there aren't any stated line reasons for. I think they're just contingency funds, if you will. What we're saying is this is more important than those potential contingencies. You've got to put food on the table before you can buy any car. And that's essentially what we've done is the bulk of everything that's in front of you is taken out of that $3 million so that the fund balance actually winds up slightly increased with the proposal that the sheriff has prepared here than it did with the budget that is currently on file. So it's not asking for additional money. It's asking for reallocation of monies that don't have a place to go right now anyway.

But the funds, I mean, so there are places for those funds to go that we're not willing to discuss in complete detail because there's future potential to purchase property that is competitive nature. um again nothing has been decided it's not it your your statement is correct that it's a placeholder um and everybody's going to have a different opinion on it that's probably the discussion we need to have um but essentially the the expense and the funding is is level right you're spending three million dollars you're spending three million dollars close to it it's reprioritizing from where the court the judge's budget is to where we think uh

Correct.

And it's just, in my opinion, going to get down, are there three members or more on this court willing to spend $3 million out of fund balance on either reoccurring equipment and or positions, however you break it up or move stuff around or not, right? And I don't know that answer. I thought I did before, but I really don't know the answer. So, I mean, court, I mean, do you think we need to have some of that discussion now to help determine if we need additional workshops if those funds are going to be freed up so to speak and reallocated then as as the two gentlemen at the podium have stated probably need to contact departments need to look through numbers look need to look through the accuracy of the direction that the proposal is going i mean all those things so i mean what what do y'all what conversation would you like to have

WELL, AS I STATED BEFORE, SO THAT MONEY SET ASIDE WAS FOR, AS THE JUDGE SAID, FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS OF THINGS THAT ARE BEING DISCUSSED FOR OPERATIONS IN PRECINCT 2. AND THERE'S ALSO A CONSIDERATION ON THE WEST SIDE IN PRECINCT 3 FOR ANOTHER. BUT AGAIN, INITIAL EARLY STAGES, EITHER WAY YOU LOOK AT IT, IT'S OUT OF FUND BALANCE. SO THAT $3 MILLION IS SET ASIDE, BUT IT'S NOT PART OF THE TAX REVENUE. IT'S PART OF THE GENERAL FUND. And part of that is due to what Miss Reynolds had said earlier, planning and for future growth. If we wouldn't have done that for the Cordova project, we would have been in a different position financially. You know, I've said that before in the positions. I always ask this for any new position in the county. Y'all should know this by now. So I saw you posted the salaries. I think Wilberton asked about that includes benefits in that. But does it include MIS stuff, furniture, space?

$32,500 more at a maximum for the equipment, for that computer, two monitors and a telephone. That's directly for each position. So a total of $32,500. And I don't know what is or isn't included in MIS's current budget and what computers, say, I could have in my office last another year so I wouldn't need it for my new position or any of the others. So it's a maximum of $32,500 at today's rates. Now, whether we get a quote that's $100 or $200 more per PER PERSON NEXT MONTH, I WON'T KNOW. BUT THE QUOTE WE HAVE RIGHT NOW IS ABOUT $2500 PER POSITION ON THAT. I don't have any additional space allocation requests. In fact, I've got telephones in those. So that's why when I say a maximum, I think that's a maximum amount. I think it's going to be drastically lower than that for what's going to be needed for those positions. That's the only thing that's not contemplated other than, I mean, the water bill for the toilet flushing, of course, is going to be incidentals. But I don't think those are the bulk of the expense. We put the bulk of the expense in here. And there's $112,000 gap difference between the judge's proposed budget and our proposed budget and pursuant to county policy. It is the intention of the court to use fund balance for purchases and net capital assets, and that's what we've done. We've allocated those instead of it coming out of the tax rate, allocated those that come from the fund balance, which is, by your statement, where it's supposed to come from. So the only recurring money is coming now from the tactical budgets that we've talked about thus far. We reclassified those to where they would be to be in line with the court's stated position on where the money should come from.

But are you categorizing, in your mind, reoccurring equipment purchases differently than one-time equipment purchases? So you have a number of pieces of equipment that have to be bought every year without fail, no matter what. To me, that's a reoccurring purchase that's not supported by the tax rate. And my overarching concern is if you spend $3 million out of fund balance, that you are starting out $3 million short in your no new revenue rate calculation for next year, which by... Default is this court committing that it will have to raise the tax rates depending upon appraisals and a number of revenue factors a certain amount to recoup What has been overspent in a way out of fund balance on something you're gonna have to replace again I understand numbers I don't and I understand budgeting I

I wasn't trying to overstep and try to do the court's job. We felt like we had to do something to be able to do our jobs. The sheriff and I aren't up here because we think we can do your job better than you. We're up here because y'all are going to make it so we can't do the best job we can do if we can't take care of our people. That's the reason why we're standing up here today. So I don't know at what rate we're replacing certain vehicles and how often we can continue. I bought my very first new car three years ago. My whole life I've just continued to repair cars because it saves me money. So I don't know at what rate we're having to replace equipment and how often we could have actually repaired it and not sold it or not gotten rid of it and then replaced it because we were flush with money. I don't know that. I know that I don't do that. I would hope that the court doesn't do that, but I'm guessing we might be able to extend some of those things out longer so that they won't recur at the same rate that you're anticipating at $3 million a year. Maybe it's at $4.9 million a year. Maybe it's actually $4.1 million a year, $3.5 million a year. That's the first time in the 14 years that I've been here in this office, and 16 that I've been in this county, that I've seen all the electives and appointees get together and start talking about how to bandage the things to keep it going. So we have a new culture here than we've had before. We're not being told, you can have what you need. You're going to get what you want. We're being told, work with what you have. And that's what we're all trying to get together to do is work with each other to prioritize, to present to the court the most fiscally responsible, budget that still takes care of the people that we have to have to run our offices. Because without our people, we're dead in the water. You can have all the equipment in the world. We don't have a robot to run it.

You know, there's different timelines on equipment replacement. I mean, it's just I understand where you're coming from on having to pull that money, and you can make the assumption that you're going to have to replace it next year, but everything's got to be replaced. People are replaced. Electeds are replaced. Cars are replaced. Buildings are replaced. Flooring is replaced. Everything gets replaced. Does it all get replaced at the same time? Does it all get replaced annually? I mean, I don't know that it's necessarily fair to say that that entire $3.4 million worth of controlled assets and equipment throughout the county is all going to have to be replaced next year. I don't know if that's completely accurate either. No. So are we going to have some costs maybe next year? Yeah. We got several problems that we're working through. And I know that I understand that the primary responsibility and concern of the court is the budget, right? But we also have, in some offices, significant staffing problems. And if that's not addressed, that problem is going to be bigger next year. The I've heard it said multiple times by members of the court. If we don't pay for this construction today, it's going to be more expensive tomorrow. The same thing with the staffing. If we don't pay for it today, it's going to be more expensive tomorrow because we're going to have more of it because those projections are just going to keep going up. It's not going to change. So that kind of kind of to his point, I mean, we still got to have the people to do the job. I'm willing to get by with less equipment and double up on equipment if I have to. I can have two deputies sitting at a desk using the same computer. I can have a patrol car that runs on a day shift and then turns around and runs on a night shift but has two different drivers. I don't want to make a habit of that in the long term, but if that's where we've got to cinch up our belt to make it work, I need the people operating it more than I need double the equipment. Does that make sense?

In a way, it's just there's dozens and dozens of other factors that people haven't seen and maybe not understand the full impact of. And I appreciate individually the willingness of people to get together and talk about it. As I've stated before, maybe I'm too careful sometimes, but I'm still worried about spending the money.

Well, Judge, just as much as we don't. Just as much as there may be aspects of your job that we don't understand, I think there's aspects of our job and our offices that you don't necessarily understand.

That's absolutely true. I mean, that's why I try to, I have to know a little bit about a lot of things, right, to try to understand the high level to say, okay, you guys communicate individually as department heads to me what your priorities are, and then try to take all that information in. Y'all have seen a small piece of what happens all year long, all the time, right? Yeah. when you sit with everybody everybody's talking about their needs and then they think about maybe the big picture or maybe a direction the county's going but at the same time having this coupled with unprecedented shortfall does not go well if it's a normal year this is a completely different conversation right we're talking about more positions i mean offsetting future expense with creative ways we're all backed in a corner at the same time because we have less money than we've ever had before, from a revenue standpoint, for all the reasons we've been talking about. So there's no easy answer. Not everybody's gonna see the same outcome. I just, I think the court needs to figure out, is there a majority willing to spend the money and we move forward or not, so.

I understand, but if I can make one more point and that's it. We made a bunch of consolations already, reducing drastically. We are asked every year a wants list and a needs list. Those are the lists we need to succeed and to do right by the people at large, the community at large, our constituents. That's what we feel we need. But I'm telling you right now, what we're presenting to you, if we don't get, we fail. And that's the problem. It's not about a fantastic, glorious success by getting all the things we need. If we don't get these things, we're going to fail. I'm going to lose people. I'm already losing people. I'm going to lose valuable, important people to the private sector, and that is going to cost the county a lot of money. It's going to make my office clunky more so than it is right now. It's going to stretch people thinner than they are. They're going to spend less time with their families. They're going to then say, I don't need this job. I can do better in the private sector and leave also. THE BORDER OF FAILING AT THIS POINT. I'M NOT ASKING FOR ANYTHING TO MAKE IT BETTER. I'M ASKING FOR ENOUGH TO KEEP IT ALL IN PART. AND I THINK THAT'S EVERYBODY THAT WAS IN THOSE MEETINGS THESE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS FEELS THE SAME WAY.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS FOR SHERIFF OR MR. WILBORN?

DO WE HAVE SPECIFIC EQUIPMENT ITEMS THAT HAVE TO BE REPURCHASED ON AN ANNUAL BASIS? AND IF SO, WHAT ARE THOSE?

IF YOU GO BACK TO MY SCREEN, PLEASE. So, I mean, vehicles are one of the biggest, largest expense. I mean, barring the purchase versus lease conversation, with the sheriff's office, you have almost 200 vehicles, five- or six-year life cycle. You're talking about needing to purchase, I mean, more vehicles than we're buying. Okay, so vehicles is the big... It's a huge part of it. And then you get into some other... some other equipment. We're doing life cycle replacement on PCs and work center upgrades in MIS that had to be shifted because half a million dollar request for new tough books and a lot of that depended upon the prior models not being able to run all of the software programs at the same time. We had the similar conversation about radio replacements because we transitioned from a proprietary next edge system where we were on an island to an LCRA system, but all that equipment was bought at one time and they are starting to near the end of their life. Instead of having to make a huge single purchase, you try to break that up over years. So you have those type of projects that are sometimes a couple million dollars each, trying to split that up over a five-year period, and you end up having a very consistent cost year over year, replacing only a portion of them that is to the tune of a couple million dollars. So if I look at recurring costs individually, just my own opinion in capital projects, and we carve out vehicles, the computers, the radios, some other items like that that may be smaller, but those are all things where you are almost absolute in the fact that you know you're going to have that $2 or $2.5 million of equipment expense the following year. It's not like a one time where we talked about on the capital project list. Let me get back to this. On a capital project list where you have security and access control upgrades on a building. You do that, you don't have to do that again next year. That could be a five or seven or eight year project. Yeah, the finance building roof. I mean, that won't have to be done for a long time. Once we do EOC, FF&E, furniture, fixtures, and equipment, that won't have to be done again. The public safety outdoor warning system, you may have additional phases of the project that you want to expand, but it's a single-time cost to be able to group with grant funding to have that out of the way. So, I mean, some of those things are, they're all on the same list, but they affect the decisions of the court and the impact to the budget differently. I don't know if that answered your question about some of the reoccurring equipment. It does. It does.

Yes. Thank you. And I wanted to pivot on a topic question. Other court members wanted to talk about that more. Okay, so Sheriff, this is, I suppose for you, not to put you on the spot for it, but since you're speaking about it, just from our perspective, so I want everyone to understand that. So we, in our last court session, had multiple elected officials come and speak to us, and I'm talking specifically about the raises for the electeds. And every elected that came up emphasized the importance of as much money as possible going to their employees and that they didn't need anything themselves. Everybody I talked to one-on-one echoed the same thing. But in this proposal, that has changed. And I hear a lot of the conversation coming from yourself and Mr. Wilborn about we need to keep our people, we need to keep people that have longevity, that have training, and I certainly understand why a person would say that. But what has changed with the elected officials that they are all, because my impression from the last court session, every person we heard from was saying, I don't need a raise, I don't need that, I want to give this to my employees. What changed?

I'm sure the elected officials that spoke up in that workshop feel that way, including myself. That wasn't all elected officials. I did receive phone calls from some elected officials who were upset that they weren't receiving a pay raise.

So when I put together the proposal, I tried to... And I would say I have heard from one that did tell me directly, one person, and I do respect that that person did call me directly. But I'm just confused about... everyone else, it seemed like the overwhelming majority was saying that we don't want it. So that's why I was interested in that.

Because it was doable with the numbers, and like I said on multiple occasions, I tried to build a consensus amongst everyone. And everyone did not see that issue the same way, so I added it in there. Commissioner, if you want to pull it, or y'all want to pull it, you're not going to get an objection from me, but that's just Josh Ray's personal opinion. I'm not speaking for everybody.

I'm trying to understand the consensus because it just, it was my impression after our last court session that the consensus was that they did not want it. So that's why I was curious about that from a consensus perspective. And then I know that we talked about the COLA versus the longevity. And that was something that I needed to understand more because I felt like also we were asking the electeds if they had a preference. And again, the overwhelming majority was the COLA. much to the dismay of some of the court members. And so on that, I certainly tried to look at that from the request of the electeds. But I understand now it's both. And again, I think I have this a little bit of a heartburn about that because that COLA, even if it's $1,000 per 700 employees. I'm not a math wizard, but that much money could get us new employees. And so it seems like from some of the electeds, the conversation, the requests are we need more people because our people are spread thin. And from some electeds and department heads, we just want the people we have to have more money. And if we get to a point where things are thin, and I said in the first place, I'm just going to pause that thought really quick. The $3 million, I did make that suggestion in court. And I still think that if we are in a time where we are desperate to keep tenured people, that if we need to move that $3 million, that I would be fine with that. But as the judge said, there are aspects of that that will continue on to the following years. And so we do need to take that into account, because how will that be funded in the future if these things are recurring? That's certainly a conversation where if we're going to look at that, and it's the insistence of the department heads and the electeds that something like a longevity would be coming out of some general fund line items like that. Longevity isn't necessarily recurring as long as we are under the mental impression that it's not. But from our meeting yesterday, it seems like we're saying the longevity expectation, whether it be 1,000 or 2,000, is a recurring expectation. So I'm kind of having a hard time with this because, to me, I've felt that longevity is something that we give when we can, but it's not an expectation to where if we don't give it, people are angry. So that's a little bit difficult for me to see. If that is what we as a county, we as a court and the elected say, hey, it's more important for us to give this longevity this year to people, we need to keep them, I'm open-minded to it. But I don't like the, but if we give it this year and we give $2,000 this year on top of the base and on top of the COLA, if we don't give it next year, everyone's going to be angry at you because that's now our expectation. Because I think that what has to be understood by everybody is that, at least for me, and I'm not going to speak for other court members, but for myself, I have no intention of keeping things from people. I don't have any intention. I think we have great people and I want them to stay. So whatever it takes, it takes, right? But I don't think the mindset of this is our expectation, we have to have all three of these things every year is fair to court members because that's not what we can always do. It's just not possible. Now, if we can, I think we should. But I just want you all to hear that because I think that it's difficult. I thought about this for a long time after our meeting last night, trying to process all of the requests and what is the most fair, what is best for the health of the county moving forward. I certainly think keeping, you know, one thing I will say, and this is the reality in the room, is that you have a lot of, even as recently as two or three years ago, If you look at two, three years ago and then you look at probably two or three years in the future, we have so many people that have been here for a significant double digit amount of years, 15, 18, 20, which is wild. And almost all of those people will be gone between two or three years ago in a few years. Right. And so you have these people that are the next, you know, the VPs of each, if you will. We need them to stay because you need to establish that longevity, establish that experience, get these people to stay so that these departments are solid and they have solid leadership and institutional knowledge. And so I think it's important to do that. But at the same time, I just really want to reiterate that I don't think that all three of these things should be an expectation. It should be if we can. And I know we're not in full agreement with that, but I want you to hear me on it.

That's really up for the court to decide if that's going to be an annual deal because that's not in our proposal. So yes, I did get some calls from electeds and department heads to reference the pay raise, but I also got calls from members of this court on what they would like to see in this proposal. So that $2,000 longevity was one of those items to try and include it. I understand that. We're really not debating with you, Commissioner, on the expectation of it or the employees. You got a good point. I think that was a new concept for me coming from the state when I came to work here because I did not get a longevity bonus or anything like that. Matter of fact, I got raises a lot less often than we do as a county because I only got them every two years, maybe if the legislature passed it. So I would sometimes go four, five, six, seven years without a pay raise. So it was a different concept for me. And I see it much the same way you do. It seems like a bonus if the county can pay it. But you're right. There is an expectation from employees because they've been given something every year for so long. Last year, it was $1,000. And that's initially what we started out with in this proposal. But we were able to get the $2,000 in there.

And I'm of the opinion that the longevity bonus should be based on the amount of time you're here. That's how it was written. The longevity base increase to the $1,000, the $50,000, or the $2,000, or the $3,500 one year, those were done kind of, I don't want to say in lieu of cost of living adjustments, but they were done in addition to the cost of livings that weren't raised enough. Because if you look at 2019 to 2020 to 2021, the 2% or the 50 cent raises or whatever that were done were not enough to match with an actual cost of living adjustment that was necessary. So the court did that. I'm not blaming and not insulting the court, but they did it in a way that I don't think was appropriate. They did it in a way that's not financially sound for a not for-profit business. A for-profit business, of course, bonuses make sense. When we make more money, the people make more money. This court is not in the business of making money. So I personally don't believe that the longevity should be done the way that it is. The fact that it was done for a number of years this way, though, in lieu of an appropriate level of a cost of living adjustment, because there were years, if you look at 2019 to 2021, you're talking about probably 12%, 13%, but the county didn't go up 12% or 13%. Instead, they said, well, we can do this cost of living, or rather this longevity-based increase so that we can not have to predict it for next year. We can at least reward them this year so that they're not falling behind. But then the following year, they would have had to fall behind. So this request of $2,000, I don't know that is appropriate. I think I personally would be more comfortable with just the $1,000 longevity increase because that's what they got last year. Because if we don't, then we have, for all intents and purposes, when it comes to budgeting, when it comes to actual money on people's tables, made them lose money for the same amount of work. If you give them the 3%, you're still making them do that at 3% in the $1,000. Because last year, they had the $1,000. This year, they get that 3% on top of it. But even the consumer price index is 3.6% or 3.4%, depending on which goods you're looking at. In some goods, up to 4.2% overall, more than 3.5%, no matter what. So even at 3% with that $1,000, people are losing money. Their money is worth that much less today than it was last year at this time. So you're causing them to lose money. If you say, yeah, but it was a bonus, yeah, arguably it's a bonus, even though we're not supposed to give bonuses in a government setting. IF YOU CALL IT A BASE ADJUSTMENT, IT NEEDS TO BE ADJUSTED PERMANENTLY. REALISTICALLY, THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUILT IN THE GRADING STEP, AND THIS CONCEPT OF ADDITIONAL MONEY BEING THROWN ON TOP OF IT NEEDS TO TAKE PLACE. me perspective, is to take place in a cost of living adjustment because that's the rate at which their money is losing money. Their paychecks are losing money. That's what's got to get recompensated. But because they've had these cost of living adjustments for all these years, taking it away from them this year would be cutting their salaries. Whether you want to call it that or not, their bottom line, their W-2s are going to be shortened by that amount of money. And if y'all are comfortable doing that, there's nothing I can do about it. But I'm not comfortable with it conceptually because I think it's doing a disservice to our people.

I don't think anyone's comfortable putting anybody at a deficit in comparison to what their money is worth last year. I don't think that's even something that any of us are thinking about. I think that our entire thought process, and again, I'm speaking for myself, is to do the best we can by our employees, but also by the taxpayers. That is a delicate and difficult balance. I do want to compliment you on intents and purposes. That makes me very happy, versus intensive purposes. Oh, yes. But, you know, I just want to make sure we're on a page of the understanding of that, because it seems like what you're saying to me, I guess, and this is just my interpretation of that, but if we do have that extended longevity every time, that it becomes an expectation. So you have people angry that they don't have it, and when it comes down to, you know, certain things like this, like... It's difficult to choose, and it's difficult to understand what will make most people happy. I think one thing that has presented a struggle for myself, and I'm sure possibly other court members, is that we're getting feedback from elected officials that's not all the same. And so when we have people say, we want this instead of this, or this is more important, and it's like, well, wait, and then it changes. So that's difficult for me. I don't have a problem putting some of the money that we had designated towards some of these things towards people. think we need to talk about what you know looking forward how we do afford that because if in the event that we have a year next year that presents some sort of struggle um we can't continue obviously to take out a savings every time now if we have a plan or we acknowledge the fact that you know next year if we're in if we're in a bad situation we we may not be able to do next year what we do this year i hope we aren't in one but i think that it should be certainly in everyone's mind while we're having this conversation

You know, Commissioner, you made the comment a while ago about the expectation of the employees. Yes. I'm going to direct your attention to the conversation that was had on this court at one point in time where we discussed the funding for various nonprofits and entities outside of the county, libraries, the food bank, all that stuff that we've been given money to before. They had the same level of expectation. I think that came up in that conversation is that's such a hard, difficult conversation because that funding has been renewed every single year. But if we're going to run it, I'm going to say this. If we're going to run a tight budget in this county to where we can basically only provide the absolute necessity essential services, we cannot be giving money to entities outside of the county. We have to make those hard decisions. And those are hard decisions that are going to have to be made. But what you're referring to is just human nature. I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that employees are used to getting that and they're going to want it again. It's the exact same conversation as that nonprofit. And yes, it's hard decisions. There's no doubt. We all have to make hard decisions right now. And they're not all popular.

And particularly when the previous times they've gotten those longevity increases is because the cost of living adjustment was smaller than the CPI change was. I mean, that's the reason why it's still hitting them. If you compare their dollars today to what their dollars were five years ago, and you compare their salaries today to what their salaries were five years ago, you're going to see that they're shorter, not larger in number, including the step increases .

I understand that. And I'm not against paying people competitively. I've never been against that. That is not what I'm saying. I just think that we're viewing this from a lens that might be dangerous at a certain point in time. That is all.

What you talked about is almost $7 billion we're paying for non-mandated services out of this county. Everybody says, well, how come Comal gets this? How come Comal gets that? They have ESDs, and they do not pay for taxes against the social services. That's why they have more money than we do. No matter what we choose today, tomorrow you're going to have to raise the tax rate. There's just no two ways about it. Everything that you're adding now, if we don't have the funds coming in on the existing tax rate, you're going to have to raise the tax rate next year.

So I said it during workshops, I'll say it again. So I think And I think the majority of the court, or all of us, want to do something for the employees. So that was done. That was changed with the 3% COLA. My take all along, based on the projected revenue that's coming in, the shortfall, we've discussed all this, to try to do something that we can for the employees. Longevity, 3% COLA. however we do it. I agree. I think the $1,000 base has been continual for a long time. If that's an adjustment that could still be made, that's fine. But on my end, that's kind of where I am. With the Cibolo fire deal, that was kind of a very inexpensive thing to do with that contract to get 32 square miles of coverage, which will help out on that Marion side quite a bit. And so we can go and talk and talk and try to figure it out and appreciate what y'all are trying to do but and I've said this before this isn't new when you're trying to pull out a general fund to fund recurring expenses with personnel it then affects your next year's budget so

But it's all recurring.

Tell me what is not a reoccurring cost.

So if everything's a reoccurring cost, when do you use the unassigned fund balance? For like a land purchase, which is a one-time deal. But we use it when you want to use it, not when it could be used for something else.

No, what I'm saying is it's related to positions that you're requesting. 101 positions requested.

But your own budget policy says that you can use the unassigned fund balance for capital and controlled assets. Yet you haven't done that. And that's what we're asking you to do. We're not asking you to spend any more money than that's not already budgeted.

It's not in the tax revenue. It's in the general fund is where that's coming out of.

That's what I'm saying.

That $3 million is in the general fund. It's not part of the projections of the revenue from the taxes.

But it can also be used for controlled assets and capital outlay. It does not have to be used on salaries, which may be a reoccurring cost because it's all recurring costs, but it doesn't reoccur annually. But from my understanding, you're wanting to use the $3 million to fund 14 positions. No, you misunderstood. I can give the presentation again if you need me to. So where are you getting the $3 million from?

Guys, I know it's frustrating because everybody has differing opinions, but tensions are high. I get it. And I know I can frustrate y'all more than anybody if I start talking right now, and that's not the goal because I see things very differently. I think things have been categorized in a way where it may not tell the whole story, but there's so much going on, so many moving parts and pieces.

You're not wrong.

The court has the ability to spend fund balance on whatever it wants. So I'm going to say this, not to make y'all mad, but it's the court's decision. I know y'all are making a recommendation, but it's not anybody else's money other than the commissioner's court to try to make decisions to protect the county in the event. If something happens, a major flood, or we've talked about debris removal, a 98 flood occurs, you had FEMA come in and clean up without the county having to spend a bunch. Now it's different. Kerrville Occurred and hopefully we never see that because they had tree and debris removal We're gonna have houses and cars and refrigerators and tires and boat docks and jet skis and all those things It could be a month or 18 months. We spend fund balance as a county and Y'all aren't going to have to answer to how we spend it when we don't have the funds to do cleanup or something else comes up. Now, I don't say that to be dramatic, but it's a real thing in my mind personally to go, okay, we've got fund balance. Tax doesn't come in for October, November, December. We need at least those few months. We need to hold some for a major disaster. We need to be able to do this. We need to have funds for un- unintended expenses that come up, and sometimes they are major repairs. You know, we had a water leak. Luckily, it's insured. We've had, I mean, a main just broke over here. You can't be so careful that you never do anything, but we also can't go so far the other way automatically, and this proposal is not going so far that it creates a dangerous situation. The nervous part for me individually is that if it starts to be a trend that it can be to a dangerous level. And then you get into debt and all those other things and it all comes full circle back to automatically raising the tax rate based on past decisions because you do have so many of those reoccurring things. There are some expenses that the county truly has that are not a guaranteed reoccurring expense, like some of the capital projects we've talked about. But you're right. Absolutely, the court can make the decision to say, we're going to put the positions in general fund, supported by the tax rate, and carve out all of the equipment to purchase that. What I'm saying is it doesn't change the fact that the court's still going to have $2 million to $3 million of equipment they have to buy again that you've now carved out. Because in that capital project list, radios were typically under the fire department. They've already been carved out in the initial recommended budget. Work center upgrades are usually in 503 and MIS that we carved out already because we didn't have the revenue. So projects before we ever had any budget conversation were already pulled into fund balance that normally wouldn't be there because we had revenue shortfall, and now we're trying to do it more. My concern long-term for the county, I won't be here, but I would still be concerned leaving here going, if we've already done that to the tune of almost $2 million with those projects, with radios, work center upgrades, some other capital projects, plus another $3 million and another $2 million on top of that next year, just how does that shape up? And again, I think it would be totally different in my mind if we had a normal revenue year. This has just been a change that you go, oh God, should we... Should we be looking at it differently because of this event? Is there any likelihood that revenue shortfall could happen for any reason that we can't anticipate? What does the market look like? We're trying to balance all those things. So it's, I get it. I know what y'all are trying to accomplish. You're trying to get the resources you need so you can provide the service to the public that y'all provide. We're trying to make sure we don't bankrupt a county or run into problems or try to hurry to address that need while also creating a hardship down the road. I think that's where it boils down to.

But the power is all yours. It's 100% yours. We recognize we don't have the power. But you talk about having to look in the eyes of the taxpayers when you raise their taxes to cost them an extra $120 a year. I get that. I get that that's hard for you. But looking in the eyes of rape victims, it's not easy either. And telling them that I don't have the resources to take care of them I mean, that can be forced upon us. I mean, people talk about which way things roll, those hassles roll onto my shoulders and onto the sheriff's shoulders. They don't roll onto yours. You have to answer to the taxpayer about the $120, but I got to tell the murder victim's family that I'm not able to appropriately prosecute the person that murdered that family member. Those are very, very different things. And I'm not saying that I want your job, but I don't have any control over how your job works. You have so much control over how the office that I run works because of the money that y'all are going to refuse to give us to maintain our people. And that's the problem I've got with the court today.

And we're not asking you to bankrupt the county judge. I mean, we're not asking you to do that. I mean, we're talking about $45 million. I mean, that proposal still left $40 to $41 million in the unassigned reserves. Now, could there be a catastrophic tsunami that comes in and takes out Guadalupe County? There could be. But today, today, we're having to do this. We're having to talk to crime victims. We're having to respond to calls. And that's just our offices. I mean, we're really not up here just representing our offices. We're representing all of them that met yesterday and the previous week. So it should be a red flag to this court that that many department heads, appointed and elected, are coming saying the current proposal is not going to work. Because governing is not just about the budget. There's lots of hard decisions in what we were each elected to do. But sometimes it seems like the only thing that comes out of this dais is pinching dollars and sacrificing. I can't tell you how many times I've heard we care about our employees or we really appreciate law enforcement, but the actions do not support the comments.

Give me just a second.

I didn't want to go down this rabbit trail, but since we're here. So in 2011, 2012, starting pay was $1,165. Current grading steps 1932. That's a 65.8% increase. It's an aggregate average of 4.38 or 4.4%. We can go back and look at CPI. I'm not saying all starting pay is where it needs to be. But along the way, and I'm not going to pull up because it's too much detail. But we've made considerable adjustments in pay. We've made $5 and $6 an hour adjustments in single years, mid-year for law enforcement. We've done it numerous times. We've added positions. If you look at, I mean, across the board, there's been so many advancements that have been made to try to support. I'm not saying it's perfect. It's so far from that. This is all a work in progress where we all have to understand all the things going on. But I also don't want comments made today when people are frustrated and want what they need to go and be heard in a way like people aren't trying our best up here to support the functions of all departments. We're trying to worry about all these things. I mean, y'all got a taste of what it is to try to get people on the same page and account for all things. And y'all saw a fraction of it. And it's not easy. It's a challenge every time to do that. I'm just saying... We're going to try to consider what y'all need and how important all these things are to you, because y'all have difficult jobs and have to do difficult things. But please understand that we have to answer for all those decisions and have to have good explanations for it. I don't want to sit up here and say I know y'all's job. I don't. I have concerns about a number of things in county departments, but I also don't know every intricacy of those departments, and it's not fair to put myself in that place. I don't run any other department. I'm one person, a single voting member on a group of five. But, I mean, if we want to get into details and talk about nonprofits and we want to talk about the operations of departments and start asking hard questions everywhere about what we should be doing as a county, let's get into details. I'd like to have some of those conversations. I don't think some of the people will want to have them in this room, though. It's not a threat. It's a legitimate concern from a taxpayer standpoint about how money is utilized in every corner of this county. If anybody thinks that everything's being done the absolute way it should be, it's not. We all need to have the mindset that we can always try to do better. We always need to try to improve, need to try to revisit things we've looked at and done in the past to say, are we doing them the right way? That's what y'all are asking us to do. And that's what departments should be doing at every turn also. Everybody has got in this habit talking about the additional longevity base of building off of what they previously had. Very seldom do I see departments go back and reevaluate their entire operation and go, if I could redo this and I had a time machine, would I do it the same way? Would I make considerable changes? Would I restructure, give new directions? So it takes all of us to do those things. I know we talked a lot this morning. I know tensions can get high. I don't think it's going to benefit any of us if we get more heated and go back and forth. I think the ball is in the commissioner's court to decide what we want to do as a group and how we want to move forward. I think if it's all right with you. Did y'all have any other comments you want to make? Gentlemen, thank you for the time this morning.

I just wanted to make some comments. I'll remain quiet. I sat in all of the meetings yesterday, elected officials and department heads. First thing I'm going to say, it doesn't have anything to do with those meetings yesterday. But we have not ratified that Cibolo contract. We agreed that we would probably do that money for this year. But I looked at the Cibolo contract going forward. There is no way I would ever vote for that contract because it locks us into one huge increase the next year and the next year. There is no way. that I will ever agree to that. Now, getting back to what was said yesterday.

Commissioner Gurman, really quick, I think we should finish out that point really quick. Yes, I also, that was also brought to my attention in regard to the Cibolo fire contract, and what was presented to us is that the net difference would be somewhere in the teens because of the decrease in the shirts fire department coverage, so Cibolo would be taking on some of that, and then they would be increasing a little more beyond it, so we would be giving them about $14,000 or $15,000 more. However, when you look at the rest of the contract, they are going to be asking us for over $100,000 more on top of all that next year, next year, and then something just under $100,000 the third year. I am disappointed that that was not part of the presentation to court. The presentation was $14,000. It was certainly not $14,000 plus another $100,000 plus another $100,000 plus something slightly under $100,000. So that's a little bit frustrating. Not by you, Mr. Pender, but... That, yeah, that's something that I think we certainly weren't aware of until afterwards. So I agree that needs to be talked about again. Perhaps we can get some conversation with the chief over there.

Sure, absolutely. We can get that conversation. I think Commissioner Gurman has a meeting with the CBO chief. The amount allocated for this year is for this year's contract. Any future contracts, we can't decide until we actually go through contract negotiations. I know that Cibolo has a dollar amount estimated, but that doesn't mean that's the dollar amount this court agrees on. Every contract we have has an allotment in there. It says up to a certain percentage, and then the court makes the decision. So when we bring that contract to court is when the court decides what the contract is going to be and what the price is going to be. What they proposed is not what we're going to pay them.

But if that's their expectation and then the court decides we're only willing to give you $20,000, are they even going to continue a contract? I don't know that.

And that was in the packet when we saw the full packet that they intend to present to Cibolo City Council. Their presentation is that Guadalupe County is going to be paying that extra amount each year that they did not include in our presentation, but that they intend to present to their city council. So it's very confusing that that's going to be what we, you know, we suddenly see, I guess, as a surprise at some point, although I'm glad that was shared with us after the presentation.

I don't have a contract with Cibolo, so I don't know what they're taking to counsel. I know.

It's nothing on you. It wasn't provided to me, at least.

We don't have any current contracts, so I don't know what they're proposing to take to counsel. I do know in the presentation that was proposed to this court that it THE DOLLAR AMOUNTS THAT ARE ALLOCATED, AND I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, BUT CHIEF TRONCOSO IS STILL TRYING TO WORK THOSE DETAILS OUT WITH MYSELF AND ALSO HE'S GOING TO MEET WITH THE COMMISSIONER, AND ALSO WE NEED TO SIT DOWN WITH CITY MANAGEMENT TO HAVE THAT NEGOTIATION. BECAUSE IF THE COURT ALLOCATES IN THIS YEAR'S BUDGET THE FUNDS THAT WERE REQUESTED FOR THE $200,000, next year's contract and the year after, that's a decision that this court and the city management decides.

Right. I just wanted to make sure we rounded out, as I know what Commissioner Gurman was getting at, and I wanted to make sure that was rounded out before we moved on to the next thoughts.

All right. Now, getting back to our meetings yesterday. So when we first started having budget workshops, I was already talking about these allocations for land and building purchases. You know, when things get really tough, I don't sit at home with my wife when times get tough and talk about, oh, we need to go to the car dealership and buy a new car. You get tough, and if you have to do something, you take it out of savings. I think that these folks have legitimate concerns. I think we have a lot more work to do on the budget. I don't know if today is the place. It had been discussed yesterday of possibly having a workshop Monday, which I had no problem with, because I know there's a conference next week. But I think that these folks have some legitimate concerns, and rightfully so. about trying to keep their people in trying to do the right thing for the county. I applaud the work that they put into it. I applaud the meetings we had yesterday, especially elected official meetings. You could not have had a, I don't want to call it warm, but a better dialogue in any meeting. It was absolutely fantastic. So I'm open to more discussion about some of these things that they're talking about. But I don't know if this is the place today, or we need another budget workshop, or what. But I'll say today, I'm not closing the door on some of their proposals. I stayed quiet because I wanted to hear what the other court members were. I wanted to give them time. But again, I am not willing to close the door on some of their proposals. I think some of them are legitimate. I think some of them have a lot of thought in them. And that's just where I am today.

So, Commissioner, in a sense, you're willing to take some of the fund balance money and potentially spend some of that on

either the proposal or some version of it? Some version of it, yeah.

I think that where they are, because, and I meant with, you know, we're trying to figure out, I think that if we stay in the 40s, we're okay on fund balance. Because you got to have about 25 for the, Chris, it's what you have to have to keep going until taxes come in. Then I figured another about 12 on if we have a flood. You know, that takes you up to about 37. And then, you know, four or five for incidentals, stuff you just don't realize. So if we stay in the 40s, I'm good with it.

I don't want to argue, but it's 40s this year. 37 next year, 33 the next year after that, when you start taking out a fund balance to the reoccurring cost, you're going to have to sooner or later raise your tax rate. You're going to have to replenish it. And the only way you can do it is either get more corporations inside here. But I can tell you right now, rooftops are not going to pay the bills.

Any other opinions, comments?

We did move on.

This was just to record, correct? Correct. But we also need to determine, are we going to have additional workshops? Is the next budget conversation only occurring on September 1st to set a budget and a tax rate? Are we going to have additional meetings in between?

I've stated my case.

Will another workshop be beneficial?

If we're willing to spend more money, especially out of the fund balance, and I think that we do need to have conversations with the different departments if we think we aren't able to do all of it. I am willing to spend some money out of here if we want to do an additional $1,000 longevity for everyone, including the electeds. If that is what everyone wants and thinks is best, I'm not opposed to that. I am, again, willing to spend some of that. I know that we're trying to make a determination here of who's where I am willing to spend some of it, at least for one of the projects, possibly both of the projects, to help assist our departments in being able to function appropriately. Looking at this list, I don't agree with 100% of it. I can see where most of it is appropriate. And if we need additional workshops, I'm open to it. And if this is something where we need to just, you know, be in touch with the different representatives from these departments, that's fine. I know that, you know, having attended one of the meetings, like, we did hear some input from some people, but I personally have not heard input from everyone. But I think that that can be obtained. So just trying to be transparent to the court about where I am with it. I do think that some of these departments truly are struggling and need to keep the people they have and need to, you know, they would truly benefit from, you know, a couple more if that's at all possible. I'm not against the additional $1,000 longevity if that's, you know, something the court is willing to entertain as well.

So a comment was made that there was a tentative workshops for Monday. I have a 9 o'clock meeting that morning. And the comment was made because one couldn't be here. I guess that was me, that you couldn't have the workshop. So I could be late. I don't know if having one member not here determines whether or not you have a workshop. I'd prefer not to have more. Y'all have been talking about this and discussing this since May. We've gone through the motions. But if the majority of the court thinks they need to talk some more, I'm not going to be that dissenter, because I have a meeting scheduled Monday morning at 9. So that's up to the court. Judge, what do you think?

I think, I mean, I hate saying it like this, but I made up my mind. I mean, I went through a lot of this. It's just a differing opinion. I'm concerned about the future tax rate impact that some of these decisions will have on the budget. In an uncertain year with an unprecedented amount of value loss, I think it puts too much stress and strain on future decisions. Everybody talks about how things are tight now and we don't go get a car and all this stuff. Well, you don't spend $3 million extra out of your savings account either. You take account of everything you absolutely have to have and take care of the people that are here to say we all have to go through this challenge together. We tighten the belt strap and we go, let's make it to next year. I understand the stress and strain and the people and the departments and the needs and all those things, but We lost a bunch of money. And what people, I think, have forgotten, we had those built-in expenses. You had, I mean, initially a 15% healthcare cost that went up, 15% increase to the appraisal district budget, 15% to an EMS contract, debt restructure. Everybody talks about saving money by using a credit card. We just did $20 million of tax notes, and our savings or our debt service structure changed by $2.5 million a year, which impacts our tax rate. And the county and everybody's talking about more debt in the future. It all builds upon the previous year. Every decision we make today, the departments are thinking about, I need this one person. But it's the next year and the year after that, and the snowball gets bigger as it rolls down the mountain. I know that's not what some people want to hear. My vote will be... on the budget that has been proposed, not to spend any more additional money out of fund balance. no matter if we have additional workshops or not. I don't think it's a waste of time if a majority of the court wants to have further conversation, get more information, and disagrees with me. I understand the position and I will respect it. That's where my opinion is. I'm concerned that carving out additional expenses that will have to be an automatic tax rate increase for next year With even more needs coming from departments in request from next year Not knowing what the real estate market looks like what sales tax collection is and all those things going on I Just think there's too many volatile things that are occurring for us to determine exactly Are we in a good spot or not? Does it feel like it at the moment feels like it's everything's a question mark and And that makes me want to be even more careful and pause even more to make sure the county is not in a bad spot in the future. So that's my position. Commissioner Wolverton, do you think at this point it would be beneficial to have additional workshops?

I just don't see us coming to any agreement with additional workshops.

So if we don't have a majority of the court wanting to have the additional workshops, is it the court's plan at this point to then still have the budget discussion and setting the tax rate discussion only on September 1st?

I'm fine with that. If you want direct answers, yes.

It seems like there are three people that feel that's what's appropriate. It seems like there are two of us that Really, I think we're coming down to are we willing to spend money on some of this proposal, and if so, do we need more time to discuss it? Correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like Commissioner Gurman and I are saying yes, we would spend some money on this proposal, and we're open to discussing it. It seems like the other three members are saying no, we're not going to take it out of savings, and therefore need no further discussion. Is that accurate?

I think so. It is for me. I think it doesn't mean that additional conversations couldn't take place, but yes, I think that's a fair summary. Any other comments or questions or discussion before we consider a motion to record the proposed fiscal year 27 budget?

Sir, move to record the proposed fiscal year 2027 Guadalupe County budget. Second.

We have a motion and a second on item L to record the proposed fiscal year 2027 Guadalupe County budget. Any other discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, same sign?

Opposed. All right, that motion does pass four yeas, one nay. Commissioner Gertman? and we'll move to the last item that was removed from consent that's item in the excavation permit applications for the following county roads listed kingsbury road union wine road barbarossa road and wild road commissioner german okay i pulled item in because there are two problems with item n num number one and i have a map here if anyone wants to look at it this this uh

permit or excavation permit actually is for a water pipeline across Sunshine Lane, which is a private lane. It is in litigation right now. that it is a private lane. We do not have the right in this court to allow an excavation permit by a private firm across a private lane.

That's true.

Mr. Brooks, how are you doing good? How are y'all today? Good. The excavation permit is for a water line, but it is going to be boring under Sunshine Lane in the county right-of-way part of it. It's not going to be on the private property side.

Not according to the map I have. It's off of Union Wine in the private property on Sunshine Lane. It's not on Union Wine.

Do you know what page that was on, on the attachment? Yeah, I'll pass it.

31. 31. Yeah, I can see.

I'll clear the audit with that. One more.

Court members, if you will look at the shaded area, it has diagonal lines on it, and it shows the intersection of Union Wine and Sunshine Lane. That pipeline that's proposed is not on Union Wine. It is boring under Sunshine Lane. And yes, there's been some discussion that the back portion of Sunshine Lane belongs to KB Homes, but this front portion does not belong to KB Homes and therefore Sunshine Lane and that area belongs to the landowners that are next to it. We do not have a right to TO PASS AN EXCAVATION PERMIT ON BASICALLY PRIVATE PROPERTY.

COMMISSIONERS, IF I MAY.

PLEASE STATE YOUR NAME.

CHRIS VAN HERDE, HMT ENGINEERING. I'M THE DESIGN ENGINEER FOR THAT PROJECT. THE WATER EXTENSION IS INSIDE OF A GV SUD EASEMENT AND IT'S CROSSING from one side of sunshine lane to the other it's a boring project of that and so there would not be any damage to the county road or sunshine road of any way shape or form so you're saying all this is within a dedicated easement yes sir and it's being done on behalf of gvsud but this is not the the the venue for that if i have a a a

a water line easement on my place. And let's just say Green Valley, for example, wants to upgrade the water line on my place. That dialogue is between Green Valley and myself as a landowner. And I'm saying we don't own Sunshine Lane. This is not the venue for that. You need to take that up with the landowners that own Sunshine Lane.

I understand the, I understand.

Well, no, I mean, that's, so the commissioner is asking if it's in utility easement, do they have the right to use it if they have permission and it is for Green Valley? Yes, but I think Commissioner Gurman is also correct. Why do we have an excavation permit submitted by somebody for a project under a private road. I mean, is that an accurate statement?

I mean... Is there any work being done in the county right of way?

The way I read it, yes, but maybe I looked at it wrong. No, the map shows it's on Sunshine Lane. It's not in the county. Union Wine is the county right of way. Correct. It's not on Union Wine. It's on Sunshine Lane.

I'm just asking Chris real quick with HMT. Is there any work being done in the right-of-way?

There was a boring that would go perpendicular to Sunshine Lane and parallel with Union Mall. I think the answer is that we are crossing Sunshine Lane. Yes, sir.

No, I'm talking about Sunshine Lane is not a county right of way. It's not been accepted by the county into the county maintenance road system. Therefore, I'm talking about Union Wine. Is there any work that is being done in the right of way of Union Wine?

Mr. Kiles, briefly, I know that you and Mr. Gurman were present in court when this lawsuit brought by one of the private landowners on Sunshine Lane was presented. And could you tell me specifically, so I understand the judge's ruling, because I know there was some debate about which portions of this road were owned privately and able to be certain construction projects were done on that versus which were county right-of-way. And I understand that at least the plaintiff is purporting that the county does own some of this. Could you help us clarify so we all understand?

What I told Judge Hines in court was that the position of the county is that the excavation permit, as it states all over the excavation permit itself, is only for county right-of-way, cuts into the county right-of-way. Sunshine Lane is not listed on the county road maintenance list and has not been formally accepted by the commissioner's court into the county road maintenance system. Now, there is a dedication document at some point where they dedicate that to the public, but a dedication to the public is not in and of itself sufficient to create a county maintained road. So therefore, Sunshine Lane is not a county maintained road. and Union Wine is. And so if it's not a county right-of-way, county-maintained road, then it does not, the excavation permit does not apply because the excavation permit is for cuts into the county right-of-way.

What was the judge's ruling specifically?

So just remove it?

Did she make a ruling?

She only...

I believe she took it under advisement.

Granted the injunction. Okay. But apart from that, I don't know what finding the facts she made.

The plaintiff has been continuing to send correspondence to us. I've contacted her attorney via email and phone call telling her that she needs to speak to our attorneys and not to continue to speak to us as she's made some indications that she may include Guadalupe County in her lawsuit. So I have not responded to her directly. I've instructed Mr. Brooks to do the same. But I was curious, because I know that the plaintiff did mention in one of her pieces of correspondence that Judge Hines did take one of the issues under advisement for a proposed three-day period before coming back with her ruling, and I was curious if she had come back with anything.

The last ruling, she did not appear to take anything under advisement. She reasserted her ruling, and she took testimony, allowed the attorney to put on additional evidence, reasserted her ruling, AND MOVED ON.

OKAY. SO INJUNCTION AS TO THE HOME BUILDER FOR CONTINUED CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF THE ROAD THAT'S PRIVATELY OWNED? IS THAT MY UNDERSTANDING THAT CORRECTLY?

AGAINST THE PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNER SO THAT THE HOMEOWNER, HOME BUILDER may continue building the road. And that's a part, that has nothing to do with the county. The county is not a party to that suit and we're not a party to the injunction. Right.

No, I was only saying that because, you know, this individual's made, you know, comment. I know she's called, you know, court members and, you know, Mr. Brooks is a witness in that she's indicated that, you know, she'll move forward with including us. So just in an abundance of caution, I've asked her to speak directly through her attorney only. But, so... This permit, is it your opinion that this permit does not allow any work, or excuse me, is not talking about any work done on a private road, it's simply the county right-of-way or vice versa?

CHRIS WITH HMT JUST SAID THAT THERE WAS NO WORK TO BE DONE IN THE COUNTY RIGHT-OF-WAY, WHICH IS THE COUNTY RIGHT-OF-WAY OF UNIONWIDE, AND SUNSHINE LANE IS NOT A COUNTY MAINTAINED ROAD.

RIGHT.

AND SO ACCORDING TO IF WE LOOK AT THE ACTUAL PERMIT ITSELF AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE PERMIT, IT SPEAKS ABOUT APPLICATION FOR EXCAVATION PERMIT, INSTALLATION OF UTILITY ON GUADALUPE COUNTY RIGHTS OF WAY. THIS IS NOT WORK BEING DONE ON A RIGHT OF WAY, AND THEREFORE THIS ISN'T THE APPROPRIATE DOCUMENT TO PROCEED UNDER.

So you recommend we remove the Union Wine Road request?

According to the assertion by Chris with HMT that it's not being done in the county right of way, then the excavation permit application would not be an appropriate vehicle for this project. It appears that it is an easement situation, and it's not our easement.

Anything else? Let me go on, and then I'm going to make a motion. On Wild Road, that's an excavation permit. I will agree to it, but I was not told anything by Road and Bridge about a Precinct 4 excavation permit. So I have not agreed to put this on court. I'm just going to say going forward, I need to know if something is, if there's a permit being put on for precinct four before I get the agenda. But anyhow, I'm going to make a motion that we approve item N and under item N, items two, I'm sorry, one, three, and four.

I'll second that with a question.

I have a motion and a second. Commissioner Wolverton?

What's going on on Wild Road?

It is a spectrum fiber optic line gas going in. Okay.

So just minimum six inches deep and right the way there.

Yes, and then five foot off of our paint edge pavement all the way through.

Can it be any deeper than six inches? Because every time that we do excavation out the way there, we usually tear them up. It must be a minimum of 24 inches. Okay. Let's hope that they do it this time.

If they don't, we have an inspector that will make sure that they will.

All right. Perfect. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments? We did have a motion and a second on the excavation permit applications for the following county roads, Kingsbury Road located in Precinct 1, Barbarossa Road located in Precinct 2, and Weill Road located in Precinct 4. Hearing no other comments or questions, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, same sign. Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Right, we will move to item 6 on our agenda, which are action items, discussion, possible motion relative to item A, pursuant to Chapter 614 of the Texas Government Code, the purchase of the county-issued firearms at fair market value by each of the following Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office deputies who honorably retired. Russell Kaler retired on June 5, 2026. David Camacho retired July 1, 2026.

It's good afternoon now.

Good afternoon.

How are you?

Peachy, how are you?

The same.

Okay. Both of these, as you just stated, worked for the county for 20 years each. They want to purchase their handguns, a Glock 17.

I know we've done this before. Do you remember the price that we allocated for the previous firearms?

We found the fair market value with the, One is $600 because it has optics and a flashlight. The second one is just a flashlight and it's $350.

Is that the recommendation I guess you would have to allocate those fair market values? Yes, sir.

Okay.

Any questions on that?

No. So who gets which one?

Russell Kaler is requesting the one with the optics and the flashlight.

So the 650? Yes, sir. 600. 600 and 350.

And 350 for David Camacho.

I think I've asked this question before. We have proof that once we sell it to them, we don't own them anymore?

Correct.

Because I don't want the liability. It's a license transfer. Yeah. Yeah.

OK. Well, Judge, I'll make the motion pursuant to chapter 614 of the Texas government code. The purchase of county issued firearms at fair market value by each of the following Guadalupe County Sheriff's deputies will honor who honorably retired. Russell Kaler, he'll pay $600 for his firearm. And David Camacho will pay $350 for his firearm. Second.

Do have a motion and a second on action. Item A, any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Thank you. Item B, the order to advertise an invitation for bid specifications for IFB 26-17, land lease for agricultural row crop planting. Commissioner Engelke.

Yes, sir. So this is that 27 acre parcel the county had purchased several years ago. When we purchased it, it was a row crop agricultural property. The court decided back then to do an agricultural lease, of which has been, I think, a five year. So we're doing the same CONSIDERATION AGAIN, RIGHT, DON? SO IT'S AN INITIAL TWO-YEAR CONTRACT WITH THREE ONE-YEAR EXTENSIONS. AND SO WE'RE AT THE END OF THAT LAST CONTRACT TERM, AND SO WE NEED TO RENEW IT. AND SO MR. CUNNINGHAM IS HERE TO DISCUSS THOSE DETAILS.

Yeah, bid specifications match what was published prior. The first term will be, or the first initial lease period is for two years, beginning November 1, 2026 and ending October 31st of 2028. There are three additional one-year renewal options after the first two-year term upon approval of Commissioner's Court. Is there any increase?

PER YEAR ON THE EXTENSION OR IT ALL STAYS THE SAME?

THAT WOULD BE NEGOTIATED.

AT THE TIME?

YES, SIR.

AS DIESEL INSURANCE, FERTILIZER AND TRACTOR COSTS GO UP, WE COULD REDUCE THE LEASE AMOUNT.

YEAH, WE COULD. I'M GIVING HIM A HARD TIME. DO WE HAVE ANY HORSES OR COWS WE NEED TO FEED?

My question is, do we have to put this out for a bid? Is it that much money? I mean, do we have to bid it? We have a renter right now.

Yes. And it was done through this process. This was something we really had not seen prior. So we're going through the formal process to make it open instead of a handshake deal.

Right there, the contract had ended. So at the time when we initiated this, as Don said, this was something new. Wanted to try to keep the land in what was going on existing with the row crop agriculture, but we couldn't just lease it to the person who was doing it. So went through the bidding process, went through the formal process, and then that's how it started. Here we are at the end of that. It seems like yesterday we did this. At the end of this process, having to renew it all over again. So this is just the beginning of it, order to advertise. So if there's no further discussion, I will make the motion to approve the order to advertise an invitation for bid specifications for IFB 26-17, land lease for agricultural row crop planting.

Second. And we have a motion and a second on action item B. Any other discussion?

One question. What's it going to cost us to advertise and go out for bid?

I want to say the cost according to the statute. It's statutorily required.

I know. I'm just trying to figure out how much it's going to cost us, and are we going to make it up in the lease?

Oh, OK. I thought you were still comparing the bid versus not bid. And statutorily under 263 of the local government code, we have to either auction it or bid it. So we have no choice. No choice.

We have to spend money. That's all I wanted to know.

Any other questions, comments? Hearing no other discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. There is no opposition. That motion passes. Action item C, the order to advertise an invitation to bid IFB 26-19, Stagecoach Road Overlay Project Phase 2.

This is budgeted in the fiscal 26 budget under the capital projects for contractor road repair. The plans and specifications for this were produced by Freeland Turk Engineering. Phase one was completed previously, and now they are ready for this next phase. Bids will be due September 16th, 2026 at 2 p.m. Any questions for Mr. Cunningham?

Move to approve the order to advertise and the invitation to bid IFB 26-19.

19 stagecoach road overlay project phase two second we have a motion and a second on action item c any other comments or questions all right hearing no other discussion all those in favor say aye aye opposed same sign hearing no opposition that motion passes thank you down Action item D, authorization to publish notice and set September 29th, 2026 for a public hearing to establish the county thoroughfare plan. I know, Commissioners, we previously had this on. I think there was a lot piling up on maybe one day, but I knew there were some additional meetings that that still had to occur we needed just a little bit of additional time apologize for any confusion um does any anybody have any serious concerns about publishing the notice and and doing the thoroughfare plan on september the 29th no no no no all right is there a motion so to approve the authorization to publish notice and set september 29 2026

for a public hearing to establish the county thoroughfare plan. Second.

I do have a motion and a second on action item D. Any other questions?

One question about it. It says for a public hearing to establish. Does that mean that we will have the public hearing like we've done before on items like this and then go into action items and vote? I think the intent would be to have that agenda, have a public hearing portion of it, and then have an action item.

I'm good with it.

Any other comments, questions? All right, we do have a motion and a second. Hearing no other discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Item E, budget amendment 26-88, to transfer funds out of grounds, maintenance, small tools to controlled assets to purchase one push mower.

Mr. Vazquez. We have a mower that we're having problems finding parts for, so this is to replace that mower. Self-propelled or pushed? This is a self-propelled. Okay. And they ask for a rear self-propelled.

Might be something I have to use some weekend, right?

Hey, I can bring that one back and you can start taking care of shirts for us. Again? Again.

Move to approve the budget amendment 26-8 to transfer funds out of ground maintenance for small tools and controlled assets to purchase one new self-propelled lawnmower. Second.

Do we have a motion and a second on action item E? Any other discussion?

Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye.

Opposed? Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Item F, Budget Amendment 26-89, to transfer funds from Commissioner's Precinct 3 training budget to the building maintenance repair building structures for panic buttons to be installed in the courthouse.

Commissioner Woolverton. Yes, Judge. It's brought to my attention that the ladies up this way sometimes are by themselves, and we've had a couple questionable people come inside looking for places and they feel a little uneasy. I asked Mr. Vasquez to give me some prices. I believe it was a little over $300. Yes, sir. And that's what we did also with the elbow building. They hang it around their neck and carry it with them. And I've already talked to downstairs on emergency management plus the constable, and they said, you know, we can go ahead and wire that right to them and they'll be able to respond. I had extra money, so I thought it would be for a good cause. With that, I'll approve the budget amendment 26-89 to transfer funds from Commissioner Precinct 3 training budget to the building maintenance, repair, building structure for panning buttons to be installed in the courthouse. Second.

Do we have a motion and a second on action item F? Any other discussion?

I'm for it. I just wanted to know how many we were getting and where they were going. But maybe we don't discuss where, actually. Just how many are we getting?

What was it, four? Four. I believe four. Yes, sir. We'll make it five. I got the money.

I mean, I was here until 1130 last night by myself, and it was a little creepy. The lights kept coming on and off. I was like, oh. So, you know, I wouldn't mind having one.

I can get the bid for another one. Okay. And they do work because somebody in the Veterans Office hit it yesterday, and they called me, hey, is everything okay? And I'm like, what's going on? Yeah, they have them under the desk whenever they move up and down. Yeah, somebody accidentally hit it.

The lanyard around the neck works really well. Yeah.

I can tell you another story. I was downstairs working one day, putting a desk together. The cleaning crew were helping me. I hit it. And they go, hey, there's cops all over the place. I'm like, I don't know. Are you okay?

They do work. So what is it tied to, Ricky? I mean, how does it work? Like, is there an extra fee for like a yearly license or something? How does it work?

I think it just gets hooked up to our alarm system. So there's no extra fee. It's hooked up to our system that's in place now. Gotcha. Yep. It's all included in that. Now there is a charge to program them to our system and other than that, that's it. That was included in the price? Yes, sir. That is included in the price.

Okay.

All right. Any other questions, comments? All right, we do have a motion and a second on action item F. Hearing no other comments or questions, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Thank you. Item G, Budget Amendment 26-90, to transfer funds from the Constable Precinct to vehicle equipment budget to controlled assets for four additional scanners and one new copier to assist with scanning, printing civil service documents. Constable, how are you? Good, good. Good morning, Judge, Commissioners.

Yeah, this is, of course, you know, the increased paper that we're printing. We're no longer getting paper copies from the district and the county, the district clerk and the county clerk when we pick up the The case is everything's being sent to us electronically. So we're having to pick up the slack and scan it all back. So I'm out of breath because I came up here.

Is that correct on the screen?

Yes, four scanners. The four scanners are for each desk that we have because what I'm wanting the officers to do is we're having to send back a... a service saying that the service was done. But I also want them to put the actual, with their signature on it inside, in the case. So we don't have any scanners. So we're doing it all by iPhone right now. So in the copier, we just, our copier is just, it's trash right now. It's squeaky. It's not good. I know. So, yeah. So that's where we're at with that.

Any additional questions for Councilor Reyes?

No, sir. Move to approve budget amendment 26-90 to transfer funds from Constable Precinct to vehicle equipment budget to controlled assets for four additional scanners and one new copier to assist with scanning and printing civil service documents. Second.

We have a motion and a second on action item G. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign.

Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to walk back down now.

Item H, budget amendment 26-91 to transfer personal funds and remaining capital outlay funds in the fire department budget to establish a new repair building and building equipment account and a major building renovation account for the cost to relocate two modular buildings that are being donated by the San Antonio fire department. Mr. Pender.

Judge, commissioners, we worked with Ricky and his team on getting a quote to get those buildings moved and placed in a location on county property. What you see there is the proposals for that. We did have the auditor's office set us up with two different lines for that. So we'll move the buildings. They're $8,500 apiece to move the buildings. Some additional funds to hook those buildings up once we find the placement of those buildings. Working with Commissioner Gurman currently on the placement of the one that will be located in Marion. That one should be coming this month or early next month. And then we'll start working on the placement of the following building once we get that one released to us. So that's all. We moved the money within our internal budget working with Chris's office. And then the $15,000 is allocated for water sewer hookups when we get to that point. That may not happen right away, but with the Marion building, we could probably get that done pretty quick because the resources are there.

Any questions on the budget amendment or the modular buildings? I know we talked previously about, I mean, location and all that stuff. I know some of that is still in process. I think all those things are going to change. But I think ultimately, no matter what the small concerns might have been, there was an overarching benefit that we would have an asset that was donated that could be used in the event we needed to deploy something. if we had to assist somebody else that had a major building issue or whatever else. I mean, all those opportunities are there. I just wanted to say all that to say thank you to the San Antonio Fire Department and others and y'all that have worked on this stuff because there's so many moving and changing parts in our county and from a fire response aspect, whether it's GCFR, municipal contracts, volunteer fire departments, all these things are swirling around. We know we need additional locations as things move forward. So just thankful that it worked out. Hopefully we'll be able to utilize them and provide that benefit at a cost savings. So it's pretty exciting they were willing to Be like, here, you need them.

Take them. It definitely is. And I'd also like to thank Chief Ward for coordinating that. He knew the folks over there at San Antonio Fire and reached out and made sure that he knew they were available. And so this was a coordination on behalf of Chief Ward and Mr. Holton worked on this project together.

Thank you both.

Move to Appear Budget Amendment 2691 to transfer personnel funds and remaining capital outlay funds in the Fire Department budget to establish a new repair building and building equipment account and a major building renovation account for the cost to relocate two modular buildings that are being donated by the San Antonio Fire Department.

Second. We have a motion and a second on Item H. Any other comments or questions? Hearing no other discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. And we'll move to item I, budget amendment 26-92 to transfer funds from the fire code capital equipment budget to establish the budget for controlled assets for nine guns and three ballistic shields and to also increase the uniform accessories and safety equipment slash supply account. Mr. Pender.

Judge, commissioners, this year's budget, we currently had tasers allocated. We are not moving to the new taser like the sheriff's office. They went to the taser 10. We're going to keep and maintain our taser 7s. We currently have those. One of the things we wanted to do is, though, in next year's budget request, we did ask for additional guns. We are not able to fund those guns, all of them through that request. So we talked to the judge about relocating those assets this year. So that is what this is doing. This is establishing that we can now purchase those firearms. We will be trading in our current firearms to the vendor. We got a discount for that. This is putting us on the same platform that the sheriff's office is on. So we're going to reduce from the 40 back to the nine millimeter. The sheriff's office, the constables, everybody's on that. The uniform accessories is to allow for us to put the mags, the clips, the smaller accessories that we need to to carry those side arms and the holsters. So that's the reason for this. We're just reallocating this year's fund out of fire code.

Everyone knows budget amendments are my favorite thing. So I mean, I've had conversations with Mr. Pinder, but also some additional departments knowing how tight revenue and budget was going. that if they had additional money or things that were unspent and certain requests in 27's budget took priority to maybe come back and do exactly what we're talking about here, reallocate those necessities so we weren't increasing next year's requests and say, what do you absolutely need? Let's not wait on getting those things. Let's try to use that funding now. I think we've seen that in a few, may see it in a few other departments. They're not great big things, but

it does offset that need for additional future funding for next year but it's also critical to what the departments are doing right now and you also see the shields up there so that is a house bill requirement for a law enforcement agency to provide shields to law enforcement officers we are not currently able to provide one to every officer but this allows us to for us to get one in each office building and location so that they are utilized that we can have those we do have if you see the budget we have a couple extra shields in there for next year that's just to get us to the minimum requirements We have to start building up to that. So if I get a TCO audit, I can show that I do have a shield.

You're telling me fire departments are now morphing over to law enforcement? This is for fire marshal's office.

This is the fire code fund. This is not out of the general fund. You're thinking firefighter, right? Firefighter. This is not for firefighters. This is for myself, Mr. Lehman, Mr. Holton, Mr. Wilson, Ms. Valdez, Mr. Pulaski, and the folks who are commissioned through the fire marshal's office.

I was wondering how you're going to get it under the bunker gear. We're not carrying it under bunker gear.

MOTION TO APPROVE BUDGET AMENDMENT 2692 TO TRANSFER FUNDS FROM THE FIRE CODE CAPITAL EQUIPMENT BUDGET AND TO ESTABLISH THE BUDGET FOR CONTROLLED ASSETS FOR NINE GUNS AND THREE BALLISTIC SHIELDS AND TO ALSO INCREASE THE UNIFORM ACCESSORIES AND SAFETY EQUIPMENT SUPPLY ACCOUNT.

SECOND. DO WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND ON ACTION ITEM I. ANY OTHER COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? HEARING NO OTHER DISCUSSION, ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SAY AYE. AYE. OPPOSED, SAME SIGN. OPPOSED. We do have, that motion does pass four yeas and one nay, Commissioner Gurman. We're going to move to item J, the proposed salary, expenses, and other allowances of the elected county clerk for fiscal year 2026 through 2027 budget. Commissioner Wolverton.

Ms. Keel has been handling two jobs and it's been a little rough. We have money available, and we've been trying desperately to find someone qualified to take this over or at least help her. So I told her I would bring this and bring it to the court, have her explain what she's been doing, and she needs help. And I don't know. So it's here. Good afternoon, Skeel.

GOOD AFTERNOON. I WAS GOING TO SAY GOOD MORNING, BUT IT'S BEYOND MORNING. HONORABLE COURT MEMBERS, I'M ADDRESSING YOU TODAY REGARDING AN UNUSUAL SITUATION, A SITUATION I DON'T BELIEVE HAS BEEN COMPARED WITH ANYTHING IN THE PAST. I'M ASKING COMMISSIONER'S COURT TO RECOGNIZE THE EXTRAORDINARY TEMPORARY ASSIGNMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY TO THE COUNTY CLERK AND PROVIDE APPROPRIATE TEMPORARY COMPENSATION WHILE I CARRY THESE RESPONSIBILITIES IN ADDITION TO THE FULL DUTIES OF MY ELECTED OFFICE.

SLIDE ONE.

WHAT HAS CHANGED? THE DEPARTMENT EXPERIENCED A SIGNIFICANT LOSS OF INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE WHEN LONG-TERM LEADERSHIP CHANGED. REGARDLESS OF HOW THAT OCCURRED, THE RESULT IS NOW WE NEED TO REBUILD A DEPARTMENT WITH CROSS TRAINING AND REDUNDANCY. The remaining employees have demonstrated a willingness to work and learn, but the prior structure did not provide sufficient cross training and redundancy to ensure that critical functions could continue seamlessly when key employees were absent or departed. County clerk duties do not stop. The county clerk provides services throughout numerous departments. Those have to be completed. And I'm responsible for that department, many departments within the county clerk's office. Those have to continue. I delegate some of those duties, and a lot of them have to be delegated to keep services moving. It doesn't eliminate the work or my responsibility. Let's talk about the six months that changed the elections office. On December 5th, our longtime EA resigned. She went to work for the state. On March 14th, we hired a new EA. On April 21st, the assistant EA resigned. She went to work for the state also. On May 21st, the election coordinator position vacated. On election night, The EA resigned. On May 28, I began 10 to 11 hour days out at the elections office. The result was the loss of institutional knowledge that we've already talked about, and the vacancies created a leadership gap that needed to be filled immediately. The staffing problem is not a no employee problem. It's the vacant management positions. We have six full-time positions and three part-time positions. The management positions are talking about coordination, compliance, contracts, billing, oversight, voter registration, mapping, reporting, election planning, and most importantly, the leadership of all those appointed officials. I don't know how to go back.

Is there a keyboard there or not?

Back button.

Hang on. We have assistance coming. Here we go.

What the vacant positions were designed to do, and this is just a brief overview of the job descriptions received from HR. These are the positions that are empty, that are not being handled at this time. Well, I can't say that because I'm trying to handle them. What I'm doing now is creating election contracts, preparing cost estimates, ordering ballots, coordinating with the state, determining November requirements and deadlines, reconstructing nine elections that occurred from November to June 13th, reconstructing hours, determining historical ballot usage, overseeing the election's budget, reviewing procedures, cross-training employees. I could go on and on. They're not just management functions. I don't think I can go without recognizing the personal impact, physical exhaustion, mental strain, constant responsibility, and more. The work didn't disappear. It moved. It moved to the county clerk's office. The county clerk's office is absorbing the impact of the election's vacancy through the delegation and teamwork. I'm fortunate to have exceptional employees who have stepped up, but delegation does not eliminate the responsibility. Even the routine responsibilities have had to be redistributed. For example, Angie has taken over the county clerk duties of commissioner's court. She's also helping me with budget issues in the elections department. She's helping me with so many different opportunities to grow and learn some about another department. But she's being very helpful, as are my other employees. Let's talk about the nine elections that have not been billed for. They total approximately $175,000. They all occurred between December 13 and June 13. I've been trying to reconstruct those elections because records were not kept. the way they had been in the past. Once the leadership left, things fell apart. They weren't putting things in the proper order. They were not putting things in the proper folders. I've had to literally reconstruct. I'm still reconstructing those nine elections. These are only cost estimates that were sent out prior to the elections. I don't know if it's more or less. I'm going to say approximately 175,000 to 190,000. Let's talk about November 3rd, Election Day. It's not just one day. It begins earlier. Planning begins in June with clearing up voter rolls, and by September, ballot styles are created, programming, proofing, testing, ballot quantities are ordered, equipment, polling locations, and election worker preparation must all come together. Every one of those pieces must be done correctly. My responsibility right now is not to simply perform those tasks myself. It is to make sure the employees performing each piece understand what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how their work affects the next steps in the election process. And the need to devote enormous time to elections right now is imperative because November is approaching. The goal is to empower the employees with knowledge, cross training, documentation, accountability, and integrity, showing the connection between every task required. And my goal is not simply to survive November. It is to build a team that understands the entire election process and can conduct November 26 election with integrity, accuracy, accountability, and confidence.

The impact is real.

THE ISSUE OF SUSTAINABILITY. SINCE MAY 28TH I'VE BEEN PROVIDING THE INTERIM LEADERSHIP NECESSARY TO THE COUNTY'S ELECTION FUNCTION OPERATING. I'VE ACCEPTED THIS EXTRAORDINARY INTERIM RESPONSIBILITY THINKING IT WOULD BE SHORT LIVED. WE WOULD HIRE A NEW EA AND I WOULD GET THEM THROUGH THE ROUGH PATCH. HOWEVER THAT'S NOT THE CASE. WE RECEIVED OVER 130 APPLICATIONS. NONE WITH ELECTION EXPERIENCE. NONE THAT WERE WORTH CONTACTING. WHEN THE ELECTION COMMISSION MET, THE DUTIES FALL BACK TO THE COUNTY CLERK AND THE TAX ASSESSOR. THE TAX ASSESSOR LOOKED ACROSS AT ME AND SAID HA HA, NOT IT. HE LAUGHED. AND IT WAS FUNNY. BUT SERIOUSLY. I COULDN'T SAY NOT IT. The voters of Guadalupe County didn't say, not it. November wasn't going to say, not it. Somebody had to do something. So I stepped in. The request, because I'm performing this responsibility in addition to my full-time constitutional duties as county clerk, I'm asking for a temporary $35,000 election stipend. to be effective October 1 to continue only while the county clerk is performing these duties. I believe this request is modest because it's less than 15% of the combined salary auto allowance value of the three vacant positions. 35,000 is approximately 33.85% of my salary. But when you total the three positions that are vacant, it's not much. If I were working just 12.5 hours above the 40-hour week for 52 weeks, that's a $650, 50 additional hours. My ordinary equivalent hourly rate, that would be approximately $35,000. Elections work isn't simply extra hours. It's a higher level of management responsibility.

What success looks like.

The November 3rd election conducted accurately, lawfully, and securely. Ballot styles being programmed, proofed, and tested and documented with quality control. Empowered employees. Billing reconstructed. The county would have a sustainable plan for elections, and my commitment is to leave the elections office stronger and more knowledgeable, more cross-trained, and more resilient than it is today. Now that the Election Commission has chosen to place a pause on the application process for the EA, it requires me to continue in my role and dedicate more than 90 hours a week through November to complete this election. Yep, the job description specifically says, must be able to work long hours under stress during election cycles, including successive weeks of more than 90 hours each week in general elections. I said yes to doing what is right and necessary. I'm just asking the county and the commissioners to recognize and compensate what that yes requires. Thank you.

Judge, I've been talking to the staff over there in shirts, and they Reiterate exactly what she said. They were never trained or cross-trained. They were told to do this, this, and this, and that's all they were told. Their lives are our biggest problem, and it's not just what Ms. Perez was trying to correct all that, but the harassment that she undertook at that time, and she said it wasn't worth it. And the word on the street is don't come to Guadalupe County because they've got problems. I've called other counties around, finding their assistant would like to come over. They kind of chuckle and say, you've got to be kidding me. If you go and deal with those individuals, they don't want it. So I appreciate everything you're doing over the way there. I know it's not easy. But I don't know how we're going to find somebody competent enough to take over that position. I've contacted Ms. Perez numerous times. She was supposed to contact you over the weekend, and apparently she hasn't done it yet. She was willing to come down on Saturdays to help. But for, I guess, the last 10, 15, 20 years, I'm not sure, there hasn't been any, I guess, coordination through that to teach people underneath them to cross-train them. So it's just... And by losing three people, we've lost just about everything. Ms. Kiel's over that way working, and... I think more than money, she needs help as far as personnel that knows something about elections. I know it's your statutory duty because you're the clerk, but you haven't done elections ever.

No. 41 years ago, the county chose to put it into a full-time position, and I've been here 25. It's pretty close to 41, but no.

Any questions, comments?

I was curious about the specific statute section. I'm looking at it right here that says that they could be filled by the county clerk or the tax assessor collector. Mr. Tice, are you aware of what statute that is?

It is the statute related to the duties prior to an election administrator position being established by the commissioner's court.

The election code chapter 31 subchapter.

Let me pull that up.

So, Teresa, while they're looking, are you able to hire in your capacity, like, these open positions? Are you trying to fill them?

I can. My thought process before the Commission decided to put a pause on the application process was not to hire. Because the new EA would come in, and then if they didn't like who I'd hired, then somebody would have up and moved their family, et cetera, and it wouldn't have been fair to either the EA or the person hired. But now that we're going to stick with me doing the election until at least January, I feel like if somebody applies that has experience, I can hire them for the position of coordinator and possibly election, assistant election administrator. We're still looking for an administrator. Word on the street is don't go to Guadalupe County.

How many positions, I get the administrator, I just heard what you said, how many positions are you short under the administrator?

Two. Two? The top three positions of the office have been vacated.

Okay.

The top three positions were the positions that held all the knowledge.

And what are the chances of, I don't doubt what's being said about the administrator. What are the chances of hiring the next two down relatively quickly?

My understanding is that's what Mr. Engelke just asked me, and it's whether people with experience want to come to Guadalupe County to apply.

It's the same thing for the next two.

Commissioner Ott, answer your question. Under 31.043, the duties of the administrator generally shall perform the duties and functions of the voter registrar, duties and functions placed on the county clerk by this code. And then the next one, duty and functions placed on the county clerk by statute outside this code. And are you asking about the reversion back to the clerk?

Well, because all I'm seeing when I'm reading this statute so far, if I look at 31048, it talks about whose responsibility it is in the event that the position is abolished, but it's not talking about if the position just experiences a vacancy, which is what's applicable here. So it's saying that the county tax assessor is just the registrar, the voter registrar, and that the duties and functions of the county clerk... that were performed by the administrator revert back to the county clerk. But I just was curious if it was the same if the position was vacant versus abolished. I'm just not able to find a vacancy language specifically.

You can't find it because it doesn't exist.

I see.

I've done extensive research and spoken with TAC Legal on it. Okay. Well, I feel better now. Yes. And so what... I was advised is that it's not common, but what happens is normally the clerk will step in, volunteers step up and take on these responsibilities. In doing so, if that is ever challenged by suit in a district court, then the person filing suit would have to prove that because the county clerk took over these responsibilities, it had a negative impact and adversely changed the outcome of the election by the clerk taking on those duties. And so that would be the burden that would have to be met to have any consequence on the clerk running the elections.

OK, thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

Well, I do, yes. I mean, so I know we discussed this a little bit last session about... people that have been working two jobs. And I did inquire initially because, of course, I want to be open minded to things that are fair. But then I did inquire initially into whether or not people, elected people, or department heads that have previously worked two jobs or served in two positions have been compensated for that. And my understanding is that's not true. Now, I don't have the years on this court that other folks do. But I just want to see, can we talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, probably should be part of the conversation. I know everybody's going to have differing, you know, opinions, and there were different times. Every job is not exactly the same, but there are other, I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but I mean, there were a couple different departments that had vacancies where an elected official had to oversee a portion of or was the point of contact and oversaw or ran that department in the interim until an appointment was made. One of them was HR director with the treasurer. I know one that was currently going on was Mr. Holton with the fire chief. I'm trying to think of any others. Court members, help me out. Engineering.

engineering vacancy. I used to work for maintenance, mowing lawns, doing fixing things that are broken because Ricky couldn't get to it in time. I did two jobs at one time. I enjoyed that. That was kind of like therapy for me.

I mean, I've done it. I've done two jobs at one time as a prosecutor here. I mean, I know Mr. Holton has done that. For a while. I mean, I don't know how long, but just during my time, I would say like a year or more. I'm not sure how long Ms. Douglas did both because I wasn't here then. How long was that? I don't know the amount of time.

A few months. Was it the same? You told me over the phone it wasn't.

Mr. Brooks is doing two jobs right now.

So the challenge is state statute, right, county clerk? That's why you're in that position. And I need to speak closer. You want to go there? Yeah. And from my experience, I don't know if the judge or Ms. Klein has experienced this before in their years of service. This is a first on my end. But there's a lot of people who do a lot of extra work. But yours is a unique situation, but it's by state statute. You are over that where you are, from my understanding. So that's part of being the county clerk.

The statute allows the election administrator position to be created.

But then in that vacancy, though, or abolishment, then... You haven't abolished. The tax assessor? Well, there's no vacancy wording in the statute according to what Stephen said. So I guess what I'm saying is you're in that position because of the state, secretary of state, those laws put you in that position. So I made a comment, the state of Texas need to pay you extra. So... THIS IS A DIFFICULT ASK.

IT'S A DIFFICULT ASK ON MY PART. I DIDN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT THE MONEY TO BEGIN WITH. IT WASN'T UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION COMMISSION MET A SECOND TIME AFTER WE RECEIVED OVER 130 APPLICATIONS OF NOT QUALIFIED PEOPLE.

I UNDERSTAND.

I HAVE THE ELECTION LAW CALENDAR FOR NOVEMBER And I didn't count the pages, but it's about 10 pages. The election is not over until December 13. I'm going to be putting in over 90 hours a week just in elections. I can say not it. I can do just what the tax assessor did. Then is the election going to crumble? Is the county going to crumble? I can just oversee a department and hope that the girls and guys get it right out there.

One question. Didn't you get a quote from the state of Texas and some of the firm to come down?

I asked ES&S to come down and program the election for us. And that was going to be $26,000 to program the ballots. I asked them to teach us how to program the ballots, and it was going to be $12,000.

That's $38,000 already.

That's something that wasn't taught to any of the staff, because it was held by the three positions.

How did it get done in that there was that New Braunfels election or something? How did you get that done? Because the election administrator was gone already then.

It was done long before the election started. Oh, it was already done. The programming has to be done by September 10th. So it will be done in September. That programming for the June election was done in May. Or it was, I'm sorry, it was done in April.

Yeah. I got what you meant. It was already done.

And the programming, they were trying. They were doing their best. They had some challenges.

I wanted to ask a question. We had, on the last court, the elected officials' salary compensation. and it's required on our budget calendar with a timing. And then there's a posting and a publication that has to occur prior to finally setting those salaries of elected officials on September 1. What does that calendar look like if, because I mean we had requests initially this morning to reevaluate either longevity and or COLAs for all elected officials. Now we have this individual item for the county clerk What does our timeline shape up to be?

It has to be 10 days. It has to be posted in the newspaper 10 days prior to the date of the meeting, which would be if the Sagin Gazette is a Saturday-Sunday edition. And then if you use that Saturday as the calculation, it gives you 10 days for prior to commissioner's court on September 1. You have to have that 10-day notice. And then you have to adopt the salaries prior to adopting the budget.

I have that. Let me pull it back up.

While you're looking, Steven, so when we talked about the proposed tax rate, that's the ceiling on that rate, correct? And then when we were talking about the proposed published elected officials, that was also a ceiling. Is that correct?

So you would have to, if you were to make a change to this and create a new ceiling, You would have to set it, publish it, and then- 10 days prior to September 1st. Right, so it would have to be in by the August 23rd Saturday- Just clarifying. Weekend edition, correct.

Okay.

But we would not have sufficient time to put other elected officials on a future agenda to have the posting be in compliance to consider a COLA or longevity to reset those, correct? Because we don't have that on today. I mean, we wouldn't meet the posting deadline to talk about the other elected officials' compensation, correct?

Correct. You would have to set another meeting, which would have to be a three-day

notice and if you get full three days notice from today that's saturday i know we're talking about two different things here i just want everybody to be on the same page as far as the timing um because if there's this idea that ALL THE ELECTED OFFICIALS WILL BE CONSIDERED AGAIN FOR EITHER COLA, ADDITIONAL LONGEVITY, ALL THOSE THINGS. I THINK IT'S CHALLENGING WITH THE TIMELINE AND THE POSTING REQUIREMENTS BECAUSE THIS IS ON THE AGENDA AS ONLY THE COUNTY CLERK.

ANY OTHER DISCUSSION? I'M NOT HEARING ANY ALMOMENT PROPOSAL THAT WE INCREASE THE SALARY AND EXPENSES OF THE ELECTED COUNTY CLERK. to the fiscal year 26-27 by $35,000.

We do have a motion. Is there a second?

I thought we were debating how we could do that at the moment. I'll second it.

Okay, we do have a motion and a second. Additional comments?

Yes. So I have talked to the taxes as a collector, and he has said that he does not recall saying not it and has been willing to help. So I don't know where the miscommunication here is occurring, but if you've got someone that is saying that, then I think that might need to be explored. If that's not... He's not said no. Obviously, I wasn't present for those conversations, but that is what I'm hearing. I also am having a hard time supporting this when we've had other individuals sitting in this room right now, department heads that have worked more than one job more than one department head job, three of them sitting here, Ms. Douglas, Mr. Holton, and Mr. Brooks that have done more than one job for months and we have not compensated them. I don't know how we pick and choose who gets additional money for working a second job. I don't see how that's fair.

I think you need to take into consideration the duties. It's not just overseeing what other people have been asked to do. Other people that have done it have done it with a full staff, or mostly full staff. You're talking about the top three positions at the elections office that are missing. Knowledge, institutional knowledge is missing.

If the tax assessor says he's willing to help, I think that there might need to be a conversation about that.

The tax assessor said he was willing to help. He's not willing to be the voter registrar. He's not willing to what? And that's what the duties fall back to the county clerk. The county clerk handles elections. The tax assessor handles the voter registration duties. And that's when he said, not it. I'll help you. I'll be glad to help you. I'll support you in all ways. Do you remember this conversation?

I remember the conversation. Like you said, it was in a joking manner, but I think it's fair to say everybody looked towards the county clerk and was kind of like, I think you're the one that is going to have to be the one to do this, right? I think Mr. John did offer to assist, like you're saying, but it wasn't, I didn't get the sense like there was a let me jump in and take half of this or a portion of this. It was like a, I'll help if you need me to, but you got it, let me know kind of thing. That's how I took the meeting. Like you said, there was humor in the comment, but I think it's fair to say everybody on the commission, including myself, looked and said, okay, I know I can't do it. Who's going to do this?

How are we going to make something like this fair going forward if we approve this and in the future we have department heads that are covering other department heads' work? I mean, I don't If there's an expectation that people are going to step in and just do it, I don't think it's fair.

That's the hardest part about these conversations because Ms. Keel's taken on a tremendous amount of additional work that I don't think is exactly the same as other situations. But I don't think it's fair to say that other people didn't have to work at all when they had additional responsibility either. And I know nobody's saying that. I'm just saying every one of these is... is not the same. And that's what, to your point, is going to make it very challenging to have individual conversations. Because then you go, OK, based on our opinion for five people, how difficult is this going to be? How hard is that going to be? Who's the individual? What's the situation? It just gets really messy in all cases. The other part I wanted to consider, and I'm not picking, I'm just asking here. When we look at an individual, let's say we have an average department that is really busy, that has a 60-hour work week, right, during a busy season where there's extra time and take-home stuff and all that. If that person has to take on more stuff, they're adding to that work week, right? In your situation, I know you didn't get to just drop all of the county clerk responsibilities. That doesn't go away. But you also have really good staff that is helping back fill, and you have Angie and others that are doing that. So from what I've seen is complete commitment by you to focus a lot of your energy on elections. Again, you don't get to just drop it and say, I'm not the county clerk anymore, but you've got great staff helping do that. So, I mean, is it fair to say you've been able to off-put some of the county clerk duties on the staff while you focus a lot of time at elections? I mean, that's the other part of it where it's like, yes, we're taking on two things, but we're also, we're only individuals that can only do so much, right? So it's like, I'm trying to think from all sides and go, if somebody wasn't in favor of this, could they argue the fact that you were really, really busy as county clerk before, and now you're really, really busy as the elections person interim. You're still putting in a bunch of time. but you're not doing 100% of both jobs at the same time because you're physically incapable of doing that. Anybody would be, right? So I'm just trying to think of all these things because, like commissioners are saying, it's like how do we handle this going forward if there is a similar situation? To what amount? Is it only based on those open positions, the amount of hours, the time, the expectation? I mean, it's a challenge for sure. Any other thoughts?

I think comparing the value of one job to another is not fair. I think that everyone's job that is in here is important. There's ebbs and flows in the HR department. There's ebbs and flows in the treasurer's department, depending on the time of year, things they have to deal with. You have Mr. Holton, who was doing emergency management, and the fire chief. I mean, you can't even predict when those ebbs and flows will be because they're based on... They're based on emergencies. Mr. Brooks can't predict the busy season because a lot of times things happen with roads, bridges, transportation safety, ingress and egress where he can't predict that. I mean, I just, I don't, I'm not, I'm not against compensating people if they're working more than one job. That's not it. But if you, if you have three other people in this room that have done this and we have not compensated them, like I don't see how we can say that's fair. I don't, I don't see how we can ask for it.

One moment.

I don't think that we can say just because these people are doing certain jobs that that's not worth as much. And if they did that job and did that work and just got it done until the situation got resolved, I don't know how we say, well, you should have said something. We could have given you money. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to diminish the work that's being done by the county clerk at all. I am not. I just, I am not seeing how it's fair to the other individuals in this room that have put in time and effort. And quite frankly, I do not like the disparagement of the tax assessor being part of this conversation. He's not here to defend himself, and I don't like that.

It was said in jest to show you what he said. It even shows a ha-ha on the slide.

Judge, someone called the question. We have a motion and a second. We need to get this resolved.

We do have a motion and a second. The question has been called. Hearing no other discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign? Opposed. Motion does fail. Two yays, three nays.

Can I make a statement?

Yes, ma'am.

I wasn't asking for the full $35,000. If you had listened to me during the presentation, I'm only asking for October through the months that I'm going to be handling the extra duties. So break that down to a monthly figure and figure it out.

I think I understood that. I mean, when you were bringing that up.

That's not what the motion was.

But it would be based on a yearly deal where if that continued on, you would receive the entire $35,000. If it was only for a short period of time, it's prorated as a, it wouldn't be like a one-time payment. That's the way I understood it. Like if you kept those duties for the entire year, you would have received the entire amount. If it was only for two or three months, it would have been a portion of that based on the additional pay. Thank you.

Good luck.

All right. We're going to move to item K, which is the capital projects fund bill list. Move to approve capital projects fund bill list. There's a motion. Is there a second?

Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve item K. Any other discussion? Hearing no other comments or questions, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign.

Hearing no opposition, that motion passes.

We will move to item seven, announcement of upcoming Guadalupe County public events.

Any announcements?

All right. We do not have court scheduled for next week. Our next regularly scheduled commissioner's court will be September the 1st. We will have our public hearing and agenda items revolving the tax rate. APPROVING AND ADOPTING THE BUDGET. THE PROPOSED BUDGET HAS BEEN FILED AND WE JUST VOTED TO RECORD THAT PROPOSED BUDGET. IT IS AVAILABLE ON THE COUNTY WEBSITE. JUST WANTED TO PUT THAT OUT THERE. ANY OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS, COURT MEMBERS? All right, then we'll move to item eight under executive session. Item A pursuant to section 551.071, consultation with governing body's attorney to deliberate pending or contemplate a litigation, a settlement offer in matters concerning privilege and unprivileged client information deemed confidential by rule 1.05 of the Texas disciplinary rules of professional conduct. Item B, presented in Section 551.087, to discuss or deliberate regarding commercial or financial information the governmental body has received from a business prospect that the governmental body seeks to have locate, stay, or expand in or near the territory of the governmental body and with which the governmental body is conducting economic development negotiations. And item C, following the notice of retirement from Dr. Teresa Sausage and pursuant to Section 551.074, personnel matters to deliberate the appointment, employment, and duties of a public officer or employee to wit Director of Human Resources. We will recess from this regular session of Commissioner's Court and enter closed session at 1.26 p.m. Where are we going?

Downstairs.

Oh, it's going to be a big one.

Recording in progress. All right, coming back from executive session, we'll reconvene this regular session of Commissioner's Court at 2.51 p.m. We did go into talk under three individual items. The first was Section 551.071, consultation with the attorney regarding pending or threatened litigation. Are there any comments, discussion, or potential motions to consider?

Oh, sure.

Is Mr. Tyas back?

Nope.

Give me just, I apologize, one second.

I will grab him.

I apologize for stepping out.

I didn't realize General Counsel wasn't back in. GOING TO EXECUTIVE SESSION UNDER THE FIRST ITEM, WHICH WAS CONSULTATION WITH GOVERNING BODIES ATTORNEY TO DELIBERATE PENDING OR CONTEMPLATE THE LITIGATION. ANY DISCUSSION ITEMS OR POTENTIAL MOTIONS TO CONSIDER ON THAT ITEM?

Yes, Judge. I move that Guadalupe County retain the law firm of Michael, Best, and Friedrich LLP as legal counsel in cause number 26-2397CV-C in the 25th Judicial District Court and authorize the county attorney to sign the engagement agreement. Second.

We have a motion and a second on Executive Session Item A. Any other discussion? Hearing no other comments or questions, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing no opposition, that motion passes. Anything else under item A? All right, we'll move to item B, presented in section 551.078. Went in to talk about economic development projects and negotiations. Any comments, questions, or potential motions to consider under item B? No. No.

No, sir.

With no discussion on item B, we'll move to item C. And that was regarding the retirement of Dr. Teresa Sawsedge, our HR director. I know we did speak about that position, how we wanted to move forward. I will reach out to Dr. T and to talk about the potential job posting details and just how things are going with the office. And if it's all right with the court, we'll plan on maybe putting something on September 1st to consider if we would be ready to either look at an interim HR director and or give an update on the job posting at that point. Is that okay? Anything else on that item? No. All right, we'll take no action on item C, and we'll move to item 9. Is there a motion to adjourn? Move to adjourn. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? We are adjourned at 2.55 p.m.