Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

call this meeting to order. This morning's, if you'll just yield from the podium just a little further, sir, this invocation of ours will be led by our very own Pastor Darius Todd. If you will please rise.

Let us bow. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this great gathering. For this morning, Lord, you have brought us together in your providence to hear and to celebrate, to mitigate, and to bring unity into this space. Thank you, Lord, for giving us opportunity to stand together as one community. Thank you, Lord, that though our various backgrounds and different understandings, Lord, you give us grace to have balance, peace, and strength. Help us now that as we do the work of this community, We pray that you would lead us, give us wisdom, understanding, patience, and grace. Thank you for all that you impart to us. We thank you now. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. 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 for all. Beautiful. Roxanne, please call the roll.

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

Here. Do we have anyone signed up for general public comments?

Yes.

So there are two ways to sign up for public comments in this courtroom. One is when we open the agenda item and one is at the very beginning where you can just say a shotgun statement that doesn't have to be tied to an agenda item. If you want to be tied to an agenda item and we call you right now, it's the wrong time and I'll edit it for you.

We have 11 public comments.

11 public comments. Okay. Of those 11, are you all in here right now? Raise your hand, good. And you're ready to speak now, not on an item, is that correct? All right, let's call them down then. And oh, and because we have such an attendance, if you please be a little extra considerate, and when the timer goes off, conclude.

Jasmine Castilla.

Am I good? Good morning, Commissioner's Court. I appreciate the opportunity that you give to the public to be able to speak today. Today, what I would like to be introducing, well, first I want to introduce myself. My name is Jasmine Castilla. I work at the Justice of the Peace 2-1. Today, I would like to hit subject on the fact, I would like to request that Hayes County's consider established bilingual pay incentive for Justice of the Peace clerks, recognizing the additional responsibilities and values bilinguals provide in ensuring equal access to court services for our Spanish-speaking community. I want to start off doing this in three specific points. First off, Spanish being treated as a skill. Second, Hays County's population increase and other Texas counties have already recognized it as well. I'm just going to go into the specifics of one. First and foremost, I want to go into my personal experience. I myself am a bilingual individual in the Justice of the Peace 2-1. Going off of that, I can tell you from firsthand experience that when there is a call coming in and it's a Spanish speaker, when there is a individual coming in from the service that's from the population coming into our courts, if they speak Spanish, that's going to become my case. That's going to be a phone call I'm going to be answering, taking me away from the work that I already have going on. Now I understand that this is something that's all of the clerk's position and all of the clerk's duties, but when there's a clerk on staff that only speaks Spanish, That becomes my responsibility. And I want to make this known that it's not just in proclamation or advocating for myself, but advocating for the people that are also bilingual within the justice of the peace that are probably feeling the same thing. My biggest point today is to bring this into action with you guys. I want you to start considering this and would like for you guys and requesting to consider this for future reference if it's not even within the fiscal year for 2027 to start this initiative. Going on to my second point, Hays County population has increased. Per Hays County financial transparency that I looked up, the population has increased 26.27%. Going off of that, the United States Census Bureau of 2025 also states Hispanics make up 40.9% of that population. Just off of that, I know I'm not going off of specific numbers off of our cases, but I am going off of the fact that population has increased. On top of that, we're 10% shy of it being Hispanics. That fact is I deal with this on a daily basis. Going off of juvenile cases, sometimes juveniles come in and it's their parents that speak Spanish that are asking us for these explanations into what they're signing, what's going on, because they're getting evicted, because they're dealing with a small claim, because something's going on, that sometimes they don't even know what a plea is. They don't know what a no contest means. They don't know what guilty means. I have to explain that, which takes also more time into the things that they're signing. Last but not least, other counties have started this. I want to specify with Johnson County, it being a smaller county. They've also done this. If you look in page, what is it? Page 134 in the fiscal year of 2026, they specify where they did give $50 a month for a bilingual clerk. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that.

Taya Valenzuela.

Hello, my name is Taya Valenzuela. I am a justice clerk out of Precinct 2-2. My reason for being here today is to discuss why justice clerks and justice court admins deserve more financial compensation, as well as what is the case threshold constituting another clerk. So, why we deserve more financial compensation is, first of all, several clerks and court admins are notably educated. I created a survey to observe both justice clerk and court admin workload, as well as their mental health, as well as their financial happiness. And I also asked a couple of demographic questions. And what I found is some hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and many hold a clerk or master's clerk certificate from TJCTC. Excuse me. My second point is that a 40K salary is hard to support an individual, much less an entire family. From my survey, I found that 69% of clerks have dependents and 50% of court admins have dependents as well. Both justice clerks and court admins experience moderate to high amounts of stress. Now this can be because of high phone, email, walk-in, e-file volume. They also perform duties outside of clerical and administrative roles, and not to mention the caseload permit, which brings me to my second point. What is the case threshold constituting another clerk? According to an Odyssey report for the month of July, Precinct 3 had 104 criminal and civil cases filed that month, and their clerk reported the least amount of stress, according to the survey. If we look at the juvenile diversion coordinator's caseload as of August 1st, he was at 365 referrals. I'm confident that we can agree that this is way too much for one person to handle, which is why Precincts 1-1, 2-1, and 5 are all requesting a new clerk, This is because their caseload per clerk ranges between 117 to 170 cases per clerk. Now, we need to keep in mind that the amount of phone calls, emails, walk-ins, e-files, and other duties a justice clerk and court admin must do as well. I want to end this by saying I recommend a regrade for both the justice clerk and the court administrative position, as well as a strong support for a new clerk for precincts 1-1, 2-1, and 5. with the possible consideration of another clerk for Precinct 2-2, as they also fit into that threshold of 117 to 170 cases per clerk.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. And you stopped before the beep. Well done.

Deborah Villapano.

Thank you, Judge Becerra and Commissioners. My name is Deborah Villalobando and I serve as the Executive Director for Southside Community Center. During the seven years I have been at Southside, I have had a front row seat in the rising needs of our community. In my early days, we had only three employees, one daily meal, emergency assistance, and temporary shelter with no case management and a few other daily services. Today, Southside has 10 employees, provides meals and showers twice most days, expanded emergency weather shelter opportunities, and a robust housing stability program where clients receive financial and case management support. In 2025, our daily services increased by 25% from 2024. This year, we are looking to increase up to 16,000 For 2025, it was 16,000 and are on track for 20,000 this year. This is reflected across other daily services. Our housing programs are lagging behind the need, including an ever-growing wait list at Sunrise Village, our 100-unit independent senior living community. You may be wondering why Southside leaders and supporters are back again asking for funding for these programs after your mid-year budget amendment. There are several reasons, including the budget planning timeline, but the reality is that programs for unhoused and housing insecure families in Hays County are woefully behind the need. Each month, we turn away more families than we are able to serve because we simply do not have the funding capacity. We are able to scale our daily services to meet the rising need because of fantastic network partners from Hayes County Food Bank and a number of local congregations to the Red Cross and also to VFWs, to individuals and social groups. We continue to have enough food, shower supplies, and hygiene kits. Scaling housing programs is much more complicated, however. At the same time, we are seeing a rising need We, along with many of our partners like St. Vincent de Paul, Hayes Helping Hands, BR3T, and local churches have stagnant or decreased funding. Housing programs require higher dollar amounts and more staff than daily services, but they provide long-term solutions rather than band-aids at the moment. I urge you to consider increasing Southside support for Southside specifically and social services more generally to meet the rising housing needs of our community. An investment in Southside is an investment in long-term stability that benefits all of Hays County. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Another one under the timer.

Naya Campos, Beerman.

Good morning. Good morning, Judge Becerra and commissioners. My name is Neha Campos-Byerman, and I serve as the Housing Program Manager at Southside Community Center. Less than two years ago, I was hired at Southside to run what has become the Housing Stability Program, a robust, multi-tiered strategy to address homelessness and housing insecurity in Hays County. The need for this program far exceeds our capacity. as well as that of any other partner organizations. Emergency assistance, a one-time payment toward rent or utilities, has been a part of Southside's programs for nearly a decade. At the start of my tenure, we covered bills up to $500. In less than two years, we've had to increase to $1,000 due to the rising need. Other organizations throughout Hays County also have emergency assistance programs. like St. Vincent de Paul, Hayes Helping Hands, and First Presbyterian here in San Marcos. None of these organizations, including Southside, can cover the full amount of a bill. This means we work together, usually with Southside's case management team, working with partners to ensure that clients leave our office with their full amount pledged. 77% of applicants receive emergency assistance through Southside. Eviction prevention is our newest program where we help with larger bills, up to $2,500, with case management support over the course of three months. BR3T is the only other organization in Hays County with an eviction prevention program. So far this year, we have received $267,000 of requests, but our funding has only allowed us to provide $50,000. Each week, our team makes the heart wrenching decisions about who will receive support or not due to our limited funding and case management capacity. 90% of eviction prevention clients remain in the same housing six months after our support. In October, 2025, we opened our renovated shelter with a cohort program to support unhoused residents. Southside has the only temporary shelter in Hays County aside from HCWC's domestic violence specific shelter. Our wait list includes hundreds of individuals, but we can only house 10 at any given time. These cohort members stay for 60 to 90 days, meaning we can only help a maximum of 60 folks annually. Meanwhile, more people become unhoused each month as resources for those who are marginally housed are also scarce. We are currently on our fourth cohort and well on our way to the goal of 75% of those completing the program and being stably housed. Thank you.

Thank you.

Byron S. Severin, sorry. Thank you.

Good morning, Judge Becerra, commissioners. My name is Byron Severance. I'm the president of the Hays CISD School Board of Trustees. I'm here today to speak to you on behalf of the SRL program and the continued support. As you know, a few years ago, the state legislator passed SB3, and amongst many things in that bill was the law requiring us to staff a armed personnel at every campus. We have 2,828 campuses at Hays CISD. We have 26,000 students and 3,500 staff. With that state law that came out, I understand that there was an unfunded mandate. I understand how difficult the budget process is. We just currently went through the school district. I know how incredibly hard it is for this board or this commissioner's court to also go through that process. But when that bill came out, we... Determined that public safety for our students and our staff was was was paramount and I also believe that this court believes that this too and I'd like to thank our Sheriff's Department for supporting us in that endeavor And so what we did is we fully allocated our budget to accommodate that those personnel at every single campus The other options available to us were a marshal program and a guardian program However, we decided that the Harris County Sheriff's Office was the best law enforcement agency to protect our 26,000 students and our 3,500 personnel across this district. And so what I'm asking here today is I know through the workshop process, you guys have done a great job with allocating us one or two resources, SROs, every year. I think this year you have three on the table. I'd like for y'all to possibly consider allocating five for us this year. I know that is a big ask. I do believe that last year we were able to do some creative things. Our administration with HACST was able to do some creative things to kind of make that a priority. And so I'm here on behalf today of the HACST Board of Trustees, 26,000 students and 3,500 staff members. to ask you for your continued support in the SRO program and to fully align the budget with Hays County Sheriff's Department and the Commissioner Court to align with our district budget of Hays CSD to fully arm the SRO program at all 28 campuses for Hays CSD. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, sir. No timer on that one.

Todd Salami. Salami. Salami.

Good morning, Judge Becerra and County Commissioners. My name is Todd Salmi, and I am here to speak with you all as you all work on the Hays County budget. Affordable housing is one of the most pressing issues in our community, and as property values rise, they raise tax revenues here in Hays County. And yet those same rising values are making it harder for working families to stay and to find and to stay housed. Many of our families are one crisis away from losing a place to live. A major hospital bill and missed paychecks from an illness. A major car repair that they need to do so they can get to work or they can get their kids to school. Our families fall behind on the bills, even as they carefully manage their paychecks and expenses. They have enough to hold on, but never enough to catch up. And then comes the eviction notice. And that's a crisis for the family, but it also adds to the burden of Hayes County. A constable has to serve the eviction. A justice of the peace has to hear the case. County clerks have to file and process the papers. Deputies have to remove the residents. It's an expensive and heartbreaking experience for our neighbors being evicted, and it's also an expensive and heartbreaking experience for our county employees who have to carry this out. And much of this process is slow, costly, and predetermined because our current system offers essentially only one option, and that is enforcement. But what if there were a second option? What if the justice of the peace could divert an eviction case so a family can get back on its feet, stay housed, and get out of the court system? What if deputies or constables who meet someone who's at risk of homelessness could connect them with Southside instead of the Hays County Jail? Some of this stuff is already happening informally and unfunded. What's missing is support from this court to make it a real partnership. The Hays County 2027 draft budget you are considering has $3.8 million for contract inmate detention. These are Hays County dollars that are leaving our county because our hardworking law enforcement and judicial system is overloaded. Today, I'm asking you to shift $250,000 of that funding to provide a diversion process for our county law enforcement and court offices to support the Southside Housing Stability Program. That still leaves $3.55 million for contract inmate detention. That's more than 93% of that light item. And yet, this 6% can help 400 families remain housed and move back into self-sufficiency. So friends, let's solve some of these challenging problems together. Let's provide real results for our local families, for law enforcement, for our courts and our clerks, and for Hays County as a whole. Thank you for your service, and God bless you.

DANIEL AYALA.

You guys are doing a magnificent job, by the way, really.

Hello, everyone. My name is Daniel Ayala. I'm the Juvenile Diversion Coordinator for Hays County, the only Juvenile Diversion Coordinator for Class C Misdemeanors relating to children. I have a unique perspective on how we handle diversion, how we handle kids, how we handle Class C Misdemeanors for children in this county. The biggest reason for that is that I am over this entire county and two municipalities. I have the unique role of traveling to every single one of those precincts. I see how much the clerks, the court admin, how much the judges struggle to deal with the caseload, right? They're constantly pushing cases out further and further because they just don't have enough staff to handle these cases, to put them on the docket. And it's not just them who are struggling. It's the citizens of this county. It's the children of this county. My peak caseload this year was 365 cases. 365 cases where I had to meet with those kids and have a one and a half hour conversation about what is the underlying cause of what's causing them to offend. I had to meet with families. I've met with SROs. So far, a lot of the folks that have spoken today have talked about something that touches the JP court one way or another. The demand is there. The people's court is struggling, and I'm seeing it every single day. I'm struggling. In the budget workshop that you guys currently have, you are considering adding a part-time juvenile diversion coordinator, okay? And that was brought to you because, historically speaking, by the time we get to where the JP's office can ask for something, there's not a lot left, right? The bigger agencies are the ones that get it, the bigger departments that get it, and I get it, it is necessary, but you're hearing the demand right now. You're seeing that we're struggling, and I'm telling you right now, at 1.5, right, one full-time and a part-time, it is not enough. It is not enough for the demand in Kyle alone, it is not enough for the demand in Buda, and it is not enough for the rest of the JPs, including the municipal court. On that market survey, it showed a lot of the comparisons to the surrounding counties. I've had conversations with every single one of those counties. I went to the regional conference in San Antonio and spoke about what we were going through. And every single one of them was in shock and awe of the lack of support. And it's not necessarily your fault. It was a new law. It was brought on to you. It was unfunded, right? The state legislature has been underfunding and cutting funding for schools this entire time. I am asking that the commissioner's court make some real investment. And I know you don't want to raise the tax rate. I get it. You talked about the penny. I get that. But how much we're failing our citizens currently is awful. And as someone who has worked with kids for 10 years, I need you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Sydney Bailey.

Good morning, Judge Becerra and commissioners. My name is Cindy Bailey, and I'm here to urge support of Southside Community Center in the 2027 budget. My husband and I have lived in San Marcos for the past six years and quickly became aware of Southside Community Center and the great work done by the staff and the volunteers in serving our neighbors by empowering families and individuals to meet their essential needs. The letter I'm about to read from a grateful young woman thanking the team at Southside Community Center for the difference they've made in her life is just one example of the great work done by each member of this team. And this is her letter. She says, I would like to sincerely thank Southside Women's Shelter for the incredible support they've shown me. I've traveled from the other side of the country and initially missed the opportunity for assistance. However, when I was given a second chance, the team encouraged me, supported me, and went above and beyond to help. It was a great opportunity to be able to live in the women's shelter. They provided helpful information about the surrounding area and made sure I had everything I needed. as they provided clothing, food, and more, which was so comforting. Thank you. During a very difficult season in my life, their care, respect, and encouragement meant more than I can express. They reminded me that I matter and I am capable of becoming someone. I'm truly grateful for the women's shelter and the role that they played in my journey. Thank you again, Southside Women's Shelter, for the help. and for all the kindness that they have given to me. And I thank you, Judge Visera and commissioners, for really listening to her words and acting on that when you consider your budget. Thank you.

Thank you.

Gail Thompson.

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you. As a pastor, participating in Springs of Life Church here in San Marcos, I urge continued and increased support for Southside Community Center. As a minister, a licensed professional counselor with training in trauma care, and the mother of a daughter with significant mental health and addiction issues, you spent time as a homeless person. I have witnessed and talked with and seen firsthand needs of the poor, the homeless, and drug addicted individuals of our society. An organization that seeks to educate our society as well as aid people trapped in this situation is worthy of all the support that we can give. I have witnessed how easy it is to land in this position as already been mentioned. All it takes is a single income family missing a month's paycheck, a major illness without health care, a job loss, A loss of a home or a car can put an individual or family in this situation. Unfortunately, our society makes many assumptions about these individuals and families. I had the opportunity to know many who have experienced it, and most are people doing the very best they can with what they have. We all need to be seen and valued and treated as worthwhile so we can contribute. We need to have a safe place to sleep. take a shower and have a meal in order to be able to go to work and hold on to a job and through that contribute to society and support our children in getting an education. Southside is known as a crucial social service here. It is where you go or are directed for needs to be met. Their services are essential like food and showers and laundry are necessary in order to live. Each person is treated with dignity and compassion Southside has developed a network within the county to connect people with helpful resources. The housing stability program is foundational in stopping the growth of homelessness. It brings more safety for everyone and a better quality of life for everyone. Dollars invested in Southside inevitably multiply throughout the community in matching funds from other agencies for emergency assistance in partnerships and transition residents from homelessness to stability. in keeping families housed even during challenging financial times, and in alleviating some of the pressures of poverty. Our church participates monthly in giving financial support, providing and serving a meal, practical donations of clothing, blankets, assistance in fundraising, and fun family events. If Southside reaches out for help, we joyfully respond because of the reputation they care for this community. I strongly urge you to enlarge your support and continue it.

Eric Martinez.

For the next one.

Eric Martinez. Ann Jensen.

Good morning, Judge Becerra and commissioners. My name is Ann Jensen, and I'm a volunteer and donor at Southside Community Center. A few years ago, I volunteered to help at the center, serve a few dinners, and it was a real eye opener. If you've never done that before, I recommend you go down and serve a meal. You see firsthand the level of need in the community. by many living out on the street. I saw a small aging kitchen with a long list of deficits. I met staff who put in many long, thankless hours of overtime, but who continued to faithfully serve our unhoused population. And while I had been a longtime supporter of Southside, that's when I decided it was time to get a little more involved. So I reached out and offered my help and became a member of the kitchen team. So Southside's building was built in the late 50s, and what passed for a commercial kitchen space at that time has definitely not stood the test of time. So over the last two years, our little team of volunteers has been making incremental improvements to the kitchen, working closely with leadership there. We've moved kitchen equipment around for better access and usage. We organized having the space painted and more regular and cleaned thoroughly. We installed a larger sink and I believe today a commercial dishwasher is finally going in. So I've been able to see how the staff, the leadership and the staff, adapt to every new challenge or need. They open cooling centers and heating centers when the weather's extreme, which it's extreme a lot lately. They have to deal with building malfunctions, equipment problems, resources not showing up when they need to. But we have Chef JJ, who's an amazing guy. He serves upwards of 50 people a day. And often he doesn't even know what's going to be in his pantry from week to week, because most of it's donated. And so I've had the opportunity to learn from other staff members about all the challenges that are associated with meeting this rising need that that you've been hearing about this morning without stopping or slowing services. So every day Southside staff serve the people of Hays County, often without the resources they need to really to do the work. And so I'm connected with Southside, but I know this is a reality for social services around the county. We're all experiencing the pressure of inflation, more expensive food, fuel and housing, And this all makes for more need for organizations like Southside. But I've also seen that a little can go a long way, especially in this community. Thank you.

Thank you.

Eric Martinez.

HOWDY, EVERYONE. MY NAME IS ERIC MARTINEZ, THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF MANO AMIGA, A COMMUNITY NONPROFIT THAT HELPS PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HARMED BY IMMIGRATION AND CRIMINAL INJUSTICE SYSTEMS. WE DO NOT SEEK GOVERNMENT FUNDING OURSELVES, SO WE'RE NOT ASKING FOR OURSELVES RATHER. WE'RE ASKING BECAUSE WE WORK ALONGSIDE THE RESIDENTS AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS WORKING EVERY DAY TO THE NEEDS OF HAYES COUNTY FAMILIES. If Hays County is serious about public safety and introducing involvement in the criminal legal system, prevention has to be a part of that investment. Helping somebody remain housed costs less than responding after they've become homeless. Connecting someone to mental health treatment before a crisis can prevent repeated involvement from police, EMS, hospitals, and jails. And when someone does enter the legal system, simple diversion programs are not enough. Programs like the mental health court, veterans court, holistic public defense, and reentry efforts are strongest when people can actually access treatment, transportation, food, housing, and employment. Cutting social service does not eliminate the need, it simply shifts that need to somewhere else. to our schools, hospitals, courts, jails, and nonprofits. Some of the greatest successes of these programs are things we may never see. The eviction that never happened, the crisis that never escalated, the family that remained stable, and the person who never returned to jail. Our nonprofits already contribute volunteers, private donation, grants, expertise, and trusted relationships. They're not asking the county to carry this responsibility alone. They are asking instead the county to be a partner. So our request is simple. Do not reduce the current state of social service funding and continue to look for responsible ways to actually increase it. As I know, many of these nonprofits have been at a flat funding rate for many years. The need is growing. The community organizations are still doing the work. And Hayes County should help ensure these nonprofits can survive and meet the needs of Hays County families. Thank you.

Alphonso Salazar. The last one.

And then we have one email.

One email that I missed.

Commissioners, Judge, my name's Alphonso Salazar, and I just wanted to cover a couple of the budget topics that got brought up last week. First off, the sheriff's office is losing talent, and whenever the sheriff's office starts to lose talent, we all kind of suffer. They're the starting point to then what goes on to the criminal justice system. And if they don't have the people with the knowledge and experience to divert things or respond properly, then the county is going to suffer. I think if we fully fund the jail staff, we can bring people back to Hays. There's a lot of issues and expenses that aren't on reports and budgets. They just happen, whether they're transportation issues, not making a court date, having their court appointed attorney show up more than once, not being able to communicate with your client. All that adds up, and it's not on black and white paper. The school resource offices are needed to protect the youth. Moving on is the associate judge for the county courts at law. They can help lower our mental health burden. They can also lower the juvenile burden. Currently, right now, the juvenile crimes are going through the roof, and they are violent crimes. They're not the old ways of tagging things and doing some harmless drugs. These are gun-related, gang-related, those sorts. It brings violence to the community, and we need to address those things as soon as possible. The community is missing something, and that's where our children are wandering off. The DA's office needs two things. One is to be able to support you all here on this court as well as all the other elected officials, and that comes from our civil side. They also need the ability to protect our youth and those that suffer from mental health crises on our criminal side and our civil side. If we were to merge the two budgets, we would be able to share resources and talent without having such a back and forth of having to be here all the time. Also, we need... a dedicated mental health and juvenile prosecutor to backstop. We have so many cases of mental health and I work with the mental health prosecutor currently and she's fantastic, but she's one human being. And we have gone back and forth on a multitude of cases and she is always trying to get the help that that person needs to make our community better. But once she's out of resources and out of hours in a day, she can only do so much. She needs the support and so do our children. It seems like many people have come up here and spoken about budgets, happiness, and working for Hayes County, and then just continuing on without losing talent to other people and causing suffering. I understand currently that the budget is in front of you, but the things that you do today will impact us in the future. And if we try to save pennies today, we may end up spending dollars later on down the road. Understand that the overarching theme is that everything is more expensive on one hand gas milk food rent that sorts And we don't want to burden our neighbors by trying to solve that problem But it seems like we're asking the employees of Hayes County to carry that burden without having the proper Funding for their education and expertise. Thank you.

Thank you, sir And that's all for in person we have one emailed comment and From Larry Gibson to the commissioners, as a pastor of a local congregation, Spring of Life Church, I am writing to express my support for Southside Community Center. Southside is a crucial social service for San Marcos and Hayes County and truly reflects the gospel's calling for us to serve whom Jesus calls. the least of my family, Matthew 25, verse 40. As a new church, our members have served at Southside before we even began weekly worship services. Back in January of 2025, many of us were concerned about cuts to the safety net that we saw affecting the most vulnerable individuals in our nation and our local community. I reached out to Pastor Jessica Kane, Director of Neighborhood Engagement, who told me that she was putting together opportunities for local churches to serve meals on Sunday afternoons on a monthly rotation. We jumped at the opportunity, agreeing to take every fourth Sunday of the month, and a few times a fifth Sunday occurred. We have had teams serve at least once a month ever since. We also partner with Southside on several of their fundraisers, including the Burger Cook-Off, the Spring Fair, and Coca Coco and Carol's. Over the time span of our partnership, we have seen firsthand just how much our neighbors in need benefit from these services Southside provides. People come to Southside not only to eat hot meals daily, but also to take showers, clean their laundry, and receive housing stability services. We have witnessed how the staff at Southside treats every person who walks through their doors, not merely as a client, but also as a beloved child of God, worthy of dignity and love. In particular, Southside housing stability programs have proven crucial to stopping the growth of homelessness in San Marcos. This is a critical issue for all cities along the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio. It brings me great hope to see how Southside provides financial assistance to those about to be evicted, case management for those striving to get back onto their home, and temporary shelter for those without a home. One of the other reasons we partner with Southside is because every dollar spent there has multiplied impact. They partner with other local organizations to provide emergency assistance to those in need. They have a team of trained cooks who know how to prepare meals to feed dozens all at once. They have relationships with local landlords and hotels to provide the best possible temporary housing for those in need. I strongly urge you to support Southside If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me. Sincerely, Reverend Larry Gibson.

Beautiful. That concludes the portion of public comments, and now we're going to go straight to F3. Am I right? That was the most hands raised. If you'll please open that agenda item or read it.

F3. Adopt a proclamation honoring the importance and dedication of poll workers in Hays County.

Second. If you'll please read it.

Proclamation declaring August as Election Worker Appreciation Month. Whereas during the election cycle, many citizens dedicate themselves to sustaining the backbone of American democracy, our election process, and more and more election workers are greatly needed in all jurisdictions. And whereas election workers provide a tangible link between the voting public and the election process, And whereas these individuals often begin their work before dawn and continue late into the night, setting up and closing polling locations, troubleshooting election equipment, and carefully following election laws and procedures. And whereas poll workers and election judges demonstrate patience, fairness, and respect toward every voter, helping to create an environment that is welcoming, accessible, and nonpartisan. And whereas their calm presence and commitment to transparency help build public trust in the electoral process and in the results of our elections. And whereas election workers span generations from college students to senior citizens and mirror the amazing diversity of their communities and American society as a whole, an election worker participation is growing among young people with more and more getting involved and working each election. And whereas the contributions of poll workers and election judges are essential to ensuring that every eligible voter has the opportunity to participate in secure, efficient, and trustworthy elections. And whereas election workers are America's champions of democracy and it is most appropriate to recognize their contributions each time we vote. Now therefore be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court extends its appreciation and admiration for the election judges and workers of this county and this great country and the vital services they provide to the election process. And the court encourages those interested in serving on election day to go to the Hayes County website at www.co.hayes.tx.us slash elections to learn more about what is required and how to sign up to work with our county elections administrator. And be it further resolved that the Hayes County Commissioner's Court proclaims the month of August 2026 as Election Worker Appreciation Month and encourages all residents, community organizations, and institutions to recognize and express their gratitude for the essential role these individuals play in administering our elections. Adopted this the 18th day of August, 2026.

Champions of democracy, I love it. Please call the roll.

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

Yes. Good morning. What's going on? All yours. My name is Jennifer Doinoff. I'm the Hays County Election Administrator, and I want to thank the court this morning for giving us the time to honor these folks standing in the room. I can't think of a better way to kick off the midterm election than to send them forward with your support, with all of our support and admiration for the work that they do. Today, we want to offer a sincere and heartfelt thank you to our poll workers and my election staff, who are also in the back, whose dedication and professionalism make it possible for elections to be free, fair, and accessible. From opening the polls early before dawn to closing them late at night, you greet voters, verify registrations, protect the secrecy of the ballot, and ensure that every eligible voter has the opportunity to cast their ballot with confidence. Your calm patience, attention to detail help resolve questions, prevent confusion, and uphold integrity in the process. You serve on the front lines of democracy, often give up long days, weekends, and holidays to ensure that our community's voice is heard. Whether you're a first-time poll worker or a long-time election judge, your work builds trust in our elections and strengthens our democratic institutions. And I'm a little bit emotional, but I want to thank each and every one of you because I can't believe how many of you showed up.

Let's give them a round of applause.

I have one more thing that I would like to say. Pastor Darius Todd said earlier that he would love to see unity and balance in this place today. I can't think of a better representation than this. These are folks from both parties that come together and they provide this vital service for democracy. So I appreciate them, and I hope each and every one of you will shake their hand and thank them as well.

Well, thank you very much. Although we may not be able to shake every single hand, I will say, I will ask each commissioner for their comments, and then when we're done with the comments, those individuals that are here for this proclamation, if we can maybe get Six per up here and then two blocks down here so that we can capture a picture of this moment to memorialize it. Commissioner Inglesby.

Jennifer, thank you for your leadership. I really appreciate all the work that you do. And I know it takes a team and you have a wonderful team here in front of us today. And just thank you for all the work that you do to ensure that our voting process goes smoothly. We really and truly appreciate everything that you do.

And thank you, Jennifer, for your leadership and for all the election poll workers for coming in early, staying long hours, staying late. It does not happen without you and your dedication. And I do hope that more young people get involved, because that would be fabulous if we can get everyone excited about elections and do their part. It is a civic duty, I feel. But we can't have these elections without everyone's help and support. completely just thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything. Commissioner Hammer.

Of course all these people showed up. It's you. You're amazing. You're amazing at everything. The connections you make at the legislature. We are so lucky and blessed to have such a great elections administrator and I think everyone in this room will 100% agree with that. Exercising our right to vote is what makes America, America. Thank you all so much for all that you do. You guys put in long hours. Y'all do a lot to make sure that we have safe, secure elections. My favorite thing is the secure, efficient, trustworthy elections because we trust in that system. to elect the people that we elect. So thank you so much for all that you do. I do hope that all young people get more and more involved. I do see this wave of the young coming in, and it is just so exciting and invigorating. So thank y'all. I think you guys all deserve all the kudos in the world, and I'm glad that August is the time to recognize y'all and all that you do.

Beautiful. Commissioner? Enjoy August. We all know what's coming. I can't say thank you enough. What I think a lot of people don't understand is, number one, the hours that go into a regular election, but everything that goes into the preparation and everything that comes before it. And I say that, whether that's picking up elections equipment and setting up polling locations, the days are, you know, the days before election tearing it down. I will tell you the worst is the night of a general election because you have used to we had our primary caucuses in the same location an hour later or however fast you can tear down the equipment. Right. I'm going to give special shout outs to all the folks from Dripping Springs because I know how long it takes to get from Dripping Springs all the way to the elections administration office. And I know that y'all are getting pounded on because, wait, everybody's turned in all their stuff. Where's Dripping Springs? Well, we're an hour away, OK? We're going to get there as soon as we can. But I really appreciate y'all. If nobody else sees it, I know we see it because a lot of y'all's polling locations are in our offices. And we purposely go out and try to see if y'all need anything in those offices. I can't reiterate my colleague's statements about Jennifer enough. And I don't say this lightly. I was in the capital almost two to three days a week on behalf of Hays County last year. in the last legislative session. And she is viewed as a true leader for elections administrators in the state. I'm very proud that we are considered pretty much a gold standard because of the changes that she has instituted here and the policies and personnel that she's put in place. And I'm very proud of her but I'm very proud of the whole process and every one of y'all for participating. So thank you.

And I get the privilege of saying when I started, when we walked in here together, Commissioner Smith, we walked in eight years ago getting new machines. Literally every moment has been an evolution. And exactly what they've said about you always out front, you always at the Capitol, you always pushing and championing for the latest and the greatest. And what I find extra valuable in a very acidic time in our country Listen, I'm a Buddhist Catholic. I really do see myself that way. Everything is as it should be. Who knows what's right? Who knows what's wrong? My point in that is we don't know what's a bad thing until it's all done and unfolded. And so when you lean in, as you have with a steady hand, the acidic, polarizing voices that are unfortunately the minority draft out the rest of us. And we need to remember, in these very critical times, as United States Texans, that we are all still looking for something that we can use to identify ourselves as Texans, neighbors, friends, person you may cross paths with at H-E-B. And so I just want to say thank you for leading that tone and that temperature. And it resonates through all these poll sites because, you know, during elections, I drive to all of them and I'm always checking because I get all the calls about this irregularity that someone feels is wrong. I mean, I'll get a call even if that flag, when you started putting up flags thanking veterans. Oh, that's this kind of thing. I'm like, what? So I'm thanking you for always answering my communications. And through you, this is a real American dream. And thank you all for what you do. Most definitely a round of applause one more time for you. Okay, now let's do that division. Maybe six up here, six over there, and then the rest in two blocks.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's why I was thinking, I was like, I thought we should move the chairs a little bit. They should sit in the chairs. They should sit in the chairs. Oh Thank you. Okay.

All right, everybody looking right here.

No, no, no, no. Give me one second. Give me one second. This is magnificent. And I've got to get a video of this. I've never, ever, ever have I ever seen something so magnificent. And now I'm ready to record. This is magnificent support. Are you guys ready?

Ready. Right here. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.

They did it.

I don't think that was a page.

Thank you. I'm hoping it doesn't matter.

Whatever his wife tells me. Right. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Thank you. Wow, I didn't know there was a community. You're going into astrology. You're going into astrology. You're going into astrology. You're going into astrology. I didn't realize that many people were here for that. Yes, ma'am. I always go in and see if they need water. Hey, good to see you.

We're going to keep moving, but thank you. Thank you, Ruben.

F2.

adopt a proclamation honoring the election student intern program.

Second.

All right. Jennifer? This one is much more manageable, be a little faster, and also answers the call that I heard from all of you that you would like to see younger people involved in the process. This is an effort that we put together with Texas State and ACC. However, we've had more of an interaction with Texas State on this particular effort so far. And so this is exactly to bring young people into the process. We ended up with seven interns this year, and out of the seven, two were Hayes County interns that were paid out of Hayes County. The rest were paid out of the election budget. So today... We want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to our college student election interns, whose dedication and hard work have strengthened the democratic process. These interns have contributed countless hours assisting with voter registration, voter education, polling place preparation, and many behind-the-scenes tasks to ensure that our elections run smoothly, fairly, and efficiently. They have brought energy, fresh ideas, and strong technical skills, helping us better serve voters across our community. They've balanced their coursework, jobs, family responsibilities, and college student interns nonetheless chose to devote their time and talents to this public service. Their professionalism, integrity, and commitment to accessibility and secure elections embody the very best of civic engagement. To each of our college student election interns, thank you for your service, your enthusiasm, and your leadership. Our elections are stronger and our community is better because of you. During their internship, these interns worked voter registration, ballot by mail, limited ballots, polling locations, inventory and supply preparation, voter outreach and equipment setup and intake, as well as the central counting station. They also participated in public logic and accuracy pre-election audit process and the post-election hand count audit, which is the audit that takes place after the election. Our interns this year, and some of them are here. If you are here and I say your name, if you can come up here, that would be great. America Juarez, Zaria Heaton, Lucero Ramirez, Nevaeh Lowe, Delilah Lopez, Cash Lawrence, and Elizabeth Armour. These are our interns from Texas State. And with them, we have the Department Chair of the Political Science Department and Melissa Rendon. And I'm going to invite them up here as well from Texas State to say a few words.

I love it. I love the lineup. And before you go on, well, we'll finish your part. We'll do it in reverse. Roxanne will go. And I just got to say this. Eat them up. Eat them up. Go, cats, go.

Absolutely. Hi, my name is Melissa Rendon. I'm the Student Development Specialist for the Political Science Department at Texas State and I've been working closely with Jennifer and Kayla to develop this partnership for our interns and also to provide voter registration to Texas State students. So we look forward to our continued partnership and we're very excited and grateful that our students have done a great job with dedication and hard work.

That's beautifully done and thank you so much. And I would like to say I really appreciate this program because so many people fail to, I just gotta be honest, fail to see the real gem, the jewel, the investment from us as communities with the vast opportunity that each and every single one of you represents. Because folks don't remember this sometimes, but Bobcats that go to school here very often make this their permanent home. And so that you're investing in your local government already and being a part of this community in the most meaningful way, I think it is a most magnificent program and I thank you for being a part of it. Most awesome. I'm gonna ask that Roxanne read the resolution now.

proclamation recognizing the service of election interns. Whereas the right to vote in free and fair elections is a fundamental cornerstone of our democracy, and whereas the effective administration of elections depends upon the dedication, integrity, and hard work of those who assist in the election process. And whereas college student election interns provide vital clerical support to election officials and poll workers through their service in voter outreach, voter education, registration activities, and the operation of polling places. And whereas these college students Election interns bring energy, innovation, and technological skills that enhance communication with voters and improve the delivery of election services. And whereas participation as a student election intern offers these young adults a unique hands-on opportunity to learn about civic engagement, democratic institutions, and local governance. And whereas student interns exemplify leadership, professionalism, and commitment to public service, often balancing their academic responsibilities, employment, and family obligations with their duties to assist the election office and voters. And whereas these internships can facilitate increased voter participation for these students, enhanced workforce development in the field of election administration, greater civic literacy, and a pipeline of future public service leaders. and whereas the contributions of these interns help ensure that every eligible voter has access to a secure, accurate, and transparent election process. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court extends its appreciation and admiration to the 2026 Hays County Election Office interns for their outstanding service and dedication to the democratic process and the voters of Hays County. Be it further resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court proclaims the month of August 2026 as College Student Election Intern Month and encourages schools, community organizations, and residents to acknowledge and celebrate the important role of college interns in supporting our elections. Adopted this the 18th day of August, 2026.

Beautifully done, beautifully written. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

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

Yes.

Commissioner Smith, would you like to start this conversation? Whenever I was at A&M, I would go back to my home county and work as an election worker every single election. And I really got a view of not only how the election worked, but all the process that went into it. I can't say thank you enough. I think you're getting a unique perspective and not just showing up to vote every day, but knowing what goes into the process. And I think you are going to be very well set in life if you decide to pursue a career related to government and knowing those things, because you would you will have a better understanding than most of the people who are actually on that ballot running for office. Thank you for your work. And I can't wait to see all progress throughout this process. Well done. Commissioner Hammer?

Well, as a bobcat, not as an Aggie. There you go. Just kidding. But no, I went to school there, and what y'all are doing is, it's so great because I was in school, and all I could think about was get out of school, get done, and start my job, right? But y'all are taking it a step further. You're reaching out of your comfort zone, and you're going out, and you're doing great work. and you're getting to see firsthand what that's like, right? You just saw all of these election workers come in here and, I mean, what support that they had from this county. So thank you for all that you guys are doing. You continue to do good work. And who graduates this next coming year? Oh, there you go. So y'all are going to go out in the world and you're going to see firsthand all of the things that we sit back here and we deal with. But you keep going and keep fighting the good fight. Thanks so much.

Thank you. And Commissioner Cohen.

Well, thank you so much for participating in this program. I'm glad to see that you see the importance of this work. And I hope that you are sharing your experiences with your friends and your fellow students, just expressing how important it is to be involved. I mean, we all need to be involved in these spaces to make a difference in your community, right? So you're starting to do that work, and I applaud you for that, and thank you very much for doing that. Thank you, Judge.

Yeah, I just want to thank you all also. I mean, it really is refreshing to see your dedication and willingness to participate in the election process. And what's even more amazing to me that it's all young women doing it. And so thank you all so much. Okay, yes, but y'all are the future, and we really appreciate what you're doing. Thank you so much.

Rose Brooks would be proud, wouldn't she?

Right? And I would like to just reiterate that I see you as treasures. I see you as someone's loved ones. I see you as our future, whether we like it or not. And I think that's awesome, because if there's one thing we can always count on, the most consistent thing in our lives is change. And so you're part of that change. You represent that change. And you leaning into it is a real gift for us. So beautifully said by all the court members. And I just want to add the icing of big, fat, juicy thank you for what you do. You want to come on up for a picture?

Hi, thank you so much. Hi, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Alright.

So, it is customary, if you don't mind, just nudge me in here. I usually stand under God.

That's it. That's it.

And someone help me hold it.

Whoever it is up front, whatever you want to do. Let's just hold it together. There we go. Teamwork. All right.

Looking right over here. Ready?

Eat them up. Eat them up. Go, Pat. Go. One, two, three. Thank you.

Well done, commissioners. And we give this to Zinnabur. Give this to you. Thank you. Thank you.

You guys have a wonderful day. And maybe some of you, maybe a part of that's over here.

You'll all be alumni soon enough. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, now will you take your hats off.

F1, adopt a proclamation recognizing the power to prosper faith-based community leadership institute for strengthening leadership and community collaboration throughout Hays County.

So moved. Second.

All right, if you'll please read it.

Proclamation recognizing the Power to Prosper Faith-Based Community Leadership Institute for strengthening leadership and community collaboration throughout Hays County. Whereas the Power to Prosper Faith-Based Community Leadership Institute, or P2P-FBCLI, is an initiative of Power to Prosper Community Development Corporation, a San Marcos-based 501c3 nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Chetay Ashford Hansford, whose mission is to equip leaders, strengthen organizations, and foster collaborative solutions that improve the quality of life for residents throughout Hays County and beyond. And whereas the Institute was established to provide faith-based leaders, nonprofit organizations, community advocates, educators, healthcare professionals, and local partners with leadership development, organizational capacity building, and strategic resources necessary to address the evolving needs of Hays County communities through initial funding provided by the Greater Fayette Community Foundation. And whereas, through education, collaboration, and shared leadership, the Institute promotes innovative partnerships that advance community health and wellness, education, workforce development, economic opportunity, food security, family stability, and overall community prosperity. And whereas the inaugural Power to Prosper Faith-Based and Community Leadership Institute represents a significant investment in developing collaborative leaders who are committed to serving others, strengthening local organizations, and creating sustainable solutions that benefit individuals, families, and neighborhoods throughout Hays County. And whereas the success of this initiative reflects the shared commitment of community organizations, faith communities, businesses, educational institutions, health care leaders, public servants, volunteers, and philanthropic partners who work together to improve the well-being and resilience of Hays County residents. Now therefore, be it proclaimed that the Hays County Commissioner's Court hereby recognizes and celebrates the Power to Prosper Faith-Based Community Leadership Institute for its leadership in building stronger organizations, empowering community leaders, and fostering meaningful collaboration to improve the health, prosperity, and quality of life throughout Hays County. Be it further proclaimed that the Hays County Commissioner's Court extends its sincere appreciation to Power to Prosper Community Development Corporation, the Institute's faculty, community partners, participants, volunteers, and supporters whose dedication and service continue to strengthen the fabric of Hays County and inspire lasting community transformation. Adopted this the 18th day of August, 2026.

Beautifully done. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

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

Yes. Commissioner Inglesby, would you like to take us off?

Yes, Judge. Dr. Shatay Ashford Hanson is here today, and I'd like to let her come up at the opening.

You want to let her go first? Shatay, I saw you back there. Come on up. Please state your name and title for the viewing public. You've always been a leader in our community and on that campus, so I thank you. I thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Dr. Shatay Ashford Hansard, and I'm here today in the capacity of founder and president of the Power to Prosper Community Development Corporation.

Beautiful. And do you have anything you want to add?

I would. I would like to just thank you again for this opportunity. As you've already mentioned through the proclamation, this organization was actually founded in 2019. We've done a lot of work under the name Access with a Wide Network, so we've offered free community camps for the past five years. This year, through the generous support of the Greater Fayette Community Foundation, we've had the opportunity to launch the other arm of our organization focused on strengthening resident faith-based leaders who strengthen communities. And so some of those organizations include, and I have with me today, Erica Rosa with Breaking Bread Outreach Ministries, one of our resident leaders, Tracy Mixon, Desire to Live Now, Tabitha Walker with Breastfriends, also Susie Hernandez with Fresh Journey Counseling, Steven Hernandez, Do Something Great, Pastor Justin Payne with Word of Life Christian Church, Rashida Palapala, Shachita B., Senior Care Services, Pastor Joanne Parsons, New Beginnings Ministries, Algie Thompson with Pentecostal Temple, Kojic. So these are some of the resident leaders that participated in the inaugural cohort that ended in July. Thank you so much again for this opportunity.

Let's give you and that group a round of applause. to say some comments and then we'll come up for a pick.

Yeah, thank you, Judge. Chitae, I just want to, you know, I remember meeting you for the very first time. It was at a ribbon cutting. And I knew then that you were a very special person. And I just really appreciate all the work that you have done to help improve and advance the well-being of Hays County residents. And so I just, you know, what you just shared and said, it means a lot that you're working to help our communities. And so thank you so much.

Thank you.

Commissioner. Dr. Ashford, it's so good to see you again. And I don't know if anybody knows what a beautiful singing voice she has when I get to see her speak. A couple months ago, she opened up her speech with a song, and I was so blown away by that moment, but it was so wonderful, and I admire the work that you do. Leadership is also my passion, trying to elevate leaders, give them the skills that they need to be able to be good leaders. And so I appreciate the work that you're doing and continuing to do in supporting our leaders coming up into the community, because they do need that support, right? And there's different types of leadership, right? People have different styles. Thank you for the work that you're doing in our community, for sure. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Hammer?

The fellowship that you have surrounding you, that's amazing. I'm all about network and bringing everyone to the table. I mean, Breaking Bread is a great name for an organization. I also do believe that doing all things with Jesus or with a faith-based intention is so important because the serving others aspect, strengthening local organizations, I mean, In my opinion, that's what I believe in big church, small government, and I think that that is y'all are doing great work, and you're getting out to the community and doing just that. Thank you.

Beautiful. Commissioner Smith.

I couldn't agree with Commissioner Hammer more. We're each called in a different way, and I think that sometimes that connection between faith and fellowship and governance and the things that we do is sometimes overlooked or disparaged, and I think to work in organizations like yourself, there really is a place for groups of faith to work hand in hand with government and with their community in other ways that people may not think of. And so I'm always impressed to see someone who's actually stepping out and doing the work because it is a hard job to bring those two different entities together. So thank you.

Thank you. As an old Latino, I was born and raised Catholic. And as a Catholic, I think I relate to a lot of people on this planet. But as an adult, I wove in, by desire, the Buddhist overlay. So now I call myself a Buddhist Catholic because seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and everything else will follow. Those key pillars of my teachings of faith that we are hearing from everyone here are is key to your peace, your harmony. And when you're radiating through the community this way, well, you're spreading it like snowflakes and rays of hope for everyone. And so thank you. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for each of you for what you do to our community because that light at the end of the tunnel may be you. So thank you. Would you like to come on up for a picture?

Yes, please.

The whole group, everybody, come on up. Everybody that's here with this organization and this effort. Anyone else here for you? Oh man, super fast, super fast.

Alright, please open F4.

F4, adopt a proclamation recognizing August 31st, 2026 as International Overdose Awareness Day. Proclamation recognizing August 31st, 2026 as International Overdose Awareness Day proclamation. Whereas community partnerships among organizations, schools, healthcare providers, first responders, law enforcement, and local leaders have been instrumental in promoting substance use prevention, education, and healthier lifestyles throughout Hays County. And whereas overdose continues to impact individuals, families, and communities across our nation, reminding us of the importance of addressing substance use through compassionate, evidence-based prevention, education, treatment, recovery support, and harm reduction strategies. And whereas International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31st provides a vital opportunity to honor those lost to overdose, support grieving families, and renew our community's commitment to ending the stigma associated with drug-related deaths. And whereas raising awareness about the dangers of opioid and drug misuse can lead to more informed community members who are better equipped to recognize signs of overdose and take life-saving actions. And whereas acknowledging International Overdose Awareness Day reinforces the importance of investing in evidence-based prevention, treatment, recovery support, and community resources that reduce overdose deaths. And whereas this day emphasizes the importance of increasing access to naloxone and other overdose reversing medications while promoting education and training that empowers community members to respond to an overdose emergency. And whereas the proclamation of International Overdose Awareness Day will promote community solidarity, offering a platform to share stories of recovery and resilience while fostering hope, healing, and community unity. And whereas overdose is a preventable public health issue that affects individuals of every age, background, and community, underscoring the need for comprehensive prevention efforts that address the factors contributing to substance use before harm occurs. And whereas every life lost to overdose represents a preventable tragedy, and every life saved reflects the power of education, early intervention, community engagement, treatment, and hope, And whereas, Senate Corps remains committed to collaborating with community partners to provide evidence-based prevention education, strengthen protective factors, increase awareness, and support individuals and families affected by substance use. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court does hereby proclaim August 31st, 2026 as International Overdose Awareness Day in Hays County and encourages all residents to participate in efforts that promote prevention increase awareness, reduce stigma, expand access to life-saving resources, and strengthen the health and well-being of our community. Adopted this the 18th day of August, 2026.

Beautifully done. Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Judge Becerra?

Yes. And who is here that would like to take the podium? And say a few words, just state your name. And if it's more than one, totally fine. Share the space. The sun shines for everyone. All I ask is that you state your name and title so that we can identify you.

Good morning, Commissioners and Judge Bassetta. My name is Matthew Gonzalez, Hays County Health Department Director. Very thankful for you all adopting this proclamation for International Overdose Awareness Day. The county has done a lot of work in conjunction with the Sheriff's Office in really trying to prevent deaths related to overdose. You know, it's such a tragic thing for our community to face, especially when it impacts the youth in our community. You know, since then, we have continued to partner with many organizations to bring awareness to drugs and, you know, prevention of overdose awareness and have implemented things like supplying Narcan at the health department or other events that we may attend. But that work could not be happening without the work of our partners, such as Cinecor and such as FESTA. And so today here to speak to you all is going to be Cassandra Salinas of Cinecor and then Dr. Kelly Clary of FESTA at Texas State University. And I just also want to give a shout out to the Sheriff's Office. They're a co-requester on this proclamation. I'm so thankful for the work that they do with us.

Thank you, Matthew. Well said. Whoever would like to go first. Just state your name and title.

Hi. Good morning. Thank you, Matthew, for the introduction. My name is Cassandra Salinas. I'm the prevention outreach coordinator with the CENACOR Foundation. I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to speak today for recognizing August 31st as International Overdose Awareness Day here in Hays County. On behalf of the CENACOR Foundation and our community partners, I want to express my sincere gratitude for your support of this proclamation and your commitment to strengthening the health and well-being of our community. As reflected in this proclamation, addressing overdose requires a collective commitment to prevention, education, treatment, recovery, support, and harm reduction. Today is both a day of remembrance, but it's also a day of hope. We gather to honor the lives lost to overdose, support those who continue to grieve, and acknowledge the many individuals and families whose lives have been impacted by substance use. And behind every loss is a person who mattered deeply in a community that feels that loss. But while today is a time to remember, it's also a time and a reminder that overdose is preventable. Prevention begins long before a crisis occurs, and it starts with education. It starts with building strong connections between young people, families, schools, and communities. It starts with helping people develop knowledge, skills, and support systems that they need to make healthy decisions and seek help when they need it. As a prevention outreach coordinator, I've had the privilege to work alongside educators, healthcare professionals, first responders, community organizations, FESTA, the health department, and who are committed to creating healthier futures for our youth and our families. Every classroom presentation, every community workshop, every conversation, and every partnership is an opportunity to make a difference before substance use can become a crisis. Today also highlights the importance of empowering our community with lifesaving knowledge. Through Naloxone or Narcan, trainings in overdose response education, Our everyday community members can gain the confidence to recognize an overdose emergency and then take action. Those moments do matter, and the willingness that our community has to learn how to respond can mean the difference between a tragedy and a second chance. This day also calls on us to continue reducing the stigma around substance use. When we lead with compassion instead of judgment, we create pathways for people to seek help, access support, and find recovery. Recovery is possible, and every person deserves to be treated with dignity, respect, and hope. What gives me hope is the incredible collaboration that we see throughout Hays County with the schools, health providers, law enforcement, first responders, community organizations, recovery advocates, local leaders, and residents. We all play a part in building a stronger and healthier community. This proclamation is a reflection of that shared commitment and that belief that we all have a part to play in preventing overdose and supporting recovery. As we recognize International Overdose Awareness Day, let us remember those who we have lost, support those who are grieving, celebrate those who are living in recovery, and recommit ourselves to prevention, education, and community action, because every life has value, and every person deserves hope, together, where more people have the opportunity to heal, recover, and thrive.

Thank you. The President of the United States,

Good morning, Judge and Commissioners. My name is Dr. Kelly Clary, and I am the leader of a $2 million federal grant supporting Hays County in substance use education and prevention, specifically for 6th through 12th graders. I am the project director of the FESTA program, FESTA standing for Fentanyl Education Support Training and Awareness. Our team shared substance use education in 290 classrooms reaching 6800 middle and high school students during the last school year. I am honored to support the proclamation to recognize Overdose Awareness Day here in Hays County. This provides an opportunity to remember those who have lost their lives to overdose, support individuals and families affected by substance use and addiction, and strengthen community efforts to prevent overdose deaths in our community. Overdose continues to affect individuals, families, schools, and communities across Texas and the nation. Prevention requires education about overdose signs and symptoms, increased awareness about substance use, for example, the fact that people can overdose from alcohol, access to life-saving resources such as naloxone, which is commonly known as Narcan, as well as a commitment to reducing stigma so that individuals feel safe seeking help and support. As a researcher, educator, mother, and community partner, I am committed to advancing substance use prevention and education, particularly among our youth and communities impacted by the opioid and fentanyl crisis. Through education, collaboration, and community engagement, we can empower individuals, especially our young people, with the knowledge as well as the resources needed to recognize an overdose, respond timely and appropriately, and ultimately save lives. Recognizing Overdose Awareness Day affirms our shared commitment to prevention, compassion, education and action. It honors those that we have unfortunately lost while reminding us that every life matters and that overdose deaths are preventable. Thank you.

Beautifully done.

I want to thank Commissioner Inglesby for co-sponsoring this with me. And I think if you polled the folks in this courtroom, everyone has been touched by someone who had an overdose in their life. The small rural community I grew up in had never really seen methamphetamines until I went to high school in the 90s. And it became an epidemic in about a year and a half. We had multiple overdoses within our community. And it really completely reshaped the place I grew up. And nothing scared me worse whenever I came into office is when we started to see the fentanyl deaths, especially in the Hays Consolidated School District. At that time, believe it or not, I sat down and spoke to each one of our school districts. And two of them just told me, well, that's a Hays Consolidated problem. We don't have those problems in our school district. Within six weeks, I was talking, I had neighbors reporting to me, and I was reporting to the Sheriff's Department, and they were investigating fentanyl sales two blocks from my house in Dripping Springs. And they made several busts there, and they were sustained busts. So at that time, there really wasn't a plan of action on how to address it. I have to commend former Sheriff Cutler. I was able to provide through the funding that we got from ARPA, the ability for the Sheriff's Department to start a fentanyl outreach program. At that time, we put a little bit of money in it, hoping it would be successful. They were able to get an additional grant. And then at the end of the day, we were able to also fund the Forever 15 Foundation at a certain level to do that outreach. And they really have become a national spokesperson or Janelle's amazing, but it's truly become an effort that we've seen the numbers turn here. And I never, I always just hoped that we could see at least a leveling off of them here. I think it's had an impact. And I think that the work that the health department and their partners is doing is having an impact and it's noticeable. It's not often that we have, it's never gonna be a success story as long as we have one loss, right? But a curb is much better than what we could have had if we as a court in the county hadn't made the choice to step up and address it. And I know I'm out of here on December 31st, but I have to tell you it's probably one of the things I'm going to be proudest of is because it's impact that I won't ever see. It'll never be in a press release. It'll never be. It's hard to quantify. But I know it made a difference, and I was excited to be a part of it. And I can't commend, I know I mentioned former Sheriff Cutler, but when that program was started, we put the right person in charge of it, and Anthony Hippolito. And he made so many connections with so many kids and so many public leaders that that's what made that program a success. So, thank you.

Thank you. Well done, Commissioner.

Commissioner?

I mean... What y'all deal with, it's something that I, like, some of these things I can kind of relate to in some certain way. Like, I have no idea. I mean, thank goodness that we have people like you guys to be able to do these prevention, these education, all of these things. Because, I mean, I break down every time I hear Janelle Rodriguez tell her story about Noah and what happened with him in the Forever 15 project. but those things are so powerful, because her having to relive that constantly is so, that would be probably the hardest thing for someone to have to do, but from, as a mom, I hear her story, and I know, I've got Narcan in my car, I've got Narcan, like, you know, I've got all these things that help me better prevent something in the future, so by y'all being able to open and have a safe space for people to come and to talk to you, and It's it's it's incredible and her being able to say her story about how her son passed away every single day I can't even imagine so thank you all for all that you do and Continue to do because it's a it's a problem And I wish that problem could just go away with snap of a finger, but it can't so y'all are needed.

Thank you Thank You Commissioner Commissioner Cohen Thank you

Ms. Salinas center core, uh, our health department, our sheriff's department, commissioner Smith. Uh, thank you for all the work that y'all have done. Um, fentanyl has been, you know, definitely something that's been very present in Hays County. And there's been a lot of groups trying to do the right thing and trying to bring awareness to this and, you know, Janelle Rodriguez. So for 15, that's a perfect example of someone who has. shared her story. And it's so brave of her to share that story and for her to continue to advocate at a national level for this disease. And it also goes back to mental health. And this court has been dedicated to try and improve mental health and provide that access to people and bring down barriers. So we have to get in the very front of it, right? And so thank you for all the work that you're doing on the daily. I see you all the time. Anytime I'm out in the community, y'all are always there, and that's what it takes. It's meeting community where they live, right, and bringing awareness to them. So thank you so much for that. Commissioner Inglesby?

Yeah. Well, Judge, I, too, just want to thank you all for the work that you do. I know it can be a very long and exhausting process, but it's a vital and important service that is needed, and I just appreciate your willingness to just continue to carry the message forward. But I think we all are responsible to spread the word and the awareness. You know, we all have a responsibility. But I want to also thank the Sheriff's Office, Matthew and his staff. Janelle was mentioned, I think, by every court member. You know, she's an awesome person and, you know, is sharing what she needs to share and just, you know, getting that word out, the importance of this disease. And so... Thank you for the work that you do.

And Commissioner Smith and I got here eight years ago and we actually watched it come into our county and peak and then through the community engagement, come back down through the dedication. I mean, we, yes, Forever 15, everyone's brought that up as an easy example. I mean, we had billboards on the highway warning people and that you're doing, six through 12 as part of the education program, I think that is magnificent because there's no world, there really is no world where we will block everything out. And so when we take care of our own through education and support and Narcan and whatever level of support and engagement and appreciation and love and affection and embrace and whatever that looks like, then when something crosses their path, they can say, no, thank you. No, thank you. And so I remember as this wave stepped into our county while we were sitting here, I started passing out Narcan because I had two young sons. And I was told it was illegal. I was like, what in the world? Narcan was illegal? I didn't realize that was illegal. I was like, how can that be? A life-saving tool, illegal. So I just always paid attention and I always said, Everything we can do to stay nimble and stay receptive through mental health and all the other fronts that we have available access to, we've got to be receptive, boots on the ground and listen and change because literally making Narcan, something so valuable and accessible, something that someone would say is illegal would be a terrible thing to see in any other kind of way. So thank you all for what you do. And it is customary for us to take a picture.

Can I say one thing really quick? Sorry. I know that we talked about thank you to Matthew and his office and thank you to the sheriff's office and Hippolito. And then we also said something about former Sheriff Gary Cutler. Mark Andrews is also a huge part of all of this outreach. And I just want to make sure that he got the thanks that he deserves because he works every day hard on this. Beautiful.

Thank you. I would agree. And I've sat through a number of these. I was at Janelle's second presentation. ever. And to say that she has progressed and what she's done, it would not do justice to what her and Anthony put together in that first presentation. But the one thing that I would draw, I know there's been several of us who've mentioned Narcan up here. You know, we had one student at, I was shocked in some of those presentations when I heard that we had students walking around with Narcan in their pocket because they just expected that there would be an overdose. And where it hit home for me was watching video of a student going through an overdose in one of my schools and taking five doses of Narcan and it not helping. Oh. And so I would just reiterate Narcan is great. But just because you have Narcan doesn't mean you're safe. It doesn't mean that anything's going to be okay. It's a tool. Great reminder. But it's not a savior. And the right choices are.

Great reminder, Commissioner. What a great reminder. That was always looming when this started unfolding in my lens. So thank you for that. So it is customary. Come on up. Anyone that wants to be a part of this picture.

Thank you. Thank you for the support. Hi. Truly team work. Thank you so much. Can we have about four people go to that side please? Or three more people? Wait, you want us to go? Coming in.

Oh, yeah, uneven. How about, well, we can make it better. Give us a second. Look at the picture here, guys. A couple, maybe three more that way.

Thank you. You deserve a good pick. All right.

One, two, three. Well done, and thank you, and you guys, you too, take some.

Thank you so much. If you need anything else from us, please don't ask. Have a wonderful day. I'm standing here just thanking you so much. Thank you so much.

Oh, absolutely. What a beautiful moment of community coming together. Please open F5.

F5.

Oh. Five. You're saying six. Okay.

Adopt a proclamation recognizing September 2026 as Emergency Preparedness Month.

Second. If you'll please read it.

Proclamation recognizing September 2026 as Emergency Preparedness Month. Whereas Hays County residents, businesses, and organizations are unfortunately often called upon to endure the possibility and the reality of emergency situations such as wildfires, floods, freezes, droughts, tornadoes, pandemics, cyber attacks, and hazardous materials accidents. And whereas lives have been lost or immense property damage has been caused by flooding, freezing, tornadoes, wildland fires, and most recently, regional flooding. And whereas all residents should ensure that they are prepared to face those threats for the best possible outcome to reduce the loss of life and property. And whereas, residents are encouraged to develop and practice emergency evacuation plans, which include a communications strategy, emergency rendezvous locations, a preparedness kit for home, work, and travel, taking into consideration the needs of the members of their household, including their pets. And whereas, residents are encouraged to register for and attend the Free Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, classes published on HayesCountyCERT.com. And whereas residents may stay up to date by visiting HaysInformed.com for 30 ways in 30 days to learn preparation tips and ideas to mitigate disasters. And whereas potential threats may change rapidly and residents may stay informed and notified by registering their address at warncentraltexas.org and by following the instructions from local officials and first responders. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court does hereby proclaim September 2026 as Emergency Preparedness Month and calls upon the residents, businesses, and organizations of Hays County to take advantage of preparedness planning information available through federal, state, and local emergency management offices and to attend the Hays County Annual Preparedness Fair 12 September hosted by the city of Kyle, Texas at Verde park where they will learn preparedness tips for all hazards and engage with first responder agencies from throughout the county to include classes and Demonstrations and stop the bleed CPR and how to properly use a fire extinguisher Adopted this the 18th day of August 2026 beautifully red.

Please call the roll Commissioner hammer

Yes. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen?

Yes.

Judge Becerra?

Yes. And we will ask our Director of Emergency Services, Mike Jones, to say a few words, please.

Good morning, Court. Mike Jones, House Emergency Services Director. This is our ninth annual Preparedness Fair. And each year we've done this, we've gone just a little bit larger. So much so that on the 12th of September from 930 to 1400, it's possible because we have several sponsors that have come to our come to our need. Our presenting sponsor this year will be Ascension Seton. The Old Children's will also sponsor our Kids Zone. Our music sponsor will be put on by CommuniCare. So we'll have the high schools in the morning time, and we'll have the flower tones in the afternoon. And the command partner is Ally Medical. Our children's kickoff sponsor is thanks to La Cima. Our preparedness partner is Mission Golf. Thanks to them, we'll have Four four-pack golf cars and two six-pack golf cars to move people around from the parking lots up to the festivities. And then, of course, our community lifeline partner will be HEB. And we have community champions, Brigade Fire Solutions and Waterloo Power. In our adult zone, we have the Twisted X Brewery, Aquawater, Duty Calls, and, of course, Butte Alliance Club. Going to supply our ice. Our chili cook-off for this fair supports our Fire Chief Association. And that chili cook-off, it's red meat only, no beans. Civilians and public are welcome to join in on this foray, so I'd love to have anybody come up here with a team. It's a $25 entry fee, and you cook some good chili, come up with about two gallons worth, and we'll have judges out there. I know one of our commissioners will be the judge, right? And on top of that, prizes will be awarded. $300 first prize for who has the best chili. Second, we'll get $200, and third, we'll get $900. We'll also have a people's choice. I think that's important too. Now let's get down to the grid. We've got departments in this county.

That's right.

We have an organization called BR3T. That's Blanco River Regional Recovery Team. And they respond to all the disasters ever since 15 when they first originated here in Hays County. And the raffle baskets help support the BR3T to help the families out there. So each department, it's that time of year, we get to compete. And now, Matthew, you're raising your hand. See, the Health Department owns that trophy right now. It's that traveling trophy. You probably want to keep it, don't you? Well, it's going to be up to you guys to make it a good basket this year because guess what? The auditor's office is coming into the foray, too, this year. So they're the first winners. And for you rest of you departments out there, you'll be expecting an email from Natalie this afternoon. She'll be sending out all the details on how this raffle basket works and how you guys can compete and win that prize. And we're adding a new prize this year. The prizes are judged by judges, but I also want to have a prize where the prizes are judged by the citizens. So the raffle ticket that gets the most tickets in their basket, that will get the People's Choice Award. Nice. And I have my staff here, too. If you don't mind, I'd like to bring them up here so you can see who they are. Not everybody's here today because many are out there training and working. But if I could bring them up here. And also, we have Tim Patek from Wembley. who's also come out here to assist us in this process.

I love that, and I appreciate that. And while they're coming up, after anything they may want to say, we'll come up for a picture. And I'm glad you mentioned Natalie, because she has been doing a magnificent job. And it's funny to say, the knife can't cut itself. The microphone can't hear itself. So she is our public information officer. She is our face to the community. But the camera never turns back to her. And so I wanted to take this moment to praise her and thank her because everything that you and I touch has to go through her. And she does a really good job, very timely, seven days a week. And so Natalie, at this moment, I just want to reiterate a thank you. Do you guys want to say anything?

What? I do want to add one more thing. When y'all come out and visit us for the chili cook-off, $20, you can taste all you want. Oh, man.

Taking over at Olympiad. Commissioner Smith?

So I just, you know, I appreciate the effort every year. I appreciate the win last year, but I have to tell you, I think there might be a lady sitting right in front of me who's going to take you down. She's wanting her trophy back. I don't know if the auditor's office has plans yet this year, but how many years in a row did the auditor's office win? Four? Yes.

Okay, the first three.

So I think there's a friendly competition brewing there. And also, you know, it's real Texas chili. It has to be red meat, no chicken, and no beans. So I'm happy you're doing that. But in all seriousness, I can't say thank you enough for all the folks who work with us. I don't think that there's an understanding until you go through a disaster like we did in 2015, like we did in 2019, like we did in 2021, as to how many organizations we have in our county that are either based here or their personnel live here and work in our general area on disaster recovery and relief. And just response as well. I just want to say thank you, as I always do. And you know whenever something happens that you have folks that are here in Hayes County that absolutely come out of the woodwork to help, that you would have never known, never knew existed here, unless you have those bad things happen. And they always show up. I appreciate it. Well done.

Commissioner Hammer?

I MAY BE GIVEN A HARD TIME, BUT I HAVE TO HAVE BEANS IN MY CHILI. I KNOW, I KNOW. I'M SORRY. THANK YOU. IT HAS TO BE HEARTY.

NO, NOT.

ANYWAYS, FURTHER THE POINT, I DO BELIEVE EMERGENCY PREPARING IS SO IMPORTANT AND SO CRUCIAL, ESPECIALLY TO THE WEST PART OF THE COUNTY. I KNOW THAT COMMISSIONER SMITH AND I PROBABLY EXPERIENCE THE MOST NATURAL DISASTERS AND THINGS OF THAT NATURE. Thank you guys for all that you do to bring in these vendors, to make people, I mean, someone can go through the emergency preparedness fair and they could quite literally get all of the supplies that they need there, take them home and have those in a kit. I know that's what I did. So, I mean, me being in the middle of it and in the thick of it, I've realized how important it is and how important it is for every constituent that I am able and honored to represent to be prepared. So, thank you for your consistent Community outreach and education.

I appreciate it Thank you, mr. Jones for Hosting this event again. It's a fabulous event I've enjoyed it the last three or four years and it's been wonderful I mean families can come and they can learn about just different areas of disaster as Emergency preparedness and get the you know, the supplies and information that they need I mean, I remember in when the ice storm happened We were trying to figure out how do we get water from the west side to the east side, right? And all of that really touched people's lives. And I always said, disaster is kind of like my jam. I really like really digging into that. But I'm so happy to be a judge again this year for the chili. I kind of like beans too, but that's just mine. But it's all good. It's all good. It's all good.

Just saying, it's all good.

Yeah, Mike, thank you and your staff. I really appreciate all that you do and our community partners that really, you know, pitch in and volunteer and do all the work alongside y'all. I mean, and it's wonderful to know that we are preparing our residents for that next disaster. It's unfortunate that it has to happen, but, you know, it will. And the more prepared that we are, the better off that we will be. And so thank you all for all the work that you do. Very much appreciated.

Well done. And the secret to my vegetarian chili is... Meat. Silly, corny dad joke. Anyway, absolutely right on evacuations are on the west side of the county. Everything, as the director of emergency management, everything I've seen, you guys have nailed it on echoing the reality that it's nine times out of 10 on the west side, there was that right on frontage. We had a fire there most recently, but for the most part, Well, there was another. But for the most part, it's over there. And evacuations, I mean, the big move and the freezes, so much is a uniting tool for us all. And I really love that most about my job is to see community coming together. We don't care the stripes. We don't care the colors. We don't care the locations. Community drops everything to come together, and that is exhilarating to me. I find myself most grateful when I see our community through that lens acting the way they're acting as neighbors. So thank you for the privilege of allowing me to be a part of that movement. And of course, you're killing it on this event. So let's come on up for a picture.

Judge, the one group that we didn't mention today that I would be remiss if we didn't mention was our CERT. Our cert team citizens of emergency response team They're average citizens here in the county that have gone through training that work directly with our emergency response folks and whether it's a wildfire on the west side or an evacuation or just a house fire and we've got first responders there and

they show up and i just want to say thank you to them and and encourage their continued work so thank you commissioner i'm glad you brought that up because it gives me a chance to segue into this y'all haven't had a chance to meet casey casey lee yet he's our new program manager for cert that doesn't mean that candy stepped away and she's still involved in it but uh he gets to hit the rubberland road so to speak perfect now come on up let's do a picture

Okay, 20. I'll do your 4. 10. Sorry. Take a break. There you go, right there. All right. We have like two people going to the other side, please.

Okay, thank you so much for all that you do.

Okay, looking right here. One, two, three. One, two, three.

Natalie, you can Photoshop us into balance. All right. Well, thank you all so much. What we're going to do right now is quickly move into six, then K-4, and then a recess to go into the workshop. So let's go.

Adopt a proclamation recognizing August 20th, 2026 as World Mosquito Day.

Second.

Read it. I appreciate it.

Proclamation recognizing August 20th, 2026 as World Mosquito Day. Whereas World Mosquito Day was founded 129 years ago and provides us with the opportunity to raise awareness of the dangers posed by mosquito-borne diseases and the continued efforts to contend with the world's deadliest animal, the mosquito. And whereas today globally more than 1 million people are killed by mosquito-borne diseases each year and nearly 700 million people are infected each year. And whereas the state of Texas sees multiple mosquito-borne diseases annually, one of which, West Nile virus, is endemic. Efforts to local health departments, mosquito control programs, and local governments in partnership with the Texas Department of State Health Services conduct statewide surveillance, laboratory testing, and monitoring to identify disease activity and reduce risks of transmission. And whereas within Hays County, Hays County Development Services started monitoring mosquitoes in 2003 as a response to positive human cases of West Nile virus across Texas. And whereas today, Hays County Development Services has codified a mosquito surveillance program providing its constituents with standardized sampling methods, educational outreach, and continued surveillance of mosquito populations and their impacts within the county. And whereas the efforts to raise awareness of mosquito-borne diseases are more than the continued efforts of the Mosquito Surveillance Program, collaboration with the Hays County Health Department that focuses on human health aspects of this risk provides a One Health integrated approach linking humans, animals, and the environment together to address the full spectrum of disease control and prevention. And whereas World Mosquito Day is a global event that celebrates and promotes awareness of mosquitoes and their impact on humans, offering the constituents of Hays County an opportunity to learn more about these animals and their immediate impacts on life within Hays County. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Commissioner's Court of Hays County does hereby proclaim August 20th, 2026 as World Mosquito Day. Adopted this the 18th day of August 2026.

I'm so bad at reading lips, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just gotta confess. Thank you so much, well read, and please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

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

Yes, I was too late, time's up. Matthew, as short and as efficiently as we can speak on this item, let's go. There you are, thank you, sorry.

MORNING COURT. I'LL MAKE IT SHORT AND SWEET HERE. WE JUST REALLY APPRECIATE YOU GUYS RECOGNIZING THIS AS WORLD MOSQUITO DAY COMES UP EVERY AUGUST 20th AND THEN WE'RE ALSO JOINING COUNTLESS JURISDICTIONS, ORGANIZATIONS AND COMPANIES WORLDWIDE TO TALK ABOUT MOSQUITO-BORN DISEASES. WITH ME TODAY I DO HAVE NICK VANDENBROOK, HE'S OUR He oversees our integrated vector management program, and he has a few additional details to speak on for Mosquito Day.

Yeah, let's do it. And I'm going to tell the viewing public because we have a workshop and we have a whole army of people waiting.

Oh!

I love it. I love it. Good job.

Good morning, commissioners and Judge Becerra. Again, my name is Nick Vandenbroeck, and I'm running the countywide mosquito surveillance program as part of the Development Services Integrated Vector Management Program. I'm here to bring attention to World Mosquito Day. It's a great day to emphasize the importance of mosquitoes and their impact on people, especially with the recent positive human case that we had this last week or the week before. and then the continued occurrences of positive mosquito pools throughout this season. World Mosquito Day is marked by the discovery in 1897 by Sir Ronald Ross when he discovered that female mosquitoes transmitted malaria. The day is meant to raise awareness about diseases that are carried by mosquitoes, including diseases such as dengue, Zika, and West Nile virus. At an average of less than a half an inch long and typically weighing no more than 2.5 milligrams, which is usually about a couple grains of salt, it's impressive that such a small animal can be considered the world's most deadly animal on the planet. Globally, there are approximately 3,700 species of mosquitoes. In the state of Texas alone, where there's known to be about 88 species of mosquitoes. And within Hays County, we've collected so far 27 of those 88 known species. Mosquitoes can range from being a general nuisance where they're just going to seek people out to bite but don't carry diseases. Some that don't bite humans at all and are just important components of our ecosystem, while others are known to be vectors or carry disease that can potentially harm and pose risk to humans. It's mosquitoes. that are the nuisance and vectors that are why it's important to recognize mosquitoes and to understand their biology. Understanding their biology, including their preferred habitat, their feeding habits and general life cycle, allow us to understand their behaviors and therefore provide ways to prevent and reduce risks to disease for people. This Thursday, August 20th, recognizes the importance of mosquitoes and also those who work to protect the people impacted by them. What I do within integrated vector management is to monitor the mosquito populations across the county and detect when those viruses are present with collaboration of organizations like the Texas Department of State Health Services, who does testing, and then allows us to notify the public so that they can stay informed as to potential dangers. We also collaborate with the Hays County Health Department, like some of my collaborators here with me, to provide a one health approach to protection. The one health approach to public health is a combined effort of multiple organizations at local, state, and federal levels, including organizations like myself and Michael, development services, the health department, and dishes at the state level. to collectively engage in the interconnectedness of people, animals, and our environment to better understand and provide a holistic solution for issues including mosquito-borne diseases. As my friends here, the mosquito and insect repellent, are here today, the idea is to raise awareness about World Mosquito Days and doing simple things to reduce the possible issues of mosquito bites and spread of disease. So the three main components, or the three Ds, as we like to call them, are address, drain, and defend. Dress, so we encourage people to wear light-colored, loose-fitting, long-sleeve shirts and pants, even though it's sometimes difficult in the state of Texas. which allows to reduce the possibility of mosquito bites. Drain, so you're going to want to drain any unwanted or unnecessary standing water around your home or workplace as mosquitoes need water to complete their life cycle. And then defend where you're going to want to wear an EPA approved insect repellent, which will help defend yourself against those unwanted mosquito bites. And then the last thing I'd like to mention, again, because of the positive human case that we had recently, the health department wanted to kind of give some information about West Nile and kind of what its symptoms are. So West Nile is typically only carried by... symptoms of only 20% of the population. 80% of people are usually asymptomatic, so they don't show those symptoms. But within those 20%, a lot of times people will experience fever, headache, body aches, joint pain, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, or swollen lymph nodes. And that less than 1% of those people infected oftentimes will develop severe illness, which affects their central nervous system, such as encephalitis or meningitis. People aged 50 and older and with weakened immune systems are usually at greater risk of severe illness. Symptoms of severe West Nile can include high fever, neck stiffness, disorientation, tremors, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness, and paralysis. And in rare cases, it can result in fatalities. Anyone experiencing symptoms associated with the West Nile virus are encouraged to seek medical attention as there is no specific antiviral treatment for West Nile at the moment. Over-the-counter medications may help relieve mild symptoms, but obviously if it increases, we encourage people to seek medical attention when necessary. Thank you for your time.

Well done. Thank you so much. And there's no world where we don't get a picture with you guys. Come on up, all of you, please.

Thanks. Hi, how are you?

That's a way. Thank you sir.

We've got fun coloring pages, too.

So cute.

All right. Plug ourselves in.

Right over here.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Thank you so much. And what if we give you this, and you guys go kill some mosquitoes? We should. That's awesome. Bat-rowing, incubating tigers.

All right.

Believe me, my phone is blowing up about how we're already behind for the workshop. So I'm going to do one thing and give you the heads up, a signpost. For those of you coming in from other areas and et cetera, we're probably going to be about, we're starting off about 20 minutes behind. So we're going to go K4, 10-minute recess, and then go straight to the workshop. In that order.

K4, discussion and possible action to authorize the execution of interlocal cooperation agreement between Hayes County and the City of Wimberley regarding funding and cooperative efforts for the Blue Hole Nature Center.

Second. All right. Commissioner?

Yeah, so we have Tim Patek here with the City of Wimberley. So this ILA is going to be, I mean, we identified the Blue Hole Nature Center in Wimberley as one of the projects for the 2020 park bond. So this is just to engage in further talks and move it along the process.

Beautiful. If you don't mind stating name and title for the viewing public.

Yes, sir. I sure will. First of all, thank you, Judge Sarah and Commissioner Hammer and members of the Commissioner's Court for me to be here today. My name is Tim Patek. I'm the city administrator for the city of Wembley. 221 Stillwater, Wembley, Texas, 78676. First off, thank you guys for putting this on the ballot back in 2020. and also thanking the Hays County residents for voting for it. We really appreciate that and also appreciate the Hays County staff for working with the City of Wimberley. What we're looking at today is for support of you approving this ILA so we can be able to finish the Blue Hole Nature Center. We've already started architectural drawings and so forth, and we're working on that. And we've also gone out for grants as well. We received one from Texas Parks and Wildlife, and we're seeking a second one after the new year. So we really look for your support on this and look forward to working with you. And I want to thank the Hays County staff again for working with us. If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

Thank you so much. And for the viewing public, the only thing I heard that needed a little potential clarification, ILA is inter-local agreement. Commissioners, any questions or comments?

Commissioner Smith, you're good?

Commissioners on this side, you're good? Efficiency is paramount. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith.

Yes.

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

Yes. We're going to take a 10-minute recess and then go straight to the workshop.

Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

So. Okay, we are back from a short recess. We are fired up, and we are ready to go. And if you don't mind, please, opening the workshop, L1.

L1, 11 a.m., budget workshop regarding the fiscal year 2027 budget. Possible action may follow.

Okay, so what we plan... Go for it. You can lead the conversation.

Scott Woodland, budget officer, and...

Good morning, Court.

We are going to start with a quick presentation, and then I'd like to quickly go over some of the requests from the last budget workshop and address some of those, and then just consider some things to consider moving forward.

Beautiful, and thank you. And although I say this at the beginning of each workshop, although it's not a hard cutoff or anything, but we're putting 10-minute timers on each slot just so that we get a grasp of time. You don't have to use all 10 minutes. And if you go over, it's okay. But it was just to guide us on how long you're up there kind of approach, okay? So don't feel insulted. Don't feel rushed. But it's a cadence machine is all at this moment.

Okay. And if you look up, this is the budget workshop for August 18th, 2026. And then I'd like to take some time to go over the strategic pillars again and spend some time. Quality time, really this is going to be my interpretation of what they mean. The definition as determined by the county is up there. To me though, community well-being is really ensuring that Hays County residents are able to have a high quality of life with access to their essential services that anyone would expect. Then under governance, workforce and organizational capacity, that's really investing in our employees, technology and communication to improve our workforce, which thereby really improves the county overall. Then there's infrastructure and sustainable growth. The growth is coming. It can't be escaped. Now, we want to do that sustainably and make sure that we are safeguarding our resources. So it's really about growing the county responsibly. while preserving our natural resources, such as water and green space and parks. Then you have partnerships and collaborations. That's teaming with our community partners to develop synergies for providing services to the Hays County residents. And then lastly, you have criminal justice monetization. And that's really coordinating efforts between departments to provide for criminal justice efficiencies and to work together with all of our entities involved in criminal justice to get the best result out of that. Okay. I do want to point out the property tax bill impact again. And this really is to kind of show that an average homeowner last year, if the rate was to increase a penny based off drops in average home prices, that that average homeowner on their Hays County property tax paid would actually save $7.51. So that's something important to keep in mind. And for our population that's under that average, that savings would be greater. So that's also something to keep in mind. The opposite is true as well, that if somebody's home value is over that, it would be less. Okay, and then... I know there's some interest from the court about potentially looking to see what could we do if we were to raise the taxes a penny. And this certainly is not set in stone. This is just something that I came up with that I thought was equitable across departments to give an example. And it's something to where we could use this as a template and have some discussions if the court so chose to try to increase by a penny, have some discussions about things that could be moved around change so that we could fit that to meet everyone's needs there. And I'd like to take some time to kind of give some detail on these positions and how they relate to our strategic objectives. So first I want to start with criminal justice modernization because that's where a lot of these positions are. And that's because it's a need that the county has assessed, that that is something that we are looking to address. And we address that in several ways here. We have our new associate judge and then our pre-trial judicial services officer one. Both of those would be working with our specialty courts and really trying to serve our vulnerable populations, including our veterans, those with mental health illnesses. as well as our juveniles. So it's really that judge in that pretrial position would be working on those specialty courts to help support those efforts. Then we have the addition of a deputy constable for Precinct 2 and justice clerks for 1-1, 2-1, and 5. And this is to help with an increased workload over all of those departments. Really, I know Constable 2 has lagged behind a little bit in their employees, and they lack two motor officers. So that is part of what factored into that suggestion. And then with the JP courts, 1, 1, 2, 1, and 5, they all have similar caseloads. They're just divided in between different departments. different types. So some is criminal, some is evictions, and there's other types as well that go through. And like I said, the numbers are similar, but they're just a different makeup, which along those lines, we also have a management analyst. That is to help the courts. So that management analyst would be working to get the data needed for the new reporting as dictated by the state. In addition to just the reporting, though, they're really going to be working on trying to increase efficiencies and looking for inefficiencies so that those can be corrected. And we think that will be a tremendous position that could grow along with the county. And then lastly, I have deputy cadets on there for the sheriff's office. That is a tool for the sheriff's office to be able to recruit better officers. And the principle behind it is that we would be paying cadets going through the academy. And it would be the preferred candidates as a way to try to secure a spot so that they don't graduate the academy and then move on to a different law enforcement entity. I do want to touch on partnerships and collaborations. None of those positions specifically apply to there, but I would like to point out that the SROs would be working with Hays CISD, and that's important to keep that relationship there. Talking about infrastructure and sustainable growth, there's really two positions that fit into that category. You have a park supervisor, which the vision there, it would be to have them start one-one And then that way they can get trained up to be ready around the time Sentinel Peak starts. Really, we want to make sure we have manpower to take on that task when it's time to go. Although that position may not be permanently there, it's important, I think, that our parks employees be flexible. But at least to start, that would be the purpose, would be to help with Sentinel Peak. Secondly, I'm recommending a development services environmental health technician. That is going to help that workforce and the work that they have. And I know that they're always on a timeline. So that is to help make that happen more efficiently. And as with any of our development services employees, really it's looking at our growth and looking at the buildings to ensure that things are safe, both from a health and an environmental standpoint. The next big strategic objective is governance, workforce, and organizational capacity. And really, there's several things that feed into this. One, you're going to have the payroll and HR position, which I would say this, that the county has grown a lot in recent years. And the administration offices haven't necessarily kept pace with that growth. And our employees are both our most important asset, as well as that can also be a liability to the county as well. So those two positions in particular are meant to address our employees and just making sure that our employees are protected as well as the county. Then secondly, you have our tax specialists, which that is really being recommended from a geographical perspective. We are a growing county. I know our satellite offices are seeing more and more traffic That additional tax office worker would be to help fill all of those stations and make sure that all of our stations are running efficiently. And then the last item I have on that is modernizing the IT landscape through a cloud migration for the ERP system. Chris Ulibarri, the IT director, actually reached out to me yesterday with some interesting information that they came up with. In my head, I thought it was going to possibly be a better, more efficient deal in the short run, but cost more in the long run. According to the IT director's analysis, it looks like there would also be a long-run savings from the fact that we wouldn't have to due to maintenance on the server, as well as the initial cost of the server itself. So that is some information that he sent to me. I would like to vouch before I send it off to you, but it did look promising from a efficiency and an economic standpoint. And then lastly, we have our community well-being, which with our community well-being, really all of these positions feed into that. Really having a a good Hays County workforce and a good Hays County government is going to, by the nature, improve the community. In addition to that, we are supporting our vulnerable populations, the youth, those with mental illness and veterans through these positions, as well as we're supporting our employees. We're trying to bring everyone to a livable wage that works for Hays County. which goes directly with this community wellbeing. We're trying to put our employees first, make sure they're getting up to that level, and then hopefully everyone else within the county, the goal is to get everyone to that level. But I think we can take the lead and set that example by starting with our employees. And then really quick, I'd like to go through some of the August 11th, Budget Workshop Requests and Responses. Commissioners and Judge, I gave you all a binder. If you open that binder, there's two ways to open it. If you open it to a chart, that's the way that we're going to be looking, wanting to look.

Did you really give us fine print, four-point font?

Is it four-point font? I apologize. I squint a lot when I read. And I try to be economics. I hate to print on two sheets of paper.

I love that part of it all. I'm just going to get a magnifying glass.

Understandable, Judge. And so the main thing that was asked for in the August 11th workshops, most of them were employees. Some of them you would have seen addressed in my recommendations. I'm just going to kind of, the sheriff's office gave a great presentation. I did want to try to include two SROs in what my recommendation is. But once again, where we end up on something like that is entirely up to the court. We could do three SROs. We could pull out those deputies and try to put in the auto theft detective. There's multiple ways we can go on that. I did want to note that altogether with the Auto Theft Detective and the AI Axon, you're looking at probably about 0.10 of a penny for that. And the AI Axon, while a great piece of software, the cost is the reason it didn't make it into my recommendation. I think it would be something great if we could afford it, but unfortunately, I didn't see the funds to be able to do that, not this year. On the next one with the county court of law, their main ask was the associate judge, and that was part of my recommendation. I do see the strength there and how that helps support the county. I do want to say that one of the questions that came up on that judge was potentially needing AV equipment and to be able to house them somewhere. And I'd like to note that we do have special revenue funds with funding for that. So we could probably do that without taking out the general fund, which I think will help out the county's overall health. The other aspect with the county court is the mental health contract funds. And I'd like to let the court know that there are funds set aside for the specialty court, a significant amount that is going to be in a special revenue fund. If the mental health court was to hit their limit on their contracts, I would have a discussion with them about how much to be able to open up from that special revenue fund to make available to them. The next department that came was the Office of Emergency Services. And their director made a great argument for all of his positions. Wasn't able to make it onto my recommendation, but I do want to show you how much the fire marshal would be. That is a position that would certainly improve the efficiency in that department. The equipment and hardware though can make that be a somewhat pricey position. Although, like I said, I definitely see that there is a need for that going forward. I just don't know if we have the funding for it this year. THE NEXT DEPARTMENT THAT CAME TO DISCUSS WAS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, AND THERE WERE SEVERAL ASKS THERE, AND MAINLY WITH ATTORNEYS AND THEN A REGRADE FOR THE DIVISION DIRECTORS, WHICH THERE WAS A MISCOMMUNICATION ON THAT. WE THOUGHT THEY WERE TRYING TO ADD ANOTHER LAYER. IN REALITY, IT WAS THAT THEY WANTED TO REGRADE THREE OF THEIR ATTORNEY SEVENS AND CHANGE THEM TO THESE DIVISION DIRECTORS, WHICH THAT WOULD HAVE A That would have an effect of roughly $20,000 to $23,000. Now, one thing that I would say about the department is with a newly elected coming in, potentially something the court may want to think about would be to put these funds away if we were to grant any of these funds for the position, to put them essentially in maybe a countywide holding account or something. And then with the newly elected, it could be something that was released when they start. But that is entirely up to the court. Just something I thought about. The other way would work as well. I just, it was something in my head I thought would be something for discussion potentially. And then there were some questions on the operating budget, which I will say this, that I CAN UNDERSTAND SOME OF THE QUESTIONS ON THE CONTINUING EDUCATION. THERE WAS 38,000 FOR NEXT YEAR. CURRENTLY THIS YEAR WE WERE AT 34,000 FOR IT. IT LOOKS LIKE WE WERE GOING TO BE RIGHT ON. For a professional division like the DA's office, I could understand increasing that sum. So that may be something that with the court's blessing I would do and just add a little bit of funds there. But I would like to say overall for those operational funds that those operational funds are something that if they were to go over during next fiscal year, those are things that we could find some funding for. You can find $2,000. You can find $3,000. What is hard to find would be a contract or something that we missed. So that's where I started was making sure, hey, we have our personnel, we have our contract. And then I started operating was one of the last things I looked at when needing to make cuts up. But understandable that some of the projections may have been off, and there's some postage that I will need to look at kind of across the board and just make sure that our departments are properly funded for that postage.

I'd like to start the conversation really quick by asking the commissioners, because I'm just the chair of this thing. I'm the conductor of the production. And so I want to ask the commissioners, it is historically... Direction at the end. Are you guys still good with that? Or do you want to talk about any kind of inclinations or feelings as we go along?

I'd like to hear him finish out this and then hear from the rest of the presenters today. And then we can get down into some real numbers.

And then we can get in there and start saying yes, no, let's... Okay, you're good with that? Okay, perfect. Yes, sir. I wanted to stop it before you finished, because if it was a, well, let's start feeding in some content now, well, then there we were. But we're going to keep going.

Completely understandable. Thank you, Judge. You bet, buddy. Okay, and then the next office that came to discuss was the tax office, which their big ass was their property tax specialist, which... They made a very good case for, I included that in my recommendation. The next office was the county clerk. With the county clerk, there were some items that the county clerk could not see because I had moved some of their software and it was said contract services, which confused me a little bit during the presentation. It was actually their software. And some of that software was moved to a preservation fund that they weren't able to run a report for. But I got with them after last week's meeting. I sat down with them. I showed them where that funding was. And then I also let them know that there was some other software that happened after we did the recommended. I made sure they understood that that was in there as well. And I was able to address most of the county clerk's concerns. They did... Their postage did look like it was going to be a little low based off what this year's was. So we worked in the general fund to move some funds there. And then we came to an agreement that there were some funds available in the records management fund, which is a special revenue fund for them. We did agree that I would increase some of their operating costs there, knowing that it would further eat into what that fund balance was of that fund. It may not make that available in future years, but they were understanding of that, and therefore we moved forward that way. Then for the JPs that came in, we had the justice clerk ask for 2-1, which was included in my recommendations. And then there was the discussion on the part-time juvenile diversion coordinator, which On that position, that one's going to be hard to fund right now. It may be something that the court determines that's something they want to do. We could move some funds around. But I also think that that may be a good position to where we could use our temporary workers and maybe see if we can't. The goal would be maybe see if we can't get a temporary worker to help initially track some of the metrics. And then using those metrics, see if it's something that really helped to the point that it would be worth adding a part-time or a full-time position to address. And along those lines, one thing that I want to say for both the justice of the pieces as well as the constables, it's an initiative of the county administrator's office to try to get into both of those departments' divisions. and try to get some metrics so that we can have some good comparisons of apples to apples. And really, it would be a matter of sitting down with them and going through the processes, learning how long things take to do, who does what, and really coming up with some data-driven knowledge that we can use to see, hey, based off this data, who needs the position? So we'd like to take it really from a... from a speculative to more of a, hopefully, a science. We're hoping to get it to that kind of level there.

Good move. That is magnificent, honestly. Each commissioner has asked for that out of different people in the request lane, and they are both, they were both actually from this side, and they're both very good, very valid, very sound, and very defensible this way. And it shows a consistency and an even-handedness from the court, which I really appreciate you asking for that because that's really good.

And I will say this, just things to think about moving forward. Think about the tax rate, any kind of salary increases we want to do for both the civilians as well as the elected officials as well is something that we'll need to start thinking about incorporating. And lastly, one final thing that's going to lead into Eric's presentation on this is that Based off my recommended use of a penny, we were able to pull in roughly $2.3 million, I think, for the salary increases for civilians. If we were to increase it by that amount, it would allow us to fund 63% of what the full market would be. And I think Eric can speak a little bit more on that and some of those numbers on the market study.

Thank you, Scott.

Good afternoon, Judge, Commissioners, Eric Langenau, Human Resources Director. So as Scott said, we did want to provide an alternate option if the court decided to adopt a one penny tax rate increase and what that would look like on the salary for our employees. And so that would establish a 1782 hour minimum or 37080 for the salary chart for our custodians. Implementing the proposed $22 an hour minimum without fully funding the market adjustment would create significant compression with grades 113 and 114. And so as a result, we would want to move the civilian charge structure 9.22% compared to the initial proposed 14.6 recommended movement under the fully funded market adjustment. So this would fund, like Scott said, 63% of the recommended market adjustment for civilian employees starting on October 1st, 2026. So the benefit to this is that it would be on October 1st versus the phased approach that was option two in the previously recommended options. This would provide employees no less than a 3% market adjustment. Employees above the pay range, the new pay grades, will receive a one-time 3% lump sum payment. Adjust the income placement where necessary to ensure no new hires come in above existing employees as a result of the partially funded market adjustment. Some employees may fall between steps due to the partial funding of the market adjustment, and then elected officials will receive either a market adjustment to get them to market average or a 3% COLA, whichever is greater, as of January 1st. No regrades would still be recommended, and no FY26 step improvements would be recommended as well.

Eric, you weren't here this morning, I believe, but you could have been here and gotten lost in the crowd. I was in the rotunda. You what? It was crowded, so yes, I was in the rotunda. And so I'm just wondering, did you hear that? I thought it was a very important piece. Did you hear that where they brought up the... I really liked what they said. Give me a second, give me a second. One... Oh, no, no, no, no. Bilingual pay, to view it as a skill... I really do. I love, appreciate and support that. I supported it in the law enforcement lane on the collective bargaining. I believe that when people are in that lane of doing those things and providing something that others don't and they learn the skill and they're able to use it to benefit us, they should be compensated for it. And so I just put that in the back of your mind, wherever you think it makes sense to bring it up.

I agree, Judge. But I do think the vision is to first start with competitive wages and then start adding on top of that. But if that's something that the court is wanting to do a little earlier, I'm happy to look and see what that would look like.

I have one question as well. And forgive me, but can you go back to the previous slide one more? Okay, so the two options that we looked at in the last budget workshop, the cost for this is significantly lower than either one of them. I mean, significantly lower. Does this include both civilian and, I assume this includes both civilian and elected? I'll defer to Scott on that bottom 2.5 million.

If I'm reading this correctly, I'm saying that they already, are you talking about this 2.5? Yeah. Yeah, I think that this is in addition to what they recommended.

No, I understand that, but both of the other options last time were significantly higher than that.

So this would be the supplemental. I think last time I just showed what we had out was like the $2 million.

Well, no. HR recommendations for civilian pay in our last budget workshop for full market alignment were $6.49 million. And for phased market alignment, it was $4.874. This is at, if we have two set aside already, This is at 2329, so that's $500,000 less, $400,000 less, or $500,000 less than either of the other two options?

It'd be less than... Yeah, so that is really a fallout as far as this is... What we did there was to get what we could in salary adjustments based off what was available there. So essentially that is our $2 million plus what we can add from this. And then that gives us, I think, roughly $4.3 million, which would be 63% of that full amount, the 6.4 million.

Okay, so it's the 40% that we're missing.

So there was already two in the budget.

If you go back to where it says a 60% phase.

Right, I'm just... It's okay. Ask away, buddy. That's why we're here. No, I'm just working through numbers and seeing where I can get, and I appreciate it. I just needed to know if this included both elected and civilian employees. And it sounds like it does.

So that would include both. So we would have to break off. Depending on which option we go with the electeds, we would have to pull that out of what would be available for civilians.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay, Eric. Valley. Moving on. I apologize for interrupting. No, thank you. Next, on the health insurance and wellness. So we still are recommending that we absorb the eight and a half Texas Association of Counties tax health insurance premium increase with no increase passed on to the employees for the 2027 calendar year. Employees to maintain their wellness or non-wellness rate as of October 1st for the 2027 calendar year. And then, again, having the employees have through December 31st of next year to complete the new wellness requirements to be able to stay on the wellness rate for the 2028 calendar year. And then we do want to continue to recommend the vacation accrual increase for employees with less than one year of service from four to seven hours per month and eliminating the six-month waiting period for vacation use. And then for FY27 and FY28, department heads and elected officials may submit internal equity classification and job title reviews for recommendations to be brought back to the court. HR, budget, and county administration will evaluate those requests and bring back recommendations for the FY28 budget cycle. And then just a quick update on the collective bargaining agreement. So CBA negotiations are ongoing and including proposed compensation adjustments for law enforcement, constables, corrections, and emergency communication managers.

Anything you guys want to contribute in this area for anything? I just want to make it accessible, digestible, one bite at a time. And so I'm hearing, I can read a room, I'm hearing that there feels like there may be support for a one cent tax increase. What I'd like to ask you of, Scott, I don't know, I'm not proposing it. You know where I'm standing. But I'd like to see if, for the viewing public, as this thing unfolds, if you can, when you have time, put a pie chart of where this one cent's gonna go. Just broad strokes, maybe no more than five categories, tops. If you can do that, I would be so grateful because I will use it to share with the public.

Sounds good, Judge. Are we looking at that from a functional expense standpoint or strategic objectives? I guess, what would our base be for that?

My biggest hope is, let's say I'm for or against, I want to use this piece of paper with that pie chart to simply tell our coworkers or the general public, with this proposed one cent increase, This is where it's going. So however it makes sense, broad strokes, because I know we can get in the weeds on effective tax rate, no new tax rate, no new revenue rate. So I just want to do a, I'm a baker, I'm not a PhD in finance. Let me see what you're saying.

I may give that information with a couple different bases.

That way the court could have that and maybe pick the best. Awesome. Maybe two different options or a third even. Beautiful. Okay, what else? Now we go through the list. Oh, yes. But after this, we're going to go to the list. Am I right? You're ready for that part, right? Yes, Judge. Okay, perfect. So we have some individuals signed up for comments. We're going to let them be read. They're not here, or are they here? Okay, we're going to let these comments be read, and then we're going to go to, we'll start with the constable's office. So let these comments be read, and then we'll go to you.

First comment is from Katie Armstrong. Dear Judge Becerra and members of the Hays County Commissioner's Court, as a newly elected member of the Hays CISD Board of Trustees, I am honored to represent the students and families of single member District 2. I am writing in support of maintaining the county's current level of funding for social service agencies. As a parent, educator, and longtime volunteer in our school district, I know that a student's ability to succeed in a classroom is deeply connected to what's happening outside of it. When families are struggling to afford food, housing, health care, or other basic necessities, students carry that stress with them to school. It can affect their attendance, concentration, behavior, and overall ability to learn. Our schools work hard to support the whole child, but they cannot address every challenge facing a family on their own. Local nonprofit organizations are essential partners in that work. By helping families remain housed, fed, healthy, and stable, these organizations create the conditions students need to arrive at school ready to learn and parents need to care for their families. I understand that elected officials carry the difficult responsibility of balancing many important needs with limited public resources. The full impact of social service funding may not always be easily captured in a single number or report, but its value is visible in the families who avoid crisis, the students who remain connected to school, and the parents who receive enough support to regain stability. Maintaining this funding is an investment in stronger families, stronger schools, and a healthier community. Together, our local governments, schools, and nonprofit partners can help families move beyond immediate hardship and build lasting stability. I respectfully ask the court to preserve social service funding at its current level and to continue looking throughout the budget process for responsible opportunities to strengthen that investment. Thank you for your time, your service, and the care you bring to these difficult decisions. Respectfully, Katie Armstrong.

Brand new elected official. Thank you for the email.

Next one is from... Jennifer Christopher? Hello, Judge Meseta and commissioners. My name is Jenny Christopher, and I am an elementary public school teacher in San Marcos CISD. I have been teaching for 13 years. I am not someone who regularly writes to elected officials or participates in this kind of local advocacy. But as we prepare to welcome students back to school this Wednesday, my heart feels a little heavier than usual. Each year, I see more students and families struggling to meet basic needs, and I know many of those challenges will walk through our classroom doors alongside them. I became a teacher because I love education and believe deeply in our children and their futures. Like most public teachers, I certainly did not enter this profession for the paycheck. Still, teachers and school staff often use their own time, money, and resources to fill the gaps we see. We buy supplies, keep snacks available, find clothes, and connect families with whatever help we can. But there are needs we simply cannot meet from inside the classroom. More families are struggling to afford groceries, remain in their homes, and cover basic expenses. Programs that provide food access, rental assistance, and other essential support make a real difference for our students. Children have a much harder time focusing on learning when they are hungry or worried about where their family will live. I first came to Hays County in 2008 to pursue my undergraduate teaching degree. I stayed to earn my master's degree, built my life here, and now I am proud to serve this community as a public school teacher. I am grateful that the county has chosen to invest in these organizations, supporting our local families, and respectfully ask you to continue that funding. Teachers will always do everything we can for the children in front of us with the continued support of the county and our local nonprofit partners. Families do not have to face these challenges alone. Thank you for listening. and considering the needs of our students and families as you make these difficult budget decisions. Next one is from Juan Miguel Arredondo. Dear Judge Becerra and members of the Hays County Commissioner's Court, I write to you wearing two hats that have given me a unique perspective on the needs of our community. As a trustee of the San Marcos, Consolidated Independent School District, and as President and CEO of United Way of Hayes and Caldwell Counties, I respectfully ask the Commissioner's Court to maintain social service funding at no less than its current level in the upcoming county budget, and to seriously consider increasing the amount of funding dedicated to the non-profit organizations serving our neighbors across Hayes County. The need in our community is not decreasing, it's growing. Every day our schools see families struggling with food insecurity, housing instability, transportation barriers, access to health care, child care, mental health resources, and the basic cost of making ends meet. At United Way, I see many of those same families walk through the doors of nonprofit organizations throughout our region looking for help during some of the most difficult moments of their lives. These organizations are doing extraordinary work, often with limited resources and growing demand. They know these communities, They have earned the trust of the people they serve. They stretch every dollar and rely on volunteers, donations, partnerships, churches, businesses, foundations, and local government to make their work possible. We should trust and support them. I recognize the difficult responsibility the Commissioner's Court has in developing a budget that balances many competing needs while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. But I also believe a county budget is more than a financial document. It is a reflection of our priorities and the kind of community we choose to be. There will always be an important role for nonprofits, churches, charitable organizations, and individual acts of generosity. Government cannot and should not attempt to replace that work. But government can and should show up for our neighbors when they most need it. If there is one fundamental responsibility we should all be able to agree on, it is that the people we represent should not be left behind when they are hungry, facing homelessness, fleeing violence, struggling to access health care, or simply trying to get their families through a difficult season. Investing in social services is not simply charity. It is investment in the disability and well-being of Hayes County. When we help family remain housed, put food on child's table, connect someone with health care, provide transportation to essential services, or intervene before crisis becomes an emergency, our entire community benefits. Our county continues to grow, but growth does not mean that every family is prospering equally. Behind the economic development, new construction, and population numbers, there are real people who are working hard and struggling to keep up. There are our students in the They are our students and their parents. They are seniors on fixed incomes. They are veterans. They are people with disabilities and survivors of violence. They are working families. They are our neighbors. As you consider the upcoming county budget, I respectfully ask that you not only protect the social service funding already in place, but to consider what additional investments is warranted by reality facing our community today. Next one is from Lorenzo Gonzalez. Dear Hayes County Commissioner's Court, I write you today as San Marcos resident, a member of the San Marcos City Council, a former school resource officer, and someone whose education and professional experience in criminal justice have shaped how I view the role of local government in building safe, stable communities. I respectfully ask the Commissioner's Court to maintain at a minimum Hayes County current level of funding for social service agencies to work diligently throughout the budget process and identify responsible opportunities to increase that investment. As a fellow local official, I understand the financial realities confronting our communities. Revenues are constrained, costs continue to rise, and every budget decision requires us to weigh important priorities against limited resources. As a city of San Marcos, my colleagues and I face many of the same difficult choices, but difficult budget year does not make the need of our residents disappear. In many cases, they make those needs greater. That is why as we work diligently to the city level to identify funding partnerships, efficiencies, and other resources to support our residents, I encourage the Commissioner's Court as our partners in the county government to do the same. My perspective on this issue is also informed by my experience in law enforcement and graduate education in criminal justice. As a former school resource officer, I saw firsthand that many of these challenges affecting public safety begin long before someone encounters a police officer, a courtroom, or a jail. A child who comes to school hungry, a family facing eviction, a person experiencing an untreated mental health crisis, or a survivor trying to escape violence does not simply leave those circumstances at the door. Meeting basic human needs is not separate from public safety. It is part of public safety. When we help stabilize a family before it loses its housing, connect someone to mental health services before crisis escalates, provide food to a household experiencing hardship, help a survivor find safety, or give a young person the support necessary to remain successful in school, we are participating, we are practicing prevention in its most meaningful form. Our police officers, deputies, courts, prosecutors, Jail, hospital, and emergency responders will always have essential roles to play. But relying on those systems after someone has reached a point of crisis is often both more expensive and less effective than investing in organizations capable of intervening earlier. That makes support for social services not only an expression of compassion, but also a responsible investment in public safety and sound physical policy. Hayes County is fortunate to have nonprofit organizations doing this work every day. They provide food, housing assistance, health care services for survivors of violence, support for children and families, and many other resources that strengthen the fabric of our communities. They leverage... That's it.

Time's up.

Next one is from Betsy Gale-Rand. Dear Judge Rosetta and Hayes County Commissioners, I am writing in to share my support of maintaining the county's current level of funding for social services. I moved here as an adult and have lived here for 20 years, and my family and I are deeply embedded in the community. What I see a lot of is need. There are so many families that are housing insecure, food insecure, do not have access to affordable health care or mental health care, and are living with precautious financial situations. It is very important to me as a taxpayer to know that my tax dollars are being spent on the most vulnerable members of our community. First, this is how we take care of our community. Second, maintaining social service fundings is financially prudent because spending a dollar today to keep someone in their home or connecting someone with mental health service today is clearly far cheaper than the thousands of dollars it would cost if these problems bloomed. Maintaining the current level of funding for social services will strengthen our community. Thank you for your service and consideration in this matter. Next one is from Alyssa Garza. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Alyssa Garza. Many of you know me as a fellow elected official, and I have the honor of serving on the San Marcos City Council for nearly six years. That experience has given me a healthy respect for everything budget season requires, including the difficult trade-offs, the inevitable headaches, and staring at tiny numbers on a computer screen for so long that it all begins to look the same. Today, however, I am writing from another seat I occupy, As a nonprofit employee who has spent the past several months meeting regularly with leaders from local organizations to discuss the local budget, social service funding, and what our neighbors are experiencing, I do not presume to speak for everyone involved. I am sharing my own perspective shaped by those conversations and years of working alongside the residents these organizations serve. First, thank you for funding the county has provided thus far. Those investments have been transformational, even when their full impact cannot be easily captured in a budget spreadsheet. This is what public safety looks like. It looks like a family staying housed, a child having enough to eat, a survivor finding safety, or a neighbor receiving help before difficult moments become an emergency. We all understand the economic moment we are in. Household budgets are stretched, the cost of nearly everything has increased, and public dollars are being asked to do more. Nonprofit organizations, meanwhile, do not gain magical new capacity simply because the need of their service grows. One thing I deeply value about Hays County is how readily our neighbors care for one another. We have seen it through the winter storms, historic floods, and every crisis that refused to respect city limits or jurisdictional boundaries. People share food, open their homes, raise money, pool resources, and offer whatever they have. That generosity is worthwhile. is worthy of more than our administration. It deserves partnership from the institutions with access to the greatest collective resources. If our residents and nonprofit organizations can work across differences and jurisdictional lines towards the well-being of this community, then our local government can match their energy. I appreciate every nonprofit leader, service provider, and resident who has come before the Corps or reached out individually in support of continued social service funding. I join them in asking you to maintain, at minimum, the county's current investment, and continue identifying opportunities throughout the budget process to strengthen it. We may occupy different seats and bring different resources to the table, but we are responsible to the same community. None of us can meet every need alone, but when residents, nonprofits, cities, schools, and the county each do their part, we give our neighbors a real chance not only to weather a crisis, but to build a lasting stability. Thank you for doing your part and continuing to invest in the people who make Hays County stronger. Next one is from Robbie Longoria. Dear Judge Becerra and commissioners, my name is Robbie Longoria, and I am writing as a Hays County resident, voter, and taxpayer in support of continued funding for local social services. My academic background is in sociology, and I can talk about social determinants of health and the research connecting housing, food access, health care, and economic stability to broader community outcomes. but I do not need to dust off my sociology agree to point out what anyone paying attention can already see. People are struggling, and the need is real. Many of our neighbors are working multiple jobs and having trouble keeping food on our table, paying rent, or accessing essential care. Programs that help families meet those needs are not separate from public safety. They are fundamental to it. Communities are safer and healthier when people have stable housing, access to food and health care, and support before a difficult situation becomes a crisis. I experience and witness the same tension facing the court, limited funds, raising costs, and many legitimate needs competing for support. I understand that budget decisions are rarely simple and I do not make this request as though other obligations do not matter. I make it because social services are part of the basic infrastructure that allows the community to function, not an optional extra to consider only after everything else has been funded. moral documents, and the choices within them show what we believe is worth protecting. As a taxpayer, this is the kind of investment I want my local government to make. It is responsible, preventative, and much less costly than waiting until families fall into crisis. I respectfully ask the court to maintain its current investment in social service agencies and continue looking for responsible opportunities to strengthen that funding throughout the budget process. Thank you for your time. Next one is from Vanessa Trevino. Dear Judge Becerra and members of the Hays County Commissioner's Court, my name is Vanessa Trevino, and I am a community organizer and a recent graduate of Texas State, Texas. I am originally from Dallas, Texas, but after moving here to pursue an undergraduate degree, I fell in love with the city, its history, and its beautiful rivers, and most of all, with its fine people who welcomed me as if I were one of their own. This is why I decided to live here permanently, to give back to the community that has given me so much. As someone who grew up low income and facing food and housing insecurities, my family relied on the generosity and resources of social service programs in order to survive. I personally know how important it is to have these services active and in place to help the most vulnerable in our society, which usually include those who are pregnant and their families, the elderly, and those who are battling debilitating physical and mental illnesses. From my time spent volunteering with local nonprofits such as Southside Community Center and HOME Center, which help our ever-growing unhoused population, working food and clove drives through local churches and school for those going without the bare necessities, and organizing voter registration drives and community forums where citizens could safely share their concerns, I have been able to see what the people of San Marcos are tired and worried and need help from their local government and leaders now more than ever. I know our elected officials face many difficult barriers in carrying out their duties such as limited public resource and balancing multiple civic responsibilities. However, persevering social service funding is essential and losing these resources will harm the people of Hays County who deserve so much more. I respectfully ask the court to uphold social service funding as at current level and keep its constituents in mind and heart while continuing to search for additional funding to strengthen public programs and initiatives. Thank you for your service and careful work in developing a fair and equitable county budget. And then our last one is from Janice Hardway. Dear Judge Becerra and members of the Hays County Commissioner's Court, my name is Janice Hardway. and I write to you as a small business owner and a former municipal judge and attorney, born and raised in Hays County and now raising my own children here. In September 2024, my business partner and I opened the Sand Market, a woman-owned gift shop directly across from the historic courthouse in San Marcos. Every day we open our doors, we see this county up close, its visitors, its longtime residents, and the neighbors who stop in, not just to shop, but to talk about what's happening in their lives. What I hear from them And what I know from decades living in Hays County is the same thing. The need in this county is real, and it is not going away. Before I owned a small business, I spent years volunteering in local schools and saw firsthand what happens to children when their families fall through the cracks. I saw families losing housing over one missed paycheck, and I saw how a single connection to the right service, food assistance, rental help, health care could be the difference between a family staying stable and a family in crisis. That experience taught me that social service funding is not an abstract line item. It is the thing standing between a hard month and a permanent loss for the people who live and work here. Running a business on the square has only reinforced that. A healthy downtown depends on a healthy community around it. When our neighbors are stretched thin, it shows up everywhere. And what people can't afford, and the workforce local businesses depended on, and in the overall fatality of the county we are all trying to build. Supporting the nonprofit who do this work is not charity separate from economic growth. It is part of what makes sustainable growth possible. I understand the Commissioner's Court has to weigh many competing priorities in this budget, and I do not envy that task, but I respectfully ask you to maintain funding for social services at no less than its current level and to look seriously at where additional investment is warranted. These organizations doing this work have earned this community's trust, and they cannot stretch further without the county's continued partnership. Hayes County is growing fast, and I would ask that as it grows, we make sure it grows in the way that it does not leave our neighbors behind. Thank you for your time and your work that you put into these decisions.

All done. All done. Okay, Constable, we're behind, guys. I've just got to be honest. I'm pushing hard for us, but there's only so much that... We can do, and when the courtroom's full and we're trying to move people without putting our hand over their mouth, we appreciate your patience, first and foremost. Constable, I'm going to give the reminder. We're going to put the timer as a signpost, as a guideline, but I don't want you to feel like we're trying to be rude.

Judge, commissioners, thank you very much, and I understand the time. I believe each and every one of you already have my budget for Precinct 1. David Peterson, constable for Precinct 1, San Marcos. The civil process papers that were produced to you, you can see who we work for. Not only the community, but our... Our court systems, which is very important to us as we do our daily jobs. I'm asking the courts to really look at our budget really hard again. Our auditor, because we're asking for an additional Justice Clark. We're asking for deputies. We're asking for bailiffs. for our courts, also civil process deputies. Of course, along with that come vehicles and all the equipment that's with it. A regrade for our justice administrator to a 117. It brings it kind of back up with our justice of the peace. secretaries also and our justification is there for you to look at we are very busy office our department whichever way you want to look at it in working for our citizens and also with our other law enforcement agencies within our county and surrounding counties also I would appreciate it. I can go through numbers, but I'm not. As you can see, we're trying to increase as we go along with the progress of our city growing, our subdivisions, our schools, our businesses, we're trying to keep up. And with your... Your blessings, the auditor's blessings, and our HR to look at us as we go year to year. We would definitely appreciate it.

Thank you so much for being so awesome on the time. Will you just stop the timer? I will say that I understand the growth you're describing all the way to slapping it to the county line on 21. You got Maxwell that's just booming of all places. Everywhere is growing all at once in your precinct, and so I see the pain. Commissioner Smith, I believe, was the one that had suggested in a previous conversation with another constable about articulating I don't want to make assumptions that you know, so I'm just going to repeat it real quick. Articulating a request of head count for just layman's perspectives, each deputy serving papers can usually in one day serve X papers, and so when you get to this amount, there's a threshold, and so His request was a good request. It is a justifiable, good tool for us to move through so that we could have continuity and consistency. And I didn't do it justice in how he described it, but you get the idea.

Yes, and Judge and Commissioners, we have done this year after year on justification with numbers, what our deputies do on a daily basis when they're serving papers. Our deputy constables throughout our county Um, uh, work in civil process paperwork and their education that they also have to, to put into this also in and out of those vehicles door to door. Um, our numbers are there. Uh, if you would please look at those numbers and the justification would surely let me get by the commissioner, see if there's anything they'd like to contribute.

Sure. So I'll, I'll just be direct. I'm going to be offering a budget amendment today to do a direct review of both the JP's and the constable's offices. I know that there is additional civil service in one. Y'all do much more than any other of the precincts. Looking at how many officers for civil service and how many other officers for enforcement, each of the, and for bailiff duty, each of the individual each of the individual constable offices had, but then also looking at what the timetable for that is. In other words, precinct three may have the lowest, but geographically they're driving seven, eight miles maybe for each one of those. And so there's a different time commitment there than here in the San Marcos area where it's very urbanized. Getting a real analysis of that, and then also in that budget amendment, I'll be offering or stating that I want the county administrator's office to do a review of both the JP clerks and for a very similar evaluation to get out to, as Scott mentioned earlier, an apples to apple comparison of the constables themselves and of the JP's themselves and what those duties entail. And then bring that back to us also in that recommendation as we talk through the budget process, the last three sessions, we've stated very clearly that we want to limit the number of new positions and re-grades to either once quarterly or once a year during the mid-season or the budget update, the mid-year budget update. we would establish, there would be direction in there to establish a calendar to do that evaluation and have it completed before that mid-year budget calendar. So any and all positions that were found to be needed would be filled at that time. And so that's what I'm going to propose. I don't know if my colleagues will support that or not, but I'm trying to address all of the JP requests because they're very different and all of the constable requests because every constable is unique. And right now, for example, even though you do much more civil service than anyone, you also have more civil service officers than anyone. So what is the breakdown of what those duties engage in and what they entail? It's hard for us to quantify that in a way other than we know that there's more cases. We know that you're having to do more work. And I want to be able to easily justify those positions on a year-over-year basis as they come in because we know we're going to keep getting them. Yep.

Go ahead. I completely echo what he's saying. Just to be able to know what does each paper, how many hours per person, or what does that look like? It would just give us some really great...

Commissioner, that's a good question. As we go to these schools, of course, it's mandated that we change our training each year. If you've got five officers or six officers in a course, yes, we do. We have a lot of civil process papers that we do. In the man hours of serving papers three times a day, you're not going to catch everybody at home. So these officers make three attempts. One might be in the morning one might be in the evening. It might take five minutes weather is a factor also To it, but those three attempts are very important to get these people these papers these documents out to the to the To our customers because it reflects on also on the courts to our JP's that we work with hand-in-hand County Clerk's Office District clerk's office, our county court at law. So it's time-consuming. Everything is time-consuming when you're working with documentations for papers to get them out. You do your three attempts, and one attempt might not be because that customer might call back. I might not be at home until 5 o'clock. So that that deputy constable has to make that trip over there and something might happen to that customer before he gets home. So those three attempts are very important because those are mandated papers to get to our clients and then get them back to the courts, which is also very important for them to justify and do their work also. So our clerks are very important to us. Without our clerks, we cannot. justify and do our work at all. We've got to look at vacation. We have to look at people getting sick, that sort of thing. So there's a lot of process to the time which you were asking, Commissioner, on those papers because they might not. The officer has to come back, document into the computer, letting us know, and the courts letting them know they were not there. The papers go back. So working with counselors, our attorneys, the same way. We have a very, very large, very important time limit, and that is important. We have year after year, and I mentioned that earlier, that we have showed that on our time limit of how many papers we serve a year, the officers and their time limit is very important to get back. Because if not, we're going to hear from our JPs. We're going to hear from our district clerk's office. We don't like complaints.

So I'm going to wrap that up really quick. So help me help you, right? If you guys can start tracking productivity, like what are your SOPs? What are your standard operating procedures on each of what you have to do? Walk us through that so we can help you justify why you will need more people. And, I mean, it will make sense at the end of the day, but right now we – we have a, we're not able to see that transparency just through these numbers, right? We need a little bit more data and a little bit more work on your end. And I know it's not easy. Everything is very different, but we can take averages at the end of the day and we can kind of move forward with those.

Totally understand. Commissioner Cohen?

Well, thank you, Constable Pearson, for coming to speak today. You know, I can recollect, you know, We're growing and your department's growing. The area that you serve is growing. And so you've always kind of come back to ask for officers every year. And I understand that. But my hope is that, you know, with the strategic plan of pillars, you know, one of them is criminal justice modernization, that my hope is our investment into that will help some of the front end stuff that cause y'all are dealing with things when they're already happening. You know, the JP's courts are full of eviction, juvenile debt collection, all these things that, you know, unfortunately people are at a point where, okay, they're in this situation and now that's, that's where you come in. Right. And so I feel like the court is, um, or the county is doing its very best to try and get in front of these things. So hopefully these courts don't get as, as busy. Right. And so, But as you know, this year is really tough, and I know that some of us are going to have to fight for a penny just to try and get some of these services that we need, keep our social services going, give employees the pay that they should get, support the departments in their initiatives to grow this county. All very difficult decisions, but I appreciate you being here and advocating for your department. Thank you. Commissioner Inglesby?

Thank you, Judge. So, Constable, thank you for being here. And I think, you know, just like my colleague said, I think that we just want to get a better understanding. I mean, I know that you present every year. You do a great job. You provide us the numbers. But, you know, the time that it takes also, if we can start preparing all of those statistics, getting them to us, and so we can have a better understanding on, you know, what does trigger? What's the number of civil process that triggers an additional deputy? And I think once we, you know, have a better idea of what that looks like i think it'll be you know a smoother process for everybody and so um i think we're just asking that we as a county as a court do a better job in gathering that information and really dialing down to the needs of our county totally understood

Constable, thank you so much. We are most grateful for your time. And I want to ask everyone else, if you're going to bring us, thank you for doing this, Constable, but if you're going to bring us material, also, he did it, but I'm just saying provide one for the county clerks so they can have their backup as well. Thank you, Constable. Next, we're going to have JP5. Come on up, Judge.

In court, real quick, I wanted to let you all know that I have a green divider on the folder, and after that green divider, for Constable 1, we had his positions. The expenditure details should follow for each one that's presenting afterwards.

Perfect, and thank you. Thank you. I think you'll start that.

Good afternoon, Judge and Commissioners. I do have a present. There it is right there. A PowerPoint presentation. It's going to go through fast because I've sent this to y'all previously. But I heard Commissioner Smith and the like. And so I want to just go quickly over this and then do a little bit of reading that I have here and go from there. But basically, y'all have seen this presentation. This is what we do, JPs do on a daily basis. This is our job responsibilities, I should say. So you can click to the next one. This is actually what we cover in our courts. And if we cover it, then so do our justice clerks and our court administrations. Those are a lot of laws and responsibilities that we have as a JP. But more importantly, those laws apply to the people that we serve. And so accuracy is very important when the JP's and the CA's court administrators do their job and they do it efficiently. They all also have to have certain service hours. So these are some, you can click, that's okay. These are the numbers that pertain to the JP5 caseload. And they're actually broken down. If you look from 2022, I started an office in 2023, but you see that tremendous jump. from 2022 to 2006. 2006, I can't see that far. But then all the way down to where we're at now, which is the 5,100. So we have over 3,000 cases that we've improved on. Click again. And those are just some numbers that Yaro previously had. You can keep clicking. And that's small, but as of July, we have approximately 901 cases, which this is the report from Bottoms, from the JP5 constable's office. And you can go, keep going, because I want to read this. Keep going. They have all that information, all this data. They've had that. Keep clicking. I'll tell you when to stop. Please and thank you. Okay, here you go right there. So I'm going to read, I want to leave that there just for, so that y'all can see it, but I want to read what I have in front of me. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come before you today and advocate for Justice of the Peace employees and the people we serve. I understand the responsibility before each of you during budget season. Every department has needs, every elected official has priorities, and every dollar we ask you to spend belongs to the taxpayers of Hays County. I don't take that lightly. I'm a taxpayer too. After receiving feedback from Commissioner Smith and reviewing the budget discussions, I went back and did my homework. I listened, reviewed numbers, looked closely at the workload, and added additional information to a PowerPoint I previously submitted. After doing that, I came back to one clear conclusion. The growth is already here. The work at the JP5 office is growing. The numbers only tell part of the story. During the first six months in 2026, JP5, Justice of the Peace Office, received 2,543 new cases. including 1,612 criminal cases, 931 civil cases, and processed more than 3,500 electronic filings. Those numbers are significant, but alone, those don't tell the story of what happens in a justice court. Behind every case number is a person. It may be a landlord trying to understand the eviction process, a tenant worried about where their families will live, someone trying to resolve a debt or a small claim case without an attorney, A defendant trying to understand what happens next. Our parents are walking through doors because their child received citations. They don't even know where to turn. That is who we serve. And the forward-facing people serving them are our justice clerk and our court administration. So our justice clerks are totally different than any other justice clerk for Hays County, and so are our court administrators. I especially want to speak about the justice clerks because sometimes our title simply doesn't equate adequately to describe the work that we do. We are like no other justice clerk. They don't just sit behind a desk and process paperwork. Justice courts are among the most public-facing office in our county government, and our justice clerks are often the first person someone encounters when they need help navigating the justice system. Every day, they assist people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives. Our court handles criminal and civil cases, evictions, debt claims, truancy matters, jury trials, magistrate inquests, juvenile matters, and countless customer service interactions. And throughout this life of those cases, our clerks are working behind the scenes to keep the system moving. They process filings and payments. They enter and maintain case information. They communicate with parties. They prepare cases for court. They answer phones and assist people at the counter. They process e-filing, manage deadlines, support courtroom operations, and make sure the work of the court continues efficiently. These are highly skilled professionals managing complex legal process while also providing direct public service. And there's another important part of the job that isn't always visible on the spreadsheet. Many of the people who come into the Justice Court do not have attorneys. They walk through our doors confused, frustrated, scared, or simply unsure of what they're supposed to do next. Our clerks must have the knowledge and patience to explain the procedure and provide accurate legal information without crossing the very important line to giving legal advice. That takes training, that takes experience, that takes patience, and most importantly, it takes people. As our case law grows without corresponding growth in staffing, excuse me, let me read that again. As our case law grows without corresponding growth in our staffing, our employees are being asked to carry more and more. At some point, something gives. Residents wait longer, employees become overwhelmed, or the risk of errors increase. None of those outcomes are acceptable to me and that's why I'm asking for your support for additional justice clerks. Juvenile diversion, I want to talk a little bit about that. Juveniles are my passion and this program is an investment in prevention. My second request is equally important because it involves some of the youngest people who come into our court, contact with our court. Last year alone, and I'm just speaking on JP5 for these numbers, last year alone, 155 students were referred to the juvenile diversion through JP5 office. You heard earlier from Daniel Ayala, who is a juvenile diversion person, he said 365 cases. This is how I look at these numbers and what they really represent. That's 155 young people. That's 155 families. And that's potentially 155 opportunities to change the direction of a young person's lives. Juvenile diversion can't simply be about check a box, complete paperwork, and closing a file. If we're going to call it juvenile diversion, then we need to actually do the work necessary to divert the young person away from the future involvement of the justice system. This requires one-on-one mentoring, school visits, parent follow-ups, reports, community service, meetings, coordinating with schools, counselors, and other agencies and programs like FESTA, CINCOR, and Resilient Kids. which all gave a proclamation to CINCOR and FESTA, and those are the programs we work with every day. Most importantly, it requires time and consistency. Sometimes a young person needs an adult who consistently show up and say, I see you, I expect, and I tell them, I expect more from you, and I'm going to get you some type of help. That's not just a courtroom program. That's prevention, that's community, and an investment in the future of Hays County. If we were to intervene today and prevent a young person from returning to our court tomorrow or entering deeper into the criminal justice system later, we have something impactful for the kids, the family, and the Hays County. So that's what I'm asking for, a juvenile diversion position. And last but not least, I'm asking to invest in the people we already have. I also want to advocate for employees who are showing up and carrying the workload. I talk to HR about recruiting good employees, but I also need to talk to them about keeping good employees. Experience matters in our justice court system. Institutional knowledge, accuracy, and customer service go hand in hand. And when employees gain experience, accept greater responsibility, and continue to serve through increased workloads, their compensation should reflect the same value they bring to this county. Competitive compensation and opportunities for advancement is cheaper than hiring a new employee. They are investing in our retention, continuity, efficiency, and better service to our taxpayers. Earlier, one of the clerks spoke on being bilingual. I wanted to let y'all know that in my office in particular, but across the JPs, we do have a lot of people that speak Spanish, and that is so crucial. We have two in our office right now, in the JP5 office, but if one of them are out sick or on vacation, then for lunch, we have to have them call back. We have to have people call back because we don't have additional bilingual person in our office. That's crucial. That's time spent. The parents get taken off work, losing money, having to come in early, trying to work around our schedule because we don't have a bilingual stipend for them to take part in. So I want to push that a lot for our clerks today. That's a skill that's necessary for Hays County. So thank you.

Judge, I thought you were going to walk away. I'm like, don't walk away yet.

Last thing. Last year, y'all asked us to wait for budget season. I listened to your feedback, I viewed the information, and we continue to do the work. And now I'm doing what I believe I was elected to, advocate for people we serve and for the employees entrusted with serving them. I'm asking this because work is already here, the case has already been filed, the phones are ringing, the e-phones are coming in, and residents are walking through our doors and our young people are already being referred to us. In fact, I received my first court case this week. and they have three days of school. So I know it's gonna be a busy juvenile diversion. So in closing, I respectfully ask for the court to support additional justice clerks, support the juvenile diversion position, and continue to invest in competitive compensation and advance opportunities for our justice court clerks. Thank you.

So Judge, I just wanted to ask, and you did a wonderful job and concise and timely, and I really appreciate it. I know we all do. In the juvenile diversion,

position there's a half part-time position in there so you're reiterating that you're looking for that to be a full-time a full-time person eventually we want we want we would like full-time but if we have to hey we'll not hey excuse me we'll take we'll take what we can get um if we go temporary or part-time then that's um i'm fine with that i will like full-time but the the The program that has been rolled out, it's more robust in JP5 office. And so that's why I had initially asked for a part-time, but I will take a temporary or a full-time position for that. Thank you for asking.

Yes, and Constable Allen, last budget season, I know that we all represent everyone right now, but I really push to support him. I've always supported the sheriff. He's sitting in the front row. I try to support every department personally in every way I can because I believe, most sincerely, you were elected, it's your department, whatever you want to call it, and it's for you to manage it. And so I just want to make sure I understood the request. And I really do appreciate you reiterating the bilingual skill pay because I've also, many times in executive session, while collective bargaining was going on, I always encouraged, supported, and promoted for law enforcement to have it. And so I'm not just trying to cherry pick winners and losers. If this is something we need and you've shown the clear need yet again, you literally get paralyzed if someone's not there and we're more than 40% Spanish speaking or Hispanic, Latino, whatever, however they framed it in the county. then these are critical things that we must support clear across the board. So I thank you for that. I really do. And justice clerks, of course, I love the articulation. We'll go over that with Eric later about the articulation, regrading scenarios, et cetera. Commissioner Inglesby.

Well, I mean, I just want to ensure because the presentation that was given, we do have the justice clerk in there. for three different JPs. And then the part-time juvenile diversion coordinator, I think we have the funding for that. And Candace, even if we use the temporary fund for that, can that be a year-long program? FUNDING SOURCE FOR THAT POSITION?

YES, MA'AM. IT WILL BE EVALUATED ANNUALLY, BUT FUNDING IS UP FOR, WOULD BE AVAILABLE FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR. AND THAT OPTION IS AVAILABLE NOW.

FULL TIME, THOUGH, RIGHT?

NO, FOR TEMP. WE DO HAVE THE TEMP OPTION FOR PART TIME. SO IF THE JPS ARE SAYING THAT THEY NEED THAT ADDITIONAL PART TIME ASSISTANCE, THEY HAVE THAT AVENUE NOW. THE COURT APPROVED A POLICY CHANGE FROM OUR INTERN PROGRAM TO A TEMP PROGRAM. So they would not have to wait until FY27 to begin that process. And I will take that tip.

Right. I will take any help. I hear the sense of urgency. So thank you, Commissioner Inglesby, for asking.

Thank you.

Commissioner Cohen?

Well, thank you, Judge Bryant, for your data. I mean, I know you always come prepared with all the facts, and I definitely appreciate that. And I think that in this budget this year, you know, we are – we hear you, you know, we have heard you all year and not just you, others, the support you need. And I know that y'all are on the front lines of everything that's going on in our community. You know, I forget who said it, but you're there when it's, you know, some of the worst times in a family's situation. So I appreciate that work. It's definitely a special skill set that JPs do. And I definitely appreciate that. And and we do want to support you in any way that we can this year.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner?

So, just hitting things real, I think that your office did a great job presenting the bilingual skill set. I do think, you know, having additional skill sets that go outside the realm of what we're asking for should be compensated. I mean, even with the JOHNSON COUNTY FOR THEIR FY26 OF $50 A MONTH. THOSE ARE THINGS THAT WE CAN DEFINITELY, I FEEL LIKE, IMPLEMENT TO ENCOURAGE THINGS OF THAT NATURE. WHEN IT COMES TO THE OTHER POSITIONS, I APPRECIATE ALL THE TIME AND THE WORK THAT YOU PUT INTO JUSTIFICATION AND THE NUMBERS AND ALL OF THOSE THINGS. I DID HAVE A COUPLE QUESTIONS. I'M SURE DANIEL WOULD BE ABLE TO ANSWER THOSE JUST BECAUSE I KNOW THAT HE'S PRETTY ORGANIZED IN EVERYTHING THAT HE DOES. but on average, do y'all have a good estimate of how much these juvenile cases take on average, 365. I know we have 2080 in terms of our hours for a year, so I just wanted to know. I'm trying to do some math on there. Do you know?

I kind of know. Because on the juvenile diversion, there's a process. Again, y'all know this came from House Bill 3186. And so from start to finish, Daniel or... Daniel processing the files. He's got to probably touch it like 10 to 12 times handling the file. That's from start to finish. That's contacting the parents. And sometimes he doesn't get in contact with them. So it takes about three to five times getting in contact with them. And then he has to set up an appointment with them. Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they don't. They have to work. And then after setting up an appointment, they go through the program.

So that's, what are you saying, Daniel? Like roughly...

244 minutes. I knew he was going to have the exact.

And so we do. And so, yeah, we do. Like I said, we, that position serves. 24 schools, I believe Hayes County. Hey CICD has 24 schools give or take the height the elementary school So I think we have 15 elementary schools, maybe 16. So That's how many schools were serving and hey CICD only.

Okay, that's why I like the idea of a full-time Yeah, I mean with his case.

Yeah And then

No, I do believe, and I know that Daniel made comment during public comment portion, which I thought was really beneficial to hear, is, you know, statutorily, what do we do? From a county perspective, I think we need to look at what we statutorily are required to do and make sure that we're doing those things with, you know, utmost efficiency and delivering those great quality products to our clients, or clients, constituents.

Well said. Commissioner Smith.

A couple of points. The first one is the employees from 2-1 and 2-2 who were here this morning, we've discussed bilingual pay in the past. And the questions that we've always had are justice clerks are not unique to the JP's office, right? We've got justice clerks in the clerk's office.

They're different.

I'm not disagreeing with that. But in our job descriptions, we have forward-facing clients or forward-facing employees in the tax office, in the county clerk's office, in the district clerk's office. And each one of those, we had made a decision in the past, if we were going to review it, we want to review that for all of those forward-facing offices. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you are bilingual in the tax office or in the JP's office, they're both a function of the county that If we are going to incentivize, we need to create something that is equalized across those. And the justice clerk's positions, I will say for my benefit, I don't know about the rest of the court, but it's one of the hardest ones for us to look at. And it always has been because we've got justice clerks at different levels. And all of the clerks in both of the district and county clerk's office, as well as every JP's office. And they all do a different job. Under the previous salary survey back in 2022, we asked for definitive different job descriptions for the JP's, for the for the district clerks and for the county clerk. And in the JP offices, it was really hard to get to that because one JP clerk may do all those functions that you put up on the screen in one office. In another office, they only do evictions, or they only do civil, or they have them split differently. And so getting to those job descriptions made it really hard. We have tried to address that in the past. I will say on the diversion side, Most of those are running through 2-2 right now. Is that correct?

So the way we have it is when we initially started this program last year, Daniel served all the JPs. We only had one position. But since then, his workload for JAP 2-2, they had a dump from the school district. And what that basically means is the school was holding the files before they turned them over to our juvenile diversion. And so he had a dump. And what that means is that all the files that they had, they just sent them to him. And that was 2-1 as well. The ACSD held all the files. And so when they dumped them into him, then that's when the 2-2 became overburdened. Several of us started doing judge diversion because we had cases sitting. And that doesn't benefit the student. And plus, we have a robust program. So we have to make certain that we address all the needs of the students that are there. The highest thing we have now, just clarify, we have a lot of kids doing THC and vaping. 90% of my cases are those. And so we've created programs and partnered with different organizations to try to collectively host classes. For JP5, it's in the evening from 6 to 7, we're hosting classes for individuals with those needs. And so all that to say, I had 155. Judge Mendoza had like maybe, I think his was 200, maybe 250. And then they're broken down according to each JP. Drip was like a 25. And then Wimberly was like 18. And then Judge Smith was probably like 45.

OK. That was my question as far as the breakdown as well. One final question, and again, I'm I'm recommending I want to see numbers that can benefit you. And I've spoken to, like I said, a majority of the JPs now. Everybody makes their sausage different. And I don't want to get into how your office runs versus somebody else's office versus I want to give you the ability to run your office the way you want to. But in doing so, we have to have some consistency amongst the offices when it comes to things that are prevalent in each one. Again, no one's going to have as many call outs in the middle of the night for a deceased body like Beth Smith. It's just she's going to have more. Nobody's going to have to have more bailiffs for their court than JP 1-2 right now. I mean, those are 1-1 and 1-2. Those are different factors that we don't We don't do a good job of quantifying, I don't think. Just out of curiosity, the employees for 2-1 and 2-2, are you all on the clock today? No? Okay, thank you. And those are really all the questions I have.

OK. And just to conclude, so you mentioned Judge Smith is going to have more deaths than everybody else. And that's accurate, based on the fact that she has a trauma hospital. But the good thing about it is y'all awarded her additional judge. And so that could balance that out. JP1211 have more civil being served, but they have two judges. For myself, Wimberly, and Drip, it's me. I am on call 24-7. So if I'm on call 24-7, as we all are on call 24-7, that means my clerks, our clerks, are all working for that, doing the extra work that we accumulate during the time that we're on call. So yes, I'm on call now as I'm speaking with y'all, but that's the job that I signed up for, and I'm happy to do it. I love what I do, and it's very fulfilling and rewarding for me, and so now it's just about taking care of my employees and seeing the value of them, what they do every day. So I want to encourage or invite you all out to my office on a day where we're working. I'm going to send y'all an invitation and I would love for each one of y'all to come out and just see the type of work they do because they are

extremely busy they work hard so thank you for your time yes sir I wanted to ask you well actually when you mentioned the whole recap people don't know this but I was so grateful that we have five JPS because literally it's one of those things that made me nervous when I first got seven we had The precincts, yes. Right, right. I'm thinking in the precinct mind, and people don't realize there's five JP precincts, but four commissioner precincts. So although it's confusing, but I have the right idea in my head, which is, no one knows this, but it made me nervous when I first got elected, because if the JPs can't answer a call, the county judge has to go. And so I'm just so grateful, in summary, that I never had to go. I know you have a tough job, and I'm grateful that I never had to do it. But I did want to ask you a follow-up. You said Hayes ISD is holding files. Will you explain why or what they're holding and how it affects you?

So last year, I cannot speak for HACISD in particular, but last year what we found is they were reorganizing or something to that effect. And so when Daniel came to us and said, hey, we got all these files that came in from HACISD, then that's what the dump was. And so I can't remember, Daniel, do you remember how many files that was when they...

So I just, and I'm not trying to corner you, but I want to get to the bottom of it. Danny, do you mind approaching the podium? And I'm not trying to kick you off, but I just want his comments to be recorded.

I'm good, thank you. Thank you, Judge.

Thank you, Judge. And so, and thank you for hanging right there. Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to do. Okay, Daniel, my questions are going to be, I guess, more focused to you. That way we can record the conversation just so that no one loses sight of it that follows it. Those hundred plus files that were held by Blank ISD. I'm not targeting anyone. I just want to get to the bottom of the information. What were these files? I want you to articulate what I believe, and I want to hear it from you.

So essentially what happened is some of the principals and some of the schools didn't agree with the notion of referring cases to the Justice of the Peace Court. So they held on to those referrals when the SROs filled them in. so that they could deal with the matters internally, as most of the other districts have done in the past. The districts that we aren't receiving referrals from are doing the same thing. They're just handling it internally. That's their current policy. So at that time, I spoke to the safety coordinator for the district, Jerry Scrocky, and they spoke to us and said, have you been receiving from so and so and so and so and so and so? And I said, we have not at the time. So then she got to the bottom of it. They figured out they were being held. And they're like, we're going to release them on because this is the policy of HACI ISD. So we're going to make sure that it gets done.

Okay. And in the meantime, they were getting addressed internally.

Yeah. So all cases have two portions whenever a child offends. There is a district policy of how they handle the discipline. Then there's a justice of the peace. So they were doing the district side of things, you know, impact, ISS, things like that. But the justice of the peace part was not being handled because we had not received it.

And so now you guys have, I know you have judge meetings. And so countywide, no one's doing that anymore, are they?

Not that I'm aware of other than San Marcos ISD. San Marcos ISD deals with everything internally. So there are no referrals coming out of the city of San Marcos. And if you look at the juvenile diversion coordinator for the city, for the municipality, they deal mostly in traffic, in traffic violations.

Okay, I appreciate it. Just for clarification, Each one of the ISDs, I think every one of the ISDs at this point, have adopted a policy related to, again, the majority of the cases are vaping and those kind of things. Up until three years ago, four years ago, it was not a problem, and they were not referring any of those cases to the JP's offices. Now there is a policy in place, a district-wide policy in each one of those districts as to how to address those. Because to his point, you might have three high schools and two principals had a different view of how to do it than a third principal, and it wasn't being equally administered. And now each one of the districts have an equal administration policy.

And if I could add to that, there was also some discrepancies within districts. Some districts weren't, and now there is a large influx coming. As a matter of fact, I think we did too good of a job pitching what diversion was that now they're more than willing to refer all those cases, and that's what we're seeing. So earlier when you mentioned the bringing in new SROs, that is the number one determining factor as to how many cases we're going to get because those schools aren't referring because they don't have an SRO to handle that. Once those SROs come in, more cases will come in.

And so are you, through your lens, I know it's unique and it's not wholly 360, through your lens and what you're doing, does the SRO help your process or is it holding back the release?

The SROs have been amazing. They are addressing matters at the school. It's just one of those side effects of when you catch people doing something, then something needs to be done. So it's just completely proportional. However many SROs I have is just how many more cases I'll have because no school can tell me that no kids are breaking the law.

Of course.

So now those cases come to me. It will increase the workload. That is just a fact. But it's not because of a wrongdoing on the SRO's part or anything like that. It's just the job.

I just didn't know. I wanted to hear for clarity if the SRO was dealing with it because it was minor and tiny and, of course, not slapping anybody in the head, but just move on, keep moving. I dealt with it, and they didn't go to see you. So good, good. And so as we continue to populate the SROs, then we've got to really double down on what you're doing because it's a direct correlation. Got it. Thank you. And just one last thing. Excuse me.

And just one last thing. So I'm standing here, but Judge Mendoza had to leave, but he left his clerk here to continue the conversation for the JPs.

Okay.

Thank you.

Who's going to continue?

Yeah, so Judge Mendoza, once you call JP 2-2, he will be calling in, and then I'll be holding it to the podium. And then the folks that brought in a presentation, I have a presentation on juvenile diversity with numbers for everything, and so do they. So as soon as we can call it, we'll bring that forward.

Whenever that window comes up, either he's back or we use the phone method. Thank you, sir. And thank you, Judge. Really appreciate your timeliness and completeness. Let's move now to tax office. And I know that Ms. Escobar is dealing with a medical situation, and so I appreciate you being here.

I can just pass them down.

Thanks.

And is there one there for our clerks?

Yes.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll walk one down. Okay.

Good afternoon, Commissioner's Court. Judge Becerra. I'm Teresa Cruz, and I'm the Assistant Tax Assessor Collector for Hays County. I just wanted to note that I took a page out of the Scott... notebook, and the print is very small. But I'm an accountant, so that's just how we roll. Okay. So we kind of went over this when we were here last week, and we decided that in addition to asking for the new employee that maybe we do need to provide some education to you guys because everyone knows the tax office tax office does this but really really what what it is that we do every day We are requesting one new employee to assist with the supplements, which come monthly, with the TNT calculations, and those are the truth in taxation, or the actual tax rate calculations for 19 of our 58 entities, plus the county. We assist Scott with that. And then to put out the bills. And then, of course, after all of that happens, then we have to collect the money and pay it out. So one thing I would like to note is that we only have room for one more employee, space-wise. After that, we're done. We have no more space. So we are asking for this last employee to finish out what we have until we get some new space somewhere, either another building or however that happens. That's true for all of our locations, not just one. This is going to tap out San Marcos. Kyle has been tapped out for years. Dripping Springs is already capped out, and I think there is physical space for one more person in Wimberley, although we don't really need another body in Wimberley at this time. So, Jennifer, myself, and the management, we evaluated all our needs, and this particular position is the most critical at this time. This is what we have decided is the most critical. Ultimately, we would like to add four to five additional support um... positions that's long-term that's when we have space that's when the budget allows for it and then of course another three to five additional clerks and kyle because once we get that new building it's not going to do us any good to have more space with no clerks so we do want that uh... another thing i would like to note is that text DMV the state level has recognized the increase in activity and they have approved us for three new workstations at no cost even though we don't have the staff to use those. So we're taking them, whether we have the staff or not, and we're going to place them at different locations. I think Jennifer is getting one in her office. We're putting an additional one in Wimberley, and then we're giving one to our accounting department. So the numbers that you see are all of the things that the clerks do. We had, as I noted last time, we had 96,800 in-person visits in just Kyle and San Marcos. And then the numbers break down for how many of those were motor vehicle and how many of those were property tax. Property tax gets all the talk. Motor vehicle gets all the action. It's a never-ending thing. Basically, if you own a home or you have a vehicle registered in the county, you have contact with our office. So that does not exclude too many people in the county. So we get all of that done with our staff, which includes 22 counter staff. In addition to all those walk-ins, we have online property tax payments. So the last two years, I have done that myself. It's something that it's helpful that you don't have to do anything else. You can just concentrate on doing that. It's something I did for another county, so I was familiar with it. So I processed 25,659 online payments this past year. Wow. That's just one. Then I also processed all of our mortgage payment downloads and account processing. And so that included 51,282 accounts. We have to do all this. It doesn't just happen. We have to download the files and we have to process them and we have to make sure that everything gets processed correctly so that the payments can then go out to the county and the school districts and the cities and everyone else who needs to be paid. So the total in-person mail-in imported property tax transactions were 100,679. The total in-person mail-in and online motor vehicle transactions for 2025 was 179,237. In addition to that, we have mail-in checks. property taxes when it really gets busy. So, if someone sends in, if they send in a payment, they send in a coupon, we match them up, we can batch them, we can process them, and it takes time, but it's a pretty seamless process. If they just send in a check or they don't include IT'S NOT IN THE CORRECT NAME OR THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH IT. WE HAVE TO MANUALLY PROCESS THOSE. WE GET A LOT OF INSTANCES WHERE THERE ARE DEVELOPERS THAT WILL SEND IN ONE CHECK AND WE ACTUALLY DID HAVE THIS. WE HAD ONE CHECK FOR 756 PROPERTIES. AND WE HAVE TO DO THAT MANUALLY. THAT TOOK ONE OF OUR STAFF EIGHT HOURS DURING DECEMBER OR JANUARY TO PROCESS THAT. SO THE TOTAL NUMBER OF CHECKS THAT I HAVE ON THE SCHEDULE IS A LITTLE BIT MISLEADING BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE PROCESSING CHECKS ALL DAY LONG. THESE ARE CHECKS THAT WE WERE ABLE TO ACTUALLY JUST KIND OF PULL OUT AND SAY, LIKE, WELL, I PROCESS CHECKS AND I DON'T WORK THE CALENDAR. SO ALL OF THAT WAS JUST PROCESSING FOR PROPERTY TEXTS. I would like to note that out of the manual posting checks of 4,294, Jennifer and I alone posted 3,000 of those. So we are very hands-on. We're not just sitting in our offices.

The Vice President Biden Eating bonbons.

Puppet masters, you know, we are actually doing the work. Good job. And Jennifer is, she wants to learn, she wants to know what's going on, and so she's in there as well. I process motor vehicle online, I mean, not online, but mail-in registrations. We are a working office. So we are asking for this one new employee that's going to be a property tax specialist, but basically what that person does is relieve some of the burden from the clerks. because we're spreading out all this work over the clerks. We're going to manage it. I mean, if we don't get the employee, we're going to manage it. We've been doing better the last few years to try and simplify the processes. We have no tolerance or patience anymore for vendors who are not going to support a seamless process. So we're changing a couple of our vendors because we've had enough and we're not going to continue.

Good.

So that's another thing, you know, that the vendors are learning that we're not messing around anymore, that if they're not going to give us a product that we can use, then we're moving on. And because of that, you know, we were able to get ACT this year, which we have not fully implemented.

So just to reiterate, your key, you have a lot of data overall, generally speaking, but your key... most repeated need in what I'm hearing is truth and taxation position, the property tax specialist.

Yes.

To fill that one empty spot you have left to make sure that you can keep up and stop splintering that work over all your clerks.

Correct.

Commissioner Inglesby?

Yes. And it is in the recommended budget, Judge. And so I fully support that. And thank you for providing all this information to us. I think it's helpful as we move forward into the future. Sure.

And you being here don't feel so bad about it being in the budget, but you being here also helps make sure it doesn't get taken out. So thank you. Commissioner Cohen?

No, I fully support the request. And like I said, I see the number of people that come into the office, so I definitely understand that. So thank you for being here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Commissioner? No, thank you very much for all of these numbers. This is a great breakdown. Do you have, like, about how long each of these take?

We do. Yes, we do. We do. We could provide that.

I would love that.

Okay. I mean, some are very brief. One thing I didn't go over is that we also have a call center. We have two staff. And in 2025, we fielded 54,421 calls. Great. That's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot.

And do you have any, I mean, I just want to know, because I know every department's very different. We have a lot of different technology and services, ERP systems, those types of things. Does it log, like, how long each call takes? Does it give you that data?

We have, we, in our budget last year, you guys approved us for an upgrade. And so now we can pull, there's a lot more data we can pull. I actually had to go back to IT to get this information, because this was prior to when we got the upgrade. And when it was implemented. And we can look and see how many calls were drawn. I actually keep it up on one of my computer screen monitors every day, so I can track how many calls are on hold, how long have they been on hold, who's been on the phone, how long have they been on the phone, that kind of thing. So we can kind of manage that as it goes on.

Is it like, did it have a CRM built into it? Customer Relationship Management. Relationship Manager. Mm-hmm. Like, good. IDEAS LIKE THIS PERSON CALLED, THIS WAS THEIR CALL. SO THEY CAN TAKE NOTES, YES. YES, EXACTLY.

SO YES, WE DO HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO THAT. WE ALSO HAVE THE ABILITY TO RECORD PHONE CALLS BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD THE HE SAID, SHE SAID KIND OF WITH TAXPAYERS. SO WE ARE USING THAT AS WELL. SO WE ARE DOING THAT.

THAT'S GOOD. IF YOU CAN GIVE ME THAT DATA, I WOULD LOVE THAT. COMMISSIONER SMITH?

I just want to say thank you to your employees for everything they do. I don't know that they get that a lot from us up here. It's the silent... It's the silent army of folks that we have facing people every day that makes our county work. And at the end of the day, nobody is happy when they walk into the tax office. It's one of the hardest jobs that we have. As someone who stole one of your employees as his executive assistant, I told her that upset constituents were nothing compared to working in the tax office. So I appreciated her. I will say this. The numbers that you presented are great. I would love to see a breakdown similar to what Commissioner Hammer asked for, because I do know that we have, it's very hard to incentivize employees when, especially those frontline employees, when they may be doing the same job for the next 10 years, right? And so how can, I want a better look at, and I know in COMMISSIONER COHEN AND I HAVE TALKED ABOUT THIS IN THE PAST. HOW CAN WE DO SOME TYPE OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR THOSE EMPLOYEES TO KEEP THEM ENGAGED, KEEP THEM IN THEIR JOB AND ENJOYING THEIR JOB AND ENTERTAIN THEM OTHER THAN WHENEVER WE DO SALARY, LOOK AT SALARY EVERY YEAR. BECAUSE ONE OF THE BIGGEST FEARS THAT I HAVE IN THE CURRENT STEP SYSTEM THAT WE EMPLOY IN THE COUNTY is that you've got a 12-year or an 18-year employee sitting next to one who's been here for six months. And when we look at the volume of customer service that they have, the number of folks that they've helped on a daily basis, that one who's been here eight months may be servicing 80 people a day. The other one might be waiting two years for retirement. And we need something to incentivize them to help them develop as employees.

I would like to mention that like Wimberley doesn't have the traffic really that any other office has. But during tax season, they are our check posting warriors. we send bundles of mail to them, and within a day they're like, okay, can we have some more? Okay, can we have some more? So, I mean, everyone does pull their weight. Jennifer has been, she is a very strong advocate for training, so we started closing the tax office once a month to get everybody in the same room and give everybody training. She also, not just for staff, this year we had training specific for scott actually uh where we had a representative from lineburger come in and go line by line over last year's tax calculation for the county and just kind of go over it and say well you know this is something we can do this is you know kind of just gave some pointers on how we could change things or not or you know make him feel more comfortable with what he had to do and we were all in there learning as well because everybody was new

Good job.

Jennifer also had training for our entities who wanted to learn because we're calculating tax rates, but then they're calculating tax rates too. And next year she wants you guys to come too. She wants to open it up to y'all so y'all can see what it is that happens.

Two to three of us won't be here, so there you go. Well, thank you so much. We are most grateful for your time and your efficiency, and we're going to go on to the next one. Thank you. Well done. Treasurer's Office, you get 30 seconds.

Thank you, Judge and Commissioners, for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Daphne Tenorio. I am your Hays County Treasurer. I'd like to address several budgetary items that require your attention as we plan for the upcoming year. First, employee pay continues to be the most significant components of an overall budget. As we review current compensation level, it's important to consider both the market competitiveness and internal equity. I am in full support of the HR compensation plan for the option two. This plan would allow less impact on the tight budget but would give our employees paid under market paid positions up to the market pay in two steps, half of it in October and half of it in April. Our office staffing needs are met and we do not need additional staff. We are grateful for your assistance in ensuring our employees are paid a fair wage. As an elected official, I am in full support of Elected Official Compensation Plan Option 2, which provides for a market adjustment for elected officials who are currently below market value or a 3% COLA effect of January 1. As we struggle with the budgetary constraints, I would like to remind you the greatest assets of our county are our employees. The next thing, there's two variances that I just kind of want to put on your radar. We have reduced postage and reduced printing services. But Scott and I have already talked about this. Postage rates are going up again, so I kind of want to put that on your radar that that is going to be something I'm going to have to come back to you for later. And additionally, printing services for my office are, we're unable to tell you when we're going to need them. It's just kind of, they come when they come. And those are the receipt books and all of the materials that we provide for the county. And I've already spoken with him in regards to continuing education. So all of my needs have been met. But there's one thing that I hadn't had a chance to talk to Scott about. We have been blessed to have interns from Texas State's Bobcat Rise program. And this last school year, we were able to fund $14 an hour for our interns. So it's These are the students who are autistic and are going to college, and we give them office trainings. So currently, I would like you to consider allotting me base pay would be, we get six hours a week, 12 weeks a semester. So that's 144 hours. If we pay $14 an hour, it's 2016. So if y'all could kind of consider that as well. That's my only real ask, and I thank you for your time. And I'm glad I don't have to make these budgetary decisions.

Just to be clear, are you saying $2,016 for the line item?

It would need to be more because it would be taxes and all that other stuff. But they don't get insurance. They don't do retirement.

But not like times three or times total?

No, it's one person at a time. So we get two students a semester. So it's four students a year. This is a really unique program that I'm so proud that the county can participate in. And I'd like to be able to offer them some type of payment.

Perfect. Commissioner Smith? I'm good. Commissioner Hammer?

Thank you for coming up and thank you for advocating for those. Of course.

Commissioner Cohen? No question. Commissioner Inglesby?

Yeah. Daphne, thank you so much for being here and that program, I think, is worthy of.

Thank you, guys. Have a wonderful afternoon.

Scram, beat it. Just kidding. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. I know you know I'm joking. For the viewing public, they might be saying, how rude.

And judge and commissioners, one thing to add, I believe, and Daphne, correct me if I'm wrong, but on the postage, I believe it's not so much for Daphne's department, but it's overall postage. So the treasurer's office handles the postage for the entire county. I believe what we would like to do would be to actually increase the county wide amount, maybe by like $5,000. I believe it's 20,000 right now. And there's been times we've been running out, so.

I think that's a better plan because there's The history of this court not liking, I hate to say it this way, with that much money, but nickel and diming the agenda with small asks, small tasks, and properly budgeting for it would be way more peaceful. Thank you so much. Thank you, Scott. And next we have County Clerk, and then it's going to be JP Tutu. Thank you for your patience, Dr. Cárdenas and Colonel...

Well, it's nice to see all of you again. And for those of you who may have forgotten who I am, I'm the current Hays County Clerk. And I'm joined here by Cynthia Malonzi, my assistant, who will be taking over my position in January. So Cynthia will provide some comments as a follow-up to the requests we made last week. My purpose in being here is that I want to express my appreciation for and my admiration of Eric Granjeno, who has done, I think he's really professionalized the office, the Human Resources Office, and done a marvelous job on the recent salary study that he did. So I'm really here to express my support for the recommendations that he made that are well supported by the research that he conducted. I think we've heard from many people today how our human resources are our most important assets in the county. Scott talked about it. Walt mentioned there are silent warriors. Daphne just talked to you about them being the lifeblood. They really are what makes our county great and what they do that really serves our county. So it's important for us, I think we all recognize, to take care of them and we all want to do what's best for our county. I think that it's really important that we do provide that salary adjustment and we do it within the year for several reasons. It's for one thing, it's the best thing for our county and our people, it's taking care of them. And I can tell you that as somebody who has lived in poverty in my lifetime, that wonderful benefits are great, but you don't care about benefits and the cost or value of them when you're trying to put food on the table, pay the rent, and pay for gas. So people need their salaries to keep going, and it's a tremendous threat to the county in a way. The potential for losing the great people that we have who are doing such a good job, turnover is really expensive. And it's just a mistake to let those things happen. Management science shows that it's very, very costly to allow problems like that to go unaddressed. I believe that Eric's research shows that our people are 70% to 80% under market. And that's just not acceptable. We need to be able to recruit the best and keep the best and reduce turnover to the minimum. So I have to say that I was pretty disappointed to hear this suggestion earlier today. that we would reduce it to sixty four percent. I realize that's based on a one cent increase. I hope you can find another point two five or something to add to that because I think it's really important. Eric talked about the compression that that would create in the salary schedule and make more messes and we do remember a few years ago when we tried to do a salary study and did it and HAD A LOT OF HICKUPS, IT TOOK PLACE AND I THINK IT MADE A LOT OF IMPROVEMENTS ULTIMATELY IN THE COUNTY, BUT IT WAS REALLY, REALLY HARD TO DEAL WITH IT WHEN IT WAS PARTIAL. YOU MAY REMEMBER WE STARTED WITH A PARTIAL ONE THEN. SO I THINK IT'S ANALOGOUS TO HEALTH CARE IN THAT IT'S You know, we know very well that providing preventive care is by far the most fiscally sound thing to do because chronic healthcare needs that go unaddressed become far more expensive to the society and community. And the lost work and labor of the people who cannot be in the workforce, do their illnesses, but also in the tremendous costs that those untreated diseases cause in healthcare later. So it's better to take care of these problems when they happen at the earliest possible opportunity than to let them go and to defer them. So I know you all care about our county and our employees and I'M HOPING THAT YOU WILL VOTE TO GIVE THEM THE FULL SUPPORT THEY NEED WITHIN THE YEAR AND ADOPT THAT OPTION, TOO, THAT ERIC HAS RECOMMENDED.

THANK YOU, BECAUSE OPTION ONE WAS NORTH OF $6 MILLION, AND THAT IS WHY I ASKED SCOTT FOR THE PIE CHART SO THAT WE CAN ARTICULATE, BECAUSE I DON'T SUPPORT A TAX INCREASE, OKAY? I WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS. I DON'T SUPPORT IT. I'M A BIG FISCAL CHEAPSKATE.

SO AM I, ACTUALLY.

BUT MY PIECE IN THAT IS, I want to make sure we take care of our coworkers, because I agree with everything you've said. I even told the sheriff. He's sitting there next to you for the camera. That's why I bring him up. But I even told the sheriff, I support everything you guys need for the employees, our coworkers. I want to trim it from other things that can be... saved on, but I never want to say I don't want to increase the taxes by cutting employee pay or not expanding it where it needs to be. Heck, I was the guy that pushed the MAG study to begin with. So I'm all about taking care of our coworkers in every way possible. But that's why I need that, Scott. I need to justify it because I'm not for a one cent increase. I don't support it at this time.

Yeah.

So we've got to see where we can shake it.

And I hear you. And I think Cynthia, when she talks about our view, is we're willing to forego some things to allow for those adjustments because we think that salary adjustment countywide is really essential to the well-being of the county.

100%.

So anyway, thank you all very much.

Is it okay if I just correct something just for the public to understand? Because she said that we're 70% to 80% below market. it's 70 to 80% of the people that are below. I just wanted to make that very clear. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no, you're good. I think you know what you were trying to, I just didn't want to, I'm like, whoa, that's really low.

Yes, you're absolutely correct. Thank you for clarifying.

Thank you, Commissioner. Okay, Colonel.

And here's.

Colonel Malonzi.

Thank you. I'm Cynthia Malonzi, the Assistant County Clerk. Commissioners, judge and staff, well, wait a minute. I need to say this first. I got new eyes.

Okay.

In the last month. So the glasses on and off are just an adjustment. So bear with me if you see me like, I can read it, I can't.

You got it.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide a second update to our FY27 budget request. Following the workshop last week, I met with Scott, the budget officer, and Eric, the HR director, to further review the items we discussed. I'm pleased to report that the contractual obligations, which identified as a shortfall, have been addressed. The necessary funds were included in the proposed budget, but were placed in a category that we couldn't see when we ran our reports. SO THAT WAS GOOD NEWS. SCOTT ALSO REVIEWED SEVERAL OTHER OPERATIONAL BUDGET SHORTFALLS AND WE WERE ABLE TO MAKE THE NECESSARY ADJUSTMENTS. THE PROPOSED BUDGET REMAINS VERY CONSERVATIVE AS WE RECOGNIZE THE NEED TO SUPPORT THE OVERALL COUNTY BUDGET. AS A RESULT WE WILL DEFER SIGNIFICANT DIGITIZATION AND PRESERVATION WORK FOR ONE YEAR. OUR PRIORITIES TO SUPPORT COUNTY EMPLOYEES THROUGH THE ADOPTION OF HR'S PROPOSED MARKET ADJUSTMENT PLAN. I also had the opportunity to meet with Eric after last week's workshop to drill down into the details of the market adjustment plan for our office as we had the high-level overview in court last week. That review was very productive, and as a result, our office has modified our FY27 request to personnel as follows. We will defer the request for a second compliance position for another year. We will defer the proposed title changes, new position descriptions, and potential regrades to FY28. Based on our review, we believe the proposed market adjustments will bring compensation for these positions into appropriate alignment. allowing the title and job description changes to be deferred. And again, those positions were positions that we already fund. We had compression. We were looking for some job title changes from like chief deputy clerk to division director. but the compensation fixes what we were trying to do we'll work on the titles later and if a regrade comes with those we'll do that we are requesting that our current probate auditor position be re graded to the equivalent pay of a staff attorney one now that's a position you've already approved we've had it open for almost the whole entire year we're not getting qualified candidates And so we're just asking to fix that right now above all else. So the prayer wait... Let's see. The total budget impact of the requested regrade is $17,425 above the current grade. However, we're deferring the second compliance position, and we have the funding that's already allotted for the probate auditor. I was just able to talk to Scott on that. He needs to do further evaluation. JUST TO GIVE YOU GUYS A BETTER REVIEW ON WHAT THAT MEANS TO THE OVERALL BUDGET REQUEST. FINALLY, THE COUNTY CLERK FULLY SUPPORTS THE HR BUDGET ADJUSTMENT PLAN AS PRESENTED. FOR THE COUNTY COMPENSATION PLAN WE SUPPORT OPTION 2 WHICH BRINGS ALL UNDER MARKET POSITIONS TO MARKET BY IMPLEMENTING HALF OF THE ADJUSTMENT ONE OCTOBER, THE OTHER HALF APRIL 1ST. IN CONJUNCTION WITH THESE MARKET ADJUSTMENTS WE ALSO SUPPORT freezing the step plan for FY27 with the step plan resuming in FY28. For the elected official compensation plan, we also support option two, which provides the market adjustment for elected officials who are currently below market or at 3% COLA. As a former director of human resources, I also want to acknowledge the work of our HR director in developing this plan. In my experiences, In my experience, this is the best compensation proposal I have seen since coming to the county. It is thoughtful, data-driven, and addresses longstanding compensation issues in a responsible and fiscally sustainable manner. Adopting HR's recommendation for FY27 is an overdue and necessary step. Our employees are the county's most valuable asset, and the work they do every day in service to our residents is invaluable. Ensuring that we remain competitive in the market is essential to recruiting, retaining, and supporting our workforce. We appreciate the opportunity to work collaboratively with budget and HR to refine our requests and ensure that we are meeting the needs of our office while remaining mindful of the county's overall fiscal responsibility. I believe these adjustments strike a responsible balance between maintaining essential operations, supporting our employees, and exercising appropriate budget discipline. We close our budget request by respectfully asking the court to support the HR market adjustment plan in its entirety. Thank you for your consideration and continued partnership as we work the FY27 budget process.

Thank you so much. And let me tell you, I know you know this, but I'll say it out loud. You two are the people I tapped to help kick off an initial budget analysis. I mean, salary survey and analysis. And then when we got through it, you were a huge help to me because you guys are the pros in my world. And the reason I bring that up, Eric, is they're tough and they're praising you. So I find that highly valuable. So thank you. Thank you for speaking positively about Eric's work because I really hold in high esteem both of your opinions. So thank you very much. Commissioner Smith.

I AGREE WITH YOU ON THE FULL IMPLEMENTATION OF OPTION TWO. I'M GLAD Y'ALL WERE ABLE TO WORK OUT YOUR DIFFERENCES WITH THE BUDGET OFFICE. AFTER YOUR PRESENTATION LAST WEEK, ONE OF THE THINGS, I MENTIONED PRESERVATION AND SOME OF THOSE KIND OF THINGS AND THE CONTRACT WORK, I'M GLAD Y'ALL WERE ABLE TO WORK THROUGH THAT AND FIND WHERE THAT FUNDING WAS. SO I'M ACTUALLY, DO YOU HAVE A TIMELINE ON WHEN WE'LL BE, WHEN WE WILL FINISH, LIKE TRULY FINISH THE PROJECT?

2032.

Just kidding.

No, it's probably going to be after that. But Walt, I will work on that to give you an answer by next court.

One of the reasons I asked that, and I mentioned this before, but I would love on behalf of the county at some point for us to be able to have, once all those are digitized, I think one of the lacking points that we have as commissioners as statutory road commissioners, is understanding where all of our property is. I've found multiple properties in Hays County that are not listed on, they're not listed in the CAD, they're not listed in anything but deed records. And given the fact that there's AI technology out there now that could review those, I've had multiple property owners come in and say, look, you know, the county owns 60 foot across my property, across the entirety of my property. I'm paying taxes on it, but it belongs to the county. By deed, we don't have any way to know that. and understanding where those are and trying to identify those, I think would be, there's multiple uses for it, but it would be helpful for our taxpayers if we own it to take control of it. If we don't own it or if we own it and they don't want it to take control of it, if they want to purchase it from us and we are never going to have a roadway there or anything else, then it's a monetary, it could be a monetary factor for the county to capture. I think there's a lot of uses for it, but we can't do it if they're all, if they're all paper records and not digital.

I'm glad you brought that up because we had some technology added to the budget for this year that didn't make it into the final cut. It's some new technology that would have allowed us with all our digitized records to be able to scan them and find the exact things you're asking for without having a whole staff to sit down and look through paper records. I'm hoping we can get that into the budget next year because what it offers will move us light years ahead.

Thank you. Good move. Commissioner Hammer.

No, thank you for presenting, and thank you for understanding where we're at in our budget process. We appreciate that and the deferrals that you did make. I know that the regrades, the staff attorney, I'm writing everything, the auditor, TO STAFF ATTORNEY, IS THAT CORRECT?

IT'S THE SAME POSITION. IT'S TITLED PROBATE AUDITOR. WE'RE ASKING FOR AN ATTORNEY

So that's pretty much all that you're asking for in terms of extra dollars to go into it? Okay, good. I just wanted to make sure that we got a full understanding because the deferrals that you were making were not in the recommended? Correct. Correct. Okay. Just making sure. Thank you.

And to fill that vacant position that they can't fill. Commissioner Cohen?

Well, thank you for reconciling with Scott and doing that extra work. That really is helpful, I think, for us. if some of those conversations can be had and it can be figured out, you know, behind the scenes. And you come and tell us, like, this was perfect, actually. Hearing that, yeah, you did a great job. And thank you for praising Eric. He's working hard over there for us.

They both are. I'm going to praise both of them.

Both working really hard.

But thank you again, Cynthia.

THANK YOU, CYNTHIA. I REALLY APPRECIATE I GUESS YOUR UNDERSTANDING ALSO AS COMMISSIONER HAMMER EXPRESSED THE DEFERRALS, YOU KNOW, AND IT'S GREAT SEEING YOU, ELAINE. IT'S BEEN A WHILE AND GLAD THAT YOU'RE STILL AROUND AND HERE. BUT, YES, I REALLY APPRECIATE IT AND WILL TAKE IT ALL INTO CONSIDERATION. I THINK IT'S, YOU KNOW, I MEAN, YOU'RE NOT ASKING FOR ANY ADDITIONAL AND SO THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING.

Just a tweak for a vacancy.

As I leave, just have a whole lifetime of experience that's always available to any of the offices to be on a committee or help or review or do any of that.

Beautiful. I love it, and I thank you both. It's a pleasure working with you. Now scram, beat it.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Cardenas and Cynthia Malonzy. Good to see everybody. Absolutely likewise. Mr. Ayala, you are up. Tied up. I was negotiating and navigating that through phone, and this is what we ended up with. Just to keep it moving. And thank you for your patience. I didn't set up the organizational lineup, but sorry that you're last.

The first presentation is given on.

The first presentation is Judge Mendoza's, that one she has in her hand. The one on specifically clerks and court administrators.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me? Actually, perfectly.

Hello?

Yes, perfectly. If you will say perfectly.

Awesome. Thank you. I apologize. So, sorry that I couldn't be there. I really wanted to be there, but I had a wedding at 1.30, and they had a but I appreciate another opportunity to come back and provide documentation. I know I came last week and spoke on multiple things, but today I'm going to speak on just salaries and the juvenile diversion position that we've requested. I know the employees, some of our employees from the precincts went there this morning on their own to express their own opinions and information. And while I appreciate them doing that, I don't think it's their job to come and have to ask for this because you know, it's our job. And a lot of them are stressing with the salaries that they have. And I wish we didn't have to have them show up for that. But Taya is there and Daniel is there right now to provide additional information throughout the process. Some of this information is actually stuff that Judge already spoke about, so I'm not going to harp on it too much. But we did try to use the salary study, and as noted previously, that we couldn't use it, but we did get some numbers to hopefully help out with this. If we can go to the PowerPoint. Okay, Justice Clerk, okay. I'm still on page one, and I want to first also say thank you, Commissioner Smith, for bring back the review of the justice clerk position and the diversion position. So I should be on page two. You can leave it there. Go to the next slide, please. So I'm going to compare job descriptions for the justice clerk positions. And we're going to be looking at the county's deputy clerk position, the deputy clerk senior position, and assistant district court administrative position. Next slide, please. Okay, something's not...

There's just a small lag on...

Okay, I'll just continue. So I know you don't have the color copies. We don't have the luxury of having a color copy here. But so the comparison of job descriptions for the deputy clerk, these are all their job descriptions that you see there. I took it straight from their job description from what HR provided to me. If you go to the next page, you also see there that now it's highlighted. Those that are highlighted are the exact things that the justice clerks do. However, it's for the JP court. So anything that says district court or district attorney and stuff like that, it's going to be relative to our court, but they still do the majority of those items. Those three things that they don't do at the end is deal with vital statistics. We don't have a file room because everything's electronic and they don't administer oaths as necessary to witnesses and interpreters, et cetera. The next slide would be deputy clerk senior, comparison of job duties. Those are their duties from their job description. And then the next one would be, again, a highlight of the items that the clerks actually do. They do these same things except, again, respected to the justice courts. Then we move on to the assistant district court administrator. We're following the same process. This is their job descriptions. And then the next page is everything that our court clerks actually do. Now, Judge Bryant is correct. We do a lot more. We do a lot that's actually different. And when we go to the justice clerk job description, what I have there on that first slide is things that are the same or similar to what the other three positions that I spoke of. But on the next slide, or all the extra things that we deal with, with warrants, complaints, citations, pleas. There's just a lot of other things that these justice clerks do. Now, when we go to comparison of the pay grade, For these three that I brought up or compared job descriptions, the deputy clerk is at a pay grade of 114, deputy clerk senior 116, the assistant district court administrator is 120. Now, even though the justice clerk does all of those job duties that each of them do, or the majority of them, they're only at 114. So, I... Bill, you know, if we're looking at job descriptions and stuff and what they're actually doing, they're very similar, if not the same as what some of those other positions are. Now, we moved to court administrator. We're going to follow the same pattern, but we're looking now at assistant district court administrator, accounting court at law court administrator, and the actual district court administrator. Court Administrator. Those are their duties, followed by the next slide of the highlighted things that the Court Administrator does. They do everything that the Assistant Court Administrator does. The next slide is County Court at Law Court Administrator, their job descriptions. And the next slide is highlighted of what the actual Court Administrators for the justice of the peace what they do the only thing there at the bottom is the coordination with the community supervision and corrections department they don't do that finally the district court administrator their job duties followed by the highlighted things of what the actual justice court, court administrators, their duties. And again, they don't work with community supervision and the corrections department regarding that. The next slide of justice court administrator, their actual duties, and then the second one where it says administrative job duties. Those are additional duties that they do, which includes actually doing and take filings and deal with the public. They actually prepare and submit monthly financial reports. financial reports to the county here. They also do monthly reports for the Office of Court Administration. They collect fines and issue receipts. They deal with a lot with the truancy cases and so forth. So there are a lot of other additional things that they do in addition to the things that are similar to the court administrators for the rest of the county. comparing the pay grade, Assistant District Court Administrator 120, County Court of Law Court Administrator 122, District Court Administrator 121, while our Justice Court Administrators are at a pay grade of 117. And we feel that that is not fair, not equal to the other positions that do similar and even less work. The next page, local comparison of local salaries. Travis County Justice Peace Court Administrator, Justice of the Peace Court Administrator, they start at 66. Williamson County has two levels of court administrators, one and two. They start at 50 and 55. Bexar County starts out at 67. Tomahaw County starts out at 58. And City of Macau starts out at 61. Now, if we were to consider, if we were to request an increase of the pay grade, we would recommend 118 for the county clerks, I mean, the justice clerks and 121 for the court administrators. Additional information to support salary increase. I got these numbers from number of cases from Odyssey, 2024, The county court law had 6,100 cases. District court had a little over 6,300. And justice court had 20,000. And, of course, you can see that same number kind of being very close to each other for each month subsequent to that. I'm sorry, each year subsequent to that. I want to hand it over real quick to Taya Valenzuela. She did that quick survey she briefly mentioned about earlier.

Hello. So the reason I created this survey was to get an idea of what's going on in our offices, as well as how they feel. So if we go to, yes, this slide looking at demographics, I sent this survey to 15 of the clerks. I got 13 back. So their level of education, I found that 38% of these clerks hold a bachelor's degree or higher. 46% of these clerks also hold a clerk or master clerk certificate from TJCTC. It's also worth noting that 69% of these clerks also have dependents, ranging from one to three all the way to, I believe, seven to nine. If we go to the next slide, this talks about daily phone calls, as well as phone calls in Spanish answered per clerk. And I want to put emphasis on per clerk. This is not them as a whole, as a unit. So on the left, when we look at calls answered per clerk, we see that 38% are taking at least 20 to 30 daily, with 15% taking more than 30. If we're looking on Spanish calls answered per clerk, 38% do get zero to three Spanish calls, but I will say that all of these Spanish calls are concentrated in precincts 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, and 5. So 23% are getting more than 10 Spanish calls per day. 31% of these clerks are getting 7 to 9 per day. So now we're going to take a look at the number of walk-ins, daily walk-ins, of course, taken per clerk. 31% reported that they're taking 20 to 30 walk-ins. 38% are saying that they're taking 10 to 20. Then zero to 10 are saying that they're taking about 30, excuse me, sorry, 31% are saying that they're taking about zero to 10. So if we look at the Spanish walk-ins taken per clerk, 23% are taking more than 10 Spanish call, I mean Spanish walk-ins per day, and 23% are taking around seven to nine. And these are also, again, concentrated in all precincts besides 1-1 and 3. The next piece of data that I wanted to look at was emails and e-files. So the number of emails per clerk, the majority are saying that they are getting around 20 to 30 emails that they're answering, of course, and that is 39%. 23% are saying they're getting more than 30. For a number of e-files, a big chunk are receiving about zero to 15 that they're starting and finishing, and that's 46%. 31% said that they're taking about 15 to 30, and 15% of them are saying that they're taking 30 to 45.

Is this per day, per week, per month? This is per day. Per day.

And I will note that all court admins are also having to do clerical duties as well, which takes me to my next point. Oh, excuse me, not there yet. But I did want to look at justice clerk workloads. I asked the question, this was on the survey, how often does a clerk feel overwhelmed on a day-to-day basis? 8% of clerks experience little to no feeling of being overwhelmed with work, and this is mainly out of Precinct 3. 69% of all clerks experience moderate levels of being overwhelmed due to workloads. whereas 23% of those clerks experience high levels of stress or being overwhelmed due to their workload. The next slide shows how justice clerks are overworked and underpaid. In JP2-1 alone, there were 12 total turnovers in the last 10 years, making the turnover rate about 1.2 per year, specifically for JP2-1. In December of 23, a justice clerk retired at 46,000 after serving Hays County for 35 and a half years. And it's important to note this because DPS did not have a clerk at the time, so this particular retiree was responsible for entering another department's work. And this is what the clerks of JP 2-1 have been doing for UPD. In this graph, it says if they had performed duties outside their job description, I had nine submissions say yes, whereas four said no. I also asked if they ever considered another job due to salary. Again, nine said yes, four said no. I will note that all justice court admins who also perform clerical duties feel that another clerk would benefit their office. Which now takes me to my next point, which is the justice court administrator sample survey. So for the demographics on this one, I sent out seven surveys. I got six back. Their level of education, 17% of court admins hold a bachelor's degree or higher. I will note that only five responded to this one, as well as for the certifications. 83% of court admins hold a clerk or master clerk certificate from TJCTC as well. The number of employees that are under their supervision, 67% have reported that they are supervising about one to three, and 33% are saying that they supervise three to five. 50% of core admins also have dependents, which I think is very important to take into consideration. So how many phone calls and emails does a core admin handle? 20 to 30 seems like the, biggest chunk, which is at 33%. However, if you look to the other 33%, some are saying that they only get zero to 10. But I will say 17% are getting more than 30 that they're answering per day. Next, for the amount of emails that they're getting per core admin, 65% are saying that they are answering about 20 to 30. So now we can move on to workload and salary needs. I also asked them the same question of, have you considered another job due to salary? Four of the submissions said yes, while two only said no. Then I asked, do you work more than 40 hours a week to complete your duties? Four of them said yes, two of them said no. And then, of course, 100% of all court admins said that they also regularly perform clerk duties. Almost there. Almost done. So how often does a clerk admin feel overwhelmed on a day-to-day basis? 67% said sometimes, 17% said every day, whereas 16% only said often. So 100% of justice court admins experience moderate to high levels of stress. Now, for what is constituting this case threshold for another clerk, I think that it is around 117 to 170. It should fall in that range for another clerk. And that is based off the caseload per clerk in precincts 1-1, 2-1, and 5. I think you're going next.

I'm going to follow up real quick just on the last couple of slides. We request that we approve the increase in justice clerk salaries. I know the salary study, again, we don't have that to go with or go by, but we did try to do some work, and it was very last minute trying to get it all done when we found out we couldn't use the salary study up until late last night. We ask that the justice clerk's pay grades are increased, as well as the salaries the justice

as well as a salary.

And we think it will greatly improve the morale of a lot of these employees, in addition to getting the assistance and the positions that are currently recommended for the clerks. We're now going to the juvenile diversion. I'm concerned that the initial recommendation for the part-time has now been removed and again, We've provided numbers last weekend and now today again to reflect that it is a requirement, and we have a big workload. And I know I asked for part-time, but after Daniel went out and got a lot of information from various entities, it does look like we need a full-time one compared to what we initially asked for. And it's troubling that we have to now do a matrix, even though we're providing the numbers, when I don't, haven't heard that another department has to do a matrix to see, you know, if we need a position. So I, you know, want y'all to, if y'all can, please just listen to what Daniel has, and hopefully we can get a full-time position.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THAT'S BEEN REINFORCED ON SEVERAL FRONTS, SO WE'RE LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING DANIEL'S PERSPECTIVE ONE MORE TIME.

ALL RIGHTY. SO HELLO ONCE AGAIN. I'M DANIEL AYALA, THE JUVENILE DIVERSION COORDINATOR. I'M GOING TO JUMP INTO THIS FIRST SLIDE BECAUSE I WANT TO HIGHLIGHT A COUPLE THINGS. SO THE INFORMATION THAT I'M PULLING FROM HERE IS FROM THE MARKET SURVEY THAT ERIC AND HIS TEAM BROUGHT FORTH TO SHOW AND HIGHLIGHT THAT THE JUVENILE DIVERSION POSITION WAS ACTUALLY PAID ABOVE MARKET PRICE. AND WHAT I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT BECAUSE I APPRECIATE THE WORK THAT ERIC'S DOING. What I wanted to say is that the comparisons aren't quite apples to apples. And it's not Eric's fault, right? This is a brand new position that has only been around for one year. And the problem with that was that the legislature gave no direction as to how to handle it, what should be the quota, how many caseloads should be used on average by your county. And I get that every county is different, which is why they want it for that flexibility. But then when you're trying to compare the pay of these roles, then you're kind of out there with nothing to compare that is quite similar to it. So I wanted to highlight a couple of things in this specific slide. If you look at the top right, at the top left, you see position title and whether it's a court clerk hybrid, a truancy hybrid, or only diversion. So I put that as a color to allow you to see on our neighbors, those comparative markets, how they actually stack up against the position here at Hays. Because as you can see in that the green color on the rest of the positions that you see there, initially on Buda, it said not applicable because they didn't have information on one and Kyle, it said not applicable. That's because that's me. I'm also the juvenile diversion coordinator for both of the municipalities. And I'm the only diversion coordinator out of this entire list that solely does juvenile diversion only. I do not split time with truancy and I don't do court clerk duties i am solely focused on this and i also have the largest numbers if you look over there where it says composition of duties on the right that's my average caseload right that's pulling also the data from last year because my numbers this year are much higher that is brought down from the numbers last year because last year we didn't have the buy-in that we have now now they see the work that we're doing now they see how much value we're putting into the community how much we're addressing these kids because as As a seven-year educator, I've been able to make these connections with the community and be able to work with these partners. And when they see that, when the district who hired me then and the districts that talk to me now talk about what is the game plan, why is this different, that's when they start referring cases. And then the last couple things that I want to highlight just on this slide is right there on important details. If you look on the right down to Como County, That's the only one that is remotely close to what I do at a 90 to 10% split, meaning 90% of the duties are truancy, 10% of the duties are juvenile diversion, and the actual diversion caseload there is 30 with 150 plus in truancy in case management. So they go with the judge and then they handle making sure that they do all the requirements and turn them back in, but there's still a lot of judge input. I'm the only coordinator that serves as both and for lack of a better term, judge, clerk, coordinator, and case manager. I do all four of those for all of my students. I meet with them. I figure out what they need. I work with partners and coordinate with those partners. I make sure that they pull in all those duties. That's the role here in Hays County, and to be completely honest with you, it is more of a golden standard than you would assume. I've met with folks in San Antonio during the largest juvenile case manager conference, And they're doing similar things at the municipal level. They have 10 juvenile case managers in San Antonio. 10. Because they understand the workload and how much time is invested in each one of those. And we'll get to the numbers in a bit. But I just wanted to show that the pay is not quite there due to the fact that we're really addressing these kids. I can't do it right now with the numbers I have. And if I had support, if I had other staff, other coordinators, we could really make this happen. But as of right now, we're kind of at the bare bones. So kind of break down what juvenile diversion looks like if you go to the next slide. Right there are our current active cases at 236 with a peak active case of 307. 365 were referred to me, not eligible for referral. That's the first number I want to highlight. On not eligible for referral, those are kids who were either aged out at the time of offense or by the time I reached them, they had already committed another offense. So because I'm so delayed in how I can get to them due to the workload, they've reoffended and I can only address their first case and their second case, I have to naturally refer back to court, which is, it's a shame because had I been able to reach them in time, possibly, quite possibly, we could have avoided the second offense. Successful diversion, this is just this year by the way, 63, with 21 on unsuccessful. Now, I know that seems low comparative, but that's a misleading number due to the delay in cases. I haven't been able to go through all those other cases in time because I'm still working on the influx, the intake of those cases. If not, those numbers would be higher. And it's not because we do a terrible program or anything like that. I just don't have the capacity to meet with these kids multiple times in person like it should be. I should be visiting them at school. I should be bringing them over to the JP's office if I can on weekends or or during the week or any other time that we can find something. When I say weekends, I meant to say during school break, right? Because in the summer they don't have school. Sometimes they stay at home and I'm able to bring them in. Other times I can't get ahold of them in the summer because they go with family or they go on trips and I'm not able to address any of the issues that they have. So that's just specifically on unsuccessful and then pending agreements. Those are the kids that I have yet to meet with to reach a diversion agreement due to the large numbers There's the breakdown of all the precincts, highlighting Precinct 2-2 at 223 referrals and 172 are active. The others have been either unsuccessful or successful. And then on the JPs, you see an asterisk on JP5. That's the 65 earlier. Judge Bryant mentioned that she had about 165 that went through hers. That's because at that point, that's when she stopped sending to me to lighten my load. she was doing judge diversion on her end, right? And she was working with multiple partners at the time to be able to address what I address. Who again? This was Judge Bryant. Got it. Yeah. So next slide. All right, so this is what the intake looks like. I'm not going to go into too much detail because I feel a good presentation speaks for itself. So just know that this is what it looks like to bring in kids. This is the amount of time. This is the individual process. These are my standard operating procedures. And if you go into the next slide, you'll see how long it actually takes, a breakdown of individual duties relating to these cases for me to be able to address them. So this is just intake. This is me getting to talk to them, getting to fill out the paperwork, coming to an agreement. This is how much it takes for each one of those individual duties. And as you can see there on the meet with family, 45 to an hour 15, that is insanely important. If we limit it down to 30 to 45 minutes, as it was originally the case when I first jumped into this position, there is no true way to dig deeper into that child and figure out what's happening. If I just say, do you feel bad about what you did? Great, okay, then let's move on. We'll write the agreement, get it done, we move on. I'm checking checklists. As opposed to having a true conversation, To be honest with you, if a child can talk to me about what they're struggling at home or where they're struggling at school or what they've been going through, then I know that that was a more likely 90% success rate whenever I'm getting through them. But if I can't get to that, then that's when I struggle more. And then next slide. This is case management. This is after they've reached the case, the diversion agreement. We're looking at 244 minutes total time, 153 in intake and 91 minutes in just total time that I have to put at the bare bones. And I wanna make sure to highlight that I say bare bones because what I did there was assume that I'm only gonna meet with them the time that I receive them for intake and the time that I visit them at school if I can get them to school. As of late, I haven't been able to see a kid's second time in person. So now I'm reduced to more phone calls and emails. And to be able to really understand whether a child is telling you what they're going through, whether they're struggling, or whether they've been offered anything, it's hard to do over the phone. So this is just bare bones assumption at 244. And if you go to the next slide, here is where I can give you a clue of what the workload is, the capacity, and what is needed. So right here we have Just using JP 2-2, there's 102 working days, right? I use the calendar for the county and then I took away any holidays because obviously I'm trying not to work on holidays. And I then found out the amount of minutes that I make in 2.4 weeks, which is 102 working days divided by five days of the week. and then found out that I had a 48,960 minutes of capacity as an individual to address my job, right, my duties. Then after that, I used JP2's example of 140 eligible cases between January through May. I take 48,000, multiply it by 244, which is the very bare bones amount that I need to speak to them, and then I'm left with 14,800 minutes or 149 minutes per day to do the other JP's office, to do municipal court cases, to do continuous diversion on some of those other cases that continue, to do coordinator duties and work with the partners like Senate Corps and Reliant, to work with mandatory training duties. Obviously, we all get the training that we have to do. Those don't take 15 minutes. And then continuing on to elongated repeated tasks, unscheduled miscellaneous task time. There's a lot of things that you don't plan for that naturally come when you're managing cases, as well as staff meetings and reports. Reports, as we all know, take a long time, but they have to be provided to show how good we're doing, right? So that is basically saying two to three hours of the day, assuming that I don't take a single lunch break, like I haven't today because I'm not working and I haven't had a time to leave, but if I go all day, without ever going to the restroom, without ever eating lunch, without ever taking five minutes to myself, this is what my day would look like. And I am underwater. And that's why I'm asking for your help. Because it is untenable. If we go to the next slide. The capacity, right, 48,000. My peak was 307. That means that if I were to do just minutes of diversion plus the daily duties, It's 93,268, and we said the capacity was 48 for one individual with no breaks. I'm way above it. I need more than that, right? Technically, if I was being honest as to how we could meet the needs, two, I'm able to see the surface of water. Three, gets me above water. Three gets me above water. Now, I understand that that's a big ask, right? I understand that. I would more than love to just have me, one other person, and then invest in us to stay. Because right now, the wages aren't good, right? The amount of work that we put in, the stress, the... I can't tell you how many kids I've had conversations with their parents where they attempted suicide. They were caught with an older man, right? All of these things weigh heavily on the individual, and to not take that personally as your failure is impossible. And I know that we talk about compartmentalizing, but when you care for the kids like I did when I was a teacher, it's the only thing that propels you forward is to make sure that you're making that difference. So earlier we were talking about an intern or someone temporary to fill the role. It's not going to be enough. It's not. We're so underwater. And the children of this county deserve better than that. And I understand that you guys talk about, I know the role of an elected, right? I understand that it's difficult to say, hey, this is gonna cost a little bit more money. I get it. I understand it's not popular, right? But if we could just realize that with the state defunding schools, that automatically affects kids, and those kids then start offending, and then the cases start rolling in even further, right? Because there's not availability for them to keep them busy, to keep them engaged, to teach them. So therefore, their mistake doesn't have to be one that you guys repeat as commissioners. I get that you don't want to raise above one penny or even maybe the penny, right? But I'm asking, and Commissioner Wald mentioned it earlier, It is a fraction of the cost of what it's going to cost us in the long run if we don't make the investment now, if we don't request earlier the county clerk mentioned make it a penny and .25, right? Do what needs to get done for the kids because as a former educator, I'm tired of the kids paying the price for us not creating action, for us being scared of what our constituents are going to tell us when we have to raise the rate just a little bit to take care of the kids. If you want to, tell them it was the kids who twisted my arm. because those are the people that I'm fighting for. Those are the people that don't get to come to the podium and speak on their behalf. So that is my ask for you. I understand that it's emotional, but I think that this county deserves for juvenile diversion coordinators to be heavily invested.

Thank you. Beautifully done. Thank you very much. Honestly, well done. Well done. Commissioner Inglesby?

Yeah, I mean, gosh, thank you for being here and sharing all of that. I mean, it's truly an important program that we have, and I hear the plea for additional help that's needed, and so we'll certainly look into the funding of this. And, yeah, thank you for the work that you do.

Commissioner Cohen?

Thank you. How long have you been in this position now, Daniel?

A year and three months.

And you're the first person ever to be in this position?

I am the second person.

The second person? Oh, that's right. The first person. Okay. Okay. So, like everything you're saying, like, I get it. I mean, I, you know, I know Hayes ISD is one of the biggest schools. It's the biggest employer of Hayes County. Y'all are busy. I do see that. And You know, and I believe in in making those investments. I mean, that's something that we in our strategic plan that we're considering. I mean, it's part of our, you know, our moral compass is investing in the future. This is that we are behind the ball in a lot of ways in this county. And we're trying to do our very best to to catch up while being sensitive to our taxpayer. Right. And sometimes, you know, we have to bite the bullet some years to do it right. And so I'm very aware of not just your needs and the JP's, but everyone's needs. And it is difficult as an elected to try and balance those without hurting the taxpayer. But I also do believe in making these early investments because I know it's going to be costly later on. And it's a cycle. If we can't get to the kids when they're young, then they're going to continue down the path where they're seeing the sheriff's department eventually. And so we're trying to break that pattern. But we need to provide these resources to our kids, our constituency. We need to be more accountable, I believe, as a government to some of these things, which historically the county has not been. And so I'm very hopeful for the path I think the county is on. It's just, unfortunately, like this year, it's valuations being down. You know, it's tough, right? And so, but I do appreciate all the information that you brought today and definitely will be considered as we go through these discussions.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Ounce of prevention. Commissioner?

That amount of data and exactly how you broke it down is 100% what I want to see for almost every single position. That was incredible. Big fan of that and being able to justify why new positions are important. I like how you said from a statutory standpoint what services that we have, and this is something that we are required to do statutorily. So it's important, and I appreciate all the effort that you put into that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well done. Commissioner Smith.

Probably the best presentation we've seen. I'll just be honest with you. I appreciate you taking to heart what I said in the last two budget workshops about really dialing down into what the need is. And I know that we have other positions statutorily that we're looking at to try to address some of those state mandates. And it's hard. Honestly, as I said, I anticipate a budget amendment later today. I probably would have included this had I had that presentation prior, and I would imagine that I would support an additional, at least one full-time employee in our next budget discussion.

Thank you. Beautiful, and thank you. And I'm glad you took my cues on how to do this. My work is showing. Of course, I'm kidding. Thank you so much. What we're going to do now is I believe this concludes our workshop. I'll close it, take us a 10-minute recess, and then continue the shop of the business. Okay? Scott, do you have anything left? No? Okay. That's good, sir. All right, perfect. We'll take a 10-minute recess, and then we will conclude with regular court. Okay, we are back from a short recess, putting a bookend on the workshop, and Scott is going to help us create that bookend. So, Scott, what say you?

Scott Woodland, Budget Officer. I'd like to get the opinion of the court on a couple items as we get prepared to put out some public notices and items like that. And one of the items is going to be a potential property tax increase. That will need to be in the record for... And then the other item would be clarification on how to, on elected official salaries and what methodology we want to use there.

Okay. What do you feel like you want to do, commissioners, starting with the elected official?

Actually, Judge, I have a, to kind of set the stage for our final conversation next week, I have a budget amendment I'd like to propose, which addresses a number of the which addresses a number of the concerns that have been expressed in the budget workshops over the last three weeks. And as an overall amendment to the budget, again, it's a starting point. It increases the tax rate by exactly one cent, and then it tries to address some of the major concerns that we discussed. If I'd had some of the background and some of the items today, I think that they probably would have been included in this. I would have found additional ways to pay for them under the existing budget. Trying to hit that one cent, that's a goal of mine. I don't know if it's doable with all the demands that we have. But I would like to present it to the court and ask for the court to at least look at consideration today. THE FIRST ITEM, AND JUST FOR BACKGROUND AS I'VE HANDED IT TO THE COURT. THE FUNDING SOURCE AS I MENTIONED IS A ONE CENT TAX RATE INCREASE FROM .399 CENTS TO A RATE OF .4099 GENERATING A REVENUE OF JUST OVER $4.22 MILLION AND LEAVING AN ADDITIONAL .0.0006 CENTS AVAILABLE FOR OTHER PRIORITIES AS WE SEE FIT WITHIN THE BUDGET. HOW MUCH IS THAT? I ASK SCOTT TO SPECIFICALLY GRAB THAT.

THAT COMES OUT TO $2,532.

I TRIED TO HIT IT EXACT.

ALL WE'VE DONE SO FAR, COMMISSIONER, WAS WE'RE STILL IN THE WORKSHOP AND HE JUST HANDED THIS AND HE'S STARTING TO GO OVER IT.

All of our employees or all of our department heads came in and they specifically referenced adoption of either some employee pay raise or pay recalibration. After consulting with our HR department, seeing the two options that were given to us last week, REALLY THE PRIORITY I WANTED TO EXPRESS WAS COMPETITIVE EMPLOYEE SALARIES AND WORKFORCE RETENTION. CURRENTLY THERE'S PROPOSED IN THE BUDGET $2 MILLION. THIS AMENDMENT FOR THOSE EMPLOYEE RETENTION AND SALARY INCREASES, IF WE WENT WITH OPTION TWO AS IDENTIFIED BY THE by the HR department and budget under our last meeting. The difference in expenditure would be $2.874,868 million with an impact on the tax rate of 0.6812. Just again, to clarify, and for all of our employees that are listening, that would be 100% of the recommendation with in a phased approach with phase one being 50 percent available to employees on october 1 and 50 phase 2 available on january 1 with no step and no regrades for fy for fy 2027 on the elected official salary we uh i chose to go with option one as presented by hr and the budget department um in In option one, if you remember, and it was outlined again today, and I just want to reiterate just for clarification, it creates about $11,688 in savings. The chart moves on January 1st with the swearing in of new officials and elected officials reelected are eligible to receive the 10% increase as previously adopted by the court on the STEP program that the court adopted in the past. The one caveat with that is in the past, those commissioners and judge, you've been here through all of our grievance processes with elected officials. As a matter of fact, last week we had to draw names for a grievance committee should there be need one. All of those have always centered around both our constables and sheriff's position. And specifically because all of their employees are directly tied to the collective bargaining agreement. Last year, at the end of the process, I proposed a pay scale for law enforcement elected officials of 1% above the salary of their highest deputy pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement. It would currently impact two of the constables and the sheriff's department. After CBA, it will probably impact all of the constables because their highest deputy will be reassessed under the CBA. This would, I believe, in talking with the constables and with the sheriff, avoid any grievance in the future because it would be tied to the CBA as is all the officers. It would be floating, correct. And it would be floating. And a good way to address it, a little bit different than we do all the other elected officials. The next priority area I wanted to target personnel increases to improve effectiveness of county services and improve efficiencies in government operations. And if you'll notice on the amendment that I handed you, each position... denoted and I apologize there's one that I missed the notation on but each position is noted as to it's important to the strategic pillars that were identified in the strategic plan and I just say given the identified additional priority positions and personnel needs identified in the FY 2027 budget workshops the following positions and regrades are recommended Additionally, the Director of HR and Budget shall produce a calendar and corresponding policy limiting the ability of department heads and elected officials to request upgrades and or new positions to twice annually, once during the regular physical budget submission and consideration process and once prior to the adoption of the physical mid-year budget amendment. so as we discussed it would give those department heads the ability to ask for new positions and new upgrades or new regrades uh once a year in the middle of the budget process and give us a more clean process to do that and however we always tell our budget our department heads come back during the budget process, come back during the budget process. This gives the ability for those department heads once a year, so every six months, to look at what those changes in their office or changes in the needs of our citizens are and how to address them. Additionally, given the offices of the Justices of Peace, the needs of the offices of the JPs, This amendment would direct the county administrator's office to work with these offices to develop a matrix and recommendation for additional personnel needs to be presented to the court during the first of the reference mid-year submission processes. So they would sit down with all of the JPs, create a process in working with them, and then come back at the mid-year to look at the requests that they've had and try to address those. And I'd also say the court further directs a similar process be established to review the need for deputy constable positions for each of the five constables. Considerations should include caseloads, both civil and criminal, and enforcement needs in each precinct as each are unique. I think that gives the clarification to our administration staff And to the as well to the to the constables and the justices of the peace as to what we're looking for. I would say a good example was and I told him this on his way out. A good example was the previous the previous budget workshop presentation we just saw. It really quantified what the need was and put a point on that. I think that is good data and not just general data. It's good data as to the work. I would tell you the data needs to be pursuant to the impacts of the job and the demands of the position. We have many employees who work for the county who have taken jobs that maybe it is not the right fit. I have three kids. I think it's great what the county chooses to pay me. At the end of the day, we need to ensure that our employees are paid at the adequate rate for the job that they're doing. Extraneous data we can't use when we're determining that because that same employee in the same position might be doing the same job, whether they have one kid, whether they have no kids, whether they have 10 kids. We can't take that data into consideration. It has to be what does the job require. And so I would just ask as we get those presentations and that data, that is the data and information we need. While I appreciated some of those facts today, it's really not relevant to the discussion at hand. That being said, I'm going to go through a couple of charts and name off some things that have been named, at least in this budget amendment, as a priority and as a cost savings. First, I want to applaud the Sheriff's Department. I had several discussions with the Sheriff's Department and the budget relative to how they could pay for some of the priorities that they had. And the Sheriff's Department was able to almost pay for those 100% with the elimination of seven requested corrections officers' position. To clarify that, currently there are, I believe, six or eight in process for new officers. However, we have 16 open positions there, and we're not sure if we're going to be able to fill those within the next couple of months. 21, sorry, 21 positions. And so that being the case, The deletion of seven of those requested officer positions provides for the ability to pay for the three SROs at Hays Consolidated ISD at the reduced rate with their match, as well as the Axion AI low PMT electronics and software upgrade that they are asking for. This is not the full package that was requested. Just help me out.

It's payment. That's why I said payment.

Yeah. Oh, I didn't hear you say payment. Oh, no, you're good.

I was just saying PMT is payment.

It's at a lower payment. Lower payment. I understand that. It is not 100% of the technology that they've asked for, but it does have majority as well as it does have, correct me if I'm wrong, but it does have the translation in it.

COMMISSIONER SMITH, SO WHAT THAT WOULD BE IS, SO THAT'S A LOW FIRST YEAR PAYMENT TO WHERE THAT'S GOING TO BE $95,000 THAT FIRST YEAR, BUT THEN THE FOLLOWING YEAR IS GOING TO BE, I THINK, $520,000. SO THAT REDUCTION YOU GET IN THE FIRST YEAR WILL BE BUILT INTO LATER YEARS. THERE IS AN OPTION IF THE COURT IS INTERESTED, WE CAN KIND OF PIECE MILL THAT TOGETHER IF THAT'S SOMETHING THAT WE WOULD WANT TO LOOK AT.

SURE. Let me finish walking through this and then I'll be more than happy to take questions on any of it. It also includes specifically the county court at law's request for an associate judge. And along with that, the DA's office has requested a mental health attorney to to help help to specifically help address the needs of that court. One of the questions that I had was if that associate judge was appointed, what were the other ramifications of that? Another attorney would be needed on the DA side, and more specifically, there would be some upgrades or retrofits needed for the space that might be available in the juvenile justice facility. And I've spoken to Scott about other pots where the THE SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT WOULD BE NEEDED SPECIFICALLY TO DO THOSE RETROFITS WOULD BE INCLUDED. IT WOULD ALSO INCLUDE FOR THE DA'S OFFICE THE REQUESTED REGRADES. THOSE REGRADES ARE ABOUT $50,000. and that's the regrade of Attorney 7, three positions, the 113 administrative assistant regrade, and the two legal assistant regrades from 116. I would just like to say, and I mentioned this earlier, but the total cost for all three positions of the SROs with equipment is $524,829, with Hayes County incurring $284,000. $1,686 in expense, and Hays Consolidated ISD shouldering the remaining $241,143 through a reimbursement rate for salary infringed of the SRO employees. That includes the equipment, so that's the reason it's a larger percentage for Hays County in that first year. After that, those numbers dropped significantly to just over 100,000, I believe. On the strategic capital needs, again, I mentioned Axion. The other things that I've really looked at as far as what were needed or I felt were needed from the overall requests that we've had so far in the budget process, you know, we mentioned voting equipment. I've mentioned it several times now. We were able to get another quote, a different quote, for the breakup of the costs of the voting equipment that we would need in three fiscal years. My concern is, once again, that, and I had additional conversations with our elections administrator this morning, there is no way that, I have a concern that the future court is going to have a very, very hard time, number one, stomaching the cost entirely of that voting equipment when our current voting equipment is at end of life, and especially doing it in a one-year period during a presidential election. It's a recipe for disaster, and if we can spread this over three years, I think we're better for it. It is by far the largest ticket item we have on here. It's $959,000. It equates to about 0.2273% of the cent in the tax rate. The other thing, and I want to thank Scott again, looking at the requests presented from the DA's office for pretrial and trial continuing education and witness expert witness compensation we were able to or he was able to identify some funds that were not being used in there and again as we look at our professionals and the required the required trainings that they have very few I would say or even more important than our attorneys and those are required statutorily for them to practice and so ensuring that that continuing education was held at a similar level is great. It would mean an increase of only about $14,000 for that. All incurred, and as I said, additionally, existing funds are identified. One thing I did not mention was that one of the things I really wanted to consider as well, when we had the advocates and the mental health court come in and talk about contract services, contract services themselves, there is actually a different, I don't want to say pot of money, but unencumbered AMOUNT OF MONEY SPECIFICALLY FOR CONTRACT SERVICES FOR THE SPECIALTY COURTS. AND I WANTED TO BE ABLE TO ADDRESS THEIR NEEDS BUT ALSO HAVE THE ABILITY FOR THE VETERANS OF THE COURT TO LOOK AT WHAT THEIR CONTRACT SERVICES NEEDS WOULD BE AS WELL. AND SO I WOULD PROPOSE THEM LOOKING AT THAT ACCOUNT. and having the county court of law judges who have those specialty courts, as those contracts expire, as those contracts are being filled to the point of the contract services running out, they have the ability, number one, to go to that account, but there needs to be a conversation between those county court of law judges as to where the best usage of those funds should be. And this gives them the opportunity and the control over that that might be helpful. And as I mentioned, also funds for retrofitting facilities at the Juvenile Center for space conversion for the associate judge position have been identified in existing funds. All that being said, at the end of the day, this creates a total tax rate with the items that were added in here of .4093. In addition to the tax rate of that, if we pass this budget amendment for a one cent increase, At minimum, that would leave 0.0094 of a cent available for usage. And at the end of the day, it gives us a starting point to look at individual positions and items for next week.

And I would... How do you feel about that?

Take any questions.

This is the first time I've seen this four-page document. Do you have some initial thoughts, or would you open it up?

Yeah, I mean, well... I mean, I can tell you what I feel that I agree with, but I also want, Scott, is there any way to put your slide back up of the people that you were recommending in your budget?

Yeah, I think so. Can we access the slideshow?

Is there any way we can get copies of that?

You want the slideshow or an Excel file? Your slideshow. Which one would you prefer? Slideshow. Okay, I'll send it to the entire court right now.

Oh, yeah. Do you want to have Sylvia printed?

Oh, there it goes.

It's right there. Okay.

But if you can go to there. Do you all want it printed out or emailed?

It would be nice to have. I mean, I think this is nice to have. I also really would like the HR presentation, too. I think that's a good... Well, I guess it would be all on this one.

Yeah. So can Sylvia print... Four or five copies?

Absolutely, yeah. Let me save it, and I'll send it to her right now.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Do we want to wait, Judge, for a minute?

We can wait on you, Commissioner Cohen. Do you have any preliminary?