Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

meeting to order and it is officially 9 o'clock and I'm stretching and there he is Pastor Darius Todd will lead our invocation if you will please all rise let's bow Heavenly Father thank you for another opportunity to come together

We thank you for this day that you have made and granted us space to come as a community. We thank you, God, for giving us the freedom to gather, to hear our neighbors, to resolve concerns, and to celebrate accomplishments. Today, Lord, we ask that you would give us grace to learn, to heal, and to come together as one people so that we may have the opportunity and all may have the opportunity to prosper. Thank you for your goodness and your mercy. We give you thanks for these now. In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Thank you.

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.

One and indivisible.

And if you will please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby. Here. Commissioner Cohen. Here. Commissioner Hammer.

Here.

Commissioner Smith.

Here.

Judge Becerra.

Here. Public comments, I will yield to you. If you will take over those that have signed up for public comments. There are two ways to speak in public comments. One will be now or the other is when we actually open the agenda item. When we open the agenda item, however, it is more restrictive. You can only talk about that agenda item. Here is when you would say whatever you want. So those that have signed up for an agenda item, if they change their mind hearing that and want to speak now, let us know and we'll change your entry. Otherwise, follow as it's been.

In person, we have Liz Sumter-Guidos.

Thanks, John. Good morning. I'm here for a couple of reasons. The first one is the Exxon contract. I want to talk about a little bit about a 10-year contract for a software. It just doesn't seem to make sense, especially one that binds one administration over another, over another, including the sheriff's office. But the other thing I really wanted to say was that as much as you may want to put guardrails on Exxon, you can't. You don't have the authority. The sheriff is an elected official. He decides what his policies are. He decides how to run his office. You can't actually mandate any guardrails for him. For example, the ILA, the interlocal agreement with San Marcos on the Pet Resource Center. We know what would be mandated in there for the sheriff's office to do. Is he doing it? Well, that's a good question. It's because you can't. You can't mandate anything another elected official has authority over. So you're either all in for Axon, for 10 years or you're all out. And that includes everything that it brings. Furthermore, I think the money can be used in a much better way. Homelessness in Pace County has changed significantly. I ran across two women and their 16-year-old daughter living in a van along with their animals in 100 degree weather, no fault of their own. They have master's degrees. They're perfectly capable of working except for one who has a medical issue and the reason that they are now homeless. And my conscience couldn't allow me to let them stay in that condition. So they're not living with me until they get on their feet. And I'm hoping that your conscience, knowing that this is going to be a bigger problem for Hays County in the future, not a smaller one, if we don't take care of that today, and begin that process of funding more money towards the Southside Center, BRT, Home Center, and all of these organizations that help people stay in their homes, feed their families, get job training, whatever the issue might be, then our society falls. It doesn't get better. So I'm hoping today that what you'll do is take a look at that Exxon, say, you know what, those numbers can actually be used in a way that will benefit citizens directly and have the biggest impact on our economic stability, jobs in the future, and actually impact public safety because crimes of necessity will occur. And that's the last thing that we want to be in a cycle in. So thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Rebecca Kilburn.

Good morning, commissioners, judge and staff. Thank you all for being here. My name is Rebecca Kilburn. I reside here in San Marcos, Texas, with my husband, Bill Miller. Thank you all for being here, but I would like to point out that you all are paid to be here, and some of us are not. I had to give up part of my shift at work today to come so that I could speak with my own mouth, words that I wrote with my own hands. The last time I was here, the community accused the developer of not having their pants on before putting on their shoes. I think that Hays County now is running around without either pants or shoes, in the wake of their divorce with Flock, about to sign on with Axon for services we don't need with money we don't have. Fiscal conservative? That's a lofty claim. On page 263, if you are online with us today, on the agenda page, click the download PDF packet. Page 263 is the rate sheet for BGE Engineering, which employs former Commissioner Mark Jones. You'll see on that rate sheet, they pay their executives up to $350 an hour. When I was doing quality assurance for construction, I got paid $23 an hour. I think it's outrageous that we're spending that kind of money for an engineering company that we have a conflict of interest in hiring through the county. Also, I'd like to point out the raises that are scheduled for next year in the budget. $5,000 to $7,000, depending on the precinct for the commissioners, a year raise, $5,000 a year raise, that's good money. But for the sheriff, a staggering $34,000 raise, that's the most money I've made in a year in my entire life, and we're giving that to him as a raise? That seems really shady to me, when social services are so underfunded. I came here today to say that we no longer trust our representatives to represent the people. And we're watching. When I was growing up, if somebody said, I'll be watching you, it was considered a threat. But that's really what you all are saying to all of us, trying to slide a 10-year contract with Axon into our budget without community input that should be required to approve $4.5 million in spending, especially with a company that may not even be around for 10 years, a company whose ethics board quit after they decided to mount tasers onto drones, a company who could copy its industry competitors and load Small drones with three ounces worth of explosives that can fly at a person using facial recognition technology and kill them. Future like Black Mirror or Judge Dredd. Is this the future we want for our community?

Thank you.

Bill Miller.

morning um can i relinquish my time so miss kilbourne okay all right so i'm going to finish what she was saying perfect thank you um so my name is bill miller i'm going to finish what rebecca kilbourne was saying i don't know about this the county metrics but 30 of the city's residents live at or below the poverty line you must think we're all rich to be able to afford 4.5 million dollars or the police state surveillance technology that is unproven and unwarranted. If our goal is to make our community safer, let's invest in things that we know scientifically to reduce crime rates. If our goal is to make officers more effective, let's give them more support positions, more boots on the ground. Community outreach, housing and rental assistance, social services, English as a second language classes for our community members, professional Spanish classes, free for civil servants, and low cost for other community members, caseworkers, more people policing in our communities, human hands, and human care. We have to stop worrying about and spending time and money on things we don't want. We don't want crime. We don't want litter. We don't want unhoused neighbors. Cry, cry, cry, whine, whine, whine. We want food security, clean water, living wages, housing stability, affordable utilities, and health care. Some of you have kids. I never had children, or she never had children of her own, hoping that would absolve her of the responsibility to show up and fight against lunacy in the name of a brighter future, or at least a future. Here I am because there is no hardship more grim than to face a dark future. It is not non-standard to have a contract of such length, or is it not non-standard to have a contract of such length? 10 years proposed to work with Axon to transcend term limits with a single budget approval seems inherently wrong. I'm disgusted with you. You are not listening. Community members have not been coming for weeks expressing our displeasure at this bait and switch. Axon is worse. How can we vote for clean water but vote against AI data processing centers and then hire a company that works against both goals? Additionally, the data they collect will eventually be sold just like our genetic data was sold with 23andMe when that company went out of business. Do not approve the budget as written. Vote no on K-12. Vote to delay the adoption until it's amended. And vote no on K-14.

Thank you, sir.

Pastor Jeff Thompson.

Good morning, Judge. Good morning, commissioners. I'm Jeff Thompson, a leader with Corridor Interfaith Alliance for Families and Central Texas Interfaith. And I'm also vice president of the Capital Idea Board. And I have with me today Eva Rios Ivorino, who's the deputy director of Capital Idea. I appreciate this opportunity to thank you for your support for Capital Idea over the years as especially for the increase of $270,000 that you have indicated in the proposed budget for 2027. Your ongoing support is an investment in the future of dozens of Hays County residents to help them move out of low paying jobs into mostly healthcare professions, but also IT jobs and trades training. Their starting wage for a graduate in this program is an average of $32 per hour. Participants' average annual wages in the past three years have increased from just over $21,000 before capital idea to almost $69,000 after capital idea, an average wage increase of 213%. Our graduates have been placed here in Hays County jobs at Hays County Development Services, Texas State University, PAM Healthcare Rehabilitation Hospital, Texas Children's Pediatrics, San Marcos Treatment Center, Christus Santa Rosa Hospital, Seton Medical Center Hays, and Hays Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Opportunities for healthy education will greatly increase with the addition of new healthcare education building at the ACC Hays Campus. That groundbreaking will be next week for that building. I'm sure you're aware of that. The new St. David's Hospital, which is already under construction in Kyle, will need all sorts of new healthcare workers and supporting professions. Capital Idea is ready, willing, and able to provide those workers. In providing for the future of our graduates, you have also provided much needed services for residents in Hays County. So I thank you again for investing in making Hays County a better place to live. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Brian McCoy.

Well, good morning, Judge Becerra, commissioners. I'm Brian McCoy, chairman of McCoy's Building Supply and director of the Emma and Miriam McCoy Foundation. Thank you for allowing me to speak today in support of Southside Community Center. My sister, Brenda Remy McCoy, joins me this morning as well. And by the way, all the words that I'm going to share this morning are mine. None of it has been generated by A.I. Southside's agreement with the City of San Marcos for the ARPA-funded housing program was signed in April of 2024. The original program was the Rapid Re-Housing Program efforts funded through ARPA, which later evolved into the broader Housing Stability Program. Approximately $800,000 was invested to launch a coordinated, community-based approach to reducing homelessness that is already producing results for local families. With those funds nearly exhausted, our family has been asked to help underwrite the program, and we have agreed to do so annually in the amount of $250,000, provided that additional funding sources join us. McCoy family funds alone are not sufficient to make the program viable. Southside's target funding goal for the Housing Stability Program this coming year is $750,000. We're asking the county to contribute $250,000, and we'll be asking the cities of San Marcos, Kyle, and Buda collectively to contribute an additional $250,000, ideally with a multi-year commitment as a budget line item. This budget allows for administrative costs to be efficient and remain a higher percentage of monies actually helping our neighbors who are in need. I want to share a few statistics. In 2025, Southside's housing programs served 371 households, including 106 through eviction prevention and 265 through emergency assistance. So far in 2026, Southside has served 201 households across its housing programs, including 157 through emergency assistance and 21 through the transitional shelter program. Southside is currently serving an average of approximately 25 families per month. The McCoy and Remy families lived in Hays County since 1972, and we are committed to supporting viable programs that help our disadvantaged neighbors. Candidly, this valuable program cannot continue without financial commitments from both the public and private sectors. Our families' investment in nonprofit agencies require us to insist that their work be viable, effective, and efficient. Southside has proven to our family they have the leadership and the staff to continue to make the housing stability program a creative and efficient way to help people in need, provided that funding is in place. I want to thank you all on this commissioner's report and your staff as you serve the people of the place that we love to call home. Thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

Amy Kemp.

Good morning, Judge Becerra, County Commissioners. My name is Amy Camp and I'm here again asking you not to approve the Axon contract. I want to thank everyone who has already spoken. I think that You know, all of the points that are made are very important, and I would urge you all to listen to them. I appreciate Judge Sumter pointing out that a 10-year contract for $4.5 million, you know, this is not fiscally responsible, as, you know, Ms. Kilbourne said as well. You know, we look around. We've heard from people talking about Southside and other services, and we see that it's not enough. People here are struggling, and we can see it. We don't have to look for it. It's right in front of our faces. And, you know, I think it's really unfortunate that so often our government, whether it's federal government, state government, local government, gives in to the politics of fear. You know, instead of thinking about how we can support each other, how we can prevent crimes before they happen, crimes of desperation, as people have mentioned, we are coming up with scenarios in our heads where this technology would be invaluable. And they are not realistic. I've heard so many times, like, what if your daughter was kidnapped? Wouldn't you want, you know, this technology to help find her? You know, I pray to God that my daughter never gets kidnapped. But that is not, you know, up there in my fears for my daughter. You know, I am afraid for the things that are confronting us right now, as Judge Wissara has mentioned before. 20% of our children face food insecurity. We look around at our roads. We look around at our unhoused neighbors and they need help, but we also need help. I need help. I need y'all to be the fiscally responsible people y'all claim to be. Pause. Do not approve this contract. Thank you.

Thank you.

Abigail Lindsay.

Good morning. My name is Abigail Lindsay, and I wanted to talk about the budget with the sheriff's office regarding Axon. I'm against this for many reasons, and I ask the court to make concessions if you must move forward. All of you are aware I've been fighting data centers since February 2025, specifically Cloudburst. And you're asking yourself, well, why does this matter and how does this tie into it? Well, these data centers lease spaces to companies like Axon. That's what they do. Axon stores all this information from their equipment. So they need places to put this. Cloudburst has made claims that they have an end user. Could that be Axon? Absolutely. Will we ever know? Absolutely not. And this is the part that hurts me. I pay taxes to Hays County. I'm a Hays County resident. So literally my tax dollars will be going to a company that I'm actively fighting against. The amount of anger and heartbreak I feel cannot be expressed in this speech, but what can be done today is to put a clause in the language, have something in there along the lines that any funds allocated will be contingent upon an approved contract by the commissioner's court. If not, the allocation of funds will be used elsewhere. I mean, I'd love for y'all just to take it out completely, but if you can't put some clauses in there, there will be new members on this court in a matter of months, the state will go into session January, 2027. And I hope there will be new laws regarding the use of eight AI at state level, the court only. And I know Liz talked about this. The court only has the power to allocate funds. You do not have a say in what the sheriff office does with this technology. They are elected officials and they follow their own policies. Let's wait and see what happens on a federal and state level with AI regulations. This time next year, we can address the issue. I'm asking for more time and more information. All of our data has been compromised at some point. This technology takes it to a whole new level of privacy issues. I support local law enforcement. Take this money and apply it to salary enhancements, hiring of new officers, I don't support cameras tracking my every move when I leave my house and an AI bot keeping a log of my activities. I don't know who will be able to access that information. And speaking from personal experience, my information has not been protected. My social security number, my emails, my address, my social media has all been compromised and leaked on the dark web. If it is online, it can and will be hacked at some point, and that is a fact of life. Please, let's take more time and research this company. See if any new laws will be put in place regarding AI. There is no rush. I understand there's no contract right now, and the allocation of funds is the first step. but please add some safeguards in the budget so as not to tie your hands with an approval of a contract because funds have been issued. There has to be a better way. The city of San Marcos has agreed not to have any contracts with Flock or Axon. Please stand with the city on this issue. Thank you.

Thank you.

Cynthia Bentley.

Good morning, Judge, Commissioners. My name is Cynthia Bentley. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of a non-profit, Unforgettable Families and Friends. I've been here a few times, but I didn't give you my background. And I'd like to give you my background to let you know why and what we're doing here in Hayes County. I have over 40 years' experience at Louisiana Workforce Commission. We have had about five different names in those 40 years, but when I retired, it was Louisiana Workforce Commission. I started at the low level, clerical. And I promoted. Each time I got a chance, I promoted to a higher and higher level until I became a supervisor of the unemployment office. They used to call it the pit. But when I got there, the dynamics changed. It was no longer called the pit because the attitude. From being a supervisor, I promoted to manager. When I became a manager, I said, oh, great, I can do some things that I know that need to be done. So we started going into the elementary schools, the middle schools, the high schools, to touch those children before they finish high school so they can kind of know what they want to do when they finish high school. Then I got another promotion as sub-regional manager, where I was responsible for eight job centers in the New Orleans area. And from there, I said, wow, I can do even greater things. We started having joint military job fairs. We started having business conferences. conversations with the businesses to find out what is it that you need for us to help your business to be successful. And from there, when I retired in 2012, I moved here. And I said, well, I'm going to take and bring some of those things that we did in Louisiana here to our local Hays County. Some of the things that we did, we implemented bikes for books at various elementary schools in Hays County. We participate in closed closets, workshops for our citizens. We partner with Southside Community Center, Hayes Caldwell Women's Center, Mendez Elementary School. Thanks to our commissioner, Michelle Cohen, she got us connected with Bonham Middle School, where we gave out tennis shoes and coats last year. We do school supplies, Christmas toys, you name it. If someone call and say, you know, they need food, well, we have the resources where we partner with Hayes County Food Bank, the Buda Food Bank, and so many other different things. And one of the things that, when I was a manager, One of the employees said, Ms. B, you're not tooting your own horn. So that's why I'm here today to toot my horn, toot toot, of the things that we're doing and making an impact here in Hays County. We have had partnerships with the DA office, the Veterans Administration office, Lions Club here in Buda, Juneteenth celebration, you name it. We are doing so many things and making an impact in Hays County. So I just wanted to let you all know the things that we're doing here. So when we ask for support, hopefully we'll get some support. And in order to get that Bikes for Books reading program in this area, in St. Martha's, we do need financial support on that. Thank you.

Thank you.

John Leonard.

Good morning, commissioners and Judge Becerra, or perhaps I should say big brothers and big sisters of commissioners court. My name is John Leonard, but many of my friends call me Winston Smith. Please feel free to do the same. I'm here today to express my strongest possible objection to the court's willingness to embrace this thing called artificial intelligence. I look at it like this. If it's artificial, it ain't intelligence. And if it's actual intelligence, it ain't artificial. It's either one or the other, but it ain't both. Despite what the sales staff at Axon may have convinced the sheriff's office and through the sheriff's office, this court. As I understand that this court has already committed to a 10-year contract, a contract worth $4.5 million with Axon to provide artificial intelligence products and services to the sheriff's office. If I'm not mistaken, the first payment has already been approved. I don't understand the rush. Over the last several weeks, key players in the artificial intelligence community have made it very clear that AI, as it's being called, avoiding the obvious oxymoron of the phrase artificial intelligence, is not quite ready for prime time. And I'm sure each of you on the dais and key leadership at the Sheriff's Office has heard many of the same news stories that I have, reporting that artificial intelligence is very good at plagiarizing, making stuff up, and also what experts call hallucinating. That's the reason most AI output is called slop. Now, I don't know what the recreational drug experiences, if any, members of this court may have had when they were younger and more callow than they are today. But I can't speak about my own, now that the statute of limitations has long ago expired. And I can say this. Asking me to do anything requiring more logic than adding one plus one during those brief periods of hallucinogenic activity was really pushing it. But here we are, about to drop a bundle on questionable technology upgrades, upgrades involving law enforcement functions and the resulting issues of innocence and guilt and freedom and incarceration, as well as record-keeping functions involving the creation and management of the official minutes of this court where integrity cannot be compromised. If you can't hear the alarm bells ringing, loud and clear, perhaps you're simply not listening. The last thing we need is sketchy technology systems replacing the creativity and adaptability, intuition, sensory understanding, situational awareness, empathy, and ethical guardrails of human reasoning. I say no to the use of artificial intelligence by any element of the Hays County government, and I ask you to do the same. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Saunders Drucker.

Hello. My name is Saunders Drucker. I'm also going to be speaking out against the use of Axon cameras in Hays County. I take the argument that for most things, a system is what it does, not what it tries and fails to do. Just looking at Flock specifically, we can take Pflugerville as an example. Pflugerville just canceled their relationship with Flock. And I don't like Axon anymore. I'll get to that in a second. But in Pflugerville, they found 400 times that their database for Flock had been accessed. 83 of those were authorized, which means that all of the rest, the rest 4 fifths out of that ratio, was unauthorized. So if a system is what it does, not what it fails to do, Flock, in that case, did not solve crimes. crimes. It enabled unauthorized viewing of the people. Now, like I said, Axon isn't any better than Flock. If you think it is, ask yourself why. A year and a half ago, there was a big push into governments across cities and counties saying that Flock is going to save you, Flock is going to save you. Now, Flock is the bad guy, and everybody's scared of it, and now there's a new one coming in saying, oh, Axon, we're actually the good guy. But Why? What do they do? Have they done anything different than these other companies? Do you actually know anything about it other than it just has a different four letter word for its name? No. I'd also like to push something else. These cameras, as an AI modified camera, any video that they take is run through their AI screening. Therefore, any video that you take out of it and try and put through like some sort of truth finder, like is this AI, yada, yada, yada. All of them inherently say yes because they have been run through that filter. Because of that, within the technology for these cameras, just within the box itself, contains the computing power to edit those images. This is a function of what they are. In order to have those sorts of like LLMs running inside of them, the same little ChatGPT or Grok or whatever that is used frequently to make a new picture, to take something out of a picture, is inside of those cameras. So someone with not that great of hacking ability or a government agency like this can change videos in the camera itself. So that way, when it's pulled as evidence, there's no way to tell that it's been modified. I'm not saying that this has been done or that people are doing this constantly, but these cameras contain that capability. And it's just going to lead us further down this path that we've been following as a society, which is, what is truth? You know, what is real? If we look at a camera that recorded me in a store, did I actually take that candy bar or did somebody just make my arm go like that right then? The only way for us to push back against this is to retake human accountability, and this is not it. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Lucy Trainor.

Patty, thank you for having us. And I want to just come at this from a kind of more of a legal standpoint. My concern is more about First Amendment protections, peaceful assembly, political and religious activity. Does Hayes County have a written policy regarding just prohibiting these AI searches designed simply to identify or track people because they participated in lawful protests? political activity, religious activity, or other constitutionally protected behavior. Second, what happens when Axon analyzes this in light of private or third-party videos, such as things like apartment cameras, business surveillance, like at Home Depot, school cameras, ring cameras? Third, if Axon or related systems like Flock can have that historical vehicle location information, what does it look like in the aggregate as a whole? And how is law enforcement putting guardrails within that kind of framework? Just like John was saying, what happens if AI gets something wrong? And ultimately, in terms of prosecution, is the county going to preserve sufficient audit evidence, audit logs, search information, underlying videos, AI results, which AI can get a lot of this stuff wrong. System system information that the courts can have that these defendants can have I mean ultimately the central question with all of this is what constitutional or statutory limitations prevents Hayes County from taking lawfully collected video of people who are not suspected of crimes and using AI to then retrospectively identify categories track and

bring associations to all these people.

I will tell y'all, I work closely with the legislature. I know senators who are really planning on coming back to this subject because so many of our counties and cities have decided to drop these contracts. People are really upset about this. It's Republicans and Democrats alike. We are very upset about this kind of government surveillance that is being allowed by our own money. Like, we're using our own money to watch all these little things that, again, in the aggregate can become, there's lots of constitutional questions. And right now, what's the written policy on this to make sure that those safeguards are put up from a constitutional standpoint? The legislature will come back to this. They will come back to this this session. So my question, my ask, is just to put a halt. Put a halt on this contract. And while the legislature is in session, if you still want to go forward, put some statutory wording on this that protects citizens. I'm a Catholic. The FBI was going through, like, did some kind of search on traditional Catholics just a few years back. The Latin mass community. There's no good reason for that. We're not terrorists. Like, there are things that our government has to keep in mind. So thank you for having me.

As a fellow Catholic, thank you.

Yes, of course. Yes, sir.

Scram beat it. No, just kidding. You were wonderful. Thank you. I'm just making light of it, but it's time to end.

Oh, yeah. No, of course.

Thank you so much. Your message was wonderful. Yes, sir. I don't want to take away from that on accident.

Yes. And FISA, too. You remember FISA? And how many people got spied on through the FISA courts? It should have never happened. Thank you.

We have three emailed.

Let's go for it.

This comes from Jennifer Moore in San Marcos. She writes, I want to share I am leaving my position with the Hays County Clerk's Office. This was not an easy decision as I enjoyed my job and my coworkers. However, the compensation is low compared to the cost of living. I made the decision to move for more compensation for my family, and I hope Hays County will increase the pay for their employees. Thank you for everyone who has supported me at Hays County. Next one is from Corey Thornton in Kyle, Texas. He writes, good morning, Judge and Commissioners. My name is Corey Thornton, and I am a proud Hays County resident, a graduate of San Marcos High School, a graduate of Texas State, and a Hays County employee. I share that to emphasize that I have spent my entire life in this county, and I will continue dedicating myself to serving the people of Hays County. I am writing today because I cannot overstate the importance of adopting HR's Full proposed pay increase for county employees. In my two years with the county, I have watched employees come and go with an alarming regularity. Unfortunately, with our current pay scale, we have a significant brain drain. We hire talented people, invest time and resources into training them, and then they leave for neighboring counties that are willing to pay them what they are worth. I will admit that my degree is not in mathematics. However, I do understand O's simple reality. It is far more expensive to recruit, hire, and train new employees than it is to retain experienced ones. Everyone understands the importance of being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. Everyone understands the desire to avoid unnecessary spending and tax increases. However, failing to provide county employees with a livable and competitive wage may be ultimately costing the county more than making this investment in the first place. I also bring to your attention that Hayes County website states that our mission as a county is to provide and improve services to residents that impact their health, safety, and quality of life. But just as a house without a foundation can never be steady, that mission cannot be accomplished without first providing for, and improving the quality of life of the employees who come to work every day to make it possible. So once again, I urge you to adopt Hays County's full proposed increase across the pay table, not because county employees are asking for extra frivolous money in their pockets, but because they deserve wages that allow them to thrive, grow, and continue serving a county that itself is doing those same things off in their labor. Thank you, Corey. Next one is from Anita Engel in San Marcos. She writes, I'm asking for additional funds for social services. I believe the current percentage of money allocated for social services is insufficient. In light of the growth in this area and the poverty of over 50% of our residents, please reevaluate the budget to assure that social services are sufficient for serving our citizens. Additionally, I'm asking the court to slow down on approval of any funds for AI surveillance tools. While this emerging technology seems helpful on the outset, it is not by any means safe to use on our citizens and during this horrible time in our nation's history. Please rethink your support for these important items. Thank you for your time. That's it.

Okay, perfect, and thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for your comments. I really do appreciate them all. And now, open F1.

F1, adopt a proclamation recognizing the week of September 17 through the 23rd, 2026 as Constitution Week. So moved. Second.

If you'll please read it.

Whereas in the Constitution of the United States of America, the guardian of our liberties embodies the principles of limited government in a republic dedicated to rule by law. and whereas September 17th, 2026 marks the 239th anniversary of the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America by the Constitutional Convention, and whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary and to the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate it, and whereas Public Law 915 guarantees the issuing of a proclamation each year by the President of the United States of America designating September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court does hereby proclaim the week of September 17th through the 23rd as Constitution Week, and ask our citizens to reaffirm the ideals the framers of the Constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guardian of our liberties, adopted this day of September 15th, 2026. Beautifully written. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Judge Bastetta?

Yes. And who would like to speak on this item? If you'll please approach the podium and state your name and title for the viewing public.

Janine Inbody, Regent, Jacobsville Chapter, DAR, Wimberley, Texas. First, I want to thank you for your service, all of you that are here today. I know that you get paid some. but your life is dedicated to this, and we appreciate that. Constitution Week is celebrated from September 17th to the 23rd. We celebrate the document that establishes our government structure and protects our fundamental rights. As we celebrate our nation's 250th anniversary this year, the Constitution is the bedrock of our 250-year experiment in self-governance, and it is worth celebrating. Thank you, Judge Becerra and the Commissioner's Court for recognizing this week with a proclamation to all Hays County residents. Jacobsville Chapter DAR will be in schools and throughout the county ringing bells on September 17th, the anniversary of the Constitution signing and highlighting the importance of our Constitution in our county. Thank you very much.

wonderfully done. Commissioners? Any comments?

Janine, thank you for being here. We really appreciate it. And, you know, to recognize the importance of this document. So thank you for being here.

Thank you so much for being here and representing Wimberley.

Always great to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And it's customary for us to take a picture for anyone that wants to be a part of this picture. Come on up.

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

Please open F2.

F2, adopt a proclamation recognizing September 28th through the 26th, 2026 as National CERT Week in Hays County.

So moved.

Second.

If you'll please read it.

Whereas the initial community emergency response team, CERT, program was created in 1985 by the Los Angeles City Fire Department after the Mexico City earthquake. And whereas CERT was originally introduced to Hays County in February 2020. 2003 and came under the auspices of Hays County of Emergency Services in 2014. And whereas the Hays County CERT has more than 400 members and continues to grow. And whereas the Hays County has experienced several emergencies requiring support of the Hays County CERT, And whereas the Hays County CERT is proud to celebrate National CERT Week from September 28th through 26th, 2026, as part of the National Emergency Preparedness Month, this year's theme is Carrying the Torch 40 Years and Beyond, which commemorates CERT's long history. Whereas, National CERT Week is an event to promote the critically important message of emergency preparedness. Whereas, the annual National CERT Week is a chance to reach as many people as possible with information that can help them prepare for and survive and recover from a major event. Whereas, Hays County CERT is established as an organization that helps create a more resilient community. Hays County CERT provides free CERT training to the public and offering community information and training sessions. And whereas special events have frequent need for assistance in the areas of mass care, first aid, sheltering, traffic control, and vigilant community members. And whereas the Hays County Community Emergency Response Team, CERT, is comprised of almost exclusively of volunteers from our local communities, with specific training and first aid, mass care, and sheltering, traffic, first responder rehab, and crowd management. And whereas search service includes involvement with the Dripping Springs Founders Day, Sights and Sounds of Christmas, Buda Wiener Dog Races, Kyle Fair, Wembley Market Days, veterans parades throughout the county, Fourth of July festivities, health fairs, Kyle Fires 5K benefit run, Juneteenth celebrations, community parades, numerous wildfires, floods, winter storms, pandemics, and the annual Hays County Emergency Preparedness Fair. Therefore, be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court recognizes September 20th through the 26th, 2026 as National Cert Week. Hayes County and expresses his acknowledgement and appreciation of the effort of our community volunteers to the regular function and continued assistance of the CERT adopted this 15th day of September 2026.

Absolutely right. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith.

I just want to make sure this what you read is that what's in the backup? I think it's different because I had a couple of a Challenges I had a couple of changes to the one that was in backup or just some typos and such No, don't reread it what part did you want to go over the last paragraph the last two paragraphs It's the same it's the same okay the paragraph just before that And also it If nobody has a problem with it, our CERT teams have done an amazing job the last two years in helping our elections department. I just want to be sure and say thank you for the help and assistance that was provided at Ranch Park and at our other polling location. I might like to add a couple of words in there specifically about their assistance for elections. And then there's also no punctuation at the end of that paragraph. So maybe a period or a actually, I think, a period missing.

And you were asking to add thanks for supporting elections. Correct. The list of things that cert does is so robust. I agree.

I just think this is important. They've shown up at almost every polling location.

They show up to everything. They are that amazing. So. He's asking to add that to it. Are you guys okay with that? Okay, so we won't be able to sign that and have to run a new one That's fine. So additional comments anyone else Thank you for everything that y'all do very appreciated. Sorry, my voice is like Please call the roll Commissioner Smith.

Yes, Commissioner Cohen. Yes, Commissioner hammer.

Yes, I

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Resoundingly yes. An amazing, magnificent organization with a magnificent team of people backing it up. Who would like to speak on this? Mike?

Mike Jones, Office of Emergency Services Director. I want to say a few things. Thank you for bringing that up, Commissioner Smith. We have 400 certain members as explained in that proclamation. Beginnings of this CERT was Wembley Valley CERT, and it turned into the Hays County CERT because of the need for a county for an organization that can come to the needs of others, whether it be first responders or citizens and residents. We have a very talented and highly group of educated people in this CERT team. Editors from newspapers, IT finance sector, attorneys, pastors, physicians, West Point. Heck, we even have our own Annapolis submarine officer. Yes. A lot of work and effort goes into this organization. And the two people that are responsible for making this really occur is Kenny Loney, who's a program manager, program director, and also Casey Lee, who just came on board as a special operations and also cert manager. I'd like to bring those two up here along for cert team to address what we're going to make. Come on up.

Come up to the podium.

Good morning. This past week was a perfect example of what our team is capable of and what they do. We celebrated our preparedness fair, as you all know, on Saturday. The entire day before that, we spent in preparation. We had over 80 volunteers between those two days. Prior to that, on Friday morning before coming out to set up, They were at the 911 Memorial supporting our first responders with rehab. They were immediately following that with going to support AMVETS at the memorial service for first aid. And then let's go back one more day on Thursday, the entire afternoon and evening, they were out with the wildfire in Wimberley and supporting our first responders with rehab. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, very long weekend, and they were still there. I can't thank them enough.

Our CERT team are first and foremost force multipliers for our first responders. And we get numerous comments from our fire department, our sheriff's department, saying how they could not do their job without our CERT members. And as was mentioned, there are 400 CERT members across the county They are, with the exception of myself and Candy, they are all volunteers. They do this because they care about the community and we thank them heavily. We cannot thank them enough.

We do have training coming up in the next few months. Stay aware of that because it is open to all of the public.

Recruit good job. Good job. Okay, so We can take this picture now for this agenda item. We've already called the roll did we not so let's come on up for a picture

I think it's called .

Thank you, although it's not signed Thank you all very much, but we will continue later

F3, adopt a proclamation recognizing the third Tuesday of September 2026 as National IT Professionals Day. So moved. Second. All right, if you'll read it.

Whereas, information technology professionals play a vital role in supporting the operations, services, and infrastructure of our local government and community. Whereas, IT professionals are responsible for maintaining reliable technology systems, protecting sensitive information, supporting cybersecurity, enabling digital services, and helping organizations adapt to an increasingly technology-driven world. Whereas IT professionals contribute to the continued improvement of government services through innovation, digital transformation, cybersecurity, data management, technical support, and the responsible implementation of emerging technologies. Whereas in an increasingly connected world, a secure and resilient technology infrastructure is essential to the continuity of government operations, emergency preparedness, public safety, economic development, and effective service to our community. Whereas National IT Professionals Day provides an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the individuals who keep our technology functioning, our information protected, our services accessible, and our community connected. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Hays County Commissioner's Court does hereby proclaim annually the third Tuesday of September as National IT Professionals Day, adopted this 15th day of September, 2026.

All right. Any comments or questions on that one? Commissioner Smith, no? So that said, annually, no one caught that. Are we putting that in perpetuity? I don't have a problem with it. I just wanted you to know it's different from the norm. Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Judge Posada?

Yes. And who do we have here to speak on this one? No problem. We'll wait. Take your time. Come on over. State your name and title for the viewing public.

Morning commissioners, judge, Chris Levi, the it director for Hayes County. Just want to appreciate, show some appreciation for the staff. Um, one of the things that I like to say is that a lot of times you don't recognize the work that they do. You open up your email, you get it, you make a phone call, somebody answers, you get on the internet, you have access. And those are the things that, um, we're made to do. And our job is to support the County employees. and I believe that we do it at the best level that he possibly can. Our goal is to continue growing and becoming the best IT department in not only the county, but in the state of Texas and the world. So thank you for appreciating us.

Thank you. Commissioner, any questions, comments?

Judge, I just want to also thank Chris and the entire team. We have an awesome team that does so much for our county. I don't know that we even realize the amount of work that they do. on a daily basis, and there's a lot of late phone calls, a lot of weekend call outs, and I just really want to say thank you and appreciate every one of you.

Yeah, I just want to echo Commissioner Inglesby's comments and the support that you give our elections office every year. I know y'all are tight around election season, but yeah, it's a job that nobody knows what goes on behind the scenes until you're right, until you can't log on to something or password doesn't work, or all those things that we take for granted, I think, on a daily basis. But thank you so much for you and your team, for everything y'all do behind the scenes. And we sure have.

Yeah, I feel like y'all don't get a whole lot of, like, thanks for letting my email work today. Thanks for making sure that nothing went wrong today. You get a lot of, hey, everything is on fire. I need it fixed, like ASAP. So it's definitely sometimes a thankless job, but we very much appreciate it, and it's extremely needed. And so every single thing that y'all do, it's It means the world to all of us. Thank you.

I would just say much to what my colleagues said relative to you never need a fireman until your house is on fire. You never need a police officer until you get robbed. But you don't realize that they're protecting you every day from those issues. You all do the same thing. Our every employee in our county whether it's our transportation department doing or whether it's our IT or Elections Department during election to functionally operate it takes y'all and I don't think they're y'all get that that pat on the back on a regular basis So I'm glad that we're doing something to recognize that but just know you're appreciated I didn't say this much. This would be the first time is this the first time we've recognized this week and I think it may be. I don't know that we've ever done it. And I'm sorry for that. This is my last time being here for it. But I certainly do hope that we continue to do this in the future. And even though he's not here, I'd hate to forget to give a shout out to Jeff McGill for his leadership of that organization for so long and all the things that he's done for our county.

And in the spirit of technology, copy-paste. Let's come on up. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There you go. Good. I'm going to go on to God. How are you guys going to position yourself?

Everybody turn sideways. There you go. Okay. You're right here. One, two, three. One, two, three. There you go. We'll give it to you.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. You made it.

Good job.

Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job.

Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job.

Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job.

Good job. Good job. Please open F4.

F4, presentation by the Hays County Office of Emergency Services to include a recap of the 2026 Preparedness Fair and to announce the winning department for the best overall basket in the employee raffle basket contest.

All right, Mike, all yours.

Mike Jones, Office of Emergency Services Director. We had quite the fair. I'd like to throw it out there. Thank you very much. Getting us to this fair point, where we were. We started in the Performing Arts Center years ago, nine years ago, and just Performing Arts Center only. And we've grown to this big, massive footprint out there in La Verde Park and Kyle. And thank you to Kyle City for allowing us to have that footprint without permit fees and things that go along with that. I also want to thank the City of Kyle for bringing out their Parks and Rec folks and utilities to help us put up the banner. and put up several things out there that are necessarily needed, as well as a special consideration to our transportation department, because when the Kyle's bucket failed, our transportation department came through with another bucket. Thank you so much, Aaron. Appreciate that, sir. You and Jesse and your team. And not only did they come put it up, but they also came out and took it down. That was fun, too. But anyway, the sponsors that we brought in for this, there's a great community to love here. Otherwise, we wouldn't have these kind of sponsors. Ascension Seton Dell Children's. They came in as our presenting sponsor. Then we had CommuniCare, was our music sponsor. That's why we had music. Our command partner was Ally Medical. They did a fantastic job as well as working the crowd during the day. And then, of course, the top Dog Chili sponsor was Lasima. Our preparedness sponsor was Mission Golf Carts. We could not have done anything without Mission Golf Carts. They were tremendous there. Community Champions was Waterloo Power and Brigade Fire Solutions. And then, of course, our music was possible thanks to Nomad Music. And I mention them because even though we paid them, they gave us a tremendous discount. They gave us the friends and family discount, I might add. Trusted X Brewery was our adult zone sponsor. Duty Calls, our bathroom sponsor. They've been a fantastic sponsor for the last two years. Aqua, Viaduct Water. Ice came from the Beauty Lions Club. There you are, Judge. And then, of course, Go Bags from Sam Marcus Premium Outlets and Tents. were provided by the Emergency Management Response, EMR, out of Schertz. Our cooling tent was provided by the Capital Area Regional Advisory Council, also known as CADRAC. And then the trophies for the Tilly Dog cook-off were provided by the Firelight Laser Company out of Buda. This doesn't happen with one person. It takes an entire team. As a matter of fact, my team will probably tell you it takes an army. But they do the work of an army. And those individuals, Candy Loney, You met her a while ago. She's our planner. Casey Lee's our special operations coordinator. Will Bauman is our GIS specialist who puts together our maps and also managed the auction and raffle items. And then, of course, Kristen Jones who put all the administration together to make this happen, plus she was a stage manager. Then we had Saul Barrera out there, one of our fire marshals, deputies. He was giving out nice or giving out literature to talk about defensible space with wildfires. And he went through everything. He came back with nothing left. So, Natalie Frails, thanks to her, we have a lot of good photographs. Also, we have a lot of good photographs from Sophia Fitterer. I didn't know that Sophia had some movies in there, but this is why we had the interruption while ago. So, sorry about that. Kim Hilsenbeck, also helped us with the promotions online. And T.J. Browder, our assistant director. I don't get a chance to recognize these folks publicly, so I'll take advantage of this time now to do so. And, of course, our CERT members. Over 80 CERT members from Friday and Saturday together were out there, and they made this possible. And every time I talk about Preparedness Fair, I get the looks from the crew that says, God, again. I deserve those looks. But they deserve the appreciation from this court and from this community because they do everything they can to make sure that we put up a preparedness message so everybody in our community will be prepared for any disaster that comes their direction. And as a result of this, A fantastic thank you to all the departments that submitted raffle baskets for this event. Auditor's Office, Fertility Management, IT, Commissioner Hammer, the Hays County Health Department, Transportation, and of course our office too. We participate at OES. Now you're probably wondering who won the baskets.

Tell me the auditor won again.

I don't have a drum roll. For that finance section from Hayes County, yes, sir, of the auditor's office. In addition to that, they had the most tickets. The most what? The most tickets. Okay, okay. So the most tickets, we have a prize for the most tickets. It comes from Tony C's Pizza. It's a pizza party for the team. And that is a $150... card for your pizza party to go out and celebrate with your team all right can you accept that okay i also have um we also also said this year we're going to have another prize for tickets as well so the second most tickets you're going to probably think this is rigged but it was always yes I'll say to the director, come up and grab that one. And Mayor Salviato, come grab your trophy and say a few things for thank yous.

How about instead of come grab your trophy, let's all come up here to take a picture with the trophy. Okay, sir. Let's do it that way. Come on up here, Marisol, superstar. Congratulations. Congratulations, everyone.

Matthew, I see that fire burning. You ready for next year?

Come on up, guys. Let's provide this picture.

Oh, I guess we're going to have people in the middle of this.

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

Beautiful. Well done. Congratulations.

Well done. Congratulations.

Do they need a stamp deck?

So, please open K-9.

K9, discussion and possible action to authorize the acceptance of the Office of the Governor Juvenile Justice and Youth Diversion Grant Program in the amount of $88,692.74 for the grant period of September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2027 and create one full-time equivalent grant-funded high-risk juvenile probation officer position. Grade 121 within the Juvenile Probation Department effective September 15, 2026 and amend the budget accordingly. So moved. Second.

All right. Please approach the podium and name and title.

Judge, my name is Landon Campbell. I'm the Division Chief of the District Attorney's Office over our Misdemeanor and Specialty Projects Division. I'm joined by Lisa Day.

Hi, Lisa Day, Chief Juvenile Probation.

We are both approaching the court. We're really happy. This is one of our great days when we've got accepted grant money to receive. This is a joint project of our office and the juvenile probation office. Y'all have heard numerous times throughout the year about the surge and complexity in juvenile crime that is occurring in our county. This position was sought earlier this year and accepted now by the Office of the Governor to recognize the increase in complexity in high-risk juvenile crime. I'm really happy that we've gotten this grant. I'm asking the court to accept it. I just want to take this opportunity to speak for Lisa and myself to shout out the amazing juvenile probation officers that we've already got working on these projects, our juvenile prosecutor, our juvenile legal assistant, Yesterday, in the middle of an extremely busy Monday where we had dockets, a jury being selected, we ended up taking time to spend two hours out at the juvenile detention facility to deal with one case with a very, very severe mix of mental health and substance abuse issues. IN A YOUNGER JUVENILE. THESE ARE INTENSE ISSUES. I'M SO GLAD IT'S BEING RECOGNIZED BY US BEING ABLE TO SECURE THESE GRANTS BY OUR AMAZING, HARD-WORKING JUVENILE PROBATION OFFICE. AND I KNOW THAT YOU ALL ARE SUPPORTING US AND I JUST ASK FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH.

BEAUTIFUL. COMMISSIONER SMITH, ANYONE ELSE?

AND JUDGE, THIS WILL FUND A FULL-TIME HIGH-RISK JUVENILE PROBATION OFFICER WHICH INCLUDES TRAVEL AND EQUIPMENT.

BEAUTIFULLY DONE. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you're doing. We all benefit from that effort. Please call the roll.

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

Yes. There you are. Thank you. Please open. I saw you come in, so let's go with K-5.

K-5, discussion and possible action to approve a license agreement with the Council for the Indigenous and the Hanoi Community, CITC, to make use of space at the Hays County Historic Courthouse to operate a historic museum exhibit titled The Past Within Us.

So moved. Second.

Commissioner, any questions or comments?

No, it's just accepting the license agreement for their panel.

All right. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith.

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer?

Yes.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. Thank you. On you go. Keep growing. I move that we open all consent agenda items.

Second.

Any questions for comment on any of them?

Let's see. I have just a quick question for Tammy Crumley, Judge. On item number 15, I know that we're asking you to repair this freezer for $18,775.86. What is the cost of a new freezer? Have we had issues with this previously? And are we just putting money into something that we should maybe consider buying new?

This is at the juvenile detention center, so I'm not familiar with it.

Stephanie, will you approach the podium?

Stephanie Hunt, purchasing agent. So the juvenile detention center director, Joelle, reached out regarding the freezer. They've had issues in the past where the transition transitions around the door, and they've had it repaired in the past, and it has a leak. Right there, the flooring is kind of falling apart right there, so they are having that come in and get fixed to where it shouldn't need any more repairs, but hopefully it'll fix it. But we did not look at what it would cost to replace the entire freezer.

So, Commissioner Inglesby, based on your question, I ask that we table this item and bring it back to court so we can get a replacement comparison.

I'm happy to do that unless I don't know what that's going to cause. If they're not able to utilize it at all, are we getting spoiled food?

So they were able to move food over to the jail that needs to be in the freezer. So that's currently what they're using because it is not working properly. It's not working at all right now.

Can we maybe look into this today? I can look into it while we're here. Why don't we do that? We'll pull this one out.

Let's table this one item.

And what else? That's the only one I made a note on as well because I know we bought walk-in freezers for less than that.

That's right. We all agree on that one. Thank you for speaking of it. So we're going to not include in the vote. We're tabling 15 Please call the roll for the rest.

Commissioner Cohen.

I'm recusing myself from G1 due to my stepfather working at Quiddity and yes to everything else.

Commissioner Hammer.

Yes.

Commissioner Inglesby. Yes. Commissioner Smith.

Yes.

Judge Becerra.

Yes. So please open J1, J2.

J1, PLN 3030-PC. Hold a public hearing regarding the Rolling Oaks Section 4, Lot 14. lot 141A and part of 64 replat. J2, PLN-2986-PC, hold a public hearing regarding the Roach subdivision, lots 1 and 2 replat. So moved.

I'm opening this agenda item for a public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak? Both of these items are open. Anyone wishing to speak for or against these agenda items, please approach the podium. I see no movement. I will close the public hearing. All right. Commissioners, anything? Let's go then. Let's open I-1.

I-1, hold a public hearing establishing a no parking zone along Sunrise Drive and Sunrise Court.

I am opening this agenda item for a public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak for or against this agenda item, please approach the podium. I SEE NO MOVEMENT. I WILL CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING.

I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION THAT WE ESTABLISH THE NO PARKING ZONES ALONG SUNRISE DRIVE AND SUN RICE CIRCLE, WE'VE HAD MANY RESIDENTS CALL WITH SAFETY CONCERNS, BASICALLY. THERE'S JUST A LOT OF PEOPLE PARKING ALONG THOSE SIDES OF THE ROADS, AND THEY'RE BLOCKING DRIVEWAYS, AND SO WE FELT, AND THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE FELT IT MIGHT BE PRUDENT TO GO AHEAD AND ESTABLISH THESE. PERFECT. NO PARKING.

SECOND. PLEASE CALL THE ROLL.

COMMISSIONER INGLESBY? YES. COMMISSIONER SMITH?

YES.

COMMISSIONER COHEN? YES. COMMISSIONER HAMMER? YES. JUDGE MACETTA?

YES. PLEASE OPEN EYE TWO AND THREE.

I2, discussion and possible action to consider the release of the three-year maintenance bond number 800155699 in the amount of $121,454.95 and the acceptance of roads into the county road maintenance system for Anthem subdivision phase 4A. I3, discussion and possible action to consider the release of maintenance bond number 2331900 in the amount of $84,007.93. Release of revegetation bond number 2331900 in the amount of $14,176.89 and accept the roads into the county road maintenance system for the Prairie Lake subdivision phase one, section two. So moved. Second.

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith.

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen?

Yes.

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

Yes. Aye. Four.

I for discussion of possible action to authorize the execution of contract amendment number one to the contract for the right-of-way acquisition services 2026-PSA-32 between Hays County and LJA Engineering Inc. for the Centerpoint Road project in Precinct 3 to increase the compensation cap by $24,700, 12% increase for the execution of supplemental work authorization number one, which adds appraisal reviews to the right-of-way scope.

Looking for a motion. Second. So moved. Okay, we got a motion and a second. Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Judge Vassetta? Yes.

Aye. Five.

Aye. Five. Discussion and possible action to approve amendment number one, terminating the existing advanced funding agreement, AFA, by and between the state of Texas, acting by and through the Texas Department of Transportation, TxDOT, and Hayes County for the roundabout intersection at RM-12 and RM-150 project.

So moved.

Second.

This is just an update. The original AFA adopted in May lacked a couple of things in it. And so this is an update of that, bringing in the specific items that TxDOT has requested. There's no change in cost and no change in scope.

What did they request for the viewing public?

Sure. Actually, it's in the backup. Let me pull it up.

But they don't have access to it.

Sure. Let me pull it up real quick. On May 12th, the Commissioner's Court considered the AFA for an updated Amendment 1 for 150 and 12 project and associated resolution. Following a partial execution of Amendment 1, TxDOT identified that the amendment template that was provided did not include project-specific language that has since been provided in a revised amendment for execution. Approval of the AFA Amendment 1 is requested to incorporate the required language to ensure consistency with updated TxDOT requirements.

Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. Open I-6 and 7.

I6, discussion and possible action to authorize the execution of a contract for engineering services. 2026-PSA-46, between Hayes County and BGE Inc. to provide engineering services for the William Peters Road Project in Precinct 1 and amend the budget accordingly. I7, discussion and possible action to authorize the execution of a contract for engineering services. 2026-PSA-49 between Hayes County and BGE Inc. to provide utility coordination services for the Goforth Road project, Cottingen Road to West of Beebe Road in Precinct 1. So moved. Second.

Commissioner?

Judge, both of these were selected back in November, and this is the negotiated contract that's coming back for consideration.

Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

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

Yes. K-1, please.

K-1, discussion and possible action to approve the assessment and collection agreement with River Bridge PID Public Improvement District. So moved. Second.

Judge, the City of San Marcos has requested our tax assessor to collect the PID taxes, and so this is at their request.

Perfect. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

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

Yes. K2.

K2. Discussion on possible action to update the Hayes County Parks fee schedule and hours of operation effective October 1st, 2026. So moved. Second.

Carl Flocky, Director of Parks and Natural Resources. What we're looking here is an approval of our fee schedule and hour structure for the next fiscal year. Notable changes within this. There are no changes to our fee and hours of the Dalston Preserve. We are looking at updating our fee for swimming reservations at Jacobs Well, should those occur next year, if there is enough water. That would be an increase of the general fee structure from a base reservation fee of $9 to $12, and the reduced price reservation fee that would apply to children, seniors, service members, or Hayes County residents from $5 to $9.

And Carl, do you have an edit in there where you can reduce the fee when there is reduced water? I'm just kidding.

It would be 100% reduction, right, when there is no swimming course. This would be the first fee increase ever at Jacobs Wall, we believe. And then we also establish our hours for Sentinel Peak Preserve once that is open from 8.30 to 4.30 daily. with a fee structure during peak swimming season of $12 for adults, $9 for all others, and during off-season when swimming is less likely for $8 for adults, $6 for all others. Other notable changes for the first time, we are opening our parks on New Year's Day and Easter. Those are big outdoor days where people want to get outside and recreate, and we want to make sure we're offering that.

Perfect. Well done. Commissioners, any questions or comments? Good job. Good job. Keep up the good work. Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Judge Rosetta?

Yes. K-3.

K-3. Discussion on possible action to grant the Director of Development Services or their designee the authority to waive the outside tax liabilities requirement and associated documentation set forth in the Hays County Development Regulations up to and UP TO AND UNTIL OCTOBER 27, 2026. SO MOVED. SECOND.

COMMISSIONER NICOLE, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT THIS?

CHASE, CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?

GOOD MORNING, COURT. CHASE YOUNG, ASSISTANT CRIMINAL DISTRICT ATTORNEY WITH THE CIVIL DIVISION. THE TAX CESSAR COLLECTOR OFFICE IS UPDATING A MUCH-NEEDED ELECTRONIC SYSTEM, BUT THAT MEANS THERE'S GOING TO BE A PERIOD until about mid-October, where tax certificate liabilities aren't able to be issued to the general public. And so one of our rules and the regulations that we have in order to be a technically complete application, whenever a plan is filed with the county, right, for review through development services, is that tax certificate liability. And so in order to keep the process moving at this point, so we don't accidentally hold up something that we're not allowed to, we're asking for a temporary waiver. Now, I do want to make sure that there's a distinction here. There is a portion of the property code, 12.002 subsection E, that says that a PLAT cannot be filed with the county clerk until such liability is attached to it. That is not what we're asking you to waive at this point. This is our internal regulatory authority under 232 Local Government Code Subchapter E that gives us the ability to kind of control those, like the county's requirements for what is required for complete application.

So the way the agenda item is written, it gives me the illusion that it is impression that it is a Precinct 2 thing, but this is a countywide thing.

This is a countywide thing. We managed to find... out about this ahead of the thing and Commissioner Cohen was the first one to answer her phone.

In typically or in a real logistic sense, the problem that we have is that we still have to, no matter whether or not we're updating our tax software or not, we still have to hit that 30-day shot clock. And we can do that internally. We just can't file the final plat with the clerk's office until we have assured that they paid those taxes. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Judge Rossetta?

Yes. K-4.

K-4. Discussion on possible action to authorize the reimbursement to the county clerk's office for consumables purchased for a full staff training on August 21, 2026 and amend the budget accordingly. So moved. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any questions? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

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

Yes. And I think we've already done K-5, so let's move on to K-6. I've been asked to table K-6, so let's go to K-7.

K-7, discussion on possible action to authorize the submission of a grant application to the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board, Fiscal Year 2027 Clean Water Act, Texas Nonpoint Source Management Program in the amount of $400,000. So moved.

All right. This is basically a grant that's going to help us with our Clean River Act, and it's going to be spanned on FY27 and FY28 with a 40% match and then a 60% match from Texas State, totaling to about $153,000.

Beautiful. Does she leave you anything else to say? I don't think so. Sorry, Carl. You did well. Well done. Commissioner, well done. Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Judge Becerra?

Yes. I always like to give a quick summary for the viewing public. And people don't have the agenda in front of them online or people don't have the backup online. So just an overview is really wonderful and I appreciate it. And I know the people watching do as well. Please open K-8.

K-8, discussion and possible action to authorize the acceptance of grant funds and the execution of an agreement between Hays County, Great Springs Project, Inc., and the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, CAMPO, to complete the priority multi-use connectivity study in the amount of $459,680. $80,000. So moved.

Beautifully done.

This grant will help us with trail connectivity within Hays County. It requires us to have a 10% match, which will be around $43,000 with a 10% match from Great Springs Project, which is about $43,000, and then 80% with Campo.

Beautiful. Please call the roll.

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

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Judge Wissetta?

Yes. K-10.

K-10, discussion and possible action to execute a first amendment to the RFP 2026-P11 Promotional Testing Services Sheriff's Office contract between Hays County and IO Solutions, reducing the overall contract by $53,617, 16%. So moved. Second.

Judge, we're reducing the cost for the, wait, we're reducing the prevention cost as one video will cover the necessary needs and then also removing the assessor expense as the SO will cover these costs.

So it's a call to our general. Great. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen?

Yes.

Commissioner Hammer? Yes. Judge Aceta?

Yes. K-11, please.

K-11, discussion and possible action to approve the FY27 Hays County civilian salary chart and FY27 market adjustment and base pay procedures, including phase implementation and market adjustments effective October 1st, 2026 and April 1st, 2027. Authorize the payroll office IN COORDINATION WITH HUMAN RESOURCES TO ESTABLISH NECESSARY JOB CODES AND UPDATE JOB TITLES ASSOCIATED WITH EXISTING JOB CODES CONSISTENT WITH THE APPROVED FY27 CIVILIAN SALARY CHART.

SO MOVED.

SECOND.

WE HAVE SOMEONE SIGNED UP TO SPEAK. IF YOU WILL TAKE OVER, COUNTY CLERK'S OFFICE.

CYNTHIA MALONZI.

HELLO, COLONEL. I'LL NEVER TIRE OF SAYING THAT.

GOOD MORNING, JUDGE. I'm Cynthia Malonzi, the Assistant County Clerk. Judge and Commissioners, I'm here in support of adopting and funding the proposed County Compensation Plan as presented. I wanted to address one of the arguments being made against this plan, that the benchmark employers selected for the study were not the right employers and therefore the methodology is flawed. That argument deserves some perspective. Compensation benchmarking is a professional discipline. The purpose of a benchmark study is not to find employers that are identical to Hays County. There are no perfect comparators. The purpose is to establish reasonable, defensible market using consistently applied criteria and compensation data. That is exactly why I'm concerned about changing the methodology at the 11th hour to accommodate a relatively small number of positions. If the methodology was professionally established, consistently applied, and used to evaluate the county's positions, we should not change the rules after seeing the results simply because some of the results are uncomfortable. That isn't correcting inequity, that's creating a different inequity. In fact, my own position has been used as an example of why the study is supposedly flawed. So I did something very simple. I conducted my own benchmark. I looked at only large Texas counties with a comparable second in command position to the elected official. Someone who provides leadership, supports the elected official, and acts in the elected official stead when necessary. My independent benchmark did not disprove the county's finding. It actually supported it. It confirmed that my position is 31% below market, and my independent benchmark supported compensation higher than what the county's study recommends. Yet I'm still standing here supporting the county's study. Why? Because this cannot be about any one position, including the position that I currently hold. It has to be about establishing a sound compensation structure for the county as a whole. No compensation plan is perfect. There will still be inequities after we adopt this plan. There will still be some compression, but there will be fewer inequities and less compression than we have today. And most importantly, we will have a much stronger baseline from which to make future corrections. We need to make a significant course correction in how Hays County positions itself in the labor market. We have an HR professional who has the education, experience, and professional credentials to lead the work, and he has a whole bunch of initials behind his name that support that. They represent professional expertise in human resources and compensation. None of us should expect a compensation study to be perfect, but we should expect it to be professionally developed, consistently applied, and based on a defensible methodology. And we should be very cautious about allowing individual disagreements with individual outcomes to drive changes to that methodology because there is real risk in changing the plan. There is risk that we continue to lose ground in the labor market, risk of continued recruitment and retention problems, and risk of perpetuating the variant equities the study was intended to address. And there's another risk, telling our employees that we commissioned a study identified a significant market problem, and then chose not to act because fixing everything perfectly was too difficult or too expensive. I'll end there. I'm asking that you please support and fund the market study. Thank you.

Thank you, Colonel. Appreciate it.

Two emailed.

And now we have two emailed.

First one is from Elaine H. Gavinez. She writes, once again, I want to express my support for the salary plan and market adjustments the Hays County Human Resource Director, Eric Ranhenel, has proposed and to encourage the Commissioner's Court to adopt it without changes. Eric is a professional who has applied his technical knowledge and experience to the design and completion of the study and to the development of appropriate recommendations based on the results. I understand there are concerns and some of the outlier salaries appear to be skewed and I have heard suggestions that the methodology should Therefore, be adjusted. As a professional researcher with 30 or more years leading complex federal research projects, I can assure you that methodology is not screwed. The counties selected and approved for the study represent the appropriate cross-section of Texas counties and current market conditions related to specific positions. There are always outliers. The methodology is fair and has yielded a balanced statistical sound result. Please do not tweak it. Focusing on individual positions will scoot the results and lead to problems in the future. In validating the entire process, I urge you to support Eric and Unhandle's work. He knows what he's doing. Next one is from Ann Medina. In Kyle, she writes, my name is Ann Medina. I'm a Hays County resident, and I have proudly been employed by Hays County for six and a half years. I'm writing today to urge the court to adopt the proposed county compensation plan as presented. During my six years with Hays County, I have witnessed firsthand the repercussions of below market compensation. Our county offers great benefits and paid holidays, which are valuable selling points when it comes to recruiting employees. In fact, these benefits can be enough to convince people to overlook the below market pay for a time. But eventually reality sets in and employees realize that great benefits alone do not pay the bills. They are then forced to leave for better paying opportunities. When an employee leaves Hays County, they take their knowledge, experience, and skills with them. The impact does not stop that employee. It affects the residents we serve. At our current pay levels, it can be difficult for a single-income household and even a dual-income household to make working for the county financially sustainable. And it is ultimately your constituents who feel the consequences. We have had to close offices because of high turnover. Lines become longer and processes take longer. when we cannot retain experienced employees, the quality and efficiency of the services we provide to our community suffer. I understand the court's responsibility to carefully consider the budget, and as a fellow taxpayer, I respect the meticulous review that goes into these decisions. But I urge you to do what is needed to adopt the compensation plan as presented. Hays County employees are also Hays County residents. We should not have to choose between serving our community and being able to put food on the table. Everywhere we look, the cost of living continues to rise, and it can feel helpless to know what we can do about it. But in this case, you can make a difference. I ask you to help your fellow Hays County residents and coworkers vote to approve the compensation plan for Hays County employees and bring our county's compensation up to market. Thank you.

And that was it you said? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. All right. So, Eric, all yours, my friend. We do have a presentation, Judge.

Good morning, court members. Eric Nanheno, Human Resources Director. All right, so we wanted to talk about how the market sources were determined just as a refresher. for the viewing public and the court members. So we did start off with 25 potential comparable organizations based on the geographic proximity, population size, operating budget, regional labor competition, and representation of both the San Antonio and Austin metropolitan areas. The five strongest comparable markets were City of New Braunfels, City of Cedar Park, the City of San Marcos, Comal County, and Guadalupe County. Other regional employers were included based on their proximity to Hays County and their relevance as realistic competitors for talent. Travis, Bear, Bastrop, Kendall, Caldwell, Blanco, Medina, and Williamson County were included because they are generally within approximately 75-minute drives from San Marcos, representing markets where Hays County could reasonably lose employees to or attract qualified candidates from. The City of Buda and Kyle were also included because they are located within Hays County and we directly compete for talent within the same labor market. On September 16th, 2025, Hayes County Commissioner's Court unanimously adopted 15 total market sources to conduct market analysis for 100% of the civilian positions. How the results were delivered, so HR intentionally maintained centralized oversight of the market analysis to ensure consistent, equitable, and fiscally responsible implementation. Baseline results were determined following consistent study methods to avoid potential biases amongst departments. During the final implementation stages of the MAG study, department heads were provided discretion in determining employee placement within the step plan. This resulted in some employees being placed at steps that did not align with their years of county service, creating internal equity concerns, and in some cases, devaluing employee tenure. Reintroducing department-level input or discretion at this stage of the current market study could reopen similar inequities. Maintaining a consistent, centrally administered placement methodology ensures that employees are treated uniformly and that years of service are recognized consistently across departments. The market study was presented post-financial review to determine financial impact and feasibility options. Department heads who have contacted HR regarding the department's market results have been provided with a high-level overview and have requested the detailed market results for their department. As previously communicated, department concerns will be reviewed and addressed holistically in FY27 for recommendations to be brought back to the court in FY27. So how to avoid inequities? Limiting market adjustments to employees earning a specific salary or placing a dollar cap on adjustments would exacerbate salary inequities. The study evaluated positions using direct job title matches, organizational structure, and or comparison of job duties and responsibilities based on job descriptions provided by the approved market sources. The most equitable approach to implementing the market study is to maintain each employee's current step when transitioning to the new pay grade. This approach consistently recognizes and preserves the value of each employee's existing tenure with the county. A market adjustment cap can create compression between pay grades and unintentionally erode an employee's years of service. For example, If an employee's placement at their current step in the new pay grade results in a 20% market adjustment but increases are capped at 14%, the employee would lose 6% of the adjustment. Because each step represents a year of service at a 3% increase, that 6% reduction effectively eliminates the value of two steps or approximately two years of recognized service. A percentage or dollar cap, therefore, does more than limit the size of an increase. It can devalue an employee's tenure and undermine the study's equitable approach of preserving current set placement in the new salary structure. Where the market adjustment investment is going. So the proposed market adjustment directs a substantial majority of funding to employees earning less than $80,000. 68% of the total market adjustment investment is attributable to employees currently earning less than $80,000. 3.31 million of the approximate 4.84 million total investment would directly go to employees earning less than $80,000, Employees earning less than $80,000 also represent approximately 82% of all employees receiving a market adjustment, demonstrating that the proposal is already heavily weighted towards lower-paid employees. Capping adjustments for employees earning above $80,000 would produce relatively limited savings while creating new equity concerns. A cap could prevent employees from maintaining their current step in the new pay grade structure, again, potentially devaluing recognized years of service and creating compression between pay grades. So reasons for limited market matches. Out of 817 civilian FTEs, 24 FTEs falling under 17 positions, 17 positions were only matched to the three biggest market sources, Travis, Baird, and Williamson County. Of those 17 positions, 11 are below market and the other six are above market average. Specialized or higher level positions may not exist across all markets. Small counties and cities may have fewer organizational layers, combine responsibilities, or not provide certain services in-house. As a result, the positions in question may only have comparable positions in those larger counties. While this means the market average for these positions is more heavily influenced by larger county salaries, it also reflects competitive market in which the specialized positions exist, and the salaries Hayes County may need to compete to recruit and retain employees performing comparable work. At the court's direction, we did work with HR, audit, budget, and county administration to develop an alternative weighted methodology for those positions where the job matches were concentrated only in Bexar, Williamson, and Travis County. The methodology provided a greater percentage of the full market adjustment based on factors indicating a higher level of responsibility or job requirements. So those factors were position level and responsibility. So greater weight for higher level positions such as department heads. Educational requirements, greater weight for positions requiring advanced education such as a graduate or doctoral degree. Experience requirements, greater weight for positions requiring significant prior experience such as seven years or more. And then population of those market matches considers the population of the counties where valid comparable positions were identified for that position. So the higher the position scored across these factors, the greater the percentage of the full market adjustment was received under the weighted methodology. So the overall findings of the weighted approach. The weighted methodology would generate approximately 66,000 in estimated savings across these 24 affected FTEs compared with the original market methodology. the weighted approach does not consistently change the outcome. For several positions already at or above market, or where the calculated adjustment falls below the county's 3% minimum, the employee's actual adjustment would remain essentially unchanged. For positions that are below market, the weighting can leave employees below the market average identified by the study, even though the available matches represent the markets where comparable positions actually exist. And in some cases, the weighted calculation also creates great placement or internal equity concerns requiring additional adjustments and reducing the practical benefit of the alternative methodology. The approach would also establish a different compensation methodology for 24 FTEs based on primarily where their valid market matches were found, rather than applying the same market methodology used for the remainder of the civilian workforce. So the key takeaways. The market competitiveness directly affects county operations. Below-market compensation impacts recruitment, retention, institutional knowledge, workload, and the county's ability to consistently deliver quality services. Consistency and equity should guide implementation. Applying the same objective market methodology across the workforce preserves employee tenure and avoids inequities that can result from salary thresholds, caps, or different methodologies for select employees. This study focused on external market competitiveness. FY27 will focus on internal equity, including position relationships, compression, and organizational alignment. The proposed investment is already concentrated on lower-paid employees. Again, approximately $3.31 million of the $4.84 million would go to those employees currently earning less than $80,000. And then, of course, delaying or limiting market corrections does not eliminate the identified gaps it carries forward. So moving forward with the court-approved market sources and a consistent methodology addresses current market gaps and moves Hay County closer to becoming an employer of choice.

Beautiful. Thank you. Jordan, I want to ask you a question out of the gate. The agenda item has written. Do we have it where it is articulating that the court has said last time we spoke of this that there was a support for option two, which was staggered, 50% 10-1, 50% 4-1, which is that total of $4.84 million. Is that the way the agenda item is written so I know what we're voting on?

Jordan Powell, Civil First Assistant. If I understand your question correctly, Judge, the way the agenda item is written would allow you to speak about that option or any other option that the court has previously discussed, or maybe there's an option that has come up in between. It would allow you to discuss any of those options, knowing that you guys have previously discussed one, but it's open to talk about the others.

Does that answer your question? And we can...

Formalize our vocal support from last week through this The way it's written Yes, I think it leaves I think it leaves it open for you to discuss any of those options knowing that y'all have previously kind of Lean towards one, but I think it leaves that that options open for you.

I just wanted to reiterate Commissioner Inglesby So judge, can I we just let the sponsoring?

Sure, whatever.

Well, I know we've had this conversation multiple times and we've actually voted on the adoption of option two. So at this point, unless there is a drafted amendment to not go with option two, it's pursuant to us to go ahead and adopt that and move forward with our budget. The budget as amended right now is 1.26 cents over our current tax rate. And we can adjust that today during our budget workshop at any time. However, we have to have, you know, I would just clarify to my colleagues that we are not amending the budget that was given to us a month and a half ago. In order to amend the budget as accepted, we've taken votes on every single amendment thus far. And so if there is adjustments to that, we just need amendments to which would address the changes that have already been made. And so if there's... If there is any additional conversation or discussion relative to the civilian salary survey that was done by our HR department, this would be the time for that. I really don't have any more discussion or questions. I think we've kind of covered it ad nauseum, and I'm supportive of the survey as written. Commissioner Cohen.

Same. I am supportive of this agenda item and what we've decided as a court. I think we've kind of talked this to death, but I'm ready to move forward with it.

So, Judge, I just felt that last week was really important to get some people together to talk about what some of those issues were. As Eric mentioned, it's a $66,000 savings overall, really not a whole lot of savings. regarding those. I mean, I appreciate the discussion and I'm hoping that, you know, we can maybe look past that and then on as we continue to move on, Eric, then maybe we maybe do things just a little bit different to ensure that we're looking at all of the positions equally and if there aren't matches, then, you know, we make some kind of determination. Did you have a comment?

Well, I was going to say yes, Commissioner, and we did expect some of these positions not to get full market matches, and in a traditional perfect benchmark study, you do choose the, there's only a position in each pay grade that's used as a sample position in the market, and the position that is chosen is one that you know is going to get 100% match or close to 100% match in the market. But because we did 100% of positions, there was likely going to be some that didn't have as strong matches. So I think in FY27, we focus on internal equity. Once that's been locked in, then we pick a position from each pay grade to then go back to the market and use that as a comparable position for that pay grade.

Thank you. Thank you. And then I would just say, Judge, I mean, you know, last week I made some comments regarding, you know, the process that we've used in years past and just feeling that it's time to move forward with a holistic approach to our employees.

Thank you. Commissioner Hammer.

I would have appreciated to know all of the, you just handed me 30 pages of information that I 100% cannot go through in 10 minutes. So my question is because we talked about that there's 46.5% of the 318 position blocks that do not have any large county representation. So how did you come up with what all of these pages came with? Where did you pull those positions from? What was your, I mean, I know that we went through a ton of different verbiage. I don't think anyone could have read all of that and understood what 100% was going on.

Yeah, so we worked with budget, county administration audit to go through the market raw data, and we went department by department looking for those positions that only had one or more of those three big county matches. So if there was three big matches but another small county, that wasn't included in this list that you just got. So it's only those positions that match within those three big counties.

So you didn't weight it based on them not having or having the smaller counties that you added to? Because I also think it's a little bit confusing. If you looked at the presentation, you said how we came up with those 13 comparables. when you look back at September 15th of 2025 and how we came up with those comparisons, we said, hey, here is the, is it SHW? SHRM, yes. Yeah, the SHRM and the World at Work data of 30 to 40% below and above budget and 30 and 40% below population, right? Correct. So you look at that data and how we came up with, I think it was five from what that, five came up with that. Yes, that sounds about right, yes. And then we added in the larger counties and then we added in the smaller counties to kind of offset each other. Exactly. So we were only looking at positions that had large county representation and we didn't care if they did or did not have small county representation is how you found these?

Well, I wouldn't say that we didn't care. I think it was a reflection of where there were matches. And I think, from my opinion, I think those are realistic or not realistic. It just shows where we're actually competing for positions, right? Where those larger counties actually have some of these positions. Chaplain, right? Not every county has a chaplain program. And so where else do you compare that to? And so I think it just shows the realistic... comparable of where we're actually competing for those talents.

And I completely understand how we're never going to have a perfect study. I get that. My biggest concerns are, I mean, the transportation department, that's a perfect example of something that across the counties, small, large, doesn't really matter. You're going to be able to find those comparables because we all do road work, right? I feel like when I looked at transportation, they had a lot of small counties that were pulling them in a direction, right? Not down necessarily, but They had a ton of small county representation and large county representation, which really gave a good picture of where they should be in the market. But I don't want them to get the brunt of not having an adjustment because the other people don't have small counties. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. But again, I think it shows that there were small counties that we had data for those positions. And it goes both ways, right? So we can attract candidates from Comal, Caldwell, Blanco in an area such as Hays because we are including that in our benchmark study versus some of those positions that are only benchmarking large counties. We're going to have to be fighting for those talents, right? So I think it just shows an accurate reflection of the market for that position.

And do you have the data on all of the county, like in terms of Travis and Williamson and Bexar County, how many positions we've lost? And by the way, court reporters is one of the worst examples you could have given. But do you have any other type of data that you can show me from that?

Not off the top of my hands, Commissioner.

Okay. Next time I really, because I feel like I was the one that dug the most into this study and understanding the numbers and the justification for it. And I truly want to support and be there and understand what is actually being derived from these numbers. So I would have appreciated to know these 30 plus pages of work that I'm sure is great. I just haven't been able to review.

Commissioner Smith. Yeah, I just, one of the things, and this is just, in the wayback machine back in 2022, 2023.

Did you say wayback machine?

That's right.

The wayback machine.

When we looked at the salary survey, the MAG study that was done, one of the things that Commissioner Schell and I looked at were actually taking our departments, department by department, and instead of doing an overall salary survey every four years, really putting our departments on a rotation, where we are looking at those departments maybe on a three-year schedule, but we don't get hit with these $4.5 to $6 million every four years that we have to come up with and gradually look at the number of employees we have on the civilian side. We have that rotation. When we look at the SO, we know every two years we're going to be looking at that, right? If we can do that, maybe not on a two-year basis, but a three-year basis, it would still prevent that compression. And it would also keep us more in line with market analysis. And I do believe that we can find a way to actually not just put it on a rotation, but do some forward planning for our budgeting, knowing the size and breadth of each of those departments. If we can divide up our civilian population generally into thirds, we can do it every third year. By department. I just it's a suggestion that we looked at because if we don't look at them over time We know that the gap gets larger and larger and then we have to play makeup but we really in the past we've never attempted to do this in-house and And so now that we have that ability, I think it's something that we as a court should really look at.

I think it's a wonderful idea, Commissioner. And so since we, as you said, have talked about this ad nauseum numerous times, and I've already felt the support publicly from the court members, Option 2, staggered, 50%, 10-1, 50%, 4-1, totaling 4.84. That's the motion on the table at this point in time.

And, Judge, I just have one clarifying comment. I believe the reason why we brought this back as well is that we need the court to approve the market adjustments and base pay procedures. And then also we need the court to tell us, I don't want to assume, none of the staff wants to assume, if you want us to go with the weighted option for those 27 positions or FTEs. 24, yeah. Thank you. 24 FTEs that were identified. Eric gave you a handout for his justification. for each of those different groups impacted. Do you want to go with his recommendation or do you want to do something different?

I want to follow Eric's professional advice. By that I mean all those letters that the Colonel said were behind your name. You're the expert in this lane more than any of us up here. And I want to follow his advice.

I would move for full adoption given the original salary survey information.

Second. So I'm just going to clarify. It's the option two for the viewing public. I don't know how many coworkers are watching. I want to make sure they understand it. I know. I get the texts. Option two, staggered, 50% 10-1, 50% 4-1. And we're adopting it as presented through the lens of our professional HR director.

Not including the weighted approach.

Correct. Not including the weighted.

Not including what he just recommended and gave to us.

And we have one more.

Yeah, I just wanted an awful disclosure. Um, so we did look at the weighted average and there was not a large difference, but we did only look at those that had what, not more than the three large counties. So there could have been like one that just had the two large counties or they had the three large counties. The $80,000 and below, you know, those adjustments need to be made. I know previously the court has made adjustments to individuals who are making more than $80,000. When you looked at department heads, you went and you placed them, you know, within certain steps. And so you have that option to do that. I just want you all to be aware, like my position, because I'm the second highest financial officer, it would be placed to be in the same step in the new grade is a $40,000 increase. that's more than the annual salary of the grade 110. So I just want that to be out in the open. Thank you.

And so, Eric, speak on that comment while we have the motion on the floor, just to continue the conversation, and then we're going to call the vote. Explain to the viewing public what that means, weighted, parse it out for the viewing public.

Yeah, so what it means is that auditor's position is in the market I don't have it in front of me.

And you don't have to use auditors. I'm just generalizing, if you don't mind. Sure. For the viewing public, what weighted means. What does this mean, including the weighted, not including the weighted?

Okay, so including the weighted would mean to not give as much weight to the full market adjustment that HR is recommending by that criteria that I presented, using that criteria as the guiding method towards seeing how much of that increase you will get. If you score higher on that criteria, you're going to get more of that full market adjustment. And so that If the court does decide to go with the weighted approach, then that is something that we developed that can hold some kind of structure in how we came up with that methodology. However, that is, again, limited savings, and I wouldn't recommend that as it's It's not treating people the same for limited savings. Now, regarding Marisol's comment, I think that what's happening here is the market has now valued that position at a different level. And so to value someone's years of service, we have to make sure that we're preserving their tenure, their step, in that new correct market average pay grade. So step one would essentially be hiring someone off the street, brand new, with no years of service, That step one is what the market value is for that position. Now, our current employees are not coming off the street. They have years of service with us, and so we want to preserve that tenure by putting them in the current step that they're on in the new pay grade that they're supposed to be in according to market.

And then the compression piece, by not following your direction, because this is going to be, it's coming out right now as not including the weighted recommendation. So tell us slowly here, because this is everybody involved, over a thousand people. Tell us what that means by not including it, the repercussions and the compression conversation.

Well, by not including the weighted approach. By not including the weighted approach, we're not going to face compression. If we did the weighted approach, There was some compression scenarios, but we internally adjusted those anyways, as we did with the regular analysis. And so those essentially that methodology didn't apply to those positions because we would have to manually adjust them anyways. So, for example, the senior juvenile probation officer, they were manually adjusted because if we did the weighted approach, they were going to fall in the same pay grade as a juvenile probation officer three. And so just as in the regular methodology approach, we manually adjusted that to alleviate that compression. We did the same for this weighted approach. So again, it's the weighted methodology really wasn't working for its intended purpose, which was not to give the full market adjustment towards that position.

So not including weighted does not undermine your work. And what else do you want to cover before we go on?

Can I say something? Sure. I want to just say I appreciate Marisol so much for saying that. We haven't ever given the positions, and nobody wants to come up and say, hey, I'm going to be making this much more. But her making $40,000 more with this study, she's not the highest one that's getting a jump. I just hope everyone understands that. I mean, there's a lot of positions that are getting $40,000, $30,000 pay increases that I just don't think we have done.

I don't think this is cooked enough to be able to vote on it, but I've been preaching to the abyss so whatever I Would I would also say I appreciate your comments however It's our employees job to follow the direction that we provide and in this scenario I We are choosing to look at our HR director and the expertise that he has there and not how, you know, at the end of the day, from a personal standpoint, I appreciate Marisol's comments, but I also know that at the end of the day, from her position as auditor, she's going to audit and make sure that everything that we do in the salary survey is correct. It's a policy decision that we are making related to how we are going to care for our employees.

If there's nothing else, please call the roll.

Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hammer? No. Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Judge Becerra?

Yes. There we go. Keep moving. Thank you very much, guys. And now we're going to go to, I'm going to squeeze one last one out, and then we're going to go to our workshop. K-13. K-13.

K-13, discussion and possible action to set the fiscal year 2027 salaries and allowances for Hays County elected officials with possible action regarding the recommendation of the Hays County Salary Grievance Committee related to the FY 2027 salary grievances filed by elected officials.

Submit. Second. Please, is it written? Please read that in person, okay. Call their name for me.

Amanda Calvert.

All right.

Hello, my name is Amanda Calvert, Hays County District Clerk. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me today, judges and our judge and commissioners. I'm sure, or at least I hope, you all have taken the time to review the salary grievance hearing. So I'll be brief. All of you know how and why I was elected to my current office with the resignation of our former district clerk. In Hays County, when you are elected to another term, you receive a re-election salary increase on a tier system, up to three tiers. This increases 12% upon re-election for each tier. My situation is unique because I was not appointed to my position, I was elected. And due to me running unopposed this year, I will almost certainly be re-elected in November. I will have only served two years coming in January when the 12% increase would take effect. That's why I'm only asking for a 6% increase for my reelection. Now, you might be thinking, you've only served two years. Why bring this up now? Well, because I'm being reelected this year. And if I bring it up in two more years, the argument will just be the opposite, that sure, you've served four years, but you're not being reelected. Also, at that time, I would be requesting 12%. And 12% over two years is the same as 6% over four years. So it's mathematically a similar argument. So I think the best time to address it is now. If this increase were denied, I would have to wait over six years and be elected three times to receive a re-election salary increase. I presented my case to the Salary Grievance Committee, and it was nearly unanimous. minus one dissenting vote. So I hope this request makes sense to y'all. And I think it's appropriate to leave it in y'all's hands to discern what is appropriate to do in this situation as individuals who all know what it means and what it takes to get elected, much less reelected. And I am super glad this came up right after you guys decided on the salaries because I would not be requesting this if my employees did not get a salary increase. That is all.

Perfect, thank you. And that's the only comment in this agenda item, am I right? And so, commissioners, I'm going to pass it to Jordan in a minute, but I will say I presided over this hearing, of course, as I always do, and it is recapped exactly right, almost unanimous, and when it is a unanimous support from that grievance body, we're mandated, we must. But she had the chance to... The chance was there to do the 12%, and I'm glad it was brought back up because it's a very fair math from being the presiding officer over that hearing of a 6%. It's a very reasonable request. So I thought it was... worthy of providing it personally. But I didn't say that out loud in that space.

COMMISSIONER WRIGHT- And, Judge, we didn't get any paperwork regarding that. So thank you, Amanda, for being here.

MR. And Jordan will give us a recap.

COMMISSIONER WRIGHT- Okay, good. That's what I'm wanting.

MS. Yes. MS.

So I'm happy to give you a quick recap. And I think Scott has a lot to add. So maybe I could start, if it's okay with the Court, turn it over to Scott and then answer some more questions. MR. You got it. Perfect.

Just state your name and title for this agenda item. MS.

Sorry. Jordan Powell, civil first assistant. so we did have two grievances and the grievance committee heard um we had as you heard miss amanda calvert and then we also had miss jennifer escobar we had the full nine member committee with our six electeds and three members of the public as a judge alluded to just a minute ago the grievance committee the nine members will vote on an increase related to those two grievances if all nine members were unanimous in that it wouldn't even be coming to the court it would be mandatory as a judge mentioned if it's between six and eight members it becomes discretionary upon the court on whether or not to take that um I'm sorry, whether or not to give that increase that's been suggested by the salary agreements committee. In this instance, as Ms. Calvert and Judge Becerra mentioned, Ms. Calvert had an eight to one vote in favor of a salary increase. And I'm going to say the number and Scott can correct me if I'm wrong in just a second. I believe it was $121,760, which is representative of a partial term. Scott can give you more information on that. And then Ms. Jennifer Escobar had a vote of seven to two in favor of her requested salary increase of $124,196, which as well makes it discretionary upon the court on whether or not to do that salary increase. Just to come full circle, anything below six votes in favor of that for the salary grievance committee would not come to the court at all. It's just... we'll say dead in the water at that point. So having to answer any more questions you may have, but I know Scott has the more detailed financial piece information for you guys.

Okay, Scott, title and name, please.

Scott Woodland, budget officer. And thank you for that, Jordan. Her numbers were spot on and the rationale was explained as well. For Amanda, we did a commiserate percentage to her years in office. And then she had a calculation that I reran and had a little bit of an increase on that number. But it was a calculation based off the years of service she did. And it was proportional to what she would have received had she did the full years, only the proportion for the time that she served. And then Jordan was also correct on

Jordan, you don't hear that very often. Just kidding.

She was also correct on Jennifer Escobar's, our tax assessor collector's salary as well, that the recommendation was to be $124,196. And that was based off kind of looking at some numbers and kind of eliminating some of the smaller counties that did not perform the same level and type of duties as she does.

Commissioner Inglesby, I'm looking at you, sorry.

So this is the item that we have to take a vote on for those? Yes. So I'm supportive of the district clerk's request at 6%, and I appreciate that consideration of that. amount of increase and not the full 12%.

And what about the tax assessor? Because this is a two-person agenda.

Yeah, I think I prefer to hold off on that one, Judge.

And did you, I want to reiterate the reason for the edit request was there was a in the assessment, there were positions that were not doing the same work, tax collecting, et cetera. Maybe just for the heck of it, do you mind, Jennifer, to speak on the difference? And I'm sorry to do this to you, but I don't want to butcher it, but there's literally a huge block of what you do that others don't that skewed that score. Yes.

And so I do have a small presentation. Good morning. I'm Jennifer Escobar, and I'm the tax assessor collector for Hays County. I'm here to briefly restate my salary grievance. For fiscal year 2027, my salary is scheduled to be $120,636. I'm asking it to be set at $124,196. Let me explain where those numbers come from. Human Resources compared my position to surrounding counties and calculated a regional average of $111,000. I understand why geography is part of the analysis and why HR selected counties within our regional labor work. My concern is that several of these offices do not perform the same work. Blanco, Caldwell, and Kendall County Tax Assessor Collector's Offices do not collect property taxes, Hays does. When those three offices are removed from HR's comparison, the average of the remaining counties whose tax assessor collectors also perform property tax collection is approximately $124,196. I believe it is a more functionally comparable average within HR's own study. I'm not asking the court to throw out HR's analysis, and I'm not asking to be paid at the level of Travis, Williamson, or Bexar County. I'm simply asking the court to consider whether the offices being compared are actually performing comparable work. Same title does not always mean the same job. Thank you.

So collecting of taxes, can you say in a percentage and or oversight of people that go into the collection of property taxes from your office that the size of the work that you oversee having that included that wasn't originally included in the original price?

I don't understand.

How big is it in your footprint of a job? What percentage of the pie does it take?

We collect 60% of the county's revenue where these other three counties don't, don't collect property taxes at all. So I'm just asking to compare apples to apples and those three counties do not do that. Yeah.

And I appreciate that. I didn't know you were here to bring that up. I, you know, I guess my concern though is here we go again, right? With the market. So are we going to compare everybody's? You know, if we feel that we're not making what we should be making, are we going to select what elected officials pay?

Just to weigh in, just to tell you about, this is being handled a little different, to frame that question a little differently, because they went through the Salary Grievance Committee. That's why it's being reviewed this way. Only because they went and went through the process. Right.

I understand. I'll consider.

Commissioner Cohen.

I'm supportive of both requests.

Thank you. Commissioner Hammer.

So you're asking for a 3.22% raise? Yes, ma'am. I think justification, again, I think market studies, I mean, it can go crazy. I do think it's important to know why a grievance committee was created in the first place in the state of Texas is because it was to protect elected officials from a rogue commissioner's court and that. So I don't necessarily think, but this is the chance for you to say your piece. So when it comes to your market study, I'm supportive. When it comes to Ms. Calvert, first of all, the mess you probably inherited, one. Two, the fact that you had to run a campaign twice. And just because of the way it goes, I'm supportive of that as well.

Thank you. Commissioner Smith. I've got two things I wanted to say. The first is, when we adopted the salary ladder for elected officials, was that four years ago? Three years ago? The first time we did it. The two of y'all were here. I don't remember. We were having multiple grievances a year, mostly from our constables and our sheriff. We've tried to alleviate that. We put this in place, and I will say that I'm The one thing I wish and I would like for us to consider in changing that salary schedule or that salary ladder is that in cases, we've had multiple cases since I've been here. We've had one county court at law judge. We've had one constable. We've had Ms. Calvert come in and serve out a term for someone else. Uh, having them at that tier one at the beginning, I think just adopting a policy stating that once they are elected, even if they had served, they should just start, they should be moved to tier two. I think that solves this issue. Um, and I think that I would be supportive of that because we know that they've already served two years, uh, in that office, if they're elected and it puts them in the cadence, it's a good idea in the, in the regular cadence. It's a good idea. The other thing I would say is that these are two very different I consider these two very different. And I will tell you that every single constable of ours will tell you that I've been more supportive of them for every request they've had. I brought 90% of their requests to this court, even if they were outside my precinct. But I have told every one of them that you were elected and you knew what you were going to make when you were elected. And I would consider that I knew what I was going to make for the first four years. And I never anticipated ever getting a pay raise. And I was here for quite a while before we ever did. The last pay raise for the commissioners prior to 2022 was in 2008. And I knew what I was going to get paid. So I think they're two very different situations. And I apologize. This has nothing to do with you. I've had the same conversation with our constables. overtime. But I find it very hard to adjust a salary within someone's first term whenever we knew. We don't do this to make a killing and make a lot of money out there. We do it because it's a public service. And I took that into consideration whenever I decided to run. And I hope that all of our elected officials did.

Thank you, Commissioner. And so the motion will be to accept. I'm going to frame it just simply to accept the majority. Voted in their favor during the committee's and so that's why I'm gonna see the motion Although it wasn't a must or a shall judge.

I would like to consider these separately possible.

You want to consider them separately? Yes You guys want to consider them separately? Yes, ma'am.

Jordan Powell, civil versus assistant. So I think actually we need three parts, and Scott and Candace can correct me if I'm wrong. I think I would say part one, Ms. Calvert's grievance and the salary associated with that. Part two, Ms. Escobar's grievance and the salary set with that. And then part three is for setting the elected, all the other elected officials' salaries. So I just wanted to clarify. It's really a three-part item, if you will.

I thought that was a different agenda item.

No, it's all in there.

It's all together. It's in the same one? Yeah. Okay, in that case, fine. Okay. So let's make the first motion to accept a 3% for Ms. Calvert. And what else do we add, Scott?

I think it's, is it 6%?

I'm sorry, I said three by accident. 6%. 6% for Ms. Calvert is the first motion.

So moved.

Second. You're good? Please call the roll.

Commissioner Cohen?

Yes.

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

Yes.

Judge Becerra?

Yes. And the motion next is to do our tax assessor, Ms. Escobar, to the requested amount to be the percentage that puts it to fair amount.

3.22%. 3.22%.

I moved. Was that 3.22%?

Yeah. Okay.

That's the three stuck in my head. Sorry. 4,000. Yeah. 3.22%. We got a motion and I'll second and please call the roll.

Commissioner Hammer.

Yes.

Commissioner Inglesby.

Yes.

Commissioner Smith. Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Judge Macedo?

Yes. 15-minute recess. We're going to go straight to workshop. Oh, the third one? Sorry. I'm trying to keep up with that clock. Part three. I got two clocks over here. Sorry. Commissioner, we're going.

I'd like to move to adopt the elected official salaries with the two amendments adopted in court today.

Second.

And I'm not going to go over them line by line. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? Yes. Commissioner Hamer? Yes. Judge Maceda?

Yes, just like that. 15-minute break. All right, cameraman, let's go. Or a person. All right, Judge Mullen. Okay, we're on. Thank you. Yeah, I forgot my black screen with my peripheral. It's been off. It's mine. So please open K-12.

K-12, 11 a.m. Hold a final public hearing for the fiscal year 2027 Hayes County proposed budget. Possible action may follow.

So moved.

Second.

All right, so we are opening the final public hearing. And we have some comments. Let's start with that.

We have one emailed from Connie Gray.

Can you repeat the name, please? Connie Gray. Thank you.

She writes, I'm opposed to Axon, and I'm appalled that when the budget can't be balanced, the court is even considering such a waste of funds. If the court wants to spend money wisely, they should bring staff compensation in line with the market and ask for your votes in favor of Eric Van Hanel's recommendations. No one who supports Axon deserves any votes in the November election. Thank you.

That was tidy. Good. Anyone else in the courtroom wishing to speak for or against this agenda item? Except you, sir. No, just kidding. If I may, Judge. Absolutely.

Good morning. I appreciate the time. Anthony Hippolito, Sheriff of Pace County. Judge, Commissioners, I just want to clear up some misconceptions on what Axon AI era actually is. I've heard over and over again in court and on social media that this is comparable to what to flock and the LPR systems that a variety of different companies use throughout the country. What we're asking for is not that at all. It's quite the opposite, actually. Everything that we're using Axon AI era for, or will be using for it hopefully, is everything that's captured within our body camera that we wear, that I didn't want to wear back in 1998. But over the time, We've learned that these body cameras are valuable for not only us as law enforcement, but the community, right? So everything that goes in our evidence.com system is all internal. Everything that we download from our body cameras, as well as our fleet cameras, is what goes into our evidence.com. And that's what we will use the Axon AI error package for. and to use to tackle that database, that internal database. It's not from outside cameras. It's not from marine cameras. It's not from LPR cameras. It's from the data that we already collect and have been collecting for decades. Again, it's from our body cameras. It's from our fleet cameras. And it's from everything that we put in manually from our evidence.com package. So the 16 or 17 different AI, the package that it comes with, Those pieces of that package tackle the internal database, which is evidence.com. So it's not coming from LPR cameras. It's not coming from the courthouse cameras. It's coming from cameras that we already use on a 24-hour basis in Hays County.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak? Okay.

Brett Bailey, Chief Deputy, Hays County Sheriff's Office. I also wanted to just add a couple of things real quick. Number one, I did hear a comment this morning I wanted to comment on that, and it may have just been misspeaking, but I think a comment was made that San Marcos has decided to no longer utilize Axon, San Marcos PD, and I know they have two and a half years left on their contract. So I also wanted to point out and remind everyone that this is not asking for additional funds. This is a one-for-one. I'm giving up to get. And... I think that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak for or against this agenda item? I mean, the workshop, in the workshop. Come on up.

I'm so used to saying this agenda item. Greg Cox, first assistant from the district attorney's office. I'd just like to echo some of the comments of the sheriff and chief Bailey. A lot of the information that has been presented to you by members of the public is just flat false. The information that is gathered using these cameras is used as evidence in criminal cases. It is stored in secure cloud based environments. It cannot be accessed by anyone without permission to access it. They share it with us to be able to use it as evidence in criminal cases. It's not shared with federal agencies or anyone else. Data is vital as evidence in cases. Jurors expect us to bring that evidence. If we don't bring that evidence, we cannot obtain convictions. Just as importantly, though, and this is where these folks have lost sight of things, those cameras that the officers are wearing on their bodies exist to protect the public from excessive force or mistreatment by law enforcement. If anything happens that strips those cameras off of those officers, those officers are free to misbehave. And I prosecuted back before body cams existed. And we would have defense attorneys coming and telling us, they beat my client up. They did all these horrible things. And we had no way to verify whether that was true or not. Now we do. And we use these cameras to make our decisions about the prosecution of cases. If we see excessive force or unfair law enforcement practices, We decline cases. We contact command staffs at law enforcement agencies. We insist that they retrain their officers or that they fire or suspend or remove them from the street. These cameras are a vital tool for protecting the public from the abuse by law enforcement. And people have gotten caught up in AI and flock hysteria, and they are conflating issues. is an important tool to protect the public. And the AI tools that are used are the things that allowed us, and you may remember, we came in here asking for Axon Justice to serve as our support for the storage of all the digital evidence in our tech share system. It's the same sort of thing. I was able to tell you that I was dropping a request for multiple legal assistance because the AI tools within that allow us to automatically transcribe videos. Because when a case comes in, you may have five or six officers on scene. Each one of them has an hour and a half of video. And as a prosecutor, we don't have time to watch all those videos. But we can create transcripts, and we can word search them, and we can find the important parts of that. And the defense attorneys can utilize that to word search and find the things that are important to them. This is good for criminal justice. And I just want to clear up some of the false information that has been presented to this court by members of the public. Thank you, sir.

Anyone else? Going once, going twice. I'm going to close the public hearing. Scott.

Good morning, Judge and Commissioners. I think we're almost to afternoon, but I think we're still technically in morning.

I'm pushing the best I can, buddy. We're still behind.

You're doing good, Judge. So we want to talk about where we're at as far as on the proposed. see if that's where we want to end up. As Commissioner Smith said earlier, we have made motions to approve a lot of items. Now, I don't believe that's set in stone, but I believe that we would have to go back through and make motions to disapprove items that have already been approved. And it's been a long road, but I think we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I think it's just this kind of final hump to get over and make sure we come to a conclusion on what we want to do with the tax rate and what we want that to fund. And without further ado, let's go to the first slide. I think this is the most pressing that may warrant some discussion. And that's fairly small on the screen. Commissioners and Judge, I just want to let you know that I gave you a handout, so it may be a little more readable from the paper. But I want to go over this and... What you see up there is what is making up the 1.26 cent increase in the M&O rate that has been discussed and we approved through motions at the last court. Now, that is a ceiling, hence the name at the top of this slide. That is our max. We can come down from that. We cannot go over that. What you see at the top there, highlighted in gray, those are all the items that have had motions passed through past courts. And then down below that, you will see in the white, we have the civilian bilingual pay. That was something discussed, but never actually approved through motions. And then you have the New World ERP Cloud. Once again, that was discussed as well, but was not approved through motions. And then finally, I have the potential reserves down there, and that is the remainder from the 1.26 cents. After everything was cleaned up on the top, that is what would be remaining. The terminology I use is potential reserves. That would give us the option, if the court so sought to, if we kept that rate, I could reduce what our one-time use of reserves are and essentially help budget a more balanced budget to be a little more fiscally responsible moving forward. Likewise, that amount could be applied to other items as well, either new positions, contract services, capital items. But that's really the options presented to court. And I know really where we want to end up at is, is this what we want? Do we want something different? I think now's the time for discussion on that and to be able to progress and make a final decision on our tax rate and what that's going to fund so that we can finalize the budget. And with that being said, I'd like to first and foremost open this to the court to see if we have anything.

Thank you. Commissioner Hammer, what the gist of what you just missed was.

I was watching it. I was pumping and watching.

So you're good. You heard everything. And just to reiterate for the viewing public, this is what is constituting the tax increase dollar amount. And the tax rate at this point, because we've voted as a court, We can come down still at this time from this list. We just can't go up. So you say there's a chance. Okay.

And like I said, I'd like to just open it up to the court for discussion on this. And I'm going to go sit down at my computer so I can make any changes as the discussion is ongoing so that we can work on getting this all updated and put through.

Okay. Okay.

Just as a reminder, as we've done in the past, if we make any adjustments to the budget as we currently have adopted, before we can go and make that final adoption, generally, Scott will run out, make those changes, get printouts for us, bring it back, and then we'll have our finalized motion.

Thank you for that, Commissioner Smith. And along those lines, I don't want to bottleneck the court. I will not print out new full revenue and expense details. I learned my lesson last time. That will bottleneck us and keep us late. What I will do is run those effects through the budget recap so we can all see where we end up at. Thank you.

Scott, I wanted to ask, the DA's positions that are up there, did we actually approve those or did we say we were going to put money aside when the new DA came into office and then we would make those determinations?

So it was actually discussed in court that what we would do with those funds would be to actually set those aside since they are re-grades, and that money would be considered with the rest of the re-grades on 4-1 when we're doing that. That way the new DA will be here, and then it's also going to follow our policy. With that being said, what I have done with those funds is I have set them aside so that they will not be used or encumbered. I have set them aside in countywide until that 4-1 date, at which time we will evaluate and determine what we want to do with those funds. Thank you for clarifying that.

Okay, and then the new attorney-free mental health and juvenile programs, I DON'T RECALL. IT'S BEEN A WHILE. DID WE APPROVE THAT POSITION ALSO? IS THAT WHY IT'S IN THERE AND WE'RE PUTTING THAT ASIDE ALSO?

THAT POSITION WAS APPROVED AS WELL. GIVE ME ONE SECOND. I BELIEVE WE MOVED THAT TO 1-1, BUT LET ME... WE DID. YES, COMMISSIONER. WE HAVE. SO THAT POSITION WOULD BE STARTING 1-1. And I can confirm that that fiscal impact follows that.

So given the ones that we haven't adopted or looked at yet, the two would be the New World ERP Cloud and the civilian bilingual pay. I'm going to wait for the judge to get back up here. No, it's okay. I would move for adoption of the new world ERP cloud. And I say that, I want to discuss that specific item. I know that as we move forward, Marisol, how long have we been waiting on a software upgrade there? On the new world ERP?

So we've been on ERP since fiscal year 2010, and they upgraded and updated every fiscal year for our year end package reporting. It has to be upgraded for the W2s and the 1099 reporting. And all of that is included in our annual software maintenance. Now the cloud, do I, is Chris here? Yes, I think our IT director can talk about the importance of the cloud upgrade.

I can tell you that I've also discussed, and I don't know how many of our commissioners are using the dashboard that we have for the individual project-based dashboards to follow and track our finances on those projects. But at this point, I know that we have not given them outside access to view those accounts and those kind of things. Even if we wanted to, our current system is so old that it won't allow us to do that. So we're not getting real-time data on what the cost of those projects are. This would help enhance that, I know, if we were able to do that. But I'll let Chris talk as well.

Chris Lubari, IT Director. Just wanted to talk about, I guess, some of the infrastructure that we have invested in that's on premise. And the danger of having that on premise infrastructure is that it deprecates faster than what our budget allows sometimes. The benefit of going to the cloud is that we no longer have to invest in that on premise infrastructure. And the investment that we make is in the infrastructure that is up in the cloud that puts that resource burden on our vendors. In order to have that infrastructure on-premise I have to have staff and work We have to have staff on-prem to take care of that and it is costly. So there's a there's a cost benefit, but there's also Mitigating risk of those that infrastructure going out and there's security issues that you know comes with deprecated applications Does anybody have any questions

I THINK IT MAKES SENSE.

I READ THE ROOM BY JUST LOOKING OVER AT THEM. I'LL JUST ASK THEM. ANYONE ELSE?

IF NOT, JUDGE, I'D MOVE TO INCLUDE IN THIS BUDGET THE NEW WORLD ERP CLOUD UPDATE.

SO HIS MOTION IS TO INCLUDE THIS INTO MORE EXPENSE.

Well, no, it would be covered in our current 1.26. It's just one of the three items that we have not had a vote on. You got a second?

I think Hammer seconded it. Is that correct?

Thank you. Do you second it?

I was just saying, do we have to do a formal vote on this, or are we just going to say three, move on?

Yeah, we can do that.

I don't know if we have to have a formal vote, or we just say three, say yes, and we move on.

I want to know if I got three. That's what I'm going for. So however that looks. Let's just do the roll call. Okay. You've got a motion. Where's the second?

Second.

Okay. Please call the roll.

Commissioner Hammer?

No.

Commissioner Inglesby? Yes. Commissioner Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Cohen? No. Judge Passetta?

No. You see? We've got to do them one by one.

All right. The next one is civilian bilingual pay.

One thing I want to say about that is now that we have adopted, well, soon to officially, I know, the salary, I mean, I think the hope now moving forward is that we start moving to a structure that is merit-based, based on experience, education, certification, special skills, all those things that traditionally is how I think these performance, when the renewals or the annuals happen, is how we decide whether an employee gets a raise. And also, when they come, they get hired. If that position specifically asks for bilingual preferred, then I think that's where that would apply. I'm just not, I don't think we need to address it here. I think we can address it down the line when we start really understanding what does that job, what jobs in that job description look like, you know, is it actually going to say, if it says bilingual, you know, preferred or required, that that's when we would pay that individual for having that skill set. And so I just don't think It's something that we have to address right now.

Is that because you think some of these positions that are being addressed necessarily don't need required bilingual or don't need it?

I think there's lots of jobs that do require that.

Yeah, but some might not.

Yeah, but some, I mean, if they don't have that skill set to do that job, I mean, in that case, then they don't get that pay, right? I mean, it's supposed to be used as rewarding for having the skill set, right? And that's what it's needed. I'm just... thinking maybe we don't need to address that here.

Sorry. And so I know you said the word rewarding, but I consider it compensation. And the assessment would be equivalent, if I understand this correctly, to the sheriff's department and how they are very rigorous through their training and assessments and all the other. And I believe that living in this world, and I know that I'm not trying to mischaracterize what you're saying at all. I'm just speaking through the lens that I'm seeing this in. Our population, there are tons of people that need this just to function, to make contact with our government. And so when our coworkers are leaned on, it is what it is. I'll just use the word by force because no one else can talk to them. I think there should be a compensation tied to it. And you're not saying no, but we can end it here is what I was thinking.

And I, you know, Judge, the other thing I'll say is that, you know, our demographics, JUST PROVES THAT WE NEED MORE SPANISH SPEAKING EMPLOYEES AND I THINK THAT WE REALLY NEED TO TRY TO RECRUIT MORE INDIVIDUALS THAT SPEAK SPANISH. THIS COULD BE A TOLL.

I HAVE A QUICK QUESTION. THIS $46,028, DOES THIS ADDRESS ONLY THE POSITIONS THAT ARE CONSTITUENT FACING THAT DO HAVE THE the ability to offer that as a benefit towards our constituents? Or is this everyone that just is bilingual?

We surveyed all departments who had Spanish-speaking employees and then got a projection based on that amount. But I think that number is a little off. I think it's actually now 70,000.

So that would be, that's half the year, and it's also including the test. So a little clarification on that fiscal impact. We said that we would wait until April, I believe, to come up with our terms, which would include, is this everybody that speaks Spanish, only four facing offices? We had not made those determinations. That's kind of what we discussed we would do is in those first six months kind of set the parameters. Yeah. And then that fiscal impact includes what we estimate for that second half of the year, plus what the testing would cost.

I also have some questions. I've spoken to at least one of our elected officials who has translation equipment sitting on the front desk of his office. And for the cost of that translation equipment, and to this point, and this is not by any means a far-reaching research or anything else, but he said that he hasn't had a single issue. His employees, they have done phenomenal with that translation equipment just sitting on the front desk of his JP office. And so I would hope if we do look at this, I agree with Commissioner Cohen, we probably need to just hold off and look at, do a real evaluation of what those forward-facing offices are, what that compensation should look like, but also evaluate what other technology is out there that could be beneficial or useful to this that might address the same issues as a cost saving.

So let's just... I don't think that one has any teeth.

Does it not have support?

I think we can wait. So no support.

That's fine. I see no support. I'm good with that. I'm good with that. Not that I'm good with no support. I'm good with that dialogue. Okay. So we're done with that one. We're done with New World. What else? My aim is just to keep moving.

Judge, I'd like to go ahead and just address the Axon issue, if we may. Okay. You know, I spoke briefly to the sheriff this morning. I know that I received a text from Chief last night also. And I really wanted to take the time for myself to go on research, you know, and I will say that I specifically looked at the translation piece of this because Um, that was the demonstration that was given in court. That was what I thought that we were looking at is more the translation. I know now that there are, uh, and I knew then, I mean, I knew that it wasn't going to be that much money for just that component, that there were many more options that were available. And I think there's 18 and the sheriff is requesting 17 of those 18. But when I went and researched, um, What really concerned me was that the direct court inadmissibility area section that I came to. And I looked it up myself because I wanted to make sure that this was correct. Axon openly acknowledges that its automated translation software is not ready for the courtroom. explicit corporate disclaimers in their own Axon assistant and auto transcribed frequently asked questions. Axon explicitly states that AI generated translation may not yet meet the formal evidentiary standards required for admission. Let's see. Transcripts and translation remain legally flagged as unverified until human review takes place. So I asked the sheriff, you know, what is our process now? And so my concern was that, let me read on. It says department mandates, departments adopting the software face strict operational walls. For example, during deployment evaluations, departments have mandated that officers must verbally warn citizens that the translation is coming from an uncertified AI. Because of this limitation, the AI translation is barred from being used for formal witness statements and evidence collection. And the text itself is legally inadmissible in court unless an independent certified human interpreter reviews and certifies the conversation line by line. AI incorrectly transcribes names, mistook information documents, and misidentified vehicle license plates from the scene audio. They gave me the location of where that actually happened. That, to me, that is just concerning because, you know, what process we're using now, we're still having to have an interpreter or have somebody that is Spanish speaking come and help an officer that doesn't speak English and is dealing with a person that only speaks English. It just seems like we're not really getting anywhere if we're still having to use a certified interpreter. But then we're adding this cost on top of that when we're still going to have to use that interpreter for these services. And that was my review. I didn't even go into mass surveillance and to all these other things that have been mentioned, although I appreciate everybody coming up and speaking. voicing their concerns. My concern is with this, and after looking at this, then I think, are we moving a little too fast? Should we take a little bit more time to review this? I'm not saying take anything away. We still have the Axon cameras. I'm not saying to take them away. They are being used, and I know they're a good tool that we have. It's just this addition of the AI and translation services is my concern, especially if they're inadmissible.

Thank you, Commissioner Inglesby, for that position. I will say that, and it hasn't come up before, but this is never intended to serve as an official court transcript or to be used in court. I would venture to say that a large percentage of our communication with the public that needs translation never sees the inside of a courtroom. This is for efficiency. This is for manpower needs. This is for those types of things. And if we were ever in a situation where we had to go to court on something, and I think perhaps Greg could back me up on this. The statistics I'm familiar with is typically about around 1 to 3% of felony offenses ever see the inside of a courtroom. However, we would obviously have verification of the translation before it was ever used. This is for talking to people to find out what their problems are, to get them help. hundred uses for this and it I do want to emphasize as well during our three-month trial and evaluation period I believe we touched five languages during those conversations to include Russian and German there it's not just the spanish-speaking community that the benefits from this so I don't I don't feel like that's a fear that you should have because we're not looking at this service to serve as an official transcript in court.

Well, it's not a fear that I have. It's a concern that I have, which I think is a little bit different. But anyway, when I looked at that, I felt that I just needed to address it and to make you all aware of my concern regarding it.

Commissioner Cohen? Oh, Greg has something to say.

I address the issue of the use in court. With any sort of transcript of any sort of body cam or interview, we can't just rely on AI. Whether it's English, whether it's any other language, we have to have someone do some verification on that. The big step forward for us as prosecutors, and we see that what the police are doing out in the field when they're interacting with these folks is greatly helped by a translation tool because otherwise they've got to detain someone longer or stand with a victim who's been armed and wait on a Spanish-speaking officer to arrive if they do not have a tool that allows them to go ahead and have a conversation. If something does end up... on a body cam that we need to be able to use to go to court where the big advantage for us as prosecutors is if we receive, if they do wait on a Spanish speaking officer and that officer comes and they have an entire conversation in Spanish, we don't have a lot of Spanish speakers in our office. And that's a sad statement given how large the Spanish speaking population in this county is, but we don't have a lot. What might happen is nobody even watches the video and we don't know what's said. If we want to know what it said, we have to pay for a translator to do it. And it's a very expensive process because they first have to go through and watch the entire thing, translate it, I'm sorry, transcribe it in Spanish, and then interpret that Spanish transcript into English. It's hundreds if not thousands of dollars to do that, and we just can't afford to do that. We don't have the budget for that. So a lot of these do not get watched, do not get taken into consideration unless we have a Spanish-speaking staff member that has the time and the bandwidth to sit down and do that for us. Where this tool gives us a leg up is we can take that Spanish translation that the Axon software has done, provide it to a licensed interpreter, they proofread it and make corrections. And it cuts the amount of time and the amount of expense for our office down to a fraction of what it would have cost otherwise. So we are actually able to, in that situation, use the majority of the Spanish language tapes that come to us where we wouldn't be using them otherwise. So this is a feature that actually benefits our Spanish-speaking members of our community significantly. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, you're welcome.

Commissioner Cohen.

So, I mean, this court has mentioned, I know I've mentioned it a few times, how I think we need to adopt an AI policy and procedures before we try and implement any new technology into our government systems. And I think a lot of counties and other cities are dealing with the same thing is how do we responsibly incorporate AI into our work? I mean, we had an agenda item on here before it was pulled to request exactly that. And so right now I'm feeling very uncomfortable with the whole AI conversation. And I'm fearful for our county that we don't have something like that in place. So that's my first concern is, you know, I would feel more comfortable exploring these if we had a policy that would help us vet the technology in some way, whether that's through Chris's department or procurement department, like what are we doing to address this up and coming technology and are we protecting ourselves? How well are we protecting ourselves? I don't know. That's my concerns right now around that.

Again, Greg Cox from the district attorney's office.

You only have to do it once when the agenda item is open.

Thank you. On that specific issue, the sheriff arranged for some Axon representatives to come and demo these things for us. And if you will recall, Chief Bailey talked about they are not going to use the draft one piece of it. And that was specifically because we vetted that and were uncomfortable with it. But with most of the rest of the features on this, we had detailed discussions. Axon brought employees of theirs that are former prosecutors, both at the federal and state level from all over the country, we had a very thorough conversation. We talked about the legalities. We talked about the practicalities. We talked about the limitations of the software. And they were able to convince us that we could successfully go into court and use these tools. And still, we have the protection of a defense attorney if we try to use something in court can object and ask a court to make a determination of whether or not it's going to be allowed to be used in court. But we did a lot of vetting with this. And in fact, I was given an opportunity at my previous job and then a little bit here to work with these companies and give them feedback and suggestions to make the tools more safe for use, more appropriate for use. And they have taken all of that feedback and put it into their development. This is not the kind of AI that's going out onto the internet and grabbing things off of just random websites. This is an internal, doesn't touch the internet. AI is a big, broad term. And AI, where you take and upload a photo and ask it to make it look like a clown or something, that's not what we're talking about. AI that goes out and searches the Internet to find things off of unvetted websites is also not what we're talking about. It is simply machine learning to take... things like listen to this audio, transcribe it, produce a transcript for someone to review before it's used. And that's what we do. We don't trust the output. But it's a guide that helps us in a very, very long, voluminous set of videos go in and find the key parts. And then our prosecutors, with that transcript open on one screen, play the video and listen to it themselves and verify that what is in that transcript is accurate and true before we rely on it. Just like the officers do the same thing, it helps them write better reports if they can find the portion of their body cam where something was discussed and go to it instead of sitting there for 45 to 90 minutes searching a video to try to find it. These are things that allow us to reduce the number of support staff we come in and ask for, and I'm sure the sheriff's office is in the same boat on that. they are force multipliers to a certain degree in that they allow us to shortcut tasks that either would take us far too long to justify doing or might not get done at all if we don't have this assistance. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Okay.

And so I know y'all are comfortable with the technology because you said you vet it, but how do we make our community and our taxpayers more comfortable? Because those are the ones that are expressing that they're not comfortable. And so how do we bridge this gap, right?

For us, it's taking cases to court and having trials and using these things in front of a jury. And we have 12 members of our community that have been selected to serve on a jury. And they're asked to make a decision of whether we prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. Same thing when we take a case to the grand jury. We have 12 members of the community that serve as a cross-section of this community to basically decide whether or not a felony gets to move to court. And we present this evidence to the grand juries. And they can ask us questions. And if they don't trust it or they don't believe it, they can refuse to indict a case, just like a Pettit jury can refuse to convict someone based upon this evidence. So we are giving the community input by taking these things to the grand jury and taking these things to trial. and letting the juries, members of our community, have a say in this. And we're also getting the additional input from judges deciding on the legality of the use of this stuff in court. But I can tell you that the volume of video that gets produced on cases now is enormous. And without tools like this, I don't know how we can do our jobs.

Is Axson the only company that provides this service?

We have no idea, but because all of our local law enforcement is using Axon body cameras and Axon fleet cameras, we know for certain that it uses – it corresponds with the equipment correctly. There may be other companies out there, but they are not necessarily synced up with – the cameras that are in use here and if we tried to switch to some other company which there is in my opinion no reason to try to make that switch it's going to end up being expensive and less reliable and commissioner i am

I am happy to hear about policy because, yes, the agenda that didn't get put back on the agenda following was mine. Thank you. You're right. I believe in not putting the tech before the policy. Facebook was found guilty in court and owes many states billions of dollars for having the ability to monitor govern and create 16 and older guidelines and stuff knowing they had the ability to and they didn't and they were found liable or whatever word they would have used i don't remember and they have to pay billions of dollars for being neglectful and so policy before the tech is a really good idea i i support that a lot that's the way it should be commissioner

I want to make it very clear because there was a lot of public comment. There's been a lot of media confusion. There's been a lot of social media confusion. We have not voted on a contract, one. We have not been presented at court with a contract. We have not paid Axon for an AI package contract that we are discussing right now. Those are three things that were said in public comment that I wanted to make sure we were able to touch on. What I would be happy doing, because, again, we don't have a contract in front of us, this basically is going into the budget as if we were able to come to terms. And if the commissioner's court said yes on the contract, we want to move forward with this, where are we going to get the funds? That's what this whole premise is. This is just a placeholder for funds to potentially look into a contract and potentially agree to these terms and conditions. I would be happy because there's some... people on the court that they want further, they want to look into things further, look at different companies, what is an RFP process, whatever that looks like, to move forward with the funding, but just putting it under software for the sheriff's office. So if they were able to find maybe another company or whatever that have you, that we have funding there. And if we never use it, then we can move it into some other category. I mean, that's all we're doing right now. We're not agreeing on a contract.

So I don't know if you guys feel comfortable, what that looks like. Well, I don't know, but I would not. I mean, I would put it maybe in countywide or something, you know.

Well, each department has their own software budget. So if they said that they only wanted to do translation services, then they have this to tap into.

Well, the other thing I would say is this is also one of the items that we had a department come forward and pay for out of their own budgeted allocation. And so if we didn't do that, I would hope that we would give those those correction officers that would pay for that back to the sheriff's department that they were willing to give up. I would all day support giving back to corrections officers. The other thing that I would say is that, you know, and I said this before, I worked in Washington, D.C. in 98 and 99 when the ACLU and others were pushing for body-worn cameras wholesale. The early 2000s, you saw states and municipalities and local entities throughout the U.S. start to mandate it. to the point where in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure added guidelines specifically on the use of body-worn cameras that dictate how the information that is garnered from these cameras can and should be used. And I know that as a law enforcement entity, our Sheriff's Department and each one of our constable's offices is supposed to have a direct They're supposed to have adopted, and I know that they did back then. I don't know when the last time it was updated was. But they have a procedure for that as mandated under Article 2B.106. of state law, and so what I would propose is leaving this money in the budget, not earmarking it for a specific technology, giving them the opportunity before January to update whatever policy that is, should they think that additional provisions underneath a new software package were needed. and then having the ability, whether it's an RFP process or an RFQ process, to really look at what the needs of our department are and then allowing them to move forward with the procurement process.

To stay consistent with what we've done with the previous items, I'm going to call for the Oxon vote for the budgeting of that money.