Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. It is 9.03 a.m. this Tuesday, June 9th, and this regularly called session of the Kendall County Commissioner's Court is now called to order. We're going to begin by calling roll. Mr. McCall?

Present.

Mr. Wieschen?

Present.

Mr. Chapman? Here. Mr. Carpenter? Here. And I'm present. We have a quorum consisting of all members of the court. Next, I'm going to hand it over to My colleagues, Commissioner McCall and Wiesens, for announcements regarding our prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.

Good morning, everyone. I wanted to welcome you. We have our Sheriff, Al Auger. He's going to open us in prayer.

Thank you, Commissioner. It's an honor. Good morning. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you today with grateful hearts, recognizing that every good gift comes from your hand. We thank you for the blessings you have bestowed upon Kendall County, for the freedoms we enjoy, and for the opportunity to gather in service for our community. Lord, we ask for your wisdom to guide the members of this commission's court as they deliberate and make decisions that affect the lives of our citizens. Grant them discernment to seek what is right, courage to do what is just, and humility to place the needs of others above personal interests. Bless the elected officials, county employees, first responders, and all those who work daily to serve and protect the people of Kendall County. Strengthen them in their duties and keep them safe. We pray for families, businesses, ranchers, and residents of our county. May your hand protection be upon them and may our community be marked by unity, respect,

and a shared commitment to the common good.

As we begin these proceedings, help us conduct ourselves with integrity, civility, and a spirit of cooperation. May all that is said and done here today bring honor to you and the benefit of those we are called to serve. It is in your name we pray. Amen.

This time I'd like to welcome Paula Wells, who's retired military master sergeant. Would you lead us in the pledge?

Thank you. Before I request declarations of conflict of interest, just a couple housekeeping issues. We will be pulling agenda item 24, the consideration of possible action to hire a county administrator, as well as number 28, the discussion regarding the child care facility tax exemption. Those are being told from the court. And then agenda item 15 is going to be placed last on the agenda because Marion truly needs to step out for a brief webinar on a grant that we're receiving and she'll circle back for that at the end. So with that, I will request any declarations of conflict of interest at this point. Ladies, anything for you? Gentlemen, anything from you? Nothing from me? Next up, comments from the bench. Commissioner McCall, would you please start us today?

Yes, good morning again. I just wanted to give a message from TxDOT. They will begin road work on Monday, this coming Monday, June 15th at 8.30. The contractor will begin installing the preformed rumble strips. They'll be going from IH 10 all the way to Highway 16, so the full 11 miles distance. The traffic control will be a one-lane, two-way traffic control operation with a pilot car, and the road work duration is expected from June 15th, Monday, and until Wednesday with daily closures. So please expect delays and maybe pick an alternate route during those days.

Thank you.

Ms. Harrison?

Thank you, Judge. Good morning, everyone. Just a reminder, if you haven't heard, that the New World Screw Worm has made its way into Texas with one case in LaSalle County and one in Gillespie County, just neighboring to us. So just a reminder to check your livestock, your pets, all animals. Look at wildlife as well for openings in the skin, wounds, navel areas, any suspicious flies or maggots in the living tissue. And if you do see something, contact your veterinarian or Kendall County Animal Control or the county agent. So early detection is critical for this response.

Thank you. Commissioner Chapman? Commissioner Carpenter? Thank you all for being here. I pulled agenda item 24, although I think it's something we need to do. I heard rumored through social media that there's a request for about 25 new employees during this budget cycle. I don't know how that got out because I didn't know about any of that. There's nothing about our budgets to this point. date that's been public. And so I do feel like as we grow our county, we're in a little bit of a slowing process there that we need to make sure that we're growing at the right way and not just bringing on a ton more people. And so you will see that item come back soon. Thank you.

A couple things. First, to piggyback off of Commissioner Weijan's comment about the New World Screwworm, I'm going to be working with other agencies on this issue. We have a meeting that's going to be coming up to discuss what the path forward is and what the cases are because There could be a couple other cases in the areas. But moving forward, our emergency management will be the point of contact for all official information from the county moving forward. I know when there's issues that come up when you get information from multiple sources, which source is true. And so we're trying to keep it where you can go to one point of contact and get the accurate information. be watching our emergency management website and Brady Constantine's posts for the official positions of the county moving forward. One thing I'd like to point out is we have a lot of employees that go out of their way to go above and beyond and improve their professional careers by taking on extra certifications and schooling that's not requested of them. One of them is our very own Deb Riebe, who works in General Counsel's Office. She recently got her HR certification. So she's not here today, but I still want to recognize her. She's out today, but this is her Professional and Human Resources, PHR, which is designed for HR professionals to validate technical and operational HR knowledge, including U.S. laws and regulation. And With a growing county, HR is a vital part of our operations. And so having someone with her professional background, her business background, has now this HR certification. It's going to help the county move forward and stay up with current times and make sure we're staying current on the laws and what the best practices are in HR. So that's it. Next up, we've got accounts payable claims. Consideration of possible action on the approval of accounts payable claims for purchases, services, and vendors. Good morning, Corinna.

Good morning, Judge. Good morning, Commissioner. Good morning. Today, claims are in the amount of $410,503.65.

Does anyone have any items on the 22 pages of accounts payable claims that you'd like to discuss? If not, I'll entertain a motion at this time.

Judge, I move to approve accounts payable claims for purchases, services, and vendors in the amount of $410,503.65. We have a motion made by Commissioner Weeson.

Do I have a second? Second. Seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? There being none. All in favor? Good morning. Please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Weeson?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Judge DeLarsen?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0.

Judge, would you like to start? Yes, please. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Next up, we're moving on to presentations, proclamations, and reports from local entities. Bear with us on this one. Oh, this one's only a couple. So first up, consideration of possible action regarding Proclamation P20260609-1, proclaiming June 2026 as Elder Abuse Awareness Month in Kendall County. So the proposed proclamation will read as follows. Whereas older adults are and people with disabilities of diverse backgrounds contribute to the well-being of the city by working, caregiving, volunteering, and actively preserving customs, rituals, and traditions. Whereas as we age, we build momentum by accumulating knowledge, experience, insight, and wisdom that can be shared to enrich our community. And whereas abuse of older adults and people with disabilities is a community concern affecting thousands of people across Texas. And whereas there were 125,382 reports of abuse of older adults and people with disabilities in Texas in 2025. Whereas abuse against older adults and people with disabilities is grossly underreported because of social stigma, embarrassment, and fear. whereas adult abuse affects men and women of all income, abilities, levels, all cultural and ethnic backgrounds in all communities. And whereas elder abuse is everyone's business, it's important to strengthen our efforts to prevent, report, and address elder abuse. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the Commissioner's Court of Kendall County hereby recognizes and reclaims the month of June 2026 as Elder Abuse Awareness Month in Kendall County and urge all residents to work together to reduce abuse and neglect of older adults and people with disabilities. So do we have anyone here to, would you mind all coming up and introducing yourselves and share a little bit more about why elder abuse is an ongoing concern within Kendall County?

Good morning. Good morning. My name is Patricia Markwood. I'm the local adult protective services investigator for Kendall County. My office is in Burnley. And then this is my supervisor, Rolando Lerma. And then also we have an APS worker, Mark Beards.

And I do have something to read, if you don't mind.

Absolutely. Kendall County Elder Abuse Awareness Month is in June 2026. And it's, good morning, honorable judge, commissioners, and distinguished guests. Thank you for recognizing and designating the 2026 as Elder Abuse Awareness Month in Kendall County. Abuse, neglect, and exploitation of older adults remains a serious concern for both national and within our community. In 2025, Kendall County Adult Protective Services received 145 cases of concern for elder and disabled individuals in the community. Of those 145 concerns, 101 received services from Adult Protective Services. Kendall County has 12,403 older Texans and 2,682 adults with disabilities. Every person deserves to age with dignity, safety, independence, and respect. Through our Partnering to Protect initiative, Adult Protective Services, the South Texas APS Community Board, and the community partners, we continue working together to strengthen awareness, expanding resources, and support safety and independence of aging in place. We are grateful for the Kendall County Courts, community partners, local law enforcement, and numerous other community agencies for their continued collaboration and commitment to protect older adults and vulnerable individuals in the community. Strong partnerships are essential to building safer, more connected communities for all generations. Thank you for your leadership and commitment to the wellbeing of our community.

Well, thank you. You've heard me say this before. If you see something, say something. Because we have a vulnerable population here and in many areas. And we're the only ones out there sometimes that these folks have looking out for them. And I've had to rely on Trish in my guardianship practice to step in. And their office is phenomenal. And we'll do everything they can to support our elderly population. So it's all about just If you're unsure, it's better to report it and let Trish sort it out and not say anything because it could mean the difference to life and death for some of these folks. So with that, I move to proclaim June 2026 as Elder Abuse Awareness Month in Kendall County pursuant to Proclamation P-20260609-1. Do I have a second? Second. Motion made by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Paula, could you please call the vote?

Commissioner Powell?

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0.

Thanks for what you do.

Next up, we have one I'm excited about. This is the first time we're doing this proclamation. It's Consideration of Possible Action proclaimed June 12th as Women's Veterans Recognition Day in Kendall County. pursuant to proclamation P20260609-2. And now we have some fantastic veterans here to support this. Would y'all mind coming up and introducing, not to put you, you're not afraid to be putting on the spot.

Good morning.

Before I read the proclamation, would you mind just sharing a little about our veteran population here, especially the women and why this is important for us to start recognizing moving forward?

Good morning, everyone. Lori Rogers, retired Navy, 22 years, retired senior chief. My husband's also retired, 26 years. We have been in Murray now for six years. I'm blessed to say that we're grateful to be back in the South. We was up in Virginia, and I don't care really if anybody says that Virginia is the South, that is true, as far as Lori Rogers is concerned, but We love that Verney has opened their arms and Kendall County has opened their arms to us as veteran population. We also do a DD214 networking club. And so if you have any veterans that you'd like to be able to get them out of the house, because sometimes we as veterans become reclusive, we do a breakfast at the Dinger the first Friday of the month from 8 to 930. And then the last Thursday of the month at Free Rum Brewery from 6 to 830. So we would love to welcome veterans, veteran family members, and the community to come together and be able to create that tribe that we often lose when we leave the military. And so I again, Judge, Commissioners, thank you very much for having us and being able to dedicate this June 12th as the Women's Veterans Day. So grateful for you all.

Absolutely. And we thank you for all you've done for our country and especially for the veterans here, because I know since you've moved into the community, You've really invigorated the veteran population, and we're really making strides to becoming the group that we want to be. Well, you notice I'm very meek and very… Soft-spoken. Yes. Thank you again. So the proposed proclamation will read as follows. Whereas women have honorably served in defense of the United States since the founding of our nation, contributing with courage, skill, dedication in every major conflict from the Revolutionary War to present day. Whereas on June 12, 1948, President Truman signed the Women's Armed Services Integration Act into law, granting women the right to serve as permanent regular members of the US Armed Forces. And whereas this landmark legislation affirmed the essential role of women in our nation's military and opened the door for generations of women to serve in every branch, occupation, and level of leadership within the armed forces. And whereas women veterans have served our country as nurses, pilots, intelligence specialists, mechanics, engineers, combat leaders, and in countless other critical roles, often overcoming significant barriers while demonstrating extraordinary patriotism and sacrifice. And whereas the state of Texas officially recognizes June 12th as Women's Veterans Day, joining communities across the nation and honoring the contributions and sacrifices of our women who have served in the U.S. military. And whereas Kendall County is proud to recognize the many women veterans who live and serve within our community and whose leadership, service, and continued contributions strengthen our county, state, and nation. And whereas it is fitting and proper that Kendall County honor and express gratitude to all women veterans for their faithful service, sacrifice, and commitment to protecting the freedoms enjoyed by all Americans. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Kendall County Commissioner's Court does hereby proclaim June 12, 2026 as Women's Veterans Recognition Day in Kendall County and encourages all of our citizens to recognize and honor the service and sacrifice of our women veterans in our community and throughout the United States. Well, I move to proclaim June 12th as Women's Veterans Recognition Day in Kendall County, pursuant to Proclamation P-2026-0609-2. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Wieschen. Any further discussion? There being none, Paula, could you please call the vote?

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Wieschen? Aye. Commissioner Chapman. Aye. Commissioner Corker. Aye. Mr. Larsen.

Aye. Motion carries five to zero.

Yeah.

I just want to get all the signatures first. Would you mind doing a picture once we get signatures?

I didn't know we were waiting on that.

I thought we did. Sorry.

No, but that was the last one. Oh, sorry. Usually the proclamation is usually my signature, but...

Okay. Oh no. Thanks, ladies.

All right, next up is we're going to reconsider our burn ban. Currently, the burn ban is off, and the latest report, the rain has helped significantly, it looks like. Is that correct, Juan? Correct. Good morning. The drought index has dropped from the 200s, I think, where we were at last week, and now we're down to 177. And it looks like some 90-degree days, but some precipitation later this week, Sunday and Saturday. So is the recommendation to keep it off for the near future? That is correct. Our recommendation is no action taken. And that's consistent with what the chiefs? Uh, so the chiefs were not pulled as the KBDI was at one 77. Okay. Very good. Does anyone have any opposition to keeping the burn van off until further notice? Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. We've got a bunch of resolutions here, so bear with us. And these are all grant related. So we'll try to hum through these, uh, First up, consideration of possible action regarding Resolution R202609020260909-1, which is adopted would establish the Kendall County Section 504 policy against discrimination based on handicapping grievance procedures as required for participation in the Community Development Block Grant Mitigation CDBG-MIT program. Good morning, Christina. What can you tell us about? Good morning.

or five resolutions we're going to be doing you judge good morning judge commissioners so as y'all are aware uh back in april y'all approved the acceptance of the community development block grant mitigation for multiple projects and within this grant some of the requirements are what is being proposed in front of you today as documentation required for the grant As we went back through the application, we noticed that there were some voids in some of the documents, which is why we are in front of you today to make sure to put these in front of you for your consideration and approval in order to proceed with the grant. So, the first one, as noted, is the Section 504 policy against discrimination based on handicap and grievance procedures. There is a policy as well as a resolution in this packet for your consideration today.

Okay. Well, I move to adopt Section 504, Policy Against Discrimination Based on Handicap and Grievance Procedures, as required for participation in the MITMOD grant, pursuant to Resolution R-202-606-09-1. Do I have a second? Second. Motion made by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none. Paula, you're up.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye. Commissioner Chapman? Aye.

Commissioner Farber? Aye. Chancellor Lanzi?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. And we'll sign all these at the end here because they all require all of our signatures. So next consideration possible action regarding resolution R. 2026-06-09-2, which, if adopted, would establish the Kendall County Fair Housing Policy as required for the MITMOD grant as well. Anything you'd like to add on this one, Christina?

Same thing. One of the processes for the acceptance of the award, and this is a fair housing policy as well as the resolution.

Okay, I move... to adopt the fair housing policy as required for the participation in the community block grant pursuant to R-202-606-09-2. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Paula, could you please call the vote?

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Legion? Aye. Commissioner Chapman? Aye. Commissioner Crockett?

Aye.

Judge Salazar?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, Consideration of possible action regarding the option of Resolution R-20260609-3, which, if adopted, would establish the Kendall County Section 3 policy as required for the participation in the MITMOD grant.

Same situation, Judge, Commissioners. This is the Section 3 policy as well as the resolution.

Okay. I move to adopt the Section 3 policy as required for participation in the MITMOD grant. pursuant to resolution R-202-606-09-3. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion?

I just have one question. So were these additional orders and resolutions that we needed to have, were they in the initial, I mean, were they added after we initially went out for the grant, or were they...

There were some that were included with the grant application, and then there are some that were not followed up on after the application, which is why we are in front of you today, is to make sure that all of the information is included. So after visiting with general counsel and going through the process, it was requested that we bring all of them in front of you just to make sure that everything is taken care of and done correctly.

And if I could just chime in a little bit. Anytime you do a CDBG grant, community development block grant, these resolutions are required. We have done these before with various projects in the county where we are the pass-through for certain people to get grants. This is the grant, though, that was initiated by ACOG that had leftover money that was brought forward from hurricane funds that we technically did not qualify originally, and then they wanted to disperse the funds. So This is the grant with the Texas General Land Office. They initially thought what we had in place probably would work somewhat. Recently, if you'll remember, we had, I believe it was Barbara Christman came to be the fair housing coordinator. They are just trying to tidy up all the things to make sure everything is current. So it's the same thing we've had to do before for CDBG grants. It's just Texas General Land Office is now saying maybe You know, we need to tie it together, and I know that Christina worked with General Counsel to declare it as the MITMOD grant specific, even though it's the same information.

And the application was in 24, I believe, originally, so things have changed. And so, as Ms. Beer had said, we're just trying to tidy it up and make sure that everything is done the proper way so nothing gets kicked back.

Okay, just wondering. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. So with that, Paula, you're up. Mm-hmm. Number 12. Yeah, it was a motion made by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. And so that was the discussion. So you're free to go.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, consideration of possible action regarding Resolution R-202. 606-09-4, which, if adopted, would establish Kendall County Code of Conduct as required for participation in the MITMOD grant. Same scenario? Same scenario. This one's for the Code of Conduct. Okay. I move to establish the Kendall County Code of Conduct as required for participation in the MITMOD grant pursuant to Resolution 202-606-09-4. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? There being none, Paula.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. reaffirm Kendall County's obligations regarding civil rights as required for participation in the Community Development Block Grant pursuant to Resolution R202-606-09-5. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Motion by the judge. Second by Commissioner Chapman. Any further discussion? If not, Paula.

Commissioner McCall. Aye. Commissioner Deaton.

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Parker. Aye. Commissioner Logan.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. Signatures. Thank you. All right. We're going to move 15 to the end, and now we're going to transition to public comments. Maxie, are you still planning to speak, or are you going to withdraw? Thank you. First up, Kevin Wellborn. Morning, sir. Morning.

Thank you, Judge and Commissioners. My name is Kevin Wellborn. I'm the Managing Director at Joshua Creek Ranch, and I'd like to speak in accordance with number 23 that's upcoming today as part of the presentation in today's Commissioner's Court. I'm going to read a statement and a letter from our owners just to make sure I'm timely. For the past 36 years, Joshua Creek Ranch has transformed from an idea into one of the most visited and celebrated hunting lodges and sporting resorts in the world. Throughout this journey, we have always supported Kendall County in a variety of meaningful ways. We attract thousands of visitors to our community annually, provide support to local first responders, engage in partnerships with local businesses, actively participate in community organizations, host countless fundraisers for local nonprofits, and lend a helping hand to residents during times of crisis. Additionally, we continuously hire employees who reside in Kendall County, contributing to the local economy through taxes and patronage of local businesses. To be clear, we do not wish to see any business or community within our county struggle or fail. Our goal is to serve as exemplary neighbors dedicated to fostering a successful enterprise while giving back as much as possible. Further, we believe that raising taxes and increasing dependence on local government agencies is not the solution for achieving such success, particularly in the current economic climate where price sensitivity is paramount. Now, a letter from the Joshua Creek owners. To the Honorable Judge and Commissioners of Kendall County, Texas, we have been residents and business operators in Kendall County since buying the property in 1986 that has become known as Joshua Creek Ranch. We have a long-time relationship with many other business operators throughout the county, including those with Bernie and Comfort addresses. We say this for the purpose of emphasizing that we have nothing against the comfort businesses that are strongly advocating for imposing the hotel occupancy tax on lodging operators in Kendall County. Our objection to the imposition of the HOT is that it disproportionately places the heaviest burden of the tax on the customers, primarily of Joshua Creek Ranch and Tapatio Springs Hill Country Resort. This tax will significantly increase the lodging charges that our guests will pay. When our clients see the increased cost of their lodging expenses, they attribute that increase to Joshua Creek Ranch, not to Kendall County, whose new tax doesn't benefit them or Joshua Creek Ranch, since it will be spent primarily to promote tourism and comfort. Another concern we have is the county's administration of the hot funds if the tax is imposed. Who will determine that the funds are spent in accordance with state law? Who will audit the allocation of the funds? Who will determine the ratio of money that will be spent on promoting various lodging styles within the county? How much will be paid to the employees required to administer the HOT funds? In our eyes, another tax could be an opportunity for cronyism and fraud. We hope you will carefully consider the negative implications of opposing the HOT on Joshua Creek Ranch and our clients. Respectfully, Joe and Ann Kircherville.

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next up, Mr. David Perkins. Are you available online, Mr. Perkins? Good morning.

Yeah, I'm online. I had to adjust my audio and video.

Certainly. Are you ready to begin, sir? You have three minutes whenever you start speaking.

Okay, here we go. I purchased property on 46 Big Joshua Creek Road from Southern Clendal Company in And subsequently, after purchasing the property, I applied for the necessary permits required for me to improve the property into the house, such as a new septic system that the house does not have. I was not officially denied any of the permits. However, I received an email from Mary Ellen, the city engineer, stating that No permits would be issued to that property that has been there for subsequently over 100 years with a driveway, with a mailbox, and with a house. And she says no permits will be issued because of ongoing litigation with Southern Kendall. We applied for the permits on April the 8th and still have not gotten a formal rejection of any kind. Just an email and subsequent conversations that I've had with the inspectors stating that no permits would ever be issued on that property and that litigation would be tied up for years. That was my quote by Leslie Spear. I do not have that in writing, but he verbally told me that. So I'm asking the court to reestablish the address that has been there for over 100 years that currently I cannot get a 911 address. And without that, I cannot apply for any other permits. I don't quite understand how this can happen only because the property has been there for many, many years. The house on it was built, in my opinion, between 1890 and 1910 and has had an address. And now, miraculously, the county has revoked the address because of litigation that does not affect my house and property at all. And their comment was that the property was illegally subdivided. All right, sir.

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. I hope you can help us out here.

All right. Appreciate it, sir. Next up, Mr. Coon. And if you want to, can you turn that mic back towards you?

Thank you. Judge, commissioners, thank you for your time this morning. You've already heard from Mr. Perkins. He is one of three lot owners that have 10-plus acre lots over in Big Joshua Creek Road. Now, apparently there is some litigation going on with Sutherland, and while that may or may not be impactful on the county's ultimate decision, the concern lies in the limbo that these homeowners or these property owners are being placed in. These folks are paying mortgages. They're paying taxes. They are waiting in limbo while they try to get an address, the most fundamental right of a property owner here in Kendall County, right? You can't have property that you can use without an address, but you can certainly be taxed on it. So the problem is, as Mr. Perkins already pointed out, we've been sitting here for two months without any sort of response from the county engineer's office. Now, whether the county decides that they're going to deny or approve It's entirely up to the county, and that's a matter that can be taken up later. What we can't do is sit in limbo and just wait indefinitely. Now, these are taxpayers, these are residents, and they need a resolution. If that evolves in the form of taking these 10-acre lots and saying, no, we're not going to give you an address or let you have a septic system or whatever, that's a matter that can be handled in the courts if that's necessary. But we do need the court to take action. We need the county to take action. Because without it, these folks are stuck in limbo. There's no due process for them. There's no ability to move forward. We're just stuck. And so we're asking the court to reach out to the county engineer's office, whatever it takes to move the ball forward on this. That's why I'm here today. Thank you, Mr. Coon. Thank you.

Next up, Ms. McCarthy, are you here? Ms. McCarthy, are you online?

Yes, I'm online. I'd like to, I had actually did not ask for public comments. I asked for items, but you've already addressed some of those items and you've deferred another item. So I'd like to defer to 22.

So you would like to speak during the agenda item 22?

Yes.

Okay. I'll substitute you in there.

22 and 23 and 15, if you don't mind.

Next up. Lenore Achenberg. Did I pronounce that right? Okerberg.

Good morning, judge and commissioners. My name is Lenore Okerberg and I live in Kendall County. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. I'm here once again to voice my opposition of the proposed hotel occupancy tax for Kendall County. Since this first came before the court last year, I've listened carefully to the arguments in favor of this tax. Over the past week, I've also took time to read the downtown comfort assessment and visit comfort Texas presentation that was included in your backup materials. Ironically, I came away with the exact opposite conclusion. The assessment doesn't Describe a tax problem. It describes a leadership coordination and marketing challenge. It talks about stronger branding, strategic recruitment, improved wayfinding, and creating a better visitor experience. Those are all worthwhile goals, but they are goals that can be accomplished without creating another tax and another layer of government bureaucracy. And let's remember who this tax would affect. They are not large hotel corporations. For the most part, they are local residents and small business owners who are simply trying to make productive use of their property in an increasingly difficult economy. Like many businesses across Kendall County, they are facing rising costs, higher property tax, and fewer customers. Creating another tax and another layer of government bureaucracy will not solve those problems. The presentation also shows that private enterprise is already stepping up 40 local businesses have voluntarily joined together they raised over $50,000 they've accumulated nearly 1800 volunteer hours. And they have support from several local organizations to me that's exactly how Community should solve its challenges through voluntary cooperation, not government taxation. I've also been told repeatedly that the community wants this tax, but where are those voices? When this issue first came before the court, my petition opposing the tax gathered nearly 300 signature in just two weeks. Now it's close to 400. While the efforts supporting the tax gathered only a small fraction of that. The people who have spoken against this proposal are residents, property owners, and taxpayers. I simply do not believe that creating a new county tax represents the will of the majority. If the local businesses want to increase tourism, there are better solutions. Work with the Chamber of Commerce. Hold the organizations that already exist to promote tourism accountable. for producing results. Continue pulling marketing budgets together. Hire a professional marketing firm. Collaborate with local businesses and property owners. Before creating a new tax and another layer of bureaucracy, I think it's fair to ask whether the organizations that already exist to promote tourism are fully accomplishing that mission. Why not strengthen and support those efforts first? Private enterprise has always, always been a better solution for solving problems than expanding government. Across Texas, hotel occupancy taxes fund tourism bureaus and visitor centers, yet many communities see little to measurable return on that investment. Creating another tax, another government program, more administrative jobs, and more red tape does not guarantee success. What it does guarantee is is that the government grows. I would simply ask the court to consider whether creating a permanent tax is truly the right answer, especially during a time when inflation, high interest rates, rising property tax, and slowing tourism market are already putting tremendous pressure on the people of Kendall County.

You're well over, so I'm going to have to ask you to end there. Thank you. All right, next up, Paul Rushofsky. Did I get that right, Mr. Roschofsky? Pretty good. Close enough? Pretty good.

Good morning, Judge, commissioners. Good morning. Thank you all. My name is Paul Roschofsky. I'm the general manager of Tapatio Springs Hill Country Resort. I spoke, I believe, in the same chair, what, two years ago? We'll say 25 months ago or so. I also am here to speak about item number 23 in regards to the hot tax. And to keep me focused, because I can go long-winded as well, I did prepare a few items. In regards to the ownership and our management company, we remain firmly opposed to implementing a hotel occupancy tax at this time. Our position has not changed. To date, the absence of a hot tax has allowed Kendall County hotels, specifically Tapatio and Joshua Creek, to remain competitive against San Antonio and other hill country markets where these taxes are already in place. Introducing one would now immediately erode that advantage and place an additional burden on our guests. I've read and reviewed the visit comfort proposal, and while we appreciate the visit comfort proposal and support efforts that strengthen the region, none of the items to be presented later today changed our position on a hot tax, nor do they address the fundamental concerns we have raised regarding governance, long-term planning, and market competitiveness. While we recognize the challenges facing small businesses and agree the county must address a declining economic activity, a hot tax is not a cure-all. Suggesting that it is is a catalyst for economic development does not reflect the full picture. Before any consideration of a hot tax, we would require a clear five-year plan detailing exactly how the funds will be allocated, defined governance and oversight of those dollars, financial projections grounded in current travel demand, and also market conditions. Additionally, our industry adjusts to market conditions daily. We are seeing tightening consumer confidence and increased scrutiny around price transparency. Implementing a new tax during this environment would negatively impact guests and reduce our competitiveness. For these reasons, we cannot support a hot tax. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Mr. Kyle, you want to speak during the item? Okay. Thank you. All right. We're going to move on to planning and budgeting. Consideration of possible action regarding the renewal of Kendall County's group health plan with Texas Association of Counties health benefit pool for plan year October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027. Juanita?

I have Monby here. Good morning. She really promotes our programs and we're asking the consideration to renew our plan with the Texas Association of Friends. We have a little error on the spreadsheet. There is no increase for the vision and we'll get it up. We just wanted to do the correct thing. but the medical rates or the snake. It's just the vision that has the error, but that would not change. Oh, thank you.

So overall, can you give us an average?

The increase of the medical was 9. So that's less than what we met with TAC. We were thinking it was going to be closer to 15. Market-wise, they're telling us it's 12 to 13, 14%. But ours is 9. Across the board, the average TAC was 9.9. So we're a little bit less than that figure. It's still an increase, but it's a positive. The dental is a 4.8. Okay. It's still the two plans, the HMO plan and the PPO plan. None of the details of those plans are changing, or at least our presentation today, there are no changes. The two spreadsheets that we originally sent to you, those are showing if the increase is covered by the county or the increase is covered by the employees for both the employee premium and the dependent premium.

And today all we're doing is the request is only to approve the plan, not who pays for what. That's a budgeting issue, correct?

Well, correct. But we need to submit that information to TAC as to how it's going to be the breakdown. What's our deadline for that? The 26th of June. So at least it's just one more court date. Would you come up?

Any thoughts on how should we approach this in a logical method?

Well, the first budget meeting that the court has would actually be June 24th. That is what is scheduled is June 24th. So your commissioner's court meeting where you would be required to take action on the renewal is the day before the 23rd.

So we move that data, have a budget meeting before court.

Okay. My plan was for the county to absorb this cost for our employees this next budget year. I know our costs have gone up for everybody, and this has been tradition of the county to try and absorb as much of the cost we can. So it's a little something because I don't know where budget holds for COLA raises and all that, but this is just something that would help the employees. So if we were to vote today, I'd like the county to absorb the cost of these additional increases rather than pass it along to the employees. So that's just my two cents on this if we've got to vote today.

Do we have a total on that?

No, I haven't totaled anything.

I don't think that you're able to vote today given the language on the agenda. We'll have to have an item on for the 23rd for the court to allocate funding. Funding part.

I can have the total based on who is currently active right now and what plan they currently have. Your renewals are done typically in August and the county pays in September. You always pay a month ahead. So we pay in September for October. You know, we're paying in June for July's coverage. That's how the insurance works. But I would be able to, based on information from the HR's department, we would be able to calculate in our office what the what the current increase would be based on current employees and the coverage that they currently have.

We did a rough estimate. Yeah, what's the rough estimate? 21,500. But we would have to have the auditor look at it. That's just the increase. Just the increase for the current.

That sounds all right. It seems low.

It seems low to me, but I want you to see it. Because you have to look at every employee and you have to look at what plan that they currently have. And then if that employee has children covered, a spouse covered, or the family coverage, because you have three different rates based on that. But I haven't calculated anything, but I will be glad to do that, give that information back to Ms. Spino, and then she can bring that forward when you vote on it at the next commissioner's court, if that's what you would. So the deadline is June 26, you said?

Correct. And we meet on the 23rd, so we could still deal with it.

Yeah. I have a question for General Counsel. And I don't know if this is possible, but can there be an action item on Commissioner's Court during the budget proceedings to vote, if that's a regular Commissioner's Court meeting or no?

I think traditionally the budget hearings in Kendall County have not included action items. I think that the better course of action would be what the commissioner suggested, which is coming back on the 23rd. And we could discuss further the different options for funding at that time and have basically a mini-budget hearing just on this item.

Melissa is going to make note. We'll revisit this. But for today, is there any opposition to... approving the renewal of the Kennell County Group Health Plan for the Texas Association of Counties for plan year October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027. I move to approve it. Is there a second? I second. Motion by the judge, seconded by Commissioner Wieschen. Any further discussion?

You'll come back with real numbers, though, right?

Okay. So with that, Paula, could you please call the vote?

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries 5-0, and we will be coming back on the 23rd to determine whether the employees will pay the increase or whether the county absorbs it in some form or fashion. Next up, number 18, consideration of possible action regarding a job description for the digital forensic analyst, one in the sheriff's office. This position is funded under grant number 144, 2 1 2 5 8 from the office of the violence against women, local law enforcement grants for enforcement of cyber crimes grant. And this basically is, we've already approved this, but we did it for a different job description. After discussing this with the sheriff and Nicole, they want to actually change it. I think they were doing an investigator of some sort, but now they want a forensic analyst, a digital forensic analyst compensation committee was okay with this. And so that's, that's the request.

Yes, basically we supported what they submitted because they were the experts in creating this.

And so everything's been being moved forward with the grant in anticipation of this, and so I move to approve the job description for Digital Forensic Analyst 1 in the Sheriff's Office to be funded with the OVW grant. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, I'll open it up to this motion by the judge, seconded by Commissioner McCall. Any discussion on this item? Yes, Judge. Okay.

Pleasure, sir. So when we approved this grant to go out for this grant, it was a no. The DA's office was involved. And so my concern is, did we get the grant changed properly? All the paperwork changed on the grant. So that we're not on the hook for three quarters of a million dollars if we get audited and it's moved from the DA's office to the sheriff's office, which is a change.

First of all, yes, they already did. But it's not if you get audited. They would not be able to move forward without me approving those claims, approving the payroll. So, yes, they've already taken care of it on the grant side. This is twofold today. One is to get you to approve the new job description that the committee has reviewed. And two, just to acknowledge that they're no longer needing in this grant to cover another crime victim's assistance. The need between the two offices, which is the CDA's office and the sheriff's office, is actually a digital forensic investigator. So they have changed that in the grant. The CDA's grant coordinator said, They have already changed all that. Ms. Forbes is here. They've changed all that. This is just kind of administrative with the court because you do have to approve the job description. But it's acknowledging that we're not going to be hiring this other position that originally they thought when they were preparing the grant documents they would need. They are, in fact, now going to be hiring a digital forensic analyst.

Yes.

So that's really why it's important.

I just wanted to make sure the paperwork trail follows the changes we've made so that we don't end up on the hook.

Correct. You have to do both. You have to get the court's approval and change your grant documents. Okay. And the other job goes away. Yes, ma'am. They will no longer be hiring a third person. That was only for this grant. This is the grant that they brought forward that is a three-year grant program. that was presented quite a few months ago. And then it was brought back for approval to accept the grant because they were awarded the grant. This grant actually started on May the 1st. So now we're just trying to catch up so that now, in this case, the sheriff would be able to move forward in hiring the new position.

Corinna, are you tracking these grants that are one to three years or whatever period is paid for by another entity. I track all the grants, yes. Right, because at some point, we're going to be faced with, are we keeping these employees and going to fund it with county money? Correct. If we don't get the grant again, and that's always a future liability to really consider.

Yes, and y'all will be discussing that later in budget.

Of course, funding. If there's nothing else, Paula, please call the vote.

Aye. Aye. Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter?

Aye.

Judge Dillard?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, we've got a request for a closure of the solid waste recycle and brush site on Saturday, July 4th for the July 4th holiday. With that, I move to close the solid waste recycle brush site on Saturday, July 4th, 2026. Do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge. Seconded by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion? There being none, Paula, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall? Yes. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So on March 13th, the county issued a request for proposals for inmate food service at the jail. We, the county received back for responses from qualified vendors. Um, an evaluation committee independently reviewed each response based on the criteria outlined in the RFP. Some of that criteria include menu samples, experience, uh, clarity and sustainability of the pricing and nutritional compliance. And after completing the evaluation process, the committee determined that Summit Food Service, LLC, represented the best value to the county. Their proposal demonstrated a strong understanding of the criteria and a competitive and sustainable cost structure. So at this time, I'm just asking the court to award the bid to Summit Food Service and allow us to enter into a contract that will later come back for signature.

What's the average price per meal? What did they get it down to?

Well, based on we asked the RFP process was we asked the vendors to submit to us their pricing methodology of how they would cost structure this. And so, you know, one vendor did it per tray. One vendor did it like a couple vendors did it like a cost plus model. And so this particular vendor did a cost plus model. So they did a cost. They didn't really say it per tray. but they did give us an annual estimate based on this of about 180 to 195,000 a year, which is probably about a $60,000 savings if they adhere to the menu and the recipes and stuff. So like part of their thing is they will consult with the jail staff and help them. That's part of their administration plan is to help the jail come up with menus or they'll provide the menus and help them with the ordering and and be able to comply with all that so that the cost can't stay down.

So we're looking at a potential 20% savings on our food costs by making this switch. So that's good news. Good stuff. Okay.

Sounds more convenient, too, with a little bit better service. Yes.

I think so.

I think the jail is pretty pleased with how it all turned out. And who's the vendor now?

Five Star. Good job. All right. Well, I move to... Let's see. Accept the request for qualifications.

It's the request for proposal.

Oh, I'm sorry. I got it. I'm sorry. I skipped ahead. I accept or I move to accept the request for proposals RFP 2026 to 07 for inmate food service and authorize the purchasing agent to enter contract negotiations with the highest ranked respondent. Which is Summit Food Service.

Judge, could you please amend your motion to accept the proposals as submitted and to issue the awarding or pardon me, awarding the contract to Summit Food Services. and authorizing staff to begin negotiations on the contract.

I amend my motion to include those three items. So, do I have a second? Second. Motion by the judge, second by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion? Now, Paula, please call the vote.

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Leeson?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge DeLarzan?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Next up, we're going to Consider and take possible action for the evaluation of the results and ranking of respondents for requests for qualifications, RFQ 2026-08, Professional Engineering Services for the Flood Warning System Infrastructure Project, and to authorize the purchasing agent to enter into contract negotiations with the highest-ranked respondent. So this is related to the Texas Water Board grant that we received, awarding us $1 million in response to the July floods.

Yes, this is in reference to the SB3 grant. So on April 26, y'all had previously approved to go out for a request for qualifications for the engineering services related to this project. The purpose of this was for the county to select an engineer that would help plan, design, implement, and be in compliance with this SB3 grant. So we also had four respondents to this request for qualifications. And again, it was independently evaluated by a committee and ranked. according to their experience, qualifications, capacity, and relative project experience. And based on that, Streamline Engineering LLC was identified as the highest ranked firm. So again, I'm coming to ask the court to allow me to enter into contract negotiations with Streamline Engineering. And again, the contract would come back to court for signature.

move to accept the request for qualifications professional services for the flood warning system and they're authorized purchasing agent to enter into contract negotiations with the highest rank respondent streamline engineering services and to engage in any other contractual negotiations an execution that is required to accomplish this project um can you tell us second and second by commissioner chapman thank you sir uh can you tell us How does this company align with our surrounding neighbors? Is this one that's getting bids from Gillespie, Kerr, places like that?

They are currently managing the SB3 siren planning in Maverick County. Their teaming partners are also working on projects with the upstream in Kerr County. And so they're and they also are active. They said they're actively engaging discharge with the Guadalupe River Basin and upstream county. They their teaming partners co-authored the flash flood warning siren guide. So and they have they've done a lot of master drain projects. And so.

And whatever. And during the discussions with them. Was it emphasized that whatever system we install, it is critical that it speaks or communicates with upstream and downstream neighbors, regardless of what equipment that they install?

Yes. Well, that was all in the RFQ, but we have not actually spoken to them yet. This was just based on their submittal is how it was ranked. But yes, that was all expressed in the RFQ. Okay.

Any other questions that I'm missing? All right. So motion made by me, seconded by Commissioner Chapman. Paula, would you please call the vote?

Commissioner McCall? Aye. Commissioner Gleason?

Aye.

Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge DeLarza?

Aye. Motion carries 5-0. Thank you. Next up is agenda item 22, consideration of possible action regarding applying for a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Offices of Justice Programs for the OJP FY2026 Special Attorneys Program Round 3 Grant to request funding that supports the grant's purposes of strengthening investigative and prosecutorial capacity, expand intergovernmental coordination, enhance the ability of jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute fraud, as well as human trafficking. Good morning, Nicole.

Good morning. I wanted to go through this a little bit. If everybody read the packet, I think the packet's kind of self-explanatory. On May 15th, I met with the U.S. Attorney for the Western District, Justin Simmons. He came in to tell me about this grant. To apply for it, you need a letter of recommendation from the U.S. Attorney, and he asked us to participate in this. What we're going to be doing is asking for an attorney for 36 months only. The job description we're going to post is going to be very clear about that, that this is a grant-funded position. The person will be assigned to and work at the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Antonio. This is a program, I think in the news lately, they talked about there's been kind of a mass exodus of attorneys from the federal government. And so they're trying to get attorneys in, um, the first offer basically was we could assign one of our current attorneys over there and it would take over their salary. We can't afford to lose anybody. But the other part of this is that we can hire somebody specifically for this purpose and specifically just for this 36, uh, months. Yes. Um, so there'll be a Kendall County employee, but they will work, um, In San Antonio, they will be full-time at the U.S. Attorney's Office and under the supervision of the U.S. Attorney. So we're not going to be housing them. The grant will cover their salary, all of their benefits, any equipment or subscriptions that we have to have them on, so like Lexus or anything that we may give our normal attorneys, books, training, all of that is also included in this. So it's an attorney that technically works for Kendall County, but they will not be working for Kendall County here. They'll be working at the U S attorney's office. It's to help with a lot of the border stuff, human trafficking, uh, that type of thing. I anticipate we might be able to help work with them on our internet crimes against children. When we partner with the feds, that type of thing.

And this serves your office by benefiting by giving you a direct leads down to the attorney's office, correct?

Correct. It does. It does allow us to, to work directly with them, but they do understand that after the end of the 36 months, we will not be retaining this position. Um, it's solely for, um, the benefit of helping out our federal partners and also, um, having a good liaison with, um, with them in the next three years and work on that relationship. And zero costs to the county. Zero costs to the county.

Okay. Um, well, I'll do this and then we'll, uh, accept public comment on this. Uh, I move to, sorry.

Oh, sorry. And I also forgot to say the, um, hiring process is also includes, um, The U.S. attorney will also be in on the hiring process and the job description. So it's not solely my decision on that.

Okay. I move to apply, allow the district attorney to apply for a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice for the OJP FY 2026 Special Attorneys Program Round 3 grant to request the funding that supports the grant's purpose of strengthening investigative and prosecutorial capacity, expand intergovernmental coordination, and enhance the ability of jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute fraud as well as human trafficking motion by the judge seconded by mike oh commissioner chapman thank you sir all right opening up the public comments and then discussion miss mccarthy yes can you hear me yes ma'am

Thank you, Nicole, for making that commentary, because one of my concerns was the space, because various judges have come just in the last month or two and said that there's a space issue in our facilities that puts the court system at risk and an inefficiency. So you're saying that These specific actions would not be facilitated within our county offices. So I appreciate you saying that clearly that they would not be here. The second thing is, is that we have created positions in the past that people on the court voted for. that ended up fulfilling those positions. And I just want to make very clear that we don't have that scenario here. If there's anybody on the court that would be potentially eyed for this position that they need to step aside and not be part of the discussion and or the vote today. And that is it.

I can say that I just, and I know y'all can't address that, but in my opinion, if I understand what she's saying correctly. If anybody on the court were to vote for this, I do feel that creates a conflict. This position also starts pretty soon, like July or maybe August, because the funding will come in pretty quickly. So I think that if that assuages any of her concerns, I guess would be the best way to put it, if I understood that correctly.

This person has to be an attorney, right? Right. So really only one person on Commissioner's Court.

I mean, everyone's alluding to me. Right. So I mean...

Yes, so... So how about this? Just out of abundance of caution, I have no intent to apply, but I will not participate. So there you go.

Okay.

So with that, Paula, could you please call the vote?

Oh, I just had a couple more questions, if I may. Let's see. Is this going to support your caseload here, or these are more federal cases?

It's all federal cases. Okay. And honestly... So the U.S. attorney reached out to me on – we met on May 15th. He sent me the information on May 21st. That's where you're seeing, like, the rush to get over here to get it done because this is the third round of releasing the funds. So that's why we're kind of rushing to get there. By the time he sent it to me, it was too late for the second round to come to commissioner's court, I guess is the best way to put it. But, yes, this is all – Honestly, when the U.S. Attorney for the Western District asks you to do something, I feel obligated to bring it in front of you and present it to be able to do this. I do think it's a really good value. The U.S. Attorney's Office may keep this person on afterwards, and we still have that connection with somebody that we hired that's connected to the county. So I do think in that way it would benefit. But yes, the direct caseload, the direct officing, other than doing their timesheets, our office really won't have much daily encounter with whoever gets hired for this position. Does that make sense? Because we have zero space in our office for anybody else right now. So that's certainly not, I don't anticipate them ever actually handling a case in Kendall County State Court.

And it looks like All indirect and direct costs are covered.

Yes, it was very clear that even travel, like training, anything that we would budget when we hire somebody is covered by that. Otherwise, I wouldn't propose that we do that.

Okay, that's all I had. Thank you.

All right. With that, Paula, could you please call the vote? I will be abstaining, so it'll be a four-member vote.

Do I have a call?

Nay.

I'm sorry. Commissioner Chapman.

Aye.

Commissioner Parker.

Aye. Motion carries three to one with Commissioner McCall, nay, and then the judge abstaining. All right. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is a presentation of the Comfort Downtown Assessment by the Visit Comfort Board. Ms. McCarthy, while you're still on, I'm going to allow you to do your public comments on this, but remember, you probably got about two minutes left. Ms. McCarthy?

I'm sorry. The comments that have already been made on this issue, I concur with completely, and I have nothing further to add. So thank you for my time.

Okay. Mr. Kyle, would you like to come up?

Good morning, Judge. Good morning. Good morning, Judge. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Lance Kyle. My address is 226 Cascade Caverns Road. I was sitting in this seat two years ago. Just like Paul mentioned earlier from Tapatio, he was here two years ago. I think Kevin was here two years ago from Joshua Creek. By the way, I represent Cascade Caverns as well. I'm not affected. I have a campground, but I'm exempt under these kind of hot taxes. By the way, Cascade Caverns is the oldest Kendall County tourist attraction, also the number one rated tourist attraction in Kendall County. So I know a little bit about tourism in Kendall County. So If you look at agenda item number 23 on the surface, the Bernie Kendall County Economic Development Corporation is supporting tourism and comfort. Well, we all support that. I love comfort. But beneath the surface, the BKC EDC is again promoting a tax without most businesses and residents being aware. That would require hotel customers in the town of Comfort to pay an additional 7% county hotel occupancy tax tax. also known as the HOT or hot tax, on top of the 6% state hot tax that they already pay. That would be a 13% combined rate like we see in some of the big cities around the country. I think in Austin they're paying something like 15% or 16%. According to the EDC plan, this would be used to promote the tourism industry primarily in comfort, but at a commissioner's court meeting in July 2012, 2024, it was revealed that this tax would apply to all hotels, motels, B&B, short-term rentals, a.k.a. STRs, transient apartment buildings, and transient condos in the unincorporated county areas as well, such as Bergheim, Candalia, Sisterdale, Waring, Welfare, etc., Proponents of the additional hot tax claim it would be a silver bullet to stop the loss of businesses and comfort, but the city of Bernie is also losing businesses, even though they have this additional local tax. By the way, the Bernie hot tax, if you've ever paid attention to their board, it's poorly administered and there's a lot of cronyism, which one of the speakers alluded to earlier. They're constantly giving money to friends and family members through quote unquote tourism projects. And if you're not a member of that select group, you don't get any kind of funding. So that really needs to be examined before you ever go down this road. From my perspective, the real problem isn't a lack of advertising or promotion. It's rising property taxes, labor rates, interest rates, rents, inflation, and certain structural issues. Relying on tax increases to generate revenue is a short-term solution that doesn't address underlying economic challenges or promote sustainable growth, despite what the EDC is telling the community. The bottom line is that it shouldn't be the taxpayer's burden to support struggling businesses. There are more creative solutions, as Lenora alluded to earlier, to address this issue. Like that Kerrville, I believe Kerrville is trying to get back their state tax as a subsidy. Can you wind up succinctly, please? Yes, I wanted to appear a judge. It's unreasonable for local business owners to expect taxpayers to rescue them instead of exploring other ways to boost their business and grow the local economy. Last sentence. Incidentally, only 33 counties in Texas levy a county hot tax, typically heavily populated ones like Bexar County. There are 250 counties in Texas. Thank you. Thank you for wrapping up quickly.

I'm going over.

Okay.

All right. So is it comfort? Would you all mind coming up for whoever is going to participate? It looks like we have a slide presentation as well.

Have you got the presentation PowerPoint? Yep. There we go. Okay. Well, Almost good afternoon. Thank you all for time to present this. And I just want to say I'm here to present the findings from the downtown assessment. That's my sole purpose here. I didn't see hot on the agenda. Therefore, I don't really know why we're getting in the weeds on this. But I just wanted to give an overview and say thank you to the court for funding this assessment. It was done in February this year. We got the assessment in January. I guess a couple weeks ago, so I wanted to give kind of a high-level overview. The purpose of the assessment was to evaluate current conditions in downtown Comfort, identify opportunities and challenges, gather stakeholder and business owner input, recommend realistic attainable strategies, and support long-term downtown vitality and comfort. So who is the organization that did the assessment? I know when we asked for consideration for the county to fund this study, we talked a little bit about it. But Texas Downtown has been in existence since 1985. They've worked with communities of all sizes and have served communities and champions of downtown across the state. They are out of Leveland, Texas. And it was a really impressive team that we got to work with. And I think if you've read the materials in your packet and read the overview of the assessment, you'll see they did a really good job. Next slide, please. Community stakeholder engagement, what did that look like? It began with a stakeholder survey that was emailed out to community members in the comfort area. It consisted of a review of historical planning documents such as the comfort vision, project that had been done a number of years ago. They did an on-site assessment where they walked the street, they knocked on doors, they had conversations, and observed what the downtown looked like during the visit. They received business center input, stakeholder input, and conversations with elected officials. I know at least two of y'all were present for those, so that was held at the Incan Hewitt in downtown Comfort, so thank you for those of you that attended and provided input. What are the results of this study? Next slide, please. One more. Thank you. Nope, one more. Thank you. Two quotes that stuck out, and I included that in this presentation. Comfort does not need dramatic reinvention or aggressive growth. I think that's important to state up front. Comfort has a lot of great things going for it, and it's how do we enhance what comfort has not change what Comfort has. The other quote that I included in here is, the community's greatest opportunity lies in strengthening what already makes it special. So again, that kind of underpins this assessment. Key opportunities that they identified is to strengthen economic vitality. Too many businesses have left the Comfort area in the past few years. And as the EDC One of our key roles is business retention, so we want to support the small businesses that are here and ensure that they stay and prosper and are here for the long run. Preserve authenticity and historic character. It's one of the biggest strengths of Comfort. Build alignment and coordination, and we'll talk about this a little bit moving forward, but there are a lot of grassroots groups in Comfort that are working to help the community, and there's a lot of Little groups that are kind of in the same circles, but we need alignment and activation. So improving activation and then visibility. That's one big thing that came out of it is the lack of visibility for comfort. It's strategic location between Bernie, Fredericksburg, Kerrville, all thriving tourism economies. Why isn't comfort enjoying that same success? And then finally, create a stronger downtown identity. Next slide, please. Existing community assets that they identified. It's a National Register historic district It's a very walkable downtown a strong owner operator business culture I mean you're gonna hear from the visit comfort folks here that represent the business community And I think you'll be really impressed by the amount of manpower hours that have been spent These are business owners trying to keep their own businesses up and running. I mean, this is my job They're running businesses and the amount of time that they've spent Launching this entity is very impressive Kind of goes along with the strong free thinker heritage identity, and as I mentioned, strategic location between three thriving tourism destinations. Next slide. Current challenges that they identified. Weak visibility, that was probably the top thing that came out of it. You know, again, the location is great, but people are bypassing comfort. They're just not seeing it. I know that the Chamber and Visit Comfort are working on signage issues in order to improve visibility into Comfort. Lack of wayfinding signage. Where is the downtown district? You know where it is on a map, but how do we get them where we want them to go? Vacant or underutilized properties. There are a lot of empty buildings, and Mr. Kyle touched on some other issues that I think play into this, property tax values. It's not just a simple issue, how do you fill these buildings, but that is something that exists as a challenge. Limited weekday activity. A lot of things are closed multiple days during the week. Inconsistent business hours. And then lack of restaurants and evening destinations. And fragmented leadership and funding structure. That's just talking about, you know, it's not an incorporated city. So you don't have a mayor or city council. You have a different structure than the city of Bernie has. Next slide, please. Um, so targeted economic development, what can we do? They gave us recommendations kind of in the short term and in the long term, but what are priorities? Um, so from an economic development standpoint, that, that appealed to me what their recommendations were, um, recruiting restaurants. Um, they have a restaurant now that's open seven days a week on high street and the businesses that are on high street have said that alone has made a big difference. Having a destination where people can go have dinner and therefore more shops stay open. So it's sort of a cycle. Um, Adding experiential businesses. This is something that somebody asked me about. What are those? And this is kind of created in response to e-commerce. That's a big threat on local brick-and-mortar shops. Mama Pops, how do you compete with e-commerce? Well, they do things to engage the customer, whether it's loyalty programs or a wine happy hour or anything to engage the customer and generate that customer loyalty. So we need more of that. Activating vacant storefronts. Increasing weekday activity. and expanding destination experiences. Right now, Comfort has the 4th of July, which is coming up. And then they have Christmas in Comfort. Those are two huge events. But having other reasons for people to come to Comfort. The Bernie, I'm blanking out on the name of the bicycle race.

Tour de Bernie.

Yeah, that was a tough one. Tour de Bernie. Things like that. That really brings people in where they stay, they eat, they shop, they patronize these businesses. So more things along those lines. Next slide, please. Immediate physical priorities. Again, wayfinding signage, pedestrian connectivity, improvements when it comes to crosswalks, streetscape and public space improvements, parking is an issue, and then just gateway identity signage. We've already discussed that one. So those are immediate physical things that could be done to help promote tourism. Next slide, please. Promotion and event strategy. They also identified stronger unified branding, a real identity for comfort. recurring programs and events, and then coordinated marketing, which Visit Comfort will talk about. They're doing an excellent job on that front. And downtown storytelling. That's a new thing from influencers that have an itinerary where they show, I spent a weekend in Comfort. These are all the things I did to just emphasizing the human aspect of these small businesses and making sure those experiences reflect that. And then I mentioned already year-round activation, not just a couple of events, but you know, an art walk, a wine walk, you know, things that encourage people to come. So that's promotion and event strategy. And then talking about organizational recommendations. This is a big, important part of this plan. Greater collaboration. We've got the Merchants Association. We've got the Chamber. We've got Visit Comfort. We have a lot of groups that are all working toward the same goal, which is to support that small business economy and comfort. So working together collaboratively activating those groups together and eliminating duplication of efforts. Because with most volunteer things, what you find is it's the same people that are raising their hand to help in all of these ventures. So, and then, you know, you risk the burnout of these volunteers. They're all, again, trying to keep their businesses open and they're taking on a lot of weight on their shoulders. So, making sure that we're not duplicating efforts. Regular stakeholder coordination and then a sustainable funding structure going forward. Texas downtown recommended that Visit Comfort TX serve as the lead on this issue. You know, speaking with people, seeing the work that they've done, they feel like that's the natural entity to lead that. So, again, I'll leave it to the Visit Comfort TX people to tell you what they're doing, but that was the recommendation that came from the assessment. And then looking ahead, building a coordinated leading structure, defining what the downtown comfort district is, consistent messaging. I hope all of y'all are following Visit Comfort's social media accounts. You'll see some really cool things that they're putting out there to generate interest, activating vacant spaces, sustainable funding tools, and leveraging new partners and investment. So again, the takeaway from all of this is comfort doesn't need to be someplace else. Comfort needs to highlight what they are. And they, I mean, here's the quote, they don't need transformation. It needs alignment, clarity, and activation. And I think that's That's the key takeaway from this. I mean, they had such complimentary things to say about the community. I mean, it's a jewel in our county. And so our role is just simply to make sure that we support it and do what we can do to help the comfort community thrive. So I'll introduce Sherry Reynolds and Missy Ivankovich.

Thank you for that presentation. And the county did fund this study. It did, yes. But thanks for administering all that and working so hard. How have you spread the results of this study? this great report. How have you got that in the community?

I was wanting to get it to the court since you were the funding partners on this. And then it has been shared with Visit Comfort. We will have it on our website. And I invite anybody in the public who would like to see it. Y'all have the full version in your packet. And the first few pages are an executive summary. So, you know, data and information is only as good as it gets out and is shared. So I would say anybody that has any interest, you can look at it on our website. I'm happy to have any conversations if people have specific questions, but we are getting it out in the community. It might be good to do a news release, kind of an official launch. Yes. Okay, thank you.

Okay, Sherry, we'll turn it over to... Actually, I'm going to speak next. I'm Missy Ivankovich, and I am the president of Visit at Comfort, TX, as well as the owner of Singing Water Vineyards in the far western part of the county. And I wanted to just take a minute to introduce myself and Sherry. Sherry's the marketing lead on our executive committee. And Visit Comfort got started actually as a grassroots effort. These were business owners who saw problems that were existing prior to even the floods, but was exacerbated last summer in 2025. And the recognition that if we don't get together, and make some changes and start working together collaboratively. We can't leave it up to other entities and outside organizations to lead those efforts for us. We need to do it internally. So it started with actually a different group of owners that got a pop-up kind of stand up going for the Christmas season of 2024. And they were able to fill some of those vacant buildings in the downtown so that it didn't feel so deserted over the Christmas season. And I was part of that partnering up to go downtown and set up shop down there for a couple of weeks. After that, that group kind of, they tired out. They burned out. The volunteer hours that we're going to talk about, it's significant to get this done. And so it sort of petered out. And then we kind of went into a lull. And in 2025, we hit the floods. And it sort of reinvigorated the conversations again in comfort. We have got to work together. And we have got to bring all these organizations together. so that our mission statements continue to work for the community. So, for example, the Chamber of Comfort does not have tourism in its mission statement. And so, existing as a committee under the Chamber was not going to be a long-term sustainable solution. We needed to set up a new entity that was driven on and focused on empowering and growing our business community and downtown comfort around tourism and hospitality. And so that's what we do. With that, Sherry Reynolds came on board. She's a short-term rental owner. I won't jump too much into your background, but we have basically incorporated. We are a 501c6 and We have 40-plus businesses from Comfort that have joined with us and said, yes, we believe in what you're doing, and we are on board. So with that support, we also have raised over $50,000 in just a few short months, and we are looking for opportunities to partner with the county so that we can step in and fill the marketing tourism gap that we identified yesterday looking at your budgets. And so what we think is an opportunity is that we can come in, utilize the parks that you have already built and invested in. My goodness, those parks are beautiful and they are underutilized and most of them touch comfort in some way. They're either in comfort or they are contiguous to comfort. So how do we utilize those parks, drive tourism and Play, nature, hike, all the good things that we bring to Kendall County or get from Kendall County. But we don't have the money to market those things. So we're basically asking, and we'll get through it with the presentation, we're asking for $25,000 so that we can market the parks and recreation that's already been built and we will include it into our marketing plan. genre. So with that, Sherry's going to talk a little bit more about that.

Okay, great. Thank you so much for having us. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to the commissioners and you, the judge, about what's going on in Comfort, Texas, because we're very excited about what's happening. So as Missy said, my name is Sherry Reynolds. I'm a short-term rental owner. I invested in Comfort last March and decided that I'm going to retire in May and open a short-term business. I have three rooms that I rent. One is a vintage Airstream, one is a deluxe suite, and one is a one-bedroom bungalow. I was open for business the first day on July 3rd, and my first act as a business owner was to knock the door and let people know that we might need to evacuate the property. So I spent four months leading into building this beautiful space for people to stay, and suddenly overnight, me, like many of the other residents, in comfort and up and down the river were decimated by a natural disaster. And as a marketing person, my background is digital marketing. I started one of the first web design companies in Austin, Texas. I worked for Michael Dell. He hired my company to build the Dell business model to explain to everyone in the company how the model worked and why Dell was being so successful. So those are some of the clients that I had. I have a small practice and I've been a digital marketing specialist for a long time. I am a dinosaur in the marketing world, but still relevant. That's what I tell everybody. Imagine my concern as a marketing person when suddenly we had nothing to market. If you looked at Comfort, although we didn't have a lot of physical damage, we were at the bottom of every single map on every single national news station, local news station for two months. And we were We were equated with the devastation that was happening in other places on the Guadalupe River. I didn't even know where to begin as a marketing person to market my own property because people did not want to come to our area. What do you do as a marketing person when you don't have something that people are interested in even looking at? So I threw myself into helping with volunteerism and really put my business hat on after working with residents helping them get resources and, and connected with a flood. And I put my business hat back on and I said, okay, we are going into a recovery process. What is that going to look like for my town, for my business? Do I even want to stay in business? My first six months in business, I made a total of $6,000. You know, it's not, it's not a good way to start a new business and to start retirement. I plan to be traveling. Um, So I put my business hat on and I went to work and I reached out in the community and I started meeting with people and getting to know my neighbors and asking a lot of questions. What's going on with you? I saw the visit comfort TX website. You could tell it hadn't been updated in a few months. It hadn't been updated in nine months and the new events weren't, we had no way to publish events. So immediately I said, please let me help. I'm a volunteer. Let me take over the website and let me help. So, Missy and Gary Louie, who's also here, another one of our board members, invited me to be part of the advisory committee and to work on the website. So Visit Comfort started as a, it's still a grassroots organization. I'm happy that we're having a hot discussion. Our presentation is not about hot. Our presentation is about getting the funding that we need to establish a digital marketing organization so that we can market the entire organization. Kendall County rural areas. And hot is the discussion that maybe we need to have again. It's on one of my slides if you want to keep moving forward in the slides. It's on one of the slides because we are talking about what might happen in the coming years. Because as an organization, as Lenore stated, You need to be able to hire a professional marketing organization. Well, let me tell you, we have a proposal for a professional marketing organization. They want $100,000 to market Visit Comfort. That's a lot of money. So we've gone back to the drawing board, and our team has said, okay, what do we really need to make this happen? Me as a marketing person, when I came into town, I took a look at what tourism looked like, and it is fantastic. It fluctuates a lot. We've got a very strong spring season because we have weddings. It starts to dip in the summer. It spikes again around the 4th of July. August, it dies again. September, October, November, it starts to go up. And then December, January to mid-February, we're dead. This impacts every single small business in our town, not only me as a lodging provider, but the stores because we don't have people staying and we don't have people shopping. So we took a look at what can we do to start to level this out? How can we attract more people to our town that live in a 25 mile radius? How do we reach out and turn some of the day trippers from San Antonio that spend on average $30 in our county into people that stay overnight that spend $150 in our county? So one of the first things we did as a team is we put together this guide. It's called the Weekend Guide to Comfort Texas. If you go to our website and look at our social media, this is the number one thing that we ask people to download and to interact with us because it shows that comfort is not just a place that you go for the day, shop on High Street, eat at High's, eat at Both Hands Burgers, or maybe you go out and drink at Missy's Vineyard. This is a place where you can actually stay for three, four, five days. And we have a lot of activities. What we want to do is extend to the parks because this whole idea of nature tourism is an untapped market for our entire county. And comfort is sitting right in the middle of this investment that you've made in the park system. We love Joshua's Joshua Springs. It took me 40, I was here for nine months before I ever went out for the first time. I have nephews that come and visit and they are fishermen. We've been going up to Centerpoint and fishing in the river. I had no idea that they could fish right there eight minutes from my house. So we have, as downtown Texas said, we have a perception problem. We have a beautiful place to market. We have an incredible heritage that The fourth generation people, there's so much pride about the community. And they're fiercely, fiercely guarded. They don't want to see Comfort become another Fredericksburg. But we do want to see our businesses to be successful. We want that to happen. And if you look at the budget that we brought to you, we are leaning heavily into the ask.

Can we advance it?

This is the final slide. We're leaning heavily into infrastructure. So we're not 100% dependent on HOT to support our group. We don't expect that. We would love to be able to grow into that. We want to be the team that facilitates a healthy discussion about the best way to support tourism for the entire Kendall County. Bernie has a great city-based tourism group. But we don't get to benefit from that because we're not in Bernie. We're in comfort. We're in welfare. We're in Sisterdale. And we're in the rural parts of Kendall County. But we have a compelling story to tell. But we need your help. We can't do it on our own. And our businesses have chipped in generously. And these are businesses that had terrible Q3s. We had restaurants that were open for business with no one eating because they were giving away free food to the volunteers in the street. We had, yeah, we had a lot of traffic. The gas stations made money because there were search and rescue teams coming through. But they didn't, those search and rescue teams, trust me, they weren't shopping at Fiddle and Frogs. They didn't stop and spend money on High Street at our beautiful boutiques. They were on their way to help people in need. So Our businesses have stepped forward. We identified 78 businesses that were tourist-facing and all of comfort. We've also reached out to our neighbors in Centerpoint because they have a very good regional restaurant and another tasting room and some things for people to do. And they also have additional lodging. We want to extend these kinds of partnerships out to Sisterdale, to Waring, that has one of the most fabulous music venues in this part of the world. We definitely want to help market the parks because we feel like having Guadalupe access right there in comfort with this new yield property purchase that you guys just did for us is going to change tourism in comfort. It's going to let us lean very heavily into the cyclists, the bikers, the hikers, the bird watchers. Did you know that Kendall County is one of the only places in Texas that the golden cheek warbler can be seen? I just learned this because I'm working on an itinerary for birdwatchers. We have something that attracts birdwatchers from all over the country to come and look for these. And your parks, the places where they're doing it, they're at Joshua Springs, they're at Crittsburg Canyon. I'm sorry if I mispronounced that one. And they're at James Kiel Park. That's where they go to birdwatch. We want to give them a place to sleep. We want to make sure that they have activities to do. We want them to go out and enjoy our vineyards. We want them to eat in our local restaurants. And we want them to meet the store owners because here in Comfort, this is something that's very unique to our town. You can actually walk in and you're going to meet the owner of the store. And some of them grew up right here in Comfort and they'll tell you the stories. So part of what we're doing as a group, we're looking into what is it that makes Comfort special? It's the stories. It's the storytelling. Just like Texas downtown, identified. It's what makes us unique. When you go to Fredericksburg, you're not going to meet many owners anymore. It's changed a lot. We want to keep what makes Comfort Special special. So we're asking you for help to build a few things. One, data intelligence. We know that if you look at the studies, $8 to $10 million in economic loss in the Hill Country after the floods. We don't have the data tools to track to know exactly what that impact was in Comfort So we'd like you, Kendall County, to help us and invest in some of the data intelligence that we need. That's $7,200. $6,000, we'd like for you to spend a little money with us so that we can market your parks because we think that we can take Joshua Springs and turn it into a weekend adventure for someone. They can go there, walk their dogs, hike, fish. The next day, they can go kayaking at James Keel. They can swim in the river. They can spend time with us. $8,300 is on the wayfinding signage. And this is very important. If you look at the signage on I-10, these were signs that were paid for by individuals. It says comfort an antique town. We are so much more than an antique town. So we've been working in conjunction with some of the civic organizations. We have a group of older men that meet every Friday at the coffee shop. They donated $2,000 so that we can replace the signs and tell a better story and help get people off of I-10. We've been working with Joe Groff and the Chamber of Commerce to create a wayfinding map. So we have a digital online map. You can see where we've identified the places that we need to direct traffic. To get to Joshua Springs, you would think, coming out of Comfort, you make a right turn. I think it's 289. I might be wrong. You make a right, and within five minutes, you're at Joshua Springs. There's no sign there. You get on Interstate 10, and there's no exit for Joshua Springs. So we want to change that. We want to help you market your parks because in marketing the parks and in marketing all of rural Kendall County, and that extends over to Joshua Creek and some of our neighbors. We want to – this money is not just for comfort. It's for the entire rural part of the county, and we want to be the leaders. We want to be the stewards, and we want to prove to you that we can be a really good destination marketing organization for the entire county. We would like to do that. That's our proposal to you. Not that we want hot, but that we want to be a destination marketing organization for the county. One of the ways we'll do that is by putting... dedicated pages on our website for each of the county parks, for Sisterdale, Kendalia, Waring and Welfare, because we have the opportunity to market. Comfort is the center, but we are within 18, 20 minutes of all these different destinations. So we have more lodging than most of the other parts of the county. We have a logical, we're a logical partner for you. So our ask today is, If you have it in your heart, we would love to have $25,000 additional dollars in our budget today so that we can buy some of the data intelligence tools. We don't have $100,000 to hire a digital marketing company right now, so they're relying on me, and I'm donating as a volunteer all of the digital marketing services. I would be charging this company $5,000 a month to do the kinds of deliverables that we're doing. website, social media strategy. I'm doing it because I believe in this town. I believe in the investment. And I believe in the people that I've met along the way. And I'm telling you, they tell me, Sherry, slow your roll. I hear that all the time. But I'm passionate about what we're doing. And we have a really great team. We have a couple of our, my crack sales team is here. Okay. Take a breath. Crack sales team, please raise your hand. I want you to see Joe Gerber, Gary Louie. He's also on our board. Ken Dinsley, who is on our advisory committee. There have been four of us out raising money and convincing our townspeople that they need to invest in Visit Comfort. So you can invest at a $100, $500, or $1,000 level. And we have over half of the businesses have joined us. And we've been out for how long? Since March? 100 years. 100 years. It feels like it. So we have more work to do, and I've talked way too much. And I thank you very much for your time. And I'm open to any questions.

Okay.

Open up to questions, ladies. You first.

I just took a look through your website. It's great. You have a lot of great ideas. Thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate that.

Well, thanks for coming in.

And I do care about the comfort community. I am your commissioner, even though I'm a precinct, too, including the economic success for all our residents. And I support industry, whether that's agriculture or tourism. And by the way, I really do like the ecotourism because I think that is something that hadn't been tapped into. Of course, we applaud small businesses. You're the heartbeat of the community. And the better these businesses do, the better our county does. I'm glad to see that you've got greater collaboration in eliminating duplication and efforts and trying to strengthen your relationship with the chamber and the other organizations. Anywhere in the philanthropy world, you know that people don't want to give money to organizations that don't get along with each other and don't have synergy and are duplicating efforts. So, I think you're on the right track. And you're right. You have the product. You just need to let everybody know about it. So I think you said you had like 41 members in your organization. So I'm not going to ask this question because we need to move on. But I would think that you have a target universe of how many that could be and what percentage you can get so that you can map out the more successful you become. the more money they're able to contribute and you can sustain this marketing effort without the help of government. And I think that you're probably talking about some seed money for fiscal year 27, which would be covered in our budget hearings. And I'm sure your commissioner will bring that forward and we'll certainly look at that. So thanks for coming in and letting us know all the great things you're doing.

Well, thank you, Hunter, for your support. We really appreciate it. And yes, we'd love to be in the budget talks this month. I want you to know that we are looking at every single funding possibility out there. We have applied to the James Avery Foundation to help us with our storytelling efforts. We've asked them for $21,300. We've asked BEC to help fund some of our technology tools. We would love to see a standalone kiosk run by Visit Widget so that people can access be in the center of our town, take a look. We can even put these out at the parks and they can see where to go. So as they're standing, they see that we've got shops here, we've got shops there, we've got places to eat here. We have places outside of town and you can even go to the parks. When you're in the parks, we can help direct you back to comfort so you know where to eat. So those are the kinds of things that we're asking for. We've also reached out to Texas Trails for $2,000 for wayfinding signs. So we're looking at alternative ways to fund, including in-kind donations and fundraising. But we need help to get off the ground. So that's what we're asking for today is a little help. Open up the channels of communication. We would love to talk to our neighbors about other ways of funding that were suggested by Texas Downtown. They said, please take a look at this in December. We know you have a lot of work to do. So we're We'd like to start the conversations in the fall and into the winter about alternatives for funding in the future. We're not ready to talk about it today. Commissioner Chapman? Yeah.

You and Gary make a good team. Thank you. Commissioner Carpenter? Thank you. This is probably the most in-depth plan I've ever seen. I was president of the Chamber of Commerce years ago. I was secretary, treasurer, all of the different positions. And I've never seen anything from the Comfort Community as well planned for the business community. So thank you very much. And I'll do everything I can to help you guys during the budget process.

Thank you. We appreciate it. We have a great team working on this. We have a lot of strong business owners and we have community organizers that are helping. And we've had the great support of Amy Story. She sits on our advisory board and she's been on speed dial for both of these ladies, for Joe Groff and for Missy So it's nice to have this kind of support. And our community is really getting behind us. And it's nice to have. It's really nice to see that.

And one other comment. Up to this point, until you had a nonprofit, we had no way of actually giving you any funds, even for seed money, until now. So the county can't just write a check to the Chamber of Commerce directly. At least we can't.

Well, and I'd like to add, too, that just note that the things that we're asking the county for is directly related to the county's investments that you've already made. You know, you've already put forward millions of dollars. And so why not let people know about it, even our own residents? I don't believe our own residents know what we have to offer in terms of the park system. So we look forward to partnering with you. Hopefully this is just the beginning.

And I just have a comment for Joshua Creek and Tapatio. When I discussed with this group the option of an alternative to a hot tax, it's called a T-PID. Look into that because that is a taxing base where individual businesses can agree to it within a community, and it only applies to them. So that's an alternative way where they could accomplish the same goal as a hot tax, but it would not impact you. So I encourage you to explore that option a little bit more to get a speed on it. Because that is, if you look through their materials, they have like step seven of their 12-month plan that they're going to look into that as well as a hot tax. But get educated on that because I think that is the best scenario that would be a good balance to work for everybody. But that's just something for you all to look at. So with that, anything else? And we're going to take a quick restroom break now that we're done with that presentation. So we'll take a restroom break. Agenda consisting of consideration, possible action on approval of amending the FY 2026 budget to regular budget adjustments, consideration of possible action regarding the authorization of the purchasing agent to issue RFP for qualifications for professional services to conduct a countywide space needs assessment. C, consideration of possible action regarding the acceptance of a right-of-way dedication from Gustavo Garcia Siller, Archbishop of San Antonio at North Creech Loop for property located at 114 US 87. D, consideration of possible action regarding the proposed amending plan of Fox Chase Farms, creating lots 42A and 43A for the property located at 115 South Hilltop Road. E, consideration of possible action regarding the proposed amending plan of Tapatio Springs Unit 18 Garden Home Subdivision Phase 2, creating lot 16163A for the property located east of Preston Trail, approximately 0.14 miles north of Wild Turkey Creek Boulevard. And lastly, consideration of possible action to approve the proposed amending plat of Pleasant Valley Business Park development plat creating lot 14A for the properties located at 25 and 31 Trust Drive. At this time, I'll entertain a motion as to the approval of the consent agenda items.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda items for June 9th of 2026. Motion to be made by Commissioner Chapman, seconded by Commissioner Carpenter.

Any further discussion?

I'd like to pull one of, I'd like to pull B.

Okay.

So would you two mind amending your motion? I'll amend it to exclude B. The consent agenda items all except item B.

Okay. Chad, do you adopt his amended motion? Yes. Okay. With that, any further discussion? If not, Paula, please call the vote as to agenda items. A through F with the exception of B.

Commissioner McCall?

Aye.

Commissioner Gleeson? Aye. Commissioner Chapman?

Aye.

Commissioner Carpenter? Aye. Judge Stolarzy?

Aye. Motion carries 5 to 0. So now Commissioner McCall has pulled the request for proposals or qualifications for a countywide space and needs assessment study. What would you like to discuss, ma'am?

I just wanted a little more information again on this. I just wanted some more explanation on request for a proposal and kind of what we're doing here with this item.

Hello. Okay, so this item is just to request. I was approached by Commissioner Chapman to ask to put this on the agenda in regards to the space needs that the district courts and county courts have expressed. So the first step is to just ask the court if y'all would like to go out for a request for proposals or qualifications. In my best practice, I've seen qualifications because a lot of times these items require maybe a professional opinion of an architect of space needs and stuff. However, in speaking with general counsel, we also said we could possibly do it as a request for proposal where they present to us their methodology of going about a space needs assessment. So that's why either one, this is just basically asking the court if y'all would like to go out to get this competitively bid done.

And it will be county-wise, so all departments and looking at space needs. Yes, I believe so. Okay. Okay. I just wanted a little clarification on it. Thank you.

Any other questions? At this time, I want to obtain a motion as to agenda item 25B.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve consent agenda item number 25B, Thank you. June 26th, or June 9th of 2026.

Motion by Commissioner Chapman, seconded by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion? If not, please call the vote.

I. I. I. I. I. Motion carries 5-0.

Next up, we're going to address the consideration of possible action regarding the agreement with South Texas Regional Advisory Council, otherwise known as STRAC, for it to provide electronic record management software services to Kendall County EMS and volunteer fire departments in a cooperative fashion to increase capability and performance for the jurisdictions of population served. Commissioner Chapman and Carpenter, I'll hand it over to you.

So if y'all will remember a couple of courts ago, the court, uh, asked Commissioner Carpenter and myself to answer any questions that the fire departments might have. We met with several of them and spoke with all of them by phone, at least if we didn't meet with them. There was no concerns other than in the reports that were to go out, there could be no private information which were not going to violate HIPAA by putting out these reports. They would be the same type of reports that Jeff Fink used to provide to the court with a 50,000-foot overview that it would say this department made X number of runs, they were X number of structure fires, grass fires, extrications, whatever the run type. but no individual information would be released from these reports. And for the public's benefit, this, we had originally, we had an umbrella type of system where the fire departments were under it. We went to a different system to where it was each individual department. And we found out in doing so that, uh, Our costs are going up because if we had a run in which the EMS and the fire departments both went, that constituted two runs. If you had the EMS and three fire departments, then that is four runs, and we're paying by the run. So by going back to the umbrella system where the county is the actual owner of the contract... and everybody else is underneath that contract, it will actually in the long run save the county money.

Jen, did you review this electronic management agreement that's part of the binder?

Yes, this contract has gone back and forth a few times with STRAC. They were great to work with, and I have no concerns about the contract.

So I can sign this one if we approve it today?

Please.

Anything else to discuss or add?

So just to confirm, Commissioner Carpenter and Commissioner Chapman, you spoke with all the volunteer fire departments and they're good with this arrangement?

Yes. The only person that the only one that we haven't had direct contact with is Brian Riley from Sisterdale. And if there's more concerns, we can bring it back and discuss. But from what I understand, they'll take the information that the departments give and they'll pick and choose what part of the reports, how we want to build those reports. And there was some involvement where I think some of them wanted to be included on how the reports are generated so they can sit in on the meetings and help discuss and drive the end result of the reports that they are given. And I think Brady is the one that STRAC responds to or gives the report. So it's in one location.

Actually, I did talk to Brian, and he We, if you remember, told him that he would be a part of the reporting. Whenever we sat down to do the reports, Brian would be involved in that because Brian has had experience in that, and he's very good with that.

We had asked him to help us with that a couple years ago, and that kind of got stalled.

So that's why we went ahead and included Brian to be a part of that team whenever we do design the reports.

Okay, very good. Thank you.

At this time, I'll entertain a motion. Judge, I'd like to make a motion to approve the agreement with Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, STRAC, for it to provide electronic records management software services to Kendall County EMS and volunteer fire departments in a cooperative fashion to increase capacity, capability, and performance for the jurisdiction of population served.

We have a motion made by Commissioner Chapman, seconded by Commissioner Carpenter. Any further discussion? If not, Paula, please call the vote.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries five to zero. Next up, consideration of possible action authorizing the county judge to execute the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department assurance of eligibility and waiver of retroactivity documents related to the purchase of Guadalupe River Ranch to support future Guadalupe River Ranch Park TPW grant applications. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Christina.

What can you tell us about this item? Good morning. So with the anticipation of Commissioner's Court purchasing the Guadalupe River Ranch property, Joe and I were in some brief discussions about looking for possible parks grants with the purchase of that property. And Texas Parks and Wildlife yearly holds some one-on-one meetings. And so Joe and I scheduled one of those meetings and we went over to New Braunfels and we spoke directly with Texas Parks and Wildlife individuals about the anticipation of Kendall County purchasing a large parcel of property with Guadalupe frontage, and if there were any suggestions that they would have on a possible grant if we were to, as Kendall County, go out after a grant. It was just an open discussion to gather information. Within that meeting, we had discussed with them the different grant opportunities. The main grant that they had suggested if Kendall County in the future wanted to apply for a grant for this property was going to be what they call the Outdoor Recreational Legacy Partnership Grant. It's also known as ORLP. That grant is currently paused. They are anticipating the grant possibly opening back up next year. And this particular grant, if in the future the court decides to go out for a grant, is up to $50 million with a 50% match. What we found out is, again, if Kendall County decides in the future to apply for this grant, the purchase price of $11 million for that piece of property could be used as the match. So great opportunity in the future if it works out to have that $11 million purchase price contributed to the match. since this grant is currently paused and we do not have an actual date for the grant opening up they had suggested that we do the waiver of retroactivity and the assurance which is in front of you today this is not an application what this is is just locking in the purchase of the property that the county has done and using that 11 million dollars as a match in the future if kendall county applies for a grant for that property Reason being is there's a time frame of 12 months. So if when the purchase was done last month, I believe on this property, if the grant doesn't open up until 13 months after that purchase, we are not allowed to use that $11 million as a match. If you approve the documents today, it lets Parks and Wildlife know that we would want to anticipate using the $11 million as a match when a grant opens up that we would like to apply for. There is no grant application. It is just the assurance that Kendall County purchased this property. It's making notation to Texas Parks and Wildlife, one, that the property is purchased, two, that it was purchased for $11 million, and it locks it in to be able to use that as a match in the future.

Does anyone have any questions for Christina or Joe? Thank you. Okay. I'll entertain a motion at this time.

Judge, I move to authorize the county judge to execute the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department assurance of eligibility and waiver of retroactivity documents related to the purchase of the Guadalupe River Ranch property to support future Guadalupe River Ranch Park Texas Parks and Wildlife Department grant applications.

We have a motion made by Commissioner Weijian. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Commissioner McCall. Any further discussion? If not, Paul, please call the vote.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Motion carries five to zero. At this time, we're going to circle back.

Thank you very much.

Mary Ellen here. We're going to circle back to agenda item 15. Are you with me? Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you for rearranging.

Agenda item 15 reads consideration and possible action regarding order O-20260609-2 to classify first class county roads as minor collectors and major collectors and establishing a process for future county roads. Can you tell us about this, Marion?

Good morning. So on April 14th, 2026, Commissioner Sport announced voted to suspend application of the thoroughfare plan. As a result of that, the road classification that was incorporated into the thoroughfare plan was also paused. And our office was directed by Commissioner's Court to bring back the road classifications on the next court or two. Unfortunately, we have been very busy and it took us a little bit longer to put that together and bring it to you. But this order is establishing the first class roads and further classifying first-class roads as either major or minor for border street improvements in accordance with our development regulations. And it establishes the procedure for new county roads to be classified through approval by Commissioner's Court of a road history form if a new road is to be county maintained. And then in the order, the following roads were listed as major Ammon Road, Cascade Caverns Road, Crabapple, Grape Creek Road, Johns Road, Old Blanco Road, Old Fredericksburg Road, Old No. 9 Highway, Ranger Creek Road to Busby Road, Sattler, Scenic Loop Road, Upper Balcones Road, Upper Cibolo Creek Road to Sparkling Springs Road, and Waring Welfare Road. And so this is just the step of approving the road classifications in accordance with 251.007 of transportation code, which requires that commissioners court shall classify each public road in the county as a first class, second class or third class road. And it does any other roads that have been previously classified. It's not changing their classifications. Those that have been previously approved as a third class road, for example, would continue to be a third class road. So what do you need from us? If the court would like to adopt the classifications, it would be approval of the order that is in your packet.

At this time, I'll entertain a motion as to agenda item 15.

Judge, I'd like to make a motion regarding order number 0-20260609-2. classify first-class county roads as minor collectors and major collectors and establishing a process for future county roads.

Motion made by Commissioner Chapman, seconded by the judge. Any further discussion?

Yes. So I wanted to mention, I pulled the City of Bernie's major thoroughfare plan, and eight of the roads for this agenda item are on the City of Bernie's adopted major thoroughfare plan. On August 14th, 2023, Kendall County Commissioner's Court rejected the City of Bernie's thoroughfare plan outside the city limits of Bernie. I believe this would make a connection between the City of Bernie and Kendall County and would complete their original thoroughfare plan into the county. I don't think this is the right time. I think this needs the public involved. We have a judge that will be seated in January of 27 that needs to be involved. And finally, we're going into the budget process, and it will be pretty compressed and extensive. So I'd like to address this maybe in January of 27, but I really want the public's involvement in this process. What's the consequence if we don't do this today?

Well, the road classifications would not be adopted, which is required by Commissioner's Court under 251.007 of Transportation Code. We would continue to have all roads classified as 60-foot right-of-way. The section in our border street policy and the development rules and regulations would not be applicable outside of the 60-foot right-of-way. To the thoroughfare plan, when we as a court discussed, when you as a court discussed the pausing of the plan, the idea was to bring the thoroughfare plan back as discussion now that we were part of AMPO and had a seat at the table and looking at broader transportation issues and that the thoroughfare plan would continue to be discussed with public involvement and a workshop and committees. We talked about that being a path forward for ultimate planning of the community, but that the classification would come back for approval of the specific road county public roads that needed the classification under transportation.

If we don't have this in place, then we cannot ask for right away dedication as these properties develop that correct.

In in the in accordance with the border street policy. You would only be able to ask for any improvement up to the 60-foot right-of-way. So the roads that are listed here that were also listed in the county's thoroughfare plan are connectors that commissioners' court identified as roads that would have increased traffic or increased connections throughout the county or to other counties and to other major roads. So any development that would come through on one of those roads would also be limited to a 60-foot right-of-way, even if we know that in the future we're going to, you know, if a development comes in, that they should widen to a bigger classification than that.

This is one of our only means of actually being able to mitigate future cost to the taxpayers of the county by, as these, we're not taking anybody's land. We are actually asking the developers to pay their fair share of this as we go forward. And otherwise, 100% of this load then comes back on the taxpayers.

So what's your theory? How does us adopt this? How does this make

bernie thoroughfare plan complete if we rejected it how is this act completing it if you look at the map you will see that it continues we we rejected the city's thoroughfare plan into outside their city limits and so if we if we classify these roads then it would just make that connection from from the cities which we rejected that plan but it would continue that roadway into the county as part of our, I mean, classification and plan. Were these the same roads that were on the thoroughfare plan before we suspended it?

Yes, the list is the same set of roads that were included previously, with the exception that it doesn't include any textile roads. But the ones that were classified as major in the thoroughfare plan are the ones that are listed here.

So you're creating a problem that doesn't exist because we already adopted our thoroughfare plan and it was a technicality that threw it out. So this is nonsensical.

May I kind of shift the discussion? So just to explain for everybody's enlightenment, we had to pretty much rescind an order that was adopted illegally, I believe, because Jen found out that we didn't have an action item. The court didn't have an action item, what, four years ago, five years ago, when you adopted the thoroughfare plan. And so really didn't have legal standing. So I was thinking we were going to come back with the thoroughfare plan and I am all for that. And yes, these roads did exist. And yes, we do need a way to have impact fees paid. And now that we are part of AMPO, we do need to look at our planning in terms of the region. But I think this is the cart before the horse. And I really like to table this today and get the thoroughfare plan set. I don't think we need to wait till January, but we need to work on that. And as part of the thoroughfare plan, have these roads, because right now, It just seems like we pulled out a piece of it without looking at the entire comprehensive plan. So I would ask that we would just try to do this maybe in another two courts so we'd all have some time to look at it because it's very new, and to me it seems totally out of order. I agree, but right now it's not comprehensive.

Just a point of clarification, the classification of roads can be separate and apart from the thoroughfare plan, and as a matter of fact, it might actually be something the court would want to consider doing permanently. because as you change your classification system, if you find a need in the future to do so, it doesn't require an amendment to the entire thoroughfare plan if they are, in fact, separate orders. This was something that we talked about when we asked for you to suspend the application of the thoroughfare plan because we are required by the statute to have a classification system. So this was brought back to you at the request of the members of the court, and we're hoping that you will consider adopting it today. It doesn't change the status quo. It separates the classification portion from the thoroughfare plan itself, which probably is what we should have done to begin with, in my opinion, just because it's easier for the court to administer and keep those two separate issues separate, because they are. They're authorized by different sections of different titles. The thoroughfare plan comes into play under Chapter 232 of the local government code. Road classification is 251 of the transportation code. So to have them addressed in separate orders, to me, makes good legal sense, but that's just my My opinion.

Thank you. Thank you for that, and I appreciate that. And sometimes what's possible in the legal realm or what looks good is not really practical. So, again, I'm in total agreement. I just think it's premature.

Well, we've got a motion and a second. So, all the vote.

Commissioner McCall.

Nay.

Commissioner Huygens. Nay. Commissioner Chapman.

Nay.

Commissioner Carpenter.

Nay.

Judge Salarza. Nay.

Yay. Motion fails three to two with commissioners from one, two, and four opposed. And the judge and commissioner for precinct three in favor.

Can I ask a question, please? This, as Ms. Osteen mentioned, this was brought at the request of commissioner's court. So with this not being approved today, what would you like the next steps to be? to help with your question on order or with questions about the thoroughfare plan, what would you like the next steps to be?

I would like more backup and to talk about the two legal statutes that Jen quoted. I'd like to pull out the thoroughfare plan so I didn't know this item was going to be on the agenda or else I could have done that. I'd like to see how that thoroughfare plan was put together, take Jen's suggestions that that not be done and exactly the way it was, that there could be a separate order for the roads. I just need to get in the weeds of all that. So if you could put all that together for us, that would be great. And is there any problem now that we've deliberated this, Jen, with her sending that to us individually as long as we don't reply all?

If she sends it to you and she's providing information and there's no deliberation until a public meeting is commenced, there is no problem.

Does anybody else have any other feedback on next steps?

I would like to know when we're assessing rough proportionality on a new business, I'd like to see the overall process on how that's accomplished. Depending on the classification of roads and the impact to the small business owner, if it's a small business or if there's no impact on residential, I'd like to know all those things.

Okay. I think I can get you some information to start. Yes, I can get you some information to start and then we can have some more discussions about that for sure.

And I do think this needs to get passed. I just want to make sure that we're, I think everyone recognizes this is an important part of protecting our community.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mary Ellen.

So it is 1133 AM on this Tuesday, June 9th. And that concludes today's open portion of today's session. We're going to take another five-minute recess till 1138 and resume with our closed session to address the duties and responsibilities of general counsel, discuss the Open Meetings Act, discuss real property, security audits, purchase of property, and pending lawsuits. And so with that, we're going to recess. All right, we've reopened our open portion of today's session. Are there any motions to make coming out of executive? From you, ladies, anything?

No.

Gentlemen, anything from you? With that, it is officially 1.25 p.m. on this Tuesday, June 9th, and this regularly called session of the Kendall County Commissioner's Court is adjourned.