Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

A very good morning to you all. I would like to call this meeting to order. This morning's invocation will be led by our very own Pastor Darius Todd. If you will please all rise.

Let us bow. Heavenly Father, thank you for another day that you've made. We honor you and we thank you in advance, Lord, for all that you shall help us to transpire and allow us to visit and view today. I pray, Lord, that you would give us this opportunity to lead and to serve those who have critical needs in this county. We pray now that you would give us wisdom, that you would help us to hear the real needs, and then also to see what we may do to affect them positively. Thank you for the wisdom and the grace to serve. We thank you, Father, for this. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

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, Under the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state, under God, one and indivisible.

Will you please call the roll?

Commissioner Inglesby? Here. Commissioner Cohen? Here. Commissioner Hammer? Here. Commissioner Smith? Here. Judge Becerra?

Here. Do we have anyone sign up for public comments? One public comment and one email.

Okay.

Okay.

And if you'll call them one by one and you'll each have three minutes when the timer goes off. You don't have to stop mid-sentence, but don't finish your thoughts, just finish your sentence.

Jeff Thompson.

Good morning, Judge. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Jeff Thompson, representing the Quarter Interfaith Alliance for Families, and also Capital Idea. I understand that today's consideration is the Hays County budget. That's at least one of the things on the agenda, and that begins today. Now that's always a stressful time for you as commissioners and judge and also for staff, county staff. You've been asking yourselves, how do we divide up the available funds equitably so that they serve all the residents of Hays County? How do you pay county employees what they're worth so that they don't have to go elsewhere to make a living wage? How do you fund the infrastructure that's needed in this fast-growing county? How do you address things like affordable housing, health care needs, and transportation needs? There's a lot of pressure on you. Pressure that sometimes, unfortunately, takes the form of personal attacks on commissioners and judge. But I want to remind you as you walk into this budget season that They're not just pressures for you, but the same pressures that people feel on a micro level. How do they feed their kids when groceries become more and more expensive? With limited funds, how do they pay for medicine that they need to stay healthy or pay for their electric bill or their other utilities? We at Corridor Interfaith Alliance for Families and capital idea, are here in the county working together with others to address those pressures and work with you to ease those pressures. As the budget process starts today, it's now in your hands to make the decisions that are more equitable for all of us Hays County residents. I ask you when you make decisions to make the votes that will help those most vulnerable, and our hardworking neighbors that are feeling so many pressures. May God bless you in this process and the months ahead. May God give you clear minds and warm hearts. Amen. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.

Kenneth Medina Cypress.

Hello judge and hello commission. Good morning. Good morning. Everybody's feeling good. Uh, I just want to say, well, my name is Kenneth Medina ciphers. I am 27 years old and I just want to talk about what mental health court has done for me. You can say my past life has been like a firecracker, no adolescent, not knowing anything, just popping off for no reason. And then when I was living here and, San Marcos, I heard about Mental Health Court. They helped me to figure out what was wrong with me with unlimited resources and a lot of time and effort, days in, day out. They helped me from seeing what's going on in my head and in my life and why I make certain decisions. And they helped me to figure out what sobriety is. Nobody taught me that, and they did. And they taught me about relationships, how much it's, how important it is. Ever since then, I became a stronger father, better understanding of life choices, and accountability. These people have helped me through a lot. I am from a broken family. All they taught me was aggression. But mental health court just sat there, talked to me with therapy, medication, and doctors. and a lot more when I didn't have transportation. They helped me. As of today, they even helped me get here. They're so amazing that I do wish a lot more people knew about it. I had done Mattel Accord one time in San Antonio. That was a little rough, but here, they did something very magical that I didn't see coming. I sat there, applied myself, and they applied their self too. When I say that I didn't understand anything about life, They broke it down, like really down to understand why it's so important to be comfortable who you are, but also there's a better life than just choosing to do what this generation is doing now. I see myself as a role model to other people. They call me to understand what they're going through and share their stories with me. So they share their stories too in mental health court. Why it's so important to be strong and not to give in to, you know, you know, drugs and like violence, there's some better life. And that's what they did. And I, and I was, and I'm still here with them. They need anything I'm willing to help because they changed my life. Like I said, I'm a father, a six year old, and she loves me to this day because they helped me. Everybody else gave up on me. When I say everyone, I mean my family, but they taught me why family is so important. And I fixed those relationships. And I still consider them my family, too, because they're very strong and have a lot of good resources. Thank you. Well done.

Thank you.

Alex Joyner.

My name is Alex Joiner. I'm a criminal defense attorney here in San Marcos. And obviously, I have no personal connection to mental health court. I've just had a lot of my clients go through the process. So I'm kind of here to talk about what I've seen. Ultimately, what I've seen throughout the process is that every single client who starts the process is hesitant because there's always some sort of stigma whenever mental health is associated with the program. However, every single client, once they start the program, they go to the very first meeting, they meet the staff, and they start learning more about the program, realize that this is something that might actually be beneficial. The big things that tend to get through to my clients are, number one, all the staff is very knowledgeable, they're understanding, and they're willing to sit there and actually listen to them with all their challenges. Because every single client has something that's unique, whether that's medication, whether they need housing, whether they need employment. And what mental health court does is they actually listen to this unique challenges of those particular individuals and they connect them to the resources in the community that can actually provide support. Sometimes those support networks are pretty easy and it's just a phone call. Sometimes it's about being able navigate the challenges of the governmental process because, unfortunately, there's just a lot of things that have to be filled out, a lot of different places that have to be connected to. And Mental Health Court has done a fantastic job of navigating those connections for our clients. Now, ultimately, this has made a big difference in my clients' lives. As a defense attorney, I've received a lot of very good outcomes for my clients. But I can say over the years, I've never had a client reach out solely to thank me because of the outcome. They'll thank me. They'll reach out. It's always because they need something different. And when they reach out for something different, they'll thank me. Mental health court's different. This is a program that not only involves probation, But it also involves something additional, the mental health court process. So not only are they going through a tougher program, but almost universally, once they complete the program, they reach out and they thank me because of the difference that it made in their lives. Something I've never seen through any other client or group of clients or programs. Finally, I genuinely believe that this is a fantastic program for the community. Ultimately, through all these type of programs, what we are looking for is a way to be able to decrease crime. And we're dealing with a group that frequently reoffends. To date, I've only had one client ever reoffend. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Brie Black.

Good morning to the court. My name is Bree Black. I am the founder of the Get Support Together Foundation. I am a Dripping Springs resident. Thank you for allowing us to be here today to speak on behalf of the Mental Health Court. My organization has a very unique system to align people searching for mental health support with the right type of support upon the continuum. And what I want to talk about is that continuum and how it impacts our community here in Texas. We had a family situation that ended up leading to the desire to create this website. And the reason behind it is this one belief. If you invest in an individual, you empower a community. In our personal experience, with the mental health crisis and there was not the mental health court to assist us through the situation, we could have four or five police vehicles in our driveway, lights flashing, lots of issues, and it wasn't just our family that was impacted, it was our neighbors, it was our neighborhood. We would hear from people after a mental health crisis, we didn't sleep that night, I was stressed and I was edgy with my children the next morning, we were worried about you, we didn't know what was going on. When people that are involved in the mental health court are brought in, you are empowering their community, not just them. The work that is done by the people that work in Judge Brown's courts, a lot of people here will speak to their personal experience. I can speak to the community. I work with health departments all over the state. I work with nonprofits who are envious about what we have here. We are changing our communities. by the investment that this court is making in the individuals who are going through the process. And I want to thank you guys for establishing the funds to bring us the mental health court in the first place. Hayes County is leading the charge. There are counties who are so envious of us. And I'm going to ask you guys to support the next step because every step you're doing is making our county a better place to live. Thank you.

Thank you.

Guadalupe Conde.

Good morning, Judge and Commissioners. It's an honor to be here before you all. My name is Guadalupe Conde. And I'm here speaking on behalf of the mental health program. I have a grandson that was incarcerated for almost a year here in Hays County because there was no room in any of the facilities for him to be sent to. And I know there were other patients as well. And last year, I read in the community flyer that comes out every month that the judge approved this program. And I thought to myself, I hope it really, if Cesar can be a part of it. My grandson's son is Cesar Martinez. He's 28 years old. He suffers from schizophrenia. And then when the DA's office offered this, that it was approved by y'all, It really got me excited because my grandson, he's really good, but he suffers from schizophrenia. His dad really never, his other grandparents were never there. His mom was too busy living life. And my husband and I, I'm 70 years old, my husband's 76, and he was always helping us out financially and with tasks at home. But when he wouldn't take his medication, that was the issue. And I knocked at every door and tried to get help before he was arrested because I called to get him arrested because I was told, contact Judge Smith. And she'll, you know, do an order for him to be committed. They would tell me, no, call the sheriff's office. And I knocked on a lot of doors, even at this church that have a mental health program. And they spoke to me real great, but never got back with me. And I tried and I tried. I called the facilities unless, because he's over 18, unless he signs for himself, admits himself. I'm sorry, we can't help you. And it just broke my heart, because at that time, he thought he was well. And I've had him since he was 18, when his mom graduated high school. He was going to ACC. But a friend gave him some lace marijuana, and that's what kicked off his schizophrenia. But he's always been a good kid. He never really got in trouble. But this past year, it was just overwhelming. And he said, you're the one who's having problems, not me. equated that to him having not taken his meds, but he was vaping because he didn't do anything else. And he was living with my husband and I. He never went out. He would go to the gym. But this is, they did a lot for me. And I'm happy where he's at right now. And I'm sorry I went over the time. Thank you so much.

Worthy message. Thank you very much for taking the time. Most grateful. Thank you.

Bubba Norton.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioners. I'm not as smart as my friend Kenny back there. I'm going to have to read this. I'm glad I don't have to follow him as well. My name is Bubba Norton. I'm a founder of Better Boat Recovery Services. We are honored to partner with the Hayes County Mental Health Corps by providing recovery support services to participants who are working to rebuild their lives. Every day I have the privilege of walking alongside men and women facing mental health challenges, substance use disorders, and consequences that often come with them. What I've learned is that recovery is nearly the result of one person or one agency. It requires collaboration, It takes the court, probation officers, treatment providers, peer support specialists, community organizations, families, dedicated professionals all working together towards a common goal. I've seen participants who once lived in crisis begin showing up for appointments, taking their medications, maintaining sobriety, reconnecting with their families, finding employment, and becoming responsible members of our community. Those changes just don't affect the individual. They strengthen families, improve public safety, reduce the burden on our emergency services and justice system, and make Hays County a healthier place to live. What makes the mental health court unique is that it combines accountability with compassion. Participants are expected to do the work. but they're also giving structure, encouragement, and support as needed. That combination changes lives. I'd like to close with something personal. 17 years ago, I wasn't standing here before you as a community partner. I was the person that needed help. I was arrested here in Hays County for felony possession of a controlled substance. At that time, I couldn't imagine a future that looked any different from my past. But Hays County invested in treatment instead of giving up on me like everybody else did. I attended the outpatient services available through this county, and those services became a part of the foundation upon which I built my recovery. Today, I'm 17 years sober. Today, I own a recovery service organization that helps people enter treatment, supports individuals in recovery, and proudly partners with this very court to help others rebuild their lives. Every person who walks into a mental health court has the potential to become someone's employee, someone's parent, someone's neighbor, someone's volunteer, or someday somebody standing at this podium asking you to give another person the same chance they were given. I know because I am that person. Thank you for believing that accountability and second chances can exist together. Thank you for your continued support of the Hays County Mental Health Court. Thank you, sir. Well done.

Lindsay Hilliard.

I get nervous speaking. Sorry. Good morning, Judge, Commissioners, and distinguished members of the court. My name is Lindsay Hilliard. I'm a recovery coach with A Better Boat, where I have the privilege of supporting participants in the Hays County Mental Health Court through the county's partnership and funding of our services. Before I ever had the opportunity to help others, I was a participant in drug court in San Antonio. My sobriety date is September 16, 2020. That day marked the beginning of a completely different life for me. Because of a program that believed in accountability, treatment, and second chances, I was able to rebuild my life. Today I have the privilege of giving back and walking alongside others as they begin their own recovery journeys. Through my work with A Better Boat, I see firsthand the impact that Hays County Mental Health Court has on people's lives. I see individuals who once felt hopeless begin to believe in themselves again. I see people reconnect with their families, maintain employment, engage in treatment, and take meaningful steps towards lasting recovery. I stand before you with a perspective that few people have. I have experienced these programs from both sides, first as a participant and now as someone who has the privilege of supporting participants through the partnership. From both perspectives, I can tell you that these programs work. Recovery isn't just about staying sober and managing mental health. It's about restoring families, creating safer communities, reducing repeat involvement with the justice system, and giving people the opportunity to become productive, contributing members of society. I am living proof that when someone is given the right support, accountability, and opportunity, their entire future can change. My life today is something I never imagined possible. On September 16, 2020, I respectfully ask that you continue supporting the Hays County Mental Health Court and community partnerships that make this work possible. Your investment changes lives, not just for the participants, but for the families and for our entire community. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, we're just getting all these home runs up here. What a wonderful morning.

Who else?

Amanda Irwin.

Good morning, Judge Becerra and commissioners. Some of you know me. My name is Amanda Irwin. I am a local criminal defense attorney, and I'm also a longtime resident of Hays County. I am currently on the shy board and I was actually elected to serve on this court's first ever criminal justice commission as the representative of the Hays County Bar Association. I have been practicing criminal law for 20 years, first as a prosecutor, and since 2011, representing citizens accused. And I can tell you that in both of these roles, the mental health has been a black hole in our criminal justice. I have seen indigent defendants languishing in the Hays County jail instead of getting the help that they need and the help that they deserve. That is until the Hays County Mental Health Court has existed. And I have seen many of my clients succeed. And because of that, I am now serving as one of the defense attorneys that assists the mental health court on their team. And I can tell you that this program really works. It makes an invaluable difference in my clients' lives, in the lives of their families and their neighbors. I also know that this court is fully aware of the importance of mental health court. Just last week, I took the survey for the Comprehensive Planning Commission, And I saw that mental health was an issue that was frequently brought up on that survey because I know this court understands the impact that it has on our communities. The program works and it's saving the county money. As Benjamin Franklin once said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And I'm respectfully urging, imploring this court to give this program the funding that it needs to continue helping the lives of so many in our community. Thank you.

Well done. Thank you very much.

Chris Villarreal.

Good morning, Judge and Commissioners. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is J. Chris Villarreal, and I serve as one of the defense attorneys for Hays County Mental Health Board. Our country is facing a mental health crisis, and Hays County is not immune to that. Every day, individuals who need treatment enter our criminal justice system because they have nowhere else to turn. For many, for too many, jail has become the default response to mental illness. In my role, I have an opportunity to see these individuals as more than defendants. I know their stories. I meet their families. I witness their struggles firsthand. The people we serve are our neighbors. They're veterans. Parents, sons and daughters, and hardworking members of Hays County who fall upon difficult times. They are not defined by the worst days of their life. They simply need the opportunity to get back on their feet. Without mental health court, many would remain trapped in a cycle of incarceration where their mental health continues to deteriorate. Jails are not treatment facilities. and punishment cannot treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, or PTSD. Treatment can, accountability can, and hope can. That is exactly what Mental Health Corps provides. I watch participants go from homelessness to stable housing, from employment to meaningful work, and from broken relationships to reunited families. I've seen people who believe their lives were over graduate our program with confidence, purpose, and hope for the future. Those moments remind me that recovery is possible when people are given the support they need. The successes reach far beyond the individual in this program. They strengthen the families. They improve public safety, reduce recidivism, and return productive taxpaying citizens to Hayes County. Every dollar invested in mental health court saves taxpayers money by reducing the incarceration, the need for emergency services, and the ongoing crisis interventions that happen every day in this community. It is not only just a compassionate choice to save mental health court, it's a fiscally responsible one. Mental health court represents what can happen when people choose treatment over a revolving door of incarceration. It gives people the structure, resources, and support they need to rebuild their lives and become stronger members of the community. As Hays County continues to grow, the need for mental health services will continue to grow with it. We should not be asking how to simply sustain mental health court. We should be asking how to expand it so that every eligible individual gets the support they need. Today, I respectfully ask you to invest in the future of Hays County and invest in mental health court. The return on that investment is not measured only in the dollars saved, but the lives restored, the families reunited, and a healthier, safer Hays County. Thank you all.

Thank you. And the last one in person.

Forrest Blackwelder Baggett?

That's correct.

Good morning. Good morning, Judge Becerra, Commissioners Cohen, Inglesby, as well as Smith, Hammer. I just wanted to tell you that I've been with the Mental Health Court since its inception a little under four years ago. I serve as a staff attorney or a defense attorney on the court, and I've seen it grow. from this tiny little thing with two participants to a thriving court full of support, full of the type of what we call recovery capital needed to give these people a continuum of care that ensures they don't reoffend, that they don't have some increase in recidivism. I would like to implore you to all consider any and all grant funding requested on behalf of this court. It's changing lives, and the ripple effect is very, very resounding. I've seen families completely reunite. I've seen people that came into the court without a Social Security card, without a driver's license, without a house, without a roof over their head, and walked out with jobs and apartments with credentials with their heads held high. This is the type of pro-social, beneficial program that this county very desperately needs to continue to support. I think that everything you've done this far is something that I and I know the participants and their families are eternally grateful for. But I do further implore you to consider the grant funding at issue and any other future proposals that may come across your desks. With that said, Brevity is the soul of wit, so I'll try to copy Shakespeare and be done. Thank you. Well done. Thank you very much.

And you're one written.

This comes from Marlene Jackson in Kyle, Texas. Good morning, judges and commissioners. My name is Marlene Jackson, and I am the director of Lighthouse Landing LLC. a supportive housing program that partners with the Assistant Outpatient Treatment Program and Mental Health Court. I respectfully ask for your support of continued funding for temporary housing for AOT participants. At Lighthouse Landing, we have seen firsthand that stable housing is one of the most important factors in recovery. Many individuals referred to us come directly from the Hays County Jail with no income, limited support, and nowhere safe to go. While they are waiting for SSI or SSDI benefits, working toward independence, supporting housing provides the stability they need to remain engaged in treatment, take their medications, attend appointments, and rebuild their lives. Our role goes beyond providing a place to live. We provide a safe, structured environment where residents receive encouragement, accountability, and support as they transition back into the community. We work closely with the AOT team, mental health court, and case managers to help individuals achieve lasting stability. Continued funding for temporary housing is an investment in recovery, public safety, and our community. Thank you for your continued support of the AOT program and mental health court and for considering this important funding request. Warm regards.

Beautifully done. Thank you very much. That concludes our public comments portion. And I'll give you a quick rundown of how our day will unfold. I have been asked not to open a six. We are not ready for that one, just as a heads up. I've been asked to open M3 out of executive session before we go into executive session. so we can have some public conversation about it. We will have a workshop at 1 o'clock. That's firm, give or take a few minutes. We won't move it up. And do the commissioners have any requests? Chief, agenda item for you? We're good. I'll do elections, and I'll do some other key items other than that. We're good? Okay. Let's open. Where are you? There it is. K1 and 2.

K1, discussion possible action to approve the early voting election day schedule and locations for the November 3rd, 2026 election. general election, and the payment of facility fees in the amount of $3,950 and authorize a waiver to the purchasing policy of obtaining three quotes for the Sunfield location. K2, discussion and possible action to appoint presiding judges, early voting ballot board, and central counting stations recommendations for the November 3rd, 2026 general election. So moved. Second.

All right. If you'll state your name and title for the viewing public. Absolutely. My name is Benjamin Kleiber. I'm the Elections Administrative Specialist. Sorry, it's a new title. Getting used to it. At the Hayes County Elections Department. We have two items to present here. The first one is the list of locations. This list is both an album of previous entities before, as well as a result of the election board meeting on the 23rd of July. There is one... Noticeable difference that you'll see from this one and previous ones. We have a new location It is the fire station number four that will be serving the folk in the Uland area the reason for the change on this one is that that fire station is a little bit larger and Helps us get more machines in there helps us kind of direct the flow a little bit better and better serve the community in general Another noticeable change is going to be the first week of early voting. You'll notice that it's now going to be from 9 to 7 p.m. That's in response to comments that we've received from the community. It allows people to have more time after work, after 5 p.m., to be able to get to the polling location in order to cast their ballot. And then for item K2, we do have That list of alternate and presiding judges, that was handed to us by the parties during that ballot board meeting on the 23rd of July. Open to any questions or anything else? Thank you.

Thank you for encapsulating. I serve on that ballot board, and you've captured the spirit of those meetings. Thank you very much. Commissioners, any questions or comments?

No, just comments. I really appreciate the extended hours to 7 o'clock. I'm sure people are really appreciative of that. And then the fire station, number 4. What did that replace? Which fire station were you all using prior to that or location?

That was another Ulam location, and I apologize for not having the name of that location. It wasn't a fire station before. I can't remember the exact one at the moment.

I can look at it before. ISD? ISD, thank you. My apologies on that one. And it's so far out, too. I mean, this is a better location. Thank you. Yeah, great job.

And as far as that fire station, the parking is... IS IT ENOUGH? BECAUSE I JUST REMEMBER IT BEING JUST KIND OF SMALL.

THAT IS A VERY GOOD QUESTION. ABOUT THE PARKING IN PARTICULAR, I DON'T HAVE THE NUMBERS FOR YOU. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE CAN LOOK INTO AND GET BACK TO YOU IF YOU'D LIKE ON THAT ONE.

I KNOW THAT THERE WAS A FIELD, YOU KNOW, WHEN THEY HAD THE GRANT OPENING. I DON'T KNOW HOW RELIABLE THAT IS OR, YOU KNOW, BUT ANYWAY. Hopefully it'll work out.

Yeah, no, it's a great question. We can look into it and see what's going on.

And maybe we can just simply ask Aaron in transportation to help us with maybe creating some cones and some markings to facilitate and maximize access. That's a really good point. Commissioners on this side? All good? Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hammer. Yes. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. Thank you very much. And let's get through these things in a tidy manner. Let's open, I move that we open all consent agenda items.

Second.

Any questions or comments on any of them?

Just one question on, I know we're having the budget workshop later, but do we have a presentation prior to that, a presentation?

Since it's on the agenda.

Which one?

Usually the budget workshop will have it as an opener.

I was just wondering since it was on the agenda. Yeah. We had a separate item, so it's fine.

Anything else, commissioners, on any agenda? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith? Yes. Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. Let's keep moving to Rose. Aye. One, please.

I, one, hold a public hearing to establish a no parking zone along Mesa Verde Drive within Belterra subdivision.

I am opening this agenda item for a public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak for or against this agenda item, please approach the podium. I see no movement. I will close the public hearing. All right, so Commissioner Smith?

Sure. This is actually being done in response to a request from the Belterra subdivision itself and the Water Supply Improvement District there, or the Water Control Improvement District.

Aaron may have some clarifying statements, but... Aaron Jones, Transportation Director. No, that's, the commissioner's correct. It's actually a request. They're building a park on that roadway, and they're going to be putting a crosswalk there in that location and just requested that there be a no parking zone where that park is going to be placed.

Good. Sounds good. Makes sense. Any other questions or comments, commissioners? Please call.

Is there a motion? Yes.

There is a motion. Did you track a motion? Okay. So moved, Commissioner Smith? I'll second. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. And I was most recently asked to pull K-5 for anybody viewing what's going on in our agenda. So please open I-2.

I-2, Discussion and Possible Action to Release the Performance Bond No. 1005. 1130663 and the amount of $1,045,394 and consider the acceptance of road construction and surface drainage improvements for Driftwood Golf and Ranch Club Phase 2 to be privately maintained.

So moved.

Second.

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Judge Becerra?

Yes. I three.

I3, discussion and possible action to authorize execution of standard utility agreement supplemental number one between Hayes County and Blue Bond Electric Cooperative, Inc. for the old Bastrop Highway project in Precinct 1 and amend the budget accordingly. Second.

Anything, Commissioner?

It's just an increase in cost of labor and materials and I guess some redesign of easements.

Thank you. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. I-4.

I-4. Discussion and possible action to authorize the execution of a contract for Engineering Services PSA-2026-84 between Hayes County and Serving and Mapping SAM LLC. TO PROVIDE UTILITY COORDINATION SERVICES FOR HIGH ROAD PROJECT IN PRECINCT ONE AND AMEND THE BUDGET ACCORDINGLY. SO MOVED. SECOND.

PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

COMMISSIONER COHEN. YES. COMMISSIONER SMITH. YES. COMMISSIONER INGLESBY. YES. COMMISSIONER HAMMER. YES. JUDGE BESETA.

YES. ALL INCLUSIVE.

I-5. I-5 DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION TO AUTHORIZE THE EXECUTION OF A CONTRACT FOR ENGINEERING SERVICES 2026-PSA-69 between Hays County and Doucette and Associates Inc. to provide engineering services for the Darden Hill West Extension Project in Precinct 4 and amend the budget accordingly.

I believe we have public comment on this, but so many.

We have several. All right. Okay, we've got a motion. We've got our second. And do you have any in person or are they all written? All emailed. Okay, perfect. So just do your thing.

This is from Matt Waters in Driftwood. I submit the statement on behalf of the 545 Save Darden Hill.com petition signatories and residents of Darden Hill Road and surrounding communities. We support safe, responsible improvements to Darden Hill Road. We do not support allowing this contract to predetermine a four-lane divided highway through a residential community and beside our schools. Item I-5 describes a 1.7 mile, four lane divided roadway. Yet the county has said that the traffic study for this extension is only now beginning and that a two lane configuration may be considered. Those facts make clear that the county should not commit to a four lane outcome before the public sees the data and meaningful alternatives are evaluated. This contract is not simply administrative. It establishes the engineering framework from which future work authorizations Alignment decisions, right-of-way impacts, and design choices will follow. This is the moment to ensure those decisions are based on evidence and community input, not on assumed regional highway connection to other planned or unfunded projects. We respectfully ask the court to continue item I-5 or at minimum direct that no work authorization advance Four-lane design final alignment or wide-away Acquisition unless the county first one publishes current traffic counts and transparent capacity analysis to compares a permanent two-lane Super to design with targeted turn lanes against the four-lane alternative three completes and publishes traffic noise and safe routes to school assessments. Four, holds dirt and hail specific public meetings before a lane configuration is selected. Five, designs for a 35 mile per hour school and neighborhood safe corridor with a meaningful plan to prevent through truck traffic and 6 returns to commissioners court for public review before moving beyond alternatives in a lot analysis. The community is not asking the county to do nothing we're asking for a safer less costly evidence-based solution that preserves Darden Hill as a community road, not a regional bypass. Accuracy in this public record matters. This agenda packet describes a new 1.7-mile, four-lane divided roadway and funds this engineering contract through 2025 certificates of obligation. Residents deserve a decision based on project's actual scope, cost, and funding before the county moves into design. Thank you. Lynn Reardon. Good morning. My name is Lynn Reardon and I live on Darden Hill Road. My property is directly affected by the proposed Darden Hill West extension. I understand that the county consistently described this project as being approximately 30% design with additional engineering and opportunities for the public input still ahead. That's why I was surprised to read the engineering contract before you today. The agenda describes the project as a 1.7 mile new four lane divided roadway, with a shared use path, roundabout, T intersection, and other specific features. As a resident whose property may be significantly affected, I am concerned about the message this sends. If the public had been told that the design is still in development, but the engineering contract is already based on a four lane divided roadway, it raises a reasonable question, which is, how open is the design process at this point? If the policy decision to build a four lane divided roadway has been made, I believe the public deserves to know that clearly. If that decision has not been made, then I hope the upcoming engineering work will include a genuine evaluation of reasonable alternatives before major design decisions are effectively finalized. Above all, I ask the court to be transparent as possible with the public. and with the property owners who stand to be most affected by this product. We understand that Hays County is growing and that the transportation improvements are needed. We simply want confidence that the public process remains meaningful and that our input can still make a difference. Thank you for your time. Isabella Waltz to the commissioners. I'm writing to explain my strong opposition to the proposed expansion of Darden Hill Road and to voice my concerns about the lack of transparency and meaningful public engagement surrounding this project. Although I do not currently live in Driftwood, I grew up there and I still spend significant time there in my community. My horse is boarded at a ranch in Driftwood and it remains one of the few places where I can escape the congestion and nonstop development of Austin. It is deeply concerning to see such a significant infrastructure project moving forward without residents being fully informed or given a genuine opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. Over the past two decades, Driftwood and the greater Dripping Springs area have already experienced tremendous growth. Longtime residents have watched farms and ranges disappear, replaced by subdivision after subdivision. The area has struggled with increasing traffic, mounting pressure on our limited water sources, and the gradual loss of the rural character that has made such a special place for generations. This proposed roadway feels like another step forward toward turning driftwood into another suburban corridor. The quiet country roads, dark skies, rolling hills, open pastures, and peaceful sunsets are not obstacles to development. They are exactly why people value this community. Every time I ride my horse through the ranch or drive the back roads, I am reminded that places like this are becoming increasingly rare in Central Texas. There are already countless communities in the region designed for suburban growth, drift which should not be sacrificed to accommodate more traffic at the expense of its residents, its ranges, its wildlife, and its fragile hill country ecosystem. Once these landscapes are fragmented by major roadways, they cannot be restored. At a minimum, I urge you to pause this project until the public has been given meaningful notice, ample opportunity to review the plans, and a genuine chance to provide input before decisions of this magnitude are made. Major infrastructure projects should not move forward without transparency and community trust. Please protect what makes Driftwood unique. Future generations deserve the opportunity to experience the same peaceful countryside that so many of us have cherished. Thank you for your time and your consideration. Tom Reardon. Good morning. My name is Tom Reardon and I'm a Hayes County resident. I appreciate the work that goes into planning, transportation improvements for a rapidly growing county. I also understand that projects like Darden Hill West Extension take years to develop. What concerns me is making sure the public process remains meaningful. The county has described this project as being approximately 30% designed with an additional engineering, and opportunities for public input still ahead. However, the engineering contract before you today describes the project as a 1.7 mile new four lane divided roadway with a shared use path, roundabout, T intersection and other specific features. As a citizen, I would simply ask for greater clarity. If the decision to move forward with a four lane divided roadway has already been made, I believe that that should be communicated openly. If it has not, I hope the engineering process will genuinely consider alternatives before major decisions become final. Transparency builds public trust. Clear communication about the decisions have been made and which decisions remain open. Helps residents understand how and when their input can still make a difference. Thank you for your consideration. Nike Mathis. Dear Honorable Judge and Commissioners, please do not approve engineering services for Jordan Hill Road. The public has not been properly informed and has not had a chance to give their input. Please take time to listen to all the people that will be adversely affected. It seems that Commissioner Smith doesn't care what the landowners want. The county is disrupting our quality of life and our dark sky initiative and our water supply. Shouldn't Commissioner Smith be working for us instead of against us? Penny Reeves. First, thank you for taking public comments on this agenda item. I have serious concerns about approving this sizable engineering contract on the proposed Darden Hill Road expansion. There needs to be much more public input, especially from residents of along Darden Hill Road, who will be impacted negatively by now the Plan 4 lane divided roadway, including 10-foot shared used path, roundabouts, T-intersections, and more. The size of this roadway and the sheer volume of traffic that will follow is going to determine to those of us along Darden Hill Road. You're planning to put an urban scale roadway into the middle of a rural area. While understanding the needs for improvements in transportation, I respectfully request more opportunities for public input before approving engineering contracts. As a member of the Driftwood Historical Conservation Society, my position on Droughton Hill Road, improvement in lines with their position. I would like the court to consider a less invasive and less costly alternative. I would support a quote unquote super two roadway, which is an enhanced two lane roadway with turn lanes where appropriate to reduce congestion and improve safety. It's already working on FM 967. This type of road can accommodate growth and the traffic that comes with growth, including school traffic, without sacrificing the character of the area that attracted those of us who bought farms and homes here. Those of us who live on Darden Hill have felt blindsided by news of this four-lane, divided roadway. We have a few meetings recently with members of the county staff, elected officials, and engineers, but after attending those meetings, I feel like the county is just going to ram this project down our collective hill road, county... Hill Country, rural loving lifestyle. This reminds me of the infamous cringe-worthy quote by Clayton Williams. If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it. I will not relax or enjoy it and will continue to voice my opposition. In addition, I continue to vote for county leaders who inform and listen to their constituents. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Bob Bridge, your judge and commissioners, Regarding today's item, I-5, please do not approve the $2 million plus for engineering plans for the western portion of Darden Hill Extension. The environment around us is under extreme stress. For example, the number of insects nationwide continues to drop dramatically, which long-term poses an existential threat to our agriculture and mankind. do what we can to slow the destruction of natural habits and use our land wisely. If the motivation for a new road is to ease road congestion, think again. A rich body of research shows that the congestion reduces reductions associated with road expansions are short-lived. Generally, fully evaporating after 5 to 10 years of use, the $2.8 billion widening of the Katy Freeway, I-10, in Houston did not ease long-term congestion. Although it expanded 26 lanes, data from the Texas A&M Transportation Institution showed that traffic delays increased significantly within a few years due to increased demand. Why do we keep doing short-sighted building over and over again? We must pause this westward expansion until Hayes County evaluates how to intelligently accommodated growth and the environment. My best. Lynn Bridge, your judge and commissioners, regarding today's item I-5, please do not approve the two million plus for engineering plans for the western portion of a Darden Hill expansion extension. These plans are just another way to destroy more of the fragile and rare hill country of Texas. Have you actually lived in or traveled through this landscape and observed what is growing there? What and who lives there and how the water cycle works there over time? Only eyes on the almighty dollar and the possibility of selling, selling, selling off the priceless Texas hill country can miss the fact that once the hill country is destroyed, it's gone forever. How do you imagine life is sustained here? Bank accounts? Hardly. All the money in the world isn't going to recreate a fragile interlocking system of earth, water, and life, such as certain short-sighted interests want to destroy in the pursuit of financial gain. Of course, people want to move here, at least for now, but could we use some imagination to figure out how to accommodate population growth without scraping tens of thousands of years off the surface of our natural world? How about transport that doesn't cause such a huge and demanding footprint? How about homes surrounding that use little energy, fewer resources, and better design to nurture our future? Why would we keep doing stupid, short-sighted building over and over again just because that's what we know how to do? I beg of you to pause this westward expansion until somebody in Hays County looks and learns from how other people in the world have intelligently accommodated growth in the environment. Sincerely. Jan Wesson. Honorable Judge Passetta and Commissioners, please do not approve I-5. I'm asking you that you put the brakes on the destructive plan. With the county still having open houses like the one at the Ranch Park Thursday at 4.30, then why would you be voting to spend $2 million on engineering fees on another part of the 150 expansion? The people that live in the Darden Hill area were misinformed like the rest of us that are in other parts of the 150 expansion area. Darden Hill folks were told the bond was for improvements to their current roads, nothing about building a highway through their neighborhoods. Four lanes, bike path, roundabouts, it's just not road improvements. The people of Darden Hill neighborhoods deserve the truth from the get-go. That did not happen. I would also implore you to follow the money. Are the firms that are getting these projects also donating to the members of this court? Please be mindful of what you are destroying because once gone, we will never get it back. Thank you. Emily Sinchini. I have found some irregularities about this contract that I believe should be investigated. First, the certificate of insurance lists the company Doucette and Associates by name, but an address in San Diego, California, while the address under which they submitted was on West Highway 71 in Austin. Second, there was no conflict of interest listed for Commissioner Smith. However, he is listed as a partner in a venture with a possible relation. Shane Doucette to the proposed vendor of 2017. While this may not be a conflict of interest, it should be addressed and resolved before any contract is granted. Okay, last one is from Denton Raglin. Dear members of the Commissioner's Court, I urge the court's support during the, oh.

Well done. Okay. Thank you very much.

Commissioner Smith. Thank you, Judge. Before we get started, I just want to give a little bit of background on this project. Within the last, I guess, probably six years, seven years, we've considered this project a number of times, at least in part and parcel. different portions. But by way of background, as far back as the 2013 transportation plan, it was recommended that there be at minimum a center turn lane added to Darden Hill Road. Right now it's a two-lane roadway at places I'm not even sure how we're able to do a center turn, or pardon me, a center strike because we don't have drainage or shoulders on the roadway whatsoever. The other thing I would tell you is that both in the 2017 150 West Character Plan, which we conducted as a county, which was done between 2013 and 2017, in direct work with the Griffin Springs Historic Conservation Society, it identified at minimum a center turn lane as well. IN 2021 WITH OUR MASTER TRANSPORTATION PLAN, THE ADOPTION OF THAT MASTER TRANSPORTATION PLAN AND THE GROWTH THAT WAS SEEN THERE AT THAT POINT, WE KNEW OF AT LEAST ONE ADDITIONAL SCHOOL GOING ON THAT CORRIDOR. IT WAS RECOMMENDED TO MOVE TO A FOUR LANE TO MATCH WHAT WE ARE CURRENTLY BUILDING. on the east side of Darden Hill Road. If you look at Darden Hill Road in its entirety, it's split by Sawyer Ranch Road. As part of the 2016 road bond, prior to my serving on the court, there was engineering paid for specifically to re-engineer and design from Sawyer Ranch Road to 1826, including a roundabout at 1826. This actually is extending that portion of the roadway in the opposite direction. Several things have changed since then. And after near the end of our process in 2021, as well as the process, the city of Dripping Springs of adopting their master transportation plan, the school district identified that they were going to have about 5,000 students there starting next year, or pardon me, in 2028, in fall of 2028. We do not have any control whatsoever over the zoning for those school districts. At this time, we know that there will be students traveling or families traveling on this portion of Darden Hill Road. And given the safety concerns, I thought it important to include this in the outreach that we did for the 2024 road bond. In that process, we actually held meetings Numerous, myself did over 26 public meetings on not just this project, but all the projects, which specifically listed in the design board and the public outreach that it would be a four-lane divided roadway given TxDOT standards with a shared use pedestrian path, which would more or less line up to what we're also looking at for Sawyer Ranch Road, which intersects at the location of the new high school there in Dripping Springs, where this would also intersect. I think the biggest concerns that I have are that when we look at some of the public comments today, number one, I want to address, I don't know, I believe the person's name was Emily, but I don't know the last name.

That was her. C-I-C-C-A.

Okay. One of the concerns that she listed was the fact that the address for Doucette is on Highway 71. I know Doucette's parent company, Klinefelter, is located in another state, and I think that they probably carry the insurance. My biggest concern with her comment is an accusation that I have some type of business relationship. I haven't had any business relationships in Hayes County with anyone in over eight years. And if there's any accusation similar to that, or if there's anything I want, I would love to have it brought out in court publicly. We can discuss it. I'll address any of it, and I'm more than happy to do so. But there are a few times that I get adamant in this court and get upset over something. It's not only upsetting, but it's untruthful. And it's comments such as that where we need to have our rules of decorum and we need to have people here so whenever they make accusatory statements that are patently false, we can swear them in because they are witnesses or they are testifying before a court of law. And I'm more than happy to answer any questions related to any type of relationship that I've ever had business-wise or otherwise. And so with that, I would just say we have had quite literally through at least four processes over a dozen votes that I can count specific to this project and well over two dozen public meetings on it. I think it's I think I can tell you. at least two of the residents here. I've met with most all of these people. I've offered an open door on this project and any project in my precinct. And they actually became residents of the area after the 2024 roadmap passed. And to say that there was no public outreach is just, I know every commissioner on this court held public meetings on these. We promoted it as much as we could, whether it was through our local papers or social media. We've got at least two very specific Facebook groups for this area that have over 20,000 people a piece in them that we promoted to. We presented these projects to the Driftwood Historic Conservation Society multiple times. We actually have meetings once a month with their leadership in my office to discuss everything from transportation to any other issues that they may have. And so I would encourage folks to actually take a look at, whenever we do this outreach, what is involved in it. The other thing I would say is I would encourage anybody who has a question to go to our website that has this information. We've got a phenomenal website up specifically to do outreach on all of the road improvement projects, and those that were included both in the bond and in the following COs. Another couple of points I would just like to make. for questions that I think are very pertinent that were brought up in those comments. Number one, we've already discussed and committed to doing an updated traffic analysis before we move forward with any project. And we are looking at overall on our projects how we can address sound in those areas. I think it's interesting when people say we want to review the plans before you move forward. But the problem is, if we look at what we're talking about, we say that we're developing a 30% plan. There's nothing for the public to review until we have that. The other thing that we have to have is we will start that public outreach and engagement portion BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR. SO WE WILL HAVE BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR THE FIRST PUBLIC OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT FOR THIS LARGER PROJECT. AND IN THAT PROCESS THAT'S WHERE WE WILL GET GARNER ALL OF THE PUBLIC INPUT OR BEGIN TO GARNER ALL THE PUBLIC INPUT ON THIS PROJECT. THERE WAS A MENTION OF THE SOUTHWEST CONNECTION PUBLIC MEETING THAT WE'RE DOING ON THURSDAY. That's a perfect example. That project is farther down the road than this one is at this point. And so now is whenever we were starting that public engagement portion. I've said in a very public meeting not long ago that if this is a child that we're raising, this project, we're just past conception. The fact is, is we want that public engagement. We want that public involvement to know specifically what we are going to birth as a project. And we're at the We're not even at the infant steps of that. But we do know what our traffic planners and engineers have told us, not just for the 2024 bond, for literally years prior to that, what the need will be. And with that, I would answer any questions of my colleague.

As the other court member that represents that footprint, I will say that I have continuously heard the back and forth of Some of the samplings of what we just heard Commissioner Smith share, which are, well, we're not there to give you an opportunity for feedback. We're not there yet. But then we turn around and then we tell them, you may not want this project, but we've already spent millions of dollars on it. And so we've got to keep moving. And today would be one of those days where we spend over $2 million on just this one contract on that extension project. And so I understand the confusion in the community, and I understand why they will say these things, because they're trying to get the cadence of feedback. I've been involved and out front with everyone in this northwest corner that I can interact with. And I've yet to find someone come up to me and tell me, judge, we like this extension. I know that Commissioner Smith writes down all the names of the people that provide comments. What I'd like to do is find out if he has a list of community members that live in the vicinity that are for this project, because at this moment in time with my sincerest intent to listen to the community, I haven't heard from them. I haven't heard from them telling me they want this project. don't live around the corner from there but I will say that I want to do what the community wants and so I want to make sure that we hear from them and I've not heard from people that say they want it that live in the area there's there's a lot of ambiguity that is just littering the landscape maybe it's lack of understanding on the community's part maybe it's lack of understanding on the courts part as to how and when and where we should be communicating because we heard Commissioner Smith just say, we've had numerous meetings, numerous meetings tied to the road bond, but it sounded to the layman, it might sound like they were tied to the extension. And so some people kind of follow the framing and the back and forth, but in reality and in summary, I keep hearing repeatedly, we don't want it, we don't want it, we don't want it. And so I even told Doucette and Associates, I said, this is a hard thing to put more than $2 million towards when all I've heard, and I'm being very clear with the public, all I've heard is we don't want it. Because when we go back out there to meet with them, then we're going to hear, Well, we've already spent millions on this project. We can't stop now. And so it's not a scenario that I want to play shake and bake with the community on. Commissioner Inglesby?

And Commissioner, I don't know your precinct as well as you do. But I recall that there was a road, and I don't know if it's this one. I don't remember. I don't recall. but where we were going to make some safety improvements because a lot of people did come out into the courtroom. It's you. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. I just wanted to make sure. But you mentioned 500 school students on this roadway in the fall of 2020. 5,000. Oh, I mean 5,000. That's what I have. I'm sorry. So I would imagine, have you spoken to the schools?

The schools are very supportive of this. And what I would say is that, and forgive me, I just want to clarify here. If you look at the corridor, the Sawyer Ranch, Darden Hill corridor, in our bond, we actually have a number of projects that all culminate at that point, specifically because of the school. I think some of the concerns that the public have seen or have raised I think is very interesting because it shows a Whenever we do a really good job of educating them as to why certain improvements are needed, then they understand it, but they still may not like it. And I say that, for example, when we look at a two-lane roadway as we do here. Safety improves dramatically on a four-lane roadway, especially when we're looking at this roadway, because there's no relief lane. Our constables have clocked people doing over 70 miles an hour on this roadway, two lanes with no shoulders. When you add a lane, it creates a relief lane. It makes it safer to pull out onto that roadway than it did when there was only one lane. One of the other concerns that we heard was that, hey, well, we want this to be a 35 mile an hour roadway, and we want you to design it to a 35 mile an hour roadway. What people don't understand whenever you talk about designing to a 35 mile an hour roadway is under transportation code, you can allow for blind curves. You can allow for driveway entrances closer to one another. There are certain things in there that actually make it less safe because it is built for a lower speed. And so what we do is we design for a 45 mile an hour roadway, but then we as a court can choose to make it 35. So you get the safety improvements of increased visibility. You get the safety improvements of driveways farther apart, those kind of things on a roadway. And then we can make the choice to make this a lower speed roadway. And so we've already committed in this process that this will be a 35 mile an hour roadway, specifically to improve safety. THIS IS ONE OF THE EASTERN PORTION OF THIS ROADWAY. IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS PORTIONS IN MY PRECINCT. I CAN TELL YOU THAT MONTHLY WE HAVE PEOPLE GOING OFF OF THAT AND WE'VE HAD ROLLOVERS, WE'VE HAD SOME PRETTY BAD ACTIONS THERE. SO WE'RE EXCITED TO GET THAT FIRST SECTION CONSTRUCTED. Whenever we looked at the 2016 road bond, and I was not here for that, there was a plan to look at how we could design, construct certain projects and then design certain projects with the anticipation of construction in the next road bond. That's what we did this time. We looked at what projects do we know by the time we get to some future bond or some future funding mechanism, where are we gonna have the most density or where are we gonna have to have real problems? And this was one of those identified roadways within my precinct, because again, 2016, we did the first portion of it, 2024, and then with the COs, we are constructing that portion. And in the 2024 road bond, we decided to move forward with the design for this. Again, whether it's, you know, The thing that we don't want is ambiguity on any of these projects. We want the public to know exactly what's coming. We want to have those hard meetings. And we can do so much. The old adage is you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I can tell them where the water trough is. I can tell them that we're doing meetings. I can tell them, here's what our plans are. And this court on this specific project, I can name no less than eight votes we've taken in support of this. If our bond passes we already have a contract with the voters that we are going to do this project And so I I can tell you that we are will continue to do public outreach That's one of the main reasons that in the scope for our GEC contract that we've looked at when we updated that for this bond we said one of the biggest concerns that I get from residents is well, we haven't done anything publicly on this and And the problem that we run into is by the time we start a design and actually get to construction, it may be 10 years. I would anticipate that's probably going to be the case on this project. And by the time, a perfect example is 150 at 12, the intersection there. By the time it goes to construction, 85% of the new residents there will have been there after the passage of the first bond that it was included in. And it's In our GEC contract now, we have public outreach and engagement on every project all the way through construction. And if you remember in the scope of work for that, that's the reason I included that. Because we had so many people who you go through the public process, you end, and then we wait five years to do the project. And again, half the people are brand new. And I think that might be some of the case of what we're hearing here.

And so I think you answered my question. So there's no money for construction. It's just this is just a utility and right away relocation or anything like that included.

No. What I will tell you is that whenever we did our public outreach for the bond, it was anticipated that we would have one hundred and fifty million dollars and CEOs for right away. If you remember, that was part of our public outreach. This was one of those named projects that would have had right-of-way on it. This is not included in the bond, no right-of-way. But go ahead. Commissioner.

Almost. Sorry. I'll get to you in a second. Yes, Commissioner.

I mean, well, and that's what I wanted to know. I mean, there's no construction money allocated to this project specifically. It's just for the design. I haven't.

And public engagement.

And public engagement. Okay. Traffic counts are going to be. Done. Okay. Okay. Those are my questions.

And that's part of the complaint because then, well, there's no dollars allocated to making the roadway, but we're going to vote on this disseminating more than $2 million for this. And so it's like, well, we've already spent millions, so we've got to keep going. And this is absolutely the frustration with the community in the area. We've already... said we don't want this at every opportunity and so I do, I genuinely am asking from Commissioner Smith who is infinitely informed, share community members in the vicinity that are for this expansion because all I hear is no one wants it and so I don't want to put money in front of it and put more money in front of it as a court When we keep hearing, we don't want it, we don't want it, we don't want it, because again, the argument will be, well, we've spent millions, we've got to do this other part.

Right, and then I think, you know, Commissioner, you shared that this, you have, I mean, schools have reached out, they do.

The school district has reached out. The city adopted their master transportation plan with this as a part of it in 2021. school district has reached out since that time and added two schools to this roadway and they are eminently concerned and i think aaron can speak to this but they are eminently concerned we're working directly with them to ensure that the east portion of this is completed at least functionally before the start of the school year in 2028 and the road bond lawsuit has put all of the projects that we have that were half two projects on a certain timeline in jeopardy and this is one of them I mean, I'm very concerned with it. But as we look at one of the things that's most telling, and I'm more than happy to share it with any of you, whenever I did a presentation at the Driftwood Historic Conservation Society on all the road bond projects, maybe three months ago, and when we did, I started that presentation with an aerial view of Darden Hill Road from 2010, from 2021, and from 2025. And it started out, it was 80% green space. There's not an awareness in that neighborhood or in that area over all of the development that has occurred there. You look at an aerial of that portion of the roadway, and it's nothing but homes. It's nothing but new construction. And I would love, there was a comment earlier that, well, why can't we look at how we can limit construction and how we can do different things on development? We would love to do that. We would love to have that authority as a county, but we don't. And so we get to deal with the mess after it's here. We don't have the authority that cities do, and we have to try to at least design to get in front of a lot of this that we know is on the way.

Commissioner Smith just said that these projects were put in jeopardy. The timing of these projects was put in jeopardy because of the challenge of the road bombs. but yet we created $100 million certificates of obligation to ensure there were no delays.

Actually, it was $220 million.

Yeah, but my point is we've got many million dollars, many millions of dollars, $100, $220 for the $439 million road bond. But you're mentioning right now that some of these projects, because of a lawsuit, they're in jeopardy. And I just... Here's the thing, Commissioner.

The project delivery, the timing is in jeopardy, not the project.

Let me finish just for a minute here. I don't want to back and forth because we both know you and I can do this for a good solid hour. My truest intent is to tell the rest of the court that I understand what the community is saying because I know this infinitely well. And some of the things being said are confusing. And so... I just want you guys to know that. I don't know anyone that wants it from the area, and I really want your support to help me speak for them. I really do. Because this is a $2 million pill for a west expansion that nobody in the area seems to want. I know that it's been in the books. I know that's the argument, Commissioner Smith. Well, we talked about it in 2012. If you want me to answer the question, I'm happy to. Well, I was almost done. You're a little antsy, and please stop interrupting me. I try the best for you. And so pointing to 2012, it was in a study, or it was drawn in in 2016. Yeah, but if the people... don't want it, and they said it every opportunity they feel like they had, I think we owe it to them just to go through the exercise and not allocate millions of dollars for design. That's the only thing I'm trying to say here.

I will tell you this. There are seven elected members of the school board. There are five, forgive me for my ignorance in knowing exactly how many members are on the school board. There are a similar number on a city council. There are that both those organizations have identified this as a need in the area. There are 65,000 residents of our community that has identified this project as a need. They could have, if they didn't like one of those projects, they could have voted against the bond that this was included in. As members of the court, there's no less than eight votes that have included this project on it that have been voted unanimously through this court. I've done literally years of meetings on not only this, but each project that I have in my precinct. I looked it up the other day. I think I've done over 130 public meetings just on transportation projects. I'm glad, Judge, that at this point you have decided to be engaged. I'm glad that you came, and you're not going to interrupt me either. You came to one meeting that was put forth as not even a meeting on this project. It was a meeting of a different organization. And you said at least three times in this court, I set up this meeting and I conducted it. No, I was the guest speaker at a meeting. and you showed up and engaged a month before an election for the first time ever, and I'm glad you did. Would have loved to have you seven years ago, or even four years ago, whenever you were campaigning for this bond with this project in it. Maybe you should have done some research at that point. But the fact of the matter is we have a commitment to our community, each one of us individually, to do what we think is best. and to address the needs that we have identified through a long series of processes, including public engagement at each point. And this is just another one of those projects in that process. And I look forward to engaging the public. I look forward to having the public meetings related to this. But without any engineering and no project, we're just going to stand in a room and look at each other and not have anything actually viable to show the public and to discuss and that's on every single transportation project we have these projects don't come out of the ether and it's just hey somebody thought this was a good idea we have citizen advisory panels the for example the southwest connector that we're doing this week the public meeting on we started a citizen advisory panel in 2020 IT HAD BEEN ON OUR MASTER TRANSPORTATION PLAN SINCE 2012. THAT WAS EIGHT YEARS BEFORE WE EVEN DID A CITIZENS PANEL. NOTHING WAS DONE ON IT UNTIL THE 2024 ROAD BOND. SO WE HAD BEEN LOOKING AT THAT PROJECT FOR 14 YEARS PRIOR. AT A CERTAIN POINT, YOU HAVE TO PULL THE TRIGGER OR NOT. We're not even ready to pick up the gun yet. We are literally looking at what should this look like. And you start the basis off on these projects with what the recommendation under transportation code would be. And that's where we're at.

And so when someone wrote some comments that you didn't agree with, you were visibly pretty upset. And you talked about how that shouldn't happen. But you just said I showed up and participated in a conversation about roads for the first time because it was an election year. Your framing and your mischaracterization is exactly why people have a lot of distrust in what you're doing. And when Commissioner Jones and you were pushing for that, 45 extension. I'll remind you that you guys.

I'll remind you you lied about that too.

I'll remind you that you guys both said the mayor and the city council of Austin support this and you said all the commissioners court from Travis County support this and they wrote me letterheads saying that you and Commissioner Jones lied in this court because it wasn't true.

Well, let me clarify exactly what I said in court, since you just lied about it again. And we can go back and forth all you want. I never said anything, not once, about the city of Austin. I never said the court supported it. You asked in this courtroom, have you spoken to anybody on the Travis County Commissioner's Court? I had a lunch the week before with two commissioners, both of which said, yeah, we think it's probably a good idea. We think it's a good project. Whenever you asked me to characterize it, I said I thought it was a positive conversation. Then you put out a press release saying that we lied. You just lied right there. And so I am... You know what? Six years ago, I would have sat here... Four years ago, I would have sat here and listened to you. The one thing that I don't doubt when we're talking about what goes on in this courtroom, I will put my... in front of the general public, in front of anyone in this county, our employees, anyone who's dealt with this county. If there's anybody on this dais, I will put my credibility up against. I would welcome it every day, sir. Every day. If you want to continue this, we will.

If you want to call for a vote and move forward, we will. I have two more things to say and then we can move on happily. I do want to bring this to a close. I really do. I promise. The supporting thoughts that crossed my mind when you said I never show up to road projects also brings to mind when community members at this intersection at 12 and 150 were very unhappy with the way it was being handled. And I was so grateful to Commissioner Inglesby, and I'm sorry, I don't remember who else supported it, but I remember you supporting it, and I really did appreciate it. whenever we put a pause for that roundabout and for some reevaluation, and there were changes made that were more favorable. And so, you know this, you're a road commissioner. I leave you guys alone until people are asking me to lean in. I do my very best to leave you guys alone. I don't try to run your operation. But when the outpouring of communication to me is, I hate to say it this way, but, 98% precinct 4 and it's always opposing what the commissioner is leading. I've got to speak of it I have no choice. That's that's what I feel is my job And I'm not trying to bash you or take a 12-hour cord. I don't want that But I feel that I have a duty to tell What I've been told and so I even apologize to Mr. Doucette telling him, hey, I have a hard time supporting this from all the feedback I received. But I can point to numerous times where I've supported lots of things. But when the community says, hey, we're having heartburn with this, I speak up. And if there are any other comments, commissioners.

Yeah.

My precinct is 35 square miles, so it's the smallest one geographically. Within that precinct, there are probably about 15 to 17 schools squeezed into that space. And I have firsthand knowledge of what it's like to have schools on what is barely a two-lane road. And my My fear for this project is, you know, yes, judge, you may not be getting any positive feedback about those who are for, but I guarantee you when that school is built, those parents are going to start calling because they call me now about our schools and how terrible our roads are unsafe and kids getting hit, you know, crossing crossing guards. And so, for me, when I think about this project and I think about the future of when that school is there and the traffic that it will bring, that concerns me. You know, I understand that there are those who are against it, and I feel whether, you know, it's you, Commissioner Smith, or the next commissioner, you know, my plea is to continue the outreach because I think that that does help. But I... I know what it's like to have schools on roads that are just not made for that kind of traffic. And I know what's going to happen in the future. I know what's going to happen in that seat with that next commissioner that comes in, that they're going to be bombarded with complaints about the school. And trust me, all of us are going to start getting calls when school starts in about two weeks and the parent pickup lines and the drop-offs are backed up, unsafe drivers, frustrated drivers trying to hurry up and get to work and school. and it becomes unsafe and those calls come. And so I always prepare myself for that every year. So just looking from that public safety lens of our kids, we need to do something about that road. We have to. And so for me, it's just the continued outreach with the neighbors and those who are against it to try and understand this school is coming. It is going to bring all these students are driving, the parents, everything. And so that's my only ask. But I mean, I will support this agenda item because I understand where it's going. And so it needs to be, you know, truly looked at.

And Commissioner, I just want to take a little moment to clarify that this, Commissioner, is for... Not fixing a road, but it's for a new road. Am I right? No. No. Darden Hill Road exists. I know Darden Hill Road exists. And front.

I'm more than happy to answer your question if you'll let me.

Extension project. Correct.

If you knew Darden Hill Road exists, you know that the extension portion of this project actually removes three dogleg right-hand 90-degree turns at the end of it. It improves Darden Hill Road, and if you'd like, you're more than welcome to look at our road bomb map. But it actually, about 80% of the roadway is existing right now that this would renovate it. would change it from a two-lane undivided or undivided roadway with no shoulders and very little drainage into a four-lane divided with a walking path along it 80 of it there is no way we have looked since 2021 at least to straighten out those curves at the end that are not a that does not significantly hurt the safety value of that roadway. As a matter of fact, in 2021, during our master transportation plan, we had five different JPs who gave comment specifically to me stating that they had all gone to a death at the intersection of Darden Hill Road and 150. There's no way that we can straighten those curves out. So the extension portion is simply cutting out the curves at the end of the roadway. About, I would say, 70 to 80% of the project is existing roadway.

So this $2 million extension project, more than $2 million, doesn't include anything to go from 12-150 roundabout around to 290?

No, this doesn't. That's a completely different project.

Because a lot of people are talking about that. Yeah, well, they're mistaken if they think it's this project. And so it's important to clarify to people what the millions of dollars will be used for. That's exact. Well, what I'm saying to you is this. Since it is being brought up that the confusion could be taking place the way the agenda was written to say it is 12-150 cracking a new piece of road to 290, I think it's an opportunity for you just to shed light on its reality of a different portion of Darden Hill.

No. Darden Hill does not touch 12 and 150. I know that. Darden Hill hits 150 and intersects at 150. There is nothing in the agenda item, there is nothing in anything relative to this that even mentions 12 because it's a completely different project. Two miles away from this project. Three miles away. Forgive me. How far is the 150 Darden Hill intersection and the 152?

The project limits of this go from the roundabout that's already constructed that we did on phase one of Darden Hill. It encompasses the existing roadway of Darden Hill westbound. It does leave an area of the existing, and that's what the commissioner was saying, is where the curves are. It moves over to I believe it's woods loop is the is the name of the road that will intersect with 150 there to be short Short of rancher. I don't know the distance, but it's a it's not it doesn't it doesn't it immediately time only to your friend So To elaborate a little bit on what the commission was saying the this this project is really and I was listening to the comments and to get a little clarification When you ask about somebody that lives in the area, I live about straight shot five miles from this. I've lived there for 28 years, thereabouts. I've seen the growth in this area. What's there 28 years ago isn't. It's by far grown. I've also, being both director and then previously operations of maintenance and seeing school zones, I've talked with each commissioner, past commissioners of this area, Commissioner Wisnap previously from Commissioner Smith in this area. It's grown tremendously. The project, this project, actually we listened, and I listened to some of the comments. I've actually, I believe the first, Matt was the first commenter, I believe I met with him twice, once with Commissioner Smith. The other, I believe, was in the town hall meeting with Commissioner Smith. We've actually given the group of petitioners comments to every one of their questions that they had, explained that in person and in writing. We work those. We're always open to have those conversations, and as we expand with these projects, like with any project, and each of the commissioners knows this, that as these designs, I mean, which these are, this is the start. This is, the commissioner said, this is a date. This is the first date, the reality of this. What we're doing is, is with these, when we do these engineering, and I think there's some confusion there. I don't disagree. with you, Judge, on the confusion side. And the confusion is I think they've wrapped up a bunch of projects into one. When I heard 30% out of there, that's where we're at on Darden Hill East, where we're building in front of the school. And I believe that's where their confusion is on that. And when I listen to growth, when we do planning and long-term planning, there's some roads in our transportation plan that We did 20 years ago or 15 years ago any of those designs that we didn't build. However, there's are that we have plans are and as we move forward. And I always tell residents that when we're looking at these plans, we look at our every five years where we redo our master transportation plan. we look and evaluate that, and we're in that process now. However, when we identify these projects, we start looking at how do we fund them, how do we there. But the first is design, and this one we did listen to what comments were. We're not required to do the noise analysis. We put that in this by listening to the residents that live there. We understand that. This also goes into, in scope of this, has environmental, has those aspects of it to get us to that point. What I would say to the residents is when we look at these plans, we've got to be proactive in looking into the future because we're looking at this When you look at the road as it is now, and each of you as the commissioners and the judge, we hear about our condition of roadways now. We get the question of why can't we widen this road? Why can't we do this? This road is there. And the reality is the majority of our roads, especially the western count, either side, eastern or western, were built to a design standard that was 30, 40 years ago. So we look at these roads and we say, okay, how can we improve these, or is there another alternative? And then when we look at, when I hear the deal about the width, so we have two choices. When we look at these, these roads are having a wide right-of-way footprint, which... Everybody that drives a road, would you rather have it urbanized? And we look at the community and the area of what we look at when we look at these right-of-ways. There are some areas that we have to do urbanized because the buildings are all there, the houses are all there. We have to have that narrow footprint. that is more of an urbanized with a curb and gutter drainage of that. When we get into these areas that are rural, whether it's east or west, we look at these corridors and we say, okay, there's nothing built there. But we want to definitely look at how the community and what they like about the community. Having a wide right-of-way. with lots of grass areas, areas that we can put our drainage into. They have paths and trails to be able to utilize and keeps the housing away where it's not that urbanized. And that's what we look at when we look at these right-of-ways. But this project is, right now, this is really a design where we can actually get the ball rolling on this to at least look at it and see what fits. And we've all been, and each of the commissioners, as we work through these designs, some things work, some things don't. And we come back and we change the scope or we adjust something. But getting it started, and when I hear that 30%, I think the confusion is that 30% was a few months back and it was actually the eastern portion that we have to build because that's right at the school and we have to be at that. And when I hear about talking about, in our meetings, we have conversations with the school district. We have conversations with the cities, whatever city they are, the municipalities. The majority of the times we're meeting, myself and each of the commissioners, we meet with those and talk about their concerns. When this first arose, you bring up, I am not a social media person. I tend to stay clear of social media myself, but I tend to look at it when it comes up, when I'm pointed out as somebody that's had an issue, because like everything, I listen to anything that somebody has a complaint, and I want to try to correct it. I want to try to fix that issue. I actually, when this all came up, because I was a little shocked because it's been in the works and that, and I look at social media, and when you asked that, I did see positives, because right now you could sit in any intersection at Sawyer Ranch, Darden Hill, Nutty Brown, and be stuck in traffic back to back. Our concerns as a transportation looking forward, you've got a 5,000-plus student body that's going to be in the high school. That's not even to mention the elementary school that's right beside it that is currently closed.

That includes the elementary as well as those two.

Then you've got to look at also the combination of the, there's an elementary, junior high just right up the road on Sawyer Ranch. THAT IS THERE. THAT'S WHEN WE LOOK AT THESE AS THE TRAFFIC. THE REALITY IS THERE ISN'T IN THE COMMISSIONER WHEN YOU ASKED ABOUT CONSTRUCTION. RIGHT NOW CURRENTLY IN THIS, THIS DOESN'T INVOLVE CONSTRUCTION. THIS IS JUST GETTING THAT DESIGN GOING. We've got to be able to even to look at what concerns that are out there, the environmental, the noise. We have to have something to get us started. We can't. It would be and I know, Judge, you've mentioned about and I apologize. I was I was missed at one of the last courts because of I was being a civil servant myself in a jury. But. What I would say is we look at this fiscally responsible. So this is something that was put up through the COs, originally through the bonds. It was passed through that. The public had voted on it. However, in order to do any of those studies, probably come out of transportation, which would come out of the generalized maintenance, which, as you said the last, we always look to where we can fund it. This would be the ideal way to fund it, to at least get the ball rolling to see where we're at.

I think that's... And thank you, Aaron, for pointing out, for example, Nutty Brown, because, I mean, you are the transportation director. I mean, I was there at the groundbreaking of Nutty Brown's HEB. And so I'm very familiar with the heartache of

Well, just this morning, I was listening to texts about residents calling because we're starting the repair work on Nutty Brown. And it's traffic is, like always, is backed up. So when I say that about traffic, we're looking that way. And trust me, I'll say this when I tell you this. Living there in that area for 28 years is like anybody with anywhere that you live in Hayes County. I would love for it to be like it was when I was a kid, growing up on Onion Creek. Drinking from the water hose, yeah. But however, what our responsibility is to the overall citizens of Hayes County is to look at where the growth is, how it's growing, and make sure. Because trust me, I hear that probably the most out of, why isn't this road built this way? Commissioner Cohen was mentioning schools. Windy Hill is a perfect example. It has a school on it. It is backed up. It'll be backed up next week. But as the evolution of our projects, we initially said three lanes on that one, and that's backed up. We widened it to three lanes in front of the school last year, and it's still backed up. So then we took our original plan and said, okay, let's do a study out of our engineering scope and adjusted it to fit, and they said the five-year ultimate is the best way to go. So we do that on a regular basis, and I want to stress to all those residents, I work for them. I work for you all, but I work for them ultimately. And we are looking at that, and we're trying to be the best steward of their dollar, plus of the environmental side of it, what works best. I'd love for it to be the way it is, but we've also got to look at How do we improve it? And that's not to say when we get our transportation plan, there might be a tweak or an adjustment to what we do, but we've got to get the ball rolling in order to get at least where we can put our eyes on what this is.

And what you've done, Aaron, is you've shown that temperament and that willingness to listen to the community because I believe for sure in the Darden Hill community gathering, and I had Carlos from HNTB and others there, they brought up that noise study. And so thank you for bringing that up and you're listening, you're incorporating what the community is asking for. And so that's the spirit of my bringing things up. They email my office, they call me, we write it down and I make sure to speak of it. And so when I say repeatedly, There's confusion. There's confusion. We need to talk more clearly. These people don't follow what we're saying. That's all I'm after is making sure we don't leave our community behind.

We're working. I'm not going to by any means say that we're perfect and we've done things perfect in transportation, but we're listening. We're adapting to that. I know I've had conversations with each of the commissioners about how we interact on social media. How do we get this word out? I'll be there Thursday to talk about those projects or any other projects. So what I would say, these are the starts of that. That's not to say the end product is exactly what the first step is. It's an adjustment. How much of this is catching the east part for the school? It ties the project together. catches actually just to the west of the phase one, which was the roundabout. So this... The termination point is the roundabout that is the entrance to the school. yes and and so that that's where it starts and it ties all of that in and and to go back to the other one about the safe site the the safety aspect so right now and i know this intersection very well because we have a we have a precinct yard and a transfer station or a recycling center on that right at the intersection right at the intersection and i have come out onto that intersections It is as blind of a two-curve. With that curve, yep. This project will actually eliminate that risk also because it'll move it down, put it in a better location to give visibility. So there's always the pros and cons. There's always that. Right now, I would say getting at least the ball rolling to where we can see the feasibility of this, the schematic side of it, and then have also there is in this THOSE OTHER PUBLIC MEETINGS, THOSE OTHER DISCUSSIONS AS WE MOVE THROUGH THIS PROCESS. SO THAT'S WHAT I WOULD STRESS. THANK YOU. I APPRECIATE IT.

COMMISSIONER HAMMER.

OH, HOW I ENJOY SITTING BETWEEN YOU ALL. SO THE ONE THING I WANTED TO SAY IS I THINK THE CATALYST OF EVERY SINGLE COMMENT THAT WE'VE HEARD IS FROM THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVE. LIKE EVERYONE CARES ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AT THE END OF THE DAY. SO WHERE ARE WE AT WITH THE ENVIRONMENTAL VISIBILITY STUDY? When is that done? What is the pulse on that?

All that is included in this contract.

It would be included in this, correct. Okay, good. And I mean, we are road commissioners. That's what we do. So we have our precincts and we are put in charge of knowing the constituent basis and knowing where the quality of life needs to be improved for our constituents to make sure that they're not sitting in traffic for long periods of time. Winters Mill, perfect example. Nobody really wanted that road. Can't imagine life without it. Wonder World, nobody wanted that road. Can't imagine life without it. So there are these things that we have to understand and we have to plan for in the future. So I see all the points. I do believe at the end of the day we work for the people. So listening to the people and as long as you're telling me you have an open door policy to meet with anybody and to hear their concerns and to bring it back to court and to be their advocate, I put you in charge of that.

There you go. If nothing else, please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. I was asked to open an agenda item from executive session, and then we're going to take no action in it, and then... We'll open it again in executive session. Is that still the request?

Yes, sir, but we still have K-1.

Right. I have several, but I just want to make sure. I saw a camera come in. I'm only guessing what they're coming in for, so I just wanted to make that declaration. Right?

Candace, correct me if I'm wrong. I think the intent was to just when we open the executive sessions before we go back, just knowing that there's one public comment before we go back into executive session. I think that was the intent.

Oh, okay. Well, I can still open it. Okay.

I just wanted to make sure. Thank you.

I appreciate it. I really do appreciate it. Okay. So then to follow... I think we're K-3, sir. Here's my pen right there. So... Yeah. We have our workshop at 1 o'clock. I see department heads and elected officials in here. We're still following that timeline, just so everyone knows. We'll be talking budgetary stuff for the most part at 1 o'clock. I just wanted you guys to hear and understand that. Okay. Let's go to... Did we finish the roads? Okay. Perfect. Cleaned up. On then? Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Three.

K-3, discussion and possible action to provide direction to the Hayes County Budget Officer to prioritize efforts related to the fiscal year 2027 budget, including but not limited to a freeze on new full-time employees, FTEs, Haskell inmate outsourcing relocation and inmate reduction to fewer than 50, the allocation of school resource officer costs, American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA, position relocation to unfilled positions, a pause on studies, master planning, and outsourced updating of projects, the utilization of the juvenile facility to house out-of-county juvenile inmates, and postponing data conversions and software updates if not required in FY2027. So moved.

Thank you. Motion and a second. Thank you. I created this agenda item. Of course, we make the agenda item, and everything is to be edited and revisited in a new motion that makes most sense. The motion and the second allows for the conversation to take place. I have, I'm sure you do, elected officials, department heads asking for direction, asking for support. I mean, they're running their entire departments and they're waiting to anticipate and projects and everything else. And so what I hope to accomplish with this agenda item is to give tight public open road mapping as a compass for not only our budget office, but for also the viewing public. to understand what our goals are and what our aim is. That's the spirit of this agenda item. If you'll state your name and title.

Scott Woodland, budget officer, and looking forward to the dialogue and some direction from the court on how we want to proceed on the budget. I don't know if we want to just take each line from the item and discuss it or if somebody on the court wants to lead the conversation.

I really appreciate your support in this. And what I want to do is, as you hear it, they want direction. And so I want to make this an opportunity for us to provide that clear direction and not put the cart in front of the horse. So this is what this is about, the discussion. So unless the commissioner has a concern, I'm going to let him lead the conversation line by line.

OK. Just going over the item, the first item to discuss is a freeze on new full-time employees, which The upcoming budget is very lean. If we were to continue that way, that would be a cost-saving measure. That being said, there could always be positions that may be important, especially time-sensitive. So that's definitely something to be considered by the court.

Sure, go ahead, sir. I would just say that... Overall, there are commitments that we had, and I'm going to jump ahead a little bit when we talk about the ARPA positions, because I think those are not new positions, but they are full-time positions that we made a commitment whenever we created those that we needed to carry those forward. The other one that I would Well, there's two. One of them is mentioned here. The other one that I know I've had direct conversations with the Hays Consolidated ISD School Board, and they are, in their budget, currently supporting additional SROs for each campus. It's a double-edged sword for me. I would welcome a conversation with the rest of the court because I well remember when we offered SROs for them under ARCA.

Countywide.

Countywide, and it was turned down. I know that they're going to carry that funding. It's something that we've always wanted to step up and assist with in the past, and I think I would be supportive of that. The one concern that I have, is that when we created, or the other concern that I have, is that when we created the Parks and Open Space Department last year, we made a strong commitment as to how that department should expand with the opening of Sentinel Peak and with the other duties that they've now taken on. I just want to ensure that whatever we do in the budget, we are looking at We don't want to open a Sentinel Peak and try to move forward with all of our projects and not have the personnel to have the public access and have our community participate in those things. I don't want to set those projects up for failure. Other than that, I don't necessarily have a problem with our departments looking at where those needs are. The other two that do stand out to me that I've had are our JP offices. I know that they've had a massively expanded caseload, and I'm sure that whenever we have the opportunity for budget workshopping over the next month that we'll hear from them. But those are the areas that I have concerns with when it comes to employees and full-time employees.

And I would just like to make a little clarification, finer granular messaging. Intent is not to terminate anyone's employment, first and foremost. That's important for me to say. Because I was not clear many years ago, and someone took that as an impression. I was like, no, I don't want to fire anyone over any of it. diesel is 514 a gallon right now. And so what I'm thinking of, every time we come to court, we have the opportunity to amend the budget. We have an opportunity to make audibles, if you will. That's the intent of coming together. So that if we've made a decision today and whatever else in the world is happening that changes the conditions, we have the ability to turn in a dime and be flexible and adjustable. My aim is... to be as lean as possible. And I don't want to shortchange Sentinel Peak staffing. Of course I don't. But I want to make sure that every opportunity we have clear across the board. And this is a tough part of the job for us because we want to help all the organizations. We want to help all of our ISDs. We want to help all of the above. But we have the financial responsibility of the county's budget. And so I'm looking for your support to make it on our lane, county, as lean and efficient as possible. And that's why I'm talking about ARPA positions that were created. It doesn't have to be all of them moved to open vacancies. We could say, okay, let's move some of them. But I want to, like you said, have that discussion here so that everyone watching has an opportunity to know, because I will forever go down as a fiscal conservative. And so I just want us to have a conversation so we can make that decision together. Commissioner Hammer?

No, I mean, I appreciate all of the work that you've done. And does this item cover us to talk about the budget in its entirety? Jordan?

THE WAY IT IS WORDED INCLUDES THE LANGUAGE INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO CERTAIN TOPICS SO I DO THINK SO. ALSO IN AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION WE DO HAVE THE PRESENTATION ITEM RELATED TO THE BUDGET. YOU COULD ALSO FOR GOOD MEASURE OPEN THAT ONE AT THE SAME TIME RIGHT NOW AND JUST OPEN THE WHOLE TYPE.

I LOVE IT AND I THANK YOU FOR THAT DIRECTION. SURE. I APPRECIATE IT. PLEASE OPEN THE PRESENTATION AGENDA ITEM AND THAT WAY WE ARE COMPLETELY OPEN AND THAT IS MOST IDEAL.

Judge, I do have a question. Do you want us to actually do the recommended budget presentation at this time as well?

No. I would like to do that at the opening of the workshop.

F1, presentation from the budget officer regarding the fiscal year 2027 budget process.

Thank you. And so now, Commissioner Howard, you're wide open.

Perfect. So I have no intention on increasing our tax rate, and I know that our budget office has done a really great job balancing that budget. That being said, The way that it's balanced isn't truly setting us up for success in the future, pulling from the reserves to cover certain items here and there. So I do believe, I mean, if I was Bill Gates, I would give everyone raises. I'd approve all of these. But unfortunately, we're working with the taxpayer dollars, not at the end of the day. And I have a hard time going to them and increasing taking food off of their table that they have to go to work for every single day. to approve some of these things. So it's a tight ship that we're running. Scott, you've done a wonderful job being able to give a recommended budget that works. I do think that we even then can take some from there. The only reason why I say that is because again, it does pull from reserves and it doesn't set us up for success in the future. But it's gonna be interesting and I'm looking forward to hearing everybody's thoughts.

And while you're there talking about pulling from reserves, I'll give it back to you just right now, Scott. Give me a second. I have a list of major unfunded capital requests. And so I really appreciate Scott and the team that's attached. I don't want to accidentally neglect a coworker doing so much hard work, but I'm just referencing the department head. There are really good requests on here. They're important. I mean, who doesn't support voting? Vanguard voting equipment. But it's $2.765 million. And the Secretary of State hasn't even required it of us. And so we've got to, and I really appreciate what you've done, Scott. We've got to say, these are good. These are nice. These are great must-haves when we must have them. We don't need them right now. Let's not buy them right now. Again. 514 a gallon. That's what's on top of mind right now for diesel. And so I'm with you on that. Before we give it back to Scott, Commissioner, since we have a short pause on the conversation, do you want to contribute anything?

For me, I just believe that it is important for everyone to be presented with the bare bones of the budget, what it looks like with no tax rate. So I have more of an appetite for a small tax increase to help cover a lot of the programs that are going to help us move forward in Hays County. A lot of the initiatives that our departments are spearheading that they want to be able to see, we have to prepare for the future. And so I truly want to hold my comments for that for the workshop. I don't want to dive into anything at the moment, just me personally, until everyone sees what the budget looks like right now. I think looking at what our county budget looks like with staying the tax rate the way it is right now, I think everyone needs to see what that looks like. And then we can move forward from that.

Commissioner Inglesby?

Yeah, and... Thank you, Judge. In my discussions with Scott, the budget officer and our county administrator, you know, I've also have been just really cautious about what we're doing. I know that it is a very tight budget year. And, you know, my direction has been, yes, let's look at a NO TAX RATE INCREASE AND LET'S SEE WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE. BUT I ALSO BELIEVE THAT WE NEED TO ENSURE THAT WE ARE STILL GIVING THE RESOURCES THAT OUR DEPARTMENTS NEED TO FUNCTION WELL. YOU KNOW, WE WANT TO ENSURE THAT IF THERE ARE ANY SAFETY MEASURES OR ISSUES THAT ARE NEEDED THAT WE ADDRESS THOSE. BUT, YEAH, I AGREE. I think it's going to be a lean year, and we just need to look at that as we move on into the budget workshop.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. And I really do, again, repeat, I appreciate the hard work you've done. For example, I don't see it on my list right now, but I know it to be true. We have a cloud backup program of a particular department. I won't mention any names, but it's not due until 2028, I think. Well, if we don't have to spend the money right now, then let's just push it off. The world's going to change. And right now, it's just, if we don't need it, I don't think we should have it, too. But if you want to continue on that path of the line items you were discussing.

Yes, Judge. And one thing that I'd like to clarify for informational purposes on the ARPA positions, and we'll get to it within the recommended, but I was able to find interest earnings in the ARPA to where we were able to leave those employees in there. Now, They could maybe stay in there the year, but next year they will have to be moved out, which we will take your advice as far as looking at positions and seeing if we can fill it in somewhere, if at all possible. Thank you.

But I think it's smart to utilize those ARPA funds if we have those funds for those positions that we continue on with that.

Yeah, that's what he said. Agreed.

Yeah.

As far as talking about other items, we'll kind of just go down the list here of what was listed out there. The next one, and to get some guidance from the court, what is the appeal of a freeze next year? Freeze? On any new positions.

Okay. Commissioners, how do you feel about it? So he needs this direction from us.

I know, but don't we need to be in workshop to have these discussions? Because I think we need to see the whole budget first before we start saying that we need to freeze everything, is my thought.

I would agree with you, but I would have one suggestion, and I've been thinking about this quite a while. We get these piecemeal requests for new positions and piecemeal requests for upgrade or regrade. And it's always been the bane of our existence outside the budget process. And so we look at a mid-year budget update that Scott does and Vicki did every, and we do our quarterly updates, those kind of things. As part of the budget process, and I'm not talking any dollar figures here whatsoever, I'm just talking as part of a process. I think it'd be very helpful and it would give good direction to our department heads at least to plan for things. To say, look, there is one opportunity in a year for additional budget or additional salary requests or regrades or new positions or, you know, I'm not going to be on the court. So y'all can do it every quarter if you wanted, but limit those to a timeframe that is predictable And that is, it makes it much easier to budget for. So, for example, on law enforcement officers in the past, for the constable's offices, we've said, okay, well, if you want a new position and a vehicle, we're going to do a new vehicle. And for the first half of the year, that's how we're going to get that funding. And instead of having that officer for the full year, We're going to start on April 1 or whatever the case may be, halfway through the fiscal year. I think that we've been fairly successful at that. But giving direction and a calendar as to when those positions or when the court would reconsider regrades or new positions and saying, look, I would love to give you all the positions you want. Come back and talk to us in January or January for that April, if it's going to be April. for that rebudget or that mid-year budget, that's when you can do it. And it eliminates that monthly piecemeal, hey, we need an upgrade. And it puts it on a consistent basis that we can budget for.

You're exactly right, Commissioner. And that's part of the whole overall goal is to harmonize direction and give Scott direction and tell elected officials and department heads. And I still, I've always said it, and I will say it here publicly, and if there's a way we can share this as... Policy update if we agree on it. I believe we should have less Day-to-day operational. I'll just call it micromanaging of department has elected officials and allow them once we approve their budget to run their budgets give them a little more autonomy and if there's a hand-holding routinely babysitting conversation to be had then we need to reevaluate what's going on with the person in charge of that space and But I really do love and appreciate the support of those department heads and officials and respect so that they can have the autonomy so that they're not peppering us every time there's a court meeting as well.

Yeah, I mean, when it comes to the freeze situation, I agree with both my colleagues. I do think that there needs to be a time and a place for it. I do think that if you did a freeze and you instituted a freeze, from one budget cycle to the next and just approved at budget cycle new positions, I think that that's something I could get behind. I also believe, I mean, we as a court said, whenever we started this process, we made it very clear that if you wanted a new position, justification and data were one of the things that we really wanted to see consistently. I believe Judge Smith has done a great job showing us CONSTANT NUMBERS, WHY SHE NEEDS POSITIONS, AND THAT IS THE ONE DEPARTMENT HEAD ELECTED OFFICIAL THAT I DO THINK HAS DONE WHAT WE HAVE ASKED OF HER IN THAT REGARD. I DON'T SEE ANY OTHER you know, numbers and Excel spreadsheets and data that supports some of these positions. And I'd love to have conversations if that's the case, if they do have that, but, and they might have that with you might be different than it is with me, but she's just done a very good job of, of letting us know as a, as a court about those, those numbers. But I do believe like Sentinel peak, I know that you said, you know, taking we Sentinel peak will be open. I'm saying this, Carl's going to hate me for saying this will be open in spring of next year. And with that, we need staff members, right? And I know that you've been working with Marisol. There are ways that we can kind of justify that based on revenue that we will be receiving from the park. So we've kind of already had those discussions and those conversations. But sometimes it is easier to say no new positions and focus more on let's pay our staff better or whatever have you. So we have to balance all of those things to be able to have a balanced budget and to not asks the taxpayers for more money out of their pocket.

Very good. What I'd like to do is have you mentally have the freedom and flexibility to go past, because I know I've heard and I've also provided publicly, direction for you, which is very valuable, and what you seek in this agenda item. And whenever we're done with the presentation, we can always reopen it for an actual vote and action and direction. So if you want to just touch the others in case there's something else to shake out, and then we're going to move on. We'll table it.

That sounds good, Judge. We'll get into the other items that are specifically mentioned in the agenda item. The next item would be the Haskell inmate outsourcing, relocation, and inmate reduction to fewer than 50.

And the thought process behind that is we have a longstanding commitment to honestly terminate that altogether. But I was on the phone with the sheriff whenever I was crafting this agenda item. And I said, I don't wanna just push something out that is an impossibility. And so he's striving for that as well. And I believe because of what we did pre Haskell, that we could use our neighboring counties again for the diminishing because we have such great work coming from our courts and everyone else in our judicial system that we do have a diminishing number of outsourcing. And so I really do believe that locking that down to committing us to pay for 50 beds and the overflow in the neighboring counties will make it where legal representation and loved ones, friends and family can go visit those people a lot easier than they can currently. And so that's what the intent is behind that because I will be bringing back an agenda item to renew the contract. I know as ugly as that sounds, but I'd like to have that conversation out front and this is the touch of that to say, yes, but let's cap it at 50.

I mean, and I agree with that. I mean, and that's what I was going to ask about the contracts. I guess we're going to have to come back and renew those or establish those once again.

ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT THE OUT OF COUNTY ONES OR THE ONES SPECIFIC TO HASKELL COUNTY? SPECIFIC TO HASKELL GOES THROUGH, THE TERM OF THAT ONE RUNS THROUGH APRIL OF 2027.

I'M TALKING ABOUT LIKE COMAO COUNTY, GUADALUPI COUNTY, SOME OF THOSE ARE WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. IF WE'RE BRINGING THEM BACK CLOSER TO HAYES COUNTY, AND I AGREE, IT WILL BE EASIER FOR REPRESENTATION The families, I know that families have been concerned about having them out there. It worked for a while and it still is, but if we can get them closer to home, I think I'd appreciate that. And the families would too. So would we have to reestablish those contracts with the neighboring counties?

Some of those, and I don't want to speak too much for the sheriff's office. I know they're in here. We still have some that are ongoing. We try to keep them open and keep good relationships with our surrounding counties to be able to utilize them if and in the event they have room.

And I wanted to make a point. I don't want to sound like I'm just completely trying to get the budget at all costs. But when it comes to outsourcing them, it is actually cheaper. But us as a court have determined, isn't it cheaper? Let me just ask that. Is it cheaper to outsource the inmates in Haskell County?

That would be hard for me to answer. I would want to run some additional analysis before I gave a for sure answer on that. With that being said, I believe... I believe the daily rate at Haskell. 115.

No, it's less than that.

It was 95 in the first contract. I thought it went up to 115. Is that not right?

For Haskell County, it's $102.50. And then other surrounding counties are at various rates depending on what the county is.

Let's go around the circle there, vicinity.

No, it is cheaper from that perspective, right?

I would agree.

But it's important to the court that they're here. It's important for various reasons. So that is something that I just wanted to make a point of, that us doing that doesn't necessarily save money, but it is something that's important to every single one of us on the court.

I would just add that I know that the Sheriff's Department has been working diligently to try to end that contract. I know there's a timeline during the budget process. Are we going to hear what that current timeline is? I know Chief Bailey's here. I'm just wondering.

I can give you the contractual timeline, but as far as an operational timeline, obviously that wouldn't come from me. So depending on what kind of timeline you're looking for.

No, I'm looking for when, if we say 50, is that doable in the first year? quarter of the fiscal year is that in the second quarter of the fiscal year is that how many do we have there now you see what I mean I mean we can't really make a good decision I don't think until we have a timeline as to what facilities will have ready here and what what surrounding counties I think the biggest concern I completely agree I'd much rather have those inmates closer the biggest concern that I have is that when we were outsourcing the vast majority of our inmates to those surrounding counties years ago They the ones that we were actually outsourcing to did not have the population growth that we were having at the time. And now some of those counties, Guadalupe County, Kamal County, some of those other counties have had exponential population growth. And I don't know how many, you know, It was not uncommon for us to get a call from a jailer or from a sheriff next door and say, hey, come pick up all your inmates because we don't have the room now. And so I just don't know what facilities are available, and I don't know the capacity. I mean, the capacity is a concern for me. But I would much rather not have any in Haskell when I think all of us feel the same way. Thank you.

You want to keep going, Scott?

Yes, Judge. The next item for discussion would be... I think we talked about the ARPA, and I'm going to move on from that, would be a pause on studies, master planning, and outsource updating of projects.

Yes. So the thought behind that item is, of course we want to be studied and prepared and planned, absolutely. However, some of these studies can go years out, and we won't be able to turn soil on something for more years out. And then by the time you go to actually touch it, they're going to say, well, we need to update this assessment and so I just want us to scrutinize the ones that are needed and the ones that are so many years out that we can actually wait before a project gets made so that we don't say well we did this but it's three years old we got to do another one and so it's just about looking at them and I think it'd be helpful to have a list of those studies or plans that we're currently working on and

then we can make that a better determination.

Perfect.

I would agree. I can prepare something for the budget meeting later.

And I think a good example of that is whenever we had the broadest, an associate's contract, we were like, hey, we're not going to be touching this for a while. We've spent this amount of money. This is how much is left in the contract. Let's terminate now, and then we can always talk about it later. Exactly. So things of that nature.

Exactly.

Okay. And would this question... WE'LL SAVE IT FOR THE BUDGET WORKSHOP. I HAVE A QUESTION OVER THIS OVER A CURRENT CONTRACT WE HAVE BUT I THINK IT MAY BE BETTER IN THE WORKSHOP. ARE WE PREPARED TO MOVE TO THE NEXT ITEM OR DO WE WANT SOME MORE DISCUSSION?

READY FOR THE NEXT ITEM.

YES, SIR. THE NEXT ONE WOULD BE THE UTILIZATION OF THE JUVENILE FACILITY TO HOUSE OUT OF COUNTY JUVENILE INMATES.

As I said on the juvenile board, the conversation behind that is to have the opportunity for all the empty space in reverse of the adult portion of what we deal with, but in the juvenile side. Help neighboring counties and hold their, support them, and ultimately, I'm hearing, you know, make some money out of it.

So I, everybody hold your breath. This is something we're going to actually really agree on. I'm not joking. This is a concept that I came up with about two years ago. And I say that because I know many of us have familiarity with the Burke Center, which is located in my precinct. And in dealing with them and with some budget shortfalls they had, they contacted me and said, we're really interested in housing juvenile inmates for Hayes County because we have contracts with, I think at that time, six other outside counties to house juvenile inmates. And we don't have one with Hays County. Why is that the case? And so I tried to familiarize myself more with our juvenile board and started looking at what the daily rate is and what our current capacity and needs were. And what I found out was we didn't have a contract with them because we were currently housing juvenile inmates from all the surrounding counties. Yes, statewide. And so the daily rate on those is actually, it's pretty good. I want to say it's $350, $370 a month, something like that, as opposed to the $102 that we're paying in Haskell. There are different restrictions or different standardizations and those kind of things we have to have. But given the growth of our county, I thought we missed something in our capital improvement plan, our CIP, whenever we didn't look at the juvenile facility that we have. Because over the next five to ten years, we'll probably fill that facility completely and have to look at some point in the near future, I say near in government terms, five to ten years of expansion of that facility. If we could not at this point really reassess and study whether or not we should do an expansion of that, then at the time and bring in those additional juveniles, at the time we need that expansion because those expanded beds, it hopefully will have paid for a majority of what that facility would cost. I know there's concerns with that, but over time, I mean, if it was 100 beds and the rate was our actual rate say we earned 170 out of that $370 back into the system, you can just stop and think that's $17,000 a day that would be going into a building fund for that facility or to help offset additional costs in the county.

Are they all in county juveniles that are facility right now?

We actually have the privilege of having some representation in our courtroom. How about we have just for a half a second, have someone from that department step on up and just give name, title, and a sprinkling tiny background. To answer that question.

Joel Ware, Hayes County Juvenile Center, Juvenile Facility Administrator. And so the commissioner, will you reset your question?

Yeah. CURRENTLY AT OUR FACILITY, ARE THEY ALL HAYES COUNTY JUVENILES?

NO, WE CURRENTLY HAVE OUT OF COUNTY KIDS FROM COMAL COUNTY, BEAR COUNTY, CALDWELL, BASH DROP. WE CONTRACT WITH OVER LIKE 60 COUNTIES IN THE STATE OF TEXAS.

AND THAT'S WHY I'M A LITTLE BIT CONFUSED, I GUESS. WE'RE ALREADY HOUSING OUT OF COUNTY. And so I... Are we getting paid? What are we asking here?

So that's my point. What's the current capacity of the facility?

Current capacity, we have anywhere from about 27 to 40 kids inside the facility. So we have two different programs inside the facility. We have a long-term program, And we also have a detention program as well. So the combined total of those two programs averages anywhere from 27 to about 40 kids.

So my question was the capacity that they have right now that is extra capacity in there that we're having these outsourced juveniles in. I think the numbers that I looked at, and Judge, you may have better numbers than I, because these have been a couple of years old that I saw, is that we would completely fill that facility ourselves within five to seven years, I want to say what the estimates were. And so if we know that we're going to fill that facility in five to seven years and we're going to have to start outsourcing and we are going to or we're going to have to expand the facility, if we go ahead and expand the facility or at least study the thought of doing it now, we might be able to capture some of the costs of that for when we do fill it up. Yeah.

Okay, and I understand that. It was just the way, I guess, the agenda item was written. You know, I wasn't sure because I thought we had out of county, and it just says to house out of county juvenile inmates, and so I...

So we have the capacity to let people know that we could take more. Am I right?

No, I don't think we have the capacity. Just because if you're going to take in more juveniles out of county, in county... that changes the morale for the staff. You know, you have to be built to handle more behavioral problems. You have to be built to handle more mental health problems. And so just taking in more out of county kids, unless there's an investment made to the facility, when you're talking about operations, appliances, staff members, you know, you have to be able to deal with those everyday problems. Exactly. Yeah, it is tough to take in more out-of-county kids.

100%. And I want to make sure I don't frame this insensitively. It's not about trying to just take them. It's helping a situation, helping neighboring counties, et cetera, and only at the capacity that you are able to successfully take effectively manage it, but that's what this conversation item's about. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

And I just want to add, I'm more interested in prevention and reform versus expansion, honestly. Not a way to generate revenue for the county, right? So my hope is that the court truly invests in those resources than the other suggested, is my thought.

Thank you all. Thank you.

One last item left. We'll go ahead and go over it. Last but not least is postponing data conversions and software updates if not required in FY2027. Which is totally what I'm asking for.

Yes, and I believe, Scott, in our conversations, I know that Jeff McGill looked at that and recommended what he believes is necessary.

In the recommended budget that I'll be presenting later, I did talk with IT, and anything that they recommended made it into the budget because they are the experts there. I wouldn't want to do something that would potentially put the county at risk. That being said, there are no large items like that currently in the budget.

Perfect. This was just a generic document. Like, Commissioner Smith, I don't want to, while we're going to table this item and move on, I know that I don't have any interest in the framing that I want to expand a juvenile facility. I don't have any interest in expanding it, and I wanted you to make sure you knew that. I know that's not your interest either, but it's about maximizing the dollars in that space as a countywide budget to make sure that we have the opportunity to just see the whole as a whole, but not to sit there and say that there's a flag to expand the juvenile center flying up here because that's not accurate.

No, I know that we're going to be in a situation in five to seven years where we're going to have to expand it. Just because after speaking with our county court law judges and others over the last two to three years, we are getting a much, much larger number of juvenile cases. And so that being in serious cases, not... Not the cases we saw 10 years ago. And they do require some type of detainment. So that being the case, we know if we can see that that's coming on the horizon, then preparing for that I think is the best thing to do. And at a bare minimum, I'd like to see us look at at least having our staff look at, okay, what is that timeframe? What does it look like? And preparing some numbers for us to say, okay, in three years we go from having, I don't know what the number would be, 50% of those juveniles, counties paying us for those juveniles to guess what? Now we're paying 75% instead of 50% out of our budget. versus other people or other counties supplementing it too. That's right.

I just wanted to take the moment worried when it was said to clarify that under no circumstances am I advocating for any detention expansion. Programs is obviously most completely the way to go. We're going to table this item and then we're going to go to K-4. Please open K-4.

K-4, discussion and possible action to consider an order of the Commissioner's Court of Hays County, Texas, accepting and approving the 2026 Annual Service Plan Update to the Service and Assessment Plan, including updated Major Improvement Area Assessment Role, Neighborhood Improvement Area No. 1 Assessment Role, Neighborhood Improvement Area No. 2 Assessment Role, and Neighborhood Improvement Area No. 3 Assessment Role for the Lesima Public Improvement District. making and adopting findings, providing a cumulative repeater clause, and providing an effective date.

So moved.

Second. All right. Commissioner.

Yeah, so this is an annual update that we are required to do within the PID, I guess, statute or agreement that we have with LACIMA, and P3 is here to kind of give us a little bit more information and details on each of those.

Perfect. Kyle Schaffman, P3 Works, the administrator for the district. So this item is the required annual service plan update required under Chapter 372 of the local government code. It contains the updated assessment roles for 2026 for the district, as well as the updated five-year service plan. Within this document, you'll also find updated information about homeownership, prepayments within the district, and forms of the buyer disclosures that are required under Texas property code. And if there are any specific questions about the document or the district itself, I'm happy to answer those. Commissioner Inglesby?

I think I'm good, Judge.

Commissioner Collins?

I'm good.

Commissioner Smith? I'm good. Annual update. There it is. No significant change. No significant change.

Thank you for your two and a half hours.

You're welcome.

Glad to be here. Jordan, anything else to contribute?

I WAS JUST GOING TO ADD THAT THOSE UPDATES TO THE ASSESSMENT ROLES ARE PROVIDED TO THE TAX ASSESSOR FOR PURPOSES OF COLLECTING ON THE SPECIAL ASSESSMENTS ASSIGNED TO THE DISTRICT.

THANK YOU. OKAY. SO DO WE NEED TO TAKE ANY ACTION?

Yes, please, Judge. If the court is so inclined to authorize the order, that's a very long agenda item, but if there's a motion to authorize the order of the court accepting and improving that plan update, that would be great.

There's a certificate of the clerk. So moved. Second. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. K-7.

K-7, discussion and possible action to authorize the execution of an agreement for professional services between Hayes County and Justice Benefits, Inc., related to exploring new or expanded opportunities for state and federal funding opportunities, and authorize a waiver to the purchasing policy for obtaining three quotes.

So moved. Second.

COMMISSIONER COHEN.

MATTHEW IS GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE ITEM.

GOOD AFTERNOON OR GOOD MORNING COMMISSIONERS AND JUDGE BUSETTA MY NAME IS MATTHEW GONZALEZ I'M THE HAYES COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT DIRECTOR AND THE DISCUSSION OF REVENUES THAT'S WHAT THIS CONTRACT IS GOING TO BE ABLE TO HELP US DO. JBI SPECIALIZES IN HELPING GOVERNMENTS WITH CONTRACTS RELATED TO FEDERAL OR STATE FUNDING AND SO SPECIFICALLY THIS PULL OF FUNDING IS FROM THE PUBLIC HEALTH PROVIDER CHARITY FUND that is operated through the state of Texas according to the 1115 Medicaid waiver with the federal government. Only public health departments, public health districts, FQHCs and local mental health authorities or behavioral health authorities are allowed to tap into this revenue pool that's available for us. So essentially what happens right now at the department is we don't collect revenue from our patients anymore. And because of that, our money that we could have charged patients for immunizations, TB services, or STIs, we're losing out on. And so what this company will do will help us create a policy within the county, assess the current market, and create a rate that we would charge patients, but it would not charge them. Instead, we would be billing to this public health funding pool. And they would handle all the reporting, auditing, and everything that goes along with it. So it makes it a very streamlined process for staff. The contract itself is based on a fee for service. So essentially what we would do, I believe it's 35% that's listed in that contract. 22%. So if we got $1,000 in revenue from the public health provider charity fund, they would get 22% of that revenue as part of their fee. So, it does allow us, again, they handle all the records, they handle all the policies. If there's ever any audit, they would handle the audit for us. So, that 22 percentage fee is, to me, well worth it, especially whenever we're not passing that fee on to our patients.

So, Matthew, just a couple of questions. So, I guess this is a more specialized approach. assistance that we need? I mean, we have a great grants department, but does it go kind of beyond their scope and this is more specialized?

Yes, ma'am. That's actually a really great question. And part of the reason why we had to get this purchasing waiver is that JBI does specialize specifically in this public health provider charity fund reimbursement. THE REIMBURSEMENT DOES FALL IN LINE WITH SOME MEDICARE BILLING STIPULATIONS, AND SO FOR INSTANCE WE SENT THREE STAFF MEMBERS TO ATTEND THE TRAINING THAT YOU HAVE TO REPORT ON THIS. AND SO IT IS A LITTLE BIT MORE COMPLEX THAN THE NORMAL GRANT WRITING REVENUE STUFF THAT OUR AUDITORS DO.

AND THEN JUST WHAT SPECIFICALLY COUNTS AS AMOUNTS GENERATED FROM THE PROGRAM? BECAUSE I KNOW WE HAVE 22% IN THERE, BUT IS IT 22% OF THE I mean, you know, are there any other reimbursable that can be added to above and beyond the 22%?

So it would only be the 22% fee. So, for example, with this contract right now, say if we were to sign it and go into this agreement with them, And this first year, we only got our policy set up with them. We only got some of the report templates. If we did not generate revenue, they're not going to charge us anything. So it's only on the reimbursement that we receive from the public health provider charity fund. Okay. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So no other reimbursables or anything like that?

It's just the 22% for those reimbursements. Okay.

And an amount up to $100,000.

Correct, and we use that language. Again, there's a waiver that's needed to be utilized as we don't believe they fall under the professional services loophole, I guess, how do you say that? And we also didn't go out for three quotes. Again, this is a very specialized service, and we couldn't find alternatives to it because, again, there are Medicaid billers, you know, people out there, but not specifically for this public health charity, provider charity fund.

Okay, thank you. Matthew, how much revenue do you estimate that we might receive within the fiscal year?

Yes, it can be very varying from the other health department directors that I've seen and talked to about this fund. They've seen anywhere between $10,000 to $60,000 in revenue. IT'S VERY NEW TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH SPACE BECAUSE NOT A LOT OF US ARE EDUCATED ON THE MEDICAID BILLING AND OTHER REVENUE STREAMS LIKE THIS. SO THERE'S BEEN A BIG PUSH BY THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE HEALTH SERVICES TO GET US TO TAP INTO THESE FUNDS. SO AS THEY TAPPED INTO THEM, THEY'RE JUST GETTING THOSE REVENUES AND REIMBURSEMENTS STARTED. BUT I'VE SEEN ANYWHERE BETWEEN $10,000 TO AT LEAST $50,000 IN REVENUE.

THANK YOU.

I'm fine with betting on the come.

Stephanie, my question's for you. Thank you, Ms. Hunt. Can you tell me how much we've leaned into finding someone else that does this work?

Stephanie Hunt, purchasing agent. So I did review... tried to review other companies that would provide this service. Specifically with this reimbursement that they're doing, I was not able to find any. That was why I was okay with them doing the waiver to the purchasing policy, but I did require them to put in the language of not to exceed contract value of 100,000 total, just because that is statutorily our limit. I did give Matthew some options as far as if we could get them to possibly go under some type of co-op contract, or if we could... procure them through SHI, which is an avenue that we've procured other options. But I told them, depending on how much they're bringing in each year, because it's not a set amount each year, it could be a year contract or it could be a two-year, three-year. But we did put that stipulation in there to potentially have us do our own procurement as well in the future.

And where's this company from? I'm sorry, what? Where is this company from?

I DON'T HAVE THAT. AND WHAT OTHER COUNTIES ARE THEY SERVING, DO YOU KNOW?

I DON'T. SO JBI DOESN'T ONLY SERVE FOR THE PUBLIC HEALTH CHARITY FUND. So right now, Williamson County uses them. Northeast Texas Public Health District utilizes them. I'm trying to remember the other health departments that also utilize them. But on top of the Public Health Charity Fund, they also help out with other criminal justice reporting. I believe there's a different SCAT reporting. So JBI also does SCAT reporting for other counties. So they're used by very small counties to very, very large counties for their reportings.

I just want you to know ahead of time, I think it's an amazing idea. I just want to make sure we have sound process to picking them. And does our county admin have any experience with these folks?

So I'm familiar with JBI. In my previous role, they did these gap reporting for Tarrant County. I also sat in on a meeting with Matthew and Stephanie where they did their presentation. And I believe that we've done our due diligence on our side. So I feel comfortable with moving forward.

And you think they're pretty...

Yes. So I participate on the Texas Association of City and County Health Officials and that association. And there is recommended by a lot of health department directors that, you know, they're saying if you're interested in tapping into this reimbursement pool, it's highly suggested that you go with these people because they've helped us get set up from beginning to end, not just, oh, we need a little assistance, we're pulling you in the middle, wrap it up for us. People from beginning to end for this process.

Again, I think it's an amazing product. Sounds like they're doing a wonderful job. Okay, if there's nothing else, call the roll.

Commissioner Smith.

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. Please open M3.

M3, Executive Session Pursuant to Section 551.071 of the Texas Government Code, Consultation with Council Regarding the County's Legal Options and Remedies Involving the Indigent Defense Services Provided by Neighborhood Defender Services. Possible discussion and or action may follow in open court.

So moved.

Second.

So this is an item that we will be talking in depth in executive session. But in the meantime, we have it open and we can talk publicly. And we have civil to guide us if we are going to say something we shouldn't.

Correct. And the reason I put this on the agenda and the reason that I wanted to pull it out of exec for a conversation is there are certain questions that... If we attempted to have those in EXACT, it would be attorney-client privilege. And I wanted to make sure to hear straight from NDS some of the answers to those questions, and they would not be allowed in our executive session. And so I know there's representatives from NDS here, and I know that we also have some representatives from both our district courts and the district attorney's office. It's I intend for this to be an open conversation because I I want to find out some data and I've been somewhat unsuccessful at that thus far as The general public probably doesn't know but we've been informed as commissioners the email That they're the services provided by NDS. They're currently in negotiations with their with a number of their employees, and we have been recently informed that some of them have gone on strike. And so that being the case, I have a number of questions. I know we've got a representative from NDS here. I'd like to hear from her first and then actually get into the weeds a little bit on what that looks like for those clients of theirs that they are representing on behalf of the county and how it's being ensured that those cases aren't slipping, that those defendants are being represented in a meaningful way, and any additional information that they may want to provide for that. With that, I do believe that we have Minoo here from NDS, and I'd like to hear any update that you can give us, and then I'm sure that my colleagues and I are going to have questions.

Mina Walters, Managing Director for Neighborhood Defender Service of Texas. Good morning, Judge, Commissioners. Commissioner Smith, I know that you have questions, and I am as prepared, I think, as I can be without knowing exactly what kind of questions you have to answer them. I'd like to start off by letting you know that The strike did end and today our employees are back at work and so we have our full staff working again. The strike lasted for seven working days and during those seven working days our supervisors stepped up. Not all of our employees went out on strike but we provided full court coverage None of our existing clients suffered. We did not reschedule any cases because our attorneys were not in court. Our supervisors covered everything. the feedback that we got from courts, from even the DA's office was that they enjoyed, like they appreciated the coverage that we were able to provide under the circumstances. We met our July caseload obligations and took the full number of cases that we were supposed to take for July under our contract. We did not get during that week that the staff was out, the judges did not give us any new clients and so I do just want to let you know that the cases that we received for that last week were companion cases for already existing clients but we did meet our caseload requirements. Let's see, I think that, you know, I'm happy to have any of you come by our office. I'm happy to have any of you ask me questions here, call me up at any time. I have been available, I remain available to you always to answer any questions that you have. Also for the judges, for anybody at the courthouse, We have remained in close contact throughout this with the judges, with the DA's office, with the indigent defense coordinators, the mental health court, and so we believe that the work has not suffered because of this, and the clients have certainly not suffered because of this.

What I plan on doing, Commissioner Smith, is giving it back to you since she's at the podium, go through the court, and then see about other people at the podium.

No, I think that's fine. Just a couple of things, and you answered a couple of my questions. So you feel like the coverage for the clients was unimpacted?

Right. The only thing that I could see that was impacted was that we didn't get new clients. I believe that Judge Tibby had given that directive to the indigent defense coordinators. But usually towards the end of the month, we start kind of winding down getting new clients anyways, and we get companion cases. They kind of hold a little bit of space. for us to get those cases instead. So I think that was fairly consistent with how we operate every month with kind of like that holding spot for companion cases. But no, as far as jail visits were concerned, as far as court coverage was concerned, our clients did not suffer. We communicated with clients every single day. We reached out to them. And so the clients did not suffer because of this.

Have you completed your negotiations, or are you still in negotiations?

We have completed our negotiations.

Okay. When we signed this contract, y'all were not a unionized facility. Is that correct?

We were not here in Texas, no.

So given the fact that I assume that those negotiations ended with various increases in different costs. Correct. We have a contract, and for people who want to ask legal, when is the termination date on the contract? Do you know?

I can tell you it's September 30th, 2027.

Okay, so we have an additional year on the contract. Correct. There's not any anticipation that the cost for the services provided to the county would be increased?

No, we are not asking for any additional money this year.

Okay. Okay. And then really my last question is, are there any concerns or were there any concerns expressed by either the judges or the DA's office relative to, and I'm just going to say these attorneys walking out on their clients. I mean, are there not bar concerns there relative to the service and standard of service that they have agreed to on taking on those clients for representation?

Yes, that concern was shared by I think every judge that we talked to when we found out that this was happening. We follow labor laws and our staff has a federally protected right to strike and so we did everything that we could to ensure that the clients did not suffer. Our supervisors attended court every day, our supervisors went to the jail every day, so we did those things, but that concern was expressed to us over and over again by the judges, especially by the judges.

How was that received by those that you were negotiating with?

I do not know. Like, I cannot get into other people's mind. I think that ultimately, you know, We would take the position that we are happy to have our staff back at work, the clients being served. That is ultimately the goal here. What I can say is that I think that some of those concerns are fair concerns. We have done everything that we could for the clients.

Okay. Commissioner Cohen?

I have no questions at this moment.

Thank you.

Commissioner Inglesby?

Well, Meenu, thank you for being here. I mean, I'll just say that, you know, it was very concerning when we received your email that this was happening, and I was actually really surprised that there was a union. I mean, I had absolutely no idea that, you know, that was what we were dealing with here. And so when was that formed and why?

So, oh gosh, I don't remember exactly. It was pretty shortly after we started up in Hays, but not right away. And I don't remember the date of it. What I can tell you from my experience working obviously in Texas for a lot of years is that I was surprised also to find this out, but non-profit legal providers in Texas are unionized and so well before NDS became unionized, Trello was unionized, Legal Aid of Northwest Texas was unionized. I know that Lone Star Legal Aid and the Houston area is unionized. TRGPD, which provides services to places like Beeville and Maverick County, those places are all unionized. And so I know that that feels counterintuitive. It did to me too when I started in this area of nonprofit legal services, but it is apparently not unusual and it's very common. And I think almost every single nonprofit legal provider in Texas is a union organization.

And can you share with us what the final negotiations were regarding the health care benefits? When I saw that, it's extremely rich. I mean, I was even surprised at that. But can you just let us know what the final? Conclusion was on that sure.

I'd like to I mean I know that I kind of explained a little bit about what the trigger language is When I told you about this and I know that you're asking the question commissioners angle commissioner Inglesby But I'm actually gonna look at you a little bit too Commissioner hammer because I know that when Shannon and I were here last year you brought up our fringe rate and obviously health care is the biggest driver of the fringe rate. We have generous healthcare benefits. As a nonprofit provider, our total compensation does not look like a county's compensation package. Before nonprofit work, my jobs were always with counties. I'm well aware of what retirement looks like, what healthcare through a county looks like. And so we compensate people differently than the county would compensate them. And part of that is this very generous healthcare package. What was previously in our contract was a 10% trigger, which means that every year, if the healthcare costs overall to NDS went up by 10% or less, that we were going to let that come out of our budget. But if they went over that, then the union would be negotiating with us on the impact of that. What we have at this point, rather than a 10% trigger, is a 20% trigger. That means that the first 20% or up to the first 20% of the cost of healthcare comes back on us. THE, OUR EMPLOYEES PRIORITIZED GETTING THAT OVER GETTING HIGHER SALARIES AND SO THIS WAS A HUGE PRIORITY FOR THEM. I KNOW COMMISSIONER HAMMER THAT YOU SAID LAST YEAR YOU WOULD RATHER PAY OUR, YOU KNOW, YOU WOULD NOT OUR EMPLOYEE SPECIFICALLY BUT YOU WOULD RATHER PAY PEOPLE THAN HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES. WE REMEMBER YOU SAYING THOSE WORDS AND OUR EMPLOYEES JUST DID NOT WANT THAT.

Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, if there's others that want to speak, I know that, you know, we've just kind of been hearing some concerns. And so I just want to hear from others maybe what those are going are. And but thank you again for being here and sharing.

Commissioner Hammer.

I just want to say I do think a public defender's office is is crucial to our criminal justice system. So I don't want to discount or discredit anything that you and your office do in any way, shape, or form. How much advance notice did you give us in that email from when the strike happened, from when you heard that it was a potential or you heard threats of it happening? I just want to know that timeline.

We told you the day before the staff went on strike. It was, I believe, the afternoon or evening before. We were working very hard, very long hours, almost daily in negotiations, trying to come up with a solution that would get us to an agreement with them before they went on strike. So when did you first hear that that could be a potential of them going on strike? I think they gave us the strike deadline maybe five days before, a week before, something like that.

You didn't hear any rumblings before that five days period?

We knew that we were going to be out of contract and so there's always rumblings. I think that's part of what happens. When we first negotiated a contract, we heard those same rumblings and there wasn't a strike, I believe. that I am correct in saying that never in NDS's history before this has there been a strike. I personally have been working 70 hour weeks or more to try to get this done. I know that everybody on our leadership team has been working those kinds of hours to get this done. When we got to that last day and we still were not at an agreement, I notified the county

Judge Tibby, would you like to take the podium?

Judge, before that, there's just one more follow-up before you sit down. I think the concerns that I have, we work with other groups that are unionized. I mean, all of our law enforcement is unionized. And I think my largest concern is how many months ago or years ago did you know that this contract was going to expire? When you signed the initial contract at unionization, you knew this contract had an expiration or a renegotiation period. Did you not?

Yes.

Exactly. When did you actually start negotiating?

April.

So from April until the walkout, what notifications did you provide the county or anyone who works with us to notify us that we could have had an interruption in service?

I did not provide any notification.

until the day before they walked out.

I mean, you know, we had people from the county administrator's office at our office and we gave them a heads up that they would see union posters on our walls. And so we weren't trying to hide anything from the county at any point during this.

I'm not saying you were trying to hide anything, but my concern is if you knew that this would be a problem, where you knew that this was a possibility, or you knew it might have an impact on our contract as you being our vendor, if that's going to be the case, why did we not, if you've been in negotiations since April, why did we not know until a day before a walkout happened, even though five days prior you had been notified that we could have had, that it was a possibility? At a bare minimum, even if you didn't notify us that you were in negotiations with our service providers, the moment that they said we may walk out next week, that should have triggered a phone call to our county.

I understand.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Judge Tibby, would you like to take the podium? And if you'll say your name and title for the viewing public.

Sherry Tibby, District Court Judge and the local administrative judge for Hayes County. I, like the Commissioner's Court, was completely blindsided by this. I had no idea that they were unionized. And so this was a complete surprise to us when we found out the day before it happened. I'm very grateful that they've worked out their differences. But if this strike had stretched out beyond where it did, it would have been a crisis of major proportions in our legal system because the NDS, they have a lot of cases. The supervisors can show up for court and basically they were just getting resets. I don't know what they did with their clients or what they said to their clients, but if it's a serious felony case and they're not the lead lawyer on that case, they are not up to speed with the facts and the evidence. And so I felt like, and I talked with the district attorney's office that You know, they were in violation of the rules of professional conduct. And it's just specifically 1.01, which in representing a client, a lawyer shall not neglect a legal matter entrusted to the lawyer or frequently fail to carry out completely the obligations that the lawyer owes to a client or clients. And so all those lawyers that went on strike, I feel like they failed in their duties to their clients. And we can't have that. I mean, that's just untenable in a legal system where they've got I don't know how many cases y'all have, like 1,000? Right. So, I mean, that's a big chunk of our indigent defense representation. And so, I mean, this was something that if it had gone on beyond this week, I don't know what we would have done because they have a significant number of clients that are in jail. And in indigent defense, a significant number, especially in the felony cases, are going to be incarcerated because they can't afford bond. And so I think we've avoided a crisis at this point. But I think my concern is, and I don't know, I don't have any answers to this, and I'm not, you know, I'm not making any, I don't make the decisions on this kind of stuff, but I'm very concerned about this happening again. And it's just not something that we can tolerate as far as the representation of the clients. And I support labor unions. I worked for one when I was in college. This is not a, this is not a, you know, criticizing labor unions and what they do. But this is a different situation than people that are working for the IRS or people that work in car manufacturing. This is a very different situation because these lawyers have an ethical duty to their client, and they walked away from that. And so that's my concern with all of this.

Thank you, Judge. Thank you so much. Commissioner Smith, would you like a... Every time someone comes to the podium, I want to give the court an opportunity to have a response.

I don't have anything for Judge Tibby. I appreciate her openness, but I also see that Greg Cox from our DA's office is here. And if there was any interactions that you might want to share with us, you're more than welcome to. If not, that's fine as well. But not yet.

Anything for comments on Judge Tibby?

I would just probably reiterate the fact that I'm glad that y'all came to terms when you did. I would, if that were to be the case in the future, as soon as there's any type of rumblings or hearings or anything that is going through the grapevine of this being another potential, just to be able to reach out to the county as soon as possible and just let us know, because we just want to make sure that everyone's being taken care of.

Not yet. Sorry. Commissioner Cohen. No, I'm good. Commissioner Inglesby.

No, but Sherry, Tibby, thank you so much for being here.

I'm sorry if you have questions.

No, I just wanted to thank you for being here and sharing that. And I agree. I mean, I think that just whenever we know something, you know something, we would appreciate a heads up as soon as possible.

Because the level of concern, higher advance notice is good. A day prior could be great for an earthquake, but not for this. Got it. Got it. OK. Sure.

Judge, if it's okay, can I ask Mena one clarifying question? Please. Mena, if you don't mind me asking, could you, the new agreement that you've recently negotiated, can you tell me what the termination date is on that? That's what I was going to come up to talk about. On the same page.

Thank you, Judge. It's a three-year contract, the new one, and there is a no-strike provision during those three years.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. And now, Greg Cox, if you don't mind approaching for any additional comments or contributions.

Thank you, sir. Greg Cox, first assistant from the district attorney's office. I actually don't have any comments, but I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.

I would probably save any comments or questions for the exact portion. Very good.

What I would say is... I hear the concern, Judge Tibby, loud and clear. Holy smokes, I hear it completely. But I will say, from the things I've heard, a three-year contract, no striking, we're locked in with protections. Does that sound, Greg, does that sound comforting to you?

It's certainly better than where we were, yes. But I agree with Judge Tibby that there are some ethical concerns that lawyers have that probably do not apply to other labor type situations. And I think some people just completely disregarded those.

OK. necessarily giving us legal advice but what would you do in those situations or someone else might do?

Well I know that when I worked in Travis County there was a county union and people could join it and prosecutors talked about joining it and everybody realized that we have a different as lawyers we have a different set of ethical obligations that meant the union if someone was a member of it might want to engage in certain conduct And if you were a lawyer and that conduct was going to violate the ethics rules, you could not participate. And as a result, a lot of the lawyers ended up not joining the county employee union up there. So I just I think that. Union activities and ethical bar rules don't necessarily line up, and people need to be careful about that. Thank you.

And before you walk away, I want to ask the court if there's any comments or questions for Greg.

Thank you for clarifying.

Thank you. Jordan, is there anything else we need to touch before we move on?

Not from my standpoint, Judge.

Okay. Well, thank you all very much. We're going to ask that you please open. We're going to take a short recess. Are you ready? Okay, we're going to take a 10-minute recess. Yes.

recess and I have been asked not to open executive session item number one so please open two and three M2 executive session pursuant to sections 551.071 and 551.072 of the Texas government code consultation with council and deliberation regarding the exchange purchase lease sale or value of real property located at or near FM 2325 and Ranch Road 2325 located in Precinct 3. Possible discussion and our action may follow an open court. M3, executive session pursuant to section 551.071 of the Texas Government Code consultation with council regarding the county's legal options and remedies involving the indigenous Defense services provided by Neighborhood Defender Services. Possible discussion and or action may follow in open court.

So moved. All right. Second. If you are not tied to M2, please clear. Please open N1. We are going to knock out this little notification, and then we're going to go straight to our workshop.

N1, discussion related to the Hayes County inmate population to include current population counts and costs.

I remain grateful to the Sheriff's Office for sending my office this jail report, and I always read it because I always have people interested in wondering what's going on. Hays County's current jail capacity, our maximum jail capacity, is 464 inmates. Jail standards recommend holding approximately 10% of that capacity open, which lowers our capacity to 417. The jail's daily average was 516, however, on July 30th. The estimated cost for outsourcing inmates this week is $77,182. The average number of males outsourced is 108 and females are zero. This week's inmates have all been housed in Haskell County. Paper-ready inmates are those inmates we have found through our judicial system, found guilty, and are now state inmates. We are holding 38 paper-ready inmates. Now that we're done with that, the last thing of business for this court is our workshop. Please open L1.

L1, 1 p.m. budget workshop regarding the fiscal year 2027 budget. Possible action may follow.

Perfect. Thank you. And the floor is yours, fine, sir. Please introduce yourself.

Scott Woodland, budget officer. And commissioners and judge, you should have both a presentation that was handed out to you as well as a folder. So the presentation is going to be my way of going through it and discussing the budget, kind of how we came up with certain numbers, giving some options to the court on what wasn't approved and just highlighting some of those, and then discussing ending fund balances as well as the social service contracts. Now, you also have a binder like this, which is very similar to what has been received in the past. I wanted to make sure you got something that you have familiarity with and that can be used after the presentation. Thank you. Okay. We're going to go ahead and begin the presentation just turning along the PowerPoint. The first, oh, I'm sorry, we'll keep going.

Go to the little thing. Are you trying to do presentation?

There's the title page. We'll go click to the next one, which will be the overview. And we've discussed this before. We knew coming into the budget that

the revenue numbers weren't going to be great. Property taxes, we're not seeing the appraisal growth that we have in the past. You'll see in the slide here and see some of the numbers and what the property taxes looked like. We also knew that we had increasing costs kind of across the board in multiple places. So my goal for this budget was to present something to the court with no increase in property tax rate just to see what we could get by with and as anticipated it's very lean a lot of requests were essentially denied so that we could get to this place where we are operationally capable of making it through the year without really any bells or whistles and with a budget this lean it would be important going forward that all department heads Commissioner's Court, essentially everybody be lockstep as far as making sure we're all being cognizant of the budget because without any real wiggle room built in, things could go off the rails really quickly. So it would be my goal and mission to make sure that I visit more, especially more than I have been with all departments, but at least make it to somewhere I'm checking in Definitely quarterly, maybe even monthly, depending on how tight things are and what the budget's looking like with the different department heads around and just going over budgets and planning and making sure that we have a fiscally responsible path forward and that because this budget is lean, that we're not blowing it in the first half of the year and then what do we do for the rest of the year? So discipline would be very important if we continue with that lean budget. Now, let's talk about... The focus, I alluded to this a little bit, the focus really is on operations. And then any additional budget we had, there were some safety capital assets that were approved, really focused on that. And then the rest of the funds we had, we really wanted to go into salary increases for both our civilian as well as our law enforcement staff. It is a CBA year, so we are in bargaining with the sheriff's office in that group as far as what raises they would get. And then we have done our own analysis on our civilian salaries, and I'll get into kind of what ends up being available for that. And lastly, once again, talking about it being lean, Here's some of the reasons. We had increased expenditures in FY27 from health insurance increases. So our insurance went up, I believe, 11% last year. It went up an additional 8.5% this year. So two years ago, we were looking at about annually $11,990, I believe, a year for an employee's health insurance. Currently, we're looking at roughly $15,430 per year. a significant jump which amounts to millions of dollars in increases on our budget. Likewise, our administrative offices moved out of the government center this year in order to make room for more judicial in that building, which I think is a great idea, and I think there'll be synergies there, but there is a cost to it as well. We only had half a year of that rent on our books, not much in the way of utilities. Next year, we're going to have that full year, full utilities. And from moving out of the government center, unfortunately, it doesn't really produce savings because we get our phone and things through our data lines, which is really the internet connection. And that's a set fixed fee. So even though everybody from admin moved out, that fee is going to stay the same over there. And now we're going to have an additional fee over at the new Dutton building.

You can't pull an extension cord?

We'll see what we can do. Just kidding. I remember Jeff at one point said he could laser Wi-Fi. So it could be a cost saving measure there. An additional cost that we have increasing is our vertical debt payment. So the way that that vertical debt happened last year, we only had one payment in the year, which amounted to, I believe, roughly $2 million. This year, we're going to have both the interest payments and the principal payment. And we're looking at, I believe, approximately $5.5 million. So we're looking at about a $3 million increase there. In addition, we have several contracts that have increased in cost. Our animal shelter contract is going to about double. And that's going to be about a $600,000, $700,000 increase, as well as our workers' comp is going up almost double, going from, I believe, $340,000 to almost $700,000. And it's just the costs kind of across the board are going up. And unfortunately, property taxes haven't really maintain speed with the cost. And there's also legislation over business exemptions, things like that, that have taken a little extra hit this year. So if we can go to the next slide, we'll talk about property taxes a little more in depth. So this is showing us keeping the rate the same. I will say that in order to make the general fund work, We pulled a half penny from the road and bridge to move over to the general M&O. We believe that is a bandaid. That is not something that will be sustainable. There is good fund balance this year. If they spend all the budget allotted to them in the next year, we'll have to bring that money back to them because they will then be to a point where We wouldn't want to put them in that position. We would want to make sure they succeed and are in a better financial state moving forward after that. With that being said, there are some, the beginning bounce is fairly conservative for what the roll forward has. And then I have also built in $2 million into the road and bridge that I'm hoping does not need to be used. That $2 million is a, We've been caught off guard by some tech stop payments that have come in in the past. And they are audits of old projects that we get years after the fact. And there's no way to effectively budget for that. So what I wanted to do was lay a couple million dollars into the road and bridge fund. And if it's needed, I want to use it there. And that way we know it's covered. It's not something I'm going to have to find down the road. Or if it's not needed, there can be discussions on what the operational needs are or a preference to let it roll back into fund balance to help out their position. Going down, you'll see the no new revenue rates are very similar, as well as the voter approval rate and the recommended tax rate. If you go down a little further, we can talk about the economics of the county a little bit. And so the average home value this year, as calculated by the CAD, was $450,956. And last year it was $464,111. So that average price has dropped $13,155, which is fairly significant. It lets you know kind of what the state of the economy, the state of the housing market is, that these have dropped in value. And for the citizens of Hays County, one good thing is by dropping in value, they would save $53 since we are keeping the tax rate the same. So a plus for the citizens. Moving down, you can look at the total taxable value down there. You'll see that the total taxable value increased by roughly a billion dollars, which sounds like a lot, but that's before any rate gets applied to it or... before any rate gets applied to it, and that is also a number that when you look at percentage-wise, you're looking at 1.5%, 2%. You're not looking at anything that is going to be significant there. One thing that hurts, once again, state of the county, state of the economy, the new improvements have fallen roughly $250 million. So I don't think that's a reflection of people not wanting to come to Hayes County, I think that's a more general reflection of the economy and people just not building and expanding right now. Lastly, we have those property tax protests, which are, they were less than half of what they were in the prior year. My guess is that it has something, probably has some to do with property values and the fact that when property values go down, there are a few that will protest that. And then it's the property values going down as well as it could also be that the CAD was a little more efficient this year. So it could be one of two things. And throughout the workshop, if anybody wants to stop and ask questions, I would like to, I'm okay with the dialogue or we can keep it all for the end. Please don't hesitate to stop me if you want to say something. Okay. Ready to move on to the next one? The strategic plan pillars. So these are strategic pillars. This is essentially what I tried to create as a compass. I wanted these pillars of what the county wants to represent and how we want to grow ourselves as a guide to some of the selections that I made. And I'm not going to go in depth on it. I'll just read off each individual one. We have community well-being, governance, workforce, and organizational capacity, infrastructure and sustainable growth, partnerships and collaboration, and then criminal justice modernization. OK. On the personnel request. So in the current year, due to fiscal constraints, we were not able to add any positions. The budget just wasn't there. And I will say one thing, that adding a position is a lot more than just what the salary infringe is. There's the equipment you buy them. There's potentially new office space you have to create. Depending on what their role is, there could be equipment, vehicles, et cetera. That's part of what is limiting on those positions is that they can be expensive, more so than other one-time costs. Also because any position that you create, you carry that with you. So now you have that cost moving forward each year after that. Here we're going to discuss the salary study a little bit. I will say that Eric did a good job. He created a great methodology for doing a comparison to like markets. When you look at these fiscal impacts, though, you will see that the full market alignment would have a fiscal impact of $6.4 million, whereas the phased-in implementation approach would have a fiscal impact of $4.8 million. And you would end up at the same ending salary there. It's just how it would be implemented. It would be half on 10-1 and then half on 4-1. With that being said, the salary really was the fallout of, essentially, I got us down to what we could operationally do. And then after that, what I had left was what I tried to save for salaries. What we end up with is roughly $2 million available for the civilian salary increases. Now, that would be able to provide about 30% of a market adjustment, which that would be a choice of the court how you would want to do that. That market adjustment would be important for the fact that it is targeted. So we're not trying to... In the past when we've done blanket raises, 10% across the board, if somebody was over market, we just made them over market 10% more. What this is looking to do is to shift the dollars to try to get people to the place that they would be in the market. With that being said, I do want to say that we would not harm any employees. Anything where the funding would decrease, Any position that would decrease, we would not decrease the funding of the employee. If somebody is maxed out, we would give them a one-time payment so that they are getting something, but it would not be increased to what their salary is.

I have a question because yesterday when we chatted, it was $2.5 million with 40% of funding. What happened to the $500,000?

So there was some bouncing that we did to where those funds weren't there. When I got back in, there was a debt service payment that goes in the general fund that I had entered into the INS. So thankfully, Marisol helped me review that schedule, and then I realized that it was in the wrong area. So that got shifted back into the general fund, which, like I said, the salary really is the fallout. So when those expenditures increased, the amount available for the salary increases decreased.

I will say, Court, too, if we did a 3% blanket across the board, just so y'all are aware, because that's what has happened in the past, it would be $1.8 million.

Roughly $1.8, $1.7. That's the step increase. Okay. Okay.

So basically what they're saying, because I didn't understand this, y'all probably did, but instead of doing a 3% across the board and them getting their step, some people may not get any increase, some people may get more than 3%, and just going from there.

And I would recommend if we were just going to do like the 3% that we would just continue the step process that we have, if that is what the court would desire. Okay. No real update. Okay.

It may be just one clarifying comment, Commissioner. The difference between doing a blanket and then the approach to make us at market is that even if an employee is over market, they would still get a one-time payment. So everyone would get some type of payment.

I didn't want to start a side conversation, but that's why I like the idea of giving the assessment the work value that it deserves so that everyone doing what their job descriptions say they're doing are properly compensated.

But who would determine how much this one-time payment is? What is the one-time payment?

So what we would do is we would take the difference in the market, and then we would apply that 30%. You're talking about the one-time payment to someone who is maxed out?

Correct.

So that would be a percentage of what their salary is, which originally we thought that 3% would be good, but if we're only giving 30% of raises to everyone else, then we would want to probably reconsider that and potentially do... 30% of 3%, which would probably come out to be about 1%.

I was going to say 0.9%.

Yeah, exactly. Roughly 1%. Enough for a club sandwich.

Yeah. But we are not, just because I'm just trying to wrap my head around it all, because we are not increasing the amount that they have to pay for insurance, correct? Correct. That was my biggest thing.

That is correct. In my recommended budget, there would be no increase in what our employees are paying for their insurance.

And to me, that was a really big deal because someone that's making less than $50,000, if they got a 10% increase, that would be eaten away completely by the cost of them having to increase what they pay for insurance. Rather than someone who's making $100,000, that would be the same amount as someone making $50,000, so.

Yes, ma'am, but just the only thing to that is that the county now has to absorb that increased cost.

No, I was just trying to make a point. So if someone saw that they weren't going to get their 3% and got 0.96%, that also their health insurance wasn't going up as well.

At least they're getting something, and it's not eating into what their real earnings are. Yes, correct. Okay, I think I'm ready to go to the next page. There... There was a multitude of great positions that were requested. I wanted to put up some on here that if the funding was available that these would be all positions that I recommend. Unfortunately, the funding is not available. There are also other positions that definitely have value, but these were the ones that really kind of stuck out to me. Letting our strategic pillars kind of guide the way is the way I looked at these to see how do they align with our strategic pillars? How are they going to function to help the county? And feel free to look over those positions if there's any questions. I'm happy to address them. I do want to point out just in general, so... The far left column, that is the strategic pillar. The next one is obviously the department, the name of vendor and employee. Next, the description of item. This is what I was talking about earlier, that a added employee is much more than just their wages and fringe. It's all their equipment. It's all their software licenses. That dollar amount that you see there is the position. plus all of the required equipment and software for them. So you will see that some positions are more than others, not just based off the salary, but also based off the equipment and other items. And then finally, at the bottom there, you will see a total, as well as that far right column is the tax rate effect. So what that says is that is the percent of a penny that each of these positions are. So if you go down to the very bottom, If the tax rate was to go up approximately 0.37 pennies, then you would be able to fund all of these positions here. Next, we're going to discuss some capital assets. Once again, funding for capital assets was very limited. We did approve certain capital assets. Where we went was that the priority for the available funding was to promote safety and reduce potential liability. So those are kind of some of the types of items that I am recommending. So it's your new vehicle up fits and vehicles for the high mileage vehicle replacements with a preference being given to law enforcement since they are in their cars often, they could potentially be involved in high-speed chases. It's important that their vehicles are maintained and that we're not going to put them in a bad place and in harm's way, potentially.

I would dial in one more little notch in. I've done this in the past, and I just think it's a good idea to have them be clearly marked patrol vehicles as well, just to make sure that we are pushing the effort towards our front line.

Yes, sir. Okay, the next one is air conditioning unit replacements, and this would be in both the GIL as well as the JDC. Once again, that's both safety as well as just compliance with certain conditions and standards. The fire investigator equipment, this is PPE for our fire investigators in order to keep them safe in the field. ADA-compliant construction and remodels, as well as property enclosures. The ADA is obviously compliance. It's something that we have to do. It's essentially we need to do it in order to be in compliance and to be good stewards for the citizens. And lastly, there is property enclosure. That one's pretty specific. That one has to do with a fence that we have around a cave in one of our parks. And there's a danger that potentially that what is blocking it right now has been circumvented many times. We want to try to put something a little better in there. And then also, I built into the budget, and hopefully we applied for a grant for it. So hopefully we can get those grant funds. and then that will help offset some of that cost. Okay, here's a listing of various capital requests that couldn't be funded. These were some of the priorities of the different departments. Once again, set up in a very similar manner to how the personnel was. You'll see the dollar amount. You'll see the tax rate effect. And if you get to the bottom there, you will see that total of the $3.4 million in that essentially all of those capital assets with a tax increase of 0.82225 pennies, essentially all of that capital could be purchased. Okay, we're gonna get into software. One thing I want to mention about the software, and I think I said it earlier in our discussion, that we ran the software as well as the computer equipment through our IT department and made sure that they were in support of all those items. If they supported it or said that it was needed, then it made its way into the budget as far as technology. Anything that didn't come from IT, Anything that didn't come from IT and was new and we weren't contractually obligated, there was few and far between as far as what we approved there. I will say that, as I said before, most of what's going through software is gonna be what we already have and we're already in contract for. Okay, here's a listing of... MAJOR SOFTWARE REQUESTS. I DEFINITELY SEE MERIT IN SEVERAL OF THESE. ONCE AGAIN, THE FUNDING JUST WASN'T THERE. AND IT FOLLOWS THE SAME PATTERN AS THE OTHER CHARTS THAT WE'VE BEEN LOOKING AT IN THE SENSE THAT YOU'RE GOING TO GET THAT TOTAL DOLLAR AMOUNT AND THEN YOU WILL ALSO HAVE THAT TAX RATE EFFECT THERE. SOCIAL SERVICE GRANTS. SO THIS IS FOLLOWING PILLAR ONE, WHICH IS COMMUNITY WELL-BEING. IT'S SOMETHING THAT HAS TRADITIONALLY BEEN IMPORTANT TO BOTH THE COUNTY AS WELL AS THE COURT. EVEN THOUGH IT WAS A TOUGH YEAR FISCALLY, WE DIDN'T WANT TO DECREASE WHAT WAS AVAILABLE TO GIVE OUT TO THESE NONPROFITS THROUGH THE SOCIAL SERVICES GRANTS. We put up a million dollars, which was split between the various entities that applied. We implemented a little bit different grading system this year to where one thing is we asked everyone to fill out a little bit of a different form. One of the big things we're working on is we wanted performance measures. So what we hope is the process is we get these performance measures. We then test them throughout the year and get the information from the get the information from the nonprofits. And then we can see whether or not they are making their way towards their goals. It essentially gives us a way to track and keep tabs on these nonprofits and see if they are really fulfilling what their obligation is and what they say they're going to do. Once again, so the amount of funding was $1 million. We ended up, the requested funding was roughly $2.68 million. There were 50 applicants. We did a total of 34 awards. Out of those awards, 26 were returning, and then there were eight new awardees. And I will also say that there were other applicants that applied for a social service grant, but in a lot of the cases, they were... kind of almost like a pilot program that in a lot of cases the program hadn't really been fleshed out and really given legs and form, if you will. And it's not something to where the county wanted to essentially be funding pilot programs as far as we really want to fund those organizations and groups that are established and that we know work and help the community. Okay, and then This last slide here is a fund balance roll for just showing the general fund, road and bridge fund, and the debt service fund. I'd like to point out that we end up with low reserves here as far as our months of reserves in the general fund based off this would come out to four months. And then in the road and bridge fund, there's 2.3 months, but that's a very conservative number in the sense of what I said earlier. In the fact that I think their beginning number will probably end up a little higher, and then I think that those funds that I'm putting in there for the TxDOT, hopefully there's nothing there, and then that $2 million would roll back into their fund balance, which would comprise... About a month, a little over a month.

We were currently, for our month of reserves in the general fund, we were at what, 4 point?

Currently we are at 4.6. That's where we're projected to end up at.

And for good bond ratings? Four. But our goal is six. Yeah, I know, but that's like the very, very bottom for us to.

It is a very bottom number. In our strategic pillars, we do say that we want to maintain five months, but obviously hard times call for hard measures, and it's a decision to make as far as how we want to handle that. So that's the end of my presentation. I'm definitely open for questions.

Commissioner Smith, we'll start with you. It's going to be a hard year, and I appreciate it. In our conversation, the clarification on whenever we went through the slides and the presentation to actually, instead of have a percentage of the penny to put in there, what the actual impact on the bond rate would be. So the general public and the members of our court, whenever, I think that was the last meeting yesterday, whenever we kind of got an overview of this, I said, I think it'd be much more direct if we had those numbers in front of us where we can say when we get into conversations, look, if we want to do something for elections or we want to make a change for this office or that office, we have the actual impact on what it will be in the tax rate when we start to do those negotiations. I think it will be much clearer. I know this is just the first step in the process, and I look forward to to you know, a month of honest and open discussions about where we think a lot of these things are. I personally, you know, asked for increases in the last two years specifically for our road and bridge maintenance side for transportation. And so it's a little disheartening. We were all the way down to two cents three fiscal years ago, and we were able to get that up to a little over four. It's disappointing to have to slide that back, but I also understand that there is a lot of departments here that are not going to get what they want out of this. I do have a commitment. I want to do whatever and anything we can on staff salaries. I think that having the last staff evaluation or market study in 2022, it's been a while. And I know that we have staff that are currently under market. And we can sell all we want on the actual benefits that we provide folks. And I think that is an amazing benefit. 20% increase in health care over the last two years and not having our staff have to eat that. I hope that our staff understands that that's a direct impact on the bottom line of their paycheck. I just don't know that all of them do. I hope they understand that. There's a lot of things to discuss in this budget, and I know we'll have a lot of time to do it.

Over the next month, but I think it's a I think it's a good start Commissioner hammer Us saying no to certain things it's hard because everybody has their departments their job is to fight for their departments to fight for their staff to fight for more services and to to benefit the Common good of our citizens, but the end of the day That common good for our citizens also affects our common citizens pocket in there and what they take home, right and So it is hard. It's hard to make, you know, we have to make tough decisions every single day. So I know that I believe some of my colleagues are more for increased tax rate. I am not of that effect, but I do think that there are also some contracts to look into and some things to maybe like from NACO, how much are we spending on NACO, to kind of pick away and pick part on what the county participates in from a membership perspective. So I look forward to continuing to uncover potential funding sources to maybe get some of these unfunded positions or expenditures to where we can support some of them. Commissioner Cohen.

Well, first, I want to congratulate you, Scott, on your first budget presentation.

Thank you. We got a little hot up here. I'm sure. I'm sure.

Yeah. This is the way to, you know, this is going right out the gate with the fire. So I appreciate the work of not only you, but, you know, Candice and all the staff that put this together. Scott, thank you for having those conversations.

Commissioner Cohen, you know what? You actually teed me up for this. I do want to thank Candace and all of her staff. They have been a terrific help. I really need to thank my staff who has been working tirelessly along with me. Cassie Paulin and Victoria Vasquez. They're staying up till midnight with me, coming in on the weekends, really, really putting in the extra effort. And then I would also like to thank Marisol, the county auditor as well, because one, she was my mentor, helped train me, as well as she has continued to offer me guidance and help me with any questions I would have. Even though she is busy as well, She takes her time to help me out. So I just want to throw that out there and thank everybody. It has been a huge help to me.

Thank you so much. You know, I think this was very important for us to see, you know, what a no tax rate would look like. Right. So we needed a baseline to start from. Right. And so it is it is hard. It is gut wrenching. But it's important. We needed to see the big vision here of what this looks like for everybody. I think what makes this budget year a little different is that we actually have a strategic plan to be our county's moral compass for the next three to five years. And I've always felt we haven't had that kind of a mechanism in place to help with some of these decisions. Um, so I am thankful to have that this year, even though it is difficult to, you know, we're going to have to make some difficult decisions and not everyone's going to be happy. I also am, you know, I want to figure out a way to take care of our staff that, that are that here. I mean, what the staff presented to us, you know, before is our 45% of our employees are below the living wage. That's a lot. And they feel that in this economy. And so I just want us to be cognizant of that. I mean, we know that our employees are the backbone of our government, and we cannot do this job without them. I'm hoping we can find some common ground. You know, I hope I can find some common ground with my colleagues here on the court. But, you know, we'll see. And, you know, now it's time to really kind of dive through and kind of, you know, make the best plan and not hurt the taxpayer and, you know, consider everyone and our vision. And, you know, in our pillars it mentions, you know, several different things about, you know, I highlight them when we were talking through it, you know, improving our outcomes, investing in our county, long range planning, expanding our programs. I mean, we're trying to prepare for the future. Right. And I hope that's what we get to do in this budget cycle. So I appreciate.

your work scott and and and all the staff for what y'all did for this thank you commissioner commissioner inglesby thank you judge um yeah scott congratulations and i i do want to also just thank everyone that had a hand in this i know there was a lot of work that was put into it and you've done a great job scott i like your presentation um yeah and i you know agree in some aspects with all my colleagues and their comments that they made It is going to be tough, and we're going to have to make some decisions that may not be popular. But we know that we're in a tough year, and we're trying to do the best that we can to have that balance and provide the services that we need. And I look forward to a more in-depth discussion with my colleagues and just seeing what the best The route is to take with all of this. There are so many positions and assets, capital assets and other things that, you know, we know are truly needed. But, you know, I do agree that if something isn't mandated and we can weigh, I know it also puts a burden on the following year because there may be things that, you know, are going to be passed on. And we'll have to see what that looks like. But yeah, I look forward to further discussion and seeing how we move to do the best that we can for our communities and for our employees.

Beautiful. Thank you, Commissioner Inglesby. We do have someone that signed up to speak, Scott. So we're going to read that now.

Through the computer.

They're going to read it again.

Okay, okay. I didn't know if somebody was coming up. Okay.

This is from Denton Raglin. Dear members of the Commissioner's Court, I urge the court's support during the fiscal year 2027 budget workshop for continued increases to the traffic enforcement budgets of Hayes County Sheriff and the precinct constables. This funding is one of the most direct levers the court has to reduce deaths and injuries on our roads. Hayes County added more than 10,000 residents between July 2024 and July 2025 and remains one of the fastest growing counties in the state. And enforcement capacity has not kept pace. In the second quarter of 2026 alone, Sheriff Anthony Hippolito's deputies logged 3,186 traffic stops and answered over 19,000 calls for service. And the sheriff noted directly that as Hays County continues to experience unprecedented growth, so do the demands placed on your sheriff's office. This matters because the link between enforcement and safety is well established. NHTSA An insurance institute for highway safety research consistently shows that visible sustained enforcement of speeding, DUI, and reckless driving reduces crashes and fatalities. A well-funded traffic unit is a proactive deterrent, not just a response after a crash has already happened. The precinct constables play an equally vital role. They are often the only law enforcement presence on the county roads and rural connectors linking Kyle, Buda, San Marcos, and Dripping Springs, where roads where higher speeds, long response distances, and rising cut-through traffic create serious risk. Additional funding for their traffic enforcement, patrol hours, and equipment covers ground the Sheriff's Office cannot cover alone. Traffic enforcement funding pays for itself. It costs far less than serious crashes, and it is one of the few budget items where the return is measured and lives saved. I respectfully ask the court to approve continued increases to the Sheriff's Office and precinct constables' traffic enforcement budgets for fiscal year 2027 as core public safety infrastructure. Thank you for your time and your continued service to Hays County.

Perfect. Recorded. Done. What else for you, my friend?

Do we want to continue the conversation from earlier on some of those items?

What I'd like to do is, if the court feels like they are in a position where they'd like to, provide official direction. And when we're done with this, I can open that agenda item. Because I do want us to... Guys, no, just the less we say publicly unified, the more... RESEARCH AND REACHING INTO CLOUDS PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO DO. SO IF WE BECOME A LITTLE MORE CONCRETE ON THE DIRECTION WE SUPPORT, IT WILL BE MORE HELPFUL TO EXECUTE THE DETAILS. SO I CAN OPEN THAT ITEM BACK UP, BUT IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE IN THIS SPACE? AND I ALSO SEE DEPARTMENT HEADS LIKE THE OFFICIALS HERE. I'D LIKE TO GIVE THEM A CHANCE TO SAY SOMETHING.

ABSOLUTELY. I think it may be better at this point to maybe review the material, go through what you've received, and then we can come back next week for the workshop and really get more in depth. Naturally, I will be available whenever. So if anyone wants to discuss with me, please reach out.

And historically, Vicki has worked with me to manage the schedule as to department head selected officials creating 10-minute windows of time for presentations of them asking, repeating, double-downing for requests.

Sounds good. Yeah. I know some have already reached out to me. I wasn't sure if I was going to be the responsible one or if the court was going to take care of it. So I will take care of it.

Vicki has historically, as it was populating, worked with me. And then I would know around the meeting what was at stake and what was the cadence of the goal.

Great. Okay.

Yes, I will work to get a schedule like that set up and ready for the next meeting. You got it. And then we'll just firm it up before the agenda gets published.

Yes, sir. And we will have a follow-up next week for the salary study, so we can share those results with you all as a part of the workshop presentation.

Perfect. Perfect. And before we close this workshop, I know that our community is sitting here peacefully, and I wanted to give them a chance to say their peace as well. Thank you, Scott. All right. Thank you. Who would like to approach the podium? The workshop is open. Anyone? State your name and title. State your name and title. And when we're done with the speaking portion, I'll close the workshop.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Judge Sandra Bryan, Hays County, JP5 in Buda. And I'm actually standing here on behalf of the JPs, my colleagues. So good afternoon, judges and commissioners. Thank you for having me for this opportunity to speak. Justice of the peace courts are often the front door to county government. We are one of the first places residents turn during some of the most difficult moments of their lives, whether it's an addiction, a small claims, debt claim, truancy, a traffic citation, a wedding ceremony, and an inquest. And I have to do a pause and say thank you, Judge Mendoza, because he took the inquest that I was about to take. Because we didn't want to miss this, so we're a team. So thank you. Or simply needing information and direction. We are truly a forward-facing department that serves our community every single day. As our county continues to grow, so do the expectations and demands placed on our office. Our responsibilities have expanded well beyond what many people traditionally see, think a Justice of the Peace does. Today, our staff manages increasing case loads. Excuse me. Let me find my space. provides customer service, navigates new technology, coordinates community programs, and ensures our court remains accessible, efficient, and responsive. We intentionally wait until budget season because we understand that every department has needs and that every request must be weighed carefully. Today we are respectfully asking for your support. We are requesting additional positions where they are needed and salary adjustments that reflect the work being performed by our employees. These requests are not simply about adding staff or increasing pay, they're about investing in people who serve the public every day. Our employees are often the first voice a citizen hears and the first face they see. They help individuals through stressful situations with professionalism, compassion, and respect. They carry tremendous responsibility while maintaining the integrity of our judicial system. They deserve to be recognized, retained, and compensated in a way that reflects the value they bring to the county. And investing in our people also means investing in better customer service, greater efficiency, improved employee retention, and a stronger experience for every resident who walks through our doors. This is not just a request for Justice of the Peace Office. It's a request to strengthen our county's most visible and accessible services. By supporting these positions and employees, you are supporting the people who serve our citizens every day. On behalf of the Justice of Peace Corps, I respectfully ask for your consideration and support and and your support during this budget season or budget process. Thank you for your time, your leadership, and your continued investment in serving people of Hays County. And then lastly, as leaders often say, we often say people are our greatest asset. This budget gives us the opportunity to just demonstrate that commitment through action. Thank you for your support.

Perfect. Thank you. Chief?

Chief? Thank you, Judge. Brett Bailey, Hays County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy. Commissioners, thank you for this opportunity. I want to say real quickly, and this is going to sound like You all know what, but I just want to say thank you to Scott. He has been transparent throughout this process. We've met several times, and thank you for the work that you've done so far. I appreciate that. I do have one request of the court, and that is there is a certain amount of angst, I believe, among department heads that I've spoken with about when we're going to see the actual recommended budget line by line. And so I just wanted to simply say the sooner we can get that before next week, before the 11th workshop, the better. And I appreciate it. That's all I have.

You got it. Candace, can we upload it today?

Yes, sir. The plan is for us to send it out to department heads after this presentation.

There you go, Chief. Gotcha. Who else? I saw you moving earlier. That's right. Come on up. Name and title.

OK, my name is Kami Matala. I'm the Mental Health Court Administrator for Mental Health Court. I want to thank you all for listening to our community supporters this morning that spoke during public comment. This included alumni, family members, treatment providers, and community partners that support the program here that serves Hays County. As a court administrator, my responsibility is to connect personal stories and outcomes to really the operational reality of delivering this program effectively. PREVIOUSLY WE RECEIVED 242,000 FOR CONTRACTED PARTICIPANT SERVICES FOR THIS PAST YEAR. WE REQUESTED 300,000 FOR THIS UPCOMING FISCAL YEAR BASED ON ACTUAL UTILIZATION AND DOCUMENTED UNMET DEED. WE HAVE NOW BEEN ADVISED THE BUDGET OFFICE MAY RECOMMEND ONLY 210,000. CLEAR THAT THAT'S A $32,000 REDUCTION. FROM THIS YEAR, AT $242,000, WE ALREADY EXHAUSTED THE FUNDING AVAILABLE FOR OUR HIGHEST NEED PARTICIPANTS. THAT'S WHO THE COURT SERVES, HIGH-RISK, HIGH-NEED PEOPLE. WE'VE HAD TO SUSPEND ADMISSIONS specifically for our highest need mental health provider in June. So we haven't been able to accept core participants that are high risk, high need, June, July, August, September, and then obviously the fiscal year starts in October. A reduction to the funding would require us to serve fewer people, provide fewer services, and ultimately stop high acuity admissions earlier than we would like. Okay. I'd like to emphasize a couple of things that this request in particular, this $58,000 that we're requesting to get to the 300 K closely matches the approximate amount that was needed to continue those admissions all the way through the end of the fiscal year. So had we had an additional $58,000, we would not be in this position where we have to stop accepting people in June. So that's why I'm asking for that specific amount so that this issue does not happen this upcoming year. That additional funding approximately would have served an additional 12 people. So if you think about that many people that we have not been able to accept or will not be able to accept it to the court program, that's what the fiscal funding impacts. We would have to reduce admissions, restrict the services, delay or decline high acuity referrals or suspend admissions. I do know that the DA's office has a long wait list, close to 40 of people that they want to be evaluated to see if they meet criteria for the court program. That's a long list and we're at capacity right now. So it does not only affects the court but also other departments as well that are working with our team to really address these issues effectively. OUR COURT PROGRAM HAS ALSO DEMONSTRATED STEWARDSHIP. SO WHEN WE'RE LOOKING AT OUR FUNDING, WE HAVE MOVED AROUND FUNDING FROM CONTRACTS WHERE THERE ARE LEFT OVER FUNDS INTO CONTRACTS THAT NEEDED ADDITIONAL MONEY. SO REALLY MOVING THAT MONEY TO WHERE IT NEEDED TO BE. and also constantly looking at our contracts to see, is this effective? Are the core participants being treated well by these service providers? What is their feedback to us? What is our interactions with them? Are those positive? Are they professional? Are they doing what we have asked of them in terms of service provision? It's also important to note that we redesigned our model a little bit to really focus on outpatient substance use services as opposed to like residential services. We know that there's the DWI and drug court. And so our main focus is really to be able to provide if there is a substance use component, the outpatient services as opposed to residential treatment. So we have moved away from that specifically due to that reason. We've also assisted people in getting on health insurance, which also lowers the cost that the court is having to cover for these services. In addition to utilizing probation resources more frequently, they have an IOP and day treatment program for those that have co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, and we've been utilizing that as opposed to having a contract for those services as well. It's important to note that when appropriate diversion is unavailable, costs and risks may shift to the community. So this is jail, repeated court proceedings, probation, hospitalizations, homelessness response, crisis services, and law enforcement contact. So there's a price tag that comes with all of those things. And addressing these issues and stopping that cycle saves a lot of money. It keeps people out of the jails. It keeps them in the community working stable. AND WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE GOALS OF MENTAL HEALTH COURT AND THE COUNTY STRATEGIC PILLARS. THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE MODERNIZATION, THAT'S ONE OF THE PILLARS THAT WAS IDENTIFIED. OUR COURT PROGRAM ADDRESSES DIVERSION, REDUCED RECIDIVISM, IMPROVED JUSTICE OUTCOMES AND DATA INFORMED DECISION MAKING. ANOTHER PILLAR IS COMMUNITY WELL-BEING. SO THIS IS ADDRESSING BEHAVIORAL HEALTH ACCESS, HOUSING STABILITY, TRANSPORTATION AND HOMELESSNESS PREVENTION. partnerships and collaboration, coordinated work among the courts, the district attorney's office, defense, probation providers, benefit specialists, and community organizations. That's pretty evident through our contracts, but also the partnerships that we have that are not contracted with our court program. and fiscal stewardship, making sure to ensure that our contracts and our contracted providers are providing the services that are exceptional for our court participants, and if they're not, pivoting to something different. Also looking at proactive interventions instead of repeated crisis response, so instead of waiting for a crisis to happen, intervening earlier to prevent that crisis in the first place. I RESPECTFULLY ASK COMMISSIONER'S COURT TO APPROVE THE FULL AMOUNT OF $300,000 FOR THE CONTRACT SERVICES. IT'S AN ADDITIONAL $58,000. THIS WOULD ALLOW US TO MAINTAIN THE HIGH ACUITY BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES THROUGHOUT THE FISCAL YEAR AND RESPOND TO THE APPROPRIATE REFERRALS AND THE WAIT LIST FROM THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE AND AVOID ANY SUSPENSION OF ADMISSIONS. You heard this morning what Mental Health Court makes possible, and this specific request for our budget gives us the operational capacity to continue producing those outcomes safely, responsibly, and accountably. So thank you for your time and consideration for our request.

I've watched that department go from zero to what we heard this morning and what it's doing in our community, and it is so refreshing and rewarding to see this department doing so beautifully well. So thank you so much for that. Commissioners, any questions or comments?

Yeah, I just want to say, first of all, I love what the Mental Health Court does, and I think it's important that we are invested within it. The $58,000 were for contract services, correct, to increase our spend there. THE PEOPLE THAT CAME UP AND SPOKE THIS MORNING, ARE THOSE SOME OF OUR VENDORS THAT WE PAY FOR WITH THOSE CONTRACT SERVICES?

LET'S SEE. A BETTER BOAT PROVIDES SERVICES TO THE COMMUNITY. THEY PROVIDE PEER SUPPORT. THEY DO PROVIDE SOME SERVICES TO CORE PARTICIPANTS, BUT THEY PROVIDE SERVICES TO THE GENERAL COMMUNITY AS WELL. WE HAD SOME PEOPLE FROM OUR ADVISORY BOARD THAT ARE NOT IN THAT CATEGORY. an alumni and we had a current court participant's family member.

Did they get paid to be here to speak?

No.

Okay. They were just speaking for the better of the county?

Yes. Okay.

That was my question there.

Commissioner, did we pay for transport services to get them here today?

We did not. So I misspoke. So A Better Boat, they work with our court participants. They also work with them after. We were coordinating the ride, and they informed us that they were just going to scholarship him and give him the ride to come here.

Okay. My concern was whenever we had one of the participants speak this morning and said that we paid for the ride to get him here to lobby on behalf of funding for the court, there's definitely an ethical problem with that, and so I wanted to address that. I'm really excited about the work of the court. There's been so much work that went into it. Even prior to Judge Brown, she's done an amazing job. But Judge Zellhart and Judge O'Brien both truly believed and cared in trying to make this work from the onset. Looking at some of the overall expenses on those costs, I appreciate where you all have looked at those contracts, knowing which ones of those contracts are actually the most used. I know initially, especially when we had ARPA funding, there were a number of other contracts in there. some of which were not utilized or we shifted money from those. And I think you heard me say a couple of weeks ago when we were looking at how we were going to, or how we were going to move forward with the contracts that we did, I asked how we could prioritize and really get a good understanding of which one of those, or which of those outside vendors were being used the most. why they were being used the most. I think all of that background information would be really helpful as we try to move forward in the process to really try to figure out what the best means to move forward under this fiscal year is.

Yeah, I think at the very beginning of the court program, we were still trying to figure out what our needs were because we were so new. And over time, we have identified what those needs are. So Our counseling contracts, they're smaller contracts, and the reason for that is because we offer a variety of counseling services based off a person's needs. Some people want in-person, some people want virtual, some people want male versus female. Some people would like a specific modality with their therapist, like CBT, DBT, MDR, those are all specific therapy modalities. having a variety of providers such as counselors that offer these different things allows the court participant to still work and meet with their therapist after, or to go to school and meet with their therapist online. It offers options. So our contracts, while they might be, while we have quite a few, the way that I allocated it was really based on our trends. So when I look at our budget, I'm projecting really HOW MANY PEOPLE I BELIEVE THAT WILL BE GETTING A SPECIFIC SERVICE, SO COUNSELING, FOR EXAMPLE, AND LOOKING AT, OKAY, PROBABLY FIVE PEOPLE WITH THIS PROVIDER. WHAT IS THAT GOING TO LOOK LIKE IN TERMS OF MONTHLY INVOICING? AND SO WHEN THE NUMBERS THAT I HAVE ARE BASED OFF OF WHAT THE TREND WAS THIS PAST YEAR AND THE TREND THAT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE END OF THE FISCAL YEAR. THAT'S WHY THERE'S, LIKE, THE SPECIFIC AMOUNTS CHANGE AND IT'S BECAUSE OF THAT PURPOSE. IT'S BECAUSE I'VE BEEN TRACKING THE BUDGET TO SEE THE PATTERNS AND MATCHING THE AMOUNT OF THE CONTRACT TO WHAT WE'VE SEEN BE THE NEED.

THAT'S REALLY GOOD. MATCHING USAGE AS WELL. GOOD JOB. COMMISSIONER COHEN? I'M GOOD.

THANK YOU. THANKS FOR BEING HERE. I DO BELIEVE THAT IT'S IMPORTANT FOR US TO CONTINUE TO LOOK AT PROGRAMS THAT COST A LITTLE AND HAVE A LARGER IMPACT AND BENEFIT IN THE LONG RUN. SO I APPRECIATE YOUR SHARING THAT.

I JUST WANT TO SHARE A LITTLE BIT. SO, KENNY, WHEN WE HAVE COMMENCEMENTS AND WHEN WE HAVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALUMNI TO SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE, WE JUST LET THEM KNOW THAT INFORMATION. either commencement, do you want to speak at commencement? There's no pressure. And they'll say yes or no. If they say yes, then they come and they speak at the commencement and they share their experience. Kenny in particular, when he graduated, was like, hey, if you have an opportunity for me to share my experience with the court, please let me know. And it was very evident that He was here today because he got a lot out of the program. So I just want you to know there was no coercion or anything like that. We let all of our alumni know when we have commencements and opportunities for them to share their experience, whether or not they want to do that is up to them. Kenny in particular was really excited to do it today. So, you know, we said, okay, you know, go ahead and come and I'm sure they'd love to hear your experience from the core program.

Well done. Well done this morning and well done right now. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Commissioners.

You got the short straw, huh? Short straw, but last in line. Commissioners, Judge, my name is Landon Campbell. I'm a Division Chief at the District Attorney's Office over misdemeanor. Division and our specialty courts division and at risk of beating a dead horse I think that y'all have all already heard a number of times about our mental health programs I'm gonna do something a little weird. I think Greg has agreed We're gonna approach for the district attorney's office later once we've been able to see the specifics of the budget but I do just want to impress a need upon y'all from somebody else's budget requests and You heard from defense attorneys and from people with lived experiences in the mental health courts and that have received help from the funding that we've been able to do in prior years. I just want to stress from a prosecutor's point of view, from the law enforcement side of it, This program over the course of the last couple of years has had an amazing impact on people who would have otherwise just been in the system. I don't want to lecture y'all. I know that you have a hard job. I know that Scott's got a hard job and that these funds don't just come from anywhere. They come from taxpayers and I know that we've all talked to taxpayers recently about what their priorities are. I would just stress that this program in particular, if there's even a whiff that funding is being reduced, is going to have significant impacts on our ability to resolve cases and truly have an impact on public safety. From our point of view, and I want you all to know that this is something that has to be said in the courthouse, we have good applicants who are ready to go forward who have significant mental health needs. there's an intersection of problems maybe there's a substance abuse disorder maybe there's a housing insecurity and then the mental health issue and that all costs a lot of money and like i said i don't have to write that check y'all are the ones creating that budget but when we have to look at one defendant and say, congratulations, you're getting the opportunity to have this good use. And then we have a budget shortfall or a problem that causes us to say we can't admit anybody else into the program. I'm now having to look at a defense attorney with a similarly situated case and say they're not getting the same opportunity because of budget realities. Is that real? Is that something anybody else can deal with? Yeah, it's real. But it's something that's being said in our courthouse right now on the funding that we have at this moment. I've talked to our mental health attorney this morning. We were already preparing to have significant draw up. drawbacks in our number of people going into these programs because of the budget that we've got right now. If the court or if the budget office is having to look at withdrawing even further, I would really ask and insist that we look at kind of the full range of budget programs that we've got because I can say without a doubt this is one of the most impactful programs that is happening in the courthouse right now. So I just wanted to reiterate that. Certainly nobody paid for me to get over here, Commissioner, I promise. I just say it because it's something that we deal with every day. And I want you all to hear that from our point of view as well. It's not soft and cuddly or anything. It's real public safety concerns. So thank you all for the opportunity.

And thank you for reiterating. Those are such significant comments from such a significant department that... I don't tire of hearing it. It's good news. So thank you. Thank you, Judge. Anyone else wishing to speak in this workshop?

Judge, can I clarify something real quick? Yes. I do want to say that I had a conversation with Kami yesterday about the dollars. I did tell her that in the general fund, those funds went down. But I also did tell her that there is a specialty court special revenue fund where I have set aside a good amount of money. Now, with that being said, it's more than what her budget was, but that money would have to be split between the other specialty courts, so it's not something that I can fully commit to that mental health court.

Court discussion. Got it.

I want to just let everybody know that there are some additional funds there.

Perfect. Well done. Thank you. Hello, Joe. If you'll state your name and title for the viewing public.

Sure. Joe Castillo. I'm the president of Hayes Helping Hands. We're one of the social... SERVICE AGENCIES THAT APPLIED FOR FUNDING, AND FIRST OF ALL, I'D LIKE TO THANK THE COMMISSIONER'S COURT FOR ALLOWING ME THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO YOU ALL THIS AFTERNOON. FOR THE LAST 20-PLUS YEARS, OUR ORGANIZATION, THANKS TO YOUR GENEROSITY, HAS BEEN FUNDED ABOUT $5,000, I THINK, FOR THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, BUT OUR DEMAND HAS DEFINITELY INCREASED. WE AVERAGED ABOUT EIGHT REQUESTS A WEEK FROM THE WHOLE COUNTY, SAN MARCOS, WIMBERLEY, UP IN KYLE, SO I HOPE YOU ALL WILL CONSIDER OUR requests for increasing our funding. And what our organization provides is rent, utilities, medical, funeral assistance. And the big demand right now has been rent and utilities. And depending on what part of the month you're in, either in the middle, towards the end, or at the beginning, that's when all your requests come in. And we have no paid staff. I mean, pretty much it's me. I get all the requests. I process them. And we have a number of partnerships that we have with Southside Community Center, Community Actions, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul. So all the different service agencies are kind of going through the same thing as far as funding goes. Their budgets are limited. So we all have kind of partnered together to know how much we can provide. So we kind of share the cost of helping. That way we can help more people. But I just want to thank you again for letting me speak to you all this afternoon. And hopefully you all can increase our funding. And if you all have any other questions, just feel free to ask me. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much for all you do in our community as well. Thank you. Anyone else to speak on this workshop before I close it? I'm closing. I'm just kidding. Just kidding.

All right. Good afternoon, Judge and Commissioners. My name is Jennifer Putman and I am the project director or administrator for the Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program. And today I wanted to ask for your support and discuss an additional funding request for fiscal year 2027 to help provide temporary housing support for AOT participants who are working towards disability and independence. Just a reminder, AOT is the Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program. So we are also under Judge Brown, but as a civil program for individuals with serious mental illness that tend to be more acute and need more wraparound services. So currently our AOT program is completely funded through a federal SAMHSA grant, Substance Abuse and Mental Health. services administration that we received in a couple years ago so fiscal year 27 will be year three of four of the grant and this grant supports the treatment and services provided through the program as well as myself and my caseworker's salary That grant does not cover housing. So while we do have the funding to connect individuals with treatment, case management, medication management, and other services similar to mental health court, we have a gap when a participant is clinically ready to live in the community, but does not yet have the financial resources to house themselves. And that's the gap we're asking the county to help us address. WE CURRENTLY HAVE A COUPLE, A FEW DIFFERENT HOUSING OPTIONS TO OUR PARTICIPANTS WITH THE BIGGEST OF THOSE BEING FIVE PARTICIPANTS CURRENTLY LIVING AT A HOUSE CALLED LIGHTHOUSE LANDING WHICH IS IN KYLE IN THE WATERSTONE COMMUNITY. So five participants are living there, two of them are paying half of their rent because they are receiving benefits. So there is also another participant and additional participants down the line that may require placement if clinically appropriate and we can identify that proper housing. So the full cost to house five to six participants is about $4,500 per month. So that would be 45,000 annually that we're requesting for assistance from the county or outside funding, which we're consistently continuously looking to find sources for and work with our community partners to address. This is intended to be temporary and transitional support, not permanent county funded housing. The reality is that our participants often face significant barriers before they can become financially independent. So most of our participants in housing came straight out of the jail, were found incompetent, so therefore were not appropriate to go into mental health court and had no other option available to them. They come out of jail with no SSI or SSDI ID or birth certificate sometimes or other documents putting them at a significant disadvantage of being able to maintain not just their mental health treatment but their daily life skills and living situation. Obtaining, I'm sure many of you are aware, obtaining SSI or SSDI can take many months AND ALL OF OUR PARTICIPANTS THAT ARE ELIGIBLE HAVE ALREADY APPLIED FOR SSI AND WE'RE JUST IN THAT WAITING OLD PERIOD. AFFORDABLE HOUSING ADDITIONALLY OFTEN REQUIRES A SOURCE OF INCOME BEFORE SOMEONE CAN EVEN APPLY AND ONCE SOMEONE QUALIFIES THE WAIT LIST IN HAYES COUNTY CAN BE ONE TO TWO YEARS ALONE. SO THERE'S A SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF TIME WHERE ONCE SOMEONE IS stable in the community and engage in treatment and making progress but simply does not yet have the income or housing option necessary to live independently and if they were to exit the program at this time would have is a very high likelihood of backsliding losing access to treatment and ending up right back in the criminal justice system. And as I mentioned, we're continuing to look for other housing opportunities and funding sources through working with Southside or looking at other housing options. So we're not relying on this funding as our only solution. We're continually evaluating where appropriate housing can come from and what other resources can be available. But right now there's a very real gap that can jeopardize the progress our current individuals have currently made. And I have some data showing what happens when this population does not have stability. So just talking about the five or six participants, who are currently being housed. They spent a combined 1209 days in the Hays County Jail during the year prior to entering AOT. So that's from beginning of 2025 through the end, through when they entered AOT, either in the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. After communicating with Jail, with Captain Villapondo, the current jail costs $163.36 per day, so that represents almost $200,000 in direct incarceration costs alone versus them just being housed for $750 per month where they're currently doing great. That number does not include behavioral health services provided in the jail, law enforcement response, court proceedings, or other crisis-related public expenditures. The actual public costs associated with this population is substantially higher and I don't know if it's even possible to even quantify. So when we're asking for this $45,000 to help maintain these stable housing, we're not just asking to pay someone's rent, we're asking for an investment in this person's stability. And while AOT is a younger program than mental health court, there are many signs that we're following the same path and the same struggles and growth opportunities that mental health court first faced when coming online. And so we're hoping to have someone having alumni in the future that can be as supportive of our program. and just give them a safe place and a safe way to restart their lives and not return to where they've been before. So our goal is for these individuals to eventually support themselves, exit the AOT program, maintain voluntary engagement, and stay out of the criminal justice system or out of the hospital, which that's a hole that I didn't even get into because that's also very hard to quantify. So we're asking for this money to, this funding to help prevent these participants from losing their stability and work with them to, once they receive their benefits, start paying on their own. And then that will open up that spot for someone else to come into our program because like Landon and Kami said there's people on the waitlist of people that we want to get in the program but we just don't have the funding to house them or they require significantly higher needs so thank you for your time and I can answer any questions and they're currently sitting in our jail right that list of 40 people so we receive referrals also from the community but I would say 60% of our referrals come from the jail

So that can help cut in funding this effort, which I fully support. That would cut our outsourcing costs and all these other pieces that are so important and so impactful. And these put people back on the rails to be contributing community members versus just sitting there incarcerated, costing taxpayer dollars, doing nothing.

I would say, Judge, that whenever we look at the mental health needs in the jail, that we don't, and correct me if I'm wrong, DA's office, but working through the BAT and those kind of things, those individuals that do have mental health needs, we're paying for those mental health needs in the jail right now, but we don't outsource those inmates. Those inmates stay here. We don't have the ability... In general, they will not accept those inmates if we outsource. So we're paying that cost here in our jail.

But what I'm saying is we pull them out of the system and then someone else takes that slot. Kind of like Tetris. Yes, perfect. Commissioner? Either way. Commissioner Hammer?

Not a whole lot of questions, but you said that you got with Captain Villapondo and you said that it was $163 per day for our jail? Yes. Gotcha. Thank you.

That's just like the gen pop, like per diem. She told me how they calculated it by the total cost and then dividing by the number of days and number of inmates and that whole thing.

And I know what gen pop means, but she's saying general population.

Which a lot of people with serious mental illness are then in isolation or higher needs, which requires additional funding or additional jail staff that increases that cost.

That's exactly right. Good job. Commissioner Cohen.

Thank you, Jennifer, for being here. We can definitely hear you.

Commissioner Inglesby?

Thanks, Jennifer. Appreciate it.

Well, then, thank you very much. If there's no one else, I'm going to close this workshop. No one else? No one else? Thank you very much, and we will get those budgets out to you today folks draft budgets And do you have some interest in opening that pay? Five for direction from the court will that help you I'm only trying to do it to help you. Do you want it?

Yes, sir, let's let's have a quick conversation I know I know it's been a long court, but let's you got it.

Please open k3 is what it was. I'm sorry, please open k3 and

K3, discussion and possible action to provide direction to the Hays County Budget Officer to prioritize efforts related to the fiscal year 2027 budget, including, but not limited to, a freeze on new full-time employees, FTEs, high schools, inmate outsourcing relocation, and inmate reduction to fewer than 50, the allocation of school resource officer costs, American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA, position reallocated allocation to unfilled positions, a pause on studies, master planning, and outsourced updating of projects, the utilization of the juvenile facility to house out-of-county juvenile inmates, and postponing data conversions and software updates, if not required in FY 2027. So moved.

Second.

Thank you. Okay, so...

Okay, really just want to check in to see really from the workshop if there's any guidance you want to give. Another item that I considered discussing, and it's less a budget item this year, and it's more of a maybe policy going forward. I do know that a lot of times what can get us, what can hurt us sometimes is that salary exceptions, new positions. I would almost think that it might be advantageous, which is a double-edged sword. It may be advantageous to set some kind of limit on how much a department's payroll could go above what their original budget was. I just wanted to get some feedback on that. Kind of what I'm thinking is here's sometimes what gets us into some issues is that We have a vacancy for a lot of the year. There's savings in the department. Somebody wants to bring them on at like a step seven. It fits that year. But then next year, you're going to have to budget for that difference there. And I'm thinking that maybe some sort of policy. And like I said, it's a bit of a double edged sword because you're taking some of the power away from the departments. But I think a 5% to 10% increase on something like that is reasonable. And what it saves us from would be, in the following year, having to make up that amount. If that makes sense to the court.

I see what you're saying. I am not necessarily for taking away autonomy within the department.

Like I said, it's a little bit of a double-edged sword. I want to give them more autonomy personally.

Yeah, I was like, I would rather them have their own budget than they do what they want with it. The one thing I can think of for positions, I know we have a lot of positions that have been open for six plus months. Maybe not a lot, but I'm sure there are some. I'd like to look into those and revisit, you know, hey, is there any other type of position that, you know, would make more sense? Or is it possible that you're good with how you've been operating? And just revisit those so we can give some flexibility. But my direction would be, I mean, I'm not for raising tax rates, so we're going to have to work with what we got.

Completely understandable. And one thing that I would say to the departments too is there's only so much room you have to move around. If you're going to put your focus and you're going to go up 20% on your salaries and your people, there's going to have to be a hit somewhere else. Your supplies, your equipment. I'm okay with that policy. It gives them that autonomy. And I think autonomy is good, but there is a a flip side to the coin.

The one concern I have is if we look at it from a departmental standpoint, the real problem is you have departments that have 100 FTEs or 450 FTEs, and you've got departments that have two or four. And at one position, they're automatically out of compliance, even if you put a 20% rate or something like that. So just from a logistics standpoint, we would... given the number of employees we have in some of these departments, you add one and it would double the size or at least 30% increase. Yeah, I have a three-person department. I understand, yeah. So I just don't think there would be a continuity there.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's one of the things I struggled a little bit with because the payroll went sometimes that payroll will go up so much, either from adding a position or even if you're hiring, we budget at a step one. If you hire three people at a step seven, which is the highest you can hire them without coming to court, then that following year, it makes a significant difference to the budget.

So just your personal view, I know that you have to deal with these, and Eric, I know you're in this boat too, you have to deal with these pay grade job description changes, requests for new positions fairly often. Would a process or instituting a process like I mentioned earlier, would that be beneficial relative to, okay, we look at it quarterly or at the mid-year? And if so, what would your recommendation be just for our benefit as we start to look at this if we did move to something like that?

Yeah, no, I actually thought that was a really good idea, both from an efficiency standpoint because Eric and I are having to take time out of our day-to-day constantly to work on those type of things to where I think that would be good, and maybe just one time. I think it would be a good budgetary constraint. I think a good start could be quarterly. Quarterly? I'd be okay with quarterly, too. It would be better.

Or halfway through the fiscal year. Halfway through the fiscal year, April?

I mean, that's kind of what I was thinking, but quarterly would be okay, too.

I think someone gets nervous. And maybe...

Maybe we start quarterly, and then if it's still a little bit of a mess.

If it looks steady, then immediately go to twice a year.

I would hate to say that without Eric's input.